It is a strange and humbling fact that few Christians understand their own Christianity. Yet it is true that there are many brethren in the Lord who know more about the Jews than they do about their own Christianity. Pay close heed to this lest it be your own case. It is always the truth most important for us that the devil tries to hide from us and turn us bitterly from it. Nor is it only the bad things that he perverts to hinder our blessing. Many true believers are kept back because they refuse to look for more than the forgiveness of their sins through the gospel. Let us zealously seek to be taught of God. Let our eyes be fixed on the Lord that we may be filled with fervor of spirit and purpose of heart. The question for our faith and practice is the attitude that God assumes toward us, and our relation to Him while Christ is above on His own right hand. How is the answer to this great truth to be carried out on the earth in the heart and ways of those who believe? We will consider some verses in Eph. 1 in this regard.

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ; according as He hath chosen us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love. … In whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of Him who worketh all things after the counsel of His own will" (verses 1-14).

At a time of utter evil it suited God to divulge the secret of His purpose. From before the foundation of the world He chose us Christians, in Christ, that we should be holy and blameless before Him in love. He would surround Himself above with beings like Himself:holy in nature, blameless in ways, and with love as their animating principle as it is His own. Such we shall be when His purpose takes full effect. We are sadly short now, but God’s purpose cannot fail; and Christ will make every word good when He comes to receive us to Himself and to be like Himself for the Father’s house.

God will surround Himself, not merely in heaven, but in its nearest circle of His own, with those capable of holding communion with Him about everything that concerns His nature, counsels, and ways. Can anything be more wonderful than the place He designs for Christians? We ought to be therefore engaged in a course of spiritual education for it now; but until we are like Christ at His coming, none will have yet arrived at the fulfilled purpose of God. But then we shall be absolutely holy before God, and not a single thing to blame will be found in us, according to the working whereby Christ is able to subdue all things to Himself. Instead of vanity or pride there will be love that delights in God and His goodness without alloy. Even now our hearts are won to all this by divine grace in partaking of a divine nature; but we justly feel how poor is our manifestation of it now. How comforting is the purpose that every son of God will be absolutely thus according to God’s nature.

Surely it is important for every true Christian to know what his new nature and relationship with God are. God forbid that we should ever neglect or forget these things. As we consider God’s purpose for His chosen ones, how deeply we are made to feel that all is ruin at the present time and how deeply we are fallen from our true estate. Where, among those who bear the Lord’s name, can be found anything similar to what is here revealed to the saints? The rarest thing to find in Christendom is any answer to the description God gives of the Christian. Is it not so? What can we say to such a fact? At best we are only learning what it is.

Having considered, briefly, God’s purposes for His sons and heirs, let us now consider His purposes concerning the inheritance itself. This future inheritance is so immense, so illimitable, that it embraces all heavenly and earthly creation, all that is to be put under Christ and consequently under those who are united to Christ. Do Christians realize that they are to share it all with Him? He would have us to apprehend it in all wisdom and intelligence. We need to know our personal blessing first; but next we need to know what we shall share with Christ when He takes the inheritance of all things. Spiritual understanding is requisite but is also abundantly given for this express purpose.

We may be helped in this if we look at the first Adam. When God made the first man and put him into the brightest part of the earth, or paradise as it is called, everything was "very good" (Gen. 1); but the very best were collected by Jehovah Elohim in His power for the head of mankind. So He planted the garden for Adam with special provision, not for every use only, but for delight and enjoyment also. And as Adam was constituted the lord of the lower creation here on earth, he was enabled in God’s goodness, through the wisdom and intelligence conferred upon him, to give the proper names to all cattle, and to the birds of the sky, and to every beast of the field; for all these were subjected to him. This is the more important because it is the appropriate sign of the dominion given him. In Adam there was no question of sin. Adam herein assumed nothing in pride. It was the Lord God that brought to him the animals to see what he would call them; and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, it had His sanction. As master by divine appointment, the right or title was recognized, as he had the wisdom and intelligence for that function. Divine goodness had pleasure in it.

So Adam gave these names, and God recognized them. Very far greater are the things God has done in Christ for us. A fair and beauteous scene it was with every creature in it that God subjected to Adam. But what is that compared with the whole universe of God, and every creature above and below, after all the ruin, gathered into united blessedness under Christ’s headship, and ourselves associated with Christ in that place of honor over all things? God therefore caused grace to abound toward us "in all wisdom and intelligence" that we might be capable even now of entering with spiritual understanding into a scene so boundless.