Sunday, May 8, 2011

Sunday Classic: F. J. Huegel (Chapter Two) "PARTICIPANTS OF THE CROSS CHRIST'S DEATH OUR DEATH"


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"The Pearls of Faith in the Fields of Christendom" 

 

Hell got bigger. Grace got Greater, and the world is heading for Hell in a handbasket. You really don't want to go there. Unless you seriously don't do something about it, You are Going to Hell. Hell was not made for you and you weren't made for Hell.  It isn't oblivion you are facing when you die, but absolute and total isolation. The ansence of God since you are created by God will cause suffering you never imagined. It was never intended for you to go there. You are going in the wrong direction and admit it or not, Hell is waiting for you. Jesus Said, Call on Me and You Shall Be Saved. We call it Salvation because it is. It is not going where you deserve to be, and that is Hell. Jesus said it, You Must Be Born Again. Read these so you can be assured God wants you in heaven, not hell.  "Call upon the Name of the Lord, and You Shall Be Saved". Reject them, pure and simple, You Go to hell.

It's your call, it just might be your Last Call. --Michael James Stone

 

  This Weeks Classic  

F. J. Huegel

 

 

Bone of His Bone 

by F. J. Huegel

PARTICIPANTS OF THE CROSS CHRIST'S DEATH OUR DEATH

CHAPTER II

MY purpose is to trace step by step the scope of this great principle of participation in Christ-to measure, as it were, the length and breadth, the depth and the height, of this marvellous identification of the believer with his Saviour. Christ, and all true believers, are one. They constitute His body. They are, in the language of Adam, "bone of His bone, and flesh of His flesh." Just what the implications of this oneness with Christ are-the overwhelming glory of such a positionmost Christians have never had -so much as an inkling. May the Father of Lights enable us not only to understand, but to enter into this holy temple, and to realize our oneness with Christ. This is the only spring that can quench our thirst. There is no other way to the fulfilment of our deepest aspirations as Christians.

We must bear in mind that it is the office of the Holy Spirit to graft the believer into Christ, as a gardener would graft the branch of a tree into the main body of another. "By one Spirit are ye all baptized into one body" (I Cor. xii. 13). Paul dwells upon this grafting process in the eleventh chapter of his letter to the Romans, where he speaks of the breaking off of Israel from the Root, Christ, and the grafting in of the Gentiles, to become partakers of the Root.

True conversion in its deepest aspect is just this. If it fails to result in a veritable grafting into Christ, it is spurious, and from the nature of the case, unfruitful. Indeed, we must be born again. We must be rooted into the very Trunk of the Eternal Godhead. We do not simply strive to imitate a Divine Leader; exceeding great and precious promises have been left to us whereby we are made partakers of the Divine Nature (2 Peter i. 4). The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are children of God, heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ (Rom. viii. 17) .

It was the Spirit who convicted us of sin, creating in us a deep antipathy for sin, and a burning desire to be free from its foul dominion. It was the same Spirit who revealed Christ to us as the only way outour sin-bearer (John xvi. 7-15) . It is the same Spirit who binds us to Christ, rooting our lives into His Divine Life, and causing us to grow up into Him who is the Head. Madame PennLewis, in one of her books, points out that in the Greek, the much-loved John iii. 16, conveys a very different meaning from that of our English versions. It is not simply he that believeth in Christ, but rather he that believeth into Him, who shall have eternal life. By the co-action of the Spirit (and the Holy Spirit works so in conjunction with our spirit that we are often altogether unconscious of His working) we have believed into Christ. He has become our life. "But he who is joined unto the Lord is one spirit" (1 Cor. vi. 17) .

Now this grafting necessitates some cutting, of course. If we will not die to the natural, how can we expect to live to the supernatural? Paul puts it thus: "If we be dead with Christ we believe that we shall also live with Him." The branch which contrary to nature is grafted into a tree of another species, must die to the old life. It must send its roots into a new trunk. It receives a new life. Its relation with the old is severed so utterly, and so completely, and so continuously, that for it, the old no longer exists. It imbibes the new with a constancy which brings about a veritable fusion of the two.

A study of Christian biography reveals the fact that the great saints of the Church (and I use the term in its Biblical sense as descriptive of all those who have truly lived in and for Christ) have with few exceptions experienced what some have called "a second work of grace." There came a time when they panted after a fuller participation in the life of God. We may speak of it as sanctification; others dwell upon the aspect of rest, and speak of the "rest of faith." The modern emphasis seems to be upon the victorious aspects-it is the Victorious Life. Or, we might speak of it as the Abundant Life. Be that as it may,-Christian experience will not be bound by terminology-the fact remains that, sooner or later, the Christian is awakened to a sense of the sin of "self-hood." There is no reason, Scriptural or otherwise, why Christians should not immediately upon conversion, be brought to this stage, but the facts indicate that they usually wander for some years in the wilderness of a divided affection before entring into the land of milk and honey.

Again, it is the Holy Spirit who works in the believer this conviction of the sin of a divided heart. He shows the believer how tragically self-will has thwarted Christ's purpose to bring him into utter union with Himself. He re

veals with racking precision and crushing clearness, the awful consequences of the "self-life" in its enmity to Christ, and its power to choke the life of the spirit. He shows the believer the duplicity of his way, the shamefulness of a hollow piety, the mockery of a superficial devotion to Christ. The believer comes to realize that he is crucifying Christ afresh by his lust for pleasure, his greed for excitement, and his passion for self. He sees that though he has been rooted into Christ, yet, he has been drawing more from the old roots. He sees how muddy is the stream of his life, how tainted the waters, how the stench of the "self-life" has blighted what flowers have grown by their side. He begins to understand Romans vii. He, too, would be free. The secret cry of his heart also becomes: "O wretched man that I am! who will deliver me from the body of this death ?"

