Really try to understand what the Christian life really is.
First, it is not a petty, trivial thing to be a Christian. Hence, our first evening was occupied with the immense significance of the Christian life.
Then, it is not a superficial thing of passing, changing feelings, sensations, emotions, and impressions. It rests upon some deep and radical changes in our very constitution.
Our second evening was occupied with what happens when we become Christians—that is, what happens to us and in us.
Then, it is not something which is exhausted in its initial experience, however wonderful and great that may be. It is not all limited to its beginning, but it is inexhaustible; it is boundless.
Our third evening was occupied with the divine purpose and principles governing the Christian life.
Finally, it is not by any means merely a matter of this life, albeit short, albeit long. It relates more to the eternity to come. Hence, this evening we are to be concerned with the eternal prospects of the Christian life—its relation to the eternal future.
We saw at the beginning that the Christian life is dated back to eternity past. It is not something which just springs up in this particular Christian era, as it is called, but it was designed by God in His eternal counsels. The New Testament has quite a lot to say about that.
That eternal purpose and design is pressing into this special dispensation in a very definite and particular way. The past eternity is pressing in and pressing up in this age in a particular way.
Now we are to see that the future eternity is also pressing into this dispensation. The future eternity is governing the present, is shaping the present, and explains the present.
God is not only working onward. Really, the onward aspect of divine activities is our side of things. God is working backward. His type of things is always backward. So that, from eternity past, He is bringing us on; but He is really bringing us back.
When we come to this matter of the eternal prospects of the Christian, we have to realize—and there is so much of it that it is not difficult to realize—that there is a very large prospective element in the New Testament. That is, the New Testament is always looking on.
In the New Testament, everything is dominated by the ages to come. The conception is an eternal one, not just a temporal one. That conception is far, far too big to be realized in fullness in any time. It is bigger than all time. It certainly, therefore, cannot be realized in any lifetime of any person.
This is from eternity to eternity, and it requires timelessness for its full realization. This, of course, explains a great deal. It explains the very nature of the Christian life and our Christian service.
A very big factor in the ways of God with His people, with Christians, is that of experience. God puts a great deal of value upon experience.
It is just when we are beginning to profit by experience, and others are beginning to profit by our experience, that we are called away. All the long, full, and deep experience has really had no adequate expression.
There is something about that which would be a problem if God put so much value upon experience, and then, when we have got it, we cannot use it. It is like a contradiction. It requires an extension somewhere, somehow, to make good all that deep experience which God has taken so much pains to produce.
It explains God’s ways with us in the path of deep and deepening experience.
Then, as to the work of God: well, the work is difficult; it is hard; the progress is all too slow. And so you may do, until your life has had all the days that can be allotted, and have spent yourself to the last drop—what have you done? What have you done, after all? What does it amount to? At most, we have to say, little—comparatively little.
There is so much more to be done, and every successive generation of Christian workers has the same story to tell. On we go, on we go, and we never overtake. We never reach anything like fullness in this life. Something more is required to make perfect both our imperfect lives and our imperfect work.
Then another factor, which is not a small one, is that God seems—I put it this way—seems to be so much more concerned with the worker than even with the work.
There is a point that creates the perplexities of Christian life and service. If God were only concerned with our Christian work, He would never allow us to be laid aside from it, especially either repeatedly or for long periods. He certainly ought not to allow us to die prematurely, as we would say.
If the work is everything, then He ought to keep us at full strength all our days and extend our days to their full period. But He does not. So many of His choice people are not able to serve in the way in which Christian service is thought of—as being in action.
Even those who are fully in action are conscious that the real need, the real need in the work of God, is for their own deeper knowledge of God Himself. God is concerned with them very largely, even more than He is with their work.
What does this say? All that discipline, chastening, trial, testing—all that we go through under the hand of God—is all that just for now? Surely He is preparing people for something more.
He is concerned with men, and with women, with people, quite as much, if not more, than with what they do for Him. This, of course, must never be taken as an excuse for not working to our full degree. But it is all a case for something more.
There is nothing perfect or complete while death remains.
You remember the argument about the priesthood of the Old Testament which the apostle develops in the letter to the Hebrews. The priests of the old dispensation could bring nothing to finality because they died and had to hand on to another. He never brought anything to finality; he died and had to pass it on to another. And so it went on.
The argument is that nothing was made perfect because of death. But He—Jesus, our High Priest—does and has made things perfect because He ever lives.
The principle, of course, is just this: while death remains, nothing is completed or comes to finality. It requires an endless life—the power of an endless life—to reach fullness.
That is clearly shown in Scripture. The picture of immortality which the Bible gives us is a very wonderful one, though it is one which we cannot understand in our present order of things.
The picture of immortality which the Bible gives us is that there are new productions without the dying of the old. Our present order is that everything new comes out of death. Everything has to die to produce something new. That is the order of this dispensation.
The heart of this dispensation is the great truth of Jesus Christ: the corn falling into the ground and dying, that there should be a production on a larger scale. That is the order of this dispensation, but that is not the order of the coming eternity.
The picture of immortality given in the Word is: new branches, new leaves, new fruit—and the old never dies. The old never dies. It is wrought to perfection without any death at all. That is rather wonderful, is it not?
When you come to the Word again regarding this prospective factor and element, note how much there is in the nature of an urge and an imperative to uttermostness.
All the time the apostles are helping us, bringing upon us the weight of this great imperative: “Go on, go on, go on.” By exhortation, by warning, they are constantly saying to us, “Go on, and ever on.”
This imperative is in relation to being utter for God, having no margin of life that is not burnt up for God. The point of that argument, that urge, that imperative, is the coming eternity—all that is in the life of the afterward.
Why be utter for God? The answer is to be found afterward. We must, they say, be utter for God because of what is going on, because this is not the end, because there is that which, coming afterward, will show the justification for having been utter for God.
Now that leads us to the next thing in this connection: the comparative element in eternity. There is, I think we agree, a prospective element in the Christian life which occupies a great deal of the New Testament.
Cut out that prospective element from the New Testament and see how much you have got. Whether it will be a dust heap, or what it is, you will not have very much left. You take that out—it is there, and it is mighty there.
But in addition to it, there is what I am calling the comparative element in relation to the coming eternity. Again, there is in the New Testament such an element.
What I mean by the comparative element is this: things are not all going to be on one level hereafter. There are going to be differences where the children of God are concerned, and very great differences.
It was to this, of course, that the apostle was pointing when writing to the Corinthians, speaking about foundations and superstructure. He said that the foundation is laid. Now let every man take heed how he buildeth thereon.
But if any man buildeth on the foundation gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay, stubble;
Each man’s work shall be made manifest:
For the day shall declare it, because it is revealed in fire;
And the fire itself shall prove each man’s work of what sort it is.
— 1 Corinthians 3:12-13
If, he implies, it is wood, hay, and stubble, it is all going up in smoke. Then he brings in this tremendously forceful word:
If any man’s work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss:
But he himself shall be saved; yet so as through fire.
— 1 Corinthians 3:15
That is, the man may thus creep through as a kind of emergency thing, just managing to get in, as we say, by the skin of his teeth. Everything has gone; everything is gone. The argument surely is that that is not what God intended.
Over against that, we have a passage such as this:
For thus shall be richly supplied unto you the entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
— 2 Peter 1:11
On the one hand, there is the possibility of just getting in with your life and nothing more. On the other hand, there is an abundant entrance into the everlasting kingdom. You see, there are differences; there are comparisons.
What about those messages to the seven churches in Asia which we have at the beginning of the book of Revelation?
Now, I do not agree that the people in those churches are only professors and not true Christians. If you grant that, then you have got to face this: that between Christian and Christian there are differences, and there are certain very distinct promises given to certain Christians there.
“To him that overcometh,” “to him that overcometh,” “to him that overcometh.” Well, clearly logic implies that if you do not overcome, then you will not get what the Lord offers. There are differences.
But I do not believe that this is a matter of lost salvation. This is something more than just being saved—getting in. What is the nature of the difference? What are the differences?
Some people would say, “Well, of course, it is reward.” All right, let us leave it there. It is reward, if you like. But what reward do you want? What is the reward that you are looking for?
Do you want honours? Do you want titles? Do you want an armchair for the whole of eternity? What is it that you want by way of reward?
Let us put the question in another way. What does the New Testament show to be the nature of the reward, if we are going to hold to that word, “reward”? The answer is this, quite clearly, if you like to look again: the reward is vocational. It is always vocational.
And His servants shall serve Him;
And they shall see His face.
— Revelation 22:3-4
Service—without all that is associated with service now. Service to Him without limit, without restraint, without opposition, without suffering. Service: to be able to serve Him.
Well, how does that appeal to you? I can think of nothing that would be a greater joy than just to be able, without all the strictures and limitations and difficulties of the work now, to be able to have full influence.
Now that is clear. The New Testament puts its finger upon vocation.
This, it goes on to show, is a matter of related positions. It is position in relation to the Lord—different positions of service.
Take one illustration, an instance. In one of those messages to the churches:
He that overcometh, I will give to him to sit down with Me in My throne.
— Revelation 3:21
There you have two ideas. One is a very close relationship with the Lord, a very intimate nearness to Him. The other is royal service. Call it what you will, it is the service of the throne.
Again, what is your conception of sitting with Him in the throne? Let us put our mentality right about all these things—thrones and whatnot. Do not get pictures of sitting on golden or ivory thrones and that sort of thing.
It simply means union with the Lord in the administration of His eternal kingdom. That is service. But that is said to be a special gift to certain people. If you like, that is reward. But the point is that it is vocational, and it is a matter of relationship to the Lord.
The final picture that we have in the New Testament, though being so full of symbolism, is an embodiment of these spiritual principles. It is the picture of the city.
Now again, get your mind clear, and do not think of a literal city. It is only an illustration, a figure, a symbol. This city, undoubtedly, is the church.
Need I argue that? “The Jerusalem which is above is our mother.” “Ye are come to the heavenly Jerusalem.” We are come—not coming later on afterward—we are come to the heavenly Jerusalem, to the church of the firstborn. The two are identical.
So that city which is said to be the New Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, is the church. Now it is put into a particular, peculiar position. Like a city, and the idea of a city is that it is the administrative centre.
Then we are told that the nations walk in its light. Something is at the centre for government, and there is much more that is not at the centre. Here is proximity to the Lord, relationship with the Lord, for eternal vocation in an administrative way in His kingdom.
That surely is enough to bear out what I am trying to say: that there is a comparative element in the eternity to come. That is the point of the urge and the imperative. That is the force of the constraint: go on unto full growth, not looking back, pressing on.
The warning is not, “How could you lose your salvation?” No. There are positions, and there is a vocation to which you are called in eternity. You may miss that. You may miss it.
I think Paul saw that in what he called the upward calling. He saw something of this reigning life in the ages to come.
With God, nothing is just official. God never appoints officers in His kingdom in a merely official way. They are not politicians, officially positioned in His kingdom; neither are they officially appointed ecclesiastics.
With God, I repeat, there is nothing just official. You know, God does not appoint officers in His church merely by title.
God’s principle of appointment is always according to spiritual measure.
God indicates those who are to have oversight, even now in the church, where it is a spiritual thing and according to His mind, as being men of spiritual nature—not elected, chosen, and voted in by popular vote or unpopular vote, but according to spiritual nature.
That is the principle of the New Testament, and in the kingdom it is like that. No one is going to have any position just because they are appointed officially to it. Every position will be according to spiritual nature.
Hence, again and again, “Let us go on unto full growth.” You know that connected with that phrase, “full growth”—rendered “perfection” in the Authorized Version, unfortunately—is always the nature and measure of the fullness of Christ. It is the nature of Christ.
