On Preaching Christ our Example
Chapter 32(TOC)
On Preaching Christ our Example
"Let as make man IN OUR IMAGE; AFTER OUR LIKENESS:" in these words of the Council of Creation, with which the Bible history of man opens, we have the revelation of the Eternal purpose to which man owes his existence, of the glorious eternal future to which he is destined. God proposes to make a GODLIKE CREATURE, a being who shall be His very image and likeness, the visible manifestation of the glory of the Invisible One.
To have a being, at once created and yet Godlike, was indeed a task worthy of Infinite Wisdom. It is the nature and glory of God that He is absolutely independent of all else, having life in Himself, owing His existence to none but Himself alone. If man is to be Godlike, he must bear His image and likeness in this too, that he must become what he is to be, of his own free choice; he must make himself. It is the nature and glory of the creature to be dependent, to owe everything to the Blessed Creator. How can the contradiction be reconciled?—a being at once dependent and yet self-determined, created and yet Godlike. In man the mystery is solved. As a creature God gives him life, but endows him with the wonderful power of a free will; it is only in the process of a personal and voluntary appropriation that anything so high and holy as likeness to God can really become his very own.
When sin entered, and man fell from his high destiny, God did not give up His purpose. Of His revelation in Israel the central thought was: "Be ye holy, as I am holy." Likeness to God in that which constitutes His highest perfection is to be Israel's hope. Redemption had no higher ideal than Creation had revealed; it could only take up and work out the Eternal purpose.
It was with this in view that the Father sent to the earth the Son who was the express Image of His person. In Him the God-likeness to which we had been created, and which we had personally to appropriate and make our own, was revealed in human form: He came to show to us at once the Image of God and our own image. In looking upon Him, the desire after our long-lost likeness to God was to be awakened, and that hope and faith begotten which gave us courage to yield ourselves to be renewed after that Image. To accomplish this, there was a twofold work He had to do. The one was to reveal in His life the likeness of God, so that we might know what a life in that likeness was, and understand what it was we had to expect and accept from Him as our Redeemer. When He had done this, and shown us the likeness of the life of God in human form, He died that He might win for us, and impart to us, His own life as the life of the likeness of God, that in its power we might live in the likeness of what we had seen in Him. And when He ascended to heaven, it was to give us in the Holy Spirit the power of that life He had first set before us and then won to impart to us.
It is easy to we how dose the connection is between these two parts of the work of our Lord, and how the one depends upon the other. For what as our Example He had in His life revealed, He as our Redeemer by His death purchased the power. His earthly life showed the path, His heavenly life gives the power, in which we are to walk. What God hath joined together no man may separate. Whoever does not stand in the full faith of the Redemption, has not the strength to follow the Example. And whoever does not seek conformity to the Image as the great object of the Redemption, cannot fully enter into its power. Christ lived on earth that He might show forth the image of God in His life: He lives in heaven that we may show forth the image of God in our lives.
The Church of Christ has not always maintained the due relation of these two truths. In the Catholic Church the former of the two was placed in the foreground, and the following of Christ's example pressed with great earnestness. As the fruit of this, she can point to no small number of saints who, notwithstanding many errors, with admirable devotion sought literally and entirely to bear the Master's image. But to the great loss of earnest souls, the other half of the truth was neglected, that only they who in the power of Christ's death receive His life within them, are able to imitate His life as set before them.
The Protestant Churches owe their origin to the revival of the second truth. The truth of God's pardoning and quickening grace took its true place to the great comfort and joy of thousands of anxious souls. And yet here the danger of one-sidedness was not entirely avoided. The doctrine that Christ lived on earth, not only to die for our redemption, but to show us how we were to live, did not receive sufficient prominence. While no orthodox Church will deny that Christ is our Example, the absolute necessity of following the example of His life is not preached with the same distinctness as that of trusting the atonement of His death. Great pains are taken, and that most justly, to lead men to accept the merits of His death. As great pains are not taken, and this is what is not right to lead men to accept the imitation of His life as the one mark and test of true discipleship.
It is hardly necessary to point out what influence the mode of presenting this truth will exercise in the life of the Church. If atonement and pardon be everything, and the life in His likeness something secondary, that is to follow as a matter of course, the chief attention will be directed to the former. Pardon an peace will be the great objects of desire; with these attained, there will be a tendency to rest content. If, on the other hand, conformity to the image of God's Son be the chief object, and the atonement the means to secure this end, as the fulfilment of God's purpose in creation, then in all the preaching of repentance and pardon, the true aim will ever be kept in the foreground; faith in Jesus and conformity to character will be regarded as inseparable. Such a Church will produce real followers of the Lord.
In this respect the Protestant Churches need still to go on unto perfection. Then only will the Church put on her beautiful garments, and truly shine in the light of God's glory, when these two truths are held in that wondrous unity in which they appear in the life of Christ Himself. In all He suffered for us, He left us an example that we should follow in His footsteps. As the banner of the cross is lifted high, the atonement of the cross and the fellowship of the cross must equally be preached as the condition of true discipleship.
It is remarkable how distinctly this comes out in the teaching of the blessed Master himself. In fact, in speaking of the cross, He gives its fellowship more prominence than its atonement. How often He told the disciples that they must bear it with Him and like Him; only thus could they be disciples, and share in the blessings His crossbearing was to win. When Peter rebuked Him as He spoke of His being crucified, He did not argue as to the need of the cross in the salvation of men, but simply insisted on its being borne, because to Him as to us the death of self is the only path to the life of God. The disciple must be as the Master. He spoke of it as the instrument of self-sacrifice, the mark and the means of giving up our own life to the death, the only path for the entrance upon the new Divine life He came to bring. It is not only I who must die, He said, but you too; the cross, the spirit of daily self-sacrifice, is to be the badge of your allegiance to me. How well Peter learnt the lesson we see in his Epistle, Both the remarkable passages in which he speaks of the Saviour suffering for us—("Christ suffered for us; who bare our sins upon the tree;" "He suffered, the just for the unjust ")—are brought in almost incidentally in connection with our suffering like Him. He tells us that as we gaze upon the Crucified One, we are not only to think of the cross as the path in which Christ found His way to glory, but as that in which each of us is to follow Him.
