ONENESS WITH CHRIST by Hannah Whitall Smith

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 21, 1882

ONENESS WITH CHRIST.

By Hannah Whitall Smith

So many of God's children are crying out for a real and vital union with Christ, that it seems important to come to a right understanding of what it consists in, and how to realize it. And I have a few words to say about it, which have been of great practical use to myself, and I trust may be a help to some others.

There is one lesson in the Christian life that most of us are obliged to learn over, and over, and over, at every advance step we take. I myself have had to learn it many times, and I often doubt whether I know it thoroughly yet. It is the lesson of not depending upon frames and feelings as the test or assurance of our spiritual condition. We learn it at one stage and about one thing, only to forget it as soon as a new stage is reached or a new question arises, when it has to be learned all over again.

I remember very well what a revelation it was to me when I first learned it. It was in the very earliest days of my Christian experience, and was in regard to forgiveness. I had no other thought but that my forgiveness depended upon my feelings; that if I felt sweet, and tender, and tender, and earnest, I was forgiven; but if I felt cold, and dead, and languid, I was not forgiven. Consequently my faith varied with my feelings, and I literally made the word of God of none effect by my own changing emotions. It was a grave dishonor to him, but this I never dreamed of, and it was utter misery to me.

Finally some one told me, or else I read it in a book, that frames and feelings had nothing whatever to do with the matter; that my forgiveness was dependent upon how God felt, and not how I felt, and on what he had done, not on what my frame of mind might happen to be. This was a perfect revelation to me. My common sense laid hold of the idea at once, and I saw it was the only reasonable, as well as the only Scriptural, ground to take.

“Of course,” I said to myself, “my feeling must depend upon what I know about it; it is always knowledge that controls feeling, not feeling knowledge. I have been turning the whole thing wrong end before. My forgiveness cannot in any possible way depend upon my feelings. I must find out first whether I am forgiven before I can expect to have any right feelings about it at all.”

I saw also that my feelings, after all, depended very much on the state of my health; if my liver, for instance, was out of order, I could not possibly have any sweet or joyous feelings, no matter how truly forgiven I might be. Our feelings are affected by a thousand things over which we have no control,—by a rainy day, perhaps, or a fog, or some disappointment in our plans, or by the influence of some one's magnetism over us, or by any or all of our varied circumstances and surroundings. But God's word cannot be touched by any of these things, and I saw that if he said I was forgiven, then I was, no matter how I might feel.

But at each step onward I have been confronted by the same conflict between faith and feeling, my feelings always asserting their right to be the deciding element in each new question in the spiritual life. And every time the same ground has had to be gone over as to the foolishness and utter unreasonableness of trying to decide by feeling what could only be decided by God's word.

Now, on no point does this temptation more persistently assail a soul than on this of our real and practical oneness with Christ; and in nothing is the mistake more dangerous. It seems at the first sight as though this at least was a point which must be decided by feeling, and the soul turns inward to examine its own emotions, sure that, however wrong such a course may have been in all previous cases, here at least it is the right and Scriptural thing to do.

I hope to prove in this article the fallacy of such reasoning.

Oneness with Christ must, in the very nature of things, consist in a Christ-like life and character. It is not what we feel, but what we are, that settles this question. No matter how exalted or intense our emotions on the subject may be, if there is not a likeness of character with Christ, a unity of aim and purpose, a similarity of thought and of action, there can be no real oneness.

This is plain common sense, and it is Scripture as well.

We speak of two people being one, and we mean that their purposes, and actions, and thoughts, and desires are alike. A friend may pour out upon us enthusiastic expressions of love, and unity, and oneness; but if that friend's aims, and actions, and ways of looking at things are exactly opposite to ours, we cannot feel there is any real oneness between us, notwithstanding all our affection for each other. To be truly one with another, we must have the same likes and dislikes, the same joys and sorrows, the same hopes and fears.

And oneness with Christ can be judged by no other rule. It is out of the question to be one with him in any other way than the way of nature, and character, and life. Unless we are Christlike in our thoughts and ways, we are not one with him, no matter how we feel.

I have seen Christians with hardly one Christ-like attribute in their whole characters, who yet were so emotional, and had such ecstatic feelings of love for Christ, as to think themselves justified in claiming the closest oneness with him. I scarcely know a sadder sight. Surely our Lord meant to reach such cases when he said in Matt. 7:21: “Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter the kingdom of Heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in Heaven.” He was not making here any arbitrary statement of God's will, but a simple announcement of the nature of things. Of course it must be so. It is like saying, “No man can enter the ranks of astronomers who is not an astronomer.” Emotions will not make an astronomer, but life and action. He must be one, not merely feel that he is one.

There is no escape from this inexorable nature of things, and it pursues us here. Unless we are one with Christ as to character and life and action, we cannot be one with him in any other way, for there is no other way. We must be “partakers of his nature,” or we cannot be partakers of his life, for his life and his nature are one. Feeling avails nothing here.

I am afraid I have not made this point as clear as I want to, but must trust that the blessed Spirit will illuminate it to the minds of my readers.—Mrs. Hannah Whitall Smith.

(Concluded next week.)