Part 1.1 - Chapter 1-5
I
The Inner Life
Text: "I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, hut
now mine eye seeth thee: wherefore I abhor myself." — Job 42:5-6.
SOMEONE has called the Book of Job
"The Epic of the Inner Life." It is most
felicitous. We all know that there is an
inner life; that within the barriers of our be-
ing, behind all activities and externalities, we
ourselves live. We all know that there is trans-
acted the real life. We all know that there we
are solitary, that there every man is a hermit.
And while this, past all controversy, is true,
in another sense this strange inner life is im-
mensely populous. Passions, desires, tempta-
tions, lurid and demoniacal thoughts, angelic
thoughts, prayers, adorations, mean selfish-
nesses, wrestle and plead, and it is into this
chaos that faith brings the nature of God, and
the life of the risen Christ, and the immense
peace and power and joy of the Holy Spirit’s
11
12 THE NEW LIFE IN CHRIST JESUS
indwelling. And we all know that when we
have received eternal life we have written but
the first chapter in the new history of the in-
ner life. New conflicts, new victories, alas!
new defeats, too.
The most commonplace Christian whom you
know is transacting in the recesses of his be-
ing an epic.
And we know that this inner life is, finally,
the source and spring of the outer life. It is,
of course, possible to keep these dissimilar for
years, but soon or late the inner life becomes
determinative of the external life. It is with
this life, therefore, that God most concerns
Himself. It is the distinctive characteristic of
the gospel dispensation. "Now is the ax laid
to the root of the tree," says the forerunner,
John. "Make the tree good, and his fruit
good," is almost the opening word of Christ.
It was always so, indeed. "Behold, thou de-
sirest truth in the inward parts." "The Lord
pondereth the heart."
I can not, I think, do better than to take the
last chapter of the Book of Job for my point
of departure, verses 5 and 6:
THE INNER LIFE 18
"I have heard of thee by the hearing of the
ear, but now mine eye seeth thee; wherefore
I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes."
It is
THE CRISIS OF THE TROUBLED PATRIARCH
The thing itself is very simple. "I have
heard of thee by the hearing of the ear." There
was a testimony concerning God which had
come to Job, and upon which he had based a
true faith and a good life. Ordinarily, Chris-
tian experience has just that history. There
is a record concerning Christ, His person and
work. It is God’s testimony, and we receive it
and set to our seal that God is true. We are
saved. It is a very real faith, though a faith
based wholly upon testimony, the hearing of
the ear. That was the faith of Job down to
the very last chapter.
Here was a godly man whose outward life
was so blameless that God could challenge the
malice of Satan himself to find a flaw in it.
Nor was he but negatively good. He was a
good man in the positive sense. His life
counted on the right and helpful side of things.
14 THE NEW LIFE IN CHRIST JESUS
Then began that strange dealing of God,
that permitted chastening, which has been the
mystery in so many other lives. How strange a
thing that the best man of his time should be
the most troubled; should be the man upon
whom, as it seemed, the hand of God lay most
heavily. And the fact, as you know, called out
various interpretations. The opinion of Satan
concerning this man’s goodness and usefulness
was that he was a mere hireling. "Hast not
thou made an hedge about him?" You have
given him unusual prosperity, and in a certain
sense you have bribed him. That was Satan’s
opinion. That was a lie. And God permitted
Satan to demonstrate the falsity of his theory
of this man’s life. God said, in effect, "Take
away the hedge"; and then you know what
happened: his property went, his children
went, and yet the integrity of the man re-
mained. He did not curse God. And then
Satan fell back upon another theory which was
just as false as the other. He said: "Skin for
skin; yea, all that a man hath will he give for
his life." You have left the man his health.
"Put forth now thine hand, and touch his bone
THE INNER LIFE 15
and his flesh, and he will curse thee to thy
face." .And so that was permitted. His health
went, grievous pains fell upon him. Bereft of
property, bereft of family, bereft of health,
and yet this man, with a faith which was
founded upon a hearing about God, main-
tained his integrity.
And then came the theories of his friends.
They agreed in the belief that there must be
in his life some secret sin, although he had suc-
ceeded in covering it from human vision. They
were very sure that the only explanation of the
sorrows which were falling so heavily upon
him was, that he was a hypocrite; was not as
good as he seemed to be, and upon that belief
they argued the question with him. But Job
knew that also to be false, and he made good
his contention that he was not a hypocrite.
A VISION OF GOD
And now we come to the real epic of his in-
ner life. God Himself took up the matter.
And if you follow the closing chapters of this
wonderful Book of Job, you will find the whole
16 THE NEW LIFE IN CHRIST JESUS
mechanics, so to speak, of the deeper dealing of
God with the inner life of a saint whom He is
about to make saintly.
There was, first of all, the unveiling of His
power, His majesty, His greatness.
"Then the Lord answered Job out of the
whirlwind. * * * Where wast thou when
I laid the foundations of the earth? * * *
Whereupon are the foundations thereof fast-
ened? or who laid the cornerstone thereof,
when the morning stars sang together, and all
the sons of God shouted for joy? * * *
Hast thou commanded the morning since the
days, and caused the dayspring to know his
place? Knowest thou the ordinances of heav-
en? Canst thou set the dominion thereof in the
earth? * * * Wilt thou also disannul my
judgment?"
Ah, poor Job ! Thou wert able to maintain
thy cause against Satan and against man, but
what wilt thou answer to God ? What, indeed,
can Job say before this personal manifestation
of God Himself but that which he did say :
"I have heard of thee by the hearing of
THE INNER LIFE 17
the ear; but now mine eye seeth thee. Where-
fore I abhor myself."
THE UTTEB COLLAPSE OF SELF
Yes, fellow-man, thyself. Now the secret is
out.
It was not at all something Job had done,
it was what Job was. Job himself was wrong.
He had never judged self before God. He
had not the sentence of death in himself. The
interpretative chapter of Job is the twenty-
ninth. The personal pronoun occurs forty-
eight times in twenty-five verses. He was a
good man, but he was too much aware of it,
and he was in deep darkness as to the real
state of his soul, of his inner life before God.
