Where Dwellest Thou?
John Gifford Bellett
Table of Contents
Where Dwellest Thou? Part 1
OH 1:33-39{There are two great parts in the revelation God has given us of Himself. There is, first- and it is of first importance to us- He reveals Himself; for how else should we know Him? We had lost every true thought of Him from Eden, so early had Satan poisoned the very springs of our being against God. The mind of the flesh is enmity against Him. But the moment was come at last when the heart of God, long yearning to tell itself out in this ruined world, was to have its full, suited expression. This we are brought to in the first chapter of John: "In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God." Blessed thought for us!- there has been from eternity with God the Word that could fully express Him; "and the Word was God," for who but God could express God? For a moment we are introduced to the vast scene of the display of His Godhead and power in creation (John 1:3), but only to be dismissed in a word, to give way before what was infinitely greater, even the Divine Word, the Creator Himself come into the world that He had made. "He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not." Yes, it is even so, for "the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us"- God manifest in the flesh. And the opened eye of faith beheld His glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. For this was the character of His coming: "the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ." "No man bath seen God at any time; the only-begotten Son which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him."
Thus the light of all that God is fully revealed had risen upon this dark world. With what effect? Oh, has it to be told? None whatever, if left to itself! Such is man, such the total ruin that sin has made of us, that what is impossible physically takes place. "The light shineth in darkness." Perfect light was there; the darkness remained as it was, perfectly unaffected by it, "the darkness comprehended it not." Such the profound moral darkness in which we lay! He was in the world, and the world knew Him not: He came unto His own, and His own received Him not. Do we not know and own it? Have we not had to prove it in our own souls? We saw no beauty in Him that we should desire Him. But mark the wondrous grace of the revelation. If He had shone into this world in all the majesty of His glory, who could have borne His presence? It would have been our destruction. But "God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself." He veiled His glory beneath the lowly garb of His humiliation, that He might bring down all the grace that was in God to us where we were in all our need of it, to draw us by the grace into the discovered truth of our condition. Had He come only to shine, we should have been left where we were, lost forever. Blessed be God, it is not so. If light is come, love is come with it, for God is love as well as light. And love is active to bring in the rays of the light into our consciences and hearts, that, being brought to know ourselves, we may know Him.
But this brings us to the second great part of the way He has revealed Himself, even the divine work, in all its completeness, by which He puts us in the presence of His glory at perfect rest. This, too, we find presented in the chapter before us, if not in its full result as to us, yet at least in the glory of Him whose work it is, and the work part of His glory. But God must work, if any heart were ever to open to His glory. Nor was the fact of an activity of divine love any new thing in itself in this poor world. God had ever wrought that there might be anything of Him, of blessing, or of good, found in it. Only all comes out clearly in the light now, and we see what the first essential work of all is, and what its character. "As many as received him, to them gave he power to become the children of God, even to them that believe in his name: which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." (John 1:12, 13) When the darkness of our condition was wholly unaffected by the presence of infinite light, when there was no heart here to answer to the infinite love that brought in the light, God wrought in that love- His word, applied by the power of the Spirit, as ever His instrument- that born of the Spirit and the Word- born of God- our poor hearts might open to receive Jesus, and that we might possess a nature capable of answering to, and (when set free) delighting in, all that was presented to us in Him. "The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God." Oh, think of the wonderful grace that wrought when there was nothing in any of our hearts that answered to anything in His, to bring us into partaking of His own nature, that we might have capacity to know and joy in Him forever! But this blessed enjoyment is not the first effect of being born of God- far from it. There must be the bringing out between the conscience and God of our sins as we never knew them before. Sooner or later self must be learned, too, to be nothing but sin. Thus we find ourselves out before God in the only truth of our condition—a condition that makes us totally unfit for His presence. What a place to be brought to, solemn and humbling, yet needed; and that is the sure mark, as it is the effect, of a work all His own. We are brought at last where Peter was in principle, as in Luke 5; "he fell down at Jesus' knees, saying, Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord." Blessed taking of God's side against himself, as it was; but not to be left there. No; that never would have satisfied divine love. More was needed for God's own glory- more, to give us rest in His presence. The answer to both is found in the glories in which the Lord Jesus is now presented to us in the testimony of John the Baptist. How suited and exquisite the grace, that, amid this full testimony to the varied glory of the Divine Word manifested on earth, we should find the complete work as an essential part of that glory, that was necessary if we were to have any part in it for blessing!
