“Grave-Clothes”.

Notes of a reading on John 11: 40-57

The glory of God comes before us for relief, when death has broken up everything. “Said I not unto thee, that, if thou wouldest believe, thou shouldest see the glory of God?” But it is seen in resurrection, and you must be in the apprehension of your soul out of death, in order to see it. The glory of God is connected with a new order of things, and that order of things began in Christ in resurrection. It is seen where Christ is now. “We beholding as in a glass, darkly” see the glory of the Lord. The glory of God now shines “in the face of Jesus Christ”.

Lazarus, and the story before us, has immediate reference to this. I see two actions of the blessed Lord here and in all of us. First, He calls Lazarus out of the grave. Then He divests him of the grave-clothes. As thus divested he sees the Lord, for before this “his face was bound about with a napkin”. Our call out of the grave is in chapter 5. The Lord there has come into death (the present scene) to call out of it. “The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God: and they that hear shall live”. We see Him as Saviour there delivering us from death. All saints have seen Him thus, but we need more, for death is not the terminus for Him in God’s account, and hence it is not the terminus for us. We, as divested, reach Him on the other side, and that is liberty. He looses in various ways. It is individual. “Loose him and let him go”. It is loosed to enter into the sphere of life in the power of the Spirit. That is, it is based upon, that I am only free when I see “the glory of God”, and it is where He is, and it is seen in Him there who is “the resurrection and the life”. It is in a scene, where death, and all that intrudes upon us in association with it (the grave-clothes) never can come. It is this that caused me to say that the glory of God is our relief. The great point is, are we divested, and have we in view now “the glory of God”?

This chapter proceeds on this line, “that the Son of God may be glorified thereby”. This is His new title, in reference to the new company, “Son of God”. He gives up for the moment “King of Israel” and “Son of man”, though both will presently be made good in Him. There is the company that is to be with Him now before He takes these titles up. That company is the assembly. And the privilege of the assembly is that they see “the glory of God”. Stephen saw it and spoke of it, Paul also to the Corinthians. It is known in the company of the “sanctifier and the sanctified”, Heb 2: 11.

From Words of Encouragement—vol 4, 1898