FAITHFUL WORDS.

BY

JOHN OFFORD,

OF PALACE GARDENS CHAPEL, KENSINGTON.

THE FOOD OF THE INNER LIFE.

"The life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.”—GAL. ii. 20. THE life of the creature cannot be a self-sustaining life. Dependency is an essential and unchanging law of its being. It must ever derive its sustenance from a source outside itself. This truth holds good of every kind of life in the universe of God. Called into existence by the will of the Creator, it can be kept in being by his power alone. Of him, as the first cause-through him, as the sale supporter-and to him, as the great end—are all things: to whom be glory for ever and ever! The new-creature life forms no exception to this immutable truth. High, holy, blessed as is that life, it is, nevertheless, dependent life. One element of its perfectness is the instinct of its nature to cling to its living head. Did it possess the remotest tendency or disposition to turn from him, that tendency would incline to destruction; that disposition would be fraught with death. It is the glory of the creature to hang upon the Creator; and it is the special glory of the new creature that it shall maintain intimate, indissoluble, and everlasting connection with its source. The

condition of dependence on another is, therefore, no defect of the new man; nay, rather, it is the very law of its being, by means of which it shall attain unto, and be maintained in, its highest state of perfection; for perfection, in degree and in development, can only be reached and held by union with, and dependence on, Christ the Son of God. This truth had its perfect unfolding in the Lord Christ himself, as the pattern of the heavenly life revealed on earth. In him the life had its full development, displaying all its features in their individual and combined loveliness. The principles of the new life were diffused in all their full, rich, holy vigour through his whole inner being. Yet he was dependent on God; for he thought, felt, spake, and acted at the will of his Father, under the guidance and power of the Holy Ghost. Speaking in the spirit of prophecy, he says unto God the Father, "Thou art he that took me out of the womb: thou didst make me hope when I was upon my mother's breasts. I was cast upon thee from the womb: thou art my God." And in asserting the fact of our entire dependence on himself for spiritual life, and for the sustenance of that life, he says, "As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father: so he that eateth me, even he shall live by me." He who subsisted in the form of God, and who deemed it no matter of robbery (or seizure), but a matter of right, to be equal with God, emptied himself by taking upon him the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men. Doubtless, as God, he could have revealed his Godhead glory to the eyes of men through his humanity; and he might so have wrought

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in his manhood frame, as to allow no sign of weakness to be felt or seen therein; but he emptied himself and being found in fashion as a man, he became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. He merged his will into the will of the Father; hid in his heart the law of the Father; yielded himself to the guidance of his Spirit; and thus suffered his ear to be wakened morning by morning to hear as the instructed One. As Son of God in human flesh, he received his humanity from the Father, by the power of the Holy Ghost-he was sent by the Father-he lived by the Father; and at his command laid down his life and took it again;-from first to last, the holy, obedient, dependent, and, therefore, perfect man. And as Jesus lived by the Father, even so do renewed men live by him. Hence the eternal law that establishes the relation of the creature to the Creator, is in strict agreement with the apostle's word, "The life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me." Paul not only had life, but he sought to live that life. He felt that Christ lived in him for a purpose; even that he might think, feel, speak, act, and walk as a new man. He could not have longed for Christ to be formed in other saints, had the inner life remained undeveloped in himself. But whence did he draw those supplies through which his life was fed and strengthened; through which its features were unfolded and matured according to its original pattern? Our text is the answer to this great question. As the Holy Ghost, in regenerating Paul, implanted in him the eternal life from Christ, so in maturing that life, he ceaselessly replenished his

inner man out of and with the fulness of Christ. Out of his fulness have all we received, and out of that fulness shall we receive for evermore. The mystic Christ in the saint finds its all in the personal Christ at God's right hand. Paul names three things concerning Jesus, on which his faith specially rested for the constant replenishing of his inner life-that Jesus was Son of God, that he loved him, and that he gave himself for him. To these three things we will now turn our attention.

I. We note the title given to Christ by the apostle, "I live by the faith of the Son of God." There is deep significance in this use of the word SON OF GOD. As Son of God, of one substance with the Father, Christ was ever "THE LIFE, even that eternal life which was with the Father." While it was on the basis of his fore-ordained sacrifice for sin in human flesh that he gave the new-creature life to the ancient saints, yet it was as God and Son of God that he was the great life-giver. And though the eternal life now dwells in the risen man, Christ Jesus, as head of the church, yet that life so dwells in his humanity, because of the personal union of the human nature with the divine nature in him as the eternal Son. The life-giving efficacy of his bruised body and of his shed blood, cannot be dissevered from its source in his Godhead. The life-sustaining virtue of his flesh, which is meat indeed, and of his blood, which is drink indeed, abides in ceaseless connection with its first great cause, in the person of the Word. The stem of his humanity contains not the fulness of the life eternal apart from the root of his divinity. The fountain of life that gushes from

his pierced heart, springs out of the ocean of his divine and essential fulness. The weary traveller, who puts his parched lips to the living water in the way-side fountain, knows that the refreshing stream comes welling up from depths that his eye has never seen, and that it has been doing so for ages before his birth. So the spirit of Paul, as it applied the longing lips of faith to the flowing fountain of the riven Rock, Christ Jesus, knew that the soul-reviving stream rose out of depths in that Rock of ages that his eye had never traced, and flowed from far-off ages, into which his imagination might seek in vain to penetrate. Daily gathering fresh life and power from Jesus, his faith ever embraced him as the Christ, the Son of the living God, whom the Father had revealed in him. It is, then, quite evident that Paul's inner life was sustained by faith in Christ, and that it drew from him all its energy for active service, and for continued endurance. "I know," saith he, "how to be abased, and I know how to abound: everywhere and in all things I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. I can do all things through Christ, which strengtheneth me." And it is equally evident, that the sublime fact of the Sonship of Christ, both in his Godhead and manhood, pervaded all his thoughts concerning the person, work, sufferings, and intercession of Christ. And when Paul would use a term at once to include all the fulness of the blessedness which is in Christ for his people, that term could be none other than the Son of God, on which fact he rests that unanswerable argument, "He that spared not HIS OWN SON, but delivered him