IT is an unmistakable fact, that the soul knowing God in this day, has higher and faller privileges known to faith, than the woman of Shunem (2 Kings 4), though perhaps they take another form; nevertheless trusting the living God is ever one and the same act, bringing peaceful repose in Him Who loves to be known and counted upon in His holy superiority to all circumstances.
Not this only, but He would have His people intelligent in His present ways, which are in character with the testimony now being given to His own beloved Son.
Elisha has had his antitype in the man Christ Jesus, Who was not only Jehovah in grace and power in the midst of sinful, ruined Israel, but also the Son of man in grace among men. He was present in a far worse state of things than in the days of Elisha. His perfect ways, words and works of love and grace, infinitely beyond anything in the past, aroused in the mass of the Jews only hatred and opposition.
Notwithstanding, many bright examples of faith are recorded of those who gladly owned and received Him, whose hearts were touched and homes opened, with not a few women mentioned that ministered to Him of their substance. All manner of diseases were cured by Him, and defiling leprosy cleansed by His touch, and, not least, death in a threefold stage met the compassion of His heart and the power of His word. The precious God-man, Jesus, could answer to the appeal of an anxious father, enter the chamber of death where Jairus’ daughter lay and restore to life, giving back the child to pursue the home course again. At the gate of Nain He stayed the cortege on the way to burial, and gave back to the weeping, desolate widow her only son. At the hospitable home, so to speak, infinitely beyond Shunem’s privilege, the sisters of Bethany were honored in entertaining their rejected Messiah, and ultimately proved His power in raising their dead brother, who was, as they stated, on the way to corruption.
Such were some of the precious samples of grace and power manifested by the man Christ Jesus, varied surely in the ways of faith and purpose, in character with those knowing and owning Him when on earth. His presence to their faith would meet all manner of disease, as well as shut out death, as the bereaved sisters declared, “Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died.”
These amazing privileges however are now passed only to be excelled by the greater wonders which the end of His course brought about. Then the Lord had not only to meet death at the hands of wicked man, when Jew and Gentile willfully and openly condemned Him, but to come in contact with death, by suffering the holy and righteous judgment due to sin. Not as Elisha, to go into the chamber of death and raise a dead son, but to die Himself; and by His death to vindicate the holiness and majesty of God. This He did, and is now “the resurrection and the life,” so that all who believe in Him may live and never die. Thus it is faith’s privilege to-day to have life beyond death in Him in Whom it is everlastingly secure; yea, to know present living association with Him Who lives to die no more.
The apostle Peter declares that God has not only raised Him from the dead, but given Him glory, that the believer’s faith and hope might be in God. He Who in love gave the Lamb, that redemption by His precious blood might be known in its present blessedness, has in righteousness also set Him on high, thereby ensuring not only abiding peace to the believer, but an engaging object to know and to love. He is the man of God’s purpose for universal rule and glory, already seen by faith, “crowned with glory and honor,” in heaven; though still, the rejected One on earth.
What vantage ground therefore for the believer today, to know the man Christ Jesus where He is, in life and peace, crowned with the blessed fact that it is from heaven He is coming to take His redeemed on high, to share glory with Himself. Being saved to await His coming, the present circumstances of loss or gain, together with any given morsel of suffering, either for righteousness or, higher still, for His name’s sake, may well in grace be accepted by us, desiring that our faith and hope may be unshaken.
He Who in matchless love died is not only on high, but is ever living to intercede for His needy saints, acting in unison with the indwelling Spirit as to all the sorrows and trials of this groaning Christless scene. If tribulation and promised suffering be realized, faith is assured that all shall be and is well. It is not only to rest in what love has done and is now doing, but to go forward to our heavenly Elisha, not in view of our deliverance from the appointed circumstances in this suffering scene, but for translation out of it. Then at His descending shout, accompanied by the archangel’s voice and the trump of God, the dead in Christ will be raised incorruptible, and the living changed, and together go up to meet Him, and thus be like and with Him eternally. In view of this may the hour of waiting be more fully spent for Him, Whose we are, ever kept in faith’s peaceful assurance that “all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to His purpose.” G.G.