iii. Such work, and this is my main point in the present chapter, is right, and rightly directed, when it protects and guides the exercise of faith. On the other hand, and this must be reiterated with most earnest emphasis, such work is not identical with faith; it has not the function of faith; it cannot for one moment take the place of faith. Within the protective circle of such diligence faith is to live and act in its divine simplicity; submissive trust in the Son of God, personal reliance upon and reception from Him whose Person and Work we thus diligently hold in holy “recollection.” Not work but trust is our organ, so to speak, for contact with Him, whether as to His righteousness for our acceptance, or as to His Spirit for our power. Yes, faith, in its simplest definition; that faith of which almost every miracle in the Gospels supplies a practical description. Faith, in the view of Jesus Christ, is personal trust. It is no mere condition which entitles us to touch Him. It is itself the touch. Not by toil of thought and will, but by that simplest touch, do I receive the Spirit of the Lord, and life and power of the Head. Toil of thought and will has a large work to do, as we have seen. But faith, and only faith, is the magnetic contact, if we may call it so, with Him. Such is His revealed order.
Let us rest, therefore. Let us labour, therefore. The life of faith in Jesus Christ is indeed a life of liberty, but not an easy-going life. Ease, indeed, there is in it, a sacred ease of certainty, of an acceptance we have not precariously won, but possess in Christ; a sense of wealth at our disposal, of power not our own, power far greater than the enemy’s, and exercised on a vantage-ground; but nothing casual and careless. There must be spiritual work that there may be a steady use of spiritual faith.
I would not be mistaken, as if I thought nothing of the most momentary and unprepared glance of the hard-pressed soul on Him who is our Peace and Victory. But I am speaking of the normal, habitual aspects of daily Christian life. If in that life, as to its wont and habit, we would know our Master’s power, we dare not leave faith to be exercised anyhow, so to speak. We must recollect, in order to believe, with a deliberate and watchful recollection. We must “grow in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour.”
“I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed to Him, against that day.” The Apostle “believed”; he had “committed” a great “deposit” to Him in whom his faith rested. And the exercise of that blessed personal confidence – how much it had to do, alike in its rise and its progress, with knowledge of the glorious Person in question, with thought upon His fulness of grace and truth, and with inference, strong and deep, as to the divine results of trust!
Lord, make us by Thy Spirit every day so to work as to believe with ever simpler faith; so to recollect as to rest indeed in Thee. Amen.
Let us rest, therefore. Let us labour, therefore. The life of faith in Jesus Christ is indeed a life of liberty, but not an easy-going life. Ease, indeed, there is in it, a sacred ease of certainty, of an acceptance we have not precariously won, but possess in Christ; a sense of wealth at our disposal, of power not our own, power far greater than the enemy’s, and exercised on a vantage-ground; but nothing casual and careless. There must be spiritual work that there may be a steady use of spiritual faith.
I would not be mistaken, as if I thought nothing of the most momentary and unprepared glance of the hard-pressed soul on Him who is our Peace and Victory. But I am speaking of the normal, habitual aspects of daily Christian life. If in that life, as to its wont and habit, we would know our Master’s power, we dare not leave faith to be exercised anyhow, so to speak. We must recollect, in order to believe, with a deliberate and watchful recollection. We must “grow in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour.”
“I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed to Him, against that day.” The Apostle “believed”; he had “committed” a great “deposit” to Him in whom his faith rested. And the exercise of that blessed personal confidence – how much it had to do, alike in its rise and its progress, with knowledge of the glorious Person in question, with thought upon His fulness of grace and truth, and with inference, strong and deep, as to the divine results of trust!
Lord, make us by Thy Spirit every day so to work as to believe with ever simpler faith; so to recollect as to rest indeed in Thee. Amen.
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