Our Hearts – God’s Divine Instrument

 

 

In the previous reflection I asked, “What cord did Jesus strike in the hearts of the disciples to elicit, ‘Now You are speaking plainly…now we know’”?

 

I want to share with you my sense of the answer to that question. There are likely other perspectives, other facets, other thoughts; I can only pass along to you my own sense; that which I have touched, heard, seen, and that in which I live (1 John 1:1 – 4). I am told that I am now old, and being old in Christ I am looking forward to that City, and in looking forward to that City I will die either as a fool, or I will go Home to that for which I was redeemed. The response of the disciples is the essence of my life in Christ, it is indicative of my hope and trust in Him, it is a foretaste of eternal glory.

 

For when Jesus speaks of coming forth from the Father into the world, and then leaving the world and going to the Father, He strikes a cord in the heart of the disciples; a cord of identity, a cord of calling and purpose, a cord of destiny.

 

In the previous reflection I listed moments in the Gospel of John in which the disciples recognized the numinous in Jesus, the Divine, the Other, they identified with Him in those moments, those moments and glimpses of glory pulled them into Jesus.

 

We see these moments in the Gospels along the sea of Galilee when Jesus calls Peter, Andrew, James, and John to follow Him. We cannot explain or understand their response other than there was something inside them that responded to the heart of Jesus Christ; as is written in the Psalms, “Deep calls unto deep.”

 

We see such a moment when Matthew leaves tax collecting, makes restitution where needed, and follows Jesus. We witness a deepening moment when Peter confesses, “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.”

 

There is a sense in which our lives in Christ are an unfolding of the dawn and the rising of the morning star (2 Peter 1:19), our “paths shining brighter and brighter until the full day” (Pro. 4:18), in a continual transformation into His image as we become who we truly are in Christ Jesus (2 Cor. 3:17 – 18; 1 John 3:1 – 3).

 

Jesus came to bring us home to the Father. He came to declare the Father’s Name to His brothers and sisters (Hebrews 2:11 – 13).  O dear friends, when we hear the Father’s Name spoken to us, when our ears are opened, when our hearts, which have lain dormant, begin to come alive in response to the Voice of our Elder Brother, then our pilgrimage truly begins, then we head toward Home, Home in Jesus, Home in the Father, Home in the Holy Spirit, Home with one another.

 

Our hearts are God’s Divine instrument. Upon them God plays His song of love and compassion and tender mercies. Upon them God plays His song of sonship, of bringing His sons and daughters to glory (Hebrews 2:10 – 11).

 

As the Holy Spirit births the dawn within us, our hearts respond to the light which unveils, “For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren; and these whom He predestined, He also called; and these whom He called, He also justified; and these whom He justified, He also glorified” (Ro. 8:29 – 30).

 

The musical score is placed before us and we begin to hear the music, what was once simply notes on paper, comes to life as we take our place both as instruments and as musicians in our Father’s grand massed orchestra.

 

“Just as He chose us in Him [Christ] before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him” (Eph. 1:4).

 

“To those who reside as aliens…according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, by the sanctifying work of the Spirit, to obey Jesus Christ and be sprinkled with His blood” (1 Peter 1:1 – 2).

 

There is only one way to encounter these passages, and that is to play the music, to enter into the music, to absorb the music, to allow the Holy Spirit to tune our hearts to the key of Jesus and for our hearts to play and sing to the Lamb who was slain from the foundation of the world…for whom? Why for you. Why for me. Why for us.

 

When Jesus says, “I came forth from the Father into the world; I am leaving the world again and going to the Father,” the context of the Gospel of John and the immediate context of the Upper Room, informs Jesus’ words thusly:

 

“I came forth from the Father into the world for you; I am leaving the world again and bringing you back to the Father. I will go ahead of you, yet I will not leave you. I will go ahead of you, yet we will walk this road together. This is more than My return, this is our Return.”

 

This is what we see in John chapters 13 – 16, this is what we will see and experience in the Holy of Holies of John 17. This is what Jesus affirms on Easter with, “I ascend to My Father and your Father, and My God and your God” (20:17).

