GOD'S CALLING AND OUR APPREHENSION OF IT
GOD’S CALLING AND OUR APPREHENSION OF IT
Surely we may look at the church as a great ship, moored to the heavenly port; the deep sea, the Red Sea of Scripture, crossed over, and also the Jordan, the river beside the land. Seats for every believer in the great assembly are on the other side, in the land flowing with milk and honey. No one has entered into the full work of Christ until he has sat down on his own seat at the passover feast, at and after Gilgal. We are born of God for these seats; but we take a long time individually until we have, as it were, sense enough to see that the seats in heaven are ours, and that each one always had his own. We are like born princes; only very gradually do we comprehend the greatness of our position.
The first great step in our history is that Christ has triumphed gloriously, and that we are not only safe from judgment by His blood, but that through His resurrection we are at the other side of judgment; we are in a new region, even in righteousness.
[p. 273] Our divine dignity is thus breaking in on us; we have got some sense now of our position. Very often we do not advance very rapidly from this. It has been said that a child learns more the first five years of his life than he does in the following twenty. Be this as it may, there is more rapid growth to rest of conscience, even peace, than there is to the other stages, and to the full apprehension of God’s calling.
The next great step is that I learn that there is not only sin in me (Romans 6), but that there is no good in me (Romans 7). I abandon myself now for Christ: “Not I, but Christ liveth in me” (Galatians 2: 20) - “The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death” (Romans 8: 2). I know my princely state now; that it is one really heavenly. Hence the next great advance is that I have left flesh and blood entirely behind. I find that I have died with Christ, and that I am on heavenly land with Him. Here now at length I apprehend what was true of me from my birth; that I have a seat in the grandest circle ever to be in heaven or earth. Christ’s work had acquired it all for me, though I only learn it by degrees. Hence, after Gilgal, we sit down and eat the passover in remembrance of Him. The corn of the land is now our proper food for serving Him, in keeping with our new, heavenly, royal, position. I am glad to think of you and —- as two of these great royal personages. May you both daily enjoy more the seats that are yours in His glorious presence! How happy to know that we, who have journeyed together so many years in the wilderness, are able to anticipate the day when we shall uninterruptedly commune together; the Lord one, and His name one. But the more our growth or spiritual sense now, the more we enter into the greatness of His grace; and if we do not, we are slow and dull of hearing.