Do you see by faith that Christ up there? Do you know a Person in heaven with all the feelings and thoughts of a man, with all the glory and beauty of God? And in that beaming forth on you of that face of glory and beauty, is there nothing that addresses itself to your heart? Who can look on the face of that Lord Jesus and not see in Him the forms of eternal life? Will the beauty of that Person not win your adoring love? Will you ever find that you can look on Him as He is, and not trust Him?
Are we not only knowing what we have in that ascended Christ as the one who has put away every spot of sin, the One who is going to take us into the Father's house, but are we letting it be seen, as we pass through the wilderness, in all we do, as Paul did? He died for us, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto Him. Oh, what a position! not only what we are saved from and put into, but, even now, eternal life to be shown out; even now, present communion with the mind of Christ to be enjoyed; never as we pass through this world, seeking anything save to show out that mind, even as He never seeking out anything but the Father's mind.
One thought pressed on me thirty-five years ago, and that was the thought of reality. Let it be a reality-don’t let me follow a meteor! Is it, I asked, a real fact that God's Christ is mine, and that He is now sitting at God's right hand as my accepted sacrifice, and all God's delight is in Him?
Your heart may have to be brought into all sorts of difficulties to find out what it has in Christ-what it is to be connected with the eternal lover of the soul. Is He known to you as the One who is occupied with all your concerns? Do you realize if daily? The thought of His being occupied about us would prevent our being tried with difficulties that spring up. It would make us say, " What! is Christ on the throne of God mine? I, such a poor feeble thing-is He given to me?" Paul found the love of Christ a personal thing-it is so. It was a personal love that gave John a place on His bosom; personal love that drew to Him the poor woman that washed His feet with her tears; and poor things down here understand the-power of that love as they go on.
When we see saints like Peter and Paul failing, we feel what a poor thing man is at his best estate; but oh, what an unexpected blessing to have to do with a God who cannot fail I And I know that when I pass from earth, I have a God who means to take me up, and make of this poor body, a body of glory like that risen man at His right hand. ' Come what may; this God has His everlasting hand underneath us.