The Real Christ

My subject this morning is the Real Christ, and this is the first of a series of sermons on this subject. We have four texts: John 1:14 — ‘ And the word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father), full of grace and truth.’’ Acts 2:36: ‘‘Let all the house of Israel therefore know assuredly, that God hath made Hum to be both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom ye cructfied.’’ 2 Cor. 3:18 — ‘ But we all, 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.’’ 1 John 2:6 — ‘‘He that saith he abideth in Him ought lmself also so to walk, even as He walked.’’

We hear a great deal about Christ in our day. It is doubtful if there ever were an age before this in which men talked and wrote so much about ‘‘Christ’’? as to-day. We hear about ‘‘Christ”’ not only from thoroughly orthodox, evangelical Christians, but we hear about ‘‘Christ’’? from Roman Catholics. We hear about *‘Christ’’ from Unitarians. We hear about ‘‘Christ’’ from Theosophists. We hear about ‘‘Christ’’ from Christian Scientists. We hear about ‘‘Christ’’ from — Spiritualists. We hear about ‘‘Christ’’ from some Buddhists. We hear about ‘‘Christ’’ from Behaists and we hear about ‘‘Christ’’ from Socialists and Anarchists. We hear about ‘‘Christ’’ even from men and women who make no profession whatever of any religion of any sort. You see His name, His title and His sign everywhere. But the Christ many tell about and urge upon men is not the real Christ. He is not the actual Christ Jesus who once walked this earth and whom men saw and studied and knew; the Christ who was the Incarnate Word of God and whose glory men actually saw with their own eyes, ‘‘ The glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.’’ He is not the Christ who once lived and died and was raised again. The Christ many talk about is a pure figment of their own imagination which they have substituted for the actual Christ of history, the Christ who once lived here on earth and who now lives in the glory and who some day is coming back again to take the reins of Government and save this wrecked and ruined human society of ours and make it what it ought to be.

The Christ, for example, of «Christian Scientists’? is not the real Christ. You sometimes think when you hear Christian Scientists talk about Christ (if you are not fully informed) that they are talking about our Lord Jesus Christ and that, as they say, they believe in the divinity of Christ, they mean that they believe in the Deity of Jesus. Not for one moment do they mean that. By ‘‘Christ’’ they do not mean a definite person at all, any more than when they speak about ““God’’ they mean a definite person. They mean the ‘‘Christ principle.’’ The Christ of Theosophy is not the real Christ. Hiven the Christ of Roman Catholicism is not the real Christ, though in some measure He is. The Roman Catholics, when they speak about Christ, mean the Jesus who was crucified, is risen and is coming again, and they mean a divine Jesus, but the picture they draw of Him and of His character and of His relation to His virgin mother is very different from the picture God Himself has drawn in this Book. And the Christ pictured in many a Protestant pulpit is not the real Christ.

The only place to see the real Christ, just as He was and is, is in this Book. Many in these days say that they ‘‘believe in Christ but not in the Christ of the Bible. There is no other Christ than the Christ of the Bible. Any Christ other than the Christ of the Bible is a pure figment of the individual imagination, a mere idol substituted for a divine reality; just as much an idol though manufactured by man’s brains as an idol men manufacture with their hands out of iron, silver, gold, wood or stone.

The real Christ is set forth in our first text: “And the word was made flesh, and dwelt among us (and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father), full of grace and truth.’’ And in our second text, Acts 2:36: ‘Let all the house of Israel therefore know assuredly that God hath made Him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom ye crucified.’’ That man Jesus who walked this earth Nineteen Hundred years ago, who was God manifest in the flesh, He and He alone is the real Christ. And this whole Book tells about Him, not merely the four Gospels but. the entire sixty-six books that make up the Bible; and this morning we are going to study Him as. pictured in this Book.

I have said that the Bible is the only book re can help us to really and truly know Him, the real Christ. Let me add that the Holy Suit is the only Person who can enable us to understand Him as He is set forth in the Bible. God has drawn the picture of the real Christ in the Bible and the Holy Spirit is God’s interpreter of the picture. It is the work of the Holy Spirit to bear:

witness of the real Christ (John 15:26), and it is only as He testifies of Christ, only as He takes the picture given to us in the written Word of God, in this Book, and interprets it to us, that we come to know or understand the Real Christ, Jesus Christ.

We have a three-fold object in studying the real Christ:

1. First, that we may see Him in all His moral glory, ‘‘The glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth,’’ and, therefore, admire and love and glorify Him as we ought.

2. Secondly, that we may become like Him through beholding Him; or, as the English Revision of 2 Cor. 3:18 puts it, ‘‘We all, with um veiled face reflecting as a mirror the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same wmage from glory to glory, even as from the Lord the Spirit.’’

3. In the third place, that in Him we may have a standard for our own conduct, or as John puts it in our third text, ‘‘He that saith he abideth m Hum ought hmself also so to walk, even as He walked’? (1 John 2:6). The Ten Commandments are not the Christian’s rule of life. The Christian has a far higher rule of life than the Ten Commandments. Jesus Christ Himself is the Christian’s rule of life. ‘‘He that saith he abideth m ‘Him ought humself also so to walk, even as He wabked.’’

JESUS CHRIST, THE HOLY ONE

We look at ‘‘the Christ’’ to-day in the most fundamental aspect of His character. What do you think is the most fundamental aspect of the character of Jesus Christ? Holiness! We look at the Christ to-day as ‘‘the Holy One.’’ Holiness is the first and most preéminent characteristic of Jesus Christ that appears in the Word of God. As John puts it in our first text: “‘We beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father.’’ Now, holiness is the preéminent moral characteristic of God and it is, therefore, also the preéminent characteristic of Jesus Christ. It is true John says, in 1 John 4:8, ‘‘God is love,”’ but John had already said something else before he said this. He had said something as the deeper foundation on which he could build the statement “‘God 1s love,’’ and that deeper something that John had already said is found in 1 John 1:9: “‘This then is the message which we have heard from Hun, and declare unto you, that God ts light and m Him is no darkness at all.’’? The whole object of the Old Testament revelation, which was to form the basis of the New Testament revelation, was to teach, elucidate and burn into the Jewish consciousness one great fundamental truth, namely, ‘‘God is Holy.’’ Holiness, I repeat, was the fundamental, preéminent, moral attribute of God and it is the fundamental, pre- éminent moral attribute of the real Christ. Christ was loving? Yes. Christ was gentle and merciful? Yes. Christ was meek and humble and prayerful? Yes. We shall study all these attributes of Christ in their place, but Christ was first of all Holy. He, too, was ‘‘light and in Him there was no darkness at all.’’

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