 

O dear, dear friends, passages such as Romans 8:28 – 39 are given to us to bring us Home, to transport us into the bosom and heart of the Lamb, into the arms of our Good Shepherd. How foolish we are when we insist on pulling down the glory of God to earth, when the Holy Spirit is saying over and over again, “Come up. Come up. Come up” (Rev. 4:1). Our blessings are in the heavenly places (Eph. 1:3) in Christ, in Christ, always in Christ.

 

My sense is that when the disciples heard Jesus say, “I came forth from the Father and have come into the world; I am leaving the world again and going to the Father,” that their hearts identified with those words, that calling, that destiny. They may not have understood what Jesus was saying, and indeed they still had much to learn, much of which would soon come into focus; just as it is with us – or at least with me.

 

When they heard these words they said in their hearts, “Me too. Us too. Yes, yes – we are going back to our Father with You.” What had been an enigma is now being made clear, what was once perplexing language, is now plain.

 

We are not accidents looking for a place to happen. We are the sons and daughters of the Living God and heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ (Rom. 8:15 – 17; Gal. 4:1 – 7).

 

This is our identity, this is our destiny. I am told I am old, and for sure closer to Home than I was before. But I’ll tell you a little secret, when that glorious Day of transition comes and I pass through that portal into the Presence of the Lamb and my fellow pilgrims…I will say, “Why, I’m not old at all. Life is just Beginning.”

Heavenly Mindedness (79)

 

“It was because God discerned in the souls of the patriarchs, underneath all else, this personal love, this homesickness for Himself, that He caused to be recorded about them the greatest thing that can be spoken of any man: that God is not ashamed to be called their God, and that He has prepared for them the city of their desire.” G. Vos

 

“But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; for He has prepared a city for them.” Hebrews 11:16.

 

Let’s remind ourselves of the two verses which Vos took as his text for his sermon, preached at Princeton Seminary chapel, Hebrews 11:9 & 10:

 

“By faith he [Abraham] lived as an alien in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, fellow heirs of the same promise; for he was looking for the city which has foundations, whose architect and builder is God.”

 

In his conclusion, Vos says that “the greatest thing that can be spoken of any man: that God is not ashamed to be called their God, and that He has prepared for them the city of their desire.”

 

Can this be said about us?

 

Do we have what Vos styles as a “personal love” for God? Or is our love a religious love, a “love” that is cautious, lest others thing we are making too big a thing of Jesus Christ? Is our love measured, lest we love God too much and miss out on the things of this world? Is our love more of a love for a Christian lifestyle, a love of being with nice people, of having a reputation as a nice Christian man or woman, than it is of having a reputation within and without the professing church of being someone who loves God with all his heart, mind, soul, and strength, and who loves his neighbor as himself?

 

Are we attempting to live in two cities, the City of God and the city of man? Do we think we have some type of dual citizenship? Is our love and allegiance divided between the things of this world and the things of God?

 

Do we have a homesickness for God? This homesickness means that we realize that we are not who the world says we are, but rather men and women and young people whose true genealogy is in God, whose destiny is in God, who were elect and chosen before the foundation of the world to travel home to our heavenly Father in and through Jesus Christ. This homesickness means that we realize that we are not accidents looking for a place to happen but have been called by Jesus Christ to follow Him from this age into the next as the daystar rises within our hearts.

 

Is God “not ashamed to be called our God”?

 

Jesus says in Matthew 10:32 – 33; “Therefore everyone who confesses Me before men, I will also confess him before My Father who is in heaven. But whoever denies Me before men, I will also deny before My Father who is in heaven.” Then in Mark 8:38 we have, “For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will also be ashamed of him when He comes in the glory of His Father with the holy angels.”

 

Vos writes of “the city of their desire.” What is the city of our desire? Where do we desire to live today? Tomorrow? Forever?

 

Do we desire a city of pleasure? A city of materialism? A city of political power? Of sports power? Of entertainment? Of economic power? Of religious power?

 

Or is the city of our desire that city whose architect and builder is God? Is it the City where the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the light, life, and delight?

 

Are we living the life of the heavenly – minded?

