VALUATION

C.G.Hitchcock

2 Corinthians 4: 16-18; Hebrews 11: 23-26

The thought I have in reading these short passages is the matter of valuation. Valuation is a consideration with which we are all very familiar in life down here when we have to consider either the relative importance of things, or the relative worth of things, or in other words, what one thing may be in value relative to another, one having to be given up for the other. Now, this passage I have read from the second epistle to the Corinthians is in a certain way, as to the first part of what I read particularly, a test. We can understand the statement that is made in verse 16: "Wherefore we faint not; but if indeed our outward man is consumed, yet the inward is renewed day by day". It is a very important matter, and I suppose forces itself upon our attention more as we grow older and experience, as many do, the limitations connected with advancing age; but, as those who have been divinely blessed and are the subjects of the enduring work of God, it is a very great matter for us to realise, and be thankful for – that while we may be conscious of ill health in some cases, or limitation physically with others, we know that our life in Christ, which is a new creation, is being renewed day by day. The work of God is going on and it will be completed according to the measure of likeness to Christ which God has purposed to achieve in each of us through the way of our spiritual development down here before we are taken to be with the Lord. What God has in mind for us will be completed, and it is surely a matter of rejoicing for us all to know that in spite of what may have marked us at times in the course of our present mixed condition of life (and we all have some things to regret, but then we do not occupy ourselves unduly with what is past) we have at the same time had lessons to learn, and then many things in our histories are things for which we can be thankful as being the result of God's grace, and the way which He has led us to maintain our course in the pathway marked out for the saints according to His word for the present time.

Now we have, through that grace and according to the help given us of the Holy Spirit, been brought into this pathway which comparatively few, we must regret to say, have felt they can take, for separation from evil with the most is an obstacle which they have not had the faith, or sought the grace, to overcome, and, if in measure we have done so, it is only through the goodness of the Lord and the faithfulness of God, that we have first stepped into it and then been maintained in this pathway. But the pathway has, in the faith and understanding of our souls, been maintained consciously and, we may say, intelligently, by this valuation that is in the last part of the passage I read, that seen things (and they are all around us and have their attractions) are but for a time – they are temporal, they will not last – and we have through grace committed ourselves to an order of things which is invisible to mortal eye but eternal. It is abiding, and let the younger particularly among us remember that while they may (and we do too, who are older, because we do not discount nature, but we do seek to keep it in its place) enjoy much which is natural, but those among us who are young and have committed themselves to the pathway are those who will more and more discern and value, not so much things that are seen, but things now unseen with which they are connected through grace, which are abiding and can be enjoyed anticipatively here now in the Spirit's power and will last through eternity, when saints will enter upon in actuality divinely established relationships with the Father and the Son, and, being maintained ever by the indwelling Spirit, will enjoy for endless days an eternity of happiness and glory in the sunshine of that love which is the very nature of God.

Now, with regard to what I have read in Hebrews 11, Moses was such an one, coming to evaluate aright things that he had not to merge and so to confuse. Moses could have had everything to go in for and enjoy in a scene wherein he was so placed that no natural joy, or no interest to the mind, would be denied him, but because of his early history, which was over-shadowed divinely and cared for by his parents in faith, there was in him that which could appreciate the moral worth of what was (in type of course, but nevertheless real) the reproach of the Christ, which he esteemed greater riches than the treasures of Egypt. That was possible because of a divine work in his soul, and we must ever remember that what determines our course here as a course pleasing to the Lord and to the glorifying of God in a scene where Christ is largely (we must not say altogether, because there are many around us who love the Lord and serve Him according to their light) in this world rejected, and the work of God within us is that which stabilises us, and enables us, as we exercise faith and rely upon the gracious and powerful service of the Holy Spirit, to go through this scene in a way which commends the glad tidings, and is a support to what is representative of the assembly in its local aspect where we may, according to the ordering of God, be set. May God bless His word.

LONDON

2 September 1986