34. Life Which Cannot Be Lost
34
Life Which Cannot Be Lost1
Your life is hid with Christ in God.
—Colossians 3:3
“Your life is hid with Christ in God,” and therefore you cannot be robbed of it (Col. 3:3). Our Lord handles us as fathers do their young children; they lay up jewels in a place, above the reach of the short arm of bairns,2 else bairns would put up their hands and take them down and lose them soon. Our Lord has done this with our spiritual life. Jesus Christ is the high coffer in which our Lord has hid our life; we children are not able to reach up our arm so high as to take down that life and lose it; it is in our Christ’s hand. O long, long may Jesus be Lord Keeper of our life! Happy are they that can, with the apostle, lay their soul in pawn3 in the hand of Jesus, for He is able to keep that which is committed in pawn to Him against that day (2 Tim. 1:12).
Then, Madam, so long as this life is not hurt, all other troubles are but touches in the heel. I trust you will soon be cured. You know, Madam, kings have some servants in their court that do not receive present wages in their hand, but live upon their hopes. The King of Kings also has servants in His court that for the present get little or nothing but the heavy cross of Christ, troubles without and terrors within; but they live upon hope, and when it comes to the parting of the inheritance, they remain in the house as heirs. It is better to be so than to get present payment and a portion in this life, an inheritance in this world (God forgive me, that I should honor it with the name of an inheritance, it is rather a farm-room!4), and then in the end to be cast out of God’s house with this word, “You have received your consolation; you will get no more.” Alas! What do they get? The rich glutton’s heaven (Luke 16:25). Oh, but our Lord makes it a silly5 heaven! “He fared well,” says our Lord, “and delicately every day.” Oh, no more? A silly heaven! Truly no more, except that he was clothed in purple, and that is all.
I persuade myself, Madam, you have joy when you think that your Lord has dealt more graciously with your soul. You have gotten little in this life—it is true indeed. You have then the more to crave—yea, you have all to crave—for, except some tastings of the first fruits and some kisses of His mouth whom your soul loves, you get no more. But I cannot tell you what is to come. Yet I may speak as our Lord does of it. The foundation of the city is pure gold, clear as crystal. The twelve ports are set with precious stones. If orchards and rivers commend6 a soil upon earth, there is a paradise there where grows the tree of life that bears twelve manners of fruits every month, which is seven score and four7 harvests in the year. And there is a pure river of water of life, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb. And the city has no need of the light of the sun or moon or of a candle, for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb is the light thereof. Madam, believe and hope for this, till you see and enjoy. Jesus is saying in the gospel, “Come and see.” And He is come down in the chariot of truth, which He rides through the world to conquer men’s souls (Ps. 45:4), and is now in the world saying, “Who will go with Me? Will you go? My Father will make you welcome and give you houseroom;8 for in My Father’s house are many mansions.” Madam, consent to go with Him.
1. Letters, no. 27, 86–87.
2. bairns: children
3. pawn: pledge, surety
4. farm-room: a rented room
5. silly: poor, pitiful
6. commend: to set off to advantage
7. seven score and four: 144
8. houseroom: lodging