Thank you very much for those kindly words
of introduction.
It's certainly my privilege and my joy to
be with you, and I've been looking forward
with eager anticipation to this day and to
the hours that we're going to spend together
with each other.
It'll be my purpose in the three sessions
in which it will be my privilege to
speak to you, to maybe draw the threads
together in the broad context of all the
other facts and information that you may gather
in the course of your discussions and panels.
It's very easy to detach our Christianity from
Jesus Christ.
And the moment you do that, it becomes
an impersonal, dead thing, it becomes a religion.
The moment you detach your Christianity from Jesus
Christ, then your Christianity is not only impersonal
to him, it becomes impersonal to yourself.
It's just your profession of faith, it's the
things that you believe.
And Christianity detached from Jesus Christ makes absolutely
no impact whatever upon your character.
It may in measure conform you to certain
imposed patterns of behaviour to which you submit
yourself to become acceptable in the particular Christian
society to which you adhere, but it doesn't
ultimately change your character.
Only Christ does that.
And I trust that throughout the course of
this day we shall, under God, be able
to discover some of the basic principles of
the Christian life.
Because essentially, you see, the Christian life is
not a pattern, but a principle.
And my one concern will be to introduce
you, as God helps me, to a principle
to which you can return again and again
and again and yet again and always find
it true.
And the more you return to the principle,
the more wonderful it will become and ever
increasingly will your experience of that principle multiply
and this will be the measure of your
spiritual maturity.
But in the accumulation of facts, in the
coming to know and understand the doctrines, we
can still be extremely confused in our thinking.
I was speaking yesterday lunch hour with a
missionary of the China Inland Mission and he
told me the story of a man in
China as told to him by a Chinaman.
He was a man who wanted to sell
some bamboo.
He had a great big long piece of
bamboo and he came to the village from
the country district in which he lived and
when he got to the gate of the
village, it was a walled village, he was
holding the bamboo, you see, this way and
it just wouldn't go through.
That was a bit baffling.
And so as the bamboo wouldn't go through
that way, he turned it upright, but he
found it was too tall, it wouldn't go
through that way either.
And then he was really perplexed.
It wouldn't go through that way and it
wouldn't go through that way.
And so he was deeply distressed about this,
but there was a man sitting on the
top of the gate and he could see
the predicament in which the man was and
he said, look here, if you hand me
that bamboo and you go through, I'll hand
it over the top and give it to
the other side.
Well, he thought that's wonderfully intelligent.
And so he handed the bamboo that wouldn't
go through that way and wouldn't go through
that way to the man on top and
he went through and the man on the
top handed it to him, the other side,
and it was wonderful.
Never known a man as intelligent as that.
So he said, I'd like to have a
word, I'd like to talk to you.
Tell a man like you, let's have a
cup of coffee.
And so they had a cup of coffee
together.
In the course of the conversation, he discovered
that that man had a son and he
had a daughter.
So he thought they could get together on
this.
He said, I'd like to be related to
you, an intelligent man like you.
I'd like my family to be, you know,
related to such an intelligent family.
I've got a daughter and you've got a
son.
What about my engaging my daughter to your
son?
So they agreed this over the cup of
coffee.
And the man got home and he explained
everything to his wife and how his mission
had almost come to failure because he couldn't
get the bamboo through that way and he
couldn't get the bamboo through that way.
It was a man, a very, very clever
man who sat in the gate and helped
him over.
And he said, I was so impressed, we
had a cup of coffee and I discovered
he'd got a son and we'd got a
daughter.
So we got together about this and I've
engaged our daughter to his son.
And his wife was nearly hysterical.
She sobbed and cried.
Nothing would comfort her.
Until at last a lady came in who
managed to do the trick and she said,
well, what is really your problem?
Well, she said, this fool husband of mine,
he's engaged our daughter to a man twice
her age.
How old's your daughter?
She said, one.
And how old's the man's son?
Two.
And so the woman said, oh, well, don't
be concerned about that.
Wait till next year, then your daughter will
be two and then she'll be as old
as her husband.
A little bit of confused thinking.
But do you know, that sounds very stupid.
But quite frankly, do you know I've discovered
that there are countless Christians just about as
confused as that in their thinking about the
Christian life.
And yet it's gloriously simple.
It's profound, but wonderfully simple.
But we miss the point.
We try it this way and we try
it that way and we're baffled.