This marks a crisis. The hour has come for a fresh revelation of the scope and efficacy of Christ's redemptive work. The believer's eyes are now to be opened to the meaning of the deeper aspects of the Cross of Christ. The Cross is unveiled. The Holy Spirit reveals Christ, this time not as the Divine Sin-Bearer (though the believer never gets beyond the need of a constant appropriation of the efficacy of Christ's sacrifice for sin), but as the way out of this loathsome thing we call "Self." It is a vision of himself as one with Christ in His death-crucified with Christ -which the Spirit now vouchsafes to the believer. He is made to see that he too died to sin in the death of the Saviour, and was ethically committed to a position of death, in order that he might be brought by the cataclysmic action of a corporate participation in the Cross, and the Tomb of the Son of Man, out from under the dominion of the "selflife" to a new life of Divine potency. He begins to see that without this participation in the death of the Son of Man, sin as a principle (that very thing which precipitated the heinous tragedy of Calvary) continues to operate in him, and to place him, in a sense, in a position of complicity with the very murderers of the Saviour. He realizes that if he fails to sign the death sentence of "self," his position as a believer becomes utterly intolerable, the acme of contradictions. He begins to realize that Christ not only died for him as a sinner, but that he, as a sinner, potentially died in Christ to sin, and that the former without the latter would involve him in moral contradictions deep-dyed and infamous. The logic of it all bears down upon him with the force of a demon, and drives him from his position of duplicity (unconsciously held, no doubt). He must either die with Christ to sin, or continue to crucify Christ (the carnal mind is enmity against God, (Romans viii. 7). He sees that unless Self is crucified, Christ is.

It is all the work of the Holy Spirit. It is not natural for a man to turn against himself and to begin to hate that which by nature he loves, as he loves nothing else under the sun; namely, "self." The Holy Spirit, as writes Dr. A. B. Simpson in Drays o f Heaven, is the great Undertaker who finally brings us to the place to which God has assigned us; namely, to a sharing of Christ's tomb. But He cannot bring us to a participation in crucifixion-life-bring us to the place called Calvary-without our consent. We must consent to die. All that the Cross signifies of pain and shame, ignominy, and death-the breaking of the Heart of Christ-is nothing more nor less than God's infinitely delicate and moral way of bringing us to a willingness to die. This was not too much if He could but woo us from ourselves, and get our consent to die.

That is why the Cross saves. It is not by Divine magic. It is not simply that Christ bore our sin. He did that. But the purpose of Calvary strikes infinitely deeper than that. In a sense, I agree with Lord Beaconsfield, who casts aspersions upon the doctrine of the atonement, and says that it is positively immoral. As conceived by many it is immoral. If Christ's substitutionary death for me stands before God as something the merit of which may be imputed to me simply because I accept the Saviour's sacrifice regardless of my mode of living, leaving in me the venomous weed, the dastardly thing which has caused this historic stench we call sin, to grow; then, by all that is potent in reason, I say that the Cross is immoral.

But that is not the Cross of Christ. That is the dismembered Cross of modern Christians. The Cross of Christ is substitutionary for "the Lord laid on Him the iniquity of us all," but it is more. The very nature of the Redemptive work of Christ consummated on Calvary, is such that you cannot receive its penal benefits without partaking of its moral benefits. That is to say, if you have looked to the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world, without coming by a profound willingness to be detached from self-unhinged from the false center, self, to be hinged to the true, which is God-then it is safe to say that the actual purpose of God in that indescribable event, which one writer has called the sublimest moment in the moral history of God, simply has not been attained. The Holy Spirit has never had a chance to work in you so as to bring you to a spiritual participation in the death of the Son of God which in the Divine economy was corporate -the Body, the Church, dying in its Divine Head.

The 'Chief of the Apostles saw this so clearly that he cries out as if stabbed, when the startling thought of a possible continuance in sin, after faith in Christ, is suggested,-a doctrine which even in the primitive Church had its acceptance. "Wht, shall we continue in sin that grace may abound?" Why not, if after all, salvation, as so many are womt to think o f it, is simply a release from the penal consequences of sin. Ah ! says the Apostle, "How shall we who are dead to sin live any longer therein? Know ye not that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ, were baptized into His death ? . . . We are buried with Him . . . into death. . . . We have been planted together in the likeness of His death. . . our old man is crucified with Him, that thee body of sin might be destroyed .... In that He (Christ ) died, He died unto sin once . . . Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord" (Rom. vi).

Truth out of proportion, it has been fitly said, becomes error. The truth of Christ's substitutionary death without this that we find in Romans vi, namely, the fact, in the judgment of God, of our participation in the Cross, our oneness with Christ in His death to sin, our willingness, in a word, too have the Spirit terminate the old life of "self," the carnal life which is enmity against God, detaching us from "self," and centering us in God,-the truth, I repeat, of the Former held without the truth of the latter, precipitates the holder into the confusion which error always entails: It is a decapitated gospel, which, because it is a false home, may do, in some cases, more harm than good.

In the Memoirs of Mrs. Penn-Lewis, there is a strange story connected with the Madame's visit to India, which fits most beautifully into this line of thought. A Missionary, who later gave himself with the zeal of an Apostle to the task of propagating the writings of Mrs. Penn-Lewis, which almost all bear upon the believer's identification with Christ in death and resurrection, had a dream that greatly impress(--d him. It was of the Cross of Christ. However, it was not the Saviour's bleeding form which held his eye. It was an exceedingly ugly thing, an indescribably loathsome thing, the nature of which he could not make out. What was this thing which so horrified him? Later, as he heard the message of identification, and realized that with Christ he had been crucified, the Spirit revealed to him that this loathsome thing he had seen in his dream, was none other than himself.

Oh! that the Church might catch a fresh vision of Calvary and come to appreciate the meaning of the deeper aspects of the Cross; that Christians might realize that Christ's object was to terminate, as it were, the "old creation," taking Man (Christ was the Son of Man) down into the grave to destroy the "body of sin," putting an end to the "old life," and then to bring him forth in resurrection power charged with the dynamic of a Heavenly life. Speaking of Jew and Gentile, Paul says: "Christ . . . having abolished in His flesh the enmity . . . for to make in Himself of twain, one new man . . . by the Cross" (Eph. ii. 15-16). What a spiritual revolution it would work in the life of the Church. How the tidal wave of a Divine life would sweep through her, charging the members of Christ's body, so many of whom are languishing in the sloughs of spiritual decrepitude, with a fresh joy, and firing them with a Heavenly life-the Life of the Ages. The Church, as has said the great French preacher, Lacordaire, was born crucified and until, like her Divine Head, she falls into the ground and dies, she abides alone, the life-giving streams cannot break forth from her bosom. It is not, as some one of our British brethren has said, a great stir in the realm of fleshly doing, but a Divine dying, which will bring the Church again to a flaming Apostolic zeal, and a fruitfulness comparable to that of primitive Christians.

God grant us the grace to be clear about one thing: Christ does not come into our lives to patch up the "old man." Here is where unnumbered multitudes of Christians have been "hung up." They thought it was Christ's mission "to make them better." There is absolutely no Biblical ground for any such idea. Jesus said that He had no intention of pouring His new wine into old pig-skins. He said that He had not come to bring peace, but a sword. He said that unless a man should renounce himself utterly, he could not be His disciple. Christ does not come to us to simply straighten out the "old life." He has never promised to make us better. His entire redemptive work consummated upon the Cross, rests upon the assumption (it is more than an assumption-God says it is a fact) that man's condition is such that only a dying and a being born again, can possibly meet the exigencies of the case. So far from attempting to patch man up, and then leaving him to imitate as best he can the pattern given in Judea two thousand yearsago, Christ takes him down into the grave where the "old life" is utterly terminated, and then makes him the participant of His resurrection. Christ our Lord fastens us to Himself and imparts to us an entirely "new life." But we have-the new upon the basis of our refusal of the old. Christ is the Vine, we are the branches. He is the Head, we form the body.

Paul's epistles are punctuated by a momentous "if," which again and again points us to Calvary, and startles us with an imperative demand-we must consent to co-crucifixion. "We shall live with Christ, if we be dead with Him." "We shall be with Him in the likeness of His resurrection, if we have been planted together in the likeness of His death."

"We shall reign with Him, if we suffer with Him."

I have often wondered why in that symbolic standard Moses lifted up in the desert, and to which our Lord in that classic interview with Nicodemus, when "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, must the Son of Man be lifted up,"-I have wonrepeat, why it had to be a serpent. Why not some thing lovely, inasmuch as it was to typify the King in His ve work upon the Cross? We read that all who the serpent were healed. But why a serpent-why y, or a rose, was it not the Rose of Sharon who s represented? It was only after I had discovered iciple of identification that I came to understand. vas not there on Calvary's Cross alone. Our "old s being crucified in the second Adam-the Representative Man-who was there upon the accursed Tree, Himself, but for man; there as One so identified ffering, sinning man, so merged with the Human its iniquity and its depravity, that He could not die and to sin without that man should ethically die in since my accursed, loathsome "self-life" was nailed there to the Cross with Christ, and in the judgment of God died in Him, what more fitting symbol than the serpent? there is in man a serpent which has stung hirn with g of death, and poisoned the springs of his being. plunged him in the night of alienation from God, il the vile thing is removed and a new life injected, ate is, to say the least, most unenviable. No other eed be pronounced, no other doom sealed, no other ion involved-the very nature of "self," pnce we get use into its true workings, and its real nature, we is such that misery must follow in its wake. It is exorable law.

Not long ago, I was reading about the strange lot of certain young ladies who are employed in a laboratory where contact with radium is inevitable. These young ladies know that upon entering this factory their fate is sealed. They will die. After a few months, or years-I do not recall the exact time, they are released from their work with a handsome cheque for ten thousand dollars. Some live a year, some two, some three, but all eventually die from the effects of radium. Hence the ample remuneration. Doctors have examined girls who have thus toiled in contact with radium, and have found by means of the X-ray, that a strange fire slowly consuming the life, burns in their bones. Radium kills. It is the most highly concentrated force known to scientists.

Two thousand years ago, there in the manger of Bethlehem, God gave to the world His only-begotten Son. In Him, was concentrated the infinite love of the Father. But the full force of that redeeming love was not released upon a sin-stricken world until there on Calvary the flaming heart of the Beloved broke. Then it was that the Radium of the Celestial was focused upon the great cancer of humanity's sin and shame. Radium kills. There is no power under Heaven that can withstand its concentrated dynamic. The Cross kills. The man who exposes himself to Calvary soon discovers that a hidden fire burns within his bones. The old "self-life," so resentful, so fussy, so greedy, and so touchy, so haughty and so vain, so blind to all save its own particular lust, so ready to sacrifice the good of the many if only its own glory may be secured-the old "self-life" can no more resist the impact of Calvary, than some frail barque, the onrush of a great tidal wave.

Dr. Marbie in his notable work on The Cross, speaks of the Saviour's death as "Immortal-dying." It generated a force-moral force destructive of sin-beside which all the cold ethics of the ages, all the precepts of the moralists, yea, all the laws of the nations are as the twinkle of a star beside the sun's meridian blaze. Indeed, it was not mere dying. The rocks were rent, and the earth quaked when in that hour of triumph the Son of Man cried out (the Evangelists insist that it was with "a loud voice"), "It is finished." Life did not merely ebb out. The force of it increased. That is why in the final hour the great Cry of Consummation shook the very earth. "When the centurion saw that so He cried out. . . he said: Truly this Man was the Son of God." (Mark xv. 39). Rightly does Dr. Mabie speak of the "death-resurrection-midprocess." The resurrection was in the death, and the death is in the resurrection. Now this concentrated Moral Radium, if I may so speak, is released in the believer's spirit when he yields himself to the Christ of the Cross. The "old life" brought under the dynamic of the Cross, is doomed to die. Resurrection life takes its place. Little wonder the Apostle to the Gentiles cried out "God forbid that I should glory save in the Cross of the Lord Jesus Christ, by whom I am crucified unto the world, and the world unto me."

"We preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God." (Power, Greek, Dunamis, from whence we get our word Dynamite.)

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Sunday Classic: F. J. Huegel (Chapter One) "CHRISTIAN LIFE A PARTICIPATION NOT AN IMITATION"


The Classic Christian Network

The Classic Christian Journals   A Classic Christian Log   Classic Christian Digest

 

Classical Sunday


SUNDAYS are CLASSICS

Every Sunday we post Classics of Chrisitanity 

"The Pearls of Faith in the Fields of Christendom" 

 

Hell got bigger. Grace got Greater, and the world is heading for Hell in a handbasket. You really don't want to go there. Unless you seriously don't do something about it, You are Going to Hell. Hell was not made for you and you weren't made for Hell.  It isn't oblivion you are facing when you die, but absolute and total isolation. The ansence of God since you are created by God will cause suffering you never imagined. It was never intended for you to go there. You are going in the wrong direction and admit it or not, Hell is waiting for you. Jesus Said, Call on Me and You Shall Be Saved. We call it Salvation because it is. It is not going where you deserve to be, and that is Hell. Jesus said it, You Must Be Born Again. Read these so you can be assured God wants you in heaven, not hell.  "Call upon the Name of the Lord, and You Shall Be Saved". Reject them, pure and simple, You Go to hell.

It's your call, it just might be your Last Call. --Michael James Stone

 

  This Weeks Classic  

F. J. Huegel

 

 

Bone of His Bone 

by F. J. Huegel

THE CHRISTIAN LIFE A PARTICIPATION NOT AN IMITATION

CHAPTER I

0NE cannot make a study of the New Testament without experiencing something of the nature of a shock, in view of the glaring difference between the Christian life as we are wont to live it, and the ideal of the Master. The disheartening incongruities, and the grievous contradictions are so painfully evident, that even those who have only a superficial knowledge of the Saviour's Word-yea, one dare say, even those who have never looked into the pages of the New Testament-are shocked. What little faith they may have, is shaken.

When one holds up before the picture of the Christian life as set forth by the Apostles, that which today goes under the name, one staggers. The emaciated body of a dying friend-not to say his corpse-could not stand in more violent contrast with him who in the days of health and vigour walked at our side.

It is not my object to pick to pieces the modern Christian. I have no quarrel with the Church. I am not pretending to play the role of an iconoclast. I have been for ten years a missionary of the Cross, and have no thought of deserting the ranks. My only purpose in calling attention to our failure as Christians, is to point the way to the victorious life in Christ for those who are conscious of their spiritua poverty, and "hunger and thirst after righteousness."

It is for the Christian who finds himself at the brink of despair, because of the gruesome picture he present when all the while he longs to faithfully reflect the Master' image, that I feel that I have a message. It is for the on whose thirst for the water of life, far from being quenched, consumes him, and leaves him sick with yearn ings, that I fain would unfold the secret of the abundant life-the life of which Jesus spoke when He said that "rivers of living water" would flow from the innermost being of those who believed. It is to the one who is wearie of hollow mockeries, sick of shams, who has become the victim of a secret self-loathing,--one who feels that as Christian he should be free from the power of sin, an who, in spite of all his struggles is crushed by a sense c failure-that I long to bring the message of the Cross. It is to those who pant for power,-that power which is from on High-those who long to have their life and service ministry, and preaching, charged with the Spirit of the living God that I feel that I have a word which will not fail to usher in a new day.

But we must briefly summarize the requisites of the Christian life before we enter upon a statement of my thesis. We are to walk as Jesus walked (I John ii. 6 We are to love our enemies (Matt. v. 44). We are 1 forgive as Jesus forgave-even as He who in the Shan and anguish of the Cross looked down upon those wt blasphemed Him, while they murdered Him, and forgave (Col. iii. 13). We are to be aggressively kind towards those who hate us, yea, we are actually to pray for those who despitefully use us (Matt. v. 44). We are to be overcomers-more than conquerors (Rom. viii. 37). We are to give thanks in all things believing that all things, even those which blast our fondest hopes, work together for our good (Rom. viii. 28; Eph. v. 20).

We are to be careful for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving to let our requests be made known unto God, so that the peace of God which passeth all understanding may guard our hearts and minds (Phil. iv. 6). We are to rejoice in the Lord alway (Phil.iv. 4). We are to think on whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue and if there be any praise (Phil. iv. 8). We are to be holy, for God is holy (1 Pet. i. 16). The Saviour said that if we believed in Him, rivers of waters of life would flow from our innermost being (John vii. 38). We are to stand out in bold, unmistakable contrast from the crooked, perverse world, blameless and harmless, the sons of God, without rebuke, shining as lights (Phil. ii. 15) . We are positively to hate ourselves not to pamper, nor to caress, nor to seek, nor to love ourselves, but literalyto hate and to renounce our own selves, and that daily (Matt.xvi. 24). We are told that we cannot be Christ's disciples if we do not renounce ourselves utterly and absolutely in all things, and at all times (Luke xiv. 26). Paul tells us that our affections are to be set on things above (Col. iii. 1).

Enough. We dare go no further. It would only increase Our shame, and our pain. We stand indicted. We are not "What Christ would have us to be. If this is the measure of the Christian life, if this is the basis upon which we are to be judged, if this is what God requires of us as Christians, like Isaiah we cry: "Woe is me, for I am undone."

Why does not the Saviour, so tender and so understanding, so loving and so wise, not make requirements more in keeping with human nature? Why does He seem to be so unreasonable? Why does He not demand of us what we might reasonably attain? He bids us soar, yet we have no wings. Talk about the super-man; it is not so much a mere overabundance of man that is required. It seems to be rather man-deified, if I may so speak, which the New Testament pronounces as the true type of Christian. Why does the Saviour go so far beyond the merely natural, and put Christian living on the basis of the supernatural? I protest, it is not natural to love our enemies; it is not natural to rejoice always; it is not natural to be thankful for the things that hurt; it is not natural to hate ourselves; it is not natural to walk as Jesus walked. Have we honestly faced this dilemma? Have we had the courage to face the implications of Christ's Word? Is anything gained by subterfuges, by pretending that the gulf between the humanly possible, and the law of Christ (i.e. what we can attain by nature and what God requires in His Word) is after all not so great?

If no satisfactory answer can be given (my contention as stated in the following chapters is that there can) the Christian system merits the aspersions of its enemies. It must face the grave charge of over-emphasis,-exaggeration-fanaticism-or whatever we may call this want of adjustment between the law of Christ and human nature.

This is no new dilemma. The great Apostle to the Gentiles, makes no bones about his conviction that human nature, as such, can never attain the ideal of Christ. He does not minimize the overwhelming incongruity. He lets the glaring fact of Christ's law as an utterly unattainable ideal, as something to which human nature, as such, can never adapt itself, stand out in all its naked reality.

Romans vii is witness to that fact. Here we have the Apostle's confession of failure, his cry of despair, his bitter regret, upon finding the Christian ideal unattainable, his groanings over what he found to be a heart-rending dilemma, his honest admission that he actually believes that the requirements of Christ's law, are something to which human nature, as such, struggle as you will, agonize as you will, can never adjust itself. Lest I be misunderstood-lest my readers be shocked by something apparently so unorthodox-I quote Paul's own words: "The good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do... I delight in the law of God after the inward man: but, I see another law in my members (aye, there's the rub) warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. Oh wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" (Rom. vii). Paul struggles. He agonizes. He weeps. He strives as only this moral giant, one of the greatest of all time, could strive. All to no avail. The law of sin, he confesses, like the onrush of a mighty stream, sweeps everything before it.

We do well to face squarely all the shocking aspects of this dilemma. Paul did. He did not throw up any smoke screen over either his own incapacity on the one hand, or the unattainable character of Christ's law on the other. He is astonishingly frank over the fact that in himself (that is, in his flesh, Rom. vii. 18) he can find no good thing. He candidly acknowledges that he delights in God's law, loves' '., but finds it something to which human nature cannot attain. If we will be honest about these things, we will find ourselves led all unconsciously to take certain steps which will most assuredly usher us into a glorious new day. It led Paul to a great discovery. It will lead us.

It was not that Paul, when he wrote Romans vii, was still wilfully disobedient, as in the days prior to the Damascan road crisis. He did love Jesus. He was a soldier of the Cross. He was a consecrated Christian. It was only that he was now seeing himself in a new light-in the blinding light of the Cross of Christ. What before, as a strict disciple of Moses, would have been excusable, now overwhelms him with its magnitude. Innocent little things, attitudes comparatively harmless, insignificant little sins which under the Mosaic law would pass unnoticed if they did not appear to be actual virtues, now break his heart. They are repulsive. They are unbearable. They seem to burn with the fire of hell. They sting like the bite of a scorpion. They stink like a decaying carcass in some slimy pool.

Paul wants to be like Jesus. It is no longer a question of mere ethics. It is no longer a question of right or wrong. Is it Christ-like? That is the burning question. Paul wants to be free. Self-love even in its secret forms, its harmless gestures, nauseates him. He would be like Jesus in all the loveliness of his humility, and of his compassion. He would love God with a pure love and serve Him with that utter singleness of eye which characterized the "only-begotten of the Father." In a paroxysm of self-loathing, and in the anguish of self-despair, the Apostle cries out for deliverance (Rom. vii. 24).

Is there a way out? Yes, there is. Paul found it-we can all find it,

Now my thesis is this: we have been proceeding upon a false basis. We have conceived of the Christian life as an Imitation of Christ. It is not an Imitation of Christ. It is a Participation of Christ. "For we are made partakers of Christ" (Heb. iii. 14). There are good things in Thomas A. Kempis' Irritation of Christ, but the basic idea is false to the principles that underlie the Christian life. To proceed on the basis of Imitation, will plunge us in just the sort of slough of despond Paul found himself in when he wrote Romans vii.

We are not what Christ would have us to be; the Sermon on the Mount does not find expression in our attitudes; sin as a principle is still rampant in our lives; we are not free from envy, pride, self-love, and lust of pleasure; the mountain of secret selfishness still crushes us and in spite of all our efforts remains immovable; there is little joy, so little freedom of spirit, none of that rapture which so characterized the primitive Christians; we agonize, and bleed, and struggle,-but failure dogs our footsteps. What is the matter? We are proceeding upon a false basis. We are attempting to do what the Saviour Himself never expected us to do. The Christian life is not an Imitation.

The great dilemma of which we have been speaking resolves itself into most simple terms when we grasp this distinction between Imitation and Participation.

For, what is impossible to me as an imitator of Christ, domes perfectly natural as a participant of Christ. It is Only when Christ nullifies the force of my inherent "self' life," and communicates to me a Divine life, that Christian F :.-;wing in its true sense, is at all possible for me. I must be born again. "The flesh profiteth nothing." Without Jesus z I can do nothing. I must live in Him and, renouncing my own life, find in Him a "new life."

Now to this "new life," the Christian requirements, so incomprehensible and unattainable while we move in the realm of the "flesh-life," are all simple. They are nothing more nor less than statements regarding its modus operandi. The Sermon on the Mount so far from cramping in any way this new life, is simply a statement of the way it operates.

The trouble is, we have not listened to Jesus. He tells us that we must abide in Him as a branch in the Vine. Matthew v, vi, vii, without John xv, would be like so many freight cars without an engine, or like a whale without water, or a bird without air.

In that upper-room interview, the Master, knowing that it was His last opportunity to impress fundamentals upon His disciples, places the supreme emphasis upon this mystical union, this spiritual oneness with Himself of all believers-this sublime fact of participation. "Abide in Me and I in you." Our failures only confirm the Saviour's Word, for He said: "Without Me ye can do nothing."

No, we are not called upon to imitate Christ. The truth of the matter is, there would be little virtue after all in that sort of thing. Paul said so, in effect, in the oft-quoted 1 Corinthians xiii-the love chapter. It could only be a wooden, artificial thing. Even here Jesus would say: "The flesh profiteth nothing." Some years ago in the country where I was doing missionary work, this sort of thing was carried to its nth degree, when a zealous devotee had himself crucified, literally nailed to a cross where his parents found him dead, when they came to his rescue. The Church rightly does not acclaim that sort of thing, and yet theoretically she proceeds, in the case of vast multitudes of her children, upon this false basis of Imitation.

The 'Christian is not called upon to strain over a role as an actor would agonize over lines poorly learned. The

Christian life in the thought of God is infinitely more blessed and compelling. "We are made partakers of Christ" (Heb. iii. 14) . Exceeding great and precious promises are given us, "that by these we might be partakers of the Divine Nature" (ii Pet. i. 4). The Believer is grafted into the Trunk of the Eternal Godhead. "I am the Vine, Ye are the Branches."

"The riches of the glory of this mystery-Christ in you the hope of glory" (Col. i. 27).

 

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Sunday Classic: F. J. Huegel (Preface) "Bone of His Bone "


The Classic Christian Network

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Classical Sunday


SUNDAYS are CLASSICS

Every Sunday we post Classics of Chrisitanity 

"The Pearls of Faith in the Fields of Christendom" 

 

Hell got bigger. Grace got Greater, and the world is heading for Hell in a handbasket. You really don't want to go there. Unless you seriously don't do something about it, You are Going to Hell. Hell was not made for you and you weren't made for Hell.  It isn't oblivion you are facing when you die, but absolute and total isolation. The ansence of God since you are created by God will cause suffering you never imagined. It was never intended for you to go there. You are going in the wrong direction and admit it or not, Hell is waiting for you. Jesus Said, Call on Me and You Shall Be Saved. We call it Salvation because it is. It is not going where you deserve to be, and that is Hell. Jesus said it, You Must Be Born Again. Read these so you can be assured God wants you in heaven, not hell.  "Call upon the Name of the Lord, and You Shall Be Saved". Reject them, pure and simple, You Go to hell.

It's your call, it just might be your Last Call. --Michael James Stone

 

  This Weeks Classic  

F. J. Huegel

 

 

Bone of His Bone 

by F. J. Huegel

FOREWORD

0NE thing for the missionary is inevitable. If he is to go forward in the face of the seemingly insuperable obstacles which beset him, ushering in a new day for enslaved souls, if, I repeat, he is to do the thing which God expects of him, and the Church expects of him, and the heart-rending need of these to whom He has come as an ambassador of light, requires of him, then he must himself appropriate in an ever-deeper and fuller way the power of Christ. He must himself be bound to that unconquerable Christ who all down the centuries has through His disciples achieved the impossible. He must get beyond a mere intellectual knowledge of the historical Christ, and so entwine the tendrils of his ,spiritual nature in the Eternal Christ that he imbibes a divine life.

The job he is attempting to do requires of him superhuman force. The merely human, however noble and strong and cultivated, proves as insufficient and as inadequate as a handful of glowing coals would be for the dissipation of an arctic blizzard. He must transcend the purely natural, and immerse himself in the super-natural. He must experience the power of the indwelling Christ, and, dispossessed of his own life, become in an ever-fuller measure possessed of a Divine life.

Only "rivers of living water" flowing from his innermost being-the promise which the Saviour has made to His own-can make possible the renewal of life in the state in which he finds it.

It may be that temperamentally he is not predisposed to forge his way into these lonely uplands of the faith. He may even have a deep aversion to the mystical elements of Christianity. Still the force of circumstances like a mighty tide will most certainly sweep him from the moorings of a merely intellectual grasp of the Christian verities, out into the deeps of a vital experience of redeeming grace. For, unless Christ becomes more real to him than any other reality, even of the physical universe, and unless he learns to draw upon Christ and to sink his being into Him and thus emerge from the deep well of the Uncreated Good, charged with that power which had fallen upon the apostles, he is from the very nature of the circumstances in which he is involved, doomed to defeat. The force of evil which he would overcome will be as destructive of his purpose, and as disdainfully subversive of his message as some mighty Gibraltar which stands out in invincible might against the waves of the sea.

The following chapters are simply an outline of the position to which, as a missionary of the Cross, I was led. I wish to share with Christians of all lands and all sects, those blessed experiences of the indwelling Christ, those immeasurable treasures which, in the deeper participation in Christ, have become mine. I wish to make the common property of the Church, those ineffable experiences which are the fruitage of a oneness with Christ-that Christ without whom the missionary, because of the peculiar situation in which he finds himself, more than any one else, realizes that he can do nothing.

I cannot send forth these messages however, without acknowledging the great debt of gratitude which I owe the late Mrs. Penn-Lewis, whose writings on the deeper aspects of the Cross, and whose insistence on the believer's identification with Christ in death and in resurrection, have meant so much to the Church in these recent years. God greatly used the writings of Mrs. PennLewis to bring me to the victorious position in Christ which the following messages seek to clarify.

With the hope and prayer that my kind readers may be given grace to realize in their own experience this deeper oneness with Christ, so that their joy may be that joy which is "unspeakable and full of glory," and their peace that "peace which passeth all understanding," and their life that "abundant life" which is eternal and which flows from the throne of God, I place these messages upon the altar of my Lord that He might use them for the edification of "the saints" and for the glory of His name.

F. J. HUEGEL.

Mexico City, Mexico.

 

Yes! Jesus is Coming!  

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Sunday Classic: Andrew Murray (Chp 2) "AND YOU SHALL FIND REST TO YOUR SOULS"


The Classic Christian Network

The Classic Christian Journals   A Classic Christian Log   Classic Christian Digest

 

Classical Sunday


SUNDAYS are CLASSICS

Every Sunday we post Classics of Chrisitanity 

"The Pearls of Faith in the Fields of Christendom" 

 

Hell got bigger. Grace got Greater, and the world is heading for Hell in a handbasket. You really don't want to go there. Unless you seriously don't do something about it, You are Going to Hell. Hell was not made for you and you weren't made for Hell.  It isn't oblivion you are facing when you die, but absolute and total isolation. The ansence of God since you are created by God will cause suffering you never imagined. It was never intended for you to go there. You are going in the wrong direction and admit it or not, Hell is waiting for you. Jesus Said, Call on Me and You Shall Be Saved. We call it Salvation because it is. It is not going where you deserve to be, and that is Hell. Jesus said it, You Must Be Born Again. Read these so you can be assured God wants you in heaven, not hell.  "Call upon the Name of the Lord, and You Shall Be Saved". Reject them, pure and simple, You Go to hell.

It's your call, it just might be your Last Call. --Michael James Stone

 

  This Weeks Classic  

 

Andrew Murray

 

 

 


 

ABIDE IN CHRIST

By Andrew Murray

Chapter 2--

AND YOU SHALL FIND REST TO YOUR SOULS

"Come unto me, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; and ye shall find rest to your souls -MATT.11:28-29

REST for the soul: Such was the first promise with which the Saviour sought to win the heavy-laden sinner. Simple though it appears, the promise is indeed as large and comprehensive as can be found. Rest for the soul--does it not imply deliverance from every fear, the supply of every want, the fulfilment of every desire? And now nothing less than this is the prize with which the Saviour woos back the wandering one--who is mourning that the rest has not been so abiding or so full as it had hoped--to come back and abide in Him. Nothing but this was the reason that the rest has either not been found, or, if found, has been disturbed or lost again: you did not abide with, you did not abide in Him.

Have you ever noticed how, in the original invitation of the Saviour to come to Him, the promise of rest was repeated twice, with such a variation in the conditions as might have suggested that abiding rest could only be found in abiding nearness. First the Saviour says, "Come unto me, and I will give you rest"; the very moment you come, and believe, I will give you rest--the rest of pardon and acceptance--the rest in my love. But we know that all that God bestows needs time to become fully our own; it must be held fast, and appropriated, and assimilated into our inmost being; without this not even Christ's giving can make it our very own, in full experience and enjoyment. And so the Saviour repeats His promise, in words which clearly speak not so much of the initial rest with which He welcomes the weary one who comes, but of the deeper and personally appropriated rest of the soul that abides with Him. He now not only says, "Come unto me," but "Take my yoke upon you and learn of me"; become my scholars, yield ourselves to my training, submit in all things to my will, let your whole life be one with mine--in other words, Abide in me. And then He adds, not only, "I will give," but "ye shall find rest to your souls." The rest He gave at coming will become something you have really found and made your very own--the deeper the abiding rest which comes from longer acquaintance and closer fellowship, from entire surrender and deeper sympathy. "Take my yoke, and learn of me," "Abide in me"--this is the path to abiding rest.

Do not these words of the Saviour discover what you have perhaps often sought in vain to know, how it is that the rest you at times enjoy is so often lost. It must have been this: you had not understood how entire surrender to Jesus is the secret of perfect rest. Giving up one's whole life to Him, for Him alone to rule and order it; taking up His yoke, and submitting to be led and taught, to learn of Him; abiding in Him, to be and do only what He wills--these are the conditions of discipleship without which there can be no thought of maintaining the rest that was bestowed on first coming to Christ. The rest is in Christ, and not something He gives apart from Himself, and so it is only in having Him that the rest can really be kept and enjoyed.

It is because so many a young believer fails to lay hold of this truth that the rest so speedily passes away. With some it is that they really did not know; they were never taught how Jesus claims the undivided allegiance of the whole heart and life; how there is not a spot in the whole of life over which He does not wish to reign; how in the very least things His disciples must only seek to please Him. They did not know how entire the consecration was that Jesus claimed. With others, who had some idea of what a very holy life a Christian ought to lead, the mistake was a different one: they could not believe such a life to be a possible attainment. Taking, and bearing, and never for a moment laying aside the yoke of Jesus, appeared to them to require such a strain of effort, and such an amount of goodness, as to be altogether beyond their reach. The very idea of always, all the day, abiding in Jesus, was too high--something they might attain to after a life of holiness and growth, but certainly not what a feeble beginner was to start with. They did not know how, when Jesus said, "My yoke is easy," He spoke the truth; how just the yoke gives the rest, because the moment the soul yields itself to obey, the Lord Himself gives the strength and joy to do it. They did not notice how, when He said, "Learn of me," He added, "I am meek and lowly in heart," to assure them that His gentleness would meet their every need, and bear them as a mother bears her feeble child. Oh, they did not know that when He said, "Abide in me," He only asked the surrender to Himself, His almighty love would hold them fast, and keep and bless them. And so, as some had erred from the want of full consecration, so these failed because they did not fully trust. These two, consecration and faith, are the essential elements of the Christian life--the giving up all to Jesus, the receiving all from Jesus. They are implied in each other; they are united in the one word--surrender. A full surrender is to obey as well as to trust, to trust as well as to obey.

With such misunderstanding at the outset, it is no wonder that the disciple life was not one of such joy or strength as had been hoped. In some things you were led into sin without knowing it, because you had not learned how wholly Jesus wanted to rule you, and how you could not keep right for a moment unless you had Him very near you. In other things you knew what sin was, but had not the power to conquer, because you did not know or believe how entirely Jesus would take charge of you to keep and to help you. Either way, it was not long before the bright joy of your first love was lost, and your path, instead of being like the path of the just, shining more and more unto the perfect day, became like Israel's wandering in the desert--ever on the way, never very far, and yet always coming short of the promised rest. Weary soul, since so many years driven to and fro like the panting hart, O come and learn this day the lesson that there is a spot where safety and victory, where peace and rest, are always sure, and that that spot is always open to thee--the heart of Jesus.

But, alas! I hear someone say, it is just this abiding in Jesus, always bearing His yoke, to learn of Him, that is so difficult, and the very effort to attain to this often disturbs the rest even more than sin or the world. What a mistake to speak thus, and yet how often the words are heard! Does it weary the traveller to rest in the house or on the bed where he seeks repose from his fatigue? Or is it a labour to a little child to rest in its mother's arms? Is it not the house that keeps the traveller within its shelter? do not the arms of the mother sustain and keep the little one? And so it is with Jesus. The soul has but to yield itself to Him, to be still and rest in the confidence that His love has undertaken, and that His faithfulness will perform, the work of keeping it safe in the shelter of His bosom. Oh, it is because the blessing is so great that our little hearts cannot rise to apprehend it; it is as if we cannot believe that Christ, the Almighty One, will in very deed teach and keep us all the day. And yet this is just what He has promised, for without this He cannot really give us rest. It is as our heart takes in this truth that, when He says, "Abide in me," "Learn of me," He really means it, and that it is His own work to keep us abiding when we yield ourselves to Him, that we shall venture to cast ourselves into the arms of His love, and abandon ourselves to His blessed keeping. It is not the yoke, but resistance to the yoke, that makes the difficulty; the whole-hearted surrender to Jesus, as at once our Master and our Keeper, finds and secures the rest.

Come, my brother, and let us this very day commence to accept the word of Jesus in all simplicity. It is a distinct command this: "Take my yoke, and learn of me, " "Abide in me. " A command has to be obeyed. The obedient scholar asks no questions about possibilities or results; he accepts every order in the confidence that his teacher has provided for all that is needed. The power and the perseverance to abide in the rest, and the blessing in abiding--it belongs to the Saviour to see to this; 'tis mine to obey, 'tis His to provide. Let us this day in immediate obedience accept the command, and answer boldly, "Saviour, I abide in Thee. At Thy bidding I take Thy yoke; I undertake the duty without delay; I abide in Thee." Let each consciousness of failure only give new urgency to the command, and teach us to listen more earnestly than ever till the Spirit again give us to hear the voice of Jesus saying, with a love and authority that inspire both hope and obedience, "Child, abide in me." That word, listened to as coming from Himself, will be an end of all doubting--a divine promise of what shall surely be granted. And with ever-increasing simplicity its meaning will be interpreted. Abiding in Jesus is nothing but the giving up of oneself to be ruled and taught and led, and so resting in the arms of Everlasting Love.

Blessed rest! the fruit and the foretaste and the fellowship of God's own rest! found of them who thus come to Jesus to abide in Him. It is the peace of God, the great calm of the eternal world, that passeth all understanding, and that keeps the heart and mind. With this grace secured, we have strength for every duty, courage for every struggle, a blessing in every cross, and the joy of life eternal in death itself.

O my Saviour! if ever my heart should doubt or fear again, as if the blessing were too great to expect, or too high to attain, let me hear Thy voice to quicken my faith and obedience: "Abide in me"; "Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; ye shall find rest to your souls."

 

Yes! Jesus is Coming!  

 -The Classic Christian Network-  -Biblical Prophecy Today Network-  -Last Generation News Report-

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      -Michael James Stone Online-


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