How May Christ Become a Living Reality to the Soul?
John Thomas Mawson
Table of Contents
How May Christ Become a Living Reality to the Soul?
On several occasions recently questions akin to the above have been put to us by young men. The questions are a cause of thanksgiving, for they denote a yearning of soul after the Lord and His things, akin perhaps to that which possessed the heart of David when he cried, “As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after Thee, O God. My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God” (Psalm, 42:1-2).
We might quote from such letters of inquiry did our space permit;, letters which whilst giving, as we have said, cause for thanksgiving, yet also bring sad thoughts, for we find that some are inclined to question whether after all there is reality in Christianity, and whether the acceptance of Christ does make any difference in the life. The superficiality and increased worldliness of many who profess Christ, and the terribly deadening effect of the widely spreading “new theology” doctrines will account for much of this, but it behooves all those who love the Lord in sincerity and truth to look to their ways.
In this connection we venture to quote from a contemporary magazine the words of one who seems to have touched the spring of things. He writes:
“Eyes are fixed upon each one of us who names the name of Christ. They are eager eyes, hungry eyes, the eyes of imprisoned and perishing souls; and while those observers may make no comment, they are asking within themselves: ‘Does it make any difference in one’s life?’
“What answer do they get to that question as they regard your life and mine? What are they reading day by day, and what conclusion are they reaching? The answer will be found in the answer to that other question: Unto whom are we living — unto self or unto Him?’
“Living unto Him is the normal, and hence the happy and fruitful life for them that live. ‘The believer is in Christ.’ His interests are where Christ is, at the right hand of God.
“To live for self, to go on in the old ways, to be making provision for that old man ‘with whom God could do nothing — and whose corrupted nature brought the Prince of Life under the power of death, even the shameful death of the cross — to seek gratification among the perishing things of a dying world, is to them that live’ an utterly abnormal existence, which can yield only disappointment and loss of peace in this life, and of rewards in that which is to come. Moreover, abiding in Christ is the condition of fruit-bearing (John 15:4, 5); and even if it were possible for a living one to find gratification, sustenance, and occasional pleasure in a dying creation, the consciousness of the waste and unprofitableness of such a life would rob it of all real joy.”
So much for those who are established in the knowledge of the Lord. We will seek now to help those whose desire is expressed in our title, and in order to do so as effectively as possible, we offer reply to the question raised in the words of several contributors.
Answer (1)
W. B. Westcott
The historical fact of Christ — that He lived and died — is generally admitted today.
Speculation and argument as to the nature of His Person, and the value of His life and death, are as numerous and contradictory as ever, but few persons doubt that He was actually on earth.
An historical personage, however, great as he may be, does not in any way affect my heart or draw out my affections. I may admire his life — as it is recorded for me — and even try to imitate it, but there the matter ends.
With Christ, however, it is different. There have been thousands who have laid down their lives for Him, and at this moment there are tens of thousands who love Him more than all beside.
The reasons for this are simply that He lives and that He loves. Caesar is dead, Mahomet is dead, Napoleon is dead, but Jesus lives.
This is the great fact to lay hold of if we wish Christ to become a reality to our souls. Christianity does not consist in a creed, nor a collection of sayings, but in a Person known and loved, whose present influence is seen in the transformed lives of men regenerate.
It is wonderful to consider that in the world today there are living numbers of men and women whose lives are controlled and whose ways are ordered by a Person they have never seen! This would be entirely visionary and sentimental if such people were not assured by evidence completely trustworthy that this Person is Real, and Living and Mighty.
This knowledge they have gained from the Book that speaks so fully of Him, and which has been interpreted to them by the Holy Spirit, whose mission is to make Him known.
How then is the Lord Jesus Christ to become a reality to me? In the same way in which many a heart in heathen lands has learned His preciousness. They believed the report of His greatness, His love, and the value of His precious blood, and thus their hearts were won. Never had such news fallen upon their ears before, and the wonder of it filled their souls. Let us in these favored lands — upon which the sun of the gospel never sets — sit down and meditate, as though the truth were new to us, upon the life and death, the resurrection and the glory of the One who died for us.
One sentence in itself would be sufficient to amaze, to captivate, to thrill the heart.
