Life of Christ

“ Life more abundantly. What kind of life, Lord and Master? Eternal life. Has He come with that great life of His to give a little and then stop? Nay, to give all to every one that every one will take.
I marvel to find Christian men denying that Christ is the type and manifestation and revelation of the possible divinity in universal humanity. It is written all over the Bible. What says Christ Himself? I have come that you might have life, and that you might have it more abundantly. As the Father has sent Me into the world, even so I send you into the world. You shall be My disciples. ”

“ To such heavenly-mindedness, my dear brethren, we all are called; and without something of this spirit, whatever our professions and formalities, we do but belie the name of Christian. "If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth, on the right hand of God; set your affections on things above, not on things on the earth; for ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God; when Christ who is our life shall appear, then shall we also appear with him in glory." ”

“ Jesus lived and died and rose again to prepare for us a new nature, to be received day by day in the obedience of faith: we ‘have put on the [p172] new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.’ Let the inner life, hid with Christ in God, hid also deep in the recesses of our inmost being, be acknowledged, be waited on, be yielded to, it will work itself out in all the beauties of holiness. ”

“ You cannot tell whether Christ is more Divine or human, more God or man—solidly based on earth, as this massive staircase, by His real humanity, by His thirty-three years’ engagement in all human functions and all experiences of this life, He is yet familiar with eternity, His name is “He that came down from heaven,” and if your eye follows step by step to the heights of His person, it rests at last on what you recognise as Divine. His love it is that is wide enough to embrace God on the one hand, and the lowest sinner on the other. ”

“ Father! we beseech Thee, let Christ thus, in ever increasing experience of His resurrection power, be revealed in our hearts as the Son of God, Lord and Ruler within us. Let His life within inspire all the outer life, so that in the home and society, in thought and speech and action, in religion and in business, His life may shine out from us in the beauty of holiness. ”

“ Jesus answers us in the words of our text: "If any man will come after me, let him take up his cross and follow me." Note it well.—I must deny myself and take Jesus himself as my life,—I must choose. There are two lives, the self life and the Christ life ”

“ Christ is the resurrection and the life. Being himself the Son of man—the archetypal man, the representative of human nature, the head and epitome of mankind—mankind ideally, potentially, virtually rose, when the Son of man rose. ”

“ There need be no exhausting effort or hopeless sighing, ‘Who shall ascend into heaven, that is, to bring Christ down from above?’ It is a life that is meant for the sinful and the weary, for the unworthy and the impotent. It is a life that is the gift of the Father’s love, and that He Himself will reveal in each one who comes in childlike trust to Him. ”

“ He celebrates its reality and intensity as life in Christ—Christ known, found, gained—Christ in the righteousness of faith and in the power of resurrection. He depicts vividly the aspiration and endeavour of that life as it continually presses onward from faith to experience and achievement, as it verifies relations to a world unseen, and looks and hastes towards a world to come. ”

“ Through Christ as the author and maintainer of this life; through Christ as the head from whom we receive vital influence; through Christ as the root by which we derive sap and nourishment, and so live. In living to God, Christ is all in all. (3.) It is to yield ourselves to God, as those that are alive from the dead, v. 13. The very life and being of holiness lie in the dedication of ourselves to the Lord, giving our own selves to the Lord, 2 Cor. ”

“ And how will the Spirit reveal this Christ in whom we are? It will specially be as the Living One, the Personal Friend and Master. Christ is not only our Example and our Ideal. His life is not only an atmosphere and an inspiration, as we speak of a man who mightily influences us by his [p197] writings. ”

“ But if within that life in the flesh there be a life in faith, which is the life of Christ Himself brought to us through our faith, that life will be triumphant, quiet, patient, aspiring, noble, hopeful, gentle, strong, Godlike, being the life of Christ Himself within us. ”

“ Perhaps this may be because, in thinking much of our salvation, we have put out of sight our King, the divine fact which no soul of man to whom it is presented can ignore. In the idea of Christ is life; let the thought of Him once get touch of the soul, and it rises up, a living power, independent of all formularies of the brain. ”

“ Jesus Christ is able, by His divine grace, to prevent the power of self from ever asserting itself or gaining the upper hand; Jesus Christ is willing to become the life of the soul; Jesus Christ is willing to teach us so to follow Him, and to have heart and life set upon Him alone, that He shall ever and always be the light of our souls. ”

“ In all life as it came to him, in all its various providences, he found Christ; in all life, as it fell to him to be lived, he found the circumstances set for him and the opportunity given to follow Christ; in all the attraction and all the pressure, the force and strain of life, he found the privilege of receiving Christ and employing Christ's grace, the opportunity for living by the faith of the Son of God. ”

“ Here is the life of holiness as the Thrice Holy gives it: the Father, the first, the Holy One, making holy; the Son, the second, His Holy One, in whom we are; the Spirit, the third, who dwells in us, and through whom we abide in Christ, and Christ in us. Thus it is that the Thrice Holy makes us holy. ”

“ Such a life, and such a life only, is to the glory of God. We must fashion our life after his if we would spend life as we should. To know how Jesus lived is to know how we should live. Every life that is in the likeness of Christ's life is accepted of God. No other life can be. While Christ was here in the body, he was in the express image of the Father. The true, holy character of God was revealed through Jesus' human life to a lost and sinning world. ”

“ He is begotten again to a lively hope, to a holy confidence in God, in his good-will and love, to a pleasant victory over terrors of conscience, dread of death and hell, to a comfortable prospect of life and immortality, being enriched with the earnest of the Spirit and sealed to the day of redemption. Such assurance has the gospel believer; he has a witness in himself. Christ is formed in him, and he is growing up to the fulness and perfection, or perfect image of Christ, in heaven. ”

