A Sermon by Hugh Martin
Galatians 2:20. Christ liveth in me.
2. Consider some of the consequences of Christ living in His people.
(1.) Their holiness is secured. For what is their holiness but their likeness to Christ? And how true must that likeness be, if Christ indeed lives in them! So far as Christ lives in you, so far you will inevitably and exactly be like Christ. For whether living in His own person or in you, there is but one Christ, unchanged – the same yesterday, today and for ever. He will not contradict Himself; He will not misrepresent Himself. He will not live in you in any other way than He lived in the days of His flesh on the earth. It is just the very Christ whom we read of in the Gospels, and just as He lived when tabernacled with men upon the earth, that lives in you. And what He was then in His own person, exactly that will He be in you, to the full extent to which by faith you suffer Him to live and dwell in you.
In you, as in Himself, He will still be the same meek and lowly One; the same kind and condescending One; the same dutiful, diligent, obedient Son; the same uncomplaining, unflinching sufferer. In you, as in Himself, He will still go about doing good; or you will, when He lives in you. In you, as in Himself, He will long after lost souls and love the souls of the saved; or you will, when Christ lives in you. In you, as in Himself, He will say – He will say in you, or you will say in Him, the ever-same, unchanged obedient One – “My meat is to do the will of Him that sent Me”; “Wist ye not that I must be about My Father’s business?” He is the same submissive One: “Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from Me: nevertheless not as I will, but as Thou wilt”. “The cup which My Father hath given Me, shall I not drink it?” He is the same forgiving One: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do”. He is the same relying One even in death: “Father, into Thy hands I commit My spirit.”
All this will He be in you, as all this He was in Himself: all this will He be in you to the full extent to which He lives in you. He will reproduce Himself in you. He will re-present Himself in you. Even as He was in the world, so will you also be. His thoughts will be yours, for the same mind that was in Christ will assuredly be in you, when Christ Himself is in you. His will will be yours, for He will work in you to will and to do of His good pleasure. His work will be yours, for “he that abideth in Me, and I in him, the same
1The final part of a sermon taken with editing from The Family Treasury for 1859. The first part, which appeared in last month’s issue, dealt with “the causes of Christ living in the believer”.
bringeth forth much fruit”. Surely Christ living in you is the truest and profoundest security for your being like Him, for your being made holy even as He is holy.
And mark how holiness on this principle – holiness thus secured – cannot fail to be based upon humility, and pervaded with it, as all true holiness must be. You live – you live a holy life; but you have no credit because of it, you have no ground of glorying. For it is really not you that lives; it is Christ that lives in you. The thoughts of purity and light and wisdom that you think, they are not your own; they are the mind of Christ – they are Christ living in you, thinking His own truth in you, wielding by His Spirit your faculty of thought and bringing its perceptions of heavenly knowledge into harmony with His own. The purposes of meek obedience and uncomplaining patience which you cherish are not your own; they are the will of Christ – they are Christ living in you, willing His own purpose in you, wielding your will by His Spirit, and bringing your desire and choice into unison with His.
Your good works are not your own: they are Christ living in you, working in you to will and to do of His own good pleasure. You resign all ground of glorying; you renounce all claim to honour. Far more: you renounce indeed your very self. It is not I, it is Christ. Christ is all in all. “By the grace of God, I am what I am: and His grace which was bestowed upon me was not in vain, but I laboured more abundantly than they all; yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me.” “I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.” Who that knows himself, in all his sinfulness and emptiness, would not renounce himself that he might be filled with Christ, that he might have Christ reproduced in him, Christ living in him – Christ, the chiefest among ten thousand, the altogether lovely, fairer than the sons of men!
(2.) The mutual love that subsists among the members of Christ. “We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren.” We know that we ourselves live, that Christ lives in us, because we love them in whom Christ lives. Our love to Him inevitably goes forth as love to them. Indeed our love to them is just our love to Him – recognising, receiving, resting on Him, as living in them also. For if Christ lives in them, His word is literally and profoundly true: “He that receiveth you receiveth Me”. “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me.”
