What does God's Word say about me?

In God's sight you are covered with gold. Gold signifies the righteousness of God. You are in Christ. You are God's righteousness in Him. See 2 Corinthians 5:21. You are no longer among those referred to in Romans 10:3 who are "ignorant of God's righteousness and going about to establish their own righteousness."

Your unworthiness, if you think of yourself, could not be more absolute than it is, but Christ who bore your load of sins upon the tree, and who is now raised from the dead, is your righteousness, your acceptance, your beauty in the sight of God, and the highest angel in heaven is not so well clad as are you, nor so fit to be in the presence of God as you are in Christ.

Your unworthiness, if you think of yourself, could not be more absolute than it is, but Christ who bore your load of sins upon the tree, and who is now raised from the dead, is your righteousness, your acceptance, your beauty in the sight of God, and the highest angel in heaven is not so well clad as are you, nor so fit to be in the presence of God as you are in Christ.

The atonement makes everything of God and nothing of us. This surely, every believer will admit, is as it should be. Apart from Christ and His work on my behalf, I am nothing, but regarded on the ground of it my blessing is illimitable. Why should I ever regard myself then in any other connection? My privilege is to think of myself as God thinks of me; to this, in my life, the Spirit seeks to transform me, and every other way of looking at myself savours of the "plague," which God must mete out, sooner or later, to all that is not of Christ.

Thus it is always, and blessed be God that it is so. We have our ways and God has His thoughts; and while He will deal with us faithfully as to the former, He can only speak of us according to the latter. What relief for the heart is here! What comfort! What moral power! What solid ground for self-judgment! God has given us a standing, and He thinks of us, and speaks of us, according to that. We have our practical ways, and He deals with us and speaks to us in reference to them. He will expose us to ourselves, and make us feel our ways and judge our doings; but the moment He begins to speak of us to others, He brings out the perfection of His own thoughts respecting us, and speaks of us according to the perfect standing which He has given us in His presence, the fruit of His own eternal counsels respecting us, and of His perfect work on our behalf.

This is a point of deepest interest. The great question is not so much what the enemy may think of God's people, or what they may think about themselves, or what they may think of one another. The real — the all-important question is, What does God think about them? He knows exactly all that concerns them; all that they are; all that they have done; all that is in them. Everything stands clearly revealed to His all penetrating eye. The deepest secrets of the heart, of the nature, and of the life, are all known to him. Neither angels, men, nor devils know us as God knows us. God knows us perfectly; and it is with Him we have to do, and we can say, in the triumphant language of the apostle, "If God be for us, who can be against us? (Rom. 8) God sees us, thinks of us, speaks about us, acts towards us, according to what He Himself has made us, and wrought for us — according to the perfection of His own work. "Beholders many faults may find;" but, as regards our standing, our God sees us only in the comeliness of Christ; we are perfect in Him. When God looks at His people, He beholds in them His own workmanship; and it is to the glory of His holy name, and to the praise of His salvation, that not a blemish should be seen on those who are His — those whom He, in sovereign grace, has made His own. His character, His name, His glory, and the perfection of His work are all involved in the standing of those with whom He has linked Himself.

You are very insignificant, and, worse than that, you have been steeped in sin; but He who takes notice of every atom in the universe has taken account of you, and has had you, atom though you be, in His thoughts, and has purposed that you shall shine in the likeness of His Son for ever. And that Son, to whom you are to be conformed, has laid down His life for you as the witness of that love and of His own personal love also; and the Holy Spirit has been given to you that that love might be the strength of your heart in your pilgrim journey through the world and your portion for ever.

The gospel is the revelation God has given of Himself; it displays the love of God towards us and what is in His heart. I can trust the declaration of what is in God's heart, and not what I think of myself.

Have you over thought of God dealing with you not as to what you are in yourself, but as to where, He has set you in Christ? Have you ever thought that it is the affections of the Father's heart which flow down to us where we are, seeing us in Christ, not in our poor wretched selves? What we are in self is not the thing to scan, but what we are, and where we are, in Christ; and what there is in the living affections of the God of glory, who has raised us up together with His Son, and has given us all heavenly blessings in Him.

We see by Deut. 32:8, that Israel is the centre of the government of this world, but then I get another thing, I get the sovereign grace of God, associating man with the second Adam, just as he was connected with the first Adam. I get the failing responsible man, and the one who glorified God in everything. It is associating us with the Second Man in glory - we are to be like Him, "The glory Thou hast given Me I have given them," &c. The thought and purpose of God is to have us with Christ and like Christ, His own blessed Son, for ever. We have this place now, though we are not in the glory yet. People think it humility to doubt of God's grace. It's no such thing. It's thinking your own thoughts when God has spoken. When God puts the best robe on you, the greatest humility is to set to, and wear it. If you say, I am not fit, it shows you think it possible you could be fit. True lowliness is to accept God's thought. We have no business to think when God has spoken; our business is to believe. If He says we shall be like Him, we know we shall, for God has spoken it. That is the only true humility - giving up thinking what we are for God, and thinking only of what He is for us. The Prodigal spoke before he came to the Father, of being made like a hired servant. That seemed lowly. It only showed he did not know the Father's heart. He did not say it when the Father's arms were round him; he could not then.