IN connection with a believer’s blessings three things, should be clearly distinguished. They are―
1. Announced in the Scriptures.
2. Appreciated through the Spirit.
3. Fully possessed in glory.
There are, moreover, three distinct joys in connection with these three things which Caleb’s history may perhaps serve to illustrate.
1. There was God’s announcement of His mind through Moses: “I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land unto a good land and a large, unto a land flowing with milk and honey” (Ex. 3:88And I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land unto a good land and a large, unto a land flowing with milk and honey; unto the place of the Canaanites, and the Hittites, and the Amorites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites. (Exodus 3:8)) and this was followed by a work which was to bring that announcement into effect. And on the shores of the Red Sea no doubt Caleb sang, with the rest of the “saved” people, “Jehovah hath triumphed”: the slave-master is judged: Canaan is ours! See Exodus 15:1313Thou in thy mercy hast led forth the people which thou hast redeemed: thou hast guided them in thy strength unto thy holy habitation. (Exodus 15:13): “Thou least guided them in Thy strength unto Thy holy habitation.” Then faith, taking one bold stride forward, sees the dukes of Edom, the mighty men of Moab, and the inhabitants of Canaan as “still as a stone,” yea, as powerless to prevent their going into the promised land as the Egyptians, lying dead upon the seashore, were powerless to prevent their leaving “the house of bondage.” in other words, though Canaan was not yet reached, God had spoken, God had acted, and faith, joy-fully, fearlessly, fell in with that, which was in His mind to bring about. “What God has promised He is well able to perform” was the language of Abraham’s faith, and Caleb’s faith could as cheerfully and as confidently say the same thing.
We too, by faith, have seen a great work accomplished, and heard a marvelous announcement in connection with it. We have been told to “rejoice because our names are written in heaven.” We have seen the enemy silenced: we have heard the love of God declared. We believe that God has “triumphed gloriously,” and that the accuser may as well be “as still as a stone,” for that, notwithstanding our numberless sins of a guilty past which he was glad to cast at us; and notwithstanding the fact that with terrible determination he urged the argument in our bewildered hearts that such a holy Being as the living God could never have anything to say to us, short of hurling us to perdition for our sins, yet he could not deny that God’s beloved Son had been to Calvary on our account, and that, while “the wages of sin is death,” God’s love had been declared in the gift of His only begotten Son, and that He had been down to death, in order that the believer “should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
2. There is the present appreciation of that which is in the mind of God for us. This is by the Spirit. Before Caleb went to dwell in Canaan he was privileged to pay a short visit to the “pleasant land,” there to taste the sweetness of its fruit. For this he had necessarily to cross Jordan, for Canaan lay on the other side. So it is with us, if we would have a present taste of the “pleasant land.” Eternal life is declared, again and again, by the beloved Son to be the portion and blessing of the believer (John 6:4747Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me hath everlasting life. (John 6:47)). But it is by the Spirit that we appreciate its present blessedness.
Verse 54. of the same chapter shows that this involves the eating of His flesh and the drinking of His blood; in other words, the personal appropriation of His death. Eating and drinking would surely signify this: we personally appropriate what we eat. “Whoso eateth My flesh, and drinketh My blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day.”
The principle of death must be applied to man on this side, before he can enter into and enjoy that which, in the Risen Exalted One, lies on the other side of death. After His death and resurrection the Holy Spirit came down to carry our hearts, as He did Stephen’s, into that deathless scene where Jesus now is. Eternal life is in His Son.
We are made to feel at home with Him, and to enjoy His present surroundings, the very atmosphere of love itself. There we find ourselves “with joy unspeakable” in that wonderful circle where, before the earth’s foundation, the Father found perfect delight in the Son, and the Son was ever rejoicing before the Father (see Prov. 8:30, 3130Then I was by him, as one brought up with him: and I was daily his delight, rejoicing always before him; 31Rejoicing in the habitable part of his earth; and my delights were with the sons of men. (Proverbs 8:30‑31), and compare with 1 Corinthians 1:2424But unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God. (1 Corinthians 1:24)).
3. There is the eternal possession with Christ of that which God has purposed for us in Christ.
The day came at last when Caleb went to reside in the “pleasant land.” And so shall it be with us.
“We are going; yes, we’re going,
To the place where Jesus is.”
“In Thy presence is fullness of joy; at Thy right hand pleasures for evermore.”
He is bringing many sons to glory, and they are all predestinated to be “conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the Firstborn among many brethren” (Rom. 8:2929For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. (Romans 8:29)). “Whom lie justified, them He also glorified.”
It is for this glory we wait. Blessed be God!
“There in effulgence bright,
Saviour and Guide, with Thee
I’ll walk, and in Thy heavenly light
Whiter my robe shall be.”
But bear this in mind, an eternity with Christ, in the unhindered enjoyment of heavenly bliss, could not add either to the truth of God’s Word or to the efficacy of the redemption-work of His beloved Son. Sixty years of Queen Victoria’s reign did not add one jot to her title to the crown and throne of Great Britain.
It is quite possible for an estate to be mine, and for me not to know it is mine; or to know it is mine by right and title, before I have even tasted a single thing that grew upon it. But it would be poor work to try to make me question my title because of this.
On the other hand, let me remember that rejoicing in the fact that the estate is mine and enjoying the estate itself are very different things. “All things are yours,” and soon shall we be in the blissful possession and eternal enjoyment of them. Till then let us listen to the Spirit’s exhortation “If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things that are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God” (Col. 3:11If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. (Colossians 3:1)).
GEO. C.