Beginning a Christian Life
Every young person should be a Christian. All the heart’s truest instincts would lead the soul to God. Christ alone can answer our cravings and satisfy our longings. In him alone can any one find himself, and reach the things that are true and right and lovely.
How may one begin to be a Christian? The hunger is in the heart, the desire to take Christ as Saviour and Master; but many a young person passes through a long experience of painful anxiety and perplexity in finding the way into the light of faith and peace. A friend, knowing that I am considering young people’s problems, writes in a personal letter’: “Some time will you ask people to help children to come to Christ and confess him? Oh, the weeks and months that I suffered, trying to gain courage to speak to my mother before she guessed it and came to me!”
This is a common experience of childhood. Children long to have some one to speak to them about Christ, so that they can voice their heart’s yearnings, and come out in joyful acceptance and confession of Christ. They love Christ, and want to speak of their love; but they need the touch of human love to help them. Happy are the young people who at this critical point in their spiritual history have wise, gentle, patient guidance.
To begin to be a Christian is to learn that God loves you; that you are his child; that Jesus Christ stands beside you, asking you to believe in him, to commit your life to him; and that you may without fear, doubt, or reserve, trust him. It is not by our love for Christ that we are saved, but by Christ’s love for us. Faith in Christ is simply the acceptance of divine friendship. You need not trouble yourself about the smallness of your love or the feebleness of your faith; your hope and your security are not measured either by your love or by your faith, but by the infinite love and strength in which you are trusting. r N The first thing is to get your relation with Christ clearly established. He loves you, and you, accept his love. He would take your life as it is, with all its sin, fault, and shortcoming, as you put it into his hands. You need not understand it all, — there is no reason why you should. You believe that Christ has all power, all wisdom, all love. His hands are safe hands, skilful hands, gentle hands, hands of love. He can take your soul, which sin has hurt and stained, no matter how sorely, and restore it to beauty. Faith is the committing of the life to him for salvation, for guidance, for care and keeping, for time and eternity.
Then the next step is the acceptance of Christ as your Master and Lord. A Christian is one who follows Christ. This means the surrender of the whole life to him. The heart must be given up. There can be no Christian life without love. Jesus demands the first place in the affections of his followers. If any one loves father or mother, brother or sister, wife or child, more than him, he is not worthy of him, and cannot be his disciple.
Soldiers may obey implicitly without love; but the most perfect obedience, if the heart be not in it, would not make one a Christian. We might devote our life and strength to Christian work, toiling unweariedly in the service of the church, giving our money lavishly for the advancement of Christianity or for the relief of suffering, and yet not be Cnristians. Love for Christ must be the motive at the heart of all our work. “Lovest thou me?” is the test.
But the heart draws the whole life after it. If we love, we will serve. “If ye love me, keep my commandments.” “Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you.” We cannot accept Christ as our Saviour, and not at the same time accept him as our Master. We must begin at once to obey him; and our obedience must be without reserve, without condition, without question. It must also be cheerful and glad-hearted, not compulsory, reluctant, or constrained. Christians are soldiers of Christ, and the soldier’s first duty is to obey. Whether the will of Christ be made known to us in his word, through our own conscience, or in providence, we should always promptly and cheerfully accept and obey. It may not be always easy — it may be very hard and costly; but when the will of our Master is made known, if we are his followers we can only obey, and our obedience should be sweet with love.
Consecration is nothing but being a Christian from the centre of our heart to the tips of our fingers, and being a Christian always, wherever we go. “Whose I am and whom I serve” was one great Christian’s idea of the life we should live. A Christian belongs to Christ, and knows it and remembers it wherever he is.
Jesus spoke Mary’s name — she did not recognize him before, she supposed him to be the gardener; but when he said “Mary! n she knew him, and from her heart said,” Rabboni I n It is always just that way. We love him because he first loved us; we know him because he first calls us. He speaks our name, and then we say “Rabboni, Master!” Christ is ours and we are Christ’s. That is becoming a Christian. Then, being a Christian is living out that same life of love, obedience, surrender, and service, through all the days.
There is something else; he who loves Christ loves his brother also. To begin to be a Christian is to remove from the arctic zone of cold selfishness into the warm summer zone of love. We cannot make too much of our relation to Christ, — that is the beginning of it all; but we have relations to others as well. We are to live in the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians, with love that suffereth long and is kind, that envieth not, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not its own, is not provoked, beareth all things, endureth all things. The Christian life that does not make us more gentle, more patient, more unselfish, is not realizing its true meaning. A Christian life is a new Christ-life lived out in this world — we are to be Christ to others.
When we love Christ we will want our brother to love him too. We will strive to bring others to him to find the same joy we have found. We will seek to bring back the one who is wandering. One writes the lesson thus: —
“First seek thy Saviour out, and dwell Beneath the shadow of his roof, Till thou have scanned his features well, And known him for the Christ by proof, —
Such proof as they are sure to find,
Who spend with him their happy days;
Clean hands and a self-ruling mind,
Ever in tune for love and praise.
Then, potent with the spell of heaven, Go, and thine erring brother gain;
Entice him home to be forgiven, Till he, too, sees his Saviour plain.”
The heart of the Christian should be a well of living water, a fount of holy and blessed influences, whose streams flow in all directions, carrying comfort, cheer, encouragement, help, and gladness to every other life they reach. Mere orthodoxy of belief does not make one a Christian, nor does attention to ecclesiastical rites and rules; a Christian is one in whom the life of Christ pulses and the love of Christ glows and burns.
When should a young person become a Christian? At once, is the answer — to-day. Not an hour should be lost. The whole life belongs to Christ, not the mature years alone, but the earliest days as well; not the ripe fruit merely, but the bud and the flower as well; not the mid-day only, with its heat and burden, but the morning, too, with its sweetness and freshness. One cannot come too early to Christ. Listen to the first gentle voices in your heart. Yield to the first influences of the divine Spirit. Give Christ the beginnings of your life.
It is a serious mistake for young people to wait until they can begin with deep experiences and conspicuous activities; they should begin as little children. Christian life is a school; we are to enter the lowest forms and become learners, advancing day by day. “Come unto me, and learn of me,” is the Master’s invitation. The best time to begin a Christian life is in childhood, when the heart is tender, when it is easy to learn.
“He who waits to have his task marked out Shall die and leave his errand unfulfilled.”