Keep Looking Down

Little Billy promised faithfully that he would not leave the yard. He was reminded there would be throngs of people on the street that day to watch the parade. But once the bands started playing and the floats began moving by, he suddenly realized what he was missing. Oh, to be free of the tall board fence that surrounded the safety of his yard! All Billy could see of the parade was through a small knot hole in the board fence. And people were constantly getting in his way.

Then he heard the voice of his big brother calling from the upstairs balcony, “Billy, why don’t you come up here?” Billy couldn’t quite reach the bottom rung of the outside ladder to the balcony, so his brother came down, lifted him in one strong arm arid carried him to the top.
Of course! Here was the place to see everything! Billy looked down at the wide avenue from one end to the other. He thrilled with excitement. “Oh,” he cried, “now I can even see what went before, and what’s passing now, and way up the street I can see what’s coming. It’s like living in a new world.” For Billy, the past, present and future had come to blend into one big NOW.

So it is when we come by God’s invitation to view the parade of time from the heavenly vantage point. God not only sees in one vast sweep the events of time, He sees all that He had purposed before the Book of Genesis began and all that will be consummated after the Book of Revelation. As viewed from His eternal NOW, eternity becomes one complete whole with the human historical span we call time just a minute but nevertheless important area.

There is an old hymn with the words, “Keep looking up to God…” For an unconverted person to come to Christ as his Savior, the person must “look up to God”. But this all must change after he becomes a new person in Christ and begins to live the Christian life. There must be a gradual transformation in our viewpoint.

The apostle Paul considered this viewpoint imperative. In his prayer for the Colossians, as given in the Phillips translation, he makes this thought clear:
“We are asking God THAT YOU MAY SEE THINGS as it were FROM HIS POINT OF VIEW, by being given spiritual insight and understanding…” (Col. 1:9)

Every man is either still centered in himself, “looking up” from his own
viewpoint, or he is enjoying the viewpoint Paul prayed about - he is “looking down” from God’s vantage point and looking out from His eyes.
But mere wishful thinking will not move fallen man into this new position. It is not man’s doing, but God’s. It was God in Christ who entered into humanity completely enough to raise man to another plane of life, to deliver manhood into a new center where all things become new.

Man was not created to be the center and any attempt to build this “I-centered” false universe will only cause confusion. God has made life that way, and there is no use kicking at it and complaining about it.
Paul reveals in many places that it was God’s purpose to take all of Adam’s race to the Cross in order to deal with the “I” principle that stands in opposition to God. So when God looked down upon the Cross, He saw us united in death with His Son. All that is involved in the treachery of S-I-N (Selfish, Independent, Negative) is dealt with there. Thus from God’s VIEWPOINT man was crucified with Christ - but more. He was buried with Christ in Joseph’s new tomb. Yet even more! He was raised with Christ to newness of life. But still more than that - and now we come to God’s basic purpose before the foundation of the world - the believer was positioned in union with Christ in a new heavenly position or viewpoint.

Now all this which God sees to have happened from His viewpoint, we must likewise see to be our experience by faith. So Paul describes it in four words: crucified, buried, risen and ascended. This is not something we do. No, we see by revelation that it happened to us “in Christ” - and we by faith live in that understanding.

There are multitudes of believers who have been well-taught about their POSITION IN CHRIST. They speak with conviction of the finished work by which they have forgiveness, deliverance, victory and authority. And well they might rejoice in all that has been done FOR THEM. Yet here is just the trouble - they are not undergoing a transformation of centers. All that has been made available to them in Christ they continue to relate to themselves: the old center. They have missed the deepest severing power of the Cross which would deliver them to a life centered in God where all things are related to Him, are seen looking down from His viewpoint.

As long as one is still more alive to what God does FOR man, to what the Cross realizes FOR man, to what our position in union with Christ means FOR man - that individual has never grasped the Father’s full purpose for placing us in union with His Son: that we might come to the same vision, purpose, dedication and philosophy of life - THE SAME HIGH VIEWPOINT - as the Son shares in the Father.

In 2nd Corinthians, chapter 5, Paul seems to share the very heart of the issue. He explains what caused him to live a completely God-centered life. With Paul, being a new creature in union with Christ was more than a doctrinal position. It was an actual experience which became real by revelation. To be in union with Christ having the nature of God meant to look out through God’s eyes, to see and interpret and relate all things to Him. One who has entered into this experience needs no one to explain it to him. He knows what it means to be released from the captivity of the old world-viewpoint where all was self-relating and to be translated into a new world where all is God-related.

