The Purity of Intention, the Key to Our Lord's Life and Ours

An Eastern prince was accustomed to retire for an hour every morning to a certain chamber in his palace, which was carefully reserved from every common eye, and in which he said that he found the secret of his life. When the room was entered, it was discovered that it was furnished like a shepherd’s hut, for his forefathers were shepherds. There, with the most simple surroundings, he had been accustomed to meditate upon his past, his present, and

his future.
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I want to conduct you into Christ’s inner chamber in which His Spirit dwelt, and the door of which He has left open for us, that we also may enter and dwell there. The text which more than others introduces us into the inner secret of our Saviour’s life is given in His own words: ‘As the living Father hath sent Me, and I live by the Father; so he that eateth Me, even he shall live by Me” (John vi. 57). From these words we may infer that what the Father was to Jesus, Jesus is willing to be to all who believe; and what Jesus said of His relationship to the Father, we may say of their relationship to Him, and we may read these words thus: “As the living Saviour hath sent me, so I live by the Saviour.”

If devout souls would take the Gospel

according to John, and substitute “Christ”

for “the Father,” and hang on Christ as Christ hung on God, they would not require a book of private devotion other than that which is furnished by this golden book of the inner life.

Our Saviour might have lived an independent life — He was “the Holy One” before He stooped to us, and deliberately laid aside the use of the attributes of His Godhead. During His human life He might at any moment have availed Himself of those divine attributes, and have fulfilled His mighty works in their power. Whenever He was hungry, instead of waiting for Peter or others to provide, He might have used His creative power to transform the very stones into bread, Had He so chosen, He might have planned His own life; and

from the transfiguration mountain have stepped into paradise. He might have spoken His own words, and poured forth such floods of eloquence as would have shone on the pages of literature with dazzling brilliancy. He might have sought His own glory as the supreme end of His life, so displaying the wealth of His nature that His deity would have been apparent to all.

Moreover, Satan was always urging Him to do iz. — Straight from the river Jordan He was led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. In the first assault the Evil One said to Him: “Thou art the Son of God; Thou hast just been claimed as such; Thou hast all power; use that power for Thyself, and make these stones bread.”

That was the crucial point in our Lord’s

life, and in“effect He replied: “It is not

My desire to be other than a dependent

human being. Inasmuch as those whom I

have come to save must learn the lesson

of depending upon My Father and Me, I also will learn by personal experience what it is to depend by faith absolutely upon My Father. Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God; and I will wait until My Father sends Me the help I need.” Afterwards, and throughout His earthly life, the same suggestion was ever being hissed in His ear, “Save Thyself” (Matt. xvi. 22, 23), but never once did He heed or yield to it, till on the Cross He surrendered His spirit to the Father, and trusted Him to raise Him from the dead.

Dependence was the law of His life. — In Hits birth the Father gave Him life. “As the Father had life in Himself, He gave

G unto the Son to have life in Himself.” It was not His own life, and after thirty-three years the Father asked again for it. When dying, Jesus said: ‘Father, receive My life.” He held His life in trust — God gave it, God maintained it, God required it, and at every heart-throb the Son said to the Father, “I live by Thee.” God was as much the breath of Christ’s life as the air is of - our natural life. The unaltering attitude of Christ was that of receiving life and breath and all things from the Father. Thus we should live, always drawing upon Christ, the fountain of life; He came that we might have life, and have it more abundantly, but we must receive the abundance of His grace if we would reign. As branches we must derive the vine-sap for our nourishment and vigour.

So in the plan of our Lord’s life. Sometimes He would say to His disciples: “Let us go across the lake and rest.” But He was quite willing to lay aside His cherished purpose when the people hurried around the lake and asked to be taught and fed. In their intrusion on His quiet He saw the emergence of His Father’s plan. Once when He was on the way to Jairus’ home a woman who had an issue of blood stopped Him, I know not for how long, and in the touch of her finger He saw the intrusion of the Father’s plan for the day, and at once arrested His own plan to follow it. In that wonderful fifth chapter of John, He says: “The Son can originate nothing — but what He sees the Father doing.” When He was in Joseph’s shop, as a young boy of

twelve or fourteen, and saw Joseph making too THE SOUL’S PURE INTENTION

yokes for the oxen, He studied carefully how he made them, and fashioned the yoke on which He was working after the same pattern and shape. Afterwards, when He went forth on His life’s ministry, He was ever watching for the development of the Father’s plan, and the things which God did in the unseen and eternal world, He repeated before the eyes of men. So His plan was the plan of God.

Jesus also depended upon the Father for His words. In one of the most beautiful translations of the Revised Version, in the fiftieth chapter of Isaiah, we are told how the Father, morning by morning, bent over the Son and awakened Him, whispering into His ear the words which He was to utter, and teaching Him how to speak

words in season to them who were weary,

THE KEY TO OUR LORD’S LIFE tor

so that as Jesus went forth to teach the people day by day He did not speak His own words, but the words which the Father gave Him. It was indeed “by the Spirit” that He gave His last command to the Apostles whom He had chosen.

Then as to Hs miracles. In that wonderful fourteenth chapter of John, Jesus says: “The words that I say unto you, I speak not from Myself, but the Father abiding in Me doeth zs works.” We might almost say that we do not know Jesus, because He was so completely dependent upon the Father. His words, His works, His life were the Father’s, and in Jesus we do not see Jesus but the Father mirrored, as heaven in a Clear lake. So also with As will, He was possessed of a will of His own, because

He said, “Not My will”; but we remember that He also said, “Not My will but Zhzne

be done.”