 

Below is the final section of Vos’s sermon. I have included it so that we can read it again and catch the challenge and beauty of his conclusion. Can we say with Paul in Philippians 3:13 – 14, “I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus”?

 

“Finally the highest thing that can be spoken about this city is that it is the city of our God, that He is in the midst of it. Traced to its ultimate root heavenly-mindedness is the thirst of the soul after God, the living God. The patriarchs looked not for some city in general, but for a city whose builder and maker was God.

 

“It is characteristic of faith that it not merely desires the perfect but desires the perfect as a work and gift of God. A heaven that was not illumined by the light of God, and not a place for closest embrace of Him, would be less than heaven. God as builder and maker thereof has put the better part of Himself into his work. Therefore those who enter the city are in God. The thought is none other than that of the seer in the Apocalypse:

 

“I saw no temple therein: for the Lord God, the Almighty and the Lamb are the temple thereof. And that city has no need of the sun, neither of the moon to shine upon it, for the glory of God lightens it, and the throne of God and the Lamb are therein: and his servants shall do Him service, and they shall see his face, and his name shall be on their foreheads.”

 

“And the faith is the faith of the Psalmist, who spoke: “Whom have I in heaven but Thee, and there is none upon earth that I desire beside Thee.” Here it is impossible for us to tell how truly and to what extent our relation to God is a relation of pure, disinterested love in which we seek Him for his own sake. There, when all want and sin-frailty shall have slipped away from us, we shall be able to tell.

 

“It was because God discerned in the souls of the patriarchs, underneath all else, this personal love, this homesickness for Himself, that He caused to be recorded about them the greatest thing that can be spoken of any man: that God is not ashamed to be called their God, and that He has prepared for them the city of their desire.” G. Vos

 

AMEN.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Heavenly Mindedness (73)

 

“And the faith is the faith of the Psalmist, who spoke: “Whom have I in heaven but Thee, and there is none upon earth that I desire beside Thee.” Here it is impossible for us to tell how truly and to what extent our relation to God is a relation of pure, disinterested love in which we seek Him for his own sake. There, when all want and sin-frailty shall have slipped away from us, we shall be able to tell.

 

“It was because God discerned in the souls of the patriarchs, underneath all else, this personal love, this homesickness for Himself, that He caused to be recorded about them the greatest thing that can be spoken of any man: that God is not ashamed to be called their God, and that He has prepared for them the city of their desire.” G. Vos

 

As we continue to work through the final two paragraphs of Vos’s message, let’s ponder: “Here it is impossible for us to tell how truly and to what extent our relation to God is a relation of pure, disinterested love in which we seek Him for his own sake. There, when all want and sin-frailty shall have slipped away from us, we shall be able to tell.”

 

There are three components to the above, “here,” “there,” and “pure, disinterested love.” We’ll look at the first and third, and then consider the second.

 

Is it really impossible for us to tell, in this life, how much we love God and the nature of our love for Him?

 

When we do see God face to face, will we think about such things? Will we look to our lives on this earth and consider how much we loved God and what the form of that love was? Will we look to our condition as it will then be, and measure our love for God?

 

Regarding the third element in the above, our future state in eternity, my sense is that we will be so caught up, so focused, so centered, in the Father and the Lamb; so filled with love for them and God’s love for us, and with their glory, that the idea of measuring ourselves – whether measuring our past life on this earth, or our life as it is then in the Trinity and with one another, will not enter our minds, hearts, or souls. This is my sense.

 

In 1 Corinthians 15:35ff Paul touches on the glory and substance of the Resurrection. In 2 Corinthians 3:1 – 18 Paul writes of the glory of the Gospel, of the New Covenant, and that it has a trajectory of what I’ll style as “open heavens” with a continual unveiling of Jesus Christ, an unveiling which transforms us into His image (2 Cor. 3:17 – 18; recall our consideration of Colossians 3:1ff and 1 John 3:1ff).

