The Secret Key to Holiness
What, it must be asked, is the secret key to this holy and worshipping witness on which the justification of the godless and the peace of God’s children depend? The one and only key is that the Holy Spirit lives in that Body of Christ.
Christ is no longer on earth. He sits on the throne of glory in Heaven. As the psalmist exults, the crown of glory blossoms eternally on the head of the great Son of David. He who ascended to Heaven is there above for our benefit. He does not just rest there in blessed idleness, but, like His Father, the Son is always working. That labour, that divine work of the Lord Jesus in Heaven, is always on behalf of His people. He intercedes for His people. He validates that rich reconciliation through His blood for His people. As High Priest He serves as our only sacrifice in the Most Holy Place (Exodus 26:33-34). In addition, He is preparing our place and is awaiting us, calling us and luring us with irresistible grace. In other words, He isn’t just working in Heaven, but He constantly works out of Heaven also on earth.
The Lord Jesus is only in one place. He lives in human flesh like ours and thus cannot possibly be in two places at the same time. Even though in the glory of Heaven much of our earthly limitations fall away, Heaven is not a place of magic. It is a real world where it is natural for every place to be separated from all other places; they do not overlap.
Even though Jesus Christ is restricted to one place at any given moment, that restriction does not limit the effect of His working. His working continues to go out in an omnipotent way and reaches therefore everywhere; it simultaneously possesses the glorious power of the divine. The divine here is that “simultaneous!” Simultaneous, that means the same God is at the same moment in Asia, in Africa, in America and in your own city or village and continues His almighty working in all these places simultaneously. He is equally near everyone, but also so near each individual as if He heard only the cry of his soul and only her special prayer.
That divine “simultaneity” is also an attribute of the Lord Jesus Christ. As much as He is restricted to one place, His majesty, grace and Spirit go out to all regions and places in the world simultaneously. As our mind controls each member of our body at the same time, so it is between this glorified Head and His mystical Body. However far that Body extends itself, Jesus notices it every time when any member of this Body suffers, just like when someone pricks your skin with a pin, your consciousness will notice it immediately.
Similarly, there is not a member of the Body who is so slight that he is beyond the reach of the Lord Jesus or that the Lord would not be his soul keeper and comforter. It can be said that this Body does not have a life of its own, but it has its existence and lives its life in the Lord Jesus. The Head controls the Body, leads it and gives sparkle to it. It is Immanuel who blossoms in His members.
With all this we still have not touched upon the greatest depth of this mystery. Even with all the above being true, that we are members of that Body and that this miraculous Body is animated from out of Jesus, this still does not explain the real mystery, namely how our “I”, how our soul, how our inner hidden person stands in this most intimate soul relation with the Mediator and Saviour and exalts in it. He is the glorious thinking, animating, leading and protecting One, if you will, the working Head who alone does it all in all His members and for them. And there we are, in all that we are out of ourselves, working not for God but for satan. Should Jesus forsake us in the hour of our death, not expecting an ascent into Heaven but a descent into hell?
That, that is the mystery. There the chasm gapes across which our faith will certainly carry us across, but that nevertheless leaves the mystery unsolved and calls for further explanation.
And then that great light that now brings you to Pentecost. Do you have immediate direct communion with the Father? Of course not, for the Father may be the ground , the origin and the creating cause of everything, but it is not the Father who descends into His Church.
Do you then perhaps have immediate fellowship with the Son? Even that is not the case, for no one can say that Christ is Lord, except through the Holy Spirit. To be sure, He took on your flesh and thus established communion with your human nature, but that is not yet to have fellowship with your inner consciousness. That’s why it was beneficial for the disciples for Jesus to go away, for without doing so, the Comforter could not come.
Do pay close attention. There is no fellowship with the Father for you except through the Son. For no one knows the Father except the Son and to whom the Son reveals Him (Matthew 11:27). Similarly, there is no fellowship with the Son for you, except through the Holy Spirit. For no one can even say that Christ is Lord, except through the Holy Spirit (I Corinthians 12:3). It is when the Holy Spirit comes that He takes up all the treasures from Christ in order to glorify Christ in you. Once it has come to this stage, the Holy Spirit comes to live in you and then in the Holy Spirit comes the Son, and in the Son also the Father. That is why the Lord Jesus could prophesy so gloriously: “I and the Father shall come and live with you, that is, after the Holy Spirit will have descended.”
– Abraham Kuyper, The Ascent of the Son - The Descent of the Spirit
