Today's encouragement comes from Hebrews 2:11, where we read these words:
"For both He [Jesus] who sanctifies and those who are being sanctified are all of one, for which reason He is not ashamed to call them brethren . . . "It is amazing, to think that Christ and His church are so closely linked, that the Messiah Himself deigned to undergo *everything* we experience (yet without sin). Do we suffer? He suffered first. Do we have to get sanctified? He, though always perfectly holy, had to "learn obedience through the things which He suffered," (Heb. 5:8). Is Jesus in glory, and bliss? The church is there with Him, even now, (cf. Col. 2:12).
Christ does not stand aloof from us, those whom He has redeemed. He is *with* us in every way, as He is our great and elder "brother" in the family of God.
[Puritan quote of the day: "He that enjoys much of God in this life carries heaven about him. . . . The enjoyment of God's sweet presence here is an earnest of our enjoying Him in heaven.” —Thomas Watson, in, "A Body of Di-vinity"]
