The Child of God: Part 3, His Path and Glory
Henry Forbes Witherby
Table of Contents
Longings After God
God Gives Desires – Christian Desire – Christ Himself The Object of the Christian’s Heart – Decadence
The new nature which God has given His children yearns after Himself, its Origin, its Strength, its Joy. In God’s presence, delighting in His light and love, unclogged by worldly burdens, free from all hindrances to the full consciousness of who and what God is, the new nature has perfect pleasure. In creation, the happiness of the creature depends upon its life being in freedom, and vigorous. Certainly such is the case with the children of God. “The life of God,” which they have, distinguishes their place in the new creation; and according to their freedom, in the presence of God their Father, is their joy. Life, under restraint, is ever burdensome: a child of God weighted with worldly cares, or half choked with worldly pleasures, is a contradiction of his new nature, and a denial of its yearnings.
The child of God, in the normal, right state of his affections, looks on to the future, when all hindrance shall be abolished, and when he, spirit, soul, and body, shall be like the Lord in the liberty of the glory. He also yearns after the conscious favor of his God’s presence day by day, and longs to know more of Christ, and to live in His enjoyed communion until the glory comes. This, though varying in intensity, and though interrupted by the influences of the world, is true of everyone who has divine life, for, as the waters of one fountain, so do the desires of this life spring from God, their source. The measure of the desires may differ, and does differ, according to the practical godliness of each child; but the eternal life itself, as acted upon by the indwelling Spirit, rises up to the Father and the Son.
God gives desires after Himself to His people. The eternal life which He has communicated to His children is unlike natural life, for that goes on independently of our parents from whom we derived it. Each human being has his own natural life in his own individuality; but the eternal life, while the possession of each believer, is immediately connected with its source and origin, God; it is not ours in ourselves apart from its source, but it is in the Son. “This is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in His Son” (1 John 5:11).
New affections, new motives, new longings pertain to this life, and all of these God sustains by His Spirit. The wanderings, the turnings aside, the world-borderings of the child of God, however dishonoring to the Father, and however sad in their results to the child of God himself, must not be confounded with the unchangeable truth of his having eternal life in Christ.
We turn to the book of Psalms, the Old Testament treasury of longings after God, and see, as it were, inscribed upon its golden walls, that the nature, God communicates to His people cannot be satisfied save in the conscious presence of God. God Himself – according to the measure of the divine revelation of what He is – is the delight of His children; fellowship with God, whom fallen human nature shuns, is even in this world rest and joy for all who are His; in eternity the rest and the joy of the children of God will be unbroken fellowship with the Father and the Son in glory.
The measure of rejoicing in God experienced by the psalmists was according to the revelation of Himself given to them by God. We are not referring to the spirit of prophecy, for the Holy Spirit moved holy men of old to express words, the meaning of which they longed to comprehend (1 Peter 1:11), but we are considering divinely wrought desires and the Spirit stirring up the heart towards God. The Spirit had touched the chief musician’s affections when he sang, “As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after Thee, O God. My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God” (Psa. 42:1-2). And most blessed desires are these, the uprising of the affections of the new nature to God their source, their end. Again, when David said, “My soul, wait thou only upon God” (Psa. 62:5), he spoke out of the depths of a heart that knew God, as his rock, his salvation, and his defense. It was the result of having dealt with God and of God having dealt with him; of deep and real searchings of soul, and of deep and real trusting in God. Indeed, such was David’s confidence in God, that he was called the man after God’s own heart! Such also was Abraham, the friend of God. The divine nature being communicated to these men, the Spirit led them to trust in, to delight in, and to walk with God.
No bars can imprison desires; and though the day of liberty had not dawned in the times of these songs, which are so frequently intermingled with lamentations and fear, the affections implanted within those souls of His people rose up to God.
Desires after God all God’s people assuredly have; but until God be known in the person of His Son, the affections of the nature which He has given His children are restrained, and the believer is barred from fully delighting in the light of the full revelation of God. Right desires after God are such as are in accordance with God’s revelation of Himself; and the child of God cannot be really happy save as he is longing after God in the spirit of that revelation, and save as God is satisfying those longings. Thus, it is of the utmost practical importance for the joy of the believer, and for the glorifying of God, that his desires should flow in the channels made by his God and Father; and this ever leads to His own Word, and teaches us to submit our hearts to the instruction of His Spirit, that we may recognize what are the divinely-made channels.
Coming to the New Testament, we open upon those pages of the Word of God which give us the yearnings of the child of God in some of their highest forms. We find that the most intense desires are after the Son of God in heaven, in and by whom God has now revealed Himself, and to whose image in glory His people shall be conformed. Here we find a character of longings such as those which the psalmists never expressed, and a freedom in the presence of God of which they never sang. The channels made by God in His children are of a heavenly character. Our Lord, a Man in heaven, Jesus in glory, object for the affections, rest for the heart, known and delighted in through the Spirit, forms in the heart these channels for the flowing of Christian longings.
True Christian desire may be summed up in these few words: “That I may know Him” ( Phil. 3:10), words which are the expression of the apostle’s panting after the Son of God. David longed after Jehovah in the sanctuary: Paul longed after Jesus in the glory. He strained forward after Him. For Him Paul had cast aside all things, eager, as a racer, to “win Christ,” his prize. He had seen Him in the glory; he knew Jesus in heaven; and his soul bounded forward in divinely-given energy to reach the goal of the Clhristian’s affections. When this goal shall be reached by all, the realized hope of eternal life will be the rejoicing of the children of God.
We have endeavored to set before our reader, in some of our previous chapters, truths which free the spirit from legalism and self effort, and establish the believer in Christ. These delivering truths may be termed chiefly positional, relating as they do to what the believer is in Christ, which position is not affected by the practical condition of the soul. But if freed by the truth, the need is great, that the soul be stirred up to the things which relate to the believer’s condition day by day on earth. With this in view, we place the desires of the heart first, for the head follows the heart, and the whole being goes where the heart leads. The actual condition of each soul is brought to the test by the Lord’s own question, “What think ye of Christ?” (Matt. 22:42). Personal intercourse with Him makes each believer what he really is; we do not say what he may seem to be.
Various theories are often submitted to the believer, in order to enable him the better to live a godly life. The apostle, in the treasury of Christian longings referred to, gives the only true principle in this one word, “To me to live is Christ” (Phil. 1:21). Christ is our life, and the believer desires to live Christ. God the Father gives the power to do this, by strengthening the affections, by His Spirit, in such a way that Christ may be their continual occupation. “Strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man; that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith” (Eph. 3:16-17). In proportion as Christ abides in our hearts, by faith, our hearts are truly taken up with Him as their object; and thus Christ becomes the principle of Christian living. If the many things of sight are filling our hearts, the world is the object we have in view; and when such is the case, the Christian, at the best, speaking practically, is like a heavily burdened man trying to run a race.
Christ Himself, and mot even truth about Christ, must be filling our hearts, if we wish to thrive. This is no unnecessary caution in a day when knowledge of the most sacred truths may be intellectually attained by so small an effort. It is a happy thing to understand the Word of God, but, with that word treasured, the aim of the Christian’s affections should be, “That I may know Him.” Desires after Christ, desires to live Him on earth, and to live with Him in heaven, make the Christian separate from the world, and separate him to the Lord. Practice flows from affection. If the heart sleep, the Christian, like a locomotive without fire or water, is at a standstill; he is a name only for speed and strength. The once ardent Ephesians slept to their first love of Christ, and from the center of lukewarm affections spiritual decay spread, till at length their privilege of light-giving for Christ was removed.
Christ died for us, and rose again; it is for us, not to live to ourselves but to Him. His love awakens ours; His love is the motive power of ours, our lamps are lighted by the flame of His love to us. “For the love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead: and that He died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto Him which died for them, and rose again” (2 Cor. 5:14-15).
Truly, to reckon oneself to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God in Christ (Rom. 6:11); to set the affection on things above, as risen with Christ (Col. 3:1-2), and to live Christ on earth (Phil. 1:21), who is in us the hope of glory (Col. 1:27), should be the high ambition of the child of God. Let other things stream out from this freedom, let service, walk, motives, be governed by Christ’s love to us!
Decadence is, alas, so common to all, that at the very outset of our thoughts upon things practical we cannot omit to speak of it. There are children of God, who once were absorbed in overwhelming desires for rest of conscience; they were burdened by the sense of sin and fettered by legality; they yearned after and wept for, the knowledge of divine favor in Christ to them personally; yes, with greater intensity than ever slave longed for liberty. God, in grace, gave them the knowledge of pardon and of deliverance, and gave them to rejoice in His freedom, and for a short time they ran well. What has hindered them, and where are they now? Sleeping among the dead!
At one time it seemed almost impossible that these eager seekers after God should ever be found in the ranks of commonplace Christians, hardly distinguishable from the world which crucified Christ, and which is under God’s judgment. Truth took the place in the mind which Christ should occupy in the heart. The facts of life and liberty were accepted; going on in heart with the Lord was deficient; there was not walking in Christ Jesus the Lord as He was received. Hence the lamps of these believers have dwindled into sparks, and they shine not as bright lights in the world.
Life and liberty may be known, nay, there is not a truth in the Scriptures that may not be known, and yet the soul sink down into a state of supineness. Unless Christ be dwelling in the heart by faith, the practical outgoings of the Christian life are at a standstill; and to return to our illustration of the locomotive, there is nothing more damaging to delicate machinery than the rust of idleness; and no idleness is so disastrous to the Christian as that which proceeds from languor of the affections.
The Child of God:
As with a nation, so with an individual, peace and liberty not unfrequently induce ease and carelessness; and solemn, indeed, as it is to express it, many a believer forsook his earnestness shortly after having been delivered from doubts and fears as to his salvation. “Ye have been called unto liberty; only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh” (Gal. 5:13). So long as the believer was occupied with his own deliverance, he was like a caged bird beating against its prison bars, he could not settle down; the liberty being given, it is his privilege to fulfill its law in loving bonds to Christ. The bird flies from twig to twig and sings its songs in liberty; it does this in the fulfillment of its nature’s pleasures. The loving child delights to run its parent’s errand, and the parent bids it run the errand – the service is liberty. The bondsman of Christ rejoices in the will of his Lord, he obeys His Word, and so fulfills the law of liberty.
It is not too much to say, that with many it seems easier to come to the Lord as a Savior at the first, and to die trusting Him as a Friend at the end, than to keep plodding on, day by day, in dependence upon Him. The beginning and the ending of many a Christian’s course are brighter than the middle. is it because at the extremes there is such felt nothingness in self that Christ is necessarily all?
We are not, automatons, or pieces of machinery wound up upon the day of our conversion, to move like the hands of a clock till we leave this world. We are responsible to Him who loves us; and the only way to live the daily life of a true Christian is to do so by living by the day, by walking by faith, and keeping on going to God moment by moment, even as we breathe the air moment by moment.
What Christ’s work has effected may be understood, yet Christ Himself not be laid hold of by the heart. To know all that Christ has done for us is not sufficient; we must have Him dwelling in our hearts by faith. May it be true of each of us, as said the apostle, “To me to live is Christ!”
The Secret of Strength
Christ Keeping His Own While He Was With Them on the Earth – The Spirit Dwelling in the Believer Now – Faith in Christ Risen: The Secret Of Strength – Living by Faith – Trying What Faith Is
We have reached the point where we have the believer rejoicing, not only in the possession of eternal life and the knowledge of the divine way of liberty in Christ, but also his having divinely given desires, of greater or less intensity, to live to God.
The more we consciously know what the eternal life is, and the more assured we are that the only liberty of this life is in Christ risen, the more we shall feel that the power for our daily walk and thought must be outside ourselves. Our flesh profits nothing, and in ourselves we are absolute weakness. We may say that the believer, who has reached the knowledge of liberty in the risen Christ, has had engraven upon his heart, “In my flesh dwelleth no good thing,” and walking in true liberty, finds his strength in Christ, and altogether outside his own powers.
Nothing of sight or sense can contribute one single particle of strength to the new man. Spiritual life draws not its support from the exterior world; it has to do with God. Faith is the unseen and divinely given power in the believer which lifts him out of himself and up to God. Faith detaches him from earthly things and influences, and, by faith, his ways and his thoughts obtain a heavenly character. It is not that he becomes peculiar and unnatural; far less that he elevates himself upon spiritual stilts; but his thoughts, words, and acts are colored by the presence of Christ, who dwells in his heart by faith.
The Lord maintained His disciples, to whom He had given life, in their daily path, when He was upon earth; He was their strength. They asked Him their questions, went to Him for direction, hung upon His Words, and followed His steps. Apart from Him they had no power whatever. While He was in the world He kept them in His Father’s name. (John 17:12). Though no longer on earth, He is still the strength of His people, He supplies power to them through the Spirit, hence His absence, instead of being a hindrance to their spiritual knowledge of Himself and the Father, is their gain through the presence of the other Comforter.
When about to leave this world, Jesus said to His disciples, “It is expedient for you that I go away” (John 16:7); for His departure from earth was the occasion far His sending the Holy Spirit from heaven to dwell in them. And now, this very hour, the Holy Spirit so works in the children of God that they are taught to depend upon Christ, and to go continually to Him in a way which those who knew the Lord before His ascension to heaven could not.
If we abide in Christ, Christ abides in our hearts; if our hearts are filled with Christ, we are drawing upon Christ, who is our power. In the records of the evangelists we find how that the disciples fell into difficulties when they were ever so short a time away from Christ; and when He is not our object, He is not dwelling in our hearts by faith, and we are absolute weakness. Christ sustains us; apart from Him we can do nothing.
The Holy Spirit is given to us in addition to the eternal life. The life is not in itself strength for holiness, though without the life there cannot be holiness. A dead man cannot do anything; and until we possess the new life we have no power to do good. The life is in itself holy, for it is divine; it cannot be tainted by sin, which dwells in us; it is a fountain which the soil of indwelling sin cannot defile; but if sin be allowed and unconfessed, the life is like a fountain hidden under the ground.
The life itself is perfect of itself, but the practical manifestation of it in the children of God is often sorely hindered; and when the indwelling Spirit is grieved by the believer, such is the case. There is a capability for illimitable expansion in the believer of the joy and the holiness, the virtues and the activities of the new life; and this expansion takes place by the power of the Spirit in us. We see in some of God’s children the life expressed in its abundance; Christ in them shines out of them. Where the life is but faintly manifested, the Spirit is grieved, as in worldly, self-seeking, or self-asserting Christians. Some believers seem to belong to a race of giants, compared with the puny stature of others, but, like giants, they are rare.
When we speak of giants, we mean Christ-like Christians, men of humility, grace, tenderness, long-suffering, goodness, peace, holiness, righteousness, truth – all of which fruits mark the presence of the Holy Spirit in His unhindered action in the child of God. But why is it that the race is so rare? how is it that each believer who may have for himself Christ as his strength, does not live by this strength? The answer is, that continuous faith in the risen Lord Jesus is so small. Daily living is too little by the faith of the risen Son of God.
Faith in Christ is the secret of the strength of the Christian. Each believer has the illustration of the practical result of this principle before him in his own conversion. How did he find himself freed from the load of sin? By believing, looking to Jesus! Explain the mystery none can, but realize it, all may.
The most learned physician in Israel could not have explained how it was that the Israelite bitten by the fiery serpent, upon looking at the serpent of brass, lived; but the simplest stricken sufferer, who believed God, could easily say why it was. Again, how was it that liberty became ours? What opened the dungeon door? Believing! We looked to the risen Christ and gave faith’s assent to God’s truth concerning Him, and ourselves in Him. Believing, we then and there out of the dungeon came, out of self – thrall into liberty in Christ. Explanation is impossible, but the believer knows it just as a man knows that he sees, because his whole body is full of light. The only answer that the man born blind, of whom we read in John 9, could give to the questions of the Pharisees was, that Christ had opened his eyes; he knew that he saw because he saw!
Many a Christian who is thoroughly well assured in his soul that faith in Christ is the only possible way by which a sinner can find pardon and peace, fails to believe that faith in Christ is the only way by which he himself can live to God. Such a believer has faith in Christ, as his Savior from the doom of sin, but not faith in Him as his Strength from the power of sin. He has faith that Christ has magnified the claims of divine righteousness respecting the sins he has committed, but not faith that the Lord works righteousness and holiness in him. The evidence of a man’s faith lies in its fruits. A sinner comes to Jesus, the sacrifice for sinners on the cross and finds forgiveness; a saint comes to Christ, the risen Lord in glory, and finds strength for living to God.