“Therefore if any man be IN CHRIST, he is a new creature; old things are passed away, BEHOLD ALL THINGS AEE BECOME NEW” (2 Cor. 5:17)
We, as Christians, have so often related Jesus Christ to our redemption that we have tended to see God’s primary purpose in eternity as the redemption of man from sin. The overshadowing theme of religious writing is man’s fall, his various needs and God’s provision for meeting them. In this way God is always related to man’s benefit, blessing and future. Man becomes central in man’s thinking about God. This is the result of a warped concept developed by blinded man who has, ever since the Fall, made all to center around and for himself.

Perhaps we can move the eternal Christ into a proper frame of reference by asking: if man had never sinned, would all things have been summed up in Christ? (Eph. 1:10) If man had never sinned, was it God’s PURPOSE for all to be “in Christ”? If man had never sinned, would Christ have been incarnated into the human family?

IT SEEMS EVIDENT FROM PAUL’S WRITING IN EPHESIANS AS HE MOVES ON THE ETERNAL LEVEL THAT THE FATHER INTENDED FOR HIS SON TO BE A MEANS OF ACCOMPLISHMENT, NOT BECAUSE SIN ENTERED, BUT EVEN IF SIN HAD NEVER ENTERED!

Consider these statements:
vs 3 “blessed us.. .IN CHRIST”
vs 4 “chosen us IN HIM before the foundation”
vs 5 “predestined unto adoption…by JESUS CHRIST”
vs 6 “accepted in THE BELOVED”
vs 10 “gathered together all things… IN CHRIST”

We must cease interpreting God’s basic purpose and plan in the light of the Fall. This which we see in Ephesians is what the Father intended to realize in His Son and it has never been affected by sin, the fall, or time.
We can quickly see how this basic purpose for the Son and His Body springs out of God’s paternal nature and desire. We can also understand how the Father “marked out for Himself” a vast family who would share His LIFE, NATURE, SPIRIT, VISION, PURPOSE AND DEDICATION. This family purpose was to be accomplished both through and for His eternal first-born Son, Jesus Christ.

Because man was allowed opportunity to choose cooperation in God’s purpose, we see how man also could choose to go his own way. As a result God’s purpose in eternity necessitated the incorporation of the redemptive plan. But He never intended that this redemptive phase was to overshadow the ORIGINAL ETERNAL BASIC PURPOSE.

As you begin to understand the BASIC PATERNAL PURPOSE of God, you realize how easily God’s children can partake of His “grace” and receive His good gifts only to become wholly distracted from His original purpose. Paul made a significant statement to Timothy, his young evangelist in the faith, “God has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to HIS OWN PURPOSE AND GRACE, which was given us in Christ before the world began” (2 Tim. 1:8-9).

We notice that God’s calling is now twofold: “according to PURPOSE and GRACE”. The apostle knows that Timothy must be identified with God in His eternal family purpose if he is to stand in the midst of worldly pressures. He exhorts Timothy to recognize that he is not merely called redemptively “according to the grace of God”, but he also is called paternally “according to God’s own basic purpose”.

Some read the Bible as though it were only a book of salvation. Thank God it is that - but it is more. Others read it as though it were merely the “book of the kingdom” - of the government of God. It includes that, but much more. It reveals the basic paternalistic purpose of God in Christ. And it helpfully points out some of the ways by which Satan has hoped to thwart God in the attaining of His family purpose.

The salvation of men is not an end in itself. Neither Israel nor the Church represent the ultimate in God’s purpose. These are rather parts of a great Family Plan. To fail to recognize this is indicative of serious defect in spiritual vision.

What does all this mean? Simply that we must move to a God-centered viewpoint from which we can properly understand the whole and relate all the parts. Simply that we cannot long fellowship with Jesus Christ living in us and share in His dedication to LIFE before we shall come to a revelation of the Father such as we have never known. This is the Son’s greatest delight - revealing the Father. Then we shall find our basis of fellowship with the Father as a member of His eternal Family becomes an expanding, growing participation as we learn all that He has from the beginning intended for Himself, for His firstborn Son, and for His many sons.

Yes, for a Christian, “looking up” to God is looking from the wrong perspective. Since we are in union with Christ, we are ascended with Him also to the throne of God. We have the mind of Christ and the spiritual eyes to “look down” on the passing parade from God’s viewpoint. Little Billy was enthralled to have his big brother lift him up to see the perspective of the WHOLE parade.

CHRISTIANS NOT ONLY CAN, BUT THEY MUST CLIMB TO THE HEIGHTS OF GOD’S VIEWPOINT. AND THERE, PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE BLEND INTO THE ETERNAL NOW OF A GOD-FAMILY MEMBER!

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