426
September 1929
T h e
K i n g ’ s
B u s i n e s s
only through Jesus Christ, our only Saviour. If we are being saved, does our neglect of religion prove it? If we regard sin as an amiable weakness that deserves pity, did we learn that from the Bible? Is the companion of fools a wise man? Can riches and honor be the desert and reward of wickedness ? Are we content to have in competence and corruption rule us in public interests? Are we ready to wink at lawlessness? Shall degraded imaginations furnish us literature? Can it be that a jazz band furnishes music? Does not the worth of an auto t CHRISTIAN is one who has become spiritually alive from the dead. The presence of spiritual life within him is the one fundamental thing that distinguishes him from the unregenerate world about him. This spiritual life is not native to us, nor can it be developed out of anything we have or are by nature. It must be given to us. So God has given us eternal life, “an|d this life is in His Son,” through whose possession of us when we believed on Him we were bom from above; “not of blood, nor or the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God” by which we become a “new creation” in Christ, being thereby made “partakers of the divine nature.” The life of a Christian, therefore, is the life of Christ within us through the Holy Spirit. It is not a life similar to His, it is His life. This is shown by the fact that what we receive in the new birth is not only “everlasting life,” but also “eternal life,” which is far more than “everlasting life.” For while everlasting life has no end, yet it may have a beginning; but eternal life has neither beginning nor end. Now the Triune God is the only one in the universe who has eternal life. The only way He can give us eternal life, therefore, is to possess us with His own life, through Christ, by the Holy Spirit. This is one thing Paul meant when he said, “To me to live is C h r i s t This is a mystery that is too high for us. We can none of us understand it but we can believe it. L ife M ust E xpress I tself Now life, of whatever kind, must manifest itself. Wherever life is present, in normal condition, it must act. Moreover, all life of every kind must express itself according to its nature. It must act in conformity with its own type. Physical life will express itself physically; men tal life, mentally, and spiritual life, spiritually. And spir itual means far more than moral. A man may be splendidly moral without any relation to spiritual things whatever. All spiritual activity has to do with direct and vital con nection with God, His Word, His Son, His people, His work for a lost world. Wherever the life of God is present arid »unhindered, therefore, it must and will act in perfect harmony with his nature. If this is not certain, nothing can be. The conclusion is that if the life of Christ is in a man it must express itself, for it will be in him “a well of water springing up," bubbling over. So long as conditions are normal it cannot be kept down. . And also, this upspringing and bubbling-over life of Christ in a man will make him prefer to think, say, and do those things that are perfectly normal to the life of Christ Himself.
mobile depend upon where it is going and how late it will be out and in what company? Does any man really think that cigarettes increase the loveliness of ladies or that play ing cards for small stakes is not gambling? Few of us would like to go back to old times and live in the deprivations that such living would mean, but none of us can improve upon the principles that enabled our fore fathers to make America beautiful with religious and civil liberty and handed down to us the noblest heritage on earth.
§te ate ate The Christian Way B y J. E. C onant , D.D. (in the “Trumpet")
If we can find out, therefore, what things are normal to the life of Christ, we shall also have learned what the normal Christian life is. L ife is E xpressed in L ove “God is love.” Love lies at the heart of God’s nature and is the normal expression of every outgoing of His being toward others. And so love will and must be the normal expression of the life of Christ in the believer, or in other words, of the Christian life. Then if we can find out what His love prompts Him to do in Himself, we shall know what His love will seek to do through us when His life possesses us. Think care fully for a moment. Love is the spontaneous outgoing of the whole life and being on behalf of others. It is the very nature of love to give. It is self-giving. “God so loved the world that He gave" Himself in His Son, who was “God manifest in the flesh.” This accounts not only for the fact that Christ came into the world, but shows why he came. He came to give Himself and He gave Himself as a ransom, that whoso- ever accepted His gift “should not perish, but have eternal life.” “The Son of man is come- to seek and to save that which was lost,” and in doing so He gave up and laid down and let go, until there was nothing left to let go of but His life, and then He gave that up that those dead in trespasses and sins might live through Him. This is what love prompted Him to do. Then He said to His disciples, “As my Father hath sent me, even so send I you.” And so as He was sent to give up His life, we are sent to do the same thing, though not in the same way. He gave His life up in death; we are' to give ours up in service. His was a dying sacrifice; ours is to be “a living sacrifice.” So He tells us to make every thing else secondary and contributory and “go ye into all the world, and proclaim the good news to every creature.” If a man is really a Christian, therefore, the indwell ing life and constraining love of Christ will impel him to go out into all his portion of the world and seek the lost for Christ, and this will be the normal activity and the main business of his life. For: what the love of God was and did through Christ when He was among men, it Will also be and do through Christians while they are among men. The life of God must act, if it is in us, and it must act according to its nature. And so true Christians who are in normal spiritual health will give their lives in seeking the lost, using whatever secular pursuits they are in to pay expenses, while the main line business of their lives will be the same as it was with Christ.
Made with FlippingBook Annual report