We have surely much cause to thank God and rejoice in Christ Jesus, but nothing really to satisfy. We must still be looking onward to the future blessings in Christ. Never till He appears will the full desires of our hearts be given us; never till we " awake in His likeness" shall we be really " satisfied." Nothing less will suffice, because the Spirit of Christ is in us- constant dissatisfaction, and constant thanksgiving meanwhile; for if we know Jesus risen, nothing short of the full power of His resurrection can content—God's thoughts run on to God's ultimate purpose of complete blessing.
This, we think, is scriptural teaching. Analogies of other truths of Scripture will help us here: e.g. (1) we are saved; (2) the saving goes on; (3) and we hope to be saved. So (1) we have been satisfied; (2) we are being satisfied; (3) and we hope to be satisfied. That is the teaching of the Spirit; and you never can get God's people to walk rightly by looking at their feet, but by looking on, like St. Paul, to the glorified Jesus at the goal in glory. It is vain to quote one text against another, e.g. "Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life." This means that the indwelling Spirit makes you independent of earth's most refreshing things, it may be (like water) things not evil in themselves; but so satisfying is the Spirit's well that it supplants the need of earth's waters. This does not say that a saint will never thirst more for the things of the Spirit: nor that a saint is satisfied with what he has in faith, and in the Holy Ghost. The most spiritual, we believe, are at once the most contented, and the most dissatisfied: for the Holy Ghost being the earnest as well as the seal must create a constant longing for the yet unexperienced and the unpossessed. Only when we are in the enjoyment of complete blessing will we have full satisfaction-i.e. in glory. The teaching then which would inculcate that the saints have no thirst for more than they possess, or no discontentedness even with the blest blessings of the highest spiritual kind here, in comparison with seeing the Savior having the travail of His soul and being satisfied, is contrary to the God's word. To teach that the saints of God could be satisfied here even with their knowledge and attainment as to Christ Himself would be teaching against Scripture, as found in Phil. 3, and against all Christian experience. So little satisfied is Paul with his knowledge or experience of Christ, that we find him writing " that I may know Him," " that I may win Christ." His "one thing" was "forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before; and pressing towards the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus," so well satisfied with the Christ he had, as to count all things but loss and dung for Him, but totally dissatisfied with his experience of Him, and longing for full satisfaction by having Him, and being with Him, and completely conformed to Him in glory.
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