And we find some clever solution to our
problem.
And just confuse ourselves that much more.
You know, God has very little to say
to us in the Bible.
Very little.
But what he has to say to us,
he says again and again and again and
yet again.
If you were to take out from the
Gospels, for instance, everything that the Lord Jesus
Christ had to say to his disciples, you
would discover, if you analyzed it, that it
was very, very little.
It was the same thing.
Again and again and again.
That's just how simple the Christian life is.
But we've made it complicated to keep ourselves
in business.
You know, the purpose of every preacher is
to preach himself out of business, not into
business.
And I believe that if once you grasp
the principle in all its sheer simplicity but
its utter profundity of what it really involves
to be a Christian, it's going to revolutionize
your Christian life.
And it's going to decomplicate you.
And introduce you to that quality of life
that the Lord Jesus described as superlative.
The purpose for which he came into the
world.
He said, I'm come that you might have
life and that you might have it abundantly.
If I were to ask you what it
is that Jesus Christ did to save you,
I wonder what your answer would be.
Probably, without a moment's hesitation, and you would
say it with a deep sense of gratitude
in your heart, he died to save me.
And yet the strange thing is, you'd be
wrong.
You see, if you turn with me to
the fifth chapter of the Epistle to the
Romans, and the tenth verse, you'll find the
verse from which the title to this particular
conference, or the theme, that is to be
pursued, has been derived.
Romans, chapter five, and verse ten.
For if, when we were enemies, we were
reconciled to God by the death of his
Son, much more, superlatively much more, infinitely much
more, being reconciled, an accomplished fact, we shall
be saved by his life.
It isn't the death of Christ that saves
you, except in a very limited sense.
It's an essential sense.
It's a sense in which his death must
save you, if ever you are to be
saved by his life.
But the much more of your salvation is
not that quality of salvation that is yours
through his reconciling and atoning death.
The much more the superlative of your salvation
is that way in which he literally saves
you by his life, twenty-four hours and
every day.
The death of Christ reconciles you to God.
But your reconciliation to God through the death
of Christ was designed in God's eternal purpose
to make it possible for you to be
saved by his life.
His death qualifies you for the life he
lived.
Reconciliation to God through his death is the
work of a moment.
And I suppose most of you who are
here this morning can look back to that
moment in your life when, convicted by the
Holy Spirit of the fact that you were
a guilty sinner, becoming aware of the fact
that Christ, nineteen hundred years ago, died upon
the cross as a historical fact, in all
the sinlessness of his utter manhood, being made
sin for us, there being imputed or credited
to him our guilt, that there might be
imputed or credited to us his righteousness.
You can look back to that day when,
in humble, simple, childlike faith, you said, Lord
Jesus, I take you as my redeemer, I
rest the whole weight of my need as
a guilty sinner upon the adequacy of your
atoning death, and though I do not deserve
it, I claim redemption through your all-pervading
name.
And you were redeemed.
That's how I was redeemed.
That's how I was reconciled to God.
Quarter nine, Saturday night, thirteenth of August, nineteen
twenty-seven.
I could almost take you to the great
blade of grass where it took place in
the boys' camp in England.
That wasn't my salvation.
I thought it was.
I thought it was for seven years.
And that's why for seven years I lived
such a miserable existence as a Christian.
In spite of all the enthusiasm with which
I threw myself into the service of Jesus
Christ, at the age of fifteen I volunteered
for the mission field, began to preach on
the streets of London and the parks of
London when I was fifteen years of age
and didn't stop preaching from that time until
now.
Led the Christian group at school and when
I left school to go to university at
the age of seventeen to become a doctor
to go as a medical missionary to Africa.
With no greater ambition I can honestly say
than to be made under God a blessing
to my fellow men and to lead them
to that unique relationship with Jesus Christ that
redeems the sinner from hell and makes him
fit for heaven.
At the age of nineteen, seven years after
my conversion I was played out, utterly exhausted,
tired, beaten, defeated.
I'd never led a soul to Christ.
For the last two years I'd been preaching
three times every Sunday and almost every night
of the week.
I discovered seven years after my conversion that
quite frankly I hardly knew a thing about
the Christian life.
I'd missed the point completely.
I was trying to make it go through
that way and I was trying to make
it go through that way.
And people on the gate were always offering
me clever solutions to my problem but I
never found the answer.
