By J.R. Miller
What is it to be a Christian? What is that change which, wrought in a natural man, make him a Christian man? What are a Christian's new relations to God and to his fellow men? What is Christian character? How should a Christian live? What is the pattern on which his life should be fashioned? If we would make our Christian life what it ought to be--we must find plain, clear answers to these questions.
A Christian is one who believes on Christ. He has entrusted his whole life, with its sin, its guilt, its ruin, its need its security for eternity, its redemption, cleansing and transformation--into the hands of the might Savior, the strong Son of God. A Christian is therefore a saved one, a redeemed one--saved, redeemed, by Christ. He is no longer guilty and condemned; he is acquitted, justified, restored to such relations before God that he is as if he had never sinned, so fully are his sins put away! He is God's lost and wandering child brought home, received, reconciled, restored to all a child's privileges!
But this is not all; it is not merely a change of relations. Those who believe on Christ are born again; the Scriptures say--born from above, born of God; that is--there is a new, a divine life in the regenerated soul. Christ speaks of it as a well of water in the believer, springing up into everlasting life. The result is shown in new affections, new desires, new hopes, and new aims. Forgiveness of sins is not enough. A man's lies and dishonesties may be forgiven; but, if that is all, he is still a liar and dishonest. God's forgiveness regenerates. A Christian life is the setting up of the kingdom of God in a human heart.
A child was troubled at the thought that heaven was so far away, and was perplexed to know how he could ever get up to that bright home. His mother explained to him that heaven must first come down to him--must first enter his heart. A Christian is one into whose heart the spirit of heaven has entered. The new life is like that which they live in heaven. We are taught to pray, "May your will be done in earth, as it is in heaven." The one place in all the earth in which it most concerns each Christian to see that God's will is done as it is in heaven--is in his own individual heart.
If we are truly born again, the life of heaven has really begun within us. It may be very feeble in its beginning, like one little seed only, planted in a garden; but the one seed is from heaven, and the new life in us has truly begun. "That which is born of the Spirit," said the Master, "is Spirit." It is the life of the Holy Spirit in a human soul. Paul put this truth in a very striking way when he said, "I live; yet not I--but Christ lives in me." Our Lord said a Christian is "a branch" of the true Vine. This suggests what Christian life and character should be, before the world. Every true Christian is a new incarnation. Christ showed the world in his own person, the life of the invisible God. No human eye ever saw God in his glory; no one could ever have seen him--had not Christ come down, and in a plain, simple, and real, human life which men could see and understand, lived out the divine life which in its glory, men could neither see nor understand. He interpreted the invisible things of God--in act and speech which the common people could read. He said, when he was asked about God, "Look at me and see God. I and my Father are one. He who has seen me--has seen the Father."
In like manner, in his own small measure, every one who is truly a Christian, is an incarnation of God, and should be able in humility to say, "Look at me--and you will see a dim but faithful representation of God." This puts a very solemn responsibility on every Christian. He represents God in this world, and is to live in such a way that from his life, men shall learn the truth about God. If Christ lives in us, men must see Christ in our faces, and hear him in our words, and learn of him in our acts!
The ideal Christian life, is a growing likeness to Christ. Christ is the pattern after which we are to strive to fashion our life. As we study Christ in the Gospels, there rises up before us the vision of His matchless beauty. We go over the chapters, and we find one fragment of His loveliness here, and another there. And as we read the story through to the end--beauty after beauty appears, until at length we see a full vision of our blessed Redeemer. This is the pattern we are to follow in fashioning our lives. This is the vision we are to seek to carve into reality in our own character. All our acts we are to bring to the example of Christ, testing each one by that infallible standard.
The Gospels should be studied by the Christian, as a builder studies the architect's drawings--that every minutest detail may be exactly reproduced, so far as in a faulty and sinful human life, the character and conduct of the faultless and sinless Jesus can be reproduced. The perfect pattern is ever to be held before us for imitation, and as we look at it glowing in all its marvelous beauty, yet far above us and beyond our present reach, we are to comfort ourselves and stir our hearts to the noblest efforts and highest attainments by the thought, "That is what I shall one day be!" However slow may be our progress toward that perfect ideal; however sore the struggles with weakness and sin; however often we fail--we are never to lose sight of the distant goal, nor cease to strive and press toward the mark. Some day, if we are faithful to the end and faint not--we shall emerge out of all failure and struggle, and, seeing Jesus as he is--shall be fully transformed into his blessed image!
Such is the aim of the Christian life. "We shall be like him"--that is the final destiny of every redeemed life. This should be inspiration enough to arouse in the dullest person--every sluggish hope and every slumbering energy--and to impel to the highest effort and the most heroic struggle. This assurance should perpetually shine like a bright star beyond the fields of toil and battle, forbidding discouragement in any temporary failure or defeat--and cheering all faintness and weariness into buoyant strength and enthusiasm.
The goal of blessedness, is not to be reached at one bound--it is the work of long and painful years, and the progress is slow and the transformation gradual and almost imperceptible.
It will help us, in striving after the perfected beauty--to remember that we can best attain it, by carving each moment's line with care. God gives us life by days and hours, not by months and years. The way to have his purpose for us fulfilled in us--is to fill each minute with simple faithfulness. Doing God's will for one moment not only lights the path for the next--but prepares us for its responsibility. Charles Kingsley said, "Do today's duty, fight today's temptation, and do not weaken or distract yourself by looking ahead to things which you cannot see, and could not understand if you saw them."
Character is a mosaic, in which each day has its little stone to set; we need only to look well to each day as it comes, and to print on each its record of beauty--and the whole will be beautiful in the end. This living simply by the day--is one of the royal secrets of a beautiful life which every young Christian should learn.
A life thus lived--each day made beautiful with the beauty of holiness and of usefulness, will in the end give a record of duty well done, of work completed, of blessings left behind at each step, and a character transfigured by the indwelling divine Spirit, and the outworking of love--until it shines in the full likeness of Christ himself!
