Beloved fellow believer, is there not a tendency at this time of ours to overlook the Person of the Lord, what He is in Himself, in the common testimony that is now borne so extendedly to His work? Would it not be for His glory, and very highly edifying for us, His people, if we were acquainting ourselves more really with a living personal JESUS? We need His work surely for the conscience, we need HIMSELF for the heart. The region of doctrine may be surveyed, as by a measuring line and a level, instead of being eyed as the place of the glories of the Son of God with an admiring, worshipping, heart. And yet, it is this He prizes in us. He has made us personally His objects, and He looks for it, that we make Him ours.
There are surely doctrines to learn, lines of conduct to make ourselves acquainted with; but, in doing so, we need to guard against learning doctrines as bare doctrines, or acquainting ourselves with lines of conduct in an abstract way. Rather let us be found, as to the attitude of our hearts when reading the word, sitting like Mary of old, at the feet of JESUS hearing His word (Luke 10:3939And she had a sister called Mary, which also sat at Jesus' feet, and heard his word. (Luke 10:39)), having Himself a living Person (whose love we know) consciously before us and finding in Him the living embodiment of the doctrines learned, and the practical expression of the line of conduct enjoined: then are we truly learning of Him (Matt. 11:2929Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. (Matthew 11:29)). Truth so learned has the effect of producing in us meekness and lowliness of heart (Matt. 11:2929Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. (Matthew 11:29)), instead of puffing us up (1 Cor. 8:11Now as touching things offered unto idols, we know that we all have knowledge. Knowledge puffeth up, but charity edifieth. (1 Corinthians 8:1).). And the line of conduct learned thus guards against legality, as the affections are brought into play and the " love of Christ " becomes the constraining motive.
The Holy Spirit delights to tell of the work of Christ, and to bear it in its preciousness and sufficiency to the heart and conscience. Nothing could stand us for a moment, had not the work been just what it was, and so counseled and ordered of God. But still the work of the Lord Jesus Christ may be the great subject, where He Himself is but a faint Object, and the soul will then be a great loser.
When considering the deeper and more distant parts of God's ways, we sometimes feel as though they were too much for us; and we seek relief from the weight of them by going back to earlier and simpler truths. This, however, need not be. If we rightly entertained these further mysteries, we should know that we need not retire from them for relief; because they are really only other and deeper expressions of the same grace and love which we were learning at the very beginning. They are but a more abundant flow, or a wider channel, of the same river, just because they lie somewhat more distant from the source.
Till this assurance be laid up in the soul, we are ill-prepared to think of them. If we have a fear, that when we are looking at glories, we have left the place of affections, we wrong the truth and our own souls. It is not so by any means. The more fully the glories unfold themselves, the more are the riches of grace revealed. The rising of a river at its birthplace, where we took in the whole object at once, without effort or amazement, has, as we know, its own peculiar charm; but when it becomes, under our eye, a mighty stream, with its diversified banks and currents, we only the rather learn why it ever began to flow. It is the same water still; and we may pass up and down from its source and along its channels, with various but still constant delight. And is it not so with " the river of God "? But knowing, as we do, its source, we can survey it in its course, along and through the ages and dispensations. When in spirit (in the way of meditation) we reach " the new heavens and the new earth," we are only in company with the same glorious Person, and in fellowship with the same boundless grace, whom we knew, and which we learned, at the very beginning.
The same One made real to the soul, and brought near, is what one would desire, in God's grace, to be the fruit of this meditation: " Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, to-day, and forever "-so He is, both in His own glory and to us.
In earlier days there were manifestations of Him, the Son of God, sometimes in veiled, sometimes in unveiled glory. To Abraham at the tent-door, to Jacob at Peniel, to Joshua under the walls of Jericho, to Gideon and to Manoah, the manifestations were veiled, and faith, in more or less vigor, through the Spirit, removed the covering, and reached the glory that was underneath. To Isaiah, to Ezekiel, and to Daniel, the Son of God appeared in unveiled glory, and He had, by a certain gracious process, to make the brightness of the glory tolerable to them see Isa. 6; Ezek. 1; Dan. 10).
The Person, however, was one and the same, whether veiled or unveiled. So, hr the days when He had, really (and not as in those earlier days) assumed flesh and blood, the glory was veiled, and faith was set to discover it, as in the time of Abraham, or of Joshua; and after He had ascended, He appeared to John in such brightness of unveiled glory, that something had to be done by Him in grace, as in the case of Isaiah or of Daniel, ere His presence could be sustained (Rev. 1).
