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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