The Lord of Glory

That love of God to me.

My Brethren

OUR Lord Jesus Christ calls those for whom He died and who have believed on Him “My Brethren.” What a word it is! The Brethren of the Man in Glory! Brethren of Him who is at the right hand of God, the upholder and heir of all things! Pause for a moment, dear reader. Let your heart lay hold anew of this wonderful message of God’s Grace; Brethren of the Lord Jesus Christ! What depths of love and grace these words contain! What heights of glory they promise to us, who were bought by His own precious blood! His Brethren now; His Brethren forever. One with Him, one with His Father and His God. Sharers of His life, sharers of His Spirit, sharers of His glory and His inheritance. Blessed, glorious truth, He calls us His Brethren.

It is in the twenty-second Psalm where we find this truth revealed prophetically for the first time. That Psalm begins, as we have seen before, with the utterance of the deepest distress. It closes with the shout of victory and of triumph. He who was forsaken of God on the cross, the blessed sin bearer, has received glory. In the midst of the congregation, His redeemed people, He praises God, who has delivered Him and who gave Him Glory. In God’s own time, in the coming day of His visible manifestation, all the ends of the world shall remember and turn unto the Lord, and all the kindreds of the nations shall worship before Him. Then the Kingdom will be the Lord’s.

He who suffered on the cross was heard “from the horns of the unicorn” (Ps. xxii:21). Resurrection was the answer from God; the power of God raised Him from the dead. At once, after the great work had been accomplished, there follows the triumphant declaration of Him whose voice had cried so bitterly in death, “I will declare Thy Name unto my brethren; in the midst of the congregation will I praise Thee.” And blessed was the fulfilment on that day of joy, when the tomb was empty and He had come forth, the risen Christ. To Mary Magdalene He said on that glorious resurrection morning, “But go and tell my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father and your Father, and to my God and your God” (John xx:17). What joy must then have filled His loving heart. From His gracious lips there bursts forth a message such as He never gave to His own before His resurrection.

The great work on the cross had been accomplished, sin had been put away by the sacrifice of Himself. The Only Begotten of the Father, God’s holy Son, one with God, became Man; then passing through death, in which He fully glorified God, God raised Him from the dead. And now He gives the blessed results of His own work for those who believe on Him. He has brought us into the same relationship with His Father and His God, which He Himself holds, as the Man Christ Jesus, raised from the dead. His Father, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, is our Father; His God is our God. And again we pause as we write this. Let our hearts repeat it: “My Father, your Father; my God, your God.” He has brought us into fellowship with His Father; He has brought us to God and the place He has with the Father and with God, is the place God’s fathomless Grace has given to us. How little our hearts take it in! How little reality we possess of all this! And yet He wants us to enjoy it as He enjoys the fulness of joy in His Father’s and His God’s own presence. May the Holy Spirit work in us unhindered, that through His power we may lay hold in faith of this mighty truth and have it as a practical power in our daily lives. My Father, your Father; my God, your God and Christ, who loved me and gave Himself for me, Christ, who loveth us, is with His Father and His God. In such relationship, brought to the Father and to God through the Lord Jesus Christ and kept there by His own Grace and Power, how happy we should be.

And because we possess now in virtue of Christ’s work this blessed relationship, He owns us joyfully as His brethren. Hebrews ii:11-12 puts this more fully before our hearts: “For both He that sanctifieth and they that are sanctified are all of one; for which cause He is not ashamed to call them brethren. Saying, I will declare Thy name unto my brethren, in the midst of the church will I sing praise unto Thee.” The Lord Jesus Christ is He that sanctifieth and they that are sanctified by His great work and are in Him, are believing sinners, reconciled to God by His blood. Both He that sanctifieth and we are all of One and this One is God, the Father. Therefore He is not ashamed to call them brethren. It is true we possess this relationship with the Man in Glory, the Lord Jesus Christ, because we are born of God. We have eternal life, His own life, and that makes us One with Him. But this is not the truth in view here. It is the truth that He has identified Himself with us and through His death and resurrection we are identified with Him. And what it means “in the midst of the church will I sing praises unto Thee” we shall not follow at this time.

