OH 1:14-18{I HAVE read these verses to fix our minds on the person of the blessed Lord, the foundation of all our hopes. Through the Holy Ghost given to us we can say, though no man can see God at any time, yet, if we dwell in love, " God dwells in us, and his love is perfected in us; " and this gives strength, and practical state of soul, and everything.
The point here is that He was manifested: not only that He was God, as at the beginning of the chapter, " the same Yesterday, and today, and forever," but that He was made flesh. He was ever God's delight, and His delight was with the sons of men; and so he became a man to bring men back to- God. He became a man Himself, that 'all God's goodness might be manifested in the evil of the world. God was here in all the sin and ruin and misery; in the midst of it " He bore our griefs and carried our sorrows," dwelling "amongst us;" and we are right to speak of the sorrows because He speaks of them. We see Him in it all, and we get this blessed truth, that God has come into the midst of all the griefs and sorrows, bearing them far more than we.
I am not speaking of His death now, but of His life: As at the grave of Lazarus it was, " Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died." He was in this world just to express all that God is in the midst of it; and that, not as He appeared for a moment to Abraham, or at Sinai to Moses, but He came and dwelt; it was a constantly living and moving in the midst of men. It is not as being in the midst of angels up there, but He came ' down here, in the midst of everything here, to be a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And when we think that that was God Himself, what a thought it is!
He came as the. truth, and man rejected Him. Still that was part of the truth. But I get grace first, for grace brought Him into it, and He was full of it; as it says here. It is a wonderful thing that God should come down thus and sit beside me; that God should thus come down in grace because I was in sorrow.
But there is another thing, and that is that we are in direct communication with Him: " Of his fullness have all we received." There is not a' saint here that has not received, and is in that wag in direct communication with, all the fullness of Christ. What a responsibility that is! It 'is enough to humble me when I say, Here am I receiving from this infinite fullness of blessedness, I am receiving now, and where is all this fullness of grace manifested in my ways? We have to seek to keep continually before us, the remembrance; that, " of his fullness have all we received." There is not a saint here, I repeat, that is not thus in direct communication with all the fullness of Christ, that he may bring it out in all his ways.
But there is another truth connected With this: " No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father," mind it is is not was, "He hath declared him." In knowing Him I know the Father, the Father in whose bosom He dwells. It is often said, " The only begotten Son left the bosom of the Father to come into the world." That is not it at all. He never left it. The bosom is the expression of all the nearness of affection, and in that He always was. All the delight that the Father has in Him He reveals to us. He makes us know what the Father is as He knows Him.
Then, besides that, I get that no one has seen God; but the One who is enjoying al] the love that is in His bosom, He has made Him known. He says " My Father and your Father." That is through redemption. And, the Holy Ghost is given to us that we may know Him. And, as another Scripture says, " No man lath seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and His love is perfected in us." It is still the Son as dwelling in the bosom of the Father, enjoying His love as He is, and declaring the Father as He knows Him Himself, who' brings us into this blessed nearness and knowledge of the Father. What a place! I am sure it would make us feel how little we are, but it opens out the heart of God to us, and lets us feel that, if any how we are little, He is great, and He has brought Him near to us so that we might know it.