Down to Earth But Heavenly Minded

Heavenly Places.

Redemption is the starting-point of the Christian in his course and his relationships with God. Many and bitter are the experiences which lead the soul up to this; but they do not find the soul consciously on proper Christian ground at all. This redemption is in Christ. We come into all the blessings and benefits of it on believing — but the work was done long before — our sins were borne, and all was finished before we came on the scene. Then came the work in our consciences which made us feel our need of cleansing; then of deliverance; but it only led us into the value of what Christ had already accomplished. This is note learned by experience — though experience may lead up to it — but by simple faith in Christ. Faith is the empty hand which stretches itself forth to be filled from Him; and true faith may always be tested, in that it has Him for its object!

Some are troubled, too, about measures of faith, as to the assured sense of deliverance or otherwise. There are no measures of faith in this respect. Faith is faith; and there is no such thing as faith in the Lord Jesus Christ that does not save. You may ask, When? I reply, When you have got it! Just as a drop of water is water as much as is the Atlantic Ocean; so faith is faith — be it great or small. Faith casts the soul wholly upon God and what He has said, apart from feelings or experiences altogether. No doubt when faith is simple right feelings and experiences will follow; but it rests upon the word of God as its true and only basis.

It may now be demanded, why I have brought together the heavenly place of a Christian, immediately following the salvation of God, and complete deliverance of the soul out of all its former relationships and responsibilities. Has not, it may be asked, the great and terrible wilderness to be traversed before we reach that place on high? Did not Israel wander for forty years in the desert before they arrived in Canaan?

This was all true with them. They traversed the one to reach the other. We have, on the contrary, reached our Canaan already, as being in Christ; it is then, and only then, that we have found the world a wilderness to us. I do not think we ever really find it so, until we are conscious of our place and possessions on high “in Christ” — united to Him by the Spirit of God. I do not say that with all it is so known; many think the wilderness of life has to be traversed before the soul is conscious of its place on high — but this is not God’s way. “Not as the world gives” gives He unto us. He brings us into all that Christ possesses as a Man before Him — and this is a present thing. There is no experience at all in learning this. Much experience had brought the soul to the consciousness of powerless fear, and such exercises of the heart and conscience that it might learn God as a Saviour — delighting to save!

But God has brought a Man into glory, and seated Him on the throne of God. Faith tells us that there is a Man in heaven — faith which is based upon the testimony of the Scriptures. They tell us that this is the new place for man by redemption. If I look upon Him as the forerunner, He has entered in for me, If I look upon my union with Him in that new place, then I am united to Him who is there. If I was alive in sins, He shed his blood and put them away. If I was dead in sins, He died for my sins. If He was raised, God has raised us together with Him. If He is gone up on high, we are raised up together and seated together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. There never was such a thing as a man being united to Christ in heaven before the Holy Ghost came down from heaven to dwell in our bodies. There never was such a thing as the Holy Ghost dwelling in a man whose conscience was not purged, and this could never have been until after the work which purges the conscience was done. Hence no saint before the cross ever knew all his sins put away, and his conscience purged. He knew of certain sins being forgiven. Nathan is sent to tell David of his horrible sin in the case of Uriah being put away. But no one ever knew God in the light of His presence within a rent vail, and that the very blow which rent the vail had put him in God’s presence without one single sin! As a consequence, the Holy Ghost never was given till Jesus was glorified. (See John 7:36-39).

The Holy Ghost inspired the prophets; came on them for a time, and then left them. He did this even on men who were not converted to God at all, as Saul and Balaam. He guided and taught the saints, and quickened the souls of sinners; but He must have the conscience purged of every sin before He could dwell in our bodies.

The Spirit of God wrought in souls, and they were born again of the Word and Spirit of God. They had a new nature, which longed for complete deliverance before the cross made it possible that God could make known to any that all their sins were there put away. The children of God were then in bondage, hoping for a Saviour, and a salvation which they needed. Still none of them had the Spirit of adoption — the Spirit of His Son, whereby they could cry “Abba, Father,” given them. Now, it is true (since the cross) that “Because ye are sons (already, by faith in Jesus Christ; Galatians 3:26), God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father” (Galatians 4:6). We stand thus consciously in relationship to God as our Father, which no saint of God ever did; although they were born of God, this relationship as sons never was known. Confidence in God characterizes the Old Testament and before the cross; relationship characterizes the New.

The people of God before the cross were under the “forbearance” of God. When the cross came and discharged all God’s claims, and purged their sins, they are on another footing altogether. They now stand as those who have been righteously forgiven and justified. Romans 3:25-26, brings this truth out very plainly; “Whom God hath set forth a propitiation (or mercy seat) through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the passing over (margin), of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God; to declare at this time, his righteousness; that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus.”

Suppose a man owed a debt which he could not discharge. Well, some kind person says he will be security for that debt. Then his creditor forbears with him; he does not press his claim. Still the creditor’s claim has not been settled, nor is the debtor relieved; the debt hangs over him still.

But suppose the rich man has kindly discharged the debt himself, unknown to the other. How very kind! you exclaim. But still the debtor’s mind is not relieved; he thinks he is still under the forbearance of his creditor. Then some one comes with the news that all has been discharged, and that the creditor wishes to assure the person that he wishes him to know it, and not be afraid to meet him any more.

