Christ Bringing Us to God

The words I wish to speak on you find in I Pet. 3: 18, “Christ, also, hath sujEfered for sins, the just for the unjust, that He mig-ht bring us to God.” They went into the g-reat object of Christ’s work. What was it for that He came? “That He mig-ht bring us to Gody You know there is a great difference in a way to a house and the house itself. I may be traveling through the most beautiful scenery, on a lovely, pleasant day, with delig-htful company, and enjoying every step of the way, and yet, I am not content to stay there always. I have gone into that way to bring me to the end, the object of my journey. Christ is the way; what is the end of the way? The end is God. Christ wants to bring us to God. You often find Christians so occupied with Christ that they never get time for God. You ask me, is there any difference between going to Christ and going to God? A very great difference. In Christ I have the gracious and merciful side of God’s character. But that is not the only side of the divine character I need to know. In Christ I have the condescension of God coming* near to me, but the object of that condescension is to bring me back to righteousness and holiness. You can never have true streng-th and an all-round Christian experience unless you learn the lesson that Christ is g”oingto win your heart that He may bring you back to God. Just think, Christ was not, in Himself, self-sufl&cient when He was on earth. He lived every day with the thoug-ht within Him: There is one g-reater than I, and my blessedness is to live in dependence upon Him, with a will g-iven up to His will and in a trust that counts upon His working-. And if I am to be in Christ and Christ in me, what was His life must become my life; fellowship with God and dependence upon God. There are aspects of the divine character that are more fully revealed in God the Father than in God the Son. Take, for instance, the fear of God. I never, in the New Testament, read of the fear of Christ. He came to reveal the other side, the love and the attractiveness and the trustworthiness of God. The element of fear and holy reverence was an element in Christ’s own character. Do not I read in Hebrews, the fifth chapter, that when Christ prayed He was heard in that He feared. He had g-odly fear towards the Father, and if my Christian character is to be perfect and all-around, I must have the fear of God as it is revealed in the Old Testament, workinginto the very foundations of my life, with this most child-like confidence there must ever be a deep, deep fear of God before the throne. I read that the four livingcreatures and twenty-four elders cast their crowns before the throne. I read that ang-els and seraphim veil their faces with their wings; if my Christian character is to be perfect there must be in it that deep consciousness of the inconceivable g-reatness of God above me that makes me bow in the very dust before Him. And it is just because so many Christians have never g-iven the truth a right place in their hearts, that Christ came to bring them to God., that there is so wanting in them that blessed element of fear and reverence, worship and adoration. Come, let us think what this means. Christ came to bring us to God. I am not going to try and give you a theological essay upon the atonement. You know all about that. But I want to look at the practical side. My object is to help the beloved workers who are being trained in this Institute, not so much as to right comprehension and clear thought, but to the down-right practical life, such as God would have. If we could get a step nearer that life all our study and work will be brighter and more entirely in the power of the Holy Spirit. How can I make it clear that Christ brings men to God? I think I can answer it

in this way: We need, in our practical, every-day life, to be brought nigh to God and to be living in that nearness. Let me take the morning hour of prayer. A man wakes up in the morning with the thought, Christ is come to bring me nearer to God. How am I to begin the day if I am to live near to God? That is what the heart longs for. Well, come, just let us think how Christ brings us near to God. A man’s desire to walk before God is strong-. He wants to be as full of God as he can be. How is he to attain it? I want to g-ive a few practical thoughts.

I think, first of all, he must set himself to g-ive God the place that belongs to Him. If I want to be brought nigh to a person I want to know who that person is. If he is a king or emperor I approach him with a different feeling- from what I approach a slave. If I approach a friend thoughts of joy fill me. Before I am brought to God I must know who God is, and as I bow before Him, I must say, “He is the Almighty One, the All Holy One. He cannot bear sin or the shadow of sin. He wants to take it away. He is the All Loving One, He wants to communicate Himself to me. The Everywhere Present One, who is with me and able to make Himself known to my soul.” If I want to be brought nigh to God I must first say, “He is God, and my soul must bow in lowly stillness and in an attitude of faith, and just exercise the belief: God is here. He, the Creator of all things on the earth, the Incomprehensible One; He is a consuming fire; He is love and wants to impart Himself wholly to me. That God is near. But I do not know Him; I know so little of Him, how can I come nigh to Him?”

Then next I begin to think, Who am I, and I say, If I give God His place I must take the right place for myself. I am a creature and I have nothing holy. I have nothing good except what God gives me. I am nothing except a vessel in which God can show forth His glory-, and therefore I want to take my place before God as nothing-. If Christ is to bring- me to God I must sink down into my nothingness. I am not only a creature but I am a sinner. That ought to make me take a still lower place. Paul never could forg-et that He was the chief of sinners. He was always thinking- of that time before his conversion when he persecuted Christ and the disciples; so he bowed low in his old ag-e and said, “I am the chief of sinners.” He was not talking- about his daily sins. He was talkingabout the more than twenty years before, when he was a blasphemer. You know, if you are to meet the Emperor of China there are certain rules about bowing before him. And there are certain rules if I am to meet God. I must come in deep self-abnegation. And then I am a redeemed sinner; this humbles me still more. I take the lowest place. There is God waiting for me to hear my cry. How can I have intercourse with this God? Jesus Christ brings me to God.

