Dead and Risen With Christ

Narrator: Chris Genthree
 •  2 min. read  •  grade level: 6
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• BibleTruthPublishers.com
Let us now stop and ask ourselves, “What has my mind been occupied with today? What has it been running after?” Could you say, “The word of Christ has dwelt in me richly”? Perhaps we have been occupied with politics, perhaps with the town talk, or with something of our own. Has the word of our own heart, the word of our own mind, filled up the greater part of our day? That is not Christ. “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom” (Col. 3:1616Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom; teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord. (Colossians 3:16)). All knowledge is in Him, and all practical wisdom. They are distinct things, but if they are real, they go wonderfully together. Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God. This, then, is what is looked for, that in this condition there be the unfolding and development of the blessed knowledge of Christ. The Spirit of God takes of the things of Christ and shows them unto us. We live in that sphere in which God unfolds His own mind.
First, the root of all is Christ as the life. Then, we pass over to the outward conduct in the man’s walk. And let me remark that, while a person may be walking outwardly uprightly and blamelessly, it may be very feebly as a Christian and without spirituality. You will find many a true Christian who has Christ as his life, and with nothing to reproach him as to his walk, and yet has no spirituality whatever. If you talk to him about Christ, there is nothing that answers. There is, between the life that is at the bottom and the blamelessness that is at the top, between him and Christ, a whole host of affections and objects that are not Christ at all. How much of the day, or of the practice of your soul, is filled up with Christ? How far is He the one object of your heart? When you come to pray to God, do you never get to a point where you shut the door against Him? where there is some reserve, some single thing in your heart, that you keep back from Him? If we pray for blessing up to a certain point only, there is reserve; Christ is not all practically to us.
J. N. Darby (adapted)