Our life from the dead is to be followed up by the habit and attitude henceforth which is the logical outcome of all this. “Reckon yourselves dead indeed, unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ, and yield yourselves unto God,” not to die over again every day, “but, as those who are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God.”
Further His resurrection life is given to fit us for “the fellowship of His sufferings and to be made conformable unto His death.”
It is intended to enable us to toil and suffer with rejoicing and victory. We “mount up with wings as eagles,” that we may come back to “run and not be weary, to walk and not faint.”
But let us not mistake the sufferings. They do not mean our sufferings, but His. They are not our struggles after holiness, our sicknesses and pains, but those higher sufferings which, with Him, we bear for others, and for a suffering church and a dying world. May God help us, henceforth, never to have another sorrow for ourselves, and put us at leisure, in the power of His resurrection, to bear His burdens and drink His cup.
November 12.
“The earnest of the Spirit in our hearts” (II. Cor. i. 22).
Life in earnest. What a rare, what a glorious spectacle! We see it in the Son of God, we see it in His apostle, we see it in every noble, consecrated and truly successful life. Without it there may be a thousand good things, but they lack the golden thread that binds them all into a chain of power and permanence. They are like a lot of costly and beautiful beads on a broken string, that fall into confusion, and are lost in the end for want of the bond that alone could bind them into a life of consistent and lasting power. O for the baptism of fire! O for “the earnest, the spirit!” O for lives that have but one thing to do or care for! O for the depth and everlasting strength of the heart of Christ within our breast, to love, to sacrifice, to realize, to persevere, to live and die like Him!
We are going forth with a trust so sacred,