THE GAIN OF KNOWING CHRIST AS HEAD
THE GAIN OF KNOWING CHRIST AS HEAD
I ask myself, what do I most desire for you? I desire that you may so know Christ as to hold Him as your Head. Though I know so little of it myself, yet through the Lord’s favour to me I know enough to be assured of its magnitude. I think it is possible to behold the Lord in glory and realise the effect, and yet not to know Him as Head. Isaac may have superseded Ishmael in your heart, and yet you might not know Christ as your Head. I can hardly convey the immensity of this knowledge. If I knew it better I should convey it better; but I know that in order to derive from Him as my Head I must be outside of everything human, I must be where there is neither Jew nor Greek, etc., but where Christ is everything. How little there is a continuous living in the consciousness of His dictation where there is no human voice to be heard, but once you enter on your right, through grace, the more you will cultivate it. I do not mean that one has to leave this world actually, but one has to be morally outside of it, “dead with Christ from the rudiments of the world”. I do not believe that you can realise what it is for the Spirit to conduct you to Christ where He is until you know Him outside of everything human as the source and fountain of everything to you; in a word, that He is your Head, and that He who is your Head is the Head of every saint. He is indeed Head of every man, but it is only the saints who have accepted Him as such; and, alas! very [p. 265] few know it. I am sure, though one may know very little of this great grace, that there is fresh and constant blessing to us from even seeking it. Once it is known in the Spirit it can never be lost, though you may not always be in the virtue of it. I desire it for you as I do for myself, because I am assured nothing can have the same effect in satisfying the heart which is attached to the Lord. Beholding Christ in glory you are transformed. When Christ is formed in you, Christ lives in you. Wonderful grace! but when you know Him as Head it is not merely that everything that is not of Him is given up or surrendered, but that you see everything in an entirely new way, as if -you were not your old self at all; you see everything as Christ sees it, and this not by merely seeing it in scripture, but He directs you to scripture in corroboration of His mind. In one word, you derive from Him. May this great grace be well known to you.
My subject last night was — Heaven is our place. If this were realised now the earth and all that suits earth would lose its hold on us.
The Lord bless you much.