1 João 3
Andrew Murray · Citado em PreceptAustin
1 João 3:2
Murray - MOLDED IN LOVE 1 JOHN 3:2 NIV The first and chief need of our Christian life is fellowship with God. As I need every moment fresh air to breathe, as the sun every moment sends down its light, so it is only in direct living communication with God that my soul can be strong. Let God’s love overwhelm you and bow you still lower down. Sink down before Him in humility, meekness, patience, and surrender to His goodness and mercy. Then accept and value your place in Christ Jesus. He loves you with a personal love. He looks every day for the personal response of your love. Look into His face with trust until His love really shines into your heart. Make His heart glad by telling Him that you do love Him. He offers Himself to you as a personal Savior and Keeper from the power of sin. We have not only Christ’s life in us as a power, and His presence with us as a person, but we have His likeness to be clearly apparent in us. He is to be formed in us so that His form and His likeness can be seen in us. The God who revealed Jesus in the flesh and perfected Him will reveal Him in you and perfect you in Him. The Father loves the Son and delights to work out His image and likeness in you. Count upon it that this blessed work will be done in you as you wait on your God and hold fellowship with Him. F B
1 João 3:2
Murray - LIKE CHRIST: In His Glory. “We know that, when He shall appear, we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is. And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as He is pure.”—1 John 3:2, 8. “And I appoint unto you a kingdom, even as my Father hath appointed unto me.”—Luke 22:29. God’s glory is His holiness. To glorify God is to to yield ourselves that God in us may show forth His glory. It is only by yielding ourselves to be holy, to let His holiness fill our life, that His glory can shine forth from us. The one work of Christ was to glorify the Father, to reveal what a glorious Holy God He is. Our one work is, like Christ’s, so by our obedience, and testimony, and life, to make known our God as “glorious in holiness,” that He may be glorified in heaven and earth. When the Lord Jesus had glorified the Father on earth, the Father glorified Him with Himself in heaven. This was rot only His just reward; it was a necessity in the very nature of things. There is no other place for a life given up to the glory of God, as Christ’s was, than in that glory, The law holds good for us too: a heart that yearns and thirsts for the glory of God, that is ready to live and die for it, becomes prepared and fitted to live in it. Living to God’s glory on earth is the gate to living in Gods glory in heaven. If with Christ we glorify the Father, the Father will with Christ glorify us too. Yes, we shall be like Him in His glory. We shall be like Him in His spiritual glory, the glory of His holiness. In the union of the two words in the name of the Holy Spirit, we see that what is HOLY and what is SPIRITUAL stand in the closest connection with each other. When Jesus as man had glorified God by revealing, and honouring, and giving Himself up to His holiness, he was as man taken up into and made partaker of the Divine glory. And so it will be with us. If here on earth we have given ourselves to have God’s glory take possession of us, and God’s holiness, God’s Holy Spirit, dwell and shine in us, then our human nature with all our faculties, created in the likeness of God, shall have poured into and transfused through it, in a way that passes all conception, the purity and the holiness and the life, the very brightness of the glory of God. We shall be like Him in His glorified body. It has been well said: Embodiment is the end of the ways of God. The creation of man was to be God’s masterpiece. There had previously been spirits without bodies, and animated bodies without spirits, but in man there was to be a spirit in a body lifting up and spiritualizing the body into its own heavenly purity and perfection. Man as a whole is God’s image, his body as much as his spirit. In Jesus a human body—O mystery of mysteries!—is set upon the throne of God, is found a worthy partner and container of the Divine glory. Our bodies are going to be the objects of the most astonishing miracle of Divine transforming power: “He will fashion our vile body like unto His glorious body, according to the working whereby He is able even to subdue all things unto Himself.” The glory of God as seen in our bodies, made like Christ’s glorious body, will be something almost more wonderful than in our spirits. We are “waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.” We shall be like Him in His place of honour. Every object must have a fit place for its glory to be seen. Christ’s place is the central one in the universe: the throne of God. He spake to His disciples, “Where I am, there shall my servant be. If any man serve me, him will my Father honour.” “I appoint you a kingdom, EVEN AS my Father hath appointed me; that ye may eat and drink at my table, and sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel.” To the Church at Thyatira He says: “He that overcometh and keepeth my words unto the end, to him will I give power over the nations, EVEN As I received of my Father.” And to the Church at Laodicca: “To him that overcometh will I grant to sit on my throne, EVEN AS I overcame, and am set down with my Father on His throne.” Higher and closer it cannot be: I EVEN As we have borne the image of the earthly, we also of the heavenly: The likeness will be complete and perfect. Such Divine God-given glimpses into the future reveal to us, more than all our thinking, what intense truth, what Divine meaning there is in God’s creative word: “Let us make man in Oar image, after Our likeness.” To show forth the likeness of the Invisible, to be partaker of the Divine Nature, to share with God His rule of the universe, is man’s destiny. His place is indeed one of unspeakable glory. Standing between two eternities, the eternal purpose in which we were predestinated to be conformed to the image of the first-born Son, and the eternal realization of that purpose when we shall be like Him in His glory, we hear the voice from every side: O ye image-bearers of God! on the way to share the glory of God and of Christ. live a God-like, live a Christ-like life! “I shall be satisfied when I awake with THY LIKENESS,” so the Psalmist sung of old. Nothing can satisfy the soul but God’s image, because for that it was created. And this not as something external to it, only seen but not possessed; it is as partaker of that likeness that we shall be satisfied. Blessed they who here long for it with insatiable hunger; they shall be filled. This, the very likeness of God, this will be the glory, streaming down on them from God Himself, streaming through their whole being, streaming, out from them through the universe. “When Christ who is our life shall be manifested, we also shall be manifested with Him in glory.” Beloved fellow-Christians! nothing can be made manifest in that day that has not a real existence here in this life. If the glory of God is not our life here, it cannot be hereafter. It is impossible; him alone who glorifies God here, can God glorify hereafter. “Man is the image and glory of God.” It is as you bear the image of God here, as you live in the likeness of Jesus, who is the brightness of His glory, and the express image of His person, that you will be fitted for the glory to come. If we are to be as the image of the heavenly, the Christ in glory, we must first bear the image of the earthly, the Christ in humiliation. Child of God! Christ is the uncreated image of God. Man is His created image. On the throne in the glory the two will be eternally one. You know what Christ did, how He drew near, how He sacrificed all, to restore us to the possession of that image. Oh, shall we not at length yield ourselves to this wonderful love, to this glory inconceivable, and give our life wholly to manifest the likeness and the glory of Christ Shall we not, like Him, make the Father’s glory our aim and hope, living to His glory here, as the way to live in His glory there. The Father’s glory: it is in this that Christ’s glory and ours have their common origin. Let the Father be to us what He was to Him, and the Father’s glory will be ours as it is His. All the traits of the life of Christ converge to this as their centre. He was Son; He lived as Son; God was to Him FATHER. As Son He sought the Father’s glory; as Son He found it. Oh! let this be our conformity to the image of the Son, that THE FATHER is the all in all of our life; the Father’s glory must be our everlasting home. Beloved brethren! who have accompanied me thus far in these meditations on the image of our Lord, and the Christ-like life in which it is to be reflected, the time is now come for us to part let us do so with the word, “WE SHALL BE LIKE HIM, for we shall see Him as He is. He who hath this hope in Him purifieth Himself, EVEN AS He is pure.” LIKE CHRIST! let us pray for each other, and for all God’s children, that in ever-growing measure this may be the one aim of our faith, the one desire of our heart, the one joy of our life. Oh, what will it be when we meet in the glory, when