“Are you happy, my dear girl?” said a visitor to a young friend who seemed to be drawing near her latter end. “Yes, quite happy,” was the reply. And raising her hand, she pointed to a Bible which was lying on her bed-side, and again repeating, “I am quite happy; I have Christ there.” Then laying her hand on her heart, she said, “And I have Christ here.” And again, pointing upwards, to where the object of her faith, her affections and her hopes were all centered, she repeated, “And I have Christ up there.”
What a source of happiness! we may well exclaim. A happiness far exceeding that of the brightest hosts on high who have never sinned. They know nothing of Christ as did the dying girl. She knew nothing else. It was all Christ! only Christ! But it was the Christ that loved her as no one else did or could, the Christ that died for her on the cross of Calvary, in presence of all intelligences. His love she could never deny, though she might be suffering the most excruciating pain; the whole universe is witness to His love. It may seem strange to nature that One who so loves should measure out to His loved ones such days and nights of weariness, and who, by a touch of the hem of His garment could dry up the deepest fountains of disease; but faith approves and would not have it otherwise until it be His holy and blessed will to come in with His healing power. The vessel that has to bear in heaven “a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory,” must be morally fitted here to bear that glory forever. Besides, the Lord in His love can make His suffering ones superior to all trouble, not by removing it, but by giving the faith that accepts all from His hands, still counting on His changeless love. “Trophimus have I left at Miletum, sick,” says Paul, “Epaphroditus was sick nigh unto death; but God had mercy on him; and not on him only, but on me also, lest I should have sorrow upon sorrow.” But though these were Paul’s brethren and companions in labor, there was no thought of anything like a miracle, or any direct intervention to restore them. It was simply then as now, a question of faith and patience. 2 Tim. 4, Phil. 2.
What we see in the dear dying girl before us is, complete deliverance from occupation with herself. Nothing about her frames and feelings; nothing about her past ways, her present experience, her hopes or fears of recovery; nothing even as to her faith, her thoughts of God’s purposes, or her own anything. She had Christ—the Christ of God as He is revealed in the holy scriptures; as He dwells in the heart by faith; as He sits at God’s right hand in the glory. But it is not by means of great learning, or great attainments, that the soul thus enjoys Christ; it is possible that this girl could barely read her English Bible—we have known many such. But the Holy Ghost having come down from heaven when Christ, as the God-man, took His place in the glory, He makes good to the soul that is looking only to Christ, these blessed realities. It is thus that the wheels of the soul are all set in motion in the day of affliction, as the apostle says. “But we glory in tribulation also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience; and patience experience; and experience hope: and hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given to us.” Rom. 5:3-5.
Although Christ is nowhere else revealed but in the holy scriptures, yet many misapprehend the Father’s revelation of His Son. There are many who teach that Christ suffered and died on the cross, to reconcile His Father to us. This is gravely to mistake the way of peace and happiness in this world, especially in the day of adversity. There is no Father’s love in this doctrine; God is seen as a judge; and the work of Christ as meeting and satisfying His justice. True, all who have faith in the work of Christ—the foundation of all blessing—are saved; but the theology of this school leaves mirrored on the soul the judicial character of God, and not the Father’s love. To know the Christ of the Bible is to know Him, His mission, His work, and the sinner’s salvation, as the fruit of God’s eternal love. God never was the enemy of man, and needed not to be reconciled. The Bible bears witness to this as early as the days of Adam. The first word we hear from an offended God after man had sinned, is one of love— “Adam, where art thou?” Man was lost, and in tender mercy, God was seeking him. And in the days of our blessed Lord—the last Adam—we read, “That God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them.” 2 Cor. 5.
