An Increasing Life!

Thank God that Psalm 92 is true. If I am not a better preacher now than I was thirty years ago, shame upon me! This is a growing life; it is an increasing life. We do not just live on some original resources. No, no! The Christian life is not merely one experience. It goes on being repeated. And, 'The best is yet to be!' The best is at the end. Listen to God's words to the prophet Isaiah: 'And even to your old age I am he; and even to hoar hairs will I carry you: I have made, and I will bear; even I will carry, and I will deliver you' (Isaiah 46:4). God does not merely start and then abandon us. No, no. He has said, 'I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee' (Hebrews 13:5).

 

But come to the New Testament statement of all this and see how Paul, rising to one of his great mountaintops at the end of the third chapter of 2 Corinthians, says, 'We all, with open face beholding' - and it means 'going on beholding' - 'as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory' (2 Corinthians 3:18). That is it. That is the Christian life. It is progressive. It expands and increases as we are 'changed from glory into glory'. We do not just get born again and then remain there, static, holding on to what we have, rather giving the impression that we have lost something wonderful and that the great thrill we had at the beginning has gone. That is machinery, not life. This is a life that changes us 'from glory into glory', and it is endless and eternal.

 

Again, let the poets express it for us:

Streams of mercy never ceasing
Call for songs of loudest praise.
(Robert Robinson)

That is the characteristic of this life. The hymn, 'In heavenly love abiding', which I quoted earlier, goes on to say this:

Green pastures are before me,
Which yet I have not seen;
Bright skies will soon be o'er me,
Where the dark clouds have been:
My hope I cannot measure,
My path to life is free;
My Saviour has my treasure,
And He will walk with me.
(Anna Laetitia Waring)

'For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known' (1 Corinthians 13:12).