HI 3{The life of Christ in the soul, and the presence of a rejected and glorified Christ before the soul, are the elements by which God associates us with His own objects, and sustains a testimony to these objects, in the world.
All real testimony for Christ in a world that has rejected Him, and all true service for His name-that is, the whole living power of Christianity in the world-has this simple ground for its spring.
This is enunciated, not as if it were a truth unknown and unacknowledged by those who are Christ's, but on account of the need there is, in the present day, for the mind to be recalled from man's complex thoughts, to God's simple power, of a living Christianity, in the world.
" Christ in you„ the hope of glory," expresses infinitely more than a doctrine or a dogma. It is the simple exponent of a living and a transforming power.
Nothing is more false in Christianity than the notion of "the imitation of Christ." A single sentence from an epistle teaches more, as to this, than whole volumes of "a' Kempis." Christ must "live in me," if I am to live like Christ or for Christ. All else is pitiful mimicry. It is worse. It is to caricature Christ to the world, by an attempt to exhibit Him, while His real character and glory are unknown.
For what was Christ in His moral walk in this world? And what i$ Christ, as despised and rejected by the world, and about to be manifested in glory? I do not speak of His essential Godhead, which all who are orthodox, allow, as giving efficacy to His sacrifice, and validity to their hopes of heaven. But Christ's blessed person and glory have another aspect than this; and His cross has another power. "That I may know Him" indicates the one; and, " by which I am crucified to the world," introduces to the other.
But what was the moral exhibition of the life of Christ here-if it was not a life whose every spring of action, and every motive and feeling and affection, was not so entirely from above-from heaven-as to be the utter reverse, and the rebuke, of all that has its spring from this debased and corrupted and corrupting world? I do not speak of " the moral sublime" of Christ's character, which has won the admiration of infidels, and the conception of which-to their own condemnation-they have pronounced to be divine; but of that detailed, delineated, portraiture, which the Gospels give of His every-day life, where as the loved and owned of God, He is the despised and rejected of the world.
How can I be called to exhibit this; or how can I take my place with Him relatively to the world, if I am not, by His grace, put relatively in His position toward heaven? and if all the springs of heaven's life and purity, and heaven's fellowship, and heaven's abiding peace, and sustaining joy, are not made mine?
But this is the real power of Christianity.
It is this which the full heart of Christ unfolds to his disciples, when, rejected by the world, His love puts them in the place of continuing a witness for God in the world when He is gone.
" Power from on high " to witness for Christ is another thing from that which the fourteenth of John, and the connected chapters, unfold. There, it is an absent Christ preparing for his disciples a home in heaven, but assuring them of his return; the certain knowledge of the Father, from what they had seen in Him; unlimited power of request in his name, and His own pledged love for the fulfillment; the presence of " another Comforter," not so much the power of witness as the companion of their solitude, and to make them know the unutterable depth of the union Of the Father and the Son, and their living union with Him; so that henceforth their life was knit up with His, " because I live ye shall live also;" and finally (though these are but the scanty streamlets from that gushing fountain), He tells them His place in the world is now to be theirs; but not to be theirs amidst its coldness and hatred and scorn, without " His peace;" and more-nor without the visits of His love to cheer their obedient hearts, while they were sent into the world, in the sad consciousness that the world was not their place, but heaven.
It is this which explains that brief epitome of a Christian's course in the world, "he that saith he abideth in Him, ought himself also to walk even as He walked." May our hearts learn, in the only way in which it can be learned, its heavenly power! " The kingdom of God is not in word but in power."_
Few who have any heart for Christ, have ever gazed upon the picture of the Apostle's "imitation of Christ," presented in this third of Philippians, without a just admiration. But few indeed have penetrated the secret of that blessed exhibition, so as to become followers of him as he was of Christ.
It has been observed that "every man, perhaps, at some period of his life, has been a hero in purpose; and in Christianity alas how prone are we to live for Christ in purpose rather than in act! It is a rare exhibition of the Gospel to see a man intent upon "doing one thing."
