Work of Christ

“ Such aspect of the divine character of Christ, rightly understood, is indeed the final consummation of that bold and brilliant hopefulness in man’s nature, which had sustained him so far through his immense labours, his immense sorrows, and of which pagan gaiety in the handling of life, is but a minor achievement. Sometimes one, sometimes the other, of those two contrasted aspects of its Founder, have, in different ages and under the urgency of different human needs, been at work also in the Christian Church. ”

“ Now that thy hands which fall down may be made strong for labour, and thou mayest be girded with strength, and have grace for grace, yea, all grace to make thee abound unto every good word and work, the author leads thee up unto the full fountain of all gospel furniture, and strength; and teacheth thee how to make use of Christ, as thy sufficiency, for working all thy works in thee and for thee. ”

“ We are all glad to work for Christ, but there is a complaint throughout the Church of Christ, from the ministers in the pulpit down to the feeblest worker, of lack of joy and lack of blessedness. Let us try and find out whether this is not the place where the secret will be discovered—that the Lord Jesus comes and shows Himself to us as our Master and speaks to us. ”

“ From Christ, who in the very act of giving binds you to live for Him and not for yourselves, and to mould your lives after the pattern of His. What a multitude of motives converge on the solemn duty of work for Christ, if we read in the light of this deeper meaning the simple words of our text, 'He gave the loaves to the disciples!' What manner of servant is he who can bear to have no part in the blessed work that follows—'and the disciples to the multitude'? ”

“ Whether Christ be regarded as human or divine, all must agree in regarding the work of His life as by far the greatest work ever achieved in the history of the human race. A topic of great importance is the influence of Christ's personality in securing the acceptance of His teaching. ”

“ They taught that Christ was real man and only man. According to them, the whole value of His life and work lay in His moral teaching and His noble example; there is no mystery, no contact of divine and human in Christ ”

“ Jesus Christ Himself is grace, is the way, is life and salvation. Faith is trust in the truth of God as manifested in the life and work of Jesus Christ; it is to believe in God; it is a knowledge of the Cross of Christ; it is to understand that the Son of God became incarnate, was crucified, and raised again for our salvation. The three central thoughts—justification, grace, faith—expressed in these inadequate phrases, are always looked upon and used to regulate that estimate of ourselves which forms the basis of piety. ”

“ He can no longer regard Scripture as merely the work of man; it is also the work of the same Spirit who has transformed him, namely, the eternal Christ. Christ is the author and inspirer of Scripture, even though imperfect human agents have been employed to communicate his revelation. ”

“ It may therefore be profitable if we turn to Christ's own manner of working, and His own emotions in His merciful deeds, set forth in this remarkable narrative, as containing lessons for us in our missionary and evangelistic work. ”

“ Let me remind you, too, that that universality of the gifts of the Divine Spirit is implied in the very conception of what Christ's work, in its deepest and most precious aspects to us, is. For we are not to limit, as a great many so-called earnest evangelical teachers and believers do—we are not to limit His work to that which is effected when a man first becomes a Christian—viz. ”

“ The Cause of Good Works So that the cause of good works we confess to be, not our free will, but the Spirit of the Lord Jesus who, dwelling in our hearts by true faith, brings forth such good works as God has prepared for us to walk into. For this we most boldly affirm, that blasphemy it is to say that Christ Jesus abides in the hearts of such as in whom there is no spirit of sanctification. ”

“ To know him who stands revealed in brief on the pages of the four gospels and revealed at large in the splendid history into which he has built himself during the last nineteen hundred years, is to gain the utmost help for character-building that the world has thus far found.
We know Jesus Christ, not only by the study of his life and teachings, but by sharing in his purpose for the race and by participation in his spirit. It is this that enables us to see life whole, and to put ourselves in the way of gaining a fuller measure of that life complete. ”

“ It may appear impossible to discern or describe the difference between the working that is of self and the working that is of Christ through faith: if we but know that there is such a difference, if we learn to distrust ourselves, and to count on Christ working, the Holy Spirit will lead us into this secret of the Lord too. Faith’s works are Christ’s works. ”

“ For Paul adds: "Other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Christ. And if any man build upon this foundation gold"—that is, the doctrine of deity and heavenly things—"silver"—that is, the doctrine of the humanity of Christ and created things—"precious stones"—graces which adorn the soul and its faculties—he without doubt is built upon Christ. So the apostles built when they taught with clearness and fervor the doctrine of the deity and humanity and the Christian graces and, when they lived in the flesh, planted with their blood the church of Christ. ”

“ And what may we not hope for from such grace and kindness, from riches of grace, to which this change is owing? Through Christ Jesus, by and through whom God conveys all his favour and blessings to us. 2. With respect to the regenerated sinners themselves: For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, &c., v. 10. It appears that all is of grace, because all our spiritual advantages are from God. We are his workmanship; he means in respect of the new creation; not only as men, but as saints. The new man is a new creature; and God is its Creator. ”

“ We have caught glimpses of the depth and range of some of the principles embodied both in the teaching and in the life of Jesus. The Gospels have brought us riches, although we have only taken grains of gold from their mine here or there. The Christian whom we are using as our authority for the time being is one who has sat at the feet of Christ and has the mind of Christ. He is one, happily, among many of all ages. ”

“ His most steady point of view is the relation of Christ to the elevation of the race, and he struggles to make clear the amazing richness of Christ’s new things—the profound character of his philosophy, and the practical humanity that wells up out of these great deeps.”—New York Methodist. ”