It is how much of Christ there is, how big we are according to the standard of Christ. That is God’s basis of appointment. It will always be with God. It is now, and in the ages to come it will always be, that vocation is settled upon how much of Christ there is in those concerned.
God’s whole hope, as we saw at the beginning of these meditations, is that Christ shall fill all things. Now that explains our discipline, for our discipline now is our training for then.
The nature of our discipline now is just to increase the measure of Christ. We have seen the decreasing measure of ourselves in every way: setting aside the old man that occupies the place of Christ, and putting Christ in his place.
The one all-inclusive object of the Holy Spirit in this dispensation is to make Christ everything, and to get as much room for Christ as He possibly can where we are concerned—as much as we will let Him have.
Now that throws us back, of course, upon this: are we really going to be utter? The measure of our faithfulness will be the measure of our usefulness in the ages to come. It is going to be governed by spiritual measure, and by no other principle.
Some people find difficulty, purely mental difficulty, in reconciling reward and grace. Is it possible that some legalists are coming back on me in their minds while I am talking, saying, “Oh, it is all of grace, and you are making it a work. After all, it is all of grace”?
Well, of course, you have got somehow to explain the fact of rewards, have you not? How can you reconcile rewards and grace? It is not so difficult as all that.
It is all of grace that we have a chance to be utter at all. It is all of grace that I can be a Christian, and that I can go on with the Lord, that I can serve the Lord a little bit. It is all of grace.
If suffering is going to lead to glory, and the measure of glory is going to be according to the suffering, then it will require all the grace of God for that. You never get outside of grace.
If ever there should come a reward—if you like to visualize such a thing literally now, a reward being offered—I tell you, when we get to that point, with a good understanding and knowledge of all the forbearance, long-suffering, and patience of the Lord, we shall fall on our faces and say, “Lord, I cannot take any reward. It is all of Your grace.”
It will be all of grace. But remember that grace is brought out in more than one way in the New Testament. There is grace which gives us access and acceptance: “this grace wherein we stand,” all the favour of God without merit—that we are saved at all, that we belong to the Lord. Yes, that is grace.
But grace is also spoken of as strength—strength beyond salvation. What the Lord meant when He said to Paul in the presence of his affliction and suffering:
My grace is sufficient for thee:
For My power is made perfect in weakness.
— 2 Corinthians 12:9
Grace is acceptance without merit; grace is strength to labour, serve, and suffer. It is all of grace, however you look at it.
So now we have to focus down upon this: there is a large place in the New Testament for our meaning business with God. It is not all willy-nilly. You believe, you accept Christ—that is the beginning; that is the end of it; you get everything now. No, there is this large place for what I call meaning business with God.
Here it is: all these entreaties, exhortations, and histories which bear down upon this. Do not leave anything to chance. Do not leave anything to chance.
Do not say, “Oh well, this does not matter very much. This will not hurt. There is not much wrong in this. I have got salvation, and the grace of God will cover all these imperfections, and I can do this and that, and it will not make much difference.”
God is a God of grace, but the New Testament says, “Do not take any risks.” If it does not mean something about your salvation ultimately, it does mean something—something.
The whole course of the Word is: look here, be utter for God, and God does not make provision for anything else. You go all the way with the Lord, or that is the end of your calling. The Lord has never said anything about where you only need to go so far, that He excuses you for this. No, it is all that God keeps in view, and He is challenging all the time: “Will we mean business with God?”
There will be no place at last for our boasting in our endurance, our success, or our utterness. Even though we pour ourselves out to the last drop, we shall be the worshippers. We shall be the worshippers. We shall be the ones who are down before Him most.
The most utter people are the ones who are most conscious of their indebtedness to the Lord. It is like that.
Now we must draw to a close. The great crisis which determines everything is always there in Scripture, always kept in view: the great crisis—the coming of the Lord.
