Down to Earth But Heavenly Minded

“Philip went down to Samaria and preached Christ to them” (Acts 8). This brief and simple statement embodies in it a grand characteristic feature of Christianity — a feature which distinguishes it from every system of religion that now exists or ever was propounded in this world. Christianity is not a set of abstractions — a number of dogmas — a system of doctrines. It is preeminently a religion of living facts, of divine realities — a religion which finds its center in a divine Person, the Man Christ Jesus. He is the foundation of all Christian doctrine. From His divine and glorious Person all truth radiates. He is the living fountain from which all the streams issue forth in fullness, power and blessing. “In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.” Apart from Him all is death and darkness. There is not one atom of life, not one ray of light in all this world except what comes from Him. A man may possess all the learning of the schools; he may bask in the most brilliant light that science can pour upon his understanding and his pathway; he may garnish his name with all the honors which his fellow mortals can heap upon him, but if there is the breadth of a hair between him and Jesus — if he is not in Christ and Christ in him — if he has not believed on the Name of the only begotten Son of God, he is involved in death and darkness. Christ is “the true Light which lightens every man that comes into the world.” Hence no man can, in a divine sense, be termed an enlightened man except “a man in Christ.”

It is well to be clear as to this. It is needful to press it, in this day of man’s pride and pretension. Men are boasting of their light and intelligence, of the progress of civilization, of the research and discovery of the age in which our lot is cast, of the arts and sciences and what has been done and produced by their means. We do not want to touch these things. We are quite willing to let them stand for what they are really worth, but we are arrested by these words which fell from the Master’s lips, “I am the light of the world; he that follows Me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.” Here it is, “He that follows Me.” Life and light are only to be had in Jesus. If a man is not following Jesus, he is plunged in death and darkness, even though he is possessed of the most commanding genius and enriched with all the stores of science and knowledge.

We will be deemed narrow-minded in thus writing. We will by many, be regarded as men of very contracted views indeed — men of one idea, and even that one idea presented in a one-sided way. Well, be it so. We are men of one idea; and we heartily desire to be more so. But what is that one idea? Christ! He is God’s grand idea, blessed be His Name forevermore. Christ is the sum and substance of all that is in the mind of God. He is the central object in heaven, the grand fact of eternity, the object of God’s affection — of angels’ homage — of saints’ worship — of demons’ dread — the alpha and the omega of the divine counsels — the keystone of the arch of revelation — the central sun of God’s universe.

All this being so, we need not marvel at Satan’s constant effort to keep people from coming to Christ and to draw them away from Him after they have come to Him. He hates Christ and will use anything and everything to hinder the heart in getting hold of Him. Satan will use cares or pleasures, poverty or riches, sickness or health, vice or morality, profanity or religion; in short, he cares not what it is, provided he can keep Jesus out of the heart.

On the other hand, the constant object of the Holy Spirit is to present Christ Himself to the soul. It is not something about Christ, doctrines respecting Him, or principles connected with Him merely, but His own very self in living power and freshness. We cannot read a page of the New Testament without noticing this. The whole book, from the opening lines of Matthew to the close of the Revelation, is simply a record of facts respecting Jesus. It is not our purpose to follow out this record; to do so would be interesting beyond expression, but it would lead us away from our immediate thesis to which we must now address ourselves. May it be unfolded and applied in the power of the Holy Spirit!

In studying Scripture in connection with our subject, we shall find the Lord Jesus Christ presented in three ways — as a test, as a victim and as a model. Each of these points contains in itself a volume of truth, and when we view them in their connection, they open to our souls a wide field of Christian knowledge and experience. Let us then consider what is meant when we speak of

Christ As a Test

In contemplating the life of the Lord Jesus as a Man, we have the perfect exhibition of what a man ought to be. We see in Him the two grand creature perfections, namely, obedience and dependence. Though God over all, the Almighty Creator and Sustainer of the wide universe; though He could say, “I clothe the heavens with blackness, and I make sackcloth their covering,” yet so thoroughly and absolutely did He take the place of a Man on this earth that He could say, “The Lord God has given Me the tongue of the learned, that I should know how to speak a word in season to him that is weary: He wakens morning by morning, He wakens Mine ear to hear as the learned. The Lord has opened Mine ear, and I was not rebellious, neither turned away back” (Isaiah 1:4-5).

The Lord never moved one step without divine authority. When the devil tempted Him to work a miracle to satisfy His hunger, His reply was, “It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord.” He would readily work a miracle to feed others, but not to feed Himself. Again, when tempted to cast Himself from the pinnacle of the temple, He replied, “It is written, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.” He had no command from God to cast Himself down, and He could not act without it; to do so would be a tempting of Providence. So also, when tempted with the offer of all the kingdoms of this world, on condition of doing homage to Satan, His reply was, “It is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve.”