Times and seasons in this respect made no difference. Of course, till the fullness of time came, the Son was not " made of a woman." Then it was that " the Sanctifier," as we read, " took part in the same " flesh and blood with the children (Heb. 2:1414Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same; that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil; (Hebrews 2:14)). For flesh and blood indeed He took then, and not till then; very Kinsman of the seed of Abraham He then indeed became. " It behooved Him to be made like unto His brethren." And all this waited for its due season, " the fullness of the time," the days of the Virgin of Nazareth. But these manifestations of the Son of God in earlier days were pledges of this great mystery, that in due time God would send forth His Son made of a woman. They were, If I may so express it, the shadows of the forthcoming substance. And what I have been observing has this in it-and which is of interest to our souls—that those foreshadowings were beautifully exact. They forecast, in forms both of glory and of grace, the ways of Him who afterward traveled and sojourned here on earth in humble, serving, sympathizing love, and is now set as glorified in heaven, the Son of man, the Virgin's Seed, forever.
It is delightful to the soul to trace these exact resemblances and forecasting’s. If we have a veiled glory at the threshing-floor at Ophrah, so have we at the well of Sychar; if we have the brightness of the unveiled glory on the banks of the Hiddekel, so have we the same in the isle of Patmos. The Son of God was a traveling Man in the sight of Abraham in the heat of that day, and so was He to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, as the day was fast spending itself. He ate of Abraham's calf " tender and good," as He did of " the broiled fish and of the honeycomb," in the midst of the disciples at Jerusalem. In His risen days, He assumed different forms to suit (in divine grace) the need or demand of the moment, as He had done of old, whether as a Stranger, or a Visitor, whether as " a Man of God " simply to Manoah and his wife in the field, or as an armed Soldier at Jericho to Joshua.
And it is this, I think I can say again, which I value specially in following this meditation upon Himself, to see JESUS one throughout, and that, too, near and real to us. We need, if one may speak for others, the purged eye that is practiced to see, and delight in, such a heaven as the heaven of JESUS must be. Will it be nothing, we may ask our hearts, will it be nothing to spend eternity with Him who looked up, and caught the eye of Zacchaeus in the sycamore-tree, and then, to the thrilling joy of his soul, let his name fall on his ear from His own lips? With Him, who without one upbraiding word, filled the convicted quickened heart of a poor sinner of Samaria with joy, and a spirit of liberty that far more than abounded? Surely we want nothing but the child-like, simple, believing mind. For we are not straitened in Him, and there is nothing to Him, like this believing mind. It glorifies Him.
Nature, it is indeed true, is not equal to this. It must come from the in-working and witness of the Holy Ghost. Nature finds itself overwhelmed. It always betrays itself as that which has " come short of the glory of God.' When Isaiah, on the occasion already referred to, was called into the presence of that glory, he could not stand it. He remembered his uncleanness, and cried out that he was undone. All that he apprehended was the glory, and all that he felt and knew in himself was his unfitness to stand before it.
This was nature. This was the action of the conscience which, as in Adam in the garden, seeks relief from the presence of God. Nature in the prophet did not discover the altar which, equally with the glory, lay in the scene before him. He did not perceive that which was perfectly equal to give him perfect ease and assurance, to link him (though still a sinner in himself) with the presence of the glory in all its brightness. Nature could not make this discovery. But the messenger of the Lord of hosts not only discovers but applies it; and the prophet is at ease, in the possession of a cleanness or a holiness which can measure the very "holy of holies itself, and the brightness of the throne of the Lord of hosts.
The Spirit acts above nature, yea, in contradiction of nature. Nature in Isaiah, in us all, stands apart, and is abashed, unable to look up—the Spirit draws us right inward and upward in liberty. When Simeon is led by the Spirit into the presence of the glory, he goes up at once in all confidence and joy. He takes the child JESUS in his arms. He makes no request of the mother to suffer it to be so; he feels no debt to any one for the blessed privilege of embracing " the salvation of God," which his eyes then saw. He through the Spirit had discovered the altar; and the glory, therefore, was not beyond him (see Isa. 6; Luke 2).
And true still, as true as ever, as true as in the days of Isaiah and of Simeon, are these things now. The Spirit leads in a path which nature never treads. Nature stands apart and is afraid; yea, will rebuke where faith is full of liberty. And these diverse ways of nature and of faith we may well remember for our comfort and strengthening, as we look at the Son of God, and meditate on mysteries and counsels of God connected with Him.