Princely Position

[WordSword]

Surely we may look at the Church as a great ship, moored to the heavenly port; the deep sea, the Red Sea of Scripture, crossed over, and also the Jordan, the river beside the land. Seats for every believer in the great assembly are on the other side, in the land flowing with milk and honey.

No one has entered into the full work of the Lord Jesus until he has sat down on his own seat at the Passover feast, at and after Gilgal. We are born of God for these seats; but we take a long time individually until we have, as it were, sense enough to see that the seats is heaven are ours now, and that each one always had his own. We are like born princes; only very gradually do we comprehend the greatness of our royal position.

The first great step in our spiritual history is that the Lord Jesus has triumphed gloriously, and that we are not only sage from judgment by His Blood, but that through His resurrection and ascension we are at the other side of judgment; we are in a new region, even in righteousness and life.

Our dignity is thus breaking in on us; we have got some sense now of our position. Very often we do not advance very rapidly from this. It has been said that a child learns more the first five years of life than during the following twenty. Be that as it may, there is more rapid growth to rest of conscience, even peace, than there is to the other stages, and to the full apprehension of the Father’s calling.

The next step is that I learn that there is not only sin in me (Rom 6), but that there is no good in me (Rom 7). I abandon myself now for the Lord Jesus: “Not I, but Christ lives in me”: “The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death.” I know my princely position now; that it is one really heavenly.

Hence that next great advance is that I have left the flesh entirely behind. I find that I have died with the Lord Jesus, and that I am on heavenly land with Him. Here now at length I apprehend what was true of me from my new birth; that I have a seat in the grandest circle ever to be in heaven or on earth. The Lord Jesus’ work had acquired it all for me, thought I only learn it by degrees. Hence after Gilgal, we sit down and eat the Passover in remembrance of Him. The corn of the land is now our proper sustenance for serving Him, in keeping with our heavenly royal position.

I am glad to think of you as one of those royal personages. May you daily enjoy more the seat that is yours in His glorious presence! How happy to know that we, who have journeyed together so many years in the wilderness, are able to anticipate the day when we shall uninterruptedly commune together; the Lord one, and His name one. But the more our growth or spiritual sense now, the more we enter into the greatness of His grace; and if we do not, we are slow and dull of learning. “Study to show yourself approved unto God, a workman that needs not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the Word of truth.” (2 Tim 2:15).

- J B Stoney

 

 

Excerpt from MJS June 16 devotional:“If there be a growing up into the measure of the stature of Christ, there must be a conscious refusal of that which would tend to revive or invigorate the old nature. The saint is not only a new creature to grow into the likeness of the Lord Jesus, but he has to watch and beware lest the things he has to do with should in any way minister to another will in him, which would divert him from God to himself. Self is the circle and center of man’s mind in his fallen state; but when Christ is formed in the soul, God is the center and source of everything.” -J.B.S.http://www.abideabove.com/hungry-heart/