WORKERS TOGETHER IN LIFE.
THE purpose of life, we have learned, is to serve God, to do His will, to minister to the good of others. God blesses us with His life, His Spirit, that we may minister of that Spirit to others. While a Being of infinite knowledge and power could Himself have done all things which pertain to the salvation and good of His creatures, infinite love and wisdom would not permit it. God has therefore associated with Himself all His intelligent creatures as sharers in the great work of redemption. We rejoice most in the success of that in which we have a part. The Lord desires His people to rejoice with Him in the glorious success of redemption, and therefore He gives them a part to act, that all may truly share in “the joy of the Lord.” Not only has He given His creature man a part in this work, but an order of spiritual beings above man are engaged in the same work. These are the holy angels, God’s messengers, or ministers, “which do His pleasure.” The angels stand nearer to God, not because God desires it or is partial, but because sin and its consequences have separated man from his Creator. Mortal man can not endure the unvailed glory of God. Sinful man will utterly perish in its light when that glory is revealed. 2 Thess. 2: 8. Even righteous men have fallen prostrate before the glorious Redeemer as He has revealed His presence to them. Acts 26: 13–16; Rev. 1: 12–17. But the holy angels who have never known sin nor mortality live in His presence, and are able to bear the fulness of His life and glory. So much of this rests upon them that when they have appeared to men, they have vailed their glory in human form. Gen. 18: 1, 2; 19: 1. And when God would show the fulness of His love, He vailed His divinity in the humanity of Jesus of Nazareth. And yet these angels that excel in power and might and glory, so much so that even one who had seen the Lord bowed to worship, are not to be worshiped. They are not God or of the Godhead; they are but ministers of God, man’s coworkers in life. Said Christ’s angel to John as the apostle fell at his feet to worship, “See thou do it not; I am a fellow-servant with thee and with thy brethren that hold the testimony of Jesus.” Rev. 19: 10. Being coworkers with man it is most reasonable to believe that not one soul will be saved by God’s great love in Jesus Christ but that angels of God have had a part in its salvation, and therefore rejoice in its triumph over evil. Not one soul will be saved over which one creature—angel or man—will rejoice alone. No one will boast of the gathered sheaves for Heaven’s garner and say, “These I have sowed and cared for and reaped; these are the results of my labor.” There will be no selfishness, no selfish boasting, in the kingdom of God. Every true worker—angel or man—will ascribe all the power and glory to the Lamb and the Father, and “sower and reaper will rejoice together” over the souls saved. And yet there is order observed in God’s working; there is the regular channel through which His life force flows to the children of men, and by which His blessed Spirit does its work. We read: “The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto Him, to show unto His servants things which must shortly come to pass; and He sent and signified it by His angel unto His servant John; who bare record of the Word of God, and of the testimony of Jesus Christ.” Rev. 1: 1, 2. Here we have the order of divine procedure: (1) The Father; (2) Jesus Christ; (3) Christ’s angel; (4) John the apostle and prophet; (5) the church. And as respects the latter, the messages to the church are given through the ministers, or watchmen, of that church. God in His wisdom can work and does work in other ways, because conditions of men demand it, but this is the regular way. The glory supreme and insupportable of the Godhead is represented in the Father. 1 Tim. 6: 16. Jesus Christ has forever blended the divine with the human, and from Him flows out the Spirit of life to all His children. The angels are the mediums, the ganglia, on these great currents of God’s life to re-enforce, so to speak, these life currents. They can bear without exaltation God’s Spirit and its outshining glory, and in themselves bring the presence of God to His children, and drive back the angels of evil which seek to destroy them. But, personally, the angels reveal themselves as helpers only to those who are by faith the children of God. God honors His human servants, and they too must be privileged to share in the labor. Thus Cornelius is assured by the angel that his alms are accepted and his prayers heard, but if he wishes instruction, let him send to Joppa and call for Simon Peter, an apostle, and Peter would tell him what to do. Saul is stricken down by the glory of God, but helping him in the way is reserved to Ananias, a disciple. The angel could have instructed the Ethiopian, but the Lord sent Philip to do this part of the work. Our Lord sends His messages of comfort and love and instruction by His angels to His church, but His church must bear them to the souls in need. She must travail in soul for the children born into the kingdom. There is infinite wisdom in all this. The unconverted man would be led to accept the Word of the Gospel through fear if it came with the glorious appearance of an angel; but slavish service is not acceptable to God. He drives no one into His service by a display of great glory and majesty. He wishes willing service. And so He sends to man the Gospel of life by man. He reveals to man the power of Christ in man, that man may be won by the glory of goodness, and not by outward show. “O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past finding out! . . . For of Him, and through Him, and to Him, are all things; to whom be glory forever. Amen.”