we see Him as He is, and see each other all like Him! Ever blessed and most glorious God I what thanks shall we render Thee for the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, and for the light of Thy glory which shines upon us in Him! And what thanks shall we render Thee, that in Jesus we have seen the image not only of Thine, but of our glory, the pledge of what we are to be with Thee through eternity! O God! forgive us, forgive us for Jesus’ blood’s sake, that we have so little believed this, that we have so little lived this And we beseech Thee that Thou wouldst reveal to all who have had fellowship with each other in these meditations, what THE GLORY is in which they are to live eternally, in which they can be living, even now, as they glorify Thee. O Father! awaken us and all Thy children to see and feel what Thy purpose with us is. We are indeed to spend eternity in Thy glory: Thy glory is to be around us, and on us, and in us; we are to be like Thy Son in His glory. Father! we beseech Thee, oh visit Thy Church! Let Thy Holy Spirit, the Spirit of glory, work mightily in her; and let this be her one desire, the one mark by which she is known: the glory of God resting upon her. Our Father! grant it for Jesus’ sake. amen WHAT WE ARE AND WHAT WE SHALL BE James Hastings Beloved, now are we children of God, and it is not yet made manifest what we shall be. We know that, if he shall be manifested, we shall be like him; for we shall see him even as he is.—1 John 3:2. THE Apostle has just said that all Christians are children of God. Here he adds that they are now His children. “Now,” he says, in this life, with all our shortcomings, “we are children of God.” But the future of the believer is even more wonderful and glorious than his present. He is to be made “like” Christ, because he will “see him as he is.” If the vision of Christ, even though His glory be only reflected as from “a mirror,” transforms us now “into the same image” (2 Cor. 3:18), what will be the effect of beholding the unveiled glory of the Lord? Here His Godhead is only partially revealed to His disciples; there the Godhead and the manhood—or rather the Godhead in the manhood—will be fully manifested, and, according to Christ’s own prayer for His disciples, they will behold His glory (John 17:24); and the result of this beatific vision will be their complete transformation into the likeness of the Lord. In every part of their being, in body and in soul and in spirit, they will be “like him.” ¶ As with a garden in winter, nothing we see in it tells us what it will be when the spring winds have loosened the frost, only we know that there is life beneath the snow, and that one day that life will show itself in leaves and blossoms and fruit. So with the believer. He will one day have a part in that glorious revealing of the sons of God for which creation is waiting. Meanwhile his spiritual life, like that of a plant safe all the winter in the root of it, is hid with Christ in God. More than this we cannot say of ourselves.1 I THE SEEDS OF DESTINY 1. We are children of God—His offspring, not His creatures merely. Ours is a Divine birthright, depraved, but not wholly obliterated; alienated, but not discrowned. Man still preserves his capability of regaining departed purity and felicity. What belongs to his character has been lost, what belongs to his constitution he retains. His character may change, but not the essence of his being. His enmity may die, his immortality never dies. His life is sacred, because he bears the image of God. Moral resemblance to God is the completion and crown of the filial relationship. It is the relation that gives the right; but where the relation has not been acknowledged and established, the right cannot be pleaded. The true child of God is born of God. He is a partaker of a Divine nature, and that nature quickens, brightens, perfects his own. He is “created anew in Christ Jesus.” “Ye are all the children of God, through faith in Christ Jesus.” “As many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God.” 2. All natural sons are not spiritual sons. The natural son becomes a spiritual son when the Father’s will and purpose are made his will and purpose. We find this beautifully illustrated in the story of the Prodigal Son. The youth chafes under parental restraint, he is now a dissatisfied son; he leaves home and makes his abode in a far country, he is now an absent son; he spends his time and money in riotous living, he is now a sinful son; sin is always sooner or later followed by punishment, he becomes, therefore, a suffering son; grief and remorse follow suffering, as the morning follows the sunrise, he is now a sad and sorry son; sorrow turns into self-condemnation, he is now a humble son; he says, “I will arise and go to my father,” he is now a penitent son; his father welcomes him home with outstretched arms, he is now a forgiven son; the fatted calf is killed, a ring is placed upon his finger, and a robe upon his shoulders, he is now a restored son; from henceforth he makes his father’s will his will, his father’s pleasure, his pleasure, and he does all, not from duty, but from love; he is now, therefore, a spiritual son. ¶ In dealing with a man of fine moral character we are dealing with the highest achievement of the organic kingdom, but in dealing with a spiritual man we are dealing with the lowest form of life in the spiritual world. To contrast the two, therefore, and marvel that the one is apparently so little better than the other, is unscientific and unjust. The spiritual man is a mere unformed embryo, hidden as yet in his chrysalis-case, while the natural man has the breeding and evolution of ages represented in his character. But what are the possibilities of this spiritual organism? What is yet to emerge from the chrysalis-case? The natural character finds its limits within the organic sphere, but who is to define the limits of the spiritual? Even now it is very beautiful. Even as an embryo it contains some prophecy of its future glory, but the point to mark is that “it doth not yet appear what we shall be.”1 3. Though children of God by faith in Christ Jesus we are still imperfect, but we have in us the seeds of a great destiny. When we find fault with the child’s lesson because he has not begun his sentence with a capital or ended his question with an interrogation mark, the mother excuses him by saying, “He is only a boy.” Yes, but it is a great thing to be a boy, it carries the promise that some day he will be a man. The child who can as yet only stammer brokenly through a sentence, if in an educated home, or who can only blunder as yet through a sum in long division, if in a good school, has promise of one day speaking correctly and calculating the distance of the stars. Only a child, but it is a great thing to be even a child in such a home and in such a school. ¶ I have stood on a projecting spur of a mountain range and looked backward on the road I have climbed and then far down into the valley below where I could see the farm-fields and the river. As I have rested there for a moment, I have felt something of the joy which comes with the heights; but as I have turned to continue the climb, I have found the way blocked with blinding mists and the higher ranges wrapped about with the dense folds of cloud and completely shut from view. I knew the heights were there before me, but I could not see them. They did not appear. And so I had to plunge into the thickening mist and continue the ascent without scenery. It is thus that John paints the second stage. The road winds through the mist. “It doth not yet appear what we shall be,” but the way is still upward and onward. We have not reached the summit, with adoption. Sonship is followed by development and growth. Here is the marvellous thing about the soul. It seems possessed of an infinite capacity. Man is ever becoming.1 ¶ An acorn is an oak-tree now; but it is not made manifest what it will be. You may bring all your microscopes and all your chemic tests to the acorn, and you will not solve the question. Had you never seen aught but an acorn—and you have never seen aught but a child of God in this reference, and most of them very young children—had you never seen aught but an acorn, no imagination within your reach, or the reach of any poet God ever gave to earth, would have brought you anywhere near the truth. Again, go back, with the help of the scientist, in the long history of this physical world and universe, and he will tell you of some such thing they have seen as this: that this earth and all related to it was, in primeval times, a fire-mist. Before the stars, before the suns were here, was some such thing, as unlike this earth as a globe of fire-mist would be. It was the solar universe; but it was not made manifest what it would be. And great as is the difference between the primeval fire and the solar universe of to-day, unimaginable as is the progress from the protoplasm, undifferentiated, to the human form in its athletic beauty, indescribable as is the difference between the acorn and the oak-tree, those differences, peradventure, are small compared with the difference between what we now are and what we shall be. In the acorn is the oak-tree, in the protoplasm is the