“THE FATHER HIMSELF HAS AFFECTION FOR YOU”
C. R. Byng
The Spirit of God would be affecting us as to the love of Christ that led Him to go into the tomb, and as to the love of the Father Himself. The Spirit would make this freshly real to those of the family, and to all of us, “The Father himself has affection for you”.
We are feeling the sorrow at this time as having some impression of the divine love that has entered into it. But the very consciousness that our beloved brother has fallen asleep through Jesus immediately connects our hearts and affections with Jesus where He is. How real it is that our brother is “absent from the body”, but he is “present with
the Lord”, 2 Corinthians 5: 8. This is the assurance that steadies our hearts at a time like this, that our brother is “present with the Lord”. What fulness of joy is his; as Paul says, it is “very much better”, Philippians 1: 24.
We are here as those who grieve, but we have hope as those who are looking forward to the resurrection. Our hearts would be affected by the love of Jesus that took Him through the sufferings of death into death itself. What death meant to Jesus! Death is swallowed up in victory now as a result of the mighty work of the Lord Jesus. Entering into every detail of His life there is what is infinite in glory. His sufferings, His death, His burial, and His resurrection have a glory that is infinite and inscrutable. And yet the love that found expression through the very midst of those sufferings is intended to draw our hearts, beloved brethren, to Jesus in the realm where He is. The Spirit of God would bind our hearts to the Lord Jesus where He is as we think of the love that led Him to go such a way that we might, as we think of death, think of it as the way into the glory where Jesus is.
The power of this present occasion is to result in our having a deeper impression of our links with the Father Himself. “The Father himself has affection for you, because ye have had affection for me”. It was affection for Jesus that held our brother in the steadiness of the pathway that was his. He knew what it was to share in assembly sorrows as well as assembly joys. He had family sorrows as well as family joys. He had pressure in his body. But, through it all, it was affection for Jesus that held him steady and gave him the fatherly influence amongst the brethren which will remain as an impression with us of the character of
the work of God in him. What an influence for good he has been as he filled out what he was given to do in a way which betokened his nearness to Jesus. The spirit of Christ that was in our brother is intended to be an influence amongst us still so that we may enjoy eternal life conditions as having some abiding impression of the way that the Spirit strengthened him.
Then, too, I think he had an abiding sense of the Father’s love. It is the Father’s love that would peculiarly lay hold of the heart of our beloved sister, and of the sisters of our brother, and of all the family—some are here, and we are glad to see them; some are not here, but the Spirit of God can give them an impression of the Father’s affection. There is to be something which steadies us and binds us to the Lord Jesus in the realm where He is, as we remain here with a sense of the Father’s love. So we desire, with help from on high, to be here as those who are pleasing to God, moving in such a way that we too, each of us, may be an influence for good amongst the beloved brethren, and amongst men generally, until the day when we see Jesus face to face.
The Lord Jesus has gone out of this world. He was leaving this world, as He says, but He is coming again very soon. In the meantime, in the very short while that remains, as our hearts are strengthened by the Father’s love, we are to be held here as those that are waiting for our Lord until He comes to take us away to be in the presence of God for ever. May we be encouraged, for His name’s sake.