 

In Dante’s journey into Paradise, Canto III, Dante the pilgrim, with an earthly mindset, wants to know whether those in the lower areas of Paradise want to aspire to higher areas, aren’t they thinking about progressing? Don’t they want to be farther “up there” with those higher than themselves? Dante the author’s answer to the question is fuller than what I’m going to quote and it demonstrates Dante the pilgrim’s inaccurate perception, for it is replete with assurance and joy and peace and contentment, but the following oft-quoted segment is the beginning of the answer to Dante’s question by a lady in Paradise:

 

“Brother, love’s virtue sets our will at rest,

and makes us wish for only what we have,

and doth not make us thirsty for aught else.

If higher we desired to be, our wishes

would be discordant with the will of Him,

who here discerneth us, which, thou wilt see,

can in these circles not occur, if love

be necessary to existence here,

and if love’s nature thou consider well.

Nay more, essential to this blessèd life

it is, that we should be within the Will

Divine, whereby our wills become one will;

and so, even as we are, from grade to grade

throughout this Realm, to all the Realm is pleasing,

as to its King, who in His Will in-wills us;

and His Will is our Peace; and that

the Ocean is, whereunto moveth all

that It creates, and all that Nature makes.”

 

Courtney Langdon, translator. Public Domain

 

We live by God’s grace here, we will live by God’s grace “there.” We live in Christ here, we will live in Christ “there.” My sense is that, as we behold Christ and the Father “there” that we will have no inclination, or thought, of self-assessment, of measurement, of comparison – for God will be “all in all” (1 Cor. 15:28).

We’ll pick this back up in the next post in this series.

Heavenly Mindedness (71)

 

I want to quote once again Vos’s conclusion, for it is our destination, it is where Vos has been taking us in his message in Hebrews Chapter 11 on Heavenly – Mindedness, what do you “see” in these paragraphs?

 

“Finally the highest thing that can be spoken about this city is that it is the city of our God, that He is in the midst of it. Traced to its ultimate root heavenly-mindedness is the thirst of the soul after God, the living God. The patriarchs looked not for some city in general, but for a city whose builder and maker was God.

 

“It is characteristic of faith that it not merely desires the perfect but desires the perfect as a work and gift of God. A heaven that was not illumined by the light of God, and not a place for closest embrace of Him, would be less than heaven. God as builder and maker thereof has put the better part of Himself into his work. Therefore those who enter the city are in God. The thought is none other than that of the seer in the Apocalypse:

 

“I saw no temple therein: for the Lord God, the Almighty and the Lamb are the temple thereof. And that city has no need of the sun, neither of the moon to shine upon it, for the glory of God lightens it, and the throne of God and the Lamb are therein: and his servants shall do Him service, and they shall see his face, and his name shall be on their foreheads.”

 

“And the faith is the faith of the Psalmist, who spoke: “Whom have I in heaven but Thee, and there is none upon earth that I desire beside Thee.” Here it is impossible for us to tell how truly and to what extent our relation to God is a relation of pure, disinterested love in which we seek Him for his own sake. There, when all want and sin-frailty shall have slipped away from us, we shall be able to tell.

 

“It was because God discerned in the souls of the patriarchs, underneath all else, this personal love, this homesickness for Himself, that He caused to be recorded about them the greatest thing that can be spoken of any man: that God is not ashamed to be called their God, and that He has prepared for them the city of their desire.” G. Vos

 

We have come to the two concluding paragraphs of Vos’s message; in the penultimate paragraph Vos quotes Psalm 73:25, “Whom have I in heaven but You? And besides You, I desire nothing on earth.” May I ask you to read this verse in your Bible? May I ask you to read this psalm in your Bible? What is the story of Psalm 73? What part does verse 25 play in this psalm? Is this psalm, and this particular verse, woven into the fabric of your life, or is this the first time you’ve considered Psalm 73?

 

Vos has spoken to us about living a heavenly – minded life, a life which looks not at the things that are “seen,” but rather the things of God which are unseen. The psalmist allows himself to be drawn into the things that are “seen,” he looks at the visible world around him and despairs, until he comes into the sanctuary of God (verse 17) and then his eyes are opened once again to the invisible and understanding is renewed within him, and he realizes that he had been like a beast before the Lord in his perception of the world around him. O but what assurance he expresses in, “Nevertheless I am continually with You; You have taken hold of my right hand. With Your counsel You will guide me, and afterward receive me to glory” (verses 23 – 24). Even when we live in beastly understanding, our God will not forsake us. Let us listen to the LORD in Psalm 32:8 – 9:

 

“I will instruct you and teach you in the Way which you should go; I will counsel you with My eye upon you. Do not be as the horse or as the mule which have no understanding, whose trappings include bit and bridle to hold them in check, otherwise they will not come near to you.”

