The whole testimony of God now is to what Christ is in heaven; and we see the most amazing crowd of blessed things connected with Him there. People often talk of the heavenly calling as if it were but a piece of knowledge. It was not a piece of knowledge for Enoch to walk with God. Nor was it for Moses to realize the power of God while leading the people through the Red Sea. God being with him, he endured as seeing Him who is invisible.

We are not Christians at all if we do not know the true God, and Jesus Christ whom He has sent; but if we do know Him, where do we know Him but in heaven? Bethlehem, Sychar, Gethsemane, each had its record, but He is not there now; He Himself is in heaven. His human body has a locality as much as mine. He is a living Person, and has called me by name as distinctly as I have called on His name. This One, whose love was stronger than death, has surely a claim on my love in the place where He is.

God thinks it a reasonable thing for me to say, “The Son of God gave up His life for me, and I love the place where He is.” Take such a word as “accepted in the Beloved.” If God’s eye passes from His Son to a poor weak believer such as I am, whom He has forced into the school of adversity, does His love rest on me as a member of Christ’s body? And is it not a reasonable thing that He should expect my love to be set on Him? What a token of love from Christ was the sending down of the Spirit, when He had gone up into heaven to receive a kingdom! In Acts 7, there was Jesus in heaven, and Stephen on earth, and all that the people knew of Jesus was what the dying Stephen told them.