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Welcome To The City Of God, December 27
His lord said unto him, Well done, good and faithful servant; thou hast
been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many
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things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord.
Matthew 25:23
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With unutterable love, Jesus welcomes His faithful ones to the joy of their
Lord. The Saviour’s joy is in seeing, in the kingdom of glory, the souls that have
been saved by His agony and humiliation. And the redeemed will be sharers in His
joy, as they behold, among the blessed, those who have been won to Christ through
their prayers, their labors, and their loving sacrifice. As they gather about the great
white throne, gladness unspeakable will fill their hearts, when they behold those
whom they have won for Christ, and see that one has gained others, and these still
others, all brought into the haven of rest, there to lay their crowns at Jesus’ feet
and praise Him through the endless cycles of eternity.
As the ransomed ones are welcomed to the City of God, there rings out upon
the air an exultant cry of adoration. The two Adams are about to meet. The Son
of God is standing with outstretched arms to receive the father of our race—the
being whom He created, who sinned against his Maker, and for whose sin the
marks of the crucifixion are borne upon the Saviour’s form. As Adam discerns
the prints of the cruel nails, he does not fall upon the bosom of his Lord, but in
humiliation casts himself at His feet, crying: “Worthy, worthy is the Lamb that
was slain!” Tenderly the Saviour lifts him up and bids him look once more upon
the Eden home from which he has so long been exiled.
After his expulsion from Eden, Adam’s life on earth was filled with sorrow.
Every dying leaf, every victim of sacrifice, every blight upon the fair face of
nature, every stain upon man’s purity, was a fresh reminder of his sin.... With
patient humility he bore, for nearly a thousand years, the penalty of transgression.
Faithfully did he repent of his sin and trust in the merits of the promised Saviour,
and he died in the hope of a resurrection. The Son of God redeemed man’s failure
and fall; and now, through the work of the atonement, Adam is reinstated in his
first dominion.
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