SALVATION, in this epistle, is always looked at as a future thing, “Whence we look,” &c. The ground of that is expressed in the 12th verse, “Not as though I had.” If the Lord Jesus Christ has taken possession of me for a certain thing, the question is, whether I have got it. The soul’s confidence is not shaken by a future salvation when I look at Christ and say He has taken possession of me and what is it for? the answer is in His mind, there has been no shadow over it, nor thoughts of turning in His mind, for 1800 years. Have I got it yet? No Shall I have it? Yes! as certainly as that I am His. People do not see that Christ is the one to whom they belong, the one to whom the Father gave a people, before the foundation of the world. When was that understood? In the garden of Eden? No! God’s great dealing in the old Testament was proving that from first to last, the creature was so completely ruined, he could not hold any good thing in his hand, and often the very magnitude of the failure caused the good thing to be given. The Lord was pleased to bring out the question of will in the creature, and when this came out, sentence was pronounced against him, and from that time the creature was on the ground of being completely ruined. Christ was not affected by it. He was the only perfect will-less man. He met Satan, and Satan found nothing in Him. He went through the world absolutely perfect, before God. You are not the same; you are ruined; and the ruin is seen first of all within you, in self-will and the want of subjection to the will of God, and in not having any intelligence as to what the mind of God is.
In the word, I find (as one who has life in Christ) that before the foundation of the world, God gave me to Christ. He did not come till 4000 years afterward, and having accomplished the work, to open the way into heaven. He went back to heaven, and sent down the Spirit, and He reveals God’s thoughts about things in heaven before the world was created. He had got a heaven which He purposed to fill with a people chosen and accepted in His Son, and given to that Son as a heavenly bride. The sons and daughters He would bring in there, were seen as clearly in His mind, without a cloud, before the foundation of the world, as when they existed on earth. Paul could say, He apprehended me for that glory, as clearly as possible. He saw Paul and each since that time, and each particular individual who is to make up the complement of that body, of which His Son is head. Each distinct member was ever before the Divine mind: like the tabernacle, not a stitch not foreseen and worked out. He might have closed up the whole thing in Peter. From the time He took possession of you, the Father could say, that person belongs to the Son of my love, not a shade between Him and the angels, in their seeing Him occupied with poor things down here. We do not get occupied, as we ought, with God’s thoughts in heaven. In all the actings of Christ to Saul, He did just as He would to any other sheep down here. Principalities, and powers, and angels, have not been stupid observers of all the marvelous dealings of God with man. They saw Him who was in the bosom of the Father from all eternity, down here for thirty-three years, they knew Him in the three years and a-half of His ministry, and at the last, in that wondrous work, on which the security of redemption hangs.
They saw the law despised; and the Jews having murdered their Messiah, they saw Him then quietly in heaven sending first to those Jerusalem murderers, and from that time waiting quietly till the time when He will come and take all up. The angels see us and know His dealings with us. He loves the whole family with the same love. Not only that love came out to the eleven, washing their feet, but He lets it come out to all. But if He does so love all, He has not got them with Him yet, but He means to get them where He will say, “Behold I and the children,” &c., and they will be like Him. He will “fashion these bodies of humiliation like unto His own glorious body.” Is that done yet? No, but it is as sure as if done; but we have to wait. The guardianship of the Shepherd over the greater part of the flock is ended, but He has not yet brought all in. He waits to bring them, everyone, in; and then He will come to take all up. In this chapter the first Adam was the center of the system of Saul of Tarsus, and he discovered that there was a Center in heaven—the Lord Jesus Christ—and in Him was eternal life.
Christ came down, but did not take the place of Lifegiver till smitten, and He has power to produce in believers the very eternal life He had before with the Father. He is the giver of it to us, as the smitten rock, whence eternal life flows down to us here. We get the character of it in the Apostle Paul getting a taste in the wilderness of that which is of all things the most precious, saying, As the Lord Jesus has taken possession of me, I shall have possession of Him one day. I shall run, up to the goal, and see him at the end. The glorious body is to be given, but much more precious the blessing connected with what I get here, than what will be mine at the end. The heart of the Father will never be more set on me than now, but when I get to heaven I shall have a glorious body. Will it be the beauty of that or the Father, that I shall be occupied with? if the Father I have the best part already. Paul with that eagle gaze saw Christ up there. Did he think that when he should get there, the best part of it would be a glorified body? or being with Christ? Ah! He loves me—it’s not the glory but Himself—but then my body will be the medium to reflect Him better than this poor body. Here evil tames in, and this body wants a thorn to guard it. Not so in my glorified body. Do you not say, if you find a thorn, Oh! Satan has done this. Paul saw that it was Christ’s love that permitted it; but when He brings you to heaven there will be no more thorns needed there, there will be no joint in the harness to gall the flesh; there, no heaviness. Poor Daniel sick, and John falling as dead at Patmos, but the body will become the medium of tasting perfectly what that Christ is, that followed with unwearied love the course of each down here. Is it the thought of any, that in the glory they shall be nearer Him than some then, or brighter than others. Ah! that is something for yourself. Paul won’t be among the eleven apostles. Will he say, Oh! what a place they have got! Paul has no place in Rev. 21:1414And the wall of the city had twelve foundations, and in them the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb. (Revelation 