Where are our hearts, oh! where are they? Are they occupied with this world, or are we quietly passing on to Heaven, taken up with that which love cannot lose sight of-a living Christ in Heaven?
What wealth have you, if you have not got Christ?' If Christ is the object before you, will all the things that fret you take Christ from you? All the things you long for, will they give you more of Christ?
Our springs, all the way from beginning to end, are in Christ; you cannot find anything apart from Christ. It won't do to stand on any ground apart from an ascended Christ. He who spake as never man spake, is the One whose word is to stand throughout eternity.
Ah! blessed Lord! I have got nothing but Thy love-a love that takes me right home to the Father's house, to be with Thee where the full expression of that love is to be manifested. Such love is a powerful thing when it gets into the heart, to lead the feet into a walk quite different from that of a man who has not got it. I can turn to that Christ and say, Nothing can disturb me, that glorified Christ in God's presence is the very ground of my peace. I know Him as the One who bore my sins on the cross, as the One who revealed the glory of God to me, and I am in connection with Him as the man of sorrows, with Him who went down to the grave, with Him risen and alive for evermore at God's right hand. And there we find, in Him so presented, our place before God.
As we go on for years, we find that these things keep their value; but what estimate can a poor sinner form of the inestimable value of that blood? What will it be when we get home, and find that we have got within, brought by that blood into the fellowship of what God is? And as we walk through the Father's house and enter into the fullness of joy reserved for us, we shall find it all connected with the very same elements wherewith He conferred on us our joy down here, as He carried us through the wilderness.
What is the first sweet word we shall hear as we enter heaven? The worthiness of the Lamb, and the blood of the Lamb. And we there because cleansed by the blood of that Lamb. What must sin be, to need the blood of God's own Son! Up there, in the presence of God, I learn something of the infinitude of sin, and nothing can fetch out its stain but the blood of God's own Son, and that has done it entirely.
Strange thought for the heart of man, that none-but the very Highest could go down low enough! None so high as He, but none other could stoop so low. None save that One could measure out what sin is in the creature, bear its penalty and settle our account with God. The believer is brought before God in a way altogether peculiar. A way, the peculiarity of which-learned at His hand-turns out to be the most blessed way that could possibly have been conceived.
There is something in that word of the Lord's, John 17:2,2As thou hast given him power over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as thou hast given him. (John 17:2) that ought to bow the heart in adoring love. Turn to the circumstances in which He was who spake it-and what is He there thirsting for? A certain position in which He can communicate something to us, in order that the Father might be glorified.
Does Christ look upon you with the thought, " I have glorified the Father in that one, I have communicated to that one eternal life? "
When He was going down to the cross, did He long to find rest from suffering? No! He wanted to glorify God, to communicate eternal life. And He not only counts it His glory, but the glory of the Father, to give it; and He is the only One who can give it. He prayed the Father that He might glorify Him by giving eternal life to as many as the Father had given Him. What a sweet word! power being given Him over all flesh that He should be the quickener, the giver of eternal life to us; that He might give us a place with Himself.
God can never forget one particle of what His Son suffered to bring us into that place; and Christ can never forget one of those whom the Father has given Him: not one will be wanting. Our life is in Him, and whatever we may have to pass through down here, that life is incorruptible and unchanged. The vessel may be marred, but the life is preserved, it is eternal. And this eternal life is something that Christ has given you, to be the power of union between yourself and the Father and the Son.