I was just as bewildered and as baffled
at the end as I was at the
beginning.
And there are some of you just like
that.
That's a fact.
You've been converted for five years, ten years,
maybe more, or six months.
So don't be angry with me if I
say it.
Although you've received the Christian life you haven't
yet begun to live it.
Because quite frankly as yet you don't know
what the Christian life is.
I believe that's why God has called us
here this day that we might discover through
his word what the Christian life really is.
Reconciled to God by his death you are
to be saved by his life.
The saving life of Christ.
Imagine that all that Christ came for into
this world was to redeem you through his
reconciling death and make you fit for heaven.
And you've missed the whole point of what
God was at in sending his son into
this world.
That's why the Bible can still be so
baffling to you in spite of the fact
that you believe it and love it.
That's why it can be so boring to
you.
You would pick up an extremely cleverly written
novel if it happened to be your habit
to read novels, which isn't mine.
But you read the first chapter where then
probably by the end of the first chapter
you'd get some idea of which way the
direction the plot was going and did you
have a clear idea of course how it
was going to work itself out.
Until you'd read the second chapter.
And then you'd realize that you'd missed the
point in the first chapter but now you
really know until you read the third chapter.
And every succeeding chapter only goes to bewilder
you more and baffle you more as to
what the man is really at until by
the time you're half way through the book
you're so frustrated you look at the last
chapter and see what really happened.
But having now got to the end of
the book you recognize that every chapter played
its part in building up the ultimate plot
of what really happened in the end.
Now supposing you were to start reading that
book again.
Nothing would deceive you.
You know the plot.
You know what the author is at.
Now that's just like the Bible.
You see until you've got a clear grasp
in your mind of what God is really
at in redemption.
You can turn to various parts of the
Bible and take a little verse here and
a little passage there and moralize.
It will still leave you bewildered and baffled
as to what really God had in mind.
What has God got in mind for you
personally in Jesus Christ.
Well just turn with me to the first
chapter of the Bible.
Genesis chapter 1.
And let's discover what God was at when
he created man.
That may give us a clue as to
what God is at when he redeems man.
The 26th verse of the first chapter of
Genesis.
And God said let us make man in
our image.
After our likeness.
Verse 27.
So God created man in his own image.
So what was the purpose of God in
man's creation?
God likeness.
To be in the image of God.
Another word that we use for God like
is godly.
But in a sense because we've got so
accustomed to using the term godly we've forgotten
really what it really means.
It's just a vague expression that means that
a man is good.
No it's not that.
To be godly means simply that you are
godlike.
To be godly means nothing more nor less
than God himself can express his nature in
terms of your humanity.
That you are literally nothing more nor less
in the very image of the God who
made you.
That's godliness.
And when God created man in his innocency,
in his perfection.
Not only did God make man to be
godlike but he gave him all that it
takes to be godlike.
Then something happened.
And the man who was created in the
image of God, godlike, ceased to be godlike.
Why do you think he ceased to be
godlike?
Because something happened whereby man forfeited what it
takes to be godlike.
He could profess to be godlike.
He might even want to be godlike.
But there was denied to him the power
thereof.
And do you know what it produced?
Here's the picture.
You'll find it in Paul's second epistle to
Timothy.
Third chapter.
To Timothy, chapter three and verse one.
This know also that in the last days
perilous times shall come.
For men shall be lovers of their own
selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents,
unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, truth-breakers, false
accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are
good, traitors, heady, high-minded, lovers of pleasures
more than lovers of God, having a form
of, what's this?
Godlike.
Having a form of godlike.
But denying the power thereof.
Practicing religion.
Singing hymns.
Going to church.
Even reading their Bibles.
Sometimes saying their prayers.
Having all the outward trappings of godlikeness, but
denying the power thereof.
Not having what it takes.
And that's why their form of godlikeness, their
practice of religion, the religious veneer that had
been imposed upon them by their Christianized society
in which they happened by the accident of
birth to be born, leaves them utterly unchanged
in terms of character or behavior.
And when you see you have a form
of godlikeness that denies the power thereof, you're
not godlike, you're ungodly.
So we have these two pictures given to
us.
Man created godlike because he had all that
it took to be godlike.
And man ungodlike, ungodly, even in the practice
of religion, because he doesn't have what it
takes to be godlike.
All right.