lily, in the fire-mist, so they say, was the earth; in you is the Christlikeness, folded more deeply, with more convolutions, than the finest folded bud. Deep within you is the Christlikeness that yet shall be part of the final manifestation of God’s purpose and will.2 Lord, purge our eyes to see Within the seed a tree, Within the glowing egg a bird, Within the shroud a butterfly. Till taught by such, we see Beyond all creatures Thee, And hearken for Thy tender word, And hear it, “Fear not: it is I.”3 II THE TRANSFIGURATION OF CHARACTER 1. Much concerning our destiny yet remains unrevealed. The Gospel is a light shining on the dark shore of eternity, like the lighthouse that gleams on a dark and stormy coast, to reveal the haven to the ocean-tossed mariner. It shines afar over the swelling flood, but only penetrating a darkness it was never intended to expel. It reveals to us almost nothing of the land to which we go, but only the way to reach it. It does nothing to answer the thousand questions which we would ask about that world, but it tells us how we may see it with our own eyes. It tells the mariner there is a haven there, and how he may reach it, and no more. It does not tell us all about the past, about our own mysterious being, or where in the wide range of the Divine dominions will be the sinless paradise of the redeemed; but it would guide us to God’s holy hill and tabernacle, where in His light we may see light, and where what is now obscure may become as clear as noonday. ¶ There is a sublime reticence in Scripture. The man who was nearer than all others to the Source of eternal life is content to say, “It doth not yet appear what we shall be”! I think this is a typical silence—typical of the whole Bible. Men often say that the evidence of the Bible is the things it tells us. Doubtless that is one evidence. But I have often thought there is another—the things it does not tell us. The speech of the Bible may be golden, but its silence is at least silver. Many a book professing to bring tidings from God would have mistaken imaginings for realities, would have published the dreams of the heart as the very descriptions of heaven. The Bible commits no such mistake. Its reticence is sublime, as sublime as that of the starry sky. Enoch speaks not in his translation moment. Elijah speaks not in his chariot of fire. Lazarus speaks not in his hour of resurrection. The child of Jairus speaks not on her bed of revival. The youth of Nain speaks not from his arrested bier. Moses alone does speak from beyond the grave; but it is not of the things beyond; it is of the things “to be accomplished at Jerusalem.”1 I know not where that city lifts Its jasper walls in air, I know not where the glory beams, So marvellously fair. I cannot see the waving hands Upon that farther shore; I cannot hear the rapturous song Of dear ones gone before: But dimmed and blinded earthly eyes, Washed clear by contrite tears, Sometimes catch glimpses of the light From the eternal years. 2. This we know—we shall be like Him. Jesus Christ was transfigured before His disciples. That was a glorious manifestation, and when the three privileged disciples who beheld His glory on the Mount were permitted to do so, when the period of enjoined silence had passed, they testified to that glory in glowing words. And here we are told by one of their number that Jesus Christ’s disciples are to be transfigured, not now and here, but in the future life, at the termination of the present dispensation, at His appearing or coming. We are told that in that day they shall be like Him, like Him whose face when He was transfigured was like the sun, and whose raiment was white and glistering, and who will come forth in His second appearing in His own glory and in the glory of His Father and of the holy angels. In that day His disciples shall be glorified together with Him. Not all men, but His disciples, they who have received Him, who believe on His Name, and to whom He gives power to become the sons of God. ¶ Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden, being killed in the battle of Lutzen, left only a daughter, Christina, six years of age. A general assembly, consisting of deputations from the nobles, the clergy, the burghers and the peasants of Sweden, was summoned to meet at Stockholm. Silence being proclaimed, the Chancellor rose. “We desire to know,” said he, “whether the people of Sweden will take the daughter of our dead King Gustavus Adolphus to be their queen.” “Who is this daughter of Gustavus?” asked an old peasant. “We do not know her. Let her be shown to us.” Then Christina was brought into the hall and placed before the old peasant. He took Christina up in his arms and gazed earnestly into her face. He had known the great Gustavus well, and his heart was touched when he saw the likeness which the little girl bore to that heroic monarch. “Yes,” cried he, with the tears gushing down his furrowed cheeks; “this is truly the daughter of our Gustavus! Here is her father’s brow! Here is his piercing eye! She is his very picture! This child shall be our queen!”1 ¶ I recall some years ago reading a sermon on this text by Dr. Lyman Abbott. All I can remember of that sermon now is a single thought in connexion with this passage. “Of all Scripture promises,” said Dr. Abbott, “the one that stretches my faith most is this: to think that poor, sinful, fallen man can become like Christ—that we who are unholy, impure, selfish, can become, like Him, holy, pure, unselfish, is beyond human comprehension. The how of it I cannot fathom, the fact of it I accept as one of the blessed promises connected with Christ’s coming.”2 3. Now this likeness to Christ is graven upon the soul, not suddenly, but slowly through the years. This is not a photograph, taken in a moment by a flash of the sun. By the regeneration of the Holy Ghost the nature is renewed, and the man is started fairly upon his new and noble work; but the precision and detail of the likeness, like the finished picture of the artist, are the labour of thoughtful and toiling years. Through many failures, through hurricane blasts of passion, and frequent rain of tears, through baptisms fierce as of fire, and exhausting as of blood, through toil up new Calvaries, and the passing through strange agonies, which, in their measure and in far-off and reverent distance, may be called the soul’s Gethsemanes—through all these must the believer press into that “mind which was in Christ Jesus”; and even at the close of an existence during which he has never lost sight of the purpose which came to him at the time of his conversion, he may feel that he has exhibited but an imperfect copy of his glorious Pattern. ¶ Of Dr. Thomas H. Skinner, Professor Henry B. Smith said: “His personal power was also enhanced, year by year, with the increase of his spiritual life; he became more and more a living epistle, a gospel of God’s grace, known and read of all men. Vexed and perplexing questions were merged in a higher life. Revealed facts took the place of disputed propositions. The living Christ took the place of the doctors of the schools and with advantage. Thus he lived and grew day by day, in his serene and hallowed old age, toward the measure of the stature of a perfect man in Christ Jesus. He was called to be a saint and he was always fulfilling his calling, not counting himself to have attained, but ever pressing onward.”1 III THE TRANSFORMING VISION 1. The vision of Christ is to result in resemblance to Christ.—There are peculiar elements and conditions in this vision which account for its marvellous energy. The visible objects of a spiritual world must owe their existence to the spiritual things of which they are the expression. Light in heaven will be caused by the action of the spiritual enlightenment of God’s presence. The great white throne will be the effect of the manifestation to the inward sense of the commanding excellence of Divine righteousness. And so the vision of the glorious body of Christ will be the effect of the action upon the understanding and the spirit of His essential self-hood. Because He will exert His spiritual power upon us, and present Himself to the mind, therefore He will be visible in glorious form. If we may so express it, He will be outwardly seen, because He will be inwardly felt in the fulness of His glory. ¶ Material forces, as we call them, are all spiritual in origin. The causes of things are spiritual. Hidden behind all the wonderful mechanism of the world, and giving it being and activity, is the power of spirit. If we once grasp this doctrine, that spirit—itself necessarily and always invisible—creates and regulates outward things and forces, we shall be able to understand how the Coming of Jesus Christ, which will be pre-eminently a putting forth of spiritual power, will also exercise an influence on the bodily condition of those who are the ready subjects of His influence. St. Paul refers our bodily glorification to the Advent, when, writing to the Philippians, he says, “We wait for a Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall fashion anew the body of our humiliation, that it may be conformed to the body of his glory, according to the working whereby he is able to subject all things unto himself.” There is one working which is able to subject all things; and the term St. Paul uses for it, possibly with reference to its spirituality, means literally “in-working.”1 2. Clear vision will ensure close likeness.