THE SAINT AN EXOTIC
THE SAINT AN EXOTIC
A saint is an exotic here, he belongs to heaven, but as a vine-branch he is to yield fruit for God and man. There is really no soil for the vine here now; consequently there is no vine; but as we through the Spirit are abiding in Christ, and He in us, we bear fruit for God’s heart. Christ was the Vine when here, and we have to maintain the virtues of Christ now that He is absent. We are to live Him here during His absence; but we are not of earth, for our Head is not here, though we are here for Him, and we act like Him here. We are true to Him, and His love is known to us, and we continue [p. 53] in it, and our joy is full, because we are living Him where He is not; as the apostle says, “To me to live is Christ” (Philippians 1: 21). We are exotics, but we are here to represent and bear testimony to One who is absent; consequently, it is not ourselves we are thinking of or any one else, but the One who is everything to us, even Christ, whom we are seeking to express here where He is no longer, because He has been rejected by His once “own” from the world. The exotic yearns, and in a measure pines for its own clime, for there truly and fully it would be developed; but being here, where everything is adverse to it, and for Him from whom all is derived, He by the energy of His Spirit sustains us in His own life down here. We can thus brave all that is against us, and maintain true constitutional vigour, and ability, too, to manifest the rarity and value of the grace and divine power which has made us exotics, and thus set forth, to the praise and glory of Christ, His name to a world which has not comprehended His beauty. I am heavenly in nature, and it is as such that I set forth Christ. The more I maintain this, the more I repel the adverse moral influences bearing upon me; and the more I set forth the excellency and virtue of Christ. It is as I am an expression of Christ here, that I am really useful to others. The more I am, the more I exhibit what is the grace of God to man, the more the Father is glorified, and the more vigorous am I myself in my own heart; for because of the energy of the Spirit maintaining me in the life of Christ, I am in the healthy tone of constitutional strength. The more exotic you are, the more useful you are, the truer witness for Christ, and the healthier and happier you are; because, like one exercising one’s self in frosty weather, you have the fresh glow of the virtue and power of life. Be an exotic wherever you are, be it in the queen’s palace or in the humble cottage. Let each eye see that you belong to heaven, and that you manifest the life of Jesus amid everything that is adverse to it here.