The coming of the Lord: it is there that everything will be determined. We may have passed on before He comes; the Word makes it perfectly clear that that makes no difference. We shall be there when He comes.
When He comes, those who are alive when He comes will not get ahead of us. Together we shall be there, and so we shall all be on common footing. Then it will be determined what the future is going to be—exactly what our place will be, what our function will be.
This is the big factor in the prospective aspect of things: always that in view. The prospect always keeps the Lord’s coming in view.
When we are saved, we receive a new hope. When we are believers, we find that that hope becomes something very definite and concrete, and it becomes called in the New Testament “the hope.” The hope is related to the coming of the Lord.
So that all the appeals, all the warnings, and all the entreaties are focused down to this: the Lord is coming, and at His coming everything will be decided. Everything will be settled. Then the future eternity will be decided where we are concerned.
You know all those appeals in the light of His coming: watchfulness, being fully occupied, being found at full strength, and serious warnings if we are not. Something is going to happen; something is going to go wrong.
I am not putting this into any system of doctrine, crystallizing it into any form of teaching. But these are the plain, simple facts. At the coming of the Lord, great decisions will take place.
If we are not watching, if we are not occupied, if we are not at full stretch, something is going wrong. The Word makes that perfectly clear. I put it like that. I mean that something is going to be missed.
So we bring the eternity that is ahead right into the present and see that this is a tremendous motive. It is a tremendous motive for the Christian life.
The life hereafter—going to heaven, however we may speak about it—is not something that is just out there in a kind of objective, detached way. We are looking forward to that day, waiting for that day to come.
My dear friends, that day has passed right into the present, today, here, now, in all its implications.
I have often put it like this: there is little hope of our going to heaven if heaven has not already come to us.
Our place then, at any rate, and our vocation then, will depend very largely, if not our salvation, upon the measure that Christ has in us in this life.
Oh, that again explains a lot of things, does it not? How the Lord does press into a short time, very often, a great deal that produces a measure of Christ in a wonderful way. Much suffering, much discipline, much pressure, much trial.
You can see the growth in grace. You discern the patience, the forbearance, the kindness, the love of Christ coming out in this suffering child of God. There is preparation for glory. There is preparation for service. It explains a lot.
We could look around it and look at it from so many different standpoints. But after all, it amounts to this: the New Testament keeps the future in view as the great governing thing for the present.
The New Testament says that it is going to make a difference in the eternity to come just how far we have gone on with the Lord, and how much room the Lord has gained in our lives now. It is going to be different. It is going to be different.
The New Testament says, “The Lord is coming.” This is no time to be neutral at all. You may die; it makes no difference. You may live; it makes no difference. The Lord will come in His own time, and then all will be decided.
So many people are interested in the second coming of Christ purely from a prophetical standpoint—events and happenings in the world, and so on. So few Christians are fully alive to this fact: that the coming of the Lord in the New Testament is always brought to bear upon this—your spiritual state.
And every one that hath this hope set on Him purifieth himself, even as He is pure.
— 1 John 3:3
Not he that has this prophetic interpretation of the second coming, but he that has this hope purifies himself. Get ready. Get ready. See that your state is all right, as well as your standing. It matters. It will matter a very great deal.
So we must open the door in our Christian lives to that greater, greater thing that is before us. At most, this is a brief one, a small one, but it is only the beginning. All its meanings are going to come out then in fullness.
Will you hear the appeal? Christian life, as we have said, is a tremendous thing. It means we are called with an eternal calling, unto an eternal vocation.
Here we are just brought into relationship with the Lord, and then are dealt with by the Lord, are allowed to serve the Lord. But even in our service, we are in school. We are learning more than anything else.
Do you not think that that really is how it ought to be? Not just doing a thousand fine things, but learning a lot—the school of experience. It is all related to the upward calling and the great vocation afterward.
May the Lord move our hearts to be utter for Him. Leave nothing to chance whatever. Take no risks. But, like His servant Paul, go for the highest prize, the fullest things that the Lord ever intends.
So we pray.