Nothing surely is so likely to prepare us for that heaven where Christ’s personal presence will be all, and that glory where we shall meet Christ face to face, as to realize communion with Christ as an actual living Person here on earth.
Of some who love the Lord Jesus and believe in him, and yet desire to love him better. If you are such a person, suffer the word of exhortation, and apply it to your heart.
For one thing, keep before your mind, an ever-present truth, that the Lord Jesus is an actual living person, and deal with him as such.
I fear the personality of our Lord is sadly lost sight of by many professors in the present day. Their talk is more about salvation than about the Saviour; more about redemption than about the Redeemer; more about justification than about Jesus; more about Christ’s work than about Christ’s person. This is a great fault, and one that fully accounts for the dry and sapless character of the religion of many professors.
As ever you would grow in grace, and have joy and peace in believing, beware of falling into this error. Cease to regard the gospel as a mere collection of dry doctrines. Look at it rather as the revelation of a mighty living Being in whose sight you are daily to live. Cease to regard it as a mere set of abstract propositions and abstruse principles and rules. Look at it as the introduction to a glorious Friend. This is the kind of gospel that the apostles preached. They did not go about the world telling men of love and mercy and pardon in the abstract. The leading subject of all their sermons was the loving heart of an actual living Christ. This is the kind of gospel which is most calculated to promote sanctification and meetness for glory. Nothing surely is so likely to prepare us for that heaven where Christ’s personal presence will be all, and that glory where we shall meet Christ face to face, as to realize communion with Christ as an actual living Person here on earth. Oh, reader, there is all the difference in the world between an idea and a person.
And then, try to keep before your mind, as an ever-present truth, that the Lord Jesus is utterly unchanged.
That Saviour in whom you trust is the same yesterday, today, and forever. He knows no variableness, nor shadow of turning. Though high in heaven at God’s right hand, he is just the same in heart that he was eighteen hundred years ago on earth. Remember this, and you will do well.
Follow him all through his journeys to and fro in Palestine. Mark how he received all that came to him, and cast out none. Mark how he had an ear to listen to every tale of sorrow, a hand to help every case of distress, a heart to feel for all who needed sympathy. And then say to yourself, “This same Jesus is he who is my Lord and Saviour. Place and time have made no difference in him. What he was he is, and will be for evermore.”
Surely this thought will give life and reality to your daily communion. Surely this thought will give substance and shape to your expectation of good things to come. Surely it is matter for joyful reflection that He was thirty three years upon earth, and whose life we read in the gospels, is the very Saviour in whose presence we shall spend eternity.
J.C. Ryle. The Complete Works of J.C. Ryle.
