also to reckon ourselves alive unto God. Our subsequent experimental death to sin is as

much by reason of the new life we have in Christ as by reason of the fact that we are

reckoned to have died with Him. Col. 2: 20 says, "If ye died with Christ". Col. 3: 1

says, "If ye were raised with Christ". And both look back to Col. 2: 12, where burial

and resurrection are stated as accomplished facts.

The apostle not only directs our attention to the blessed fact of our union with the

risen Christ, but adds:--

He takes us beyond resurrection to ascension, and not to ascension only, but to the

seated Christ at God's right hand. What is the apostle's reason for introducing this

reference to the seated Christ?

It is the glory of the dispensation of the mystery that every member of the body is not

only reckoned to have been crucified with Christ, to have died with Him, to have been

buried, quickened and raised with Him, but also to have been "seated together in

heavenly places". The apostle would teach us that our strength to live down here is found

in our glorious position up there. This he sums up in the two words "seek" and "set".

Christ is Head over all things to the Church which is His body, in the capacity of the

risen, ascended and seated One. If we would more fully appreciate what is involved and

implied in the reference to Christ "seated at the right hand of God", we must turn aside

for a while to study that epistle which, while it teaches nothing as to the mystery, is the

epistle of the seated Christ. The epistle to the Hebrews, while it knows nothing of a

redeemed company "seated together in heavenly places" (for that is the mystery itself), is

a glorious exposition of the fact that Christ is the seated One at the right hand of God, and

all its doctrine and practice flow from that one source.

Turning to this epistle, we do not read more than three verses before coming upon this

principal theme:--

The burial, the resurrection and the ascension are passed over in silence here, so that

the climax shall be reached in one step.

In Heb. 4: 14 this great High Priest is said to have passed "through" the heavens

(dierchomai), and in Heb. 7: 26 He is said to have been made "higher than the

heavens"; with which should be compared the passage in Eph. 4: 10, where it is written

that Christ "ascended up far above all heavens" (huperano).

Summing up what he has said in Heb. 1:-7:, the apostle writes in Heb. 8::--