=I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I that live,
but Christ liveth in me: and that life which I now live in the flesh
I live in faith, the faith which is in the Son of God, who loved me,
and gave himself up for me.--Gal. 2:20.=
Such conversion of life is the normal result of a vital fellowship
whose bond is faith. For one thing, a man at once begins to care a
great deal more about his own quality when he believes in Christ and
in Christ's love. "What a King stoops to pick up from the mire cannot
be a brass farthing, but must be a pearl of great price." To be loved
by anyone is to enter into a new estimate of one's possible value; to
be loved by God in Christ is to come into an experience where our
possible value makes us alike ashamed of what we are and jubilant over
what we may become. We begin saying with Irenæus, "Jesus Christ became
what we are that he might make us what he is." And then, faith,
ripening into fellowship, opening the life sensitively to the
influence of the friend, issues in a character infused by the friend's
character. He lives in us. Such transformation of life does not happen
in a moment; it requires more than instantaneous exposure to take the
Lord's picture on a human heart; but time-exposure will do it, and
"Christ in us" be alike our hope of glory and our secret of influence.
_O Father Eternal, we thank Thee for the new and living way into Thy
presence made for us in Christ; the way of trust, sincerity, and
sacrifice. Beneath His cross we would take our stand, in communion
with His Spirit would we pray, in fellowship with the whole Church of
Christ we would seek to know Thy mind and will._
_We desire to know all the fulness of Christ, to appropriate His
unsearchable riches, to feed on His humanity whereby Thou hast become
to us the bread of our inmost souls and the wine of life, to become
partakers of Thy nature, share Thy glory, and become one with Thee
through Him._
_Give unto us fellowship with His sufferings and insight into the
mystery of His cross, so that we may be indeed crucified with Him, be
raised to newness of life, and be hidden with Christ in Thee._
_We desire to make thankful offering of ourselves as members of the
body of Christ; in union with all the members may we obey our unseen
Head, so that the Body may be undivided, and Thy love, and healing
power, and very Self may be incarnate on the earth in one Holy
Universal Church. Amen._--W. E. Orchard.
Eleventh Week, Sixth Day
With faith in Christ so seen as the secret of divine forgiveness and
assistance, of achieving power and inward transformation, there can be
little surprise at the solicitude which the New Testament shows
concerning the disciples' faith. We find this urgent interest in Paul:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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