 

We will return to Psalm 73:25 in our next post in this series. In the meantime, what do you see in this psalm?

 

Heavenly Mindedness (61)

 

Let’s look at the first paragraph from Vos’s conclusion, quoted in the previous post:

 

“Finally the highest thing that can be spoken about this city is that it is the city of our God, that He is in the midst of it. Traced to its ultimate root heavenly-mindedness is the thirst of the soul after God, the living God. The patriarchs looked not for some city in general, but for a city whose builder and maker was God.”

 

One of the banes of our pagan post-modernity is that we live without basic spiritual, intellectual, moral, ethical, and emotional fundamentals. We reinvent the wheel daily, we scratch where it itches, seldom questioning whether we ought to do so; we are people of appetite being fattened up for the kill. Vos concludes his message on heavenly - mindedness with fundamentals. What are the fundaments in the above quotation?

 

We are called to seek the City of God, a “city which has foundations, whose architect and builder is God” (Hebrews 11:10), and we are seeking this City because God is there and we want to be with God. This means that we freely confess that we are “strangers and exiles on earth” (Heb. 11:13) and that we are “seeking a country of our own” (Heb. 11:14).  When Paul points out that we are citizens of heaven in Philippians 3:20, he does it in the context counting his earthly pedigree among dung that he may know Jesus Christ.

 

Jesus says, “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasure in heaven, wither neither moth nor rust destroy, and where thieves do not break in or steal; for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matt. 6:19 – 21).

 

This is a call to be singled-mined, for Jesus says, “No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth” (Matt. 6:24).

 

Christ calls us to an exclusive allegiance and devotion and love to Himself and to the City of God. The thieves which would steal from us are many, and most of them look pretty good, appealing to our ego, individually and collectively, and exerting peer pressure on us. Whether it is material prosperity, fame, security, nationalism, scribal Christianity, or hedonistic Christianity, most thieves dress themselves up so as to seduce and deceive us. Many thieves within the professing church tempt us to substitute something for a relationship with Jesus Christ, they brand a teaching, a movement, or an emphasis, with His Name, but as with the Galatians, they direct our attention elsewhere; caricatures of Jesus Christ abound within the professing church.

 

Living in heavenly – mindedness means saying “No” to many things; things of the world and things of the professing church. We are not looking for just any city, we are looking for the City of God because that is where God lives and we want to live in God, through God, and unto God, in our Lord Jesus Christ. We learn to recognize that, “Except  Yahweh builds the house, they labor in vain who build it; unless Yahweh guards the city, the watchman keeps aware in vain” (Psalm 127:1).

 

“Traced to its ultimate root heavenly-mindedness is the thirst of the soul after God, the living God.”

 

What is eternal life? It is knowing the Holy Trinity, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. “This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent” (John 17:3). “This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent” (John 6:29).

 

“O God, You are my God; I shall seek you earnestly and early; my soul thirsts for You, in a dry and weary land where there is no water” (Psalm 63:1). “As the deer pants for the water brooks, so my soul pants for You, O God. My soul thirsts for the living God; when shall I come and appear before God?” (Psalm 42:1 - 2).

 

We are called to be ever looking unto Jesus, the Author and Perfecter of our faith (Hebrews 12:2), knowing that as we see Him that we are transformed into His image (1 John 3:1-3; 2Cor. 3:17 – 18).

 

Are we thirsting after God? Where are our treasures?

 

Are we pointing people to Jesus Christ, or are we marketing a Christian lifestyle?

 

Do we satiate our souls with the passing things of this earth, including religious things, or are we crying out to know nothing but Jesus Christ and Him crucified? (1Cor. 2:2).

