by Arthur W. Pink
by Arthur W. Pink
Philologos Religious Online Books
Philologos.org
by Arthur W. Pink
December, 1936
Union and Communion.
9. Glory. We cannot do better than commence here at the point where we closed in our last, for nowhere in Scripture do we have such a clear and blessed revelation of the Church's future bliss as the Lord Jesus favoured us with in John 17. “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 lovedst Me before the foundation of the world” (v. 24). Every word in this verse calls for separate meditation. Once more the Redeemer says, “Father,” for He is suing for a child's portion for each of His people: it is not simply wages, such as a servant receives from his master, but an inheritance, such as children receive from their parents—the inheritance being the Father's house, where the Son now is. He had said “Father” when asking for His own glorification (v. 5), and He does so again in connection with the glorification of His saints: addressing God thus intimated the loving intensity of the Mediator's intercession.
Christ's “I will” here at once arrests our notice—the only record we have of His ever addressing the Father thus, yet it was in as perfect keeping now as His “not My will” in Gethsemane. First, this “I will” was a note of authority which became Him who is God and man in one Person, to whom had been committed “power over all flesh” (John 17:2). Moreover, He had a perfect knowledge of the Father's will, and as the Surety of His people, Christ was here suing for the fulfillment of that covenant agreement which had been entered into before He embarked upon His great undertaking. Second, it was a testamentary disposition: Christ was about to die and therefore said “I will.” “When Christ made His will, Heaven is one of the legacies which He bequeathed to us” (T. Manton). The same thought is found again in “I appoint unto you a kingdom, as My Father hath appointed unto Me” (Luke 22:29). Third, it also reveals His deep earnestness and full purpose of heart, as the “Master, we would that Thou shouldest do for us whatsoever we shall desire” (Mark 10:35).
“That they also, whom Thou hast given Me, be with Me where I am.” Nothing gives a lover such a joy and satisfaction as to be in the immediate presence of his beloved. Heaven will not be Heaven to Christ until His glorified Bride is there by His side: then only will He “see of the travail of his soul and shall be satisfied” (Isa. 53:11). Nothing will content the heart of the Head but that His Church should be brought unto the possession of the utmost blessedness, to be continued unto and enjoyed by them forever and ever. It was so that His people might have a clear and comforting knowledge of this that He gave them that exceeding great and precious promise “I go to prepare a place for you: and if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto Myself; that where I am, there ye may be also” (John 14:2, 3). How this reveals the heart-attitude of Christ unto us!
“Father, I will that they also, whom Thou hast given Me, be with Me where I am.” That is in sharp and solemn contrast from “where I am, thither ye cannot come” (John 7:34), spoken to the unbelieving Jews. The wicked have no title, no fitness, no heart to be where Christ is: Paradise is still closed against them by the flaming sword (Gen. 3:24). But it will be the consummation of the believer's happiness to be where Christ is: as the Psalmist declared, “In Thy presence is fullness of joy, at Thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore” (16:11). How utterly different is the attitude of Christ toward His own from that of many of this world, who, when they enter suddenly into earthly riches and honours, quickly forget the fellows and friends of former days. Not so the Lord Jesus: His heavenly glory does not cause His love to decay in the least degree or take His mind off His people. They are inexpressibly precious to Him, and He cannot be content unless they are with Him.
It is as though Christ said to the Father, As given to Me by Thee, the elect are My “portion” (Deut. 32:9), My “special treasure” (Mal. 3:17, margin), My “royal diadem” (Isa. 62:3), My “joy” (Zeph. 3:17): and as their Head and Mediator I express My will, and it is that they shall be raised to the highest pinnacle that it is possible to elevate creatures, that they may be where I am, and that, not in some distant compartment of Thy House, but in My immediate presence, so that they may behold My glory—feasting their eyes and feeding their hearts upon Myself. Surely nothing can convey to our minds, under the teaching of the Holy Spirit, a clearer view of the heart of Christ toward His beloved. O that the blessed Comforter may so shine upon these words of Christ's, and thereby let in such light into our understandings, as may lift our hearts unto a clearer comprehension and greater admiration of His love than we have ever had before.
“That they may behold My glory.” This beholding is, first ocular. The bodily senses have their happiness as well as the faculties of our souls, and this will be realised in a far nobler and purer degree hereafter. Job affirmed thus when he said, “Though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God: whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold” (19:26, 27)—“see God” in the Person of the God-man Mediator. The saints shall then behold the Person who redeemed them, and that nature in which He suffered so much for them. The outward man will be regaled, as truly as the inner. There is a glory to charm our eyes in Heaven: not only the beautiful mansions and the glorious inhabitants, but above all, the face of the Lamb. As it is now said of Christ Himself, so shall it yet be the experience of each of His people: “For Thou hast made Him most blessed forever: Thou hast made Him exceeding glad with Thy countenance” (Psa. 21:6).
This beholding is, secondly, and supremely, mental and spiritual. The mind is the noblest faculty, for man is a rational creature, and there is as great an inclination to knowledge in his soul as there is in beasts to carnal pleasures. The drunkard may talk of his delight and the voluptuary of the gratification of sense, but the true delight of the soul is knowledge, and therefore it must be satisfied in Heaven, or else we would not be happy. “The pure in heart shall see God” (Matt. 5:8), yet not with the bodily eye, for He who is “Spirit” (John 4:24) cannot be viewed by the bodily senses, and therefore is He called “the invisible God” (Col. 1:15). But God has given man, in preference to the beasts, a mind which is capable of knowing Himself, and in our glorified state our knowledge of Him will be immeasurably increased, so that the soul shall be perfectly satisfied with its mental and spiritual sight of Him.
What an affecting sight it will be to behold the glory of Christ! How it will ravish the heart! Abraham was favoured with an anticipatory glimpse of it and “was glad” (John 8:56). If old Simeon was contented with a view of Christ as an infant—“Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace, according to Thy word: for mine eyes have seen Thy salvation” (Luke 2:29, 30)—what will be the effect on us when we stand before His very throne! Even now it fills the soul with joy unspeakable when faith and spiritual illumination beholds Him in the Word and through His ordinances, but words cannot express what it will be to behold the Lord in open vision. To behold the King in His beauty, to see the Lamb “as it had been slain” (Rev. 5:6)—still bearing in His body the marks of the Cross—will fill us with thanksgiving and praise.
But this glory which the saints are to behold is also a Divine one: it will be the luster of the Divine perfections which will be revealed to us through and by Christ, every attribute of God supplying a part, all combining to make up this supreme spiritual splendour. Then will God's unsearchable wisdom be more completely opened to us, for in Christ “are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Col. 2:3). Then will God's illimitable power be more fully discovered to us: that power which created a universe out of nothing, that preserved His little flock in the midst of a world of wolves, that will make a footstool of all His enemies. Then will God's holiness be known in all its loveliness, and joyfully shall we then unite with the angels in crying “holy, holy, holy, Lord God of hosts.” Then will God's love be seen without a veil: His smile shall never again be checked with a frown, nor the light of His countenance be obscured by any intervening cloud of sin.
Not till the glorified Church reaches Heaven will its union with God in Christ be complete. Union implies more than relation: it imports actual presence; not physical or local, but spiritual and cordial, by which the sinless soul, with will and affections guided by restored reason and judgment, closes with and embraces Him; and He in fulfillment of the eternal counsels, and with infinite love and delight, embraces her. When the soul is perfectly formed according to God's own heart and fully participates in the Divine likeness so as to be perfectly like Him, it is fitted for the most intimate communion which is possible between two such natures—the Divine and human. Nor can pen depict the holy bliss of glorified saints from such a love-union, now perfected between the blessed God and them. The likeness of God upon a creature will cause the eternal One to cleave in love to it, and the beholding of His glory by eyes from which the film of sin has been completely removed will make the soul embrace Him as its ravishing portion.