When a Christian brother ministers to me in Christian love, it is not he but Christ living in him that ministers to me. When I, in turn, minister in love to my brother, it is to Christ living in him that I minister. Thus, in His people, Christ Himself ministers to me here: Christ will hereafter own me as having ministered to Himself in them. Even a cup of cold water, given in the name
of a disciple, should be met with gratitude to Christ for it now; and it will obtain from Christ its reward at last.
Hence also the secret of that pure and exalted feeling of honour and esteem with which the blessed grace of love to the brethren is characterised. For when I truly love a believer, it is with an emotional ascription of honour to him as one of the excellent of the earth. I recognise him as a child of God – as an heir of God. I recognise him as a king and a priest by God’s appointment and in the estimation of our Father who is in heaven. But honourable and exalted as this, his recognised rank and renown, must be, my estimate of him rises higher still when I recognise the truth that Christ lives in him, when I recognise Christ Himself living in him. Then I not only honour him in Christ, but I honour Christ in him.
Nor does his earthly rank or estate enter into this consideration at all. That dwindles into insignificance, and does not at all come into account. Indeed his nation, kindred, people and tongue become a matter of pure indifference. Christ living in him obliterates all social and national distinctions, throws down all barriers of social and national separation. “There is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free; but Christ is all” if Christ is in all, if Christ is all in all. “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me.” Well therefore may this mutual love be assigned as the grand evidence of discipleship: “By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another”.
(3.) The explanation and the origin, of persecution. It originates in the world’s hatred to Christ and is directed against Him. It must be so, seeing that Christ lives in His people. “Saul, Saul, [wasting the Church,] why persecutest thou Me?” And it is no extenuation of the world’s guilt, in hating the saints, that they do not believe that Christ lives in them – that they do not know or recognise Christ in them. Their rejection of those who are His stands on exactly the same footing as their rejection of Him: “The world knoweth us not, because it knew Him not”.
Depravity blinded the world to the glory of Christ when He came in His own person, and it blinds them to the measure of His glory in which He comes in the persons of His people. The bitter Ishmaelitish laugh and jest with which you, the worldling, scorn the Isaac of God, the promised seed; the hard words or hard deeds with which you, born after the flesh, persecute him that is born after the Spirit, will bear no excuse from your assertion that you did not know, you did not think, you did not see that Christ was living in him – that it was really the promised Seed of the woman, Messiah Himself, you were persecuting. For it is only your hatred and bitter prejudice that
blind you. If you feared God and loved Christ, you would see Him in His people: “They that fear thee shall rejoice when they see me” trusting in Thy word; they shall glorify Christ in me.
Consider – in your dislike of those that are Christ’s, in your suspicion of them – your hard thoughts and hard speeches concerning them; your discomfort in their presence when their godliness, their Christliness, comes out; your scornful joy over their infirmities and failures. Consider what a proof you have in all this of your deadly enmity to that Christ who lives in them. You cannot but know that as yet Christ lives in them only partially. If Christ is in them, the body is dead because of sin, though the Spirit is life because of righteousness. A body of sin and death is in them, as well as a living Christ. And that body of sin and death is a drawback to the completeness of the life and likeness of Christ in His people. They profess to give no more than a partial, though a real, representation of Christ. They profess no more, though they long for it to be far more; they long for it to be unbroken and complete.
But if it was so – if their infirmities were removed, if their remaining corruption was finally suppressed and extinguished; if there was absolutely nothing seen in them any more except Christ, “Christ living in them” in the unabated fullness and energy of His holy grace and life – you know that their society would be unspeakably more painful to you still; their Christliness would rebuke you more powerfully than now; your withdrawal from them, if withdrawal were possible, would be more complete. Or if you could not escape their presence and their intercourse; if you found yourself in relations to them which you could not set aside; if you found them a people with whom, in their perfect righteousness and holiness and likeness to Christ, you had to keep company – would not your dislike to them, your rejection of them, your resentment against them and their piety, break out in manifold strength and bitterness?
