It is remarkable how constantly the Spirit of God presents, in intimate connection, the full relief of the conscience from all sense of guilt, and the deliverance of the heart from the moral influence of this present evil world. Now, it should be our care, beloved Christian reader, to maintain the integrity of this connection. Of course, it is only by the gracious energy of the Holy Ghost that we can do so; but we ought to seek earnestly to understand and practically carry out the blessed link of connection between the death of Christ as an atonement for sin and as the moral power of separation from this world. Many of the people of God never get beyond the former, if they even get that length. Many seem to be quite satisfied with the knowledge of the forgiveness of sins through the atoning work of Christ, while, at the same time, they fail to realize deadness to the world in virtue of the death of Christ and their identification with Him therein.
Now, when we stand and gaze upon the burning of the red heifer in Numbers xix.—when we examine that mystic heap of ashes, what do we find? It may be said, in reply, We find our sins there. True, thanks be to God and to the Son of His love, we do indeed find our sins, our iniquities, our trespasses, our deep crimson guilt, all reduced to ashes; but is there nothing more? can we not, by a careful analysis, discover more? Unquestionably. We find nature there, in every stage of its existence—from the highest to the lowest point in its history. Moreover, we find all the glory of this world there. The cedar and the hyssop represent nature in its widest extremes; and in giving its extremes, they take in all that lies between. “Solomon spake of trees, from the cedar-tree that is in Lebanon even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall.”
“Scarlet” is viewed, by those who have carefully examined Scripture on the point, as the type or expression of human splendor, worldly grandeur, the glory of this world, the glory of man. Hence, therefore, we see in the burning of the heifer, the end of all worldly greatness, human glory, and the complete setting aside of the flesh with all its belongings. This renders the burning of the heifer deeply significant. It shadows forth a truth too little known, and when known, too readily forgotten—a truth embodied in these memorable words of the apostle, “God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, whereby the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world.”
We are all far too prone to accept the cross as the ground of escape from all the consequences of our sins, and of full acceptance with God, and, at the same time, refuse it as the ground of our complete separation from the world. True it is, thanks and praise be to our God, the solid ground of our deliverance from guilt and consequent condemnation; but it is more than this. It has severed us forever from all that pertains to this world, through which we are passing. Are my sins put away? Yes, blessed be the God of all grace. According to what? According to the perfection of Christ’s atoning sacrifice as estimated by God Himself. Well, then, such precisely is the measure of our deliverance from this present evil world—from its fashions, its maxims, its habits, its principles. The believer has absolutely nothing in common with this world, in so far as he enters into the spirit and power of the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. That cross has dislodged him from every thing here below, and made him a pilgrim and a stranger in this world. The truly devoted heart sees the dark shadow of the cross looming over all the glitter and glare, the pomp and fashion of this world. Paul saw this, and the sight of it caused him to esteem the world, in its very highest aspect, in its most attractive forms, in its brightest glories, as dross.
Such was the estimate formed of this world by one who had been brought up at the feet of Gamaliel. “The world is crucified unto me,” said he, “and I unto the world.” Such was Paul, and such should every Christian be—a stranger on earth, a citizen of heaven, and this not merely in sentiment and theory, but in downright fact and reality; for as surely as our deliverance from hell is more than a mere sentiment or theory, so surely is our separation from this present evil age. The one is as positive and as real as the other.