The Obedience of Christ

We are sanctified to the obedience of Christ. Let me say one word on this obedience. I say of my child, who wants to go another way, but who yields to me, it is very pleasant to see such obedience: but it was not so with Christ, He never had a will to wish to go the other way. When the tempter came to Him, he said, "If Thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread." What was His answer? It was as though He said, "Nay, I am a servant; I cannot command, I obey; It is written, 'That man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God.' That is the obedience of Christ. The Father's will was His motive for everything. There are thousands of things we do from habit, and we say we must do them: there is no "must" for me, but Christ's will. I have to learn what His will is; for we are made epistles of Christ, and the path we are to walk in is to manifest the life of Jesus in our bodies. Everything I do should be the expression of the allegiance of my heart to Christ; and the manifestation of Him to others. The standard of walk is, what is "worthy of the Lord," not of man. Sometimes it is very difficult to be peaceful, patient, gentle, when a man wrongs and insults one; but were you not the enemy of God, and did not God forgive you when you were His enemy? Well, you forgive your enemy. I quite understand the difficulties, but we have the blessed privilege of walking as He walked. If you want to do this, go and study Christ, learn what His path was down here, after you have learned your place in Him on high. It is a great comfort that, in looking at Christ, I not only see the thing I ought to be, but I get the thing I ought to be, "grace for grace." "We all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory." There is real growth there, not in fitness and acceptance, but in likeness to Christ; and it ought to be growth every instant.

We are in this place of Christ, then, before God; and what I would press upon you is to study Christ, so that we may be like Him here. There is nothing that so fills the soul with blessing and encouragement, or that so sanctifies: nothing which so gives the living sense of divine love, that gives us courage.

The Lord give us this courage, and enable us to study Him. "He that eateth Me, even he shall live by Me." J. N. Darby.