t,' 'adopted {55} as sons through Jesus Christ.' We are all of us
perfectly familiar with the idea of Christ as, so to speak, a personal
and individual redeemer, as the holy and righteous one, the beloved and
accepted Son, who is risen from the dead and exalted to supreme
sovereignty in heaven. But popular theology has not been quite so
familiar with the idea that Christ was and is all this in our manhood,
not simply because He was God as well as man (true as this is); but
because as man He was anointed with the Holy Spirit of God: that it was
in the power of that Spirit that He lived His life of holiness and
wrought His miracles of power: that it was in the power of that Spirit
that He taught and suffered and died and was glorified. Nor has
popular Christianity been familiar with the resulting truth: that by
that divine Spirit which possessed Him as man, the life of Christ is
extended beyond Himself to take in those who believe in Him, and make
them members of 'the church which is his body.' Yet, in fact, this
extension is implied even in the name Christ. The king Messiah, the
Christ of the Old Testament, is but the central figure of a whole
kingdom associated with Him, and all the characteristic phrases for
Christ in the New Testament {56} express the same idea. He is the
'first-born among many brethren[1]'; He is the 'first fruits[2]' of a
great harvest; He is the 'head of the body[3]'; He is the 'bridegroom'
inseparable from 'the bride[4]'; He is the second Adam, that is, head
of a new humanity[5]. Thus if the heavens closed around the ascending
Christ, and hid Him from view, they opened again around the descending
Spirit, descending into the heart of the Christian society to
perpetuate Christ's life and presence there. This historical ascent
and descent only embody in unmistakable facts the truth that the
life-giving Spirit, who made the manhood of Christ so satisfying to our
moral aspirations, is also and with the same reality, though not with
the same perfection or freedom, living and working in that great
society which He founded to represent Him on earth. Because this
society is possessed by the Spirit, therefore it lives in the same life
as Christ, it and all its individual members are 'in Christ.' In one
place, indeed, St. Paul includes the Church, the body, with its head
under the one name 'the Christ[6].'

[Sidenote: _Life in Christ_]

It is because the Church thus shares Christ's {57} life that