Now this forbearance was the state of the saints before the cross — they confided in God — trusted His promises. They knew that some day or other these promises would be fulfilled. They thus lived and died in confidence in God. God was looking on towards the cross, and the Son was in the heavens; the One who had presented Himself to come some day and do all God’s will (Psalm 40:6 — 8). Thus God waited, and His people were under “the forbearance of God;” and the Son was security, so to speak, for their sins; one day or other He would take up the claim and discharge it. At last came the Son of God; in holy love He took up the work — “bore our sins” on the tree, discharging every claim. He died and rose, and went on high. From the heavens which He entered by His own blood (Hebrews 9:12), He sent down the Holy Ghost with the message that the sins were borne and put away, and thus our consciences are purged in receiving His testimony to us (Hebrews 10:15-17); then having believed this testimony to us, He then comes to dwell in us, uniting us to Him who has purged our sins, and then making us members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones!

But more. Then comes out all God’s delight, and the purposes of His love. He gives us the same place, and joys, and blessings, and inheritance with His own Son! He had become a Man, and as a Man — the firstborn amongst many brethren He took His place in glory, and God set us in Him there on high. He has blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ (Ephesians 1:3). He has quickened us together with Christ; raised us up together, and seated us together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 2:6).

Thus His people have, by sovereign grace, this new and wondrous place, and they should be the exponents of a heavenly Christ, on earth, by the Spirit of God. The Church of God, looked upon in the truth of it, is the reflex on earth, produced by the power of the Spirit of God, to the glory of Christ in heaven.

We will now examine this a little more in detail. Forty years’ endurance brought Israel up to the plains of Moab, and Jordan lay before them. The wilderness is a subject of deep interest to our hearts. In no place do we so learn the sympathies and tenderness of Christ as there, where faith and patience are tried and tested — where God leads and feeds, and trains His people in obedience and brokenness of will, for the heavenly warfare of the land. This is not properly the subject of these papers, though we may enter a little upon it in the next chapter. They had been safe from judgment forty years before in Egypt, on the night of terror. They had come out of it by redemption, never to return by that way again. Still they were not come in to the Canaan to which God had purposed to bring them; and there rolled the barrier to the land. The Jordan is commonly taken as a type of death, and very justly. But it is not death physically — or in other words the death of the body. It is the fact of Christ’s death and resurrection being counted to us in grace, and so used that it is death and resurrection morally to us, leading us “in Christ,” into a new scene altogether; a place where we know no man after the flesh, yea, if we had known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we Him thus no more (2 Corinthians 5:16).

We read in Joshua 3, that the Ark of God — borne by the Levites — was first to pass down into the waters of death, the last token of the enemy’s power. There was to be a space between it and the Host which followed after. Then as the feet of the priests touched the brim of the waters, they stood upright on an heap, and all the Host of the Lord passed over into the land in which the Lord delighted, at the other side of Jordan. God had passed over them when He was judging Egypt. They passed over here, when it was a question of sovereign grace bringing them into the land in which He chose to dwell.

None could pass that way till Christ first was there. He must dry up that mighty stream of death in which God’s judgment was expressed. He must thus end human life, which the enemy could touch, before He introduced us into the life beyond it all. The waters compassed Him about, and flowed over His head. Deep called to deep as they reached His soul. But all was borne, and the bed of the river of death proved, as His people traversed it with dry-shod feet, that all had borne down upon Him; “All thy waves and billows passed over me.”

The priests “stood firm,” bearing the Ark; and “the people passed over right against Jericho.” There was the organized strength of the Enemy in unbroken power — the seven nations of Canaan were also there. Thus has the Lord died and risen; ascended on high He has entered, as Man, into a new sphere for man, and has introduced us into life on the other side of death, and given us all that He possesses as Man.

In Ephesians 1 this new place is unfolded according to the counsels of God. It is remarkable that there you have an allusion, not only to the Passover and Red Sea; that is the judgment of sin, and redemption of the people of God; but we have also in it the Ark in and out of the Jordan, and in our Canaan — the heavenlies. Thus, the whole wilderness is dropped; fulfilling most fully in the antitype the statement of God’s purposes to Moses in Exodus 3:8, and the full result of those counsels in introducing man into His presence on high.

Thus we read (verse 7), “In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace.” The blood of Christ, on the ground of which we have this forgiveness and the redemption which is in Christ, is the way into those counsels of His grace and purposes in Christ before the world began. Then we read (verse 19) of “The exceeding greatness of his power to usward who believe, according to the working of his mighty power which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand in heavenly places.” Thus the true Ark of the Covenant has been in the waters, and in the next chapter (Ephesians 2:3-6), the people of God have passed through. “Even when we were dead in sins, he hath quickened us together in Christ, and hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.”

We have thus been introduced into this new land. We might say in the language of Psalm 119:3, “The sea saw it and fled: Jordan was driven back.” As the Psalmist links together the deliverance out of Egypt of the Red Sea, and the entrance into the land through the Jordan; so does the breadth of the purposes of that God, “who is rich in mercy,” take in, in Ephesians 1, 2, our present introduction into “heavenly places in Christ Jesus,” as the people whom He has cleansed and redeemed!