“ Note, All things are the believer's, that Christ might have honour in his great undertaking, and God in all might have the glory. God in Christ reconciling a sinful world to himself, and shedding abroad the riches of his grace on a reconciled world, is the sum and substance of the gospel. ”

“ That Christ may dwell by faith in your hearts: that being rooted and founded in charity, you may be able to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth, and length, and height, and depth. To know also the charity of Christ, which surpasseth knowledge, that you may be filled unto all the fulness of God. Now to him who is able to do all things more abundantly than we ask or understand, according to the power which worketh in us: to him be glory in the church, and in Christ Jesus, throughout all generations, world without end. ”

“ On believing his existence, and cultivating the knowledge of his attributes, especially those which are so astonishingly displayed and harmonized in the redemption of mankind by Jesus Christ, it very naturally follows, to every reflecting mind, that we owe him ourselves, and are bound by the strongest ties to present to him the most spiritual worship of which our intelligent nature is capable.
The moral image of God, after which man was created, was his greatest excellence. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Whoever else may abandon him, the glorified Man of sorrows saith, "I will never leave thee nor forsake thee." Wherever he goes, Christ attends him. Wherever he labors, Christ sustains him. Wherever he preaches the gospel or administers the sacraments, he has the express authority and assured blessing of their heavenly Author. ”

“ He shows, as do so many of those who emphasize the inner experience of Christ as a living presence, an exalted appreciation of the historical revelation in Christ. Christ is, he says, both God and man, and thus being the perfect union of divinity and humanity {270} can be our Saviour. ”

“ And God set Christ in the world to be the living type of human perfection, to attract men by their love for Him to His kind of life, and to furnish them with all needed aid in becoming like Him—that as Christ had kept the Father’s commandments, His disciples should keep His commandments, that thus a common understanding, an [186] identity of interest and moral life, should be established between God and man. ”

“ Every good, loyal, and gallant Catholic who begins any work of imagery ought, first, to invoke in all his labor the Divine power by the blessed name of Jesus, who illumines every human heart and understanding ”

“ I am doing only what belongs to the best and richest movement of humanity. More than this, it assures me that assent to the claims and promises of Jesus Christ satisfies these spiritual needs in such a way as to produce the strongest, the most lasting, the most catholic sort of human character. The historical life of the Church thus in every age 'setting to its seal' that God's offer in Christ is true, reproduces the original 'witness,' commends it to conscience and reason, spans the gulf of the ages, and brings down remote and alien incidents into close and intelligible familiarity. ”

“ Devotion to a Church, to opinions, to an organization, to orthodoxy—these are paltry, misleading, and vain when they become the source of inspiration, the animus of a call. God must be the mainspring of the preacher's effort, the fountain and crown of all his toil. The {66} name and honour of Jesus Christ, the advance of His cause, must be all in all. ”

“ Christ says: "Accept Me." "He makes everything centre in His Own Personality." And the men who have helped to make what so far in our human world is grand and glorious, have shown us that Christ's word is a real word, meaning a real thing. ”

“ For he proved himself to the heart of all humanity, God's Son, loving, not for the sake of men's reciprocation and appreciation of himself, but for the sake of the salvation of humanity. Therefore Christ's method is the one for every man and woman on all planes of activity, however humble. ”

“ Through this insight, they were the beginners of a new type of Christianity, which has become wide-spread and impressive in the modern world, a type that finds the supreme significance of Christ's Life in His double revelation of the inherent nature of God, and the immense value and potentiality of man, and that changes the emphasis from schemes of salvation to interpretations of life, from the magic significance of doctrine to the incalculable worth of the moral will. ”

“ As Christians, we profess, not only to believe and look for, but to love and long for, the appearing of Christ, and to act in our whole conversation with a regard to it. The second coming of Christ is the centre in which all the lines of our religion meet, and to which the whole of the divine life hath a constant reference and tendency. ”

“ You have the history of the light, and you have received the virtue and power which are in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and it is for you to obey your leaders and the intelligence which is in you, which may the Lord grant, in the name of Jesus. ”

“ The Gospel of Jesus Christ, as it is given in the Old and New Testaments, the Book of Mormon, the Book of Doctrine and Covenants, and in the experience of every true Christian who has lived and still lives upon the earth, teaches that it is the privilege of every Saint so to live and walk before their God, as to enjoy the light of the spirit of truth from day to day, from week to week, and from year to year, through their whole lives. ”

“ Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, was this grace given, to preach unto the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ; and to make all men see what is the dispensation of the mystery which from all ages hath been hid in God who created all things; to the intent that now unto the principalities and the powers in the heavenly places might be made known through the church the manifold wisdom of God, according to the eternal purpose which he purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord: in whom we have boldness and access in confidence through our faith in him. ”

“ In the gospel, when we believe the promises, we receive the [Pg 141] Spirit of life, and are justified in the blood of Christ from all things whereof the law condemned us. Of Christ it is written in the fore rehearsed John i. This is He of whose abundance, or fulness, all we have received, grace for grace, or favour for favour. ”

“ For the perfection of our ordinary actions, we should do them in the sight of Jesus, that is, to use the words of the missal, by Christ, with Christ, and in Christ To do our actions by Christ, is to do them in dependence upon Him, as He did everything in dependence on His Father, and by the movement of His Spirit. ”