Expositions of Holy Scripture: Second Corinthians, Galatians, and Philippians Chapters; I to End. Colossians, Thessalonians, and First Timothy.Maclaren, Alexander
Religion
Expositions of Holy Scripture: Second Corinthians, Galatians, and Philippians Chapters; I to End. Colossians, Thessalonians, and First Timothy.
Maclaren, Alexander
Bible. Epistles of Paul -- Commentaries
II. So much, then, for the first central fact that is here. Now let me
say a word, in the second place, about the faith which makes that fact
the foundation of my own personal life.
'I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself
for me.' I am not going to plunge into any unnecessary dissertations
about the nature of faith; but may I say that, like all other familiar
conceptions, it has got worn so smooth that it glides over our mental
palate without roughening any of the _papillae_ or giving any sense or
savour at all? And I do believe that dozens of people like you, who have
come to church and chapel all your lives, and fancy yourselves to be
fully _au fait_ at all the Christian truth that you will ever hear from
my lips, do not grasp with any clearness of apprehension the meaning of
that fundamental word 'faith.'
It is a thousand pities that it is confined by the accidents of language
to our attitude in reference to Jesus Christ. So some of you think that
it is some kind of theological juggle which has nothing to do with, and
never can be seen in operation in, common life. Suppose, instead of the
threadbare, technical 'faith' we took to a new translation for a minute,
and said '_trust_,' do you think that would freshen up the thought to
you at all? It is the very same thing which makes the sweetness of your
relations to wife and husband and friend and parent, which, transferred
to Jesus Christ and glorified in the process, becomes the seed of
immortal life and the opener of the gate of Heaven. Trust Jesus Christ.
That is the living centre of the Christian life; that is the process by
which we draw the general blessing of the Gospel into our own hearts,
and make the world-wide truth, our truth.
I need not insist either, I suppose, on the necessity, if our Christian
life is to be modelled upon the Apostolic lines, of our faith embracing
the Christ in all these aspects in which I have been speaking about His
work. God forbid that I should seem to despise rudimentary and
incomplete feelings after Him in any heart which may be unable to say
'Amen' to Paul's statement here. I want to insist very earnestly, and
with special reference to the young, that the true Christian faith is
not merely the grasp of the person, but it is the grasp of the Person
who is 'declared to be the Son of God,' and whose death is the voluntary
self-surrender motived by His love, for the carrying away of the sins of
every single soul in the whole universe. That is the Christ, the full
Christ, cleaving to whom our faith finds somewhat to grasp worthy of
grasping. And I beseech you, be not contented with a partial grasp of a
partial Saviour; neither shut your eyes to the divinity of His nature,
nor to the efficacy of His death, but remember that the true Gospel
preaches Christ and Him crucified; and that for us, saving faith is the
faith that grasps the Son of God 'Who loved me and gave Himself for me.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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