The Lord Jesus is not now on earth. He has ascended into heaven. What a very peculiar position then is mine hear! Sensible of the worthlessness of the first man, and of the absence of the Second. My own life—that of the first man, I have; the One I love—the Man who has glorified God upon the earth—I find no longer here. How can I get on?—only as united to that One in the glory. He is my Christian Life. Once with Him I can walk here, not to cultivate my old life, but to manifest His, which is mine in Him.
Thus the Lord Jesus says, “For their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth” (Jn 17:19). His sanctification as expressed in these words is positional. He has ascended into glory, and is wholly apart from this scene, that we might by the Holy Spirit be associated with Him there (via the Spirit using the Life of the Lord Jesus—NC), and this is our moral sanctification.
But how am I led into this association? See Stephen in Acts 7:55, “being full of the Holy Ghost, looked up steadfastly into heaven, and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God.” Now there was a new and distinct action of the Spirit, enabling Stephen’s soul to penetrate through everything, and to find the Lord Jesus where He is, even in the glory of God. It was a new thing brought out at that moment. It was, in a sense, contrary to Stephen’s own preaching, for he had been preaching that Christ was to come down—to return (all thought Christ was about to “restore again the kingdom to Israel”—NC)
In chapter One of Acts the disciples were distinctly told not to gaze up into heaven (Act 1:11), but now Christ’s rejection was completed, and there was no longer any possibility of His return to earth to take His rights, and the Holy Spirit takes an altogether new line of action. He reveals the Lord Jesus in the glory to the saint, and links the soul of the believer with Him there, all hope for the earth being cut off.
Now every new revelation determines the character of the action of the Holy Spirit during any given period or dispensation. When everything has failed on earth, He directs me to where there is no failures, He turns my eye and heart to heaven. He accomplishes in me the very same action that He did in Stephen.
“Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God” (Col 3:2, 3). It is the strangest of all anomalies that we should be left here to live, where our life is not. Tell me where your eye is, and I’ll tell you what your conduct is. “We all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord” (2Co 3:18).
There we get the moral consequences of personal fellowship—one spirit with the Lord Jesus, the glory claims me as its own. I can behold the glory of the Lord with unveiled face, and be transformed thereby “into the same image.” I have no shrinking from the glory, my heart rests in it. I can look upon that glory as one with the blessed One who is there, and who has made for me a free entrance into it by the ministration of righteousness and of the Holy Spirit.
If I am not in conscious union with the One who is there, I cannot “hate” the life that is here (Jhn 12:25; 1Jo 2:15). He has ended the first man (old man, sin nature after Adam, still there but rendered inoperative—NC) on the Cross, and now I am free in the life of the blessed One in the presence of my Father.
—James Butler Stoney (1814-1897)
MJS daily devotional excerpt for August 9
“Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matt. 11:28).
Hard as it is for the believer to finally come to rest concerning his spiritual birth, it seems to be even more difficult for him to simply rest in the Lord Jesus for his life and service.
“There are two stages in the Christian life. The one in which, after conversion, a believer seeks to work what God would have him do. The second, in which, after many a painful failure, he ceases from his works, and enters the rest of God, there to find the power for work in allowing the Father to work in him.
“It is this rest from their own work which many Christians cannot understand. They think of it as a state of passive and selfish enjoyment, of still contemplation which leads to the neglect of the duties of life, and unfits for that watchfulness and warfare to which Scripture calls. What an entire misunderstanding of God’s call to rest!
“Truly to rest in God is to yield oneself up to the highest activity. We work, because He worketh in us both to will and to do (Phil. 2:13). As Paul says of himself, ‘I labor, striving according to his working who worketh in me with might’ (Col. 1:29). Entering the rest of God is the ceasing from self-effort, and the yielding of oneself in the full surrender of faith to God’s working.” - Andrew Murray (1828-1917)
“Not only does the Lord Jesus live in us, but He becomes the motivating Object of our life as Christians. The law is no longer our motive or rule of life. It is entirely displaced by a Person, and that Person ‘the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.’ Henceforth the soul has a new center and source—it is no longer self-centered, but Christ-centered.” - Charles Andrew Coates (1862-1945)
“Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me; for I am meek and lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest unto your souls” (Matt. 11:29).
