Biblical Essays
PREACHING CHRIST: WHAT IS IT?
“Philip went down to Samaria and preached Christ unto them” (Acts 8). This brief and simple statement embodies in it a grand characteristic feature of Christianity – a feature that distinguishes it from every system of religion that now exists or ever was propounded in this world. Christianity is not a set of abstractions; a number of dogmas; a system of doctrines. It is preeminently a religion of living facts, of divine realities – a religion that finds its center in a divine Person, the Man Christ Jesus. He is the foundation of all Christian doctrine. All truth radiates from His divine and glorious Person. He is the living fountain from which all the streams come forth in fullness, power and blessing. “In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.” Apart from Him all is death and darkness. There is not one atom of life, not one ray of light in this entire world except that which comes from Him. A man may possess all the learning of schools; he may bask in the most brilliant light that science can pour on his understanding and pathway; he may garnish his name with all the honors his fellow mortals can heap on him, but if there is the breadth of a hair between him and Jesus, if he is not in Christ and Christ in him, if he has not truly believed in the only begotten Son of God, if he does not have a contrite heart, he is involved in death and darkness. Christ is “the true Light which lighteneth every man that cometh into the world.” Hence, in a divine sense, no man can be termed enlightened except “a man in Christ.”
It is well to be clear regarding this. It is needful to focus on it, especially in this day of man's pride and pretension. Men are boasting of their light and intelligence, of the progress of civilization, of the research and discovery of the age in which our lot is cast, of the arts and sciences and what has been done and produced by their means. We do not want to touch these things. We are willing to let them stand for what they are really worth, but we are arrested by these words that fell from the Master's lips, “I am the light of the world; he that followeth Me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.” Here it is, “He that followeth Me.” Life and light are only to be had in Jesus. If a man is not following Jesus he is plunged in death and darkness, even though he is possessed of the most commanding genius and enriched with all the stores of science and knowledge.
We will no doubt be deemed narrow-minded in this writing. A majority who might read this essay will probably regard us as men of very contracted views – men of one idea, and that one idea presented in a one-sided way. Well, be it so. We are men of one idea; and we openly confess that we heartily desire to be more so. And what is that one idea? It is Christ – God’s grand idea. Christ is the sum and substance of all that is in the mind of God. He is the central object in heaven, the grand fact of eternity, the object of God’s affection; of angels’ homage; of saints’ worship; of demons’ dread – the Alpha and Omega of the Divine counsels – the keystone of the arch of revelation – the central sun of God’s universe.
This being so, we need not marvel at Satan’s constant effort to keep people from coming to Christ and drawing them away from Him after they have come to Him. He hates Christ and will use anything and everything to hinder the heart in getting hold of Him. Satan will use cares or pleasures, poverty or riches, sickness or health, vice or morality, profanity or religion; in short, he does not care what it is, provided he can keep Jesus out of the heart.
On the other hand, the constant object of the Holy Spirit is to present Christ to the soul. It is not merely something about Christ, doctrines respecting Him, or principles connected with Him, but His own self in living power and freshness. We cannot read a page of the New Testament without noticing this. From the opening lines of Matthew to the close of the Revelation, the whole Book is simply a record of facts respecting Jesus. It is not our purpose to follow out this record; to do so would be interesting beyond expression, but it would lead us away from our immediate thesis to which we pray will be unfolded and applied in the power of the Holy Spirit.
In studying Scripture in connection with our subject, we shall find the Lord Jesus Christ presented in three ways: as a test, as a victim and as a model. Each of these points contains in itself a volume of truth, and viewing them in their connection they open to our souls a wide field of Christian knowledge and experience. Let us then consider what is meant when we speak of
Christ As A Test
In contemplating the life of the Lord Jesus as a Man, we have the perfect exhibition of what a man ought to be. We see in Him the two grand creature perfections, i.e., obedience and dependence. Though God over all, the Almighty Creator and Sustainer of the wide universe; though He could say, “I clothe the heavens with blackness, and I make sackcloth their covering,” yet so thoroughly and absolutely did He take the place of a Man on this earth that He could say, “The Lord God hath given Me the tongue of the learned, that I should know how to speak a word in season to him that is weary: He wakeneth morning by morning, He wakeneth Mine ear to hear as the learned. The Lord hath opened Mine ear, and I was not rebellious, neither turned away back” (Is. 1:4-5).
The Lord never moved one step without divine authority. When the devil tempted Him to work a miracle to satisfy His hunger, His reply was, “It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord.” He would readily work a miracle to feed others, but not to feed Himself. Again, when tempted to cast Himself from the pinnacle of the temple, He replied, “It is written, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.” He had no command from God to cast Himself down, and He could not act without it; to do so would be tempting Providence. So also, when tempted with the offer of all the kingdoms of this world, on condition of doing homage to Satan, His reply was, “It is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve.”
