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you will only get it where the Spirit of God is free. A wonderful
thing that! Have you partaken of it? Do you look forward to the
Supper as the greatest event in your life, that you are going to
partake of the heavenly calling? It will lift your heart to Jesus,
“the Apostle and High Priest of our confession”.
In Philippians Paul says, “Brethren, I do not count to have got
possession myself; but one thing forgetting the things behind,
and stretching out to the things before, I pursue, looking
towards the goal, for the prize of the calling on high”—or as
the Authorised Version puts it,
“the high calling”—“of God in Christ Jesus”. The high calling—
Have you got your sights in that direction, beloved brethren?
“The calling on high of God in Christ Jesus”. Our brother said
over the weekend that Christianity is Christ, but Christ
glorified. That is it. That is “the prize of the calling on high of
God in Christ Jesus”. This was Paul and he is pursuing the
prize, Christ in glory. As the hymn puts it, ‘Yon heaven is our
home’. The high calling stirs us up and takes away the
lethargy from us. How sad it would have been if half-way
across the wilderness Rebecca had said to Abraham’s
servant, ‘I want to go back to my father, my mother, my home’.
Mr. Darby says in the ‘Synopsis’ on Genesis 24, ‘But to return
was to give up Isaac (Christ)’—“The prize of the calling on high
of God in Christ Jesus”. Rebecca would have missed that if
she had gone back. None of us want to go back, do we? Why
should we go back? Is there any need to go back if we have
“the prize of the calling on high of God in Christ Jesus” before
us?
Another scripture occurs to me in Thessalonians, “To which
end we also pray always for you, that our God may count you
worthy of the calling”—think of that!—“and fulfil all the good
pleasure of his goodness and the work of faith with power, so
that the name of our Lord Jesus Christ may be glorified in you
and ye in him, according to the grace of our God, and of the
Lord Jesus Christ”, 2 Thessalonians 1: 11, 12. “Worthy of the