Conformed to the Image of Christ

“For whom He did foreknow He also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren”

God’s ultimate purpose in our creation was that we should finally be “conformed to the image of Christ.” Christ was to be the firstborn among many brethren, and His brethren were to be like Him. All the discipline and training of our lives is with this end in view; and God has implanted in every human heart a longing, however unformed and unexpressed, after the best and highest it knows.

When God said in the beginning, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness,” we cannot for a moment suppose that He meant we were to be made in the image or likeness of His body. He must have meant that man was to be made in the image or likeness of His nature and character. Neither could He have meant that man, when first created, was to be created full fledged in this image, but only that he was to be begun, as all adult life is begun, in helpless ignorant babyhood. It is just as an architect could say of a great building, when as yet only the foundation-stones were in place, “This is a cathedral,” so could

God say of man, “This is My image,” although as yet only the foundation-stones of this image were laid; for we are told that “the first man is of the earth earthy.”

That it was only the foundation-stones of what was God’s final purpose for man which were laid at the moment of man’s first creation, is plain from the fact that man then had no knowledge of the difference between right and wrong, and was therefore, as babies are, in a very undeveloped state, and could not by any possibility be said, at least in this respect, to be in the likeness of God. But the embryo of God’s image was in man, and God’s purpose in regard to him began to be accomplished then, and it has gone on, in a grand process of evolution, ever since, both in the individual and in the race.

Christ is the pattern of what each one of us is to be when finished. We are “predestinated” to be conformed to His image, in order that He might be the firstborn among many brethren. We are to be “partakers of the divine nature” with Christ; we are to be filled with the spirit of Christ; we are to share His resurrection life, and to walk as He walked. We are to be one with Him, as He is one with the Father; and the glory God gave to Him, He is to give to us. And when all this is brought to pass, then, and not until then, will God’s purpose in our creation be fully accomplished, and we stand forth “in His image and after His likeness.”

Our likeness to His image is an accomplished fact in the mind of God, but we are, so to speak, in the manufactory as yet, and the great Master Workman is at work upon us. “It doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when He shall appear, we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is.”

And so it is written: “The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit. Howbeit that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural; and afterward that which is spiritual. The first man is of the earth, earthy; the second man is the Lord from Heaven. As is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy; and as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly. And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly.”

The grand process of Christian evolution is set forth here. “The first man Adam was made a living soul.” This expression “living soul” means in the Hebrew, according to Cruden’s Concordance, the same thing as “living creature,” which was the description given of the animal kingdom; and man, therefore, when first created, was simply a perfect animal, “of the earth earthy,” since he had no conscience, nor any knowledge of the difference between right and wrong.

Then we have given to us in an allegory an account of the first step in the evolution, by which the first Adam, i.e. the natural or animal man, was to be developed into the last Adam, i.e. the spiritual man. The serpent tempted man to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and said, “For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened; and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.” And, after Adam and Eve had eaten of the tree, the Lord confirmed this, and said, “Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil.”

Instead of this being a fall out of a higher state into a lower, as is so often thought, it really was a step upward out of a lower stage of development into a. higher. It surely was a great advance for man when God could say of him, “Behold, the man is become as one of us, knowing good and evil.” “As one of us” — this could not have been said of him before; and it marked a distinct step upward in his development. The baby’s ignorant innocence, that knows no difference between right and wrong, may be a beautiful thing in its place, but it becomes imbecility when it continues on into manhood. And man, who was destined to “grow up into Christ in all things,” needed first of all to become acquainted with the difference between right and wrong. No progress was possible until this took place. We cannot wonder, therefore, that St Augustine calls it “felix culpa,” the “happy fall”

The first step, therefore, in man’s evolution had now been taken. Man had discovered the difference between right and wrong, and had begun to develop a spiritual nature, a nature which God Himself declared was akin to His own. And from henceforth the conflict between the spiritual man and the animal or natural man has never ceased to be carried on. “For the flesh lusteth against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh, and these are contrary the one to the other; so that you cannot do the things that ye would.” “For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the spirit, the things of the spirit. For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace; because the carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.”

