p. 436 | The Christian Life

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jul 22, 1886

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 12, No. 28.

The Christian Life.

To NOT a few the Christian life seems a hard and laborious one. Discipleship is almost a spiritual bondage rather than a joyous, excellent freedom. The difficulty is they have not yet learned by experience what the Christian life really is. They attempt to follow Christ, goaded to it by an active and unsatisfied conscience, or perhaps by fears of the consequences to themselves if they do not. Such a life cannot but be one of wearisome struggle and frequent defeat.

The Christian life is one inspired by a very different spirit from this. It looks not merely to one's own conscience and will, but to Christ, both for impulse and power. Its aim is so to appreciate his own wonderful love to us that a personal love to him, as the best and dearest of all friends, shall become the supreme affection of the soul. It tries to regard every duty and accept every trial, as assigned us by him and to be done or borne for him, as an expression of our love. In proportion as we live such a life, not one of mere duty, but of personal and outflowing love to Christ, we shall find the Christian life to be the happiest life that can be lived.

It is a most pernicious mistake to suppose, as many do, that Paul, in the latter part of the seventh chapter of Romans, is describing the life of a true disciple. The picture he so vividly paints is that of one who is striving in his own strength and by the power of his own resolution, to fight successfully the battle with temptation. The writer uses the first person singular, just as he does in the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians, for the sake of vivacity and impressiveness. Perhaps he was describing his own experience before he learned of Christ how to live the Christian life. But that he was not describing this life is very clear from the fact, not only that the struggler is constantly vanquished, as the true Christian is not, but that when the despairing cry has been wrung from him, "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" the apostle at once holds up Christ as the source of power and victory. "I thank God [deliverance is to be had] through Jesus Christ our Lord." And he then goes on in the eighth chapter to sing the glad song of victory which Christ has taught us: "There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus."—Advance.