The life of faith is not simply looking once to Christ for salvation, but going on with Him hour by hour. Being justified by faith, we live day by day on the principle of faith. We do not receive life from the once crucified Lord, and then go on in our own power; “As ye received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in Him” (Col. 2:6) – by faith. Every day the believer needs Christ as his strength; and living by faith, he is living outside his own resources, and by the Son of God, who loved him and gave Himself for him.
There is an association of the closest intimacy effected by the Spirit between Christ in heaven and His people on earth: “He that is joined unto the Lord is one Spirit” (1 Cor. 6:17). And the Lord is ever at hand, ever near; and the Spirit makes its conscious of His presence; and thus faith is encouraged and stimulated to draw upon Him.
Living by faith is, really, practical dependence. The strength of the believer vanishes when the dependence is interrupted. Samson’s strength departed, and he became as another man, so soon as he was shorn of the external sign of subjection. And so it is to this hour; the believer’s spiritual strength flies away immediately he trusts in himself. Yesterday’s strength is of no support in today’s difficulties. Christ, alone, makes us strong moment by moment. The apostle could say of his path, in its details, its sorrows, and its joys, “I can do all things through Christ which strengthened me” (Phil. 4:13); and He is the same yesterday, today, and forever: Christ was not different eighteen hundred years ago from what He is today; He waits to be proved by all those who trust in Him.
We received the new life being born of the Spirit; we cannot sustain that life by our own strength; self cannot uphold our relation to God; but God has given us the Spirit to enable us to live by faith; and the divine way for holy living is in the Spirit by the faith of the Son of God, who is in heaven.
Each day calls for continuous exercise of faith in Christ. It is all important that, as each day passes by, our thoughts should be freshly associated with our Lord, who is looking into our hearts to find there trust in Himself. The strength itself comes from Christ; it is ours according to our faith. The believer, by daily dealing with the Lord, proves where strength is found. We are saved in a moment; we receive life at once; but we are strong simply as moment by moment we live the life of faith. Faith is a mighty tonic for the soul, but must be tried.
The lesson of dependence is not learned all at once; and in this sense, as there is growth in the knowledge of God and of Christ, there is growth into the way of strength. Let the believer cast himself upon the Lord for the passing moment, for the difficulty of the hour, for the state of his soul, for all the thousand little things that make up one day of living here on the earth, and he will soon find what Christ is for him. Let him really try Christ as his strength.
Who but the Lord Himself can still the tumultuous waves within the human breast? who else shall say, “Peace, be still,” and create a great calm within? The peace of Christ is known in seasons of life’s deepest anguish, and may be known none-the-less sweetly in the calm hours of this brief pilgrimage. Faith is the setting to our seal that God is true; living by faith we prove what it accomplishes. Let its principle be tried for one brief hour, let Christ be believed as the strength of the heart, as the believer’s power, and then what cannot be explained will be realized.
Faith shines brightest in the dark; it is the star of the night: but the stars are in the sky all day, as well as all night; the darkness makes their presence apparent. We do not mean to hint that there is not special faith granted for special occasions, but would insist upon the need of that even tenor of spirit that arises from continual intercourse with, and dependence upon, the Lord, which is really the outcome of the life of faith, or living by faith.
Trying what faith is, is really trusting what Christ is. The most searching exhortations follow the apostle’s declaration to the Colossians that Christ is our life, and we are risen with Christ. These exhortations bid us to set the mind on heavenly things where Christ is, and to practice, putting to death the members which are on the earth, and putting on the heavenly things which were expressed in Christ when below. Let the believer who would thus live believe the Scriptures, and not look for any evidence in his own soul, and it will be like coming out of the tunnel into the sunshine.
Christ is “in all,” He is the life of all. Let the realization of the soul he compared to the condition of men groping about in the dense, dark fog; still we know that it is clear daylight above the fog, and all we want is to get up high enough. Now, the fact is, we are risen with Christ, then may we set our affection on the things above where Christ sits at the right hand of God; and though the secret power is unseen, faith in Him will lift the spirit of the believer into the clear light where He is.
Spiritual Conflict
Liberty Leads to Conflict – Greater Power for the Believer Than Against Him – The Spirit of God Searches Us – The Spirit Is Opposed to the Flesh – The Way of Victory – Spiritual Prosperity
We will speak of the conflict which, in greater or less intensity, every believer has to go through daily. It is not the struggle for deliverance of soul that now is to occupy us – of that we have already spoken – nor the conflict which is against Satan, wrestling with spiritual wickedness in heavenly places – but the inward conflict in the child of God.
It may be said, “What, if a man knows his sins to be forgiven, and more, liberty” (which some call “sanctification,” “higher life,” “full peace,” and so forth), “then, surely, every spiritual desire must be gratified, and thenceforward, till heaven be gained, there can be nothing more to be wished for.” In things spiritual, as in things natural, when children have grown up to manhood, to ripe age, or, as Scripture speaks, are “perfect,” they do not find that thenceforward there is nothing to do, nothing to suffer. Quite the contrary; in one sense they may be said to begin life only when perfect. Until the great and terrible “I” be held by grace to have been crucified with Christ, the believer can hardly be said to have begun to live the new life in its liberty; but liberty attained, conflict is acutely entered into.
Greater power exists for the believer than against him. The believer knew the bitterness of inward strife before he knew his standing in Christ risen; but having been brought into liberty, he is subject to conflict. Sin is in him, Satan is active, the world attractive. But there is a vast difference between the character of the conflict in the believer who is in liberty, and in him who is in bondage. The difference is this: before he knew himself to be in Christ, the believer was like a helpless cripple in the clutch of a giant; after his deliverance, having the Spirit as power to deal with sin in him, the Spirit within him is stronger than his flesh. Mark, we do not say that the believer is stronger in himself than he was, but that the Spirit in him is power. And by the Spirit’s power he overcomes.
Before we were brought into Christian liberty the power of the indwelling Spirit was not known, but, being delivered from thrall to self, we are in the moral position which should gain the victory. Not that the position itself is victory, it is the vantage ground for victory; victory is obtained by the Spirit. Still, it is no little good to know what the vantage ground is, and a greater thing to occupy that ground.
The Holy Spirit, who dwells within us, knows our heart’s. When He has taken up His abode in the child of God, He does not suffer the child to pursue his own course through this world at his list. The child of God has his natural inclinations, his tastes, his wishes, he is the self-same person, with the self-same tendencies as before. His nature is unchanged; it is the identical selfish, or vain, or rash, or timeserving nature as hitherto. He may be beset with the sins of love of money, or ease, or applause. His new birth does not correct his old nature, with which he came into this world, but the Spirit of God, who at the first made him feel what he was by the Word, and produced in him repentance, gives the Word effect in his everyday life, cleansing and purifying, and causing self-judgment by its means.
The Spirit of God dwelling within us stimulates the desires of the holy nature which He has implanted in us. He leads to humility, gentleness, and courage, and all in a divine way. We do not mean such qualities apart from God, which in that case may be merely traits of human nature.
When our flesh stirs us up to desire its old things, the Spirit of God does not remain passive in us, but occasions conflict within: “For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: [in order] that ye should not (lit.) do the things that ye would” (Gal. 5:17). He restrains the believer from doing the things which the flesh likes, and constrains him to do the things which God loves, and effects this by acting upon the new man.
The believer is not, and never will be, free from having sin in him in this world; nor will he be free from the danger of committing any kind of evil: and he is never, practically, safe except when he feels his weakness, and walks in the dependence of faith in God. Should he say, “I cannot help doing evil,” then he denies the Spirit of God in him as the power for holy living, and remains in the mire of wrongdoing. Should he say, “I am holy, or spiritual, or heavenly,” and in his heart think of what he is in himself, then it is self at work in another and more dangerous form, and he has denied the Spirit of God in His power producing holiness, spirituality, and heavenly-mindedness. This last is worse than the first, for the first is unbelief in God, the last belief in self. The truth is, there is constant conflict proceeding within the child of God, and the Spirit is continually restraining from evil, as well as leading to good; and truth is the effect of the work of the Spirit of truth.
The Spirit is opposed to the flesh. The Spirit dwells in us, and in our flesh dwells no good thing. We have been called to liberty, to be free before God – not to be satisfied with, or to give way to ourselves. This condition of liberty is to be used for God; the flesh is not to be allowed to place the believer again under the religious thrall of ordinances, or law; neither is it to be allowed to run in its own evil likings of a base sort; – the liberty is to be used for serving God and walking before Him. Divinely-given liberty is marked by humility and holiness, by peace and joy.
The flesh in its pride would say, “I can live to God by means of law-keeping and religious observances;” the flesh in its lusts would say, “I am safe for eternity, and thus can live for myself.” The new life God has given us has no affinity for either the one or the other of these evils, and the Spirit of God opposes the flesh in each.
The way of victory in everyday life for the believer is solely by the power of the Spirit, and the first step on the way is, putting to death the deeds of the body. There are evil things to which we naturally incline; it is the pleasure of our old Adam to commit specific bad and sinful deeds. The members of our bodies are the servants of our desires; we have absolutely to refuse and put to death those activities, and the power for this action is the Spirit who dwells in us.
The tree itself God has cut down judicially in the cross of His Son; this truth is not affected by our daily walk; what we are as men in the flesh, God has judged and condemned in Christ when occupying our place; but we have grave responsibility before God as to our ways, we have to cut off the sprouts of the tree. God condemned our nature once for all, when His Son was made sin for us; but sin is in us, and we have continually to keep the shoots down or they will become branches. We were noticing the other day a felled and branchless elm tree, yet it was sprouting all over “If ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live” (Rom. 8:13). No natural power can put to death the results of nature, the Spirit of God is the believer’s only force to effect this great end.
Having the divine nature, the child of God abhors the evil, and the indwelling Spirit of God is his strength for not doing evil and for doing good. The Scriptures set before us this power of the Spirit of God affecting our every detail of life. Be the deeds of the body those of the gross kind, or those of a more subtle nature, still the Spirit of God gives the strength enabling the child of God to get the victory.
The Spirit is opposed to the conceptions of our evil hearts, and by Him we subdue and slay our evil actions. There is no practical living the life of faith without this conflict, and, no doubt, every child of God does, more or less, put to death these deeds. Living to God, practically speaking, does not take place in the believer’s life on earth unless he set aside the ways of his flesh. We say practically, for, as we have shown, the life which we have is in the Son of God, and secure before God, hid with Christ; but having the new life, and living out the new life in these mortal bodies, are widely different facts. All the children of God have the life; we cannot affirm that all truly live it out daily.
Spiritual prosperity depends greatly upon spiritual weeding. Cost what it may, the weeding must be done, else there will be no golden harvest. Children, when they see poppies and other weed flowers amongst the corn, may say, “How pretty they look!” but every weed sucks strength from the harvest. Weeding is not done once and for a lifetime, but is a continuous and laborious work, and weeds increase according to soil and seasons. Some soils and seasons make weeds with terrible rapidity. So it is with the believer; but get rid of the weeds he must. He cannot get rid of the soil, his flesh, in which no good thing dwells, he cannot free himself of sin in him; but by the Spirit of God he can put the weeds to death as they come up, he can avoid giving way to what it is natural to him to do.
The flesh produces weeds more rapidly than the sourest land, and, at times, the devil and circumstances favor their rapacious growth in such a way that the strength of the soul seems eaten up; but “if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live.” There seem to be times for special kinds of evil growths amongst Christians generally; Satan is permitted to make certain assaults on the prosperity of souls in different ages. Thus we find that the difficulties disturbing believers are frequently of the same sort over large sections of Christendom. While men sleep Satan sows his evil seed, hence the need of constant prayerful watchfulness in each child of God for what may be springing up in his own soul. Laxity or indifference as to the truth of the Scriptures, and laxity or indifference as to morals, are prevalent weeds of these our times.
Though weeding be toilsome, heart-breaking, and afflictive work, it is the only way to spiritual prosperity; and let us remember, that as old fields grow weeds as well as new, so it matters not how old a Christian may be, he is always to be putting to death the deeds of his body. There is no safety from sinning unless we walk according to God, whether we be young or old.
The endeavor to live to God will cause deep heart-searchings and conflict in each individual believer. It will cause work as painful as judicial to self; but it is written, “They that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts” (Gal. 5:24).
Victory over our ways introduces us to, as well as springs from, the enjoyment of the presence of Christ. The deeds our natural hearts delight in, caused our Lord His cross and suffering for us. He was crucified, and being risen with Him, it is our privilege to reckon ourselves to be alive unto God, and to put to death those members of our bodies which are sin, and the Spirit of God is our only power for this end.
Walking in the Spirit
In the Spirit – The Spirit in Us – Walking – No Mingling of Flesh and Spirit – No Confidence in the Flesh – The Spirit of God Gives Power for Fulfilling the Requirements of the Law, Hinders The Fulfillment of the Lusts of the Flesh, and Produces Holiness – Going on in Spirit
“Ye are not in the flesh, bid in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you” (Rom. 8:9). The fact of the Spirit of God dwelling in him marks off the position of the child of God from that occupied by man in his nature state. We may illustrate this truth by supposing a man residing in different countries. He could not be both in England and France at the same time, and he would be subject to the laws and government of the one country in which he was. Being in the Spirit, the child of God is subject to the divine laws and principles connected with his position, and is responsible to walk in obedience to those laws and principles.
Now, while the position of favor is ours, we are like men who, being naturalized into a country, have still in them likings for, and habits of, their old land, which are utterly foreign and abhorrent to the country where by favor they are placed. Sin is in us, the flesh is in us – that is, our old nature which sins and loves sin is in us. Though we are in the Spirit the principle is in us which inclines to the things that are hateful to the favored place into which we are brought.
Here, then, we have the fact of the child of God not being in the flesh, but being in the Spirit, and also of the flesh being in him. How, then, shall he live for God, and, in some degree, according to the favored place in which by grace he is? For his fallen nature is altogether foreign to the place he is brought into by grace. He that is in us is greater than he that is in the world, and by the power of the Spirit the believer lives to God.
The Spirit is in us, as well as the flesh. Not only has the strong delivering arm of the Lord brought us out of “in the flesh,” but the Spirit of God Himself dwells within us. He is mightier than the inclinations of our evil hearts; and it is our privilege and responsibility to walk not in our own poor strength, or by the force of our own resolutions, but in the Spirit.
In the Word of God we find the laws and principles for daily behavior which should govern the practical conduct of the child of God. We have no liberty to set up a code of regulations of our own manufacture, we have to conform to the principle of living our daily lives according to the favored place into which we have been brought. Where this is not done, unhappiness of soul and dishonor to God must result. Men may set at naught the laws of the land in which they dwell, and make new laws, but no child of God can thus act in respect to God’s kingdom. God changes not; it is not possible for H is people to make and unmake the principles of His house. In dependence and obedience is our only strength.
In perfect grace the Holy Spirit dwells in the children of God, abiding with them forever, He never leaves nor forsakes them, He teaches them, helps them; and the practical concern of the child of God should be so to conduct himself that the Spirit may act in him unhinderedly.
Walking indicates the inward as well as the outward energy of a man; it is the working of his heart as expressed by his actions; it betokens the general bent of his soul, demeanor and conduct; it indicates that which directs the spiritual man, as well as the course which the spiritual man is taking. Unless there be walking in the Spirit, there cannot be spirituality.
“ They that are in the flesh cannot please God” (Rom. 8:8). God is not to be pleased by any acts performed by any man outside the circle of “in the Spirit.” However earnestly a runaway child might address himself to do the things his father bade him while he was yet at home, his efforts would be worse than useless so long as he remained away from his parent’s presence. The only course open to the unconverted sinner is to repent as God has commanded. (Acts 17:30).
The question for the child of God is not whether an unconverted man can please God, but the practical issues arising from the fact, that he in his old Adam strength cannot do so. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God; neither can the child of God by the power of the flesh please God. “The flesh profiteth nothing” (John 6:63). Whether in saint or sinner, in child of God or child of disobedience, the flesh remains ever the same.
There is no mingling of the forces of flesh and Spirit. It is a solemn question of nature, and of power relative to nature. A man cannot fly because he is a man, the power of flying is foreign to the nature of man; neither has the flesh wings to rise to God. A bird which flies may or may not exercise the power which pertains to its nature; and broken or clipped wings mar the act of flying. We expect the bird that flies to be seen flying, and if the power is not exercised we know something is amiss.