The Man Christ Jesus was perfectly obedient. Nothing could tempt Him to diverge the breadth of a hair from the narrow path of obedience. He was the obedient Man from first to last. It was the same to Him where He served or what He did. He would act by the authority of the divine Word. He would take bread from God; He would come to His temple when sent of God, and He would wait for God’s time to receive the kingdoms of this world. His obedience was absolute and uninterrupted from the manger to the cross, and in this He was well pleasing to God. It was creature perfection; and nothing in any wise different from this could be agreeable to God. If perfect obedience is pleasing to God, then disobedience must be hateful. The life of Jesus, in this one feature of it, was a continual feast to the heart of God. His perfect obedience was continually sending up a cloud of the most fragrant incense to the throne of God.

Now, this is what a man ought to be. We have here a perfect test of man’s condition, and when we look at ourselves in the light of this one ray of Christ’s glory, we must see our entire departure from the true and only proper place of the creature. The light that shines from the character and ways of Jesus reveals, as nothing else could reveal, the moral darkness of our natural state. We are not obedient; we are willful; we do our own pleasure; we have cast off the authority of God; His Word does not govern us. “The carnal mind is enmity against God; it is not subject to the law of God; neither indeed can be” (Romans 8).

It may be asked, “Did not the law make manifest the wilfulness and enmity of our hearts?” No doubt, but who can fail to see the difference between a law demanding obedience and the Son of God, as Man, exhibiting obedience? Well then, in so far as the life and ways of the blessed Lord Jesus Christ transcend in glory the entire legal system, and in so far as the Person of Christ transcends in glory and dignity the person of Moses, just so far does Christ, as a test of man’s condition, exceed in moral power the law of Moses. And the same holds good of every test that was ever applied and every other standard that was ever set up. The Man Christ Jesus, viewed in the one point of perfect obedience, is an absolutely perfect test by which our natural state can be tried and made manifest.

Take another ray of Christ’s moral glory. He was as absolutely dependent upon God as He was obedient to Him. He could say, “Preserve Me, O God, for in Thee do I put My trust” (Psalm 16). And again, “I was cast upon Thee from the womb” (Psalm 22). He never for one moment abandoned the attitude of entire dependence upon the living God. It is befitting to be dependent upon God for everything. The blessed Jesus ever was! He breathed the very atmosphere of dependence from Bethlehem to Calvary. He was the only Man who ever lived a life of uninterrupted dependence upon God, from first to last. Others have depended partially, He did it perfectly. Others have occasionally or even mainly looked to God; He never looked anywhere else. He found all His springs, not some of them or most of them, in God.

This, too, was most pleasing to God. To have a Man on this earth whose heart was never, for one single moment of time, out of the attitude of dependence, was very precious to the Father. Hence, again and again, heaven opened and the testimony came forth, “This is My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.”

Since this dependence in the perfect life of the Man Christ Jesus was infinitely agreeable to the mind of God, it also furnishes an infinitely powerful test of the natural state of man. We can here see, as we can see nowhere else, our apostasy from the creature’s only proper place — the place of dependence. True, the inspired historian informs us in Genesis 3 that the first Adam fell from his original place of obedience and dependence. True also, the law of Moses makes manifest that Adam’s descendants are, every one of them, in a condition of revolt and independence, but who can fail to see with what superior power all this is brought out in this world by the life and ways of Jesus? In Him we see a Man perfectly obedient and perfectly dependent in the midst of a scene of disobedience and independence, and in the face of every temptation to abandon the position which He occupied.

Thus the life of Jesus in this one particular point of perfect dependence, tests man’s condition and proves his entire departure from God. Man in his natural state always seeks to be independent of God. We need not go into any detailed proof of this. This one ray of light, emanating from the glory of Christ and shining into man’s heart, lays bare every chamber thereof, and proves beyond all question — proves in a way that nothing else could prove — man’s departure from God and the haughty independence which marks our natural condition.

The more intense the light which you bring to bear upon an object, the more perfectly you can see what it is. There is a vast difference between looking at a picture in the dim morning twilight and examining it in broad daylight. Thus it is in reference to our real state by nature. We may view it in the light of the law, in the light of conscience, in the light of the loftiest standard of morality known among men, and in so viewing it, we may see that it is not what it ought to be, but it is only when we view it in the full blaze of the moral glory of Christ that we can see it as it really is. It is one thing to say, “We have done those things which we ought not to have done, and left undone those things which we ought to have done,” and it is another thing altogether to see ourselves in that perfect light which makes everything manifest. It is one thing to look at our ways in the light of law, conscience or morality, and another thing to look at our nature in the light of that all-powerful test, namely, the life of the Man Christ Jesus.

We will refer to one more feature in the character of Christ, and that is His perfect self-emptiness. He never once sought His own interest in anything. His was a life of constant self-sacrifice. “The Son of Man has come to serve and to give.” These two words “serve” and “give” formed the motto of His life and were written in letters of blood upon His cross. In His marvelous life and death, He was the Servant and the Giver. He was ever ready to answer every form of human need. We see Him at Sychar’s lonely well, opening the fountain of living water to a poor thirsty soul. We see Him at the pool of Bethesda, imparting strength to a poor impotent cripple. We see Him at the gate of Nain, drying the widow’s tears and giving back to her bosom her only son.

