December - the Free Presbyterian church of Scotland

The Church’s Worship in Heaven 361self-same priesthood of our celestial High Priest – that the redeemed in gloryworship God. Their spiritual light and insight into their covenant with Godfar exceeds ours. “We see through a glass darkly”, they “face to face”. Here“we know in part;” they “know even as also [they] are known”. But whatthey know fully above is what we know also truly, though partially, if wehave the Spirit’s teaching here below. What they see face to face is the samethat we see through a glass darkly – by the help of the Word and the mediumof ordinances in the Church militant. Their worship is, in all its elements, inits materials and its spirit, identical with ours.We are not cut off from intelligent sympathy with saints in heaven – ourbrethren of whom we have been for a time bereaved. The elements of theirjoy and worship are the very elements of our own believing consciousnesshere below. Their use of Christ in His priesthood is identical with ours. Theirmode of access to the throne in glory is our medium of access to the throneof grace; the themes of their thanksgiving and praise are ours; and the covenantwhich encompasses and guarantees unto eternity all their joy is ourstoo, for though our house be not so with God as theirs is, He hath made withus the self-same covenant, ordered in all things and sure, and the High Priestat His right hand for ever protects its validity.“Take comfort, Christians, when your friends / In Jesus fall asleep.” Theyare not carried beyond the compass of your communion, nor taken away toa realm and to exercises defying your comprehension. Your own conversation– your citizenship – even while here, is in heaven. You are not “strangers andforeigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and of the household of God”.You are come unto Mount Zion, unto the city of the living God, to the heavenlyJerusalem, to the spirits of your beloved departed ones made perfect. Theyhave the deepest sympathy with you; and only earthliness can shut you outfrom sympathy with them. Your relief against every tendency to earthlinessis in the sympathy and services of the High Priest in heaven; and by thatpriesthood at the right hand of the throne, the children of faith on earth andof glory in heaven are knit together in one communion, and the angels ofGod do service to them. For in the glorious ministrations of the heavenlypriesthood of Christ we see heaven opened and the angels of God ascendingand descending upon the Son of Man.And now, laying our hearts open by faith to the soothing and exaltinginfluence of divine revelations such as these, what force should we not findin the unanimous voices of apostles, psalmists and prophets, as they callupon us, saying, “If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which areabove, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. Set your affection onthings above, not on things on the earth. For . . . your life is hid with Christ