The Glorious Secret

Continued . . .

When we “cease from” our “own works,” telling the Lord we are willing to wait His time, and let Him reveal it to us in His own way, then either suddenly as by a “light that surpasses the brightness of the sun,” (Acts 26:13) or imperceptibly; but in any case, Christ is revealed in us, a living bright reality.

Perhaps we are unable to say how and when it happened, but now we have the Spirit’s testimony that Christ reigns within us.

How the Secret is Manifested

“And they glorified God in me:” (Gal. 1:24).

When Christ is manifest in us, there is not much question about it. I will testify in word and in deed. Before, it was: “I know what I believe,” but now, “I know whom I believe in.”

“They glorified God in me.” This is always the result of Christ’s indwelling—others glorify God—but it is not the earthen vessel He makes His temple at all. They do not say, “What a wonderful Christian,” but rather “What a wonderful God.”

As soon as Christ is revealed in us, “the secret will out!” We no longer need to ask: Should I testify about it? For others will notice His glorious presence in us and ask us what has happened.

After the revelation of the secret in Paul and the manifestation of it to others, we read of this glorious secret and its mighty, energizing power.

“For He who worked effectively in Peter for the apostleship . . . also worked in me.” The work that God wrought in Paul worked in him just as effectually as it worked in Peter on the Day of Pentecost. It made Peter a new man, a bold, fearless witness to the crucifixion and resurrection. So, the glorious Son of God worked in Paul, compelling him, “doing mighty signs and wonders” through him. And Paul believed that God could do just as much in him as in Peter, even though he was not among those who had been filled with the Spirit at Pentecost.

Do we, as God’s children, believe as Paul did that the God who worked so gloriously in Peter can be equally mighty in us? “For the same Lord over all is rich to all who call upon Him.”

The Secret and its Conditions

“I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I that live, but Christ lives in me. That life which I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God . . .” (Gal. 2:20.)

This is the crux of the whole matter. “I” must be crucified before it can be said, “Christ lives in me.” God opens our eyes to see the fulness in His Son. He tells us that the secret of a blessed Christian life lies not in our trying to live like Christ, but in the Son of God Himself coming and dwelling in His temple, and He is living His own life through us.

It is a great step forward when, as children of God, we see that we have absolutely failed to live like Christ and we give up trying! The patient Lord has to let us try, that we may find out that it is impossible to copy the life of the Holy Son of God.

Just as we attempted to save ourselves, or make ourselves fit to approach God, and then found after all our striving, that we were “not better but worse,” so, after the matter of our salvation is settled, we again seek to do the very same thing, and think that now our sins have been forgiven, “with His help” we can succeed in pleasing Him.

Oh, how many of us have a dim idea that we have some good thing to offer God, or we expect Him to make something better out of us.

Someone once said, “It is a long road to the end of ourselves,” and it seems so long before we really and honestly believe, “In my flesh dwells no good thing.” Like King Saul we use our own judgment and are willing to destroy what we consider vile and refuse, but spare what we call “good.”

The Holy Spirit has to teach us—sometimes very painfully—that we have no “best” to “retain,” and that our very beauty melts away like a moth (Psalm 39:11), for all that is under the curse of sin.

God has to teach us that we have no best to retain, not one good thing; our very best is under the “curse of sin,” and His plan is not to improve the flesh, or to make it better, but that we surrender it to death with Christ. Not “I,”—even “good I”—trying to please Christ and live like Christ, but “I” condemned to death, recognizing God’s sentence of death, and yielding all to the cross of Calvary.

When we thus take our place of death with Jesus in real surrender, then the Holy Spirit will make it true and then bear witness to it by revealing Christ within—no longer a dim, distant Lord but, as one has said, “an inside Saviour!” Then Christ manifests Himself through the earthen vessel and God is glorified. Then Christ works in and through the yielded body not feebly and intermittently but with mighty effectual power. No longer hindered by us, but gloriously and blessedly moving through us as He wills.

“It is no longer I that live but Christ.” This is the secret of which such words as “glory” and “riches” express.

We need to remember however that Christ dwlling in the believer will not destroy his individuality. It is “Christ lives in me” and “I” that is crucified—the “I” that dethrones and dishonours the Lord—a “me,” the personality, that lives and yields sweet, implicit obedience to its tender, gracious King within. Christ, not self on the throne of the heart, the new spring at the centre of our being.

The “Secret” for others

“My little children, of whom I labour in birth again until Christ be formed in you.” (Gal. 4:19).

“Oh, that Christ might be revealed in them, and fully formed in them” was the apostle’s yearning desire for his church, and to this end he travailed on their behalf. How he watched and prayed, nursed and cared, encouraged and warned them, as he watched the Holy Spirit patiently and tenderly detachiching them from the old self-life. Paul laboured among them according to the “working” which was “working in him mightily” (Gal. 1:29), with one great end and longing that Christ might be formed in them, and that he might present every one of them perfect in Christ Jesus in the day of his appearing.

This is the Glorious Secret hidden from the generations down through the ages, until God in Christ came and reconciled the world to Himself, but which is now revealed to all who are willing to meet the conditions. An earthly vessel in which Christ Himself is revealed, after the self-centred “I” has been crucified. An earthly vessel that, “not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think of anything as being from ourselves,” so that everything in it may glorify God alone! An earthly vessel so surrendered that God can work in it with unhindered power, while one lives moment by moment in faith in the Son of the living God, who dwells in us.

“But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us . . . always carrying about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body.” 2 Cor. 4:7-10.

“For this cause, I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ . . . that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith . . . that you may be filled with all the fulness of God.” Eph. 3:14, 19.