—We know that truth already in its early manifestations. We grow like that which we habitually contemplate, and especially so when we contemplate lovingly and enthusiastically. The affectionate child takes on the characteristics of the parent whom he loves. And the man who contemplates God, who sets Him always before his face, who looks upon Him as the supreme object of love, grows into the likeness of God; and such is the testimony of Jesus Himself, as He addresses the Father in that wonderful prayer in the seventeenth chapter of John: “This is life eternal, that they should know thee, the only true God, and him whom thou didst send, even Jesus Christ.” ¶ A pleasant, sunny landscape has the power of transcribing its own joyous image into the heart of him who intelligently surveys it. The shadow of a cloud, it has been said, does not pass over the face of a field without making some change in it, and in the feelings of the observer. However this may be, it is certain that we cannot live without influencing others, and others influencing us. Human society is a vast network of reciprocal influences. Everybody acts and is acted upon in turn. Every man helps to mould and fashion the character and destiny of every other man within the sphere of his attraction. The thoughts of a man, spread over the pages of a book, have power to work an intellectual assimilation in the mind of him who carefully studies the pages. So must it be spiritually, only in a much higher degree.2 ¶ Nathaniel Hawthorne has a story of a great stone face carved on the mountain side, which reproduced itself in the spectator. A young man who never wearied of gazing on that face had his life beautified by the vision, and one day as the people looked on his face, they said, “It is the same as on the mountain side.” ¶ Jenny Lind told me, with all her own vivid, emphatic brilliancy of gesture and look, of a scene which had evidently left on her an indelible impression of wonder and glory. She had gone to look on the face of her friend, Mrs. Nassau Senior, after death. The son of her friend had shown her the stairs, and pointed out the door of the room where the body lay, and put the candle in her hand, and left her. She pushed open the door and entered alone; and there, before her, lay the face, fine and clear-cut, encompassed about with a mass of white flowers. On it was peace, and a smile, with the lips parted; but that was not all. I must tell the rest in her own words. “It was not her own look that was in her face. It was the look of another, the face of another, that had passed into hers. It was the shadow of Christ that had come upon her. She had seen Christ. And I put down my candle, and I said,’ Let me see this thing. Let me stop here always. Let me sit and look. Where are my children? Let them come and see. Here is a woman who has seen Christ.’ ” I can never forget the dramatic intensity of her manner as she told me all this, and how she at last had to drag herself away, as from a vision, and to stumble down the stairs again.1 What we, when face to face we see The Father of our souls, shall be, John tells us, doth not yet appear; Ah, did he tell what we are here! A mind for thoughts to pass into, A heart for loves to travel through, Five senses to detect things near, Is this the whole that we are here? Rules baffle instincts—instincts rules, Wise men are bad—and good are fools, Facts evil—wishes vain appear, We cannot go, why are we here? O may we for assurance sake, Some arbitrary judgment take, And wilfully pronounce it clear, For this or that ’tis we are here? Or is it right, and will it do, To pace the sad confusion through, And say:—It doth not yet appear, What we shall be, what we are here. Ah yet, when all is thought and said, The heart still overrules the head; Still what we hope we must believe, And what is given us receive; Must still believe, for still we hope That in a world of larger scope, What here is faithfully begun Will be completed, not undone. My child, we still must think, when we That ampler life together see, Some true result will yet appear Of what we are, together, here.1 3. The clear vision is possible only to cleansed eyes.—The Jews had looked for Him through many centuries, and when He came they did not know Him. When Christ parts the veil once more, and with the fulness of His being, as St. Paul says, apart from sin, is manifested, shall we know Him? Will He find faith on earth, the faith to receive Him? He will not be like what we to-day imagine. He will be as unlike some of our imaginations as He was when first He came. If you are thinking of Him as He parted from His disciples, He was not even then what you have sometimes thought Him. He was still scarred, and His brow was still riven with Calvary; and this is the last truth of this great word of St. John. We shall never see Him till we are like Him, simply because we cannot. You do not know your friend, you do not know your enemy, except in so far as you are like him. From your life there must go, not only impurity, but all leanings towards it; and in its place there must be that burning repugnance that was in Him when He declared “he hath nothing in me,” when the advent of the Evil One was to Him unspeakable and unutterable pain because He was pure. And if we would learn the way of purity, it is the old way of sorrow and toil—the way He went. “I consecrate myself for their sakes, that they may be consecrated.” ¶ How can a man, without clear vision in his heart first of all, have any clear vision in the head? It is impossible!2 ¶ The Civil War did not originate in a conspiracy, but in a perverted state of mind, as other great conflicts have originated in a perverted state of mind. No one attributes the operations of the “Holy Office,” the Inquisition, to a conspiracy; or the seemingly endless wars of religious persecution, to a conspiracy; or the cruelties of the Spaniards in the New World, to a conspiracy. Conspiracy is too insignificant, too weak a word to cover the terrible meaning of such events. We must get nearer human nature than a conspiracy can bring us: we must get close to the undeveloped reason and the undeveloped conscience, and the incapacity to interpret the simple laws in the economy of nature. The blind are not only they who will not, but they who cannot see. And in the history of civilization it is they who cannot see that will not, rather than they who will not see because they cannot.1 ¶ All shall see of Him just what they can see—what they are fit to find in that perfect, all-embracing, all-expressing face. Two men are charged with a crime, of which one is innocent, and knows that his innocence will be made plain, while the other is guilty, and has no hope of hiding his guilt. Think you they trace exactly the same expression on the face of their judge? The fears of one fix his eyes upon the firmness, the resolution, the searching sagacity of nostril and mouth and eye; and he trembles. The confidence of the other points him to the just, honourable, patient mien which gives him promise of a complete investigation; and he exults. Both watch the same face at the same moment, but what they find there is not the same.2 Life’s journey almost past, Tottering I stand at last Close to the door; Weary the way hath been, And often sad through sin, Now all is o’er. The friends I walk’d beside At noon and evening tide Went long ago, And evening’s travel, grown Ever more chill and lone, Seem’d to pass slow. Yet was it night, not day, Thus slowly waned away— Now dawn is nigh; The daystar’s warning bright Tells me the shades of night All Boon will fly. Beyond that welcome door I know—and oh, for more Why should I care? I shall my Saviour see As now He seeth me; Jesus is there! WHAT WE ARE AND WHAT WE SHALL BE -LITERATURE Ainger (A.), Sermons in the Temple Church, 13. Ball (C. J.), Testimonies to Christ, 118. Binney (T.), Sermons in King’s Weigh-House Chapel, 2nd Ser., 316. Brooks (P.), The Law of Growth, 346. Burrell (D. J.), The Golden Passional, 243. Campbell (R. J.), The Keys of the Kingdom, 21. Chadwick (G. A.), Pilate’s Gift, 183. Davies (J.), The Kingdom without Observation, 84. Drummond (R. J.), Faith’s Certainties, 149. Eyton (R.), The True Life, 207. Fraser (J.), University Sermons, 167. Harris (S. S.), The Dignity of Man, 222. Haslam (W.), The Threefold Gift of God, i. 66. Holland (W. L.), The Beauty of Holiness, 68. Ker (J.), Sermons, i. 365. Lewis (A.), Sermons Preached in England, 162. Lewis (F. W.), The Work of Christ, 134. Mackenzie (R.), The Loom of Providence, 146. Maclaren (A.), A Year’s Ministry, ii. 255. Matheson (G.), Leaves for Quiet Hours, 286. Murray (A.), Like Christ, 241. Nicoll (W. R.), Ten-Minute Sermons, 313. Punshon (W. M.), Sermons, i. 66. Pusey (E. B.), Parochial and Cathedral Sermons, 479. Robertson (F. W.), The Human Race, 43. Selby (T. G.), The Lesson of a Dilemma, 243. Thew (J.), Broken Ideals, 186, 187. Vincent (M. R.), The Covenant of Peace, 174. Virgin (S. H.), Spiritual Sanity, 272. Webster (F. S.), The Beauties of the Saviour, 143. Wright (D.), The Power of an Endless Life, 217.