Now turn to Romans again, and turn back
to that fifth chapter.
To which we have already made reference.
Romans chapter five and verse six.
For when we were yet without strength, what
does that mean?
Denying the power thereof.
If you are without strength, you are without
power.
When we were yet without strength.
In other words, when we did not have
what it takes.
In due time, Christ died for what kind
of people?
The ungodlike.
Why were they ungodlike?
Because they were without strength.
Because though they may have had a form
of godlikeness, it denied the power thereof.
So God created man to be godlike and
gave man all that it takes to be
godlike, but something happened that forfeited man all
that it takes to be godlike, and he
became ungodlike.
But in due time, Christ came, while men
were ungodlike, ungodly, because they were without the
strength, without what it takes to be godlike,
and died for it.
When we were yet without strength, in due
time, Christ died for the ungodlike.
Why do you think Christ died for the
ungodlike?
That somehow by virtue of the efficacy of
that atoning, reconciling death, those who were ungodlike
because they were without strength, on the basis
of his atoning death, might receive once again
what it takes to be godlike.
Do you know what it takes to be
godlike?
God.
That's how simple it is.
Because God created man to be inhabited by
God, for God.
As that human vehicle through whom God would
be in man the origin of his own
image, the cause of his own effect.
God in man reproducing his own character in
terms of man's humanity.
What it takes to be godlike is God,
and therefore what it takes to be a
man is God.
It takes God to be a man, as
God intended man to be.
Nothing less.
And that's why it takes Christ to be
a Christian.
Because you see, Christ in a Christian puts
God back into a man.
Is that very complicated?
Now you understand what that tense verse means,
don't you?
If when we were enemies we were reconciled
to God by the death of his sign,
much more now.
Being reconciled, at peace with God our maker,
whose holiness our sin outraged, through the death
of Christ, who died for the ungodly when
they were without strength.
Without what it takes.
If when we were enemies we were reconciled
to God by the death of his sign,
much more now.
Being reconciled.
The foundation having been laid upon which God
can restore to man what it takes to
be godlike.
We shall be saved by his life.
Because you see, it takes God to be
a man, therefore it takes Christ to be
a Christian.
Because Christ in the Christian puts God back
into the man.
And from now on, reconciled to God by
his death, I'm going to be saved by
his life.
For the Lord Jesus Christ, who has come
back to indwell my redeemed humanity in the
gracious presence and person of his Holy Spirit,
is once more in me going to be
the origin of his own image.
The cause of his own effect.
2 Peter chapter 1.
For three years, in all sincerity, Peter, with
unchallenged devotion, loyalty, sentimental attachment, dedication and
enthusiasm, tried to be a good Christian.
He tried to be a disciple.
He was trying to play effectively the role
of an apostle.
And failed miserably.
Because for those three miserable years of sincere
human endeavour, Peter was trying to do the
impossible.
He was trying to be the cause of
his own effect.
Trying to be in himself the origin of
his own image.
He was trying to be a good Christian.
And he thought he had what it took.
And that's why, just before the Lord Jesus
was crucified, he came up and said, Master,
though all men forsake you, I won't.
You can count on me.
If there's one upon whom you can rest
your whole confidence, Peter's the name.
Even if it costs me death itself, I
could die for you.
And Jesus Christ was completely unimpressed.
Was Peter insincere?
Not a bit of it.
I can assure you this, that if Peter
had been sitting in this meeting here today,
and at the close of the meeting the
speaker were to make an invitation and invite
any man or woman prepared to lay down
their lives utterly in total dedication to Jesus
Christ, without any cant or insincerity, Peter would
have been one of the first to stand.
Peter would have been one of the first
to come to the front.
And Jesus Christ would have been equally unimpressed.
And that's why today countless thousands of men
and women and boys and girls respond to
public invitations and Christ is as unimpressed today
with their display of sincere enthusiasm as he
was with that of Peter's 1900 years ago.
You remember the death of the five missionaries
amongst the Orca Indians?
Did anybody ever tell you that story?
I'm sure they did.
And on the basis of that story in
the last five years, literally thousands if not
tens of thousands of men and women have
stood in solemn dedication as the challenge has
gone out in the name of five men
who gave themselves selflessly in the name of
the Orca Indians for Jesus Christ, who'll take
their place?
And in their thousands they've stood.
I was at Briarcrest Bible School, Bible Institute
in Canada, some fourteen months ago.
