The Christian Life: The Ideal
“Far better in its place the lowliest bird
Should sing aright to Him the lowliest song Than that a seraph strayed should take the word And sing his glory wrong.”
“TTTHAT is it to be a Christian? What is thai ‘* change which, wrought in a natural man, makes him a Christian man? What are a Christian’s new relations to God and to his fellow-men? What is Christian character? How should a Christian live? AVhat is the pattern on which his life should be fashioned? If we would make our Christian lives what they ought to be, we must find plain, clear answers to these questions. A Christian is one who believes on Christ. He has entrusted his whole life, with its sin, its guilt, its ruin, its need, its security for eternity, its redemption, cleansing and transformation, to the hands of the mighty Saviour, the strong Son of God,
A Christian is therefore a saved one, a redeemed one — saved, redeemed, by Christ. He is no longer guilty and condemned: he is acquitted, justified, restored to such relations before God that he is as if he had never sinned, so fully are his sins put away. He is God’s lost and wandering child brought home, received, reconciled, restored to all a child’s privileges.
But this is not all; it is not merely a change of relations. Those who believe on Christ are born again, the Scripture says — born from above, born of God; that is, there is a new, a divine, life in the regenerated soul. Christ speaks of it as a well of water in the believer springing up into everlasting life. The result is shown in new affections, new desires, new hopes, new aims. Forgiveness of sins is not enough. A man’s lies and dishonesties may be forgiven; but if that is all, he is still a liar and dishonest. God’s forgiveness regenerates. A Christian life is really the setting up of the kingdom of God in a human heart.
A child was troubled at the thought that heaven was so far away, and was perplexed to know how he could ever get up to that bright home. His
18 IN mS STEPS.
mother explained to him that heaven must first come down to him — must first enter his heart. A Christian is one into whose heart the spirit of heaven has entered. The new life is like that they live in heaven. We are taught to pray, “Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven.” The one place in all the earth in which it most concerns each Christian to see that God’s will is done as it is in heaven is in his own individual heart.
If we are truly born again, the life of heaven has really begun within us. It may be very feeble in its beginning, like one little seed only, planted in a garden; but the one seed is from heaven, and the new life in us has truly begun. “That which is born of the Spirit,” said the Master, “is spirit.” It is the life of the Spirit in a human soul. Paul put this truth in very striking way when he said, “I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.” Our Lord said a Christian is “a branch “of the true Vine. This suggests what Christian life and character should be before the world. Every true Christian is a new incarnation. Christ showed the world in his own person the life of the invisible God. No human eye ever saw God in nis glory; no one could ever have seen him had not Christ come down and in a plain, simple and real human life which men could see and understand lived out the divine life which in its glorymen could neither see nor understand. He interpreted the invisible things of God in act and phrase which the common people could read. He said, when he was asked about God, “Look at me and see God. I and my Father are one. He that hath seen me hath seen the Father.”
In like manner, in his own small measure, every one truly a Christian is an incarnation of God, and should be able in humility to say, “Look at me, and you will see a dim but faithful representation of God.” This puts a very solemn resyonsibility on every Christian. He represents God in this world, and is to live in such a way that from his life men shall learn the truth about God. If Christ lives in us, men must see Christ in our faces and hear him in our words and learn of him in our acts.
The ideal of Christian life is therefore the likeness of Christ. That is the pattern shown in the mount after which we are to strive to fashion our life.
As we study Christ in the Gospels there rises up before us the vision of his matchless beauty. We go over the chapters, and we find one fragment of his loveliness here and another there; and as we read the story through to the end beauty after beauty appears, until at length we see a full vision of the Christ which, though imperfect by reason of the imperfectness of our nature, yet truly represents to us the image of our blessed Redeemer. This is the pattern we are to follow in fashionino; our lives. This is the vision we are to seek to carve into reality in our own character. All acts we are to bring to the example of Christ, testing each one by that infallible standard. The gospel should be studied by the young Christian as a builder studies the architect’s drawings, that every minutest detail may be exactly reproduced so far as in a faulty and sinful human life the character and conduct of the faultless and sinless Jesus can be reproduced. The perfect Pattern is ever to be held before us for imitation, and as we look at it glowing in all its marvelous beauty, yet far above us and beyond our present reach, we are to comfort ourselves and inspire our hearts to the noblest efforts and highest attainments by the thought, “That is what some time I am going to be.” And however slow may be our progress toward that perfect ideal; however sore the struggles with weakness and sin; however often we fail, — we are never to lose sight of the distant goal nor cease to strive and press toward the mark. Some day, if we are faithful to the end and faint not, we shall emerge out of all failure and struggle, and, seeing Jesus as he is, shall be fully transformed into his blessed image.
Such is the aim of the Christian life. “We shall be like Him ‘’ — that is the final destiny of eveiy redeemed life. This should be inspiration enough to arouse in the dullest soul every sluggish hope and every slumbering energy, and to impel to the highest effort and the most heroic struggle. This assurance should perpetually shine like a bright star beyond the fields of toil and battle, forbidding discouragement in any temporary failure or defeat and cheering all faintness. and weariness into buoyant strength and enthusiasm.
This goal of blessedness is not to be reached at one bound: it is the work of long and painful years, and the progress is slow and the transformation gradual and almost imperceptible.
“Heaven is not gained by a single bound, But we build the ladder by which we rise From the lowly earth to the vaulted skies, And we mount to its summit round by round.”
It will help us, in striving after the perfected beauty, to remember that we can best attain it by carving each moment’s line with care. God gives us life by days and hours, not by months and years. The way to have his purpose for us fulfilled in us is to fill each minute with simple faithfulness. Doing God’s will for each moment not only lights the path for the next, but prepares us for its responsibility. Charles Kingsley said,” Do to-day’s duty, fight to-day’s temptation, and do not weaken or distract yourself by looking forward to things which you cannot see, and could not understand if you saw them.’’
Character is a mosaic in which each day has its little stone to set; we need but to look well to the days as they come, and to print on each its record of beauty, and the whole will be beautiful in the end. This living simply by the day is one of the royal secrets of a beautiful life which every young Christian should learn. The following lines by Susau Coolidge are full of suggestions on this point:
“Every day is a fresh beginning,
Every morn is the world made new:
You who are weary of sorrow and sinning,
Here is a beautiful hope for you — A hope for me, aod a hope for you,
“All the past things are past and over;
The tasks are done and the tears are shed: Yesterday’s errors let yesterday cover; Yesterday’s wounds, which smarted and bled, Are healed with the healing which night has sued.
“Yesterday now is a part of Forever —
Bound up in a sheaf, which God holds tight. With glad days and sad days and bad days which never Shall visit us more with their bloom and their blight, Their fullness of sunshine or sorrowful night.
“Let them go, since we cannot relive them — Cannot undo and cannot atone;
God in his mercy receive, forgive them I
Only the new days are our own:
To-day is ours, and to-day alone.
“Here are the skies all burnished brightly, Here is the spent earth all reborn, Here are the tired limbs springing lightly To face the sun and share with the mom In the chrism of dew and the cool of dawn.
“Every day is a fresh beginning;
Listen, my soul, to the glad refrain, And, spite of old sorrow, and older sinning, And puzzles forecasted, and possible pain, Take heart with the day, and begin again.’*
A life thus lived, each day made beautiful with the beauty of holiness and of usefulness, will in the end give a record of duty well done, of work completed, of blessings left behind at each step, and a character transfigured by the indwelling divine Spirit and the outworking of love until it shines in the full likeness of Christ himself.