WHO ARE YOU? AND WHAT?

I am known on earth by my body. But it is important to remember that it is not thus that God knows me, God knows me by what He forms in me, and forms me in. “I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me”, Gal 2: 20. The outward man perishes, “but the inward man is renewed day by day”. The important matter is not that which must either perish or be changed. It is that which remains for eternity—that which “cannot be shaken”.

“The things which are seen are temporal” (2 Cor 4: 18), and has reference to the body. That which is unseen is eternal, and has reference to the work of God in us now, and by the Spirit. We traverse a waste, and have to do with vain things, all of which have to “perish in the using”, but the blessedness lies in that I know how God looks at me. “He hath not beheld iniquity in Jacob, neither hath he seen perverseness in Israel: the Lord his God is with him, and the shout of a king is among them”, Num 23: 21. And I would not give much for all that a man has of earthly good, if he has not this. The body is only “the earthly tabernacle house”, but it is not mine even then, nor to be lightly esteemed. It has a wonderful work down here. It is the vessel for the display of Christ. The exhortation (since it is not your own) is, “therefore glorify God in your body”, 1 Cor 6: 20. The apostle Paul was determined that thus his body should be found down here. So he says, “According to my earnest expectation and my hope, that in nothing I shall be ashamed, but that with all boldness, as always, so now also Christ shall be magnified in my body, whether it be by life, or by death”, Phil 1: 20.

Then remember if we are thus known of God, and we are (for “the Lord knoweth them that are his”) “the world knoweth us not”, 1 John 3: 1. I do not covet to be known by this world, when I am assured that I am known of God. “As unknown, and yet well known” (2 Cor 6: 9) marks the satisfied path of the simple servant of God. I “know my sheep, and am known of mine, as the Father knoweth me, even so know I the Father”, John 10: 14, 15.

Oh, the joy contained in the thought that He knows me, and that He who perfectly knows me loves me. He loves His own, and I too love those that are begotten of Him for His sake, all of them. The new creation is all of God, it is the sphere of love, “By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another”, John 13: 35. The world then does not know the believer. It cannot answer the question, Who is he or what is he? and am I satisfied that this should be so? Who refers to origin, to parentage, to birth! What refers to what the Spirit of God has formed in me, and me in. Of all this the world is totally ignorant. In proportion as we know a little of the who and the what of Christian privilege, the who and the what of this poor world sinks into its only true place of the dung and dross of utter insignificance.

From Helps for the Poor of the Flock—vol 4, 1899