Heavenly Mindedness (57)

 

“No one but a redeemed creature can truly know what it is for God to be God, and what it means to worship and possess Him as God. This is the fine gold of the Christian’s experience, sweeter to him than honey and the honeycomb. The river that makes glad the city of God is the river of grace. The believer’s mind and heart will only in heaven compass the full riches, the length and breadth and depth and height of the love of God.

 

“No one can drink so deeply of it here, but he will more deeply drink hereafter. Blessed be God, no stream of Lethe flows this side of his city to wash away from our minds the remembrance of redeeming grace! The life above will be a ceaseless coming to Jesus, the Mediator of a better covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling that speaketh better than Abel. The Lamb slain for our sins will be all the glory of Emmanuel’s land.” G. Vos

 

God possesses us, and we possess God. God is glorified in us, and we are glorified in God. God took upon Himself our nature, yet without sin; and in Christ we are given His Nature. We are heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ – to be a joint heir is to possess fully what Jesus Christ possesses, and we possess our inheritance in Christ, in the Lamb. To be a joint heir means that our inheritance is indivisible, it cannot be divided, it cannot be fragmented.

 

When John the Baptist cries, “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29), he is crying out our eternal calling – for we are eternally called to behold the Lamb, to glorify the Lamb, to worship the Lamb, to delight in the Lamb, and to live in the light of the Lamb. This is the Lamb that was slain before the foundation of the world, the Lamb who was slain and is worthy to open the seals, the Lamb whom we are to follow wherever He goes, the Lamb who, along with His Father, is the Light of that City. This is the redeeming Lamb, who has purchased us with His own blood, who has given His life for us, who is both Priest and Sacrifice, who has justified us, sanctified us, made us holy, made us the righteousness of God in Himself, who has transformed us from sinners to saints, who has taken us out of Adam and into Himself, in whom we are buried in baptism and are raised to newness of Life, who we are now married to instead of the Law (because we have died to the Law). This is the Lamb who leads us into the koinonia of the Trinity.

 

To be heavenly – minded is to seek the Lamb, to follow the Lamb, to hunger for the Lamb, to eat His flesh and drink His blood, to live by His Life, to love Him with all that we have and all that we are, to be possessed by Him, owned by Him, devoted to Him, marked by Him, lost in Him in everlasting joy.

 

Our lives are to be a ceaseless coming to Jesus. Every morning should begin with Jesus, everyday end with Jesus, and every moment be lived in Jesus. After all, if this is how we will live in eternity, ought we not to live this Way now? This Way today? This Way in this moment, and the next moment, and the next?