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"THERE are two schools of doctrine among professing Christians as to the offices and relations of the Lord. The first speaks thus: Any work or office, held by Christ, cannot be held by us; it usurps His right if we pretend to share them. The other, which is the old doctrine, answers thus: If the Incarnation means anything, if Christ and His Church are really one body, all Christ's offices first held and exercised by Him on behalf of men must likewise be held and shared by His members, because He lives in them just as they apprehend that for which they were apprehended. The former view, which I feel assured is a mistake, arises from a misconception of the first great truth of Christ for us, to the denial of the greater truth of Christ in us, and we His members. The latter opens the riches of the glory of the mystery, which is now revealed, which is Christ in us, the hope of glory. The latter is the Church's faith which, however caricatured and abused, cannot be denied without sore loss to the deniers. For this faith confesses the Incarnation, that the Lord still dwells in flesh and blood, and that because He dwells in us, though in ourselves we can do nothing, we can yet do all things through Christ, who is the power in us; and because He is 'the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever,' if He live in us, He will yet do His proper works, in and through those who grow up out of self to live in Him." -Andrew Jukes.

VIII.

POWER FOR SONSHIP AND POWER FOR

S

SERVICE.

"As many as received Him, to them gave He

power to become the sons of God," says the Scripture. Christ for us as our life must first of all be appropriated in order that we may stand in the place of sonship to the Father. We do not work for life, but from life; we do not by our own power attain unto Christ, but we receive Christ in order that we may have power to attain. "We preach Christ crucified the power of God," says the Apostle. That is, we hold up this external fact of the Son of God bearing our sins and putting them away, and we beseech the sinner to look at this fact and accept it and rest in it. This is the Gospel, and the Scriptures declare that this Gospel of Christ is "the power of God unto salvation † to every one that believeth." By no striving of our own, by no energy of will or strength of repentance, can we attain unto salvation. Eternal life is the gift of God, which, when we receive it, makes

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us partakers of "the power of an endless life"; it is not an attainment which we can grasp by the power of our own finite life. In other words, we are first of all to accept Christ's life and work and redemption for us, as that which can alone put us into relations of sonship and justification and fellowship with the Father.

But to such as have already become the sons of God, there is a promise given of still greater attainment, the power of the indwelling Spirit. "But ye shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you, and ye shall be witnesses unto Me." Before it was power to become the sons of God; now it is power to serve as the sons of God. And it is very significant to observe how constantly this kind of energy is connected in the Holy Ghost. The power of

Scriptures with the the Spirit of God."* "The demonstration of the Spirit and of power." "With the Holy Ghost and power."+ These are illustrations, which might be greatly multiplied, of the constant association of these two ideas. Christ's ascension to the Father, as we know, was the condition of the descent of the Spirit; and concerning this the Lord said, "The works that I do shall ye do also, and greater works than these shall ye do, because I go unto My Father." Thus the ministry of the Spirit was announced to be mightier in results than that of

*Rom. xv. 19.
† Cor. ii. 4.

Acts x. 38.
John xiv. 12.

the Son. This would not seem easy to credit. If we were ignorant of the facts of science, and some one were to show us a reservoir of water, and tell us that this element is capable of three manifestations, liquid, vapour, and solid, and ask us which would be the most powerful, we might say the solid form; and looking at the iceberg, which can crush a huge ship as you grind a dry leaf between your fingers, this conclusion would seem to be justified. But science would point at once to the vapour-so light, so impalpable, and in its finer forms so invisible, and remind us that this is the power that is moving our huge steamships, and drawing our countless railway trains, and driving our ponderous factories-the greatest motive force in our modern civilization. The Blessed Trinity has been manifested to us in two forms in this dispensation. First, He came as the Word made flesh, the incarnate Lord, with the might of His divine manhood, that could silence the winds, still the waves, open the gates of the grave, and reverse the laws of gravitation. Is not this the most powerful revelation of God? "Greater works than these shall ye do," is His answer. When God comes as the secret invisible Spirit, like the wind which we cannot see, and cannot tell whence it cometh or whither it goeth; and when this Spirit shall dwell in His fulness in believers, moving their wills, inspiring their words and energizing their actions, then shall be seen the greatest things for the glory

of God and the salvation of souls that have yet been witnessed. It is this gift of the Spirit as a divine power for service and testimony, that we wish to unfold in the remaining part of this chapter.

This special enduement of strength from the Holy Spirit we have already alluded to in a previous chapter. We shall now consider it more at length, as revealed in the divine Word and in human lives.

In the case of our Lord Jesus Christ, there is a distinct recognition of this enduement, as constituting His preparation for His ministry. After the visible descent of the Holy Ghost upon Him at the Jordan, we read that He "returned in the power of the Spirit" into Galilee," and that he went into the synagogue at Nazareth and read and applied to Himself the words of the prophet, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He hath anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor." In the Acts of the Apostles we hear Peter declaring “how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power,† who went about doing good and healing all that were oppressed of the devil."

In the case of His apostles, we find a constant recognition of the same fact. "Now He which establisheth us with you in Christ and hath anointed us is God," Paul writing to the Corinthians.

*Luke iv. 14.

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