The Man Christ Jesus was perfectly obedient. Nothing could tempt Him to diverge from the narrow path of obedience. He was the obedient Man from first to last. It was the same to Him where He served or what He did. He would act by the authority of the divine Word. He would take bread from God; He would come to His temple when sent of God, and He would wait for God’s time to receive the kingdoms of this world. His obedience was absolute and uninterrupted from the manger to the cross, and in this He was well pleasing to God. It was creature perfection; and nothing in any wise different from this could be agreeable to God. If perfect obedience is pleasing to God, then disobedience must be hateful. In this one feature of it, the life of Jesus was a continual feast to the heart of God. His perfect obedience was continually sending up a cloud of fragrant incense to the throne of God.
This is what a man ought to be. We have here a perfect test of man’s condition, and when we look at ourselves in the light of this one ray of Christ’s glory, we must see our entire departure from the true and only proper place of the creature. The light that shines from the character and ways of Jesus reveals, as nothing else could, the moral darkness of our natural state. We are not obedient; we are willful; we do our own pleasure; we have cast off the authority of God; His Word does not govern us. “The carnal mind is enmity against God; it is not subject to the law of God; neither indeed can be” (Rom. 8).
It may be asked, “Did not the law make manifest the willfulness and enmity of our hearts?” No doubt, but who can fail to see the difference between a law demanding obedience and the Son of God, as Man, exhibiting obedience? Well then, in so far as the life and ways of the blessed Lord Jesus Christ transcend in glory the entire legal system, and in so far as the Person of Christ transcends in glory and dignity the person of Moses, just so far does Christ, as a test of man’s condition, exceed in moral power the Law of Moses. And the same holds true of every test that was ever applied and every other standard that was ever set up. Viewed in the one point of perfect obedience, the Man Christ Jesus is an absolutely perfect test by which our natural state can be tried and made manifest.
Take another ray of Christ’s moral glory. He was as absolutely dependent on God as He was obedient to Him. He could say, “Preserve Me, O God, for in Thee do I put My trust” (Ps. 16). And again, “I was cast upon Thee from the womb” (Ps. 22). He never for one moment abandoned the attitude of entire dependence on the living God. It is befitting to be dependent on God for everything. The blessed Jesus always was. From Bethlehem to Calvary He breathed the very atmosphere of dependence. He was the only Man who ever lived a life of uninterrupted dependence on God, from first to last. Others have partially depended, He did it perfectly. Others have occasionally or even mainly looked to God; He never looked anywhere else. He found all His springs in God, not some of them or most of them.
This, too, was most pleasing to God. To have a Man on this earth whose heart was never, for one single moment, out of the attitude of dependence, was very precious to the Father. Hence, again and again, heaven opened and the testimony came forth, “This is My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.”
Since this dependence in the perfect life of the Man Christ Jesus was infinitely agreeable to the mind of God, it also furnishes an infinitely powerful test of the natural state of man. As nowhere else, we see here our apostasy from the creature’s only proper place – the place of dependence. True, the inspired historian informs us in Genesis 3 that the first Adam fell from his original place of obedience and dependence. True, the Law of Moses makes manifest that every one of Adam’s descendants are in a condition of revolt and independence, but who can fail to see with what superior power all this is brought out in this world by the life and ways of Jesus? In Him we see a Man perfectly obedient and perfectly dependent in the midst of a scene of disobedience and independence, and in the face of every temptation to abandon the position He occupied.
Thus the life of Jesus in this one particular point of perfect dependence, tests man’s condition and proves his departure from God. In his natural state, man always seeks to be independent of God. We need not go into any detailed proof of this. This one ray of light, emanating from the glory of Christ and shining into man’s heart, lays bare every chamber thereof, proving beyond all question – in a way that nothing else could prove – man’s departure from God and the haughty independence that marks our natural condition.
The more intense the light that we bring to bear on an object, the more perfectly we can see what it is. There is a vast difference between looking at a picture in the dim morning twilight and examining it in broad daylight. Thus it is in reference to our real state by nature. We may view it in the light of the law, in the light of conscience, in the light of the loftiest standard of morality known among men, and in so viewing it, we may see that it is not what it ought to be, but it is only when we view it in the full blaze of the moral glory of Christ that we can see it as it really is. It is one thing to say, “We have done those things which we ought not to have done, and left undone those things which we ought to have done,” and it is another thing altogether to see ourselves in that perfect light which makes everything manifest. It is one thing to look at our ways in the light of law, conscience, or morality, and another thing to look at our nature in the light of that all-powerful test – the life of the Man Christ Jesus.
We will refer to one more feature in the character of Christ, and that is His perfect self-emptiness. He never once sought His own interest in anything. His was a life of constant self-sacrifice. “The Son of Man has come to serve and to give.” These two words “serve” and “give” formed the motto of His life and were written in letters of blood on His cross. In His marvelous life and death, He was the Servant and Giver. He was always ready to answer every form of human need. We see Him at Sychar’s lonely well, opening the fountain of living water to a poor thirsty soul. We see Him at the pool of Bethesda, imparting strength to a poor impotent cripple. We see Him at the gate of Nain, drying the widow's tears and giving back her only son.
