THE CHRISTIAN WALK
‘Like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.’
The Apostles lived in the knowledge that Jesus Christ was ever at their side. Their mind never questioned for a moment the fact of His Resurrection. They gave it out in the streets, they proclaimed Jesus and the Resurrection, and none could resist them. Driven out of Jerusalem, they came to the ends of the earth, preaching the same doctrine.
I. Newness of life.—We are continually surrounded by evidences of the power of resurrection, and those evidences all point to the manifestation of a newness of life. We cast seed into the ground and it springs into a plant. When the winter months are over it seems to blossom into new beauty and freshness; surely that reminds us of the resurrection of the body. Our body will be raised with all its perfection; it will be raised spiritually; a spiritual body raised in power, not in weakness. There will be no dullness of the intellect, no dullness of the eye, no disease of the body. Nothing was created to be destroyed; everything is raised again. You put a piece of coal into the fire, and think that it has burnt itself out, but it simply requires the scientific man to collect the gases which the smoke gives forth in order to produce the same substance again.
II. Men need to be raised from a lower to a higher stage in the spiritual ladder of life.—There may be one here who has fallen from the path; you may remember having given way to some sin, some grievous sin. This message touches your heart, and if your eyes become gradually enlightened, then your conscience is commencing to work, you feel drawn towards the ‘newness of life.’ If this is so, then your resurrection from the state of spiritual death to the life of righteousness is the beginning under the guidance of Almighty God. He is speaking to your soul. He is asking you to confess your sins to Him and to ask for His forgiveness. He loves you, He needs you, and He is calling you to Himself.
III. Some one may need help in their daily life.—You may not perhaps be conscious of living at this moment in any special sin. but the world presents many difficulties and temptations, and the question is, how may you fight them? They may come to you in your home, in your business, or your profession. You will find that place of refuge which you are seeking in the love of Jesus, and when you know that love it will constrain you to walk in ‘newness of life.’ Have a fear of doing anything that may displease Him, for Jesus is ever abiding with you. Avoid entering upon engagements or friendships which may come between your soul and God. Try to let some of the light of heaven stream down upon your life and work here. Let us try to carry into practice the life of Christianity. It calls for the highest standard of straightforwardness and goodness in our transactions with others. It acts as a check against everything unfair, unprincipled, even though the world may call it shrewd or sharp. It bids us seek not only our own interests, but the interests of those whom we employ, or by whom we are employed. It tells us that we must lay aside all uncharitable and harsh thought of others. It insists upon our thoughts, words, and actions being pure, and it reminds us that our bodies are the temple of the Holy Ghost, and that wrong and sinful passions are sure sooner or later to bring their inevitable punishment.
Rev. D. Aikin-Sneath.
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‘If any one wishes to know, how far the “life” of a Christian is a “new life,” he will find it in the comparison, of which these words speak—“That like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.” By which we are taught—that, such as was the difference—not between Christ’s “life” after His resurrection, and His “life” before it, as it is generally taken; but such as was the difference between the Christ shackled in the grave, and the Christ free and spiritual after He left it—so is “the new man” to be different from “the old.” ’
(SECOND OUTLINE)
A PERMANENT FACTOR IN SPIRITUAL LIFE
It is no mere statement of an unbalanced dogmatism which induces the Church still to put into the mouth of her children in answer to the question, ‘How many Sacraments hath Christ ordained in His Church?’ ‘Two only as generally necessary to salvation, that is to say, Baptism and the Supper of the Lord.’
I. Holy Baptism as a permanent factor of our present spiritual life.—We cannot think of this Sacrament as an arbitrary thing imposed by God on mankind under pains and penalties, to be accepted without any clear recognition of its value, to be rejected on pain of eternal damnation. Its obligation is rooted in the very nature of man and in the weakness of his nature. With this doctrine of birth-sin belonging to the children of Adam, and of further hereditary taint descending from parents, Christ, we may say with reverence, had first to deal in delivering man from the bondage of moral death. Man had to be made capable of the higher goodness, and therefore ‘Ye must be born again’ is the first and most obligatory command which meets the Christian entering on his life here on earth. And so Baptism, or the Sacrament of New Birth, is lifted out of any arbitrary or artificial position which it might have been supposed to hold, and takes its place, as being as necessary to the spiritual life as natural birth is to the natural life. To those who will accept Christ’s gift, with the hand of faith, Holy Baptism, not as a charm acting independently of the man, but co-operating with his faith, will give him that nature which will enable him to produce in his poor, weak, crumbling humanity that image of Christ which would have been impossible without it.
II. There is hardly any question more pressing at the present day than the precise hearing of what we call our nature or our conduct.—Is nature a weight tied round our neck to render futile from the very first the frantic plungings which we mistake for the efforts of freedom to escape drowning? Is nature, on the other hand, a carefully adjusted lifebuoy, so that without any effort or struggle on our part we can trust it to sustain us amidst the breaking waves of this troublesome world? Has Baptism anything to say to these difficulties? Every child who is brought to the font brings with him, if this be true, a vast series of hereditary moral tendencies to be worked out in his life. When he passes down into the death of Christ, and is buried in the waters of Baptism and rises again to newness of living, he does not enter on life deprived of his characteristics, his tendencies either in the direction of good or evil inherited qualities. Baptism is not a levelling process, which starts all men on an equality from the first, to pick up for themselves fresh distinction. Surely at Baptism we may believe that two things happen:—
(a) A fresh power is given to the will of dealing with the vast number of characteristic trails and tendencies which are marshalled under the name of Nature.
(b) The characteristics themselves are spiritualised, the very poisons invested with a salutary power. And so accordingly we find in the lives of men two phenomena which answer to this suggested process of regeneration. We find men triumphing over what has obviously been an hereditary taint, and further, even more than this, we find people turning the hereditary taint into a source of positive virtue.
After all, God made us, and not we ourselves. And not only did God make us, but He regenerated us at the font, and if it was His will that we should still retain these tendencies and desires which frighten, and sometimes even impede us, let us be sure that our perfection lies in their right and proper treatment; and that God wills to save us as we are, and not, except in the last resource, as those who have had to cut off the right foot, or pluck out the right eye, in the desperate struggle for salvation.
—Canon Newbolt.
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‘We hear little about Holy Baptism. Large numbers of people have never even seen the Sacrament administered, and are little concerned with it as a practical event in their own lives; unless it be that some belated survival of better times causes them to procure a certificate of their Baptism as a preliminary to the occupation of some post to which they hope to succeed, or as a sign of their membership in the Church of England, at a period when it is profitable or necessary to make such a declaration. It is viewed at the best, as something of interest to fond parents, and to such as happen to be called to be sponsors—just as others are called to be bridesmaids—as a picturesque ceremony to which some people attach importance, and others do not; but as to its having any present spiritual bearing on their life, unless it be certain promises conducive to a good life were then made in their name—they would ridicule the idea as fantastic, or at least as fanciful, perhaps even superstitious. But it is necessary to repeat once more that there is an obstinate persistency in the Bible, and in the unbroken tradition of the Church in another direction. Holy Baptism, so far from being a piece of fanciful symbolism, which may be cast away by a majority of ratepayers into a lumber-room of denominational peculiarities, or which might certainly be abolished in favour of some new forms of initiation into Church membership—is treated in the Bible as fundamental, as one of the main exhibitions of the permanent victory over sin won by Christ in His Resurrection.’