The Story of Grace
The heart, if I may so express it, enters heaven when it listens in faith to the story or tale of grace.
The work and fruit of grace is all our title to heaven itself by and by. The story or tale of grace, listened to by faith is all our way, and our only way, into heaven in spirit now.
The self-judgings of the holy principle, and the doings and obedience of the righteous principle, in us, are good and needful; but it is not the property of such things to lead us to, and seat us in heaven. It is the silent attitude of faith listening to the story of the grace of God, that constitutes the present heaven of the soul.
We have some illustrations of this silent listening of faith, while grace is rehearsing or exercising itself, given us in Scripture.
Look at Genesis 3 The Lord. God speaks to Adam, among the trees of the garden, of present penalties on him and his wife; but in His words to the serpent, he lets fall on Adam’s ear the tale of grace, which told him that the charm of the serpent’s promise should he broken; that instead of alliance between the deceiver and deceived, there should be enmity; and that in that enmity the one who stood for the deceived (God’s gift also) should at all personal cost be fully and gloriously the conqueror.
To this tale of gospel grace Adam listens, listens in silence. There is nothing else for him. But through the Spirit, this so works on his soul, that he comes forth from his distance into God’s presence; and his heart is so filled with the tale of grace, and with that only, that he seems altogether to forget the present penalty. He comes forth, calling his wife “the mother of all living,” thus owning the mystery which had been revealed to him, and that only. This is full of blessing. This is a beautiful illustration of the virtue that lies in a believing, silent listening to the tale or story of grace. Adam was borne in spirit, not only away from that distance into which sin and guilt and conscience had driven him, but beyond the fear or thought of present sorrow, to which his history in the world was about to expose him. He was as at the gate of heaven in spirit. Look again at Zechariah 3.
Joshua is before the angel of the Lord, and Joshua’s accuser or adversary is there also. Joshua appears in all defilement and degradation. The tattered garments of a prodigal but poorly hide his shame and nakedness—nay, they rather witness it and publish it; he has nothing to say for himself, and his only wisdom is not to attempt or affect anything; he is deeply and thoroughly silent. But there is One in the scene who can speak, and does speak, and Joshua listens. And what does the listening Joshua hear? What tale falls on the ear of this polluted one, whose very pollutions make him dumb? The same precious story of grace. For Joshua (in his filthy garments) hears the Lord himself—none other or less than He—rebuking his accuser. He hears the same Lord humbling him as a brand fitted for the burning, no better than a vessel of wrath fitted to destruction; but he hears at the same time that he was chosen, and that all the provisions of the house of the Lord were to be used for him, and the servants of the house commanded to be active and stir themselves for him.
This was the tale of grace, which the silent, listening sinner hears. And what a gate of heaven that moment was to him! To Joshua, in spirit, heaven had now opened itself, and he enters and sits there.
Look at the same heaven opened again in Luke 15.
The earth had shown itself a scene of thorough weariness and disappointment to the heart and mind of Christ, as we see in chapter 14.
It was not because it was the place of either violence and fraud, of either lion or serpent. The varied moral scenery of chapter 14 had been laid in the religion and in the social friendliness of the human family. Nothing coarse or repulsive had marked it—no blood had stained it, or guile of the serpent disfigured it. But the heart of Christ takes its journey through it all, grieved, wearied, and disappointed, and nothing gives Him rest or refreshment, till sinners and publicans come and hear him (15:1). Oh, the blessedness of such an attitude and moment both to Him and to us! There it is that we (and the Spirit of Jesus wearied with man) gain the bright heaven of God. Jesus left the Pharisees’ feast and the company of an admiring, following multitude, and now found Himself listened to by sinners, not followed by a crowd that had miscalculated their strength to be on such a road, but listened to by poor harlots and publicans, who had nothing to give, nothing to promise, nothing to undertake or pledge for themselves, but who came only for what they could get from Christ’s stores of boundless grace, and therefore heaven opens itself—and the parables which listening faith is invited to hear tell of heaven’s joy over listening sinners.
As a simple soul, soon after the word of grace had quickened it with the life of Christ, breathed out—
“Tis not for what I give Him;
It is when I believe Him,
I feel this love, and hear Him
Bid me be happy near Him.”
When the Lord had read from the 61st of Isaiah, that wonderful Scripture which publishes the riches of goodness or grace, He closed the book (see Luke 4)
This action was full of meaning, and of comfort too. It tells us, that when Jesus had caused us to hear the tale or story of grace, He had discharged His ministry. And that story (if listened to and received by faith) would be everything to us; and, in a fine sense, we might close the book, as Jesus did; we might pause, and muse, and meditate, and again and again turn in our minds this one happy, powerful, elevating tale of grace.
It would work liberty, and joy, and confidence, and real gospel sanctification for us and in us (through the Spirit), as it has done in thousands of sinners like us. But as this tale of grace is listened to in silence, so it is to be listened to in solitude. We are not only to listen while God Himself rehearses it to us in the gospel, but we are to be there alone with Him, apart from our fellow-creatures. It is to be between God and our own souls; we are not to think of others at all. It would disturb the soul in such a sacred moment. For the thought of others might ensnare us; we might remember their excellency and strength beyond our measure, and be led to fear and to unbelief. Therefore, as we are to be silent before God, thus speaking in grace, so are we to be alone with Him; that is, our fellow creatures, as well as ourselves, are to be set aside; for God is to be to us everything when the question of our peace is to be transacted.