Listen! “ ... The Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me.” Eternity itself will not give time enough to enter fully into the meaning of these wondrous words. Say them to yourself — if you would have Christ become a reality to your soul — as you walk along the street, as you stand behind the counter, or in the shipyard or the factory. And ever bear in mind that He loves His own to the end, and that He is the same yesterday, today, and forever — yesterday, when He died for you, today, as He lives for you, and to-morrow, when He comes to take you to be with Himself forever.
“Who is this me?” said Martin Luther, referring to the text above-quoted; “Christ delivered Himself up for me; yes, for me, who am such a wretched and miserable sinner. Say ‘me’ with all thy might, print this pronoun ‘me,’ ‘me,’ — for the word is written for thee — print this pronoun indelibly on thy heart, and thou hast the gospel of Christ.”
If I would have Christ to be a reality to me I must be assured that I am a reality to Him — in other words that He takes a personal interest in me — in my salvation, in my pathway, in my service.
To reason thus will not fill me with a sense of my own importance, but will cause my heart to overflow with praise to the One who, though so great and glorious, condescended to notice, to love, to die for, even me.
Very helpful, too, will it be to form the habit of taking the Lord Jesus Christ into my confidence about everything that interests me. Nothing is too minute to tell Him of, and no one is so true, so wise, so loving.
Needless, perhaps, to say, I cannot company with Christ, and realize His presence, apart from the Holy Spirit. Therefore is it of all importance not to grieve the One who dwells within me. If I sin, a shadow falls at once upon my spirit, and the Lord withdraws. Confession, then, is a necessity if I would be restored, for it is written “without holiness shall no man see the Lord.”
Neglect of prayer, hasty and careless reading of the Scriptures, slothfulness or undue activity in service, a sectarian or bitter spirit, indulgence in some harmful habit, worldliness — these are some of the things that make Christ alien to the heart He fain would fill. And yet —
“Still sweet ‘tis to discover, if clouds have
dimmed my sight,
When passed, Eternal Lover, towards me,
as e’er, Thou’rt bright.”
One thing must be emphasized as a ‘sine qua non’ in connection with our question.
I must be much alone with Christ, if He is to become a reality to me. Service, the communion of saints, the general meetings for prayer or worship — none of these can be substituted for the quiet hour in which the Lord Himself speaks to me as no one else can do.
Answer (2)
W. Bramwell Dick
Let us open our Bibles at Acts 7, where we read of a man to whom Christ was a living reality. Stephen had trusted Christ, he had preached Christ, and now he was about to die for Christ’s sake. Surrounded by his enemies who clamored for his blood, they “saw his face as it had been the face of an angel (ch. vi. 15), though he did not know it. With no uncertain sound he presented the truth till they winced and winced again. The critical moment arrived, every man took stone in hand to hurl at God’s honored servant, but for an instant they were held in check, while he “full of the Holy Ghost, looked up steadfastly into Heaven, and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God, and said, Behold I see the Heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing on the right hand of God” (ch. 7:55-56.) What a sight! Is it any wonder that, after that, he kneeled down and prayed for his foes; and while they might claim that they murdered him, the Holy Spirit records — “he fell asleep.” Thus it was with one who died. Now let us see how it worked out in one who lived.
Witness of Stephen’s death was a young man called Saul. He had seen how, with Christ as a living reality, one of His servants could die, soon he was to learn how, with Christ as a living reality, he should live. Arrested by a light which blinded him to this world ever after, he heard a Voice that dulled his ears to every sound of earth; he saw the face on which Stephen gazed, and at that moment the citadel of his life was captured, his heart was won, and his experience has been well expressed in the familiar lines: —
“I have heard the voice of Jesus,
Tell me not of aught beside;
I have seen the face of Jesus,
And my heart is satisfied.”
From that day the Lord Jesus Christ was everything to him. Probably the world labeled him a monomaniac; he was a man of one idea. His desire was to live Christ (Phil. 1:21); to preach Christ (Gal. 1:15-16); and that in his converts Christ might be formed (Gal. 4:19). Thirty years after conversion, after experiencing vicissitudes and trials such as no other servant of Christ ever had, stripped of everything in which as a natural man he might have boasted, incarcerated in a Roman prison, he wrote to the Philippians, “To live is Christ” (1:21); to depart is to be “with Christ” (1:23); in chapter 3 he reviewed the past and wrote, “What things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ” (vs. 7). Contemplating the present, we find him pressing on that he might know Christ (3:8-9-10); while looking on the future he told them he was looking for Christ (vss. 20-21).
