WE ARE HEAVENLY
[p. 246] WE ARE HEAVENLY
What I desire to bring before you is what we are; not the practical side, but what we are. I will divide it into two parts; one respecting the gospel; the other, respecting the assembly.
We are made for heaven, we are heavenly, not of the earth, though on it. When the truth first came out, we tried to carry it out in the wrong way, turning away from this thing and that thing in order to be heavenly. That is legality. I remember the effect it had on me when someone said, “We are heavenly”. We do not like to say it, because we so little act up to it.
In the gospel we are entitled to heaven, our joys come from heaven now. In the church we are placed there now. It is the devil’s device to separate the gospel from the church; it is a masterpiece of iniquity so to separate the two that one can hold the gospel but ignore the church. You cannot divorce what God has put together. The lack I find in souls is, that while they know that their sins are forgiven, they do not know their new place.
What place have you? Is it earth or heaven? It could not possibly be earth, for Christ was rejected from the earth. It has a great moral effect upon a person to be able to say, ‘I have a place in heaven, I have no property on earth at all, it is all in heaven.’ “Who shall give you that which is your own?” Luke 16: 12. It is the Lord’s property I have on earth, but in heaven I have my own. In the garden of Eden, man lost his place; man is lost; the question to him then is, First - Where art thou? then - What hast thou done? Every believer seeks to be [p. 247] clear as to the latter, but very few are clear about the former.
In the Old Testament I do not find that the man driven out of Eden is superseded by a man in a new place with God. In the Psalms I get a sense of shelter and care, and I get the glory of the Lord dwelling in the cloud in the midst of His people. But in the New Testament I am not only relieved from my misery, not only have I got pardon and acceptance, but I have a place where God is; for this I must be a new man. Is this on earth? No. Christ has been rejected from the earth. “No man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven”. This passage makes it clear that the Old Testament saints had no place in heaven. The lost man could not enter heaven. How could the man driven out of Eden ascend to heaven?
When the new thing came out, it was said of Stephen, “He .. . looked up stedfastly into heaven “. The heavens are opened: the first time they were ever opened upon man, except on Christ. True, Enoch went to God: he was the seventh from Adam, in type the completed man (who is really Christ); “God took him”; he got a place with God.
I turn now to Luke’s gospel. Read the end of chapter 7. Every believer knows that he is forgiven, that his offences are cleared away; but the lack is this, that while he knows that he was guilty, and that he is now clear of guilt, he does not really know what it is to be found, as one once lost. We were not only guilty but lost, and we are not merely forgiven, but we are given a place with God. One who had been at the greatest distance, the lost one, is made meet for the Father’s house. In Luke 7 the woman the sinner, comes to Jesus; an affection is established between her and the Saviour; her sins are forgiven, but with no sense of a new place with God and fitness for it. That is where thousands are now; they know [p. 248] they are forgiven, but they have not the joy of being brought to God. Now in Luke 10: 30 - 37 the sinner is cured, carried, and cared for all the journey, until “I come again”. Very blessed, you may say; so it is, but there is no new place with God there; it is all man’s benefit in the place where he is. We must bear in mind that man was driven out of Eden, and in order that he should obtain a new place with God he must be a man after a new order.
Now look at Luke 14: 15. “And when one of them that sat at meat with him heard these things, he said unto him, Blessed is he that shall eat bread in the kingdom of God”. What did that man mean? He meant that when God had full sway, the earth would be a beautiful place. The Lord replies by saying, “A certain man made a great supper”. That was a greater thing. The supper was in the house; the house gives a character to the supper; it is the finish of the gospel; we have come to our place now, to the festivities of the Father’s house. So the prodigal in chapter 15 is not only forgiven, but he is fitted to enter the house, and to be merry there. If you have not reached the place for which God has fitted you, you have not answered to the delights of His heart, but you are keeping the place of the lost man. The prodigal, as to himself, only wanted to be saved from misery, he had no thought of a new place with his father. If you have not come to the Father’s house, you have not met the desire of the Father’s heart for you. The great point of Luke 15 is the joy of the finder; the joy of the Father’s heart in having you; not merely in saving you, but in having you; and for Him to have you, you cannot be of that order of man who was driven out of Eden; you must of necessity be a man of a new order. You will never have divine joys in your soul unless you have reached the new place. What hinders it? Earthly things, not sinful things; no saint wants sinful things; but earthly
[p. 249] things are the hindrance; the bit of land, oxen, wife; beautiful things in themselves. I have another place and I draw my joys from that place. I know it is inconceivable. I feel at times as if I must bow under the weight of the fact, that the blessed God delights in my company. Do not believe in love that does not desire your company. If you give up things here, what is the recompense? The Lord’s company; that was what Peter started with in Luke 5. You will not understand your place with the Lord till you understand this. The Lord grant that we may enjoy our place.