All this and much more we see, but we never see Him looking after His own interests. We cannot too deeply ponder this fact in the life of Jesus, nor can we too thoroughly scrutinize ourselves in the light this wondrous fact emits. If in the light of his perfect obedience, we can detect our terrible willfulness; if in the light of His absolute dependence, we can discern our pride and haughty independence; then surely, in the light of His self-emptiness and self-sacrifice, we may discover our gross selfishness in its many forms, and as we discover it, we must loathe and abhor ourselves. Jesus never thought of Himself in anything He ever said or did. He found His food and drink in doing the will of God and meeting the need of man.
What a test is revealed here. How it proves us. How it makes manifest what is in us by nature. How it sheds its bright light over man’s nature and man's world, and rebukes both one and the other. After all, the great root-principle of nature and this world is self. “Men will praise thee when thou doest well to thyself” (Ps. 49). Self-interest is really the governing principle in the life of every unrenewed human being in this world. Nature may clothe itself in amiable and attractive forms; it may assume a generous and benevolent aspect; it can scatter as well as hoard; but of this one thing we may rest assured – the unregenerate man is totally incapable of rising above self as an object. In no way could this be made so thoroughly manifest – in no way could it be developed with such force and clearness – in no way could its vileness and hideousness be so fully detected and judged as in the light of that perfect test presented in the self-sacrificing life of our blessed Lord Jesus Christ. It is when that penetrating light shines on us that we see ourselves in all our true depravity and personal vileness.
The Lord Jesus came into this world and lived a perfect life – perfect in thought, perfect in word, perfect in action. He perfectly glorified God, and not only so, but He perfectly tested man. He showed what God is, and He also showed what man ought to be – showed it not merely in His doctrine, but in His walk. Man was never before so tested. Therefore, the Lord Jesus could say, “If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin; but now they have no cloak for their sin. He that hateth Me, hateth My Father also. If I had not done among them the works which none other man did, they had not had sin; but now have they both seen and hated both Me and My Father” (John 15:22-24).
Again, He says, “I judge no man; and yet if I judge, My judgment is true” (John 8:15-16). The object of His mission was not judgment but salvation, yet the effect of His life was judgment on everyone with whom He came in contact. It was impossible for anyone to stand in the light of Christ’s moral glory and not be judged in the very center and source of His being. When Peter saw himself in that light, he exclaimed, “Depart from me for I am a sinful man, O Lord” (Luke 5).
Such was the certain result of man seeing himself in the presence of Christ. Not all the thundering and lightings of Mount Sinai, not all the condemnations of the legal system, not all the voices of the prophets could produce such an effect on a sinner as one single ray of the moral glory of Christ darting into his soul. We may look at the law and feel we have not kept it, and agree we deserve its curse. Conscience may terrify us and tell us we deserve hell-fire because of our sins. All this is true, but the moment we see ourselves in the light of what Christ is, our whole moral being is laid bare – every root, fiber, motive spring, element, all the sources of thought, feeling, desire, affection and imagination are exposed to view, and we abhor self. It cannot possibly be otherwise. The whole Book of God proves it. The history of all God’s people illustrates it. To cite cases would fill volumes.
True conviction is produced in the soul when the Holy Spirit lets in the light of the glory of Christ. Law is a reality, conscience is a reality, and the Spirit of God may and does make use of the former to act on the latter, but it is only when we see self in the light of what Christ is that we get a proper view of self. Then we are led to exclaim with Job, “I have heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear, but now mine eye seeth Thee; therefore I abhor myself.”
The question of the ages is this: “Have we ever seen ourselves in this way? Have we ever really tested ourselves by the perfect standard of the life of Christ?” It may be we have been looking at our fellow man and comparing ourselves with that imperfect standard, and trying ourselves by that imperfect test. This will never do. Christ is the true standard, the perfect test, the divine touchstone. God cannot have anything different from Christ. Before we can find our place in the presence of God, we must be like Him – conformed to His image. Do we ask, “How can this ever be?” – By knowing Christ as the Victim and by being formed after Him as the Model.
Before proceeding, it is most needful that the whole world and each human heart should be seen and judged in the light of the moral glory of Christ – that divine and perfect test by which everyone and everything must be tried. Christ is God’s standard for all. The more fully and faithfully the world and self are measured thereby, the better. The grand question for the whole world and for each human heart is this, “How has Christ been treated? What have we done with Him?” God sent His only begotten Son into the world as the expression of His love to sinners. He said, “It may be they will reverence My Son when they see Him.” Did they do so? Sadly, no. “They said, This is the heir; come let us kill Him.” This is how the world treated Christ.
Be it observed, it was not the world in its dark pagan form that so treated the blessed One. No; it was the world of the religious Jew and the polished and cultivated Greek. It was not into the dark places of the earth, as men speak, that Jesus came, but into the midst of His own highly favored people “who were Israelites; to whom pertained the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises.” It was to them He came in meekness, lowliness and love. It was among them He lived and labored and “went about doing good, healing all who were oppressed of the devil, for God was with him.” How did they treat Him? This is the question; let us ponder it deeply, and ponder the answer. They preferred a murderer to the holy, spotless, loving Jesus. The world got its choice. Jesus and Barabbas were set before it and the question was put, “Which will you have?” What was the deliberate, determined answer? “Not this man, but Barabbas. Now Barabbas was a robber.”