1 João 3:5
Murray - THAT YOU MAY NOT SIN ‘In Him is no sin. Whosoever abideth in Him sinneth not.’—1 JOHN 3:5, 6. ‘YE know,’ the apostle had said, ‘that He was manifested to take away our sin,’ and had thus indicated salvation from sin as the great object for which the Son was made man. The connection shows clearly that the taking away has reference not only to the atonement and freedom from guilt, but to deliverance from the power of sin, so that the believer no longer does it. It is Christ’s personal holiness that constitutes His power to effect this purpose. He admits sinners into life union with Himself; the result is, that their life becomes like His. ‘In Him is no sin. Whosoever abideth in Him sinneth not.’ As long as he abides, and as far as he abides, the believer does not sin. Our holiness of life has its root in the personal holiness of Jesus. ‘If the root be holy, so also are the branches.’ The question at once arises: How is this consistent with what the Bible teaches of the abiding corruption of our human nature, or with what John himself tells us of the utter falsehood of our profession, if we say that we have no sin, that we have not sinned? (see 1 John 1:8, 10). It is just this passage which, if we look carefully at it, will teach us to understand our text aright. Note the difference in the two statements (ver. 8), ‘If we say that we have no sin,’ and (ver. 10), ‘If we say that we have not sinned.’ The two expressions cannot be equivalent; the second would then be an unmeaning repetition of the first. Having sin in ver. 8 is not the same as doing sin in ver. 10. Having sin is having a sinful nature. The holiest believer must each moment confess that he has sin within him,—the flesh, namely, in which dwelleth no good thing. Sinning or doing sin is something very different: it is yielding to indwelling sinful nature, and falling into actual transgression. And so we have two admissions that every true believer must make. The one is that he has still sin within him (ver. 8); the second, that that sin has in former times broken out into sinful actions (ver. 10). No believer can say either, ‘I have no sin in me,’ or ‘I have in time past never sinned.’ If we say we have no sin at present, or that we have not sinned in the past, we deceive ourselves. But no confession, though we have sin in the present, is demanded that we are doing sin in the present too; the confession of actual sinning refers to the past. It may, as appears from chap. 2:2, be in the present also, but is expected not to be. And so we see how the deepest confession of sin in the past (as Paul’s of his having been a persecutor), and the deepest consciousness of having still a vile and corrupt nature in the present, may consist with humble but joyful praise to Him who keeps from stumbling. But how is it possible that a believer, having sin in him,—sin of such intense vitality, and such terrible power as we know the flesh to have,—that a believer having sin should yet not be doing sin? The answer is: ‘In Him is no sin. He that abideth in Him sinneth not.’ When the abiding in Christ becomes close and unbroken, so that the soul lives from moment to moment in the perfect union with the Lord its keeper, He does, indeed, keep down the power of the old nature, so that it does not regain dominion over the soul. We have seen that there are degrees in the abiding. With most Christians the abiding is so feeble and intermittent, that sin continually obtains the ascendancy, and brings the soul into subjection. The Divine promise given to faith is: ‘Sin shall not have dominion over you.’ But with the promise is the command: ‘Let not sin reign in your mortal body.’ The believer who claims the promise in full faith has the power to obey the command, and sin is kept from asserting its supremacy. Ignorance of the promise, or unbelief, or unwatchfulness, opens the door for sin to reign. And so the life of many believers is a course of continual stumbling and sinning. But when the believer seeks full admission into, and a permanent abode in Jesus, the Sinless One, then the life of Christ keeps from actual transgression. ‘In Him is no sin. He that abideth in Him sinneth not.’ Jesus does indeed save him from his sin,—not by the removal of his sinful nature, but by keeping him from yielding to it. I have read of a young lion whom nothing could awe or keep down but the eye of his keeper. With the keeper you could come near him, and he would crouch, his savage nature all unchanged, and thirsting for blood,—trembling at the keeper’s feet. You might put your foot on his neck, as long as the keeper was with you. To approach him without the keeper would be instant death. And so it is that the believer can have sin and yet not do sin. The evil nature, the flesh, is unchanged in its enmity against God, but the abiding presence of Jesus keeps it down. In faith the believer entrusts himself to the keeping, to the indwelling, of the Son of God; he abides in Him, and counts on Jesus to abide in Him too. The union and fellowship is the secret of a holy life: ‘In Him is no sin; he that abideth in Him sinneth not.’ And now another question will arise: Admitted that the complete abiding in the Sinless One will keep from sinning, is such abiding possible? May we hope to be able so to abide in Christ, say, even for one day, that we may be kept from actual transgressions? The question has only to be fairly stated and considered,—it will suggest its own answer. When Christ commanded us to abide in Him, and promised us such rich fruit-bearing to the glory of the Father, and such mighty power in our intercessions, can He have meant anything but the healthy, vigorous, complete union of the branch with the vine? When He promised that as we abide in Him He would abide in us, could He mean anything but that His dwelling in us would be a reality of Divine power and love? Is not this way of saving from sin just that which will glorify Him?—keeping us daily humble and helpless in the consciousness of the evil nature, watchful and active in the knowledge of its terrible power, dependent and trustful in the remembrance that only His presence can keep the lion down. O let us believe that when Jesus said, ‘Abide in me, and I in you,’ He did indeed mean that, while we were not to be freed from the world and its tribulation, from the sinful nature and its temptations, we were at least to have this blessing fully secured to us,—grace to abide wholly, only, ever in our Lord. The abiding in Jesus makes it possible to keep from actual sinning; and Jesus Himself makes it possible to abide in Him. Beloved Christian! I do not wonder if the promise of the text appears almost too high. Do not, I pray, let your attention be diverted by the question as to whether it would be possible to be kept for your whole life, or for so many years, without sinning. Faith has ever only to deal with the present moment. Ask this: Can Jesus at the present moment, as I abide in Him, keep me from those actual transgressions which have been the stain and the weariness of my daily life? Thou canst not but say, Surely He can. Take Him then at this present moment, and say, ‘Jesus keeps me now, Jesus saves me now.’ Yield yourself to Him in the earnest and believing prayer to be kept abiding, by His own abiding in you,—and go into the next moment, and the succeeding hours, with this trust continually renewed. As often as the opportunity occurs in the moments between your occupations, renew your faith in an act of devotion: Jesus keeps me now, Jesus saves me now. Let failure and sin, instead of discouraging you, only urge you still more to seek your safety in abiding in the Sinless One. Abiding is a grace in which you can grow wonderfully, if you will, but make at once the complete surrender, and then persevere with ever larger expectations. Regard it as His work to keep you abiding in Him, and His work to keep you from sinning. It is indeed your work to abide in Him; but it is that, only because it is His work as Vine to bear and hold the branch. Gaze upon His holy human nature as what He prepared for you to be partaker of with Himself, and you will see that there is something even higher and better than being kept from sin,—that is but the restraining from evil: there is the positive and larger blessing of being now a vessel purified and cleansed, of being filled with His fulness, and made the channel of showing forth His power, His blessing, and His glory. NOTE IS DAILY SINNING AN INEVITABLE NECESSITY? ‘Why is it that, when we possess a Saviour whose love and power are infinite, we are so often filled with fear and despondency? We are wearied and faint in our minds, because we do not look stedfastly unto Jesus, the author and finisher of faith, who is set down at the right hand of God,—unto Him whose omnipotence embraces both heaven and earth, who is strong and mighty in His feeble saints. ‘While we remember our weakness, we forget His all-sufficient power. While we acknowledge that apart from Christ we can do nothing, we do not rise to the height or depth of Christian humility: I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me. While we trust in the power of the death of Jesus to cancel the guilt of sin, we do not exercise a reliant and appropriating faith in the omnipotence of the living Saviour to deliver us from the bondage and power of sin in our daily life. We forget that Christ worketh in us mightily, and that, one with Him, we possess strength sufficient to overcome every temptation. We are apt either to forget our nothingness, and imagine that in our daily path we can live without sin, that the duties and trials of our everyday life can be performed and borne in our own strength; or we do not avail ourselves of the omnipotence of Jesus, who is able to subdue all things to Himself, and to keep us from the daily infirmities and falls which we are apt to imagine an inevitable necessity. If we really depended in all things and at all times on Christ, we would in all things and at all times gain the victory, through Him whose power is infinite, and who is appointed by the Father to be the Captain of our salvation. Then all our deeds would be wrought, not merely before, but in God. We would then do all things to the glory of the Father, in the all-powerful name of Jesus, who is our sanctification. Remember that unto Him all power is given in heaven and on earth, and live by the constant exercise of faith in His power. Let us most fully believe that we have and are nothing, that with man it is impossible, that in ourselves we have no life which can bring forth fruit; but that Christ is all,—that abiding in Him, and His word dwelling in us, we can bring forth fruit to the glory of the Father.’—From Christ and the Church. Sermons by Adolph Saphir. The italics are not in the original.
