Are you Christ’s?

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Sep 19, 1871

Are you Christ’s?

“The apostle closes a burning climax with the exulting word, ‘For ye are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.’ Are you Christ’s? Who feels that he is his? What is such a feeling? That of entire dispossession by yourself. All unrenewed people have a fancy that they are their own; that they can do what they will with themselves; and that they can employ their affections, their time, their money, their brains, or what they please. If they owe allegiance to any person, it is to those of their own household, or to human beings to whom they are indebted, not to Christ. They may have a blind thought of something due to God, but only in the sense of not violating any voice of conscience in themselves, that is, of not opposing their better self. Any thought of personal allegiance to Christ they do not entertain. Any affection for him, any solicitation of his guidance, any conference with him as to the direction of their affairs, or the bestowment of their means, or time, or words, they do not for a moment entertain. They write books about him, and never ask him to help them in the composition. They prepare sermons, even concerning him, and never implore his help in the preparation. They rush into business without any consciousness that all their success must come from him. They engage in their professions and pleasures, unmindful of him by whom are all things, and for whom are all things.

“Be ye not like unto them. Do not disregard Christ. ‘Ye are Christ’s.’ Do you show it by frequent interviews with him? You consult your partner; consult this Chief Partner. You even ask information of your clerks, workmen, servants; how much more of your Lord and Master. You ask advice of your wife how to spend your gains; how much more of Him who alone has given you any thing to spend.

“‘Ye are Christ’s,’ implies complete absorption in him. He is all in all. He is your breath, your thought, your love, your other and greater self. You think his thoughts, feel his feelings, live his life. You are not your own. You are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. So live. So love. Then will you have perpetual peace and power. Then will nothing trouble you above your ability to bear. Then will you go forward cheerfully in the path of life, absorbing to yourself all that is good, and repelling all that is bad. All are yours, because ‘ye are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.’ Here and hereafter, life and death, time and eternity, finite and infinity, creature and Creator, man, angel, devil even, to conquer Heaven to dwell in, hell to subdue and shun, all are yours; for ‘ye are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.’”—Zion’s Herald.