(iii) DIVINE WRITING
Jim Brown
In a sense the words spoken previously refer to writing which produces an internal effect in us. The work of God in each of our hearts is wonderful, but there will come a day when what has been written internally will have external expression. "Jehovah will count, when He inscribeth the peoples" (Ps 87: 6). How fine to think of God writing up His people who will populate the heavenly regions, and in doing so, drawing attention to Christ. God can count and inscribe because of these stoops to which we have had reference. I suppose in John 8 when the Lord wrote on the ground, He was obliterating everything that stood out against the woman. Colossians speaks about "having effaced the handwriting in ordinances which stood out against us" Col 2: 14. That woman stood before her accusers, the handwriting in ordinances stood out against her, and she was open to condemnation. But the Lord Jesus stooped down and wrote, and the handwriting in ordinances before which she fell short was erased. Wonderful work of the Lord Jesus! So that we are brought into this great realm of favour, our hearts made malleable and flexible, able to bear the divine writing.
First of all, of course, we rejoice because our names are written in heaven. Blessed divine handwriting that has written our names in the Lamb's own book of life! "Rejoice that your names are written in the heavens" Luke 10: 20. Every one of us from the oldest to the youngest, as trusting in His finished work, can lay hold of that wonderful assurance, that our names have been written in the book of life. Nothing can erase that writing, nothing can efface our inscription there: it is written deep in the power of the blood of the Lamb. That has secured it for the divine pleasure eternally.
The exercises which we go through in our wilderness experience, and in our personal histories with God, create conditions in which the divine writing can take place. But there will come a day when it says "he shall go no more out". That is the overcomer; "and I will write upon him the name of my God". Think of the Lord Jesus Himself actually writing upon each overcomer, the name of His God. It suggests the accolade of divine approval: the emblem of our acceptability before God, by virtue of what Christ has done. Second Corinthians 1 verse 20 says that "whatever promises of God there are, in him is the yea and in him the amen, for glory to God by us". That will come out in glad display eternally, and the proof that every promise of God has been secured for His glory in Christ will be demonstrated in the writing upon us of "the name of my God". God will be able to claim us as His own and proclaim to a universe that we are His and for His glory. Nothing will be able to disturb the wonderful relationship which we have with Christ's God. "I ascend to my Father and your Father, to my God", that is Christ's God, "and your God". His God is our God, and that Name, the name of Christ's God, will be written upon us. What a wonderful prospect and incentive that is.
Then "the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem, which comes down out of heaven". The city will be the aggregate of all on whose hearts in time divine writings have been made; and it is God's. But Christ will write upon every overcomer the name by which the city is known by God. How fine to bear the identity of the city of Christ's God. How near the new Jerusalem is to God! Revelation 21 brings that home to us. It comes down from heaven from God, and it has the glory of God. Think of the glory of God being substantially in that wonderful city, and the Lord Jesus, in writing its name upon us, will indelibly and publicly assert our title to citizenship there.
But then too, "my new name". What delight that fills us with. Who can tell what that name will be! How many titles the Lord Jesus bears! But His new name suggests something fresh and distinctive, the Father's love and appreciation no doubt entering into it. By and by it will be revealed to us because that new name will actually be written upon us. How wonderful to contemplate that! Christ's new name, written upon every redeemed saint who has overcome down here. And it will be in external display. It is as if God would say, I am going to place on every overcomer My own token of the glory and the preciousness of this One to Myself. That is a wonderful climax to divine operations that there will be something externally secured which God can claim as His own, and of which He will not be ashamed, but rather will come out in glad display. The universe will see it. As the redeemed in their bodies of glory walk about the heavenly places, they will be an eternal testimony to the substantiality of divine workmanship and the delightfulness of Christ as Man to God.
May our hearts be freshly encouraged by this wonderful idea of divine writing. He has erased the handwriting in ordinances which stood out against us so that we can be at home where He is loved, and in some way be the manifestation and expression of the triumph of God's operations in men. For His Name's sake.
EDINBURGH
22 July 1997