EXTRACTS

CHRIST KNOWN IN GLORY

Christ in humiliation wins our hearts, and Christ in glory satisfies them. We learn to be suitable to Him by being in His company.

If you are conversant with Christ in glory, you must be like Him in humiliation, because His life could not act differently in the same circumstances. It must act similarly in similar circumstances.

I am in the same circumstances in which Jesus was down here; and as I have Christ in me, now glorified, and able to communicate with me through the Holy Spirit, I am living here as He lived, and I have the enjoyment and resources which were known to Jesus here on earth; and my heart is consciously enjoying the love which He bore me, in treading the path of death and sorrow for me. I deepen in the sense of His love for me, while I live Him in the very circumstances which He passed through for me.

If I were not in His life, I could not comprehend how He walked and endured down here, and all to win us. He “loved the church, and gave himself for it”. If I were only to follow Him, as Peter and John did here, in His humiliation, I should feel attracted to Him, but I should not know how He felt and suffered for me. I should still be in my own life, though quickened.

But when I know that I have life in a risen Christ, and that He lives in me, I walk here as He walked; and I know and understand the nature of that love that made Him suffer for me here.

Company with Christ in His humiliation draws the heart to Him, but there is in it no necessary, or indeed possible, relinquishment of man in this life. But when I am in His life by the Holy Spirit, I can understand and feel as He felt, and the life of Him who here died for me is reproduced in me.

Christ in humiliation helped the man still in natural life, but the corn of wheat must fall into the ground and die to bear fruit. Now in Him I have resurrection life, so I can live as He lived here, and though I still have natural life, it is controlled, not by the will of man, but by the Spirit of God, in the life of Him who is risen and glorified. The Holy Spirit is here for Christ, and not for the man on earth. The latter refused Him. The Holy Spirit maintains for Him in the place where He was refused. Not only am I connected with my Saviour in glory, but He lives in me, and this is my start, not my attainment. It is really wonderful as simple grace.

J. B. Stoney (New Series Vol. 12, pp.315, 316)

The Lord stands up and says, “The time is fulfilled ... repent and believe in the glad tidings”. It is not simply believe it, but believe in it, that is, take it on and search it out, and see how much there is in it. If you believe in it, you will find that you love the truth more and more. A lover of the truth is a person who has looked into the great gospel epistle—Romans; it is the truth set out in the most orderly way to meet the conscience and heart of a repentant sinner, and every page of it induces love of the truth.

J. Taylor (Vol. 89, p.449)