OUR FUTURE

OUR FUTURE

Lastly, now, as to our future. If I do not see the mystery, I cannot recognise the position the church will hold with regard to Christ hereafter. As the church is His body now, so will it ever retain, but in a perfect way, this relationship to Him. “The fulness of him who fills all in all”, Ephesians 1: 23. We see and know, alas,

^[p. 117] how inadequately the church now performs its great mission, and sets forth Christ in the scene where He has been refused. But in the future, to endless ages, when she comes down from heaven as a bride adorned for her husband, she shall set forth His glory in perfection of beauty and without diminution, herself all glorious, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, ever united to Him, and holding thus a position pre-eminently greater than any of the other saints. While all are of one, so that He is not ashamed to call them brethren, only the church is united to Him, and connected with Him as His body for ever and ever.