CHRIST IS OUR LIFE
"And
this is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and THIS LIFE IS IN HIS SON"
-I
John 5:11 [KJV]
How
often we are looking and looking in vain for life in ourselves. True
it is that if God has quickened our souls we are partakers of life
divine, of life spiritual, of life eternal, of the life that is in
Christ and comes from Christ; and yet how often we vainly seek to
find it warm and glowing in our breasts. If once given it never dies;
but it is often hidden beneath the ashes, and thus though it slowly
burns and dimly glows, yet the ashes hide it from view, and we only
know it is there by some remains of warmth.
"Your
life is hid with Christ in God"
(Colossians 3:3) and therefore not only hidden as treasured and
stored up safely in God, but hidden from the world, and even hidden
from the eyes of its possessor. Christ is our life. There is no
other. To look, then, for life in ourselves independent of and
distinct from the fountain of life is to look for that in the
creature which is lodged in the divine Creator, is to look for that
in man which dwells in the God-man; to look for that in self which is
out of self, embosomed in the fulness of the Son of God. And it is
not merely that life is in Him, but He is the life itself.
As
the sun not only has light and heat, but is light itself and heat
itself, so the blessed Lord not only grants life, but He Himself is
what He grants. As a fountain not only gives water, but is itself all
water, so Christ not only gives what He is, but is all that He gives.
Not only, therefore, is He "the
resurrection,"
centering in Himself everything, both for time and eternity, which
resurrection contains and resurrection implies, but He is "the
life,"
being in Himself a fountain of life, out of which He gives from His
own fulness to the members of His mystical body.
–Gospel report by preacher J. C. Philpot
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