You
diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess
eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about Me, yet you refuse to
come to Me to have life. John 5:39-40
The value of everything is
its livingness. The value of the Scriptures is not that we know our Bibles and
can handle our Bibles and can give addresses, wonderful addresses, from our
Bibles, and that we can quote Scripture fully and accurately and all that sort
of thing. It is not that we bear the name of associates of Christ, Christians,
not that we have this great inheritance and tradition. It is the livingness of
it all which is proving itself in all ways, that this risen Life of Christ
should prove itself.... That is a strong thing to say, it is a searching thing
to say. You have the Christian tradition and a great deal of Christian
teaching, perhaps you know your Bibles very well, or think you do, perhaps you
have many advantages in your associations, but the question arises. Not do you
know it all, have you got it all, all the teaching, the truth, the Bible
knowledge, the association, and that you are at all the meetings and you have
heard it for years and years past and your association with it has been very
close. That is not it. You can have all that and yet you yourself not be marked
by this vital something that you become a vital factor in the whole thing. You
are still a passenger, perhaps a parasite; not really in the good of it
yourself. Let us be frank about it. We must face this as a personal matter.
The answer is in the
resurrection.... Resurrection is not to be only something that happened with
Jesus, but it is something that has happened in us and taken place inside of
us. There is a counterpart of that by His risen Life imparted, that we have been
raised together with Him. And that is not just doctrine either. That is real,
that is vital truth and something to happen in us as well as in Jerusalem so
many years ago. It is not just history and tradition, it is experience.... We
have not only to believe that Jesus rose from the dead, but we have got to
be alive ourselves with Him in that resurrection and on that ground.
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