Sweeter far than man’s theology are the sacred words of holy scripture. To know the Christ of the Bible we must begin our lesson with the heart of God. We speak not now of a newly awakened soul whose eye must be directed to the precious blood of Christ to meet His sense of guilt and troubled conscience; but rather of those who may have been Christians for many years, but strangers to the perfect repose, the single eye, of the dying girl. Yes, we must begin with the Father’s love. He who lay deepest in the heart of God was not spared, but delivered up to accomplish the purposes of love; and a plea for every other blessing is founded on this great gift. “He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?” (Rom. 8:32.) As the lesser is included in the greater, so is every blessing that love can give bound up in the gift of Christ.
So the blessed Lord Himself always teaches. “This is life eternal, that they might know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent.” Thus the Divine Master ever taught His disciples to trace all their mercies up to the Father’s heart, and to accept all from His hands—health or sickness—as the fruit of His love. In place of Christ suffering on the cross to reconcile His Father to us; we are told, times without number, that it was the Father who gave us to Christ to be redeemed and fitted for His holy presence. “Thine they were,” says Jesus, “and thou gavest them me.... Holy Father, keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me, that they may be one as we are.” Could love do more? Could love say more? “That they may be one as we are.” The heart cannot receive it, it overflows all its limits. What perfect unity there must be between the “Holy Father,” and His Son; and such is the believer’s perfect blessedness in Christ. As He says further on: “That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us; that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.” How emphatically almost every line of scripture condemns the false doctrine that it was necessary for Christ to suffer and die in order to reconcile God to ruined man! One of the objects of the blessing here spoken of is, “That the world may believe that thou hast sent me.” And now He adds the crowning blessing, “And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one: I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them as thou hast loved me.”
Surely nothing could be higher than this—in the same glory with Christ, and loved even as He is loved. Could the heart think of Him? In looking up to the exalted man in the glory, the poor, withered, weakly, bed-ridden, one may say, “See you that man in the glory? He is the perfect definition of what I am in my Father’s sight. That radiant glory which now surrounds His adorable Person, is mine now, and in its brightest beams I shall bask forever. And the complacent love of the Father in His Son, is His love to me. Think not of me as I am now. My Lord has given me to know in experience what the body of humiliation means; but He has also given me to look up, and say, when He comes, He will change this body of humiliation that it may be fashioned like unto His body of glory. Then, O then! In the same glory, loved with the same love, and in my new resurrection body, exactly like His own.” Mark the three unities in John 17:11, 21, 22-23.
Thus has my pen run on without stopping to think whether this was the most correct way of speaking of “Christ in the Bible.” Surely this might be done a hundred different ways; He fills the Bible; none of its different parts can be properly understood unless we have Him as our key. Still it is most important to know Him and all the blessings which are ours in Him, not only as the fruit of His cross and sufferings, but as the fruit of the Father’s love. We can then rise above the trials of the way, above the returning clouds after the rain, above the mutterings of the gathering storm, above the desolating tempest, above the shining hosts of heaven, above “all principality and power;” and repose on that heart whence all our blessings flow—the Father’s bosom.
But these sunny heights are not reached in a day, though they are ours from the time of our conversion. We must begin with the cross, with the deep sense of sin in the conscience, with the efficacy of the blood of Christ to cleanse it all away, with pardon and acceptance in the beloved, and oneness with Him as the Head of His body, the church, through the presence and indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Unless we know something of the relationship into which we are brought by our oneness with a risen Christ, nothing is known in power. That which constitutes Christianity and should characterize the Christian, flows from our union with Christ in resurrection. To know that we are one with Him beyond death and the grave, beyond the reach of sin, Satan, and the world, where no enemy can ever come, where nothing can ever arise to disturb this union, is solid peace, perfect rest, and heavenly joy. This is to be tasting the joys of heaven, though still on earth, and it may be, encompassed with the infirmities, and almost ready to sink with the weariness of the way.
The good Lord give all who read these pages, to know Christ as He is revealed in His great work on the cross, in His present position on the throne, and in His coming again to receive us to Himself; meanwhile He is sure to have His right place in the heart by the teaching and power of the Holy Spirit.