Here we have a sample man to whom Christ was a living reality. Right across his history from conversion to martyrdom may be written CHRIST, for in him Christ was expressed. In looking, then, at his career, we have the answer to our query. The Lord Jesus Christ at the right hand of God, the mighty Conqueror of Calvary, the Rejected of earth, the Accepted in Heaven, the once Thorn-crowned, now crowned with glory and honor, led him captive; the great love that led Him to die for the chief of sinners, filled and thrilled his whole being. He whom God had enthroned in glory, Paul enthroned in his heart; he surrendered every crevice of it, he gave him the key of his whole future existence; and he brooked not for a single moment anyone or anything that threatened to rival Christ’s place in his affections.
Someone may remark: “But he was an apostle.” He was; we are now considering, however, his experience not as an apostle, but as a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, and that is open to every true Christian who reads these pages. Christ, then, will become to us a living reality, as we get to know Him where He now is; as we realize that He who fills the throne of God, and will shortly occupy the throne of the Universe, claims the throne of our hearts; and as we unreservedly place ourselves under His blessed rule.
This is not accomplished by a series of pious resolutions, nor by a process of lopping off or giving up; it is gained when we “swing the heart’s door widely open,” and “bid Him enter.” Then everything unsuited to Him is displaced; He fills and He satisfies. Then, whether the maid in the kitchen or the mistress in the drawing room, the tradesman at the bench or the employer in the office, the obscure tract distributor or the better known gospel preacher, in any and every sphere, Christ is a living reality, and we become living “epistles known and read of all men” (2 Cor. 3:2).
Shall we bend our knees, close our eyes, and conscious that no eye but His is upon us, and that no ear but His hears us, say:
“Just as I am — Thy love, I own,
Has broken every barrier down:
Now to be Thine, yea, Thine alone,
O Lamb of God, I come!”
“Just as I am — of that free love
The breadth, length, depth and height
to prove,
Here for a season, then above,
O, Lamb of God, I come!”
“Just as I am — by Thee set free,
That Thou mayest now become to me,
A living, bright reality:
O, Lamb of God, I come!”
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Never was there a lock of soul-trouble yet, but what there was a key to open it in the Word of God. For our pain, here is an anodyne; for our darkness, a lamp; for our loneliness, a Friend.
A cripple on the right road is surer of the prize than a racer on the wrong.
Holiness is practical orthodoxy, and should walk hand-in-hand with doctrinal orthodoxy.
The great guardian principle of all conduct in the Church of God is personal responsibility to the Lord. No guidance of another can ever come in between an individual’s conscience and God. In Popery this individual conscience is taken away.
Your testimony now is to be enjoying Christ for yourself, and not to be looking at your testimony to the saints. As you enjoy Christ for yourself, saints will find it out, and that will be your testimony to them.
There is always energy in the Spirit. He is the untiring Servant of the Lord’s glory, and if we are led by Him “dull sloth” and lethargy will be cast aside. We are exhorted to walk in the Spirit, not rest, or sit still, but “walk.” The Spirit would move us onward and upward toward the goal, with the love of Christ holding the soul in its almighty grasp.
Second Series of Replies
H. D. R. Jameson
Answer (3)
That which makes Christ a reality to the soul is faith, for faith it is which is the evidence, or conviction, of things unseen (Heb. 11:1) and are our Lord departed from the realm of sight, He said to His disciples “Ye believe in God, believe also in Me” (John 14:1); that is to say Christ is now, on high, an object for faith.
When, then, faith has become dimmed in the soul, and Christ no longer shines personally before the Christian, we do well to see first, whence faith is in its source, and second, what are the things which directly tend to the overthrow of that faith, and bring in darkness where light once shone.