From that love-union in glory will issue everlasting communion. “There is nothing there to hinder God and the holy soul of the most inward fruitions and enjoyments; no animosity, no strangeness, no unsuitableness on either part. Here the glorified spirits of the just have liberty to solace themselves amid the rivers of pleasure at God's own right hand, without check or restraint. They are pure, and these pure. They touch nothing that can defile, they defile nothing they can touch. They are not now forbidden the nearest approaches to the once inaccessible Majesty; there is no holy of holies into which they may not enter, no door locked against them. They may have free admission into the innermost secret of the Divine presence, and pour forth themselves in the most liberal effusions of love and joy; as they must be the eternal subjects of those infinitely richer communications from God, even of immense and boundless love and goodness” (J. Howe, “The Blessedness of the Righteous,” 1668).
“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 lovedst Me before the foundation of the world” (John 17:24). In the last clause Christ tells the Father why He wills that His elect should be with Him and behold His glory. As the God-man, the Man taken into personal union by the Son, and as such the “Fellow” (Zech. 13:7) of Jehovah, He was, from all eternity, the Object of the Father's ineffable love. He was conceived in the Divine mind before all worlds, being the “Firstborn” of all God's thoughts, counsels, designs toward all beings, visible and invisible. Christ, as God-man, was the Centre and Circumference as it respected all God's vast designs in grace, nature and providence. Christ's Person is infinitely precious in God's sight, and therefore has He placed the highest honour of all upon Him as being the Medium through which the invisible God shall shine forth for all eternity, for thereby the Church will perceive how much the Father loves Christ and that it is the overflowings of the same which falls on them.
“I will, therefore, that they may behold My personal glory, which Thou has given Me, that from that sight they may have the most enlarged views their minds are capable of, concerning Thy love to Me, and to them in Me, as this will be a perfecting them in the full enjoyment of Thine everlasting love. Thou hast possessed My mind with it from everlasting; Thou hast taken Me up into the mount of personal union and communion with Thee. I have shone forth before Thee in all My personal glory. I have been in Thy bosom, and been admitted into a full knowledge and enjoyment of all the love of Thine heart. Thou lovedst Me from everlasting, and My whole Person, God-man, is the Object of Thine everlasting love. Thou lovedst Me as the Son of God, and as the Son of Man; Thou lovedst Me before the foundation of the world as the Head of the whole election of grace. Thou lovedst Me as Mediator. I am in every sense the Object of Thy love. I would open Thy whole heart to these, Thine, and My beloved ones. I would express it unto them most freely. I would speak out in their hearing the secrets which have passed from everlasting between Thee and Me, that they may have the clearest evidence I can give them of it” (S. E. Pierce).
The Lord Christ will shine forth in His personal glory in the view of His saints, and it will be so beheld by them as to be reflected upon them. Our glory in Heaven will not be independent of Christ, nor will it be inherent in ourselves: our everlasting bliss will be received out of the fullness of the Lord of glory. Just as the glory of the sun is subjective in itself, but objective upon others, so it will be in Heaven: we shall be bathed in the effulgence of Him who is Light. We shall be favoured with such views of Christ, as God-man, as will forever preclude any possibility of sinning, for our souls will be satiated with His perfections, filled with unutterable admiration and adoration. We shall be so completely swallowed up with Christ that we shall no longer have any thought about ourselves! This it is which constitutes the very essence of heavenly blessedness: we shall be so thoroughly absorbed with the loveliness of the Lamb as to forever lose sight of, forget, ourselves! The Church will so centre in God as their Portion and Inheritance that communion with Him, through His Christ, will be the fountain of their life for evermore.
Our thoughts have carried us along so swiftly that we must now go back and consider the several steps in the believer's history which is to terminate in this blessed consummation. The first step or stage occurs at regeneration, when he is made meet for the inheritance of the saints in light, for it is then there is wrought in him a principle (or “nature”) which capacitates his (hitherto depraved) soul to visualize and relish spiritual things. A beggar might gaze upon the glory of a king, and yet be no gainer; but when a regenerated soul looks in faith unto the crucified and risen Saviour he is “saved” thereby (Isa. 45:22). The second step or stage in the soul's journey unto the beatific vision occurs in its practical sanctification, which is a gradual process and progressive experience, under which, beholding in the glass of the Law and the Gospel the glory of the Lord, he is changed into “the same image” by the Spirit (2 Cor. 3:18).
