Am I in Christ? (Continued)
“Know ye not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates.” — 2 Cor. xiii, 5.
HE tests spoken of in the preceding chapters
would be incomplete without the addition
of one other.
To “faith and love, which is in Christ Jesus,” must be added their necessary adjunct and concomitant — “Without HOLINESS no man shall see the Lord” (Heb. xii. 14). Indeed, faith and love would be spurious, mere names and counterfeits, unless this latter be their expression and outcome. The Divine Master himself tells of the impossibility otherwise of entering the fortress of Love. He makes holiness an essential condition, so to speak, of abiding within that fortress. “If ye keep My commandments y ye shall abide in My love” (John xv. i o). And how frequently He reiterates the same assertion. “If ye love Me, keep My. commandments” (John xiv. 15); “also,” He that hath My commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth
Me; and he that loveth Me shall be loved of My Father, and I will love him, and will manifest Myself to him “(John xiv. 21). “If a man love Me, he will keep My words: and My Father will love him, and we will come unto him and make our abode with Him” (John xiv. 23). “He that abideth in Me, the same bringeth forth much fruit” (John xv. 5). While assuring them that all within the compass of His Omnipotence to bestow will be theirs in answer to prayer, hear the divine postulate — “If ye abide in Me, a7id My words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will and it shall be done unto you” (John xv. 7). Equally impressive is His converse utterance of warning: — “Every branch in Me that beareth not fruit He taketh away” (John xv. 2). Holiness is the key-note to the whole teaching of His Sermon on the Mount. With what righteous emphasis does He discard mere barren, intellectual assent to doctrine, if dissevered from purity of heart, and assimilation to the divine will and character — “Not every one that saith unto Me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of My Father which is in heaven” (Matt. vii. 21). In His intercessory prayer, His petitions to the Father are, if we may so express it, supported and strengthened with the plea — “Thine they were, and Thou gavest them Me, and they have kept Thy word” (John xvii. 6). After His work on earth was completed, how solemnly does He dwell, in later injunctions from His glorified lips to the Churches in
Asia, on the necessity of a spirit of holiness in all (whether in a corporate or individual capacity) who are IN Him! How repeated, in these divine epilogues also (just as we have noted in the course of His earthly ministry) — are His monitions against an inoperative and uninfluential faith — a cold formal love! To take one as an example. “I know,” says He to the Church of Sardis, “thy works, that thou hast a name that thou livest, and art dead. Be watchful, and strengthen the things which remain, that are ready to die: for I have not found thy works perfect before God. Kemember therefore how thou hast received and heard; and hold fast, and repent. If therefore thou shalt not watch, I will come on thee as a thief, and thou shalt not know what hour I will come upon thee!” (Rev. iii. 1-3). While to those of that same Church who had their “garments undefiled” (ver. 4), in other words, who had attained to holiness of heart and life. He appends the beautiful promise — “He that overcometh, the same shall be clothed in white raiment, and I will not blot out his name out of the book of life, but I will confess his name before My Father, and before His Angels” (ver. 5).
Is it needful for us to adduce any passages of similar import from the writings of St. Paul? All our preceding meditations on his monogram are filled with imperative injunctions as to the cultivation and development of this inner grace of sanctification. “Ye are not your own, for ye are bought with a price, therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are His” (i Cor. vi. 20). “In whom,” as a resultant necessity of this mystical union and incorporation, (to revert to a familiar verse), “all the building fitly framed together groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord: IN” WHOM ye also are builded together for an habitation in God through the Spirit “(Eph. ii. 21, 22).” Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption “(Eph. iv. 3). In the Epistle to the Colossians, (where, as we have also previously seen, the oneness of the believer with his Saviour is very specially referred to), the great end and object of that mystical union is thus stated — “And you... hath He reconciled in the body of His flesh through death, to present you holy and unblameable and unreproveable in His sight” (Col. i. 21, 22). The central portion and kernel of his prayer in behalf of the same Church is — “That ye might be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding; that ye might walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing, being fruitful in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God “(Col. i. 9, I o).” They that are Christ’s,” says he, in writing to the Galatians, “have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts” (Gal. v. 24). To like purpose in Ephesians i. 4, believers are said to be “chosen IN Him before the foundation of the world, that they should be holy and without blame before Him in love.” In the sublimest chapter of his great Epistle, in speaking of “the called according to His purpose,” he adds — “For whom He did foreknow, He also did predestinate to le conformed to the image of His Son “(Rom. viii. 28, 29). The summing up of that same doctrinal epistle begins with the adjuration —” I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, hol, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service “(Rom. xii. i). Nor can we forget how, in an earlier part, these most solemn words confront us (we know none more solemn in Scripture or that should lead to deeper heart-scrutiny) — “If any man have not the spirit of Christ, HE is NONE of His “! (Rom. viii. 9). Without adverting to the disputed authorship of the Epistle to the Hebrews, we have there at all events this Pauline declaration — “For we are made partakers of Christ, if we hold the beginning of our confidence steadfast unto the end” (Heb. iii. 1 4).
