Wednesdays with Watson is a weekly reading taken from my favorite Puritan writer, Thomas Watson. This week’s selection is taken from The Sermons of Thomas Watson.
…our being with Christ is not only local, but conjugal: we shall so behold him, as to be made one with him. What nearer than union? what sweeter? Union is the spring of joy, the ground of privilege; by virtue of this blessed union with Christ, all those rare beauties wherewith the human nature of the Lord Jesus is bespangled shall be ours. Let us compare two scriptures, John xvii. 24. “Father, I will that they also whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am, that they may behold my glory.” That is, the glory of the human nature; this is not all, ver. 22. “The glory that thou hast given me I have given them.” Christ hath not his glory only for himself, but for us; we shall shine by his beams: here Christ puts his graces upon his spouse, and in heaven he will put his glory upon her. No wonder then the king’s daughter is “all glorious within,” and “her clothing of wrought gold.” How glorious will the spouse be, when she hath Christ’s jewels upon her? Judge not of the saints by what they are, but by what they shall be: “It doth not yet appear what we shall be,” 1 John iii. 1. Why, what shall we be? “We shall be like him.” The spouse of Christ shall not only be made one with Christ, but she shall be made like Christ; in other marriages the spouse changeth her condition, but here she changeth her complexion: not that the saints in glory shall receive of Christ’s essence, they shall have as much glory as the human nature is capable of; but though Christ conveys his image, yet not his essence. The sun shining upon a glass, leaves a print of its beauty there; and it is hard to distinguish between the glass and the sun-beam: but the glass is not the beam, the sun conveys only its likeness, not its essence.
Words of Grace 