Whatever we may think of natural evolution as taught by Darwin, we must all believe in this spiritual evolution as taught by Paul. A late writer has said, “God is gradually developing higher forms of life out of lower forms; the spiritual and the intellectual, out of the animal and the sensuous; and it is in this process of evolution that sin shows itself, sin being simply the supremacy of the lower over the higher.” What might be right in a monkey is wrong in a man, and what might be excusable in our lower nature, becomes sin in our higher. What we must do then, in order to co-operate with God in our evolution, is, as Tennyson has said, to “move upwards, working out the beast, and let the ape and tiger die.” Every time we conquer the “beast” in us, we help forward our evolution, and every time we let the “beast” conquer us, we hinder it.

It is deeply interesting to see that this evolution, which was begun in Genesis, is declared to be completed in Revelation, where the “One like unto the Son of Man” gave to St John this significant message to the overcomers: “Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of My God; and he shall go no more out: and I will write upon him the name of My God, and the name of the city of My God which is New Jerusalem, which cometh down out of Heaven from My God: and I will write upon him My new name.” Since name always means character in the Bible, this message can only mean that at last God’s purpose is accomplished, and the spiritual evolution of man is completed, and he has been made, what God intended from the first, so truly into His likeness and image, as to merit having written upon him the name of God!

Words fail before such a glorious destiny as this! But our Lord foreshadows it in His wonderful prae** when He asks for His brethren that “they all may be one; as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that Thou hast sent Me. And the glory which Thou gavest Me I have given them: that they may be one even as we are one. I in them, and Thou in Me, that they may be made perfect in one.” Could oneness be closer or more complete?

Paul also foreshadows this glorious consummation when he declares, that, if we suffer with Christ, we shall also be glorified together with Him; and when he asserts that the “sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed in us.” The whole creation waits for the revealing of this glory; for Paul goes on to say that the “earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God.” And he adds finally, “And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.”

In view of such a glorious destiny, at which I dare not do more than hint, shall we not cheerfully welcome the processes, however painful they may be, by which we are to reach it? And shall we not strive eagerly and earnestly to be “labourers together with God” in helping to bring it about? He is the great Master-builder, but He wants our co-operation in building up the fabric of our characters, and He exhorts us to take heed how we build. We are all of us at every moment of our lives engaged in this building. Sometimes we build with gold, and silver, and precious stones, and sometimes we build with wood, and hay, and stubble.

And we are solemnly warned that every man’s work is to be made manifest, “for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire.” There is no escaping this. We cannot hope, when that day comes, to conceal our wood, and hay, and stubble, however successfully we may have managed to do so beforehand.

To my mind there is no more solemn passage in the whole Bible than the one in Galatians which says, “Be not deceived: God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. For he that soweth to the flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit, shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting.” It is the awful inevitableness of this that is so awe-inspiring. It is far worse than any arbitrary punishment; for punishment can sometimes be averted, but there is no possibility of altering the working of a natural law such as this.

In a Catechism I saw lately were the following questions and answers: —

Q. What is the reward for generosity?

A. More generosity.

Q. What is the punishment for meanness?

A. More meanness.

No Catechism ever spoke more truly. We all of us know it for ourselves. In the parable of the talents our Lord illustrates this inevitable law. The condemnation on the unfaithful servant may have sometimes seemed to us unfair, but it was only the reaping of what that servant had sowed. “Take therefore the talent from him and give it unto him which hath ten talents. For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not, shall be taken away even that which he hath.”

This is no arbitrary pronouncement, but is simply a revelation of the inherent nature of things, from which none of us can escape.

But in order to be labourers together with God, we must not only build with His materials, but also by His processes, and of these we are often very ignorant. Our idea of building is of hard laborious work, done in the sweat of our brow; but God’s idea is far different. Paul tells us what it is. “We all,” he says, “with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.” Our work is to “behold,” and, as we behold, the Lord effects the marvellous transformation, and we are “changed into the same image by the Spirit of the Lord.” This means, of course, to behold, not in our earthly sense of merely looking at a thing, but in the divine sense of really seeing the thing. We are to behold with our spiritual eyes the glory of the Lord, and are to continue beholding it. The glory of the Lord does not mean, however, a great shine or halo. The real glory of the Lord is the glory of what He is and of what He does, the glory of character. And it is this we are to behold.