Take the third step. The first was: give God His place and let Him be seated on His throne of glory; the second: take your place before God. The third: take your place in Christ Jesus. I am speaking to believers. You understand what the atonement is; that we have been brought nigh by the blood. You have believed that for yourself personally, that your sins are pardoned and you have had access to God’s favor. You want, this morning, to be brought into a life always near to God. You need Christ to do it. How can He do it? Take your place in Christ Jesus and by an act of faith and by the light of the Holy Spirit see and believe that you are one with Christ. Christ is before the Father and you are in Him and He is in you. No branch was ever so really in the vine, no finger of my hand was ever so truly in my body, as I am in Christ by a vital union, and as Christ is in me. And when I want to come to God I am told that the place I am to occupy is the place of the most intimate nearness. The writer of the Hebrews teaches it. The efficacy of the blood is our boldness; the living- High Priest waits to bring us in. It is not that I am down here while He does a little work in and for me. No! As the High Priest who says, “Ye in Me, and I in you,” He brings me to God. In the power of my union with Him, in living fellowship with Himself, He presents me, and I, by faith, have a real, abiding access within the veil, into the very life, into the very heart and love of God. There I bow in holy adoration and speak the words.

So near, so very near to God,
More near I cannot be,

For in the person of His Son
I am as near as He.

Christ came to bring us unto God. I am not only in Him but Christ is in me as a living person. Christ takes charge of me, Christ introduces me to the Father, and as I am before the Father, Christ gives the working of the Holy Spirit, and He teaches me what my work is when I am brought nigh to God. It was that God might

J get His children in a life of fellowship to understand and realize who He is. Some, when they g-et within the veil, when they are brought nigh into the holiest of all, look upon it as a grand attainment. It is only the beginning of the blessed life. For, when I am there, then God is able to let His light shine into my whole being. Then God is able to let His holiness come upon me. When I am there God is able to make me bow and sink down into a nothingness and into humility that I never thought possible to attain to, that I may be there receiving the inflowing of God’s Holy Spirit in a freshness and a fullness inconceivable. Oh! beloved, Christ came to bring us very nigh to God. It is not only nearness of acceptance but nearness of love, the consciousness that He loves me and I love Him. It is the nearness of that union of love which consists in the closest possible fellowship. Give up all in emptiness for Him to fill, and God waits to come down and pour His fullness into me. Christ died that He might bring us unto God, and in that place, in God’s presence, oh, there it is, that not only God’s work in me is to be done, but there it is I am to learn how to do my work for God. In that nearness to God is the place of intercession. Throughout the church of Christ there is a univer sal complaint that we pray too little. Some work much but pray little. We pay far more attention to what we have to do with men than to what we have to do with God. Beloved, the fountains of the Christian life, the fountains of the outflow of the Holy Ghost, the fountains of love and power to be broken up in our hearts and to be poured out to men, these fountains rise from the throne of God, and it is only as man tarries before God in fellowship with the Most High, that God’s love can flow through us. Ask any worker of experience, ask any man who has preached the gospel long, and he tells you he has to mourn the fact that he has not had that deep love for sinners which comes from dwelling in the love of God. And where am I to receive this inflowing love? It is when I am brought nigh to God. There it is I learn what intercession is; there I become strong to bear the burden of the church and of the world in quiet pleading with God. I have such access to Him, I am so really His friend. He gives me such power with Him that I know I have only to plead and an answer will come. Dear friends, is there not a great deal of our living of which we might confess it bears but little mark of Christ having brought us nigh to God.

There is another step. I say Christ brings us thus nigh to God in Himself that we may act out and live our lives in the world in that nearness to God. You occasionally find men, when they speak in public, they have a sense of God upon them. I have been told that at the great International Convention in London there was more than one speaker of great eloquence, but there was one man, whose very presence, when he rose to speak, hushed the audience. The very presence of God was with him. So, with a man like Geo. Muller, who has spent his whole life in prayer, the presence of God is on him. But how seldom one finds this. Of George Bowen, of India, it is told, that he had said that the nearness of God was nearer unto him than any man upon earth. A friend asked him about it, and his answer was: “Yes, God is nearer to me, consciously, than any one in this room.” Is it not that presence we want? That presence of God to go out and meet men, to g-o out and do work, to go out and eng-age in business, to go out and be tempted and tried, the presence of the Everlasting God to be with us from morning to nig-ht, moment by moment. You ask me, Can it be? I ask you, I have asked it before, I ask it again, does it cost you any trouble to enjoy the sunlig-ht from moment to moment, whether you pick up a book to read or whether you look into the face of a friend to recognize him, or whether you do business or domestic work; the sun takes care to shine all along. God has given it to you. It does its work. You spend every moment of the day in the enjoyment of that light. And what think you? Would your God care more to have such provision made for your body than for your spirit. We need not be in the dark, without the lig-ht of the sun, twelve hours of the day, and would God not be able and make provision that you should every moment abide in the light of His presence and the joy of His immediate nearness. Christ came and died to bring” us unto God. Listen to what we read in the Hebrews, about the better hope of the New Testament “by which ive draw nigh unto God.’’’’ Listen to what we read in the same chapter, “He is able to save completely them that come to God by Him.” If you will learn, not only to ask this blessing”