 

When we arise in the morning, do we soak our souls in Christ and His Word or in the things of this earth? Are we eating from the Tree of Life or from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil?

 

Are we crying out, “O Father, O Lord Jesus, teach me to seek Your Face! Give me a thirst that only You can quench! A hunger that only You can satisfy!”

 

Are we offering ourselves to God (Rom. 12:1 – 2) so that He might give us as broken Bread and poured out Wine to our generation in and through Jesus Christ? O dear friends, to partake of the Communion Table means that we must be that Communion Table, in Christ, to others – one of reasons we know that the Eucharist is sacramental.

 

The depths of eternity are calling to the sons and daughters of the Living God. Our Father’s Throne is calling us home. Living Water is flowing from the Throne to draw us to that Place where God is all in All. Let us be like the son who “came to himself” and headed home to where he belonged – let us forbear to eat the food of swine, no matter how hungry we may be, for our Father will surely care of us. Let us endeavor to bring others along, knowing that we can’t force them, but also knowing that as they hear the Name of the Father, His Nature, that they just might leave their fishing nets and follow Jesus (Hebrews 2:9 – 13).

 

O dear friends, if we will live with God in eternity, ought we not to be seeking to live in Him and through Him and unto Him now, today, this very moment? O dear sister, O dear brother, your Father sent His Firstborn to reveal His love for you, to shower you with His grace, to bring you home to where you have always belonged. Jesus  Christ has given you His glory and He dearly desires that you be filled with His joy and love (John 17:22 – 26).

 

I pray, as I write these very words, that you will know the fulness of the life and love and joy of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, I pray that your life will be enveloped in the Holy Trinity and that your life, in Christ, will feed the lives of others.

Heavenly Mindedness (60)

 

“Finally the highest thing that can be spoken about this city is that it is the city of our God, that He is in the midst of it. Traced to its ultimate root heavenly-mindedness is the thirst of the soul after God, the living God. The patriarchs looked not for some city in general, but for a city whose builder and maker was God.

 

“It is characteristic of faith that it not merely desires the perfect but desires the perfect as a work and gift of God. A heaven that was not illumined by the light of God, and not a place for closest embrace of Him, would be less than heaven. God as builder and maker thereof has put the better part of Himself into his work. Therefore those who enter the city are in God. The thought is none other than that of the seer in the Apocalypse:

 

“I saw no temple therein: for the Lord God, the Almighty and the Lamb are the temple thereof. And that city has no need of the sun, neither of the moon to shine upon it, for the glory of God lightens it, and the throne of God and the Lamb are therein: and his servants shall do Him service, and they shall see his face, and his name shall be on their foreheads.”

 

“And the faith is the faith of the Psalmist, who spoke: “Whom have I in heaven but Thee, and there is none upon earth that I desire beside Thee.” Here it is impossible for us to tell how truly and to what extent our relation to God is a relation of pure, disinterested love in which we seek Him for his own sake. There, when all want and sin-frailty shall have slipped away from us, we shall be able to tell.

 

“It was because God discerned in the souls of the patriarchs, underneath all else, this personal love, this homesickness for Himself, that He caused to be recorded about them the greatest thing that can be spoken of any man: that God is not ashamed to be called their God, and that He has prepared for them the city of their desire.” G. Vos

 

This is the concluding quote from Vos’s sermon, Heavenly – mindedness. I thought it would be good to include this lengthy conclusion so that we could meditate on the many threads that Vos ties up and weaves together. While we will drop back and look at these elements, for now, as you ponder the above, what do you see? What is the big picture? What does the forest look like and what are the trees you see in the forest?

 

How does Vos’s description of the heavenly – mindedness of the Patriarchs compare with our lives? With the way we think and feel and live?

How does our life - orientation compare with the Patriarchs?

 

Please take some time pondering Vos’s conclusion. What are the final images and thoughts he wants to leave with those who first heard him speak this at Princeton Seminary? What are the thoughts and images that Vos wants to leave with us?