All this and much more we see, but we never see Him looking after His own interests. No, never! We cannot too deeply ponder this fact in the life of Jesus, nor can we too thoroughly scrutinize ourselves in the light which this wondrous fact emits. If in the light of his perfect obedience, we can detect our terrible wilfulness; if in the light of His absolute dependence, we can discern our pride and haughty independence; then surely, in the light of His self-emptiness and self-sacrifice, we may discover our gross selfishness in its ten thousand forms, and as we discover it, we must loathe and abhor ourselves. Jesus never thought of Himself in anything He ever said or did. He found His food and His drink in doing the will of God and in meeting the need of man.

What a test is here! How it proves us! How it makes manifest what is in us by nature! How it sheds its bright light over man’s nature and man’s world, and rebukes both the one and the other! For what, after all, is the great root-principle of nature and of this world? Self! “Men will praise thee when thou doest well to thyself” (Psalm 49). Self-interest is really the governing principle in the life of every unrenewed man, woman and child in this world. Nature may clothe itself in very amiable and attractive forms; it may assume a very generous and benevolent aspect; it can scatter as well as hoard; but of this we may rest assured that the unregenerate man is wholly incapable of rising above self as an object. In no way could this be made so thoroughly manifest — in no way could it be developed with such force and clearness — in no way could its vileness and hideousness be so fully detected and judged as in the light of that perfect test presented in the self-sacrificing life of our blessed Lord Jesus Christ. It is when that penetrating light shines upon us that we see ourselves in all our true depravity and personal vileness.

The Lord Jesus came into this world and lived a perfect life — perfect in thought, perfect in word, perfect in action. He perfectly glorified God, and not only so, but He perfectly tested man. He showed what God is, and He showed also what man ought to be — showed it not merely in His doctrine, but in His walk. Man was never so tested before. Therefore, the Lord Jesus could say, “If I had not come and spoken to them, they had not had sin; but now they have no cloak for their sin. He that hates Me, hates My Father also. If I had not done among them the works which none other man did, they had not had sin; but now have they both seen and hated both Me and My Father” (John 15:22-24).

Again, He says, “I judge no man; and yet if I judge, My judgment is true” (John 8:15-16). The object of His mission was not judgment but salvation, yet the effect of His life was judgment upon everyone with whom He came in contact. It was impossible for anyone to stand in the light of Christ’s moral glory and not be judged in the very center and source of His being. When Peter saw himself in that light, he exclaimed, “Depart from me for I am a sinful man, O Lord” (Luke 5).

Such was the certain result of a man’s seeing himself in the presence of Christ. Not all the thunderings and lightnings of Mount Sinai, not all the condemnations of the legal system, not all the voices of the prophets could produce such an effect upon a sinner as one single ray of the moral glory of Christ darting into his soul. I may look at the law and feel I have not kept it, and own I deserve its curse. Conscience may terrify me and tell me I deserve hell-fire because of my sins. All this is true, but the very moment I see myself in the light of what Christ is, my whole moral being is laid bare — every root, every fiber, every motive spring, every element, all the sources of thought, feeling, desire, affection and imagination are exposed to view, and I abhor myself. It cannot possibly be otherwise. The whole book of God proves it. The history of all God’s people illustrates it. To cite cases would fill volumes.

True conviction is produced in the soul when the Holy Spirit lets in upon it the light of the glory of Christ. Law is a reality, conscience is a reality, and the Spirit of God may and does make use of the former to act on the latter, but it is only when I see myself in the light of what Christ is, that I get a proper view of myself. Then I am led to exclaim with Job, “I have heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear, but now mine eye sees Thee; therefore I abhor myself.”

Reader, have you ever seen yourself in this way? Have you ever really tested yourself by the perfect standard of the life of Christ? It may be you have been looking at your fellow man and comparing yourself with that imperfect standard, and trying yourself by that imperfect test. This will never do. Christ is the true standard, the perfect test, the divine touchstone. God cannot have anything different from Christ. You must be like Him — conformed to His image — before you can find your place in the presence of God. Do you ask, “How can this ever be?” By knowing Christ as the Victim and by being formed after Him as the Model!

It is most needful, before we proceed with the subject which has been engaging our attention, that the whole world and each human heart should be seen and judged in the light of the moral glory of Christ — that divine and perfect test by which everyone and everything must be tried. Christ is God’s standard for all. The more fully and faithfully the world and self are measured thereby, the better. The grand question for the whole world and for each human heart is this, “How has Christ been treated? What have we done with Him?” God sent His only begotten Son into the world as the expression of His love to sinners. He said, “It may be they will reverence My Son when they see Him.” Did they do so? Sadly, no. “They said, This is the heir; come let us kill Him.” This is how the world treated Christ.

Be it observed, it was not the world in its dark pagan form that so treated the blessed One. No; it was the world of the religious Jew and of the polished and cultivated Greek. It was not into the dark places of the earth, as men speak, that Jesus came, but into the very midst of His own highly favored people “who were Israelites; to whom pertained the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises.” It was to them He came in meekness, lowliness and love. It was among them He lived and labored and “went about doing good, healing all who were oppressed of the devil, for God was with him.” How did they treat Him? This is the question; let us ponder it deeply, and ponder the answer. They preferred a murderer to the holy, spotless, loving Jesus. The world got its choice. Jesus and Barabbas were set before it and the question was put, “Which will you have?” What was the answer — the deliberate, determined answer? “Not this man, but Barabbas. Now Barabbas was a robber.”

