“We have the full knowledge of accomplished redemption, we know that we are sitting in the heavenly places in Christ. Our conscience is forever purged. God will remember our sins and our iniquities no more. But the effect of this work is, that we are entirely His, according to the love that is shown in the sacrifice that accomplished it. Morally, therefore, Christ is the all in all of our souls. It is evident that if He loved us, if he gave Himself for us, when in us there was no good thing, it is in having absolutely done with ourselves that we have life, happiness, and the knowledge of God. It is in Him alone that we find the source, the strength, and the perfection of this.
“Now, as to justification, this truth makes our position perfect. In us there is no good thing. We are accepted in the Beloved—perfectly accepted in His acceptance, our sins being entirely put away by His death. But, then, as to life, Jesus becomes the one object, the all in all of our souls. In Him alone the heart finds that which can be its object—in Him who has so loved us and given Himself for us—in Him who is entire perfection for the heart. As to conscience, the question is settled in peace through His blood: we are righteous in Him before God, while exercised daily on that ground. But the heart needs to love such an object, and in principle will have none but Him, in whom all grace, devotedness to us, and every grace, according to God’s own heart, is found.
“The Church—loved, redeemed, and belonging to Him—having by the Spirit understood His perfections, having known Him in the work of His love, does not yet possess Him as she knows Him. She sighs for the day when she will see Him as He is. Meanwhile He manifests Himself to her, awakens her affections, and seeks to possess her love, by testifying all His delight in her. She learns also that which is in herself—that slothfulness of heart which loses opportunities of communion with Him. But this teaches her to judge all that in herself, which weakens the effect on her heart of the perfections of her Beloved. Thus she is morally prepared, and has capacity for the full enjoyment of communion with Him; when she shall see Him as He is, she will be like Him. It is not the effort to obtain Him; but we seek to apprehend that for which we have been apprehended by Christ. We have an object that we do not yet fully possess, which alone can satisfy all our desires—an object whose affection we need to realize in our hearts—an end which He in grace pursues by the testimony of his perfect love towards us, thereby cultivating our love to Him, comforting us even by the sense of our weakness, and by the revelation of His own perfection, and thus showing us all in our own hearts that prevents our enjoying it. He delivers us from it, in that we discover it in the presence of His love. It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of cultivating these holy affections which attach us to Christ, and cause us to know His love, and to know Himself.
“Practically, what deep perfection of love was in that look which the Lord gave Peter when he had denied Him! What a moment was that when, without reproach, although instructing him, He testified His confidence in Peter by committing to him, who had thus denied Him, the sheep and the lambs so dear to His heart, for whom He had just given His life!
“Now this love of Christ’s, in its superiority to evil, a superiority that proves it divine, reproduces itself as a new creation in the heart of every one who receives its testimony, uniting him to the Lord who has so loved him.
“Is the Lord anything else than this for us? No, my brethren, we learn His love, we learn in these exercises of heart to know Him Himself.”