And nothing, not the depth of his affliction,
nor the reproaches of his friends, nor his own
self-communings ever brought him to see him-
self. But when he passed from a knowledge
about God to a personal acquaintance with
God there was nothing to be said but the de-
spairing:
"I have heard of thee by the hearing of the
18 THE NEW LIFE IN CHRIST JESUS
ear, but now mine eye seeth thee. Wherefore
I abhor myself."
The revelation of God, bringing a real sense
of personal unworthiness and demerit, is what
I think essentially we have in this experience
of Job. It is not in exercises of self about
self; not in any efforts of Job to discover the
mystery of his inner life, that he comes to real
self-consciousness ; but it was the vision of God
Himself which, flooding his inner being,
brought the humbling, hateful vision of self.
A NEW AND HIGHER SERVICE
And then the most astonishing thing of all
happened. God took up the vindication and
restoration of the man who abhorred himself!
"The Lord said to Eliphaz the Temanite,
My wrath is kindled against thee and against
thy two friends: for ye have not spoken of
me the thing that is right, as my servant Job
hath."
And then, as you know, God made of Job
a priest through whom alone the three re-
proachful moralizers could approach His of-
fended holiness.
THE INNER LIFE 19
"My servant Job shall pray for you, and
him will I accept."
You see, we have essentially four things
here: First, the vision of God; secondly, the
utter collapse of self; thirdly, a new and higher
service; and lastly, a doubled fruitfulness.
"Also the Lord gave Job twice as much as
he had before."
Now I believe we have here an order which
is invariable, and I am very sure that we have
here an experience which is not exceptional.
Oh, beloved, we too have heard of Him by
the hearing of the ear, but we need to come to
deeper things, closer things, with God. We
need to come to that personal and underived
acquaintanceship with Him, so that we may
say with the men of Samaria, "Now we believe
not because of thy saying; for we have heard
him ourselves, and know that this is indeed the
Christ," although the first effect of it will be
this awful humbling, this utter collapse of self.
But oh, how blessed a place is that valley of
humbling. No one falls there who does not
rise to newness of life and service. But re-
20 THE NEW LIFE IN CHRIST JESUS
member, it costs the sentence of death in self;
the thorough reconstruction of the inner life.
NOT AN ISOLATED EXPERIENCE
It will help us in interpreting this experience
to see that it came, not to Job alone, but to
every man greatly used of God. The circum-
stances differ but the essence is the same — God
is realized, self-strength is turned into helpless-
ness, new power and blessing are given. Josh-
ua fell at the feet of the Man with the drawn
sword (Jos 5:13-15) ; Isaiah must cry, "Woe
is me" (Isa 6:5-8), only to be cleansed and
recommissioned ; Jeremiah must learn that he
"cannot speak" before the Lord will touch his
mouth (Jer 1:6-10); Ezekiel, prostrated by
the glory, must fall on his face in the collapse
of self before the Spirit can fill him, and Je-
hovah can say, "I send thee" (Eze 1:28;
2:1-10) ; Daniel must say, "I saw . . . and
my comeliness was turned in me into corrup-
tion" (Dan 10:5-12). Even John the Be-
loved, before the vision of the glorified Christ,
must fall "at his feet as one dead" before the
THE INNER LIFE 21
"right hand" can be laid upon him, and he can
hear the "fear not."
I wish now to gather up briefly what all this
means. And first of all,
TWO THINGS WHICH IT IS NOT
It is neither the entire eradication of the
flesh, the death, the extinction of self, nor is it
sinless perfection. Self is abhorred, distrusted,
detested, set at naught. But so uniform are
the characteristics of this experience, whatever
the age or dispensation, that it is not difficult to
state both the result accomplished and the
steps by which it is wrought.
1. We have, then, in this supreme experi-
ence, the revelation of God Himself to the soul.
It is not something about God ; some new tes-
timony concerning God, or some lesson of
sorrow or trial. It is God’s own act, His self-
revelation of something which testimony had
never communicated to heart or conscience, so
that there is a new and intense apprehension of
himself.
2. The instances quoted from the Scrip-
22 THE NEW LIFE IN CHRIST JESUS
tures agree, too, in the effect of this unveiling
of God. Before that vision of God self is ab-
horred. So absolute is this effect that, as we
have seen, it is constantly spoken of as the ut-
ter deprivation of strength. The self-life is
not slain, but it is so seen in that glory as never
again to be trusted, or in any way counted on
in the things of God. As Paul said : "We had
the sentence of death in ourselves, that we
should not trust in ourselves, but in God, which
raiseth the dead," in the God of the resurrec-
tion, in the God of the new, undying life.
3. In agreement, too, are the biblical in-
stances that this destruction of self-confidence
is followed by the infilling with the strength
of Him who was dead and is alive again. Not
once is the man on his face before the awful,
beautiful vision left prostrate. "I received
strength," is the unvarying testimony.
4. And then comes the new and higher ser-
vice. This is the blessed consummation; this
and the new fruitfulness.
Could I covet anything better for you than
that you should see God face to face? Than
THE INNER LIFE 28
that there should come to you this highest word
in the epic of the inner life? May He grant it,
for His name’s sake.
II
The Imparted Life
Text: "I am come that they might have life, and that they
might have it more abundantly." — John 10:10.
THIS was the new note in the message
of Jesus Christ. It fell, for the most
part, upon uncomprehending ears.
After nineteen centuries of alleged gospel
preaching it is still for the most part uncom-
prehended.
That Christ was a teacher of ethics, as in the
Sermon on the Mount, is understood. That
He died for our sins is, as a fact, understood.
That He changed the issue from righteousness
by works to righteousness by faith, moving the
centre from Mount Sinai in Arabia to Mount
Calvary in Judea, is understood, though halt-
ingly, but that He came to impart to believing
human beings a new quality of life, even the
very life which was and is in Himself — this is
not understood.
Eternal life is, indeed, much spoken of, but
24
THE IMPARTED LIFE 25
it is understood to mean mere duration of be-
ing — the persistency of life notwithstanding
the fact of physical death.
In the teaching of Jesus Christ, as in the
apostolic writings, the eternal life imparted by
Christ to all who believe in Him, is indeed a
term implying endlessness of life, but, since
endlessness is also a quality of mere human
life, eternal life is, far more emphatically, a
term of quality, of kind.