What is this but a proof that the more clearly Christ is revealed to you, the nearer Christ is brought to you, so much the more you dislike Him. And if Christ therefore was to come to you, not only in His own personal perfection in His people, but in Himself, in His own perfect person, you would fully and finally reject Him and say, “Depart from us, for we desire not [Thee, nor] the knowledge of Thy ways?” Ah, do not forget that it is this you indeed say when now you reject His people. You reject Him; you persecute Him in them; for “Christ liveth in” them.
But let believers know what they are to expect at the world’s hands, and why. Christ living in you will not fare any better at the world’s hands than Christ sojourning in the world in the days of His flesh. The world is the same now as then. Christ in you is the same Christ as then. If they have kept His
sayings, they will keep yours also; if they have persecuted Him, they will persecute you. The servant is not greater than his Lord; it is enough if the servant be as his Lord. And it must be so if his Lord lives in Him. Christ in His own person was the object of the world’s malice. Christ living in you will be so still.
(4.) The words of Paul to the Colossians: “Christ in you the hope of glory“. Christ living in you by His Spirit is the seal, the hope, the earnest of the glory to be revealed. Not the glory itself as yet: the seal only, not the substance; the hope only, not the realisation; the earnest merely, not the fullness or completion. And the reason is that Christ as yet lives in you not as He lives in His glory: when He does so, that will be your glory realised. When Christ as glorified shall live in you, you also will be glorified thereby. But Christ does not yet live in you as He lives in His glory. Christ lives in you as He lived in His humiliation, in His work and travail, in His sorrows and sufferings – His glory veiled in the tabernacle of His flesh and beneath the thick covering of His deep abasement.
The Christ who now lives in you is not the Christ as sitting in the fullness of His blessed reward, but the Christ as labouring in the yoke and toil of His humble service, the Christ as going about Judea and Galilee doing good and suffering evil – overcoming evil with good, enduring the contradiction of sinners against Himself; living indeed a glorious life in the favour of His Father even then, but with His glory hidden. This is the Christ who now lives in you. Your life therefore also is hid with Christ in God. To suffer with Christ is your portion now, even to fill up what is behind of the sufferings of Christ. When glory comes, Christ will live in you in glory as He lives in glory Himself. Before glory comes, Christ will live in you in the world even as He Himself did live in the world. “Ought not Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into His glory?” Ought you not to suffer with Him, that you may also be glorified together?
It is only “the hope of glory”. But it is that hope most sure and blessed – most animating for duty, most comforting for patience. For living in you, and working in you, Christ will perfect that which concerns you. He will gradually suppress, and finally extinguish, all that is not “Christ in you” and then shine forth in you in the unabated splendour of His perfect image. You do not know what you shall be, but you know that, when He shall appear, you shall be like Him, for you shall see Him as He is. There will then be nothing in you but Christ. Already you have said, and you habitually say, None but Christ for me. And, blessed be God, that is already realised in full perfection. Christ for me; Christ, “who loved me, and gave Himself for me”; Christ, who appears “in the presence of God for” me.
But then that other cry shall also be realised fully, which as yet is but the object of desire and hope, and towards which there is only as yet a progress: None but Christ in me; and you will be satisfied when you awake in the attainment of it. Meantime, bear patiently the sufferings; “for I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed in us”. The seal, earnest and hope of that glory is Christ living in us already. Engage an in-living Christ more and more, by faith, by vigilance, by prayer, by diligence and dutifulness – engage the Christ that lives in you to mortify and crucify the sin that dwells in you. So will you realise and manifest His inward presence with you. And you will say, with growing faith and wonder and with deepening apprehension of the rich grace and marvels of the saying, “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and 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.”