Let me give an illustration. Some one offends against me, and I am tempted to get angry and retaliate. But I look at Christ, and think of what He would have done, and dwell upon the thought of His gentleness and meekness, and His love for the offending one; and, as I look, I begin to want to be like Him, and I ask in faith that I may be made a “partaker of His nature,” and anger and revenge die out of my heart, and I love my enemy, and long to serve him.

It is by this sort of beholding Christ, that we are to be changed into His image; and the nearer we keep to Him, the more rapid the change will be.

I have heard of a wonderful mirror known to science, which is called the parabolic mirror. It is a hollow cone lined with a mirror all over its inside surface. It possesses the power of focusing rays of light in different degrees of intensity, in proportion to the increasing nearness to its meeting-point at the top end of the cone, the power being more and more intense as the terminal point is approached. It has been discovered by science that at a certain stage in this advance toward the interior point where all the sides of the mirror meet in absolute oneness, the power of the focus concentrates all the light-giving properties of the sun’s rays into such an intense brilliancy, as to make visible things never before discerned by the human eye, rendering even flesh transparent, and enabling us to see through the outer covering of our bodies to the inner operations beneath.

Advancing a little further into the interior of our mirror, the heat properties of the sun’s rays are so concentrated as to generate a heat sufficient to melt iron in sixteen seconds, and to dissipate the alloy of gold, leaving only the solid globule of the pure metal, in fourteen seconds.

Advancing further still, the photographing properties of the sunlight are so concentrated as to impress an ineffaceable image of the mirror upon anything that for one second only is passed through the focus.

Advancing still further, nearly to the point of oneness, the magnetising powers of light are so concentrated that anything exposed to it for a single instant becomes a powerful magnet, drawing afterwards all things to itself.

Whether all this is scientifically correct or not, I am not scientist enough to know, but at least it will serve as an allegory to show the progress of the soul, as it is changed from glory to glory, in its evolution “into His image.”

First, as we behold as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, we come to the light focus, which reveals our sinfulness and our need. “Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, I am the light of the world; he that followeth Me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.”

Second, as we draw closer, we reach the heat focus, where all our dross and reprobate silver is burned up. For He is like a refiner’s fire, and like fuller’s soap: and “He shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver; and He shall purify the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold and silver, that they may offer unto the Lord an offering in righteousness.”

Third, as we draw closer still, we come to the photographing focus, where the image of Christ is indelibly impressed upon our souls, and we are made like Him because we see Him as He is. “We know that when He shall appear, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.”

Fourth and finally, as we come to the point of oneness, we reach the magnetic focus, where our character is so conformed to Christ, that men, seeing it, will be irresistibly drawn to glorify our Father which is in Heaven.

If we would be conformed to the image of Christ, then, we must live closer and ever closer to Him. We must become better and better acquainted with His character and His ways; we must look at things through His eyes, and judge all things by His standards.

It is not by effort or by wrestling that this conformity is to be accomplished; it is by assimilation. According to a natural law, we grow like those with whom we associate, and the stronger character always exercises the controlling influence. And, as divine law is all one with natural law, only working in a higher sphere, and with more unhindered power, it need not seem mysterious to us that we should become like Christ by a spiritual union with Him.

But again I must repeat, that this union with Christ cannot come by our own efforts, no matter how strenuous they may be. Christ is to “dwell in our hearts by faith,” and He can dwell there in no other way. Paul, when he tells us that he was crucified with Christ, says, “Nevertheless I live: yet not I but Christ liveth in me: and the life that I now live, I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me, and gave Himself for me.”

“Christ liveth in me,” this is the transforming secret. If Christ liveth in me, His life must, in the very nature of things, be manifested in my mortal flesh, and I cannot fail to be changed from glory to glory into His image.

Our Lord’s teaching about this is very emphatic. “Abide in me,” He says, “and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in Me. I am the vine, ye are the branches. He that abideth in Me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit; for without Me ye can do nothing.”

