UK 3:22Now my eye rests on Jesus: I find the Lord from heaven a Man! All is to begin again. Do I ask, again, What is man? At once Christ comes out. Do I look at myself? At all around? What do I see? Enough to break my heart, if there is a heart to be broken. The only thing which prevents people being utterly broken down is that they have not a heart to feel things as they are. But a rest is here! I have got a Man now who satisfied God, this blessed Man on earth, in the presence of God, looking to God, and an Object to God! Not Messiah purging His floor, but Him in whom God's thoughts and purposes are all folded up‒not man perishing before the moth, but JESUS, the Son of Man, not merely coming down from Abraham and David, but traced up, " which was the son of Adam, which was the Son of God "; the second Man‒the last Adam‒the quickening Spirit. What a relief; for what is man? What one's self when the heart's sin is known‒giving up God for an apple from the beginning hitherto! But now a Man, a blessed Man, appears, " and praying."
... The dependent Man for dependence is the essence of a perfect man. Truly we see God shining all through, but yet in Jesus the dependent Man in the place and condition of perfectness as Man. The root of sin in us is self-will, independence. Here my heart has rest! A dependent Man in the midst of sorrow, but perfectly with God in all, in humiliation, or in glory, it makes no difference as to this: the perfect is ever the dependent One. And when that blessed heart thus expressed its dependence, did He get no answer? " The heaven was opened." Does heaven open thus on me? It is open to me indeed, no doubt, but I pray because it is open; it opened because He prayed. I come and look up because the heavens were opened on Him.
It is indeed a lovely picture of grace, and we may be bold to say that the Father loved to look down in the midst of all sin, on His BELOVED SON. Nothing but what was divine could thus awaken God's heart; and yet it was the lowly, perfect Man. He takes not the place of His eternal glory as the Creator, the Son of God-He stoops and is baptized. He says (Psa. 16), " In Thee do I trust." He says to Jehovah, " Thou art my Lord; my goodness extendeth not to thee: " He says to the godly remnant in Israel (i.e., to the saints that are in the earth, and to the excellent), " all my delight is in them."...
And the Holy Ghost descends like a dove on Him-fit emblem of that spotless man! fit resting-place for the Spirit in the deluge of this world. And how sweet, too, that Jesus is pointed out to us as God's Object. I know the way the Father feels about Him. I am made His intimate, and admitted to hear Him expressing His affection for His Son, to see the links reformed between God and man.
Thus I get rest, and my heart finds communion with God in His beloved Son. It is only the believer who enjoys it, but the link is there. And if I find that in and about me which distresses the soul, I have that in Him which is unfailing joy and comfort.... With Him let heaven and earth be turned upside down, and still I have a rest. What blessedness for the heart to have the Object God Himself is occupied with!