LOVE’S COMMUNICATIONS
C. A. Coates
I read these few words to call attention to the blessed fact that communications of love, do not cease in the disembodied state. It is not only that the spirit rests in the consciousness of love, but communications of love continue. The body is not necessary for the reception of these communications, for Paul at a time when he was unconscious of the body—could not even say whether in the body or out of the body—that is, the body had nothing to do with this matter, but caught up into paradise—heard unspeakable things said. Words are definite communications.
Beloved brethren, how sweet it is to think of it. We know how the Lord loved to make communications of His love to His loved ones here, and now their continuation.
The words we read carry us into the region of
paradise. We find a man in Christ there. Oh how we love to think of our sister therein this blessed order of manhood—“a man in Christ”. No longer in mixed conditions, trammelled with the earthen vessel—free from all that—but still competent, blessed be God, to receive communications from God, and such communications as our ears have never heard because communications of paradise cannot be uttered in this lower world.
To depart and to be with Christ; which is “very much better”; but not only to be with Christ, but to have communications of His own love continued, and continued as never known here—I love to think of it!
In the disembodied state not only spiritual affections remain but occupation with divine communications, spoken and heard, in that divine scene. How it enlarges the thought of being with Christ!
So whatever this interval, long or short—with some, centuries, with others only a short time, there is not only the consciousness of love, but communications of love. May our hearts be greatly comforted by this
These unrevised notes, which have just become available, are of a word given at the burial of Mrs. Cann—Ed.