BELOVED BROTHER,
I have been occupied for my own soul with the inquiry, what is the hope of the Christian; and I send you some points of the result, thinking they may be a means of cheering and encouraging some of God's dear children.
The first important point, which this result brings powerfully home to the heart and conscience, is the source of this hope. And the only right means of estimating it, the only sure ground on which the heart can rest in appropriating it, is that all I hope for is the fruit of the grace of Jesus. It is what His own heart finds its delight in giving to us; because it is that of which He knows the blessedness, and because His love is perfect toward us. His interest in us is as perfect as Himself. This is essentially characteristic of perfect love. All this, I need not say, is according to the Father's counsels. “It is not mine to give,” says Christ,” save to those for whom it is prepared of my Father.” For it is what He takes as man that He gives to us, in receiving it Himself as man from His Father, and delighting in it as the expression of the Father's love.
This brings out another simple, but, remembering Who Jesus is, a most blessed and wonderful truth; that where there is perfect love on the one hand, and capacity of enjoyment through possession of the same nature on the other, love will seek to bring its object into the common enjoyment of that which it possesses, and finds its blessing and enjoyment in. This is true of a friend, of a parent, and of every genuine human attachment; though of course in these cases imperfection is attached to the affection itself, and to its power of accomplishing its power to make happy. Yet the perfection of Christ's love does not (since it is love to us) make our introduction into the enjoyment of His blessedness a thing not to he hoped for, because it is too excellent, but just lays the sure ground for this hope. It is His own delight to make us happy, a part of the perfection of His nature, of His own satisfaction. “He shall see of the travail of his soul and be satisfied.”
It is to this I would first direct the attention of yourself and your readers. Christ finds His own delight in blessing us, and in blessing us with Himself, because He loves us. And this blessing must be according to the perfectness of His own nature; for it flows from Him and is to be enjoyed with Himself, and as He enjoys it before and with the Father. What a scene this opens before us, if we have indeed tasted His love! Yet it is all dependent on His own free goodness, and the fruit and display of it, the happiness itself being dependent on His own excellency. That His grace is the source of it every Christian will recognize; but you will find that, in taking scripture to guide us in the details it gives us of our future blessedness, this character of blessing shines out most evidently. The elements of our future which scripture affords I would present, though surely grace is needed to give them their value, which will be just proportionate to our personal estimate of Christ Himself, that is, to our spiritual knowledge of Him.
Our possession of the life of Christ, His being our life (so that it can be said of us in its nature and fruits, “which thing is true in Him and in you”), is the basis of our hope, and what makes us, in connection with His work on the cross, capable of enjoying it. He became man; and having first wrought redemption and glorified God in our behalf, and blotted out our sins and made peace, He (victorious over death and entering risen and glorified into God's presence) becomes the source of life to us, nay more is our life. We are thus brought into the place of sons, all the old thing—its nature and fruits—judged, condemned, and done away, whatever conflict and exercises of heart we may have with it, while down here. As alive in Christ we stand before God, consequent on the accomplishment of redemption, and in virtue of complete forgiveness. “He (God) quickened us together with Him, having forgiven us all trespasses.” We are introduced into the place of sons with Christ, as the result and fruit of redemption, and as really partaking of the life in which He lives.
See how the Spirit in 1 John (which specially treats of the existence, possession, and development of this life in Christ, and so in us. See chap. i. 1, 2; v. 11, 12, for the general principle) connects us with Christ in life, position, and consequently hope. “If ye know that he is righteous, ye know that everyone that doeth righteousness is born of him. Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called children of God.” We have by adoption Christ's relationship with God, yet as really born of God possessing a nature displayed in the same qualities. “Therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew him not (the true and perfect Son of God). Beloved, now are we God's children; and it is not yet manifested what we shall be; but we know that, when he shall be manifested, we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. And everyone that hath this hope in him purifieth himself as he is pure.”
Blessed testimony in all its parts! Born of God we have the nature morally and the position of the true, blessed, and eternal Son made man, that in His glory we may be with Him and like Him. We are children of God, unknown by the world consequently as He was. We shall be perfectly like Him in glory, seeing Him as He now is above in heavenly glory, and hence can bear no lower standard now. Having this hope in Christ, reaching to and founded on Himself, we seek to be as like Him now as possible in the inner man; and in our ways we purify ourselves as He is pure. What a picture of the moral position of the Christian is here, through his living connection with Christ! It is sweet to say it is ours, sweeter to say we have it in Him, and He the perfection of it. If His life is animating us, through the strengthening grace and communications of the Holy Spirit, what a power and value will such a statement have for us living and dwelling in Him!