Third, it is at death the believer approaches much nearer the goal so longed for by his soul, for then he not only leaves this world behind, but he is forever done with sin—he leaves it behind too. Welcome release! How that should reconcile him to the putting off of the body! Passing strange is it from the spiritual side of things—though not so from the natural—that the great majority of Christians are as reluctant to leave this world as are the godless, and view with such trepidation the valley of the shadows. Not only is there nothing whatever to be feared in death to the saints—for Christ has extracted its sting—but there is much in it and its attendants that should make it welcome. Sin—that plague of the renewed heart, that monster which is the cause of all our spiritual grief, that vile thing which is ever marring and interrupting our communion with God—will be done with forever. And being done with sin, there will be an end to all physical sufferings and mental sorrows. The entail of the first Adam will be finally severed. But this—grand as it is—is but the negative side; consider the positive.
As soon as the Lord is pleased to dismiss any of His saints from the body by death, they are immediately admitted into Heaven, and there they behold His glory. Christ's glory is great in the estimation of His people: they have a spiritual perception of it now, but they will have a much greater and grander view of it when removed from this vale of tears, when they are “absent from the body, present with the Lord” (2 Cor. 5:8). Therefore was it that the Apostle exclaimed, “Having a desire to depart, and to be with Christ; which is far better” (Phil. 1:23). Heaven is the habitation of all saints upon their departure from this world, and then they shall enjoy a fellowship with God through Christ which greatly exceeds any they are capable of now. At best our present communion with Christ is but feeble and fitful; but it will not be so always: in the intermediate state the redeemed are with Christ and receive wondrous “revelations” (2 Cor. 12:7) from Him.
“Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth” (Rev. 14:13): not “shall be,” but “blessed are” they—a Divine declaration which gives the lie to that Christ-dishonouring idea which supposes that at death the souls of believers, in common with unbelievers, pass into a state of oblivion. Yes, “blessed” beyond words are they who die in the Lord, for not only do they leave all sin behind forever, but they are “with Christ in Paradise” (Luke 23:43). True, that blessedness falls short of the final state, nevertheless, in various respects it approximates thereto. There is much in common for believers between death and resurrection, and after the resurrection, though the latter excels the former. Both are termed a “crown” (Rev. 2:10—immediately after death; 2 Tim. 4:8—at the latter day), both are a being “present with the Lord” (2 Cor. 5:8; 1 Thess. 4:17). Both are termed a “sight of Christ” (2 Cor. 5:6, 7)—while in the body we walk by faith, but when absent from the body and present with the Lord, walking by sight is necessarily implied: 1 John 3:2.
Yet great and grand as is the blessedness of the dead in Christ, that which they will enjoy in the resurrection and eternal state shall far surpass it. To the question “How are the dead raised up? and with what body do they come?” the inspired answer is returned, “Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die; and that which thou sowest, thou sowest not that body that shall be, but bare grain, it may chance of wheat, or of some other. . . . So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption; it is sown in dishonour, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body” (1 Cor. 15:35-37, 42-44). What a difference are we here taught to expect between the present and the future state of our bodies. From one view, the body that rises is the same that died—personal identity is preserved; but from another view, it is radically changed.
More than a hint of that marvelous change of the believer's body is found in the record of Christ's transfiguration, when “His face did shine as the sun, and His raiment was white as the light” (Matt. 17:2), and when after His own resurrection He passed through closed doors (John 20:19); for it is written that He “shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto His glorious body, according to the working whereby He is able even to subdue all things unto Himself” (Phil. 3:21). And if such a great and grand change is awaiting the believer's body in the resurrection state, who can conceive the change of the soul when it is “glorified?” Who is so bold as to define the limits of the soul's capacities and capabilities when freed from the burden of sin and made like Christ (1 John 3:2)? Who can estimate the excellency of a glorified soul's operations in connection with Divine things?! - A.W.P.
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