All the beauty and loveliness that could be seen in man as God created him, is seen in Christ. We learn why such loveliness was in Him when we ask, " Who is this Man?" and the answer is given, " Before He was a babe here, Emmanuel, God with us, He was in the glory of God, He was with God, He was God." There is not a single thing a saint can have, save in connection with this Christ Jesus. Where is my life now? It is in Him. When Christ rose, He took the place of Life-giver; a fountain of living waters was unsealed, and the waters flowed; life came down to men like the Jerusalem sinners who had dipped their hands in the blood of the life-giver. Life in Christ comes in between us and everything of the flesh. It has power to separate the heart from every indulgence of the flesh. Who could have thought of God getting glory by the very falls of a believer? How does He act in regard to the Prodigal? " Ah," He says, " he is My child after all!" What wisdom in the Father; He knows how to take care of His own glory. If Satan has done what he could in mischief, God can go beyond: He can open a way, so that the very chiefest of sinners can draw near, fitted for the Father's house. Who but God could have thought of such a thing!-What will it be when His blessed Son comes, and countless multitudes stand up to meet Him, made like unto Him in glory! What manner of person will you be in that day, when freed from your present body of pain and humiliation, and clothed with a body of glory-a human body (flesh and bones) like His!
Christ will search all the corners of the earth to gather out the dust of His saints, to raise them up in perfection and beauty, to take them home to the Father's house. How it changes one's thoughts and feelings about the sorrows and distresses of the present scene, when one thinks of the power and glory of the Life-giver that is soon to be put forth to make all new and bright! What a marvelous thought! Christ coming to wipe out every mark of Satan from the earth, and to make all beautiful.
And is this Christ the one most precious to our hearts, the fountain filling all with rivers of living waters? He is the central point in heaven, if not so in our hearts. Can we not rejoice that He is there? rejoice that He is out of this wilderness? Can we not as members of His body enter into His blessedness up there? Can we not be unselfishly glad that He is in the Father's house?
But there is another thought, the people whom He has called have connection with all His doings. I am in a world where not a ray of light comes save from the face of Jesus Christ, and I am one whose citizenship is with Him in heaven; I am even. now risen with Him who shall change this vile body and make it like His own; that is the perfecting of this thought of citizenship. First then, I am to rejoice because Christ is happy, and then because He is the charter of my citizenship; my name is written in His bosom, and He is the charter of all my blessing,-but He has not changed my vile body yet. When He leaves the right hand of God, He puts forth His power to change this vile body. Is there no sweetness in the thought of seeing a further manifestation of power, which has not yet been seen? A scene yet to be unfolded, in which the power of Christ has not hitherto been manifested; and the unfoldings of His power are always so blessed.
We shall not wait till Christ comes down to the earth, but go up to meet Him in the air; and afterward we shall come down with Him.
He will come and make this world the place of His power; then we shall get another sphere for the manifestation of the mightiness of His power down here. Do we realize how much our joy depends on looking for the coming of the Lord? If I am not making Him my one object, as He is God's one object, is my eye single? Surely not! surely not! If my eye is ever on the manifestation of His Lordship, it is single.
As soon as the Holy Ghost was sent down, there was one desire stirring all hearts, i.e., to see the Lord Himself-the one thought was to wait for God's Son from heaven. But how that fervent desire and occupation about it is lost! What torpor has crept in, in contrast with that bright hope, as generation after generation has intervened! But is not God turning hearts round again to that point? God knows none but a glorified Christ, He sees us only in that One sitting there, Head of His body, the Church; and God is dealing with us now in connection with this Christ. To think of being greeted in heaven as part of that Christ, and inseparable from Him! Nothing to glory of in self-only in Him. But what a blessing to know that it is only in and through Christ that God can bless me!
God would have us live as a heavenly people, who can be so where we are now, because He sees us in the Christ at His right hand, in an inseparable union, raised up with Him. Oh! are we witnesses in this way? Are we a heavenly people whose souls are tasting what it is to be living above things down here? We cannot lower God's behests; while we deplore our shortcomings do we crave for power, for grace, to walk as witnesses for Him, as a heavenly people? There may be dark experiences-and no doubt God brings His people round in this way, and back again and again where He began with them, as " dead, buried, and risen with Christ." He will bring the heart back, and back again. He will have true worshippers as a witness for Himself on earth. Oh! if there were but more intercourse between our souls and that Christ in heaven, for the greater letting down of our souls before God, in the consciousness of what we are here in the body, and what we are as members of Christ's body. Not as to the question of acceptance-if that comes in, the process of humiliation stops in us, because there is then another question to be settled. If I know Christ, I am before God as perfectly guiltless, as certainly accepted, as Christ Himself is.
The believer is passing through the wilderness into glory, his soul in communion with Christ in the light, he has got the key to all blessing in Christ; but when it comes to the question of Satan or the world,, the word is, "fret not thyself." May God enable us to see why He is using the furnace, and that it is to show us what we are. It is very humbling-but if God is using the flesh (because we have been walking in the flesh) to humble us, and to discover to us what we are, shall we not say with Job, " I am vile, and I abhor myself"? But, oh God! continue to make me feel it, let me see what I am, but let it be with Thee, in Thy presence.