But let us keep it before our hearts a little while longer. The Lord of Glory calls us “My Brethren.” He who is there in the Father’s house, in the Father’s presence and on the Father’s throne is not ashamed to call us brethren. He knows all about us. He knows all the depths of sin in which we are by nature; that by nature we were enemies by wicked works and children of wrath, but He took it all upon Himself and has taken it out of the way and now He looks upon us and all who have accepted Him by personal faith as being one with Him and one with His Father; therefore He is not ashamed to call us brethren. What a comfort it should be to our hearts! What joy it should create in our souls! He Himself received from God, His heart’s desire and the request of His lips (Ps. xxi:2). And all His desire and request was in our behalf, that He might bring us, His many sons, to glory. And now He rejoices in us, for we are His inheritance. He wants us to rejoice in Him and with Him in an unspeakable joy and full of glory. Our souls entering into all this and rejoicing with Him in His salvation, enjoying the comfort of it; this honors Him and honors God.

It should end the discouragement and unbelief from which we so often suffer. Though we are weak and erring, imperfect in all our ways, yet He is not ashamed to call us brethren. Such a fellowship and relation into which we are brought once and, for all by the Son of God, should, if accepted in faith, dispel any doubt about ourselves and free us from all gloom and discouragement. Alas! how dull we are not to enter fully into the joy and comfort Grace has bestowed upon us!

And then think of the dignity and honor which is ours. Sons of God with Him; Heirs of God with Him; one with Him, perfectly identified with the blessed One in God’s presence. Therefore He is not ashamed to call us brethren. To walk worthy of the Lord is our calling; and worthy of the Lord we shall walk if we have the great fact of our fellowship with the Son of God as a reality before our souls. It is a sad state to speak theoretically of our position in Christ, to know all this with our intellects and not to manifest it in our lives and show forth the excellencies of Him, who has called us from darkness into his marvellous light.

He is not ashamed to call us brethren. It should strengthen the love for the brethren. Love one another. The weakest, the most imperfect believer, that one who appears to us so unlovable and so ignorant, is nevertheless owned by him. Just let us remember in looking upon all believers, that he is not ashamed to call them brethren, that no matter where they belong, what their knowledge in the Scriptures might be, they belong to Christ, and are equally beloved of God. How we need it in a day when Satan goes about dividing the people of God. Love for the brethren, a deep, real heart love, will possess us as our hearts feed upon the fact of our oneness with him and with His Father and His God.

He is not ashamed to call them brethren. It will be an incentive to witness for Him. Dishonored as He is, it falls upon us to honor Him by our personal witness. While in the Father’s presence He sings and is the leader of the praises of His people, we must sing of Him here and utter His praise on earth. He is not ashamed of us; how could we ever be ashamed of Him? What an honor to speak His worth, to tell out, though in feeble way, His glory and exalt His name. And yet we must beware of an unscriptural familiarity with Him, which the Holy Spirit does not sanction in the Scriptures. We must not address Him, as it is so often done, as “my brother,” or other sentimental terms, which our pen is reluctant to repeat. In all this we must not forget His dignity and glory. While He thus identified Himself with us and is not ashamed to call us brethren, He is nevertheless the holy Son of God, the Lord of all. As such we must adore and worship Him. Some blessed day we shall be just like Him. We are predestinated to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the first born among many brethren (Rom. viii:29). That will be in the glorious day when we shall meet Him face to face. “We know that when He shall appear, we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is” (John iii:2). What it all will mean? What day of joy and triumph for Him, when He stands as the leader of all whom the Father has given unto Him, when all according to His prayer will be the sharers of His Glory. Then He will be glorified in His saints for they will bear His image and reflect His glory. What a destiny! Like Him and with Him. And this future of perfect conformity to the Lord Jesus Christ and possession of the wonderful inheritance, which, in its riches we cannot grasp now with out finite minds, is rapidly approaching. How soon it may burst upon us!

Oh, friends, beloved in the Lord! Do we all enjoy this now in faith? Is it so that the Lord Jesus Christ becomes daily more real and precious to us? Do we live in the power of all this?

The Patience of Christ

“BUT the Lord direct your hearts into the Love of God and into the Patience of Christ” (2 Thess. iii:5). With these words Paul exhorted the Thessalonian believers. They had many trials and difficulties. They suffered persecutions and were troubled. False alarms had affected their patience of hope in the Lord Jesus Christ. The inspired exhortation puts before their hearts the Patience of Christ. Comfort and joy, encouragement and peace, would surely come to their hearts and strengthen them, if they remembered and entered into the Patience of Christ.