There are two further parts of the divine work, and they are brought out in this testimony to His glory first, "Behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world;" and, secondly, "He it is that baptizes with the Holy Ghost." These two parts of the work of the Son of God are needed to be added to the primary work of the Spirit of God, by which we are born anew, to complete the full Christian position. In the slain Lamb of God we find the righteous ground- now for the first time manifested- of all the work of God in blessing that there ever had been, or could be, in a lost world, but here presented according to all the perfection found in it for God, and therefore in its full, complete efficacy, even to the clearing away of sin forever, in a new heavens and new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness. Of that first part of His work as the Lamb of God, He could say, "God is glorified in him, and if God be glorified in him, God shall also glorify him in himself." And He has done it. So that, where God rests in the full settlement of every question of sin, as it affected His glory, there we rest in seeing our sins gone in His death who bore them, and we ourselves judged, condemned, and crucified with Him. It needed, indeed, the whole glory of the work that lays the foundation of the new heavens and new earth to remove the stain of a single sin from our guilty souls; but it is there, an accomplished work for us. So that the moment the eye of faith turns from self, found out in its sin, to the Lamb of God, the scene is cleared for us, as it is for God, of all we have done and been. It lay in the perfection and glory of His work as the Lamb of God, to end all that was of the first man for faith, in infinitely executed judgment, and to lay the basis, in divine righteousness, for the accomplishment of all God's counsels, for His glory and our blessing, in the Second.
But this brings us to the second part of the work of the Son of God, as He who baptiseth with the Holy Ghost. It is all here still wrapped up in testimony to the glory of His Person. But we know it as accomplished. Having finished His work as the atoning Lamb of God, He has taken His place as the accepted Man in the glory of God, and sent down the Holy Ghost. He is given to dwell within us, as each one receives the testimony of accomplished redemption, to bring us in power into the whole of Christ's own place, as man, before that glory. He baptizes with the Holy Ghost. It is no longer the mere negative taking away of all that had to be taken away in God's judgment, but the full, positive bringing in of what was to be established in its room. Not till, in fact, the work of redemption was accomplished could the Holy Ghost be given; "for the Holy Ghost was not yet, because Jesus was not glorified." And so, in the faith of our souls, "In whom ye also, after that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, in whom also, after that ye believed, ye were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise" (compare Acts 19:1-6; Eph. 1:15). Given immediately upon, and the seal of, the faith that believes God's testimony to the accomplished work of a risen and glorified Christ, the Holy Ghost gives us the consciousness of our new and wonderful place in Christ. This testimony is conveyed to us in the forgiveness of sins. Hence it is at the point at which we receive the positive and conferred forgiveness of our sins, that we receive the Holy Ghost to dwell in us. Compare Acts 2:38; 10:43, 44; and the place of the introduction of the Holy Ghost, in the Epistle to the Romans, after peace with God through justification. (Rom. 5:5.) Also in type, in the case of the leper (Lev. 14:14-18), where the oil (type of the Holy Ghost) follows the application of the blood of the trespass offering.
Thus, when the Holy Ghost was come, Jesus says, "Ye shall know that I am in the Father, and ye in me, and I in you." When He had made peace through the blood of His cross, and become Himself the first messenger of it to His disciples, in John 20, greeting them with, "Peace be unto you," as the last Adam, a quickening Spirit, He breathed on them, and said, Receive ye the Holy Ghost. It is the Spirit as the power of the life with which He was risen from the dead, rather than given as a distinct Person to dwell in them. For this we know they had still to wait till the day of Pentecost. The Son of God was come, "that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly." The Spirit is the power of that life now possessed in new association with the risen Christ. Hence it can be said, " The Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death." (Rom. 8:2.) It is a positive, actual deliverance, by divine power, out of the old condition in which we were into a wholly new one in Christ. Further, He is the Spirit of adoption; if we are the sons of God, by faith in Christ Jesus (Gal. 3:26), because we are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying Abba, Father. (Gal. 4:6.) Another blessed mark and effect of His presence is stated in 2 Cor. 3:17: "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty"- liberty to gaze on the unveiled glory of God in the face of Jesus, the token of God's perfect acceptance of the work, according to which we are accepted before Him in righteousness, that as we gaze, we may be changed into His image. There are also corporate effects of the gift of the Holy Ghost, as dwelling on earth, and uniting us to Christ; but these do not come within the scope of the Gospel of John; and it is profitable for our souls to distinguish the individual aspect of the baptism of the Holy Ghost from that which is corporate, for we must be established in the former before anything of the latter can be known in privilege and responsibility. J. A. T.
(To be continued.)
The fathers were spoken to by the prophets, by those who had but visions and dreams. We are now spoken to by the Son, by Him who sees face to face, who has access to all that is of God. And this lets us into heavenly things as well as earthly. This discloses the holiest things to our view, as well as the courts, because our prophet is there, while the prophets of the fathers were more in the distance, in the place of visions and dreams. J. G. B.
