Christ had a perfect life, given by God.  The Father said:  “Will you give up that life to me?  Will you part with it at my command?” And He parted with it, but God gave it back to Him in a second life ten thousand times more glorious than that earthly life.  So God will do to every one of us who willingly consents to part with his life.  Have you ever understood it?  Jesus was born twice.  The first time He was born in Bethlehem.  That was a birth into a life of weakness.  But the second time, He was born from the grave; He is the “first-born from the dead.”  Because He gave up the life that He had by His first birth, God gave him the life of the second birth, in the glory of heaven and the throne of God.  Christians, that is exactly what we need to do.  A man may be an earnest Christian; a man may be a successful worker; he may be a Christian that has had a measure of growth and advance; but if he has not entered this fullness of blessing, then he needs to come to a second and deeper experience of God’s saving power; he needs, just as God brought him out of Egypt, through the Red Sea, to come to a point where God brings him through Jordan into Canaan.  Beloved, we have been baptized into the death of Christ.  It is as we say:  “I have had a very blessed life, and I have had many blessed experiences, and God has done many things for me; but I am conscious there is something wrong still; I am conscious that this life of rest and victory is not really mine.”  Before Christ got His life of rest and victory on the throne, He had to die and give up all.  Do you it, too, and you shall with Him share His victory and glory.  It is as we follow Jesus in His death, that His resurrection, power and joy will be ours.

And then comes our last point.  The fifth step in His wondrous path was:  He was lifted up to be forever with the Father.  Because He humbled Himself, therefore God highly exalted Him.  Wherein cometh the beauty and the blessedness of that exaltation of Jesus?  For Himself perfect fellowship with the Father; for others participation in the power of God’s omnipotence.  Yes, that was the fruit of His death.  Scripture promises not only that God will, in the resurrection life, give us joy, and peace that passeth all understanding, victory over sin, and rest in God, but He will baptize us with the Holy Ghost; or, in other words, will fill us with the Holy Ghost.  Jesus was lifted to the throne of heaven, that He might there receive from the Father the Spirit in His new, divine manifestation, to be poured out in His fullness.  And as we come to the resurrection life, the life in the faith of Him who is one with us, and sits upon the throne—­as we come to that, we too may be partakers of the fellowship with Christ Jesus as He ever dwells in God’s presence, and the Holy Spirit will fill us, to work in us, and out of us in a way that we have never yet known.