Yet thou shalt love Me still.
The spear shall pierce thine heart, and Mine shall be
The life that lives and moves henceforth in thee.
Then as a conqueror loosened from the cross,
Laid in the grave of nothingness and loss,
Thou shalt awaken, and be borne above
Upon the breath of Mine almighty love.”
Thus the revelation of the love of God, which was to the soul the opening of heaven, the entrance into the Father’s house where was the feast of joy, the music, and the dancing, was to lead to a walk of faithfulness here below, which would bring upon the witness of God persecution and shame and reproach.
Was it, therefore, that when the Lord had spoken to the Pharisees of the love which welcomes the publican and the sinner, of the joy and gladness into which the returning son was brought, He spoke to the disciples the solemn warning lest the riches, not only temporal, but spiritual, entrusted to them as stewards should be wasted by them? Is it not true that the revelation to the soul of that which is in the Father’s house, the joy and the love, and the unspeakable riches of Christ, needs nothing less than Divine grace and power to keep us from misusing the treasure entrusted to us, and making it an occasion for feeding and exalting the fleshly mind?
Therefore Paul needed the thorn in the flesh, not to fit him for entering the third heaven, but after he had been there; so that the riches bestowed on him were not made an occasion for self-glorification, but he became a good steward of the manifold grace of God.