I turn now to John 3, the doctrinal side of it. Jordan was just as much a type of the death of Christ as was the blood upon the lintel and the Red Sea. Every believer knows something of the first two, but what about the brazen serpent and Jordan? I have the life of the One who has died out of this place. This is not the sphere for eternal life. “Who died for us, that whether we wake or sleep, we should live together with him”, 1 Thessalonians 5: 10. Do not look at Jordan as something afar from you. You are just as much entitled to be over Jordan as out of Egypt. It is a blessed thing when your heart finds out what Christ is. First, He never leaves you; that is the manna, what Christ is to you; next, as in Canticles, the reciprocity of affection; but that is not union. Affection prepares for union, but it is not union. Many are up in Ephesians who have not much enjoyment. Why? Because there is not the affection which can only be satisfied with union. But I want you to insist upon what you are, not on your experience, but on your title to what Christ’s death has effected for you. It has given you a title to a new place. Paul was caught up to heaven; 2 Corinthians 12. The thief on the cross was a practical example of it; he was taken from the depths of sin and degradation to the greatest delights in paradise. Can anything affect your heart so much as the way the man in Christ is [p. 250] received in the new place? What I press now is the right that we have to be in the place, and that it is not only that I delight to be there, but the ineffable thought is that the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ delights to have me in His place, sharing His joys.
Turn to Colossians 3. There I find heaven is my place, I have a right to it. So in John 14, the Lord says, “I go to prepare a place for you”. Adam was driven out of Eden, but I am come now in Christ to another place, the Father’s house; I have a place in heaven.
In every departure from the truth the heavenly thing is given up. There is nothing so difficult to retain. Peter in his first epistle, begins with “a living hope”. In his second epistle he says, ‘the Lord is coming; do not let your heart rest in things on the earth; all these are to be burnt up’; and of Paul, he says, “.. . in all his epistles speaking in them of these things ... hard to be understood”. Paul says, as it were, to those in a ship, ‘You had better go on shore, to heaven.’ Then Peter adds, ‘Do not stay, the ship is on fire.’ Saints are settling down upon the earth. They have the wrong place before them. If you have not your place in heaven before you, you cannot run aright. The epistles of Peter and the Hebrews both speak of running to the place. Do your ways declare that you are running to heaven? Why do you not throw aside the weights and run swiftly?
In Romans 6, I find I am dead to sin; now pursue this, and you will find you are dead to the place too. This I get in Colossians 2: 20; and in chapter 3, the apostle instructs them about entering the place. In Romans I get “newness of life”. Romans does not go beyond that. Thank God, I have a new life, and I belong to the new place. I know how disjointedly I am bringing this out, but the Lord often fits into the soul a very disjointed statement.
[p. 251] In Joshua 5 you come to Gilgal. In the wilderness it is Marah; that is, I refuse the thing for which Christ died, I do not gratify myself; but at Gilgal the whole thing is gone. You are dead with Christ; the reproach of Egypt rolled off in the circumcision of Christ, the cross; it cannot be resumed. “Ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God ... mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth”. You are out of earth and in heaven. Like a recruit, he drops all of the civilian at the barrack gate in order to be made into a soldier. The old cannot disappear anywhere else but inside the barrack gate; that is Gilgal; there is nothing there but the new order; nothing there but Christ.
If you do not reach the place you do not feed on the corn of the land, Christ in glory. Paul says, “Lay hold on eternal life”; that is the result of knowing Christ in glory. If I do not, I do not know present association with Him. Souls are occupied with Christ where He was, that is the wilderness; but how many know Christ where He is? Nothing satisfies the heart, but present association. I want to know Him where He is at this moment; that is Philippians 3. How little one’s heart knows of Him up there! You do not satisfy His heart about you if you do not know Him there, nor can you be truly in service either. You must get direction from Himself. No one can rightly serve, but in communion with Him where He is. As a member of His body I am placed there and, as I am there with Him, I learn to be here for Him.
The Lord grant that we may know truly how the gospel entitles us to heaven, and that in the assembly we are placed there for His name’s sake.