“HIS OWN”
A. A. Bellamy
John 13: 1; 2 Corinthians 7: 3
I believe the Lord has assured our hearts, dear brethren, as to the blessed portion of our sister as with Christ. I think also He would assure our hearts of His love to those who are His
own at this present time who are in the world. He has said, “I am with you all the days, until the completion of the age”, Matthew 28: 20. It is a very blessed experience to have the sense of His being with us. He has tasted every human sorrow in a reality which is beyond us. He has gone before; the Lord has Himself gone before. But then He is with us, and we see in these chapters in John how He was with His own in their experience of death and His own death. I think we commonly connect His love for His own with the side of sympathy and support in what we may be called upon to go through, but He went through it with them.
There were those who wept; He was alone, not in weeping, but in the way He wept, in the sense of what death was, its weight, its crushing weight upon the human spirit. The Lord was with them and is with us, dear brethren, in this experience. Having loved His own He loved them through everything; His love never wanes. Our experiences vary, up and down; the love of Christ is constant and it is His love for us at this present moment, His own who were in the world He loved to the end. What that would be we have to ponder; I would not undertake to define it; but He loved them through everything, and His love never changes. It is the great link in which things will be carried over into the eternal state, not in knowledge, not in light, but in love.
So I read of Paul’s affections for this company, the Corinthians. He had said something before and he is saying it again, “for, I have already said that ye are in our hearts, to die together, and live together”, and if in Paul’s heart and those with him, dear brethren, how much rather they were in the heart of Christ. The Lord, I think, would send a message to the local brethren in these terms; they are in His heart. If we think of the burdens that have been upon this local company, of the experience of death in recent
history, the Lord would meet that with the assurance of His love. It is in love that things are going to be carried through and preserved. I have no question in my mind as to that, beloved brethren; it is His love for us in the fullest sense, because we love because He first loved. The very love that Paul had for these Corinthian believers, despite all that we know about them, is an example to us, and he says, “ye are in our hearts, to die together”.
We have been reminded of the delivering power of death; there are things which cannot be carried through into a realm of life. If we died together, dear brethren, how much we would be able to leave behind, things that aggravate, things that cause agony amongst the brethren; if we died together they would cease. That is what he says, “to die together”. It is not reckoning ourselves dead unto sin here, it is the experience of the thing. So that we know, dear brethren, that we have passed from death to life because we love the brethren. We know it; it is consciousness; it is not an outward thing, or the knowledge of it; it is the realization of it, to die together and to live together. Are we going to live together? Eternally, yes, whether we watch or whether we sleep we are going to live together with Christ; we are going to live together with Him. This passage does not go quite so far; Paul stops at the thought of living together. I believe the way into it is through dying together, then we shall—and we do; it is not a far-off hope or expectation. One is conscious, dear brethren, increasingly as time goes on of this blessed realm of life together, and the way into it; there is only one way, only one entrance; to die together and to live together.
May the Lord encourage our hearts in the fresh sense that this realm exists, and exists among His own. We are not saying it is this or that company; it is among His own, not a position. What is it then? It is His own. I wonder if each one, each individual, is within that number in this company today, His own, His property, those for whom He died, for whom His precious blood was shed. Those who are of the faith of Christ, they are His own, He loved them, and He loves them to the end.
Word at the burial of Mrs. A. J. Ellis, Barnet
26 February 1980