Principles of Union with Christ

edition.

Chapter 1

Jesus My King

Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest! (Luke 19:38).

Jesus comes as King to those of us who believe in Him. He comes in to set up His government and write His law within our hearts. He comes to establish His kingdom within us, and to sway His sceptre over our whole being and personality. He must be spiritually revealed and received by us personally as our great and glorious King.

We need Him to reveal himself to our souls as the one upon whose shoulders rests the government of the universe. Jesus is the King! He governs this world for the protection, discipline, and benefit of all believers in Him. This revelation of Jesus as King has a powerful sin-subduing tendency in the hearts of those who honor Him as their King. We will tend to live a more humble and obedient life for our King when we know that all events are directly or indirectly controlled by Him. We praise Him knowing that absolutely all things are designed for and will surely result in our good.[1] These considerations, when revealed to our souls and made living realities by the Holy Spirit, kill selfishness and confirm the love of God in us.

Jesus Christ, who has all power and authority in heaven and on earth, needs to be revealed to our souls, and received by faith, so that He may dwell in and rule over us. We need to see and feel our weakness, our need of protection and defense, and our need of being watched over by Him. We need to see the infinite power of Christ our King for our needs to contend with the power of our spiritual enemies. We need to consider our troubles, our dangers, and our certain ruin without the Almighty One to interpose in our behalf. The soul needs to truly and deeply know itself; and then to be inspired with confidence by a revelation of Christ as God, the Almighty God, and the King who possesses absolute and infinite power. Christ must be presented to our very souls, and we must accept Him and His strength in all our needs for power.

Oh, how infinitely blind we are to the fullness and glory of Christ if we do not know Christ in His power and ourselves in our weaknesses, as revealed to us personally by the Holy Spirit. When we are led by the Holy Spirit to look down into the abyss of our own emptiness—to behold the horrible pit and miry clay of our own sinful habits, which are fleshly, worldly, and devilish entanglements—when we see in the light of God that our emptiness and necessities are infinite; then, and not till then, are we prepared to wholly cast off our selfish self and put on Christ as Lord and King. The glory and fullness of Christ are not revealed to our souls until we discover our need of Him. But when our selfish self is fully revealed in all its loathsomeness and helplessness, when hope is utterly extinct respecting every kind and degree of help in ourselves, and when Christ the King, the all and in all, is revealed to the soul as its all-sufficient portion and salvation; then, and not till then, does the soul know its salvation. This knowledge is the indispensable condition of appropriating faith, or that act of receiving Christ, or that committal of all to Him, that takes Christ home to dwell in the heart of faith, and to preside over all its states and actions. Oh, such a knowledge and such a reception and putting on of Christ is blessed. Happy is he who knows Christ by his own personal experience as King of kings and Lord of lords.

It is indispensable to a steady and implicit faith that the soul should have a spiritual apprehension of what is implied when Christ said that all power was delivered unto Him. His great commission to us was: "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I will be with you always, to the very end of the age" (Matt. 28:18b-20, author’s emphasis). This great commission included great and precious promises. The ability of Christ to do all, and even exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, is what the soul needs to see clearly in the spiritual sense. We are not to comprehend that Christ is King merely as a theory or as a proposition, but we are to see the true spiritual importance of His lordship in the totality of our lives. This is equally true of all that is said in the Bible about Christ in all of His offices and relationships. It is one thing for you to theorize and speculate and offer opinions about Christ, and an infinitely different thing for you to know Him personally as He is revealed by the Holy Spirit to your heart and mind. When Christ is fully revealed to your soul by the Comforter, you will never again doubt the attainability and reality of personal holiness and entire sanctification in this life.[2]

Prayer

Come, Holy Comforter, and minister personally to my soul. Show me all the relationships that Jesus Christ wants to have and can have with me if I would but open my life completely to Him. Work your gracious will in my heart and mind, because I truly want Jesus Christ to rule in my life and be my one and only Sovereign King. Bring your testimony to my spirit and teach me that He has in reality power and authority over all. Especially impress upon my soul that through Christ the King, I can overcome all sinful habits and temptations in this life for the sake of His glory and the spread of His victorious kingdom. Amen.