What a tremendous fact – a fact little weighed, little understood, little entered into – a fact that stamps the character of this present world; tests and makes manifest the state of every unrepentant, unconverted heart beneath the canopy of heaven. Where shall we turn for a true view of the world, of nature, of the human heart, of self? To police reports, calendars of our Grand Juries, or various statistics of the social and moral condition of our cities and towns? No; all these may set before us facts that fill us with horror, but let it be distinctly seen and deeply felt that all the facts ever recorded of crime in its most fearful forms, are not to be compared with that one fact, the rejection and crucifixion of the Lord of glory. This crime stands out in bold relief from the background of man’s entire history and fixes the true condition of the world, of man, of nature, of self.
It is this we are anxious to urge on the heart before proceeding to the second division of our subject. It is the only way to get a right sense of what the world is and what the human heart is. Men may speak of the vast improvement that has taken place in the world and of the dignity of human nature, but the heart turns back to that hour when the world, called to make a choice between the Lord of glory and a murderer, deliberately selected the latter and nailed the former to a tree between two thieves. As far as the world is concerned, this crime of crimes remains uncancelled and unforgiven. It stands recorded on the eternal page. Not only is this so regarding the world as a whole, but it also holds true for those of us who are unrepentant, unconverted. The solemn question still remains to be answered by the world – by the individual sinner: “What have we done with the Son of God? What has become of Him? How have we treated Him?”
Of what use is it to point to the progress of the human race, the march of civilization, the advance of the arts and sciences, improvements in transportation and communication, modern weapons, the ten thousand forms in which human genius has tasked itself in order to minister to human lust, luxury and self-indulgence? All these things are far outweighed by the misery, moral degradation, squalid poverty, ignorance and vice in which more than nine-tenths of the human race are involved.
But we do not attempt to put barbarism against civilization, poverty against luxury, grossness against refinement, ignorance against intelligence. We have only one test, one standard, one gauge, and that is the cross to which Jesus was nailed by the representatives of this world’s religion, its science, politics and civilization.
It is here we take our stand and ask this question, “Has the world yet repented of this act?” No; for had it done so, the kingdoms of this world would have become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ. It is here we take our stand and ask, “Have each of us repented of this act?” One may say, “I never did it. It was done by wicked Jews and Romans many, many years ago. How could I be counted guilty of a crime which was committed so many centuries before I was born?”
We reply, “It was the act of the world and each of us are either part of that world which stands before God under the guilt of the murder of His Son, or, as a repentant and converted soul, we have found refuge and shelter in the pardoning love of God.” There is no middle ground, and the more clearly we see this the better, for in no way can we have a just sense of the condition of this world or of our own heart except in the light cast thereon by the life and death of Christ as a test. We cannot stop short of this mark if we are to form a true estimate of the character of the world, the nature of man and the condition of the unconverted soul. As to the world, there can be no real improvement in its condition, no radical change in its state until the sword of divine judgment has settled the question of its treatment of the Son of God. As far as the individual sinner is concerned, the divine testimony is, “Repent and be converted that your sins may be blotted out.” In the second place, this leads us to contemplate
Christ As A Victim
This is a more pleasing subject to dwell on, though the other must never be omitted in preaching Christ. It is too often lost sight of in our preaching. We do not sufficiently press home on the conscience of the sinner in both life and death, Christ as a test of nature's true condition and a proof of its irremediable ruin. The law may be used, and rightly so, to do its testing work in the conscience. Yet, through the blindness and folly of our hearts, we may attempt to take up that very law to work out righteousness for ourselves – that law by which, when rightly viewed, is the knowledge of sin. But it is impossible for anyone to have his eyes opened to see the death of Christ as the terrible exhibition of the enmity of the heart against God, and not be convinced that he is hopelessly ruined and undone. This is true repentance. It is the moral judgment of not merely our acts, but of our nature in the light of the cross as the only perfect test of what that nature really is.
All this is fully brought out in the preaching of Peter in the earlier chapters of the Acts. Look at the second chapter where we find the Holy Spirit presenting Christ both as a test and a victim. “Ye men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a Man approved of God among you by miracles and wonders and signs, which God did by Him, in the midst of you, as ye yourselves also know. Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken and by wicked hands have crucified and slain; whom God hath raised up, having loosed the pains of death; because it was not possible that He should be holden of it . . . Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly that God hath made that same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ.”
Here we have solemn and bitter dealing with conscience regarding the way they treated the Lord’s Anointed. It was not merely that they had broken the law; that was true; nor yet that they had rejected all the witnesses that had been sent to them; that was equally true, but that was not all. They had actually crucified and slain “a Man approved of God,” and that Man was none other than the Son of God Himself. This was the naked and startling fact that the inspired preacher urges with solemn emphasis on the consciences of his hearers.