The children of God have a power – even that of the Spirit of God – connected by sovereign grace with the divine nature communicated to them; and, saith the scripture, “if we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit” (Gal. 5:25).
The broad principle of life being in Christ, and power for walking before God being supplied by the Spirit of God, are truths generally accepted by all true Christians; the practical difficulty for the child of God lies rather in the application of these truths to his own daily life. Say what we may as to divine doctrine, when the test of daily behavior is before us, there is a sorrowful tendency to lean upon the flesh, to look to it, to hope from it, even when there is looking to Christ also.
No confidence in the flesh we should therefore place at the very forefront, if the child of God would really and truly walk in the Spirit. By thus speaking we are fully aware that we return to the A B C of the gospel; but who gets the first letters of this alphabet so perfectly as never to want to go over them again! We have to come back not only daily but hourly to this point; and there is no greater danger than to suppose we are fixed for life in having “no confidence in the flesh.” There are all kinds of backdoors open to return to it; we do not speak of trusting in the flesh for eternity, but trusting in it for the difficulties of the day. An unconverted man, who rests his hope for divine favor on turning over a new leaf, is trusting in the flesh for eternity, and thereby rejecting Christ’s work of redemption. A child of God who is trusting in his strength of resolve, for example, is, so far as that extends, having some confidence in the flesh, and hence is setting aside the power of the Spirit in him.
Any attempt at spiritual progress, made in the power of the flesh, is like that of sinking men. We live in the Spirit; let our actions be by His power. What should we say of the voyager who began his journey to America by trusting himself to the strong Atlantic steamer, and who, towards the end, thought the best plan to finish his voyage would be by the strength of his own arms, and so leaped overboard? “Are ye so foolish? having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh?” (Gal. 3:3). Having begun in divinely-given power, are we to finish in our own?
Child of God, faith is necessary! We draw upon God by faith as we walk by faith; it is a divine truth that, The Spirit of God gives power to the believer to act holily; let us walk in the faith of this fact. “Received ye the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?” (Gal. 3:2). We have to go on as we began, by faith. “As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in Him” (Col. 2:6).
The believer’s power for fulfilling the requiremet’s of the law is of the Spirit. (Rom. 8:4).
Though not under the law as a rule imposed upon him, the child of God, being made partaker of the divine nature, fulfills the law’s demands. Its holy and righteous claims are according to God’s nature, for God gave the law; and walking in the Spirit, the believer simply and happily obeys these demands. When the moon is high in the noonday sky we do not walk in her light; her glory is lost in that of the sun. But the sunlight does not contradict the moonlight because of its greater brilliancy; it apparently absorbs it; so, since the true light shines, we walk not in the light of the law, which was not made to rule the day of Christian liberty, but in that of the gospel. We see the law, as it were, in the heavens of the Christian revelation, and fulfill its requirements by the power of the Spirit of God who dwells in us.
Take as an example this command, “Thou shalt not steal.” By the law, the sin of theft is forbidden, but compare with this the exhortation of the gospel wherein the command lies: “Let him that stole steal no more; but rather let him labor, working with his hands the thing which is good, that he may have to give to him that needeth” (Eph. 4:28). Here shines a ray of the light of divine love. Giving has taken the place of stealing. The thief by nature has become generous by grace. The gospel exhortation contains far more than the demand not to steal, it expects him to whom it is addressed to be like God – a giver. The light of the gospel day has not contradicted that of the legal night, but he who walks in the light of the gospel fulfills the demands of the law.
The believer’s power for not fulfilling the lust of the flesh is of the Spirit: “I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not (in no way) fulfill the lust of the flesh” (Gal. 5:16). It might be objected, if a Christian were not under the restraint of the law that his life might be careless. The “no way” of the above verse forbids such a notion. Our blessed Lord lived out the life which was in Him – the eternal life. He fulfilled the law and the prophets, and did His God and Father’s will; and so long as the child of God is walking in the Spirit he is living in the excellence of the law of liberty, doing with joy, though feebly, as Christ did.
Keeping to the principles of the place – in the Spirit – where the believer is by grace, he, on the one hand, fulfills the requirements of the law, and on the other, does not fulfill the lusts of the flesh. Here is positive and negative of the utmost importance for Christian living. So long as the flesh in us is active, holiness is hindered. We must not limit fleshly activity to mere animal propensities; there is religious as well as gross flesh. To be sure, people do not care for the taste of the leaves of the apple tree, but whether leaves or fruit, all grow out of the one stock. The tree has to be rejected, and all that it produces. So long as we walk in the Spirit the cravings of the flesh are, as it were, nipped in the bud and its activity suspended.
The believer’s power for holiness is of the Spirit: “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace; longsuffering, gentleness, goodness; faith, meekness, temperance” (Gal. 5.22-23). Such fruits do not grow out of the old condemned stock of the flesh, but out of the new life which is ours in Christ. How long together a believer walks in the Spirit is not our inquiry, but the principle of holiness. If a man says he has not sinned for a month or a year, he is a deceiver of himself. Spiritual pride is not of the Spirit of God. Spiritual elation is dangerous imitation of Satan. Christ in glory is the standard of perfection, Christ on earth the pattern for the Christian’s walk. No one’s walk is perfect, but the Spirit of God who dwells in us is perfect, and as the child of God yields himself to God, as one alive from the dead, the desires and cravings of his flesh are not fulfilled, and the Holy Spirit in him brings forth fruit out of him.
Being led by the Spirit is favor common to all Christians, it is the principle upon which God now deals in grace with His people. Outside the circle wherein God dwells by His Spirit, men are led by Satan; under the law His people were in bondage, and under the schoolmaster. Now, in Christian privilege, the Spirit leads: “If ye be led of the Spirit, ye are not under the law” (Gal. 5:18).
The two principles of being under the law and being led by the Spirit cannot run side by side; they are quite distinct from each other. They are different ways of God’s dealing with His people. When God brought up Israel from Egypt He led them by the cloudy pillar, He guided them and prepared their way, they were entirely at His charges, and altogether in His hands. So is it now with His people, He leads them – “For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God” (Rom. 8:14).
As has been already shown, the title son implies the favor of position; it does not say, as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the children of God. Sonship is the special privilege which now pertains to all the children of God. The gracious and tender dealing of God expressed by the leading of His Spirit is that which marks His ways with His people now.
Undoubtedly the Spirit of God directs in the countless details of life. Those who have faith, and are on the lookout for His hourly direction, will not be disappointed. But the Spirit of God leads according to directions of the word; hence that which is called the leading of the Spirit, and which has not the truth of the Scriptures for its line of thought or action is necessarily false.
If we are truly walking by His power we shall act in obedience to the truth. This fact needs emphasizing, for the way in which some speak of being led by the Spirit to do what they like is truly sorrowful. The Lord’s name is taken in vain, and the Holy Spirit trifled with. The first element in spirituality is obedience to the Scriptures.
Diligence of soul is required. The life of faith and walking in the Spirit convey the thought of continuous going on in dependence upon God. A good start is not enough; we must keep plodding on according to one principle, till we reach the glory. Truths have certain attractions for many while new. At one time the Galatians would have plucked out their eyes, had it been possible, to give them to the Apostle Paul. Then he was, to them, a veritable messenger from God; but in some way they lost their blessedness, and so when the attraction was offered them to give up going on in the Spirit, and to seek to become perfect in the flesh by means of placing themselves under the law, they were ready for it.
A believer who begins in the Spirit, and runs well, and then goes to the law to become perfect, is beguiled by enemies of liberty in Christ risen. We have to keep going on by the rule that the flesh has been brought to its end for us in the cross of Christ, and that new life in Him is ours; hence that in Christ neither circumcision availeth, nor uncircumcision, but new creation (Gal. 6:14-16). We have to frame our conduct by the rule of walking in the Spirit, as well as to practice its path. The principle must never be lost sight of, however we may fail in carrying it out. We must steer by divinely-given principles, even if winds and waves at times do throw us out of our course: to give up God’s principles because of opposing elements is to court shipwreck.
The rule of the Christian life is self out of sight, in Christ crucified; “I have been crucified with Christ” – Christ in heaven, our all; “In Christ.” And the power for daily behavior; Christ only. Keeping on thus, we are walking in the Spirit, who gives power to fulfill God’s will. “If we live in [or by] the Spirit, let us also walk in [or by] the Spirit” (Gal. 5:25).
Walking in the Light
What Is the light? Who Are in the light? – Light and Life Immediately Connected – Who Walks in the Light – The Ever-cleansing Blood
We must be in the light in order to walk in it. The light is the full revelation of God; Christianity; the truth, as now unfolded by the Scriptures; and the children of God are before God according to what God is. To be in the light is to be in the Christian position now occupied by the people of God.
God is light; such is His nature. He has fully made Himself known in the person and through the work of His Son; therefore the true light now shines amongst men. As the full revelation of God is light, anything obscuring that revelation is of darkness. Before God had made Himself fully known He dwelt in the thick darkness; and at that time neither His light nor His love could be understood.
The children of God are in the light, being before Him according to the measure of His full revelation of Himself. It is not the measure of our knowledge of God that constitutes the light. What we may see of the sunlight does not determine what it is: the sunlight of the truth of who and what God is, now shines; the night of Judaism, illumined by types and shadows, is passed; our privilege is to walk in this light. In this light every child of God now is; the children of God are the “we” who walk there. There is no other place before God which a believer can occupy in relation to light and darkness save light. Twilight may exist in the souls of Christians, who do not fully believe the truth of the gospel, but there is no such existence now as a twilight revelation of God.
That the true light shines, we see declared, for example, in the vail of the temple being rent from top to bottom, from heaven to earth, when our Lord died. God, who had been hidden, was then revealed according to the measure of the fullness and perfection of Christ’s completed work of sin-bearing; and from that day to this, the light of His righteousness shines forth in relation to His judgment against sin.
Being perfectly cleansed by the blood of Christ, the holiest of all is the believer’s place before God, and it is so simply upon the ground of what the sacrifice of Jesus has effected. It is the Christian’s position by virtue of Christ’s work. Our dwelling-place is in the light and the holiest of all, not by reason of our subjective condition of soul, but because the Lord has made the place or standing ours by the putting away of our sins by the sacrifice of Himself, and by His bringing us to God: “Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way, which He hath consecrated for us through the veil, that is to say, His flesh” (Heb. 10:19-20).
An unconverted man, one whose sins are not taken away, who is not brought to God, is in the darkness of his nature state, and in ignorance of God; and he is in this position, entirely outside the question of what his conduct may be. He is not in the light, and therefore cannot walk in it. The first question is, where a man walks; the next, how he walks. Is he in the golden palace where the full blaze of the divine light shines, or is he still outside the palace and in the darkness of the world?
A Christian’s walk may often be faulty, but just because he is in the light he is responsible to walk as a child of light: “Ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord: walk as children of light” (Eph. 5:8). Such a spiritual position as that of neither darkness nor light does not exist; there is no intermediate place, either here or hereafter. Divine facts and our apprehension of those facts must not be confounded together. We need faith in the divine truth, not faith in our apprehension of the truth. Many stumble over this stumbling-stone, but faith in what we believe to be true because we believe it, is really faith in our own faith, not faith in God.
Light is immediately connected with eternal life. We have already seen that when the truth of God first reached us it was as light discovering to us our darkness. In a word, it was by grace, the discovery to us of God, who is light. If we bring a candle into a large dark room, the light proves its own presence and discovers the darkness also. The first work of God in the soul is by His Word, “Let there be light.” The entrance of God’s Word gives light, teaching who He is; and the effect thereof in the soul, as each child of God can witness, is that in him “God divided the light from the darkness,” when by the truth he began to be discovered to himself.
The blaze of the light at the first only makes the awakened soul feel his sinfulness; it is a disturbing and searching word, but its effect is to make the soul forsake his sins and repent; and then the light and the darkness are both known as absolutely different within. The theories and fancies in which we once indulged, concerning our old Adam nature becoming improved or rendered less dense by illumining influences, disappear by reason of the truth having convinced us that the nature of God is light, and that the fallen nature of man is darkness.
Then by grace the believer discerns, by the witness of the precious blood of Christ, that God is light, he knows – at least so far as he enters into the truth – God’s thoughts about sin. He knows those thoughts too, in twofold force; first, the utter and absolute abhorrence the divine nature has of sin; next, the satisfaction the divine nature has in the blood by which sin is put out of God’s sight. The blood of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, proclaims to sinners the impossibility, in time or in eternity, of God passing over a sinner’s sins, turning aside and not dealing with sin; it also proclaims a mercy-seat for the whole world, upon the sure basis that sin has been dealt with, and answered for, by the sacrifice of the perfect offering – the Lamb of God. If the sinner neglects the mercy-seat, he enters eternity, courting eternal wrath.
The child of God having life, is taken out of darkness and placed in the light. This is his position before God, and is so, we repeat, exclusively by virtue of the Lord’s work for him. The truth of the believer occupying this position is entirely distinct from that of his being in the condition of having the window of his soul open to receive the full brightness of the truth, and hence of his being full of light. The condition should agree with the position, but the position is not determined by the condition; such a thought is really placing our walk before Christ’s work, and judging of what God is for us, by what we are for Him!
Those who walk in the light are the children of God. Walk according to the light as God is in the light none can, for that standard would be absolute perfection according to the very nature of God Himself. The first consideration is where, the second how we walk.
In nature there are creatures of the day and creatures of the night; each class moves either in the light or in the darkness; some are at home in the one, others in the other. But if we saw a bird of the day roused from her resting-place and fluttering through the darkness, we should not declare, because of her unwonted flight, that night was day, or she of the night. God has made His own children of the day, and His work is perfect. No one can walk as a child unless he be a child.
Alas! that so much of the lives of many Christians is taken up with the inquiry, “Am I a child?” We are partakers of the divine nature, and all is of grace. Should not the love and ways of our own children forbid such questionings? they do not continually ask us whether they are really our children. They are in our homes, even as we are in our homes, and their pleasure is to behave according to their parents’ wishes.
God has been revealed; and what is the truth concerning Him? “This then is the message which we have heard of [or from] Him [that is, the Lord], and declare unto you, that God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5). The Lord taught His disciples who God is; and His teaching or message is communicated to us. There had not been a full revelation of God given to men until the lips of Jesus declared Him. Sin cannot be tolerated in His presence. Man in the darkness of his sinful nature cannot dwell in the presence of God. The world, and the wicked one, in whose embrace it lies, cannot approach Him.
The child of God belongs to God, and is before Him according to the measure of the perfection of Christ’s work. According to this standing should his walk be; he is in the golden room illumined by the flood of perfect light, and should comport himself according to the place where God has put him.
God knows exactly what we are, He knows every thought, every motive, and nothing is or can be hidden from Him. In this assurance the child of God walks; he knows God is looking into his heart, and sees all things. He does not fear the look of God, who is light; nay, he is glad of it. All that he is in himself, his God knows, and he is aware that he can never take God by surprise by what he does, because God knows what he is, though very often he is a wonder of evil to himself. There is not the thinnest gossamer vail between him and God, nor yet a single step which he can ever take away from the eye of God.
We have eternal life, the life of God; God dwells in us, and we in God; He has given us of His Spirit, so that it is ours – poor, weak, feeble, and, in our own selves, sinful creatures as we are – to be found practically walking as those who are in the light. Scripture never tells any one to exercise activity in that to which he does not belong. It does not bid dead men walk, or children of darkness to do the works of the sons of light; legalism and doing are not consistent with the revelation of God that He is light, but Scripture exhorts us to act as what we are – “Ye are all the sons (lit.) of light, and the sons (lit.) of the day: we are not of the night, nor of darkness. Therefore let us not sleep, as do others” (1 Thess. 5:5-6).
Sleeping and walking do not naturally go together. In the reality of divine things the mechanical action of somnambulism is unknown. We do not say that there is not sleepwalking at times amongst the children of God, for, alas, there is a sad amount of formalism, and performance of religious observance, which may well go by such a description; and any religious observance may be turned into formalism. Let us see to it that we are real, and, because we do not belong to the night let us not sleep as do others. Hence also the exhortation, “Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light” – or shine upon thee – (Eph. 5:14), which exhortation is based upon the believer being light in the Lord, and commences with a “wherefore” in relation to that position.