As to the source of faith, it comes, as indeed does every good gift, from God (James 1:17 and Eph. 2:8), but mediately it becomes ours through the Word of God, for “Faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the Word of God” (Rom. 10:17). This scripture relates no doubt to the first dawn of faith within the human soul; but, if that be its source, need we wonder that where there is neglect of private reading of God’s precious Word, or of tarrying in the presence of Him of whom that Word speaks, and who is Himself the Word, faith becomes dim within, and Christ seems to fade from before the vision of the careless Christian?
But to pursue the subject and take up the question of the positive hindrances to faith, it is remarkable that the epistle which is especially concerned with the subject of personal piety (1 Timothy) brings before us three well defined practical reasons for that darkness of soul which many have now to deplore. Each of the following passages brings before us that which practically means the overthrow of faith, but in connection with different causes; affecting first, the conscience; second, the heart; and third, the mind.
(1). “Holding faith, and a good conscience; which some having put away concerning faith have made shipwreck” (1 Tim. 1:19).
The first and most effective blow at faith is struck when a good conscience is surrendered, for sin and Jesus are diametrically opposed; there is therefore no limit to the darkness which may overtake a soul when once it begins to give up the practical maintenance of a good conscience.
(2). “For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows” (1 Tim. 6:10).
Here we see how departure from faith is brought about through the avenue of the heart — the lust of other things entering in. Christ must be supreme. If He be not given the first place He can no longer shine brightly before the vision of our souls, and darkness must follow. How earnestly then should we hearken to the exhortation, “Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life”! (Prov. 4:23).
(3) “O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called, which some professing have erred concerning the faith” (1 Tim. 6:20-21).
Here the mind comes in. Man has been made in God’s image and likeness, an intelligent being, and the mind has accordingly a wonderful place in Scripture. We are not to despise it; but it is to be a mind formed by the Truth, that is, the testimony of things as they really are, which is what we get in the inspired Word. A mind, on the other hand, distracted by the ever-changing theories of that which cannot truly be called science, or knowledge, for it is not the truth, is in very real danger, of which God in His goodness gives us solemn warning here, for that way lies thick darkness.
Our wisdom as Christians will most assuredly be to hearken earnestly to these divine instructions; and guarding mind, heart and conscience, to give time to daily study in His own presence of those words of spirit and life which are the food of faith; thus shall Christ Himself be, and abide, a blessed reality to our souls!
Answer (4)
W. Bramwell Dior
We may learn a lesson and receive a warning in what is recorded of one to whom Christ had ceased to be a living reality. Casting our eye on 2 Timothy 4:10, we read — “Demas hath forsaken me, having loved this present world.” In this pregnant sentence we have the story of the spiritual downfall of a child of God. That he was such, we cannot doubt. In Colossians 4:14, Paul sent greetings from Demas, while in writing to Philemon he referred to him as his “fellow-laborer” (Philem. 1:24). We feel sure that he who wrote “lay hands suddenly on no man” (1 Tim. 5:22) would not have alluded in such terms to Demas, had he not at that time been a fellow-laborer in the true sense of the word. There must have been a time, we conclude, when to him Christ was a living reality, and when to serve Him was his desire. What, then, caused his declension? He “loved this present world.”
The world, we understand, is looked at in Scripture in, at least, four ways: the material earth (Acts 17:24); the people in the world (John 3:16); the world system (1 John 2:16); and the present age, or present course of things (Gal. 1:4), This last, we believe, is what is meant in the verse now under consideration. We are not told that Demas fell into gross sin, he might not be termed by others a backslider; he may have continued the outward observance of things religious, but he was affected by the spirit of the age. Instead of observing the clear line of demarcation marked out by Paul, (on account of which, we judge, he was deserted by all in Asia), Demas, it may be, thought that by compromising with the world, he could elevate his fellow-men; his presence amongst them might have a restraining influence upon them, and thus he could do more to further the interests of Christ than Paul who, bound with a chain, lay a helpless captive in prison. This reasoning sounds plausible, but God’s thoughts are not as our thoughts (Isa. 55:8).
It is written, “Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever, therefore, will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God” (James 4:4); and “If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him” (1 John 2:15).