This is literally true. If we abide in Him, and He in us, we can no more help bringing forth much fruit, than can the branches of a flourishing vine. In the very nature of things the fruit must come.

But we cannot take the “old man” into Christ. We must put off the old man with his deeds before we can “put on the Lord Jesus Christ.” And the Apostle, in writing to the Colossians, bases his exhortations to holiness of life, on the fact that they had done this. “Lie not one to another,” he says, “seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds, and have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of Him that created him.”

Sin must disappear at the incoming of Christ; and no soul that is not prepared to surrender all that is contrary to His will, can hope to welcome Him. The “old man” must be put off if the new man is to reign. But both the putting off and the putting on must be done by faith. There is no other way. As I have tried to explain elsewhere, we must move our personality, our ego, our will, out of self and into Christ. We must reckon ourselves to be dead to self, and alive only to God. “Reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord.” “Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin; but yield yourselves unto God as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God.”

The same kind of reckoning of faith which brings the forgiveness of sins within our grasp, brings also this union with Christ. To those who do not understand the law of faith, this will no doubt be as great a mystery as the secrets of gravitation were before the law of gravitation was discovered; but, to those who understand it, the law of faith works as unerringly and as definitely as the law of gravitation, and produces its results as certainly. No one can read the seventh chapter of Hebrews, and fail to see that faith is an all-conquering force. I believe myself it is the creative force of the universe. It is the higher law that controls all the lower laws beneath it; and what looks like a miracle is simply the working of this higher controlling law.

Faith is, as I say, the law of creation — “Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.” We are told that “God spake and it was done, He commanded and it stood fast.” And our Lord tells us that if we have faith we can do the same. “And Jesus answering saith unto them, Have faith in God. For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea, and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass, he shall have whatsoever he saith. Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.”

Faith, we are told, calls those things which be not as though they were; and, in so calling them, brings them into being. Therefore, although we cannot see any tangible sign of change, when by faith we put off the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, and by faith put on the new man which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness, yet nevertheless it has really been done, and faith has accomplished it I cannot explain this theologically, but I can fearlessly assert that it is a tremendous practical reality; and that those souls who abandon the self-life, and give themselves up to the Lord to be fully possessed by Him, do find that He takes possession of the inner springs of their being, and works there to will and to do of His good pleasure.

Paul prayed for the Ephesians that “Christ might dwell in their hearts by faith,” and this is the whole secret of being conformed to His image. If Christ is dwelling in my heart I must necessarily be Christ-like. I cannot be unkind, or irritable, or self-seeking, or dishonest; but His gentleness, and sweetness, and tender compassion, and loving submission to the will of His Father, must be manifested in my daily walk and conversation.

We shall not be fully changed into the image of Christ until He shall appear, and we shall “see Him as He is.” But meanwhile, according to our measure, the life of Jesus is to be made “manifest in our mortal flesh.” Is it made manifest in ours? Are we so “conformed to the image” of Christ, that men in seeing us, see a glimpse of Him also?

A Methodist minister’s wife told me that at one time, when they had moved to a new place, her little boy came in after the first afternoon of play, and exclaimed joyfully, “Oh, mother, I have found such a lovely, good little girl to play with here, that I never want to go away again.” “I am very glad, darling,” said the loving mother, happy over her child’s happiness; “what is the little girl’s name?” “Oh,” replied the child, with a sudden solemnity, “I think her name is Jesus.” “Why, Frank!” exclaimed the horrified mother, “what do you mean?” “Well, mother,” he said deprecatingly, “she was so lovely that I did not know what she could be called but Jesus.”

Are our lives so Christ-like that any one could have such a thought of us? Is it patent to all around us that we have been with Jesus? Is it not, alas, often just the contrary? Are not some of us so cross and uncomfortable in our living, that exactly the opposite thing would have to be said about us?

Paul says we are to be “epistles of Christ,” known and read of all men, “written, not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God, not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart.” I firmly believe that if every child of God, all the world over, would begin from this day onward to be an “epistle of Christ,” living a truly Christ-like life at home and abroad, it would not be a month before the churches would all be crowded by inquirers, coming in to see what was the religion that could so transform human nature into something divine.

