OUR CITIZENSHIP IS IN HEAVEN
[p. 419] OUR CITIZENSHIP IS IN HEAVEN
I have read this verse to bring before you our subject this evening, that our citizenship is in heaven; the word ‘conversation’ does not express the meaning of the original, which is the position which the place of your birth confers. The subject is immensely important when we consider that we must be of Christ to be there. First we begin with the great supper, as we read in Luke 14: 15, which is the portion of the youngest believer. When a pious Jew said, “Blessed is he who shall eat bread in the kingdom of God”, the Lord then announced that there was a great supper - evidently the celebration of grace. You not only know that you are accepted of God, but you enjoy your acceptance. Many are assured of God’s love in the gospel, but they do not enjoy it; the prodigal son did not enjoy his father’s reception at first. The great supper is the fatted calf. This is the beginning, and if you do not know it you cannot advance. The beginning is most important; you not only know your acceptance, but you enjoy it. Many believe in Christ risen, and have received the Spirit of God, and yet are not enjoying their acceptance. In order to enjoy your acceptance, not only have you received the Holy Spirit who sheds abroad in your heart the love of God, but the same Holy Spirit who has assured your heart of the love of God, as the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus makes you free from the law of sin and death. You are on entirely new ground now, and you can only enjoy it in the Spirit, altogether apart from the flesh; hence it is heavenly festivity. The feast comes from heaven; though you have not yet gone there, you have home comforts before you get home; heavenly joys on the earth.
[p. 420] Now, if you do not know this - the beginning - and maintain it, you will not prosper. You must enjoy your acceptance; and it is only in the Spirit that you can enjoy it. “The kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit” (Romans 14: 17); it is all of God. Nay, more, the tendency of any earthly favour is to divert you from this enjoyment. This is a very solemn word to us all; I have found that anything here, however good, which attracts you, diverts you from your heavenly portion. Hence you read of those who were called to the supper (Luke 14: 18), that the first said, “I have bought land, and I must go out and see it”. There was no sin in buying a piece of ground. If you know the heart of man, you will know that a piece of ground is very attractive to man. “The earth hath he given to the children of men” (Psalm 115: 16). Another said, “I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I go to prove them”, and another said, “I have married a wife, and on this account I cannot come”. All naturally good things, but they are earthly things, and by them they were diverted from the heavenly. Every christian who knows his own history knows that he has been diverted from the heavenly festivity by earthly advantage. You cannot now call earthly advantages blessings, because Christ is not here; and you cannot have true enjoyment yourself where Christ is not. It is plain that anything which diverts you from the great supper is a snare. The man who marries a wife ought to be able to say, I am coming, and through grace my wife is also coming. I desire that your hearts may be exercised as to the snare of earthly advantages. Hence this chapter closes with the solemn words, “Every one of you who forsakes not all that is his own cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14: 33). It is not only, except a man hate his own life also he cannot be my disciple, but he must forsake all his own resources in order to enjoy his new portion - the great supper.
[p. 421] Now this, the supper, is your beginning - “we are making our boast in God, through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Romans 5: 11).
Next I turn to Christ as the Priest. You must know Christ as your Saviour before you could know Him as Priest. First you know that you are brought to God; next, that the Priest maintains you in the blessedness of Himself in the presence of God. As you read in John 14: 20, “In that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you”. You are “within the veil, where Jesus is entered as forerunner for us become for ever a high priest according to the order of Melchisedec” (Hebrews 6: 20). The moment you accept the fact that Christ is the great Priest over the house of God your heart will say, Where is He? It is a great moment in the history of the soul when the heart is really drawn to Christ where He is. When you know Him as Priest, you know that He maintains you in His own brightness in the holiest of all - “a great priest over the house of God”. But besides this, which is the climax, you are going through a world of sorrow and difficulty, and you feel your infirmity, and if you are following Him, the word assures you, for it says, “Having therefore a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God” (Hebrews 4: 14). He is “able to sympathise with our infirmities”, was “tempted in all things in like manner, sin apart” (verse 15), and He draws you to Himself. He does not alter things here. Many look for Him as “a very present help in trouble”, but His sympathy is much more. When Peter was beginning to sink, the Lord stretched out His hand and caught him, and drew him to His own side. He did not smooth the waters, they were as rough as ever; but Christ brought him to His own side, a divine calm out of all here. If you taste of this wonderful relief, you will be severed from the place where Christ is not, and be attached to Himself in the place where He is. No one is really detached from [p. 422] the earth who has not been attracted to Christ personally in heaven where He is. “If then indeed he were upon earth, he would not even be a priest” (Hebrews 8: 4). In christendom they place the priest between the congregation and God. They ignore the terrible fact that Christ has been rejected by the world. As His rejection by the world is before you, so is His exaltation by God before you. Ignore His rejection and you ignore His exaltation, and His priesthood cannot be known. In His company He endears Himself to you, and thus, relieved from your individual pressure, you find yourself in the consecrated company around Him. We see in Leviticus 8 that every offering necessary for approach to God was offered up before the consecration took place; then the consecrated company, Aaron and his sons, went into the holy places; we have “boldness for entering into the holy of holies by the blood of Jesus” (Hebrews 10: 19). You are so attracted to Himself that, like Ruth to Naomi, you say, “Whither thou goest I will go”. No place can fully please you where the Lord is not. Thus you are drawn from this place to where He is.