The same thought comes out with great prominence in the writing of the Apostle Paul. To take one Epistle, that to the Galatians; we find four passages in which the power of the cross is set forth. In one we have one of the most striking expressions of the blessed truth of substitution and atonement: "Being made a curse for us, as it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree." This is indeed one of the foundation-stones on which the faith of the Church and the Christian rests. But a house needs more than foundation-stones. And so we find that no less than three times in the Epistle the fellowship of the cross, as a personal experience, is spoken of as the secret of the Christian life. "I have been crucified with Christ." "They that are Christ's have crucified the flesh with its affections and lusts." "God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world." That Christ bore the cross for us is not all; it is but the beginning of His work. It does but open the way to the full exhibition of what the cross can do as we are taken up into a lifelong, fellowship with Him the Crucified One, and in our daily life we experience and prove what it is to be crucified to the world. And yet how many earnest and eloquent sermons have been preached on glorying in the cross of Christ, in which Christ's dying on the cross for us has been expounded, but our dying with Him, in which Paul so gloried, has been forgotten!
The Church does indeed need to have this second truth sounded out as clearly as the first. Christians need to understand that bearing the cross does not in the first place refer to the trials which we call crosses, but to that daily giving up of life, of dying to self, which must mark us as much as it did Jesus, which we need in times of prosperity almost more than in adversity, and without which the fulness of the blessing of the cross cannot be disclosed to us. It is the cross, not only as exhibited on Calvary, but as gloried in on account of its crucifying us, its spirit breathing through all our life and actions, that will be to the Christian and the Church as it was to Christ, the path to victory and to glory, the power of God for the salvation of men.
The Redemption of the cross consists of two parts—Christ bearing the cross, Christ's crucifixion for us, as our atonement, the opening up of the way of life; our crucifixion, our bearing the cross with Christ, as our sanctification, our walking in the path of conformity to His blessed likeness. Christ the Surety and Christ the Example must equally be preached.
But it will not be sufficient that these two truths be set forth as separate doctrines; they can exercise their full power only as their inner unity is found in the deeper truth of Christ our Head. As we see how union with the Lord Jesus is the root in which the power of both the Surety and the Example has its life, and how the one Saviour makes us partakers both of the atonement and the fellowship of His cross, we shall understand how wonderful their harmony is, and how indispensable both are to the welfare of the Church. We shall see that as it is Jesus who opened up the way to heaven as much by the footsteps He left us to tread in as by the atonement He gave us to trust in, so it is the same Jesus who gives us pardon through His blood, and conformity to Himself through His Spirit. And we shall understand how for both faith is the only possible path. The life-power of this atonement comes through faith alone; the life-power of the example no less so. Our Evangelical Protestantism cannot fulfil its mission until the grand central truth of salvation by faith alone has been fully applied, not only to justification, but to sanctification too, that is, to the conformity to the likeness of Jesus.
The preacher who desires in this matter to lead his people in the path of entire conformity to the Saviour's likeness, will find a very wide field indeed opened up to him. The Christ-like life is like a tree, in which we distinguish the fruit, the root, and the stem that connects the two. As in individual effort, so in the public ministry, THE FRUIT will probably first attract attention. The words of Christ, "Do ye even as I have done," and the frequent exhortations in the Epistles to love, and forgive, and forbear, even as Christ did, lead first to a comparison of the actual life of Christians with His, and to the unfolding and setting up of that only rule and standard of conduct which the Saviour's example is meant to supply. The need will be awakened of taking time and looking distinctly at each of the traits of that wonderful Portrait, so that some clear and exact impressions be obtained from it of what God actually would have us be. Believers must be brought to feel that the life of Christ is in very deed the law of their life, and that complete conformity to His example is what God expects of them. There may be a difference in measure between the sun shining in the heavens and a lamp lighting our home here on earth; still the light is the same in its nature, and in its little sphere the lamp may be doing its work as beautifully as "the sun itself". The conscience of the Church must be educated to understand that the humility and self-denial of Jesus, His entire devotion to His Father's work and will, His ready obedience, His self-sacrificing love and kindly beneficence, are nothing more than what each believer is to consider it his simple duty as well as his privilege to exhibit too. There is not, as so many think, one standard for Christ and another for His people. No; as branches of the vine, as members of the body, as partakers of the same spirit, we may and therefore must bear the image of the Elder Brother.
The great reason why this conformity to Jesus is so little seen, and in fact so little sought after among a large majority of Christians, is undoubtedly to be found in erroneous views as to our impotence and what we may expect Divine grace to work in us. Men have such strong faith in the power of sin, and so little faith in the power of grace, that they at once dismiss the thought of our being expected to be just as loving, and just as forgiving, and just as devoted to the Father's glory as Jesus was, as an ideal far beyond our reach; beautiful indeed, but never to be realized. God cannot expect us to be or do what is so entirely beyond our power. They confidently point to their own failure in earnest attempts to curb temper and to live wholly for God, as the proof that the thing cannot be.
It is only by the persistent preaching of Christ our Example, in all the fulness and glory of this blessed truth, that such unbelief can be overcome. Believers must be taught that God does not reap where He has not sown, that the fruit and THE ROOT are in perfect harmony. God expects us to strive to speak and think and act exactly like Christ, because the life that is in us is exactly, the same as that which was in Him. We have a life like His within us; what more natural than that the outward life should be like His too? Christ living in us is the root and strength of Christ's acting and speaking through us, shining out from us so as to be seen by the world.