The ministry of John the Baptist also had
its startling message, "And now also the ax is
laid unto the root of the trees." There was
to be no more experimentation with the old
Adamic tree, no more seeking of fruit from a
stock that, after centuries of testing, could
produce but wild fruit. "Make the tree good"
is the new word, and this can only be done by
giving the tree a new life and nature. "That
which is born of the flesh is flesh," and can
never be made aught else. The old man under
the new gospel is to be crucified with Christ,
not improved by higher ideals. "They that
are in the flesh cannot please God." The
Adamic taint forbids it, and is ineradicable.
26 THE NEW LIFE IN CHRIST JESUS
Two things are said by Christ in this tenth
chapter of John: He gives his life for the
sheep (vs. 11, 15, 17), and this is redemption;
and He gives His life to the sheep (vs. 28) and
this is regeneration.
Precisely this duality is found in the third
chapter. The sheep are under a two-fold dis-
ability: they are "perishing" under the curse
and sentence of the law, and must be redeemed
by one able and willing to be "made a curse"
in their stead; but also they are born of the
flesh and therefore mere flesh-men, unable to
"see" or "enter" the kingdom of God, and for
this there is no remedy save in a re-birth.
But precisely these two needs are met by the
gospel of the love of God; the Son of man
must be lifted up on the cross to redeem the
perishing, and the Holy Spirit imparts the di-
vine nature and the new life to all who believe
on the Son of man as crucified for their sins.
THE NEW LIFE IS CHRIST’S LIFE
Mere endlessness of being would not be
"eternal" life. Eternal is "from everlasting to
everlasting." Only He who "was in the begin-
THE IMPARTED LIFE 27
ning with God * * * was God" could be-
stow, through the eternal Spirit, eternal life.
And this imparted life is His own life. "I
am the vine, ye are the branches." What a
symbol of unity of life is the vine with its
branches. The branch has no independent
source of life. The life of the vine and the life
of the branch are one. All possibility of re-
newal, of growth, of fruitfulness depends upon
the life energy of the vine. Well might the
vine say to the branch, "Because I live, ye shall
live also."
It would not be possible to state more
strongly than does our Lord this identity in
life of Himself and those who through faith
in Him crucified have been born again. "As *
* * I live by the Father: so he that eateth
me, even he shall live by me." "As thou,
Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also
may be one in us." "I in them, and thou in
me.
The vital suggestions are, if possible, even
more intense in our Lord’s simile of "the corn
of wheat." Just as a grain of wheat sown, dies
indeed, yet dies into countless grains of wheat,
28 THE NEW LIFE IN CHRIST JESUS
giving its own life to each, so Christ speaks of
His own death.
And this testimony to oneness of life with
Christ pervades the apostolic explanation of
the gospel. The church is declared to be His
body. The human body, composed of many
members, is the figure used to express the one-
ness with Him of the "many members" who
constitute, like the members of the natural
body, one organism, and this organism is called
"Christ" (1Co 12:12). It is declared of
Christ, not only that He gave life to the be-
liever, but that He "is our life." And John
declares the record to be "that God hath given
to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son."
THE INLIVING CHRIST TO BE OUTLIVED
God expects nothing from the flesh — the
self-man. In the divine reckoning our old man
was crucified with Christ. The old man is
summed up in one terrific word of three let-
ters — sin. Acts of sin proceed from a nature
which is sin.
In one great and luminous passage the Holy
Spirit through the Apostle Paul states, in the
THE IMPARTED LIEE 29
terms of the apostle’s actual experience, the
fact and method of the new life: "I am cruci-
fied with Christ." This is a fact of revelation
not a fact of consciousness. Paul does not
"feel" crucified, but in the divine reckoning he
is counted so, and this the apostle also reckons
to be true. God expects nothing from the old
Saul of Tarsus, and in the seventh of Romans
experience the apostle has learned the final
truth about Saul: "In me, that is in my flesh,
dwelleth no good thing."
Then comes a fact of consciousness, "Nev-
ertheless I live," followed by another fact of
revelation, "Christ liveth in me." Saul lives as
yet, but death or the return of Christ will be
the end of the Saul life, and Christ also lives in
Paul.
Then comes the practical, present outcome
of it all, "The life which I now live in the
flesh" (body). How shall that life be lived?
The Holy Spirit gives an answer to which,
speaking broadly, the church has never risen.
THE METHOD OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE
Two theories of Christian living here on
30 THE NEW LIFE IN CHRIST JESUS
earth have measured, and do measure, the aver-
age faith.
First, life by precept, by rule. There is a
large truth here. The Bible is a great in-
struction in righteousness; a great revelation
of the mind of God about human life. No in-
ner light can take the place of the divine rev-
elation. It is perfect ethically and also com-
plete.
But it has the fatal defect of furnishing no
dynamic. "The law made nothing perfect."
Precept gives a perfect rule of life, and by it
life must always be tested, but precept carries
no enablement. "The law * * * was weak
through the flesh." A chart does not carry
us across the ocean, but it shows us where we
are on the trackless deep, and where to go.
The life by precept was tried under law and
left the whole world of humanity in speechless
guilt before God.
Still more hopeless is the notion of life by
the example of Christ. "What would Christ
do?" is the formula. As to immoralities, self-
ishness, worldliness, the answer is easy. In all
the real crises of life it utterly breaks down.
THE IMPARTED LIFE 81
Our conclusions as to what Christ would do
arc vitiated bv our limitations of habit of
thought, of unspirituality, of ignorance of
Christ. In His earth-life He constantly did the
things that shocked every religionist in Pales-
tine — Pharisee, Sadducee, Herodian. He did
not do the things they thought He ought to do,
hut every day did something they thought in-
consistent with His Messiahship.
What then is Christian living? It is Christ
living out His life in the terms of our person-
alis, and under the conditions which environ
us. We do not ask, "What would Christ do?"
we say to self, "Yet not I," and yield our
powers to the sway of the inliving Christ. "Al-
ways bearing about in the body the putting to
death of the Lord Jesus," (the practical ex-
pression of our co-crucifixion with Him being
"having no confidence in the flesh") , "that the
life also of Jesus might be made manifest in
our body."
