03.05. Chapter 5

THE REALIZATION OF THE CHRIST LIFECENTRE AND SPHERE That preliminary adjustment, whereby man finds his life, consists in his restoration to God. That is made possible and accomplished by the work of Christ, for “ God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself.”

Man apprehends God through Christ. Therefore the restored or adjusted life of man is the Christ life. By the denial of self, through the infinite grace of God, man receives the value of the death of Christ, and the virtue of His life. Therefore he is correctly designated a Christian; that is, one who has received the life of Christ and henceforth is one with Him, in motive and in mind.

It is significant that the disciples were called Christians first at Antioch. A study of the book of the Acts of the Apostles shows that in consequence of the failure of the Church in Jerusalem to carry out the commission of Christ, God by the Holy Spirit moved His base of missionary operations to Antioch, laid an arresting hand upon a new instrument, and made Saul of Tarsus the pioneer missionary toward the uttermost part of the earth. The disciples in Antioch responded to the inspiration of the Christ life, and therefore necessarily became the instruments through which the witnesses were sent forth in fulfilment of His purpose. Whatever the attitude of the men of Antioch was toward the Church, it is evident that as they observed the disciples, they came to the conclusion that there was only one name which could exactly describe them, and that was the name Christian. This designation of the disciples was born of the fact that the outside world recognized their relationship to Him. This is only an illustration, but it is a striking one, that the life adjusted to God through Christ, no Christian Principles becomes in the deepest and truest sense Christian life. In the same connection it is equally interesting to remember that this Saul of Tarsus, who became Paul the apostle, has in his writings consistently emphasized the fact that the life of a believer is the life of Christ. As to his own personal experience he declared in one brief statement, full of beauty and of suggestiveness, the whole story of his Christian life. “ To me to live is Christ.” That is an all-inclusive and exhaustive statement, which Frederic W. Myers has beautifully illustrated in his poem, the opening and closing lines of which tell the deepest story of the life and labours of the great missionary apostle.

“Christ! I am Christ’s! and let the name suffice you, Ay, for me too He greatly hath sufficed.

Christ is the end, for Christ was the beginning, Christ the beginning, for the end is Christ.”

Moreover, in his writings, when he had occasion to correct errors of any kind, Paul in variably did so by positive teaching concerning Christ, and by urging those to whom he wrote to the realization of that life in their own experience. This is seen in his correction of the errors of practical life in the Corinthian church; of the errors resulting from the influence of Judaizing teachers in the Galatian church; and of the errors existing as the result of the mixture of Judaism and Greek gnosticism in the church at Colosse. In the course of the letter to the Colossians there are certain statements which may be taken out of their context without doing any violence to their value, and linked together as revealing the all-inclusive truth concerning Christian experience. First by way of illustration, and not for a full examination, notice the inter-relation between two of these. “ It was the good pleasure of the Father that in Him should all the fulness dwell “; and “ in Him ye are made full.” The first is the apostle’s all-inclusive declaration concerning Christ. The second is his all-inclusive declaration concerning the resources of the believer. In the Christ all the fulness of God dwells. The believer is filled to the full in Him.

There is another connection of passages possible from the same letter, which constitutes the theme of our present study. In the course of his argument in order to the correction of what he terms “philosophy and vain deceit,” the apostle made use of the words, “ Christ in you, the Hope of glory,” as suggesting the central, experimental mystery of Christian life, and later he wrote the words already quoted, “ In Him ye are made full.” If we take these statements again yet more briefly by the omission of some of the words unnecessary to our present meditation, we see that the apostle’s conception of Christian life is that Christ is its Centre and Sphere. “ Christ in you “ indicates the fact that He is the Cen tre. “ Ye in Him “ reveals the truth that He is the Sphere. It is well to say at this point that the word sphere is chosen, rather than circumference, or circle, because the use of the latter term is permissible only in the description of a plane surface, while a sphere is that which absolutely surrounds whatever stands at its centre, on every side and in every direction. In this sense Christ is the Sphere of the believer’s life.