It is specially the preaching of Christ our Example, to be received by faith alone, that will be needed to lead God's people on to what their Lord would have them be. The prevailing idea is that we have to believe in Jesus as our Atonement and our Saviour, and then, under the influence of the strong motives of gratitude and consistency, to strive to imitate His example. But motives cannot supply the strength; the sense of impotence remains; we are brought again under the law: we ought to, but cannot. These souls must be taught what it means to believe in Christ their Example. That is, to claim by faith His Example, His Holy Life, as part of the salvation He has prepared for them. They must be taught to believe that this Example is not a something, not even a some one outside of them, but the living Lord Himself, their very Life, who will work in them what He first gave them to see in His earthly life. They must learn to believe that if they will submit themselves to Him, He will manifest Himself in them and their life-walk in a way passing all their thoughts; to believe that the Example of Jesus and the conformity to Him is a part of that Eternal Life which came down from heaven, and is freely given to every one that believeth. It is because we are one with Christ, and abide in Him, because we have in us the same Divine life He had, that we are expected to walk like Him.
The full insight into this truth, and the final acceptance of it, is no easy matter. Christians have become so accustomed to a life of continual stumbling and unfaithfulness, that the very thought of their being able with at least such a measure of resemblance as the world must recognise, to show forth the likeness of Christ, has become stranre to them. The preaching that will conquer their unbelief, and lead God's people to victory, must be ted by a joyous and triumphant faith. For it is only to faith, a faith larger and deeper than Christians ordinarily think needful for salvation, that the power of Christ's example taking possession of the whole life will be given. But when Christ in His fulness, Christ as the Law and the Life of the believer, is preached, this deeper faith, penetrating, to the very root of our oneness of life with Him, will come, and with it the power to manifest that life.
The growth of this faith may in different cases vary much. To some it may come in the course of quiet persevering waiting upon God. To others it may come as a sudden revelation, after seasons of effort, of struggling and failure; just one full sight of what Jesus as the Example really is, Himself being and giving all He claims. To some it may come in solitude where there is none to help but the living God Himself alone. To others it will be given, as it has been so often, in the communion of the saints, where amid the enthusiasm and love which the fellowship of the Spirit creates, hearts are melted, decision is strengthened, and faith is stirred to grasp what Jesus offers when He reveals and gives Himself to make us like Himself. But, in whatever way it come, it will come when Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit is preached as God's revelation of what His children are to be. And believers will be led, in the deep consciousness of utter sinfulness and impotence, to yield themselves and their life as never before into the hands of an Almighty Saviour, and to realize in their experience the beautiful harmony between the apparently contradictory words: "In me, that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing;" and, "I can do all things through Christ, who strengtheneth me."
But root and fruit are ever connected by a STEM, with its branches and leaves. In the life of Christ this was so too. The connection between His hidden life rooted in God, and that life manifesting itself in the fruit of holy words and works, was maintained by His life of conscious and continual personal fellowship with the Father. In His waiting on the Father, to see and hear what He had to make known, in His yielding Himself to the leadings of the Spirit, in His submission to the teachings of the Word which He came to fulfil, in His watching unto prayer, and in His whole life of dependence and faith, Christ became our Example. He had so truly been made like unto us in all things, become one with us in the weakness of the flesh, that it was only thus that the life of the Father could be kept flowing freely into Him and manifesting itself in the works He did. And just so it will be with us. Our union to Jesus, and His life in us, will most certainly secure a life like His. This not, however, in the way of an absolute necessity, as a blind force in nature works out its end; but in the way of an intelligent, willing, loving cooperations continual coming and receiving from Him in the surrender of faith and prayer, a continual appropriating and exercising of what we receive in watchful obedience and earnest effort, a continual working because we know He works in us. The faith in the vitality and the energy of the life in which we are eternally rooted win not lead to sloth or carelessness, but, as with Christ, rouse our energies to their highest power. It is the faith in the glorious possibilities that open up to us in Christ our life, that will lead to the cultivation of all that constitutes true personal fellowship and waiting upon God.
It is in these three points of similarity that the Christ-like life must be known; our life like Christ's hidden in God, maintained like His in fellowship with God, will in its external manifestation be like His too, a life for God. As believers rise to apprehend the truth, we are indeed like Christ in the life we have in God through Him; we can be like Christ in the keeping up and strengthening of that life in fellowship with God; we shall be like Christ in the fruits which such a life must bear; the name of followers of Christ, the imitation of Christ, will not be a profession but a reality, and the world will know that the Father has indeed loved us as He loved the Son.
I venture to suggest to all ministers and Christians who may read this, the inquiry whether, in the teaching and the thought of the Church, we have sufficiently lifted up Christ as the Divine Model and Pattern, in likeness to whom alone we can be restored to the Image of God in which we were created. The more clearly the teachers of the Church realize the eternal ground on which a truth rests, its essential importance to other truths for securing their complete and healthy development, and the share it has in leading into the full enjoyment of that wonderful salvation God has prepared for us, the better will they be able to guide God's people into the blessed possession of that glorious life of high privilege and holy practice which will prepare them for becoming such a blessing to the world as God meant them to be. It is the one thing that the world needs in these latter daysmen and women of Christ-like lives, who prove that they are in the world as He was in the world, that the one object of their existence is nothing other than what was Christ's object—the glorifying of the Father and the saving of men.