These testimonies would be incomplete without including another of “the glorious company of the Apostles; “— him whose own distinctive and favourite ’ monogram ’ undoubtedly was,” God is love “: as if he had no room for any other thought or test. Yet listen to a few of His utterances as to Love’s needful and essential complement.” If we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie and do not the truth “( i John i. 6).” Whosoever abideth iii^Him sinneth not; whosoever sinneth hath not seen Him, neither known Him. Whosoever is born of
God doth not commit sin, for his seed remaineth in him, and he cannot sin, because he is born of God “(i John iii. 6, 9). “And he that keepeth His commandments, dwelleth in Him, and he in Him; and hereby we know that He abideth in us, by the Spirit which He hath given us” (i John iii. 24). While adopting in its glorious plenitude the formula of his “beloved brother,” the aged Seer of Ephesus may be heard to sum up all in the earnest exhortation — “And every man that hath this hope IN Him purifieth himself, even as He is pure” (i John iii. 3).
Thus, then, have we seen, in this and the foregoing meditation, that Faith, Love, and Holiness are the three consecrated occupants of the regenerated soul, ministering Levites in the spiritual Temple — a trinity of divine forces in the new nature of “the man in Christ.” And it is through the operation and development of these three divine principles that the end and object of Redemption, in the case of each member of the Church is attained — “That the name of our Lord Jesus Christ may be glorified in you, and ye in Him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ” (2 Thess. i. 1 2).
But it may be said, and said truly, do we not, in the assertion of these solemn verities
Soar too high,
For sinful man beneath the sky “?
Does not the believer — he, whose peerless privilege we have seen throughout to be in Christ — ever and anon, by reason of his own backsliding — (faithless, and loveless seasons), grievously imperil his spiritual and everlasting safety?
We have adverted to that same question more than once in the course of this Volume. But the necessity of guarding, alike against discouragement and misapprehension is so great, that we offer no apology for recurring to the subject, in connection with the special topic of this chapter. We reply then, as we have previously done, that, in the highest sense of the word, the believer’s standing-ground in his Saviour is unassailable. Blessed be God, in respect of the Great covenant relation as ’ the Redeemed of the Lord, whom He hath redeemed out of the hand of the enemy,’ His people cannot be finally relegated under the old bondage of sin and death. Redeemed once, they are redeemed for ever. “He hath broken the gates of brass, and cut the bars of iron in sunder” (Ps. cvii. 1 6). In another and sadder acceptation, however, there may be (in the case of most there are) grievous relapses, it may even be painful experiences and memories of guilt and shortcoming: — the consciousness of oft-abused mercies, scorned grace. The sun may be there; it is there; but his glorious disc is hidden and obscured by enfolding clouds: clouds which our own faithlessness and sin have gathered: — “Thou didst hide Thy face and I was troubled” (Ps. xxx. 7). Oh! it is surely no small comfort to those who have undergone, or may be undergoing, these terrible experiences, that Christ Himself,
—He who knoweth our frame, — who can enter, as no other can, with sensitive tenderness into the frailties of His tried and tempted people — recognises the possibility of such falls and collapses. Hear His own words to those who were the most favoured recipients of His presence and fellowship — “Behold the hour Cometh, yea is now come, that ye shall be scattered every man to his own, and ye shall leave Me alone “(John xvi. 32). The J did leave Him ‘alone’: — the saddest and mournfulest hour of His and their history. The hour when loyal allegiance and fidelity were most needed and demanded; then, yes, then, the very body-guard of the Prince of Life, as we know well, turned renegade, despite of a recent solemn appeal that might have effectively rung its deterrent accents in their ears — “Will ye also go away?” They fled, panic-stricken, in coward ingratitude, amid the moonlit groves of Olivet. The Vessel that had so long and lovingly sheltered them, they abandoned to the fury of the storm. How soon had they forgotten the conditional promises which, as we have seen, had so lately been addressed to them — ■” If ye abide in Me;” and its sad converse, “Without Me!”
