The church of God, next to Christ Himself, is the center of all God’s counsels for His glory. It is very sweet, when we are in the consciousness of our relationship as sons — children of God our Father — to be assured of and instructed in our relationship to Christ as “members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones.” The church is that wonderful structure in which God will display, in all the ages and throughout eternity, the “exceeding riches of His grace.”
God’s purposes and counsels are not unfolded in Scripture till the cross is past. It stands morally at the end of the world’s history. In God’s dealings previous to the cross, you have the responsible man tested and exposed. The Lord Jesus came down and brought out the fact that man was irrecoverably lost. When the cross is thus passed, all God’s counsels, which were before the foundation of the world, unfold themselves to us in the Word, and that for the first time.
God took the man who so glorified Him and put Him in glory in the display of righteousness. He is there, “Head over all things” in a fourfold title — Creator, Son and Heir, Son of Man and Redeemer. There He awaits the joint-heirs (His bride for that day of glory), and when all are gathered, He will put forth His great power and, binding Satan, will possess all, and we shall be joint-heirs of it with Him.
F. G. Patterson