I have got something that gives me power to live, not according to the flesh but the Spirit. In everything, from the greatest to the least, there is nothing out of which we cannot get an occasion to glorify God. Someone once said he wanted a larger sphere of service, because he had so few opportunities where he was. My answer was, “Your life is an opportunity.” The Apostle Paul said to Timothy, “Thou therefore, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus.” If we were full of Christ, grace would be sure to flow forth in all circumstances, but whether it be the youngest or the most mature Christian, it can only flow forth as the eye is fixed on Jesus. Where was all to meet Timothy’s need? Is not the heart of Christ as fresh as ever to the people of His love? If the eye is fixed on Him, looking for grace, we shall be full of the joy of the Holy Spirit.
If you knew practically the blessed free giving of Christ (there is no end of the stream of grace flowing from Him), nothing down here would affect you unduly; you could not say “this or that looks very black”; it would not be black, looked at on Christ’s side. There is Christ’s side of everything down here.
Plenty of Affliction
As one connected with Christ Himself, you will find plenty of affliction. Do you say that your path is full of difficulty and trial? Well, thank God for it, saying, “As Christ’s path was strewn with thorns and briers, so would I have mine to be.” Are there none? Where are you? What! Are you going by a shortcut of your own into Canaan? I am often cheered when told that my path as a Christian is a hopeless path. Well, I say, then my path is like Paul’s. Enough for me to find affliction in connection with a living Christ. How can I use anything of the world? How gather for myself one flower fit to carry into God’s presence, save as standing in communion with a living Christ? Satan may give me a stigma, but that will only mark whose I am and where I am.
Oh, what a difference it makes in the sorrows of this life, if, instead of looking at them as something against us, we have fellowship with Christ in them. Would you like to be snatched up with dying embers clinging to your feet, saved so as by fire, rather than make up your mind to suffer with Christ? All who are laid on the foundation will be saved, but if walking inconsistently, it will be “so as by fire.” If walking consistently, receiving the reward.
Eternal Life
The Christian may say, “I have power to reject Satan, the world, and self, because I have got eternal life. I am standing in a strength that is just the same for me as it was for Paul. The evil may be increased, the days darker, but God is the same, and eternal life in Christ is what I have got. If I walk in separation from evil, as one who possesses that, I have the sweetness of this thought cheering me—the Lord knows me as His own.”
How is it in the present time that we do not find Christians satisfied with what God reveals in His Word? Just think of the difference between the early Christians and Christians now. Then they began with Christ as having borne their sin, being raised from the dead, and in the glory, where He had a place prepared for them. And whatever they might be, He knew no change; He was the same yesterday, today and forever. That was where the early Christians were. It gave them a spring of joy all the way and enabled them to bring that glory into all their circumstances as pilgrims and strangers. That glory never left Paul’s mind, and in all that he had to pass through, his soul was always delighting in it. It led him captive all the way.
G. V. Wigram