I SHOULD like to say just a word on the passage we began these meetings with: " Christ loved the church, and gave himself for it."
One remark I would make in passing, is that this meeting to-night recalls the memory of those held some years ago when the truth of the coming of the Lord always had such a prominent place in the ministry of the word, much more so than it has done of late.
I think we must confess that we have in some degree lost the sense of the reality and blessedness of this truth, and the same " constancy of hope " has not been maintained in our hearts. We can therefore only thank the Lord that He is reviving in our souls that which should be the joy and delight of our hearts, the hope of soon seeing Him face to face. " To wait for his Son from heaven;" such is the hope of every believer who knows Jesus as his deliverer from the wrath to come.
But to return to this scripture with which we began, and which brings before us the Lord's present interest in and care for His church here on earth, which tells us thus of His interest in each one of us individually as part of that church, and of His service for us on high at the Father's right hand.
There is no scripture that so fully brings out the perfect love of Christ for His church as this. We get here, as has been often remarked, the past, the present, and the future activities of the love of Christ. It is a perfect love, for it is a love that never wanes. He loved the church; and here is the most perfect proof of it: " He gave himself for it." That is the extent to which He values the church. A man values a thing in proportion to what he has paid for it. How does Christ value the church? Poor, miserable things though we be, He gave Himself for us. It was a love that kept nothing back; He gave Himself; He could do nothing more.
And then: " That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word." This is His present action. Do you think He has lost sight of us because He has gone up on high? No; He loves us right on to the end. His very bringing us together, as He has now done, that our hearts may be encouraged and built up in Him, is a manifest token of His present love and care for us, of this love that never wanes.
And then the third point, and this is one that, I believe, will awaken in our hearts the desire for His coming; He is waiting for it Himself: " That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing." If our love has waned, and in some measure we have forgotten that which is our "blessed hope," His love and patience never fail. He still waits with loving desire for the moment when He will present all-glorious to Himself, the church which He has purchased with His own blood.
If you loved a person with a perfect love, no matter what their present condition, you would never be satisfied until you had brought them into your own condition. Suppose a man really loves a woman whom he finds in a low estate, he will never be satisfied until he has placed her by his side in his own estate; he says she must share with me fully all the joy, the pleasure, the honor, the riches that are mine; I must have her altogether in my own estate. Less than this would not be perfect love. And so Christ will never be satisfied until He has brought His church into His own estate. What are all these spots and wrinkles? They are the marks of our estate. But He will wipe out every mark, every trace of them, and bring us into His own estate, into a condition and position worthy of Himself.
Whatever the calling now, whatever the blessedness of it, and it is great, as it is made known to us and sustained in the soul by the power of the Holy Ghost, yet it is not the fullness; it is only a part of that which shall be. The day is coming when we shall no longer see obscurely, but face to face, when we shall know " even as we are known."
When these-things come before our souls with any degree of freshness, does it not make us feel what a small, dim, feeble apprehension we generally have of them? This epistle tells us of "the hope of his calling." The calling itself is a wonderful one, and we have that; it is a present thing to us; we are even now united to Christ. But there is a hope connected with it; a hope of something that we have not yet; and that is the obtaining of the full realization of all that results from this most blessed union, to be one with Him, to be the sharers of His glory, to see Him face to face. And therefore there is "the hope of his calling."
In these bodies of humiliation, in this world of sin, we are not yet fully in His estate. But we shall be, we shall be like Him.
And where shall we he? Where He is, and nowhere else.
Nothing awakens so powerfully in our hearts the desire to see Him as the thought that He is waiting too. He says: I shall not be satisfied until I get you at home with myself in my glory.
Is there but feeble response in our hearts to this perfect love? What will augment it? Dwelling on that love we see in Him. It is always so. Nothing save occupation of heart with Christ produces in us the state that is suitable to Christ. It must produce a response in my heart when I see Him sitting there in patience, waiting to come and fetch me. I am the object of His perfect love. And I am waiting for Him to fetch me; I am waiting, with the whole church so scattered and torn now, to be brought home and presented to Himself, and in a state altogether worthy of Himself, " without spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing."
The Lord grant that our hearts may be awakened to look more constantly for Him, so that our path here may be as the path of the just, "shining more and more unto the perfect day."
(F. H. R.)