THE CHURCH'S PLACE IS IN HEAVEN

THE CHURCH’S PLACE IS IN HEAVEN

Next, if I comprehend the mystery, I must see that though the church, the body of Christ, is on the earth, yet it can have no other place but the place where Christ is. There is no truth more resisted or questioned, even by the more conscientious and intelligent, than that the place of the saints now is in heaven. They argue, and justly, ‘How can we be in heaven and on earth at the same time?’ Any who argue after this manner evidently do not see the mystery. How could Christ and His body have in reality two different places? Admit the truth that His body’s place is in heaven, and then we can see how it has been sent by Him to maintain His name, or His testimony, here on the earth. It is impossible to accept that the church is in the closest alliance to Christ, and not to see that though it can be absent from His place, as one set on a mission — as indeed it is, yet that it cannot own or belong to any other place but the place where He is, and as He is, in heaven. When any one intelligently sees the mystery, he acknowledges that heaven is the church’s present place, and from it come all its proper joys, though it be here for a season to do its Lord’s will. In a word, I know no simpler test of one’s knowledge of the mystery than this: is the church heavenly or earthly? The Lord Himself was on the earth and worked at a trade here, but He was always heavenly; and be assured you do ^[p. 116] not see the nature of the relationship subsisting between Christ and the church, if you do not see that His place is its place, though for a season it is here to testify of Him.