NOTES ON SCRIPTURE 1895 NO. 39
NOTES ON SCRIPTURE 1895 NO. 39
Isaiah 6: 1 - 7; 2 Corinthians 3: 7
Under the law there was a demand for righteousness from the glory of God on mount Sinai. From Christ in glory there is a ministration of righteousness. There [p. 85] was grace before Christ came, as we see in the case of Isaiah, who was a prophet, but he could not endure the sight of the King, the Lord of Hosts. Then he received grace: “Then flew one of the seraphims unto me, having a live coal in his hand ... and he laid it upon my mouth, and said, Lo, this hath touched thy lips; and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin purged”. There was grace - he was forgiven; but there was no righteousness ministered to him from the glory. He did not know a Saviour there, and he was not at home there. The light now shines down from the finish from Christ in glory. “If our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost: in whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them”. (2 Corinthians 4: 3,4) The first light which reaches the dark soul comes from the finish, that is from Christ in glory, and you are not in the fulness of the gospel until you have come to the finish. The great delay in souls is that they do not see that all that is contrary to God has been removed in the cross - the flesh, that which the live coal refused and repelled. Man after the flesh was brought to a judicial termination in the cross. “In that he died, he died unto sin once”. (Romans 6: 10) He bore the judgment due to me, but He not only bore the judgment due to me, He glorified God where I had dishonoured Him. God is indebted to a Man for glory! All the attributes of God were declared and met in the Man Christ Jesus - love and righteousness, truth and holiness - all. He so glorified God that He was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father. There is no live coal in the glory now for the believer in Jesus; on the contrary, the nearer you come to the glory of God which shines in the face of Jesus Christ, the more assured you are that you are not only justified, but that the righteousness of God greets you in the light of the glory. You are not only [p. 86] justified, but you are in the justification of life, in the righteousness of God where there never was a stain. As the prodigal found that the nearer he came to his father the more assured he was of his father’s reception, so the nearer you are to Christ in glory the more assured you are of your place there with Him. The gospel is that as He is, so are we in this world, but beyond the gospel or the fruition of the gospel, as you behold the Lord’s glory - He is without a veil - you are transformed into the same image from glory to glory; so that not only are you at rest as to heart and conscience with Christ in the glory - which is the gospel - but as you behold His glory, you come out here in a way suitable to Him, to be for Him in this world.