The privileges of the Christian are innumerable, and of an entirely different character from those of the men of this world, and also different from those of the saints of Old Testament times, though these often serve to illustrate the divine privileges that the Lord has given to those who are His. Isaiah, for example, was brought into the presence of the Lord to behold His glory, and then he was enabled to go forth in the service of the Lord as sent of Him (Isa. 6:1–8). Then there were the potters, who dwelt “among plantations and enclosures: there they dwelt with the king for His work” (1 Chr. 4:23). Kept apart from the influenced of the outside world in conditions that were pleasant and conducive to good workmanship, they had the wondrous privilege of dwelling in the company of the king.
“Part with Me” and Fruitbearing
At the beginning of John 13 the departure of the Son of God to be with His Father is in the mind of the Lord, and in love for His own He stoops to wash their feet, an act that expressed His great love for those He had chosen to be His companions, and the wondrous grace that caused Him to become Man that they should be brought into association with Him. There was however much more expressed in this care for His own as He told Simon Peter. The feet of the disciples were being washed to indicate something of a spiritual nature, even that to have part with Him, in the place into which He was about to enter, His own must be cleansed morally to enjoy communion with Him before the face of the Father where He soon would be.
Communion with the Son of God in heaven, and with the Father also, cannot be enjoyed if we have been defiled in our spirits with the things of this world through which we pass. To set us free from such defilement, the Son of God on high has undertaken to cleanse us through a ministry that applies the word of God to the soul, and brings comfort to the heart. With the spirit free from what defiles, the saint of God can enter the presence of the Lord, and enjoy blessed communion with the Son and the Father, as having part with the Son in what is heavenly and divine.
“Part with me” belongs to the inside place, where the heart and spirit are occupied with what belongs to the Father and the Son in heaven, but we also have the divine privilege of living for the Father and the Son in the outside place, even in this world as witnesses to the glorified Son of God. Something of this is brought before us by the Lord in John 15, where the subject of fruit-bearing is taken up. Jesus on earth was the true Vine, to bring pleasure to His God and Father, and His disciples were the branches. This figure is used by the Lord to show how His own in this day can bear fruit in their lives for the glory and pleasure of God.
Two outstanding things are necessary if we are to be here for the pleasure of God, the care and discipline of the Father, and constant dependence on and communion with the Son in heaven. These things are necessary for all divine service, but they are also essential if we are to be for God’s praise in all the details of our daily life. The Father watches over us with loving care, but we are to be watchful, so that nothing is allowed to hinder our communion with the Son of God as abiding in Him. Drawing upon the resources of the Son in dependence and communion, we shall bring forth fruit, express the precious features of the Son of God, and thus glorify the Father, and show that we are disciples of the Son.
Access to the Father and Walking Worthy
Having written of God’s eternal purpose in Ephesians 1, and of how God’s power has set believers down in Christ in the heavenlies, in Ephesians 2, the Apostle Paul writes, “For through Him we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father” (Eph. 2:18). Then having in Ephesians 3 brought out the truth of the mystery, according to God’s “eternal purpose in Christ Jesus our Lord,” the Apostle adds, “In whom we have boldness and access with confidence by the faith of Him” (verse 12). How great is this privilege of having access to the Father in company with the Son and in the power of the Spirit.
Our access to the Father is in the light of the wonderful communications concerning the eternal purpose of God of which His Christ is the centre, and the One by whom all will be brought to completion. It is according to God’s eternal purpose we have received the heavenly, spiritual and eternal blessings that are brought before us in these chapters, and our entry into the Father’s presence is surely that we might be in communion with Him as to His great revelations, and that we might worship Him as knowing Him as sons, for it is the knowledge of this relationship that gives us the boldness and confidence in our access into His presence.
As blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, as forming part of the body and bride of Christ, and as belonging to God’s house, which “grows unto a holy temple in the Lord” (Eph. 2:21), we are exhorted to “walk worthy of the vocation wherewith” we are called (Eph. 4:1). Knowledge of the Father, and communion with Him in the inside place in relation to His purpose, will enable us to carry out His will by walking worthy of the calling wherewith we are called.
How dignified the sons of God should be in their walk through this world as conscious of their relationship with God and of the place He has given them in association with His own Son. This dignity marked the Son of God as He walked among men in testimony to His God and Father, and its character is shown to us in verse 2, “with all lowliness and meekness, with long-suffering, forbearing one another in love.” These are the features that were seen in perfection in God’s Son, and they are to be in evidence in those that God has made sons with His own Son.
The Holiest and Outside the Camp
The children of Israel were never permitted to enter the holiest in the tabernacle that Moses reared; only the high priest could enter once a year, on the day of atonement, but it was not with boldness, for in the divine instructions relating to Aaron’s entry it is twice written “that he die not” (Lev. 16:2, 13). Hidden in the cloud of holy incense, and occupied with sprinkling the blood of the sin offering, Aaron was unable to be occupied with all the beauty and glory of the presence of God.