And who can describe or speak fully and worthily of the Patience of our blessed Lord! It includes so much. All His moral Glory and Divine perfections are concealed and revealed in this Word. The word patience has a wide meaning. It means more than we generally express by it. Submission, endurance in meekness, waiting in faith, quietness, contentment, composure, forebearance, suffering in calmness, calmness in suffering; all and more is contained in the one word, Patience. And such patience in all its fulness and perfection the Son of God exhibited in His earthly life. Whenever we look in the Gospels, we behold this calm, quiet, restful patience. His whole life here on earth is but a continued record of patience. In patience His childhood was spent, and when in His twelfth year the Glory of His Deity flashed forth we read “He went down with them, and came to Nazareth, and was subject unto them.” In patience, He whose mighty power had called the universe in existence, toiled on, content in Nazareth, submissive to the Father, till after many years the day would come, when the work He had come to do should be begun and finished. To describe that Patience during His public ministry from Nazareth, where He had been brought up, to Golgotha, would necessitate a close scrutiny of every step of the way, every act and every utterance which came from His holy lips. What discoveries of His Grace and moral Glory we make, if under the guidance of His Spirit we meditate on His life here below. Humility and submission under God, patient waiting on Him, utter absence of all haste, perfect calmness of soul and every other characteristic of perfect patience, we can trace constantly in that wonderful life. What patience is revealed in the forty days in the wilderness, when He hungered and was with the wild beasts (Mark i:13). When Satan tempted Him and asked for stones to be made bread, He exhibited still His patience. In His service, that marvellous service rendered by the perfect servant, no ambitiousness or ostentatiousness can ever be discovered. He pleased not Himself but Him who sent Him. He was constantly going about doing the Father’s will. His kindness and love were rewarded by rejection and insults, yet no complaint or murmur ever came from His lips. He was always trusting in God, perfectly calm, perfectly satisfied.

And how His patience shines out in dealing with men. What patience He had with His disciples and how He bore with them in love. They were slow learners. What patience and tenderness in his conversation with her, whom He had sought, the woman at Samaria’s well. And greatest above all His patience in suffering. He endured the cross. When He was reviled, He reviled not again; when He suffered, He threatened not, but committed Himself to Him that judgeth righteously. (1 Pet. ii:23). He was oppressed, and He was afflicted, yet He opened not His mouth; He was brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before his shearers is dumb, so He opened not His mouth. All the buffetings, shame, dishonors, griefs, pains and sorrows He patiently endured. Oh! the patience of Christ, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame!

And into this patience of Christ our hearts are to be directed. It is to be the object of our contemplation and to be followed by us, who belong to Him. The patience of Christ must be manifested in our lives. For even hereunto were ye called, because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that ye should follow His steps. His humility, submissiveness, contentment, calmness, patience in endurance, in doing and suffering the will of God, must be reproduced in our lives. But how little we know of it in reality. Impatience is the leading characteristic of the closing days of this present evil age. It is alas! but too prominently seen among God’s people who are influenced by the present day currents. How little true waiting on the Lord and for the Lord is practiced! How much reaching out after the things which are but for a moment and which will soon perish! In consequence there is but little enjoyment of that which is the glorious and eternal portion of the Saints of God. How great the haste and hurry of present day life! How little quietness and contentment! In suffering and loss, murmurings, fault-finding and words of forced resignation are more frequently heard than joyful songs of praise. Unrest instead of rest, discontent instead of contentment, anxiety instead of simple trust, self exaltation instead of self abnegation, ambitiousness instead of lowliness of mind are found on all sides among those who name the name of Christ and who carry His Life in their hearts. And why? Your heart, dear reader, is so often out of touch with Christ. You lose sight of Him. His Spirit is grieved and in consequence there is failure and the impatience of the flesh. Return, oh my soul, unto thy rest! Direct, O Lord, our hearts into the Patience of Christ.

