THE GREATER THE HEIGHT THE GREATER THE POWER
THE GREATER THE HEIGHT THE GREATER THE POWER
As to ————’s remark about ‘high truth’ (as they call it) depressing one, of course it would, if Christ were not my life, and if He were not sitting where I am seeking to be in spirit. Caleb, as you have been hearing, sets forth how a mere man was sustained by God in an unknown and untravelled path, but the case with us is that we follow Him who is our life and strength in the path where He has gone before, having overcome all that lies between; there is nothing to depress now, as there might have been to a Caleb; for all has been perfectly overcome, all is perfectly [p. 89] assured to me in the One who is set down at the right hand of God, and it is really not the question whether I can get there, but whether He is there. Is the greater than Caleb in the land of promise? Yes. Then Caleb’s daughter is surely there, nay, she has more, for she has both the upper springs and the nether springs — association with Christ there, and the Holy Ghost here. ————’s speech is simply a misconception of the fulness of Christ’s work and the completeness of our identification with Him. I find that no one, who is really in Christ, consciously a new creation, thinks anything too high which puts him closer to Christ. Love could never be too near to its object. Nearness to Christ is the instinct of divine life, as we see in the first question of the two disciples who followed Jesus (John 1), “Where dwellest thou?” Why is not this the first question now? Because there is not simple devotedness of heart to Christ.
———— has written a book on communion, in which the nearest and dearest thought in the heart of Christ is never alluded to. Levelling down is what he terms communion; to me it is a very sad book. I feel the true servant as he knows the mind of Christ, as he is in communion with Him, will have conflict in spirit for the saints who are so dear to Him; but though the more I am in His mind, the deeper will be my conflict, because I cannot be satisfied with anything short of His mind, yet the more shall I be in all the grace and patience that is in Him, for as I am with Him, I receive of Himself as a whole, if I may use the expression, and not merely virtues from Him; and though I suffer more because of the state of things around me, I am at the same time better able to bear up and to overcome than when I was suffering less, so that the deeper the sense one has of the need of the saints the more one is like Shammah in the field of lentils (2 Samuel 23: 11, 12).