Note the result: “Now, when they heard this, they were pricked in their hearts, and said unto Peter and to the rest of the apostles, Men and brethren, what shall we do?” No marvel that they were pierced to the heart. Their eyes were opened and what did they discover? – That they were actually against God Himself; the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. And what were they at issue about – About the law? No. About the prophets? No. About the rites and ceremonies, the statutes and institutions of the Mosaic economy? No. All this was true and bad enough. But there was something far beyond all this. Their guilt had reached its culmination in the rejection and crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth. “The God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob, the God of our fathers, hath glorified His Son Jesus, whom ye delivered up, and denied Him in the presence of Pilate, when he was determined to let Him go. But ye denied the Holy One and the Just, and desired a murderer to be granted unto you; and killed the Prince of Life, whom God hath raised from the dead; whereof we are witnesses.”
This truly was and is the climax of man’s guilt, and when brought home in the mighty energy of the Holy Spirit to any heart, it must produce true repentance and from the depths of the soul evoke the earnest inquiry, “Men and brethren, what shall I do?” “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” It is not merely that we have failed in keeping the law, in doing our duty to God and our duty to our neighbor in living as we should. Sadly, all this is too true. But we have been guilty of the dreadful sin of crucifying the Son of God. Such is the measure of human guilt, and such was the truth pressed home by Peter on the consciences of the men of his time.
What then? When the sharp edge of this powerful testimony had penetrated the hearts of those listening, when the arrow from the quiver of the Almighty had pierced the soul and drawn forth the bitter penitential cry, “What shall we do?,” what was the answer? What did the preacher say? “Repent and be baptized, every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” So also in the third chapter, he says, “And now, brethren, I know that through ignorance ye did it, as did also your rulers. But those things which God before had showed by the mouth of all His prophets, that Christ should suffer, He hath so fulfilled. Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord.”
Here we have the two things distinctly presented, namely, Christ as a test and Christ as a victim – the cross as the exhibition of man’s guilt and the cross as the exhibition of the love of God. “Ye killed the Prince of life.” Here was the arrow for the conscience. “But those things which God before had showed that Christ should suffer, He hath so fulfilled.” Here was the healing balm. It was the determinate counsel of God that Christ should suffer, and while it was true that in nailing Jesus to the cross man had displayed his hatred of God, yet no sooner is any soul made to see this and thus is brought to divine conviction, than the Holy Spirit holds up to the view of every true believer that very cross as the foundation of the counsels of redeeming love and the ground of the full remission of sins.
So it was in that most touching scene between Joseph and his brethren as recorded in Genesis 44 and 45. The guilty brethren are made to pass through deep and painful exercises of heart, until they stand in the presence of their injured brother with the arrow of conviction piercing their inmost soul. Then, but not until then, these soothing words fall on their ears, “Now, therefore, be not grieved nor angry with yourselves, that ye sold me hither; for God did send me before you to preserve life . . . So now it was not you that sent me hither, but God.”
What exquisite, matchless grace. The moment they entered the place of confession, Joseph was in the place of forgiveness. This was divine. “He spoke roughly to them” when they were thoughtless regarding their sin, but no sooner did they say these words, “We are verily guilty concerning our brother,” than they were met by the sweet response of grace, “It was not you, but God.”
So it is in every case. The instant the sinner takes the place of contrition, God takes the place of full and free forgiveness; and most assuredly, when God forgives, the sinner is forgiven. “I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord, and Thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin” (Ps. 32).
Would we have it otherwise? Surely not. A hard heart, unbroken spirit, unreached conscience could not understand or make a right use of such words as, “Be not grieved; it was not you, but God.” How could it? How could an unrepentant heart appreciate words that are only designed to soothe and tranquilize a broken and contrite spirit? To tell a hard-hearted sinner not to be grieved, would be fatally false treatment. Joseph could not possibly have said to his brethren, “Be not grieved with yourselves” until they had said and felt “We are verily guilty.”
Such is the order, and it is well to remember it. “I will confess and Thou forgavest.” The moment the sinner takes his true place in the presence of God, there is not one syllable said to him about his sins except to tell him that they are all forgiven and forgotten. “Their sins and iniquities will I remember no more.” God not only forgives but forgets. The convicted sinner stands and gazes on the cross, and sees himself in the light of the glory of Christ as the divine and perfect test, and cries out, “What shall I do?” How is he answered? By the unfolding of Christ as a victim, slain by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself.
Who can define the feelings of a soul that has been convicted of desiring a murderer and crucifying the Son of God, when he learns that that crucified One is the channel of pardon and life to him – that the blood which was shed forever puts away the guilt of shedding it? What language can adequately set forth the emotion of one who has seen his guilt, not merely in the light of the Ten Commandments, but as shown out in the cross of a world-rejected Jesus; and yet knows and believes that his guilt is all and forever put away? Who could attempt to embody in language the feelings of Joseph’s brethren when they felt his tears of affection dropping on them? What a scene. Tears of contrition and tears of affection mingled. What a precious mixture. The mind of God alone can duly estimate its value and sweetness.
