EXTRACTS

The Lord Jesus Christ took man’s place as appointed to destruction. He took up your cause and mine before God. He went to Calvary. He went to the cross, and there He exhausted the judgment. The judgment that was duly ours He took upon Himself vicariously as man. The judgment that lay upon us who were appointed to destruction, the Lord Jesus Christ has borne. And now our place, the place of the believer, is assured by His place in the presence of God. I do wish I might be able to convey to every heart here the position that Christ occupies at the present moment before God in relation to humanity. Directly it enters into your heart you have light, you have confidence. Peter tells us that God “has raised him from the dead and given him glory, that your faith and hope might be in God”. Directly you see that the One who took your place on the cross has been taken up by God, and placed in heaven in glory, your heart is filled with confidence in God. Your faith is in God. You say, ‘If He has taken that One and put Him in highest glory, what doubt can I have henceforth, what difficulty can I have henceforth? The place He has given Christ is my place, the favour towards Christ is the favour of God toward me’. It is so magnificent, so transcendent, that our hearts are slow to take it in; but the place that Christ has in heaven now is the measure of the believer’s place in the presence of God.

J. Taylor (Vol. 4, pp.280,281)

I am speaking about righteousness, the thing itself, and how it culminates under the title of God’s righteousness and how it appears in the heavenly city which is said to be pure gold, like transparent glass. A righteous man has no dark parts; all he is doing is bearing in one direction, and that is on the assembly, so that the assembly is pure gold. There is no part dark,

“and the city pure gold, like pure glass”, Revelation 21: 18. Think of that! We are moving on to that. We have just sung, ‘God’s righteousness with glory bright’; we are going on to that, but then we are carrying it with us. It is not that we find it there, we go with it; we develop it, we have

it, we belong to it, we are walking in it, as it says, “that we might be made the righteousness of God in him”. So that we have part in the heavenly city, in what is pure gold as transparent glass. Think of belonging to that! We belong to that already, it is being worked out now, and it is on this principle, dear brethren, that I have been speaking of it in the assembly. The current of our exercises is in that direction, that there might be righteousness in the building up of the assembly in righteousness.

J. Taylor (Vol. 57, p.517)

Many read Hebrews, and for many years I read it myself, as though the whole point was how we were to get through the wilderness. But the point, is, how you are led into perfection, to get out of the wilderness while you are actually in the wilderness—to get into the holiest, entering into rest, as it were. You enter into the rest of God when you see that all God’s ways have found their rest and accomplishment in Christ in glory. Christ has been raised from the dead and exalted, and we see the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ; that is the rest of God, the satisfaction of all that He is. Aaron never went into the holiest to remain there—he did not enter as forerunner. Now Christ has entered in, and has sent forth the Holy Spirit to carry us there in spirit. The high priest could only go in alone, and had to come out again; he dared not go in to remain. There was no liberty or boldness; it was impossible that man could go in till God had come out; it would have been no good to man. How could he go in to God, unless God had revealed Himself? The veil was rent on the divine side to enable God to come out, when all before Him had been cleared to His glory.

F. E. Raven (Vol. 9, p.433)

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