But let us look at the unfolding of those springs of action which formed the beauty of this moral exhibition of Christ in the Apostle. Too often the mind misses, by dwelling upon the exfoliation, what it was the intention of the Spirit in the Apostle to disclose; which evidently, here, was not the result, but the hidden spring, of a life of unlimited consecration to its object.
What he relinquished in his course is plain; what was his estimation of present things is equally marked; what was his future expectation is alike defined. He could say, "Our conversation is in heaven"-which was saying much, if its force be understood. He could further add, "from whence also we look for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ"-which stamped the sacred unworldly character on his hope. But his sorrow was unmitigated when he thought of "the Cross of Christ," being associated with a lower aim, in " minding earthly things."
But how did he reach this altitude? And what set in motion, and kept in motion, these unworldly sympathies? There is but one simple and unchanging element, whether lie be looked at in the outset of his course, its continuance, or its close. And the issue or result is as simple as its spring. If Christ was the spring of his action, the end of his action was also Christ.
It was the revelation of Christ in his soul that at first detached him from the world, and from self, and from all that self holds dear. it was the same undimmed View of Christ that kept him with unquenched ardor of affection following in the path of his rejection, and spending himself in unwearied service for that which was dear to Christ in the midst of an unfeeling and hostile world. It was simply and alone the same blessed Christ in glory that brightened the future of his soul, and filled the horizon of his earnest and unfailing hope. " Our conversation is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Savior the Lord Jesus Christ," tells of the goal on which his eye was fixed. "That I may know Him," in a single gush, reveals the first and last and only absorbing passion of his heart.
But is this the Christ we know? Is it the selfsame sun that warmed and cheered and brightened the day of Paul's earnest labor, which still shines for us? Or is it that, from length of time, his beams reach us but obliquely, which glowed in their zenith in the Apostle's day? Or is it that our hearts have, with the world, grown old, and with their feeble, palsied motion, say that the time is past, for them to revive beneath his genial glow?
It is not thus. But we have left the mountain-top, where still he pours his fervid beams, and have got down into the fogs and vapors and dampness of the marshy plains below.
" Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to-day, and forever," is a truth that can stay the heart when all around is putting on the tokens of decay, and that which bears the name of Christ is verging fast towards Laodicean lukewarmness and rejection. But Christ must have a witness in the world till he comes again. And the truth that "Elijah was a man subject to like passions as we are," may well turn the lonely drooping heart in confidence to Elijah's God, despite of Israel's apostasy, and Ahab's wickedness, and Jezebel's corruption.
But the moral picture of our chapter is before our gaze.
" No confidence in the flesh," is a leading feature in it, and one, if our souls would copy, we must not forget. It is the obverse of the medal, with its other inscription, " our conversation is in heaven."
It is the first expression, the essential condition of being so owned of God, as to have "His Son revealed in us." "Christ in you the hope of glory," taught one who was not a whit behind the chiefest Apostles, that he was " NOTHING." And when it pleased God to reveal His Son in him, immediately He "conferred not with flesh and blood"-so that the expression, " We are the circumcision," or those who are acknowledged of God as in connection with Himself, is necessarily followed by, "who serve God in the spirit, and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh."
It is a negative effect, it is true; but as such it is essential to the possession and the display of God's grace and Christ's power.
Nothing but the bright revelation of a dying, living, crucified, glorious Christ-a Christ whose love brought Him from heaven's glory to "the dust of death" for us; a Christ whom the world has rejected, and who now beckons us onward to His glory from the throne of our God, can ever produce this effect in us of, "no confidence in the flesh;" but this revelation, when true and bright to the soul, does and can. It alike displaces the claims and pretensions of a righteous or of a sinful self. It can, and must do so, because, " It is not I that live, but Christ liveth in me."
It is not the world, whether in its riches, its ease, its reputation, or its esteem, that is in prominence here. That is a thing so alien from the thoughts of the Apostle, and has so utterly lost any hold it might have had on his affections, that he has only tears when he mentions those who imagined it could for a moment be associated with the cross. He dismisses such a thought with the stern declaration, "that those who mind earthly things" are "the enemies of the cross of Christ."
That blight of Christianity which has so thickly settled down upon all that bears the name of Christ now, was seen only by the Apostle in absolute and deadly antagonism to the cross. And his emphatic condemnation of it is heard in the brief expression, "I am crucified to the world, and the world is crucified to me."
