To me it is a more real thing knowing Christ as a man in heaven, than seeing Him as His followers did when down here. God has let the reality of His being there into my heart, and the light of that reality shines forth in rays that come to me right down from heaven. I call this, faith in living exercise; but I may have faith, and yet may not be dwelling on the reality of a living Christ in heaven. My heart may not be up there, with all its feelings gathered up to Him.
Salvation has a divine as well as a human side. Nothing that God had created could satisfy Him, save to have Christ as man sitting on His throne. Ah! His ways are not as our ways. God's glory in redemption was to show how low He could let the Son of His love stoop-in letting Him go down to the death of the cross-break His heart in woe -and then to set Him as the center of a new system as the Lamb slain. Would that be according to man's thought of glory? But God would have His own way, and all His glory shone forth in redemption. His glory is to have heaven filled with poor sinners, brands plucked from the burning. And His Christ finds Himself sitting patiently waiting 1800 years for heaven to be so filled.
Can you say, " Ah! that Lord Christ has washed me from my sins, yes, washed me after a fashion which none but He could have had the least idea of; and He is waiting now, but soon He will rise up-and may such an one as I go up and be accepted? Yes. Why? Because the whole place is filled with the fragrance of the work done by the One in whom I am accepted."
I was for years endeavoring to find God, but like a bull in a net struggling and striving to do something first for myself, not knowing that God had done something for me; till I looked into heaven (thus an earthen vessel gets turned up to the light) and there I saw the very thing to suit a poor sinner-a God of grace, in Christ; in a place where, there is not a single element of the place I am in now. And I am brought into the light shining there, the light that makes everything here easy to be read and gathered up.