1 João 3:14
Murray - THE DESPAIR OF SELF 1 JOHN 3:14 When the truth of God touches our hearts, we know we cannot overcome the hardness of heart and pride just by the force of our own reason. It is only through death to ourselves that we can pass into life. There is no real conversion from the life of sin until we realize that our whole nature must be parted with, but we discover that in ourselves we cannot do it. Through this despair, we lose all our life to find a new one in God. Here faith, hope, and true seeking for God are born. But up to this point, faith and hope and turning to God in prayer have been practiced only by obligation and method. They are not living qualities of a new birth until we have stopped feeling any confidence in ourselves. We must feel within the reach of divine love. We must feel that God created us to be a habitation of His own life and Holy Spirit. In dealing with us, love is God’s bait. It will put its hook into the heart and make us realize that nothing is so strong, so irresistible as divine love. A Heart Like His My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. JOHN 15:12 Among all of those who know that we are Christ’s disciples, there is one very important person, and that is yourself. If you have love toward Christ’s disciples, you will know that you are one of his disciples, for how does the beloved apostle John put it? “We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren” (1 John 3:14 KJV). It will be one of the clearest evidences to your own heart that you are really a disciple of Jesus when you realize that for Christ’s sake, you love the redeemed family of God. By this test shall all men know that you are his disciples. By this test shall your fellow Christians also know that you are Christ’s disciples. I do not know of anything that more commends a Christian to his fellow Christian than a true spirit of love. No sermon can be so eloquent to the world as a true manifestation of the love of Christ, and when God restores to his church genuine, hearty, and sincere Christian love—I trust we have not wholly lost it—but when he gives us much more of it, then shall the world be more impressed by the gospel than it is at present. If ours is not a loving church, I have labored in vain and spent my strength for nought. If you love not one another, surely you do not love the Savior; but if you are knit together in love Daily Light on the Daily Path - We know that we have passed out of death into life. “Whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.”—Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life. It is God who establishes us with you in Christ, and has anointed us, and who has also put his seal on us and given us his Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee.—By this we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our heart before him. . . . Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God.—We know that we are from God, and the whole world lies in the power of the evil one. You were dead in the trespasses and sins. . . . [God] made us alive together with Christ.—He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son. 1 John 3:14; John 5:24; 1 John 5:12; 2 Cor. 1:21–22; 1 John 3:19, 21; 1 John 5:19; Eph. 2:1, 5; Col. 1:13 Chris Tiegreen - From Death to Life The One Year Heaven on Earth Devotional: 365 Daily ... - Page 140 If we love our brothers and sisters who are believers, it proves that we have passed from death to life. But a person who has no love is still dead. 1 John 3:14 IN WORD This world is broken. You know that; you see evidence of it every day. You also know the explanation given in the early chapters of Genesis. One act of rebellion invited the rebellious spirit into the core of our souls, resulting in catastrophic consequences for the human race. And that rebellious spirit is self-centered by nature. It reverses the flow of the most powerful force in the universe to feed ourselves rather than others. It turns love inward. That’s a deadly direction. Our own love was never meant to be spent on ourselves. It was meant to flow outward, to be fully received from God and fully spent on Him and each other. When we enter the Kingdom of life, that tragic reversal is reversed again; love is turned back to its proper direction. The King bathes us in His love, we receive it in gratitude, and then we are free to offer it back to Him and to everyone else. That’s how we experience life instead of death. If that isn’t our experience, we are still living in the culture of another kingdom, no matter how many times we’ve prayed to receive Christ or declared our Kingdom loyalties. Love is evidence that we are truly living in a Kingdom environment, drinking in life rather than death. Without it, we are still walking in darkness and experiencing the fruit of rebellion. We are missing the benefits of the Kingdom. IN DEED Always check the direction of your love. Is it flowing outward? Is it truly turned toward God and others? It’s okay to admit that it isn’t; every human being has had to deal with vestiges of the Fall, even after coming into the Kingdom. But if your life feels more like death, then the direction of your love may be the reason. The Kingdom culture is overflowing with the love of the Father. Fully drink it in. Bask in it. Saturate yourself in it. Then let it spill over lavishly into the lives of others. You and they will begin to experience the fullness of life. WE HAVE PASSED. - C H Spurgeon (Beside Still Waters) 1 John 3:14 Life is like a parade that passes before our eyes. It comes. Hear the people shouting. It is here. In a few minutes, people crowd the streets. Then it vanishes and is gone. Does life strike you as being just that? I remember, ah I remember, so many in the parade. I have stood, as it were, at a window, even though I have also been in the procession. I recall the hearty men of my boyhood, whom I use to hear pray. They are now singing up yonder. I remember a long parade of saints who have passed before me and have gone into glory. What a host of friends we have in the unseen world, who are “gone over to the majority.” As we grow older, they really are the majority, for our friends on earth are outnumbered by our friends in heaven. Some of you will fondly remember loved ones who have passed away in the parade. But please remember that you also are in the parade. Though they seem to have passed before you, you have been passing along with them, and soon you will reach the vanishing point. We are all walking in the procession. We are all passing away to the land of substance and reality. We expect good things to come. We are not inhabitants of this country; we are citizens of the New Jerusalem. We are only shipwrecked here for a while, exiled from home until the boat comes to ferry us across the stream to the land where our true possessions lie. Life, light, love, and everything is He who has gone before. Jesus is our Forerunner to the place that He has prepared for them that love Him (John 14:2). David Jeremiah - We know that we have passed from death to life. Loving God, My Savior said, “He who hears My word and believes in Him who sent Me has everlasting life, and shall not come into judgment, but has passed from death into life.” I who have Your Son, Lord God, have life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life. God, You establish me in Christ and anoint me; You also have sealed me and given me Your Spirit in my heart as a guarantee. By this I know that I am of the truth, and shall assure my heart before You, God. If my heart does not condemn me, I have confidence toward You. I know that I am of You, Lord God, and the whole world lies under the sway of the wicked one. I am one Jesus made alive, who was dead in trespasses and sins. Lord God, You made me alive together with Christ. You have delivered me from the power of darkness and conveyed me into the kingdom of the Son of Your love. I praise You, merciful God, for You have enabled me to pass from death to life, from separation from You to relationship with You. 1 JOHN 3:14; JOHN 5:24; 1 JOHN 5:12; 2 CORINTHIANS 1:21–22; 1 JOHN 3:19, 21; 1 JOHN 5:19; EPHESIANS 2:1, 5; COLOSSIANS 1:13 H A
1 João 3:16