Christianity then, if I may use the somewhat mechanical and mathematical terms, is Christocentric, and Christo-spheric. Christ is at the centre of the believer’s life, the believer is at the centre of His life. Now it is perfectly evident that this statement is inclusive and exhaustive, and therefore altogether be yond the possibility of anything like detailed exposition in the course of one address. All I propose, therefore, is the statement of the double truth in its barest outlines of application, and as to its first principles of value in the life of the Christian. It is well that we should remember that whichever of these aspects we may consider, we are compelled to use the same terminology. If we speak of the life as being Christo-centric, then the believer is the sphere of the Christ, because Christ is the Centre of the life of the believer.

If we speak of Christian life as being Christospheric, then the believer is the centre of the Christ, because Christ surrounds the believer’s life. The fact that Christian life is Christo-centric is the essential mystery and miracle and might of Christian experience. To think of Christianity only as a cult, which may be accepted as presenting theories which are acceptable to the intellectual comprehension, is to fail utterly to understand the real meaning thereof. To consider Christianity as the presentation of an ideal, or the enunciation of an ethic, is to have caught some gleam of truth, for both these things are so; but it is to fail altogether to discover the profoundest fact and meaning thereof. The consistent teaching of Christ Himself and of His apostles is that when self is denied Christ ascends the throne, assumes the responsibility, and by His own indwelling through the Holy Spirit communicates all the power necessary to obedience.

Let us in the simplest way possible attempt to understand the real meaning of this conception. We may do this best by thinking of the believer, that is, of one individual as constituting the sphere of the life of Christ. Our knowledge of men commences in the realm of the physical. My first consciousness of a person other than myself is necessarily that of the physical. On the street or in the railway train, or in the midst of a multitude we have brief transitory acquaintance with human beings. If we happen to gaze into the eye of some stranger, we may catch some gleam of the spiritual nature, not enough to enable us to form any correct estimate, but enough to produce a sense of the mind, and therefore of the spirit of the one on whom we look. Even such illumination comes, however, through the physical. Thus I repeat, that to deal with a human being is first of all to be conscious of the material, the external, the manifest.

Nevertheless in doing so we are perfectly sure of the fact, that what we are first conscious of, is not the essential. The essential is that which looks through the eye, listens through the ear, makes us feel through the touch. Be yond the physical medium is the spiritual essence. In dealing with that spiritual nature we first communicate with the intellectual, and thus approach the emotional, and finally reach the volitional, which is the central citadel of human personality. In dealing with the essential spiritual nature of any human being we necessarily first have to do with the intellectual, which is capable of observation and comprehension. The emotional is never reached save through the intellectual. It is perfectly true that the intellectual may be a spoiled instrument, flinging distorted visions upon the retina, and thus producing false emotion. All that, however, is not now under discussion, and does not interfere with the accuracy of the statement that the emotion of love or hate is always the result of an intellectual conception. Beyond, is that which is the final dignity of human personality, the power to choose, to decide, to elect, to determine. I need hardly stay to argue that every man has such power; it is so patent and self-evident that man may exercise his will as against the conviction of his intelligence, and in a contrary direction to that suggested by the driving power of the emotion. There is a sense in which the intellect and the emotion affect the choice of the will, but there is no escape from the fact that man is able to will by choosing as between the claims of conflicting emotions resulting from apparently contradictory intellectual conceptions. The weak man is the man who al lows his will to be wholly driven by his emotion. The strong man is the man who is able to say, What I would, I will not, I could wish to keep Onesimus for my own benefit, but I will send Onesimus back to Philemon. That is strength, and at the centre of every life is that capacity.

Turning back once more to the external or physical we have what we speak of as the senses. The last home of sensation is the spirit, but the medium of the senses is the flesh.

Sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch, are all the servants of the intelligence. By each and all of these man apprehends things external to himself. That apprehension is intellectual conception, which creates emotional consciousness. Thus the senses indicate to the intelli gence, and through it influence the emotion, and finally make their appeal to the will, but they always await its decision. The weakened will says to the emotion, Gratify yourself. The strong will refuses the cry of the emotion whenever it is out of harmony with eternal principles. All this leads us in broadest and barest outline to a conception of that sphere of which in Christian life Christ is the Centre.

Therefore in the moment in which a man denies himself, he yields that central citadel of his personality to Christ, Who takes up His abode at the centre of the life upon the throne of the will, and from thence administers the whole life. He interprets the meaning of all things for the intelligence. He inspires the emotion with the true reasons for its activity.

He impulses the will in its choices toward conformity to the will of God. I have named that last, because it is last in the activity of human personality, and yet it is supreme. The conceptions of the intelligence are wholly changed when Christ at the centre of the life interprets the meaning of all of which through the media of the senses the intelligence becomes conscious. This has the widest application, but we will confine ourselves to human life. When one man looks upon another, what does he see?

It depends entirely upon whether Christ sits at the centre of his being, and interprets to him the meaning of what he sees. If Christ be at the centre, the man who sees another man, sees the image of God, bruised it may be, almost out of all recognition, but still there. The hall mark of the Divine proprietorship is stamped upon every face plainly to the eyes of those at the centre of whose life Christ lives and reigns. That is what Christ always saw when He looked at men, and He gives all men in whom He dwells the same vision of others. But if Christ be not in him, what does a man see, when he sees a man? Well, it depends entirely upon what, out of his own self-life, he has made the dominant factor at its centre.

If he is seeking for earthly wealth, when he sees a man he sees “ a hand.” He speaks of employing a thousand “hands.” He looks upon men as chattels to be possessed, instruments to be pressed into the work of enriching himself. If on the other hand the master passion of his life is the acquisition of knowl edge, he looks upon man as a specimen, to be dissected, analyzed, accounted for, placed. The intelligence is far more under the control of the will, and biassed by its purpose than we often think. Where that will is the throne of Christ, He interprets the Divine meaning of all the things of which the intelligence is conscious, setting them in their right place and proportion and perspective in the economy of God. That is true,not merely of the supreme fact upon which human eyes can look, a hu man being; but also of all things lower in the creative order, animals, or fields, or flowers, the mighty sea, or the dewdrop that glistens in the morning light upon the blade of grass.

What is seen depends entirely upon whether Christ is at the centre of the life. If He be there, “ the old things have passed away, be hold, they are become new,” a new God, a new heaven, a new earth.

“ Heaven above is softer blue, Earth around is sweeter green!

Something lives in every hue Christless eyes have never seen, Birds with gladder songs o’erflow, Flowers with deeper beauties shine, Since I know as now I know, I am His, and He is mine.” The whole intelligence is illuminated with the new light of the Christ life. If someone shall answer, I have never experienced anything like that, it is perfectly evident that such an one has not been born again. Christianity to such may be a mere ethical convenience, which enables them to prevent other people defrauding them, and themselves to escape the unprofitable experience of imprisonment, or it may be the inspiration of a certain form of philanthropy, which is likely to be profitable. If Christ be in the life, He is the “ Hope of glory,” and the intelligence sees everywhere fringes of gold upon the clouds, and through all creation there flash and flame the beauties of the eternal order. But Christ at the centre of the life does more than interpret to the intelligence the meaning of things. By so doing He inspires the emotion, so that men are moved to approbation, and love of the things that harmonize with the character of God. When He sits at the centre of personality, man begins to love the things of light, the pure and the high, the noble and the true, and consequently all the activity of love toward relations, friends, toward men generally, and toward the world, is new. Said the apostle who understood the mystic relationships between Christ and the believer so perfectly, “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world.” Yet this same apostle chronicles for us the fact that “ God so loved the world.” There seems to be a contradiction between these two statements, and yet spiritual intelligence is at once conscious that there is no contradiction. When Christ is at the centre of the life the emotions are purified, and act in consonance with the eternal reason of the Eternal Love.

