To Live Is Christ
Almighty God, our Heavenly Father, we want to thank thee this morning that we have Christ. When we think of what we were without him, and when we remember how we sometimes try to live without him, we pray that thou wilt help us to open our eyes that we may see him in all his beauty.
0 Lord God, may we know the meaning of the text, “Heirs of God, and joint heirs with Jesus Christ.’’ Help us to know that in the person of Jesus Christ we are very near to thee to-day, that just as the high priest went into the holy of holies with the name of the children of Israel upon his heart, so our High Priest is in the presence of God, having upon his heart our names. We thank thee for this, our Father.
Help us, O God, to put this truth in our hearts, that we may not (Only have him hereafter, but now. We ask for thy special blessing and direction at this time, and all we ask in Jesus’ name. Amen.
SUBJECT — LIVE IS CHRIST.”
The subject this morning is, “For to me to live is Christ,” and those of you who were here last evening will remember the subject presented was “Prayer,” which is the foundation truth upon which you must build if you would live the “Life of Blessing.” No man can live this life unless he knows how to pray. All we have is in Christ, and we must know him.
1 want to ask you to think this morning, for a little time, on the text found in Phil. 1:21, “For to me to live is Christ.”
This is a day when men are advising students and those seeking to enter upon a life of power to read among other things the biographies of great men. I have found for myself an inspiration in reading the biographies of the saints of the church. If you want to be fired with missionary zeal, read the biographies of Carey and Judson and the writings of John G. Patou, that missionary to the New Hebrides Islands. If you want to know art, read Ruskin. I care not how dull your soul may be, if you get into the writings of Ruskin, you will find yourself seeing things through Ruskins eyes, and feeling tilings through Ruskin’s heart. If you would have your despondent spirit encouraged, and your blood flow fast in your veins, read the life story of General Grant. It is one of the privileges of my life that I saw him writing the closing chapters of his book. And so if you would follow in those triumphal marches with him, and witness the battles he fought, read his book. I find that when I am somewhat down spiritually, and indisposed because of physical weakness, I take heart by reading the autobiography of Charles G. Finney. I think one of the best books for young ministers, as well as those who are older, is the autobiography of this man of God.
And yet I submit that whatever you read, you will be disappointed, because whenever you get into the lives of these men, you will find some point of weakness. But still you say: If
I knew the secret of that man’s life — if I only had that man’s, ideal, I believe I could walk as he walks. If I only had the key that he had in his grasp, I believe I, too, could be a man of power.” This morning I submit to you the autobiography of a man, written in one sentence. You will have no feeling of disappointment as you read that one sentence, or the life of the man in full. In Phil. 1: 21 you have the real autobiography of St. Paul, “For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” My text is the first part of the verse, “For to me to live is Christ.”
As you read the epistles he wrote, you will find the secret of his greatness. Turn with me to Gal. 2:20, “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.”
It is a marvelous thing thus to get to the place where we put the out of things. Paul tells us a great deal in the seventh of Pomans, how tried and failed to do the things that ‘‘I” ought to do in the service of God. Just go through that chapter and notice how much he has to say about the failure of “I.” When he conies to the end of the experiences of he said, ‘‘O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death And then he answers it himself, thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord,” or, as he puts it in the text, Tor to me to live is Christ.” Can you say it? And then out of this seventh of Pomans he goes into the eighth of Pomans, and, instead of saying, ‘‘I,” he says, “the Spirit.”
Now turn to the second of Galatians, and we read, am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.”
That is the secret of Pauhs greatness; and any man is great just in proportion as Christ is in his life. I would not be quoted here in this meeting as putting any mark of disrespect on colleges and seminaries, but I do submit that if we are counting our greatness on grounds of having graduated at any of these institutions, we are making a great mistake. It is when Christ is abiding in us that we can lay claim to real power. Let me give you Paul’s ideal, Phil. 3: 12-14: “Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect: but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus. Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ J esus.”
Everything in Paul’s experience was to contribute to the glory of Christ, and I want to suggest that when that is true of us we have the secret of power.
I had the privilege of listening the other day to Rev. Floyd W. Tompkins, D.D., rector of Holy Trinity Church, Philadelphia. He said that when he had placed Christ in the right position in his life, everything was a sacrament. ^‘Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.” He experienced it in every act of his daily life. When he washed his hands he said, ^Tord, do thou keep them clean.” When he put on his garments he prayed, “Lord, as I put on this garment do thou help me to put on Christ;” And so it was through his life. That is what it means when Paul said, “For to me to live is Christ.” If you want the key to the real greatness of the apostle’s life, all you have to do is to read the text. It is one of the best texts in the Bible; but with it I want you to link that other text in Galatians (Gal. 2: 20), for that is Paul’s Calvary. For to him to live was Christ, because he had been crucified with Christ, and had risen with him, and Christ now lived in him. “I” was crucified.
