Service
“His servants shall serve Him.”[[432]] The life on earth is the beginning of the life in heaven; education on earth is an initiation into the principles of heaven; the life-work here is a training for the life-work there. What we now are, in character and holy service, is the sure foreshadowing of what we shall be.
“The Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister.”[[433]] Christ’s work below is His work above, and our reward for working with Him in this world will be the greater power and wider privilege of working with Him in the world to come.
“Ye are My witnesses, saith the Lord, that I am God.”[[434]] This also we shall be in eternity.
Witnessing
For what was the great controversy permitted to continue throughout the ages? Why was it that Satan’s existence was not cut short at the outset of his rebellion?—It was that the universe might be convinced of God’s justice in His dealing with evil; that sin might receive eternal condemnation. In the plan of redemption there are heights and depths that eternity itself can never exhaust, marvels into which the angels desire to look. The redeemed only, of all created beings, have in their own experience known the actual conflict with sin; they have wrought with Christ, and, as even the angels could not do, have entered into the fellowship of His sufferings; will they have no testimony as to the science of redemption,—nothing that will be of worth to unfallen beings?
“The Glory of This Mystery”
Even now, “unto the principalities and the powers in the heavenly places” is “made known through the church the manifold wisdom of God.” And He “hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places; ... that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us through Christ Jesus.”[[435]]
“In His temple doth every one speak of His glory,”[[436]] and the song which the ransomed ones will sing,—the song of their experience,—will declare the glory of God: “Great and marvelous are Thy works, O Lord God, the Almighty; righteous and true are Thy ways, Thou King of the ages. Who shall not fear, O Lord, and glorify Thy name? for Thou only art holy.”
In our life here, earthly, sin-restricted, though it is, the greatest joy and the highest education are in service. And in the future state, untrammeled by the limitations of sinful humanity, it is in service that our greatest joy and our highest education will be found;—witnessing, and ever as we witness learning anew “the riches of the glory of this mystery;” “which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.”