Perfection
Instead of wasting your time with what has passed away, go on to the full revelation of Christ. Be at home there, understanding what the will of the Lord is.
Where did Paul see Christ? Not on earth, for long after Christ had left the earth Paul was a persecutor, but he saw Him as we all know in heavenly glory. His only knowledge of Christ at all was of a Christ in heaven. His pathway on earth he might learn, but the revelation of Christ that brought his soul into the presence of God, in the power of an accomplished redemption, was the revelation of Christ in heaven and in glory. Hence he says, "Though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no more" (2 Corinthians. 5:16). The Christ he wanted to "win," as he says in Philippians 3, was a glorified Christ. It may cost me my life, but never mind. That is my object; after that I am reaching. I am alive from the dead because Christ is, and I want to lay hold of that for which Christ has laid hold of me. I am not in the flesh, but in Christ. I have the consciousness that this work of Christ has put me in a new place. I am not yet glorified in body, but in a new place as to my life and associations and home. This is the perfection we are to go on to.
One moment's real apprehension of Christ in the glory is sufficient to dim the brightness and glitter of every earthly thing, but the soul must be occupied alone with Christ for this.
If our affections and desires are lingering on earth, or stopping short of a glorified Christ in heaven, as the One in whom our life is hid, and to whom we are presently to be conformed in glory (and that in the glory where He is), we shall soon find that earthly things are something more than dross and dung. Leave a stone on the ground for a time and you will find that it will gradually sink into it. And our hearts, if they are not practically in heaven with Christ, will soon become attached to earthly things.
We should remember that, if things on earth are dark and if the heart is tested in journeying through the world, all on the side of God is bright. "Therefore leaving the word of the beginning of Christ, let us go on unto perfection."
