THE KING’S BUSINESS
437
reflected the viewpoint and life o f Christ. Submission to Jesus Christ in this sense means the reconciliation and surrender of the life to God. To give Christ the place of Lordship in the life means to come into right relations with God. Right relations with God means that the life is so adjusted that it becomes the channels of the divine life as manifested in Christ. Prof. Wheeler Robinson says, “ A man who is converted in the New Testament sense is one who has sur rendered to forces immeasurably greater than anything he has of him self: one who has awakened to the overwhelming consciousness of a spir itual world brought to a focus be fore him in the person of Christ.” First you have the surrender and then follows the new consciousness through the introduction of a new life. This is a restoring o f the life with its possibilities to the purpose for which it was created. Dr. M. Scott Fletcher in his book, “ Psychology of the New Testament” says, “ The distinctive fea ture in the Christian idea of person ality is that the whole man—emo tional, thinking, and willing, stands in closest and most intimate relationship with the divine spirit from whence he originated and under whose per sonal influence and power he alone reaches his consummation in Christ.” Salvation therefore is primarily and essentially a bringing of man into right relations with God. A man sim ply cannot be right until he is in that relationship. He cannot realize his life apart from this relationship. This connection with the divine life is made in Jesus Christ. He is the one in whom God is reconciling the alien life of the world to Himself. Here we are brought face to face in our study of the Incarnation. At this point God made a new departure in which the new manhood is made
possible. There is nothing arbitrary about the New Testament insistance upon the fact that we must accept Christ as our Saviour. There is no other way in which we can be saved. We cannot be saved until we are in right relation with the divine life and Christ is the point at which God and man meet and make the connection that makes possible the flow of the divine life through the human instru ment. It seems to me that this makes very clear the reason why a man may be quite moral and good and kind as in the case of Mr. Lee and still not be saved. A man may have a wonder ful measure of these things in his life and still not be right with God. History is full of illustrations of this fact. Perhaps Dr. Chalmers is one of the most striking illustrations of the fact that we have in modern times. He was good, kind and hon est and a powerful preacher of the Gospel for years before the great crisis in his life in which he got right with God. This fact of vital relation with God also explains how it is that a man can be quite orthodox in his belief concerning Christ and the Bible and yet not be saved. Salvation is not a creed, although a saved man always has a very definite creed. By faith we make the surrender that makes possible the control of the life by Christ which issues in the new relationship. The faith or belief that leads to action, namely the act of definite surrender to God, saves. Sal vation is the thing that results from this action. Prof. Eucken tells us that society must go on to failure and ruin unless there is a new infusion of the trans cendent life into the life of humanity. This need is met by this fact of the gospel. Here is the way in which we are to get this new infusion of
Made with FlippingBook - Online catalogs