As children of
men we are known in this world; the world can point to us and say, “His father
was son-and-so,” and according to our high or low connection in that way, honor
or despise us.
As children of
God we are not known for the simple reason that our Father is unknown. Let any
man in any circle, high or low, of this world’s society be introduced as a
child of God, and see what a blank astonishment will follow such an
introduction. They know not God, therefore they cannot appreciate such a
relationship with Him. Therefore, those of us who are in that relationship as a
child of God are, as such, real strangers and foreigners in this world. Our
being born of God constitutes us that, and according to the degree in which we
ourselves value this wonderful relationship, so will we realize our
strangership among the very people where we are so well known; so too will it
practically separate us from their company, their object, their mode of life,
and their pleasures and pursuits.
But there is
more. The way we have become children of God is through faith in Jesus Christ,
who, “as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness,” was “lifted up” on the
cross, “that whosoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting
life” (John 3:14,15). This blessed Jesus, therefore, becomes now the object and
delight of our hearts. How else could it be? It is by His suffering upon that
cross that our sins are forgiven:“with His stripes we are healed” (Isa. 53:5).
It is by His blood that we have “boldness to enter into the holiest” (Heb.
10:19)—the very presence of that holy God before whom the seraphim angels have
to veil themselves. It is by His death that we are set free from the guilt and
dominion of sin and that we escape the visitation of the angel of death at
midnight, pass out of the land of bondage, and pass into the land flowing with
milk and honey.
Jesus is now,
therefore, the object of our hearts. “We love Him because He first loves us” (1
John 4:19). As the man who, out of love, “leaves his father and mother and
cleaves unto his wife” (Gen. 2:24), so Christ left His Father and home in glory,
and out of love to us suffered as none ever suffered. But, in return, the wife
clings to her husband and follows him all through. So with us who love Him. If
He is in heaven, our hearts follow Him there, and are at home only there. If He
is still rejected and despised by this world, we want nothing else from the
world than what they give Him. We cannot endure to be received and honored
where He is refused and despised. Still more, we cannot even feel at home with
His professed friends who give Him but a back seat and grieve Him by their
ways.
One will
readily see that this is not pretending to be holier and better than this one
or that one, but a natural outcome of a love that is true. No true wife could
be at home where the husband she loves is not given the place that belongs to
him. So no lover of Christ can ever be at home in this world while “Christ” is
a despised name in it. Nor can we be more comfortable among those who profess
His name while they have among them that which wounds the Lord. Therefore, when
the world had crucified Christ and cast Him out, God said to His children,
“Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love
the world, the love of the Father is not in him” (1 John 2:15).
He also foresaw
what His professing people would do, and how things would turn out in the end,
so He said again to His people, “In the last days, perilous times shall come.
For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud,
blasphemers, disobedient to parents,… lovers of pleasures more than lovers of
God; having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof:from such
turn away” (2 Tim. 3:1-5).
Oh, beloved
brethren! Children of the God of love! Oh, for such a measure of that
devotedness of heart to our Lord as to make it morally impossible for us to
abide with whatever dishonors Him, but will compel us to follow Him anywhere
and at whatever cost! Thus, and only thus, shall we know the reality of our
relationship with Him, even as He has said, “Wherefore come out from among them
and be separate, says the Lord, and touch not the unclean; and I will receive
you, and will be a Father unto you, and you shall be my sons and daughters,
says the Lord Almighty (2 Cor. 6:17,18).