Where Dwellest Thou? Part 2
Thus the complete christian position is before our hearts in the testimony of John the Baptist, secured in the glory of His Person, and in the order of the divine work that brings us into it. All the divine fullness was pleased to dwell in Him. But if He is thus presented, there is also, as we have seen necessarily going before that any might receive Him, the work of sovereign grace by which we are born of God. Then there is contained in the glory of His Person, that He was the Lamb to take away sin according to the exigencies of God's own glory and of our discovered condition-and lastly, when by His precious blood our sins had been washed away, the Holy Ghost is given to bring us consciously into our wholly new place in Christ; for if any man be in Christ there is a new creation, old things are passed away, all things are become new. We are complete in Christ, before the Godhead's fullness. What a salvation it is, complete in its three parts, presented, too, in the order in which they are made good to our souls. First, life, and with it the conviction, of our sins, for the life was the light of men; secondly, the blood of the cross, and a full and everlasting forgiveness by it; and lastly, the Holy Ghost, seal of the faith that believes God's testimony to it, that we may be established in Christ in the full christian position. Of course, as yet it was only found in the testimony of the glory of Christ, save that there was a positive actual work of divine quickening going on that any might receive Him.
Now we come to what may well challenge our hearts, as to the effect of this grace in salvation when fully known to our souls. For it is just here we have an historical incident of surpassing interest brought in, as the few given in the Gospel of John are always, to illustrate the doctrine in hand. " Two disciples of John heard him speak, and they followed Jesus." Blessed practical effect of this truth, beloved brethren, too often lacking with us! And they followed Him, not for anything more that they could get from Him, but with one object. And, oh! what it tells of the manner of the love displayed in God come into this world in Christ! So completely had He won the confidence of these two hearts in attracting them after Himself; that their object that first day they ever knew Him is to find out where He dwells, that they may dwell with Him. The fruit of His grace as He turned and saw them following is sweet to the Lord in this cold heartless world, and He draws out the expression of it by His question " What seek ye?" Can He put such a question to us? We rest in the wonderful position we have been established in. It is well. It is the basis of any proper fruit of Christianity. But what are we seeking? For let not our hearts be deceived into thinking we are seeking nothing. It is impossible. The heart was made for an object, and a personal object, and nothing but a divine one can satisfy it. So that if we are not seeking Christ, we are assuredly seeking somethinffb that is not Christ. Ah! is it not the secret of so much failure, of so little brightness and power of christian life, of so little testimony for Him in separation from the world, where there is no question of the full christian place. There is not the attraction of Christ known personally as the one bright blessed object of the heart eclipsing all else. Not so could these disciples know their place; but thus early in their knowledge of Him they were bent on one thing, " Where dwellest thou?" And the Lord accepts and ratifies the desire, as of His own awakening in their hearts, " Come and see." " He satisfieth the longing soul."
But I think we may see a more extended scope in the place this touching incident has, at the opening and as the frontispiece of this Gospel. It is the awakening of a need in the soul, to which the Gospel of John supplies the answer. The other gospels tell 'us of the Son of man that had not where to lay His head in the world He created. This is the revelation of the heavenly home of the Son of God. He dwells in the bosom of the Father. He has come to reveal it that we may find our home now in spirit, and forever there with Him where He finds His. It was just what these two disciples, if there were but two, were drawn after Him to seek. Oh to know more of the power of such an attraction! and then we shall be more prepared for the full heavenly association with Himself, to which this gospel is the blessed moral introduction. In the light of what follows in it, " Come and see" is really the invitation to look into heaven now, and become familiar with it as His home and ours.
This testimony of heavenly things comes very early. Only, before there can be the reception of it, there must come the earthly testimony of the need of our condition in view of what is heavenly. " If I have told you earthly things and ye believe not, how shall ye believe if I tell you of heavenly things?" The Son of man had come down from heaven to tell of what is there-" the Son of man who is in heaven," even when thus testifying of it on: earth. (Chapter 3:12,13.) But in chapter 4 the richest heavenly things of divine grace in the Person of Jesus are presented in vain (vers. 10-15), till the Lord turns the testimony in upon what she is, and the first ray of divine intelligence enters as ever through the conscience. " He that cometh from heaven is above all, and what he bath seen and heard that he testifieth, and no man receiveth his testimony." Still there was this testimony in all its perfection, and grace working, as we have seen, that we might receive it-the Father drawing to the Son, that when we come, we may find the Son revealing the Father, as only the Son can, and in special character as the Son who dwells in His bosom. " No man hath seen God at any time: the only-begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him." Thus when the time was come, the testimony of His words and works being rejected, that He should leave the world and go to the Father, and He leads the thoughts of His people to the Father's house for the first time in scripture (chap. 14), He can say, " Whither I go ye know." As though He would say, You know heaven quite well; the Father's house is no strange place to you. How can it be possible? Philip seizes the truth, so far at least that the Father's presence must make all the blessedness of the Father's house he asks, " Show us the Father and it sufficeth us," but only to show how far he had been from discerning the proper glory of the Lord Jesus as of an only-begotten Son with the Father. " Have I been so long with you and hast thou not known me, Philip? He that hath seen me hath seen the Father. Believest thou not that I am in the Father and the Father in me?"-His words and works, all that He was, made the revelation of the Father. So that however little hearts entered into it then or now, there had been revealed, and shining out in Him morally here, every characteristic trait of the divine and everlasting blessedness of heaven.
