I. The gift of the Spirit of life dwells in those who are united to Christ in a fulness more abundant than was ever revealed before. And the gift of life is not a power, a principle, but a very true Person dwelling in us. This is the regeneration for which all ages waited till the Word was made flesh the new birth of water and of the Spirit, of which the baptism of Christ is the ordained sacrament. Here, then, we see a part of this great promise. In one word, it is the fulness of life given to us by the personal indwelling of the Holy Ghost, which Christ by His indwelling has bestowed upon us.
II. And besides this, the gift of life is abundant, not only in its fulness, but in its continuance. We cannot die in our Head, because He is life eternal; nor can we die in ourselves, except we cast out the Giver of life who is in us. Our first head fell, and drew us with him into the grave; our second Head is in heaven, and "our life is hid with Him in God." We can die no more by any federal death, but only by our own several and personal death. If sinners die eternally, they die one by one, of their own free choice, even as Adam. And we die now no more by single acts of disobedience, but only by a resolved and deliberate course of sinning. This reveals to us the wonderful love and miraculous longsuffering of Christ, and of the Spirit who dwells in us. Where once He enters, there He abides with divine endurance.
Let us draw from what has been said one or two practical truths of great importance in our daily life. (1) And, first, we hereby know that in all our acts there is a Presence higher than our own natural and moral powers. We were united to Christ by the presence of the Holy Spirit from our baptism. There has never been a moment, from the first dawn of consciousness, from the first twilight of reason and the first motions of the will, when the Spirit of life has not been present with us. The working of the Spirit is, so to speak, co-extensive with our whole moral being. He presides over all the springs of thought, word and deed, by His gracious presence endowing us with power and will to mortify sin and to live in holiness. What, then, is our life but the presence of the Spirit dwelling in us? (2) Another plain and practical truth is, that this Presence works in us according to the revealed and fixed laws of our probation. (3) Lastly, we may learn that the union of this Divine Presence with us in our probation issues in the last and crowning gift of this life the gift of perseverance. "Faithful is He that calleth you, Who also will do it."
H. E. Manning, Sermons,vol. iii., p. 159.
Abundant Life
Assuming inequalities of power to reign through every department of life, from the lowest to the highest, what I gather from Jesus' words is this, that God is not satisfied with any lower form of vitality where a higher can be attained, and that it has been one design of the Gospel to intensify human life, if I may so say, through every region of it; not to damp, impair or enfeeble a man's life-powers at all, but on every side to exalt them. The Son of God visited us in our far-off and, spiritually speaking, half-dead world, to make ours a more abundant life, as though He had come to bring a spiritual sunshine with Him, or had swept us with Himself into the regions of eternal day.
I. First of all, I think this has come true even in the ordinary and natural experiences of men. The effect of Christianity has not been to deaden men to the interests of this life, with its common joys and sorrows, but, on the contrary, to render our earthly life larger and more intense. The world itself is surely a graver, vaster thing since Jesus Christ died upon it. Common business rises in importance when by it you have the task set you to glorify your Saviour and serve your brother men. Our little life, obscure or petty as it may be, is no longer as a landlocked lake, set by itself apart; but, lo! it is an inlet, with open channel uniting it to the awful ocean beyond, and into it also there pour day after day those mysterious tides of life and passion which come from the infinite heart of the most high and loving One.
II. In the second place, Jesus Christ makes life to His disciples a more abundant thing by conferring upon us a new sort of life, and one which has fuller pulses and a deeper and stronger vitality about it than merely natural or unregenerate men can possess. The experiences of Christian that is, spiritual life are more intense than those of nature, because they are awakened in the new-born soul by a far grander and more mighty class of of facts and relationships; eternity is vaster than time, God mightier than the world. Unregenerate men touch time and the world; we, if we are Christ's, touch God and eternity. A man's conversion to God adds a fresh region, a new department, to his being; it gives him new thoughts, it quickens in him new emotions, it begets new motives, it sets before him new ambitions. The new life must be a fuller one, a deeper one, than the old, giving birth to thoughts more grave, feelings more deep, in a word, "life more abundant."
J. Oswald Dykes, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxiv., p. 177.
References: John 10:10. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xx., No. 1150; J. F. Stevenson, Christian World Pulpit,vol. ii., p. 388; H. W. Beecher, Ibid.,vol. xxix., p. 340; C. Short, Ibid.,vol. xxx., p. 261; Contemporary Pulpit,vol. vii., p. 65; Preacher's Monthly,vol. v., p. 302; Homiletic Quarterly,vol. ii., p. 130; Homiletic Magazine,vol. xvii., p. 237; G. Dawson, Sermons on Disputed Points,p. 93; F. Tucker, Penny Pulpit,No. 606; E. Mellor, In the Footsteps of Heroes,p. 172; Homilist,vol. vi., p. 423.