1 See especially Finney’s sermon on this in Principles of Victory, All Things for Good to Those That Love God, pp. 128–136.

2 Systematic Theology, pp. 637, 638, 640, 641, 642.

Chapter 2

Jesus My Savior

She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins (Matt. 1:21).

Jesus Christ was born to save us from our sins. As the prophet foretold, On that day a fountain will be opened to the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, to cleanse them from sin and impurity (Zech. 13:1). Jesus Christ, let it be ever remembered, and spiritually understood and embraced, is not only a justifying Savior, but also a purifying Savior. His name is Jesus, because He saves His people from their sins.

As Jesus, therefore, He must be spiritually known and embraced. Jesus, Savior! He is called Jesus, or Savior, we are informed, because He saves His people not only from hell, but also from their sins. He saves from hell only upon condition of His saving from sin. You have no Savior if you are not saved from sin in your own experience. Of what use is it to call Jesus Lord and Savior unless He is really and practically acknowledged as our Lord and as our Savior from sin? Shall we call Him Lord, Lord, and then not do the things which He has told us to do? Shall we call Him Savior, and refuse to embrace Him so as to be saved from our sins and the practice of sinful habits and selfishness?

We must know Jesus as the one whose blood cleanses us from all sin. How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God! (Heb. 9:14). And the Apostle Peter reminds us, For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver and gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect (1 Pet. 1:18, 19). And he has written to us, who have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the sanctifying work of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and sprinkling by his blood: Grace and peace be yours in abundance (1 Pet. 1:2). The Apostle John encourages us by writing in praise of Him for our redemption, To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood, and has made us to be a kingdom and priests to serve his God and Father—to him be glory and power for ever and ever! (Rev. 1:5, 6).

When the shedding of Christ’s blood is rightly understood and embraced, when His atonement is properly understood and received by faith, it cleanses the soul from all sin. When Jesus Christ is received as one to cleanse us from sin by His blood, we shall know what James B. Taylor meant when he said, I have been into the fountain, and am clean. You must know by your personal experience what Christ meant when He said, You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you (John 15:3). You must know His love and know that you are washed clean by the shedding of His blood. Ezekiel declared the promise of God regarding the work of His Son, I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws (Ezek. 36:25–27). It is of foremost importance that language like this, relating to our being cleansed from sin by Christ, should be unfolded to our souls by the Holy Spirit, and embraced by faith, and Christ truly revealed in this relationship. Nothing but this can save us from sin. This will fully and effectually do the work of sanctification in our souls. It will cleanse us from all sin. It will cleanse us from all our filthiness, and from all our idols. It will make us clean.

We need to know and appropriate Christ, our King and Savior, as dying for our sins. It is the work of the Holy Spirit to reveal His death in relation to our individual sins, and as related to our sins as individuals. The soul needs to grasp Christ as crucified for us. It is one thing for us to regard the death of Christ merely as the death of a martyr, and an infinitely different thing, as everyone who has had the experience knows, to apprehend His death as a real and authentic vicarious sacrifice for our sins. We must know personally that He died as a true substitute for our death. We need to recognize Christ as suffering on the cross personally for us, or as our personal substitute. We need to be able to say, That sacrifice of my God and King was for me! That suffering and that death were for my sins! That blessed Lamb was slain for me! When we fully and completely realize and appropriate Christ the King and dying Savior, He can kill the practice of sin within us. If knowing Christ in His dying love will not subdue our rebellion against His kingdom, what can?[1]

Prayer

Lord Jesus, am I so hard of heart that I cannot weep when I think of your dying love for me? Am I so hardened in sin and rebellion that I cannot bow willingly and humbly beneath your sceptre? Teach me from your Word and fill me with your Spirit so I can joyfully obey your decrees out of a heart of love. I have one desire, and that is to glorify you. You have done all for me, and I rejoice in your salvation. Help me