"HIS
EXCELLENT GLORY" -
As you quietly occupy your place before the Father and assimilate His personal
love for you, the Holy Spirit is conditioning you to contemplate the Father's
glory. What is His glory? God's glory is the sum total of His divine
attributes and His infinite perfections.
How is His excellent
glory manifested? "God ... hath in these last days spoken
to us by His Son ... who, being the brightness of His glory. and the
expressed image of his person ... " (Heb. 1:I-3). The
Word in 2 Corinthians 4:6 is even more explicit: "For God, who
commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shone in our hearts, to give
the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ
"
The Word directs you to
meditate--to behold--the Lord Jesus. "Holy brethren, partakers of
the heavenly calling consider the apostle and high priest of our profession,
Christ Jesus." "Looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher (perfecter)
of our faith " (Heb. 3:1; 12:2).
SCRIPTURAL
FELLOWSHIP - Yes, it is by faith, and not by sight or feelings, that
you sit before the Lord Jesus and look into His blessed face to behold the glory
of the Father. "Whom, having not seen, ye love; in whom, though
now ye see Him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of
glory." "For our light affliction, which is but for a moment,
worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, while we look
not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the
things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are
eternal" (I Pet. 1:8,- 2 Cor. 4:17,18).
"COME
AND SEE" - As
you fellowship with the Son, you will worship the Father; and that by means of
the Word. "God is a spirit; and they that worship Him must worship
Him in spirit and in truth" (John 4:24). Hence you sit before the
Lord Jesus with your Bible open to the truth concerning Him, and study in
dependence upon the Spirit of Truth. "He (the Holy Spirit) shall
glorify me; for he shall receive of mine, and shall show it unto you" (John
16:14).
It is in the intimacy
and influence of His presence, and the surety and security of His Word, that you
concentrate upon the Son of God who is "crowned with glory and
honor" (Heb. 2:9). You are to be like Mary, "who also sat
at Jesus' feet, and heard his word." "But one thing is needful
and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from
her" (Lu/ 10:39,42).
HEAVENLY
RECKONING - As you by faith abide in your position, you are occupied
with the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. The Spirit of Christ sees to
that: "He shall glorify me" (John 16:14). "Where the
Spirit of the Lord is there is liberty" (2 Cor. 3:17). It is
essentially as you are in your place in the heavenlies that you are to reckon
yourself to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God in Christ Jesus (Rom.
6:11). It is on the basis of reckoning that the Holy Spirit keeps the old
man and all that is fleshly inactive, while freeing you to look unto the Lord
Jesus. "And when they lifted up their eyes, they saw no man,
except Jesus only" (Matt 17:8).
THE
FELLOWSHIP OF GROWTH - Studying the glory of the Father as manifested
in the life of the Lord Jesus in the Word is not only an aspect of fellowship,
but it is the major means of growth. "But we all, with
unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are changed into
the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord" (2
Cor. 3:18).
As you contemplate the
different facets of the Lord Jesus' character, the Spirit of Christ, in
conjunction with all that He takes you through day by day, causes His very
characteristics to develop in your life--"from glory to
glory." "The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace,
long-suffering, gentleness, faithfulness, meekness, self-control" (Gal.
5:22,23).
This fellowship of
growth is highly personal--a oneness of nature. As you behold, He
bestows. You look upon Him in "faith which worketh by love"
(Gal. 5:6), and the Lord Jesus develops His life within you by the
Spirit--you grow. "And the glory which thou gavest me I have given
them, that they may be one, even as we are one" (John 17:22).
THE
FELLOWSHIP OF LIFE - It is to this fellowship of life that you have
been called. "God is faithful by whom ye were called unto the fellowship
of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord" (I Cor. 1:9). It is thus that
you are progressively conformed to the image of the Son, and that you will
become more than conqueror through Him that loves you (Rom. 8:37).
It is there, in
fellowship with the Father and the Son, that you recover the awareness of their
blessed presence; it is there that your loneliness and fear will fade
away, and you will have rest. It is there that "God shall
supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus"
(Phil. 4:19).
"We want to find
the Lord Jesus in the Word; and, having found Him, to feed on Him by
faith. This imparts freshness, vitality, and energy, all of which we
deeply stand in need of in this day of freezing formalism.
"What is the value
of a chilling orthodoxy without a living Christ known in all His powerful,
personal attractions? No doubt sound doctrine is immensely
important--every faithful servant of God will feel himself imperatively called
upon to 'hold fast the form of sound words'; but, after all, a living
Christ is the very soul and life of sound doctrine. May we, by the power
of the Holy Spirit see more beauty and preciousness in the Lord Jesus
Christ." - C.H.M.