Tremendous fact! — a fact little weighed, little understood, little entered into — a fact which stamps the character of this present world and tests and makes manifest the state of every unrepentant, unconverted heart beneath the canopy of heaven. If I want a true view of the world, of nature, of the human heart, of myself, where shall I turn? To police reports? To the calendars of our Grand Juries? To the various statistics of the social and moral condition of our cities and towns? No; all these may set before us facts which fill us with horror, but let it be distinctly seen and deeply felt that all the facts ever recorded of crime in its most fearful forms, are not to be compared with that one fact, the rejection and crucifixion of the Lord of glory. This crime stands out in bold relief from the background of man’s entire history and fixes the true condition of the world, of man, of nature, of self.

Now, it is this we are anxious to urge upon the heart of the reader before we proceed to the second division of our subject. It is the only way to get a right sense of what the world is and of what the human heart is. Men may speak of the vast improvement which has taken place in the world and of the dignity of human nature, but the heart turns back to that hour in which the world, when called to make a choice between the Lord of glory and a murderer, deliberately selected the latter and nailed the former to a tree, between two thieves. This crime of crimes remains, so far as the world is concerned, uncancelled, unforgiven. It stands recorded on the eternal page. Not only is this so as regards the world as a whole, but it also holds good for the unrepentant, unconverted reader of these lines. The solemn question still remains to be answered — answered by the world — answered by the individual sinner — “What have you done with the Son of God? What has become of Him? How have you treated Him?”

Of what use is it to point to the progress of the human race, to the march of civilization, to the advance of the arts and sciences, to improvements in transportation and communication, to modern weapons, to the ten thousand forms in which human genius has tasked itself in order to minister to human lust, luxury and self-indulgence? All these things are far outweighed by the misery, the moral degradation, the squalid poverty, the ignorance and vice in which more than nine-tenths of the human race are involved.

But we do not attempt to put barbarism against civilization, poverty against luxury, grossness against refinement, ignorance against intelligence. We have only one test, the one standard, the one gauge, and that is the cross to which Jesus was nailed by the representatives of this world’s religion, its science, its politics and its civilization.

It is here we take our stand and ask this question, Has the world ever yet repented of this act? No; for had it done so, the kingdoms of this world would have become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ. It is here we take our stand and ask the reader, Have you repented of this act? He may say, “I never did it. It was done by wicked Jews and wicked Romans nearly 2000 years ago. How could I be counted guilty of a crime which was committed so many centuries before I was born?”

We reply, It was the act of the world and you are either part of that world which stands before God under the guilt of the murder of His Son, or you have, as a repentant and converted soul, found refuge and shelter in the pardoning love of God. There is no middle ground, and the more clearly you see this the better, for in no way can you have a just sense of the condition of this world or of your own heart except in the light which is cast thereon by the life and death of Christ as a test. We cannot stop short of this mark if we would form a true estimate of the character of the world, the nature of man and the condition of the unconverted soul. As to the world, there can be no real improvement in its condition, no radical change in its state, until the sword of divine judgment has settled the question of its treatment of the Son of God. As far as the individual sinner is concerned, the divine testimony is, “Repent and be converted that your sins may be blotted out.” This leads us, in the second place, to contemplate

Christ As A Victim

This is a much more pleasing subject to dwell upon, though the other must never be omitted in preaching Christ. It is too much lost sight of in our preaching. We do not sufficiently press home upon the conscience of the sinner, Christ both in life and death, as a test of nature’s true condition and a proof of its irremediable ruin. The law may be used, and rightly so, to do its testing work in the conscience. Yet, through the blindness and folly of our hearts, we may attempt to take up that very law to work out a righteousness for ourselves — that law by which, when rightly viewed, is the knowledge of sin. But it is impossible for anyone to have his eyes opened to see the death of Christ as the terrible exhibition of the enmity of the heart against God, and not be convinced that he is utterly and hopelessly ruined and undone. This is true repentance. It is the moral judgment, not merely of my acts, but of my nature in the light of the cross as the only perfect test of what that nature really is.

All this is fully brought out in the preaching of Peter in the earlier chapters of the Acts. Look at the second chapter where we find the Holy Spirit presenting Christ both as a test and as a victim. “Ye men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a Man approved of God among you by miracles and wonders and signs, which God did by Him, in the midst of you, as ye yourselves also know. Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken and by wicked hands have crucified and slain; whom God has raised up, having loosed the pains of death; because it was not possible that He should be holden of it … Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly that God has made that same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ.”

Here we have solemn and bitter dealing with conscience as to the way they treated the Lord’s Anointed. It was not merely that they had broken the law; that was true; nor yet that they had merely rejected all the witnesses that had been sent to them; that was equally true, but that was not all. They had actually crucified and slain “a Man approved of God,” and that Man was none other than the Son of God Himself. This was the naked and startling fact which the inspired preacher urges home with solemn emphasis upon the consciences of his hearers.

