Personal—Collective
Personal
If the ways and life of Christ do not come out, then, whatever may be the assumption of Christianity, it is pretty clear that there is not much of Christ within. I enjoy Christ within only just in so far as Christ comes out.
Collective
The only place where I join the company of heaven and breathe on earth its atmosphere is in the “holiest of all”. This company is that of the sanctified, and the atmosphere is that of love, Heb 2.
Personal
Christ comes to you now whenever you have time and room for Him. His LOVE draws Him to you. Nothing satisfies LOVE but the company of its object. “We will come unto him, and make our abode with him”. Because you cannot go to Him in heaven, He comes to you on earth, John 14: 23.
Collective
Christ comes to the company of those on earth who have closed the door on the first man (that is on themselves), see John 20: 19-26. God has done with that man, and if we have not, God will not give us the conscious joy of the Man of His delight. “I will not leave you [the company] comfortless: I will come to you”, John 14: 18. He comes to that company whenever He can, and whenever they thus make room for Him.
Nothing can separate the Lord from the individual saint, nor from the company of His own. Love breaks through every barrier, see SofS 8: 6, 7. But it is one thing to know this (as is said “by faith”), and quite another to have the present joy of His presence. The first is totally worthless without the second, just as my life, both as an individual and as one of a company, is worthless without Christ in known presence. Oh, the miserable “FORM of godliness!”, 2 Tim 3: 5
From The Christian’s Friend—vol 25, 1898
God Known and God Unknown
God could not be known in Old Testament times. He had not come out, and man could not go in. Now, God is revealed in three Persons, and this could not be true until the Son had come. The Son declares the Father, and the declaration is made good in us by the indwelling of the Spirit. God is known. “This is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent”, John 17: 3. Without the three, it is clear that God cannot be known, since He has been pleased to make Himself known in this way. We are shut up to these Three.
From The Christian’s Friend—vol 25, 1898