 

Heavenly Mindedness (58)

 

“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

 

Continuing with the quote from the previous post:

 

“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.” I’m reminded of a song, titled The Song of the Soul Set Free, I first sang as a new Christian in 1966 in a camp meeting choir outside of Frostburg, MD. Some of the words are (relying on memory), “Angels cannot sing it, this song of joy and freedom, for mortals only know it, the ransomed and the free.” Peter writes that “angels long to look” into the things of the Gospel and salvation (1 Peter 1:12).

 

Sadly, when we repudiate the image of God we abandon the glory of God’s creation, including His creation of mankind. We abandon that special place God has placed man (see Psalm 8) and man’s special calling to live in koinonia with God, with one another, and to live as a steward of creation. For the Christian, the restoration of the image of God in us through Jesus Christ should be one of the unfolding delights of our lives – and yet our earthbound “Christianity” has the practical effect of stunting our growth in Christ, we are like the seed sown among thorns who allow the things of this earth to choke our growth (Mark 4:18 – 19).

 

 “This is the fine gold of the Christian’s experience, sweeter to him than honey and the honeycomb.” Our lives are to be about knowing Jesus and making Him known to others. Knowing Jesus is our calling, not engaging in perpetual self-improvement projects. Paul’s great desire was “…that I may know Him…” (Phil. 3:10). Jesus says to the Father, “This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent” (John 17:3).

 

As I look back over my life, I see irony in the fact that as a young professing Christian I often said that there is a difference between knowing about Jesus Christ and really knowing Him. I have heard this throughout my life. The irony is that I was often in situations in which I didn’t know Jesus, I didn’t display a life in Jesus, and in which I was substituting a Christian “lifestyle” or a set of doctrines or teachings for koinonia with the Trinity. (Please don’t misunderstand me, doctrine and dogma are critical to our life in Christ and with one another – one of our problems is that because we are ignorant of the Bible and its dogmas we make things up as we go along and therefore live in confusion.)

 

Let me tell you a common sense thing, if we really know someone we’ll talk about him or her, we’ll talk about character, we’ll talk about our relationship, we’ll talk about our joys, and we’ll talk about the things we don’t understand. We talk about the people and things that are important to us; are we talking about Jesus Christ? Are we sharing our life in Christ with others, both those who know Him and those who don’t?

 

I think of a song titled, Knowing You, or All I Once Held Dear. The chorus goes, “Knowing You, Jesus, knowing You, there is no greater thing. You’re my all, You’re the best, You’re my joy, my righteousness, and I love You Lord.” Is this our heart’s desire, to know Jesus and to make Him known to others?

 

Paul writes, “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known” (1Cor. 13:12).

 

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?

Heavenly Mindedness (56)

 

“The other point to be observed is this, that heaven is the normal goal of our redemption. We all know that religion is older than redemption. At the same time the experience of redemption is the summit of religion. The two have become so interwoven that the Christian cannot conceive of a future state from which the redemptive mold and color would be absent. The deepest and dearest in us is so much the product of salvation, that the vision of God as such and the vision of God our Savior melt into one. We could not separate them if we would. The simple reason is that precisely in redeeming us God has revealed to us the inmost essence of his deity. 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.”  G. Vos

 

Continuing to work from the above quote from the last post:

 

“We all know that religion is older than redemption.” I would love ask Vos what he means by this, but since I can’t ask him I’ll have to take it as it is written, and it is problematic as it is written. After all, we see redemption in Genesis 3:15, “And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on the head, and you shall bruise him on the heel.” We also see redemption in Genesis 1:2 – 3, for just as the earth was formless and void and in darkness, so were our lives before the work of the Holy Spirit, therefore Paul can write (2 Cor. 4:6), “For God, who said, Light shall shine out of darkness, is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.”

 

“At the same time the experience of redemption is the summit of religion. The two have become so interwoven that the Christian cannot conceive of a future state from which the redemptive mold and color would be absent.” In the previous post we noted that Vos uses the term “redemption” in a comprehensive manner, encompassing all of salvation.

 

“The deepest and dearest in us is so much the product of salvation, that the vision of God as such and the vision of God our Savior melt into one. We could not separate them if we would. The simple reason is that precisely in redeeming us God has revealed to us the inmost essence of his deity. 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.”

