Your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is our
life appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory.
Colossians 3:3–4
The one who abides in Christ, the Crucified One, learns what it is to be crucified with Him, and in Him to be dead to sin. The one who abides in Christ, the Risen and Glorified One, becomes a partaker of His resurrection life and the glory He is now crowned with in heaven. Unspeakable are the blessings that flow out of our union with Jesus in His glorified life.
This life is a life of perfect victory and rest. Before His death, the Son of God had to suffer and struggle, could be tempted and troubled by sin and its assaults. But as the Risen One, He has triumphed over sin; and, as the Glorified One, His humanity has participated in the glory of Deity. The believer who abides in Him as such is led to see how the power of sin and the flesh are indeed destroyed; the consciousness of complete and everlasting deliverance becomes increasingly clear, and blessed rest and peace—the fruit of such a conviction that victory and deliverance are an accomplished fact—take possession of the life. Abiding in Jesus, in whom he has been raised and set in heavenly places (Ephesians 2:6), such a believer receives that glorious life streaming from the Head through every member of the body.
This life is a life in the full fellowship of the Father’s love and holiness. Jesus often gave prominence to this thought with His disciples. His death was a return to the Father. He prayed: ‘‘O Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before the world was’’ (John 17:5). As the believer, abiding in Christ the Glorified One, seeks to realize and experience what His union with Jesus on the throne implies, he understands how the unclouded light of the Father’s presence is His highest glory and blessing, and in Christ it is the believer’s portion too. He learns the sacred art of always, in fellowship with His exalted Head, dwelling in the secret place of the Father’s presence. When Jesus was on earth, temptation could still reach Him, but in glory that is done away with. Everything is holy there and in perfect harmony with the will of God. And so the believer who abides in Him experiences the awesome fact that in this high fellowship his spirit is sanctified into growing harmony with the Father’s will. The heavenly life of Jesus is the power that casts out sin for him.
This life is a life of loving goodness and activity. Seated on His throne, Christ dispenses His gifts, bestows His Spirit, and never ceases to lovingly watch and work for those who are His. The believer cannot abide in Jesus the Glorified One without feeling himself stirred and strengthened to work; the Spirit and the love of Jesus breathe into him the will and the power to be a blessing to others. Jesus went to heaven with the objective of obtaining power there to bless abundantly. As the Heavenly Vine, He does this work only through the medium of His people as His branches. Therefore, whoever abides in Him, the Glorified One, bears much fruit, because he receives of the Spirit the power of his exalted Lord’s eternal life. The humblest believer can become the channel through which the fullness of Jesus, who has been exalted to be a Prince and a Savior, flows out to bless those around him.
There is one more thought in regard to this life of the Glorified One, and ours in Him. It is a life of wondrous expectation and hope. Christ sits at the right hand of God, waiting in expectation till all His enemies are made His footstool (Hebrews 10:13), looking forward to the time when He will receive His full reward, when His glory will be known to all, and His beloved people will be with Him forever in that glory. The hope of Christ is also the hope of His redeemed: ‘‘I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also’’ (John 14:3). This promise is as precious to Christ as it ever can be to us. The joy of meeting is surely no less for the coming Bridegroom than for the waiting bride. The life of Christ in glory is one of longing expectation; the full glory only comes when His beloved people are with Him.
The believer who abides closely in Christ will share with Him in this spirit of expectation. Not so much for the increase of personal happiness, but from the spirit of enthusiastic allegiance to his King, he longs to see Him come in His glory, reigning over every enemy, the full revelation of God’s everlasting love. ‘‘Till He comes’’ is the watchword of every truehearted believer. ‘‘When Christ who is our life appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory’’ (Colossians 3:4).
There may be serious differences in the understanding of His promised coming. To one it is plain as day that He is coming very soon in person to reign on earth, and that imminent coming is his hope and his stay. To another, who loves his Bible and his Savior just as much, the coming can mean nothing but the Judgment Day—the solemn transition from time to eternity, the close of history on earth, the beginning of heaven; and the thought of that manifestation of his Savior’s glory is his joy and his strength. It is Jesus, Jesus coming again, Jesus taking us to himself, Jesus adored as Lord of all, that is important; He is the sum and the center of the whole church’s hope.
It is by abiding in Christ the Glorified One that the believer can fully anticipate, in true spiritual longing, His coming, which alone brings true blessing to the soul. There is an interest in the study of the end times, and such schools sadly are often better known by their contentions about opinions and condemnation of believers who do not agree with them than by the meekness of Christ’s character. It is only the humility that is willing to learn from those who may have other gifts and deeper revelations of the truth than we, the love that always speaks gently and tenderly of those who do not see as we do, and the heavenly character that shows that the Coming One is indeed already our life, that will persuade either the church or the world that our faith is not in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.
To testify of the Savior as the Coming One, we must be abiding in and bearing His image as the Glorified One. Not the correctness of the views we hold, nor the earnestness with which we advocate them, will prepare us for meeting Him, but only our abiding in Him. Only then can our manifestation in glory with Him be what it is meant to be: a transfiguration, a breaking out and shining forth of the indwelling glory that only awaited the day of revelation.
Blessed is the life ‘‘hidden with Christ in God, set in the heavenly places in Christ,’’ abiding in Christ the glorified! Once again the question comes: Can a frail child of dust really dwell in fellowship with the King of Glory? And again the blessed answer has to be given: To maintain that union is the very work for which Christ has all power and authority in heaven and on earth at His disposal. The blessing will be given to him who will trust his Lord for it, the one who in faith and confident expectation continually yields himself to be wholly one with Him. It was an act of wondrous though simple faith by which the soul first yielded itself to the Savior. That faith grows up to gain clearer insight and a surer hold on God’s truth that we are one with Him in His glory. In that same wondrously simple but wondrously mighty faith, the soul learns to abandon itself entirely to the keeping of Christ’s almighty power and the merits of His eternal life. Because it knows that it has the Spirit of God dwelling within to communicate all that Christ is, it no longer looks upon it as a burden or even an effort, but allows God’s divine life to have its way, to do its work; its faith is the increasing abandonment of self, the expectation and acceptance of all that the love and the power of the Glorified One can perform. In that faith, unbroken fellowship is maintained and growing conformity to His image realized. As with Moses, the fellowship makes us partakers of the glory, and our lives begin to shine with a brightness not of this world.
What a blessed life! It is ours, for Jesus is ours. We have the possession within us in its hidden power, and we have the prospect before us in the manifestation of its full glory. May our daily lives be the bright and blessed proof that a hidden power dwells within, preparing us for the glory to be revealed. May our abiding in Christ the Glorified One be our strength to live to the glory of the Father, our enabling to share in the glory of the Son.
And now,
little children,
abide in Him,
that when He appears, we may have
confidence and not be ashamed
before Him at His coming.
1 John 2:28
Refuse to Settle
for the Shallow Life
The waters of life are rough—at the surface. Beneath the choppy waves of circumstances is a peaceful, unchanging dwelling place in God. For those desiring a deep relationship with God, Calvin Miller shows how to break the tyranny of things that occupy the mind and discover intimacy with God. Entering the depths of the fullness of God is not some distant thing for which a Christian must struggle throughout life. It is as near as one's heart.
Into the Depths of God by Calvin Miller
BETHANY HOUSE