The Christian Walk by A. J. Gordon, D. D.

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Sep 2, 1886

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 12, No. 34.

“The Christian Walk.”

By A. J. Gordon, D. D.

A TRUE Christian walk is a reproducing in our lives of the righteousness which is already ours in Christ. Joined to the Lord by faith, we become “partakers of his holiness.” But not that thereby we may be exempted from the necessity of personal holiness. It is rather that such personal holiness may have a new and higher obligation, since it has become a new possibility.

The double purpose of our union to Christ must never for a moment be forgotten, nor its heavenward and earthward aspects for an instant separated in our apprehension. It is in order that we may be as he is in the reckoning of God, and equally that we may be as he is before the eyes of men. “No condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus” is one phase of this blessed truth.

But, O believer, forget not the other, lest you bring upon yourself the curse of a dry and barren Antinomianism: “Created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.” The branches are the product and the measure of the roots, the one spreading as widely as the other strikes deeply. And how solemn the obligation resting upon those who are as truly rooted in Christ, to reach forth their branches and cover that area of good works which they have underlaid, and so to speak, pre-empted by their faith. Our privileges in Jesus are glorious beyond comparison. But they are awful when we remember that they are the pledge and measure of our obligations.—A. J. Gordon. D. D.