One word more. Let us above all beware lest in the preaching and seeking of Christ-likeness that secret but deadly selfishness creeps in, which leads men to seek it for the sake of getting for themselves as much as is to be bad, and because they would fain be as eminent in grace and as high in the favour of God as may be. God is love: the image of God is God-like love. When Jesus said to His disciples: "Be ye perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect," He told them that perfection was loving and blessing the unworthy. His very names tell us that all the other traits of Christ-likeness must be subordinate to this one: seeking the will and glory of God in loving and saving men. He is Christ the Anointed: the Lord hath anointed Him—for whom I for the broken—hearted and the captive; for them that are bound and them that mourn. He is Jesus; living and dying to save the lost. There may be a great deal of Christian work with little of true holiness or of the spirit of Christ. But there can be no large measure of real Christ-like holiness without a distinct giving up oneself to make the salvation of ers for the glory of God the object of our life. He gave HIMSELF FOR US, that He might claim US FOR HIMSELF, a peculiar people, zealous of good works. HIMSELF FOR US, and US FOR HIMSELF: an entire exchange, a perfect union, a complete identity in interest and purpose. HIMSELF FOR US as Saviour, US FOR HIMSELF still as Saviour; like Him and for Him to continue on earth the work He began. Whether we preach the Christ-like life in its deep inner springs, where it has its origin in our oneness with Him in God, or in its growth and maintenance by a life of faith and prayer, of dependence and fellowship with the Father, or in its fruits of humility and holiness and love, let us ever keep this in the foreground. The one chief mark and glory of the Christ is that He lived and died and lives again for this one thing alone: THE WILL AND THE GLORY OF THE GOD OF LOVE IN THE SALVATION OF SINNERS. And to be Christ-like means simply this: to seek the life and favour and Spirit of God only, that we may be entirely given up to to same object: THE WILL AND THE GLORY OF THE GOD OF LOVE IN THE SALVATION OF SINNERS.
[1] "Thomas à Kempis has said, "All men wish to be with Christ, and to belong to His people; but few are really willing to follow the life of Christ." There are many who imagine that to imitate Jesus Christ is a specially advanced state in the Christian life, to which only a few elect can attain: they think that one can be a real Christian if he only confesses his weakness and sin, and holds fast to the Word and Sacrament, without attaining any real confirm to tlte life of Christ; they even count it pride and fanaticism if one venture to say that conformity to the likeness of Jesus Christ is an indispensable sign of the true Christian. And yet our Lord says to all without exception: "He that doth not take his cross, and follow after me, is not worthy of me;" He mentions expressly the most difficult thing in His life—the cross, that which includes all else. And Peter writes not to some, but to the whole Church: Christ hath left us an Example that ye should follow His footsteps. It is a sad sign that these unmistakeable commands have been so darkened in our modern Christianity, that our leading ministers and church members have quietly, as by common consent, agreed to rob these words of their sting. A false dogmatic must bear no small share of the blame. To defend the Divinity of our Saviour against unbelief, men have presented and defended His Divine nature with such exclusiveness, that it became impossible to form any real living conception of His humanity. It is not enough that we admit that Christ was a true man; no one can form any true idea of this humanity who is ever afraid to lose the true Christ, if he does not every moment ascribe to Him Divine power and omniscience. For, of a truth, if Christ's suffering and cross be only and altogether something supernatural, we must cease to speak of the imitation of Christ in any true or real sense of the word. Oh, the gulf of separation which comes between the life of Christ and the life of Christians, when the relation between them is only an external one! And how slow and slothful the Church of our day is to apply the great and distinct rule so clearly laid down in the life of Christ, to the filling of these gulfs and the correcting of the disorders of our modern life. The Church of Christ will not be brought again out of its confusions until the faithful actual imitation of her Lord and Head again become the banner round which she rallies His disciples. "-From M. Diemer, Een nieuw boek over de navolging van Jesus Christus (A new book on the imitation of Jesus Christ).
[2] "What is it thou sayest, my son? Cease from complaining, when thou considerest my passion, and the sufferings of my other saints. Do not say, "To suffer this from such a one, it is more than I can or may do. He has done me great wrong, and accused me of things I never thought of. Of another I might bear it, if I thought I deserved it, but not from him!" Such thoughts are very foolish: instead of thinking of patience in suffering, or of Him by whom it will be crowded, we only are occupied with the injury done to us, and the person who has done it. No, he deserves not the name of patient who is only willing to suffer as much as he thinks proper, and from whom he pleases. The truly patient man asks not from whom he suffers, his superior, his equal, or his inferior; whether from a good and holy man, or one who is perverse and unworthy. But from whomsoever, how much soever, or how often soever wrong is done him, he accepts it all as from the hand of God, and counts it gain. For with God it is impossible that anything suffered for His sake should pass without its reward.
"O Lord, let that become possible to me by Thy grace, which by nature seems impossible. Grant that the suffering wrong may by Thy love be made pleasant to me. To suffer for Thy sake is most healthful to my soul."-From Thomas à Kempis, Of the Imitation of Christ, 3. 19, That the suffering of wrong is the proof of true patience.
[3] "Jesus hath now many lovers of His heavenly kingdom, but few bearers of His cross. He hath many who desire His consolation, few His tribulation; many who are willing to share His table, few His fasting. All are willing to rejoice with Him, few will endure anything for Him. Many follow Jesus into the breaking of bread, but few to drink of the cup whereof He drank. Many glory in His miracles, few in the shame of His cross."-From Thomas à Kernpis, Of the Imitation of Christ, 2. 11. That the lovers of the Cross of Jesus are few.
"To many it seems a hard speech, "Deny thyself, take up thy cross, and follow Jesus." But it will be much harder to bear that other word, "Depart from me, ye cursed;" for only they who now hear and follow the word of the cross shall then have no fear of the word of condemnation. For the sign of the cross will be seen in the heaven when the Lord cometh to judgment, and all the servants of the cross, who in their lifetime have been conformed to Christ crucified, will then draw near to Christ their judge with great confidence. Why, then, dost thou fear to take up the cross which fitteth thee for the kingdom? In the cross is life, in the cross is salvation: the cross defends against all enemies: in the cross there is the infusion of all heavenly sweetness; in the cross is strength of mind, joy of spirit; the cross is the height of virtue and the perfection of sanctity. There is no happiness for the soul but in the cross. Take up, therefore, thy cross and follow Jesus, and thou shalt live for ever.
"If thou bear the cross cheerfully, it will bear thee. If thou bear it unwillingly, thou makest for thyself a burden which still thou hast to bear. What saint was there ever who did not bear the cross? Even Christ must needs suffer. How then dost thou seek any other way than this, which is the royal way, the way of the sacred cross?