But let us guard against misunderstanding. Let no one suppose that tears of contrition are the cause of pardon or the meritorious ground of peace. Far, far away be such a thought. From the days of Joseph's brethren to the days of the third of Acts and to the present moment, all the tears of contrition that ever gushed forth from the fountains of broken hearts could not form the foundation of a sinner's acceptance and peace with God or wash away a single stain from the human conscience. In prospect from the fall of man to Calvary and in retrospect, from Calvary till this moment, the blood of the divine Victim and that alone – nothing except that precious blood, that atoning death, that peerless sacrifice – could justify a holy God in forgiving one sin. But, blessed be God, so perfectly has that sacrifice vindicated and glorified His Name, that the moment any sinner sees his true state, his guilt, rebellion, enmity, his base ingratitude, hatred of God and of His Christ; the moment he takes the place of true contrition in the divine presence – the place of one utterly broken down, without plea of moderation – that moment, and only at that moment, does one honestly cry out, “What must I do?” And if the answer is the same as revealed in the Holy Word of God, and if God’s Word is obeyed, then infinite grace meets him with those healing, soothing, tranquilizing words, “Be not grieved,” “your sins and iniquities will I remember no more,” “Go in peace.”
Some might suppose that we attach undue importance to the measure of contrition, or that we mean to teach that everyone must feel the same character or degree of conviction as was produced by Peter’s powerful appeal in Acts 2. Nothing is further from our thoughts. We believe there must and there will be conviction and contrition. Further, we believe the cross is the only adequate measure of human guilt – it is only in the light of that cross that anyone can have a just sense of the vileness, sinfulness and loathsomeness of his nature. But all may not see this. Many never think of the cross as a test and proof of their guilt, but merely as the blessed ground of their pardon. They are bowed down under a sense of their many sins and shortcomings, and they look to the cross of Christ as only the ground of pardon. Certainly they are right. But there is a deeper view of sin; a deeper sense of what human nature in its fallen state really is – a deeper conviction of the godless and Christ-less condition of the heart. Where is this to be reached? At the cross and there alone. It will never do to look back at the men of the first century and say what terrible sinners they were to crucify the living embodiment of all that was holy and good, gracious and pure. No; what is needed is to bring the cross forward into our century and measure nature, the world and self thereby.
This is the true way to judge the question. There is no real change. “Crucify Him! Crucify Him!” is just as much the cry of the world of today as it was in the first century. The cross was then and is now the only true measure of human guilt. When anyone is brought to see this, he has a far deeper sense of his condition than he can ever have by looking at his sins and shortcomings in the light of conscience or the Ten Commandments.
And to what will all this lead the soul? What will be the effect of seeing self in the light that the cross, as a test, throws on it? The deepest self-abhorrence. Yes, and this holds true in the case of the most refined moralist and amiable religionist who ever lived, as much as in the case of the grossest and vilest sinner. It is no longer a question of grades and shades of character, to be settled by the graduated scale of human conscience or moral sense. No; the cross is seen as the only perfect standard. Nature, the world, the heart, self, is measured by that standard, and its true condition reached and judged.
We are intensely anxious that all should thoroughly understand this point. One will find it to be of immense moral power in forming his convictions, both regarding his own heart and the real character of the world through which he is passing – its moral foundations, framework, features, principles, spirit, aim, and end. We want him to take the cross as the perfect measure of himself and all around him. Let him not listen to the suggestions of Satan or to thoughts that spring up in his own heart, to the vaporings of falsely called philosophy and science, to the infidel vaunting of this preeminently infidel age. Let him listen to the voice of Holy Scripture – the voice of the living God. Let him use the test that Scripture furnishes – a crucified Christ. Let him try all that and see where it leads him. One thing is certain, in his own self-consciousness it will lead him down into those profound depths where nothing can avail him except Christ as the divine Victim who bore the judgment of God against sin and opened heaven to the sinner.
Having sought to present Christ as a test and Christ as a victim, we shall now, in dependence on divine guidance and teaching, proceed to consider Him as:
The Model
To which the Holy Spirit seeks to conform every true believer. This will complete our subject and open up a wide field of thought to the Christian. God has predestinated His people to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren (Rom. 8). But how can we ever be formed after such a model? How can we ever think of being conformed to such an image? The answer to these questions will unfold more fully the blessedness and infinite value of the truth that has already passed before us.
If one has followed the line of thought we have been pursuing; if he has entered into it or if it has entered into him in the power of the Spirit of God; if he has made it his own, he will see, feel and own that in human nature there is not a single atom of good, not one point on which one can rest his hopes for eternity. He will see that, as far as he is concerned, he is a total wreck. He will see that the divine purpose as revealed in the Gospel is not to reconstruct this moral wreck, but to erect an entirely new thing. Of this new thing, the cross of Christ is the foundation.
One cannot ponder this too deeply. Christianity is not the old nature made better, but the new nature implanted. “Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God” (John 3). “If any man be in Christ, he is a new creation; old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. And all things are of God who hath reconciled us to Himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation” (2 Cor. 5).
