SHARING WITH HIM

SHARING WITH HIM

IN Way’s Translation we get one of the richest views of Christ’s ministry for us that we have in any of our translations. Gal. 2:20, “Yes, I have shared Messiah’s crucifixion. I
am living indeed, but it is not I that live; it is Messiah whose life is in me.” The heart can hardly take in the reality that is unveiled to us. “Yes, I have shared in His crucifixion.” This is the legal side of our Identification with Christ.

You see, He shared with us in His Incarnation. He became one with us. He gave us His kingly glory and became one with suffering, lost humanity. He was one with us in His Substitution. He shares with us; He shares our sins, our infirmities, our diseases. He took them upon Himself.

The sharing was so real that “He who knew no sin, became sin” in order to become Identified with us, to come to our level.  He not only had sin reckoned to Him, sin laid upon Him as the High Priest laid the sin of Israel upon the goat, but He actually became sin.
We can hardly grasp the fact that Deity could become sin, but He did. He died spiritually.
“The Righteous for the unrighteous, that He might bring us to God.”

In the New Creation, we shared with Him. He is the Head; we are the body.  He has imparted Himself to us, and when He imparted Himself to us, He gave to us a new self in the place of our old self.  That old, fallen, sin-ruled self was displaced and the new Jesus
self, the New Creation self, the Godlike self, the self that is made in the image of Christ, became our new self.

You see how utterly He shared with us; how much He became one with us.  But in Col. 3:1 he says, “If, then, you have shared in Messiah’s resurrection, aspire ever to the things on high, where Messiah is,  throned at the right hand of God. “Let your thoughts dwell on things above, not grovel on the earth. You have died to things of earth, and your real life now has been hidden, by its union with Messiah, in the being of God.” (Way’s Trans.)
Here we catch a glimpse of our utter oneness with Him, of the completeness of this union.

What is more real than this: “I am the vine, ye are the branches.” (John 15:5). Here He shows us we are the fruit-bearing part of Him.  We are the Love-revealing part of Him.
We are the part of Him that blesses and touches humanity. We are the part of Him that brings Eternal Life to lost man. We are sharing in His Resurrection. The heart is thrilled.
If we share in His Resurrection, we share in His victory over Satan: we share in His victory over sin.  We have been raised together with Him. We are sharing His victory over the adversary.

Then Satan knows that we conquered him in Christ, that we were with the Master when He put him to nought and triumphed over him, and put off from Himself the principalities and the powers when Jesus made a show of Satan before his own hosts in the dark regions; that we shared with Him and were a part in that great victory. And did you notice, we are sharing in the things on High where Messiah is enthroned at the right hand of God? We are seated with Him.

You see, in Eph. 2:6-8 we were raised together with Him, and then not only were we raised with Him, but we were seated with Him. Let me read from Ephesians (Way’s Trans.): “Thrilled us with the same new life wherewith He quickened our Messiah.-By free grace alone have ye obtained salvation-and with Him He raised us from the dead, and with Him throned us in the high heavens.” His expression “throned us” means we are seated as one with Him on the throne now.

He is the Head of the Body; we are members of the Body Where the Head is, the Body is.
The authority that belongs to the Head belongs to the Body. Now you can understand Matt. 28:18: “All authority hath been given unto me in heaven and on earth.” All authority; all dominion. You understand now why He could “put off from Himself the principalities and the powers.” You can understand how He could “make a show of them.”

He was the Master, with the Omnipotence and Ability of the Father.  We share in that.
He has given us the legal use of His Name. In that Name is invested all the authority the Father gave Him after His Resurrection. That Name is ours, and we have a legal right to use it.  Oh, I wish that our hearts could take it in.

The days of our defeat and failure would then be over. Rom. 6:2 (Way’s Translation), throws much light upon our union with Christ. “We have passed out of sin as truly as the dead man has passed out of life: can we, when thus dead to it, still go on living in it? Or, if you fail to grasp this inference, look at it thus: do you not comprehend that all of us, who passed by baptism into union with Messiah Jesus, were by baptism made sharers in His death? Well then, if that baptism made us share His death, it must have made us share His burial too.

“It must follow that, as Messiah was raised from among the dead by means of the descent of His Father’s glory, so we too, who rose with Him, are to be’ employed wholly in the activities of the New Life. “For if, by having died like Him, we have entered into living union with Him, most certainly we shall not be less so in consequence of having risen with Him.
“This we recognize, that our former self was nailed to His cross with Him so that that body which was the instrument of sin might be made impotent for evil so that we could not any longer be slaves of sin.”

