Am I in Christ?
“Know ye not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye he reprohates.” — 2 Cor. xiii. 5. ’ Hold fast the form of sound words, which thou hast heard of me, in faith and love which is IN Christ Jesus.” — 2 Tim. i. 13.
DUE previous meditation might appropriately
have formed the conclusion of this Volume:
the eternal union and communion of the
believer with an ever-living Lord in heaven.
But there is one all momentous practical question which seems still to demand the special consideration of every reader. How do I know that all this wealth of present bliss and everlasting glory is mine? ‘Am I IN Christ? ’
The entire verse from the Apostle’s 2nd Epistle to the Corinthians, of which the first words above quoted are a part, distinctly state that there are certain data by which this personal problem may be accurately solved. To express it differently, there are certain plain, palpable tests and characteristics furnished in Holy Scripture, by which we can approximately, at all events, determine our relation to God, and our warrant to say in the language (we have often quoted) of him who thus penned his own monogram — “I know a man in Christ.”
Surely we may say, in premising, of supremest importance to each of us is the answer to that question. ‘Out of Christ’ — outside the clefts of the Rock — we are exposed to the fury of the storm. “Out of Me “(apart from Me), says the Saviour Himself,” ye can do nothing “(John xv. 5). Xor can there be any neutral ground — any possibility of compromise here. An old writer tersely expresses it,” Halfway to Christ is a dreadful place.” On the other hand, we have written to little purpose in the preceding pages, if we have failed to set forth the glorious converse; alike the freeness of the Gospel invitation, and the inviolable security and peace to be found in Christ. With Him (m Him), we are safe for time, safe for eternity. It was the presence of the Ark in the Wilderness of old — the symbol of the Jehovah- Angel’s presence — which guaranteed Israel’s safety. When the Ark moved, they moved; when the Ark rested, they rested. The prayer of Moses is very remarkable. It was not, ‘Take us safe to Canaan ‘: but rather (if we may venture to give his petition a Gospel rendering) — to be, in Christ; — within the shadow of the Pillar- Cloud by day, and the Fiery Column by night: —” If Thy presence go
“I Jcnow,” not ‘knew,’ as in our authorised version. — See AlforiVa Greek Testament in loc.
not with us, carry us not hence” (Ex. xxxiii. 15). Happy for those of us who can say, with some good measure of lowly confidence, in the words of one who knew more than others of this blissful shelter of the great Anti-typical SheJcinah, “And truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ” (i John i. 3).
Let us restrict ourselves, at present, to two such texts afforded by our Apostle, and which he groups together in the second of our motto-verses — “In faith and love which is in Christ Jesus” (2 Tim. i. 13).
(i.) The first of these characteristics here mentioned is FAITH in Christ. It would be to rehearse the best-known and most significant utterances, both of Gospels and Epistles, were we to attempt enumerating the various passages in which this elementary Christian grace is referred to. Take a few specimen sayings of the Redeemer Himself. It is, if I may so call it, the leading and prominent feature in His own repeated manifestoes. “Come unto Me” (Matt. xi. 2 8). “Him that Cometh unto Me I will in no wise cast out” (John vi. 3 7). “AU that the Father giveth Me shall come to Me.” “He that believeth on Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in Me, shall never die” (John xi. 25, 26). “God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John iii. 1 6).
“Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that heareth My word, and believeth on Him that sent Me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life” (John v. 24). “In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying. If any man thirst, let him come unto Me, and drink. He that believeth on Me, as the Scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water” (John vii. 37, 38). So also in the Great Intercessory Prayer — “For I have given unto them the words which Thou gavest Me; and they have received them, and have known surely that I came out from Thee, and they have believed that Thou didst send Me” (John xvii. 8).
To pass from the sayings of the Master to those of His faithful Apostles. One of Paul’s most familiar exhortations in one of the most memorable incidents of his history was — “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved” (Acts xvi. 31). “For,” says he in another epistle, “though I be absent in the flesh, yet am I with you in the spirit, joying and beholding your order, and the steadfastness of jovlt faith IN Christ” (Col. ii. 5). “The righteousness which is of faith” is a remarkable assertion of his towards the close of his Roman Epistle — “speaketh on this wise. ... If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved” (Rom. X. 6, 9). The Beloved disciple again and again echoes the same assertion — “Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God” (i John v. i). “He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in himself” ( i John v. i o). Quotations might be almost indefinitely multiplied; but those given are enough to show, that “coming” to Christ, “confessing” Christ, “believing in” Christ: in other words, the exercise of a simple appropriating faith in Him and in all the benefits of His purchase, form one incontrovertible evidence to every anxious inquirer, of God “dwelling in Him, and he m God” (John iv. 15). “Only live in this faith, walk in it, and act in it, and as surely as Christ lived by the Father, so shall every member of His body live by the strength and wisdom of its Head.”
With this foundation text before us, we can adopt the words of the Saviour’s Valedictory discourse and say, “At THAT day” (the day of your coming to Me, and reposing on Me), “ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye IN Me, and I in you” (John xiv. 20).