Next I turn to the effect of being drawn to Him, as we read in Hebrews 12: 1 “Let us also therefore, ... laying aside every weight, and sin which so easily entangles us, run with endurance the race that lies before us”. You are running on to Himself. Until Israel were established in grace in Numbers 21, they were not set on entering the land. When you have found your place with Him in the holiest, you are in the race here. You are “looking stedfastly on Jesus the leader and completer of faith: who, in view of the joy lying before him, endured the cross, having despised the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God” (Hebrews 12: 2). It is a journey of faith; you are in the wilderness, conscious of the absence of Christ, but surmounting everything between you and Him. He has gone all [p. 423] the road; by faith supplied by Himself you travel to Him; your heart says, “Whither thou goest I will go”.
The next section I turn to is that the servant’s place is in the Father’s house. When I say a servant I do not mean a special class. “To each one of us has been given grace according to the measure of the gift of the Christ” (Ephesians 4: 7). All are called to serve. A member which may appear of little use may be of great importance. In this vast infirmary the one who can serve most is the greatest. The Lord said, “If any one serve me, let him follow me; and where I am, there also shall be my servant” (John 12: 26). Could you wish for anything better? In John 14: 2 the Lord is leaving His own here to serve Him, and He says to them, “I go to prepare you a place”. Do you think a true-hearted servant of Christ would expect to find a place where his Lord was rejected? The Lord counts on the heart of His servant. Hence His words, “They are not of the world, as I am not of the world ... As thou hast sent me into the world, I also have sent them into the world” (John 17: 16 - 18). You will see, I trust, that the heart true to Christ cannot seek a place here, that His servant is not looking for a place where his Lord was rejected, but that he is here for Him; and his present reward is, “Where I am, there also shall be my servant”. Nothing can be plainer, even to natural feelings, than that you could not accept a place where a beloved one was refused.
I have already spoken of the great supper, and of knowing Christ as Priest. I now come to the solemn but blessed fact that you cannot be fully in Christ’s confidence, you are not in consonance with Him, until you are in conscious union with Him in heaven, and then you are in heavenly power. You are never in His full confidence until then.
But the point I am dwelling upon now is that your citizenship is in heaven. We have seen that it specially characterises the servant; you cannot be in heavenly [p. 424] power unless you realise union with Christ in heaven, and if you are not in heavenly power you cannot be a witness of Him, according to John 15 and 16. If your heart were true to Him, and if you knew Him as in the epistle to the Hebrews, you would be so drawn to Him where He is that it would be the greatest joy to you to be united to Him; it is not only that in the purpose of God He has set each of us in the body as it has pleased Him, but each has to be led into conscious knowledge of it by the Spirit of God. Alas! the greatest truth is the one least known. May souls take it to heart that the greatest favour which God confers is the one least known by His children. I press upon you that you cannot be a servant in heavenly power, nor can you be in consonance with Christ’s mind unless you are in conscious union with Him. The effect of union with Him is that your individual interests are merged in Him; the Christ dwells in your heart by faith, and by His power you carry out His pleasure.
One word more as to the servant: until you are in heavenly power you cannot be superior to the power of Satan; as we read in Ephesians 6: 10, “Be strong in the Lord, and in the might of his strength ... and, having accomplished all things, to stand”. “The ruler of this world is judged”. The heavenly man can stand for the Lord against all the power of the enemy. If you are in heavenly power you are superior to all the power and machination of Satan.
