THE CROSS
THE CROSS
Where man was removed - God was revealed.
“All thy children shall be taught of the Lord”, Isaiah 54: 13. It is interesting and important to apprehend the way in which we are taught. It is plainly by the Spirit. The light shines from God; this is the effect of the word. Light is given as you are ready for it, but you are not an independent being; you not only grow up into Christ who is Head, but you derive from Him. He is first formed in you; He lives in you. As His place in you advances, you advance in growth. Yet no one can come unto Him except the Father draw him. The beginning is with God, but the nurturing and cherishing is by Christ Himself through the Spirit to the members of His body. Christ is first formed in us, then we abide in Him, and “we know that he abideth in us, by the Spirit which he hath given us”. (1 John 3: 24)
I have been very much interested lately in the difference between goodness and love. “There is [p. 467] none good but one, that is, God”. (Matthew 19: 17) But “God is love”. (1 John 4: 8) There is very little about love in the Old Testament. Goodness when there is unlimited power would do anything to serve me. Love likes my company. Goodness seeks to benefit me, love to share with me what it enjoys. Now, thank God, I can heartily own His goodness - proofs of it every day and hour - but to be hourly assured that He likes my company seems too much for me. I believe it, I rejoice in it. It is wonderful that He, the ever blessed God, should really care to share His enjoyments with me. Oh! how one is rebuked when one dwells on the nature of God as He is to us. See how the love of Christ culminates, “I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also”. (John 14: 3) I hope you may gain as much as I feel I have in dwelling on the love of God.
The Scriptures tell me what God gives me, but they do not give it to me. The Spirit applies the word to me in its divine meaning, and I then possess what Scripture tells me is mine through God’s grace. For instance, Scripture tells me that if I behold the Lord’s glory I shall be transformed; 2 Corinthians 3: 18. It does not transform me, however clearly I may see what it states. It communicates to me a very great thing, but the communication is in order that a very great thing may happen to me, and this can be only by the Spirit.
What a great day when through grace one is born anew! This is a day we shall remember with joy every moment of eternity - that God by His Spirit should [p. 468] open the eye of the soul to see Jesus sent by Him to die for our sins. What a moment never to be forgotten!
The celebration of the marriage (of the Lamb) is the public avowal of what is true now by the Spirit.
It is a most blessed experience when one is sensibly where there is nothing, and no one, but Himself: and that you lack nothing there. One comes out from such an experience, in a way, surprised that old and approved interests here are not so indispensable to one, though they are better answered to.
If you are to keep in the Lord’s path, you must walk in fellowship with His death here, and in association with Him in glory on the other side; thus you will be kept in true balance.
If we were more assured of the interest the Lord takes in us we should like to be more dependent on Him. How much more we dwell on our feelings about Him than on His feelings about us! Nothing gives perfect restfulness but a true sense of His love. The work is done, but the motive assures our hearts that the work must have placed us before Him according to His own standard, and the Lord Jesus Christ is the only standard. Love cannot have two standards.
I do not know anything which makes one feel more the helplessness of oneself than illness does. It is good for us to be taught dependence in any way. The more [p. 469] we know the blessing of dependence, the more we like it. Dependence on God and holiness go together.