Here then is one great and blessed part of our hope, “we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.” It is perfectness in likeness to Christ, in ourselves morally, in full result, for it is in glory; that is, all the fruit of the power of this life, as in Christ, produced even as to the body; while its internal excellence, likeness to Christ, is perfect, and no hindrance to its exercise, but, quite the contrary, a suited condition; and with the blessed consciousness that we are like Him, though we have it all from Him. We shall be like Him.
But, secondly, in this state we shall have the full blessed object in which this perfect nature delights, and in this state is capable of delighting in all its absolute and heavenly excellency before us—its satisfying object: an object which can keep all its powers in blessed and full exercise will occupy it with perfect delight. And yet while I delight in Him as supremely excellent, the full display of heavenly excellence, I know that I am like Him; I could not (my desires being fixed on this, having tasted its excellence) be perfectly happy were I not. However great our glory and excellency may be, it is only as being like Him. He is the thing we are like; He is it in its own proper and positive, substantive, being and existence. If I am adopted to be a son and am really born of God, behold, He is the Son. Hence all our excellence is the means of apprehending and adoring His.
We may remark that this is true both in moral perfection, and in relationship. God is perfect in Himself and for Himself. Love and holiness, as indeed every other attribute of God, have their joy in themselves, and of course perfectly and infinitely in God. But the creature needs an object to enjoy perfectly what this blessed nature is and gives, even when he possesses it. The new man delights in holiness; but the perfect holiness of God is needed for the perfect delight of our new and holy nature. The new man has a nature imbued with love, and so can delight in its exercise; but the perfect love of God, manifested in Jesus and known in communion is his delight. So in our relationship we are sons with God; but I must learn in Jesus what it is to be a son, and what the power of that word is, “the Father loveth the Son.” We share in the glory; but the glory in which we share is His.
In the hope then, presented to us in this passage, we have the Father's love as the source. Hence we are already children, so as to know the position; but this flowing from our being born of God from Christ being our life, and we as He, so that even the world does not know us, as it did not know Him. We are so identified with Him, that though what we shall be does not yet appear, we shall be like Him when He does appear, seeing Him in the very glory in which He now is as the Son, with the Father, viewed in manhood on high. It is not as the world will see Him, being blessed under Him, and seeing Him so far as He can be revealed to mortal eyes; but being like Himself and seeing Him as He is.
This leads to another part of the blessing, which is equally the joy of Jesus Himself. We shall be with Him Evidently if we love and delight in Him, this is needed for our full joy; and while He ministers this to us now by being present with us in grace, it is the object of our hope in its complete character and permanent fullness. “So shall we ever be with the Lord.” Remark here that the apostle, when here speaking of the Lord's coming, does not enter at all as regards our portion into the consequences in glory and dominion. This has its place; but what satisfies and fills the apostle's heart, when he has the revelation of the way in which God would call up the saints to their enjoyment, is (for his own feeling of joy and delight) all embraced in this, “So shall we ever be with the Lord.”
This is more than once brought before us by Christ Himself. “Father, I will that they whom thou hast given me be with me where I am, that they may behold my glory; for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world.” The connection of these last words throws light on the value and extent of this hope. The Lord continues, “O righteous Father, the world knew thee not; but I knew thee, and these knew that thou didst send me.” The Father had to decide, so to speak, between Christ and His disciples on one side, and the world on the other; for the moral separation was complete. What the Father was had been shown in Christ. The world could recognize nothing of it: there was no common principle or bond. The disciples had recognized at least, through grace, that He came from the Father.
He could not stay in the world: that was closed. His departure forms the ground-work of the whole chapter. Whether He or the world was to be owned of the Father could have no doubt. The Father, and necessarily so, had loved Him before ever the world existed; and if the world rejected Him, the hour was come for the Father to glorify Him with Himself. For the time, no doubt, the disciples were to remain in the world; but He had declared to them the Father's name and would declare it, that the love wherewith the Father loved Him might be in them, and He in them. Hence He would have them where He was. They would be able to enjoy it, since they knew the same love, and He was in them to be the power of the enjoyment. It was not only their desire and blessing but His. He would have them where He was, if He could not (and far better, surely) remain where they must be for the moment.
