DESCRIPTIVE OF THE HEAVENLY MAN
DESCRIPTIVE OF THE HEAVENLY MAN
Some try to make the end justify the means — but I am sure the use of any means except the Holy Ghost weakens the testimony, and where the Holy Ghost is sovereign the world opposes, but Christ is glorified, and heavenly things are shewn in compensation for the loss of the world. Read the early part of John 16, and you will see what I say. How could any one be descriptive here of the heavenly Man unless he were in spirit in heaven? The testimony is not that I am saved from hell, but that I am of the heavenly Man, though, of course, I could not be of the heavenly Man unless I were saved from hell.... In John 4 the Lord presents the greatness of God’s gift, but the conscience must be set free before it can be apprehended and enjoyed; that is Paul’s side. The gift cannot be enjoyed until the conscience is at rest through the work. Faith and conscience must go together. The word addresses my conscience; I am made sensible of my responsibility; I believe and own it, and the Spirit enables me to be according to my responsibility. When the conscience of the woman at the well was awakened God is thought of; religion is before her; she says, “I perceive that thou art a prophet. Our fathers worshipped”, etc. (John 4: 19, 20). Then the Lord opens out the immensity of our new relation to God, not only the greatness of our new condition, but that we are to worship the Father in spirit and in truth. The Father is not on earth, He does not come down; we go [p. 165] to Him as sons, and in the life of the Son. No one could be heavenly if he were never in heaven in spirit. The work which secures me a place there has been accomplished to the infinite satisfaction of the blessed God. But I have to appropriate the death of Christ in order to be free from sin and the world; death alone frees me. In Christ’s life I am free; as I accept death with Him I am over death. I am in His life. May your heart enter richly into it, and may you thus delight yourself in the heavenly Man.