“Being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ: by whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.”
As to our past, we have peace with God. All our past has been dealt with at the cross, and as a result, we have perfect, unbroken peace with God.
As to our present, Jesus Christ has opened up for us access to God’s blessed presence in the unclouded sunshine of His favor.
As to our future, we “rejoice in hope of the glory of God.” Yes, our blessed Lord and Saviour is our Head in glory and has promised, “I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto Myself; that where I am, there ye may be also” (John 14:2323Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him. (John 14:23)). He will soon come again to accomplish His blessed promise.
The world with all its vanities, the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life, will one day collapse into dust and ashes in the fire of God’s righteous judgment. But long before that awful day arrives, our Saviour will come for us, whom we expect from heaven, where our citizenship is. At His quickening word of command, His sleeping saints of all ages will arise from the dust of their graves in glorious bodies, in a moment — in the twinkling of an eye. At the same moment these corruptible “bodies of humiliation” of ours will be transformed into the likeness of His own glorious body, and He will lead us to the mansions in His Father’s house. “Behold I and the children which God hath given me” (Heb. 2:1313And again, I will put my trust in him. And again, Behold I and the children which God hath given me. (Hebrews 2:13)).
His great new name, that name at which every knee shall bow, will then in the blaze of His glory be written on the foreheads of His servants. And when the day shall appear, when the Lord will “make up [His] jewels” (Mal. 3:1717And they shall be mine, saith the Lord of hosts, in that day when I make up my jewels; and I will spare them, as a man spareth his own son that serveth him. (Malachi 3:17)), every tear wept for His sake will then shine like a diamond in the sunlight of His face, “when He shall come to be glorified in His saints and to be admired in all them that believe” (2 Thess. 1:10). Then the countless hosts of His saints will fitly reflect His beauty, as the dewdrops in the field at the rising of the sun, like precious jewels, in variegated colors reflecting the glory of the heavenly orb.
And what is it that enables those tiny dewdrops to reflect the light of that glorious orb, the splendor of which blinds the human eye? Is it not because those little drops are free from earthly alloy? They come from heaven and therefore are able to reflect heavenly glory. Thus it will be with the saints, the Lord’s servants, when they shall appear with Him in glory, each “clothed upon with our house which is from heaven,” in glorified bodies — the livery of glory, “the gala-uniform,” as it were, of the servants and soldiers of Christ. Then there will be no more impediment in their bodies, no earthly nor fleshly alloy, no intrusion of vain-glorious self in our poor little service, to impede our reflecting His glories! Oh, what a radiant reflex of His glory and beauty will His servants then be! How different from what we are now! Would to God we were now more like dewdrops — little, pure and empty, that is, clear of alloy! What different lights we should then be, in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation!
May we learn, in the power of an ungrieved Spirit, more truly to “rejoice in hope of the glory of God”!
We thus have peace, grace and hope, expressing the believer’s past, present and future: as to the past, unbroken peace with God; as to the present, the unclouded sunshine of His favor; as to the future, the never-to-be-disappointed hope of the glory of God. May that calm and secure peace, that blessed and establishing grace, and that cheering hope shine out more and more in our walk and daily life!
Bible Treasury, Vol. 15, p. 295