Then the love of the world is no longer the love of dust, issuing in the attempt to find spiritual satisfaction in material things. It is rather such love of the world as through serv ice and sacrifice attempts to restore it to consciousness of the love of God, and fellowship therewith. And so finally, Christ being at the cen tre of the life, interpreting the meaning of the things of which the intelligence is made conscious, by setting them in the light of the eternal order; inspiring the emotion, so that it acts only in harmony with the love and holiness of God, thus impulses the will in its choices.

Christ at the centre of a human life means therefore His dominion over the external and the manifest, and consequently all the senses, and their medium the flesh, are under the do minion of the spiritual nature of man, which in turn is under the dominion of the Christ, and so, therefore, these very senses are brought into subjection to the will of Christ which is the will of God. If Christ be seated at the centre of the life, it is no longer possible for the eyes to look at things at which once they looked with eagerness, no longer possible for the ears to listen to things to which once they listened with interest, no longer possible for the tongue to utter words which once it ut tered with delight. All the senses of the physical being brought under the dominion of the spiritual, which is under the dominion of the Christ, become Christian, and the consequence is that through the material life, truth finds an expression when Christ Who is Truth sits King at the centre of the being. All that, however, is but the consideration in bare outline of one side of our great theme, that namely that Christian life is Christo-centric.

It is not only true that Christ is the Centre of the believer’s life, it is also true that He is the Sphere of the believer’s life. This is a theme so vast that in the consciousness that I am only able to touch the fringe of it, I rec ommend to all interested in the truest spiritual interpretation of it, a book by my friend Dr. Arthur T. Pierson, entitled “ In Christ Jesus.” In it he gathers up the teaching of the seven groups of epistles, and with the aid of diagrams graphically sets forth what the phrase suggests according to New Testament teaching. While I value everything that has come from Dr. Pierson’s pen, I venture to say that nothing he has written in the department of the devotional life is so full and illuminative as this treatise. In this address we consider the fact only in broad and general outline. The believer stands in one great Sphere, which yet may be considered in two departments, which for the sake of illustration we may term concentric spheres.

There is first the temporal sphere, and beyond that the eternal. These must not be thought of as separated into compartments, for the be liever already lives the life eternal. At the same time there are limitations in present experience, which after a while will cease. Now whether we think of what we have just described as the temporal sphere, or of the eter nal, we think of Christ, for in all the outlying reaches of the believer’s circumstances or sur roundings, using either word in its broadest sense, Christ is to be found. That is to say, that He is not only dictating at the centre of the believer’s life, He is energizing at its utmost extremity, and filling all the vast spaces which stretch beyond. To the believer therefore all interests are Christian, that is, having to do with Christ. All spiritual interests are homed in Him. The service of the saints is service rendered to the Christ, and indeed, the only sufficient inspiration for unceasing and suffering service, is love to Christ. By the Galilean Sea with the light of morning breaking over its waters, when Christ restored the wandering apostle, before committing to him his work, He did not say, Simon, lovest thou the men of the world? but “Lovest thou Me?” Christ is everywhere, so that the believer finds Him to be inspiration as well as dynamic. All therelations of time and space are Christian. A loved one leaves my side, and fellowship in service, which is immediate, ends, as my comrade passing over the seas enters upon some new toil in China, in India, but I am never far away from the absent one, because Christ in me is there also, and Christ in the absent one is around me. Thus all space is annihilated in the fellowship of the saints by that deep and profound consciousness. All the relations of time, moreover, are interpreted by the same fact. “ Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and to-day, and for ever.” All the relations of force are governed by the same fact. There is no blossom of beauty upon which the eyes look, but that the Christ life is expressing it self through it. He is the First-born of creation, and therefore His nature manifests itself in all the beauty of the earth.