And we are not to be discouraged by fail-
ures. Not all at once does Christ gain com-
plete control over powers and faculties accus-
32 THE NEW LIFE IN CHRIST JESUS
tomed to the rule of self; but, "walking in the
Spirit," there assuredly comes an increasing
sense of peace, rest, joy.
III
The Tragedy of the Inner Life
Text: "For to will is present with me, bat how to perform
that which is good, I find not." — Rom. 7:18.
THAT is the tragedy of the inner life;
the breakdown of the human will be-
fore the Christian ethic; the torment
of an unattained ideal.
The defeat of a languid desire is nothing;
but to throw the whole power of the will on the
side of something which God commands, and
then to rind the will break down, that, for an
earnest soul, is tragic beyond words.
It is a very common mistake to suppose
that we could be holy if we only wanted to.
We think our difficulty lies in bringing the
will to act on the side of what God requires,
and that if we really put forth sufficient will
power we should enter upon a spiritual life.
But here is a man who makes the amazing dis-
covery that the spiritual life is something
33
34 THE NEW LIFE IN CHRIST JESUS
above the reach of his will at its highest
stretch. He can not grasp spirituality and
bring it down into his life by willing to do it.
And this was the experience, let us remember,
of one of the strongest wills that ever was
lodged in a human character. The Apostle
Paul was not a weakling; he was endowed
with immense will power. When he was a
mere
RELIGIONIST AND NOT A CHRISTIAN
he was not a lax nor a languid one. He saw
that the great enemy of the traditionalism in
which he had been reared was this new thing,
Christianity ; and his imperious will forced him
into the very front of the fight against Christi-
anity; made of him "the tiger of the Sanhe-
drin." Nothing deterred him — no weeping of
women, no plaint of age, or youth; he put
Christian men and women in prison, and when
the question was one of stoning them to death
he gave his vote against them. No, Paul was
never a half-and-half man. There was in him
not merely a fullness of intellectual vigor and
life that compelled him to take sides, but there
THE TRAGEDY OF THE INNER LIFE 35
was in him a force of will that enabled him to
accomplish his desires.
But here was a seemingly simple thing that
he was not able to do; but now he has before
him an ideal which is unattainable by the
power of his resolution. "To will is present
with me," he says, "but how to perform that
which is good, I find not." He can not will
himself into spirituality.
what is "good"?
That is the case before us. But we shall
never understand what Paul means unless we
stop for a moment to consider his little word
"good." What is this good that Paul can not
do by willing to do it? We may exclude some
things at once. He is not speaking here of
morality, of honesty, of kindliness, of chastity,
of faithfulness in the relations in which man
stands to man, as husband, as parent, as
friend. These things lie completely within the
power of the will. Every one of us has known
men wholly apart from Christian power and
Christian influence who were all of these
36 THE NEW LIFE IN CHRIST JESUS
things. Every community has upright, truth-
ful, honest, kindly, courageous, helpful, clean,
high-living men who are not Christians.
The Apostle Paul is not speaking of those
good qualities at all; all those things he had
done all his life; his will had proved effective
in that sphere.
And neither is he thinking, by this word
good, of common religiousness, church-mem-
bership, church-going, saying prayers, read-
ing the Bible, giving money; all these things
he had done all his life by will power. He
was the foremost religionist of his time, by a
conscientious use of his will.
Well, then, what does he mean by speaking
of the good which he wills but can not attain?
He means such things as this : "For to me to
live is Christ, and to die is gain." And this:
"I am crucified with Christ; nevertheless I
live; yet not I but Christ, liveth in me; and the
life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the
faith of the Son of God, who loved me and
gave himself for me." That is what he is think-
ing about — the
THE TRAGEDY OF THE INNER LIFE a:
REPRODUCTION OF CHRIST BEFORE MEN
— of being Christlike. That is what he calls
"good." Did Paul mean, then, that he was de-
feated in a will to he Christlike — not as good
as Christ, but good like Christ in measure?
Yes.
He had before his mind, to illustrate it
further, perhaps, the beatific character. He had
read the Sermon on the Mount, and we may
be very sure that he put it into its right place,
dispensationally, but he was not willing for one
moment to say that because he was in grace
and in the church, and not in the kingdom
and not under law, that therefore he was justi-
fied in living on a lower level than the kingdom
life — rather he would say, " a higher demand
is laid upon me."
And while there was not in his mind all this
negative and inferior morality, there was in
his mind the spiritual morality which forms the
Christian standard. "Blessed are the poor in
spirit," he would say, and then I can imagine
that he would beat upon his breast and say,
"Oh, proud Paul! Oh, Paul, when will you
38 THE NEW LIFE IN CHRIST JESUS .
ever be poor in spirit?" And then, perhaps,
in the earlier stages of his experience he would
say, "I will be poor in spirit."
"Blessed are the meek." "Oh," he would
say afterward, "I am the chief of sinners.
When I read that word meek, I dare not lift
my eyes to him — I can not." Did you, my
hearer, every try to be meek? If you did, did
you succeed? It is open to any one to act
meekly, to go around with a kind of
URIAH HEEP ’UMBLENESS
but that only makes a hateful Pharisee of you ;
that is not being meek. And if there is any-
thing that Jesus Christ hates, it is Pharisee-
ism; that is the one thing He can not do any-
thing with. The only word he had for the
Pharisee of his day was, "Woe unto you." He
had no messages for them; there was nothing
in his gospel for a Pharisee. No, Paul is not
going back to Phariseeism. And, deeper than
that there was in Paul’s heart, when he talked
about being "good," the imperious demand
which his new nature and the urge of the new
life made upon him that he should have victory
THE TRAGEDY OF THE INNER LIFE 39
over self in all the forms in which self mani-
fests itself.
Now in the face of a standard as exalted as
the Christlike life there is
A GRAVE DANGER
That danger must have been present to Paul,
and I have no doubt he had to resist it and to
cry mightily to God about it; the danger, I
mean, of saying or thinking that the Christ
standard is too high ; that it was put there, not
to attain to, but as an ideal toward which we
are to aspire. We are to consent to it that it
is good, but for flesh to expect to attain to it is
another thing. Well, here was a man who
was minded to live that kind of a life, some-
how, and never let himself go till he did.