"He that willingly submits to the cross, to him its whole burden is changed into a sweet assurance of divine comfort. And the more the flesh is broken down by the cross, the more the spirit is strengthened by inward grace. It is not in man by nature, to bear the cross, to love the cross, to deny self, to bring the body into subjection, and willingly to endure suffering. If thou look to thyself, thou canst accomplish nothing of all this. But if thou trust in the Lord, strength shall be given thee from heaven, and the world and the flesh shall be made subject to thy rule. Set thyself, therefore, to bear manfully the cross of thy Lord, who out of love was crucified for thee.
"Know for certain thou oughtest to lead a dying life, for the more any man dieth unto himself, the more he liveth unto God. Surely, if there had been any better thing, and more profitable to man's salvation, than bearing the cross, Christ would have showed it us by word and example. But now He calleth all who would follow Him plainly to do this one thing, daily to bear the cross."-From Thomas à Kempis, Of the Imitation of Christ, 2, 12. Of the Royal Way of the Sacred Cross.
[4] One of the most earnest and successful labourers in the work of saving the lost writes as follows: "If I had not been led to a clearer and fuller experience of what salvation is, I never could have gone through the work of the last few years. But, at the same time, one thing has continually been becoming clearer, that we cannot speak of unbroken fellowship with our Lord unless we give up ourselves, and that without ceasing, to a world lying in the wicked one, to save in the strength of our Lord what He gives us to save. A consecration to the Lord without a consecration to our neighbour becomes an illusion or leads to fanaticism. It is this giving up of ourselves to the world to be its light and salt, to love it, even when it hates us, that constitutes for all really consecrated souls the true battle of life. To find in labour our rest, and in fighting the sin around us in the power of Jesus our highest joy, to rejoice more in the happiness of others than our own, and so not to seek anything for ourselves, but everything for others, this, this is our holy calling."
May God help us not only to admire such thoughts, but at once to join the little bands among His children who are really giving up everything, and making their life work the winning of souls for Jesus.
[5] "Evil can only be overcome by the contact of a most personal self-devotion, never by a love that stands at a distance. "Ye are the salt of the earth," Jesus said: ye yourselves just as you are, in the midst of society; in every place and every moment a sanctifying power must flow out from you and your presence. Christ Himself is the life and the light. In all that He does, or says, or suffers, it is always Himself; whoever separates ought from Himself no longer preserves it, it vanishes in his hands. And just this is the radical error of our modern Christianity. Men separate the words and works of Christ from Himself, and so it comes that many, with all they do as Christians, have never found Christ Himself. So there are many who trust in His suffering and merit, who cannot show that they have any real fellowship with Him, or truly follow Him. Christ had His abode not only in Cana of Galilee, but also in Gethsemane and on Calvary. Alas! are there not many who make their boast of the cross, and yet are more afraid of the real cross than they are of the devil? They have so wisely arranged their profession of Christ's cross, that no loss to their honour, their goods, or their liberty can ever come from it. Christ's true and actual imitation must once again, as in the olden times, become the standard of Christendom. Only and alone in this way will faith again conquer unbelief and superstition. Many are labouring hard at present to prove to a doubting world the inspiration of Holy Scripture, the truth of the words and the life of the Lord Jesus. It is labour in vain, to try and prove by words and argument that which can alone be made known by its own self-evidencing power and its actual presence! Let the proof be given in your deeds, that the spirit of the miracles dwells in you; prove above all in your life, that Jesus Christ is continuing in you His heavenly eternal life; and your words will bring many to believe. But if you are wanting in this demonstration of the Spirit and of power, be not surprised if the world bestow little attention on your eloquent arguments. The hour is come that all Christendom must rise up as one man, and in the power of Christ repeat over again what Christ Himself did to a perishing world. This is the need there is for the imitation of Jesus Christ; this is the only valid proof for the truth of Christianity."-From M. Diemer, Een nieuw boek van de navolging van Jesus Christus.
[6] I have left the preceding piece as it was originally published in Dutch. The English Revised Version translates: "But we all, with unveiled face reflecting as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image, from glory to glory, even as from the Lord the Spirit;" and gives in the margin "beholding as in a mirror." It is difficult to settle which is the better translation, as the original can bear both meanings I confess that beholding appears to me better to suit the passage: the reflecting the image can only come after we have been, or at least as we are being, "transformed into the same image." It is only as we are transformed into it we can reflect it: the means of the transformation appear to be almost better expressed by beholding than reflecting. However this may be, even if we prefer to translate reflecting, what has been said on beholding does not lose its force: it is the intent, longing, loving, adoring gaze on the glory of God in the face of the Beloved Son that transforms.
What rich instruction in regard to the Divine Photography of which the text speaks there is in what we see in the human art! In the practice of the photographer we see two things: faith in the power and effects of light, and the wise adjustment of everything in obedience to its laws. With what care the tenderly sensitive plate is prepared to receive the impression! with what precision its relative position to the object to be portrayed is adjusted! how still and undisturbed it is then held face to face with that object! Having done this, the photographer leaves the light to do its wonderful work: his work is indeed a work of faith.
May we learn the precious lessons. Let us believe in the light, in the power of the light of God, to transcribe Christ's image on our heart. "We are changed into the same image as by the Spirit of the Lord." Let us not seek to do the work the Spirit must do: let us simply trust Him to do it. Our duty is, to seek the prepared heart, waiting, longing, praying for the likeness; to take our place face to face with Jesus, studying, gazing, loving, worshipping, and believing that the wonderful vision of that Crucified One is the sure promise of what we can be; and then, putting aside all that can distract, in stillness of soul, silent unto God, just to allow the Blessed Spirit as the Light of God to do the work. Not less surely or wonderfully than in the light-printing which is done here on earth, will our souls receive and show the impress of that wonderful likeness.
I feel tempted to add one thought: what a solemn calling that of ministers as the servants of this Heavenly Photography, "ministers of the Spirit" in His work (see 2 Corinthians 4:6): to lead believers on, and point them to Jesus and every trait in that blessed face-and life as what they are to be changed to; to help them to that wistful longing, that deep thirsting for conformity to Jesus, which is the true preparation of soul; to teach them how, both in public worship and private prayer, they have just to place themselves face to face with their Lord, and give Him time, as they unbare and expose, their whole inner being to the beams of His love and His glory, to come in and take possession, by His Spirit to transform them into His own likeness.
