" If any man love me," etc. (John 14:21-2321He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him. 22Judas saith unto him, not Iscariot, Lord, how is it that thou wilt manifest thyself unto us, and not unto the world? 23Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him. (John 14:21‑23)). Here the Lord speaks of His love in a connection quite different from the love that all who believe " share even unto the end." Here it is a love manifested only to one who is walking in communion with Christ, treasuring up His word. John was one who loved the Lord and treasured up His word, and he had the consciousness given him of the Father's and the Son's love, so that He might have communion with the heart of God. Is there this intercourse between our hearts, and the heart of the Lord Jesus? Are we treasuring up His word? Is it dwelling richly in us? If the word of Christ governs the heart, it will push out all other things. Christ not only loved me when I was dead, so as to die for me, but He loves me as a disciple, and this love should make one's heart bright going through the wilderness,-love leading us on with the present blessed consciousness of a living Christ occupied with us here in the wilderness. As soon as I realize the thought that Christ is not so absorbed up there as not to have a heart occupied with His people down here, I can say, " I may be toiling through many a wave below, but if His word is treasured up by me I am loved and prayed for, and the Father loves me, and Christ looks down on me in all brightness of love; as though He said, ' You began with my love, and are going on with it to the end, over every wave. ' "
If the life of Christ is sustained down here by us, nothing can minister to it so much as the thought of the living feelings and affections that are in Christ, "if I do so and so, what will Christ feel?"
I have got something that gives me power to live, not according to the flesh but the Spirit. In everything, from the greatest to the least, there is nothing out of which we cannot get an occasion to glorify God. Some one once said he wanted a larger sphere of service, because he had so few opportunities where he was. My answer was, "Your life is an opportunity." The apostle Paul said to Timothy, " Thou therefore, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus." If full of Christ, grace would be sure to flow forth in all circumstances, but whether it be the youngest or the most mature Christian, it can only flow forth as the eye is fixed on Jesus. Where was all to meet Timothy's need? In Christ; and is not the heart of Christ as fresh as ever to the people, of His love? If the eye is fixed on Him, looking for grace, we shall be full of the joy of the Holy Ghost.
If you knew practically the blessed free giving of Christ (there is no end of the stream of grace flowing from Him), nothing down here would affect you unduly; you could. not say " this or that looks very black; " it would not be black, looked at on Christ's side. There is a Christ's side of everything down here.
As one connected with Christ Himself, you will find plenty of affliction. Do you say that your path is so full of difficulty and trial? Well thank God for it, saying, " As Christ's path was strewed with thorns and briers, so would I have mine to be." Are there none? Where are you? What! going by a short cut of your own into Canaan? I am often cheered when told that my path as a Christian is a hopeless path. Well, I say, then my path is like Paul's. Enough for me to find affliction in connection with a living Christ. How can I use anything of the world? How gather for myself one flower fit to carry into God's presence, save as standing in communion with a living Christ? Satan may give me a stigma, but that will only mark whose I am and where I am.
Oh, what a difference it makes in the sorrows of this life, if, instead of looking at them as something against us, we have fellowship with Christ in them. Would you like to be snatched up with dying embers clinging to your feet, saved so as by fire, rather than make up your mind to suffer with Christ? All who are laid on the foundation will be saved, but if walking inconsistently, it will be " so as by fire." If walking consistently, receiving the reward.
The Christian may say, " I have power to reject Satan, the world, and self, because I have got eternal life. I am standing in a strength that is just the same for me that it was for Paul. The evil may be increased, the days darker, but God is the same, and eternal life in Christ is what I have got; and if I ivalk in separation from evil, as one who possesses that, I have the sweetness of this thought cheering me,-the Lord knows me as His own."
