0 that there was that character of Nazariteship in us! Like Paul, could we say, "It is a little thing if you hear that my head is cut off, it is only that I shall go straight to the arms of Christ. If it is not cut off, I shall have another occasion to magnify Him down here?" His life being in Christ, he is sure that that life will always come out, no matter where.
Would that when any of us are ready to depart, we might have that blessed power to say, " The whole of my life has been spent for Christ, and the testimony of God!" Not to be with any of us as with Demas-loving this world, and turning back.
If Christ has given me life, He takes care of it and makes it shine forth, unless 1 grieve His Spirit. Is salvation merely taking up my cross and going through the wilderness? No. He who has taken me up and made me His, will bring me through it all but till I see Him and have a glorified body, have not got full salvation. Peter and Paul have it not yet. It is the being with Christ in the Father's house.
I have the knowledge that all the glory of God is in the face of Jesus Christ, and the rays of light that have shone into my soul are infinitely more precious than every other thing; but when I sec Christ as. He is, I shall be clothed upon like Him; I shall see Him with my eyes, hear Hint with my ears; there will be no distance whatever between Him and me. Christ proposes to us to stand in the Father's house in bodies of glory like unto His. You have His competency to be in heaven. You are a partaker of His nature. You could not be there save on that ground. If any fall asleep, they are present with Him. He enables me to say to the Father, " I have as true a right to come into thy presence as He who is on thy throne; for I come by and through and in Him who has given me the right and title without a thought of what I was.
Why do believers go so heavily through the wilderness, going through the sand, and their feet sinking so heavily down in it? It is because they do not see that their acceptance with God is as perfect as that of Christ; God seeing all the beauty of Christ upon them, and they will be presented by Christ to God, glorified with all His glory. I am on my road to glory, able to sing songs in the night.
If Christ has said that He means to bring us into the Father's house, He will he occupied about us the whole of the way, and will have us to know it too. If thinking of self, I shall not be able to sing songs in the night.
If we want to follow Christ, we must have fellowship with the sufferings of Christ, bearing the stigma as did Paul. If thinking of the flesh and of what belongs to the first Adam, it will be sorrow all the way; if of the second Adam, it will be joy all the way.