We who know, as individuals, the love of the Lord Jesus ought to have distinctly before our minds the unsearchableness of His Person, realizing that His glories are of the highest character possible. He Himself states it and says, “No man knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal Him” (Matt. 11:2727All things are delivered unto me of my Father: and no man knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him. (Matthew 11:27)). Any attempt to analyze and any feeling of our having comprehended the Son is all wrong. The Son has presented the Father and the Father’s plans, and it is not ours to comprehend Him by whom they have been presented.
The Creator
In Colossians 1 we find some amazing glories. Paul speaks of the image of the invisible God, the First-born of every creature, preeminent there, for by Him were all things created that are in heaven and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones or dominions or principalities or powers; all things were created by Him and for Him. John states it also. Not one thing was brought into existence but by Him, the Lord Jesus Christ. He that brings anything into existence must be above that thing, and indeed also above all things. He adds that they were created not only by Him, but for Him. All were connected with Him and with the manifestation of His divine glory. Again (vs. 17), “He is before all things.” He was before all, as He was the only cause of all, and the cause must have priority and superiority to every effect, and he adds, “By Him all things consist,” or stand together. He holds everything by the hand of His power.
Then he goes on to speak of redemption, the peculiar place He would hold to one part of the redeemed, “head of the body, the church; who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things He might have the preeminence. For it pleased the Father that in Him should all fullness dwell; and having made peace by the blood of His cross, by Him to reconcile all things unto Himself; by Him, I say, whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven” (Col. 1:18-2018And he is the head of the body, the church: who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things he might have the preeminence. 19For it pleased the Father that in him should all fulness dwell; 20And, having made peace through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things unto himself; by him, I say, whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven. (Colossians 1:18‑20)).
The Church and Israel
He is looking forward to that amazing time when there will be a new heaven and a new earth, wherein dwells righteousness: all brought by Himself under the power of God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and in heaven above Himself having the church, the bride, on earth having Israel, the nation under government and then under blessing, and everything that would not be subject sent down to the lake of fire.
Who, from first to last, is the doer of it all? The Son of God, the Man who loved me and gave Himself for me — the Man who hung between two malefactors on Calvary. Divine power was His; the name of everyone who should be with Him in glory was given to Him by the Father. What sort of person was that? Oh, beloved friends, the light which was active in the kingdom of creation was displayed. What a display of power, of tenderness, to those on earth! What an almighty power that will bring forth out of the dust all those who sleep in death and raise them to heavenly glory and fill the earth with a new race, equal to Him in the glory above, filling all, and forever, in the new heavens and the new earth, wherein dwells righteousness!
The Divine Plan
I think I can trace, from creation down, gradual steps from man set in the Garden of Eden down to the lowest order of creation. But from the highest expression of human perfection to the infinite God there is a chasm between the two. The smallest grain of sand carried by the wind had a nearer relation to me than I have as a creature to the almighty, infinite God. When I look to the end of what God is doing, I am astounded. There is the fullness of divine glory in a Man, and in all the height of that glory the perfect Man, and a people in heaven. Heaven was not made for man; the earth has He given to the sons of men. But a people are quickened by the Holy Spirit, adopted as children, clothed upon with glorious bodies, and down from Him the whole is blended together up to God. All the Father is presented in the Son, God in divine glory, the God-man on that throne, and a company prepared as the bride in the glory, and right down from that, step by step, it gives unity in what is before the divine mind.
Oh, what a place the Man that died on Calvary had in the mind of God the Father! No wonder Paul’s heart was bursting: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ” (Eph. 1:33Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ: (Ephesians 1:3)). “All spiritual blessings” — ours through Him, in Him who is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! He chose us in Christ before the world was. The mind goes back to the place He had in the bosom of the Father. What do we understand by all spiritual blessings? Have we clear thoughts as to them? Could we sit down and write a list of them, just as of property in this life we could sit down and give a list? Blessings to Israel — what are they in comparison?
Communion
In divine things Scripture alone will not do; it is a matter of communion. Do we know what fellowship with the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ is? People who do know would be likely to show it in their faces. Do we know what this means — what a blessed thing it is for the Father to have such a Son, and for that Son to have such a Father! To say, lying on your bed at night, “There they are up there; how blessed God is with such a Son! What a happy person Christ is to be the Son of such a Father — the Son who has brought forth all the riches of grace, so that even I can enjoy them!” The heart looks from one to the other, knowing the relationship and what the relationship involves, and delights in it. It is a little taste of the new creation.
We have to wait in patience with Him, not only for Him. He is waiting for His church which is created by God in Christ Jesus. But the church is created unto good works, and God has before ordained that we should walk in them. Are there no works to which you are created? The One who died for you, who lives for you — have you not got to live for Him? In great things? No, in little details. To eat to Him, to drink to Him, to sleep and wake to Him. How that ennobles the whole course of a Christian! When I go to rest, will the eye of Christ be on me? In the morning, when I start up, is it with Christ — to live to Christ? How can I? We are one spirit with Him.
Adapted from G. V. Wigram