A State
“And I heard as it were the voice of a great multitude
; saying, Hallelujah! for the Lord our God the iAbniphty reigneth. Let us rejoice and be exceeding glad, for the marriage of the Lamb is come and His wife hath made herself ready.” — REVELATION 19: 6.
RAVEN is a state as well as a place. Whatever the outward appearance may be, however entrancing to eye, how fascinating to ear, how pleasing to taste or touch, how ecstatic to feeling all the scenes and sounds, enjoyments and felicities may be, these are not the prime sources of its attraction. It is a state — a state of enthronement, elevation and freedom. It is emancipation. Much has been left behind of the old, the worn out and the burdensome, and much of new, the strange and the wonderful will be there. It will be a state of perfected knowledge. ‘Then we shall know even as we are known. God knows us perfectly here. We will know Him and all things perfectly there.
“For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is. come, then that which is in part shall be done away. When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known” (1 Cor. 13: 9-12).
What will be the unspeakable benefactions in a state when we know all things perfectly! Neither height nor depth, nor breadth, nor length, in heaven and earth and hell that will not lie open to our knowledge in that exalted and perfected state where all mysteries will be gone.
In the sixth chapter of Romans we have a statement vital to heaven: “But now being made free from sin, and become servants to God, ye have your fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life.” To “make free” is to emancipate. The negroes are free, no slavish chains enthrall them. A dual action is here seen. There is emancipation from sin and enslavement to God — an attitude of repulsion, of entire freedom from sin, and an attitude of entire enslavement to God. ‘These bear the fruit of holiness if found in a heart where God reigns, from which sin is excluded. To such a state and to such a character heaven belongs by heirship, by right. Two struggles mark the true heavenly life — to be freed from sin, to be wholly devoted to God.
How free can I be from sin? How thoroughly devoted to God can I be? ‘These are questions which have engaged and often perplexed the holiest of men. Too much time and thought have been given to these trying by theoretical or verbal statement to fix the limits. The Scriptures make strong affirmations at this point. The holy Boardman in Burmah says:
“I find on reading the apostles’ writings that they address their fellow Christians and speak of themselves as persons that are dead to sin, buried with Christ into death. They are dead, and their lives are hid with Christ in God. They have crucified the flesh with its affections and lusts. Their old man is crucified with Christ. They are dead to sin by consequence and are freed from sin. They cease from sin. Being born of God, they sin not, they cannot sin, they have overcome the world, the world is crucified to them and they to the world.
“Now these things are mentioned not only as things to be desired or sought after, but as already obtained. ‘Ye are dead — have crucified the flesh — have put off the old man — are freed from sin — hath ceased from sin.’”
Thus queried this man of God. How many before and since have raised the same questions? Of one thing we may be sure that the experience and attitude of Christian attainment and obtainment set forth in the New Testament is open to all Christians of every age and every clime. Books on holiness may give us no light and theories may confuse. But with our Bible before us and the open door of prayer, and the increasing light and power of the Holy Spirit, each can settle the question as a personal experience, keeping the divine statement ever before the mind, “Free from sin and become the servants of God,” emancipation from sin most complete, enslavement to God most perfect, with the full possibilities of God’s grace, Christ’s blood, the power of the Holy Spirit and of faith — that God is “able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think” — that all things are possible to him that believeth — that “He that spared not his own Son but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him freely give us all things?” — that God has given us all things in Christ — that by prayer we can have all that there is in Christ — that we are charged to “be filled with all the fulness of God” — that God is able to make us abound in all grace — that “always having all sufficiency in all things may abound to every good work”’ — that God can “make us perfect in every good work to do his will, working in us that which is well pleasing in his sight” — that God can make us, “that we may stand perfect and complete in all the will of God.” All these wonderful and far-reaching Scriptural statements concerning the possibilities of grace, fully answer the question as to how free we can be from sin and how thoroughly we can be devoted to God.
This “fruit unto holiness’ is absolutely necessary as a prerequisite for heaven. “Without holiness no man shall see the Lord.” Holiness is an imperative, inflexible, eternal condition of heaven. A holy God, a holy Jesus, a holy heaven, demand holiness among men as well as among angels. “Every man that striveth for masteries is temperate in all things. They do it to obtain a corruptible crown, but we an incorruptible. I therefore so run not as uncertainly, so fight I, not as one that beateth the air: But I keep under my body and bring it into subjection; lest that by any means when I have preached to others I myself should be a castaway.” So writes Paul to the Corinthians.
The heavenly-fitting virtue here stressed is that of temperance, self-control, the strong master of self under the law of strict self-denial. The apostle enforces the necessity of temperance by reference to the athlete who spent much time in training, and who denied himself of those things which were agreeable and in which they ordinarily indulged. Their training, temperance and strict self-denial were familiar and emphasized this virtue in a strong way. It is heaven of which the apostle is writing, and the presence of this temperance in all things, this self-control, was not only to be exercised in the higher realms of man’s nature, but the Christian’s bodily appetites were to feel the strong hand of this temperance. Not simply to become Christians was it necessary, but its daily and hourly exercise were necessary to continue Christians. Without it the highest range of Christian elevation and obtainment would keep one from becoming a reprobate. “I keep under my body” means to strike heavily in the face so as to render black and blue a hard subject, so as to reduce it to self-control, and also bring the body into subjection and enslave it. “The body is the adversary considered as the seat of the temptations of Satan, and especially that of self-indulgence.”
By self-control the pride, obstinacy and self-seeking appetites are to be restrained and broken down. The flesh and spirit are to be brought under the law of this heavenly race. No one is free from this law. The apostle declares elsewhere: “He that striveth for the mastery is not crowned except he strive lawfully.” An examination of the victors in the combats took place after the contest, and if it were found that the race had been won by unlawful means they were deprived of the prize. The law for the heavenly contestants is severe self-control. Without it all seeming success in the heavenly race will be rejected and discrowned.
