THE GLORIFIED MAN
[p. 27] THE GLORIFIED MAN
What this scripture sets out is wonderful, but if you understand the glorified Man, you know how He brings it all in. He has overcome in righteousness - He is glorified in the setting aside of every man. One man is cleared away in judgment, another Man has introduced something entirely new - that is salvation - you cannot make it too simple.
I have had a good deal of helpful meditation upon the resource the Lord is when all around is darkness, weariness and temptation.
The impossibility of diverting a soul from the smallest touch of divine grace. If a soul is saved, it cannot be lost. How much time we have all lost in seeking to establish the fact of our election, instead of enjoying the bloom and freshness of it, seeking excuses for our unbelief, when we might have been walking in the power of it. “If ye do these things, ye shall never fall”. (2 Peter 1:10). If we had spent the same time and anxiety that we have wasted in seeking corroboration of our salvation, in seeking instead that there should not be a shade or a soil upon it, how different our walk would have been! And when we walk worthy of it, we have the corroboration of it. The trial I have had was feeling myself in this place of soil and confusion - I thought, how can you talk of glory? But I found that glory is the most separating thing possible! Not a bit of the soil of this place sticks to me. It is all perfectly new - when you find out relief in this way, it establishes the power of the truth immensely.
If you have failed and are looking for restoration, where would you begin? (The Nazarite had to begin all over again.) That will not do - it is improving the old thing - you must begin at the other side of the [p. 28] failure - get on another line, it is the line of the glorified Man, not the line of the failing Man. How do you apply that to Peter? He went out and spoke boldly - he was above his failure, he had got hold of the Man in glory and was occupied with him. See Acts 3: 14, “Ye denied the Holy One and the Just” - just what he had done himself.
Well, where do you begin? With the good. And how do you go on? With the good. Well, that is where I am now - you have been there for a long time. Yes, but it is a very different thing to see a thing and to go the road - “Ye have not passed this way heretofore,” Joshua 3:4. Well, have you found out what you do when you have failed? Begin on a new line. Where does your new line lead you to? To where Christ is. Two things, power and place, you must have both; power leads you to the place, the power of the glorified Man takes you to the place of the glorified Man - Colossians 3, “where the Christ is”. The heavenly Man comes from heaven; he is not going there - he has gone there first.