"Who is sufficient for these things? Our sufficiency is of God, who hath made us able ministers of the Spirit."
[7] At a meeting of ministers, where these words in Romans 6:11 were being discussed, the question was asked by the reader, which of the five different thoughts of the verse was the most important. He pointed out what these thoughts were. The first, likewise also ye, suggesting the complete likeness to Him of whom it had just been said, "In that He died, He died unto sin once; in that He liveth, He liveth unto God." The second, reckon yourselves, the command in which the duty of a large but simple faith is laid upon us. Then, dead indeed to sin, the truth in which the teaching of the previous verses is summed up. Next, alive unto God, the never-failing accompaniment and the blessing of the death to sin. And then, through Jesus Christ our Lord, in Him who is ever root and centre of all Scripture teaching. Which of these clauses must be considered as that the right understanding of which is most essential to the full experience of the whole?
The first answer was at once given, "dead unto sin." It is certainly this expression, the leader remarked, that above all has created such deep interest in this verse, and stirred so much earnest striving to realize what it implies. And yet it does not appear to me the most important.
"Alive unto God," was the answer of a second. For it is the life of Jesus given to us in regeneration that makes its partakers of His death and its power over sin. "Dead unto sin" is only the negative aspect of what we have as a positive reality in being alive unto God, If we looked more at the "I alive unto God," the "dead unto sin" would be better understood.
"Reckon yourselves" was suggested by a third. Is not this command to act faith in what has been prepared us of God the chief thought of the verse, and that, therefore, to which our chief attention must be given?
Another brother now said, "Through Jesus Christ our Lord." Our leader said: I think I have lately been taught that this is indeed that on the right apprehension of which the power of the whole verse depends.
How many have been looking most earnestly for the full insight into the blessedness of being dead unto sin and alive unto God, and yet have failed! How often we have heard them pray, "Lord, we are not yet utterly dead, but we long to be so"! many others, who have better understood the text. and have seen that everything depends upon the "Reckon yourselves to be dead," upon the faith that accepts God's statement of what is already true and sure, yet confess that their faith is not followed by the power and the blessing they hoped for!
The mistake has been this: they have been more occupied with the blessings to be had in Jesus, "dead unto sin," "alive unto God," and the question as to their experience of them, or even with the effort to exercise a strong abiding faith in these blessings as theirs, than with JESUS HIMSELF, IN WHOM both the blessings, and the faith that sees them are ours. The death unto sin, the life unto God, are His (see Verse 10), are IN HIM, accomplished, living, actual, mighty realities; it is as we are IN HIM, and know ourselves to be in Him, and so come away out of ourselves to be and abide in Him only and always, that the blessings which there are in Him will, in the most simple and natural way possible, spontaneously become ours in experience, and that we shall be strengthened in faith to claim and enjoy them. It must be Christ Jesus first and Christ Jesus last. He must be all.
See how clearly this comes out in the third verse of the chapter: "Know ye not that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ, were baptized into His death?" The baptism into Jesus Christ was the first thing—that they had understood and accepted; the baptism into His death followed from it—this they were now yet to learn the meaning of. The Lord Jesus had been baptized with water and with the Holy Spirit, and yet He spoke of a baptism yet to come; the full outcome of His first baptism was to be the death of the cross. Even so it is with us. When baptized unto Christ we "put on Christ" (Galatians 3:27), we are made partakers of Him and all He is and was, of His death too. But it is only in course of time that we got to understand this, and really to claim the power of His death unto sin and His living unto God. But we can do this successfully only as we hold fast the initial all-comprehensive blessing, baptized INTO CHRIST. It is the faith that goes away out to take its abode consciously and permanently in Jesus that will have the power to say, "IN CHRIST JESUS" we are dead unto sin, and alive unto God; "I in Christ Jesus," we do boldly reckon ourselves dead unto sin and alive unto God.
"Baptized into His death:" what a word! The death of our Lord Jesus was the chief thing about Him; it gives Him His beauty, His glory, His victory, His power. In the complete conformity to this, the highest privilege of the Christian consists. To be immersed, plunged into, steeped in the death of Christ, the whole being penetrated with the spirit of that death, its obedience, its self-sacrifice, its utter giving up of everything that is of nature, that has been in contact with sin, to pass through the death into the new life that God gives: this must be the highest longing of the Christian.
He has been baptized into the death: He yields himself to the Holy Spirit to have all that it contains unfolded and applied. And he does this in simple faith: he knows that in Christ Jesus he is dead unto sin and alive unto God. Just as the life unto God is a complete and perfect thing, and yet subject to the law of growth and increase, so that he goes on to life more abundant, so with the death to sin. In Christ he is dead unto sin, completely and entirely, and yet the full enjoyment of what that death means and works in all its extent is matter of growing intelligence and experience.
But let us beware of wearying ourselves—how often we have done so!—with trying more to comprehend exactly, and to realize feelingly, what this death to sin is, and what the conscious reckoning ourselves dead is, than to remember that all this comes only as we are and abide IN CHRIST JESUS, IN WHOM alone these blessings are ours. I may be so occupied with the blessings and their pursuit, that I lose sight and hold of Him in whom I must be abiding most entirely if I am to enjoy them. Let my first aim be in wholehearted faith and obedience to dwell in Jesus, in whom are the death unto sin and the life unto God: the whole state of being which is implied in these words is His—He lives it, it is His alone —as I lose myself in Him, I may rest assured that the blessing I long for will come, or rather, I shall know that in Him I have the thing itself, that Divine life out of death working in me, even when I know not exactly to describe it in words. And I shall see how the whole power and blessedness of the command gathers itself into the closing clause, "Likewise also ye, reckon yourselves to be indeed dead unto sin, and alive unto God, IN CHRIST JESUS." IN CHRIST is the root of LIKE CHRIST.
