06.04. Christ In You the Hope
Chapter 4 Christ In You the Hope
IT is meet that the chief Christian temple in the greatest Gentile city should be dedicated to the Apostle Paul, because it is to him that we Gentiles owe our knowledge of two of the deepest mysteries of the kingdom of heaven. The first of these mysteries is unfolded in Ephesians 3:1-21 --that the Gentiles are "fellow-heirs and fellow-members of the body and fellow-partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus." It was the cherished hope of those who held closely by the traditions of the Mosaic law that they could turn the new wine of the kingdom into their old and broken bottle-skins, and fill the Jewish temple by making it the vestibule of the Christian Church. It was to oppose this idea that the apostle spent a life of privation, persecution, and incessant suffering. He saw clearly enough that a new spirit was working among men which could not be confined within the restraints of a material and typical system. In season and out of season he protested that the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ was a new entity in the world, that the one condition of entrance was faith, that there was no preference given to the Jew over the Gentile, that in Christ Jesus was neither Jew nor Greek, and that its gates stood wide open without partiality to all who found in Christ an asylum from the storm, satisfaction for the heart, government for the will. The second of these two mysteries is disclosed in Colossians 1:1-29, and is perhaps the more wonderful. As the apostle fulfilled his stewardship for us Gentiles, his own mind was filled with wonder and rapture at the transcendent glory of the secret that he was commissioned to tell; and surely his face, as he dictated the burning words, must have been suffused with heavenly light, as though it had caught the glow of the sunrise. The immanence or indwelling of Christ is the characteristic fact of Christianity. Our Lord became incarnate, died, and rose again that we might become His home and temple. Christianity is not a creed, but a life; not a theology or a ritual, but the possession of the spirit of man by the Eternal Spirit of the living Christ. A man may have all else, be orthodox in creed, correct in practice, observant of forms of worship, but if he lack the divine life he has not yet seen the kingdom of heaven. In regeneration the living Saviour actually becomes the tenant of the regenerated nature; and as the life of the animal is superior to that of the plant, and the moral and mental life of man superior to that of the animal, so the life born in the Christian soul distinguishes its possessor from all other men. The first man Adam was made a living soul, the last Adam a quickening Spirit. The reason why the indwelling of Christ is so little recognized by the majority of Christian people arises from the inwardness of its shrine. Below the senses, keen to appreciate every change in the world around; below the tastes and preferences, the fears and hopes, the resolutions and desires which characterize the soul-life; below our self-consciousness, self-energy, and all that goes to make up our individuality; in the depths of the spirit, the part of our nature in which we touch God most closely, the holy of holies of our being, Christ finds His residence and comes to dwell. Are we not conscious at times of uprising thoughts that defy speech, of hopes that overleap the narrow horizon of our life, of yearnings and impulses and inspirations that surge up from inner depths? All these witness to the existence of that marvelous capacity for God which characterizes the spirit of man; and it is there, in the innermost depths of our being, that the living Christ enshrines and hides Himself.
It is not wonderful, then, that, with all our searching, we cannot find Him out. He enters like the gentle zephyr. We can detect no footfall in the passage or on the stair; we cannot discern what He is doing any more than we can follow the workings of nature in the roots of the trees in spring; and because His presence will yield to no test that our senses can devise, we are apt to think it is not there, and to suppose that it cannot be for us to say with Paul, "Christ is in us--in me, the hope of glory."
We must therefore avail ourselves of that wonderful faculty of faith which is the key to all Christian living and alone can give us the assurance of things hoped for, the test of things not seen. Faith does for the spirit what the senses do in our natural life. As eye and ear and touch reveal the presence of those we love, so faith is eye and ear and touch to the spirit. She sees Christ, touches the robes in which He veils Himself, hears the golden bells that ring at every movement of His feet; and raising her voice with unhesitating certainty, assures us that He is present; as much so as though there were no heaven for Him to fill, or myriads of spirits waiting to draw their all from Him, as the flowers beside the brimming stream fill their cups from its tides.
It is well, therefore, by faith to reckon that this is so. Let us often say aloud, "Christ is within; God is here." Let us reverently enter the shrine of our inner life, and commune with Him there. Let us believe that He waits within us to be at any moment just that which we need most: patient in the impatient; calm in the restless; strong in the weak; wise in the ignorant; loving in the unforgiving. But let us fear above all the energy and assertion of our self-hood, so constantly arrogating to itself importance, and rushing forth through all the avenues of our life.
It is only as we die to the world around us, and to the self-life within us, that we realize the glory of this mystery. If we were more tranquil in our behavior, quiet in our movements, self-possessed, willing to wait only upon God, pausing before answering, lifting up our hearts before opening our letters, seeking direction before making engagements or forming plans, we should be conscious of the rising up within us of another life than our own, a purer, stronger, richer life, reproducing something of the glorious life He lived once among men.
What a glory the knowledge of this secret will bring into face and life! The orchid root breaks into the glory of the flower; the light ray is unraveled in the hues of the rainbow; the Christ was manifested in the glory of transfiguration, and His secret indwelling reveals itself in a glory that never shone upon sea or shore. This mystery also enriches our lives: "the riches of the glory of this mystery;" that is, the man who enters into its realization becomes sensible that he can meet the demands of his life with a wealth of resource, an exuberance of energy, with a glow of enthusiasm which had been previously foreign to him. It was the knowledge of this that made the martyrs glory in the fires, and has made it possible for the weakest and poorest of mankind to enrich the world with thoughts and words that can never die.
It is much to have a rich environment from which to extract the nutriment our natures need; but it is more to possess the indwelling of Christ, in whom all the fulness of God dwells, and to feel it rising up in us night and day, and only asking us to cease from our own works, that He may be all in all.