Mark the result! “Now, when they heard this, they were pricked in their hearts, and said to Peter and to the rest of the apostles, Men and brethren, what shall we do?” No marvel that they were pierced to the very heart. Their eyes were opened and what did they discover? Why, that they were actually against God Himself — the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. And about what were they at issue? About the law? No. About the prophets? No. About the rites and ceremonies, the statutes and institutions of the Mosaic economy? No. All this was true and bad enough. But there was something far beyond all this. Their guilt had reached its culmination in the rejection and crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth. “The God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob, the God of our fathers, has glorified His Son Jesus, whom ye delivered up, and denied Him in the presence of Pilate, when he was determined to let Him go. But ye denied the Holy One and the Just, and desired a murderer to be granted to you; and killed the Prince of Life, whom God has raised from the dead; whereof we are witnesses.”

This truly was and is the climax of man’s guilt, and when brought home in the mighty energy of the Holy Spirit to any heart in all this world, it must produce true repentance and evoke from the depths of the soul, the earnest inquiry, “Men and brethren, what shall I do?” “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” It is not merely that we have failed in keeping the law, in doing our duty to God and our duty to our neighbor in living as we should. Sadly, all this is too true. But oh! we have been guilty of the dreadful sin of crucifying the Son of God. Such is the measure of human guilt, and such was the truth pressed home by Peter on the consciences of the men of his time.

What then? When the sharp edge of this powerful testimony had penetrated the hearts of the hearers, when the arrow from the quiver of the Almighty had pierced the soul and drawn forth the bitter penitential cry, “What shall we do?,” what was the answer? What had the preacher to say? “Repent and be baptized, every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” So also in the third chapter, he says, “And now, brethren, I know that through ignorance ye did it, as did also your rulers. But those things which God before had showed by the mouth of all His prophets, that Christ should suffer, He has so fulfilled. Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord.”

Here we have the two things very distinctly presented, namely, Christ as a test and Christ as a victim — the cross as the exhibition of man’s guilt and the cross as the exhibition of the love of God. “Ye killed the Prince of life.” Here was the arrow for the conscience. “But those things which God before had showed that Christ should suffer, He has so fulfilled.” Here was the healing balm. It was the determinate counsel of God that Christ should suffer, and while it was true that man had displayed his hatred of God in nailing Jesus to the cross, yet no sooner is any soul made to see this and thus is brought to divine conviction, than the Holy Spirit holds up to view that very cross as the foundation of the counsels of redeeming love and the ground of the full remission of sins to every true believer.

Thus it was in that most touching scene between Joseph and his brethren as recorded in Genesis 44 and 45. The guilty brethren are made to pass through deep and painful exercises of heart, until they stand in the presence of their injured brother with the arrow of conviction piercing their inmost soul. Then, but not until then, these soothing words fall upon their ears, “Now, therefore, be not grieved nor angry with yourselves, that ye sold me hither; for God did send me before you to preserve life … So now it was not you that sent me hither, but God.”

Exquisite, matchless grace! The moment they entered the place of confession, Joseph was in the place of forgiveness. This was divine. “He spoke roughly to them” when they were thoughtless as to their sin, but no sooner did they say these words, “We are verily guilty concerning our brother,” than they were met by the sweet response of grace, “It was not you, but God.”

Thus it is, beloved reader, in every case. The very instant the sinner takes the place of contrition, God takes the place of full and free forgiveness; and most assuredly, when God forgives, the sinner is forgiven. “I said, I will confess my transgressions to the Lord, and Thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin” (Psalm 32).

Would we have it otherwise? Surely not. An hard heart, an unbroken spirit, an unreached conscience could not understand or make a right use of such words as, “Be not grieved; it was not you, but God.” How could it? How could an unrepentant heart appreciate words which are only designed to soothe and tranquilize a broken and contrite spirit? Impossible. To tell a hard-hearted sinner not to be grieved, would be fatally false treatment. Joseph could not possibly have said to his brethren, “Be not grieved with yourselves” until they had said and felt “We are verily guilty.”

Such is the order, and it is well to remember it. “I will confess and Thou forgavest.” The moment the sinner takes his true place in the presence of God, there is not one syllable said to him about his sins except it be to tell him that they are all forgiven and all forgotten. “Their sins and iniquities will I remember no more.” God not only forgives but forgets. The convicted sinner stands and gazes upon the cross, and sees himself in the light of the glory of Christ as the divine and perfect test, and cries out, “What shall I do?” How is he answered? By the unfolding of Christ as a victim, slain by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself.

Who can define the feelings of a soul that has been convicted of desiring a murderer and crucifying the Son of God, when he learns that that very crucified One is the channel of pardon and life to him — that the blood which was shed puts away forever the guilt of shedding it? What language can adequately set forth the emotion of one who has seen his guilt, not merely in the light of the ten commandments, but as shown out in the cross of a world-rejected Jesus; and yet knows and believes that his guilt is all and forever put away? Who could attempt to embody in language the feelings of Joseph’s brethren when they felt his tears of affection dropping upon them? What a scene! Tears of contrition and tears of affection mingled! Precious mixture! The mind of God alone can duly estimate its value and sweetness.

