THE SPHERE OF LIFE NO. 2

^[p. 47] THE SPHERE OF LIFE NO. 2

As Christ lives in me, I walk here as He walked. He did everything here consistent with eternal life, in which He ever was, but there was a great difference between His life as a Man, and as in the Father’s bosom, and yet they were concurrent. You are to walk here as He walked, and concurrently, to be in communion with Him where He is; but in the one you are walking among men — “The life that I live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God”; and in the other you are in communion with Him, who now lives unto God, and to ‘nothing else’, as J.N.D. says. As I am near the Lord, He enables me to conduct myself here as He did when here. He did live here, in the old order, He now lives in heaven, in the new and eternal order where everything is in perfect consonance to His mind, and you are united to Him there, and can enjoy Him there in unclouded light, and when you are with Him there, you will not need the support necessary for the wilderness.

I think all are “in the light” of the revelation of God, but I have no ground for stating that all are in communion, though I fully admit that all are called to it. I see that communion is a very great thing. It is concert with Christ in His present thoughts. I can enjoy His help and sympathy, and be much cheered by the sense that He never leaves me, but communion with Him is far beyond this, and implies that I am in present unison with Him where He is. Mary, in John 11, was in the effect of His sympathy before she was in company with Him, as in John 12. None of us have more than a measure of communion, but ever so small a measure of it is very different from the sense of His care for me down here, though the greater would include the lesser. Your child might be very happily sitting beside you, and yet not in communion with you.... It is right and proper to be exercised as to a correct apprehension of such a great subject, and surely this is the great gain of speaking often one to another.