The Patience of Christ. He is still the patient Christ. Rejected by the world He has taken His place upon the Father’s throne. There He waits until His enemies are made His footstool. Long ago, in our human reckoning, He entered there. Long ago the Father said to Him, “Ask of Me and I will give Thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost part of the earth for Thy possession” (Ps. ii:8). Up to now He has not yet asked the Father. When He asks it will mean judgment for this world. In infinite patience He has waited and waited in the presence of God. And all this time He has carried on His work as the Priest and Advocate of His people who live on earth. With what tenderness and patience He has dealt with all who lived in the past centuries. His mighty power kept them and now they are at home with Him. The same patience He manifests towards us. How often we have failed Him and walked in the flesh instead of walking in the Spirit. We came to Him and confessed and then we found Him so loving towards us. But ere long we failed again and in His loving patience His arms were again around us. And thus a hundred times. He changeth not. He is the same loving, patient Lord towards His own in Glory as He was on earth. “He shall not be discouraged,” the prophet declared. Even so His Patience knows no discouragement.

In all the dishonor done to His holy, worthy Name, He endures patiently. He is silent to all what is done by His enemies. The Patience of Christ. May the Lord grant us His Patience. John said to himself, “I am your brother and companion in tribulation and in the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ” (Rev. i:9). To that kingdom and Patience of Jesus Christ of which John speaks of belonging we belong. The martyrs belonged to it. Afflictions, persecutions and sufferings were their part. They are ours. In humility, in endurance, unflinching courage, in the patience of Christ, let us suffer with Him, share His reproach until His Glory is revealed.

He Shall Not Keep Silent

THE heavens have long been silent. It is one of the leading characteristics of this present age, the closed, the silent heavens. But they will not be silent forever. “Our God shall come and shall not keep silence” (Ps. i:3). In His divine Patience the Lord has been at the right hand of God for nearly two thousand years. He will not occupy that place forever. It is not His permanent station to be upon the Father’s throne. He has the promise of His own throne, which He as the King-Priest must occupy. Nearly two thousand years have gone since He passed through the heavens and during that time He has been rejected by the world. Every possible dishonor, insult and shame has been heaped upon His holy head through the instrumentality of the enemy, the devil. Never before has the rejection of the Man in Glory been so pronounced, so radical, so blasphemous as now. Those who love the Lord Jesus Christ are constantly seized by an unspeakable grief on account of these awful denials of the Christ of God and an horror as well. And still He patiently waits. But He will not always wait. His Patience will some day be exhausted. He will pray His unprayed prayer in Glory and ask of the Father the nations and the uttermost parts of the earth. The Father will then send the Firstborn back to this earth. When He comes in visible Glory to this earth it will mean the day of vengeance. The vengeance of God will fall upon His enemies. All the Christ rejecters, the wicked men and women who received not the love of the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness, the enemies of the cross of Christ, though they lived amiable lives (one of Satan’s pet phrases), will meet Him not as the patient lamb, but the Judge, the lion of the tribe of Judah. What will it be when His Patience is ended? What will it be when the kingdom and the Patience of Jesus Christ give way to the kingdom and Glory of Jesus Christ? Rapidly the day is nearing when the Lord Jesus Christ will be completely rejected. As long as the true church is still here this complete rejection is an impossibility. But the church will some day leave this earth. Then conditions are ripe for the complete rejection of the Christ and the reception of Antichrist who will then appear. And when the beast is worshipped (Rev. xiii) and the world defies God and His anointed as never before, when the nations of apostate Christendom stand in battle array (Rev. xix:19), then He will come as the King whose patience is ended and claim His Kingdom. What will it mean when His Patience is ended? Who can describe it? What judgments will fall then upon a wicked world and be meted out upon the enemies of Christ? The day of vengeance is rapidly approaching. It is the day of vengeance for the world. It is the day of the Glory of Christ. It is the day of the Glory of the Saints. It is the day of your Glory as a believer.

Let us suffer with Him, that we may also be glorified together. Let us be patient as long as He is patient. “Be ye also patient; establish your hearts for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh. Grudge not one against another, brethren, lest ye be condemned; behold the Judge standeth before the door” (James v:8, 9).

In His Patience pray for the unsaved. Preach the Gospel, give out the Gospel, send the Gospel, give for the Gospel, live the Gospel. A little while longer and His patience will end.

Trusting in the Lord thy God,
Onward go.
Holding fast His faithful word,
Onward go.
Not denying His worthy name,
Though it brings reproach and shame,
Spreading still His wondrous fame,
Onward go.

