Must I carry the world in my heart because I am down here in a body of sin and death? No; blessed be His name! I have got the river of life flowing down from Christ above, and filling my heart, helping my soul to bear fruit unto Him from whom it flows.
The old Christian can say to a young Christian, " You may try, but you cannot satisfy your heart with the world, for I have never found a thing in it to satisfy mine." But he could not say, " I have walked so far down the hill of life, and I cannot fail." Yet we can say, " Let all that can be brought against me, yet God will be faithful to His word, and Christ will present me faultless and without spot or blemish before Him at His appearing."
If I could say I am a better man than when I began life in Christ, it would be only because I see more of my own vileness now than I did years ago.
What is my place and my power to walk? God has raised me up together with His Son, and given me the Spirit, and because of that I go on, and everything that is not of Him I have to judge. The walk of the Spirit is one of separation from all that is not of the Father. Believers ought to walk as being dead, buried, and risen with Christ, as those that are espoused to their Heavenly Bridegroom saying, " We cannot do What He would not like." Nature may say, I should like that, or wish this; but the answer is, " No; you belong to Christ: and if Christ's wish is contrary to yours, you are not to have yours." By His blood He has brought you into the place where He is now, and you can say, " I will give it up; I will count that dead for which He died. It has death upon it; I give it up."
You are in a place of power,-the power of the communicator of life; and wherever life has been communicated, that power works to change those who have it into His image, from glory to glory.
What has a believer to do with getting eternal life? No man ever would have had the thought of God saying, " There is a living man up here, like you, outwardly. That One who was despised and put to death, is now at My right hand,-the One to whom I have given everything in the wide universe, and through a boundless eternity, and in token of it I give life to you." It is God who is the Giver. What have I done to get it? I know that I have it; faith gives me the certainty of it far beyond feelings that say it is not true. God says it is; and it is so entirely a substance in God's mind, that I can resign everything as to eternity, saying, " I don't want to speak for myself; Thou hast spoken for me. The life I have is a life of communion with the Father and Son. I know and realize it with certainty and vividness, so that when flesh and heart fail I can rest there.