And a missionary from the Orca Indians was
there.
She said for five years, in their hundreds
and in their thousands, men and women, young
men and women, full-blooded young men and
women have been standing in solemn dedication to
take the place of the men who died.
She said, do you know how many have
arrived?
Not one.
Well, it made it a very successful missionary
meeting.
After all, when the speaker's got two or
three hundred people standing on their feet, everybody
pats him on the back and they all
go home well satisfied.
Except God.
We've learned to play church.
And the tragedy is this.
Not without sincerity.
Just simply trying to get the bamboo through
that way and the bamboo through that way,
that's all.
Nobody ever showed them how to get the
bamboo through the right way.
Peter found this out.
Before the cock crows, you'll deny me three
times.
And Peter was really indignant.
That did violence to his sense of dignity.
His sense of loyalty.
That challenged his integrity.
He voiced his indignation.
It says more vehemently he declared his utter
dedication.
And there came in a slip of a
girl.
Oh, you're one of his lot, aren't you?
I'm not.
Never seen the man before.
Oh, he's got a strange accent.
Cock crow.
Three times it happened.
And to add color to his denial.
At last, like the Galilean fisherman he was,
he cursed and swore.
And he could almost have touched him.
With his hand.
And the Lord Jesus quietly turned.
And the second time, the cock crowed.
And Peter went out and wept bitterly.
The bitterness of self-discovery.
Wonderful day for Peter.
You see, when the cock crows, it's the
dawn of a new day.
The most wonderful thing that can ever happen
in the life of a boy or a
girl or a man or a woman who
is a Christian.
Is for the cock.
That heralds your graduation.
Out of the bitterness of self-despair.
Out of the bitterness of self-discovery.
Out of the bitterness of failure to graduate
at last.
Into life as God intended life to be.
God-given life.
Life that can only have its origin in
God himself.
Instead of our mock heroics.
That's what Peter was talking about when he
wrote this second epistle.
Simon Peter, a servant and an apostle of
Jesus Christ.
To them that have obtained.
Light.
Precious.
Faith.
And he had already learned that to have
faith was something more than believing text.
To have faith now for Peter was something
more than being able to recite John 3
.60 and say that's true.
That isn't faith.
Nobody ever got redeemed.
Nobody ever got to heaven.
And nobody ever learned to live the Christian
life through believing John 3.60. The devil
believes.
You can memorize the Bible from Genesis to
the Revelation.
And congratulate yourself.
On your capacity to memorize.
And maybe it won't make the slightest difference
to your character.
Because you see it isn't the truth you
know that changes your life.
It's the truth you do.
That's why John said.
If we say that we have fellowship with
him.
And walk in darkness.
If we say but walk.
In darkness.
We do not the truth.
We know the truth.
We say the truth.
But we don't do the truth.
And faith is doing the truth.
Not believing it.
Faith is doing the truth you believe.
And when you do the truth you believe.
It means you do what you're told.
And when you do the truth.
The truth behaves.
And when truth behaves.
Truth becomes righteous.
This is the precious faith that Peter is
talking about.
According he says verse 3.
Of this first chapter of his second epistle.
According as his divine power hath given unto
us all things that pertain unto life and
what?
God like.
He said there was a time not so
long ago when I thought I had it.
I was adequate.
I was mobilizing all my resources.
On Christ's behalf.
I was inclined to believe that Jesus Christ
had considered himself extremely fortunate.
That he had a man like me on
his side.
I really believed I had what it took.
Till the clock drew.
And I buried my head in shame.
And wept hot bitter stinging tears.
And discovered the bankruptcy of my own soul.
Now I know that it is his divine
power that gives to us.
All that it takes.
All that pertain.
Unto life and God likeness.
Through the knowledge of him.
Who hath called us by and to glory.
And virtue.
Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and
precious promise.
That by thee.
The truth.
You might be partakers of the divine nature.
Because that's what it takes.
Partakers of the divine nature.
This is the divine power that gives to
us all that pertains to life and God
likeness.
That we literally have become nothing less than
partakers of his divine nature.
Peter says I see it now.
I didn't want the cross.
I tried to persuade him.
And deter him.
When he said that he was going to
Jerusalem.
And that there he would be delivered into
the hands of wicked men.
And be it done to death.
But on the third day he would rise
again from the dead.
With the best will in the world.
