by Arthur W. Pink
by Arthur W. Pink
Philologos Religious Online Books
Philologos.org
by Arthur W. Pink
October, 1935
Union and Communion.
3. Mystical. The everlasting love of the Triune God is the origin of the Church's union to Christ, election being the first and fundamental act of that love toward its members, that election giving them a subsistence in their Head: “According as He hath chosen us in Him before the foundation of the world” (Eph. 1:4). In election God made it manifest that He was pleased to desire creature fellowship and society, instead of dwelling alone forever in His own infinite self-sufficiency. First, He ordained that His beloved Son should take manhood into union with His own Person, and that as God-man He should be the Head of a people given to Him for His glory. This order in the Divine counsels is marvelously adumbrated in the physical realm: the head and members of the human body are conceived together in the womb, as Christ and the members of His Church were chosen to form one Body; yet as the head comes out first, so Christ was given the pre-eminence from the womb of God's decrees.
However difficult it be for us to grasp, it is important we should recognise that God's eternal decree gave the elect a super-creation subsistence before Him, so that they were capable of being loved and of receiving a grant of grace. In other words, in God's eternal thoughts and foreviews, the elect were conceived and contemplated by Him in the Divine mind as real entities in a state of pure creaturehood, above and beyond any consideration of the Fall. Even then they were “Blessed with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ” and “accepted in the Beloved” (Eph. 1:3, 6). It is of great moment that the Church should thus be first considered by us, that we never lose sight of the original dignity and loveliness of the Church, anointed and blessed in Christ before the foundation of the world. Her state by the Fall was not her original one, any more than her present state is the final one.
“Behold, I and the children whom the LORD hath given Me” (Isa. 8:18). Such were “sons” before God sent forth the Holy Spirit into their hearts (Gal. 4:6); they were “children” while “scattered abroad” before Christ died for them (John 11:51, 52); they were “children” before the Redeemer became incarnate (Heb. 2:14). The elect were “children” from all eternity and decreed to be so unto all eternity. They did not lose their sonship by the Fall, neither by any corruption derived from that Fall in their nature. “Children” they continued, though sinful children, and as such, justly exposed to wrath. Nevertheless, this relationship could not be revoked by any after-acts in time: united to Christ from all eternity, they were always one with Him. It is a remarkable fact that never once has the Holy Spirit used the prepositional form “into Christ” with reference to God's election of the Church, although “eis” occurs in the Epistles over six hundred times: it is always “in (Gk. “en”) Christ,” because the Church was never out of Christ!
From all eternity the Church stood in Christ as His mystical Body and Bride. A union between the members and their Head was then established which neither sin, Satan, nor death could sever. We say again, it is of vast importance that we do not lose sight of the original glory and beauty of the Church. The fall of the Church in Adam did not and could not alienate the Church from Christ, but it gave occasion for redemption, thereby affording the means and opportunity for the honour of Christ, by His work, death and resurrection bringing a greater revenue of glory to the Almighty Author of salvation than had the fall of man never taken place. Wondrous indeed are all the ways of God: in the ultimate outcome, He was no loser by Adam's defection, but the gainer; as it is written, “The LORD hath made all things for Himself: yea, even the wicked for the day of evil” (Prov. 16:4); and again, “Surely the wrath of man shall praise Thee” (Psa. 76:10).
“God's love to His elect is not of yesterday; it does not begin with their love to Him, 'We love Him, because He first loved us' (1 John 4:19). It does not commence in time, but dates back from eternity, and is the ground and foundation of the elect's being called in time out of darkness into marvelous light: 'I have loved thee,' says the Lord to the Church, 'with an everlasting love: therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee' (Jer. 31:3); that is, in effectual vocation. Many are the instances which might be given in proof of the antiquity of God's love to His elect, and as it is antecedent to their being brought out of a state of nature. God's choosing them in Christ before the foundation of the world was an act of His love towards them, the fruit and effect of it. His making an everlasting covenant with His Son, ordered in all things and sure, on account of those He chose in Him; His setting Him up as the Mediator of the covenant from everlasting; His donation of grace to them in Him before the world began; His putting their persons into His hands, and so making them His care and charge, are so many demonstrative proofs of His early love to them.
