HEAVEN THE HOPE OF THE GOSPEL

HEAVEN THE HOPE OF THE GOSPEL

I agree with you ‘that in the gospel we wait for heaven’, but I am convinced that the slowness or delay in realising our union with Christ, is that the gospel, as of God, and from God, is not apprehended. You get heaven in the gospel. The blessed God has been so infinitely satisfied in the cross that all the distance on His side has gone; a Man has glorified Him, and that Man is in glory, and hence every one believing in Christ now, is accepted in the ^[p. 44] Beloved; his place is in glory, and the more he beholds the Lord’s glory the more is he transformed into the same image. It is really his place. The Father according to His pleasure not only justifies the believer where once he was under judgment, but He compels him to come from the place of judgment and misery, unto His own place where neither sin nor misery has ever been.

You ask me about the sermon on the mount. I see no key to it but the nature of the new man. I do not think that it is the principles of the coming kingdom, I think the principles are those of the man of God. “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect” (Matthew 5: 48) is the highest standard.

I am much interested here, thank the Lord, and I am out every evening. You ask for my subjects. The gospel first, not only the service rendered by Him, but the second great step — the knowledge of His love in doing the service; I consider that when this is known there is progress, and that there is no progress without it.