By these and similar exhortations we see that the invariable and unchangeable position of the Christian by virtue of Christ’s work for him, and his state consequent upon his spiritual watchfulness, are quite distinct. And we see, that while the believer is in the light, still he may fall into a low state of soul and go to sleep among the dead, that is, the unconverted: and thus, though he be of the light, yet, by having closed his spiritual eyes and lost his spiritual activity, he may become to all appearance like the dead, he may resemble them as much as is possible for the living to do so – he may be asleep among them.
The ever-cleansing blood of Jesus Christ. As the sun ever shines, so does the blood ever cleanse. The light of God’s own nature cannot tolerate sin; in the ever-present cleansing of the blood, the child of God is maintained before the holy God. There is a continuous efficacy in this precious blood, an ever-abiding value, a constant maintaining power before God. We are before God according to His nature, and in the blood of His Son we have the everlasting equivalent in relation to our every sin. Such is the intrinsic worth of the blood of Jesus Christ.
We need perfect purity before God, as we are brought into fellowship with Him, and thus the light and the blood are connected. The light is our place, and there in that light, where God is unveiled in absolute holiness and in perfect love, the blood of His Son cleanses us.
We do not need to be washed by that blood again and again, for Jesus “hath washed us from our sins in His own blood” (Rev. 1:5); but none the less do we need its ever-cleansing character in His presence, before whom the very heavens are not clean, and who charges His angels with folly. We do not need to be brought to God again by the Lord’s work or by Himself, for Christ has “once suffered for sins, the Just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God” (1 Pet. 3:18); but being so brought to God, being “perfected forever” (Heb. 10:14), we do need that cleansing blood which ever maintains us where we are according to God’s own purity. The essential worth of the blood of Jesus, its own intrinsic worth, its ever present value, is of all importance for us.
The very holiness of God, the very light itself, is honored by the precious blood. We, in ourselves as black as night, are now whiter than snow. The brighter the noonday sun shines upon the unstained snow, the whiter and the more glistening does it appear. The brighter the light, the more does it make manifest what the child of God is made in Christ. No trembling of conscience comes in here. The child of God has liberty and joy in the nature of His God.
If there be any doubting, the child of God has not yet fully appreciated that he is IN the light as God is IN the light. No further than this, surely, can our thoughts travel along the road of perfect acceptance. We are before God in Christ according to what God is as the holy God.
Walking as Christ Walked
Christ Our Example – Obedience the Characteristic of the Lord’s Steps – Obedience and Happiness – Obedience and Holiness – Hidden Springs of Peace and Joy
Christ is our life; He also is our pattern.
The life, which is ours in the Son, and the character of that life expressed in us, are not to be sundered from each other in our thoughts: “He that saith he abideth in Him ought himself also so to walk, even as He walked” (1 John 2:6).
We see the Father in the Son. The Son, who was ever with the Father, having come to earth and become a man, not only is that eternal life, but by His every step He is the manifestation of it. By the walk of the Son on earth we know what the nature of the eternal life is, possessing which we shall uninterruptedly delight in God. What is the eternal life in its essential character? Christ. And what its characteristics expressed so that we can see it? Christ’s walk as a man on this earth.
Our Lord was what His Words declared. His life in its activity is the expression of His own sayings. “Who art Thou?” inquired the Jews, and Jesus answered, “Even the same that I said unto you from the beginning” (John 8:25). In us there is self, fallen human nature, evil; nevertheless, what was true of Christ,” the word which ye have heard from the beginning” is now true of each child of God, “true in Him and in you” (1 John 2:8), for Christ is our life.
The Holy Spirit is in us, who have the life of Christ, and we are called to walk by the Spirit’s power, according to the principle and after the pattern of the Lord’s path; to be the exponents of this saying, “Ye are manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ, written... with the Spirit of the living God” (2 Cor. 3:3). Christians read God in Christ, the world reads Christ in Christians. If the epistle is blotted and indistinct, if the life led is un-Christ-like, no wonder the world understands not Christianity.
Obedience characterized each step of the Son. He came from heaven to do God’s will in the body God prepared Him: “Lo, I come to do Thy will, O God” (Heb. 10:7). He lived a life of perfect obedience. As disobedience to God characterizes the energy of man’s fallen life, so obedience to God characterizes the new life, which is in Christ. The first man, Adam, started off on his career in willfulness; the Lord, who came from heaven, began His path on earth in obedience, and continued that obedience unto death, even the death of the cross. He came “from heaven, not to do His own will, but the will of Him that sent Him” (John 6:38). Having received life from Him, we are in the Spirit’s sanctification, which is to the obedience of Christ (1 Peter 1:2), to walk as He walked.
The practical effect of the Holy Spirit sanctifying the child of God is the production in him of Christ-like character. The child of God follows the pattern, but, of course, he never actually attains to the perfection of Christ’s steps, though he is called to do so; and we must not argue from the stand-point of our failures. A little child learns to do as his father does, follows, alas his mistakes as well as his better example; but the little child cannot fulfill the completeness of the grown man’s strength. Our Lord and Master has taught us how to walk even as children of obedience. We are poor, weak followers of Him at the best, and every step is more or less faulty; we follow with tottering feet; but when the life of Christ in the child of God is rising to its source, there is obedience and walking as Christ walked.
Having the new nature, obedience is rendered in the power of the Spirit. It is as natural to the new nature to do as God loves, as it is for the old nature in us to do as the flesh likes. The principle of a perfect walk is obedience to God, and that principle should guide us. Spiritual progress is impossible, if attempted on a wrong road; obedience to God is the only road to practical holiness, and as we pursue this way, we, in our feeble manner, are walking as did Christ.
The obedience of the child is his happy liberty. Disobedient children are miserable, while the child who learns to love its parents’ will derives its highest pleasure in fulfilling its parents’ wishes. In our own homes the child who most sincerely loves his parents’ will, and the least loves his own, is the happiest and brightest of the circle. And in the family of God the principle holds good – obedience and happiness are the cause and effect of true Christ-like character.
Our Lord was the truly obedient Man, and His human heart was full of God the Father’s love. It is a great thing, to be practically filled with the effect of true Christianity, namely, divinely-given happiness. A child of God so filled is wealthy with heavenly joy, and does not want the world; he has the love of the Father in him, not the love of the Father for him only, but in him. Every child has the love of the Father for him; those who are obedient have His love in them. He does not reckon what he has given up or suffered for the Lord, the excellency of what he has is his delight. Even a child does not tell us how many handfuls of sand he has thrown down, as, with sparkling eyes, his hand grasps the treasure.
He is not ever fault-finding with his fellows, but rather is helping the weak, and seeking the good of the tried and suffering. The fountain of divine love filling his soul wells up and overflows to the refreshment of others. In his small measure, he is a slight expression of what Christ was on earth. Exquisite, divinely-beautiful indeed, are the rays of this light; great the privilege amid sin and darkness to hold forth the word of life shining as lights in the world.
Too often the idea of obedience to God, even in the minds of Christians, carries with it the notion that the unbroken colt is at last subdued into a quiet religious drudge, and is so broken, by sheer strength of superior force. God would not have His children like the horse or mule, which have no understanding, and whose mouths have to be held in with bit and bridle, but guided by His eye, as the dear child who watches the movements of his parent’s countenance. The submission of obedience is not all that the child of God should seek for, the joy of obedience should also be his desire. “I delight to do Thy will, O my God: yea, Thy law is within my heart” (Psa. 40:8), teaches us not only of the principle of the Lord’s steps, but also of His joy in walking.
Jesus was the perfect man – all His thoughts and ways were of God. His obedience was therefore absolute according to the divine standard. If, when we speak of our obedience, our old Adam-life, our flesh, our sinful nature be in consideration, a hopeless end is before us. “The flesh profiteth nothing” (John 6:63), “it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be” (Rom. 8:7), no bit or bridle can curb or hold it. The child of God obeys his Father, having a nature which delights in his Father’s will and does so by the power of the Spirit of God who is in him.
The flesh cannot be made to obey the law. This we have sought to show in previous chapters, certainly it is never asked to obey the Father. The law was given by Jehovah to men in the flesh, as a restraint upon evil and a demand for good; the Father’s will is communicated in His love to His children. The law is part of the revelation of God moral requirements from His creature man, and these requirements being according to God’s nature are unalterable in their character. Having the life which is of God, and the Spirit dwelling in him, the child of God fulfills these requirements. It is according to the new nature, the divine nature given him, to do so.
Jehovah said to Israel, Do this and thou shalt live (see Deut. 5:33, Gal. 3:12), but the children of God are exhorted to obey because they are children. “Obey and live” implies the maintenance of life on the condition of rendered obedience; but “obey because you are a child” implies godly living by reason of an existing relationship. To man innocent, the word in effect was, Disobey, and you shall die; to man under the law, Obey, you shall live; now to the children it is, Living, your privilege is to obey.
The commandments of the Father are addressed solely to His children, even as we do not bid the neighbors’ children do what we require of our own. Our requirements are according to what we are, and are enforced by reason of the relationship between us and our own. A man must he a child of God before he can obey the Father’s commands; no one becomes a child by obedience, for we are born of God, and until born of God we have not life capable of obedience. There must be the nature, before the obedience of the nature can be rendered.
When an unconverted man sets himself to walk as Christ walked, he merely seeks to imitate Christ’s actions, he does not so much as attempt to walk on the principle of the joy of obedience that governed the Lord’s heart and affections. The most precise outward resemblance to Christ in fasting, weeping or suffering, would be after all only the cold, lifeless statue, the form but not the breath of life; its imitation, not its reality. To seek to imitate Christ in the power of the flesh, is a far more hopeless task than attempting to fulfill the law in that power. Every step of the pathway of Jesus was willing obedience to His Father – what sinner in his sins ever dreamed of such a principle of pleasing God as this? No spirit of the unconverted man ever gets beyond the idea of rigid exteriorism, beyond the lifeless marble, the cold, dead thing which can never live.
Holiness results front obedience. We have a holy nature given to us, and grow in practical holiness by obeying. The soul becomes clean by the word, Seeing ye have purified your souls in obeying the truth” (1 Peter 1:22).
Obedience needs to be definite and specific. A general kind of obedience does not prove practical godliness. Great discoveries are to be made by the child of God about himself; by truly acting out the precise instructions of the written Word. If we had a precious jewel to keep bright, we should carefully remove each spot and speck from it, thus do God’s jewels require the removal of each stain from them.
The more we use the laver of the word, the more shall we find the need of it. Spots must be removed from the soul one by one. God has to be dealt with about the special thing which dims the luster of the affections towards Himself. “I have sinned,” means a great deal: a general confession means, usually, very little. The former brightness of many a child of God is now lost, because of his not dealing with himself about his own ways by means of the truth; many are now scarcely distinguished from the world because they failed in obedience to the Word of God respecting specific details in their lives.
True holiness abounds in love and good works. Purification of soul in obeying the truth has not merely negative results. It is not only that special evil is avoided, abstained from, or purged out of the ways of the child of God, but positive good follows – “Seeing ye have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren.”
The Spirit not only restrains from evil, but effects good; renders in the child of God some resemblance to the Father, and this expresses itself in love. Love of the brethren comes, if we may use the words, naturally, to those who are born again: “Love is of God, and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not, knoweth not God; for God is love” (1 John 4:7-8).
On the one hand, we see in Christ’s walk absolute separation from evil, and on the other, continuous doing good. The sick, the suffering, the poor, the heart-broken, were ever in His thoughts; He “went about doing good” (Acts 10:38). Men’s consciences, minds, hearts, as well as their bodily needs, were His gracious care; while the condition of the souls of His disciples was continually before Him. What is the one great word that can alone express our blessed Master’s path, His whole life below, from the manger to the cross? – Love. “He that saith he is in the light, and hateth his brother, is in darkness even until now. He that loveth his brother abideth in the light, and there is none occasion of stumbling in him” (1 John 2:9-10). Holiness without love is not Christ-like, and love without activity and object, is a well without water. It is important to have before us, the well-doing of true holiness.
Who, save the child of God, is there now on earth to witness, by works of love to men, what divine love is? And in the inner circle, even the family of God, the witness to being the Lord’s disciples is His love in us working out from us to His beloved people. “By this shall all men know that ye are My disciples, if ye have love one to another” (John 13:35).
There is a forming work going on in every believer daily. Just as little children’s characters are formed by the effect upon them of the ten thousand incidents of their homes and associations, so are the spiritual characters of the children of God being formed hour by hour, by nearness to God or contact with the world.
The likeness to the old Adam lessens, or is held back, in proportion as that to God increases. Spiritual growth is becoming more like to the Son of God and to God the Father. “As obedient children, not fashioning yourselves according to the former lusts in your ignorance: but as He which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation; because it is written, Be ye holy; for I am holy” (1 Peter 1:14-16).
Love and light, grace and truth, marked the steps of the blessed Lord, and though it must of necessity be but feebly expressed, still a similar beauty of holiness should characterize the path of the child of God.
Peace and joy are the hidden springs in those children of God, whose spirits are near their Father. If a child of God sink down into the world, he is a daily contradiction to the desires of the nature which God has given him. He can never be happy save when delighting in God, who would have His children full of the peace and the joy which filled His blessed Son as a Man when he was here upon earth.
The Lord gave His own peace to His disciples, not peace only, but His peace. (John 14:27). What was this? That unbroken repose, which, as a man ever doing the Father’s will, He experienced in His life below. No adverse wind ever ruffled the absolute calm of the soul of the perfect Man, for we are not now referring to His sin-bearing on the cross.
Did sinners reject His testimony, He communed with His Father, and thanked Him that He had revealed to babes what the wise and prudent could not see – did religious hatred seek to stone Him; He gave sight to the blind as He passed through the midst of His persecutors – did His accusers clamor; He answered not a word – did brutal hands smite, and human lips spit and curse; still He was silent – and when at length He was nailed to the cross, He prayed to His Father to forgive His tormentors. Such was His peace. The still waters of His spirit were never ruffled, His soul was ever at rest in His Father’s love. This is His peace, “My peace”; and this He gives to His own.
Peace, perfect peace, ever dwelt within His breast, and walking as Christ walked, His people have the character of peace He had.
No turmoil reaches up to the dwelling-place of God in light. The God of peace dwells in peace, and even on this tumultuous earth the peace of God garrisons, and holds against all troubles, the hearts of truly obedient children. Peace is a hidden spring, which wells up within the soul: “Great peace have they which love Thy law; and nothing shall offend them” (Psa. 119:165).
A heart not only at peace with God by reason of what Christ did on the cross, but in peace on this earth, because walking with God, is a lovely testimony to God and to heaven. A heart sensitive to every sorrow and sympathetic with every grief, and yet so filled with the love of God the Father that it has not a ruffle on it, is indeed a happy epistle of Christ. The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keeps the hearts of those who do as Christ did.
Happy are they who take their cares to God and leave them there. It is not necessary that the Christian should be fretful and worrying, as if the concerns of time and eternity were not in God’s hands. True, some have easier dispositions than others, but the peace of which we speak is not common to nature, it comes from God in heaven: faith in God, and rest in the Father, will produce it in the soul.
Joy as well as peace dwelt in the Lord. Jesus was the man of sorrows; the presence of sin, the disobedience of the world, rendered Him such while here below. Satan’s temptations could only occasion Him grief. Alas! Satan’s temptations please our natures, and frequently humble us by showing us what we are; Jesus suffered being tempted.
Satan brought the temptation to Him when hungry, to make stones bread, but the hunger natural to man was not the deeper pain to Jesus; that was occasioned by the temptation to satisfy Himself by means of His own power, and not by the direction of God. Satan brought out all the glory of the world before the King. The kingdom was His by right, but God’s time had not yet come for Him to take it; hence, deep was the suffering caused by the temptation to take the world from the enemy’s hands. Satan dared tempt Him to cast Himself down from the pinnacle of the temple, thereby to test God in His care of Him! Even at that moment, being so sorely tried, He doubted not Jehovah’s care over Him as a man. But, as He refused the temptation and resisted the tempter, He suffered by means of the thought presented to Him. Such in His blest perfection of dependence was Jesus, the obedient man; yet, while the man of sorrows, Jesus was the man in whom was divinely-given joy.
The world did not bring Him joy, the joy that filled His heart was from heaven. The Man of sorrows had not only the spring of peace ever fresh within His soul, but the joy of the Father’s presence, of His Father’s love and companionship. He speaks of His joy which as a man He so fully knew; and it may be ours. (John 15:11).
