From the book “The Master's Indwelling” By Andrew Murray
Chapter 6 – CHRIST OUR LIFE
Col 3: 4 ...Christ who is our life...
One question that rises in every mind is this: “How can I live that life of perfect trust in God?” Many do not know the right answer, or the full answer. It is this: “Christ must live it in me.” That is what He became man for; as a man to live a life of trust in God, and so to show to us how we ought to live. When He had done that upon earth, He went to heaven, that He might do more than show us, that He might give us, and live in us that life of trust. It is as we understand what the life of Christ is and how it becomes ours, that we shall be prepared to desire and to ask of Him that He would live it Himself in us. When first we have seen what the life is, then we shall understand how it is that He can actually take possession, and make us like Himself.
I want especially to direct attention to that first question. I wish to set before you the life of Christ as He lived it, that we may understand what it is that He has for us and that we can expect from Him. Christ Jesus lived a life upon earth that He expects us literally to imitate. We often say that we long to be like Christ. We study the traits of His character, mark His footsteps, and pray for grace to be like Him, and yet, somehow, we succeed but very little. And why? Because we want to pluck the fruit while the root is missing. If we want really to understand what the imitation of Christ means, we must go to that which constituted the very root of His life before God. It was a life of absolute dependence, absolute trust, and absolute surrender. Until we are one with Him in what is the principle of His life, absolute dependence on God, it is vain for us to seek here or there to copy the graces of that life.
Life from God
We often think that God has given us a life which is now our own, a spiritual life, and that we are to take charge; and then we complain that we cannot rightly keep it. No wonder. We must learn to live as Jesus did. I have a God-given treasure in this earthen vessel. I have the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, the revealed Words of God in my heart (2 Cor 4:6). I have this life of God's Son within my spirit, given me by God, it can only be maintained by God Himself as I will to live in fellowship with Him.
What does the Apostle Paul teach us in Romans 6? He tells us that we must reckon ourselves to be dead to sin, and alive to God in Christ Jesus. He goes on to say: “Therefore yield yourselves to God, as those that are alive from the dead” (Rom 6:13). How often a Christian hears solemn words about his having to reckon himself dead to sin, and alive to God in Christ! He does not know what to do; so he wonders: “How can I keep it, this death and this life?” Listen to what Paul says. The moment that you believe yourself to be dead to sin and alive to God, go with that life to God Himself, and present yourself as alive from the dead, and say to God: “Lord, You have given me this life. You alone can keep it. I bring it to You. I cannot yet understand everything. I hardly know what I have got, but I come to You to perfect what You have begun.” To live like Christ, I must be conscious every moment that my life has come from God, and He alone can maintain it.
Dependence on God
How did Christ live out His life during the thirty-three years in which He walked here upon earth? He lived it in dependence on God. You know how continually He says: “The Son can do nothing of Himself (John 5:19). The words that I speak are not my own but the Father’s (John 14:10).” He waited unceasingly for the teaching, and the commands, and the guidance of the Father. He prayed for power from the Father. Whatever He did, He did in the name of the Father. He, the Son of God, felt the need of much prayer, of persevering prayer, of bringing down from heaven and maintaining the life of fellowship with God in prayer. We hear a great deal about trusting God. And we may say: “Ah, that is what I want,” and we may forget what is the very secret of it all, — that God, in Christ, must work all in us. I not only need God as an object of trust, but I must have Christ formed within my heart as the power to trust; He must live His own life of trust in me.
If we are to enter into the rest of faith, and to abide there; if we are to live the life of victory in the spiritual land of Canaan, God’s Promised Land, it must begin here. We must be broken down from all self-confidence and learn like Christ to depend absolutely and unceasingly upon God. There is a greater work to be done here than we perhaps know. We must be broken down, and the habit of our souls, our wills, must be unceasingly: “I am nothing; God is all. I cannot walk before God as I should for one hour, unless God keep the life He has given me.” What a blessed solution God gives then to all our questions and our difficulties, when He says: “My child, Christ has gone through it all for you. Christ has brought forth a new nature that can trust God; and Christ the Living One in heaven will live in you, and enable you to live that life of trust.” That is why Paul said: “Such trust we have toward God, through Christ” (2 Cor 3:4). What does that mean? Does it only mean through Christ as the mediator, or intercessor? No, it means much more. Through Christ living in our hearts, by His words and Spirit, and enabling us to trust God as He trusted Him.
