The intimacy between the Lord and His elect is beyond, we may say, what is known elsewhere.
Angels do His pleasure, wait in His presence, have kept their first estate, and excel in that strength
that serves Him. But they are not where elect and saved sinners are. The angels learn, through the
Church, the manifold wisdom of God (Eph. 3:10). It is to us that the Son has made known all that
He has received from the Father.

The Saviour acquaints Himself with the secrets of the bosom of the sinner, while He
communicates to such a one the secrets of the divine bosom. This is intimacy indeed. See it in the
stories of Abraham, Moses, David, and others. It is a most marvelous thing_but it is true. We
are not called to prove it_Scripture does that both by doctrine and illustration. We are called to
believe it and enjoy it.

In the Epistle to the Romans we find the Spirit of God leading the saints along two different paths:
the path of grace in chapters 1-8, and the path of knowledge in chapters 9-11. He finds us at the
beginning in ruins. We are taken up as sinners, having come short of His glory, and are in revolt
and distance from Him. It is from such a point we start on the way. But He leads us along from
our depths to His heights, from our ruins to His wonders and riches of mercy. And at last He
plants us on an elevation where we can challenge all our enemies and find ourselves above all that
might be against us. Who can be against us? is the language of the heart there; who can accuse,
who can condemn, who can separate?

Having thus conducted us the whole way along the path of mercy, and settled our own questions
for ever, He again takes us by the hand to lead us along another path, the path of wisdom or
knowledge, where we learn, not our own interests as sinners, but the various riches and secrets
of His own counsels from the beginning to the end of them. Nor does He let go the hand of the
saved sinner whom He is here conducting until He plants him on another elevation and puts
another rapture in his spirit_not an exultation in His own blessedness under the gifts of grace as
we see at the end of the previous path, but a triumph in the ways and purposes of God through the
light of these divine communications now made to him.

And is not all this intimacy? First, to bring home a banished one, to fit a sinner for His presence,
and set him there in liberty and strength and joy, and then to tell him all His counsels?

The woman of Sychar (John 4) got the first of these but not the second_at least at that time. Very
fitting that was. The Saviour told her all about herself and then so showed Himself to her that her
spirit was filled with the exultation that we find at the close of the first of those paths we have
been tracing in the Epistle to the Romans (that is, at the end of chapter 8). But the time had not
then come to lead her along the second path.

But if we look far back at Gen. 18 and 19, there we see the case of a saved sinner, a saint of God,
led along each of these paths; or rather, such a one already standing at the end of the one, led
along all the way of the other.

The Lord comes to Abraham as he is sitting at the door of his tent near Hebron. Like one who
knows Him well, Abraham rises and worships, and proposes to get some refreshment ready for
Him. Accordingly, the repast is prepared and partaken. Abraham thus enjoys the grace in which
he stands. The presence of God is his home. He illustrates a soul in Rom. 8:31-39. But being
there, he is ready to take a further walk in company with his divine Master. And so he does. They
rise together from under the tree where the feast was shared; and as they go on together, the Lord
communicates His secrets to Abraham.

Can intimacy exceed this? "I call you not servants, for the servant knoweth not what his lord
doeth; but I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made
known unto you" (John 15:15). Wondrous grace! God the Father will not have us servants, but
sons; the Lord Jesus will not have us servants, but friends. Again I say, angels are not presented
as enjoying such intimacy with the Lord; neither is Adam in the innocency of the garden of Eden.
But saved sinners occupy such a place by God’s grace.

Look at John’s Gospel and John’s Revelation as other illustrations of these same things. Here is
one sinner after another, in that Gospel, led along the path of grace from his own depth of ruin
to God’s own heights of salvation and peace, to exult there in the spirit that closes Romans 8. And
in the Revelation we see John himself (saved sinner as he was, standing at the end of the path of
grace), led along the whole way of the divine counsels, and instructed in the secrets of the seals,
the trumpets, and the vials, until he is left in sight of the holy Jerusalem, as in the rapture that
closes Romans 11!

These paths are bright indeed:the sinner, at the end of the one, exults in his own condition, saved
with a sure and everlasting salvation; the saint, at the end of the other, exults in the counsels of
God disclosed to him so that he may walk in the light as God is in the light. How the Lord delights
to honor the sinners saved by His grace!