ANSWERS TO INQUIRIES - IN CHRIST THE FATHER'S HOUSE, ETC.

ANSWERS TO INQUIRIES - IN CHRIST THE FATHER’S HOUSE, ETC.

As to your first question, the rapture must include all saints, and not merely the church; and this fact would not be the less consoling to the Thessalonians.

Next: “in Christ” must be determined by the context. “In Christ”, in John, is nature; in Romans, it is the new headship; and in Ephesians it is the means by which I am in heavenly places. It does not say union, but there it is by union that I am in Him; and it is not in Him as the representative Man, but as members of His body. All saints raised up together, but exhibiting His beauty here corporately. I am, blessed be His name, to know myself as raised up, and made to sit there, as truly and as absolutely as I know that His blood has washed away my sins. One is as much done for me by the blessed God as the ^[p. 348] other. If I do not know the power to set me there, I have not the power to maintain His beauty here; and this is the real importance of knowing where the grace of God has placed us corporately.

Lastly, as to the Father’s house; Luke 15 is a parable, and conveys the grace of the gospel, and what the converted soul enjoys. In Jewish language the prodigal would have come from the “far country” (which would be even one yard outside the Holy Land) into the Holy Land. But christianity opens the Father’s house to the prodigal, and not the land at all. This was the new thing where the “great supper” was held. Now the Holy Spirit comes down from the glorified Saviour, and delights my heart with the comforts of the Father’s house, and not with the blessings of the land. This is the gospel; but in the church, as united to Christ, I am brought to ‘that favoured hour, when toil shall all be o’er’. This is the difference between the gospel and the church. The deep assurance of the joy made known to me, far beyond Exodus 15, is the gospel; and in the church, as raised up, and in heavenly places in Christ, I am where the grapes grow.

One word more. I think “accepted in the beloved” very different from “in Christ”. We are this moment accepted in the Beloved, but all the full consequences of that acceptance have not come to pass yet. I am this minute heir of God, and joint-heir with Christ, but I have not come into all the gain of it yet. I am sure the best way to counteract opposition is to confine oneself to passages which distinctly state our present union with Christ. For instance, if the church be His body and if He be its Head now, I should not attempt to prove union, any more than I should stultify myself by proving to any one that my head was really united to my body, or that my body was united to my head. The fact of the relationship proves union, because the relationship could not subsist without union; and the vain endeavour (unintentionally, I could fully admit)

^[p. 349] is to set aside the mystery, which is God’s first interest and this has been successfully accomplished for many centuries, even the most pious lending a hand to it. The truth of the mystery discards and ignores everything of the first man, upholds and confines itself absolutely to everything of Christ; and thus the body completes Him, is His fulness, and displays His beauty.