foundly confirm the sweet and noble simplicity of the believer’s spiritual contact with the Lord Jesus Christ as his sanctification. Such is some suggestion of the true place of motives and means. Let me briefly indicate further, a little in de tail. M otives The Word of God is full of the appeal to motives, in the believer’s walk with God. Ye are bought with a price; therefore glorify God; Ye were redeemed with precious blood of Christ; I beseech you by the mer cies of God; He was in all points tempted; let us therefore come bold ly to the throne of grace. Perhaps as pregnant a place as any is Gal. 2:20, where the great Apostle of just- tification discloses to us the glorious secret of his present life of sanctifi cation: not I, but Christ liveth in me; I live my life in the flesh by faith in the Son of God; words im possible to take too absolutely in their blissful reality. May God the Holy Ghost make them for every true disciple the photograph of his own conscious blessedness! But do not for get how the strain closes: Who loved me, and gave Himself for me. Here is motive, not drawn out in argument indeed, but embosomed in living real ization. I am living absolutely upon Him; I am drawing direct from His fulness; but what has brought me into contact, what enriches and de velops my faith, why is Christ in me all this to me? It is because He was all that for me, and towards me. One practical result of this view of the place of motives is, that watch ful and Scriptural meditation must be a very real thing with him who would live by faith in the Son, who would be purified in heart by faith. I mean not artificial and mechanical meditation, but that direct consider ation of our Apostle and High Priest in the light of the Written Word, of which the Epistle to the Hebrews speaks. Let our prayers not fail to have this always as a large element in them — holy contemplation, holy, humble, definite, undoubting avowal before the Lord of what He is, what He has done, what He is doing, for me and to me. And (here is our point) let this be with the object never to terminate the meditation, the ascription, in itself, but to con tribute as it were, just that item of fresh realization to the holy aver age and habit, the inarticulate con sciousness, so to speak, of the soul’s hourly life in and upon Him and His resources for deliverance from sin and ability to walk and to please Him.
Means But I have thus already touched on my second word, means. For medi tation is indeed a means, one of the innumerable means of grace. I do not attempt to speak fully of any of those means, even the chief. It will be enough if one may but emphasize the two words means and grace apart. Of grace, what shall I say? I will dare to say just this, that on the whole, and for the subject we have in hand, it is, in effect, just the work ing of the eternal Spirit the Third Person, who evermore, as the im m ed ia te , the literally immediate, agent, sanctifieth the elect people of God. And by whatever doors of in ner act, or outward ordinance, He evermore comes in to do His work •—with an entrance which is also residence— that is means of grace. Once for all let me reverently do Him His sacred honor, remembering, all through the subject, His work. It is He who mediates, ministers, makes, the presence of the slain and glorified Saviour to and in the soul. If I depart, I will send Him; He shall glorify Me; I will come unto you. But this is just one of those divine truths which are meant not to en cumber but to intensify the soul’s personal and absolutely simple life by faith in the Son of God. Stop and think of it, in the reverent study of the Word, and it will enhance your view of the greatness of the process that is going on; but so as to leave you the more free to act upon that process, to use to the uttermost that contact with Christ which is secured and made divinely virtual and pow erful, by none other than the Holy Spirit. Using the Means Then, remembering Him, use the means by which He loves to do His spiritual work. Pray in the H oly Ghost. Remember that a close walk with God, by faith in His Son, is perfectly sure, if really close, to be a life of watching and Your Prayer Requests Each morning at eight the editor ial staff of King’s Business magazine gathers for prayer. Over the years God has answered the heartcry of thousands. Should you have a re quest we would count it a privilege to take it to the throne of grace. Your request will be held in the strictest confidence. Address: The Editors, King's Business, 558 So. Hope St., Los Angeles 17, Calif.
prayer such as never was before; a life in which the very sense of holy joy and possession will instinctively work in you the blessed sensitiveness which must ever ask, while yet you have and rest. Search the Scriptures. For there the Spirit speaketh expressly. The closer the walk with God, by faith in His Son, the stronger will be the holy ap petite for the positive assurances of your inheritance, and the positive precepts of His now delightful will, in His absolutely truthful and au thoritative Word. Worship God in the Spirit. Dream not that the life of. faith can be its true self in neglect of the holy adora tions and praises and confessions of the Lord’s congregation. Expect, rath er, to find in every public prayer, truth and help tenfold. Continue in the breaking of bread. It is your Lord’s ordinance, and there fore divine! At the sacred table, taught b y ' the Spirit, what less do you do than put your finger into the print of the nails, and thrust your hand into His side, and say— as if indeed you saw Him, the slain and risen Lamb—My Lord, and my God? Deep is the blessedness of the com munion-hour, when we are habitual ly living by faith in Him; a blessed ness sure to enrich with new spirit ual realization the daily and hourly contact with the living Lord Jesus Christ. The Real Secret Yet, let us remember it well. Our strength against temptation, our abil ity for true obedience, resides in nothing less, nothing else, than liv ing union and contact with Jesus Christ our Head. That union and con tact is immediate, spiritual. Nothing is to be between; not the most vener able and apostolic organization, not the most precious of Christ-given or dinances. But these things are not therefore nothing. Rightly used, by the spiritually-minded disciple, they have a sacred work to do. They are to be powerful things in the way of assuring the fact of contact, and of promoting, d e ep en in g , enriching, guiding, the sense of it. But the con tact, the union, found and realized, is the vital thing, unique, immedi ate, wholly spiritual. W ill the reader make perfectly sure that this is the possession of his own soul? For nothing less than this is spiritual safety. Nothing else than this can bring spiritual satisfaction. It is in fact the deep secret, the sub stance and the sum, of Christian sanc tity. (Included in “Christ and Sanc tifica tio n P ick e rin g & Inglis, Ltd., London.) END.
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