‘VTien Paul wrote to the Philippians, he wrote in prison. You could hear the clanking of the chain which bound him to the Roman soldier at his side, and yet his great word is “rejoice.” Now I submit to you that if the Apostle Paul could sit in his prison and write an epistle with the word “rejoice” written over and over again, we ought to rejoice in our experiences, ought we not? “Oh,” you say, “but you don’t know my field. I have such a narrow field.” Man, it is not as narrow as that of the Apostle Paul when he was in prison, and he said, “Rejoice, rejoice.” Beloved, we want to enter into the whole truth of it; why did Paul say, “Rejoice, rejoice”? It was because Christ was in him, lived in him.
You sang this morning that hymn I love to have sung, “Living in the inner circle.” My friend. Dr. Pierson, said that we must not bo content if we are “living in the inner circle,” because a circle is very narrow. It is our privilege to live in the sphere “in Christ,” and that opens right up into heaven. So, if in your life you become discouraged, you can look up
TO lAVK IS CHRIST
and away from your discouragement into heaven. That is where Christ is, and for us to live is — Christ a Let me say it very slowly, and let us be honest, and put in the name of the object which is dearest in our life. For some of us it is not the life I know about; not the life the members of your church know about; it is the life that God knows about. For to me to live is — pride, ambition, determination to have my own way, resolve to be great? What is it, my brother? Is it this, or can we say, ‘‘For to me to live is Chris Oh, if it can be that, before this conference is over we shall not have a little narrow field, for we can say that we have learned in whatsoever state we are therewith to be content, because for us to live has become Christ.
Have any of you read Drummond’s “Ideal Life”? If you have not, I advise you to read it. If you have, you remember that Drummond says that the life of St. Paul should be divided into stages. I will give them to you:
The first is PauVs life before his conversion, Phil. 3: 3-6: “For we are the circumcision, which worship God in the spirit, and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh. Though I might also have confidence in the flesh. If any other man thinketh that he hath whereof he might trust in the flesh, I more: circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, an Hebrew of the Hebrews; as touching the law, a Pharisee; concerning zeal, persecuting the church; touching the righteousness which is in the law, blameless.”
That was Paul’s life before his conversion. Born in the city of Tarsus, he said of it, “It is no mean city.” Born of the seed of Abraham, and out of the line of his ancestry was to come the first king of Israel. No man was ever better born than Saul of Tarsus.
Now consider his education. He was educated in the best college in the land, taking his place at the feet of Gamaliel. There was no man better educated than Saul of Tarsus. Why, he must have been the honor man of that institution. He ^‘graduated’’ from his college, and he wants to shine. What shall he do? He wants political honor. His friends may have said, ‘‘Here is your chance; these few people have gathered themselves together to worship this Jesus of Nazareth, and you persecute them.” And Paul starts out filled with zeal and persecutes them, not- only at Jerusalem, but outside of that city, even as far as Damascus. He arrests them, both men and women, and puts them all in prison; he “breathed out threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord,” and “made havoc of the church.”
This brings us to the second stage. He goes away from Jerusalem to Damascus to persecute them there. He leaves Jerusalem, wTiere he has been too busy to stop and think of himself; he has been busy day and night, and night and day. As he journeys, (this is not imagination; it is reality), he goes by the Jordan, over the hills of Samaria, through the land where Jesus lived and worked, and now he thinks as he rides along. I can imagine how the landscape passes before him like a panorama. I have an idea that he might have met the widow of Nain, and she might have said to Saul of Tarsus, “The one whose brethren you are persecuting raised my boy from the dead.” I have an idea he might have met the father whose child was raised from the dead. “Well,” says the father, “the child was dead, and I saw him take her by the hand, and the maid arose and sat up.” He might have met the man who was a leper, “I was dead according to the law, and he made me alive.” And as he goes, he thinks.
Third stage of Ibis life: then comes the change. A voice from the cloud saying, “Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?” And then the change came to him. You know it was somewhat different for Saul of Tarsus to be a believer in the Nazarene than for you and me. More difficult than for Peter, because Peter began from the human side, and saw him step into greater and greater life. It is very easy to say, “He is ‘Jesus of Nazareth,’ and now he is in heaven.” Paul had to think himself back the other way. He thought it all the way back until he came to this, “Lord, what wilt thou have me to do. This is always the secret of blessing. It is not a life of sorrow or sadness we thus enter upon, but quite the opposite. What saith the Scriptures? It is, “I delight to do thy will, O God!” You can never have a cross in this world so long as you keep two pieces of wood together. (Illustrating by holding two rules parallel.) You have got to put them over each other, if you want to make a cross. You will never have a cross in this world so long as your will is parallel with the will of God. God wants you in China, and you are in this country. He wants you here, and you are determined to be in China; it is just as bad one way as the other. “Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?” This is blessing.