Surrender to God
And so, if one wants to live a life of perfect trust, there must be the perfect surrender of his life, and his will, even unto the very death. He must be willing to go all the way with Jesus, even to Calvary. When a boy of twelve years of age, Jesus said: “Did you not know that I must be about my Father's business?” (Luke 2:49) and again when He came to Jordan to be baptized: “It is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness” (Mat 3:15). So on through all His life, He continually said: “My meat is to do the will of Him that sent me (John 4:34). I have come not to do my own will, but the will of Him that sent me” (John 6:38). “Behold, I have come to do Your will, O God” (Heb 10:9). And in the agony of Gethsemane, His words were: “Not my will, but Your will be done” (Mat 26:39).
To have the full Christ and not a false or partial Christ means that we say: “I give up everything to the death that God may be glorified. I have not a thought; I have not a wish; I would not live a moment except for the glory of God.” You say at once, “What Christian can ever attain that?” Do not ask that question, but ask, “Has Christ attained it and does Christ promise to live in me?” Accept Him in His fullness and leave Him to teach you how far He can bring you and what He can work in you. Make no conditions or stipulations about failure, but cast yourself upon, abandon yourself to this Christ. He lived that life of utter surrender to God that He might prepare a new nature which He could impart to your spirit by His words and His Spirit, and it is a nature by which He makes you like Himself.
The one thought that ought to be in the heart of every believer is this: “I am dead with Christ; I am absolutely, unchangeably given up to wait upon God, that God may work out His purpose and glory in me from moment to moment.” Few attain the victory and the enjoyment and the full experience at once. But you can do this: Take the right attitude and as you look to Jesus and what He was, say: “Father, You have made me a partaker of the divine nature, a partaker of Christ. It is in the life of Christ given up to You to the death, in His power and indwelling, in His likeness, that I desire to live out my life before You.”
The sentence of death is on everything that is of human nature. But are we willing to accept it, do we cherish it? Would we not rather try to escape the sentence or to forget it? We do not believe fully that the sentence of death is on us. Whatever is of self must die. Ask God to make you willing to believe in your heart that to die with Christ is the only way to live in Him. “But must I remain dead to self every day?” Yes, beloved; Jesus lived every day in the prospect of the cross, and we, in the power of His life, being made conformable to His death, must rejoice every day in taking up our cross, by faith, with Him into death.
Raised by God
Christ lost nothing by giving up His life in death to the Father. And so, if you want the glory and the life of God to come upon you, it is in the grave of utter helplessness that the life of glory will be born. Jesus was raised from the dead, and that resurrection power, by the grace of God, can and will work in us. Let no one expect to live a right Christian life until he lives a full resurrection life, united with Christ, by faith, in the power of His resurrection.
Jesus got this divine life by depending absolutely upon the Father all His life long, depending upon Him even in death. Jesus got that life in the full glory of the Spirit to be poured out, by giving Himself up in obedience and surrender to God alone, and leaving God, even in the grave, to work out His mighty power. And that very Christ will live out His life in you and me. Oh, the mystery! Oh, the glory! And oh, the Divine certainty. Jesus Christ means to live out that life in you and me. Don’t you think we ought to humble ourselves before God? Have we been Christians so many years, and realized so little what we are? I am a vessel set apart, cleansed, emptied, consecrated; just standing, waiting every moment for God, in Christ, by the Holy Spirit, to work out in me as much of the holiness and the life of His Son as pleases Him.
And until the Church of Christ goes down into the grave of humiliation, confession, and shame; until the Church of Christ comes to lay itself in the very dust before God --- to wait upon God to do something new, and something wonderful, something supernatural, in lifting it up, it will remain feeble in all its efforts to overcome the world. Within the Church what lukewarmness, what worldliness, what disobedience, what sin! How can we ever fight this battle, or meet these difficulties? The answer is: Christ, the risen One, the crowned One, the almighty One, must come, and live in each individual Christian. But we cannot expect this unless we believe we died to self, to the rule of human nature, with Him.
Gal 2:20 I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ lives in me:
