I need not remind the enlightened reader that all this, if taken apart from death and resurrection, is perfectly unavailable to us. We need not only an incarnate, but a crucified and risen, Christ. True, He should be incarnate to be crucified; but it is death and resurrection which render incarnation available to us. It is nothing short of a deadly error to suppose that in incarnation Christ was taking man into union with Himself. This could not be. He Himself expressly teaches the contrary. "Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and _die_, it abideth _alone_; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit." (John xii. 24.) There could be no union between sinful and holy flesh, pure and impure, corruptible and incorruptible, mortal and immortal. Accomplished death is the only base of a unity between Christ and His elect members. It is in beautiful connection with the words, "Rise, let us go hence," that He says, "I am the vine, ye are the branches." "We have been planted together in the likeness of His death." "Our old man is crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be destroyed." "In whom also ye are circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, in putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ: buried with Him in baptism, wherein also ye are risen with Him through the faith of the operation of God, who hath raised Him from the dead." I would refer my reader to Romans vi. and Colossians ii. as a full and comprehensive statement of the truth on this important subject. It was only as dead and risen that Christ and His people could become one. The true corn of wheat had to fall into the ground and die ere a full ear could spring up and be gathered into the heavenly garner.
But while this is a plainly revealed truth of Scripture, it is equally plain that incarnation formed, as it were, the first layer of the glorious superstructure; and the curtains of "fine twined linen" prefigure the moral purity of "the Man Christ Jesus." We have already seen the manner of His conception; and, as we pass along the current of His life here below, we meet with instance after instance of the same spotless purity. He was forty days in the wilderness, tempted of the devil, but there was no response in His pure nature to the tempters foul suggestions. He could touch the leper and receive no taint; He could touch the bier and not contract the smell of death; He could pass unscathed through the most polluted atmosphere. He was, as to His manhood, like a sunbeam emanating from the fountain of light, which can pass without a soil through the most defiling medium. He was perfectly unique in nature, constitution, and character. None but He could say, "Thou wilt not suffer Thine holy One to see corruption." This was in reference to His humanity, which, as being perfectly holy and perfectly pure, was capable of being a sin-bearer. "His own self bare our sins in His own body on the tree." Not _to_ the tree, as some would teach us; but "_on_ the tree." It was on the cross that Christ was our sin-bearer, and only there. "He hath made Him to be sin for us who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him." (2 Cor. v. 21.)
"_Blue_" is the ethereal color, and marks the heavenly character of Christ, who, though He had come down into all the circumstances of actual and true humanity (sin excepted), yet was He "the Lord from heaven." Though He was "very man," yet He ever walked in the uninterrupted consciousness of His proper dignity, as a heavenly stranger. He never once forgot whence He had come, where He was, or whither He was going. The spring of all His joys was on high. Earth could neither make Him richer nor poorer. He found this world to be "a dry and thirsty land, where no water is," and hence His spirit could only find its refreshment above. It was entirely heavenly.--"No man hath ascended up to heaven, but He that came down from heaven, even the Son of Man _who is in heaven_." (John iii. 13.)