The love of God is the source of all our blessings and joys, and God is love, but in a certain sense His holiness elevates us more. His love is perfect. We dwell in love, dwell in God, and God in us. It is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit which is given to us. It is proved by the death of Christ, and so we are to walk in it. But it cannot be said we are love. God is sovereign in love, “rich in mercy, [of] His great love wherewith He loved us.” All this is objectively blessedness, and in us, and enjoyed by us in communion.
Partakers of His Holiness
It is said we are “light in the Lord.” He makes us partakers of His holiness — partakers morally of the divine nature. No doubt we love, but we are light. How blessed this partaking of the divine nature! And to this we must have respect too in our relationships with God. We know, thank God, that He is love towards us, and indeed in us. But He is light, and as this tested man, so, in grace, man is made it, that is, the new man has this character, “after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.”
Prayer
Prayer takes up our wants where we are and presents them to God — goes in where He is, according to what He is. Men are in wants and difficulties down here, and they carry them, as down here, to God, and this is all quite right, and they will be surely heard, and graciously heard. I may pray from my wants and for my wants, and others too, as we have seen, and it is all right. But if I am living in the heavenly things, and see the saints in the beauty that belongs to them in Christ, and my prayers for myself and for them are formed in what I am dwelling in, how much higher and more earnest they will be. I am thinking of them or of myself with the thoughts of God, and want them to reach them. My desires are formed by these, and I labor with God in prayer for them. The Word, through the power of the Spirit, reveals heavenly things — I see the saints according to God’s mind in them, and as with God, and for carrying out His desires and His thoughts for and in them, I plead with God according to these thoughts. Oh, what a different thing it is! But how near we must be to God so to labor in prayer — to labor for the carrying out His thoughts in them, as they are inside with Him.
J. N. Darby