I want you to look at the word come in four different contexts. I want you to see it first of all in John 1:39. This was the come of salvation, the come of invitation to meet the Lord Jesus Christ. It was at a time when one of the disciples had been chosen. John the Baptist and two of his disciples had just seen Jesus, and in verse 36, John said, "Behold, the Lamb of God! And the two disciples heard him speak, and they followed Jesus.... They said unto him, Rabbi, (Master,) where dwellest thou?" And Jesus said, "Come and see." (See John 1:36-39.) This invitation is offered to "the whole world," to every individual that ever lived. Come. God so loved the world, the world of sinners, not merely the world of the elect, but the world of sinners. God loved them. God is not engaged in a fantastic mockery. He is calling men to believe. It's true that there are men who are dead in trespasses and sins; their will is turned away from Christ. When Jesus said, "Ye will not come to me, that ye might have life" (John 5:40). He was telling the truth.
Every once in a while, I come up against somebody that says, "If you are once saved you are always saved, aren't you? Isn't that what the Bible teaches? Then that means that as long as you believe, you can do as you please, right?" It doesn't mean anything of the kind. It means just the opposite. If I am once saved it is because He has begun a good work and He will keep on perfecting it until the day of Jesus Christ. And when He saved me, He put me in a road and said, "I have created these good works that you should walk in them." There's no question whatsoever of the Christian saying, "Well, I'm saved. I can now take the bit in my teeth and go any way I wish." True, there are moments when the flesh rises and seeks to have its own way. But, nevertheless, the general trend and tendency of the life that is in Christ must be in the path that He prepared for us, "created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them."
Then there is a third category of purposes. For we have seen purposes that have their whole issue with us in eternity, and we have seen others that begin in us now. There is still a third set of purposes, the practical purposes that God is working through our lives. And while, of course, some of these may carry over into eternity, God has specific purposes for working through us while we live this life in the flesh. Never forget that God tells us we live this life in two different places. He says that we are in the world, in the world that crucified Christ. Paul puts it, "The life that I now live in the flesh ..." When anything wonderful appears in the life of a Christian, when we find anyone who has been touched by Jesus Christ, when we see something that sublimely shows Christ has been working in the life, someone from the heavenly realm looking at it seems a stark contrast between the beauty of Christ and the ugliness of the world. It would be like seeing a magnificent lily growing in a manure pile. God has reached into the mud and has saved us out of darkness into light and is working things in us at the present time.
In the second place, let us look at some of the things that God proposes to do in us now. God is beginning to work in us who are believers, rooting and preparing the purposes that He plans to work out now and in eternity.
When the Lord Jesus Christ died, the disciples were frightened. They thought that they themselves might be crucified. And as rapidly as possible, they took flight. Their refuge was an upper room in somebody's house, where they had gone up and closed the door, and were huddled there in fear. And suddenly the Lord Jesus Christ came through walls and was standing there in the midst of them. "When the doors were shut ... Jesus [came] and stood in the midst, and saith unto them, Peace be unto you. And when lie had so said, he showed unto them his hands and his side. Then were the disciples glad, when they saw the Lord" (John 20:19-20). And the Lord began to speak in a great way, giving the purpose which He had in His heart for these disciples. He said, "As my Father hath sent me, even so send I you" (v. 21).