But in this "no confidence in the flesh," we see the cross, and the glory turning all that could be a ground of confidence, in natural descent-in the participation of divine ordinances-in the exactitude of religious observances, and the perfection of moral virtues-into " loss for Christ"; and "the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus, his Lord," turning everything he had lost for him, in comparison, into a heap of " dung."
"The righteousness which is of God by faith" "the righteousness which is through the faith of Christ," puts utterly outside the righteousness of self, or that which is by the law; and that through being "found IN HIM.;" while the power of Christ's resurrection draws him on through a life of suffering, as the legitimate road to " the resurrection from the dead." And if he seeks to be made conformable to Christ's death here, it is because he sees in it the moral pathway to the glory, along which his soul is bounding, like a courser, to his goal.
His detailed life amidst such burning desires, such a contempt of the world, such unearthly motives, was still, in one sense, common-place enough; it had only this of pre-eminence in it, that in the ratio in which heaven and glory-CHRIST-possessed his soul, the world heaped upon him its neglect and contempt, and scorn. " Even unto this present hour [he says] we both hunger, and thirst, and are naked, and are buffeted, and have no certain dwelling-place; and labor, working with our own hands: being reviled, we bless; being persecuted, we suffer it: being defamed, we entreat: we are made as the filth of the world, and are the offscouring of all things unto this day."
But did He sigh, that he was thus cast off by the world? No! He had neither time nor heart to think of it, except when some laggard soul, still' lingering in the world, needed to be reminded that He who possesses heaven's glory, traveled to it through the world's scorn: and that our God has called us to the same inheritance, " by glory and by virtue."
One point was in his eye: one object, and one alone, bounded his view-" Our conversation is in heaven; from whence, also we look for the Savior the Lord Jesus Christ"-and though every step was bringing him nearer to it, nothing did He think He had attained while this was still before.
His own and the church's relationship to Christ he had fully earned; the ultimate object for which Christ had laid hold on him was kept steadily before his mind, and neither successes nor disasters could stop him from reaching onward, until he himself had laid hold on this, " not as though I had already attained.... this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus."
But is he content to be lonely in this ardent race? No! See how he stretches a friendly hand to those who, through faintness, are dropping in the rear, and says, in effect,—"Come on-come on!"-" Brethren, be followers together of me." And see him, too, casting a lingering look towards those who have stopped in their course, through "minding earthly things." He weeps at their condition, and sorrowfully vents the word of warning, "They are the enemies of the Cross of Christ ... their glory is their shame." But he cannot stop. He dashes away the tears which, when looking downwards, dimmed with sorrow his eyes; and again looking upward and onward, his face beaming with the brightness of eternal hope, he exclaims-" Our conversation is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ: who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself".
Conclusion.
Beloved brethren in the Lord, is this the simple character of the Christianity we profess? Is Christ so simply, so singly the object of our souls, as to be the power of the displacement of all that we have clung to in the past; all that would entangle us, and make us turn our backs on the Cross, in the present; and. all the schemes and expectations, the fears or anticipations of the future?
To his heart, whose aspirations have for a while arrested the current of our thoughts, CHRIST was all this. And, Oh! may the precious grace of that God who separated him from his mother's womb and called him by His grace, and was pleased to reveal His Son in him, that he might preach him among the heathen, make it the one object of our souls that CHRIST may be thus revealed, restored, to our hearts! Too often the measure of practical godliness which may mark us-the reading of the word, our prayer, our self-denial—look not beyond ourselves; or at least not beyond the limit or that service on which the heart may be set for Christ. These things are necessary to maintain a tone of piety, and to keep the heart from being driven backward by the world's adverse current. But this is not "conversation, in heaven." This is not CHRIST filling, from the, center to the circumference, our affections and our hearts! This is not "CHRIST dwelling in our hearts by faith!" This is not, with the Apostle, to do "One Thing!"
There is a hand that can remove every film from our darkened vision, and make us "with unveiled face [to] behold as in a glass the glory of the Lord, [and be thus] changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord:"-then, and then only, shall we be able to say, " This one thing I do!"