Vou. XXXVI BROOKLYN, N. Y., FEBRUARY 1, 1915 No. 3 IMPUTATION AND APPLICATION OF OUR LORD’S HUMAN LIFE-RIGHTS Apparently a great many of God’s people have difficulty in discerning just what is signified in the expression, “Gave himself a ransom for all.” ‘hey ask, If our Lord Jesus gave his human life a ransom for Adam and his race, where has he now any right to human life to give in justification to those who accept his favor, in view of the fact that we read, “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life’ ?—John 3:36. To appreciate the answer to this question, we must realize that the giving of the ransom has various features. First of all, our Lord’s consecration when he was thirty years of age, which he symbolized by water baptism, represents the giving up, the surrender, of his life to God. The lite which he surrendered was a perfect human life, one to which he had a full right. St. Paul tells us that he was “holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners.” Our Lord was not a member of the Adamic race in a direct sense—in the sense of having received his life from a human father; therefore his was not a condemned life, like that of the rest of the world. Nothing more was needed. He surrendered the full equivalent of Adam’s life and perfection. But he did not surrender his life to Adam; he merely put it into the Father’s hands without giving it to anybody. During the three and a half years of his ministry our Redeemer laid down his life. He completed that work at Calvary, saying there, “It is finished!” He there finished his baptism into death; he continued his self-surrender to the end. But he has not yet made any application of this human life to Adam and his race. He has merely put it into the Father’s hands. It was a life that had not been torfeited, that had not been mortgaged, that had not been embargoed. He simply surrendered his life in harmony with the Father’s plan.—Luke 23:46. RIGHT TO LIFE ON TWO PLANES When the Father raised him up on the third day, he made Jesus a spirit being. He was put to death in the flesh and was raised a spirit—quickened in spirit. (1 Peter 3:18—Diaglott) This quickened One of the new nature had this new life as a reward for his obedience in permitting his earthly life to be taken from him, But he had not forfeited his right to the earthly life; hence as a new creature he still retained this right to perfect human life. Everything that belonged to a perfect life belonged to him. He had permitted the Jews to take away his life, but he had neither surrendered nor forfeited his right to life. So when he was raised to life by the Father, he had not only the right to the spirit nature, but also the right to the earthly nature—not that he would have use for this for himself; for any one having the divine nature would have neither use nor desire for the earthly nature. The specific right that he had was the right to give, to bestow freely upon Adam and his race, human life—the very object he had in mind when he came into the world. So when the Lord Jesus arose from the dead and ascended up on high forty days later, he retained all the rights that he ever had. He had the right to human life, never having forfeited it; he also had the divine nature, the reward of his obedience—a superior right, a superior nature. But when he ascended up on high, he did not apply the merit of his sacrifice for the world of mankind; otherwise the whole world would not now lie in the wicked one. (1 John 5:19—Diaglott) ‘If our Redeemer had made an application of his merit for the world when he ascended, it would have taken away the sin of the world; but he did not do this. The Scriptures tell us that the church alone has escaped from the condemnation upon the world. (Romans 8:1) Evidently, then, the world is still in the wicked one. The only ones who have escaped from this condemnation are those who have accepted the arrangement of this Gospel age. Nobody else except the consecrated class has had merit and justification from Christ. RESTITUTION IMPUTED TO THE CHURCH How, then, does our Lord apply the merit to the church? We answer, Not directly. If he were to apply his merit directly, it would give the church human life, human perfection. God has some better thing for the church—that the church might attain to the same divine nature to which Jesus attained. The church attains this by following in the footsteps of Jesus. This signifies that as he sacrificed his human life, and laid down his earthly rights according to the will of the Father, so all who would become members of his bride class must do the same, must surrender their earthly life, in order to be associated with him, Only if we suffer with him shall we reign with him.—2 Tim. 2:11, 12. “If any man would be my disciple, let him deny himself, soever will so do during this Gospel age will attain to the same divine nature, the same glory, the same immortality—the difference being that our Lord will always be Head over all, the Chief over the church, which is his body, and that they will always be his members in particular, the church in glory. The question, then, comes up, If it was necessary for Jesus to be pure, holy, how could the church be acceptable to the Father, when they are of the depraved human nature? The answer of the Bible is that to this class who become his disciples Jesus imputes the merit of his sacrifice to the extent of covering their blemishes, their imperfections. We are to discern between give and impute. He will give his merit to the world by and by. But now he is making an imputation to the church. By this term imputation is signified, that if the church had remained of the earthly nature the same as the world, they would by and by have the right, the same as the world, to come up out of degradation to human perfection. Jesus secured by his death the privilege of giving all those rights to the church as well as to the remainder of Adam’s race. But this class, the church, forego all those rights to human perfection, When we consecrated ourselves to God, we gave up our right to become inheritors of the earth and earthly things; we gave up all our rights in the sense of merely surrendering them. By faith we believe that Jesus would in due time have given us those blessings of restitution the same as to the whole world of mankind. By faith we accept those blessings and by faith we surrender them, The only thing left for the church to do is to surrender their earthly lives. Some may have more vitality, and some may have less; some may have more talents, and some less; some may have more years, and some less; but whatever each has it is to be given up, surrendered. So, then, at consecration the church class voluntarily surrender their earthly nature. They surrender all the earthly rights that they have of the present time, and also those rights that would have been theirs had they remained part and parcel of the world. Jesus does not give to the church at the present time any part of the ransom-sacrifice, but merely imputes to them, counts to them, that part which they might have had if they had remained a part of the world. When Jesus died, he did not pay over a ransom as an offset for Adam, When Jesus was raised from the dead, he had not paid a ransom; and when he ascended to the Father he did not pay over a ransom for the world. But he laid in the Father’s hands the merit of his sacrifice. He has been imputing of this merit down through the Gospel age to the church only, but now he has about finished the imputing to the church, and the work of giving to the world restitution is about to begin; and before it begins the merit imputed (loaned) to the church must be actually paid over to divine justice as the basis for human restitution. WORK OF THE GOSPEL AGE TYPIFIED On the Jewish Atonement day the High Priest, first of all, killed the bullock. That bullock represented our Lord Jesus, the perfect man, and the priest represented our Lord, the new creature. Thus he typified the consecration of the human nature and also the condition of the new creature, still in the fleshly body, typed by the priest in the first Holy. Our Lord was in this condition of the Holy during the three and a half years of his ministry, During that time he had the privileges of the Golden Altar, and the light from the Golden Candlestick (representing the light of God’s truth), and the blessings represented by the Table of Shewbread (the spiritual food). At the end of the three and a half years, having finished the work of sacrificing himself, having burned the antitypical incense, he passed under the second veil. On the third day our Lord arose on the other side of the second veil—on the spirit plane—fully perfected as a new creature, no longer in any sense of the word a man. Ile could go and come like the wind. He remained with his disciples to convince them that he was no longer a man—going and coming like the wind, and appearing in various bodily forms. Then, when he ascended up on high, as the greatest antitypical High Priest he took with him the blood. The blood signifies the life of the sacrifice. He appeared in the presence of God, and there he sprinkled of the blood on the Mercy-Seat. This sprinkling of the blood on the Mercy-Seat was to make atonement for a certain class. That atonement we see was made only for the priests and the Levites—not for the world.—Leviticus 16:6. After the High Priest had finished making the atonement for the priests and the Levites, he went out into the Court take up his cross and follow me.” (Matthew 16:24) Then, again and there began a different work. Our Lord made appli“Where I am there shall my disciple be.” (John 12:26) Who- cation of the blood for the antitypical priests and the Levites [5621] (35-36)
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