“WITH THEE IS THE FOUNTAIN OF LIFE.”
DAVID sings in his ascription of praise to God in the thirty-sixth psalm: “With Thee is the fountain of life; in Thy light shall we see light.” It is therefore true primarily and inherently that all the life in the universe is from God. In even a stronger sense we can say that “all the life in the universe is God’s life,” if by life we mean that which is directly connected with God, unperverted, tending only to perpetuity. But even as “they are not all Israel, which are of Israel,” even so that is not all God’s life that is of His life. If sin had never entered the universe, all life would have been literally God’s life, whether in planet or plant or mollusk or man. As God is eternal, so His life is eternal, flowing in uninterrupted affluence from the great Fountain. It would have perpetuated to all eternity every living creature. Where God’s life reigns, there is no death. God’s life is in harmony with God’s law. It flows from the great Fountain through that living law. It was designed to flow from the Fountain unto all God’s children, and by their choice out from them in streams of blessing to others. The operations of that law in deeds of love are the manifestations of His life. But when sin in Satan and man perverted that law and that life, the perverted law was no longer God’s “law of righteousness,” but “the law of sin,” and that perverted life was no longer God’s life, but became the working of death. Hence the life of Satan and his demons and the life of sinful man and all the lower creatures is a “vain life,” fed of God in order to prolong an existence in which man may “lay hold of eternal life,” and God’s wisdom and love may be demonstrated. But tho He prolongs that existence, tho He feeds a dying world, the life of the dying is not His life. For it is expressly written that the wicked are “alienated from the life of God” (Eph. 4:18); that without Christ they have “no hope, and [are] without God” (2:12); that “he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him” (John 3:36); that “he that hath the Son hath the life; he that hath not the Son of God hath not the life” (1 John 5:12). But thanks be to God, all may have God’s life. Those who by faith believe in the only-begotten Son of God not only will have, but do have in the believing eternal life. John 3:16; 6:47; 1 John 5:11. Faith is yielding to God’s will, is harmony with the law of God’s life, and opens heart and soul to life’s inflow. All through the Scriptures we read of the life common to plant and beast and man; but through Jesus Christ another life is given, the life of the Spirit. The first life, coming through inheritance and prolonging conscious existence, is the psyche or soul life; but the life which God gives, which comes to us through His own unperverted channels, is the zoe life. Only to this latter word are the adjectives everlasting and eternal applied. The energy which comes through it is “the power of an endless life” which makes a man victor over sin. All who receive this life are no longer “alienated from the life of God,” but are indeed temples in which God dwells. Man should therefore honor his body as a temple of God. He will consecrate it to be used for God’s service. He will do as did Daniel, nourish it upon that which will furnish the best material for the working of the endless life. He will feed it and water it with those things which are most in harmony with the law of God’s righteousness and life. And this will not be a mere sentiment, but a principle ripened into a purpose, bearing fruit to God’s glory. O, it is only life that can transmute black despair to living faith. It is only the life of God that can lift above sin and death. Every soul needs His life. And every soul can have it, warm, fresh, free; for Jesus came expressly “that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.”