Murray - LIKE CHRIST: In His Self-sacrifice. “Walk in love, even as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given Himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savour.”—Eph. 5:2. “Hereby perceive we the love of God, because He laid down His life for us: and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.”—1 John 3:16. What is the connection between self-sacrifice and self-denial? The former is the root from which the latter springs. In self-denial, self-sacrifice is tested, and thus strengthened and prepared each time again to renew its entire surrender. Thus it was with the Lord Jesus. His incarnation was a self-sacrifice; His life of self-denial was the proof of it; through this, again, He was prepared for the great act of self-sacrifice in His death on the cross. Thus it is with the Christian. His conversion is to a certain extent the sacrifice of self, though but a very partial one, owing to ignorance and weakness. From that first act of self-surrender arises the obligation to the exercise of daily self-denial. The Christian’s efforts to do so show him his weakness, and prepare him for that new and more entire self-sacrifice in which he first finds strength for more continuous self-denial. Self-sacrifice is of the very essence of true love. The very nature and blessedness of love consist in forgetting self, and seeking its happiness in the loved one. Where in the beloved there is a want or need, love is impelled by its very nature to offer up its own happiness for that of the other, to unite itself to the beloved one, and at any sacrifice to make him the sharer of its own blessedness. Who can say whether this is not one of the secrets which eternity will reveal, that sin was permitted because otherwise God’s love could never so fully have been revealed? The highest glory of God’s love was manifested in the self-sacrifice of Christ. It is the highest glory of the Christian to be like his Lord in this. Without entire self-sacrifice the new command, the command of love, cannot be fulfilled. Without entire self-sacrifice we cannot love as Jesus loved. “Be ye imitators of God,” says the apostle, “and walk in love, even as Christ hath loved us, and given Himself a sacrifice for us.” Let all your walk and conversation be, according to Christ’s example, in love. It was this love that made His sacrifice acceptable in God’s sight, a sweet-smelling savour, As His love exhibited itself in self-sacrifice, let your love prove itself to be conformable to His in the daily self-sacrifice for the welfare of others, so will it also be acceptable in the sight of God. “We ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.” Down even into the daily affairs of home life, in the intercourse between husband and wife, in the relation of master and servant, Christ’s self-sacrifice must be the rule of our walk. “Likewise, ye husbands, love your wives, even as Christ loved the Church, and gave Himself for it.” And mark specially the words, “Hath given Himself for us an offering to God.” We see that self-sacrifice has here two sides. Christ’s self-sacrifice had a Godward as well as a manward aspect. It was for us, but it was to God that He offered Himself as a sacrifice. In all our self-sacrifice there must be these two sides in union, though now the one and then again the other may be more prominent. It is only when we sacrifice ourselves to God that there will be the power for an entire self-sacrifice. The Holy Spirit reveals to the believer the right of God’s claim on us, how we are not our own, but His. The realization of how absolutely we are God’s property, bought and paid for with blood, of how we are loved with such a wonderful love, and of what blessedness there is in the full surrender to Him, leads the believer to yield himself a whole burnt-offering. He lays himself on the altar of consecration, and finds it his highest joy to be a sweet-smelling savour to his God, God-devoted and God-accepted. And then it becomes his first and most earnest desire to know how God would have him show this entire self-sacrifice in life and walk. God points him to Christ’s example. He was a sweet-smelling savour to God when He gave Himself a sacrifice for us. For every Christian who gives himself entirely to His service, God has the same honour as He had for His Son, He uses him as an instrument of blessing to others. Therefore John says, “He who loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?” The self-sacrifice in which you have devoted yourself to God’s service, binds you also to serve your fellow-men; the same act which makes you entirely God’s, makes you entirely theirs. (See note.) It is just this surrender to God that gives the power for self-sacrifice towards others, and even makes it a joy. When faith has first appropriated the promise, “Inasmuch as ye have done it to the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me,” I understand the glorious harmony between sacrifice to God and sacrifice for men. My intercourse with my fellow-men, instead of being, as many complain, a hindrance to unbroken communion with God, becomes an opportunity of offering myself unceasingly to Him. Blessed calling! to walk in love EVEN AS Christ loved us, and gave Himself for us a sacrifice and sweet-smelling savour to God. Only thus can the Church fulfil its destiny, and prove to the world that she is set apart to continue Christ’s work of self-sacrificing love, and fill up that which remaineth behind of the afflictions of Christ. But does God really expect us to deny ourselves so entirely for others? Is it not asking too much? Can any one really sacrifice himself so entirely? Christian! God does expect it, Nothing less than this is the conformity to the image of His Son, to which He predestinated you from eternity. This is the path by which Jesus entered into His glory and blessedness and by no other way can the disciple enter into he joy of His Lord. It is in very deed our calling to become exactly like Jesus in His love and self-sacrifice. “Walk in love, EVEN AS Christ loved.” It is a great thing when a believer sees and acknowledges this. That God’s people and even God’s servants understand it so little, is one great cause of the impotence of the Church. In this matter the Church indeed needs a second reformation. In the great Reformation three centuries ago, the power of Christ’s atoning death and righteousness were brought to light, to the great comfort and joy of anxious souls. But we need a second reformation to lift on high the banner of Christ’s example as our law, to restore the truth of the power of Christ’s resurrection as it makes us partakers of the life and the likeness of our Lord. Christians must not only believe in the full union with their Surety for their reconciliation, but with their Head as their example and their life. They must really represent Christ upon earth, and let men see in the members how the Head lived when if.e was in the flesh. Let us earnestly pray that God’s children everywhere may be taught to see their holy calling. And all ye who already long after it, oh, fear not to yield yourselves to God in the great act of a Christ-like self-sacrifice! In conversion you gave yourself to God. In many an act of self-surrender since then you have again given yourselves to Him. But experience has taught you how much is still wanting. Perhaps you never knew how entire the self-sacrifice must be and could be. Come now and see in Christ your example, and in His sacrifice of Himself on the cross, what your Father expects of you. Come now and see in Christ—for He is your head and life—what He will enable you to be and do. Believe in Him, that what He accomplished on Earth in His life and death as your example, He will now accomplish in you from heaven. Offer yourself to the Father in Christ, with the desire to be, as entirely and completely as He, an offering and a sacrifice unto God, given up to God for men. Expect Christ to work this in you and to maintain it. Let your relation to God be clear and distinct; you, like Christ, wholly given up to Him. Then it will no longer be impossible to walk in love as Christ loved us. Then all your intercourse with the brethren and with the world will be the most glorious opportunity of proving before God how completely you have given yourself to Him, an offering and a sacrifice for a sweet-smelling savour. O my God, who am I that Thou shouldest have chosen me to be conformed to the image of Thy Son in His self-sacrificing love? In this is His divine perfection and glory, that He loved not His own life, but freely offered it for us to Thee in death. And in this I may be like Him; in a walk in love I may prove that I too have offered myself wholly to God. O my Father, Thy purpose is mine; at this solemn moment I affirm anew my consecration to Thee. Not in my own strength, but in the strength of Him who gave Himself for me. Because Christ, my example, is also my life, I venture to say it: Father, in Christ, like Christ, I yield myself a sacrifice to Thee for men. Father, teach me how Thou wouldest use me to manifest Thy love to the world. Thou wilt do it by filling me full of Thy love. Father, do ik that I may walk in love, even as Christ loved us. May I live every day as one who has the power of Thy Holy Spirit to enable me to love every one with whom I come into contact, under every possible circumstance, to love with a love which is not of me, but of Thyself. Amen. NOTE One of the most earnest and successful labourers in the work of saving the lost writes as follows: “If I had not been led to a clearer and fuller experience of what salvation is, I never could have gone through the work of the last few years. But, at the same time, one thing has continually been becoming clearer, that we cannot speak of unbroken fellowship with our Lord unless wc give up ourselves, and that without ceasing, to a world lying in the wicked one, to save in the strength of our Lord what He gives us to save. A consecration to the Lord without a consecration to our neighbour becomes an illusion or leads to fanaticism. It is this giving up of ourselves to the world to be its light and salt, to love it, even when it hates us, that constitutes for all really consecrated souls the true battle of life. To find in labour our rest, and in fighting the sin around us in the power of Jesus our highest joy, to rejoice more in the happiness of others than our own, and so not to seek anything for ourselves, but everything for others, this, this is our holy calling.” May God help us not only to admire such thoughts, but at once to join the little bands among His children who are really giving up everything, and making their life-work the winning of souls for Jesus. Warren
1 João 3:16
