Unsearchable Riches

Some of the Relationships of Christ to His People

By Edward Dennett

Chapter 10

CHRIST OUR EXAMPLE.

ONE of the most familiar truths to all is that Christ, in His pathway through this world, is our example. There are several scriptures which distinctly state and enforce it; and the truth itself is implied in almost every book of the New Testament. St. Peter, when treating of the duties of domestics, points them to Christ, who, he says, has left us an example that we should follow His steps (1 Peter ii. 21). In like manner, the Apostle John says, " He that saith he abideth in Him, ought himself so to walk, even as He walked " (1 John ii. 6). In the Epistle to the Hebrews also, after detailing the long catalogue of the men of faith in the past dispensation, the writer proceeds, "Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the Author and Finisher of faith; who, for the joy that was set before Him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God. For consider Him that endured such contradiction of sinners against Himself, lest ye be wearied and faint in your minds " (Heb. xii. 1-3). The force of this scripture is often unperceived by the superficial reader, because of the insertion of the word " our "—making the Lord Jesus to be the Author and Finisher of our faith. This is altogether to miss the teaching of the Spirit of God. The truth brought before us is that the Lord Jesus is a complete example of faith; that as man, He is our example in the life of faith. This would be more readily seen if, instead of Author and Finisher, the words were translated, as they sometimes are, Leader (ἀρχηγὸν) and Completer (τελειωτὴν) of faith—i.e., that He is the Leader in the pathway of faith —and He is the Completer of it, that all the way through, from beginning to end, He is the perfect example of it, as the obedient and dependent Man. Hence our eyes are ever to be fixed upon Him; we are to be looking unto Jesus, to mark His example, that we may be sustained in following in the same steps. Our Lord Himself often presented the same truth. It is involved in all the passages wherein He speaks of discipleship. For instance, " If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me " (Matt. xvi. 24). It is true that the prominent thought here is the condition of discipleship; but " following " is nothing less than, in obedience to His Word, owning Him as Lord, and walking in His steps.

It is, then, abundantly clear that our blessed Lord, in His life down here as man, is our example; and we desire to consider this subject, —not only to press its importance, but also to show the ground of it, and the means of carrying it into practice.

The ground of it lies in what He was as man in the world. Before His incarnation He had presented Him self to God, saying, " Lo, I come to do Thy will, 0 God " (Heb. x. 7). And this is the keynote of His whole life, coming as He did, not to do His own will, but the will of Him that sent Him (John vi. 38). And this He did perfectly, and uninterruptedly, from Bethlehem to Calvary. Every thought, feeling, and act were in obedience to God's will. For the first time since the Fall, God found truth in the inward parts of a man— of that One who answered all His requirements, so that God could rest in Him in perfect complacency and love. And what joy it must have been to the heart of God, to be able to look down upon this scene, where all had failed and gone out of the way, where there was none good, no not one, and to see Christ in the midst of unparalleled difficulties, exposed to all the malice of men and Satan, ever responding, and that perfectly, to His own desires —to behold Him glorifying God on the earth in every circumstance in which He was placed, and all through His life

     "Faithful amidst unfaithfulness,
          'Mid darkness only light,
     Thou didst Thy Father's name confess,
          And in His will delight."

In Him, then, at last, God found the Man who was, without exception, after His own heart—the One who embodied the perfection of His own thoughts, and answered to the ideal of His own mind —the perfect Man. In every circumstance, therefore —what He was toward God, and what He was toward man; what He was in the presence of friend, or enemy, whether in sorrows, persecutions, or temptations; in all possible scenes, whether in retirement, or in public—in all things, in every manifestation of His life down here, He was our example; for all His manifold experiences were but occasions for the unfolding of what He was as the obedient and dependent man; and hence the revelation of God's standard for all that are His. If, therefore, I would know what God desires that I should be, I must look at Christ, and trace out His steps in His pathway through this world.

