p. 2 | The Confession of the Life

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jan 7, 1886

The Confession of the Life.

By Rev. A. J. Gordon, D. D.

“THOU hast confessed a good confession before many witnesses.” This is the highest and crowning confession. If a man's life is only the blurred and unsightly perversion of his confession instead of its living fac-simile, he is the greatest reproach upon Christianity which it has to bear. Now what kind of a life and example does the ordinance of baptism call for? It calls for a life dead to the world and crucified to sin. That means a life which is insensible to the appeals of fashion and wealth and honor and self-indulgence. “All that is in the world” the apostle sums up as the “lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.” But Paul, looking upon all these things, exclaims, “The world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world.” What impression do jewels and satins and diamonds make upon the dull eye of the corpse? What impression do gold and silver and stocks make upon the folded palms of the dead man in his coffin? What appeal can civil honor and political preference make to the citizen who was last week laid away in Mt. Auburn? And yet this condition of deadness to the world and all it contains is the high ideal which Paul sets before the Christian.

I do not say that it can be attained at once. It is the last and highest result of the discipline and trial and endeavor of an earnest life.

But I ask you, Is such a life your aim and desire? Are you, to use the apostle's words, obeying from the heart that form of doctrine to which you are committed? Ah, what reservations and withholdings there are from such a life! How we shrink from being utterly given up to God through separation from the world! In the first Christianization of Great Britain, the practice of immersion was universal. I have read that when a certain warrior-chief came to be baptized, he held up his right hand, that it might not be submerged with the rest of his body. And when asked the reason of this strange conduct, he replied, “I wish to reserve this right hand to fight my enemies with.” Alas, how many such reservations there are on the part of baptized Christians! A right hand kept back, with which to grasp covetously for wealth and honor; a right foot kept back, with which to stand in half-hearted attachment to the present evil world; a right eye kept back, with which to feast upon the glitter and glory of forbidden things.

But what is God's requirement for consecration? “I beseech you therefore, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice,” every power and part of us devoted to God in living service and for the furtherance of his glory. Does this seem too high and lofty an ideal for us to reach? Let us, at least, from this time onward, strive for it. Forgetting the things which are behind, and reaching forth to those things which are before, never giving over till we attain unto the fullness of the measure of the stature of Christ.—Rev. A. J. Gordon, D. D., in Golden Rule.