living in and enabling us to trust God as He trusted Him.
Then comes, thirdly, the death of Christ. What does that teach us of
Christ's relation to the Father? It opens up to us one of the deepest
and most solemn lessons of Christ life, one which the Church of Christ
understands all too little. We know what the death of Christ means as an
atonement, and we never can emphasize too much that blessed substitution
and bloodshedding, by which redemption was won for us. But let us remember,
that is only half the meaning of His death. The other half is this: just as
much as Christ was my substitute, who died for me, just so much He is
my head, in whom, and with whom, I die; and just as He lives for me, to
intercede, He lives in me, to carry out and to perfect His life. And if I
want to know what that life is which He will live in me, I must look at His
death. By His death He proved that He possessed life only to hold it,
and to spend it, for God. To the very uttermost; without the shadow of a
moment's exception, He lived for God,--every moment, everywhere, He held
life only for His God. And so, if one wants to live a life of perfect
trust, there must be the perfect surrender of his life, and his will, even
unto the very death. He must be willing to go all lengths with Jesus, even
to Calvary. When a boy twelve years of age Jesus said: "Wist ye not that I
must be about my Father's business?" and again when He came to Jordan to be
baptized: "It becometh us to fulfill all righteousness." So on through
all His life, He ever said: "It is my meat and drink to do the will of my
Father. I come not to do my own will, but the will of Him that sent me."
"Lo, I am come to do Thy will, O God." And in the agony of Gethsemane, His
words were: "Not my will, but Thine, be done."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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