To touch pitch is to be defiled, and to go into the world, even though it be with the best intentions, is to be degraded to its level, and to be no longer of any service to Christ. Whatever was Demas’s motive when he started, once on the down grade, descent was rapid. And the last word recorded of him is that he “loved this present world.” Christ was obscured by the world; his love for Christ was eclipsed by his love for the world, his desire for Christ’s appearing was extinguished by his desire to be distinguished in the world, and his testimony was in vain.
Thus there passes from our view this erstwhile soldier, who, in the day of battle, proved false to his Lord, forsook the standard and went over to the enemy. Surely there is a reason for this sad verse being placed on the page of holy Scripture. Are we not in danger today of going in the way of Demas? The world bids for our friendship. “Come to us,” it says, “and you will do us good. Give up your puritanical notions, and adopt our ways and methods. Countenance our amusements and join in our pursuits, then will we consider your views, and religion will suit us.” The spirit of the age is to acquiesce in this semi-worldly, quasi-religious state of things, and those who do not fall in with this are considered bigoted and narrow-minded.
How many Christians have been caught in this current, and, carried out of their true course, are, so far as testimony for Christ is concerned, but useless derelicts stranded on the rocks of “this present world.”
Ere we conclude we venture to call attention to all that we are permitted to know of the close of Paul’s history as recorded in this same chapter. He who, being a man of like passions with ourselves, could write “be ye followers of me, even as I also am of Christ” (1 Cor. 11:1), is a pattern man. He had now reached the end of his journey. He knew that his work was finished, and that, not on account of Nero’s sentence, but because of his loved Master’s call, the supreme moment was just at hand. Let us hearken to his closing words, “I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith: henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day” (2 Tim. 4:7-8).
The valiant warrior put off his armor, laid aside his sword, resigned his commission into His hands from whom he had received it, and was ready to pass from the prison-house of Nero to the presence chamber of the King. He was about to step up even then, in anticipation of a day yet to come, when he should receive the “crown of righteousness” from the Lord, “the righteous Judge.” We believe this title indicates the delight the Lord will have in that day, in showing how much He appreciates the loyalty of those who, in this day are true to Him, and who love and long for His appearing.
Thus the curtain drops upon the history of one to whom Christ was a living reality from first to last. Whether in the flush of the joy of first acquaintance with Christ, or in the severe test of endurance throughout a long and chequered career, or with the prospect, as in this chapter, of early martyrdom, it was Christ, only Christ, and nothing but Christ.
May it be so with us, assured that as our eye is fixed upon, and our heart is engaged with that living Person at God’s right hand, so will He become a living reality to us; He will command our affections; He will dominate our lives; “to live unto Him who died for us, and rose again” (2 Cor. 5:15), will be our constant wish while to see His face will be our profound desire.
“Jesus! Thou art enough
The mind and heart to fill;
Thy patient life to calm the soul;
Thy love its fear dispel.
O fix our earnest gaze
So wholly, Lord, on Thee;
That with Thy beauty occupied,
We elsewhere none may see.”
Concluding Series of Replies
J. T. Mawson
Answer (5)
Our steamer was expected to reach a certain small coast town on a West India island about daybreak, for the disembarking of passengers, and we knew that we ought then to see one of the most beautiful sights that nature could present. A high range of mountains, shading away from bright green at the foot into a deep purple at the summit, reared their heads against the glorious blue of a tropical sky, while waving at the base of them were the feathered palms as of some fabled land, and all the picturesque surroundings of a lovely bay. We were up betimes waiting for the morning to break over the eastern waters; but when at last it did appear, we saw not the landscape that we had expected, for a heavy bank of cloud hid those mountains with their gorgeous colorings from our view.
Those who had not seen them could scarce believe that they were there, and if they had not been indelibly photographed on our minds, we too should have questioned their reality, so that even to us, being thus obscured, they were but a memory. It is often thus with the things of God; the clouds from the world arise to obscure the bright prospect, or the foul miasma of the flesh wraps the soul in its embrace, then the sense of the reality of these things passes away, and the sweet serenity and calm of the uplands give place to the restless fever of a soul out of communion with God.
Things nearer at hand remain in view — perhaps the fellowship of Christians, or some service undertaken in the brighter days — but the joy, the charm, the reality are gone, everything seems out of focus, for Christ is not seen as the great central Object throwing everything else into its right relation. Then the question arises as to the reality of these things, for no things are so unreal as divine things to the soul out of communion and under the cloud of what is temporal. It may be the memory remains to increase the unhappiness, but Christ is not a present living reality.
