SYNOPSIS.
LECTURE I.
ONE BODY.
Difference of God’s dealings with His people in the past and present dispensations; Adam; Abraham; Israel as a nation; death and resurrection of Christ introduce a new thing; the body composed of Jew and Gentile; the cross, showing the complete ruin of man, removes the barrier to God’s free action; God’s thoughts set upon the glory of His Son; first shadow of the Church’s union with Christ precedes the entrance of sin; Ephes. i. is then adduced to show that God develops His counsels of grace before mentioning man’s sin; the cross not merely meets the desperate need of man, but unites in one body Jew and Gentile; a new man thus created; a habitation in which God could dwell; Christ, God’s true temple while on earth; the truth of the one body claims the attention of all Christians; human and divine relationships; Satan’s grand object to hinder the present operation of God in the saints; and succeeds at man’s weak point in that man likes to be something; and so easily falls a prey to the working of the enemy; the glory of Christ’s Person as maintained by the Holy Ghost, the mainspring of the life and conversation of a Christian man; difficulties met with in reasoning about the Church on Old Testament analogy; Christ Head of His body in resurrection; consequently the body is heavenly as in the Head; “Christian” means more than “Saint;” bearing of the Gospels and Epistles on the one body; servants and children; a Jew could never have put the Old and New Testaments together; the cross the foundation of a new revelation; what is the unity of the Spirit? Christians act on this unity only when gathered to the name of