The effect of the mission of Christ to this world was to prove, as nothing else could have proved, man’s totally irremediable ruin. When man rejected and crucified the Son of God, his hopeless case was proven. It is of the deepest importance to be thoroughly clear regarding this. It solves a thousand difficulties and clears the prospect of many a dark and heavy cloud. As long as a man is possessed with the idea that he must improve his nature by any process whatever, he must be a total stranger to the fundamental truth of Christianity.
Sadly, regarding this simple truth of the Gospel, there is a fearful amount of darkness and error in Christendom. In one way or another, man’s total ruin is denied or reasoned away and the very truths of Christianity as well as the institutions of the Mosaic economy are made use of to improve fallen nature and fit it for the presence of God. Thus the true nature of sin is not felt; the claims of holiness are not understood; the free, full and sovereign grace of God is set aside; and the sacrificial death of Christ is thrown overboard.
The sense of all this makes us long for more earnestness, power and faithfulness in setting forth those foundation truths that are constantly affirmed and maintained in the New Testament. We believe it to be the solemn duty of every writer and speaker, all authors, editors, preachers and teachers to take a firm stand against the strong current of opposition to the simplest truths of divine revelation, so painfully and alarmingly apparent in every direction. There is an urgent demand for faithfulness in maintaining the standard of pure truth, not in a spirit of controversy, but in meekness, earnestness and simplicity. We want to have Christ preached as a test of all that is in man, in nature, in the world. We want Christ preached as a victim, bearing all that was due to our sins; and we want Him preached as a model on which we are to be formed in all things.
This is Christianity. It is not fallen nature trying to work out righteousness by keeping the Law of Moses. Neither is it fallen nature striving to imitate Christ. No; it is the complete setting aside of fallen nature as an utterly good-for-nothing thing and the reception of a crucified and risen Christ as the foundation of all our hopes for time and eternity. How could the unrenewed sinner get righteousness by keeping the law, by which is the knowledge of sin? How could he ever set about to imitate Christ? “He must be born again.” He must get new life in Christ before he can exhibit Christ. This cannot be too strongly insisted on. For an unconverted man to think of imitating the example or walk in the footsteps of Jesus, is the most hopeless thing in the world. No; the only effect of looking at the blessed example of Jesus is to put us in the dust in self-abasement and true contrition. And when from this place we lift our eyes to the cross of Calvary to which Jesus was nailed as our surety, our sin-bearer, our substitute, we see pardon and peace flowing down to us through His precious sacrifice. Then, but not until then, we can calmly and happily sit down to study Him as our model.
If we look at the life of Jesus apart from His atoning death; if we measure self by that perfect standard; if we think of working self into conformity to such an image, it must plunge us into utter despair. But when we behold that perfect, spotless, holy One bearing our sins in His own body on the tree – when we see Him laying in His death and resurrection the everlasting foundation of life and peace and glory for us – then, with a peaceful conscience and liberated heart, we can look back over the whole of that marvelous life and see therein how we are to walk, for “He has left us an example that we should follow His steps.”
So, while Christ as a test shows us our guilt, Christ as a victim cancels that guilt, and Christ as a model shines before the vision of our soul as the standard at which we are to continually aim. In other words, Christ is our life and Christ is our model, and the Holy Spirit, who has taken up His abode in us on the ground of accomplished redemption, works in us for the purpose of conforming us to the image of Christ. True, we must always feel and accept how infinitely short we come of that lofty standard, but still, though the manifestation of that life is sadly hindered by the infirmities and corruptions of our old nature, Christ is our life. The life is the same, as the apostle John says, “which thing is true in him and in you, because the darkness is past and the true light now shineth” (1 John 2:8). We can never be satisfied with anything less than “Christ our life, Christ our model.” “For me to live is Christ.” It was Christ reproduced in the daily life of Paul by the power of the Holy Spirit.
This is true Christianity. It is not flesh turned religious and leading a pious life. It is not unrenewed, fallen, ruined nature trying to recover itself by rites and ceremonies, prayers, alms and vigils. It is not the old man turning from “wicked works” to “dead works,” exchanging the nightclub, pornography, and gambling, for the monastery, pew, and meeting house or lecture hall. No, it is “Christ in you, the hope of glory,” and Christ reproduced in our daily life by the powerful ministry of God the Holy Spirit.
Be not deceived. It is of no possible use for fallen nature to clothe itself in forms of religion. It may become involved in such attractive things as ritualism, sacred music, pious pictures, sculpture, architecture, dim religious light. It may scatter the fruits of a large-hearted benevolence: it may visit the sick, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and shed on all around the sunshine of a genial philanthropy. It may read the Bible and go through every form of religious routine. It may even attempt a hollow imitation of Christ: schoolmen may discipline it, others may subdue it, and mystics may enwrap it in their cloudy reveries and lead it into quiet meditation with nothing to contemplate. In short, all that religion, morality and philosophy can do for it and with it, may be done but all in vain, because it still remains true: “That which is born of the flesh is flesh.” “It cannot see or enter the kingdom of God,” for “ye must be born again.”
