So often the Lord Jesus presented the most remarkable truths in the plainest of language, and inattentive hearers are apt to naively consider them ordinary or unimportant. A prime example is His description of the new intimacy made possible through His Calvary triumph and the Spirit’s Pentecost arrival.
In His Upper Room ministry He said, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him” (Jn. 14:23). True love for Christ is based on trust, and will evidence itself in taking what He says seriously. The Father, delighting in our delight in His Son, will then open to us ever-increasing intimacy with Himself. And then? What follows is almost more than the mind can grasp, more than the heart can bear.
“We will come to him and make Our home with him.” Did I read that correctly? Is this a real and definite possibility to have my heart as the home of these divine Persons? It is, of course, the Blessed Hope that we shall be forever where He is (Jn. 14:3), once we have been completely renovated by the transformative vision of His glory and “we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is” (1 Jn. 3:2).
It is in “this hope” that we are to be saved from despair and distraction, “eagerly waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body. For we were saved in this hope” (Rom. 8:23-24). We are also secured by this hope because “This hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast, and which enters the Presence behind the veil” (Rom. 8:24). And since this is true, we are also sanctified by this hope, for “everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself, just as He is pure” (1 Jn. 3:3).
Peter delights to tell us that this “living hope” means that we are being kept for our inheritance and it is being kept for us: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His abundant mercy has begotten us again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and that does not fade away, reserved in heaven for you, who are kept by the power of God through faith for salvation ready to be revealed in the last time” (1 Pet. 1:3-5).
Thus the twin tracks of God’s purposes for His people have their co-terminus at The Moment we see our Beloved at last. One track declares that our Intercessor in the heavens (Rom. 8:34) has gone Himself to prepare a place for us. The other answers that our Intercessor in the heart (Rom. 8:26) works within us, preparing us for that perfect place.
But now, here, in my under-construction condition, He and His Father are offering to move in until the project is complete. No need for imagination to find words to describe my present state. Here are some samples: “the sufferings of this present time…subjected to futility…the bondage of corruption…we ourselves groan within ourselves…the Spirit also helps in our weaknesses” (vv. 18-26).
But then this building material was of God’s own choosing: “For you see your calling, brethren, that not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called. But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty; and the base things of the world and the things which are despised God has chosen, and the things which are not, to bring to nothing the things that are, that no flesh should glory in His presence…that, as it is written, ‘He who glories, let him glory in the Lord’” (1 Cor 1:26-29, 31).
Why, I feel like doing that right now! Who can keep from boasting in such a Lord as this? With His regal palace just beyond the horizon, He and His Scion-Prince have come into the rude and humble dwellings of these willing subjects. The battle still rages outside, but inside a table is prepared where we sup together. This is no momentary photo-op, for the Lord Himself said it: “We will come to him and make Our home with him.” Who would miss this opportunity?