“There are also instances to be given of God's love to His elect while they are in a state of nature. 'When we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly . . . . God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us' (Rom. 5:6, 8). Now certainly these persons were in a state of nature who are said to be 'without strength,' etc., and yet God commended His love towards them when and while they were such, in a matchless instance of it. John makes use of this circumstance respecting the state of God's elect, to magnify the greatness of God's love; 'Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins' (1 John 4:10). Again, the quickening of God's elect when dead in trespasses and sins, the drawing of them to Christ with the cords of powerful and efficacious grace in effectual vocation, are instances of His special grace and favour, and fruits and effects of His everlasting love to them.
“If God did not love His elect while in a state of nature, they must forever remain in that state, since they are unable to help themselves out of it; and it is only the love, grace and mercy of God which engage His almighty power to deliver them from thence. There are three gifts and instances of God's love to His people before conversion, which are not to be matched by any instance or instances of love after conversion. The one is the gift of God Himself to them in the Everlasting Covenant, which covenant runs thus: 'I will be their God, and they shall be My people.' The second is the gift of His Son to suffer and die on their room and stead, and so obtain eternal redemption for them. The third is the gift of His Spirit to them, to convince them of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment. And now what greater instance is there of God's love to His people after conversion? If the heavenly glory, with all the entertaining joys of that delightful state, should be fixed upon, I deny it to be a greater instance of God's love, than the gifts of Himself, His Son, and Spirit; and, indeed, all that God does in time, or will do to all eternity, is only telling His people how much He loved them from everlasting” (John Gill).
Now it was this eternal love of the Triune God which gave the Church an election-union in Christ form everlasting, for that love ever considered them in Christ. As it is written, nothing “shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 8:39). Christ as God-man, was loved by the Father as the supreme object of His complacency (Prov. 8:30; Isa. 42:1), which was manifested in His election of Him; and the Church was the secondary object of God's love as viewed in Christ. The Lord Jesus declared to the Father, Thou “hast loved them, as Thou hast loved Me . . . . Thou lovedst Me before the foundation of the world” (John 17:23, 24). Therefore as eternal election is a display of God's everlasting love to His people, so it is also an instance and evidence of their eternal union to Christ. The one cannot be without the other: if loved in Christ, the Church must have been one with Him.
It is not that election was a fore-appointing of persons unto an union with Christ, as stones are selected to be used in a building, or as a slip is chosen for engrafting into a tree. Ephesians 1:3, 4 does not say, “According as He has chosen us to be in Him” or “that we should be in Him.” Instead we read, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ: according as He hath chosen us in Him before the foundation of the world”—the Church was blessed with all spiritual blessings in Christ “according as” they were chosen in Him. Election was not the original uniting act, for that was the everlasting love of God; yet the two must not be separated: they went together. Nevertheless, as in election the Church is considered in Christ, so it is a proof of their eternal union to Him. Now there are several things which arise from and are branches of this everlasting love-union of the Church to Christ, which it will now be our joy to consider. First and chief of these is the marriage between Christ and the Church.
It pleased the Father to choose for His Son, as God-man, the Church, to be not only His Body, but also His Bride, who was to receive from Him and share with Him His honours, glories, and privileges. Having chosen the Church in Christ, the Father set her before Him in the glass of His decrees, according to the uttermost purpose of His love and grace toward her, causing her to shine with excelling brightness and loveliness in the view of His Son, giving Him to see how high she was in the Father's estimation, and presenting her to Christ as His choicest gift to Him. This drew out the heart of the God-man towards her, caused Him to open His arms and heart to receive her, to set His affections and delight upon her, to regard and esteem her according to the high value which the Father Himself had placed upon her.