J. G. B.
Our Living Association With Christ in Heaven
(5) A new race. Our connection is with a risen and glorified Christ. Even those in apostolic times who had known Christ after the flesh, knew Him no more so (2 Cor. 5:16): No longer were they around him on earth as branches in the vine, but livingly associated with him where he now is in heaven itself by the Holy Ghost come down from him for that end. On earth, such was His grace, it might have been said, “He liveth unto men;” but now, they having rejected Him, “He liveth unto God” (Prov. 8:31), (Rom. 6;10). He, having both glorified God in His life and vindicated God in His death, and having given Himself for us, has been raised by the glory of the Father and seated in heaven, and God is now working in the person of the Holy Ghost to glorify Him by taking of His and showing it unto His saints.
The most beautiful and perfect life was cut off in death; but on His part in love to us which led Him to give Himself for us; and on God’s part as bearing the full judgment of God as a propitiation for our sins before God as our substitute to have them borne away and washed, cleansed, forgiven; and now God, working in righteousness for the One who has so loved His God and Father as to glorify Him even about sin, at all costs to Himself, even laying down His life, when He so loved us as to drink the dreadful “cup,” which, had we drunk it, would have proved to us the cup of unmitigated and eternal wrath—has given us to Christ and in the new life in Him, in resurrection and the Spirit, associated us with Him in the glory of heaven itself in a new creation of which He is Head, as well as being a new race of men in Christ, of which He is the last Adam; a new state of which He is Lord; a new “House,” over which He, as “Jesus the Son of God,” who is passed, through the heavens into the presence of God, is set; a new body, the church to which He, as First-born from the dead, and set over all in heaven and earth, in this world and the world to come, has been given as Head.
The blessed Lord who died for us, being in heaven, has made all this world a blank and a wilderness to us who are here without Christ. Christ’s absence, when felt in the Spirit, makes this world an empty and unsatisfying place; for, like Mary of Bethany, all that we reckoned fairest and best in this sad scene has gone with Him to the grave; and “He is not here, he is risen:” and as “risen with Christ,” as to our spiritual place and state, we cannot but press on to reach Him where He is now seated, crowned and glorified. Not only have we a new object, but to gain this object we are set in the energy of the Spirit to run a new race.
If believers only saw their place in and part and portion with a glorified Christ, the surpassing excellence of the knowledge of Him would set them energetically on their course with the bright beams of the glory of Christ irradiating their souls in such a way that they should have their spirits so stirred by the power of Christ in the Spirit, with a sense of having Himself, that they should get outside of everything of earth and man and Satan’s world, and press on to the glorified Jesus in the heavens whom it is God’s delight to honor.
The text illustrated by Philippians 3 is the precious word of Christ: “And for their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also may be sanctified by the truth” (John 17;19). He has set Himself apart for His God and Father and us in that bright glory of heaven; also, just as we see His surpassing excellence and glory and holy love we will be sanctified to Him from everything in this world, both good and bad. What joy it gives in the Holy Ghost to have Him occupying the whole vision of the soul! Who that knows aim does not feel his heart stirred with bounding affections to reach Him in glory!
“From various cares my heart retires,
Though deep and boundless its desires,
I’ve now to please but One.”
“But one thing”: “I’ve now to please but One.” Living Christ: pleasing Him; reaching on to know Him and have Him in glory; perfectly conformed to Him; this is the one person and the “one thing” for the free loving heart that can sing:
“Tis the treasure I’ve found in His love
That has made me a pilgrim below,
And tis there when I reach Him above,
As I’m known, all His fullness I’ll know.”
[NOTE.-These lines, “I’ve now to please but One,” and “Tis the treasure I’ve found in His love, that has made me a pilgrim below,” we believe have been blessed as hardly any detached lines of hymns have been. Fully a dozen of years ago, when the former was sung at a conference in a certain city,—in the time of their morning freshness and childlike simplicity, when the saints attending it knew nothing else and when Christ in His risen and ascended glory, beauty, and attractiveness was just beginning to shine into their hearts, this line—
“I’VE NOW TO PLEASE BUT ONE,”
captivated the heart of one who was present with a marvelous spiritual power, and filled him with an experience of the Person and Presence of Christ Himself—so spirit-filling, ecstatic, and commanding, that when he addressed a meeting on his return, the entire audience seemed as if one by one and altogether to give an immediate response to it; and when afterward he put the line in his paper and wrote about it as one sitting at a heavenly feast, thousands felt the strange, unearthly influence of it, as light above the brightness of the sun; and some live to tell of the further blessed thing that that one line first placed them soul to soul, in the spirit, with the all-attractive “Person of the Christ” in the heavenly glory; and proved it had done so by separating them practically to Him in this world—the scene of His sorrows, rejection, and death.. And, O beloved, if
“I’ve now to please but One,”
were felt in power and in the Holy Ghost by every one of us, would it not rouse every sleeping virgin and send all “forth unto Him without the camp,” their hearts bathed in the heavenly radiance of His wondrous love, and at the cry “Behold the Bridegroom” springing forward to meet Him with lamps trimmed and burning, and “oil in their vessels with their lamps?”
“TO ME TO LIVE IS CHRIST.” “I’ve now to please BUT ONE.” Any word that tells of Him in His personal excellency, His finished work, and His surpassing glory as he now is in the Father’s presence, may form the “eye salve” to enable souls who have a desire after Him to see “how great is His beauty, and how great is His glory,” and to become a willing people in a day of heavenly power.
Such was once the effect of the reading of a little paper of wonderful energy on the words “Jesus only” in a prayer-meeting twenty-five years ago, that (we were told by one of them) about thirty men were linked at once with Christ in heaven, taken possession of and were delivered simultaneously from self and their fellow-men, and got on their feet to go forth with Christ’s Gospel as the Lord’s free men to tell of the glory of His Person and the perfection of His sinbearing work. Grand work this of the Holy Spirit making His Word a divine “eye salve” to let men see the glorious Person of the ascended Christ in the midst of His own circumstances, for then comes into view the all-satisfying sight—an accomplished work for the conscience and a perfect object for the heart.]