21:14). But if the Son takes him by the arm, and he walks into the glory, leaning on the Lord, or the Lord says to him, You Paul, get behind that pillar and look at the people you brought into the glory. Ah! Paul, I am the one that you alone desired to look at. Yes! Lord, Thou art the Lord who knew how to heap up things upon me, who kept pulling the vessel down into the waters and filling it up. A large vessel holds more than a smaller, but it is Himself, only Him, and Paul says I shall see Him one day and run right up in a glorious body, to be with Him (v. 18). It is a solemn thing, that these were not gross evil livers; there is not the question of putting them out, but certain ones of whom His heart stood in doubt. It is a searching thing to all hearts. If I have Christ as the center of the system I am in, I have communion with Him, in the power of the eternal life He has given me, and I have to walk as one whom Christ knows to be in communion with Himself. People take the power of the Spirit to be marked by the manifestation of joy in a believer; so it is, but connected with it will be the fullness of self judgment. If near Christ, I shall see the utter contrast between Him and self, and self-judgment will be followed by fullness of joy in Him. The Church, as a system, is set up on earth, and soon there comes in corruption, and corruption of the highest thing is always the most disgusting. A sweet flower may become corrupt, but the corruption of that would be far less than the corruption of the body of a beautiful child. The corruption of Satan, as one of the highest angels, was far more dreadful than that of a subordinate creature. God chose a people, first of all before the foundation of the world; but second, there is the exercise of His grace and power in calling and bringing them out as His own people; as in the case of Israel—God takes a people out of Egypt. When the power of God is put forth in revivals, people go out, but God passes them into difficulties. If He choose us, to bring us out, so He looks to see, afterward, whether we choose Him, and are separated from thing’s down here, to go with Him. He says I picked you up for the Son of my love to take you to heaven, and if so, you take care to go after Him. He sees all ruin in me, but He says you have not walked as you ought, but you are mine and I mean you to be there. If God has given me salvation, He lays claim to me, as His own property. The way He shows His sovereignty you get in the call of Saul of Tarsus. Had not He a right to put two extremes together? Enemies of the Cross, they could hardly be inside the Assembly if they rejected Christianity, but they would not have the Cross between them and the world. The life of Christ was a life of humiliation. He came out of the Divine glory, down to the death of the cross, and if I have His life, I ought to want to carry that cross. I ought to want to have the same mind that He had. He came from off the throne eternal, from the highest to the lowest place, and I want His life in me, to act as His, I want it to be a life of humiliation.
Rome, as the system of corruption, sits as queen of the earth: and in Protestantism the monarchs of the land became nursing fathers of the Church. Henry VIII became independent of Rome because he could not marry another wife: and if we look around, where shall we find the Cross and Nazariteship amidst the miters and jewels and costly things of those who are living like princes, in many instances, I doubt not, feeling it a painful duty to do it—but where shall we find all that in connection with the Cross of Christ? And when we come to individual believers, do we and the Cross coming in to separate them from earthly things? Do many so see the beauty of the Son of God coming down, making it manifest through His whole course, that He was not of this world, and ending it in the death of the Cross, that they are saying, Oh I want to be like that blessed One. I want to reflect that meekness, that lowliness, and if so, what a crowding of other things saying, and in such and such a thing I want to be like my Master, showing Christ’s mind in everything, —all starting away and dropping off from you, that is not like Christ, minding God and the Father; on the other side everything crowding upon you in which to be like Christ in all you are passing through down here. How blessed that man up there, who has been most like Christ down here.
Then, the next blessed thought is, “our citizenship. &c.” We are there already in spirit, and we look for Him to come, that we may be there, body, soul, and spirit.
There is something exceedingly beautiful to my own soul, that God gives us so little about tomorrow, except as connected with the coming of Christ. If translation could take place now, the expectation of it would take me off waiting for Christ to come as the Resurrection and the life, to fill up every part of me with the fullness of the power of eternal life. He soon shall come out of heaven to fill up everyone now waiting for Him, and He shall bring them home as vessels filled up. He only is to do it. Something so sweet in God’s thought, waiting till His Son has gathered the last of the people given Him by the Father, before the foundation of the world.
Soon He will come. He is to gather up all the sheaves, fitted by Himself, to go into the barn, and they will then know all His delight in them.
As we look at these poor bodies saying now, I have a body where I have a thorn, where the law of sin and death remains, but I do not mind it, He meant it to be so till He come, and then what a blessed deliverance What a thought of that Lord, before taking me home making this body like His own, by the working of “His mighty, power subduing,” &c. Was dragging His people out of Egypt, and through the Red Sea, All? No! He was going to take them into a land flowing with milk and honey, and He led them all the way. That is His thought, and He will not come till the work is done.
He does not call Sauls and leave them to walk alone. No! He is watching them day and night. But when He gets those people into the Father’s house, He will not be able to add anything whatever to them. The Father, saying of those people, after they are brought home, you are the fruit of my Son’s work, and His glory is to be displayed through you. It is a very blessed thing to feel as those to whom Christ has given the light of eternal life, that not only all our springs are in Him who died to give it to us, but that the light is so to shine out, that the path of each one, however humble, may be marked by the spark of eternal life shining out the whole way.