How, if you want to know Paul’s view of these things, turn to Philippians, “What things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ. Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ.”
Ho small thing was it, brethren, for a man who held such a prominent place among men to count it loss? To have lived a life blameless according to the law, and count it loss? Ho small thing to be the foremost scholar of his day? Paul says, I count it loss, that I may win Christ. And he wrote it after testing the whole thing for years. He wrote it in prison, and he saw his whole life stretch out before him, and he weighed his life against the world’s life, and he said, “For to me to live is Christ.”
Oh, may God help some one here to-day — and especially the young men in the seminaries — may God help us all to say, “For to me to live is Christ.” “I am determined to be a great man,” says the student. Dear fellow-student, there is something infinitely better than being a great man in the eyes of men. Paul tested it, and he said, Tor to me to live is Christ/* I think it would be a great thing if you could go back to your homes, and your children say, never saw him look like that’^; your wife would say, never knew him to talk like that.” You go back and stand in your pulpit, and your people look into your face and see a change, and they say, ‘What is the change in our pastor?” And then you could answer it by saying, am determined to live Christ.” That text would have a new meaning if you just took it in that way.
I tell you there are certain attributes of Christ which are yours; they are your inheritance. Phil. 2: 5, “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.”
0 man, if the mind of Christ Jesus is in you, you will see things as he sees them; you will think things as he thinks them; you will do them as he would do them. Men may differ about Sheldon’s little book, “What Would Jesus Do?” but it has revealed the fact that many people in the church are looking for something better than is found in the life of the average Christian. If I should go through this world walking every day as he would walk, acting all the time as he would act, this would be a world of blessedness.
Turn with me to II. Thes. 3: 16, “Now the Lord of peace himself give you peace always by all means.”
1 heard a speaker say once that you could not define the word “peace.” I was skeptical, and I thought I would try it. I wrote the word in my note-book and thought about what to set down as defining the word, and I could not do it. You try it to-day, and you will see. Dr. Webb-Peploe says it is the opposite of confusion, strife, and unrest. Let me say the word, and see if it hasn’t restfulness in the very sound of it, — Peace. “Peace I leave with you,” “My peace I give unto you,’^ “He is our peace.” Doesn’t it rest you? Why, if I can claim the “peace of God,” and Christ says I can, oughtn’t I to live in restfulness? If I claim that peace, I am living in the very life of the Lord Jesus. May God help us to claim peace from him.
In II Cor. 10: 1, Paul says, “I beseech you by the meekness and gentleness of Christ,” A man said to me one time, “What is the meaning of meekness’?” “Why, it means lifelessness.” “It doesn’t at all,” he said; “Moses was a meek man; was he a lifeless man?” Far from it. The word meek, a meeh man, means a tamed man. It is the word used in classical Greek (you will find it in the “Anabasis”) to define the “taming of horses.” I want to tell you of a good book to get, those of you who cannot use the Greek. Some of you know the Greek very well, but those of you who are disposed to forget your Greek and Hebrew, as I know I am, and those of you who have not had the opportunity of learning it, to you I would suggest Strong’s “Exhaustive Concordance.” You can turn to the back of the book and find every form and shade of a word. When I have the time, and want to look up a word, I go to my Greek text, but if I am in a hurry and not able to search, I reach for Strong’s “Exhaustive Concordance,” and look up these words. Now let us see what “gentleness” means. It is a “disposition to be fair.” “I beseech you by the meekness of Christ” — that is, his being controlled by the will of God; and by the gentleness of Christ — his disposition to be fair, fair in all things — just to see things as he would see them, to be influenced by things as he would be influenced by them.
I. Cor. 1: 24, “Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God.” Now I am going slowly this morning, and I want to get down to the rock bottom of it all. “Christ the power of God.” It will be a glad day when we stop seeking for an experience, and seek for him; get away from looking for an “it,” and look for him. You cannot divorce the power of God from the Son of God, and the work of the Holy Spirit is his witness to the Son. “I go away,” — “He comes.” “I go,” — “I will send him.” Would it not be a glorious thing to go back to your room and meet him there, and by faith put your finger into the print of the nails in bis band, and stoop down and touch the pierced feet, and draw aside the garment and see where the spear was thrust into his side, and you could say, ‘‘Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth,” and he would speak with you and you with him? Your tears would flow, and your heart would burn, and you would come back and say, “I have heard him speak.” Oh, it is possible to have a fellowship like that. Christ is the power of God, and the Holy Spirit is here to make him a reality unto each one of us.