Notice now from this vivid translation that we shared with Christ in His death. We shared with Him in His Resurrection, and we are sharing now with him at the right hand of the Father. From another angle, He is sharing with us in our ministry as branches of the Vine.

We are His testimony.
We are now His confession.
We are boldly telling the world what we are in Christ.
We have taken our place in Christ.
We are acting as a part of Himself.
We share in everything that He did. He is sharing in everything that we are.

This brings a nearness to the Reality of that great oneness between the Head and the Body. You see, we suffered with Him; we shared in it.

We shared in His Justification.  We shared with Him when He was made alive down in that dark region, and we heard the Father whisper, “Thou art my Son; this clay have I begotten thee” (Acts 13:33), speaking of His Resurrec¬tion. We shared in that Resurrection. We shared in the power and authority of it. When He put all the enemies beneath His feet, they were beneath our feet. When He triumphed over them, that was our triumph.

And now we are carrying out His precious will in the earth. He is sharing His Ability, Wisdom and Love with us. You caught that in Rom. 6:6: We shared in His Resurrection ;
and in Eph. 2:5, 6, we share in His Life and we share in His throne. In Rom. 6:8 you get it clearly: We shared in His new Life, the new Resurrection Life; the same wonderful Life that Jesus had.

Col. 2:13 (Way’s Trans.) “In the rite of baptism we were laid with Him in His grave; in that rite too did we share His resurrection, through our faith in the soul-awakening power of God, who began by raising Jesus from the dead. “And you too-for dead you lay in the charnel-house of your transgressions and the impurity of your sensual nature – you God thrilled with that same new Life of Jesus.” Can’t you see the utter oneness, our absolute union in Christ?

Can’t you see that today you are partaking of His Divine Nature, that as you yield to the inward Life of God in your spirit, you will slowly but surely gain the ascendancy over your reasoning faculties until your mind becomes renewed through the reading of the Word, which is really the unveiling Mind of Christ. You will have the Mind of Christ.

Don’t forget for a moment that in the mind of the Father you are sharing in the Throne of Grace. You own a share in it.  Just as Way translates Eph. 2:6, “We share His throne.”
Why, our Head is there. Our Lord is there. Marvelous, isn’t it? I sometimes wonder how Paul and John and the rest of them that are gathered about the Throne, feel about us down here.

I imagine Paul is just yearning over us that we might understand the riches of the unveilings that he gave to us of the Living Christ in His Resurrection. Can’t you see how we reign with Him?  In His Substitution, we share with Him from the cross to the Throne.
We were crucified with Him; we died with Him; we suffered with Him; we were justified with Him; we were made alive with Him; raised with Him; and are now seated with Him.

Now you want Weymouth’s translation of Rom. 5:17: “For if, through the transgression of the one individual, Death made use of the one individual to seize the sovereignty, all the more shall those who receive God’s overflowing grace and gift of righteousness reign as kings in Life through the one individual, Jesus Christ.” This is the climax of our earthwalk.
That overflowing Grace is the overflowing of the Love Nature of the Father that is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit.

The Gift of Righteousness gives us our legal standing before the Father. The overflowing Grace was the incoming of the Nature and Life, the substance and being of our Father into our spirits. The Nature of the Father coming in has made us Righteous, made us like the Father, like Jesus; made us utterly one with Him. Now we reign as kings in the realm of this New Life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

You see, we were in slavery and servants of the adversary. We are now the joyful Love Slaves of Jesus. We are heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ, and we are
coming into that new knowledge of what we are in Christ. Sin-consciousness has robbed us in the past of our faith; robbed us of our sense of worthiness; robbed us of our joy of Sonship. We know now that sin-consciousness was just a camouflage of the adversary.
We were standing complete in Christ, but we did not know it. We were the Righteousness of God in Christ and we did not know it.

As long as Satan could keep us in ignorance, he kept us in darkness and weakness.
But the veil has been torn away. The light has shone in.  The light that we had before was darkness, but now this is the Light of Life. “He that followeth me shall not walk in the darkness.” We walked in the darkness, but now He is the Light of our Life. He is our Life. He is our Light. We have become like those whose eyes had been blinded but now have received light, and we see things as they really are.

Before, we were groping and hoping. Now we have passed out of the realm of hope into the realm of assurance. It is the realm of Reality. We know who we are, and what we are. We know what Grace has been bestowed upon us. We are walking in the light of this wonderful Life Christ brought into the world.