HEAVENLY THINGS
HEAVENLY THINGS
The coming of the Son of God into this world disclosed the fulness of grace; “grace and truth came by Jesus Christ”. Hence our Lord can say to Nicodemus, “If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe, if I tell you of heavenly things?” Heavenly things come from Himself. He adds, “And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven”, John 3: 13. He, though a man on earth, was always in heaven. Since the days of Babel, when man had avowed his independence of God, God had sought for the man simply and entirely dependent on Himself. Abraham was thus called. “Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto a land that I will shew thee”. (Genesis 12: 1.) He was to leave the place marked by independence, and come into a place which he could only reach or be kept in by faith. True, his posterity failed to keep the place, and went down eventually into Egypt. God then proceeded in a new way. He does not again call man to walk by faith, but He Himself undertakes to bring Israel into the land, or the place. This the book of Joshua recounts. Failure [p. 350] eventually marked this also. Abraham was a type of the walk of the heavenly man here, and Joshua that of the title and portion of the heavenly man through grace. Now when Christ came, the Man desired of God, He is here, but always in heaven, the place where everything is according to God. “Heaven is my throne”. Isaiah 66: 1.
It is a delight of heart to every believer to know that there was on this earth a Man who was always in heaven while here, and how much more when we see that He has died for us because of our state, that He might be able to give us of His life. Hence He says that “as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life”, John 3: 14 - 15. “And this is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son”, 1 John 5: 11. What joy to the heart to know that we now partake of the life of the One who never left heaven, even while He was down here on earth, and entering into the duties and labours and services of a man among men. Now this eternal life is promoted and sustained by the Holy Spirit dwelling in us. “Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life”. John 4: 14. While eternal life extends into eternity, it is not so much duration as to time that it communicates, as the knowledge of God. It is from God and reaches to God. “And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent”. The first epistle of John was written “that ye may know that ye have eternal life”. It is the life “more abundantly” of John 10: 10, an immense advance of anything known or enjoyed before. Now “we know that the Son of God has come, and has given us an understanding that we should know him that is true; and we are in him that is true, in his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life”, 1 John 5: 20. It was first communicated [p. 351] after our Lord rose from the dead. He breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit”. (John 20: 22.) Thus it is plain, however wonderful, that we have the life of Jesus, who while on earth was always in heaven.
Now as Christ is our life, His place and position must determine ours. Many see and own that He is our life, who do not see and own that we are heavenly, and hesitate to designate a believer now as heavenly as to his standing, though in the type it is very fully set forth in the Lord’s words to Moses in Exodus 3: 8 - “I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land unto a good land and a large, unto a land flowing with milk and honey”. They were brought out of the land of Egypt into the land of Canaan. The same work, the death of Christ, which has obtained my deliverance from all my ruin, has also secured a place in heaven for me. If I am out of the one, I am by title and birth in the other. Yet it might be contended that I am not in heaven yet. True, I am not there yet bodily, but I belong to it. I am here in a place to which I do not belong. If Christ had remained here on earth, He would still have been my life, and that life is heavenly in its character and tastes; but heaven as a place would not definitely have been mine. But seeing that Christ has been called away, as we see in Matthew 22: 44, to sit down at God’s right hand, and seeing that He has been rejected from this earth, it is now necessary, and in keeping with the grace of God, that we should be associated with Him where He is. God has “quickened us together with Christ... and has raised us up together and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus”, Ephesians 2: 5, 6. Consistent with God’s purpose we could have no other place, and for our own happiness we could not be regarded as connected with the place where our Saviour is not, and from which He has been called away on account of man’s rejection. Our citizenship then is in heaven; “from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ: who shall change our vile body, that [p. 352] it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body”, Philippians 3: 20, 21. Not only, then, is our life in heaven, but heaven is our place; therefore our walk or practice here is heavenly. As we are heavenly both as to life and place while we are on the earth, it follows that the practice must be that not only of one going to heaven, but of one in principle, motive and object belonging to heaven. Otherwise the first prayer the Lord taught His disciples - “Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven” - would not have been fulfilled after all had been accomplished, and the Holy Spirit had come down from heaven. The practice of one going to heaven is set forth in Hebrews, as simply and entirely referring to God. Going on to His rest, succoured all along the road by our High Priest, with the present right of entering the holiest and of being sustained there by the “high priest over the house of God”, Hebrews 10: 21. We have gone forth “unto him without the camp, bearing his reproach. For here have we no continuing city, but we seek one to come”, Hebrews 13: 13 - 14. We look for “a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God”, Hebrews 11: 10. We are “strangers and pilgrims on the earth. For they that say such things declare plainly that they seek a country”, Hebrews 11: 13, 14. Those who are really seeking “a better country, that is, an heavenly”, and looking for a city - or an organisation - whose builder and maker is God, are necessarily strangers and pilgrims here. This is their practical character and bearing here, when going to it with the eye simply on God.
Now in 1 Peter 1 it is there too a matter of one going to “an incorruptible and undefiled and unfading inheritance, reserved in the heavens for you”; but it is more with reference to one’s walk and way with men on earth, and therefore in this epistle we are told how to tread our way through every kind of suffering and in every relation of life. We read in chapter 2, verses 11 and 12, “Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against [p. 353] the soul; having your conversation honest among the gentiles: that, whereas they speak against you as evildoers, they may by your good works, which they shall behold, glorify God in the day of visitation”. Until we reach the heavenly character, “the God of all grace, who hath called us unto his eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after that ye have suffered a while, make you perfect, stablish, strengthen, settle you”, 1 Peter 5: 10. In these two epistles we have both parts of the walk of the believer on earth going on to heaven.
Again, in Colossians and Ephesians we get the practice enjoined on the believer on earth, because he belongs to heaven, and is therefore required to set forth the traits of that country here. In the limits of this paper I can barely touch on them. In Colossians the practice enjoined on us is in keeping with our nearness to heaven. In this epistle there is the answer to the first great desire of the heart, “Where dwellest thou?” He said, “Come and see”. Here the believer sees and seeks the things above “where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God”. And the practical life down here must now be in keeping with this moral height and enjoyment.
I must not stay to particularise; but Christ is everything, and in all. “Do not lie to one another, having put off the old man with his deeds, and having put on the new, renewed into full knowledge according to the image of him that has created him; wherein there is not Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bondman, freeman; but Christ is everything, and in all”, Colossians 3: 9 - 11.
Now one word on the epistle to the Ephesians. In this epistle the believer is seated in heavenly places in Christ Jesus, and the practice incumbent on him is in keeping with this great position. I must act here in everything as belonging to God and heaven, and not to man and earth. I cannot rightly understand the great mystery, the assembly, the body of Christ, as to its construction, unless I see myself in this new and great [p. 354] position. I may accept and in measure understand the construction of the body by the Holy Spirit: but how the Jew and gentile can be one body I cannot divinely see, unless I see that heaven and not earth is the place of our present association with Christ, for on earth it could not be possible, and the attempt to obtain it on earth simply ends in socialism. Hence it is in this epistle that the exhortation is enjoined to endeavour to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace - the first and greatest duty and function of the heavenly man here on the earth.
I come down to be prominently and exclusively interested in the interests of Christ. I displace the old man and all the principles which govern him, to demonstrate and exemplify in this earthen vessel His pleasure in every detail, and resist in His power all the force and devices of the power of darkness. Thus the heavenly things in life, place and practice, are my joy and portion here. May it be so to each believer more and more.