THE PLACE WHERE LOVE IS KNOWN
THE PLACE WHERE LOVE IS KNOWN
You cannot know the love and favour of God to you and be ignorant of the place to which God has called you. The prodigal did not know the climax of the father’s love to him until he was feasting with his father. If he does [p. 259] not answer to the love he does not partake of the feast, and if he is not in the place where God would set him he cannot know or taste or enjoy the love that sets him there; he cannot say — I know the love, but I do not sit and eat; neither can he say — I sit and eat, but I do not know the love. As he sits and eats, so he knows the utmost that love would do, and there it is enjoyed. Love is always working for its utmost purpose, not at Shalem, but at Bethel; there Jacob knows the interest that God has in him. It is not in the well-watered plain, but from Melchisedek that Abraham learns the heart of God towards him. It is not in going back into Egypt, but in going into the land that Caleb knows the delight that God had in him. It is not saying, The time is not come to build the house of the Lord, but in building it that you get the word — From this day will I bless you. Instead of being occupied with present things, “This one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, ... I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3: 13, 14). The knowledge of God’s love draws me into the place where His love enjoys to have me, and where I can enjoy it in its fulness. If I keep to a lower place (while owning the love) I am seeking that the love should display itself to me in the lower place; this it cannot do. It cares for me thus truly, but it can only display itself in the place which is in itself the expression and display of the love. Hence according as God is known to me, so am I in relation to Him. If I see God, that is my Father, as revealed in Christ, I say, “our Father”; but if I know that I am a child through Christ Jesus it is a different and an exceeding greater thing. In the one case I see a Father, in the other I myself say — Father, because I know it in the Spirit of Christ and in association with Him —
‘As sons like Him with Him to be.’ (88:1)