One cannot help seeing in such a passage as this the deep interest the Lord takes in blessing. There is profound love in it, as well as the fact that He delights in blessing. His purpose is to bring us into the enjoyment of His own blessedness. His thoughts are blessings, and there is no blessing anywhere else but in Him. If I speak of blessing, it must be what is in the heart of God.
A father’s thoughts of giving to his children are measured by his love for them. When we see what is in God’s heart for us and that all His thoughts have the form and power of blessing, what must they be for us! He is conforming us as to His own thoughts in blessing at the end. We, abject sinners taken up by Him as the objects of this love, show the greatness of His love. Christ is the great Workman of it all. It is by Christ that He does it. When God sets about to bless, it is by the Son of His love. What an immense foundation for us to rest upon! “He that descended is the same also that ascended up far above all heavens, that He might fill all things.” “He also descended first into the lower parts of the earth.” What, then, is to escape the power of Him who has been in the lowest place of misery and death. He is taken up to the highest place in glory, the throne of God and all between is filled up by Christ. There is strength and something to rest on for me, a poor sinner. Yet it is not distant from us, for we have the consciousness of its being in and around us.
The Lamb is nearer to my heart than any. He has known me better than any better than I know myself. This Christ who dwells in our hearts by faith is the One we shall meet there. I shall find One in heaven nearer and dearer to my heart than anyone I know on earth. Nothing is so near to us as the Christ that is in us, and nothing is so near to God as Christ.
Yet the world is in a man’s heart. All that is agreeable and outwardly good in this world finds its echo in man’s heart, and all the evil that has come finds its place there too. Christ was here amidst it all. He met it all without having the evil in Him He knows it all. Everything we feel, all that passes through the heart of man, Christ has gone through, not by grasping at the thing, but by resisting the evil.
Christ can meet all. The center key to all is Christ; He has power to put away the evil. If there was one thing where my heart could not rest on Christ, it would be dreadful. All have the knowledge of good and evil, even the unconverted man. Without Christ he sets about racking his heart to find any good thing that is under the sun. All the best affections of a man are the occasion of his greatest distress, because sin has come in and the heart gets pulled and torn every way.
Present confidence in Christ is needed in trial (losing a near relative, for example) but the practical effect is that every trial a man goes through gives him (if the heart is thus trusting) to know more and more of what Christ is to meet the need and more of Christ as possessing Him. “I bare you on eagles’ wings, and brought you unto Myself,” and there we find all the unfoldings of what God is in Christ. I cannot do without Christ. I want manna in the wilderness: God gives it to me. And not only do I get all this such as water and manna, but I have Christ Himself in it all. No matter what it is that exercises my heart in the knowledge of good and evil, it makes Christ more known and more enjoyed. Our natural portion as Christians is to enjoy God.
Where has God planted us? In the enjoyment of an accomplished redemption; the result is that love has not only been manifested towards us but poured out in us. The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit which He has given unto us. We dwell in God—for His love is infinite, but I am in it; I dwell in it, and He dwells in me.
J. N. Darby (adapted)