We think of Him wearied at the well of Sychar, giving there living waters to a lost sinner, and we consider His joy. He had then meat to eat His disciples knew not of. (John 4:32). Our Lord had heavenly joy while on His path of suffering; earth did not offer Him any gladness, but giving of heaven’s treasures to men, and receiving as a man the complete satisfaction arising from abiding in His Father’s love, He had His joy. In our small measure, and according as we walk as He walked, the Father is with us, and thus the joy in which the Lord rejoiced is ours.
The Father is always our Father; the relationship is not disturbed by the child’s behavior; but the joy of the Father’s presence is broken in upon, when the child does not walk in obedience. The sovereignty of the grace of God, which has made us His children, is not affected by any shortcomings on the child’s part, but the possession of that heavenly joy with which the Father fills our hearts depends upon our walking as Christ walked.
Fellowship With the Father and the Son
The Key to the Truth of Fellowship With God – Life the First Necessity for Fellowship – Light Marks Its Sphere – Love Characterizes It
The three keywords to unlock the mystery of fellowship with the Father and the Son are life, light, and love.
Of all the marvels of God’s grace, none is more marvelous than the fact of His bringing men into fellowship with Himself. That God should interest Himself in the concerns of our daily lives, and number the very hairs of our heads, is wonderful indeed; that He should give us glory in heaven above the angels is a wonder deeper still; but that He should call us to like thoughts, wishes, feelings, and to common objects with Himself is beyond all conception! Yet such is the case; and the reality of this fellowship is for every child of His; for it is not the portion of the great and the mighty of His family merely, but the blessedness of all His children.
Life is the first necessity for fellowship with God – new life, divine life. We must be born anew before we can have common thoughts with God. It is important clearly to recognize the truth that in no sense whatever, can our sinful and fallen nature have intercourse with God. There must be a nature capable of having like-mindedness with God, before there can be communion with Him, The lower animals may be made to serve man, and to be subject to him; but there is nothing in them capable of thinking morally with man. In this, however, is inferiority of nature only; but with man in his sins, there is direct moral opposition of nature to God. Man is darkness and God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all. The very holiness of the nature of God is prohibitive of man in his fallen state, having like thoughts with Him.
Fallen human nature has not, and cannot have, one like thought, wish, or feeling with God; nor has man in the flesh one aim, purpose, or action according to the divine nature. Not only is this true of the time when the children of God were in the flesh – that is, before they were born of the Spirit – but it is also true of the fallen nature in them so long as they are upon earth; for the flesh in them ever remains flesh. The fallen nature, the flesh in the child of God, maintains its character to the end; in the glory, the flesh, the evil principle in us, will be no more.
Before the new life was communicated to us we were in the flesh, and could not enter into God’s mind; we are now in the Spirit, but the flesh in us is what it always was. The flesh sins: the new life sins not; it cannot sin. So long as the flesh in us is kept in its true place of death, the believer is not sinning; sin is in him, but he is not committing sin; moral activity of his flesh is suspended. As a practical fact, it is, alas! the case, that we swiftly become restored to fleshly activity by the influences of the world, and too little reckon ourselves to be dead indeed unto sin. When this is the case the activity of the Spirit’s work within, in leading us to joy in God, is hindered, and instead, the Spirit is making us to feel how sorrowful a thing it is, for the child of God to live to himself.
God, in His infinite grace, has brought His people to Himself; they were of Adam fallen, but now, having eternal life given them, they are partakers of the divine nature. They were, by reason of their wicked works, children of Satan, but now they dwell in God and God in them, and entirely because God in His sovereignty has made them His. Far more than salvation is theirs. Salvation from sin, the world, and Satan, is a theme of intense gladness, every word of which redounds to the grace of God; but the Father’s name and association with Himself and the Son of His love opens up such thoughts of future joy and understanding of God, that its lengths, breadths, depths, and heights are utterly overwhelming. The love of the Father and the Son are simply inconceivable, save when entered into from the only center whence they can be rightly known.
Turning to the Epistle of John, that apostle, having spoken of the Word of life, and that life manifested on earth, and now declared to us through the Scriptures, teaches us that he speaks as he does, in order that the children of God may have fellowship with the apostles, “us “; adding, “and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ” (1 John 1:1-3). First, he speaks of the life, then of that life manifested on earth, and then he introduces the children of God into the fellowship with the Father and the Son.
Life is ours by the free favor of God, and having the life, we have the privilege of the fellowship. It is true that some of the children enjoy the fellowship but feebly; but let us not limit God by our limited apprehension of Him. The best thing in the family is the parent’s love, and this is the common portion of all the children.
The new and eternal life is that which each child lives; other divine life there is none; “God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in His Son” (1 John 5:11). Growth of the child there is, but the privilege of the fellowship flows from the possession of the life. As this fellowship is enjoyed, so is the measure of true Christian joy. Let the heart be ever so large, divine joy shall fill it to overflowing. The greatest measure in common with the smallest, will be filled brimful when dipped into the ocean. There is boundless joy for the child of God; his heart may be filled with it by means of fellowship with the Father and the Son.
In the glory that awaits the children of God, when the eternal life will be fully enjoyed by them, the joy of each will be full indeed; for then fellowship with the Father and the Son will be complete, still, while here in the world, in trial, daily difficulty, and weakness, the portion of each child is fellowship and its consequent joy.
Light marks the sphere of this fellowship. The message which the Lord, the Life, declared was, that “God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all.” There cannot be fellowship with God, save according to what He is. We do not read that the Father and the Son have fellowship with us, as if God walked with us according to our poor, mean thoughts or attainment, but He leads us in spirit to His own thoughts of love. Having the nature which He has communicated, His children have, by His Spirit’s indwelling, the capability of enjoying common thoughts and companionship with God.
The very first requirement in this fellowship is holiness. The holy nature of God prohibits every evil thing and thought in our hearts to approach His presence. Man’s nature is darkness, “If we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth” (1 John 1:6); we should deny the very truth of what God is light, for “in Him is no darkness at all.”
In the full blaze of what God is, as revealed by His Son, and made known to us through the Scriptures, fellowship with Him is had. Here it is that the child of God walks – “If we walk in the light as He is in the light.” How he walks is a question to be settled after it is determined where he walks. And walking in the light, fellowship follows, not as an attainment, but as a consequence. Nor, let us repeat, is this privilege for a few only; it is the common portion for the family of God, and is enjoyed by all who are obedient.
The truth of what the light is, is unalterable. It must not be weakened in the soul to suit the sense we may have of our individual practical state. God is God. He is what He is, and ever will be what He is; and His children have fellowship with Him. He leads us up, by His Spirit, to His thoughts. He has compassion on us in our feebleness, not fellowship with it. Our state often hinders practical communion with God, but God has brought us to Himself in His sovereign grace, and He changes not, His nature is ever light and love; He has made us His children and brought us into close connection with Himself, and this is our absolute portion.
According as the believer enters in spirit into what God is – even Light, we may be sure he will more and more deeply feel what he is in himself. We do not mean in a legal way, or in a constrained manner, for God’s perfect love casts out fear; but all things are made manifest by light, and the presence of God brings out the truth about everything. The people of God will be perfectly transparent in heaven; sin indeed will no longer be in them, as is the case now; they will then “know as known” (1 Cor. 13:12); yet now, even upon this earth, where the old man is in each child of God, unless darkness has blinded the eye, true thoughts of God and real fellowship with Him must render the heart deeply sensible of what he is and acutely sensitive to what he does. He needs no darkening glass through which to look at his sun; he is a child of light and belongs to the light.
The truth goes with the light – it issues from the light. The Word of God has opened up His truth to us, and any thought which rejects the Word, or denies the truth, is darkness. It is unbelief to seek to modify the revelation of what God is, because we find what is in us. Divine truth is absolute, and brooks no denial, no tampering with, no toning down. God is what He is – light; and He has given to His children eternal life, and brought them into the light even as He is in the light.
If we should say that we have no sin, the assertion would demonstrate that the truth was not in us, for such darkness respecting man’s fallen nature would be proof of ignorance of God’s nature. He who has the divine life communicated, cannot be blind to the fact of his own nature being evil. Again, if we should say we have not sinned we should make Him a liar, for God tells us that we do sin. Such assertions when made, demonstrate that those who make them are astray concerning who and what God is. The very fact of the child of God having the new nature, and the Holy Spirit of God in him, makes him awake to the reality of what his fallen nature is. The Word of God would not be in us, the work of the Son would be repudiated, and His propitiation ignored, by the vain boast of the sinlessness of the old man, or of a believer not having sinned.
Professed fellowship with the Father and the Son, together with denial of the truth of the Word of God, is terrible evidence that the message declared concerning God by His Son has never been received in the heart, and that he who makes it is not in the light. If not in the light, no man can have fellowship with God. We are sure that the simplest believer will be clear of all such practical denials of God’s nature. We may say that “God is light” is a truth which every child of God knows to be true, and knows because he has the eternal life which is in God’s Son. The life of God communicated to the child of God and the nature of God cannot be separated. We have the life of God, and are made partakers of the divine nature. He is light, and we have fellowship with Him in what He is, and in no lower standard.
Love characterizes the fellowship. “God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him” (1 John 4:16). God has given us the eternal life, brought us into the light as He is in the light, and being there, we have communion with Him as our Father, and with His Son, in the love of the divine nature. Our thoughts of love may be measured by our own standard; the love of God is holy and perfect as Himself.
Human ideas of love are like all else human, imperfect and soiled by evil; weakness and very faint apprehension there is in our fellowship, but no taint of sin can possibly enter into the hallowed association of the child of God with his Father. As to what the love is, let the soul who knows the Son answer, for the Lord has said, “Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father in Me, or else believe Me for the very work’s sake;” and He has thus addressed us as to what He was as seen on earth – the eternal life which was with the Father, and which was manifested to us. His grace and truth explain to us God as light and love. The Son in the bosom of the Father has revealed Him: Jesus has not only taught us by words that God is love, He has lived out on this earth the love of God, and He who has seen the Son has seen the Father. Jesus Himself is the explanation, in His own person, of God as love.
The Spirit of God teaches our hearts who and what God is: “Hereby know we that we dwell in Him, and He in us, because He hath given us of His Spirit” (1 John 4:13) – of His Spirit, of what He is Himself in His nature. The child of God knows and believes the love that God has to him; he knows what God is, having the life of God and the Spirit of God. “God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him” (ver. 16).
“Grieve not the holy Spirit of God” (Eph. 4:30), says the Word, and when the Spirit is ungrieved in us, we enjoy perfect repose before God in His love, and delight in what He is. In the family circle, the child’s delight is his parents; and the little child, however simple, finds its happiness with them. The children grow in knowledge; but the characters of the parents color the home and form the joys of the family. We are supposing a home on earth, where the parents are worthy, where the children are obedient in love: the illustration does not go far enough, but it faintly expresses the repose of the children of God in the Father’s love, out of which repose fellowship issues. The love of God the Father is our joy.
What is it which marks the ripening of age in the child of God? For as there is growth, so will the fellowship increase. That which characterizes the “fathers” is, they “have known Him that is from the beginning.” The aged apostle has but one reason for his writing to them, “because ye have known Him that is from the beginning” (1 John 2:14). What a clearness as to who and what God is does the knowledge of Christ give to the children of God! The ripest age returns to the person of the Son, and there remains to rest forever. Heart knowledge of Jesus, the Son of the Father, marks the maturing of the children of God.
As we consider the search of modern infidelity after life, we mourn over these poor seekers for the beginning of what men value. In Jesus only is true and divine archaic knowledge – Jesus, who is the Word of life, from all eternity the same. Human wisdom and research stand in no stead here: “No man knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal Him” (Matt. 11:27).
“From the beginning”; ponder over these words, having such emphatic force in our days of Christianized infidelity; “from the beginning,” that is from the coming of Jesus into this world, from the incarnation of Him, in and by whom the eternal life was manifested, and the Father revealed. The beginning for the people of God is the person of the Lord, and all that is He is, and declared to us to be, by penmen inspired of the Holy Spirit. The histories of what He is, the tale of His life below told fourfold, is the unfolding of that which is “from the beginning;” and only by acquaintance with the Son can we know what the eternal life is, and who God is, and have real fellowship with the Father and the Son. The present and the future of the new life are before us in these words: “This is the life eternal, that they might know Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent” (John 17:3). The present – this brief lifetime, where we become acquainted by faith with Jesus, and through Him with the Father; the future – the endless ages, when we shall more deeply know Him and the Father. In so far as this knowledge is ours now, so far is our fellowship with the Father and the Son; and no further.
With the thought of the future before us, the vastness of the divine nature and of our unlimited joy in the knowledge of the Father and the Son, open out before the soul. Even on earth there seem to be such depths and lengths in the heart and mind of a great and noble companion, that could we daily enjoy His companionship we should not exhaust what He is; we come back ever to find Him more lovable, more admirable than before, and yet ever to find Him – Himself; “So like Himself,” are our words as we wonder at his ways.
But “what is man”? That which is true and lovely in him is what God made when He made him upright; to know God is to dwell in love. The more the child of God knows the Father and the Son, the more he longs to know. He comes to his Father to find fresh delight, and to be filled anew with joy. “That your joy may be full,” is a word for eternity as well as for time. Here our capacity is limited, and too often our hearts are filled with other things to our sorrow; there our capacity will be according to the stature of the fullness of Christ, and nothing shall ever hinder our joy; still, however vast that which is known, the vastness of what is to be known about God will ever remain exhaustless. Our state will be perfect, our enjoyments infinite.
Let us attempt, by an outlook into the measureless space around us, to aid the meditation of what the endless enjoyment of the child of God will be. The works of God surpass all, but who shall compass Him! A man’s mind awakens to the fact, that this earth hangs amongst the myriad lamps of heaven, in space so vast, that the nearest moon and planets, separated from it by thousands of miles, are close to his touch, compared with the unutterable distances lying between this globe and the countless stars which the eye can but faintly see. His opened mind grasps the idea of greatness: immensity is before him. He feels that human thoughts of time are but as a drop of the ocean’s fullness, and the length of thousands of years of this world’s history but as a pin’s point in the presence of the circling journeys of the suns and stars. His imagination travels from star to star, above, beneath, and returns at length wearied with its flights; he wonders at the immeasurable, and feels that his most fertile conceptions of what eternity is, are as nothing compared with the fact of the space which lies above, beneath, and on either side of this globe.
The overwhelming greatness of these works of God are such that eternities could not exhaust the joy of the creature who might be enabled to visit them and study their wonders. Yet even should this be possible, what would journeys from star to star and sun to sun be? Simply research into the Creator’s works. The child of God has a far nobler portion; he has for his eternity fellowship with the Father and the Son, communion with God in what God is as made known. Those heights, those depths, those lengths and breadths of what God is, who shall declare them? An expanse of eternal occupation and joy opens out before the astonished soul. It is not merely a seat in heaven, a place amongst the glories; not simply a song to sing which knows no ending, a harp to strike which shall never be unstrung; but having the eternal life, and having like thoughts, and feelings, and common objects with God the Father, and God the Son, by the indwelling Spirit.
In its full enjoyment, the eternal life will be knowing the Father, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom He sent to this world. The child of God will enter into the divine mind by the Spirit, he will think with purest joy like thoughts with God, travel on from wonder to wonder, learn greater depths by every fresh marvel learned; never wearied, never sated, ever satisfied. What a portion awaits the possessor of the new life! The fullest joy in the unclouded love of God is his prospect, dwelling in the blaze of the light of what God is, possessing the eternal life.
Fellowship With the Father and the Son-Practical Considerations
Obedience the First Practical Principle of the New Life – The Love Which Seeks Communion – The Grace That Restores – The Way That True Fellowship With the Father and the Son Expresses Itself
The child of God, as he looks on to the future and then around him at present things, must have his heart filled with practical considerations. He is not in heaven yet, but in the world which lies in the arms of the wicked one; sin is in him, and he often sins. He possesses the eternal life; he is in the light, and he knows it is his portion to dwell in the love. But he knows, too, that frequently his realization of what is his portion is but feeble. Well, then, may his heart inquire, – How shall this fellowship with the Father and the Son be better known; how shall the child of God more fully enter into it?”