Nor was this all. He whose presence here had been the revelation of a place so new to the thoughts of His people, was now going to take His place as man, as the revealed and known center of all the joy and blessedness and glory of that place. For " I go to prepare a place for you "-Himself the home and intimate link of their and our hearts with the place, His going there all the preparation of it possible or needed, to give us our place there in spirit with Him, till He comes to receive us to Himself. Hence the word never speaks of our going to heaven, but to Him. The person makes the place, even in natural things, how much more in divine!
But there was more in His heart for us-more that we needed to connect us in power with the place thus revealed to us. He had been the manifestation in His own Person when here of all that makes heaven what it is forever. He has gone to take His place there as the One who loved us and gave Himself for us, that our hearts might follow Him there as to their own familiar home. And now from that home of love and joy and glory, He has sent the Holy Ghost to be the power of our association with Him in it, and thus of our enjoyment of such heavenly blessedness (Chapter 14:16-20.) It is the full blessed answer to the awakened longing of the soul, " Where dwellest thou?"-the " Come and see " of Jesus in answer to it, that we may "abide with him." Thus we have before us in this gospel, the main elements, morally, that go to form a heavenly people upon earth, left here to express what is heavenly, and thus only truly to represent a rejected, heavenly Christ, while waiting for Him.
When the Lord Jesus was glorified and the Holy Ghost was come, we find this expressed as the normal christian position, and the responsibility that flows from it. " As is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly." We are constituted such by the grace that has called us to Himself, but not without the revelation of a new sphere suited to us as such. " What eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him, God hath revealed unto us by his Spirit." Hence " we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen." (2 Cor. 4:18.) But it is only by faith that this is true to us, so that we are willing rather to be absent from the body and present with the Lord for the actual sight of them (chap. v. 7, 8), seeing through a glass darkly now but then face to face. Still the things that are eternal are revealed now that we may look at them; and more, as a risen people, " risen with Christ, seek those things which are above [and here we see the power of the link of Christ's presence there for our hearts], where Christ is, sitting on the right hand of God." (Col. 3) And we are exhorted to set our mind (for the Spirit of God supposes that our affections will be there and says nothing of them) on things above and not on things on the earth. The mind is distinct from the affections. For as it has been truly put in illustration of this difference-a man's affections may rest in his family, and his mind be all the while engrossed in his business. Now the Spirit would have our minds engrossed with Christ. For many walk, the same apostle tells us, weeping, who mind (using the same word) earthly things, and are enemies of that which is the distinctively separative power of Christianity, the cross of Christ, whatever their profession to be His. And then in one blessed expression of it he sums up the whole christian position, viewed practically, " Our citizenship is in heaven." He used a word of far reaching force for a Greek mind, who held all other relationships and interests in life subordinate to his citizenship. As though he would say: all that forms the life morally, in relationship, love, motive, object, and joy, is found for us in heaven now; whence we await in hope, too, the Lord Jesus as Savior, to change this body of humiliation into the likeness of His body of glory according to the working by which He is able even to subdue all things unto Himself.
Earnestly would I raise the question then, beloved brethren, in our souls, if in our christian place before God, have we been saved to rest in that place, or from it, as the clear starting-point, now to seek Christ for His own beauty and excellence, as our one worthy and individual object? Like one of old who could say, " One thing have I desired of the Lord that will I seek after, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord." But if our hearts are set for this by His grace, we 'cannot find Him in the world out of which He has been rejected. He is ascended up to the scene of which morally He had been the full revelation in His own Person here, and our hearts follow Him. He draws them there that He may satisfy the desire He has awakened, in the enjoyment of the heavenly things of His home and presence. " Come and see. And they came and saw where he dwelt, and abode with him that day." " He satisfieth the longing soul," in ever-increasing measure, and with increasing capacity and longing 'now; in the divine fullness of it when we are with Himself forever. " Father, I will that they also whom thou hast given me be with me where I am." " I will come again and receive you unto myself." " Surely I come quickly." " Even so, come, Lord Jesus."-J. A. T.
(Concluded from page 163.)
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