THERE is what Scripture calls: “the age to come,” which is ushered in when Christ returns. And there is “this age,” referring to all time, that precedes the return of Jesus. You find both together in this one saying of the Savior, that the sin against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven, “neither in this age, neither in the age to come” (Matt. 12, 32, Dutch version).
Thus these two ages form two spheres, spheres for our life and spheres for our thought. On one side the world round about us; but far excelling this the world which is with God, and which also here below shall once supersede this old, passing world.
To an unbeliever there is no confusion about this. To him there is only “this world” and “this age.” But a child of God lives simultaneously in these two worlds and in these two ages; and to inlive and inthink himself in these two at the same time is something, to which he is enabled by grace alone.
Only by special grace do these two come with him in pure balance.
Mostly, however, that grace is lacking.
So, among the children of God you find on one hand those, who richly and fully inlive in this world, not in sinful but nobler sense; yet know scarcely anything of inliving in the “age to come” and in “the coming world of glory.” They know that that age and that world are to come, but postpone inliving in it to a later date.
Others, on the other hand, among God’s children fall into the opposite onesidedness. They close their eyes as much as possible to this world, almost exclusively to engage themselves with the “coming age.” In the cloister, which shuts one off altogether from this world, this effort and this tendency find their consummation.
Balance is neither with the first nor with the second. Rather with both the balance is altogether out of equipoise. With the first the scale of this age is too low, and that of the age to come too high. With the other again the scale of this world is altogether out of sight, and only the scale of the world to come, before their eyes.
Such is the case with many now, and so it threatened to become already in the church of Ephesus when Paul was still alive. And therefore Paul writes to this church, that day by day he prays for the saints at Ephesus, that this special grace might be imparted unto them, that not merely they might dwell in this world after God’s holy will, but at the same time obtain such “enlightened eyes of understanding,” as to have a clear and perspicuous insight into “what is the hope of their calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints” (1, 18).
This prayer of the apostle should continually ascend from the church unto God. It should unceasingly be our own prayer.
For this special grace is indispensable to every one of us, and this grace also God imparts to his saints only, when they pray for it, with groanings of heart, continuously.
“THE hope of his calling” does not refer to the call to faith and conversion. To this voice of your God’s calling you gave a hearing, when you believed and converted yourself. The calling of God here in question extends much further. He, your God, is in glory, you are on earth, and now God calls you away from this world to His world, from your insunkenness to His glory, from “this age” with its misery to the “age to come” with its riches and glory.
Thus to this calling there is a prospect attached. The prospect of a state of perfect happiness. And of obtaining and acquiring of that state of happiness this call of your God gives you hope.
Not an uncertain hope, which perchance will and perchance will not be fulfilled, but a fixed, unquestionable, certain hope, which guarantees perfect fulfilment. Thus “the hope of his calling” means: the perfect, unshakable certainty of the state of happiness, that awaits you.
Yet this state of happiness is not your part here. Foretaste you may enjoy of it, but the salvation, that comes, is as yet an inheritance, which truly and surely awaits you, but it is still as an inheritance, in possession of which you only come later on.
Already here on earth, however, it is something quite different, whether you are merely told, that an inheritance is apportioned you, or whether at the same time you are told, how great that inheritance is, and wherein it consists.
Only this last information renders you, if it is a rich inheritance, rich already now in your mind.
So the apostle wills, that you, as child of God, not only shall know, that you are an heir, and that some time you surely will obtain the inheritance, but also wherein that inheritance consists. And therefore he wants you to know: “What is the riches of the glory of that inheritance,” how overwhelmingly great and all expectation excelling it is, so that the knowledge of the riches of that inheritance, which is coming to you, may already here render you blessed with respect to your feeling.
And of this joy of hope and of this already in advance being rich in the knowledge of the coming inheritance, he now says, that it must live, and can live, only “in the saints.”
For them alone that inheritance is. They alone receive the promise of it. In them alone can there arise the real representation of it.
But then also in them, in all God’s saints, that hope, that foretaste must live. He who as child of God, does not know that hope, that foretaste, lives beneath his station as child of God; undervalues the work of God’s grace; and sins against the compassions and the love of God, Who from pure grace provided all this for him.
HE who fell asleep in Jesus, did not therefore go at once from the darkness here below into the eternal light.
There was for him a gradual transition.
First he knew only this world, in which by the Common grace of God, there was still, O, so much beauty, so much attractiveness, so much nobility, so much of good report, but which with all its beauty was ever swathed with an atmosphere of sin and of suffering.
Then in the hour of his conversion a window was opened to him, through which at once he obtained an outlook upon an entirely different world, incomparably richer and more beautiful, and especially, so glorious because there is no sin in it to stain it, and no suffering, to make the flower fade on its stem.
Yet after his conversion, if left to himself, he would not have been able to embrace these two in his outlook simultaneously. He would either have taken his stand at this open window, that, forsaking this world, he might look continually upon those gleamings of the eternal,—or, returning to his world, he would have neglected that other world, upon which the opened window afforded outlook.
But then that particular grace was also given him, that God the Lord united both for him, and gave him an eye, temporarily in this world to admire the greatness of his God and under that impression to serve his God, and also, not merely to look into the other world, but to live in it, and already here to be rich in the wealth of the inheritance that awaited him.
And this then has gone on and on. With an ever more even balance. With an ever clearer representation. With an ever more deeply rooting expectation. Strong in this world, and at the same time inspired and charmed by the world which was to come.
Till finally also his hour struck, that by a new call, God called him altogether away from this world, and by way of beginning, the glory of the age to come disclosed itself to him.
YET even so there awaits him still a new, a last transition.
In dying is not yet the consummation. That consummation only comes in the “consummation of the ages” when once all antithesis falls away, and “this age” and “this world” pass away, now to be taken up into glory.
Then, says the Scripture, “the holy city, the new Jerusalem, comes down from heaven, adorned as a bride arrayed for her husband.” Something which of course does not mean to say, that then from heaven a city with streets and gates and ramparts comes out of the clouds. But this, that the chaos, which shall ensue after the world conflagration, shall be created and formed anew, and shall be made into a more glorious, holier world, far excelling all form and splendor of this world. And that this glorious appearance shall not come forth from the earth itself, but from above, by God, and forms, like unto heavenly forms, shall be imprinted upon it.
The external shall then perfectly correspond to the internal. The glory without to the glory within. The glory, which shall then surround God’s saints, shall be one with, and after the standard of, the inner blessedness. See God face to face with the eye of the soul, and admire the full, clear reflection of God’s majesty with the eye of the body. Pure outbeaming to without of what gleams with untarnished gold in the soul.
The riches of the glory then no more an inheritance, but an appropriated possession, with full, free enjoyment. Not alone the glory, but the liberty of the glory of the children of God.
Already now they who have fallen asleep in Jesus, the whiles they dwell in the Father-house, carry the prophecy of that glory about with them in the soul. Already they have glimpses of it. Only what they still miss is the rise of this sun of “the age to come” above the horizon. And that only comes, when Christ comes and shall triumph, and all His saints with Him.
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