Do you understand that the Lord Jesus has certain things belonging to Himself connected with the heavens,- a portion peculiar to Himself, which He shares with the. Church in the heavenlies-of which He has made us partakers? Do you know your title? Has your soul tasted what a place the Father's house is? Have you got to wait your actual entrance there for this? Oh no; grace has made you a fellow-heir (one lot), grace has linked your life up with the Lord Jesus -hid now in God with Him, sitting on the Father's throne. This is not a hope but a certain thing; His leaving the Father's throne to come and take us up, that is the hope which presses warmly on His heart. Does it so on yours? Does that hope enter into your present portion? Does it press on your heart daily and hourly that in a little while you are to enter into the inheritance, and to be a fellow-heir with Him?
With regard to conscience, how do I stand? I know that looking at myself I could not have a hope. How could a person have it without peculiar views of God's grace! What! has God chosen me? What a God He must be to have a thought about a thing like me! not looking at what I was, but at what He has made me: that heavenly inheritance prepared, and the Father giving me a title to enter in. Oh what riches of grace! What blessed hopes He puts before me, amid the ruins of this wilderness! What a God! How impossible to stand on that ground without knowing something of the wonders of God's grace, a little of the length, and depth, and breadth, and height of that love that passeth knowledge. What a happy people these fellow-heirs will be when they get home! More touching still to one's poor heart-so narrow, so hard,-to hear God saying, " you are not only to find rest up here with My Son, but all that He has shall be yours! further still, all that He is-you are now one body with Him, accepted in Him; He in you and you in Him." Do you think that God looks on you poor feeble ones, as you look on yourselves and on one another, with all your shortcomings and slips and falls? No; He looks at us in the body of Christ. What makes saints go on so pertinaciously looking at themselves as individuals instead of at the body? The reason is that the heart does not like the idea of being nothing-lost and merged in the body: God's grace having made us one with Him, that as He is we are, His grace flowing down, building us together for an habitation of God: but we don't like to go for nothing. It is sin, positive sin, the sin of unbelief, to look at ourselves merely as separate individuals, and not as in the body, as we are up there with Him. What would not be the effect if such a thought were received in simplicity? What would it not be to our hearts, so Harrow and so occupied with our own individual experiences, to realize ourselves in such a position? The eye of God coming down upon me as I am, individually, makes me cry, " Unclean! unclean! " makes me loathe myself in dust and ashes: but to know that that eye turns to the heavenly places, fixed on one body, and sees not me in myself, but me in the body, as I am in Christ-how blessed!
The very smallest space between the head and the members would destroy life; how close then must be the union!
What becomes of all our guilt when Christ is looking into our hearts, saying, " I have separated you from guilt; I was crucified, I have died, and you have died with Me unto sin, and are alive unto God, raised up with Me, and sitting in heavenly places in Me"?
Do you know Christ? If you do, it will make you loathe and detest yourself; and the better you know Him, the greater will be your self-loathing. But if you do know Christ, your conscience is a purged conscience, it has to do with the blood of the Lamb slain. God has deeper thoughts of that blood than man has. The mercy in the bosom of God none can tell or know but the Christ who Himself carried out that mercy in His own body on the tree to its utmost extent. Oh God! Thy Son bleeding and dying on the cross could alone understand what that mercy is.