The Unavoidable Christ

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Mar 23, 1915

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 42, No. 12.

The Unavoidable Christ

We Must Meet Him

WHEN we have accepted Christ as our Saviour-Friend, we never can get away from His love. He said to His disciples before He left them to ascend in His bodily presence to heaven, “I am with you always.” This promise was for every one who loves Christ. There is no place where we may be that He is not. One wrote to a friend: “Somehow I feel that Christ is not with me any more. I call Him, but He does not answer me. I seek Him, but I cannot find Him.” Yet this one was mistaken. Jesus had not left her. When she called Him, He was closer to her than the air she breathed. When she was seeking Him, He was right beside her. The unavoidable Christ!

We remember what happened the morning of the resurrection. Mary of Magdala was eager to find His body. She did not dream of finding Him, the loving Friend, alive; but she wanted to find His body, that she might anoint it. She found His grave open, the loved body gone; and her grief was very great. Even the presence of angels within the tomb did not meet her need; and when, turning back, she saw some one standing near, she supposed it was the gardener, and she implored Him to tell her where He had taken her Friend. The answer was, “Mary,” in tones she knew well. She thought she had lost Him; and lo, He was close beside her! The unavoidable Christ!

We never can be where He is not. We have it in the old psalm:

“Whither shall I go from Thy Spirit? Or whither shall I flee from Thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, Thou art there: If I make my bed in sheol, behold, Thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning, And dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; Even there shall Thy hand lead me, And Thy right hand shall hold me.”

How strange it is that some people think of the divine presence always as something to dread, something to be afraid of! They quote the words, “Thou God seest me,” and are startled and alarmed by the thought of the divine eye. That is not the way that the thought of the ever watchful presence of Christ should affect us.

Perhaps we do not remember the whole of the Old Testament story in which we find those words “Thou God seest me.” A wronged woman is driven out into the wilderness, and is in despair as she thinks of her desolated condition. An angel comes and gives her a message of hope for the future. She will be the mother of a nation. And so she calls the name of the God who had come to her in her loneliness and distress, “Thou art a God that seeth.”

Instead of being a word to cause terror in our hearts, this is a word that brings hope and joy. “Thou God seest me.” O, how glad we should be that God does see us! We never can be in any trouble in which He does not see us. And for Him to see us is, if we yield to Him, for us to be safe. Nothing can ever go really wrong with us in the obeyed presence of our Lord and Master.

But let us look at this truth of the unavoidable Christ in another way. The word “unavoidable” suggests also that there are some who would like to avoid Him. When He was on the earth, there were many who did not care for Him, did not believe on Him, did not love Him, did not want to take Him as their Master. They tried to avoid Him. Some even hated. There were many that day who cried “Crucify Him!”

Well, did it make any real difference? What right had Jesus to claim men's affection, trust, and loyalty? Why is it so necessary that people shall love Christ and follow Him? He is the Son of God. He is the Messiah — King of men. Every one owes Him allegiance. Not to accept Him as King and Lord is to be disloyal to God. Not to take Him as our Saviour is to miss eternal life. He is the Way — no one cometh unto the Father but by Him. To avoid Christ is to withhold one's self from life.

A MATTER OF LIFE OR DEATH

It is not therefore merely a matter of opinion, of taste, of preference — it is a matter of life or death whether we are on Christ's side or not. A good many are letting the feeling creep over them that it really does not matter whether they love and follow Christ or not. They admire Him, in a way. They like His teachings, approve them intellectually, but they do not feel any great necessity of obeying them. They are coming to think of Christ as a Saviour in a broad, general sense, the uplifter of all men, the Redeemer of the world in that He is making the world better, reforming it, introducing

better conditions, bringing in better civilizations, better education.

But is it not true that the thought of individual salvation only through personal acceptance of Christ is fading out of men's consciousness? O, it does matter what we do with Christ! We may not avoid Him as we would avoid a system of philosophy. To avoid Christ is to perish. There is no other name, if we reject this name.

The unavoidable Christ! We cannot leave Christ out of our life. We must meet Him. We must accept Him or reject Him. He offers Himself to us as our Saviour; we must answer the question whether we will accept Him as our Saviour or not. He comes to be our Lord and Master; we must answer whether we will bow down to Him in surrender, whether we will serve Him or not. He comes to be our Friend, to enter into all our experiences, to answer all our longings, to guide us in the path of life, to strengthen us for duty, to answer our heart hungers. We must decide whether we will have Him for our Friend or not.

WE MUST LIFT THE LATCH

But not one of us can avoid Him. No one who has ever heard the gospel, can go to the bar of God and say, “Jesus Christ never came to me with an offer of salvation, of blessedness.” Certainly He comes to every one who lives where we live, in the blaze of gospel light. Certainly no reader of these words can ever say, “Christ never came to me.” We cannot say: “He never called me by name. He never showed me a possible noble future and asked me to accept it. He never painted for me a dream of life, of glory, of immortality, and said He would lead me to its attainment.” He is before each one's door. “I stand at the door and knock.” See Him there, standing, knocking, waiting. He says, “If any man open.” He will not force the door. You must lift the latch.

The unavoidable Christ! Can any one really want to avoid Christ, and enter eternity without Him? O, let us open to Him! Let us give Him our heart. Yea, we must have Christ; so that when everything else fails and fades, we shall find ourselves forever at home in the everlasting arms.—Sunday School Times