“Thine they were,” said Christ to His Father, “And Thou gavest them Me” (John 17:6), to be My heritage, My portion, My bride. Here was the grand originating cause of Christ's love for His Church; the fact that she was the Father's love-gift to Him. Viewing the Church from eternity as thus presented to Him by the Father, He could not but regard her as supremely worthy of His affection and delight. His language was “I will betroth thee unto Me for ever; yea, I will betroth thee unto Me in righteousness, and in judgment, and in lovingkindness, and in mercies. I will even betroth thee unto Me in faithfulness: and thou shalt know the LORD” (Hosea 2:19, 20)—let it be carefully borne in mind that the record of His words in Holy Scripture are but the open transcript of what He said in secret before the world began: many examples of this might be given, but we here only state the bare fact.
“The King's daughter is all glorious within: her clothing is of wrought gold” (Psa. 45:13). Observe well the glorious title which the Church here bears, and mark carefully what is necessarily presupposed and clearly implied in it. The “King” is God the Father, of whom we read “a certain King, which made a marriage for His Son” (Matt. 22:2). That “marriage” was made form everlasting, and therefore could the Divine Bridegroom say to His celestial Bride, “thy Maker is thine Husband” (Isa. 54:5). Now it is by virtue of this marital union between Christ and His people that the Church is here designated “the King's daughter”: because the Father is Christ's “Father,” He is the Church's “Father” (John 20:17); because Christ is the Father's Son, and the Church is wedded to Him, therefore the Church is the Father's “Daughter!”
Most marvelously and blessedly was all of this shadowed out in connection with our first parents. Adam, in his creation and formation, was a type of Christ; Eve of the Church. Before Adam's creation we read of a council held between the Eternal Three concerning him: “And God said, Let Us make man in our image, after Our likeness” (Gen. 1:26). So it was in connection with the last Adam (Heb. 10:5, 9). Adam's body was supernaturally produced out of the virgin earth, as Christ's body was miraculously conceived by the Virgin Mary. The union between the soul and body of Adam (Gen. 2:7) adumbrated the incomprehensible union between the eternal Son of God and His assumption of our nature into oneness with His own Person. Adam's lordship, or his being given dominion over all mundane creatures (Gen. 1:28), prefigured Christ's universal headship over all things to His Church (Eph. 1:22, 23). But it is the formation of Eve and her union with Adam to which we would now direct particular attention.
“And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him . . . . And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and He took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof. And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made He a woman, and brought her unto the man. And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man” (Gen. 2:18, 21-23). First, behold here the tender solicitude of God toward Adam: “It is not good that man should be alone.” In this a deeper mystery is opened unto those who have eyes to see: it is a revelation on the earth plane of what had passed secretly in the eternal councils of Heaven. Christ, as God-man—”the Beginning” of Jehovah's way (Prov. 8:22; Col. 1:18), the Fountain-head of all His decrees (Isa. 42:1; Eph. 3:11)—was the grand Object of Jehovah's love: all His vast designs concentrated in Him, concerned Him, and were designed for His manifestative glory from all eternity—”all things were created by Him, and for Him” (Col. 1:16).
Second, we discover here God's purpose to provide a suitable companion for Adam: “I will make him an help meet for him.” This affords us a yet fuller insight into that which had passed in the Divine mind before the foundation of the world: God thought it not meet that the God-man (“set up” in Heaven before the world was: Prov. 8:23, 24) should be alone, therefore did He ordain and choose a Bride for Him. Third, God created Eve out of Adam, taking one of his ribs and from it and the flesh cleaving thereto made He the first woman. This also was a most striking acting out in time of what had transpired ere time began. God had chosen the Church in Christ, she was in Him before the foundation of the world. Christ having been “foreordained before the foundation of the world” (1 Peter 1:20) to become incarnate, and His human nature having a covenant subsistence before God, the Church, as thus considered in Him, received her human nature from Him, and hence that expression “We are members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones” (Eph. 5:30) is language which most evidently refers us back to Genesis 2:23.
