God's Dealings with His Children,

G. V. Wigram

I should like, beloved in the Lord, to endeavour, as God may enable me, to bring a little before your minds the outline which is given to us in scripture of God's dealings — the revelation of His own glory, and the name of His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.

With that thought I read the portion out of Colossians, and read it intentionally before reading the portion out of Ephesians. Ephesian truth is much higher than Colossian truth. The truth presented by the apostle was truth that had reached his own soul in a very peculiar way. Man in glory, God-man, called him Saul by name, and revealed Himself to him as One that wanted him — Saul, the persecutor — to become a vessel to carry mercy to earth. The way He was presented to him brought out the union that existed between Him and those Saul was persecuting. "Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me?"

The Colossians appear to have heard the truth that, Christ was Head of the family of God, of the saints now put together as His bride. They appear to have heard it, but to have let slip the main part — the Headship.

There is no irritability found in the mode he takes up the subject which gives him occasion to bring out the personal glory of the Lord, as he had not done in Ephesians, as connected with creation and providence, as well as with redemption. Very important, whatever part we take. We who know as individuals the love of the Lord Jesus, ought to have distinctly before our minds the unsearchableness of His person, and that His glories are of the highest character possible. He Himself states it, and says, "No man knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son, will reveal him." Any attempt to analyse, and any feeling of our having comprehended, the Son, is all wrong. The Son has presented the Father and the Father's plans, and it is not ours to comprehend Him by whom they have been presented.

In Colossians we find some amazing glories. He speaks of the Image of the invisible God, the First-born of every creature, pre-eminent there, for by Him were all things created that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers; all things were created by Him, and for Him. John states it also. Not one thing was brought into existence but by Him, the Lord Jesus Christ. That shows the pre-eminence. He that brings anything into existence must be above that thing, and indeed also above all things. He adds that they were created not only by Him, but for Him. All were connected with Him. Creation was by the Son acting. All was connected with the manifestation of His divine glory. Again (ver. 17), "He is before all things." He was before all, as He was the only cause of all, and the cause must have priority and superiority to every effect; and he adds, "by him all things consist," or stand together. He holds everything by the hand of His power. The pillars of the earth rest on that Man who was despised, spit upon, and crucified. The One that with such gentle compassion pleaded with Saul of Tarsus, and knocked long at the hearts of many of us, before any hearing was produced in us, before we opened to Him, a stranger as He then was to us, He was the One who upheld everything. He goes beyond the heavens and the earth, and the fruitful seasons. This pre-eminence was His. Then he goes on to speak of redemption, the peculiar place He would hold to one part of the redeemed, "Head of the body, the church; who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things he might have the pre-eminence. For it pleased [the Father] that in him should all fulness dwell; and having made peace by the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things unto himself; by him, I say, whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven."