December 25, 2014
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Why the incarnation? "a more familiar conversation" with the saints (Jonathan Edwards)
From Jonathan Edwards', "Works 2," Chapter XI., Miscellaneous Observations, Heaven (http://www.ccel.org/ccel/edwards/works2.xii.v.html):
Christ took on him man’s nature for this end, that he might be under advantage for a more familiar conversation than the infinite distance of the divine nature would allow of; and such a communion and familiar conversation is suitable to the relation that Christ stands in to believers, as their representative, their brother, and the husband of the church. The church being so often called the spouse of Christ, intimates the greatest nearness, intimacy, and communion with God. . . .
The conversation of Christ’s disciples in heaven shall in many respects be vastly more intimate than it was when Christ was upon earth; vide Notes on John xx. 17. for in heaven the union shall be perfected. The union is but begun in this world, and there is a great deal remains in this world to separate and disunite them; but then all those obstacles of a close union and most intimate communion shall be removed. When the church is received to her consummate glory, that is her marriage with Christ, and therefore doubtless the conversation and enjoyment will be more intimate. This is not a time for that full acquaintance, and those manifestations of love, which Christ designs towards his people.
The saints, being united to Christ, shall have a more glorious union with, and enjoyment of, the Father, than otherwise could be; for hereby their relation becomes much nearer, they are the children of God in a higher manner than otherwise they could be; for, being members of God’s own Son, they are partakers of his relation to the Father, or of his Sonship; being members of the Son, they are partakers of the Father’s love to the Son and his complacence in him. John xvii. 23. “I in them, and thou in me: thou hast loved them as thou hast loved me; ” and John xvii. 26. “That the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them; ” and John xvi. 27. “The Father himself loveth you, because ye have loved me, and have believed that I came out from God.” So they are, in this measure, partakers of the Son’s enjoyment of his Father; they have this joy fulfilled in themselves, and by this means they come to a more familiar and intimate conversing with God the Father than otherwise ever would have been; for there is, doubtless, an infinite intimacy between the Father and the Son, and the saints being in him shall partake with him in it, and of the blessedness of it.
Such is the contrivance of our redemption; thereby we are brought to an immensely more glorious and exalted kind of union with God and enjoyment of him, both the Father and the Son, than otherwise could have been. For, Christ being united to the human nature, we have advantage for a far more intimate union and conversation with him than we could possibly have had if he had remained only in the divine nature. So, we being united to a divine person, can in him have more intimate union and conversation with God the Father, who is only in the divine nature, than otherwise possibly could be. Christ, who is a divine person, by taking on him our nature, descended from the infinite distance between God and us, and is brought nigh to us, to give us advantage to converse with him. This was the design of Christ, to bring it to pass that he, and his Father, and his people, might be brought to a most intimate union and communion, John xvii. 21, 22, 23. “That they all may be one, as thou, Father, art in me and I in thee, that they also may be one in us, that the world may believe that thou hast sent me; and the glory which thou hast given me have I given them, that they may be made perfect in one.” Christ has brought it to pass, that those that the Father has given him should be brought into the household of God, that he, and his Father, and they should be as it were one society, one family, that his people should be in a sense admitted into the society of the Three Persons in the Godhead. In that family or household, God is the Father; Jesus Christ is his only-begotten and eternal Son; the saints, they also are children in the family, they have all communion in the same Spirit, the Holy Ghost.
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May God's Holy Spirit increase our understanding of and experiential acquaintance with the privileges that are already ours as the Bride of Christ – those "great and glorious possibilities of the Christian life" of which Martyn Lloyd-Jones spoke – privileges which are available to us not only in heaven, but privileges which are to be sought and embraced and enjoyed in this life, due to the Word becoming flesh! My prayer for myself, as well as for all the saints, is that the words of Isaac Watts ("Come, We That Love the Lord") would be our living testimony...
The men of grace have found,
Glory begun below.
Celestial fruits on earthly ground
Celestial fruits on earthly ground
From faith and hope may grow,
From faith and hope may grow.The hill of Zion yields
A thousand sacred sweets
Before we reach the heav’nly fields,
Before we reach the heav’nly fields,
Or walk the golden streets,
Or walk the golden streets.Unacquaintedness with our mercies, our privileges, is our sin as well as our trouble. ~ John Owen, "Of Communion with God the Father, Son and Holy Ghost"
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