Where and with whom faith lives.
I. Where faith lives. (1) The life of a man who has truly laid hold of Jesus Christ, and so is living by faith, is on its inward side that is, in deepest reality a life passed in the dwelling of the great King. (2) The privilege has for its other side a duty; the duty has for its foundation a privilege. For if it be true that the real life of every believing soul is a life that never moves from the temple-palace where God is, and that its inmost secret and the spring of its vitality is communion with God, what shall we say of the sort of lives that most of us live? Does it not sound far more like wrong than truth to say of people whose days are shuttlecocked about by trifling cares, and absorbed in fleeting objects, and wasted in the chase after perishable delights, that they "are come unto Mount Zion," and dwell in the presence of God? The old fable of a mountain of loadstone which drew ships at sea to its cliffs is true of this Mount Zion, which is exalted above the mountains that it may draw hearts tossing on the restless sea of life to the "fair havens" beneath its sheltering height. There is no dread, though there is reverence, and no fear, though there is awe, in the approach of those who come through Jesus Christ, and live beneath the smile of their reconciled God and Father. (3) If you are living by faith, you do not belong to this order in the midst of which you find yourself. See that you keep vivid the consciousness, that you cultivate the sense, of having your true home beyond the seas; and look out as emigrants and colonists in a far-off land do to the old country, as being home.II. With whom does faith live? Of companions for us, in our lonely earthly life, there be two sorts, and as to both of them the condition of recognising and enjoying their society is the same, viz., the exercise of faith. (1) We have a better face brightening the unseen than any angel face. But just because Jesus Christ fills the unseen for us, in Him we are united to all those of whom He is the Lord, and He is Lord of men as well as angels. And we too may come to the joyful assembly of the angels, whose joy is all the more poignant and deep when they, the elder brethren, see the prodigals return. (2) "The Church of the first-born." These first-born have their names written in heaven, inscribed on the register of the great city; and to that great community, invisible like the other realities in my text and not coterminous with any visible society such as the existing visible Church, all those belong and come who are knit together by faith in the one Lord.
A. Maclaren, Paul's Prayers,p. 101.