" Having loved His own, He loved them to the end," is a truth not only known by faith to every believer in Him, but also from their own experience of that love. And oh, how sweet this experience of Christ's love in this cold world! When the heart is chilled, and yearning for a little warmth, how sweet to turn to the Lord Jesus and feel this -warmth of His love! Ah! looking up to Him, the heart is always warmed. And what is it that feeds His love to His Church? From what source flowed the springs of that love? In the Epistle to the Ephesians we have the setting forth of that which would feed the love of the Lord Jesus in regard to His Church. In the first chapter, we have the scene laid before time was: verse 4. When the Lord Jesus looks at me, He looks as at one who was chosen by the Father before time was, to show forth the glory of that grace which could accept me in the Beloved- He sees the chosen of the Father in me, the Father having bound me up with the Son before the foundation of the world. Not only the poor sheep and prodigal brought into the Father's house, but more-a secret purpose, He and the Father one in that purpose, and the poor sinner chosen and accepted in Him before the foundation of the world. And can God have aught against you when He has thus sat in council about you? Must not the Son love you, seeing your association with the Father, in Himself, before the world was? Oh, this feeds His love again, His love is fed by the complete association with Himself of the Church; not only as one with Him, but as that for whom He left all, and has done all. He gave Himself for me; at the cross bearing our own sins in His own body on the tree: God laying on Him your iniquity and mine: we dying with Him, buried with Him by baptism into death, and raised up in Him. Can we look up there and not feel the exceeding riches of the grace of that God, who, in raising Him up from among the dead, raised us up in Him, and seated us in heavenly places in Him? Impossible! When the Lord Jesus looks in the face of a believer, He says, " I do and must love thee, but I love thee for my Father's sake. I loved thee before the foundation of the world, because He chose thee in me, and I must love thee to the end for His sake."
As a child of God, wandering in the world's wilderness, it is very sweet to have comfort poured down to me from the heart of God, but it is still sweeter the thought that I have sympathy with the heart of the Father as to His thoughts about His only begotten Son, and His affections towards Him. Oh! there is nothing like the entering thus into the revelation of God, the Father's affection for the Son of His love.
" Ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus." If you are a believer, He has sent the spirit of His Son into your heart, whereby you cry Abba, Father. The heart gets its blessed rest in sonship simply by believing in Christ Jesus. The spirit of His Son in the heart enables its happy throbbings to be expressed, crying this wondrous new name, unknown to the Jews, of Abba, Father. God has set me in His presence as a son, and life flows down to me, so that I can look up and contemplate there the delight which the Father has in His Son; I can have communion and sympathy with the joy of the Father's heart in that Son: and it is this which gives the Church its highest point of glory.
Does the thought ever steal over your heart, Well, there the Father's heart is fully satisfied-there the Son is-and there I have my portion, for I can say My Father; and in that sense alone the Lord calls us brethren, thus alone can we be in association with Himself on the throne of the Father?
The Spirit feeds and administers to our hearts all the thoughts of the Father and Son. Blessed truth! that Son-the Lord Jesus-having been a man and wearing man's form up there, and we as men with Him forever. Does it ever strike you -let us say it reverently-haw happy God must be to have such a Son, and how happy Christ must be?
As man, that Son brought out the character of the Father, so that I, as man, can understand it. Oh how one ought to admire and adore the way Christ brought out the character of God on earth as love, in the poor prodigal!
God could look upon the anointed man, and say, " I can have Him up here, for He is dod as well as man." And we can look up and realize the Lord's joy, who could say, " If ye loved Me ye would rejoice, because I said, I go to the Father."
No person can be of the bride save a child of the Father. The bride will be shown out before the world, that the world may see the glory He has given her. The Father gave this glory to the Son, but he cannot keep it for Himself, He wills to share it with those dear to Him. The world will be forced to admire the Church in glory; and she ought to be admired, for the Father's delight is in the Son who bought His bride with His own blood. The Church will be where the sense of being loved by the Father, even as the Son is loved, will surpass all understanding. That One in whom all the fullness of the Godhead dwells, causing all the love of the Father to flow forth to us; and the consciousness of that love will give our hearts all their joy in glory. There He is-claiming all glory and giving it to the bride; but I do not find my deepest joy in this. Above and beyond all the Church's glory, I have deep in my heart the thought that I know the Lamb under another title. His blessed self is deep hidden in my heart; I can say, "I know thee as the Son who hast revealed the Father to me. All, all, would be nothing to me, if I did not know Thee in this other name, the only begotten Son of the Father, full of grace and truth. That name of Son has brought me near to the Father; He bore it deep down here, He bears it high up above. He may be the Son of man, and is, but merely as having taken our flesh. If He were to enter this place now as Son of man-why should we fall down at His feet to worship Him, but because we know Him as the only begotten Son of God:—before all creation-in the beginning-there was the Son in the bosom of the Father.
The Father's house, the Father's bosom, was to be the resting-place of the Church: nothing could satisfy that Son, but her being there where He had rested from all eternity. But we have this place of rest now-we shall never be more sons than we are now; else, where were the force of that word: " now are we the sons of God." I have got the best part now, He has made me a son, has given me to see and enter into the communion of the Father and the Son, to taste the delight of the Father over His Son, as a fresh taste of heavenly joy in my soul every day. If I am in trial down here, I know the Father is in perfect rest up there, and my fellowship is with Him and with His Son.
Very little is said in Scripture about the Father's house, save what we find in John 14. One is never weary of those verses, because they tell of the personal love of the Lord Jesus to His Church; but locality is not defined, nor the thought of heaven introduced as meaning any particular locality. Jesus lifts up His eyes to heaven. Many found their ideas of heaven on some early association in their mind of a place of glory beyond the clouds, and connect it with all that the word of God has made familiar to them. Breaking down all this, would leave them with this blessed thought of the Son upon the Father's throne, and the Father setting them there together with Him.
Whenever my faith goes up there, what does it find realized? The thought of One there who was once in all my circumstances of sorrow down here; the thought of home up there with Him. Oh, what a warm happy feeling the heart experiences at that thought-not the circumstances of that home, but the being there with Him. A man's heart is in his home, not because of its circumstances, but because the object of his affection is there. The same with regard to heaven; I find uncommonly little of detail as to circumstances there, but I find unfading reality in one or two simple verses: for instance this, " If ye loved me ye would rejoice, because I go to my Father." What a volume in that! Christ wanting us to enter into the joy of His heart at the thought of the Father's home, saying, " I want to share with you this thought of my joy; I want you to rejoice with me, because in a little while I shall be with my Father; and not only that, but you also shall soon be there with me." If we could see all the glory of heaven, it would be poor in comparison with the thought of seeing that Son sitting on the throne of His Father, and ourselves seated together with Him in those heavenly places. What perfect rest of heart there is in that expression, " made us to sit together in the heavenly places," thus bringing us into the blessed taste of the glory He has got!
The character of our rest, and our power to walk as risen men, is laid down in Col. 3 When God's eye looks upon you, what does He see? Why, that you are one who has a place up there; and, when His eye rests on Christ, it rests as not expecting to find a blot. How impossible, as the eye of God turns on us, that He should find anything but imperfection! But he turns round to see us hid in Christ, and to meet in those who are hid in Christ, Christ's perfection.