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THE THREE GREAT LINES OF TRUTH IN THE NEW TESTAMENT

I hear that you have been tried by the contention in L————.

I am persuaded that in order to seize the root of it, we must first ascertain the truth of our calling — God’s calling. If I have learned from God’s word His calling for the church — the present testimony — I can very easily decide what teaching helps it.

There are three great lines of truth in the New Testament: 1st, what Christ was on the earth; 2nd, what He is now in heaven; and, 3rd, what He will be when He comes.

Now of the first, every believer knows something, and according to his devotedness it is his daily food. The second — as He is and where He is — I apprehend is little known. The third is studied often when the second is practically unknown. Now many think that they know the second (Christ as He is) because they have accepted “heavenly truth” (as it is called), but surely so great a favour could not be accepted in faith without being paramount to the soul; you must be under the power of it. The first is for our salvation and for our pilgrim life here — the wonderful display of God in man; and the gospels chiefly,

^[p. 100] with a great part of the epistles are taken up with it — what Christ was on the earth, the great and perfect blessedness which He has obtained for the believer where he was ruined, and how He gilded with His grace every detail of man’s life down here. We are not only reconciled to God by the death of His Son, but He never leaves us nor forsakes us; all the need on our side He fully supplies, and, as a rule, souls do not seek any more. But there is more. The first, most blessed and necessary, only leads to the second — Christ as He is. You may say, Souls are not ready for the second. That I could readily admit. Look through the epistles. You will see a reference to it in 1 Corinthians 2: 9, and in 2 Corinthians 3: 18 (you remember your own vision of the glory, that was the second), also in 2 Corinthians 12. None that I know of in Peter or James or Jude. In Hebrews you are led into the second — you have “boldness to enter”. In Ephesians and Colossians it — the second — Christ where He is — is fully opened out; and in 1 John; and in 2 Timothy it is set forth in the words “my doctrine” — the one great truth in the day of difficulty. I need not add more. I wish I could talk to you, but I am sure that if the second (Christ as He is and where He is) were known to the soul, that it would be the paramount subject before it, as it was with you the morning after your vision.

The first (Christ as He was) could not be overlooked, it would be enhanced in the light of as He is, andwill be for ever.

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