But here let us just guard against misunderstanding. Let no one suppose that tears of contrition are the cause of pardon or the meritorious ground of peace. Far, far away be the thought from the reader’s mind! All the tears of contrition that ever gushed forth from the fountains of broken hearts, from the days of Joseph’s brethren to the days of the third of Acts and to the present moment, could not form the just foundation of a sinner’s acceptance and peace with God or wash away a single stain from the human conscience. The blood of the divine Victim and that alone, in prospect from the fall of man to Calvary and in retrospect, from Calvary till this moment — nothing except that precious blood, that atoning death, that peerless sacrifice — could justify a holy God in forgiving one sin. But, blessed be God, so perfectly has that sacrifice vindicated and glorified His Name, that the moment any sinner sees his true state, his guilt, his rebellion, his enmity, his base ingratitude, his hatred of God and of His Christ; the very moment he takes the place of true contrition in the divine presence — the place of one utterly broken down, without plea of moderation — that moment, infinite grace meets him with those healing, soothing, tranquilizing words, “Be not grieved,” “your sins and iniquities will I remember no more,” “Go in peace.”

Some might suppose that we attach undue importance to the measure of contrition, or that we mean to teach that everyone must feel the same character or degree of conviction as was produced by Peter’s powerful appeal in Acts 2. Nothing is further from our thoughts. We believe there must and there will be conviction and contrition. Further, we believe the cross is the only adequate measure of human guilt — that it is only in the light of that cross that anyone can have a just sense of the vileness, sinfulness and loathsomeness of his nature. But all may not see this. Many never think of the cross as a test and proof of their guilt, but merely as the blessed ground of their pardon. They are bowed down under a sense of their many sins and shortcomings, and they look to the cross of Christ as the only ground of pardon. Most surely they are right! But there is a deeper view of sin, a deeper sense of what human nature in its fallen state really is, a deeper conviction of the utterly godless and christless condition of the heart. Where is this to be reached? At the cross and there alone. It will never do to look back at the men of the first century and say what terrible sinners they were to crucify the living embodiment of all that was holy and good, gracious and pure. No; what is needed is to bring the cross forward into our century and measure nature, the world and self thereby.

This, be assured of it, reader, is the true way to judge the question. There is no real change. “Crucify Him! Crucify Him!” is as positively the cry of the world of today as it was of the world of the first century. The cross was then and is now the only true measure of human guilt. When anyone, man, woman or child, is brought to see this, he has a far deeper sense of his condition than ever he can have by looking at his sins and shortcomings in the light of conscience or of the ten commandments.

And to what will all this lead the soul? What will be the effect of seeing self in the light which the cross, as a test, throws upon it? The deepest self-abhorrence. Yes, and this holds good in the case of the most refined moralist and amiable religionist who ever lived, just as much as in the case of the grossest and vilest sinner. It is no longer a question of grades and shades of character, to be settled by the graduated scale of human conscience or the moral sense. Oh no; the cross is seen as the only perfect standard. Nature, the world, the heart, self, is measured by that standard, and its true condition reached and judged.

We are intensely anxious that the reader should thoroughly enter into this point. He will find it to be of immense moral power in forming his convictions, both as to his own heart and as to the real character of the world through which he is passing — its moral foundations, its framework, its features, its principles, its spirit, its aim, its end. We want him to take the cross as the perfect measure of himself and all around him. Let him not listen to the suggestions of Satan or to the thoughts that spring up in his own heart, to the vapourings of philosophy and science, falsely so-called, to the infidel vauntings of this preeminently infidel age. Let him listen to the voice of Holy Scripture which is the voice of the living God. Let him use the test which Scripture furnishes — a crucified Christ. Let him try all that and see where it will lead him. One thing is certain, it will lead him down in his own self-consciousness into those profound depths where nothing can avail him except Christ as the divine Victim who bore the judgment of God against sin and opened heaven to the sinner.

Having sought to present Christ as a test and Christ as a victim, we shall now, in dependence upon divine guidance and teaching, proceed to consider Him as

The Model

to which the Holy Spirit seeks to conform every true believer. This will complete our subject and open up a wide field of thought to the Christian reader. God has predestinated His people to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren (Rom. 8). But how can we ever be formed after such a model? How can we ever think of being conformed to such an image? The answer to these questions will unfold more fully the blessedness and infinite value of the truth which has already passed before us.

If the reader has followed the line of thought we have been pursuing; if he has experimentally entered into it or if it has entered into him in the power of the Spirit of God; if he has made it his own, he will see and feel and own that in himself, by nature, there is not a single atom of good, not one point on which he can rest his hopes for eternity. He will see that, so far as he is concerned, he is a total wreck. He will see that the divine purpose as revealed in the gospel is not to reconstruct this moral wreck, but to erect an entirely new thing. Of this new thing, the cross of Christ is the foundation.

The reader cannot ponder this too deeply. Christianity is not the old nature made better, but the new nature implanted. “Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God” (John 3). “If any man be in Christ, he is a new creation; old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. And all things are of God who has reconciled us to Himself by Jesus Christ, and has given to us the ministry of reconciliation” (2 Corinthians 5).