Fourth, out of Adam's rib the Lord God made, or as the margin more correctly renders it “builded” the woman, for she is of a more curious and delicate frame than the man. Now Christ is “the foundation” (1 Cor. 3:11) and the Church is His “building”: built up for Him and upon Him, with heavenly art, by an infinitely wise Architect—”Ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house” (1 Peter 2:5). Fifth, God then set Eve before Adam, “and brought her unto the man,” and this, in order to effect a marriage union between them. What blessed light this casts upon the high mystery of grace, when God the Father presented the elect unto Christ. It was to that He referred when He said, “Thine they were, and Thou gavest them Me” (John 17:6)—as He gave Eve to Adam!
In our endeavour to view the eternal transactions of Divine love and grace, we must contemplate the Church as she was before Adam's defection. We must view her first, not as fallen, but as unfallen; not as involved in sin and ruin, but as the pure and spotless bride of Christ, given by the Father to Him as His Spouse. Most blessedly was this typed out in Eve as she was brought and given to Adam in all her spotless innocency. O how surpassingly fair must Eve have appeared in the morning of her creation, as she came fresh from the hand of her Maker! What could Adam do but love her and delight in the admirable bride which the Lord God had so graciously provided for him! So Christ viewing, in the glass of God's decrees, the Bride selected for Him, loved and delighted in her, betrothed Himself unto her, took her as thus presented by God unto Himself in a deed of marriage-settlement as the gift of the Father.
Let it be fully noted that Adam was joined to Eve in marriage before the Fall, and not after it. How this exposes the makeshift compromise of sublapsarians! Ephesians 5:31, 32 in the light of Genesis 2:23 unequivocally establishes the fact that the making of Adam and Eve before sin entered the world, prefigured the marriage-union of Christ and His Church, decreed of God prior to any consideration of the Fall. Nor does this stand alone. In Leviticus 21:13, 14 is another precious type equally definite and plain. There we read, “And he (namely, the high priest of verse 10) shall take a wife in her virginity. A widow, or a divorced woman, or profane, or an harlot, these shall he not take: but he shall take a virgin of his own people to wife.” Now as the high priest under the law was a figure of the great High Priest over the House of God, we must see in this Divine prohibition a typical intimation that the Church was espoused to the God-man in all her virgin purity as she stood before Jehovah in her native innocency.
But to return unto the exquisite scene set before us in Genesis 2. We observe, sixth, that Adam owned the relation which now existed between himself and Eve: “This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man” (Gen. 2:23). In like manner Christ received the elect at the Father's hands, became their Husband, and from thence owned them as His everlasting Spouse. His love for her is blessedly told out in “As the Father hath loved Me, so have I loved you” (John 15:9)—eternally, infinitely, unchangeably. He speaks of her as “in whom is all My delight” (Psa. 16:3); and “How fair and how pleasant art thou, O Love, for delights!” (Song. 7:6). Seventh, as Adam was not created for Eve, but she for him, so God did not foreordain and “set up” Christ, as God-man, for the Church, but the Church was ordained for Him: “For the man is not of the woman; but the woman of the man; neither was the man created for the woman; but the woman for the man” (1 Cor. 11:8, 9).
Finally, though Adam was not taken out of the woman nor created for her, nevertheless it was not good that he should be “alone”: Eve was his necessary complement, his companion, his help meet; yea, as we are told, “the woman is the glory of the man” (1 Cor. 11:7). In like manner, Christ, as God-man, would be incomplete without His Bride: considered as His mystical Body, she is called “the fullness of Him that filleth all in all” (Eph. 1:23). Christ needed a vessel which He might fill, that should reflect His glory; hence we read, “the messengers of the churches, and the glory of Christ” (2 Cor. 8:23); and again, “Israel My glory” (Isa. 46:13) He calls her. In the last reference made to her in Holy Writ we read, “Come hither, I will show thee the Bride, the Lamb's Wife . . . descending out of heaven from God, having the glory of God: and her light was like unto a stone most precious” (Rev. 21:9-11). In and by and through the Church Christ will be glorified to all eternity.
We must leave for our next article (D.V.) the consideration of how the marriage of the Church to Christ gave her communion with His honours and interests; as we must the effects which her fall in Adam did and did not produce in her.—A.W.P.
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