I stood astride his path.
And I said not so Lord this shall
never be.
I didn't want the cross.
But then I didn't understand the cross.
I didn't see what God was at.
But I see it now.
I see that the death he died simply
was the means whereby I could be qualified
to receive the life that he lived.
That only by his reconciling act that would
restore me a guilty sinner to a peace
relationship with God my maker.
Could my humanity once more be inhabited by
his deity.
And these hands become his hands.
And my lips his lips.
And my mind his mind.
And my eyes his eyes.
And my cheek his cheek.
My total being body soul spirit mind emotion
and will.
My total personality filled and flooded with God
himself.
I see it now.
This is the gospel.
This is the good news.
That I was designed in God's eternal purpose.
First created and now redeemed and spiritually regenerated.
To be the human vehicle through whom God
will express spontaneously his own divine life.
And create in me his own image.
I see it now.
I didn't know it then.
That's why I was so stubbornly dedicated to
my own dedication.
That's why I exercised so much faith in
my own faith.
I missed the point.
I was reconciled to God by his death
so that I could be saved by his
life.
See it now.
That's what God's been trying to tell me
all the time.
But I tried it this way and I
tried it that way.
We produce all kinds of complicated solutions to
the problem.
Instead of listening to God.
To the sheer simplicity which is in Jesus.
He died for me.
For what I've done.
He rose again.
To live in me and take the place
of what I am.
What could be less complicated than that?
And so now I agree with my brother
Paul.
To me to live is Christ.
Partake of the divine nature.
And now Jesus Christ in me is going
to be the origin of his own image.
The cause of his own effect.
And all that is incumbent upon me is
to maintain that attitude towards the Lord Jesus
that places my humanity in unreserved availability to
his indwelling deity.
And that's the Christian life.
To me to live is what?
Christ.
Does that sound very complicated?
Of course it isn't.
The amazing thing is this.
We can frame it and hang it on
the wall.
And never get it off the wall.
Into the experience of our life.
That's the biggest problem.
Sing to it.
Talk about it.
Preach about it.
Everything except do it.
And act on the assumption that it's true.
Now of course when the Lord Jesus having
redeemed you through his death steps back into
your life in the power of his resurrection
through the Holy Spirit there's a radical change
of government if you'll give him the sovereignty.
You no longer walk after the flesh.
Now you walk after this divine nature that's
been imparted to you.
Christ himself.
You become a new creation.
One of God's new men.
You see.
Godliness is not produced by your capacity to
imitate God.
You don't have what it takes to imitate
God.
Did you ever think it through?
Supposing God-likeness was the consequence of your
capacity to imitate God.
Or Christ-likeness your, the consequence of your
capacity to imitate Christ.
Or as is so often said, just think
what would Jesus do?
And then you do the way he would
do.
That's, that's, that's sanctification.
That's being good.
Just think what he would do.
Detached from Jesus Christ.
Just think as though he were living 1
,900 years ago what he would do.
And then you do what he would do.
All right.
Try it.
Don't you see that any act of imitation
derives not from the imitated but from the
imitator?
Any act of imitation doesn't derive its capacity
from the object of the imitation but from
the person who imitates the object.
A person that I may be imitating may
be totally unaware of the fact that I'm
imitating.
They are completely impersonal to the act of
imitation.
If I produce a perfect imitation of that
particular object there's only one person who deserves
the credit.
I do.
My capacity to imitate.
A small boy in the back of the
class while the teacher's back is turned can
imitate him.
Maybe to the great amusement of everybody in
the class.
How much is the teacher contributing to the
act of imitation?
Nothing except to be the impersonal object of
it.
And if God-likeness is the consequence of
your capacity to be like God, to imitate
his behavior or imitate the behavior of Jesus
Christ or for that matter you see a
truly genuinely God-like man and so you
imitate his God-likeness.
The moment you do so you kill him.
Because your behavior simply derives from your capacity
to imitate.
And a monkey can do that.
Or a parrot.
And God-likeness does not derive from an
ape-like capacity to imitate.
God-likeness is the exclusive consequence of God's
capacity to reproduce himself in man.
Exclusively.
And if you have never discovered this you
haven't begun to understand what it means to
be a Christian.
Now I'm fully aware that some of the
things that I'm saying to you at the
moment are a little bit baffling.
Maybe almost confusing.
I've long since become accustomed to this.
