If you have Christ at all, you have Christ not only for atonement, but as your life. He that believeth on the Son has everlasting life; and the everlasting life is Christ, just as truly as by being born into the world from Adam I have got an old natural life that loves evil, and which, as it grows in strength, grows in capacity for self-will. Even so, if I believe in Christ, there is this new life produced, which is developed in proportion as Christ is fed upon and looked to, and as Christ's words and ways are pondered over by the soul.
There is an assimilating power communicated thus to the believer by the Holy Ghost. The words of our Lord are spirit and life. It is not only that they produce life in the first instance, but they sustain the life, and are the means of its vigor. And this is what the Apostle Peter shows us (1 Pet. 1 and 2). He speaks of the incorruptible seed, the Word of God which liveth and abideth forever. But then he shows that the same Word of God which is the means of first imparting the life through the revelation of Christ, is also the provision for strengthening and refreshing it. Therefore he exhorts them that, as newborn babes, they should desire the sincere milk of the Word. The Word of God which is first used to introduce the life into the soul, through the making known of Christ, is that which now keeps up the life, draws it out, brings it into healthful exercise. And here is one way-"Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ." This was what Christ was doing when He was here below. He did not please Himself. He never chose the path of ease; hut, on the contrary, every case of wretchedness and sin and sorrow was what occupied the Lord Jesus, provided it were the will of God.
When He took His place as man on earth, there was the continual exercise of communion between the Lord Jesus and His Father, the spirit of dependence upon the living God that never acted without His Father's direction. And so it should be with our souls. If we are thus laying ourselves out to hear one another's burdens, we need to wait upon God about it to know what the will of the Lord is. It is not the law, nor ordinances, but "bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ."
W. K.