This question has been put already, though not in the words of our inquiry. A disciple once asked Jesus, “Lord, how is it that Thou wilt manifest Thyself unto us, and not unto the world?” Jesus had just said, “He that hath My commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth Me: and he that loveth Me shall be loved of My Father, and I will love him, and will manifest Myself to him” (John 14:21). The idea of a public manifestation in regal glory and power to the world, was to this disciple intelligible, but at that hour he knew not the meaning of a private manifestation to himself. The Messiah’s throne, and His ruling over the world’s kingdoms, he had heard of in the prophets; but the deeper mystery of the Son entering into the heart of an obedient child and, with His Father, filling that heart with peculiar joy, was new to him. Then “Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love Mc, he will keep My words: and My Father will love him, and We will come unto him, and make Our abode with him.”
The Father and Son dwell with the obedient child; They come to him and make Their home with him. In the glory the children of God will abide in the Father’s house, and in the Father’s presence, and He shall fill their hearts; on earth, where the Lord is loved and His Words treasured, the manifestation of the Father and the Son to the heart of the child of God make earth heaven to him. It is by obedience to the Lord that the fellowship which the child of God so deeply desires is consciously known and entered into.
Obedience to the Word is the first sign of the presence of the eternal life, the first requirement from God of His children. Adam lost his all on earth by disobedience, we enjoy our all by walking as Christ walked, in obedience. “Hereby do we know that we know Him, if we keep His commandments” (1 John 2:3).
The commandments of the Lord are precise and clear. Keeping “His commandments,” and more still, keeping “His Word,” is that which is set before us. The commandments are His definite instructions, the Word the general expression of His mind. A child obeys his father’s formal commands, not to do or to do given things; he also keeps his father’s word, that is not doing or doing things according to the general tenor of his father’s mind: “Whoso keepeth His word, in him verily is the love of God perfected: hereby know we that we are in Him” (1 John 2:5).
Christian character is formed by occupation with Christ. The Lord sets before us the secret of joy in these words, “If ye keep My commandments, ye shall abide in My love; even as I have kept My Father’s commandments, and abide in His love” (John 15:10). Obedience is the practical means for maintaining this fellowship, which is the full joy of the children of God.
Fellowship with the Father and the Son and love of the world are incompatible. The world is that system which has grown up on this earth without God, and “All that is of the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world” (1 John 2:16). The world around each one of us will assume different colors according to our different tastes. That which we individually like the most, will, as a rule, be the world to us, and the world we shall least willingly give up. It is easy to give up things we do not care for, and to call ourselves unworldly, and it is easy to see love of the world in other Christians, and to be blind to our own love of it. We may say, that anything which would not be happily carried on in the presence of God is of the world; and the word is, “If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him” (1 John 2:15). A child, while disobedient, would not have the love of his parent in his heart; for if that love were in him, he would be doing his parent’s will.
The child of God is left in the world for the purpose of glorifying God, He is not of the world, even as Christ is not of it. (John 17:16). Such is his position by grace, and it is his to say, “We know that we are of God, and the whole world lieth in wickedness” (1 John 5:19). The love of the Father in him separates him practically from the world. No man can love good and evil at the same time; the love of two opposites could not be simultaneously within one breast. The all-powerful holy love of the Father draws the child to Himself and His love; and consequently separates from the world. True separation to God comes about by the affections being attracted by the love of the Father to the Father.
“Sanctify them through Thy truth: Thy word is truth” (John 17:17). The Lord was addressing God the Father when He thus prayed for His own. All the Scriptures are truth, but the specific truth that makes the child of God unworldly is that revelation of the Father’s name to his heart which sanctifies or separates him to the love of the Father. It is not simply that the child of God has the place Christ occupies – that he is not of the world as Christ is not of it – he has in the infinite kindness of God, the love that Christ dwelt in, for his portion. So long as that love is filling his heart, there is not room in him for the world.
Real sanctification is wrought by the positive blessing to the heart that follows the known love of the Father. The Father’s love filling the heart of the child of God, by the power of the Spirit in him, detaches him from the world by its own almighty attraction. A loving parent makes his child so bright and happy by his presence and love, that the child does not want the evil things his father hates.
The Father and the Son wait in gracious willingness upon the children of God, wait upon them for the purpose of manifesting themselves and making their abode with them; and this is one of the highest love – proofs of the marvelous position which the child of God occupies. In the earthly family circle we see how the parents wait upon their children, what pains they take with them, how tenderly they correct and seek to remove that which is evil in them, and how they seek the absolute confidence of their own. This fact in nature may be reverently used as a humble illustration of the grace of God which seeks all the confidence and love of His children. Each child is the object of the unwearied care of the Father; we do not now refer to such care as we may perceive exercised over us in our temporal affairs and difficulties, but in the deeper things which pertain to Himself in the training of our spirits.
Each child is watched over, and led on into heart knowledge of Himself. What the thoughts of the Father and the Son concerning the children of God are, we find expressed in the seventeenth chapter of John, in those words which Jesus spake as He lifted up His eyes to heaven. For He was at that moment, not teaching them how they might live in love together (see John 13:14), nor of their home above (John 14:2) and peace below (vs. 27), nor yet of their fruit-bearing (vs. 15), nor testimony to the world (vs.16); He was not speaking to them, but about them – not even teaching them of the Father, but speaking to the Father concerning them and us. Here, then, in these words, as He looked up to the Father and off from the earth, we learn how the Father’s name maintains in holy association with Himself and with His Son, the children who truly know that name. “Holy Father, keep through Thine own name those whom Thou hast given Me, that they may be one, as We are” (John 17:11); the title holy, and the name Father, combine the character and the relationship of God towards His people in the world.
Restoration to fellowship comes before us at this point, for though the believer should not sin, yet who is not conscious of erring ways and wandering thoughts? that is, provided he be indeed in the light. But, “If any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.” He is our Comforter in heaven, the gracious person there who undertakes our affairs in the presence of the Father. He maintains the child of God before His holy Father by His constant and gracious presence on high. The Father beholds perfection in Him, and Jesus Christ the Righteous, takes up every detail of our poor, faulty, erring lives, and makes us to judge ourselves in our path below. He brings about confession, softens our hearts, and produces reality in us.
Alas! how poor are our thoughts as to “our sins”; but more deeply entering into the fellowship with the Father and His Son Jesus Christ, we shall more truly know what we are, and more intensely value the present work of the Lord as our Advocate. And the deeper the acquaintance with Him, the more true will the confession of “our sins” be. It will be direct personal work.
We shall be ready to tell our Father what we have done. It is not for pardon, or to be saved from wrath, the child confesses his sins, but in grief of heart for dishonoring the God who loves him. Too many of the children, by non-confession of their sins, allow a tissue, as it were, to be set up between their spirits and the Father’s love: and this will grow with lack of genuine dealings with Him about sins, till it becomes a thick dark pall, through which the affections cannot see the love of the Father. Then the spirit of the child of God becomes like that of the wanderer who is far off from the parents’ home.
The child of God is only truly happy as he is practically in the light, before God, according to what God is. It is of the highest importance for spiritual prosperity, that he have no reserves with his Father, and no secrets before Him. God who knows all things knows our hearts, and in His presence we get to know consciously what our hearts are.
True fellowship with the Father and the Son expresses itself in living practically the eternal life, in walking as Christ walked, not pleasing ourselves. Love divine is the moral sphere wherein the child of God moves. This love is no abstraction, but a reality; love without an object is a loneliness of soul impossible to the child of God. On this earth the members of the family of God are the persons for whom the child of God specially cares. “If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?” (1 John 4:20).
“If we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another” (1 John 1:7). The life, the light, the love are for all the children, and fellowship one with another follows the fact of being in the place in which we are by grace. “One with another” allows not the notion of monk-like isolation. “One with another” embraces all the children of God, denies that inherent selfishness which occupies itself with our own small circle or coterie. “One with another” gently refuses the spirit of self-exaltation which assumes a spiritual superiority, to the exclusion of tin “babes” from the portion of the “fathers” in Christ.
How we are able to deport ourselves before the members of the family, is a test as to our real fellowship with God. “Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God: and every one that loveth Him that begat loveth him also that is begotten of Him” (1 John 5:1), for the nature of God expresses itself through His children. The children have the divine nature; loving the Father, they love the children of the Father. We do not love the evil ways of that child of God who may be careless in his walk, yet the erring child should be, of all others, upon our hearts in prayer. The unruly will be warned, the feeble-minded comforted, the weak supported, and patience toward all exercised (see 1 Thess. 5:14), when true fellowship with God the Father and His Son are enjoyed.
The character of the love borne by child to child is of the same nature as that which the Father bears to His children; it is not human, but divine love in a human heart; it is therefore regulated by what God is: “By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and keep His commandments” (1 John 5:2).
The unwearied care of God for us, His patient grace, His gentleness, His leading us on from the world nearer, in spirit, to Himself, indicate what should be the character of our love’s activity towards one another. Our joy in the Father’s presence, as He Himself and His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, are made manifest to our hearts, gives us the character of the joy of true fellowship one with another. Christ-like behavior and occupation with the Father and the Son, are bright evidences of the existence of the fellowship which belongs by grace to the child of God on earth, and which will be his uninterrupted portion in eternity.
Laying Hold of Eternal Life
Glorious Prospects – Reigning in Life – The Hoped-for End – Grasping the Life Now – Entering Into Life
The eternal life which God communicates has not only moral characteristics, but hopes pertaining to it. The circumstances, whatever they may be, which make this world what it is to each individual child of God, do not affect the actual nature of the life itself that all the family by grace possess. The life peculiar to trees is the same life everywhere, whether the tree grow in congenial soil or where it can barely find nourishment to exist.
Christ is our life, and should death touch the body of the child of God, no change is made to the eternal life itself, which he possesses. The circumstances of glory, in which he will be in heaven, will not alter the nature of the eternal life which he now possesses. In time and in eternity the life is the same, and the holy enjoyments, heavenly delights, and the fellowship pertaining to it, ever alike, But what the fullness of this holy enjoyment, and what the depths of the fellowship with the Father and the Son will be, we know but in part.
The natural mind evolves for itself the notion of a future existence from the basis of the things of this present life. The future state, according to the heathen, was a kind of shadow of the present, for the mind of man cannot imagine that which it has no data to work from; the future state according to modern infidelity, is the counterpart of its own mist and darkness concerning the origin of life; – “no God” for the beginning of life; “no God” for the hope of life, is its boast and its folly. The revelation of God declares to us an eternal life, explains its character by the gospels of the Son of the Father, and tells us not only what our future happiness will be, but also what our final state will be – likeness to Christ in glory. There is absolute explicitness in the Word of God as to what we shall be, as well as the absolute certainty of our having eternal life now.
Glorious prospects are before the children of God, and the contemplation of the future stirs up hope and leads hearts forward to the entering into life. Scripture teaches us, as we have sought to show, what the life is, and that the life is ours now; it also teaches us that there is an entering into life in the future. Thus life has eternal prospects attached to it, as well as present enjoyments, and the deeper the present enjoyment the more marvelous are the eternal prospects to the soul.
In one sense the idea of life, as it will be ours in the manifested glory, is more easily apprehended than is the fact of life in its actual, essential, ever-present character. The child of God thinks of himself, perhaps at a distant day, entering into life; which is well if the coming glory is before him; but if he thinks of himself in a way that separates him in his thoughts at the moment from this life, he has lost the sense of his life being in Christ, and has not the true thought of what entering into it is. The fullness of the eternal life, which is ours, will not be known until – spirit, soul, and body – we are like the Lord Himself. At no point short of this great end, can the Christian’s longings tarry, and his life – hopes reach right up to Christ where He is in heaven; “When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with Him in glory” (Col. 3:4). The more the child of God enters into his present portion, the nobler and the more just will be his desires for the future.
We are not yet reigning in life, this prospect is before us. The full blessedness of the eternal life will be known only in glory. The first Adam, by his disobedience, brought death into the world, and by this work of sin death now reigns over the globe. The human race has death only for its last prospect. We began to live on this earth, and so soon as we were capable of thinking, we learned that we should have to die and leave the world and all its delights. What an awful darkness it is to have only such an outlook as this!
The last Adam, by his obedience unto death and through righteousness, brought the new life to the people of God; and though the circumstances of this world, where we receive the new life, are often sorrowful, the life itself has, as the prospect attached to it, only glory; “We shall reign in life by one Jesus Christ.” The life is our present possession, the glory our prospect – the one is as secure as the other. We have the eternal life, and we also look forward to it in the condition of glory. This, whatever the trial, harass, pain, or poverty that may beset the child of God, is his outlook. He has no less an expectation before him than entering fully into life.
There is an end before the believer. There is an end for his service of righteousness: “Ye have your fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life” (Rom. 6:22); and also for his trials and conflicts, “He shall receive the crown of life” (James 1:12). Thus also, when the harvest is anticipated and the end of the good and the evil of these few years is before us, and consequently the sowing to the flesh and the sowing to the Spirit is looked at, the word for the people of God is, “He that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting” (Gal. 6:8). An end is before the Christian. When everything in and of the world has come to its close, when the world and the lust thereof has passed away, when the great godless system built up on the earth is no more, and all its pleasures have melted away forever, there lies an end for the Christian, and that end is – eternal life.
“Lay hold of eternal life,” said the apostle to Timothy, viewing him in his conflict on this earth, face to face with foes. (1 Tim. 6:12). He had been called to this eternal life, he had confessed the good confession before many witnesses. He possessed the life, could never lose it, neither could any ever take it from him, therefore, and with the more reason, he was to lay hold of it with all the force of divinely-given power.
If the Christian is grasping the things of the world he is not laying hold of this life. A hand that grasps glory is for the soul of the child of God a great practical deliverance from the glitter of the world, the strife of tongues and the questions of the hour. Where power of soul-grasp is deficient, and enervation prevailing among the children of God, we may be sure that there is not a stirring up of the soul to the glorious eternity which is before us. We cannot grasp eternal life and the world also; one or other must be let go. We want both hands to grasp aright.
The more truly we live in the power of the eternal life as in its future display, the more shall we be taken up with it and keep a firm spiritual hold of it. Vain babblings, points, and disputations on the one side, and worldliness and greed of money on the other, seem to have been before the apostle’s mind in his exhortation to Timothy, as the great deterrents to the people of God laying hold of the eternal life. The former, evidence a mind far off from practical Christianity, and filled with anything but genuine godliness; the latter, speak of hearts possessed with this poor present hour; both prove the absence of communion with God, from which desires for the coming glory must, of moral necessity, spring. Satan defiles and entangles men’s hearts with both.
“Laying hold,” is a great word for a day of Christian feebleness. We have but to read the apostle’s word to Timothy to be made to feel that he seems to have pictured our very times. What a vast amount of wasted time there is, on the one hand, over “questions and disputes of words,” which might have been devoted to true godliness, visiting the sick, caring for the poor and the aged, and good works; whilst, on the other, what lack of simplicity, and oftentimes what reliance on position and wealth!
Eternity is out of sight when these and such like things are filling the mind. They are Satan’s toys given to the child of God to play with, in order to make him forget who he is, and whither he is going. How little is eternity before even true Christians as a present realization! How little laying hold of that which alone is really life!
After all, what is truly life? The transitory things of the hour: the questions of the day, babblings, contention about men. fame and honor, and money and worldly glory? No, the eternal life only – the present delight of which, is the fellowship with the Father and the Son, and the prospects of which, are glory with Christ on high.
Practical godliness, the apostle had strongly before him in His Words to Timothy, on the laying hold of the eternal life. Let none think that the real enjoyment of the eternal life, its vigor and Spirit-given energy, finds its answer in any concern less than that which is of eternal value. The world’s honors are but for the day; those who receive them die, and there is the honors’ end; but the things of God are for eternity as well as time, even the cup of cold water given in the Lord’s name will never lose its reward. “Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world” (James 1:27). The Lord, the Life, labored in love for souls. He went about doing good; so shall we, in our small way, if His life in us is unhindered in action.
The true display of what the eternal life is in God’s children on earth, is true likeness to Christ in His path below. The one great object of the believer should be, God and eternity. The contemplation of eternity has a mighty effect on our lives. Let one school affect one line of exterior piety and another school a different one, may the reality of eternity, so near at hand, and the fact of our so soon being about to stand before our God and Father, govern the outcome of our behavior!
If we have in any way a clear sense of what eternal life is, let us be absolutely real and earnest in our desires respecting it; let us lay hold of it. This spiritual energy will work out in the most practical way in every day conduct, and will make each hour of our lives worth living. The world lives for that which ends in death, the Christian for eternity and life.