[8] I add here an extract from Marshall On Sanctification, in which the reality of our being partakers with Jesus of the very nature in which He lived and died and rose again, is very clearly put.
I have often regretted that the somewhat antiquated style of this writer, and the introduction of questions not of immediate interest to the soul seeking the path of holiness, prevents his book from being as well known as it deserves to be. It is on all hands acknowledged to be the one standard work on the subject. It has been given him by God's Spirit with wonderful simplicity to set forth the great truth that holiness is a new life, a new nature, prepared for us in Christ Jesus, and that therefore every step in the pathway of holiness, whether in the use of the means of grace or in obeying God's commands, must be one of faith. I have thought that an abridgment of the work in which all that is essential is provided in the author's own words, would supply a real want, and might be a blessing to many. I have prepared such an abridgment, which has been issued by the publishers of the present work, under the title of The Highway of Holiness.
"The end of Christ's incarnation, death, and resurrection was to prepare and form an holy nature and frame for us in Himself, to be communicated to us by union and fellowship with Him; and not to enable us to produce in ourselves the first original of such an holy nature by our own endeavours.
"1. By His incarnation there was a man created in a new holy frame, after the holiness of the first Adam's frame had been marred and abolished by the first transgression; and this new frame was far more excellent than ever the first Adam's was, because man was really joined to God by a close, inseparable union of the divine and human nature in one person—Christ; so that these natures had communion each with other in their actings, and Christ was able to act in His human nature by power proper to the divine nature, wherein He was one God with the Father.
"Why was it that Christ set up the fallen nature of man in such a wonderful frame of holiness, in bringing it to live and act by communion with God living and acting in it? One great end was, that He might this excellent frame to His seed that should by His Spirit be born of Him and be in Him as the quickening Spirit; that, as we have borne the image the earthly man, so we might also bear the image of the heavenly (1 Corinthians 15:45, 49), in holiness here and in glory hereafter. Thus He was born Emmanuel, God with us; because the fulness of the Godhead with all holiness did first dwell in Him bodily, even in His human nature, that we might be filled with that fulness in Him (Matthew 1:23; Colossians 2:9, 10). Thus He came down from heaven as living bread, that, as He liveth by the Father, so those that eat Him may live by Him (John 6:51, 57); by the same life of God in them that was first in Him.
"2. By His death He freed Himself from the guilt of our sins imputed to Him, and from all that innocent weakness of human nature which He had borne for a time for our sakes. And, by freeing Himself, He prepared a freedom for us from our whole natural condition; which is both weak as His was, and also polluted with our guilt and sinful corruption. Thus the corrupt natural state which is called in Scripture the "old man" was crucified together with Christ, that the body of sin might be destroyed. And it is destroyed in us, not by any wounds which we ourselves can give it, but by our partaking of that freedom from, and death unto it, that is already wrought out for us by the death of Christ; as is signified by our baptism, wherein we are buried with Christ by the application of His death to us (Romans 6:2, 3, 4, 10, 11).
"God" sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, for sin (or "by a sacrifice for sin," as in the margin) condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the spirit" (Romans 8:3, 4). Observe here, that though Christ died that we might be justified by the righteousness of God and of faith, not by our own righteousness, which is of the law (Romans 10:4-6; Philippians 3:9), yet He died also, that the righteousness of the law and by walking after His Spririt, as those that are in Christ (Romans 8:4). He is resembled in His death to a corn of wheat dying in the earth that it may propagate its own nature by bringing forth much fruit (John 12:24): to the passover that was slain, that a feast might be kept upon it; and to br broken that it may be nourishment to those that eat it (1 Corinthians 5:7, 8, and 11:24); to the rock smitten that water might gush out of it for us to drink (1 Corinthians 10:4).
"He died that He might make of Jew and Gentile one new man in Himself (Ephesians 2:15); and that He might see His seed, i.e. such as derive their holy nature from Him. (Isaiah 53:10). Let these Scriptures be well observed, and they will sufficiently evidence that Christ died, not that we might be able to form an holy nature in ourselves, but that we might receive one nady prepared and formed in Christ for us, by union and fellowship with Him.
"3. By His resurrection He took possession of spiritual life for us, as now fully procured for us, and made to be our right and property by the merit of His death, and therefore we are said to be quickened together with Christ. His resurrection was our resurrection to the life of holiness, as as fall was our fall into spiritual death. And we are not ourselves the first makers and formers of our new holy nature, any more than of our original corruption, but both are formed ready for us to partake of them. And, by union with Christ, we partake of that spiritual life that He took possession of for us at His resurrection, and thereby we are enabled to bring forth the fruit of it; as the Scripture showeth by the similitude of a marriage union, Romans 7:4: 'We are married to Him that is raised from the dead that we might bring forth fruit unto God.'"
[9] Though the words of our Lord Jesus in the sixth of John were not spoken directly of the Lord's Supper, they are yet applicable to it, because they set forth that spiritual blessing of which the Holy Supper is the communication in a visible form. In eating the bread and drinking the wine, our spiritual life is not only strengthened because therein the pardon of our sins is signified and sealed to us, but because the Holy Spirit does indeed make us partakers of the very body and blood of our Lord Jesus as a spiritual reality. So one of our Reformed Church Catechisms, the Heidelberg (Qu. 78), puts it, "What is it then to eat the broken body and drink the shed blood of Christ" "It is not only to embrace with a believing heart the sufferings and death of Christ, and so to obtain the pardon of sin and life eternal; but moreover also that we are united to His sacred body by the Holy Ghost, who dwells both in Christ and in us, so that we, though Christ be in heaven and we on earth, are nevertheless flesh of His flesh and bones of His bones. "
It is known that there are in our Protestant Churches three views of the Lord's Supper. On the one hand, the Lutheran with its consubstantiation, teaching that the body of our Lord is so present in the bread, that even an unbeliever eats no longer only bread, but the body of the Lord. On the other the Zwinglian view, according to which the effect of the Sacrament is a very impressive exhibition of the truth that the death of Christ is to us what wine and bread are to the body, and a very expressive confession of our faith in this truth, and so of our interest in the blessings of that death. As the Holy Spirit in the Word speaks to us through the ear, so in the Sacrament through the eye. Midway between these views is that of Calvin, who strongly urges that there is in it a mysterious blessing, not well to be expressed in words; that it is not enough to speak of the life which the Spirit gives to our spirit through faith but that there is a real communication by the Holy Spirit of the very flesh and blood of Jesus in heaven to our very body, so that in virtue of this we are called members of His body, and have His body in us as the seed of the spiritual body of the resurrection. While avoiding, on the one hand, the sacramentarian view of a change in the bread, it seeks to hold fast, on the other, the reality of a spiritual substantial participation of the very body and blood of our Lord Jesus.
