1 Cor. 15:51-5851Behold, I show you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, 52In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. 53For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. 54So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. 55O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? 56The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law. 57But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. 58Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labor is not in vain in the Lord. (1 Corinthians 15:51‑58)
I HAVE one word in my heart to press on you before going away: “Be ye steadfast, unmovable.” If our hearts are not close to Christ, we are apt to get weary in the way. All is a vain show around us; but that which is inside abides, is true, is the life of Christ―all else goes! When the heart gets hold of this fact, it becomes (as to things around) like one taken into a house to work for the day, performs the duties well, but passes through, does not live in the circumstances. To Israel the cloud came down; they stayed; it lifted up―on they went. It was all the same to them. Why? Because, had they stayed when the cloud went on, they would not have had the Lord. One may be daily at the desk for fifty years, yet with Christ the desk is only the circumstance. The doing God’s will, making manifest the savor of Christ, ― that’s the simple thing. Whether I go or you go, I stay or you stay, may that one word be realized in each of us― “steadfast, unmovable,” in whatever sphere, as matter of providence, we are found. Let the divine life be manifested―that abides; all else changes, but that life remains and abides forever―aye, forever. There is not a single thing in which we have served Christ that shall be forgotten. Lazy, alas! we all are in service; but all shall come out that is real, and that which is real is Christ in us, and that only. The appearance now may be very little, not much even in a religious view; but what is real will abide. Our hearts clinging closely to Christ, we shall sustain one another in the body of Christ. The love of Christ should hold the whole together, Christ being everything; we content to be nothing. Helping one another, praying one for the other. I ask not the prayers of the saints; I reckon on them. The Lord keep us going on in simplicity, fulfilling as the hireling one day, till Christ shall come, and then “shall every man have praise of God.” Praise of God! Be that our object, and may God bind all our hearts together thoroughly and eternally.
Reader! You are either in Christ the object verse 15, love, or out of Christ the object of God’s judgment. Which is it?