Part 10 (1/2)
The last Adam, and the first.
The Spirit, and the flesh.
G.o.d has put us by His grace into the first of these. The Master says, ”Stop there.” Much as when a father puts his little boy in the railway carriage, _en route_ for home, and says, ”My boy, stop where you are.
Do not get out; no change is necessary.” We are in Christ by regeneration and faith. We may not always be thinking about Him; but we remain in Him, unless by unfaithfulness or sin we consciously and voluntarily leave Him. And if we have left Him for a single moment, it is always possible by confession and renewal to regain our old position.
This is confessedly an inadequate figure of speech. There is a sense in which the member cannot be amputated from the body, and the soul cannot be divorced from its union with Christ. But we are not dealing now with our integral oneness with Christ for life, but with our abiding union with Him for fruit-bearing and service. And again we say, for those who are so immersed in daily business, as to be unable for long together to keep their minds fixed on Christ, that their abiding in Him does not depend on their perpetual realization and consciousness of His presence, but on the faith that they have done and said nothing inconsistent with the holy bond of fellows.h.i.+p.
You are in a lift until you step out of it, though you may not be thinking of the lift. You keep on a road until you take a turning right or left, although, engrossed in converse with your friend, you do not think of the road. You are in Christ amid the pressure of daily care, and the haste of business, so long as your face is toward the Lord, your att.i.tude that of humble submission, and your conscience void of offence. During the day it is therefore possible at any moment to say, ”I am in Thee, O blessed Christ. I have not all the rapture and pa.s.sion of more radiant hours, but I am in Thee, because I would not by a single act, leave Thy secret place.” If at such a moment you are conscious that you are not able to say as much, instantly go back over the past few hours, discover the place when you severed yourself from your Lord, and return.
Study G.o.det's beautiful definition of abiding: ”It is the continuous act by which the Christian lays aside all he might draw from his own wisdom, strength and merit, to desire all from Christ by the inward aspiration of faith.”
Whenever, therefore, temptation arises to leave the words of Christ (ver. 7), for the maxims of the world, step back, remain in Him, deny yourself.
Whenever you are tempted to leave the narrow path of His commandments (ver. 10), to follow the impulses of your own nature, reckon yourself dead to these that you may _run_ in those.
Whenever you are tempted to forsake the holy temper of Christ's love, for jealousy, envy, hatred, step back and say, I will not go out of my hiding-place, I elect to remain in the love of G.o.d.
The one effort of life is therefore reduced to a persistent resistance to all the suggestions of the world, the flesh and the devil; that we should step out of that Blessed Man into whom the Father has grafted us.
Then He abides in us. He is strong where we are weak, loving and tender where we are thoughtless, holy where we fail. He is in us as wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption; and as the hope of glory.
XVI
Prayer that Prevails
”If ye abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.”--JOHN xv. 7.
Christ expected answers to His prayers, and in all His teaching leads us to feel that we shall be able to obtain, through prayer, what otherwise would not come to our hand. He knew all that was to be known of natural law and the Father's heart; but notwithstanding His perfect acquaintance with the mysteries of the Father's government, He said, ”Ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.”
A careful comparison between the confident a.s.surances of the Master, and the experience of Christians, as detailed in their biographies or personal confessions, discloses a wide difference between His words and the findings of His disciples. Many have become accustomed to disappointment in prayer. They have asked so many things which they have never received; have sought so much without finding; have knocked so repeatedly, but the door has remained closed. We are in the habit of accounting for our failure by saying that probably our prayer was not according to the will of G.o.d, or that G.o.d withheld the less that He might give us something better. In some cases there may be even an unspoken misgiving about the harmony of prayer with our Father's love and wisdom, or with a perfect confidence in Him as doing the best for us in the world. We forget that if we prayed as we should, we should ask what was according to His will. We evade Christ's definite words, ”_Whatsoever_ ye shall ask in My Name, that will I do.”
When we consider the lives of some who have wrought mightily for G.o.d, it is clear that they had learned a secret which eludes many of us.
Take this, for instance, from the biography of Dr. Burns Thomson.
”When much together as students,” writes his friend, ”we agreed on special pet.i.tions, and the Lord encouraged us by giving answers, so early and so definite, as could only have come from Himself, so that no room was left for the shadow of a doubt that G.o.d was the Hearer and Answerer of prayer. Once the answer came the same day, and at another time, whilst we were yet speaking. My friend often spoke of our agreement, to the glory of Him who fulfilled to us His promise, and I refer to it, to encourage others.” This is but one leaf out of the great library of prayers, intercessions, and supplications for all saints, which stand recorded before G.o.d.
We naturally turn to our Lord's last utterances in which His instructions about prevailing prayer are fuller than those of the Sermon on the Mount; and than those given in the mid-pa.s.sage of His earthly life, which depict the importunity of the widow with the unjust judge, and of the friend with his friend at midnight. The words spoken in the chapter we are now considering are particularly pertinent to our purpose, because they deal exclusively with the age to which our Lord frequently referred as ”that day,” the day of Pentecost, the age of the Holy Ghost, the day of this dispensation.
OUR LORD TEACHES THAT ANY PRAYER WHICH IS TO PREVAIL WITH G.o.d MUST Pa.s.s FIVE TESTS, though these are but different phases of the same att.i.tude.
(1) _The glory of the Father._--”That the Father may be glorified in the Son” (John xiv. 13). The one purpose of Christ on earth was to glorify the Father; and at the close of His life here He was conscious that He had not striven in vain. ”Now,” said He, ”is the Son of Man glorified, and G.o.d is glorified in Him.” This was the purpose of His earthly career, and it was perfectly consistent with that of His eternal being; for each person of the Holy Trinity is ever intent on unfolding and displaying the moral beauty of the other twain. Having sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, Christ still pursues His cherished purpose of making His Father known, loved, and adored.
No prayer, therefore, can hope to succeed with Him, or can claim His concurrent intercession, which is out of harmony with this sublime intent.
Whatever pet.i.tion we offer should be submitted to this standard. Can we establish it in the presence of Christ, that our request will promote the glory of the Father? Bring in your evidence--establish your pleas--adduce your strong reasons. If you can make good your claim, your prayer is already granted. But be sure that it is impossible to seek the glory of G.o.d consistently with selfish aims.
These two can no more coexist than light and darkness in the same cubic s.p.a.ce. The glory of G.o.d will ever triumph at our cost. It is equally certain that none of us can truly pray for the glory of G.o.d, unless we are living for it. It is only out of the heart that has but one purpose in life and death, that those prayers emanate which touch the tenderest chord in the Saviour's nature, and awaken all His energies to their highest activity, ”That will I do.”