This is not the place to enter on this more fully. But I am persuaded that, when a more scriptural view prevails as to the relation between body and spirit, it will not be thought strange to believe that without anything like a real presence in the bread itself. we are indeed fed with the very body and blood of our Lord Jesus. The body of our Lord is now a spiritual body, transfigured and glorified into the spirit-life of the heavenly world, the spirit and the body in perfect, unity and harmony, so that now the Holy Spirit can freely dispense and communicate that body as He will. Our body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which dwelleth in us; our bodies are members of Christ; our mortal board are even now being quickened and prepared by the indwelling Spirit for the resurrection (Romans 8:11): why should it be thought strange that "by the Holy Spirit the communion" of the body of Christ, so distinctly promised, should be, not an Old Testament symbol or shadow, but a blessed heavenly reality?
Calvin's words are as follows: "I am not satisfied with the view of those who, while acknowledging that we have some kind of communion with Christ, only make us partakers of the Spirit, omitting all mention of flesh and blood." "In His humanity also the fulness of life resides, so that every one who communicates in His flesh and blood, at the same time enjoys the participation of life". The flesh of Christ is like a perennial fountain which transfuses into us the life flowing forth from the Godhead into itself. The communion of the flesh and blood of Christ is necessary to all who aspire to the Christian life. Hence these expressions: "The Church is 'the body of Christ.' " "Our bodies are 'the members of Christ.' " "We are members of His body, of His flesh and His bones." "What our mind does not comprehend, let faith receive, that the Spirit unites things separated by space. That sacred communion of flesh and blood by which Christ transfuses His life into us, just as if it penetrated our bones and marrow, He testifies and seals in the Supper, not by representing a vain or empty sign, but by these exerting an efficacy of the Spirit by which He fulfils what He promises." "I willingly admit anything which helps to express the true and substantial communication of the body and blood of the Lord, as exhibited to believers under the sacred symbols of the Supper, understanding that they are not received by the imagination or the intellect merely, but are enjoyed in reality as the food of eternal life." "We say that Christ descends to us, as well by the external symbol as by His Spirit, that He may truly quicken our souls by the substance of His flesh and blood." "Such is the corporeal presence which the sacrament requires, and which we say is here displayed in such power and efficacy, that it not only gives our minds undoubted assurance of heavenly life, but also secures the immortality of our flesh."-Calvin's Institutes 4. 17, § 7, 9, 10, 19, 24.
To the soul who seeks fully to live by Christ as He did by the Father, the sacrament is a real spiritual blessing, something more than what faith in the word gives. Let all the praying and believing and living in which we seek to realize the wonderful blessing of living just as Christ did by the Father, ever culminate in our communion of the body and blood at the Lord's table. And let us go forth from each such celebration with new confidence, that what has been given and confirmed on the great day of the feast, will by Jesus Himself be maintained in power in the daily life through the more ordinary channels of His grace—the blessed fellowship with Himself in the word and prayer.
[10] "Let us begin by considering what was the groundwork of the whole beauty and harmony of our blessed Saviour's character. Love to the Father was the ruling motive of His life. It so pervaded His nature as to find expression, directly or indirectly, in every word as well as every action. It will be well if we try to realize something of the perfect simplicity with which that love was so continually shown forth in daily life.
"We especially need to remind ourselves of how entirely this was the case, because, in these days of artificial manners, and of false shame, we are so frequently tempted to conceal our true motives, and to think it a disgrace if we are led into any sign of betraying our deepest religious feelings. We conceal them from those who would not understand them, lest perchance they should scorn our judgment, and wound our self-respect; and we too frequently even hide them from those who me of like mind with ourselves, lest they too might think us lacking in good taste. Self fears the slightest rebuke, the merest breath of disapproval So long as our love to God is weak enough to allow of its being hidden, self will carefully hide it, rather than run the least risk of being considered deficient in discretion.
"Of true discretion, which is quite a different thing, we shall find abundant examples in our Master's life. But that false discretion, which strives to divert notice, not from ourselves, but from the deepest principles of our conduct, and in order to save our own selfish feelings from being wounded, finds no counterpart whatever in the life of our Lord. In His earthly nature, as man, Christ loved the Lord His God with all His heart and with all His strength. And this all-pervading, love could not but assert itself continually. Our lord simply and unhesitatingly referred to it as a simple fact, whenever the slightest occasion for doing so arose. It was His avowed object that the world should know that He loved the Father. He frequently and emphatically alluded to His personal connection with the Father as the means by which He lived: it was His consciousness of that union which gave Him unfailing support.
"Jesus Christ made known the Father's love; He was sent that He might reveal the deep blessedness of belonging wholly to God. Even so are we sent, each one of us into the world, in order that we may make the Saviour known to those around us. Through our own intimate and personal connection with Himself, we are each one of us to reveal the Son, even as He revealed the Father. And this we can only do by acting as He did, by continually proving how all-sufficient is the sense of union with Himself."-From a chapter on the example left us by Christ, in a little book containing many precious thoughts, Steps on the Upward Path; or, Holiness unto the Lord. By A. M. James. Religious Tract Society.