HEAVENLY LIFE

John 12: 24-26; 20: 17; 21: 8; 16: 12-14; 15: 1-3

What has been brought before us already is that the whole object of Satan’s opposition is to prevent us from entering into and enjoying the calling of God—that which is our true place and portion by the grace of God in connection with His blessed Son. I am quite sure that any one of us who has sought to enter upon and enjoy in any little measure this heavenly association with Christ, who is not content with merely accepting it as a doctrine, must be conscious of the persistent opposition of Satan which meets us on every hand. But what I have before me in these scriptures is to present the other side. The great object of the Lord Jesus Christ, and of the present ministry of the Holy Ghost, is to lead our hearts into the enjoyment of association with Him in that place where He is. I believe this, too, this intimately associated with our service and with waiting for the Lord. The more we have the sense that we are one with Him where He is in heavenly glory outside this world, the more we shall realise that we are only down here to serve Him—our only business down here is to follow and to serve Him. We do not belong to this place, our life is hid with Christ in God; we are here only to serve, and the more we are in company with Him, and have the sense that we belong to Him where He is, the more truly see shall be waiting for Him. The more we know what it is by faith and in spirit to be with Him there, the more we shall realise how apart we are from everything here and long to be with Him. I believe why we so little wait for Him is that we have known so little of present association with Him where He is. The object of the truth is to connect us by the present power of the Spirit of God with the Lord Jesus where He is, and to lead us into present actual association with Him there where He is.

Turn to John 12: 24, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit”. If we think of the Lord's death—what was in His mind when He laid down His life for us? What was His object? If each gave an answer to these questions we might get many different replies. With many it would be limited to the thought of securing pardon for their sins, or in some way meeting their need as sinners, securing their salvation from eternal wrath; and no doubt all this was included, but that was not the chief object of the Lord Jesus in laying down His life. Just before He had been acknowledged as Son of David and Son of man, and everything appeared as if the time had come for Him to take His earthly glories; at once He turns away from it and begins to speak of His death, with a view to a totally different object. Here in John 12 He says, “Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die” ... He turns His back on all this earthly glory, and speaks of His death as that by which He would have a heavenly company associated with Him in the place He was about to take with the Father in heavenly glory. It was that He might not be alone in all the blessedness of His own life in the favour of God, and as Son with the Father. He was ever the Son dwelling in the bosom of the Father; but while on earth He was alone in this blessed life. The answer to this is verse 17 of chapter 20. Having accomplished redemption, gone down into the place of death, and having glorified God there under the judgment due to sin; rising from the dead He meets the one whose heart was so devoted to Him, and says, “Go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God”. He is not alone now. As He ascends and takes His place before God in heavenly glory, as Son before His Father, in all the blessedness of these relationships, He identifies His people with Himself. He says, “Go tell my brethren”. They were no longer His earthly brethren, but identified with Him now in this heavenly relationship. He can say, My Father and your Father now; He makes His home their home now. That is a present thing. He brings them in spirit and in truth to His own home, not yet in body but in spirit. How does He bring them to His home? By revealing the Father to them; by introducing them to the Father. “I have declared unto them thy name, and will declare it”, John 17: 26. Have we entered into this—that we are brethren with the Lord Jesus Christ in that heavenly relationship, in that heavenly place He has taken before the Father; that all that God is as Father to Christ, all that He was manifested to be to Him as man down here, He is now to us; that we are brought into all the fulness and blessedness of that relationship now—that we are in the Son, and thus in the Son's place before the Father? The object of His laying down His life for us is that we might be one with Him in His place before the Father, and enjoy all the present blessedness of this relationship as now one with Him, and introduced in Him to the Father to enjoy the communion which belongs to this relationship. The whole of this heavenly company is one with Him now in all the fulness and blessedness of that place. Every believer is made one with Him in that place.

That is the first point.

