I pray... that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may
know the hope to which He has called you, the riches of His glorious inheritance
in the saints.
(Ephesians 1:18 NIV)
What is Christ’s inheritance in
the saints? What are the riches of the glory of Christ’s inheritance in the
saints? It is that the saints are to provide Him with the means of the universal
manifestation of Himself as God has purposed Him to be. It is a part of the
arrangement in those counsels of the Godhead, that He shall be the central fullness, but that the fullness should not be manifested, displayed in an
isolated way. There would be no purpose in that, because He could have done that
in Deity without incarnation, He could have possessed the fullness in that way, and that
is what the letter to the Philippians says. He was equal with God, and had all
the fullness, but He emptied Himself. Why? In order that others might be brought
into the fullness, that He might not hold it all for Himself. That is what Satan
wants to do.
The Lord Jesus let go in order to bring others in. The apostle says, “Let
this mind be in you.” If any of you are inclined to stand for your own
rights, on your own ground, to hold things for yourself, you are violating the
very spirit of Christ who let go His own rights in order that others might come
into them and get the benefit. So the inheritance of Christ is this: that He is made heir of all things, but
He can have all things only as He has the saints, and He gets those “all
things” through and in the saints. It is a part of the arrangement, the
agreement. It is not as one isolated unit in God’s universe, that He is to have
everything, but by appointment man-wise, in a corporate sense, and not only in a
personal sense.... The Lord is not satisfied with His people just being saved, and the Lord is
not satisfied that people should just remain saved. The Lord has fixed this as
His goal: the
full knowledge of Him. It is indispensable to the Lord. His
inheritance is bound up with it. The need today is that the Lord’s own people
should come into a knowledge of Himself which they do not possess, into a
position in relation to Himself which they do not occupy; in a word: into the
full knowledge of Him.