Under such circumstances what is to be done? There is but one way of escape, and that is to seek the presence of God. We may go to Him assured that He is more desirous that we should live in the power of divine things than we can be, moreover He, who brought us into them at the beginning, is the only One who can restore the joy of them to us when that joy is lost.
If we fear Him we shall go to Him, and the fear of the Lord is the first necessity of our lives, every mystery is made plain to those who fear the Lord, for the secret of the Lord is with such. It is in His presence, away from the deadening influences of things temporal, that we hear His voice, and we must pray the Psalmist prayer, “Be not silent to me, lest if Thou be silent to me, I become like them that go down into the pit” (Psa. 28:1). If God’s voice is not heard, and we are not in exercise, we are like the un-quickened multitudes that know not God.
The World
In the presence of the Lord we get a right estimate of the world, and our souls respond to His judgment about it, as given us in the Scriptures.
The Word of God is most insistent and emphatic as to the world. Jesus said of it, “It hated me” (John 15:18). He also said of His own, “I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you” (John 15:19), and, “They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world” (John 17:16). Paul, by the Holy Spirit, said, “The princes of this world... crucified the Lord of Glory” (1 Cor. 2:8). John said, “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him” (1 John 2:15). James said, “Ye adulterers and adulteresses know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? Whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God” (James 4:4). It is evident then that we cannot find our delight in worldly pursuits and in the things of Christ at the same time. We cannot hug the world and know the reality of divine things: there is no co-mingling between them, and on our part there must be, there can be, no compromise. To adopt such an attitude will be to be thought eccentric, and indeed if our souls find their center in Christ, we shall be eccentric to the world, for it hated Him, but we shall be concentric to all in the circle of the Father’s love, for the Father finds all His delight in His Son.
The world is but a vapor that shall pass away with all the lust of it, even as the clouds that hid the mountains disappeared before the advancing day; when this comes to pass in actuality, then shall Christ stand out in His inherent and eternal beauty before the admiring eyes of a universe. But in the presence of God our faith judges the world even today, and this clears the vision so that those things which are invisible to carnal eyes come into full view, and are the greatest realities of the life.
The Flesh
No Christian loves “the flesh,” and there are times when the soul’s hatred of it is most intense, and the agony of being overcome by it almost more than can be borne; and yet victory comes not. The reason for this is often that underneath all the desire after Christ, there is the reserve of some part of the life, or some time in the day, for self and gratification of the flesh. Augustine in his confessions tells us that he used to pray “O God make me pure, but not just now”.’ and many another heart has had that secret thought and desire even if the prayer has not risen to the lip.
There are three things the remembrance of which will help us:
1. The flesh is the great rival to the Spirit whose delight is to occupy us with Christ.
2. It will always mar our enjoyment of Christ’s things.
3. All the time spent in it is lost time.
But neither the world nor the flesh will be truly judged by our occupation with them, or even by a close investigation of their godlessness, nor shall we turn from either because we have suffered loss at their hands.
It is when there is borne upon our souls by the power of the Holy Spirit what the cross of Christ means, that we shall be able to say, “The world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world” (Gal. 6:14), and that we “have no confidence in the flesh” (Phil. 3:3).
For this we must go to God: in His presence our thoughts will give place to His, and grace, power, and mercy, will be given for a walk of separation from the evil things, and the joy of the knowledge of Christ as the risen and exalted one who loved us and died for us, will be a great and present reality.
Answer (6)
J. Wilson Smith
If Christ is no reality to a man it would be well for him to ask himself the question, “is Christ aught to me? Is His name anything more to my mind than a sound which I have been taught to venerate? Have I ever been brought into such contact with Him that I have consciously received blessing at His hand? Have I proved, in a truly sensible way, that He has touched and enriched my soul?” Let this inquiry be first answered.
Then it may safely be said that, in the experience of the true Christian, there are varied degrees and measures and unfoldings of the Lord to him. He may pass slowly perhaps from the time when he said in pride of heart “All of self and none of Thee,” to the time when, by grace, he prayed: “Some of self and some of Thee;” and then to that when, by that same grace, he cried: “None of self and all of Thee.”