Mark here that this connects it with the Father's love, as it rests on Jesus. He desired to have them with Himself. It was part of His delight. He who had walked with Him in His humiliation would show them His glory. But, besides, there was the capacity of enjoying what He enjoyed along with Him; for the Father's name He had revealed as He knew it, that the love wherewith He was loved might be in them.
What a hope is this and (blessed be God) founded on a present blessing, only as yet in an earthen vessel, and known in present imperfection!
And if we are with Christ, it is in the Father's house, where He is in the Father's love. He is not to be alone, but gone to prepare a place for us; nor will He be content to send and fetch us: He will come and receive us to Himself, that where He is we may be also. The same chapter (14) shows us that it is our present knowledge of the Father as revealed in the Son, that is the means of knowing what this joy is, and coming to the enjoyment of it. We shall be there with the Lord, ever with Him: no interruption, no decay of joy, but rather increasing delight, as there always is when the object is worthy of the heart; and here it is infinite; and this in the relation of the Father's affection for the Son. We are to be with Him in that place, with Himself, and with Him in the joy, infinite joy, which He has in the Father's love, a love resting on Him as Son, but in His excellency as such, loved before the world, and now the accomplisher of redemption.
Some other passages will help to fill up the great leading traits here given, both as to the glory and our living with the Lord, showing our identification or association with Him, and the character of this blessedness. “The glory thou hast given me, I have given them,” the Lord says, “that they may be one as we are one, I in them and they in me.” If Christ is in us now the hope of glory, He will be in us then the display of glory; He will be glorified in His saints, and wondered at in all that believed. Here it is not mutuality but manifestation, manifestation through the fullness and excellency of that which is displayed, being in Him that displays it: the Father in Christ, and Christ in us. “Thou in me,” says the Lord. The Father is in Him in divine unity and fullness; and yet here, mark, Christ is spoken of as One to whom glory is given; that is, though a divine person, He is considered also as man. And then “I in them “; so that, as the Father is displayed in the Son, as in Him, so the Son, Christ, is displayed in us, as in us.
I will now refer to Psa. 16 and 17 which collaterally throw light on this part of our subject. In Psa. 16, which is with others quoted in scripture as showing the humanity of Jesus, His taking our sorrows, and position of dependence on and obedience to God (that is, our position as saints), it is written, “I have said to Jehovah, Thou art my Lord, my goodness extendeth not to thee—To the saints on the earth, In them is all my delight.” That is, having the divine glory, He associates Himself with the saints on the earth, the excellent in God's sight. At the close He says, that as One who is the head of these, the path of life is shown to Him; in God's presence is fullness of joy, and at His right hand pleasures for evermore. This then in principle is a part of our hope as His “companions,” though He be anointed with the oil of joy above us. We are in God's presence where fullness of joy is. Where God's presence is, it fills all things and excludes what is contrary to itself. It necessarily makes infinitely and perfectly happy. It sufficed for Christ's hope—He who knew it best and perfectly; surely then for ours; and as we have seen, we have a nature capable, without alloy or mixture, of perfectly enjoying that presence.
Let us add too that we shall not lose the Holy Ghost by being in glory: loss indeed it would be. Our nature of joy will be the new nature, the divine nature of which we are made partakers; our power of joy the Holy Ghost who dwells in us. It is striking that even Jesus, after His resurrection, gave commandments to His apostles by the Holy Ghost. Compare Rom. 8.
Psa. 16 gives the fruit of dependence; Psa. 17 what God will be found as a righteous answer to Christ's claim in virtue of His walk and obedience, to the beholding Jehovah's face and awaking after His likeness. Of this we have spoken on 1 John 3. The beholding God's face we find again in Rev. 22: only it is there in a general way the glory. God and the Lamb are thrown together so to speak. It is not the Father, and being with the Son. God and the Lamb that was slain are brought objectively into one point of view. The portion there shown to us is seeing His face, His servants serving Him, His name on our foreheads; that is, privilege in approaching, service as it should be, and the perfect and evident witness in us of Whose we are. This is a mere external part of the joy; but it is most precious, and not to be omitted.