There is a saying, you know, that if you aim
your arrow at the moon you won’t hit the
moon, but you will shoot higher than if you
aimed your arrow at a barn. Well, Paul never
let himself down by any poor sophistry like
that. You and I do, my friends.
Now I want to pass on to
40 THE NEW LIFE IN CHRIST JESUS
A VERY PRACTICAL QUESTION
What does Paul mean by saying, "To will
is present with me, but how to perform that
which is good, I find not"? I have heard all
my Christian life the statement that Christians
are not to live in the seventh of Romans. Well,
I would to God that nine out of ten of them
got into the seventh of Romans. The man in
the seventh of Romans is not a listless dweller
in spiritual things; he is a man whose heart is
breaking and whose being is in agony because
his life is not like Christ’s! The man in the
seventh of Romans is a man who was all red
with the blood of the Son of God. He knew
that he was wrestling with something that was
awful and real, and he was bound to have the
solution for this problem if God has one for
him. I ask, what does this man need who
wills and resolves to do good, and then finds
himself defeated? Does he need more ethics?
A higher standard? Why, the poor man
knows more good now than he is doing; and
just there is the weakness of mere ethical
preaching. It continually says to the poor
THE TRAGEDY OF THE INNER LIFE 41
sinner, "Be good," but never teUs him how to
be good. And the pulpit today is largely en-
gaged with telling people to "be good" and not
telling them how.
We come to him with the Ten Command-
ments and say, "Why, Paul, I do not know
what is the matter with you; you seem beside
yourself with all this talk about not being able
to be good. Here are the Commandments."
And he says, "But I know them; I have known
them from my youth up, and I delight in them
after the inner man, but I can not keep even
them." No, law can not help him. Law says,
"Thou shalt," and "Thou shalt not," but it
adds nothing to the force and power of man;
nothing whatever. Well, what does he need?
NOT ETHICS, BUT DYNAMICS
The man needs superhuman power to enable
him to realize in his life a superhuman spiritu-
ality.
Now, when any one says, as an objection to
Christianity, that the ethical demand of Chris-
tianity is too high for human nature, he has
just begun to find out the truth; a truth that
42 THE NEW LIFE IN CHRIST JESUS
about eight out of every ten Christians never
do find out. It is too high for human nature.
It is meant to be too high for human nature.
It is put where no hand of man can ever touch
it; where no unassisted human capacity can
ever reach it. And if that were all, the gospel
would be to the saint, whatever it may be to
the sinner, a message of despair. But that is
not all.
Along with this superhuman demand, super-
human power is offered. And Paul laid hold
upon it. He did not stay in the seventh of
Romans, for when the will is aroused to its
utmost power and yet can not do a thing, then
the man has reached the end of himself.
AT PEACE AND VICTORIOUS
When we pass from the seventh to the eighth
of Romans we find the wretched man of the
seventh of Romans at peace and victorious;
what is now his testimony? "The law of the
spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me
free from the law of sin and death." Not a
new resolution, nor a new habit, nor a deeper
hold on himself, nor more prayer. Do you
THE TRAGEDY OF THE INNER LIFE 48
think that a man in the agony of the seventh
of Romans does not pray ? Why, the Apostle
Paul, when he was there, prayed, you may be
sure, day and night on his face before God.
Not more prayer, nor more anything that you
and I can do, nor that Paul could do, but
something that God can do.
THERE IS THE REMEDY
That is what Paul means: not more from
within, but something from without put with-
in. And almost while he is saying, "Oh,
wretched man that I am," out of the very
agony of spiritual defeat, he lifts up his face
in triumphant testimony for he has found the
secret, and he says, "The law of the spirit of
life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from
the law of sin and death" (Rom 8:2).
So this man can write afterward, "For me
to live is Christ"; write it to Philippians who
knew him more intimately than you know me.
"The life which now I live in the flesh, I live
by the faith of the Son of God" he could say
to those Galatians who had seen him under
trial and testing, "Not by my efforts, nor by
44 THE NEW LIFE IN CHRIST JESUS
my resolutions, nor by my vows, but by the
power, the authority, the law, of the spirit of
life in Christ Jesus."
Defeated along the line of the will, he is vic-
torious by the power of the Spirit within him;
the superhuman standard achieved by super-
human power. Paul laid hold upon that
power, and so we have the triumphant eighth
chapter of Romans, which may be the experi-
ence of every child of God — a life of continual
victory, peace and power.
IV
The Delivered Life
Text: "If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be
free indeed." — John 8:36.
THE most widespread and universal of
the delusions current among men is
the notion that they are free. No
imputation is more quickly, more vehemently
resented than the imputation of slavery, of
bondage. There are no free men. Millions,
thank God, are in the process of emancipation,
but none are yet completely emancipated.
Paul told the Roman chief captain that he
was born free. In the limited sense in which
he used the word it was true; Paul was born a
Roman citizen. But in every other important
sense the words were not true, as Paul would
have been the first to admit. Like all of us,
Paul inherited chains. For centuries that
mysterious force, heredity, had been silently,
invisibly, preparing bonds for him — bonds for
spirit, soul, body. Every soul born into the
45
46 THE NEW LIFE IN CHRIST JESUS
world is born into an invisible net which the
centuries have been weaving for him. Its
meshes are race predisposition, race habit, fam-
ily habit, sin, formal religion, and, "they say."
Think of the men to whom Christ was talk-
ing when He uttered the words of our text.
"We be Abraham’s seed, and were never in
bondage to any man." They spoke honestly
enough, as we do when we boast of our free-
dom, but at that moment they were in political,
intellectual and religious bondage.
Politically, they were under bondage to an
assortment of despots from Caesar down to
Herod and Pilate. Morally, they were the
slaves of race pride, of prejudice, of ignorance,
of habit, of sin, of self-will. Religiously, they
were the slaves of traditionalism, of bigotry, of
formalism.
WE ARE SLAVES OF PARTY
Is our case better? Very slightly. Theoret-
ically, we are free politically. Actually, we are
the slaves of party, of the caucus, of the bosses.
The very minute I give over into the hands of
a convention the right to formulate my polit-
THE DELIVERED LIFE 47
ical creed I am no longer absolutely free.