The world is full of unbelievers in the reality of the Christian religion, and nothing will convince them but facts which they cannot disprove. We must meet them with transformed lives. If they see that whereas once we were cross, now we are sweet; once we were proud, now we are humble; once we were fretful, now we are patient and calm; and if we are able to testify that it is the religion of Christ that has wrought this change, they cannot help but be impressed.

A Christian man who, on account of his earnest work, had gained a great reputation for piety, had unfortunately gained an equally great reputation for a bad temper and a sharp tongue. But at last, for some reason which no one could understand, a change seemed to come over him, and his temper and his tongue became as sweet and as gentle as they had before been violent and sharp. His friends watched and wondered, and at last one of them approached him on the subject, and asked him if he had changed his religion. “No,” replied the man, “I have not changed my religion, but I have at last let my religion change me.”

How much has our religion changed us?

It is very easy to have a church religion, or a prayer-meeting religion, or a Christian-work religion; but it is altogether a different thing to have an every-day religion. To “show piety at home” is one of the most vital parts of Christianity, but it is also one far too rare; and it is not at all an uncommon thing to find Christians, who “do their righteousness” before outsiders, “to be seen of men,” but who fail lamentably in showing their piety at home. I knew a father of a family once, who was so powerful in prayer at the weekly prayer meeting, and so impressive in exhortation, that the whole church was much edified by his piety; but who, when he went home after the meetings, was so cross and ugly that his wife and family were afraid to say a word in his presence.

“And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are; for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.” These words, “They have their reward,” seem to me among the most solemn in the Bible. What we do to be seen of men, is seen of men, and that is all there is to it. There is no conformity to the image of Christ in this sort of righteousness. The righteousness that is Christ-like is the righteousness that bears every-day trials cheerfully, and is patient under home provocations; that returns good for evil, and meets all the homely friction of daily life with sweetness and gentleness; that suffereth long and is kind; that envieth not; that vaunteth not itself; that is not puffed up; that seeketh not its own; is not easily provoked, and thinketh no evil; that beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. This is what it means to be conformed to the image of Christ! Do we know anything of such righteousness as this?

We sometimes talk about performing what we call our “religious duties,” meaning by this expression our church services, or our stated seasons of devotion, or our Christian work of one sort or another; and we never dream that it is far more our “religious duty” to be Christ-like in our daily walk and conversation, than even to be faithful in these other things, desirable as they may be in themselves.

The righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees was a righteousness of words and phrases, and of ceremonial observances, and this is often very impressive to outsiders. But, because it was nothing more, our Lord condemns it in unmeasured terms: “Woe unto you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise, and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone. Woe unto you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness.” And He adds, “Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.”

It is very easy to say beautiful things about the religious life, but to be what we say is an altogether different matter. I know a Sabbath School teacher who had been teaching her scholars a great deal about, casting all your cares on the Lord, and trusting Him in times of trial; and they had been very much impressed. But at last, a trouble came into the life of this teacher, and some of her scholars saw her in her own home while it lasted. To their amazement and distress they saw her fretting, and chafing, and worrying, and complaining; acting, in short, just as if there was no God to trust, or as if His ways were not ways of love and goodness. It was an “object lesson “to those children, that undid all the good which that teacher’s previous teaching had seemed likely to accomplish; and one of them, who was very observant, said to me triumphantly,” I thought it could not be true

while Miss was telling us about how we might

trust the Lord for everything; and now I see it was only goody talk, for she don’t do it herself.”

A cross Christian, or an anxious one, a discouraged gloomy Christian, a doubting Christian, a complaining Christian, an exacting Christian, a selfish, cruel, hard-hearted Christian, a self-indulgent Christian, a Christian with a sharp tongue or a bitter spirit; a Christian, in short, who is not Christ-like, may preach to the winds with as much hope of success, as to preach to his own family or friends, who see him as he is. There is no escape from this inevitable law of things, and we may as well recognise it at once. If we want our loved ones to trust the Lord, volumes of talk about it will not be one-thousandth part as convincing to them, as the sight of a little real trust on our own part in the time of need. The longest prayer and the loudest preaching are of no avail in any family circle, however they may do in the pulpit, unless there is on the part of the preacher a manifest living out of the things preached.

