LIFE

Life 1. Suppose we were asked any of the following questions:—Can you tell me in a word the subject of the New Testament? Or, can you explain, just as briefly, the object with which Christ came into the world? Or, can you indicate the final purpose of the multitude of various religious organizations and movements which we find at work all round us, many of them tending, like other kinds of modern machinery, to become more and more complex? Can you say why all the sermons are preached, why all the various services are held, why all our Communions are made? Will not a single word answer all these questions? Surely the one word “life” is a sufficient reply to them all. Is not life the one subject of all Christian teaching and study? Is not life the one object of every kind of Christian effort? 2. From time to time in the course of His ministry our Lord briefly, yet quite comprehensively expressed, by means of some pregnant phrase, His whole purpose and object. For instance, in the hearing of the Pharisees, He said it was “for judgment” that He came into this world. Then He told Pilate that He came “to bear witness of the truth.” But never more fully or completely did our Lord express the whole purpose of His mission than in these words of the text—“I came that they may have life.” Sum up the gospel in a single word, and that one word is “life.” Get at the heart of all Christ had to teach, and life is nestling against that heart. One thought determines every other thought; one fact interprets and arranges everything, and that one fact, so dominant and regal, is the deep fact of life. Deeper than faith, for faith is but a name, unless it issue from a heart that lives; deeper than love, though God Himself be love, for without life love would be impossible, life is the compendium of the gospel, the sweet epitome of all its news; it is the word that gathers in itself the music and the ministry of Christ. “The words that I speak unto you,” He said, “they are spirit, and they are life.” “I came that they may have life, and may have it abundantly.” “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.” “I am the resurrection and the life.” All that He came to teach, all that He was, is summed and centred in that little word.1 [Note: G. H. Morrison]

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