When I take my opinions, my convictions, con-
cerning morals or religion second-hand from
other men, whether they are men of today or
men of the Reformation period, or of the early
church councils, I am no longer free.
When I allow a habit to dominate my life,
I am no longer free. When I allow pride or
vanity, or ambition, or pleasure to control my
life, I am the basest of slaves. The very fact
that I do not, can not, of myself, cease from
sin proclaims me a slave. Jesus Christ came
into a world of slaves.
CHRIST THE EMANCIPATOR
It is interesting to note that His first formal
announcement of His mission on earth touched
life at that very point. In the synagogue at
Nazareth there was handed to Him the book
of the Prophet Isaiah, and He found the place
where it was written: "The spirit of the Lord
is upon me, because he hath anointed me to
preach * * * deliverance to the captives."
He begins with our slavery to sin. And here
*8 THE NEW LIFE IN CHRIST JESUS
He encounters an initial difficulty. The man
whom He would set free is not only a slave, but
a condemned slave. He is a slave, exposed for
sale, but with a halter round his neck. Who
will redeem him? Nay, rather, who can re-
deem him? Not his brother man, for he too is
a slave with a halter round his own neck.
"What is the price of this slave? of that one?"
One price for all. Whoever will redeem these
slaves must die in their stead. And, obviously,
only one who has never sinned, and who is him-
self perfectly free, can be accepted. Only one
being has ever appeared who met these neces-
sary conditions — Jesus Christ. And, to pay
that price is the very business that brought
Jesus Christ to this earth. At the cost of His
own life, of His own unimaginable suffering,
He pays the last demand of a holy law and re-
deems from death the slaves of sin.
Are they free from the curse of the law?
Yes. From the habit of sin? No. Then begin
those great redemptive processes which work
in the sphere of the inner life, the object of
which is the transformation of character and
complete deliverance from the dominion of sin.
THE DELIVERED LIFE 49
THE PROCESS OF DELIVERANCE
It begins with the complete removal of fear.
The believer is told that he is not under law,
that is, a system of probation to see if he can
work out a righteousness for himself, but un-
der grace, that is, a system of divine in work-
ing, which produces the very righteousness
which the law required, but which man never
achieved. The believer is assured that Christ
has given to him eternal life, and that he shall
never perish ; that nothing is able to pluck him
out of the omnipotent hand which holds him;
that lie who began a good work in him will
perfect it till the day of Christ. As for his
sins; they are blotted out, cast behind God’s
back, buried in the depths of the sea, forgiven
and forgotten. And this is a necessary first
work, for no man is really free who is under the
bondage of fear.
Then grace imparts to the believer the in-
dwelling Holy Spirit. The nature that was
open to every assault from without, and a slave
to every vile impulse from within is now gar-
risoned by omnipotence. In the power of that
50 THE NEW LIFE IN CHRIST JESUS
indwelling One, the believer is made free from
the monstrous necessity of sinning under which
every unredeemed life groans. No Christian
needs to sin. If he yields to solicitations from
without, or the more subtle suggestions from
within, it is because he deliberately or care-
lessly wills it so. The Spirit is there to break
the power of sin.
GRACE AND THE INSPIRATION OF NEW RELATION-
SHIP
Then grace puts the renewed life under the
stimulus and inspiration of great relationships.
The believer is not merely a pardoned criminal,
he is a child and son of God ; and that by a new
birth which is as actual in the sphere of the
spiritual as his natural birth was in the sphere
of the physical. He is a son of God, not by
some far-off fact of creation, but by the imme-
diate and personal fact of a divine begetting.
He no longer traces his descent from God
through Adam, but is, as Adam was, a son of
God with no intervening ancestor.
This, the believer is told, brings him into the
wonderful privileges of access to the Father,
THE DELIVERED LIFE 51
and of fellowship with Him. Christ is not
ashamed to call him "brother"; he is raised to
joint heirship with Christ in all things, and is
to share the power and glory of Christ in the
coming kingdom.
Grace confers upon the believer the great
offices of priest and king. As priest he is set
free from the ancient formalism in the worship
of God "entering into the holiest by the blood
of Jesus," and offering, without regard to time
or place, "spiritual sacrifices, acceptable unto
God through Jesus Christ." His worship,
freed from ceremonialism, is a son’s adoration
of a Father who is infinite in holiness and be-
nevolence and power, but who is none the less
a Father because He is God. And this office
of priest carries of necessity the privilege of in-
tercession. The believer-priest prays for those
outside the family of God who do not pray for
themselves. He, like Christ, is the daysman
and remembrancer before his Father of the un-
believing world.
Grace tells the believer that he is as vitally
united to Christ as the members of his own
body are united to him. "By one Spirit are
52 THE NEW LIFE IN CHRIST JESUS
we all baptized into one body." "He that is
joined unto the Lord is one Spirit."
WHAT TRUE FREEDOM IS
But Christian freedom is not anarchy, which
is the mere riot of self-will, but it is to be so
joined to God the Father; so vitally one with
Christ the Son; so yielded to the gentle sway
of the Holy Spirit, that the human will is
blended into the divine will, and so made one
with the absolutely free and sovereign will of
God Himself. God does as He wills, but God
always wills to do that which is at once abso-
lutely right and absolutely benevolent.
And in all this there is no subversion of the
believer’s individuality, but the lifting of that
individuality to the divine level of a passionate
love of all that is lovely. It is obedience, but
obedience under the new covenant, where the
law is written in the heart, like mother-love.
A mother finds her highest joy in obedience
to that imperative born into her deepest being
with the birth of her child.
No truly honest man feels the constraint of
the laws against theft. He is not honest be-
THE DELIVERED LIFE 53
cause of something printed in a statute book,
but because of something printed on his heart.
He would still be honest if the statute were
repealed. And therefore he is perfectly free.
Without that interior work no external thing
done to a man makes or can make him free.
Executive clemency extended to a convicted
criminal does not make him a free man. He is
still the slave of his criminal desires. But if
he falls in love with honesty and uprightness
and integrity, then he is free. All this trans-
formation grace works in the redeemed heart.