Chapter 13 is the present ministry of the Lord Jesus, the expression of His present care and love and interest in us as His people. It is a great thing for our hearts to have the sense of the Lord’s present care and interest in us, and to know His thought about us. He is there, and we are here in this world. He prays for those the Father had given Him out of the world. There He is in all the present activity of His love. What is His thought, His desire for us? what is He seeking to do? It is expressed in the word to Peter, when He is about to wash his feet: “If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with me”. It is not a question of getting blessing through Him, but He is seeking by this present service on high that we should have part with Him. It is not merely seeking grace for us to travel through the wilderness; it is not His service as the Advocate or the Intercessor on high, to secure for us restoration of soul when we have sinned, or to obtain for us the grace and help we need for our wilderness path; it is more. It is that He may lead our hearts by His Spirit into the enjoyment of present company with Him, that He may fit us for present communion with Himself, that we may enjoy this part with Him. I will not say any more on this point, but would ask, How much do we know of this? However little we may enter into it, it is the great thought and desire of the Lord Jesus for us. His great object is to dissociate us from everything of this world, and of man, in order to lead us into present communion with Himself where He is; the enjoyment of the relationship in which He has set us with His God and Father.

Now I turn to chapter 16, where we find what is the present ministry of the Holy Ghost which is to this same end. “I have yet many things to say unto you ... when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth”. By what means does the Spirit seek to connect our hearts with the Lord Jesus Christ? “He shall glorify me: for he shall receive of mine and shall shew it unto you”. This is a different thought from the end of chapter 15, where it is the public testimony of the Holy Ghost. The Lord speaks of Him as the One who should bear witness to His glory in a world where He had been disowned and rejected. But here it is His testimony to the individual believer. To us he bears witness to the glory of the Lord Jesus; He presents from the Word the Person of the Lord Jesus in the glory, and He takes of His things and shews them to us that we might be occupied with Him; He seeks to engage our hearts with Him, and thus to lift us above all that would occupy and engage us here or occupy us with ourselves. When the heart by the Spirit's ministry is occupied with the Lord Jesus. we cease to be occupied with ourselves. “He shall glorify me”. We get a figure of this in Abram’s servant going to Rebekah—he sought to attract her heart by revealing all that belonged to Isaac; all the greatness of Isaac. “He shall take of mine, and shall shew it unto you”. What the Lord enters into as Man risen and glorified to shares with us. We share in His things; all He has He causes us to share with Him, all His own things, what characterises the portion of the Son now. Nothing less than this. Therefore we can only know and enjoy it in communion with Him; we have nothing apart from Him; all is in Him: His joy is to share with us His things. The Spirit reveals them to us to connect our hearts livingly with the Lord Jesus Christ, and make them good in our souls so that we may enjoy present communion with Him where He is gone to be with the Father.

Lastly I turn to chapter 14. He is coming again. What is our thought in connection with His coming again? Is it simply a desire for relief, that we may be free from labour, toil, and suffering? He says, “I will come again, and receive you unto myself: that where I am, there ye may be also”. That is according to His prayer in chapter 17: “Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am”. That is what is in His heart; nothing else will satisfy the love of the heart of the Lord Jesus Christ than that the whole company of His brethren should be with Him where He is. Will nothing else satisfy our hearts? Have we no other thought in connection with the hope of His coming? To be in His company, to behold His glory? If this love fills our hearts and we are drawn into present company with Himself, to taste in any little measure the blessedness of communion, nothing could satisfy us but that where He is we shall forever be, nothing to hinder the enjoyment of His company, where He will have His joy in the company of His own. It is the present portion of every saint, and what the Spirit of God seeks to lead us into now, present association with the Lord Jesus Christ; and the hope of the future to be with Him where He is, to see Him, and to know that His home will be our eternal dwelling-place! The more we enter into the truth that we belong to heaven, that all our blessing is there, the more we enjoy this heavenly life in communion with the Lord Jesus, the more shall we realise that we are on the earth only to serve Him; His is our one business, and the more shall we be as those who have no portion or hopes here, really awaiting His return. If we are not practically dissociated from the world and earthly things we cannot be really looking for the Lord to come. May the Lord give us to see what is in His heart, and to enjoy it now by His Spirit.

From Truth for the Time vol 3 (1891)