Thus the Lord Jesus says, “For their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth” (Jn 17:19). His sanctification as expressed in these words is positional. He has ascended into glory, and is wholly apart from this scene, that we might by the Holy Spirit be associated with Him there (via the Spirit using the Life of the Lord Jesus—NC), and this is our moral sanctification.
But how am I led into this association? See Stephen in Acts 7:55, “being full of the Holy Ghost, looked up steadfastly into heaven, and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God.” Now there was a new and distinct action of the Spirit, enabling Stephen’s soul to penetrate through everything, and to find the Lord Jesus where He is, even in the glory of God. It was a new thing brought out at that moment. It was, in a sense, contrary to Stephen’s own preaching, for he had been preaching that Christ was to come down—to return (all thought Christ was about to “restore again the kingdom to Israel”—NC)
In chapter One of Acts the disciples were distinctly told not to gaze up into heaven (Act 1:11), but now Christ’s rejection was completed, and there was no longer any possibility of His return to earth to take His rights, and the Holy Spirit takes an altogether new line of action. He reveals the Lord Jesus in the glory to the saint, and links the soul of the believer with Him there, all hope for the earth being cut off.
Now every new revelation determines the character of the action of the Holy Spirit during any given period or dispensation. When everything has failed on earth, He directs me to where there is no failures, He turns my eye and heart to heaven. He accomplishes in me the very same action that He did in Stephen.
“Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God” (Col 3:2, 3). It is the strangest of all anomalies that we should be left here to live, where our life is not. Tell me where your eye is, and I’ll tell you what your conduct is. “We all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord” (2Co 3:18).
There we get the moral consequences of personal fellowship—one spirit with the Lord Jesus, the glory claims me as its own. I can behold the glory of the Lord with unveiled face, and be transformed thereby “into the same image.” I have no shrinking from the glory, my heart rests in it. I can look upon that glory as one with the blessed One who is there, and who has made for me a free entrance into it by the ministration of righteousness and of the Holy Spirit.
If I am not in conscious union with the One who is there, I cannot “hate” the life that is here (Jhn 12:25; 1Jo 2:15). He has ended the first man (old man, sin nature after Adam, still there but rendered inoperative—NC) on the Cross, and now I am free in the life of the blessed One in the presence of my Father.
—James Butler Stoney (1814-1897)
MJS daily devotional excerpt for August 9
“Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matt. 11:28).
Hard as it is for the believer to finally come to rest concerning his spiritual birth, it seems to be even more difficult for him to simply rest in the Lord Jesus for his life and service.
“There are two stages in the Christian life. The one in which, after conversion, a believer seeks to work what God would have him do. The second, in which, after many a painful failure, he ceases from his works, and enters the rest of God, there to find the power for work in allowing the Father to work in him.
“It is this rest from their own work which many Christians cannot understand. They think of it as a state of passive and selfish enjoyment, of still contemplation which leads to the neglect of the duties of life, and unfits for that watchfulness and warfare to which Scripture calls. What an entire misunderstanding of God’s call to rest!
“Truly to rest in God is to yield oneself up to the highest activity. We work, because He worketh in us both to will and to do (Phil. 2:13). As Paul says of himself, ‘I labor, striving according to his working who worketh in me with might’ (Col. 1:29). Entering the rest of God is the ceasing from self-effort, and the yielding of oneself in the full surrender of faith to God’s working.” - Andrew Murray (1828-1917)
“Not only does the Lord Jesus live in us, but He becomes the motivating Object of our life as Christians. The law is no longer our motive or rule of life. It is entirely displaced by a Person, and that Person ‘the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.’ Henceforth the soul has a new center and source—it is no longer self-centered, but Christ-centered.” - Charles Andrew Coates (1862-1945)
“Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me; for I am meek and lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest unto your souls” (Matt. 11:29).