Luke 9 will also afford us light both on the glory and on living with Christ. It is we know a picture, or momentary manifestation, of the glory of the kingdom. Moses and Elias are in the same glory with Christ. They are with Him, in all the intimacy of familiar conversation, talking with Him. They are talking of what necessarily most interests Christ Himself, and man too—of His death, and that in connection with the great change about to take place in God's ways, His death at Jerusalem. They do so with a divine knowledge, for it was not yet come. The excellent glory too is there: into it they enter. Remark that Christ speaks of the same things with the same familiarity to His disciples on the earth.
Another testimony (Rev. 2:1717He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches; To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the hidden manna, and will give him a white stone, and in the stone a new name written, which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it. (Revelation 2:17)) gives what is more personal; for all we have spoken of is more common to all saints. We shall have a white stone, that is, the perfectly approving testimony of the Lord; and on it a name written which no one knoweth but he that received it. This is a joy and communion and personal knowledge of the Lord, which was for him alone that had it, between his soul and Christ.
We have thus spoken of what is personally or individually enjoyed. There is, besides all this, the presenting of the church to Christ; and the glory of the kingdom, if we look downward toward that over which we shall reign. These however are not at present my object. But how bright and blessed is the hope that is before us, founded on the acceptance of Christ Himself! To see Him; to be like Him, and with Him in His own relationship with the Father; to converse with Him with divine intelligence; to be before God with Him; to enjoy the unclouded, unmingled, blessedness of His presence, as He and with Him; yet to receive it all from Him, and owe it all to Him. Another point in the Transfiguration is worthy of all attention. Moses and Elias enter into the cloud. Now this cloud was the dwelling-place of the divine glory. Hence the three apostles feared, when Moses and Elias entered into it. But not so do we read of Moses and Elias. This then is another part of our hope. If a voice comes out of the cloud for those on earth, it is the home of those who have their place in the heavenly glory. Nor do I doubt that Psa. 145 gives us something analogous on earth to the intercourse between the Lord and Moses and Elias. If you look at verses 5-7, there is the intercourse between Messiah and the godly in the excellent glory of Jehovah; but this by the bye.
Let the reader remark how all this joy has its counterpart and commencement of realization down here, save the glory of the body alone. The heart knows that, how sweet soever the common joy of saints (a necessary proof and accompaniment of the holy liberty of the Spirit in a pure heart), yet in joys and sorrows there is a looking to Jesus, a communion with Jesus, a dependence of heart on His approbation, in which none can participate. On high it will be perfectly possessed and enjoyed in the white stone and the new name. The heart that knows Him could not do without this.
Remark too how various the joy is; and so it is now. I delight in the nature of God; I delight in a Father's love. I delight in the glory of Jesus; I delight in my intimacy with Him; I delight in the blessedness of being with the Son before the Father; I delight in His being a man with whom I am, yet one divinely perfect. I delight in God and the Lamb—the blessed and glorious display of redeeming counsels and divine glory. I delight in being like Christ. I delight in all the saints being like Him; I delight in His being glorified in them. I delight in adequate service, in a full and perfect witness, in a fit and heavenly worship. I delight in what is the glory of Christ Himself as such: it is what is common to all, and what is peculiar to oneself.
The Christian will remark too that, in enjoying Christ in glory, he will not lose the blessed feeding on a humbled Savior: we know this now also. We delight in communion and in hope in the glorified Lord; but we turn back and feed on Jesus, lowly and rejected on the earth. If He is what we hope for in glory, He is what we need on earth. But our heavenly state will surely not diminish our power of delighting in the perfection of that blessed One. And as the pot of the manna, which had nourished Israel in the desert, was to be kept in the ark in Canaan, that Israel in the rest might know what had sustained them in the desert, so we shall eat of that hidden manna which has fed and nourished our souls in our pilgrimage.
But I close. May hope be as living in the saints as the object is worthy of all their hearts. May they abound in hope by the power of the Holy Ghost. As throwing light on this, let me recommend Eph. 1, where our position before God, our relationship with the Father, and the difference between our calling and our inheritance, are very clearly brought out. J. N. D.