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Eph. 4: 13; Phil. 3: 15; Col. 4: 12; Heb. 5: 14; James 1: 4, 17, and the passages
which speak of "perfectness", "perfecting", and the whole epistle of Hebrews.
It is something to provoke one to emulation to see how the apostle did not remain
satisfied with seeing men saved from sins, but suffered and strove to present them perfect
in Christ Jesus. He, like Peter, desired the babes to grow, to ever keep before them "the
perfect Man, and to remember that the measure of our faith is
"The stature (of full age) of the fulness of the Christ".
"Christ shall be magnified in my body" (Phil. 1: 20, 21).
pp. 167, 168
The apostle who allowed nothing to turn him aside from finishing his course, who
pressed on through all opposition in his desire to present every man perfect in Christ
Jesus, did not forget his Master in his zeal for His service, nor his Lord in his desires for
His saints. Writing to the Philippians the apostle could say of himself:--
"With all boldness, as always, so now also, Christ shall be magnified in my body
whether by life, or by death, for to me to live is Christ, and to die gain."
What faithful service must lie behind the ability to say that, "as always, so now also"!
The magnifying of Christ in the body is a deeper experience than the words may at first
indicate. To the Philippians themselves the apostle speaks of standing fast in one spirit,
and with one soul striving together for the faith of the gospel. We should probably have
placed the spirit highest, and the body lowest; it is not so in Christian experience. The
new convert to the faith may magnify Christ in his spirit, but may shrink from the ordeal
of magnifying Christ in his body. There is in this distinction a most important principle;
the believer first knows Christ as the risen One at the right hand of God, the One Who is
far above all principality and power, then as the truth lays hold upon his heart and life, as
the life begins to evidence itself in growth, the believer is taken backward in his
experience, he begins to learn not only the glory of the resurrection, but the teaching of
death and burial; the cross too becomes something experimental in his life and
knowledge, he seeks not only to "know Him" in His present glory, but begins to desire to
"know Him" in relation to having fellowship with His sufferings, and conformity to His
death. Joined with Christ as the risen One he entertains doubt of sharing that resurrection
life, yet as he enters into deeper fellowship of his sufferings it is "if by any means" he
may attain unto a resurrection which is connected with being made perfect, or reaching a
goal, and off gaining a prize. It is this that the apostle has to teach us when he speaks of
spirit and soul in the case of the Philippians, but reserves the reference to the body to
himself.
We endeavoured some time ago to draw attention to the interpretation of Phil. 3: 21,
where the "vile body" is the "body of humiliation". This humiliation does not necessarily
call attention to indwelling sin or natural corruption, which is common to every child of