II. A consciously vivid apprehension of Christ
II. A consciously vivid apprehension of Christ
Having the fullness of faith, Christ is to the soul, the Son of God indeed.
The divinity of the Lord Jesus Christ becomes a spiritual verity, rather than a doctrinal conception. He who is full of faith can not be a Unitarian, for he knows by spiritual cognition that Jesus is Lord. The soul on the heights of the fullness of faith falls in adoring love at the feet of Jesus, and exclaims My Lord and my God, as never before. The sacrificial work of Christ receives under the illumination of faith in its fullness a new interpretation to the heart. The mystery of the cross becomes the glory of the soul.
The blood of the cross is exalted into infinite worth; it is seen as the sole ground of reconciliation, justification, sanctification, and eternal redemption; it is recognized not as a part, but as the whole of the atoning work; not as its symbol, but as its substance. The blood has wondrous significance to one who is full of faith; he sings of it with a sense of appreciation greatly augmented over that which he felt the hour he first believed.
That sweet apostrophe so often sung,
O the blood, the precious blood,
Which Jesus shed for me!
thrills his heart with raptures that are inexpressible. The substitutional propitiatory significance of the death of Christ is no longer a dogma, but a felt truth. Moreover, the name of Jesus becomes freighted with a power that is measureless; it is seen as
The name high over all;
as the prevailing element of successful prayer; as the mediatorial channel of all communion and communication between God and man as the true Jacobs ladder which joins earth and heaven, and this Christian life into a Bethel-a house of God. Christ becomes the Alpha and Omega, the first and the last, the all and in all to the soul which has come into the fullness of faith. So realized is Jesus to the soul in sensible glory that it exclaims:
O could I speak the matchless worth;
O could I sound the glories forth,
Which in my Savior shine,
Id soar, and touch the heavenly strings,
And vie with Gabriel while he sings,
In notes almost divine!
I once called upon a lady who had gone through deep waters of sorrow.
When I met her she had not been inside of a church for four years, though a Christian. The death of her husband had so saddened her by the peculiar circumstances under which it had occurred, that she could not summon courage to take her accustomed place in the house of God. Besides, the shadow of sorrow rested so deeply upon her heart that she had kept, all through those four years, lights burning every night in every room of her house, not out of superstition, but because she felt that natural darkness, superadded to the darkness of her sorrow, was more than she could bear. I said to her: Jesus will help you and comfort you. She replied petulantly:
You ministers say Jesus will be this and Jesus will be that to the soul, but he has been nothing to me in this sorrow. I saw she was not in condition to be talked with much. She was holding on to Jesus as her Savior, but had not embraced him as her Comforter. She was made the subject of special prayer by a few to whom her case was reported. A few weeks after wards she came to one of our morning meetings. I was almost startled when I saw her enter the door. A few minutes after the meeting began she arose, and said in almost an exclamatory tone; It is true, it is true! Jesus can help a broken heart! O, he came into my soul yesterday, and I blew out all the lights last night, and my soul and my home are now brighter than when all were burning. When she opened her heart and received the Comforter, there sprang up in her heart a fullness of faith which realized Jesus to her in all his matchless worth. Such faith is the souls Mount of Transfiguration, where it beholds in beatific visions the glories which in our Savior shine.
Dear reader, may you allow the Holy Spirit to translate you to this heavenly place; for once there you will desire to build tabernacles, and will sing:
Here I should forever stay,
Weep and gaze myself away.