(2.) The second characteristic, here mentioned by the Apostle, is love: — “in faith and love, which is in Christ Jesus.” When these two sacred graces have revealed themselves, they confidently tell that the soul has become an adjunct of the Great living Temple.
Let us here also listen, in the first instance, to the Saviour’s own emphatic testimony: “He that loveth Me shall be loved of My Father” (John xiv. 21).
‘■ Memorials of a Quiet Life,” voL ii. p. 213.
“The Father Himself loveth you, because ye have loved Me, and have believed that I came out from God” (John xvi. 27). Our Apostle refers in many passages to this new and indispensable evidence of the spiritual life. He speaks not only of that divine love, like the sun in the heavens flooding the soul, but the soul becoming itself a willing recipient. “The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost, which is given unto us” (Rom. v. 5). Again, “The love of Christ constraineth us” (2 Cor. v. 14). “The Lord direct your hearts into the love of God” (2 Thess. iii. 5). It is, moreover, remarkable the frequency with which St. Paul combines, as we find him doing in this same verse at the head of the chapter, both testing principles of Faith and Love; as if they were the two co-ordinate and inseparable factors in the Christian’s inner life — “Putting on the breastplate of faith and love” ( I Thess. V. 8). In one of the most glowing passages of his writings we have a similar conjunction in a more extended form — “In whom we have boldness and access with confidence by the faith of Him. That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God” (Eph. iii. 12, 17-19); while his closing benediction in the same Epistle is — “Peace be to the brethren, and love with faith” (Eph. vi. 23). Though he reverses the order, hear, in his salutation to his beloved Philemon, the groundwork of thanksgiving to God on his behalf — “Hearing of thy love and faith, which thou hast toward the Lord Jesus, and toward all saints” (Philemon 5). And once more, see how in writing to his son Timothy he entwines, so to speak, faith and love with his monogram — “And the grace of our Lord was exceeding abundant, with faith and love, which is IN Christ Jesus” (i Tim. i. 14). In the General Epistle of Jude we have the same juxtaposition of the two Christian graces. It seems as if Faith brings first within the divine fortress, and then, armed with the holy breastplate of Love, we pace in safety the battlements, and keep sacred vigil within. — “But ye beloved, building up yourselves in your most holy faith,... keep yourselves in the love of God” (Jude 20, 21). The venerable St. James speaks of “the crown of life which the Lord hath promised to them that love Him” (James i. 1 2). As in the case of the Apostle of the Gentiles, how beautifully also does the Apostle of the Circumcision combine the two graces, putting moreover in the lips of his converts the familiar monogram — “Whom having not seen, ye love; IN whom, though now ye see Him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory” (i Pet. i. 8). Could the latter Apostle ever forget how solemnly the ’ love-test ’ was addressed to himself: and that, too, in words of more touching adjuration than ever fell on mortal ear: “Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou Me?” We need be least of all surprised to meet with this evidence of love reiterated in the Epistles of the Disciple of Love. We find St. John adducing it, first in a negative shape: “If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in Him” (i John ii. 15). Then, to take one out of many beautiful and expressive passages in his Epistles, in which it is brought before us in a positive form — “And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him” (i John iv. 16). This atmosphere of love, breathed and inhaled by every “man in Christ,” includes along with the love of God the love of the Brotherhood.
Deepest in the centre, its waves send their circling eddies to the circumference of humanity; — “If we love one another. His love is perfected in us.’’ “We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren” ( i John iii. 1 4). “Be ye kind,” says St. Paul, in a beautiful passage (Eph. iv. 32), where, yet again, his monogram (which occurs in the original) is misrendered, and indeed practically omitted, in our authorised translation — “Be ye kind one to another, tender hearted, forgiving one another, even as God IN Christ hath forgiven you.”
Can we, with some lowly measure of assured confidence, subscribe the twofold test which the Apostle
6 Gcos eV Xpiarc, not “for ChrlsCs sake,” as in the English version.
has thus submitted to us? Has faith, the elder-born of the two graces, reached out its hand, and touched the golden sceptre? Have we looked to Christ? Have we come to Christ? Have we received Christ? Then, further, and in conjunction with this, are we conscious of a faith ‘*’ which worketh by love: “a faith which has born within us new thoughts of God? Has the dread feeling which once surrounded our every conception of Him — the Awful, the Incomprehensible — passed away; and do we feel the loving affection of children, engendered and cherished towards our Father in Heaven, and the Brother in our nature on the Throne? In a word, can we take up and appropriate the twin challenge of the two great leaders in the Apostolic Church? Can we make St. Paul’s noble avowal of a personal faith, which thus at the end of his consecrated life rises to its climax — “I know whom I have BELIEVED, and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him “? (2 Tim. i. 1 2). Can we make St. Peter’s equally memorable declaration (it may be, like him, with trembling lip, yet too with honest sincerity of heart and purpose, — “Lord, Thou knowest all things. Thou knowest that / LOVE Thee “? (John xxi. 1 7).