 

I want to add the following quote as we ponder the above, we’ll see it again in the next section of Vos’s message, “The life above will be a ceaseless coming to Jesus…”

 

The foregoing is an example of how difficult it is for us to speak of our future state in eternity, a condition, a manner of life, which is far beyond our comprehension and vocabulary. Paul was “caught up into Paradise and heard inexpressible words, which a man is not permitted to speak” (2 Cor. 12:4). We also might wonder what Paul saw in addition to what he heard. And yet, the door of future vision is not entirely closed to us, for Paul also wrote, “…Things which eye has not seen and ear has not heard, and which have not entered the heart of man, all that God has prepared for those who love Him. For to us God revealed them through the Spirit; for the Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God” (1 Cor. 2:9 – 10).

 

Then of course we have John’s vision throughout Revelation, and in particular chapters 21 and 22. However, if we miss the point of the Presence of God Almighty and the Lamb in these chapters, and try to reduce this description to the material, to the physical, we will fail to see their glory – this is about what the eyes of our heart see, not what our natural eyes see.

 

In Dante’s Paradise we read;

 

“This way of speech best suits your apprehension,

   Which knows but to receive reports from sense

   And fit them for the intellect’s attention.

So Scripture stoops to your intelligence:

  It talks about God’s ‘hand” and ‘feet’, intending

  That you should draw a different inference;”

            Canto IV:40-45 (trans. Dorothy L. Sayers and Barbara Reynolds, Penguin)

 

The reason I want us to think about this is that Vos, strictly speaking, contracts himself as he moves toward the close of his message, and he even makes a statement that, upon reflection, he may have edited out had he had the chance. Yet, considering that Vos is writing about the future state of those in Christ, this is understandable and we ought not to have heartburn about it – for to contemplate the Trinity is to be at a loss for consistent words. Images often convey more than words, and words within images often find their texture and meaning. Hence, we have vivid images in John’s Apocalypse, and within these images we have words – images drive the book of Revelation, words are supporting characters. Or perhaps we could better say that words and images dance together and we see their patterns and interactive beauty.

 

Vos writes “God has revealed to us the inmost essence of his deity,” but he also writes, “The life above will be a ceaseless coming to Jesus.” Then we have, “the vision of God as such and the vision of God our Savior melt into one. We could not separate them if we would.”

 

What do you see in the above paragraph?

 

If we have a ceaseless coming to Jesus then we must be able to distinguish Jesus from the Father. Also, if we have a ceaseless coming to Jesus then what does this say about us seeing the inmost essence of his deity? And yet, may we not be so caught up in the Divine Presence that one moment (if we can speak of “moments”) we see the Father and the Son, and the next moment we simply behold God’s ineffable Trinitarian glory? Furthermore, how does our ceaseless coming to Jesus relate to our seeing the inmost essence of his deity? In other words, do we “see” God once and for all, and is that vision, that seeing, static? Or do we abide in a continuing deepening and heightening relationship and revelation with Him?

 

Will we really see the inmost essence of his deity? Perhaps it will seem to us as if we see Him this way, but perhaps it will seem like this one moment, and then it will be deeper the next moment, and the next, and the next (do you see how limited we are? I speak of “moments” when there is no time in that Place, but I am a creature of time…at least for “now”.)

 

Vos is doing what we all are likely to do, we simply can’t speak or write about these things except in a limited way – but we do the best we can to communicate the glory of God in the Face of Jesus Christ.

 

Our calling, our heart’s desire, ought to be to see the Face of God. As we previously pondered, Jesus did not say, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall go to heaven,” but rather, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” This is where Vos is headed, this is where Vos has always been headed in this message of Heavenly – Mindedness; this is where we ought to be headed.

 

O dear friends, let us not be as children playing with things such as extravagant schemes of prophecy that change with the headlines; let us not be as infants focused on ourselves and what we want; let us not be so foolish as to think we can conjure up lasting transformative programs that will sustain us through this lifetime – but let us find our heart’s desire in beholding Jesus Christ, and in so doing we will find ourselves transformed from glory to glory into His image – and we will know this joy together in Him (2 Cor. 3:17 – 18; Hebrews 12:2; Matthew 17:5).