And I'm not a bit discouraged.
You'll discover that some of the somewhat confusing
and baffling things that I'm saying to you
will become increasingly logical.
Until suddenly something will click and you'll kick
yourself.
You'll say, well of course.
Why didn't I see that before?
But you'll never understand it unless you take
time out to discover what God has to
say about you and how he made you.
How this is in point of fact a
function.
And that's why during the course of the
day we're going to do some very hard
work.
And I appreciate the close attention that you're
giving and that you're going to continue to
give.
And I believe that it will be investment
of your time that will reward you for
eternity.
You see, God created man in such a
way that it is possible for God to
reproduce himself in man.
To understand that we've got to understand to
some small degree how God made him.
And that's why he tells in the first
epistle to the Thessalonians and the fifth chapter
and the 23rd and the 24th verse.
1 Thessalonians 5, verse 23.
And the very God of peace sanctify you
wholly and I pray your whole spirit and
soul and body be preserved blameless under the
coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Faithful is he that calleth you.
What does he go on to say then?
Who himself also will do it.
Everything to which the Lord Jesus calls you
is something which he himself is going to
do in you.
This is the very heart of the gospel
message.
This is what makes Christianity something more than
a religion.
Something more than a mere ethic.
Something more than a political creed.
Something more than an ideological philosophy of life.
Faithful is he that calleth you who himself
will also do it.
Everything to which he calls you he does.
For it is God who worketh in you
both to will and to do his good
pleasure.
For one good reason.
If he himself did not do it, who
calls you to it, you wouldn't have what
it takes.
And all that God accomplished so triumphantly in
Jesus Christ when he died upon that rugged
Roman gallows and the third day God raised
him from the dead.
Everything that he accomplished there was designed to
restore to you all that it takes to
be man as God intended man to be.
He wants to make you man again.
On earth, on the way to heaven.
Fit not only for heaven when you die,
but fit on earth on the way to
heaven.
The Lord Jesus himself taking up residence in
you.
The only hope of glory.
The origin of his own image.
And the cause of his own affair.
Did you ever see electricity?
Did you?
No man has seen electricity at any time.
And yet we're sitting in this building and
enjoying light.
Some of which is coming from these lamps.
Are these lamps producing the light?
You each one of you know enough to
recognize the fact that these lamps are not
producing the light that we are enjoying.
The lamps are simply the means whereby the
electricity which is invisible is making itself visible
in terms of light.
You haven't even been interested in these lamps.
I doubt whether even you've glanced at them.
Because in themselves they are totally unimportant were
it not for the fact that they are
created with a unique capacity to receive that
upon which they must constantly depend if they
are to function for the purpose for which
they were created.
Those lamps were created to receive the invisible
electricity.
And so to allow that invisible electricity to
work in and through them that the invisible
electricity through the lamp can declare itself in
terms of light.
And you can enjoy the light but you
still haven't seen electricity.
Yet both the cause, the electricity and the
light, the effect come from the same source
of power.
No man has seen God at any time.
And yet the amazing thing is this that
God created man as these lamps were created
to receive the invisible God.
And that man might so depend upon the
invisible God within him that that invisible God
within him both working in and through him
might declare God.
So man was created to make an invisible
God visible.
But as the electricity must be exclusively the
cause of its own effect and the origin
of its own image in light.
So God in you and me, Christ in
you and me must exclusively be the cause
of his own effect.
The origin of his own image in light.
Say what would happen if one of these
lamps suddenly decided to be the cause of
its own effect?
Supposing one of these lamps suddenly assumed an
attitude of arrogant independence and refused to be
servile in its dependence upon this thing called
electricity.
I'll be a lamp in my own right.
What would happen to it?
It would go out.
And that's what happened when man fell into
sin.
He believed the devil's lie for the devil
persuaded man that he could be man without
God.
That he could lose God and lose nothing.
He could be the origin of his own
image.
Said the devil to man, you can be
like God and you won't die.
And he believed it.
And the first man Adam died by faith
in a lie.
He did the lie.
As you and I may live by faith
when we do the truth.
And what happened when Adam fell into sin
was that he forfeited all that it takes
for a man to be godlike.
And what God did in Christ upon the
cross was done that a man might receive
what it takes.
To be switched on again.
Christ in you.
Nothing less than that.
To be saved by his light.
Let's have a word of prayer.