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THE AFTERGLOW

LOOKING back over the Grand Canyon of Scripture four great truths suffuse a glory light over it like an afterglow. Interwoven and interpenetrated, they reveal the Trinity at work linking eternity with time, heaven with earth, glory with grace, God with man, the Saviour with the sinner, Christ with the Church.

The Purpose of the Father
Antidating creation was the eternal purpose of God determining, conditioning and relating all things of creation and salvation in their origin and their end. With God there were no surprises and no emergencies. The Word made flesh was not an after thought of God. The purpose of the Father stretches from the eternal past over the millenniums of time to the eternal future. This eternal purpose encompasses God’s relationship to men, both sinners and saints; to angelic beings, both evil and good; and to Satan and his hosts. It centres in His Son for whom in the eternal ages of the past He chose a company of saints to be His Body and His Bride who would be in Him, become like Him and be with Him now and through all the ages upon ages to come.

The Person of the Son
One luminous Person fills and floods the Grand Canyon of Scripture with heavenly glory light—the Person of the God-man, our Lord Jesus Christ. The Jesus of history is not in view here. The Saviour of the gospels has gone from the Cross to the Throne and is seated there at the Father’s right hand. The light that suffuses the Grand Canyon of Scripture is the glory of the crowned Victor; of the holy Head of the Church in whom dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily; and of the One to whom the Lordship over all things in heaven and upon earth is given.

The Position of the Christian in Christ
In Christ—how simple the words! How superb the truth! All Christians, of whom the Church consists, made one with the glorified
Christ so that His position is their position; His possessions their possession; His privileges their privileges; His power their power; His plenitude their plenitude.
“In Christ”—then “Into Christ in all things.”

The Power of the Spirit
The outworking of the Father’s purpose is in the Son. The inworking is by His Spirit. Access to the unsearchable riches in Christ and the appropriation of them is made possible only by the mighty power of the Holy Spirit. The fulness of God the Father made available in the fulness of the Son is made actual through the fulness of the Spirit.

“Be ye filled with the Spirit.”