Murray - LIKE CHRIST: Giving His Life for Men. “Whosoever will be great among you, let him be your servant; and whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your slave: even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to ter, and to give His life a ransom for many.”—Matt. 20:26, 27, 28. “Hereby know we love, because He laid down His life for us: and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.”—1 John 3:16. In speaking of the likeness of Christ’s death, and of being made conformable to it, of bearing the cross and being crucified with Him, there is one danger to which even the earnest believer is exposed, and that is of seeking after these blessings for his own sake, or, as he thinks, for the glory of God in His own personal perfection. The error would be a fatal one; he would never attain the close conformity to Jesus’ death he hoped for; for he would be leaving out just that which is the essential element in the death of Jesus, and in the self-sacrifice it inculcates; that characteristic is its absolute unselfishness, its reference to others. To be made conformable to Christ’s death implies a dying to self, a losing sight of self altogether in giving up and laying down our life for others. To the question, how far we are to go in living for, in loving, in serving, in saving men, the Scriptures do not hesitate to give the unequivocal answer: We are to go as far as Jesus’ even to the laying down of our life. We are to consider this so entirely as the object for which we are redeemed, and are left in the world, the one object for which we live, that the laying down of the life in death follows as a matter of course. Like Christ, the only thing that keeps us in this world is to be the glory of God in the salvation of sinners. Scripture does not hesitate to say that it is in His path of suffering, as He goes to work out atonement and redemption, that we are to follow Him.10 How clearly this comes out in the words of the Master Himself: “Whoever will be chief among, you, let him be your bond-servant, As the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many.” The highest in glory will be he who was lowest in service, and likest to the Master in His giving His life a ransom. And so again, a few days later, after having spoken of His own death in the words: “The hour is come that the Son of man should be glorified. Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit;” He at once applied to His disciples what He had said by repeating what they had already heard spoken to themselves, “He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal.” The corn of wheat dying to rise again, losing its life to regain it multiplied manifold, is clearly set forth as the emblem not only of the Master but of each one of His followers. Loving life, refusing to die, means remaining alone in selfishness: losing life to bring forth much fruit in others is the only way to keep it for ourselves. There is no way to find our life but as Jesus did, in giving it up for the salvation of others. Herein is the Father, herein shall we be glorified. The deepest underlying thought of conformity to Christ’s death is, giving our life to God for saving others. Without this, the longing, for conformity to that death is in danger of being a refined selfishness. How remarkable the exhibition we have in the Apostle Paul of this spirit, and how instructive the words in which the Holy Spirit in him expressed to us its meaning! To the Corinthians he says: “Always bearing about the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body. For we which live are always delivered to death for Jesus’ sake, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh. So then death worketh in us, but life in you.” “Though -Ye was crucified through weakness, YET HE LIVETH by the power of God. For we also are weak in Him, but we shall LIVE WITH HIM BY THE POWER OF GOD TOWARD YOU” (2 Cor. 4:10–12; 13:4). “I now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for His body’s sake, which is the Church” (Col. 1:24). These passages teach us how the vicarious element of the suffering that Christ bore in His body on the tree, to a certain extent still characterizes the sufferings of His body the Church. Believers who give themselves up to bear the burden of the sins of men before the Lord, who suffer reproach and shame, weariness and pain, in the effort to win souls, are filling up that which is lacking of the afflictions of Christ in their flesh. The power and the fellowship of His suffering and death work in them, the power of Christ’s life through them in those for whom they labour in love. There is no doubt that in the fellowship of His sufferings, and the conformity to His death in Phil. 3. Paul had in view not only the inner spiritual, but also the external bodily participations in the suffering of Christ. And so it must be with each of us in some measure. Self-sacrifice not merely for the sake of our own sanctification, but for the salvation of our fellow-men, is what brings us into true fellowship with the Christ who gave Himself for us. The practical application of these thoughts is very simple. Let us first of all try and see the truth the Holy Spirit seeks to teach us. As the most essential thing in likeness to Christ is likeness to His death, so the most essential thing in likeness to His death is the giving up our life to win others to God. It is a death in which all thought of saving self is lost in that of saving others. Let us pray for the light of the Holy Ghost to show us this, until we learn to feel that we are in the world just as Christ was, to give up self, to love and serve, to live and die, “EVEN AS the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many.” Oh that God would give His people to know their calling; that they do not belong to themselves, but to God and to their fellow-men; that, even as Christ, they are only to live to be a blessing to the world. Then let us believe in the grace that is waiting to make our experience of this truth a reality. Let us believe that God accepts of our giving up of our whole life for His glory in the saving of others. Let us believe that conformity to the death of Jesus in this, its very life-principle, is what the Holy Ghost will work out in us. Let us above all believe in Jesus: it is He Himself who will take up every soul that in full surrender yields itself to Him, into the full fellowship of His death, of His dying, in love to bring forth much fruit. Yes, let us believe, and believing seek from above, as the work end the gift of Jesus, likeness to Jesus in this too. And let us at once begin and act this faith. let us put it into practice. Looking upon ourselves now as wholly given up, just like Christ, to live and die for God in our fellow-men, let us with new zeal exercise the ministry of love in winning souls. As we wait for Christ to work out His likeness, as we trust the Holy Spirit to give His mind in us more perfectly, let us, in faith begin at once to act as followers of Him who only lived and died to be a blessing to others. Let our love open the way to the work it has to do by the kindness, and gentleness, and helpfulness, with which it shines out on all whom we meet in daily life. Let it give itself to the work of intercession, and look up to God to use us as one of His instruments in the answering of those prayers. Let us speak and work for Jesus as those who have a mission and a power from on high which make us sure of a blessing. Let us make soul-winning our object. Let us band ourselves with the great army of reapers the Lord is sending out into His harvest. And ere we thought of it, we shall find that giving our life to win others for God is the most blessed way of dying to self, of being even as the Son of man was, a servant and a Saviour of the lost. O most wonderful and inconceivably blessed likeness to Christ! He gave Himself to men, but could not really reach them, until, giving Himself a sacrifice to God for them, the seed-corn died, the life was poured out; then the blessing flowed forth in mighty power. I may seek to love and serve men; I can only really influence and bless them as I yield myself unto God and give up my life into His hands for them; as I lose myself as an offering on the altar, I become in His spirit and power in very deed a blessing. My spirit given into His hands, He can use and bless me. O most blessed God! dost Thou in very deed ask me to come and give myself, my very life, wholly, even unto the death, to Thee for my fellowmen? If I have heard the words of the Master aright, Thou dost indeed seek nothing less. O God I wilt Thou indeed have me? Wilt Thou in very deed in Christ permit me, like Him, as a member of His body, to live and die for those around me? to lay myself, I say it in deep reverence, beside Him on the altar of death, crucified with Him, and be a living sacrifice to Thee for men I Lord! I do praise Thee for this most wonderful grace. And now I come, Lord God! and give myself. Oh for the grace of Thy Holy Spirit to make the transaction definite and real! Lord! here I am, given up to Thee, to live only for those whom Thou art seeking to save. Blessed Jesus! come Thyself, and breathe Thine own mind and love within me. Take possession of me, my thoughts to think, my heart to feel, my powers to work, my life to live, as given away to God for men. Write it in my heart: it is done, I am given away to God, He has taken me. Keep Thou me each day as in His hands, expecting and assured that He will use me. On Thy giving up Thyself followed the life in power, the outbreaking of the blessing in fulness and power. It will be so in Thy people too. Glory be to Thy name. Amen.