I need not add more on the servant and how essential it is that he should be in heavenly power, but I must dwell a little on the course which is incumbent on every christian if he would progress. We all in a measure, I suppose, accept the truth that Christ is the Head of the church, but how do we learn it? In Colossians 2: 20 we read, “If ye have died with Christ from the elements of the world”. In Romans, which I have referred to already in connection with enjoying the great supper, you are dead to sin as you walk in [p. 425] the Spirit. You must learn this before you know Christ as Head. When speaking of the race, I showed you that we are running on to Him. But if you would know Him as the Head you must leave this scene altogether, you must cross Jordan. I do not mean that you are to die. The old divines made Jordan a death-bed; Jordan is simply liberation. In Christ’s death you accept complete separation from everything here. I judge that many true-hearted souls who have not experimentally learned the Red Sea - that is, who have never appropriated the death of Christ and known that they are free of the judgment on man in Christ risen - go through this experience on their death-bed. But that is not Jordan. There is no water in Jordan; the nearer you come to Jordan the more you will find, like Stephen, that there is no judgment there. But except you are dead with Christ from the elements of the world, you will never know Him as Head. Hence the apostle tells the Colossians, “And not moved away from the hope of the glad tidings” (Colossians 1: 23) The hope of the glad tidings is heaven. He reminds them that they belong to heaven. In Colossians you are not looked at as in heaven, but as preparing to go there. Hence Colossians 3:1 says, “If therefore ye have been raised with the Christ, seek the things which are above” - you would not be seeking them if you were there - “where the Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God: have your mind on the things that are above, not on the things that are on the earth”. I desire to lead your hearts to be alive to the snare of cultivating earthly things, even a beautiful flower. If your hearts are set on Christ who is not here, you seek to know Him where He is. In order to come to Him you must pass out of this scene, “for ye have died, and your life is hid with the Christ in God”. You are outside of things here, you have put off the old man and have put on the new; then you come to the Head where “Christ is everything, and in all”. Surely a moment [p. 426] of deep delight to your heart, when you can say, He is everything.
Anyone who has had the slightest taste of knowing the Head will say, It is inconceivably great that I should know Christ as my Head, and that I should be directed by Him in His own circle on the earth.
I have already shown that the servant must know union with Christ in order to be in full concert with His mind; but I also insist that it is God’s gracious portion for every believer. Every christian should, like Rebekah, be conducted to Christ Himself in heaven, and know that wonderful moment when-
’... The Spirit’s power
Has ope’d the heav’nly door,
Has brought me to that favoured hour.’ (74:5)
- to Him where He is. Then you are in heavenly power; you cannot be so but by union with Christ. It is not attainment. All His members have gone up with Him, but each one must have conscious knowledge of the power “which he wrought in the Christ in raising him from among the dead” (Ephesians 1: 20). It is a wonderful moment when your heart realises in any measure the blessedness of being united to Christ, to the One who is the joy and delight of your heart. You know that you are brought to Christ where He is; you cannot have conscious knowledge of union until you are brought to Him, like Rebekah to Isaac. Now when you know union with Christ you are a heavenly citizen, and you come out from Him in heavenly power. You belong to Him there, His place is your place; you have heavenly tastes, which you cannot have but as you are with Him.
Now I hope you will connect the beginning with the end. You begin with the great supper, and you end with being consciously united to Christ. The beginning is the festive joy of acceptance with God, in such a sense of the heart of God, that “we are making our boast in God, through our Lord Jesus Christ”. Next [p. 427] you know Christ the High Priest outside of this scene and all the pressure here; He not only draws you to Himself to solace you individually, but also to lead you into the holiest where He is in unclouded light:
‘Our hearts let in its rays,
And heav’nly light makes all things bright,
Seen in that blissful gaze.’ (12:3)
I trust that each of you may be able to say very decidedly, I see that heaven is my place, that we are citizens of heaven, we belong to that place; and may you be conscious, too, how easily you can be ensnared by things here, and that often a natural mercy draws the heart away from its true place, and entails sorrow and decline.
I need not add more. May each of us understand better His words: “No one has gone up into heaven, save he who came down out of heaven, the Son of man who is in heaven” (John 3: 13). If you are of Christ you are heavenly.
Your calling is that you are of Christ, and His place is your place, and the more you practically carry it out the more you will enjoy it. As servant you have a place where He is. The One who has drawn away your heart is in heaven, so that you are not thinking of this place, but of Him where He is. May the Lord lead each of you to understand it. I know the difficulties in the way, how the smallest natural interest or taste will, if allowed, divert one from it. Be assured nothing will ever sever you from this place but the attractiveness of Him who has left it. Neither resolutions nor afflictions will effect it, but the attractiveness of Him who is not here. You have found outside of all the pressure and trial in this place such full solace in His company, that you “exult with joy unspeakable and filled with the glory” (1 Peter 1: 8).