Here lies the deep and solid, the divine and eternal foundation of Christianity. There must be the life of Christ in the soul – the link with “the Second Man, the last Adam.” The first man has been condemned and set aside. The Second Man came and stood beside the first. He proved him and tested him, and fully showed that there was not a single ingredient in his nature, character or condition that could be made available in that new creation, that heavenly kingdom which was about to be introduced – that not a single stone or timber in the old building could be worked into the new – that “in my flesh dwelleth no good thing” – and that the ground must be thoroughly cleared of all the rubbish of ruined humanity, and the foundation laid in the death of the Second Man who in resurrection has become, as the last Adam, the Head of the new creation. Apart from Him there can be no life. “He that hath the Son hath life; he that hath not the Son of God hath not life” (1 John 5:12).
Such is the conclusive language of Holy Scripture, and this language must hold true in spite of all the reasoning of those who, in their liberal and enlightened views, boast in their intellectual powers and in the breadth of their theology. It matters little what men may think or say; we have only to hearken to the Word of our God which must stand forever, and that Word declares, “Ye must be born again.” Men cannot alter this. There is a kingdom that can never be moved. In order to see or enter this heavenly kingdom, we must be born again. Man has been tried in every way and proved wanting. Now, “Once, in the end of the ages, hath Christ appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself” (Heb. 9:26).
This is the only ground of life and peace. When the soul is firmly settled thereon, it can find its delight in studying Christ as its model. It is finished with all its own efforts to obtain life, pardon and the favor of God. It flings aside its “deadly doings;” it has found life in Jesus, and now its grand business is to study Him, to note His footsteps and walk therein – to do as He did, to always aim at being like Him, to seek to be conformed to Him in everything. On all occasions, the great question for the Christian is not, “What harm is there in this or that?” but, “Is this like Christ?” He is our divine pattern. Are husbands exhorted to love their wives? It is “As Christ loved the Church.” What a model. Who can ever come up to it? No one, but we are still to keep it before us. Thus we shall enter into the truth of those lines, “The more Thy glories strike mine eyes, The humbler I shall lie, Thus while I sink, my joys shall rise Immeasurably high.”
The Christian will at once perceive what a wide field of practical truth is opened up by this closing point in our subject. What an unspeakable privilege to be able, day by day, to sit down and study the life and ways of our Great Example; to see what He was; to note His Words, His spirit, His style; to trace Him in all the details of His marvelous path; to note how “He went about doing good”; how it was His food and His drink to do the will of God and to minister to the need of man. And then to think that He loves us, that He died for us, that He is our life, that He has given us His Spirit to be the spring of power in our souls to subdue all that is of the old root of self and produce in our daily life the expression of Christ.
What mortal tongue can unfold the preciousness of all this? It is not living by rules and regulations. It is not pursuing a dead round of duties. It is not subscribing to man’s dogmas or religious institutions. No; it is union with and manifestation of Jesus Christ. This we repeat and reiterate – this and nothing less, nothing different, is true, genuine, living Christianity. Let us see that we possesses it, for if not, we are dead in trespasses and sins, we are far from God and far from the kingdom of God. But if we have been led to truly believe on the name of only begotten Son of God, if as a consciously ruined and guilty sinner we have fled for refuge to the blood of the cross, then Christ is our life, and day by day it should be our one unvarying object to study our Model, to fix our eye on the headline and aim at coming as near to that as possible. This is the true secret of all practical godliness and sanctification. This alone constitutes a living Christianity. It stands in vivid contrast with what is commonly called “a religious life” that often resolves itself into a mere dead routine, a rigid adherence to lifeless forms, a barren ritualism which, far from exhibiting anything of the freshness and reality of the new man in Christ, is a distortion of nature itself.
Christianity brings a living Christ into the heart and into life. It diffuses a divine influence all around. It enters into all the relations and associations of human life. It teaches us how to act as husbands and wives, as fathers and mothers, as children, as servants. It does not teach us by dry rules and regulations, but by setting before us, in the Person of Christ, a perfect Model of what we ought to be. It presents to our view the very One who, as a Test, left us without a single plea, and as a Victim, left us without a single stain, and who now, as our Model, is to be the subject of our admiring study and the standard at which we are always and only to aim. It does not matter where we are or what we are, provided Christ is dwelling in the heart and exhibited in daily life. If we have Him in the heart and before the eye, He will regulate everything; if we do not have Him, we have nothing.
We close our essay, not because our theme is exhausted, but because it is inexhaustible. We believe that the Spirit of God alone can open the subject and apply it in living power and freshness to our souls and thus lead us into a higher type of Christianity than is ordinarily exhibited in this day of worldly profession of Christianity. May the Lord stir up our hearts to seek greater nearness to Him and more faithfully conform to Him in all our ways. May we be enabled to say with a little more truth and sincerity, “Our citizenship is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ; who shall change the body of our humiliation, that it may be fashioned like unto His body of glory, according to the working whereby He is able even to subdue all things unto Himself.”