Heaven makes redemption full, the purchase complete, the possession perfect, the pledge sure. Even here we have the foretaste of the full heaven. Heaven is joy unmixed, eternal, rapturous. Here we have by the presence of the Holy Spirit, “joy unspeakable and full of glory.” Even here we “rejoice evermore,” “rejoice always.”’ To rejoice is the command of earth as well as the luxury of heaven. Heaven is the place and state of perfect rest, but even here by the Holy Spirit peace reigns. Our “peace flows as a river.” “The peace of God which passeth all understanding shall keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” This is the type and beginning of heaven’s peace. ‘The kingdom of God in this world is “Righteousness, Peace, and Joy in the Holy Ghost.” The kingdom of God in the next world will be but the perfection of righteousness, peace, and joy. “The redemption of the purchased possession” is changed in the Revised Version to, “Unto the redemption of God’s own possession.” God’s possession of us is by the Holy Spirit, not by redemption, not by being bought back only, but by God taking possession of us, by yielding ourselves to be filled, possessed, controlled, owned ‘by God, mastered absolutely by God. He is to have unlimited authority over us and supreme unmixed control in us. That is God’s rule here, the precursor and earnest of His reign in the better world. Heaven will give us fullest possession of God, and heaven will give God the fullest possession of us, But heaven is only for those who are God’s possession here.
God’s Word reveals another land where the misfortune of poverty and the curse of crime never come, where a life of beggary and a death of the cross puts no stigma on character, no mark on the brow, no ostracism. Heaven is made up of the outlaws of earth, of earth’s banished ones.
Here is Scriptural description of such characters as will be found in heaven:
“They had trials of cruel mockings, and scourgings, yea, moreover of bonds and imprisonment: They were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword: they wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins; being destitute, afflicted, tormented (of whom the world was not worthy); they wandered in deserts, and in mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth” (Heb. 11: 36).
Wonderful grace which makes saints and immortals of earth’s defamed and ostracized ones!
Wonderful association and companionship for our Lord, the beggar Lazarus and all holy beggars who have learned by their begging the secret of faith and who have the heart for heaven! Wonderful companionship and association for our adorable and Divine Lord — a thief banned by earthly justice to the cross! wonderful power of that death to make the redeemed and glorious ones of heaven out of the refuse of earth, out of its beggarly crime! Glorious companionship of a beggar and robber to be with our Lord in Paradise! Royal exaltation and renown, to add to the glory of Himself and to the renown of Abraham, by making Lazarus, earth’s ostracized one, his own companion! How the false estimates, false reputations, false rewards of earth are reversed and rectified in Christ’s heaven!
In the parable of the rich man and Lazarus Jesus teaches us much of heaven as well as many sad and alarming lessons of hell. All men do not go to heaven. All men might go to heaven, but all men will not go to heaven. This we learn from the rich man, who in hell lifted up his eyes being in torments. Heaven is not subjected to the financial and social influences of this world. Lazarus the beggar has no money, no friends, no social influence. He has committed the unpardonable crime of earth, of being a beggar. He is ostracized, friendless, lives without money, dies without friends and is buried without tears. But heaven — who can understand it? It receives Lazarus, the beggar on earth, into more than kingly society; angels are his attendants, and he becomes the bosom friend and associate of Abraham, the rich man, the “friend of God,” peerless in social elevation. Heavenly society is not based on money nor any of its tributaries, incidents or accidents. Purity of character reigns in heaven, but money does not.
The favorite Bible word for heaven is “glory,” which seems so especially suited to describe heaven. It means splendor, brightness, magnificence, excellence, preéminence, dignity, majesty in the sense of absolute perfection, a most glorious, a most exalted state, a glorious condition of blessedness.
A happy state heaven will be. There might be perfection in knowledge and not bliss. There might be progress and pain. There might be glory, effulgence and splendor, which would bring no calm to the breast, no joy to the heart. But heaven’s state will be one of supreme, unalloyed happiness, with nothing to shadow its brightness, nothing to bring pain, or cause sorrow. There is ineffable joy, no void, no fear, no anxiety, no alloy.
There are real joys in heaven. We are not apprised of their pursuits, their high vocations, but neither listlessness nor weariness will be known. Activity is the first and strongest impression given us of heaven, an activity too intense and profound to be intermitted or to be joyless. Their joys are of the highest and most engaging order, no fitful delights, no dreamy visions, but filling the heart, the mind, and the spirit.
We can, perhaps, more readily appreciate its joys by negative statement than by the positive, by the ills we shall escape, as fully, or more so, than by the joys we shall inherit:
“No sickness.” What an immeasurable bliss! “No pain.” What endless comfort and ease! “No sorrow,” no cloud, no night, no weariness, no bitterness, no anguish, no penitence, no remorse, no graves, no sighs, no tears, no sad laments, no broken hearts, no death-bed scenes, no dying there. Never a corpse, never a coffin, never a hearse, never a grave in all that happy, thrice blissful land. No funeral crowd ever wept, no sorrowing ones ever pass through its streets, or walk along its cloudless highways. Not only is there an absence of these things, which destroy earth’s brightest bliss. Their absence is enough to form a delightful heaven. But there is positive good, “fulness of joy and pleasures forevermore.”
No chilling winds, or poisonous breath,
Can reach that healthful shore;
Sickness and sorrow, pain and death,
Are felt and feared no more.
When shall I reach that happy place,
And be forever blest?
When shall I see my Father’s face,
And in his bosom rest?