"Christ
lives in me."—Galatians 2: 20
"Christ
is our life."—Colossians. 3:4
Christ’s life was more than His teaching, more
than His work, more even than His death. It was His life in the sight of God
and man that gave value to what He said and did and suffered. And it is this
life, glorified in the resurrection, that He imparts to His people, and enables
them to live out before men.
"Hereby shall all men know that ye are My
disciples, if ye love one another." It was the life in the new brotherhood
of the Holy Spirit that made both Jews and Greeks feel that there was some
super-human power about Christ's disciples; they gave living proof of the truth
of what they said, that God's love had come down and taken possession of them.
It has often been said of the missionary, that
unless he lives out the Christ life on an entirely different level from that on
which other men live, he misses the deepest secret of power and success in his
work. When Christ sent His disciples forth, it was with the command:
"Tarry till ye be endued with power from on high." "Wait, and ye
shall receive the power of the Holy Ghost, and be My witnesses to the ends of
the earth." Many a missionary has felt that it is not learning and not
zeal, and not the willingness for self-sacrifice in Christ's service, but the
secret experience of the life hid with Christ in God, that enables him to meet
and overcome every difficulty.
Everything depends upon the life with God in
Christ being right. It was so with Christ, with the disciples, with Paul. It is
the simplicity and intensity of our life in Christ Jesus, and of the life of
Christ Jesus in us, that sustains a man in the daily drudgery of work, that
makes him conquer over self and everything that could hinder the Christ life,
and gives the victory over the powers of evil, and over the hearts from which
the evil spirits have to be cast out.
The life is everything. It was so in Christ
Jesus. It must be so in His servants. It can be so, because Christ Himself will
live in us. When He spoke the word, "Lo, I am with you always," He
meant nothing less than this: "Every day and all the day I am with you,
the secret of your life, your joy, and your strength."
Oh, to learn what hidden treasures are
contained in the blessed words we love to repeat: "Lo, I am with you all
the days."
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