With the Christian it is so different, for we have “boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus”(Heb. 10:19). The precious blood of Christ, which has taken away all our sins and made us meet for the immediate presence of God, and given us the knowledge of the love of God, enables us to enter with holy boldness, and there we are free to commune with God in relation to all His glory that shines unveiled in the face of Jesus, and to learn what all that is in His presence speaks of, the varied colours of the veil that speak of Christ’s perfections and the offices that He fills as do the curtains that form His dwelling. There too we see the gold of the boards, and the ark of the covenant; all speaking of Christ as known to God.
If it is our privilege to enter the holiest as having Christ, our great priest over the house of God, we have to remember that the One who enables us to enter the inside place suffered in the outside place, for “Jesus also, that He might sanctify the people with His own blood, suffered without the gate” (Heb. 13:12). Guilty Israel put their Messiah outside its door, and crucified Him on a malefactor’s cross. Was it not a privilege for the disciples of Christ to share His place of rejection, to voluntarily accept the place of reproach meted out to the One who died for them? Is it not our privilege to go forth to Christ to share His reproach outside the door of guilty Christendom that has put Him outside?
We cannot go outside the Christian profession, but we can go out to Christ from every association in this world where there is no place for Him. It is not enough to go outside the imitation camps of Christendom, but rather to go outside to Him, to be where He is, Himself the attraction for our hearts, and Himself the object of our separation from all that belongs to this evil world that has rejected Him, and still rejects Him.
Holy Priests and Royal Priests
In his first epistle, the Apostle Peter writes of those who have purified their souls in obeying the truth coming to Christ “a living Stone…chosen of God and precious” (1 Peter 2:4). Then he shows that those who have come to Christ are living stones, who “are built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ” (verses 5). The priests of Israel were a distinct class, apart from the people, but in Christianity all who are true believers in the Lord Jesus Christ are priests to God, forming part of His spiritual house.
Different sacrifices were offered by the priest under the Levitical order, all of which have their fulfilment in Christ, whether the burnt offering, the meat offering or the peace offering. Now that Christ has died and risen again, we are able to enter into the meaning of these and also of the sin offerings, and can present Christ to God and this is praise and worship. The writer to the Hebrews exhorts, “By Him therefore let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of our lips giving thanks to his Name” (Heb. 13:15). This is our privilege within, as entering the presence of God, presenting His Son in His deep perfections as typified in the varied aspects of the sacrifices of Israel.
Believers in the Lord Jesus are not only an holy priesthood, but “a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people,” and so that we might “show forth the praises of Him who has called us out of darkness into His marvellous light” (verse 9). All that Israel should have been in regard to the earth the saints of God have been brought into in an entirely new way. Israel should have shown forth the praises of God among the nations; instead, on their account, “the Name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles” (Rom. 2:24). It is our precious privilege, as royal priests, to make known in our lives what God is in all His goodness, having been brought into the marvellous light of the revelation of Himself in goodness in the Person of His Son.
Divine Glory Without and Within
Different Scriptures reveal that the saints will share in the display of God’s glory in the millennium and in eternity. In John 17:22–23) the Son of God speaks to the Father of the glory given to Him being shared by His own. When the saints are seen in that glory with Christ, the world will behold in them the fruit of Christ’s work as being sent into the world to accomplish God’s will, for it was God’s will and pleasure to have a vast company of the redeemed to share the glory He has given to His Son as Man. We could never have been seen by the world in that glory had not Christ come and died on the cross, had the Father not sent Him to accomplish His purpose.
The display of the divine glory in that day will also show the deep affection that the Father has for those He has given to be the companions, the brethren, of His own Son, for the saints share in this wonderful glory that the Father has given to the Son. In love, the Father “spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?” asks the great Apostle to the Gentiles (Rom. 8:32).
If we share the divine glory without in the day of display, there is a glory within the Father’s house that we cannot share. Yet, in wondrous grace, we are to behold the glory that we cannot share, and this according to the express desire of God’s blessed Son, when He said, “Father, I will that they also, whom Thou hast given me, be with me where I am; that they may behold my glory, which Thou hast given me: for Thou lovest me before the foundation of the world” (John 17:24). This glory given by the Father to the Son is surely the glory that the Son asks from the Father in verse 5 of this wonderful chapter, the glory the Son had with the Father before the world was.
This eternal glory of the Son had evidently been laid aside when He became Man, but He has entered into it again as Man so that His own, given to the Son by the Father, might be able to look upon with deepest admiration the glory of the eternal Son. If our joy will surpass all telling in gazing upon such glory, a glory that shows the eternal affection of the Father for the Son, what will it mean for the Father and the Son to have a company of those they have redeemed with them in the Father’s house in such a place of privilege, affection and eternal joy?
R. 22.4.70