The All-Sufficiency of Christ

In a letter of Hewitson*s, there occurs a sentence which is well worthy of repetition. He writes: — “Longinus says of Homer that he majces his gods mere men: we may say of our unbelief that it makes the saving strength of Jehovah our Saviour less than the rebelling strength of our indwelling sin.” To this source — low views of Christ’s sufficiency — we may trace the cause of all our failures. While we have believed in Him as able to meet all our need in the matter of pardon and justification, we have failed to trust Him with the same implicit and simple confidence for deliverance from the bondage and service of sin. The power of sin against us we have secretly regarded as greater than the power of Christ for us, and yet could anything be more dishonouring to God than

such low and unbelieving thoughts of that Son whom He has sent to be the Saviour from all iniquity? Not of the unsaved only, but of the reconciled and forgiven, He seems to ask that all-important question —” What think ye of Christ? *’ What do you think of Him in reference to ybur sanctification as well as your justification; in reference to your daily trials, your temptations, and conflicts with sin? Is He as able to deliver you from the dominipn of all these as He is to save you from the guilt and penalty of sin? Is He an all-sufficient Saviour? Get but a view of His infinite power and of His wondrous love — of His ability and willingness to save, always and noWy — and though your foes may not become less, either in strength or in number, you will rise to another sphere of life, above the mists and fogs of unbelief which have so long and so frequently shut out the light of God’s countenance from your soul. You will rise to a position of deliverance already obtained by Christ for you.

The joy and confidence of a child of God “who is walking by faith, does not arise from any consciousness that the root of sin is eradicated, but from a sweet and hallowed assurance, founded on the word of God, of Christ’s all-sufficiency in keeping it under, in breaking its power, and filling the soul with His own blessed Spirit, and in living His own life in us. The believer is not occupied with himself, but with Christ. It is not what / am or have become, but what He is, and is able to do, for and in me, that fills me with courage, and faith, and hope. ‘’ Moses wist not that the skin of His face shone.*’ And yet he gave a testimony that it did shine, not by actually speaking about it, but by shining.

Let us not suppose, however, that no testimony to holiness is to be given by the lips. Though Christ and not self must be the subject of our testimony, yet we must tell out what we are finding Christ can do for us day by day. All God*s children believe Christ is able to deliver them from their be-

setting sins. But we want the testimony that He does deliver them, that He is leading them along a path which is ‘< righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.” It is salvation in its present-tense aspect that we so greatly need to be prominently and definitely presented to those who have thoroughly grasped salvation in its past and finished sense. It is a constant view of Him “who delivered us,” and who “doth deliver,” and who “will yet deliver us,” that we need, to keep us from being overcome by the temptations of sin and unbelief.

“The faith which enables the soul to abide in Christ is nothing else than an assured trust and confidence on our part that, as He has already wrought out for us our acceptance with God, so He will work in us every gracious disposition (be it repentance, or faith itself, or humility, or hope, or love) which is necessary to qualify us for glory. It is not enough to

supplicate these graces; we must lean upon Him for them, and fix the eye of expectation upon the promise of His new Covenant: “I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts:” being well assured that He will fulfil to us the terms thereof. There is a promise, I say, that He will fulfil in us all the work of sanctification; and it is well that it is so, by way of makmg assurance doubly sure, and giving to the doubtful heart a

strong consolation If the soul has the

least scintillation of a desire to be holy; much more if it is bent on being holy, as far as its power goes; still more if it is striving and struggling to be holy, and beating against the cage of its corruptions in a great longing for spiritual freedom, as a poor imprisoned bird beats, who sees outside the bright sun and the green trees, and other birds flitting to and fro in the blue ether, — is it conceivable that the Incarnate love, the love which bled, and agonised, and poured itself out in death for the objects on which it had fastened, should

not meet that desire, that longing, that striving, and visit the soul with power? As without holiness no man shall (or can) see the Lord, must not Christ be much more earnestly anxious to make us holy than we can be to be made so? If we do not believe in this earnest anxiety of His, do we believe in His love at all? Have we ever really apprehended it; or has it been merely a tale recited in our ears, which we do not care indeed to contradict, but which has never at all taken hold of, or touched our hearts?

Ah! what if these struggles to be holy should themselves be in a certain sense a token of unbelief? What if the poor bird imprisoned in the cage should be thinking that, if it is ever to gain its liberty, it must be by its own exertions, and by vigorous and frequent strokes of its wings against the bars? If it did so, it would ere long fall back breathless and exhausted, faint and sore, and despairing. And the soul will have a similar experience which thinks that Christ has indeed won pardon and

acceptance for her, but that sanctiHcation she must win for herself, and under this delusion beats herself sore in vain efforts to correct the propensities of a heart which the word of God pronounces to be “desperately wicked.” That heart, — you can make nothing of it yourself; — leave it to Christ, in quiet dependence upon His grace. Suffer Him to open the prison doors for you, and then you shall fly out and hide yourself in your Lord’s bosom, and there find rest. Yield up the soul to Him, and place it in His hands, and you shall at once begin to have the delightful experience of His power in sanctifying.” — Dean Goulburn, D.D. — “Thoughts on Personal Religion,” p. 24.