There are many unsuspected places of the New Testament that would receive a perfect elucidation from these things, which have vacillated between many interpretations, or been done wrong to, or passed as merely general when their application was most strict. We can justly understand the expression, "Your faith groweth exceedingly, and your charity aboundeth." If faith meant faith in the ground of peace, the quantity of faith has nothing to say to it, but the value of the object. So the difference between the "work of faith," and “the labor of love." The expression of James, "Hath not God chosen the poor in this world, rich in faith, and heirs of the kingdom which he bath promised to them that love him," receives its just force; and corresponding texts also, "The meek shall inherit the earth." "Blessed are ye poor," and giving this the sense of the spirit of poverty to the expression, "poor in spirit," declining the greatness of this world. The position of poverty held in faith saves so many of the positions easily felt to be necessary to the position of this world, if there is an heirship to the world to come, and that the present world, and every part of its constitution contrary to God and to Christ, except as to the bare fact that power belongs to God. If the position of the heirship of the kingdom is held in poverty, how naturally and without question is the saint free of the world and its ambitions, its frowns and favors. The utmost that those that possess can do is to possess as though they possessed not, to use as though they used not. It is an abuse to do otherwise, and in respect of the kingdom, (in fact its revelation,) loss. The work of faith will make this world a very wilderness. The labor of love one to another is called for: the walk of faith in it opens the way to, and is the field of it; in fact, mutual help and love among the strangers who wait for an enduring substance. The more thoroughly the possession of the kingdom is realized, the more steady must be the recurrence to Gilgal, and the creeping in of Babylonish things, and the value of this world's goods, guarded against. We shall not be separate before God unless our hearts are bound up with Christ, it will be a meager and failing confession without Him, and it should be "true in him and in us."
Lastly, the duties and the relationships of the saints on earth, such as are recognized by Christ, are ruled by the Master and done to Him, and they receive the reward of the inheritance, because they serve the Lord Christ; He is confessed in all things, and every thought is in subjection to Christ; and His name is on their foreheads, both here and hereafter. (Rev. 22:44And they shall see his face; and his name shall be in their foreheads. (Revelation 22:4).) We have not to go out of Christ for anything. "We are complete in Him (and this is, I believe, the true and only sense of the word in Col.) who is the head of all principality and power."
There is a point which receives perfect elucidation from this position of the believer. The truth of the place of Melchisedec, in this respect, has, I believe, been rarely fully, and clearly understood. We find in the Epistle to the Hebrews, Melchisedec spoken of as entering in, but there is nothing of His coming forth. Again, happy souls know that it is not intercession that keeps them in the place of grace. They are in Christ, before the Father, in Christ in whom they have believed. Placed there in the settled claims of Christ, to be there unreprovable in the sight of God, and yet the office of Melchisedec is intercession while above, not only of advocacy in case of failure, (1 John 2,) but of intercession for them in the difficulties of confession; compassed with the consciousness of past infirmity, (though without sin,) and a compassionate High Priest. Even the ignorant and those out of the way are the object of His graciousness. Held, indeed, as safe in Him, they, as the objects of His Father's love, are His charge while on Satan's ground, and He becomes, to all who look to Him, the strength of their confession, and the leader in the path they walk, the beginning and end of their faith. Heirs with Him in a usurped country, seeking wisdom to distinguish between God's and Cæsar's, they confess Him not only in His grace, but in hope and patience, " in the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ," desiring to be with Him, and looking to be in His image. The fitness of this High Priest is most instructive. He who has received this office from the Father is in His place, where He intercedes, and from which He sends His help, and whence the love that animates the saints comes, holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners, becoming those who are to follow Him, in whom they stand, and in whom they are presented to the Father.