We know, too, how He sought the Father’s glory. He said, “I have glorified Thee on earth.” It was as though it mattered little what men said or thought of Him. His only care was to afford them deeper and truer conceptions of the Father, whom He came to declare. He pledged Himself to answer our prayers, “That the Father might be glorified in the Son”; and in His last prayer He said, “I would wish to be glorified, My Father, only that I may the better glorify Thee.” It was as though the Lord Jesus were only ambitious to be known and recognised by men, that He might unfold God’s character, and attract to Him.

Lf our blessed Lord chose this life of dependence out of all possible lives that He might have lived, ts tt not wisest, most blessed, most Christlike, for us to give up living the independent life in the flesh, and to begin from this moment to depend upon Christ as Christ depended upon God?

If our Master held His life moment by moment at God’s dictation, should not we shape our plans and expend our life as Jesus wills? If He allowed His plan always to give way to God’s plan, is it not evident that, instead of scheming, planning, and striving to get our own way, we ought always to be looking out for Azs plan so as to yield submissively before it? If He gave up His words for the words which the Father put into His lips, do we not greatly mistake in trying to elaborate our sentences and weave the web of bewitching words

instead of day by day waiting to receive the words our Saviour gives us? If we would depend upon the Master for the power of His life, opening all our being, and preferring His power imparted to any power of our own, I need not say how our lives would at once become divine and marvellously powerful.

How CAN JESUS BECOME TO US WHAT THE

FATHER WAS TO HIM?

First: We must be quiet; we must wait. In all music there are rests, and sometimes whole bars of rests; so there must be in every life the still hour for allowing God by the Holy Spirit to form His Son within us. Jesus often climbed into the mountain solitudes, apparently to give time for the

thought of God the Father to fill His

THE KEY TOCOUR’ LORD’S EIFE: ‘10s

nature, and there must be times in our life when we give an opportunity for Christ to assert Himself and impress Himself absorbingly on the vision.

Second: We must be sure to make Jesus jirst in everything. The first words in our Bible are very significant — “In the beginning God.” The story of every day ought to be commenced with the words: In the beginning the Word. He must be the Alpha, the first, the beginning. If, before you rush into a new enterprise, you would sit quietly down and be sure that Jesus Christ is first, it would save you from landing in many a quagmire. Let Jesus be first in every plan, every act, every sermon, every letter and interview. All must be begun, continued, and ended in Him.

Third: We must make the glory of Jesus our aim, We may not always feel it to be our aim, but must choose it to be so. Our will must lie in that direction, as a needle which is to be magnetised lies along the magnet. Always remember this great principle of the Christian’s life, that when you cannot feel a thing, you must choose it by an act of your will, and then ask God to create in you the corresponding emotion, as the motive of your action. Let the glory of Jesus be your aim in every service. Let His glory be the thought, whether you eat or drink, or whatsoever you may do. This must be the supreme purpose, whether we are engaged in making money, in housekeeping, or in mission work. Our prayers for the conversion of our friends are often hindered by the imperfection of the motives

that prompt them. We wish them saved that they may no longer bring misery and disaster into the home. To succeed in prayer, our motive must be pure, and we must be willing to put the glory of Christ as the prime consideration in the conversion of those we love.

Fourth: We must meet God’s will in every circumstance. Draw a circle, the circle of God’s will, then step into it, and keep in it all your life; so that whatever happens may reach you through the encircling will of God. Joseph’s brethren may put him in the pit, but it is not they who sent him into Egypt, but God. Judas may bring the cup, but Jesus says: “The cup which JZy Father hath given Me, shall I not drink it?” When we are living in the will of God, our enemy may shoot his poisoned

arrows against us: they will glance aside unless God wills otherwise; but if He wishes them to strike, by the time they reach us they have become God’s permissive will for us.

Lastly: We must reckon on God. We have no right to be constantly feeling our pulse and worrying about our faith. Let us look away from faith to the object of faith. It is better to have the least faith in Christ, than the greatest faith in our faith. To obtain strong faith, reckon on the faithfulness of God. Begin to count God faithful. It is useless to question whether you have faith enough to believe a note of hand; the question is, whether the man who signed it is worthy of trust.

Go over these steps again: be still: make Christ first in everything: live absolutely for

Him: receive from Him all your words to

THE KEY TO OUR LORD’S LIFE 10g

speak, all your works to do, all the power of your life: when accosted by any sudden emergency or need, seek from Him, who sent the demand, the power to meet it: reckon absolutely upon Christ: meet His will in every circumstance. Such was the way that Jesus lived towards His Father; live so towards Him.

You may inquire how it was that the human nature of Christ became so absolutely yielded to the Father. The answer comes from one of the profound sentences in the Bible: “Who, through the Eternal Spirit, offered Himself without spot to God.” When our Lord was baptized, He said, by symbol and metaphor: “I come to do Thy will, O my God; yea, Thy law is within My heart.” And immediately there came

on Him the power of the Eternal Spirit. It was in the power of that Spirit that He yielded Himself to God, without spot or blemish. If, then, we are to live towards Christ as Christ lived towards the Father, we must be energised by the same Spirit. Whatever our station or occupation, we may resolve to live that life from this hour, but may forfeit the power to live it within twenty-four hours, unless we rely on the Eternal Spirit to work mightily in us as in Him. The only power by which we can live the life of Jesus, is through the infilling of the Holy Ghost. Shall we not, then, resolve to finish for ever with the independent life, and to dare to say, as never before, “The living Saviour hath sent me, and He lives in me”? To which we shall hear Him responding, from the excellent glory,

“Because I live, ye shall live also.”