Our Lord speaks to us of cutting off the right hand and plucking out the right eye, of getting rid of every hindrance, even of hating this natural existence, in view of entering the eternal life. Exhortations of the most intense earnestness are addressed to the child of God to stir him to holy living and self-sacrifice in the view of eternity. And the more truly believers realize their present blessings, the more earnest will they be to lay hold of that which is their prospect.
The child of God is going into life in its condition of everlasting blessedness, and the enjoyment of what he has now is the stimulant to his spirit to make him long for that which is still future.
Heirship
The Lord’s Hand Fashioning His Own for the Inheritance Before the Grave is Entered – God Has Made His Children Heirs – God Will Inherit All Things in His Children – The Character of the Kingdom – The Hope of Eternal Life – God and the Word of His Grace
The child of God is an heir of God. The glories of the kingdom await him; weak and suffering on earth though he be, no lower destiny is his, than being glorified by God, together with His Son. Because we are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son in our hearts; hence we now approach God as the Father in the spirit of adoption, and because sons we are also heirs of God, and hence shall possess glory. An heir to a great estate, an heir to a throne and mighty kingdom, would be stirred, when anticipating his entry upon his possession; that exceeding weight of glory which awaits the sons of God is commensurate with His character and kingdom whose heirs they are; the honors of their anticipation are worthy of their God.
What eye has not seen nor ear heard, nor heart of man at any time conceived of the things God has prepared for them who love Him, He has revealed to us by His Spirit. The heart takes in and tastes that which the senses cannot apprehend, the spiritual affections of the child of God already feed upon things which are inexpressible. The apostle could not utter the things of the third heavens, which, when caught up there he heard, but the eye shall see, the ear shall hear, and the sons of God rejoice in, what God has prepared for them.
Previous to this fullness of blessing, the bodies of the children of God will be made glorious like to Christ’s present glorified body. To enter that kingdom in these frames of weakness and of earthly mold would be impossible: “Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Cor. 15:50). It will be in our resurrection glory that the inheritance incorruptible and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, will be entered upon.
The crowning act of the Savior’s grace will therefore take place before the heir of God comes into his inheritance. The Lord the Savior will deliver His people from the coils of their mortal frame, He will Himself “change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto His glorious body” (Phil. 3:20-21). Already, by His work of redemption, we are fit for the kingdom, we have been made meet by the Father to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light. (Col. 1:12). But as the Savior, Jesus, has saved us from wrath, from judgment, from sin, so He will save us from weakness, suffering, death, and all the frailty of humanity, removing from each the image of the earthy. “We shall all be changed”; the circumstances of glory will be fitly entered; robes of glory will be worn; we ourselves shall be rendered, spirit, soul and body, fit for the eternal future. “As we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly” (1 Cor. 15:49).
How the glory of that hour stirred the apostle’s soul. To him it was not as if he had already obtained the prize; he was not already perfected, made like Christ in heavenly glory; but as Christ had laid hold of him for the glory of that day, he must needs lay hold of the glorified Christ (Phil. 3).
The joy of the love of God is our present portion, the hallowed relationship of children with the Father our daily pleasure, but the future beams before us, and with increasing brilliancy, as life shortens: “Beloved, now are we the children (lit.) of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when He shall appear, we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is” (1 John 3:2). “Glorified together,” “conformed to the image of His Son,” “like Him”!
As our present portion, “We know that we are of God”... “We know that the Son of God is come”... “We know that we have eternal life” (1 John 5:19,21,13) As our certain future portion, “We know that we shall be like Him” – the Son of God in glory.
The most exquisite comfort lies in this prospect. We will not say simply for our own personal blessings, for the prospect is of such a kind that we cannot limit it to our mere individual selves. Heavenly joys and coming glory will be shared in common by all the family of God; “we,” who are alive and remain to His coming; “we,” who are absent from the body, present with the Lord, who have gone out of this poor world to the Father; “we,” the whole family of God, shall be like the Son.
The chords of our hearts are moved as we utter such words, for the dearest ones greatly beloved, who have left us, are present to our thoughts. Their flesh failed, and their poor frail bodies yielded to the touch of death; it was our lot to see their outward man perish day by day, and their inward man renewed; we watched and wept till at length we listened to the last long sad sigh, and then, so far as this world goes, all was over. “But we know that when He shall appear” God will bring our loved ones with His Son from the heavens. They are now in paradise, their spirits are with the Lord, but He will remove their dust from this earth, He will give them their bodies of glory, their “corruptible will put on incorruption,” and they and “we shall be like Him.”
The Lord’s crowning act of grace to His own, their initiation, as it were, into the glory of God, is a theme for the affections, of the most endearing kind. Jesus Himself, the glorified Man in heaven, is the witness of what we shall be, and His glories as man, declare to us the character of the glories awaiting us when we shall be “glorified together.”
God Himself has made His children heirs, we are “heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ” (Rom. 8:17). Christ being the Son of God has of right the inheritance (Heb. 1:4), and as risen Man in glory God has appointed Him heir of all things. (vs. 2). His own essential dignity, His eternal Sonship, and His effected work on the earth, require for His honor, the throne of the whole universe, and in infinite grace, yet for the pleasure and the joy of His beloved Son, God has made poor, weak, dying men co-heirs with His Christ. “What is man, that Thou art mindful of him? and the Son of Man, that Thou visitest him?” (Psa. 8:4).
The kingdom of God will be full of happiness, glory and power; not a disappointment, nor regret, will be known there. In resurrection we shall receive the complete honors of sonship; this is the common glory awaiting all the children; the weakest and the youngest on earth will be like Christ, and all are heirs of God.
The fact of the believer being “a son, and if a son, then an heir of God” (Gal. 4:7), was used by the apostle to rouse those whom he addressed from the mean religiousness they had adopted. An heir of God, knowing that he is such – ponder over the words, not an heir of earth’s royal houses, but an heir of God – turning to “the weak and beggarly elements, whereby ye desire again to be in bondage” was such an unnatural sight, that said he, “I stand in doubt of you” (Gal 4:20). Let us in these days of like temptations consider our future, and by it regulate our present religion.
The exceeding meanness of that religiousness which permits to any man a hold over another’s conscience, or dreams of angels and departed saints as intermediates between the soul and God, may well be shamed out of the heart by the light of the bright rays of the coming glory. The child of God, knowing the purpose of his God, could not turn to things or notions which dishonor the character of God. God is traduced by that system of so-called Christianity, which is really a great plan for lowering His Christ in the eyes of Christians, and of setting up men, and departed spirits or angels in His stead.
Since God’s love is ours, the glory is secure; but let us remember it is God’s love and God’s glory of which we speak so confidently. The question is, Who and what God is; not what am I? We once heard a Christian say, “Oh! if I could be sure of one of the back seats in heaven, behind the angels, I should be satisfied.” But God would not be satisfied with having His child in such a place; our destiny is, by His grace, not a whit less than conformity to the image of His Son, that His Son might be the first-born among many brethren (Rom. 8:29).
Not even an angel’s place is that of a son of God. The angels, mighty and excelling in strength, have their place as servants, the child of God is heir.
God will inherit all things in His children. In the fullness of times, when ages and dispensations shall have run their course, God will set His Son as head over all things in the heavens and on the earth; and the vast multitude of the sons of God will be associated with Him in His reign and glory. The apostle prayed that the people of God might know “what the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, is; and deeply wonderful is the consideration of the truth, of God as having riches of glory in His people. Yet may we with reverence, form an illustration, from our earthly homes; what greater joy could a father have in his sons, than seeing them in positions of honor, carrying out all the purposes of his heart!
There is vastly more than the bare fact of getting to heaven before us in such prospects as these. God is God, and has wrought for His own glory and joy. Let not a jot of all the favor of God to us be surrendered by our souls. Lost or forfeited, naught can be, for we are heirs by the divine will; but the enemy would cheat us, if possible, from enjoying by faith what is ours.
The holy character of the kingdom is frequently enforced in the Word. Evil works and fleshly activity will be barred out of it: “The unrighteous shall not enter the kingdom of God” (1 Cor. 6:9). The kingdom will be after the character of the King, and the heirs of God should now walk worthy of the coming kingdom. That which may never enter the glory should be kept out of our lives on earth. The future should govern the present; the future is secure in God; the present is our responsibility. Prospects of glory have a reflective strength, and evidence their existence in the walk and ways of the child of God. We do not in this world expect a king’s son to do mean things or to think low thoughts. His heirship and position govern his condition before men; how much more so should this be true of the children of the God of glory!
Any dishonest or mean behavior, or any of the low practices of Satan’s world, should be abhorred by the heir of God. Deception, falsehood, and the whole circle of unrighteousness, are obnoxious to the coming kingdom. Thoughts, words, and ways worthy of that glory should be found in or at least be sought after, by those who speak of such prospects as belong to the child of God.
The hope of eternal life is glory. “Being justified by His grace, we should be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life” (Titus 3:7). As we read again: “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Col. 1:27).
Until the hope be realized, the child of God must, of the necessity of his new nature, long for its fulfillment; and we believe every possessor of eternal life has this hope. The intensity of the hope will vary, no doubt, according as the lamp is well or feebly supplied with oil. The more communion there is with God the Giver of life, the more pure will be the hope of the life in the child of God; and the more fully the life is practically lived out on earth, the more earnest will be the hope for glory in heaven. The apostle who said, “To me to live is Christ,” said also, for Him I have “suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ” (Phil. 1:21; 3:8). Living Christ in his daily life made him long to win Christ in glory, and knowing Christ in glory was the spring and vital force in him of his living Christ on earth.
God and the word of His grace are our support on the way to the inheritance. Ten thousand adverse things still beset our path; it is not intended that the heir of glory should reach the inheritance without hardship and conflict.
The path of the Lord on earth is set out by Him as that of His people. The servant is not above his master. Suffering on earth and reigning in heaven are linked together: “If we suffer, we shall also reign with Him” (2 Tim. 2:12). There is in the ways of God a necessity for His children to learn what trial and suffering are. The path of His Son on earth is the path to which they also are called.
Sin has brought death and misery into this world, therefore the path of men going to glory must of necessity be contrary to the world. Righteousness must occasion loss in a world of iniquity. The people of God belong to the kingdom of God now as much as ever they will, but its glories are to them yet future. Holy living and eternal glory are morally associated, even as evil living and eternal darkness are connected together.
The believer is, however, not only exhorted to abstain from evil because of the glory, but he is cheered by the prospect of overcoming: “He that overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be his God, and he shall be My son” (Rev. 21:7).
In the sense of our responsibility it is joy to repose our feebleness on God: “I commend you to God,” said the apostle, “and to the word of His grace, which is able to build you up, and to give you an inheritance among all them which are sanctified” (Acts 20:32).
The Liberty of the Glory
The Liberty of the Grace of God – Fitness of Spirit, Soul and Body for the Glory – The Power of Hope – Creation Waiting for the Manifestation of the Sons of God – Eternal Life, Light and Love
The liberty of the grace of God is the present portion, the liberty of the glory, the prospect of His children. God met us in His grace in our estrangement from Himself, pardoned our sins, brought us to Himself, made us to know His love as our Father, put His Spirit in us, and gave us to rejoice in His Son. All this is grace, perfect grace, and the child of God is in the holy and happy liberty of this grace in the presence of his God.
We have as our present privilege by Christ “access by faith into this grace wherein we stand.” We have our prospects also, and which for excellency can only be compared with the blessing of the present favor; we “rejoice in hope of the glory of God” (Rom. 5:2). What the glory of God in its full extent is, we know not, but sufficient has been told to make us eagerly long for the day of its display. His glory as Creator is declared by His heavens; His glory in the new creation will be declared in His children.
A glory far transcending the glories of this creation awaits His people. Christ the Son of God, the risen Man, is the head of the new creation, and its glories will be worthy of Him. Glimpses of heavenly glory have been seen for moments on this earth. One was granted on the mount of transfiguration, and again the glory shone from the face of Jesus in heaven as Saul was on his way to Damascus. The prize of the calling up on high awaits the children of God. They will be made like Christ, glory will be revealed in them, they will shine with Him, manifesting the glory of God.
It is our joy to know that we are not waiting for the manifestation of grace: “the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared” (Titus 2:11). Each believer is a grateful witness to this fact, for “according to the riches of His grace” God has redeemed us from this world to Himself by the blood of His Son; He has forgiven us our sins, and by grace we are saved. We can joyfully say, as applying the passage to our very selves, “Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound” (Rom. 5:20).
God’s grace towards us is perfect this very day. Do we view ourselves as we were in our sins upon this earth, enemies to God and alienated from Him by wicked works, still we think of that which is greater than our sins and deeper than our natural hatred to God – even His grace toward us. Do we lift up our eyes from ourselves and all that we are by nature, and look to heaven – there in glory we see Jesus the Beloved One of God, who died for our sins; and we learn, “to the praise and glory of His (God’s) grace,” that we are accepted, brought into divine favor, in the Beloved, where He is. The grace of God in its riches is for us as sinners in our poverty and misery, meeting us in our sins; the grace of God in its glory is for us as His people, washed and made fit for heaven.
Our sins are removed by the blood of Jesus shed on earth, and this being so, we are taken into the acceptance of Christ, who is in heaven. The riches of the grace of God are for us in our lost and evil state by nature; the praise of the glory of His grace, is His work and purpose in taking such as we, into the very love and smile which rests upon His own Son in heaven. In the presence of this grace of God we are in liberty, we go about this world, and perform our daily duties in the consciousness of His free favor toward us; the glory is yet to come, and for it we hope.
When we are in the glory we shall be so fashioned as to be in liberty there. We might have a place set apart for us in a palace, but before we could enjoy it, two things would be necessary; first the palace must be entered, next we must be in a fit state to enter it. Supposing we were taken to the palace just as we are, from the midst of the rough usage of daily life and toil. Our everyday attire and demeanor, as we might so express it, would not conduce to our liberty. We should require to be conformed to the character of the palace in order to be at home there. Now, not only have the children of God glory awaiting them, not only has the Lord said, “I go to prepare a place for you,” but He will make His own perfectly suitable for the bright place into which He will bring them.
Frail humanity could not bear the weight of glory, the present state of our bodies could not partake of it. The three disciples, who saw the Lord and the two glorified saints enter the cloud, feared, as they beheld these glorified men in such a place. It was a strange sight to witness men pass into the glory with the Lord. But Moses and Elias were perfectly at liberty in the Shekinah with Jesus.
The blessed Lord’s appearance became changed on that day, “the fashion of His countenance was altered” (Luke 9:29), the Man of Sorrows shone for a moment as the Man of Glory, “His face did shine as the sun” (Matt. 17:2). He was the “same Jesus,” but “altered.” He is now glorified in heaven, and the light of His glory is “above the brightness of the sun” (Acts 26:13). Heaven’s brightness shines from His face, not even the sun’s – the greatest light this earth knows. Before that brightness Saul fell to the ground, and seeing Him in heaven, John fell as dead at His feet (Rev. 1:17). We have faint ideas of the present glory of Jesus the Lord, but eventually the child of God, from the youngest to the eldest, will be at home in His presence as He is. All will be glorified together with the Lord, and all will appear in glory with Him.
These bodies will be transformed. Like Moses and Elias on the mount, we shall be “men... in glory” (Luke 9:30-31). The child of God will be clothed upon with his house, which is from heaven. The tent of mortality will be exchanged for the house of incorruptibility. In this tent we groan. Sorrows around and pains within us, occasion the grief. Sighing according to divinely-given affections and hopes, is quite distinct from discontent and murmurs. The apostle was a man of praise and ecstasy, yet he groaned, being burdened. The love of Christ in him, the indwelling Spirit made him do so. Deep sympathy with suffering, and sorrow for sin and surrounding wickedness, and desires to be with, and like Christ, called forth his sighings: “For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven” (2 Cor. 5:2). “Ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption – the redemption of our body” (Rom. 8:23).
The child of God is waiting for the redemption of his body; his body is not yet redeemed, but is still in the frailty and corruption attendant on this creation. His spirit, not his body, is at liberty in God’s presence. Glory is to be revealed in him (Rom. 8:18); and he will be altogether changed from his present estate and condition.
Divine knowledge now possessed is imperfect. “We know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.... Now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known” (1 Cor. 13:9-12). However much we may know, how little it is at the most! Many cannot fail to be sensible in themselves of a sorrowful immaturity of knowledge of Christ and of God His Father. “The measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (Eph. 4:13) is not yet reached by us. We look on the unseen as through a window of dulled glass; the character of the glory is not in our full view, Here we are learners in the school of God; there we shall stand in the fullness of the adoption, with our lessons learned and the liberty of full age come.