Has He said the end is near?
Onward go.
Serving Him with holy fear,
Onward go.
Christ thy portion, Christ thy stay —
Heavenly bread upon the way,
Leading on to glorious day —
Onward go.

The Love of Christ

THE Patience of Christ was recently the object of our meditation in these pages. Blessed and inexhaustible it is. And now a still greater theme is before our hearts. The Love of Christ. The heart almost shrinks from attempting to write on the matchless, unfathomable love of our blessed and adorable Lord. All the Saints of God who have spoken and written on the Love of Christ have never told out its fulness and vastness, its heights and its depths. “The Love of Christ which passeth knowledge” (Ephesians iii:19). And yet we do know the Love of Christ. While we cannot fully grasp that mighty, eternal Love our hearts can enjoy it and we can ever know more of it. And He Himself whose Love is set upon us wants us to drink constantly of the ocean of His never-changing Love and receive new tokens, new glimpses of it. Surely His own blessed Spirit, though one feels so insufficient for such an object, will guide us in our meditation. He is with us and in us to glorify Him and take of the things of Christ to show them unto us. The Love of Christ, the Holy Spirit ever longs to make known and to impart to our poor and feeble hearts.

The Love of our Lord is an eternal Love. It is not a thing of time. It antedates the foundation of the world.

“His gracious eye surveyed us

Ere stars were seen above.”

He as the Son of God in the bosom of God was the object of Love. “Thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world” (John xvii: 24). And then He knew us and His Love was even then set upon us, before we ever were in existence. He knew our sinfulness, our enmity, our vileness, and in Love which passeth knowledge He looked forward to the time, when He would manifest this Love to us His fallen creatures. “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high I cannot attain unto it” (Psalm cxxxix:6).

It was Love which brought Him down from the Glory, which He had with God. What Love to come into this dark, sin-cursed world, a world full of enemies. What Love to leave that bright and glorious home and appear as man, made of a woman entering this world He had called into existence. And there was no room for Him in the inn. It passeth knowledge.

And then that life, which He lived on earth, was lived in that mighty Love.

“A love that led Thee here below
To tread a lonely path in grace,
To pass through sorrow, grief and woe,
The portion of a ruin’d race.”

What Love we see in Him, in every step of that lonely path! What compassion, what tenderness in every action in every word we discover, ever new and fresh, in that blessed life of God’s unspeakable gift. Wherever we look we behold that Love. Loving compassion rested upon the multitudes; with Love He compassed the poor, the sinful, the oppressed, the heartsick and the outcast. Love carried the weak and failing men, who had believed on him, His disciples. A blessed word it is, which stands in the beginning of the thirteenth chapter in the Gospel of John. “Having loved His own which were in the world, He loved them unto the end.” His Love for His own was expressed by serving them. He pleased not Himself but had come to minister. He then girded Himself and began to wash the disciples’ feet. What humiliation! Yet it was the fruit of Love. All He did was born of Love. His was on earth a constant, a never-tiring, an enduring Love. All the selfishness of His disciples could not quench that Love. Nothing could quench His Love for His own. Nothing will ever quench it. Peter denied Him. “And the Lord turned and looked upon Peter” (Luke xxii:61). Was it a look of reproach? Was it a frown of displeasure which Peter saw in that beloved face? Far from it. Love in its divine perfection shone out of the eyes of the Son of God. And after His resurrection that Love was still the same. There was no reproach connected with the restoration of Peter to service. In the greatest tenderness and Love He committed to His disciple, who had so shamefully denied Him, the lambs and sheep so dear to His own loving heart.

Again we say, that Love passeth knowledge. How could man’s imagination and invention ever have produced such a loving Person as our Lord, revealing the perfection of divine Love!

But there is greater Love than the Love which we behold in His blessed Life on earth. The greater Love is manifested when He laid down His life. He came into the world to die, to be the propitiation for our sins. He came to take our place on the cross. He came to drink the cup of wrath in our stead and suffer the awful penalty of our sins.

“For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die. But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”

God in Love gave thus His Son, and He gave Himself in Love. From shame to shame, from suffering to suffering, from pain to pain and agony to agony that Love went on to plunge into the deepest sorrow, to reach at last the place where His loving lips had to cry “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken me?”

“To death of shame Thy love did reach,
God’s holy judgment then to bear;
Ah, Lord, what human tongue can teach