Thus the complete christian position is before our hearts in the testimony of John the Baptist, secured in the glory of His Person, and in the order of the divine work that brings us into it. All the divine fullness was pleased to dwell in Him. But if He is thus presented, there is also, as we have seen necessarily going before that any might receive Him, the work of sovereign grace by which we are born of God. Then there is contained in the glory of His Person, that He was the Lamb to take away sin according to the exigencies of God's own glory and of our discovered condition-and lastly, when by His precious blood our sins had been washed away, the Holy Ghost is given to bring us consciously into our wholly new place in Christ; for if any man be in Christ there is a new creation, old things are passed away, all things are become new. We are complete in Christ, before the Godhead's fullness. What a salvation it is, complete in its three parts, presented, too, in the order in which they are made good to our souls. First, life, and with it the conviction, of our sins, for the life was the light of men; secondly, the blood of the cross, and a full and everlasting forgiveness by it; and lastly, the Holy Ghost, seal of the faith that believes God's testimony to it, that we may be established in Christ in the full christian position. Of course, as yet it was only found in the testimony of the glory of Christ, save that there was a positive actual work of divine quickening going on that any might receive Him.
Now we come to what may well challenge our hearts, as to the effect of this grace in salvation when fully known to our souls. For it is just here we have an historical incident of surpassing interest brought in, as the few given in the Gospel of John are always, to illustrate the doctrine in hand. " Two disciples of John heard him speak, and they followed Jesus." Blessed practical effect of this truth, beloved brethren, too often lacking with us! And they followed Him, not for anything more that they could get from Him, but with one object. And, oh! what it tells of the manner of the love displayed in God come into this world in Christ! So completely had He won the confidence of these two hearts in attracting them after Himself; that their object that first day they ever knew Him is to find out where He dwells, that they may dwell with Him. The fruit of His grace as He turned and saw them following is sweet to the Lord in this cold heartless world, and He draws out the expression of it by His question " What seek ye?" Can He put such a question to us? We rest in the wonderful position we have been established in. It is well. It is the basis of any proper fruit of Christianity. But what are we seeking? For let not our hearts be deceived into thinking we are seeking nothing. It is impossible. The heart was made for an object, and a personal object, and nothing but a divine one can satisfy it. So that if we are not seeking Christ, we are assuredly seeking somethinffb that is not Christ. Ah! is it not the secret of so much failure, of so little brightness and power of christian life, of so little testimony for Him in separation from the world, where there is no question of the full christian place. There is not the attraction of Christ known personally as the one bright blessed object of the heart eclipsing all else. Not so could these disciples know their place; but thus early in their knowledge of Him they were bent on one thing, " Where dwellest thou?" And the Lord accepts and ratifies the desire, as of His own awakening in their hearts, " Come and see." " He satisfieth the longing soul."
But I think we may see a more extended scope in the place this touching incident has, at the opening and as the frontispiece of this Gospel. It is the awakening of a need in the soul, to which the Gospel of John supplies the answer. The other gospels tell 'us of the Son of man that had not where to lay His head in the world He created. This is the revelation of the heavenly home of the Son of God. He dwells in the bosom of the Father. He has come to reveal it that we may find our home now in spirit, and forever there with Him where He finds His. It was just what these two disciples, if there were but two, were drawn after Him to seek. Oh to know more of the power of such an attraction! and then we shall be more prepared for the full heavenly association with Himself, to which this gospel is the blessed moral introduction. In the light of what follows in it, " Come and see" is really the invitation to look into heaven now, and become familiar with it as His home and ours.
This testimony of heavenly things comes very early. Only, before there can be the reception of it, there must come the earthly testimony of the need of our condition in view of what is heavenly. " If I have told you earthly things and ye believe not, how shall ye believe if I tell you of heavenly things?" The Son of man had come down from heaven to tell of what is there-" the Son of man who is in heaven," even when thus testifying of it on: earth. (Chapter 3:12,13.) But in chapter 4 the richest heavenly things of divine grace in the Person of Jesus are presented in vain (vers. 10-15), till the Lord turns the testimony in upon what she is, and the first ray of divine intelligence enters as ever through the conscience. " He that cometh from heaven is above all, and what he bath seen and heard that he testifieth, and no man receiveth his testimony." Still there was this testimony in all its perfection, and grace working, as we have seen, that we might receive it-the Father drawing to the Son, that when we come, we may find the Son revealing the Father, as only the Son can, and in special character as the Son who dwells in His bosom. " No man hath seen God at any time: the only-begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him." Thus when the time was come, the testimony of His words and works being rejected, that He should leave the world and go to the Father, and He leads the thoughts of His people to the Father's house for the first time in scripture (chap. 14), He can say, " Whither I go ye know." As though He would say, You know heaven quite well; the Father's house is no strange place to you. How can it be possible? Philip seizes the truth, so far at least that the Father's presence must make all the blessedness of the Father's house he asks, " Show us the Father and it sufficeth us," but only to show how far he had been from discerning the proper glory of the Lord Jesus as of an only-begotten Son with the Father. " Have I been so long with you and hast thou not known me, Philip? He that hath seen me hath seen the Father. Believest thou not that I am in the Father and the Father in me?"-His words and works, all that He was, made the revelation of the Father. So that however little hearts entered into it then or now, there had been revealed, and shining out in Him morally here, every characteristic trait of the divine and everlasting blessedness of heaven.