Do not we most usually think and speak as children, and are not our thoughts, too, generally crude and ill-formed, and our utterances disconnected? Even the few giants in knowledge that exist, “know in part.” But, then when glorified together with Christ, we shall know as known. We shall see “face to face” Himself the light of the eternal day, His glory and the glory of His God being the ceaseless sunshine of the eternal home. It will be our joy to see His face, and His name shall be in our radiant foreheads. (Rev. 22:4). Each of the many sons shall be the reflex of Himself. Each among the countless multitudes of the redeemed, shall shed abroad the brightness of His light forever.
In the liberty of the glory He will look into our hearts, and we shall look into His heart and find nothing but love. No mean thoughts will crowd our spirits then, all will be pure and holy, and all full of love in the light. We shall behold His glory, fully understand Him, and have perfect communion with Himself and His Father. “Father, I will that they also, whom Thou hast given Me, be with Me where I am; that they may behold My glory” (John 17:24).
In the liberty of the glory we shall look into each other’s hearts and find nothing but love; no restraint or constraint will then exist, no separation, no distance, no coldness amongst the children of God. Each one will be in his right place, and each will be perfectly transparent to the other, God shining through each, to the glory of His own name and character. What a contrast with this present time, its bickering and strife, its jars and discord! Yet even now, if Christ were all to the children of God, not only would they be more heavenly, but earth would be like heaven where they were. Can we do other than sigh for the day of glory, yet with patience wait for it?
The tower of hope even in the things of this world is a vast force within the human breast. Hope to the Christian is an immense strength; “We are saved by (or in) hope” (Rom. 8:24). The hope is sure and certain, it cannot fail. It is not like hopes built upon an earthly basis; the foundation for our hope of glory, is God and His glorified Son. No limit short of glory with Christ in heaven, is the outlook of our expectations. No one can be subject to disappointment, for God is the faithful promiser. Each individual child of God will be brought into the fully-developed privileges and honors of the sons of God, every divine-given hope of joy will then be consummated, every faithful Word of God fulfilled.
“Conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren” (Rom. 8:29), is our destiny, and when this fills the heart, it is an irresistible impetus to the affections. How this hope has lighted up the long hours of suffering, cheered the dying, and soothed the wearied! Many a faint-hearted traveler to eternity, has it invigorated and quickened into zeal; for the time is short, and suffering will soon be passed for the child of God. Many a saint, depressed by reason of the way, jaded by the buffetings of Satan, and sick at heart because of his malice and cowardly wiles, has it lighted up into a very flame of ardor; for the end is near. Many a slothful servant has this hope stirred into fresh devotedness, awaking him from his spiritual torpor and mysterious inactivity for the salvation of souls, and for the good of God’s people. Eternity is at hand. Its brightness already beams before the eye of faith. Faith soon will be lost in sight. Servants of the Master, awake, then! seek not ease below, arouse and work; now only during this little while is the opportunity for telling the sin-stricken world of the once crucified Savior, of present peace, and of coming glory for those who believe in Him; now alone is the time to cheer the faint-hearted and to comfort the weary; now only is the time to battle on for Christ’s sake through adversity and enemies, strong in the hope of the approaching day.
The very fact of hope dwelling in and stimulating the soul, is evidence that there is much awaiting the child of God. It tells its own talc to the world, which has no hope, no certain prospect for time, whose eyes are sightless, and oh! how dark for eternity! “What a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for?” (Rom. 8:24). What the world offers man sees, but for what God spiritually gives it has no sight. Faith possesses all things, and hope stretches on to the fullness of the possession, yet in no restless mood, for patience sits by the side of hope in the Christian’s soul, and teaches him to wait for the glory of his God. “If we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it” (vs. 25).
The hope of being conformed to the image of God’s Son has a purifying effect within the heart. “We know that, when He shall appear, we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is. And every man that hath this hope in Him purifieth himself, even as He is pure” (1 John 3:2-3). The steersman’s eye is fixed on the glory, and by his hand the vessel’s helm answers to the object in view. By the light of glory he shapes her course: that light which pierces through earth’s darkest gloom and densest fogs.
Holiness and purity follow the hope of being like Christ; he who is looking forward to be like Christ in heaven, seeks to be like Christ on earth; he whose prospects are the brightest, hastens on the path of holiness with quickest step. The prospects and the path are in accord with each other.
The purpose of God is to bless creation through His children. Here on the earth made partakers of the divine nature, here where sin and death abound, being given eternal life, and here, as to the body, having the self-same lot as other men, the child of God is the channel of blessing for men generally. But failure and self-seeking too often clog the communication, the souls of men are not watered, and God is hindered from using His children, as would be the case were humility and Christ-like character prevalent in them. In the coming day “we shall be like Him,” and all evil being absolutely removed from us, we shall be the pure and perfect channels for God to use for His own purposes of light and love.
There will be nothing then to mar the bright shining out from us of God in us. We see a transparent cloud floating before the sun in the pure blue sky, and note its excessive brightness, yet the light is not its own, but that of the sun shining through it. Such an illustration seems to indicate what, speaking spiritually, a child of God glorified will be, even a lovely, unsoiled expression of God and of Christ – a fair transparency through which God shall shine. When John saw the holy Jerusalem having the “glory of God,” he noted “transparent” golden streets, and stones “clear as crystal,” and the city itself as “clear glass.”
Creation wails for the manifestation of the sons of God; its groans will cease on the day of their glory. Hope was left in the cup of its sorrow when, by reason of man’s sin, creation was made subject to vanity. Suffering and death are not to hold in their arms God’s creation forever. It “groans and travails in pain together until now.” There rises up to God a moan from His suffering creatures on this earth, an unison of sorrow from its four quarters, as day by day passes by.
What human mind can conceive the immensity of misery that exists upon this globe? The very thought of suffering on a large scale so overwhelms the mind that it grasps it not, and so it is easier to consider it than the detailed misery of one misfortune. We feel compassion, and are moved to tears, over one starving child; we hear of famines and of thousands perishing, and fail to grasp the meaning of the words. But every sigh, every sorrow, every pain every detail of each grief over the whole face of His creation – is known to God, and the cry thereof rises up to Him.
But presently His creation will break forth in lasting song, heaven and earth will utter the love of Him who has redeemed the people of God by His blood, and angels with loud voices will re-echo His praise. (Rev. 5:11-14). Then will creation be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory (lit.) of the children of God (Rom. 8:21).
The earnest expectation of the creature, the stretching out of its neck in eager longing desires the manifestation of the sons of God, for it is the divine purpose that His creature man shall be the communication of blessing in His creation. At the first, Adam was the intelligent ruler of what God had made on this earth; he named the animals, each according to its nature, and through him the praise of this creation should have risen to the Creator. Sin has plunged the whole creation into confusion and distress; but the purpose of God will yet be fulfilled on the sure basis of resurrection, for the resurrection will be the day of glory for the sons of God.
Life, light, and love in their fullness, and without the supervening circumstances incidental to this present life, are near at hand – the perfect freedom of the children of God approaches. All will soon be made like to Christ as He now is; all will presently have entered life everlasting; all will be before God according to His nature, holy, and without blame, in love. Fellowship with the Father and the Son will be without interruption, the indwelling Spirit will never more be grieved. The marvelous words of the Lord to the Father will be fully realized: “And the glory which Thou gavest Me I have given them; that they may be one, even as We are one: I in them, and Thou in Me, that they may be made perfect in one” (John 17:22-23).
This brightest of all bright prospects nears daily, this glory is at our very doors. The sons of God are waiting with the expectant creation for their manifestation, they are longing for the redemption of the body. Our cherished graves cry out for that day, our broken hearts weep out their yearnings, our silence and bereavement sigh for it; we are hoping to see our dearest once more face to face, to see them not as we last beheld them, in their dying weakness, but glorious in the accomplished hope of eternal life.
That transient scene of coming glory witnessed upon the mount of Transfiguration, indicates the holy friendships and sweet companionships of heaven. Communion with Jesus will be then our joy. The crowns of rejoicing composed of glorified saints who on earth were brought to God by the servants’ means, await the weary worker of this hour; the holy fellowship of men and women, who followed Christ on earth, will then be resumed, never more to be broken. Weakness of body will soon have passed, flagging of mind will soon never more be known; and instead, forever and forever, fresh gladness, fresh songs, fresh sights of Jesus, fresh knowledge of the Father.
Happy are they who now in this day of salvation come to Christ as guilty sinners. He came from heaven to teach us of heaven, and to give the eternal life to all who come to Him. Happy are they who have learned, in His death and resurrection, God’s righteousness, and who, receiving the Son, obtain the eternal life; happy, even now, in a world of sin, and sorrow, and death. But what mind can conceive, what tongue utter, their eternal happiness in glory! What lips can frame the language which shall express the lengths and depths, the breadths and heights which the child of God in glory shall know of
LIFE and LIGHT and LOVE!
Appendix
The following references may be helpful to the reader who would investigate the use made in the New Testament of the words Son, child, infant, and kindred terms.
SON – υἱoς
There is a large number of passages where the word Son occurs in relation to the Lord Jesus Christ. These, which it will hardly be necessary for our object to give in detail, may be divided into four groups. Those passages which speak of Him as
Son of God,
Son of Man,
and Son of David;
and all the other passages where the word is used concerning Him.
Passages where the word carries with it a spiritual meaning.
Matt. 5:9 – They shall be called the children (lit. sons) of God.
Matt. 5:45 – That ye may be the children (lit. sons) of your Father which is in heaven.
Matt. 8:12 – But the children (lit. sons) of the kingdom shall he cast out into outer darkness.
Matt. 9:15; Mark 2:19; Luke 5:34 – Can the children (lit. sons) of the bridechamber.
Matt. 13:38 – The good seed are the children (lit. sons) of the kingdom, but the tares are the children (sons) of the wicked one.
Matt. 23:15 – Ye make him twofold more the child (lit. son) of hell than yourselves.
Luke 6:35 – Ye shall be the children (lit. sons) of the Highest.
Luke 10:6 – And if the Son of peace be there, your peace shall rest upon it.
Luke 16:8 – The children (lit. sons) of this world are in their generation wiser than the children (sons) of light.
Luke 19:9 – This day is salvation come to this house, forasmuch as he also is a Son of Abraham.
John 12:36 – Believe in the light, that ye may be the children (lit. sons) of light.
John 17:12 – None of them is lost, but the son of perdition.
Acts 13:10 – O full of all subtlety and all mischief, thou child (lit. son) of the devil.
Rom. 9:26 – There shall they be called the children (lit. sons) of the living God.
2 Cor. 6:18 – Ye shall be My sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty.
Gal. 3:7 – They which are of faith, the same are the children (lit. sons) of Abraham.
Eph. 2:2 – The spirit that now worketh in the children (lit. sons) of disobedience.
Eph. 5:6; Col. 3:6 – Cometh the wrath of God upon the children (lit. sons) of disobedience.
1 Thess. 5:5 – Ye are all the children (lit. sons) of light, and the children (sons) of the day.
2 Thess. 2:3 – That man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition.
Heb. 2:10 – In bringing many sons unto glory.
Heb. 12:5 – We have forgotten the exhortation which speaketh unto you as unto children (lit. sons), My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord.
Heb. 12:6-8 – The Lord.... scourgeth every son whom He receiveth. God dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not? If ye be without chastisement. ... then are ye bastards, and not sons.
1 Pet. 5:13 – The church ... saluteth you; and so doth Marcus my son.
Passages specially referring to privileges of sonship.
Luke 20:36 – Neither can they die any more: for they are equal unto the angels; and are the children (lit. sons) of God, being the children (row) of the resurrection.
Rom. 8:14 – As many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.
Rom. 8:19 – The manifestation of the sons of God.
Gal. 3:26 – Ye are all the children (lit. sons) of God by faith in Christ Jesus
Gal. 4:6 – Because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts.
Gal. 4:7 – Thou art no more a servant, but a son; and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ.
Rev. 21:7 – He that overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be his God, and he shall be My son.
CHILD – τέχνον.
Passages where the word marks spiritual birth or spiritual relationship.
John 1:12 – As many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons (lit. children) of God.
John 11:52 – He should gather together in one all the children of God that were scattered abroad.
Rom. 8:6,17 – We are the children of God. And if children, then heirs, heirs of God.
Rom. 8:21 – The glorious liberty (lit. liberty of the glory) of the children of God.
1 Cor. 4:14 – As my beloved sons (lit. children) I warn you.
1 Cor. 4:17 – I sent unto you Timotheus, who is my beloved son (lit. child).
2 Cor. 6:13 – I speak as unto my children.
Eph. 5:1 – Be ye therefore followers of God, as dear children.
Phil. 2:15 – That ye may be blameless and harmless, the sons (lit. children) of God.
Phil. 2:22 – As a son (lit. child) with the father, he hath served with me in the gospel.
1 Tim. 1:2 – Unto Timothy, my own son (lit. child) in the faith.
1 Tim. 1:18 – This charge I commit unto thee, son (lit. child) Timothy.
2 Tim. 1:2 – To Timothy, my dearly beloved son (lit. child).
2 Tim. 2:1 – Thou therefore, my son (lit. child), be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus.
Titus 1:4 – To Titus, mine own son (lit. child), after the common faith.
Philem. 10 – I beseech thee for my son (lit. child) Onesimus, whom I have begotten in my bonds.
1 John 3:1-2 – Behold, what manner of love the Father bath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons (lit. children) of God. Beloved, now are we the sons (lit. children) of God.
1 John 3:10 – In this the children of God are manifest, and the children of the devil.
1 John 5:2 – By this we know that we love the children of God.
3 John 4 – I have no greater joy to hear that my children walk in truth.
Passages where the word marks a spiritual condition.
Matt. 3:9 – God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham.
Matt. 11:19; Luke 7:35 – Wisdom is justified of her children – all her children.
John 8:39 – If ye were Abraham’s children, ye would do the works of Abraham.
Rom. 9:7-8 – Neither, because they are the seed of Abraham, are they all children. They which are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God. The children of the promise are counted for the seed.
Gal. 4:25 – And this Agar.... answereth to Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children.
Gal. 4:28 – Now we, brethren, as Isaac was, are the children of promise.
Gal. 4:31 – So then, brethren, we are not the children of the bondwoman.
Eph. 2:3 – Were by nature the children of wrath, even as others.
Eph. 5:8 – We are light in the Lord: walk as children of light.
1 Peter 1:14 – As obedient children, not fashioning yourselves according to the former lusts.
1 Peter 3:6 – Sara obeyed Abraham, calling him lord: whose daughters (lit. children) ye are.
2 Peter 2:14 – An heart they have exercised with covetous practices; cursed children.
Rev. 2:23 – Ι will kill her children with death.
There are various other texts where the word marks natural birth, and some where it is used as a term of kindness, as, for example, “Son (child), be of good cheer; thy sins be forgiven thee” (Matt. 9:2).
LITTLE CHILDREN – τεχνίον.
John 13:33 – Little children, yet a little while I am with you.
Gal. 4:19 – My little children, of whom I travail in birth.
1 John 2:1 – My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not.
1 John 2:12 – I write unto you, little children, because your sins are forgiven you.
1 John 2:28 – And now, little children, abide in him.
1 John 3:7 – Little children, let no man deceive you.
1 John 3:18 – My little children, let us not love in word.... but in deed.
1 John 4:4 – Ye are of God. little children, and have overcome them.
1 John 5:21 – Little children, keep yourselves from idols.
INFANT – νήπιος.
Matt. 11:25 – Hast revealed them unto babes.
Matt. 21:16 – Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings thou hast perfected praise.
Luke 10:21 – Hast revealed them unto babes.
Rom. 2:20 – An instructor of the foolish, a teacher of babes.
1 Cor. 3:1 – As unto carnal, even as babes in Christ.
1 Cor. 13:11 – When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, put away childish things.
Gal. 4:1 – The heir, as long as he is a child, differeth nothing from a servant.
Gal. 4:3 – Even so we, when we were children.
Eph. 4:14 – Be no more children, tossed to and fro.
Heb. 5:13 – Every one that useth milk is unskillful in the word of righteousness, for he is a babe.
Courtesy of BibleTruthPublishers.com. Any suggestions for spelling or punctuation corrections would be warmly received. Please email them to: BTPmail@bibletruthpublishers.com.