A. H. Strong, Christ in Creation, 175—“If it is consistent with evolution that the physical and natural life of the race should be derived from a single source, then it is equally consistent with evolution that the moral and spiritual life of the race should be derived from a single source. Scripture is stating only scientific fact when it sets the second Adam, the head of redeemed humanity, over against the first Adam, the head of fallen humanity. We are told that evolution should give us many Christs. We reply that evolution has not given us many Adams. Evolution, as it assigns to the natural head of the race a supreme and unique position, must be consistent with itself, and must assign a supreme and unique position to Jesus Christ, the spiritual head of the race. As there was but one Adam from whom all the natural life of the race was derived, so that there can be but one Christ from whom all the spiritual life of the race is derived.”
The consequences of union with Christ may be summarily stated as follows:
(a) Union with Christ involves a change in the dominant affection of the soul. Christ's entrance into the soul makes it a new creature, in the sense that the ruling disposition, which before was sinful, now becomes holy. This change we call Regeneration.
Rom. 8:2—“For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus made me free from the law of sin and of death”; 2 Cor. 5:17—“if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature” (marg.—“there is a new creation”); Gal. 1:15, 16—“it was the good pleasure of God ... to reveal his Son in me”; Eph. 2:10—“For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works.” As we derive our old nature from the first man Adam, by birth, so we derive a new nature from the second man Christ, by the new birth. Union with Christ is the true “transfusion of blood.” “The death-struck sinner, like the wan, anæmic, dying invalid, is saved by having poured into his veins the healthier blood of Christ” (Drummond, Nat. Law in the Spir. World). God regenerates the soul by uniting it to Jesus Christ.
In the Johnston Harvester Works at Batavia, when they paint their machinery, they do it by immersing part after part in a great tank of paint,—so the painting is instantaneous and complete. Our baptism into Christ is the outward picture of an inward immersion of the soul not only into his love and fellowship, but into his very life, so that in him we become new creatures (2 Cor. 5:17). As Miss Sullivan surrounded Helen Keller with the influence of her strong personality, by intelligence and sympathy and determination striving to awaken the blind and dumb soul and give it light and love, so Jesus envelops us. But his Spirit is more encompassing and more penetrating than any human influence however powerful, because his life is the very ground and principle of our being.
Tennyson: “O for a man to arise in me, That the man that I am may cease to be!”Emerson: “Himself from God he could not free; He builded better than he knew.”Religion is not the adding of a new department of activity as an adjunct to our own life or the grafting of a new method of manifestation upon the old. It is rather the grafting of our souls into Christ, so that his life dominates and manifests itself in all our activities. The magnet which left to itself can lift only a three pound weight, will lift three hundred when it is attached to the electric dynamo. Expositor's Greek Testament on 1 Cor. 15:45, 46—“The action of Jesus in ‘breathing’ upon his disciples while he said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit’ (John 20:22 sq.) symbolized the vitalizing relationship which at this epoch he assumed towards mankind; this act raised to a higher potency the original ‘breathing’ of God by which ‘man became a living soul’ (Gen. 2:7).”
(b) Union with Christ involves a new exercise of the soul's powers in repentance and faith; faith, indeed, is the act of the soul by which, under the operation of God, Christ is received. This new exercise of the soul's powers we call Conversion (Repentance and Faith). It is the obverse or human side of Regeneration.
Eph. 3:17—“that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith”; 2 Tim. 3:15—“the sacred writings which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.” Faith is the soul's laying hold of Christ as its only source of life, pardon, and salvation. And so we see what true religion is. It is not a moral life; it is not a determination to be religious; it is not faith, if by faith we mean an external trust that somehow Christ will save us; it is nothing less than the life of the soul in God, through Christ his Son. To Christ then we are to look for the origin, continuance and increase of our faith (Luke 17:5—“said unto the Lord, Increase our faith”). Our faith is but a part of “his fulness” of which “we all received, and grace for grace” (John 1:16).
A. H. Strong, Sermon before the Baptist World Congress, London, 1905—“Christianity is summed up in the two facts: Christ for us, and Christ in us—Christ for us upon the Cross, revealing the eternal opposition of holiness to sin, and yet, through God's eternal suffering for sin making objective atonement for us; and Christ in us by his Spirit, renewing in us the lost image of God, and abiding in us as the all-sufficient source of purity and power. Here are the two foci of the Christian ellipse: Christ for us, who redeemed us from the curse of the law by being made a curse for us, and Christ in us, the hope of glory, whom the apostle calls the mystery of the gospel.
“We need Christ in us as well as Christ for us. How shall I, how shall society, find healing and purification within? Let me answer by reminding you of what they did at Chicago. In all the world there was no river more stagnant and fetid than was Chicago River. [pg 805]Its sluggish stream received the sweepings of the watercraft and the offal of the city, and there was no current to carry the detritus away. There it settled, and bred miasma and fever. At last it was suggested that, by cutting through the low ridge between the city and the Desplaines River, the current could be set running in the opposite direction, and drainage could be secured into the Illinois River and the great Mississippi. At a cost of fifteen millions of dollars the cut was made, and now all the water of Lake Michigan can be relied upon to cleanse that turbid stream. What Chicago River could never do for itself, the great lake now does for it. So no human soul can purge itself of its sin; and what the individual cannot do, humanity at large is powerless to accomplish. Sin has dominion over us, and we are foul to the very depths of our being, until with the help of God we break through the barrier of our self-will, and let the floods of Christ's purifying life flow into us. Then, in an hour, more is done to renew, than all our efforts for years had effected. Thus humanity is saved, individual by individual, not by philosophy, or philanthropy, or self-development, or self-reformation, but simply by joining itself to Jesus Christ, and by being filled in Him with all the fulness of God.”