This, indeed, is the blessed climax, and suggests to us the words of Paul: “Nevertheless I live, yet not I.” In his case, “self”, (and what a mountain of evil is “self” I) had been morally displaced by the Lord Jesus Christ, who had become his life in true practical reality. Yet the same climax may, and should be reached by all.
But just as there is continuing advance from the time when the first beams of light irradiate the eastern sky, until the hour when the sun reaches its zenith in the heavens at noon of day, so there may be, and must be, progress in the Christian’s apprehension of Christ.
The bride in the Song of Solomon begins the path of such progress by saying: “My Beloved is mine and I am His” (ch. 2:16). Her initial apprehension is her own wonderful possession: “He is mine!” What a sense of reality is here!
But then, after a while she says: “I am my Beloved’s, and my Beloved is mine” (ch. 6:3). This indicates growth — her possession is not so prominent now as the dawning apprehension of the thought: “I am His.”
Finally she declares: “I am my Beloved’s, and His desire is toward me” (ch. 7:10). Here self is lost in the consciousness of His satisfaction in her.
How forcibly real and simple is the knowledge of Christ! and in this line no experience can be of greater value. Was it not with this in view that the great apostle of Christianity bowed his knees before the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and prayed (as in Eph. 3) “that He would grant them according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man, that Christ might dwell in their hearts by faith” [thus becoming to them a living bright reality as the abiding tenant of their affections] “and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge”; so that, while they loved Him, they might learn more fully His love to them — a love beyond knowledge.
This is the great study, and object, and aim in Christianity: and, on account of it, the four inspired Evangelists wrote their separate descriptions of Him who was everything to them — their endless theme and story — till they finished by saying that the world itself could not contain the books which should be written. For this glorious reality, apostles lived and suffered and died; whilst today in the apparent wreck of everything divine, we are sustained in triumph by the Spirit-given consciousness of a living, loving Christ on high who is everything and in all!
Answer (7)
H. P. Barker
Let your thoughts travel for a moment round the whole circle of your Christian friends. Then fix them upon the one whom you esteem more than all the rest. Perhaps this will be the dear servant of Christ who was used of God for your conversion. May be it will be one who has been a great help to you in your Christian life; or possibly a godly parent who has many a time prayed for you and with you.
Imagine that you are staying for a time under the same roof as that honored friend of yours. One night, after he has retired to his room, you hear a sound as if he were talking to someone. And so he is. It is his voice in prayer that you hear; he is talking to God.
You cannot but hear what he says, and your attention is riveted when you catch the mention of your own name. Your friend is praying about YOU !
And how he pours out his heart in earnest supplication on your behalf ! He seems to know all about you, your daily trials and struggles, your temptations and failures, the pressure that sometimes seems almost too great to bear, and your lack of strength to carry life’s burden. He speaks, too, of unknown and unsuspected dangers that surround you, and of snares that Satan sets for your feet. And he mentions your earnest longings after the things that are true and good, your desires for closer communion with God, and your feeble endeavors to serve Christ.
In connection with all these things your friend prays for you, earnestly, beseechingly, importunately, mentioning your name again and again.
What you hear fills you with comfort. You say, “I am sure God will answer the prayers of His dear servant,” and you realize the immense blessing of having someone to offer “the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man” on your behalf.
But now transfer your thoughts from your friend to your Savior.
Your ears cannot hear Him, but He is interceding for you as really as if they could. He mentions your name; He knows all about you. He has watched your faltering footsteps and has encircled you with His protecting care. He loves you more than tongue can tell. He died once, for love of you, and would be willing to do so again if it were necessary. Day and night He thinks of you. He is nearer to you than any earthly friend can be, and His intercession is mightier than any that such can offer. Does not the thought of this cheer and encourage you?
Sit down quietly for a few minutes and think. Close your eyes and say to yourself: “My Savior is thinking of me. He is interceding for me in Heaven. He never takes His eyes off me. He loves me tenderly, faithfully and forever.”
Then get down on your knees and talk to Him as if your eyes could see Him. He hears every word that you say.
And when you rise from your knees I venture to think you will know what it is to have Christ as a living reality to your soul.