GOD'S MAN IN RESERVE

GOD’S MAN IN RESERVE

... My impression is that the objection arises from viewing Christ as He is (in a way) to us, instead of looking ^[p. 112] at Him as God was looking at Him when He was here glorifying God as a man. I see that from the beginning man was before the eye of God. The first man utterly failed, but God had a Man in reserve. His Son would become a Man, and through Him the church, the complement of Christ as a man, would be unto God’s glory by Christ Jesus throughout all ages (Ephesians 3: 21). There can be no question as to His divinity. Old commentators held that His miracles were recorded to prove His divinity, but we see that they are recorded to set forth how God was revealing Himself in grace to man. If I am in communion with God, I see Christ as He was here to God, and however fully I may see His personal greatness (”In him all the fulness of the Godhead was pleased to dwell” Colossians 1: 19), I am not diverted from seeing the greatness of His work and ways as a Man on the earth. I think that the mystery in its magnitude is very little apprehended. How necessary it is that we should have the Spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him in order to conceive what the church is as the complement of Christ. The world could not contain the books which could be written of Him, but the church — millions upon millions of saints will be His complement, each one of us a bit of the wondrous Man who glorified God here.

The blessings peculiar to Christians cease as soon as Christ moves off the Father’s throne. If you apprehend their special peculiarity you will see this must be the case, and therefore there cannot be anything of the order of the church here after the rapture. Why do saints enjoy hearing of all that Christ is to us and at the same time are, apparently at least, uninterested in all that He is in His own circle of things? Because they like Him to come to our side, but are not drawn to His side.