The Crown of Righteousness
AND
THE APPEARING OF CHRIST
No one of us, I suppose, can fully say with Paul the seventh and eighth verses, but it is of all moment to love His appearing. It is not His coming to take away His saints. It is His appearing in glory with them. “When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory”, Col 3: 4.
At the appearing of Christ in glory we appear, and everything in the saints will suit Him. I love to think of that. Now we disappear, but then “He shall come to be glorified in his saints, and to be admired in all them that believe”, 2 Thess 1: 10. We shall all have been divested and invested then, for all will have been manifested at the judgment-seat of Christ before we appear in glory with Him. I do not love His appearing in a selfish way, thinking of reward, but I love His appearing because I think of what He will get, and because the day is coming in the which He will see in me everything according to the desire of His own heart! What a day will that be for Him who “loved the church, and gave himself for it” (Eph 5: 25)—the same blessed One “who loved me, and gave himself for me”, Gal 2: 20!
It is only when we can say, I love His “appearing” that we do not wish to go on now with anything which does not suit Him. Nobody does, who loves His appearing. I love His appearing because then there will be nothing left in me but what does suit Him. Why go on now with anything which He will refuse in that day? It is because you do not think of His appearing. What folly! No one can go on now with what he learns by the Spirit and the word is unsuited to Christ, if he loves His appearing!
How small it makes things look which men ‘highly esteem’! What value does Christ place in that day upon these things? The apostle Paul always sought to live in the light of that day. He looked at men and things in the light of it, and it helped him to value them according. It is the way of deliverance from earthly influences, and it is the way to become a man of the “single eye” and the one purpose. “This one thing I do”.—“Thou hast fully known my doctrine, manner of life, purpose”. He says this in another place, but to this same Timothy.
The crown of righteousness will go to all those “who love his appearing”. They go together. But the loving His appearing is in this day, the crown in that. There comes the blessed light of God and of that day streaming down to me through the Spirit and the word in this day, and can I say what Paul could say? ‘I refuse in myself what does not suit Him; I refuse in ecclesiasticism what does not suit Him; and I refuse in the world what does not suit Him’. That is the man the Lord will stand with. All else may forsake that man, but he will know notwithstanding all that, what Paul knew, “THE LORD” stood with me. And He would thus stand, and He will. Such a man can say, “And the Lord shall deliver me from every evil work, and will preserve me unto his heavenly kingdom, to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen”, v 18.—Reader! Paul is only one among “all those that love his appearing”, but you and I will in heart form two more, just in so far as we are consistent now with that day.
From Food for the Faithful—vol 2, 1899