Yet that is not all. Christ is far more than One Who stands behind all the developments of life, as originating Source. It is equally true that in Him all things consist. The bond of inter-relationship between all life and all lives is His essential Being. All the rhythmic order of the universe is created by the presence of the Christ, so that He is immanent, the Centre of the believer’s life, and transcendant, its Sphere. Wherever the Christian looks he sees the Christ. At dawning of the morning His face makes it more beautiful. When the sun goes westering, and the shadows of the evening are growing, the consciousness of His presence is sleep. When the battle thickens, He rides at the head of His battalions, and leads to victory. When peace is declared, it is His benediction falling upon the sons of men. Christ is everywhere, and to the man who knows what it is to have Christ in him, the Hope of glory, whether he look up or down or out or back Christ’s face is there.

Yet so far reference has only been made to the first department, or to the sphere of the temporal. It is equally and superlatively true that He is the eternal Sphere. The believer in common with all men, thinks at times of the day of his passing, of that hour in which the external fact is laid aside, of his crossing of a boundary line, of a time when the ropes that moor the vessel to the shore are cut, and the life crosses the bar out to the limitless and immeasurable sea. Everyone so thinking, thinks of God. It is the time when the spiritual consciousness of man expects the unveiling of God, looks to come into some more intimate consciousness of, and relationship with Him. This is the secret of the dread of death in the heart of the sinner. The believer shares the conviction that beyond death there is a meeting with God, but the face that shines through the gloom is the selfsame One which has been seen through all the discipline of the pilgrim age. Christ is the Image of the invisible God, the Brightness of His Glory, the express Image of His Person. The Christ with Whom we have grown sacredly familiar in shop and of fice and workshop is the God Who will meet us when we cross the boundary line. I shall “ see my Pilot face to face When I have crost the bar,” and He is God. And then beyond, the ages, the continuously born and awful ages. Sometimes when we were children the thought of them filled us with fear. I remember lying awake at nights, and trying to think of what for ever meant, until my child brain nearly turned with dread, and it is still a thought filling the soul with awe, that of these ages that cannot cease rolling one after another in majestic order. But the Christian knows that these also are under the governance of God, and that referring to Christ an inspired writer has said, “ Through Whom also He made the ages.” I know not what the ages will be, but they have lost their terror for me. Sometimes I still endeavour to think of them. This is the age of God’s grace. It has lasted for nineteen hundred years. Presently it will end, and beyond it what? Who shall tell? As to those imme diately succeeding, our view may differ, but the fact of them, and of their continuity and succession none of us questions. Every ration alist believes that. Man’s rationalism only has to do with his own small personality. According to his own view it is he that ends, and not the ages. Now I see them coming, ever coming, lit with their own distinctive glory, all derived from the essential Being of Deity, but they are fashioned by the Christ. Every new age shall receive its quality, its quantity, its value, its new unfolding of the essential mystery of God, under His direction. Thus Christ is the Sphere of the believer’s life, so that whether he looks to the bound of the present and the temporal, or whether he looks beyond seeking for the face of God, or whether he thinks of the ages with their new creations and revelations, Christ is everywhere, turning the darkness of the present into the light of morning, interpreting the nature of God by the majesty and mercy of His own glance, and assuring the perfection of the ages by the fact that they are under His control.

Finally and in a word, if Christ is the Sphere of the believer’s life, the believer is at the cen tre of His, compelling His consciousness, so that the Christ is made joyful or sorrowful by the believer, and compelling His activity in which He is first true to Himself as God, and therefore true to the believer. All language fails, and therefore let me without hesitation state this fact in such figurative terms as are necessarily imperfect, and yet illuminative.

Christ has put the believer in His heart, where the crimson blood of His eternal love finds its centre and its home; and He has taken up His abode at the centre of the believer’s heart, for the purification of the streams of life, and the compelling of their conformity to the will of God.