The Universality Of Christ

God has singled out a Person, and gathered into that Person all the Divine perfections; everything is inseparably bound up with His Son; He has put all the fulness of eternity and of the universe into that Person, and bound up all the fulness in Him; not a fragment can be had apart from Him; that which is to characterize the new creation is in Him. The predestined end of God is a full presentation of the fulness of Christ - “The church, His body, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all” (Eph. 1:23).

Every corner of the universe will speak audibly of Jesus Christ; so that we shall not be able to go into a place, or touch a life, without finding an expression of the Lord Jesus.

“Christ in you, the hope of glory” - this is heaven. You walk in the presence of the Lord Jesus. Think of the whole universe like that; a universal expression of His Son in fulness. That is the end God has in view, that Christ shall fill all things; that, looking into everything, it shall be found to be full of Christ. All is made for Him, and in the new creation all will speak of His presence and show forth some characteristic of Him. Oh! the joy, even now, when you touch a life and find immediately that life is full of the Lord Jesus, and the Lord Jesus is the fulness of that life; what a benediction it is!

God has singled out a Person and set Him forth to be seen of all - the Man Christ Jesus.

The Universality Of The Church

You cannot go outside of A and Z in the realm of literature; you box the compass of language with A and Z; likewise Christ Jesus is First and Last of God’s new creation, and all that is in between; you cannot get outside of that. We must never think of anything as outside of Christ; He Is Salvation; He Is Sanctification; He Is Redemption, Justification, Peace; Wisdom, Love, Heaven. “Know ye not as to your own selves, that Jesus Christ is in you,” this Christ - in you! Do you see the possibilities and the tremendous reach of this?

God will transform His universe, not from without, but from within. How? By putting Jesus Christ within the believer by His Holy Spirit; and thence there will be a two-fold activity - being conformed to Him by His Spirit, and He being formed in the believer; thus He is going to make His new creation.

“Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Col. 1: 27). “God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He that hath the Son hath life” (1 John 5:11, 12).

“If any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His” (Rom. 8:9).

“The Lord Jesus Christ: who shall fashion anew the body of our humiliation, that it may be conformed to the body of His glory, according to the working whereby He is able even to subject all things unto Himself” (Phil. 3:20b, 21; ARV).

“Put on the new man, that is being renewed unto knowledge after the image of Him that created Him: where there cannot be Greek and Jew… but Christ is all, and in all” (Col. 3:10, 11; ARV).

“The church, which is His body, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all” (Eph. 1:22b, 23).