Post by netchaplain on Dec 14, 2022 5:16:12 GMT -8
Perhaps no one subject is more replete with blessedness than the glory of the Bride, the Lamb’s wife. Whether we look at the grace that first brought us into it, or whether we look at the unfolding of this love in the glory of the marriage; however we look at it, it is simply beyond description.
The source of Jewish glory was in time. God made Himself known from time to time to the prophets. When He came to Moses, He spoke thus: “I am the God of thy fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.” As this God, He came to send them out of Egypt. He divided the nations among them, and gave them Canaan for their possession. Still, His love to them was altogether in time. They could not go back further than Abraham. The covenant with him was the highest bond of Jewish blessing, and was still in connection with the earth—as it always will be.
Ephesians One shows us that the foundation of our joy and blessing is much deeper (God has more for all in His Son—NC). It takes me up into the bosom of the Father; it shows me that the Church is infinitely beyond anything connected with time. When I trace the line of blessing belonging to the Bride, the Church, I find that it has its rise, not in Abraham, but in God Himself. In Hebrews Two we read, “He that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all of one” (Heb 2:11). All these riches of grace came out from the Father, When the time of the marriage is come, and for which we are waiting, how wonderful will be our potion! The most glorious thing of all will be the person of the Lord Jesus Christ.
The glory of the Bride is, that she has the person of the Lord Jesus. The joy of the Church, as the Bride, is that she will be like Him, and see Him as He is (1Jo 3:2). There will be no loveliness in the Lord Jesus that she will not have too. She will be no longer in disguise. All the moral glory, and moral beauty of her Beloved, will be hers.
Where do we now read the Father, but in the face of His Beloved? The Father has now given us the light of the knowledge of His glory “in the face of Jesus Christ” (2Co 4:6). But it is when we see Him, that we shall be fully like Him (sinless—NC); not as He was once, His visage marred more than any man’s, and His form more than the sons of men. There will be nothing then to hinder the flowing forth of all the fullness of the Father’s love.
If we can realize the glory of the Bride in connection with our present humiliation, we shall find that it will separate us from everything here. Our glory comes down out of the Father, and has altogether to do with the Person of the Lord Jesus, and this cut us off from everything earthly; this will just lift us up altogether, and give us power over all circumstances.
It is only as we realize the power of the glory, that we shall be able to remedy the things that are wrong; and it is by realizing the power of our union with the Lord Jesus in the glory that we shall separate from the world, and this will unite us to one another (i.e. the saints—NC). If we look at our beloved brothers and sisters as forming part of the glory of the Lord Jesus, we will not suffer anything to come in to separate us from each other.
—John Nelson Darby
MJS daily devotional for Dec 13
“What if there were conscientious objectors in the Lord’s army? Actually, our Lord does not have any noncombatant soldiers whatsoever in His service, since the battle line extends from the front all the way to the rear; to say nothing of the fact that we are all camped in enemy territory.” -MJS
“Luther, speaking to the young preachers of his day, said: ‘I did not learn to preach Christ all at once. The devil has been my best professor of exegetical and experiential theology. Before that great schoolmaster took me in hand, I was an unweaned child, not a grown man. It was my combats with sin and with Satan that made me a true minister of the New Testament. It is always a great grace to me, and to my people, for me to be able to say to them: “I know this text is true! I know it for certain to be true!” Without incessant combat, and pain, and sweat, and blood, no ignorant stripling of a student ever yet became an effective preacher.’“
“Every bit of truth we receive, if we receive it in faith, will take us into conflict and will be established through conflict. It will be worthless until there has been this process. Take any position the Lord calls you to take, and, if you are taking it with Him, you are going through things in it, and there will be an element added by reason of the pressure. You have taken a position, yes; but you have not really received as yet, the true value of it has not yet been established. You have not come into the real significance of the truth until there has been some sore conflict in relation to it.” -T. A-S.