Nor was this all. He whose presence here had been the revelation of a place so new to the thoughts of His people, was now going to take His place as man, as the revealed and known center of all the joy and blessedness and glory of that place. For " I go to prepare a place for you "-Himself the home and intimate link of their and our hearts with the place, His going there all the preparation of it possible or needed, to give us our place there in spirit with Him, till He comes to receive us to Himself. Hence the word never speaks of our going to heaven, but to Him. The person makes the place, even in natural things, how much more in divine!
But there was more in His heart for us-more that we needed to connect us in power with the place thus revealed to us. He had been the manifestation in His own Person when here of all that makes heaven what it is forever. He has gone to take His place there as the One who loved us and gave Himself for us, that our hearts might follow Him there as to their own familiar home. And now from that home of love and joy and glory, He has sent the Holy Ghost to be the power of our association with Him in it, and thus of our enjoyment of such heavenly blessedness (Chapter 14:16-20.) It is the full blessed answer to the awakened longing of the soul, " Where dwellest thou?"-the " Come and see " of Jesus in answer to it, that we may "abide with him." Thus we have before us in this gospel, the main elements, morally, that go to form a heavenly people upon earth, left here to express what is heavenly, and thus only truly to represent a rejected, heavenly Christ, while waiting for Him.
When the Lord Jesus was glorified and the Holy Ghost was come, we find this expressed as the normal christian position, and the responsibility that flows from it. " As is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly." We are constituted such by the grace that has called us to Himself, but not without the revelation of a new sphere suited to us as such. " What 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, God hath revealed unto us by his Spirit." Hence " we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen." (2 Cor. 4:1818While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal. (2 Corinthians 4:18).) But it is only by faith that this is true to us, so that we are willing rather to be absent from the body and present with the Lord for the actual sight of them (chap. v. 7, 8), seeing through a glass darkly now but then face to face. Still the things that are eternal are revealed now that we may look at them; and more, as a risen people, " risen with Christ, seek those things which are above [and here we see the power of the link of Christ's presence there for our hearts], where Christ is, sitting on the right hand of God." (Col. 3) And we are exhorted to set our mind (for the Spirit of God supposes that our affections will be there and says nothing of them) on things above and not on things on the earth. The mind is distinct from the affections. For as it has been truly put in illustration of this difference-a man's affections may rest in his family, and his mind be all the while engrossed in his business. Now the Spirit would have our minds engrossed with Christ. For many walk, the same apostle tells us, weeping, who mind (using the same word) earthly things, and are enemies of that which is the distinctively separative power of Christianity, the cross of Christ, whatever their profession to be His. And then in one blessed expression of it he sums up the whole christian position, viewed practically, " Our citizenship is in heaven." He used a word of far reaching force for a Greek mind, who held all other relationships and interests in life subordinate to his citizenship. As though he would say: all that forms the life morally, in relationship, love, motive, object, and joy, is found for us in heaven now; whence we await in hope, too, the Lord Jesus as Savior, to change this body of humiliation into the likeness of His body of glory according to the working by which He is able even to subdue all things unto Himself.
Earnestly would I raise the question then, beloved brethren, in our souls, if in our christian place before God, have we been saved to rest in that place, or from it, as the clear starting-point, now to seek Christ for His own beauty and excellence, as our one worthy and individual object? Like one of old who could say, " One thing have I desired of the Lord that will I seek after, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord." But if our hearts are set for this by His grace, we 'cannot find Him in the world out of which He has been rejected. He is ascended up to the scene of which morally He had been the full revelation in His own Person here, and our hearts follow Him. He draws them there that He may satisfy the desire He has awakened, in the enjoyment of the heavenly things of His home and presence. " Come and see. And they came and saw where he dwelt, and abode with him that day." " He satisfieth the longing soul," in ever-increasing measure, and with increasing capacity and longing 'now; in the divine fullness of it when we are with Himself forever. " Father, I will that they also whom thou hast given me be with me where I am." " I will come again and receive you unto myself." " Surely I come quickly." " Even so, come, Lord Jesus."-J. A. T.
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