Romans 8:9, 10: “But ye are not in the flesh, but in the
Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his. And if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the Spirit is life because of righteousness.”
Of course the Spirit of Christ is within every child of God, in one sense. He is in us and around us, but do we always give him full sway in our lives and in our ministry? He must be the sphere in which we live. 1 know why it is that so many times I have felt so discouraged and so powerless. It was because I had in experience gotten out of the sphere in which God means that I should live. I have breathed the world instead of the atmosphere of God. I know why it was that sometimes my sermons have had no influence over the people. It is because I have breathed from books and magazines and newspapers, and have not been breathing all that comes with the Spirit of God. Are you ready for the text again? “For to me to live is Christ.”
To my mind it is like a banqueting-table. The table is there, loaded with more than we can appropriate. You and I are invited, and we are told to go up and take what we need. It is ours; we need not ask or agonize for it. I believe Christ is mine in just that way.
“Fade, fade each earthly joy,
Jesus is mine.’’
Oh, may he be the “All in All” of every one here!
TO LIVE IS CllKIST In the home of an English lord, in England, there were gathered two or three celebrated Christians, and they were speaking of their Christian experiences. Some one turned to Mr. Meyer and asked him to tell his story. Said Mr. Meyer, used to be impatient, and I stopped it; I used to be irritable, and I broke that off.” Lord Canard said: ‘‘I think Mr.
Meyer is wrong; that is not the place for a Christian to be. I think he ought to be taking in and taking in and taking in of Christ; that is better than giving up.” And so this morning, dear friends, I come to this banquet-hall and say, ‘‘1 am very impatient; I will claim his patience. I am apt to be unfair with men; I will take his gentleness. I do not see things as they ought to be seen; I will take his mind. I will go beyond that, I will take him” Come in, blessed Christ, come and fill us, and so we can say, Tor to me to live is Christ.” Would that this may be so of every one here to-day.
What is your minister like? Is he eloquent and intellectual?” What answer can be true of you? ^AYell, I cannot tell you about his sermons; I always think of Christ when I see him.” Is that true of you? Then, to you to live is Christ. In a famous Russian palace, in the salon of beauty, a certain artist was asked to paint a great number of pictures for the salon. Eight hundred and fifty of the most beautiful women were chosen as subjects. He finished his work, and in so doing paid a marvelous tribute to the empress. In every individual picture he painted something like Catherine. Here, Catherine’s hair; there, a dress like Catherine’s; over there, Catherine’s favorite flower. This one had Catherine’s pose; that one some feature of Catherine; some other one had Catherine’s eyes or Catherine’s hands; and so, you could go over the canvas, and, taking the different parts, you could have made a picture of Catherine. It would be a marvelous thing if people would say to me, “Show me Christ,” and I would take them to the man who wrote “My Jesus, as thou wilt.” You know how he wrote it. He was blind, but he wrote, Jesus, as thou wilt.” I would take him to the poor old woman whose heart was broken and whose head was bowed with shame because of her boy’s sin. I would take him to see her when her son gave his testimony in the church, of God’s saving power, and she came up and put her arms around his neck and sobbed in her joy, “You never was bad; you never was bad.” That is the spirit of Christ.
Campbell Morgan used this text at Winona, and he said: ‘Suppose I change it — for to me to live is myself. It is my sermon, my house, my family, myself,” Then, for me to die, what is that? “For to me to live is pleasure.” A Christian might say that and still be a Christian; then what is it to die? “For to me to live is sin”; then what is it to die? If there is sin in your heart and mine, whether it be great or little, it amounts to the same thing then. If to me to live is sin, what will it be to die?
Dr. Dugan Clarke told me of a little hoy in one of the families he knew of who was blind; and the father of the boy said: “Dr. Clarke, there is a celebrated specialist in Indianapolis to whom we want to take our boy. We want you to go with us. If he fails, we want your sympathy, and if successful, we want you to rejoice with us.” They went, and the specialist did his delicate work, and said, “He is going to see.” When the little fellow opened his eyes and looked upon his mother, he didn’t know her. He only knew her by the touch of his fingers. Finally the mother could stand it no longer and she spoke his name. His little arms went around her neck, and all he asked was, “Mother, is it heaven?” Well, it shall be like that. For to me to live here is Christ; but with all the joy I have, I see through a glass darkly. To me to die shall be gain, for I shall see him as he is. Bless God for that!