WHAT IS THE OTHER SIDE 3

John 12: 23-4; 20: 17-21; 21: 13-15

The thought before me in reading these scriptures is, What is ‘the other side’? and how a soul in faith reaches it. ‘The other side’ is the other side of death, outside all that belongs to man in his present life in this world. It is God’s side, Christ’s side. It is that sphere where God is revealing Himself and acting according to His own counsels. We were hearing that the work of Christ has enabled God to come out and to approach man, not merely according to his need, but according to His own heart, and moreover to bring man to Himself and into all the blessings of His house according to His own counsel. And surely this is entirely outside of man’s responsibility; it is what existed in the purpose of God before ever man was created or placed in responsibility. God is now acting according to His own nature and character, and doing that which is according to His own heart. It is God’s side. When we enter into these things we understand what the apostle speaks of when he says, “Whether we be beside ourselves, it is to God”, 2 Cor 5: 13. That is, when we are occupied with God and what He is doing in connection with the glory of Christ, we are carried outside ourselves and all that is of ourselves; then we are on the other side. Have we not tasted the blessedness of this? I trust we know, in some measure, what it is to be abstracted from everything connected with ourselves, to be occupied with God and God's things.

Then, again, it is Christ's side of things; it is where He is, where He is known, and where we are associated with Him in those things which are His. He has gone out of this world, and if we would find him, we must go to where He is, we must go to the other side. What we get in John is how the Lord delights to associate us with Himself. Not merely that He imparts blessing to us; that He might do, and will do for others; but He brings us to share His own blessing. Therefore He says, “I ascend unto my Father and your Father, and to my God and your God”. It is not simply “my Father”, but “your Father”. Thus He connects us with Himself in what is His own position and relationship before His God and Father, makes us one with Himself in all the blessing expressed in the words “my Father”, “my God”. Thus He conducts us into that out-of-the-world heavenly condition of life which is revealed in Him as the Son gone back as man to the Father, the other side of sin and death and everything of this world; outside of all that naturally belongs to man as alive in this world. And in view of this, He has sent the Spirit of truth to us to make known these things to us, and to link our hearts with Himself in them, as He says, “He shall receive of mine, and shall shew it unto you. All things that the Father hath are mine, therefore said I, that he shall take of mine, and shall shew it unto you”, John 16: 14. What could exceed the blessedness of this? It is beyond all conception, that you and I are called to enjoy all that order of things where Christ is. What will be our heavenly and eternal portion is given us now as ‘heavenly light’ to cheer and satisfy our hearts. We can never get beyond this, but we are brought to taste it even now, in present communion with the Father and in communion with the Son. What characterises ‘the other side’ is, that there all things are of God, and Christ is all.

As belonging to a scene which is outside the reach and capacities of the natural man, it is evident that we need divine power to enable us to appreciate and enjoy what is there. It is only by the Holy Spirit's ministry and power that we can rise to the possession of what is ours in and with Christ, in that heavenly scene where He is; but, having the holy Spirit, it is our privilege to find our home and our portion there in spirit even now. Another day we shall be there altogether. He said, “Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me be with me where I am”.

Now we come to how the soul in faith reaches all that is the ‘other side’.

First of all, I must understand how Christ has met me on my side, how He has come down in grace and taken up everything on my side, and that, according to God, glorifying Him in connection with all that I have done, and all that I am as a sinner, as He could say in view of the cross: “Now is the Son of man glorified, and God is glorified in him”, John 13: 31. There all His moral glories as Son of man came out, and there He glorified God as to sin, put it away, removing all the judgment for every saint of God. He has removed everything from God's eye, and from our eye too. Until this is known, the soul is incapable of entering into what belongs to Christ and association with Him, because he must necessarily be occupied with himself and his own need. Therefore, when the Lord had sent that wondrous message to His disciples through Mary, He comes into their midst and speaks peace to them, to put them into a condition to enjoy what was expressed in that message. Until deliverance is known, this would be impossible. Hence the Lord sets them in peace, He says, “Peace be unto you”. That word expresses the value of His work. He was there, the living One out of death, the Victor, having by His death once for all settled for us every question as to sin, annulled the power of Satan, and set aside all that sin had brought upon us—death and judgment. When all is done, and in the sense that God has been glorified, He says, “Peace be unto you”. The value of His work is such that we can be before God in perfect peace, without a thought about sin, or about ourselves; we are free. If it be not so with any soul, it is because he is not in the knowledge of what Christ's work has effected. The whole thing is gone, and I am cleared of all by the death of Christ—not only cleared of my sins by His blood, but cleansed of the whole state in which I was by nature, by His death.

But having learnt this, there are certain things which might hinder communion, hinder the enjoyment of our association with Him ‘the other side’: there is the flesh in us, and the world to which it turns. We have therefore to learn and accept all that was expressed in His dying. “Now is the judgment of this world”, John 12: 31. What does that mean? What does His dying speak of? That this world—man’s system—is under the judgment of God. Is that how we look at the world and all that is of man? Have we accepted that? The whole thing—man with all his boasted attainments—judged? If not, we cannot get to ‘the other side’. I believe that the great hindrance is the world. I cannot put one foot on this side, and the other foot on ‘the other side’. I cannot hold God’s things in one hand, and man’s things in the other. “Love not the world”, 1 John 2: 15, 16. What is the world? Does it mean bad things? Not necessarily. Whatever is not of the Father is “of the world”—good or bad. It is the system man has built up for himself in independence of God. Then another thing is, the Lord is rejected. “And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me”. That was the world’s estimate of the Son of God. When Pilate said, “Behold the man!”, the world says, we will not have Him. That is the world; but what makes it more difficult is that the world now has clothed itself with the profession of Christianity, they celebrate His birth and His death. As the Lord said to the Jews, our fathers killed the prophets, and ye build their sepulchres (Luke 11: 48); they might profess, in their day great regard for the prophets, but nevertheless they were of the same generation as those who killed them. So likewise the world, with all its profession of Christianity, is the same world that crucified the Lord. It is important that we should clearly understand this. The world has not changed, it is as much opposed to the Father as ever it was. Let us take it to heart.

A person may say, I do not like to connect myself with that, it means a life of suffering and reproach. Well, you cannot have ‘the other side’ without it. He that loveth his life shall lose it, and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal”, John 12: 25.

One more word. I have set forth certain obstacles, and they are real difficulties, but what is to enable us to overcome them? As our brother has been saying, He constrained them to go over. How does He do it? By presenting Himself to us as an object to attract our hearts. As He said, speaking of the Holy Spirit’s ministry, “He shall take of mine and shall shew it unto you”. Just as Abraham's servant tells of Isaac and of all the riches his father had given him, and having brought forth the jewels and put them on Rebecca, the question is, “Wilt thou go with this man?” I believe that is how the Spirit of God constraints us to go over to ‘the other side’. All the doctrine in the world will not take me there, it must be attachment to the Person of the Lord. That is why Mary was a suitable person to receive that blessed communication which was to conduct her to ‘the other side’. He says, You belong to me up there, in that place to which I am going. She thought of being associated with Him down here in Jewish blessings connected with the earthly kingdom, but He would connect her heart and ours with Himself in that heavenly scene, where we are to share His blessings and joy.

What could her heart want more.

The Lord give us to be drawn to His Person, so that we may say, like Rebecca, “I will go”. May our hearts be free to be conducted by the Spirit of God to Him, so that we may find our home, our most blessed enjoyments—our all—in that scene where He is.

From Truth for the Time vol 4 (1892)