p. 1 | One with Him

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Oct 22, 1894

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 20, No. 50.

One with Him.

Jesus Christ identifies himself with his people. This has always been true and will always be true. Whatever is done to them he takes as being done to him. Whatever they suffer, he suffers, and when they rejoice in that which is good, he rejoices with them.

One with the Least.

This blessed truth is thus stated by the prophet of old: "In all their afflictions he was afflicted, and the Angel of his presence saved them; in his love and in his pity he redeemed them; and he bare them, and carried them all the days of old." Isa. 63:9. Our Lord himself thus expresses it in the New Testament: "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me." "Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me." Matt. 25:40, 45. Christ identifies himself, therefore, not alone with his people generally, but with the very least of them.

One in All Things.

A blessed and sustaining truth is this to the child of God. In the sore temptation he knows that not only did Christ while here upon the earth meet that very temptation in a general way, but he met it for every soul who will have to meet it afterward. He meets it now with the trusting soul. He walks with him the pathway of trouble and conflict. He bears with him the contumely and scorn, the reproach and persecution, of the world. He says, "The reproaches of them that reproached thee fell on me." The persecutor sees but the man, the "heretic," the "fanatic," the "crank," the "criminal," but High Heaven sees in him the Lord Jesus Christ, for whose sake is the persecution, "bound, scourged, and sold again." Every conscientious child of God, every advocate of true liberty, is the ambassador of the kingdom of God, and will not God avenge his chosen?

One in Death and Life.

"But his chosen may die?" Yes, as the world calls dying; but in him they live; in him they cannot die. He has been in the grave, and has come forth a mighty conqueror. He goes with his faithful servant in the grave in the blameless righteousness placed upon that servant, and righteousness is life. And as the grave could not hold Christ because he was righteous, so neither can it hold those upon whom Christ has placed the righteousness there is in him. What though we suffer persecution, Christ suffers with us; he identifies himself with us all the way. That apostle of whom God said, "I will show him how great things he must suffer for my name's sake," declares, "For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us," "if so be that we suffer with him." With Christ! His presence lights the darkness, smooths the roughness of the way, embalms the bruised feet, dries the tear-dimmed eyes, stays the fainting heart. And if in our blindness, ignorance, and perversity we make mistakes, there is none so ready, so mighty, so willing to forgive us and help us again in the sure path. Blessed indeed is the presence of Christ. Better, indeed, is "fire-walled hell with him than golden-gated Paradise without;" for he maketh the fiery furnace a palace of praise, and the desert waste a wellspring of joy. "O taste and see that the Lord is good; blessed is the man that trusteth in him."