THE NEW IDEAL OE LIFE
Then grace works transformingly by the
power of new and exalted ideals. The whole
conception of life is changed. Under the old
bondage life was conceived of as a possession
which man might rightly use for himself ; under
the new ideal, life is precious because it may be
used for the blessing of others. The new man
in Christ has accepted as the new ideal of his
new life Christ’s law of sacrifice. He heartily
adopts Christ’s formula: "The Son of man
came not to be ministered unto, but to minister,
54 THE NEW LIFE IN CHRIST JESUS
and to give his life a ransom for many"; "He
that will save his life shall lose it, but he that
will lose his life for my sake, shall find it";
"Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground
and die, it abideth alone, but if it die, it bring-
eth forth much fruit."
Such an ideal, heartily accepted, under the
conviction that so only may life be nobly lived,
works of itself toward disenthralment from the
old slavery of self.
Pursued, though with many a failure, and
with steps which often halt, such an ideal is a
transformation. The man who accepts it has
issued to the universe his declaration of in-
dependence. He is free from the old appeals
and solicitations which had power over him
because they seemed to promise something
toward the old monstrous ministry to the god
self. No longer desiring self-exaltation or self-
pleasing, the bribe has ceased to appeal. Its
presentment only causes pain to the heart that
has fallen in love with humility.
THE VISION OF ETERNITY
Then grace allures and charms with the
THE DELIVERED LIFE 55
vision of eternal things. Paul divides all things
into two categories, things seen and things un-
seen, and he declares that the seen things have
the fatal defect of being temporary, while the
unseen things have the infinite value of eter-
nal endurance. Believing this, the new man in
Christ sits lightly to things seen. They become
the mere incidents of life, not its substance. Of
this world’s goods he may have much, and he
is glad because they can be used to enrich other
lives; or he may gather little, and he is glad
because he has not the responsibility of the
right use of great possessions. His true inheri-
tance is in heaven. And in and through all
this the Son has made him free.
Walking in the Spirit, the Lord’s free-man
has but to heed the exhortation, "Stand fast,
therefore, in the liberty wherewith Christ hath
made us free, and be not entangled again with
the yoke of bondage."
V
The Larger Christian Life
Text: "He brought me forth also into a large place." — Psa. 18:19.
YOU observe that we have here a testi-
mony, not a promise. God actually had
done this thing for David. He was a
shepherd lad; obscure, conscious but dimly if at
all of his own capacities; shut up to the small
things and small thoughts of a young rustic.
Then God began to work in his life, stimulat-
ing him with great promises, leading him into
great ventures, beating him with the hammer
of adversity till the crude ore of him was
turned into tempered steel; but all the while
breaking shackles, tearing away enmeshing
nets, lifting the wings of his soul, filling him
with divine inbreathings, expanding, enlarging,
disenthralling him ; until at last David came to
the consciousness that he was a free man and
in a large place. He could stand with lifted
head, strong young arms outflung, upraised
56
THE LARGER CHRISTIAN LIFE 57
chest breathing deep the free, ample air, a
man at home in the universe. I repeat it,
David is testifying here, not theorizing. lie
had found it so. Upon which I remark :
THE REAL CHRISTIAN LIFE IS LARGE
It is the men who are living without God
who are living in a small and narrow place.
There is no more shameless lie afloat among
men than that the Christian life is a narrow
life, and that the life that does not subject it-
self to the will of God is a high, free thing.
We are all, I believe, passionate lovers of
liberty. We seek room; we want a place in
which we may expand and broaden out. A
great many young people of today have a fancy
that to come into the will of God is to come
into narrowness. It is Satan’s lie. But let us
not blame the devil overmuch. He never could
have got his lie believed if so many of God’s
people had not made "religion" a poor nega-
tive thing: a system of "don’t" and of outward
observance.
It was to intensely "religious" people — in
58 THE NEW LIFE IN CHRIST JESUS
this sense — that Christ spoke His great word,
"If the Son, therefore, shall make you free, ye
shall be free indeed." He came to preach de-
liverance to the captive of formalism no less
than to the captive of sin. The gospel is a call
out of littleness, out of pettiness, out of insig-
nificant things, to the breadth and sweep of
great thoughts and forces, and to the wide hori-
zon of limitless possibilities.
Now it is true of every child of God that he
is brought into a large place. Unfortunately,
many persist in living narrow lives in the large
place. To be free and not to know it, this
seems to me tragical and pathetic beyond
words. One thinks of old prisoners set free,
and weeping for the old dungeon again.
CIRCUMSTANCES CANNOT NARROW IT
Just here permit me to anticipate a very nat-
ural objection. You say, "I live in obscurity;
God has set me in narrow circumstances, in a
routine of petty duties. I live in a farm house ;
I live in a village ; I toil in a factory ; I monot-
onously feed pieces of leather or wood into a
THE LARGER CHRISTIAN LIFE 59
machine and never see them again; I plow, I
delve, I sell cloth by the yard, I wash pans and
dishes. I know of no large and beautiful way
to wash pans. I keep a little district school ; I
must have my mind on my work; my back
grows bent and my muscles stiff and sore. I
am no exultant young David, anointed of the
Lord, free to go and come, to sing deathless
songs, to rule over men."
PATIENCE, DEAR HEART, HEAR THIS
Jesus Christ lived thirty years in Nazareth,
but He never permitted Nazareth to give the
measure of His life. You may think of Him
as a boy helping His mother, holding baby,
fetching water from the fountain and chips
from the shop. He made yokes, I suppose,
not wholesale with a big iron machine, but one
by one, patiently fitting them to peasant shoul-
ders, broad and narrow, stooped and straight.
Thirty years He lived there, and there was ma-
tured the finest human character the world
ever saw. The baptism with the Spirit added
power; suffering perfected sympathy, but it
60 THE NEW LIFE IN CHRIST JESUS
was the largest, freest man that ever lived who
laid down His carpenter’s tools one day and
walked down to Jordan to be baptized of John.
Do you not see the secret? He never per-
mitted Nazareth to put its littleness upon Him.
The one man upon whom there are no limita-
tions whatever of race, of circumstance or of
character was a villager who toiled for bread!
It is not given to many of us to live in great
scenes and to be a part of great transactions.
Our life is a round of small cares and duties.