Some Christians seem to think that the fruits which the Bible calls for, are some form of outward religious work, such as holding meetings, visiting the poor, conducting charitable institutions, &c. &c. Whereas the fact is that the Bible scarcely mentions these at all as fruits of the Spirit, but declares that the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance. A Christ-like character must necessarily be the fruit of Christ’s indwelling. Other things will no doubt be the outcome of this character; but first and foremost comes the character, or all the rest is but a hollow sham. A late writer has said: “A man can never be more than his character makes him. A man can never do more nor better than deliver or embody that which is his character. Nothing valuable can come out of a man that is not first in the man. Character must stand behind and back up everything — the sermon, the poem, the picture, the book. None of them is worth a straw without it.”

In order to become conformed to the image of Christ, we must of necessity be made “partakers of the divine nature.” And, where this is the case, that divine nature must necessarily manifest itself. Our tastes, our wishes, our purposes, will become like Christ’s tastes, and wishes, and purposes; we shall change eyes with Him, and see things as He sees them. This is inevitable; for where the divine nature is, its fruits cannot fail to be manifest; and, where they are not manifest, we are forced to conclude that that individual, no matter how loud his professions, has not yet been made a partaker of the divine nature.

I can hear some one asking, But do you really mean to say that, in order to be made partakers of the divine nature, we must cease from our own efforts entirely, and must simply by faith put on Christ, and must let Him live in us and work in us to will and to do of His good pleasure? And do you believe He will then actually do it?

To this I answer most emphatically, Yes, I mean just that. I mean that if we abandon ourselves entirely to Him He comes to abide in us, and is Himself our life. We must commit our whole lives to Him, our thoughts, our words, our daily walk, our downsittings, our uprisings. By faith we must abandon ourselves, and, as it were, move over into Christ, and abide in Him. By faith we must put off the old man, and by faith we must put on the new man. By faith we must reckon ourselves dead unto sin, and alive unto God; as truly dead as alive. By faith we must realise that our daily life is Christ living in us; and, ceasing from our own works, we must suffer Him to work in us to will and to do of His good pleasure. It is no longer truth about Him that must fill our hearts, but it is Himself, the living, loving, glorious Christ, who will, if we let Him, in very deed make us His dwelling place, and who will reign and rule within us, and “subdue all things unto Himself.” “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature; old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.”

It was no mere figure of speech when our Lord in that wonderful sermon on the mount, said to His disciples, “Be ye therefore perfect even as your Father in Heaven is perfect.” He meant, of course, according to our measure, but He meant that reality of being conformed to His image to which we have been predestinated. And in the Epistle to the Hebrews we are shown how it is to be brought about. “Now the God of peace, that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, make you perfect in every good work to do His will; working in you that which is well pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ: to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.”

It is to be by His working in us, and not by our working in ourselves, that this purpose of God in our creation is to be accomplished; and if it should look as regards some of us that we are too far removed from any conformity to the image of Christ for such a transformation ever to be wrought, we must remember that our Maker is not done making us yet. The day will come, if we do not hinder, when the work, begun in Genesis, shall be finished in Revelation, and the whole creation, as well as ourselves, shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.

“For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit the redemption of our body.”

“‘Tis, shall Thy will be done for me? or mine, And I be made a thing, not after Thine; My own, and full of paltriest pretence? Shall I be born of God, or of mere man? Be made like Christ, or on some other plan? What though Thy work in me transcends my sense, Too fine, too high for me to understand. I trust entirely. On, Lord, with Thy labour grand I I have not knowledge, wisdom, insight, thought, Nor understanding fit to justify Thee in Thy work, O Perfect. Thou hast brought Me up to this, and lo! what thou hast wrought I cannot call it good. But I can cry O enemy, the Maker hath not done; One day thou shalt behold, and from the sight wilt run.’”