The effect of the mission of Christ to this world was to prove, as nothing else could have proved, man’s totally irremediable ruin. When man rejected and crucified the Son of God, his case was proved to be hopeless. It is of the deepest importance to be thoroughly clear as to this. It solves a thousand difficulties and clears the prospect of many a dark and heavy cloud. As long as a man is possessed with the idea that he must improve his nature by any process whatever, he must be a total stranger to the fundamental truth of Christianity.

Sadly, there is a fearful amount of darkness and error in the professing Church as to this simple truth of the gospel. Man’s total ruin is denied or reasoned away in one way or another, and the very truths of Christianity as well as the institutions of the Mosaic economy, are made use of to improve fallen nature and fit it for the presence of God. Thus the true nature of sin is not felt; the claims of holiness are not understood; the free, full and sovereign grace of God is set aside; and the sacrificial death of Christ is thrown overboard.

The sense of all this makes us long for more earnestness, power and faithfulness in setting forth those foundation truths which are constantly affirmed and maintained in the New Testament. We believe it to be the solemn duty of every writer and every speaker, of all authors, editors, preachers and teachers to take a firm stand against the strong current of opposition to the simplest truths of divine revelation, so painfully and alarmingly apparent in every direction. There is an urgent demand for faithfulness in maintaining the standard of pure truth, not in a spirit of controversy, but in meekness, earnestness and simplicity. We want to have Christ preached as a test of all that is in man, in nature, in the world. We want Christ preached as a victim, bearing all that was due to our sins; and we want Him preached as a model on which we are to be formed in all things.

This is Christianity. It is not fallen nature trying to work out righteousness by keeping the law of Moses. Neither is it fallen nature striving to imitate Christ. No; it is the complete setting aside of fallen nature as an utterly good-for-nothing thing and the reception of a crucified and risen Christ as the foundation of all of our hopes for time and eternity. How could the unrenewed sinner get righteousness by keeping the law, by the which is the knowledge of sin? How could he ever set about to imitate Christ? Utterly impossible! “He must be born again.” He must get new life in Christ before he can exhibit Christ. This cannot be too strongly insisted upon. For an unconverted man to think of imitating the example or walk in the footsteps of Jesus, is the most hopeless thing in the world. Ah! no; the only effect of looking at the blessed example of Jesus is to put us in the dust in self-abasement and true contrition. And when from this place we lift our eyes to the cross of Calvary to which Jesus was nailed as our surety, our sin-bearer, our substitute, we see pardon and peace flowing down to us through His most precious sacrifice. Then, but not until then, we can calmly and happily sit down to study Him as our model.

If I look at the life of Jesus apart from His atoning death; if I measure myself by that perfect standard; if I think of working myself into conformity to such an image, it must plunge me into utter despair. But when I behold that perfect, spotless, holy One bearing my sins in His own body on the tree — when I see Him laying in His death and resurrection the everlasting foundation of life and peace and glory for me — then, with a peaceful conscience and liberated heart, I can look back over the whole of that marvelous life and see therein how I am to walk, for “He has left us an example that we should follow His steps.”

Thus, while Christ as a test shows me my guilt, Christ as a victim cancels that guilt, and Christ as a model shines before the vision of my soul as the standard at which I am to aim continually. In a word, Christ is my life and Christ is my model, and the Holy Spirit, who has taken up His abode in me on the ground of accomplished redemption, works in me for the purpose of conforming me to the image of Christ. True, I must always feel and own how infinitely short I come of that lofty standard, but still, Christ is my life, though the manifestation of that life is sadly hindered by the infirmities and corruptions of my old nature. The life is the same, as the apostle John says, “which thing is true in him and in you, because the darkness is past and the true light now shineth” (1 John 2:8). We can never be satisfied with anything less than “Christ our life, Christ our model.” “For me to live is Christ.” It was Christ reproduced in the daily life of Paul by the power of the Holy Spirit.

This is true Christianity. It is not flesh turned religious and leading a pious life. It is not unrenewed, fallen, ruined nature trying to recover itself by rites and ceremonies, prayers, alms and vigils. It is not the old man turning from “wicked works” to “dead works,” exchanging the beer parlor, the theatre, the gaming table and the race course, for the monastery, the pew, the meeting house or the lecture hall. No reader, it is “Christ in you, the hope of glory,” and Christ reproduced in your daily life by the powerful ministry of God the Holy Spirit.

Be not deceived! It is of no possible use for fallen nature to clothe itself in forms of religion. It may become involved in the attractive things of ritualism, sacred music, pious pictures, sculpture, architecture, dim religious light. It may scatter the fruits of a large-hearted benevolence: it may visit the sick, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, shed on all around the sunshine of a genial philanthropy. It may read the Bible and go through every form of religious routine. It may even attempt a hollow imitation of Christ: schoolmen may discipline it, others may subdue it, mystics may enwrap it in their cloudy reveries and lead it into quiet meditation with nothing to contemplate. In short, all that religion, morality and philosophy can do for it and with it, may be done but all in vain, inasmuch as it still remains true that, “That which is born of the flesh is flesh.” “It cannot see or enter the kingdom of God,” for “ye must be born again.”