We repeat, it is, alas! the too truthful rehearsal of human experience still. “In Christ,” and yet betrayed into grievous sin! Oh, how dreadful the character which, in such case, that sin assumes! Sin committed IN Christ! How abominable in the sight of “Him that is Holy, Him that is True” — the defiling of that
Temple ‘^ whose Temple are ye’’’! Yes, and what a loud call surely to the believer to exercise the most scrupulous watchfulness and vigilance, lest, in some unguarded moment, he may be led thus to inflict foul dishonour on his Lord, as well as leave some indelible stain on his own conscience: the soul, which ought to be a mirror reflecting the Saviour’s image, irretrievably blurred and shattered!
We have taken the saddest phase of spiritual aberration; and even if there be no such overt, or positive act of sin, faith and love and holiness may at times be dimmed from other causes, too varied and numerous to specify, — each heart, knowing its own bitterness. But, be these experiences what they may; even in the lowest extremities, “in darkness and in the deeps,” cannot Hoipe, “the song-bird “— the nightingale of the soul, — awake its reviving melody stUl, as of old, amid the deepening shadows and surging waves — “Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of Thy water-spouts: all Thy waves and Thy billows are gone over me. Yet the Lord will command His loving-kindness in the daytime, and in the night His song shall be with me, and my prayer unto the God of my life.... Hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise Him “(Ps. xlii. 7, 8, 11). Note, it is prayer, the cry of the new creature IN” Christ, which restores the joys of salvation. See in that allegorical picture in the Song of Songs, how the Bride found at last her long-forfeited Lord. She simply sought Him. Prayer was her resort. Leaving the darkened city, her footsteps carry her from hill to hill, and from valley to valley, wherever she deems it likely her Gracious Shepherd may be. The cry of a broken heart is heard. But observe too, it is a cry of unquenched love (for even to the Heart-Searcher she can own “whom my soul loveth “): — “Tell me, 0 thou whom my soul loveth, where thou feedest, where thou makest thy flock to rest at noon” (Sol. Song i. 7).
If any eyes, dim with sadder than tears of bereavement, trace these lines, do not despair. “Cast thy burden” (the heaviest supposable one) “on the Lord, He will sustain thee;” He will release thee. The enemy may do his best to drive thee to despondency; but take our monogram, as we find it in the lips of the same Old Testament Saint — when “tears had been his meat day and night;” smarting under the cruel, yet he felt merited sarcasm, of those who said unto him, “Where is now thy God?” They with their philosophy of despair would have him leave his covenant-shelter, and like a maimed and wounded bird betake himself to other refuges. What is his answer? Confident of his position as a child of that covenant, and with his perch, though all unworthy of it, on the sheltering boughs of the Tree of Life — “In THE LoKD,” is his reply, “put I my trust: why say ye to my soul, Flee as a bird to your mountain “? (Ps. xi. I.)
“Oh thou of little faith, wherefore dost thou doubt?”
God will not reject the sighings and aspirations of the penitential spirit. The promise is ever sure — •” They that seek shall find.” It may be uphill struggle; oftbaffled purposes —
“An infant ciying in the night — An infant crying for the light,
And with no language but a cry.”
It may be the efforts of the chained eagle, flapping his wings — straining his eye for blue vault and everlasting hills. But “He satisfieth the longing soul: “and it is only one of His thousand assured promises —” Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall: but they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint “(Isa. xl. 30, 31). “The waves,” says Chrysostom, “are many and the storm is furious; but I fear not to be drowned, for I stand upon a Rock.” It is by more fully realising not only that we are on the Rock, but in the Rock (in Christ), that the words become to us an assurance as well as a precept — “Sin shall not have dominion over you “(Rom. vi. 1 4).” The most effectual way in which a Christian can get the better of a particular fault, is by cultivating the root of all holiness, by endeavouring to obtain a closer union with Jesus Christ, and to acquire more of that blessed Spirit... which will enable him to conquer all his corrup-
2C5
tions, and to improve and strengthen all his Christian graces.”
“At that day,” therefore, (may we once more employ the Saviour’s own utterance and say) — “At that day” (the day of Faith and Love and Holiness; it may be added, the day of godly sorrow, the day which listens to the meanings of the contrite in heart), “ye shall know that I am in the Father, and ye IN Me, and I in you.” We may, in a similar spiritual acceptation, append words spoken by the same Divine lips at the same solemn time. What accents of comfort to every sorrowing wanderer, bewailing, through his own self-forfeiture, the loss of the Great Shepherd! “And ye now therefore have sorrow; but I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you” (John xvi. 22).
William Wilberforce’s Letter to his Son. Life of Bishop Wilberforce, vol. i. page 11.