The present government of God applies to walking in divine enjoyment, not to forgiveness and peace. We enjoy this blessed communion, dwelling in God and God in us, by the Holy Ghost given to us. If we grieve Him we are made sorry, humbled, perhaps chastened. It is always our place; but its realization and enjoyment depend on the revelations and action of the Holy Ghost in us, and these depend on our walk and state and obedience.
So in John 14 and 15 the enjoyment of divine favour and blessedness is made to depend on the walk of the saint. It must, if it is by the Holy Ghost dwelling in us; for how should we be enjoying communion in love in the midst of evil or idle thoughts? The presence of the Holy Ghost depends on righteousness - Christ's presence on high. That sheds God's love abroad in our hearts. We dwell in Him and He in us. But if evil is there the flesh is at work, the Holy Ghost is grieved, communion is interrupted. It is not a question of title (that is settled; Christ is in heaven), but of enjoying the blessedness I am brought into, enjoying God. Here all our walk with God is in question, though it is by grace I do so walk aright. What I urge here is the soul's getting clear hold of the difference between forgiveness - grace applied, through Christ's work, to sin and all the fruits of the old man - and our introduction in Him in righteousness into the presence and communion of God, where no cloud or question of sin ever comes. We may get out of this (not out of the title to it, but its enjoyment in spirit - not that peace is destroyed with God, but communion), but in it no cloud of sin can come. We are loved as Christ is loved. All depends on His work. But one is the forgiveness of that out of which we have been brought, the application of Christ's work to our responsibility as children of Adam in flesh. In the other we are not in flesh, but in Christ, in the enjoyment of that into which He is entered - our life for ever. J. N. Darby.