Here lies the deep and solid, the divine and eternal foundation of Christianity. There must be the life of Christ in the soul — the link with “the Second Man, the last Adam.” The first man has been condemned and set aside. The Second Man came and stood beside the first. He proved him and tested him, and showed most fully that there was not a single ingredient in his nature, his character or his condition which could be made available in that new creation, that heavenly kingdom which was about to be introduced — that not a single stone or timber in the old building could be worked into the new — that “in my flesh dwells no good thing” — and that the ground must be thoroughly cleared of all the rubbish of ruined humanity, and the foundation laid in the death of the Second Man who in resurrection has become, as the last Adam, the Head of the new creation. Apart from Him there can be no life. “He that has the Son has life; he that has not the Son of God has not life” (1 John 5:12).

Such is the conclusive language of Holy Scripture, and this language must hold good in spite of all the reasonings of those who boast themselves in their liberal and enlightened views, in their intellectual powers and in the breadth of their theology. It matters little what men may think or say; we have only to hearken to the Word of our God which must stand forever, and that Word declares, “Ye must be born again.” Men cannot alter this. There is a kingdom which can never be moved. In order to see or enter this heavenly kingdom, we must be born again. Man has been tried in every way and proved wanting. Now, “Once, in the end of the ages, has Christ appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself” (Hebrews 9:26).

This is the only ground of life and peace. When the soul is firmly settled thereon, it can find its delight in studying Christ as its model. It is finished with all its own poor efforts to obtain life, pardon and the favor of God. It flings aside its “deadly doings;” it has found life in Jesus, and now its grand business is to study Him, to mark His footsteps and walk therein — to do as He did, to aim always at being like Him, to seek in everything to be conformed to Him. The great question for the Christian on all occasions is not, “What harm is there in this or that?” but, “Is this like Christ?” He is our divine pattern. Are husbands exhorted to love their wives? It is “As Christ loved the Church.” What a model! Who can ever come up to it? No one, but we are still to keep it before us. Thus we shall enter into the truth of those lines of our own poet,

“The more Thy glories strike mine eyes,
The humbler I shall lie,
Thus while I sink, my joys shall rise
Immeasurably high.”

The Christian reader will at once perceive what a wide field of practical truth is opened up by this closing point in our subject. What an unspeakable privilege to be able, day by day, to sit down and study the life and ways of our Great Example to see what He was; to mark His words, His spirit, His style; to trace Him in all the details of His marvelous path; to note how “He went about doing good”; how it was His food and His drink to do the will of God and to minister to the need of man. And then to think that He loves us, that He died for us, that He is our life, that He has given us of His Spirit to be the spring of power in our souls to subdue all that is of the old root of self and produce in our daily life the expression of Christ.

What mortal tongue can unfold the preciousness of all this? It is not living by rules and regulations. It is not pursuing a dead round of duties. It is not subscribing to certain dogmas of religious belief. No; it is union with Christ and the manifestation of Christ. This we repeat and reiterate and would impress upon the reader. This and nothing less, nothing different, is true, genuine, living Christianity. Let him see that he possesses it, for if not, he is dead in trespasses and sins, he is far from God and far from the kingdom of God. But if he has been led to believe on the name of the only begotten Son of God, if as a consciously ruined and guilty sinner he has fled for refuge to the blood of the cross, then Christ is his life, and it should be his one unvarying object, day by day, to study his model, to fix his eye on the headline and aim at coming as near to that as possible. This is the true secret of all practical godliness and sanctification. This alone constitutes a living Christianity. It stands in vivid contrast with what is commonly called “a religious life” which, alas! very often resolves itself into a mere dead routine, a rigid adherence to lifeless forms, a barren ritualism which, far from exhibiting anything of the freshness and reality of the new man in Christ, is a distortion of nature itself.

Christianity brings a living Christ into the heart and into the life. It diffuses a divine influence all around. It enters into all the relations and associations of human life. It teaches us how to act as husbands and wives, as fathers and mothers, as masters, as children, as servants. It does not teach us by dry rules and regulations, but by setting before us, in the Person of Christ, a perfect model of what we ought to be. It presents to our view the very One who, as a test, left us without a single plea, and as a victim, left us without a single stain, and who now, as our model, is to be the subject of our admiring study and the standard at which we are ever and only to aim. It does not matter where we are or what we are, provided Christ is dwelling in the heart and exhibited in the daily life. If we have Him in the heart and before the eye, He will regulate everything; if we don’t have Him, we have nothing.

We will here close our paper, not because our theme is exhausted, but because it is inexhaustible. We believe that the Spirit of God alone can open the subject and apply it in living power and freshness to the soul of the reader and thus lead him into a higher type of Christianity than is ordinarily exhibited in this day of worldly profession. May the Lord stir up all our hearts to seek greater nearness to Himself and more faithful conformity to Him in all our ways! May we be enabled to say with a little more truth and sincerity, “Our citizenship is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ; who shall change the body of our humiliation, that it may be fashioned like to His body of glory, according to the working whereby He is able even to subdue all things to Himself.”