Who Are They?
CONVERSION to God is a very real thing, wherever found. Outwardly it may be more marked in one than in another, but inwardly the same reality is stamped on both alike.
There was undoubtedly a greater outward change in the raising of Lazarus, who had been dead four days, than in the maiden form whose youthful face the signs of vitality had only just departed. But the inward change was as real in one as in the other. And so with every, true conversion. There may appear more outward change in the selfish drunkard when converted, than in his wife when she found the Saviour. He was besotted, even to the most disgusting rudeness and cruelty; she was patient, upright, and highly moral. But an inward work was necessary in both. Both had to be brought low enough to pass through the narrow door of self-condemnation, and only thus did their hearts make a personal acquaintance with Jesus as the all-sufficient Saviour of the lost.
Now, to come to our subject more directly, let me answer the above question by saying that every true believer on earth is regarded in Scripture as “heavenly” (1 Cor. 15:48, 4948As is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy: and as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly. 49And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly. (1 Corinthians 15:48‑49)). True, in his ways he may he very far from expressing it, but in God’s account he is “heavenly” all the same.
Take an illustration. If you wanted to point out to someone the beauties of a purple or copper beech tree, you would not choose one close to the open windows of some flour-mill or cement-works, where nearly every leaf was more or less disfigured by white dust; nor would you expect to see the beauties of a cream-colored pony while it was yoked in the shafts of a chimney-sweep’s soot cart. In each case what they seemed to be would be, at least, a partial denial of what, in point of fact, they really were.
In like manner, if you would see a true sample of a heavenly man, you must not look at the earthly-minded, worldly ways of the mass of professing. Christians today. Many of them may be truly converted men, but their ways deny it. Where, then, you may ask, can I see a fair sample: of a heavenly man?
Thank God, there are thousands of good specimens even today, but as any one of these, through evil associations, is in danger of losing his true heavenly color, I would rather turn you to one of those brought before us on the page of Holy Scripture. Take the case of the apostle Paul, according to the Spirit’s record of him in the Acts.
1. He had the call of heaven at his conversion. But so have you. Perhaps yours was not so marked as Paul’s, for his was without any human, instrumentality. (Read his conversion in Acts 9), But it was the same Lord that made you hear His voice and stopped you in your determined downward course, and then spoke peace and comfort to your repentant, troubled heart.
2. He had a perfect fitness for heaven. But so have you.
Perhaps you say, I know Paul had, for he was caught up to the third heaven, but I any not so sure about myself. But if God has cleansed and justified you, you are as fit for the third heaven as Paul was. Read the account in Acts 10. of the vision of Peter. He saw heaven opened and all manner of “beasts” taken in there, but only because they had all been “cleansed” by God Himself. God claims the right to say what is fit and what is not fit for His holy presence. And every soul cleansed by the precious blood of Christ is pronounced “clean every whit.”
But perhaps you may say, How can I be in a fit state for heaven with an evil nature― “the flesh”―still in me?
Do you not remember that Paul had the same?
When he came out of the third heaven, did he not need a “thorn in the flesh” to keep him from spiritual pride through the movements of an indwelling principle of evil― “the sin that dwelleth in me,” as he spoke of it in Romans 7:2020Now if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. (Romans 7:20)?
If “sin in the flesh” is still found in the believer, and it is―for “if we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us” (1 John 1:88If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. (1 John 1:8)) ―there is something else to be said. God has already judged it in the cross of His Son, and by the help of the indwelling Spirit the believer judges it also. Instead of its presence robbing him of communion, he is not only free from it by the death of Christ, but by the Holy Ghost he can be in communion with God about its badness. The presence in the house, of fruit condemned by the wise mother as unfit for food does not hinder her child’s happy communion with her, if he condemns it also. It is when, in disobedience, he partakes of it that he loses his communion and gets into trouble. And God has given us His Spirit that we may not do the things that naturally we would.