among- other blessing-s, but if you will, indeed, believe that Christ will fulfill this work in you and bring you nigh unto God, so that every moment of your life is spent in His presence, Christ will work it out in your life. Christ suffered that “He might bring us to God.” Dear friends, as surely as we are God’s children our life can be full of God. In Ephesians, Paul tells us that God is willing to strengthen us with might by His Spirit in the inner man, until we are filled with the fullness of God or unto the fullness of God. I long thought that meant some high experience, but it means simply that God wants to be present with us with such consciousness that our heart is all the time full of His blessed presence, His holy will and His divine inworking. Christ wants to bring us nigh to God.

One more thought. When Christ brings us nigh to God He brings our will in perfect harmony to the will of God. I cannot have my will at variance with God’s will, or mourning its inability to do God’s will, and all the time have the enjoyment of the blessing of God’s light and God’s presence,

Christ came to bring me to God. I not only need faith to realize that He is in me and I in Him, but by faith I need to give myself up to His working, that as a living person He shall reveal the will of God perfectly in me, and so breathe into me His own disposition and His own life. Christ is to dwell and live in me. I am not to count Christ as a separate being, dwelling in my heart as a locality, but Christ is to be in my heart, in my life, in my thinking, living and willing, as the very life of all I do, so that He lives Himself out throug-h me. So Christ is formed in me, and God sees the very fig“ure, the very form of Christ within me. And as Christ is thus manifested within me in His disposition and Spirit, the nearness of God becomes more intimate and the fellowship with God becomes more close. Oh! beloved, God wants us to come nig-h to Him in Christ. Are there not many Christians who live far from God? When you press this thoug“ht they are satisfied with having- been pardoned and brought nig-h. You have reason to doubt your position unless you have yielded to God to work out the practical, spiritual, experimental nearness to God. We talked, last week, about the baptism of the Holy Spirit, and the baptism of power, and the life of the Spirit, but I do pray you, young men and women, who are going to devote yourselves to service, and you believers who are longing to live holy lives, remember one thing, you want more of God in your life. A man has just as much religion as he has of God, and if a man wants more religion he must have more of God. We have a great deal of seeking of more religion, more power, and yet we do not think of having more of God. God created you for Himself to fill you with Himself. Christ redeemed you to be filled with your God. Oh, come and let Christ do His work, and before we go on to speak, this evening, about that life, let us realize this one supreme thought, Christ wants to bring me to God. I want, by the help of God, to be very practical, and I want to ask believers, is this what you are seeking for? Have you come here for the acquiring of new truths or thoug-hts, or are you here that Jesus may bring- you near to God? When you pray, two minutes spent in quietly giving- yourself to be broug-ht near to God by Christ would be better than twenty minutes in prayer in the ordinary way. We often pour out our petitions, praise and confessions to a distant God. If you want your life chang-ed, if you want God to come into your life, if you want God to take possession of your life, in prayer always make your first desire: “Son of the Father, bring me near to God.’’^ Bow in the very deepest adoration and reverence, and wait, wait before Him. It is God’s own work to reveal Himself. Bow in an act of faith; the Everlasting- God is here, longing to take possession of me, willing- to make Himself known. I wait upon God. Bow in deep lowliness, and beseech God, for His g-reat mercy’s sake, to come near and make Himself known to you. I often see young- Christians, how they try to g-rasp every truth and rejoice over every beautiful conception. They resolve to live entirely for God, and they know not how much self-confidence there is in all. I pray that God may bring- them to the place of feebleness and emptiness. You know Peter’s consecration. It was such a defective consecration. He said, I am ready to g-o to prison and death. He truly meant it, but it was in self-confidence. Christ led him to see it when He allowed him to fall. Then he was humbled and wept bitterly. I beseech you, pray to God with your whole heart, “Oh! God, make me humble, make me meek, make me g-entle, and let the g-lory of God fill my soul with fear and reverence all the day.” Do not be afraid that it will take away your joy. It will strike deeper root into the very depth of your being-.

Christ suffered, that He mig-ht bring- us to God. What did He suffer? Nothing was too great. He endured all, that He might bring us to God. Are you willing to take time and trouble that you may be brought nigh to God? If that has become the object of our desires we will understand the work of Christ far better, and our understanding and knowledge of that work will bring far more abundant fruit.