“ The atonement of Christ reconciles man to God, not God to man; for the Christ-principle is God, and how can the Christ-principle propitiate itself? How can the Christ-heart reach higher than itself, when no fountain can rise higher than its source? Jesus can conciliate no nature above his own, because he is part of the Eternal Life. ”

“ I am a religious man, an earnest man, a friend of missions; I work for Christ in my church, but, alas! temper and sin and worldliness have still the mastery over my soul," hear the word of God. If any will come and say: "I have struggled, I have prayed, I have wept, and it has not helped me," then you must do one other thing. You must see that the living Christ is God's provision for your holy, spiritual life. You must believe that that Christ who accepted you once, at conversion, in His wonderful love is now waiting to say to you that you may become a spiritual man, entirely given up to God. ”

“ All that Christ was, did, suffered, dying in the flesh, and ascending into heaven, was for this sole end, to purchase for all his followers, a new birth, new life, and new light, in and by the Spirit of God restored to them, and living in them, as their support, comforter, and guide into all truth. ”

“ The Christ is speaking for himself and for his mother, Christ's heavenly origin and aim. To-day the Christ is, more than ever before, “the way, the truth, and the life,” — “which lighteth every man that cometh into the world,” healing all sorrow, sickness, and sin. ”

“ In doing or in suffering, in his intellect and his heart, in his thoughts for himself or for others, Christ is all things to him and in all. When life is thus filled with Christ, heaven becomes, as one may say, a mere circumstance, and death but an incident upon the way,—in the soul’s everlasting pursuit of Christ. ”

“ Of God are ye in Christ. It is not as if God placed and planted us in Christ, and left it to us now to maintain the union. No, God is the Eternal One, the God of the everlasting life, who works every moment in a power that does not for one moment cease. What God gives, He continues with a never-ceasing giving. It is He who by the Holy Spirit makes this life in Christ a blessed reality in our consciousness. ”

“ The question ‘How we become holy,’ is answered thus: ‘Our devotion to God is a result of inward spiritual contact with Him who once lived a human life on earth, and now lives a glorified human life on the throne, simply and only to work out the Father’s purposes. We live for God because Christ does so, and because Christ lives in us, and we in Him: the Spirit of Christ is the Agent of the spiritual contact with Christ which imparts to us His life, and reproduces in us His life. ”

“ Things present are yours, for your support on the road; things to come are yours, to enrich and regale you for ever at your journey's end." Note, If we belong to Christ, and are true to him, all good belongs to us, and is sure to us. All is ours, time and eternity, earth and heaven, life and death. ”

“ We are not comfortless, while we know that our Redeemer lives. (2.) Therefore you shall live also. Note, The life of Christians is bound up in the life of Christ; as sure and as long as he lives, those that by faith are united to him shall live also; they shall live spiritually, a divine life in communion with God. ”

“ The more attention we give to the great truth that the Christ is here with us now, the more we open the mind to the consciousness of His spiritual presence, and as we enter more and more into the consciousness of the Christ, we enter more and more into the limitless life of the Christ; thus we become filled, through and through, with the supreme power of that life that is eternal life. ”

“ For that Gospel begins from the principle that Christ, the living Word of God, is the life and light of men, the life and light of all men. If that is true, it must have been the work of the Son of Man, of the Word made flesh, to let all manner of people know that He was the source and spring of their life,—that apart from Him they had none. Now, life must be inward; it cannot come to a man from the world which is about him. ”

“ Ye profess Christ Jesus the resurrection and the life; and yet persecute them that witness him to be so. If ye say, ‘How shall we know that these people who say they witness these things, do so, or no?’ I answer, turn your minds to the light which Christ Jesus has enlightened you withal, which is one in all; and if ye walk in the light, ye shall have the light of life, and then ye will know and see what ye have done, who have persecuted the Lord of glory, (in his people,) in whom is life, and the life is the light of men. ”

“ While the writers of the New Testament vary in their mode of presenting the ultimate goal of man, they are at one in regarding it as an exalted form of life. What they all seek to commend is a condition of being involving a gradual assimilation to, and communion with, God. The distinctive gift of the Gospel is the gift of life. 'I am the Life,' says Christ. And the apostle's confession is in harmony with his Master's claim—'For me to live is Christ.' Salvation is nothing else than the restoration, preservation, and exaltation of life. ”

“ The life of Christ between his birth and his death are untouched. The considerations that really weigh most with us—as they did with the apostles—in making us Christians, {109} certainly do not come here to prominent expression. ”

“ Christ offered life, and it was not accepted. Note, First, There is life to be had with Jesus Christ for poor souls; we may have life, the life of pardon and grace, and comfort and glory: life is the perfection of our being, and inclusive of all happiness; and Christ is our life. Secondly, Those that would have this life must come to Jesus Christ for it ”

“ God has given all He has to Christ, and God longs that Christ should have you and me entirely. I come to every hungry heart and say, "If you want to live to the glory of God, seek one thing, to claim, to believe that the presence of Jesus can be with you every moment of your life. ”

“ In Christ, the Holy One of God, Divine Holiness will be found in human life and human nature; a truly human will being made perfect and growing up through obedience into complete union with all the Holy Will of God. In the sacrifice of Himself on the cross, that holy nature gave itself up to the death, that, like the seed-corn, it might through death live again and reproduce itself in us. ”

“ Christ received us to the glory of God in the eternal covenant. The Father draws us to Christ, by p. 7giving us to feel our sinful state, our weakness and wants; and then by setting before us his dear Son in his ability and willingness to save. In his light we see him, desire him, move in heart after him, and long for a smile of his approbation—to feel it, and enjoy it, knowing that eternal life is in it. These workings of the mind are often attended with fears, bondage, doubts, and misgivings, and these rise as hope gets down; but as faith gathers strength, so we rise above these doubts. ”