Everything we find in the good tidings, or gospel, makes God’s side prominent. We like to make the sinner prominent because we are thinking of ourselves; but in the gospel we ever find God’s side prominent—God’s manner to the sinner. It is the extent of His blessings in Christ for the lost one! The Prodigal not only got a new mind, but a new appearance, and a new place. So that it will not do to limit the gospel to the sinner’s need. It is not enough to see the judgment removed; but you must see that all the thing which was under judgment, is also removed—the sinful nature that earned the judgment of God. Paul says, “If Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the Spirit is life because of righteousness.” This complete deliverance from the flesh was never seen fully even in type, till the case of the thief on the Cross. There we see a man a thoroughly changed being. A man dead here, and alive in heaven! It is not only deliverance from the fear of sin and death, but the very leprous body of sin set aside in death for a glorious body.
If I have learned, ever so feebly, the scope and purpose of the Gospel, I am anxious not only to keep clear of sins, but to keep clear of the flesh itself, the nature which produced the sins, and all that to which the flesh would respond.
Look at the story of the Prodigal son, and see what it discloses. It gives us a simple tale of endless blessing. The Father’s feelings about the Prodigal. It is He who runs in the story. The Prodigal wakes up in the distant scene of his disgrace and ruin, from his course; but he only learned the Father’s heart from Himself. We lose sight of the motive which actuated the Father’s heart, and consequently we are weak in learning what it effects. In these two points we are defective. The motive on the Father’s side—the effect of the motive on the Prodigal’s. He says to the servants, “Bring forth the best robe and put it on him.” His investiture is entirely new. He is not only new in heart and mind, but new in appearance too. It was not putting a new robe on the old rags. This is what is affected by an imperfect gospel, and therefore imperfect practice comes from imperfect doctrine. He must go into the Father’s house, new in heart and mind as well as in appearance. He must go in, in a manner suited to the Father’s heart and house. Everything had come forth new from it to fit him for his place; it was not restoring anything to him of that which he had squandered and lost. He had borne the image of the earthly; he will bear the image of the heavenly, so that he gets even now an investiture from heaven. A wretched prodigal transferred to the highest place, as well as the highest condition. This tells out its own tale of the heart of God to a poor, ruined sinner.
Dear reader, are you seeking to know the thought of God about you as you seek the things of the world? It is revealed to you in His word; but you don’t see it because you are not looking for it as you are for them.
Look at the case of the thief. A man brings himself to an ignominious death-he has not one word to say for himself—and there you see God’s Son beside him, revealing the depth of the Father’s love to that poor prodigal! That is what the living God, who sitteth in the circle of the heavens, ruling over all, has done to tell out His heart for a poor prodigal. Yet the prodigal’s blessing does not stop even there. No; he is to come into the Father’s house, to eat with the Father of the fatted calf! How sad to find souls stopping halfway. They are content to know their sins forgiven, and go on without the sense of the investiture suited to the Father’s house. Yet it is in this sense, I find, while I journey here, that God is made known to my soul, as a poor prodigal, so that I may joy in Him! Even here I get the consciousness of being a new creature in Christ; one who is to be conformed fully to the image of His Son. One who is created in Christ Jesus for a new order of existence altogether. Therefore Paul says, “God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world.” (Gal. 6:1414But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world. (Galatians 6:14).) I am severed from it, and it from me. Souls here exclaim, Oh, but about my business? Well, you have got the grace of Christ for it too; even a slave is to adorn the doctrine of God his Saviour in all things. You are to carry about the dying of Jesus here, that the life of Jesus may be manifest in your body; an earthen vessel carrying about a treasure; a lamp within a pitcher! You are to go through the ordinary transactions of life in the grace of Christ.
Now, do you believe that if you had tasted the joys of the Father’s house, anything in the world would have power to detain you here? The brightest thing would pale before them—all your projects and prospects would go.
Poor and feeble as we are, have not some tasted of these satisfying springs? But then, are we living on the earth to manifest here that we are saved from it, from the flesh, from all our ruin? Saved to walk as Christ, in the power and character of His life? In joy of heart, because in spirit in all that is suited to the Fathers house, as having tasted of its joys, and eaten them? Are we marked a singular and peculiar people as we pass through the world?
We ought to be a peculiar people; the exhibition of the divine colors—the life of Jesus manifested in our bodies. Souls sink to a low place when they know not fellowship with the Father and the Son. They lose the sense of having life and incorruptibility for their portion, when they have to do in practice and will with the world and the flesh which is judged. Do you wonder then that they are not happy? They have no sense of present deliverance in Christ—of a place in Christ. Interest yourself for a moment in the grandeur of what God offers you; get a glimpse of that which “eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him, but (which) God hath revealed unto us by His spirit;”—(1 Cor. 2:9-109But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. 10But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. (1 Corinthians 2:9‑10))—and then tell me, “I will go and look for other things to till my heart! You could not. God unfolds it to you. Will you turn away your eye to a poor fleeting world, soon to be submerged in judgment? We know not how soon the trumpet may sound—very soon it may be! Turn from it then, as the thief turned from it. His eye turned to Jesus as he said, “Lord, remember me.” He appealed to that One who was sent from God—the Lord of life and glory, on the Cross for him. And, oh, what an answer He returned him! “Today shalt thou be with me in paradise.” In the highest place and condition He had to bestow.