But Jesus Christ lived in narrower circum-
stances than ours. The newspapers, the tele-
graph, the railway and steamship bring
largesses to the remotest of us. Homer chanted
his deathless songs from door to door, in pov-
erty, unappreciated, for a crust of bread. Mil-
ton, shut up to physical blindness, ranged in
spirit from the Paradise that was to the Para-
dise that shall be. Dante, in exile, in a petty,
mediaeval town, learning "the steepness of an-
other’s stairs and the saltness of another’s
bread," fathomed the upper and the nether
depths.
THE LARGER CHRISTIAN LIFE 61
Do you say, "15ut we are not Homer, Milton,
and Dante?" Thank God! I would rather
have my two eyes than Milton’s fame; my own
good native land than Dante’s exile; my hum-
ble home than Homer’s wanderings. But surely
our souls have some power of flight; their
wings may beat the upper air for some dis-
tance, somewhere, if they may not take Dante’s
tremendous spirals.
WHAT WE ARE, NOT WHAT WE DO, DETERMINES
THE LARGENESS OF LIFE
Lacordaire says : "A king may pass through
our streets clothed in purple and fine linen,
and he may be a mean and base man, because
his thoughts are mean and base; and there may
pass by a poor man in vile raiment and he may
be a great man, because his converse with him-
self is high and great." That is true. Things
do not make life large. Men do large things
sometimes in small places, and others do small
things in large places. If we are of kin to the
great souls we shall some time be known as of
that strain.
62 THE NEW LIFE IN CHRIST JESUS
A homely American poet has put this into
his poem: "The Unexpressed." Three men,
writer, musician, builder, plod through life,
toiling day by day for daily bread; and the
writer never pens the epic which he dumbly
feels ; the musician never composes the oratorio
which resounds in his soul; the builder builds
wooden houses instead of the cathedral of
which he feels himself capable. And then they
die, and the three men who greet them are Ho-
mer, Mozart, and Michel Angelo!
"This dead musician’s soul went forth
Into the darkness drear —
A glad voice smote the clouds apart —
The brother-greeting of Mozart,
Who hailed him as his peer.
’Souls know,’ he said, ’that music best
That haunts the dumb soul unexpressed.’ "
Yes ; many a life of obscurity, poverty, neg-
lect, self-denial and pain is essentially great
because it is lived in fellowship with great
things — the things of God. Such a soul can
wait. It is elect, and shall yet come to its own.
THE LARGER CHRISTIAN LIFE 63
"Serene, I fold my hands and wait,
Nor care for wind, or tide, or sea;
I rave no more ’gainst time or fate,
For, lo, my own shall come to me.
’I stay my haste, I make delays;
For what avails this eager pace?
I stand amid the eternal ways,
And what is mine shall know my face.
’Asleep, awake, by night and day,
The friends I seek are seeking me.
No wind shall drive my bark astray,
Nor change the tide of destiny.
"What matter if I stand alone?
I wait with joy the coming years;
My heart shall reap where it has sown,
And garner up its fruit of tears.
"The waters know their own and draw
The brook that springs in yonder height;
So flows the good with equal law
Unto the soul of pure delight.
"The stars come nightly to the sky,
The tidal waves unto the sea;
Nor time, nor tide, nor deep, nor high,
Shall keep my own away from me!"
64 THE NEW LIFE IN CHRIST JESUS
THE SECRET OF THE LARGER LIFE
If now you ask me how all this larger Chris-
tian life may be lived, I shall venture three
suggestions :
1. Put your life under the great law of ex-
clusion by preoccupation. Keep littleness out
by being with greatness. There was no place
in Christ for mean things. It was not that
Christ refused small cares, drudgeries, duties.
It was that He accepted them and was filled
with the joy of doing them.
2. Live your Christian life in the sense of
its great verities. You are children and heirs
of God by faith in Jesus Christ. Say every
day, "I am a child of God." I defy circum-
stances to narrow and dwarf the life that is
lifted by the consciousness of divine sonship
and divine fellowship.
"The larger Christian life is independent of
circumstances."
There drifted into my house once a human
wreck. He had been the editor of a great daily
newspaper, and was a man of rare gifts. It
was the old story ; little by little the drink habit
THE LARGER CHRISTIAN LIFE 65
had fastened upon him and had dragged him
down to a living hell. I could not tell him to
"assert his manhood;" he had none. I had a
better gospel than that. I told him that he
could be born again; that he could become a
partaker of the divine nature, and a son and
heir of God. He fell upon his knees. "My
God!" he cried. "Can a dog like me become
God’s son?" And he poured out his heart,
giving himself away to Christ. I shall never
forget his transfigured face, nor the singular
solemnity and loftiness of his bearing as he
took my hand and said: "I am a child of God."
Get out under the stars on a clear night, and
look over your estate. The stars are yours and
Christ’s. Know that as a child of God yon are
greater than any possible estate, and you will
not wash pans, plow and reap any less thor-
oughly, but you will do these things royally,
like a king or queen. Remember, you are of
the family of God.
A poor saint went into a very aristocratic
church in a strange place. "I believe," said
the usher rather dubiously, "that I do not know
you." "Do you know the Lord Jesus Christ?"
66 THE NEW LIFE IN CHRIST JESUS
asked the poor saint. "Oh, yes." "Well," said
the poor man, "I am a poor brother of His."
3. Be a vital part of Christ’s work.
"The field is the world." Your field is the
world. Keep your sympathies world wide. If
your heart is in China or Africa or Central
America, and with the work there, it is just
the same as if you were there, wherever your
body may happen to be.
At the Student Volunteer Convention in
Cleveland they had Carey’s cobbler’s hammer.
It was better worth seeing than the crown
jewels in the Tower. No scepter in Christen-
dom is so venerable as that hammer. It is as
if it came out of the shop in Nazareth, almost.
Carey beat hobnails into peasants’ shoes with
that hammer; beat sturdily and well. But, as
one thinks of him, the narrow walls of his cob-
bler’s stall fall away, and his humble bench
changes to the likeness of a throne, and one
sees a pierced hand hold over his head the dia-
dem of righteousness. For that cobbler, bowed
over his daily task, was sweeping the darkened
continents into his yearning, and holding a
world up in prayer to God.