We are delivered from the power of darkness and passed over to the place where Christ is—where He is spoken of only as in that place. Not only are we brought into light out of darkness, but we are associated in the kingdom with the only begotten object of His special love—the kingdom of God’s dear Son. We have this place into which grace has brought us; we are “made meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light” (Col. 1:12).
But then we have it all in these poor earthen vessels, though “risen with Christ,” and therefore we are to “seek those things which are above.” We are told to “set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth, for ye are dead” ({vi 29520-29521}Col 3:2-3)—dead to the law, dead to sin, quickened together with Christ. “When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory” (Col. 3:4). The risen Christ at God’s right hand is our life, and yet we are not taken out of this world.
Three Worthies
And then we are also told, “Walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing” (Col. 1:10). I get three “worthies” in the epistles: “worthy of God who hath called you unto his kingdom and glory” (1 Thessalonians 2:12), “worthy of the vocation” (Eph. 4:1), and, here, “worthy of the Lord.” My path through this world is to be worthy of Him. My life should be the expression of Christ; my life, ways, everything should be the expression of everything that Christ expressed.
“Fruitful unto every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God” (Col. 1:10). Here I get growth. I get no growth in reconciliation, there is no growth in the value of Christ’s blood, but the moment I get here, there is “increasing.” I know God, and I say, “That is not fit for God.” I purify myself. It does not say I am as pure as Christ, but that I am to purify myself “even as he is pure” (1 John 3:3). As I get my eye purified, I see better; I get my “senses exercised to discern good and evil,” and the more I get on, the more I see what I am getting onto.
Perfection
Here I would say a word, as I find it current in certain circles that perfection is attainable here. But there is no perfection for the Christian except Christ in glory. If I am a risen man, I take Him on earth as a pattern for my steps, but not what I am to attain to. Christ down here is unattainable, because Christ had no sin, and I have sin. There is no perfection down here; you never find any who maintain that there is, who do not lower it to Adam condition. I seek to walk as Christ walked, not after the flesh at all, but the point I am aiming at and looking to is Christ in glory. It is “when he shall appear” that I shall be like Him, and until then I seek to be as like Him here as ever I can be.
“This one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling [or, the calling above] of God in Christ Jesus” ({vi 29435-29436}Phil. 3:13-14). I have no calling down here; the “calling above” is the whole thing that God has set before us.
People say, God cannot give you a rule you cannot attain to. But I say, God never gives you a rule to which you can attain—never! First there was the law. Could man attain to that as in the flesh? It was not subject to the law of God, nor can be. And now there is Christ in glory. Can I attain to that? Never here! But I press on to it; it is before me, and I never attain it till I get to Him. This object that I am aiming at governs me where I am; “I live by the faith of the Son of God,” and if you are not living by Him glorified, you have not got Him at all. If you look for perfection down here, you have lost your object; it is a complete blunder in the very nature of the thing. Christ in glory is the object to which our minds ought to be always looking. We are predestinated “to be conformed to the image of his Son,” and if you are looking at anything else, you are not looking at that.
Patience and Long-Suffering
And now, as regards the path down here, we are “strengthened with all might, according to his glorious power” (Col. 1:11). And what is the fruit of it? It sounds like a poor thing—“patience”! But there is a working of will in us that does not like to be thwarted. That is not patience! “Let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing” (James 1:4). We need divine power for patience; this is the first thing. And what next? “Long-suffering.” As we get it in Ephesians: “I beseech you that ye walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called, with all lowliness and meekness, with long-suffering” ({vi 29274-29275}Eph. 4:1-2). And then I get “joyfulness.” The moment I get the will broken—my will bowing to God’s will and bearing with patience everything I come across—then joy is unhindered.
Thus we have got the place in which we are set, and then the behavior with which we are to walk in it. What the apostle looks for is that we should be “filled with the knowledge of his will, in all wisdom and spiritual understanding” (Col. 1:9). But do we not often find ignorance of His will? Where we do, there is always our own will working. He looks for a spiritual conformity to Christ’s mind so to mark our mind and walk and ways that our life should wear the expression of the life of Christ. It is not merely avoiding positive sins; it is far more than that. The question is: What will please Christ? The question really is, Is Christ in our hearts enough to make us seek only one thing upon this earth until we get to Him where He is? If our hearts are set on Christ, our one desire will be to “walk worthy of the Lord,” and then the world will not know us.
Thus we see that not only are our sins gone, but we are brought into this new place in Christ: “delivered from the power of darkness, and translated into the kingdom of his dear Son,” and that, being thus brought there, we have now to walk in it “worthy of the Lord.”
He wants us to be “holy and unblamable and unreprovable in his sight.” That is what He would have us—what is pleasing to Himself. We are forgiven, justified, reconciled to God, fit for the inheritance of the saints in light, fit for the kingdom of God’s dear Son, and sent now to walk down here in the consciousness of our place up there.
May the Lord only give His saints to have a deeper, truer sense of the place into which He has brought them in the Lord Jesus Christ, that they may know what it is to be brought to God according to the acceptance that is in Christ Jesus.
J. N. Darby (adapted)