Obtaining

Two intimate friends were once lunching together, and after the host had said the usual grace, “For what we are about to receive, may the Lord make us truly thankful,” his friend asked him when he was expecting to have that prayer answered. “What do you mean,” was the reply. “Why,” was the rejoinder, “to my certain knowledge you have been praying for the last twenty-five years to be made thankful: is it not about time that you were thankful?” In the same way in the Christian life there comes a time when we should cease asking and commence obtaining. This is the value of distinction between God’s promises and God’s facts. The promises are to be pleaded and their fulfillment expected. The facts are to be accepted and their blessings at once used. When we read, “My grace is sufficient for thee,” it is not a promise to be pleaded, but a fact to be at once accepted and enjoyed. When we say “The Lord is my shepherd,” we are not dealing with a promise or the groundwork of prayer, we are concerned with one of the present realities of the Christian experience.

Until He Comes

Our Lord Jesus Christ during the latter part of His earthly ministry laid special stress on two great facts associated with Himself; His death (Matt. xvi. 21; John vi. 51; viii. 28; xii. 32); and His coming again (Matt. xvi. 27; xix. 28; xxiv. 27, 37, and 44; ch. xxv.). His death was to be “for the life of the world” and “a ransom for many”; His coming was to be the crown of His revelation and the constant hope of His followers. On the first occasion when the Lord revealed to His perplexed disciples the fact of His approaching death (Matt. xvi. 21), He spoke also of His coming and glory (Matt. xvi. 27) thereby linking the two great events and showing the latter to be the complement and perfect explanation of the former. Then, “on the same night in which He was betrayed,” our Lord instituted an ordinance which was to combine in its full spiritual meaning a reference to His atoning death and His glorious coming; an ordinance which would be a standing to both, and serve for the sustenance and expression of His disciples’ faith in the one and of their hope in the other (Matt. xxvi. 26-29; I Cor. xi. 26).

Hope in His Coming

The fulness of God is the fulness of hope. “That ye may abound in hope.” Hope in the New Testament is a Christian grace wrought in the soul by the Holy Spirit. It is to be carefully distinguished from our modern use of the word as equivalent to hopefulness, just as a mere matter of buoyancy of temperament. The Christian hope will undoubtedly produce hopefulness, but the two are never to be confused, much less identified. The one is the cause, the other the effect. Hope always looks on the future and is concerned with that great object which is put before us in the New Testament. The Christian hope is fixed on the coming of our Lord, and this is a very prominent element of New Testament teaching. It is to be feared that it does not obtain great prominence in much of present day Christianity. Most people look forward, not to the coming of the Lord, but to death; yet the one object of expectation set before us in the New Testament is the coming of our Lord. Now-a-days, the general idea is that death will come, and the Lord may come; but Scripture reverses this and says, “Death may come, but the Lord will come.” There is something in the very fact of dying which is abhorrent to the Christian man. It is not that he is afraid to die, but that he naturally shrinks from that which is ever spoken of in the Bible as man’s “enemy.” “The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death” (1 Cor. xv. 26). The Lord’s coming, on the contrary, is a subject of joy, satisfaction, blessedness, and the contemplation of it can do nothing but good to the soul.

Perfect Peace

The fullness of God is the fullness of peace. “Fill you with all…peace.” This brings before us the passive, as joy gives the active side of the Christian life. As with joy, so also there is a twofold peace in the Word of God, the peace of reconciliation and the peace of restfulness. The peace of reconciliation is the foundation: “Being justified by faith we have peace with God” (Rom. v. 1). The enmity has been removed, the barriers are broken down and the soul is reconciled with God through Him Who is our peace. And then comes the peace of restfulness: “The peace of God” (Phil. iv. 7). The soul at peace with God enjoys precious realisation of His presence as the God of peace, and restfulness arises and abides moment by moment in the heart. This again is part of the fullness of life which God intends for us in Christ Jesus, the fullness of His own peace. “Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on Thee” (Isa. xxvi. 3).

Satisfaction

The fullness of God is the fullness of joy. “Fill you with all joy.” Joy is one of the most important and prominent elements of the Christian life. It is a condition of soul which is the immediate result of our definite personal relation to Christ. There is a twofold joy in the Bible – the joy of salvation and the joy of satisfaction. The joy of salvation comes from the experience of sin forgiven, from the consciousness that the burden has been rolled away, and that all the past is covered in the righteousness of Christ. This was the experience of the jailer at Philippi, who “rejoiced, believing in God” (Acts xvi. 34). It was the restoration of this joy for which David prayed (Ps. li. 12).

The joy of satisfaction is the other element of the fullness of joy. “Satisfaction!” some one answers, “is it possible to use such a word in connection with the Christian life of the present?” Should we not limit this idea of satisfaction to the life to come? Satisfied with what? Not with ourselves, not with our attainments or service, but satisfied with Christ. The Apostle Peter’s glowing words are not to be postponed to the life to come, “whom, having not seen, ye love; in whom, though ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory” (1 Pet. i. 8). This is one of the searching and supreme tests of life – our satisfaction with our Lord.

Abundant Entrance

A Christian man was on his death-bed. He had spent a long life of service in the Kingdom of God, and a friend at his side was encouraging him with the thought of his approaching entrance into the Home above, and the joy of meeting his Lord after all his earnest labour and faithful service. The dying man responded with beautiful humility, “I shall be satisfied if I can but creep into heaven on my hands and knees.” We can easily understand the spirit which prompted these words; he felt that his service was nothing compared with his need of the Mercy of God through which alone he would reach the heavenly Kingdom. At the same time there is another sense in which the words are not rightly applicable to the Christian, for St. Peter speaks of our having “an abundant entrance ministered unto us into the everlasting kingdom” (2 Pet. i. 11). In keeping with this St. Paul was constantly emphasising the Christian life under such figures of speech as “wealth,” “riches,” “abundance,” “fullness,” and he prays that Christians “might be filled with all the fullness of God.” He was not satisfied with a bare entrance into heaven, he wished his converts and himself to have the fullest possible Christian life and experience here below, and then enter fully into the joy of the Lord above. This is the true Christian life, the life of fullness, depth, power and reality; the only life emphasized in the Word of God, the only life that can glorify God or satisfy His purpose concerning us.

Appointment

Shall we not therefore make an appointment with God from this moment? There is no special place of meeting now, only a special Person through Whom we come. Christ our Saviour and our Lord is willing to make an appointment with us, if only we are willing to respond to Him, and definitely arrange to meet with Him day by day.