How is it in the present time that we don't find Christians satisfied with what God reveals in His word? Just think of the difference between the early Christians and Christians now Then they began with Christ as having borne their sin, being raised from the dead, and in the glory, where He had a place prepared for them. And whatever they might be, He knew no change -the same yesterday, to-day, and forever. That was where the early Christians were, and it gave them a spring of joy all the way, and enabled them to bring that glory into all their circumstances as pilgrims and strangers. That glory never left Paul's mind, and in all that he had to pass through, his soul was always delighting in it. It led him captive all the way.
Have our hearts ever been up there with that Christ in glory? Have we known a risen Christ as the starting-point of blessing? Is that Son of God taken up to heaven (earth-rejected), claiming us as those wanted as witnesses for Himself, and in connection with His work and service to be carried on? One may have all sorts of experiences of one's own feebleness, but nothing will keep the soul save really knowing the Lord Jesus in Heaven as the One who has separated us unto Himself. There is then the sense of His claim over us,-we His and Himself ours.
When God has given me salvation in Christ it is no longer the question of what God thinks of me as a person, but what He thinks of the fruits of the work of the Son of His love. I must have both parts, first as to what I was, then as to what I am. As to what I was, the blood shed on the cross is my measure; as to what I am, God has so connected me with Christ that I am become the righteousness of God in Him. Am I to say, I may live as I like? What! with the Christ who died for me claiming every thought of my heart, that living Christ, looking at me all the day long! Oh', what a change it is when I know the yearning of Christ's love as He looks on me, saying, " You are espoused to Me." Christ wanting to have me all to Himself! Paul could say, " the love of Christ constraineth me;" not an outside restraint, as when he was bound with fetters to a soldier, but a constant hold of Christ on the heart. Led captive by that Christ, the anointed Man, Paul could say, " Christ not only looked out of heaven on me and took away the thick veil on my heart, and let the light shine in, but He is the One who loves me, and that love of His binds me as a fetter and makes me go whither He would." He says, "I died for you individually, that you individually may know you are mine, and you are to live to me." Here I get the love of Christ to myself, so as to be able to say, I must not live to myself, but to Him who loved me and gave Himself for me.
If a new Gospel were found, saying that Christ had ceased to care how His people walked, would it be a sorrow to you? Or if any one were to discover a new epistle to unfold beyond what we already have, the way to live more to Christ, would it not be joy? It ought to be joy to meet with brethren able to show you the force of passages of Scripture which teach you that Christ wants everything to be done by you according to the power of the life given you in Him.
Paul was not as a vessel broken, and another formed by the potter out of the same clay. No; it was a new thing altogether. He was a new creature in Christ, old things had passed away. Nothing as regards the flesh was changed in Paul, but the mastery of the flesh was. The law of sin and death is not taken out of the flesh, but I am delivered from it, brought out of the position where all is death into that where all is life. I have eternal life in me to give me power to live unto-Christ. "I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me;" is not that a blessed truth? Are you walking in the power of that life, in the light of eternity?
Life down here is to most people a life of vexation, of trial; the heart wears out under it, or else there is a sort of stoicism, and as troubles come like the sparks that fly upward, people say, " We have got to endure it, and we must." But how different this experience from that of the Christian who can say, " Show me any sharp flint scorched by the sun, and I can turn it over and find moisture underneath." How different when all things are seen to be of God, who has reconciled us to Himself by giving us His Son! A person gets the heaven-side of things who finds God in everything. It is a blessed thing that as there is not a sparrow falls to the ground, nor a flower that blossoms, without the Father, so, as sorrows turn up, and thorns and briers come in our path, to know that the Father is in it all; to be able to say in everything, "there is my Father," and so, passing on quietly without care, knowing that every detail of life is watched by a Father's eye.
And when He comes to unroll our whole life since we believed, will it grieve us for Him to know it all? When you have failed in any way, and God has brought the sense of it to your soul, do you want not to settle it till a future time? or is it not a positive relief not to cover it up, but to feel that the thing has been judged? Nothing will do but making a clean conscience before God, not letting a spot remain, but confessing and taking the whole blame; rejecting the thing and condemning it in yourself first.