Accepting, then, the truth that Christ is our example, we must be very careful to define the class for whom it is intended. Mistake here would be of the most fatal kind, and has indeed been the cause of shipwreck to many a soul. The Unitarians, for example, make the whole duty of man to lie in the imitation of the life of Christ; and, moreover, they contend that success in this end is the passport to a happy immortality; and books, like Thomas à Kempis' Imitatio Christi, proceed more or less on the same principle —that it is possible for the natural man to walk in the steps of the Lord Jesus. We need hardly point out, that such teaching ignores the whole subject of man's relationships with God, the question of sin, and man's depravity through the Fall. " They that are in the flesh cannot please God" (Rom. viii. 8) is a statement which some men either ignore or disbelieve, to their own destruction. What presumption for a sinner under condemnation —a sinner alienated from God, whose very nature is enmity with Him (Rom. viii. 7)—to claim the power to follow the steps of the Holy One of God! It only shows us the power of Satan to deceive, and allure to ruin, when such a delusion is cherished in the minds of men. Just as he enticed Pharaoh and his host to think they could follow Israel through the Red Sea, and all alike " sank as lead in the mighty waters," so now he leads men to imagine that by their own efforts they can imitate Christ, and thereby produce a righteousness fit for God's presence; and thus deluded, they perish for ever. It behoves us, therefore, very carefully to indicate the qualifications which are necessary in order to follow the example of Christ.

(1.) The essential one of all is that we must have the same nature. It is quite true—indeed, a fundamental dogma of Christianity—that Christ became Man. " When the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth His Son, made of a woman " &c. (Gal. iv. 4). He was as truly born into this world as we are; but the words the angel spake to Mary must never be forgotten, " The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee; therefore also that holy thing which shall he born of thee shall be called the Son of God" (Luke i. 35; see also Matt. i. 18-20). While, therefore, Christ really took part of flesh and blood (Heb. ii. 14), and was consequently "very man," as well as " very God," it could not be said that He took our nature, that He became bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh. That were indeed to declare that He had a sinful nature; to disqualify Him from being the Lamb of God— the Lamb without spot, or blemish —and to undermine the very foundations of the atonement, and consequently of Christianity. No; He was ever holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners; while we were by nature the children of wrath.

How then could it be possible for us (in whose flesh there is no good thing) to imitate the life of Him who was absolutely holy? The leopard cannot change his spots, nor the Ethiopian his skin, neither can the natural man alter the character of the flesh in which he is born. Hence the first necessity is to be born again; as the Lord Himself said to Nicodemus, " Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again " (John iii. 5-7). Until, then, we are born again through faith in the Lord Jesus, by the power of the Holy Ghost, and have received, therefore, a new nature, we cannot follow Christ. Let us be very clear upon this point; for to speak otherwise is only to delude and to imperil souls. If there be not the same nature, there cannot be likeness in the life. There may be outward resemblances between an action of a natural man, and an action of Christ; but this does not constitute, in God's sight, imitation of His example. The nature of the two actions —in their motive, character, and end —must be the same. We may tie roses on a gooseberry bush, but they have not been produced by the tree. So actions— to be like Christ's —must be produced, and they can only be produced in those who have the new nature—a nature like His. In other words, we must be like Christ (as to nature), before we can imitate Him.

(2.) Having even the nature is not enough, because the power is still wanting. The characteristic of the new nature is feebleness — weakness itself; and hence I may be really born again, a child of God, yet utterly unable to take a single step after Christ. We have an example of this in Romans vii. The one whose case is there put says, " That which I do, I allow not: for what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I " (Rom. vii. 15). What a confession! and yet he tells us that he delighted in the law of God after the inward man (Rom. vii. 22), showing that he had a new nature —had been born again. What he, therefore, needed was power. And where was this to be obtained? The pre-requisite of it was deliverance—the knowledge that sin had been judged, as well as the guilt of sins cleared away, that, through the death and resurrection of Christ, he had been brought out of his Adam-condition into a new place in Christ, so that, having the Spirit of God dwelling in Him, he was no longer in the flesh, but in the Spirit (Rom. viii. 9). The indwelling Spirit is our only power for the imitation of Christ. Indeed, this was Christ's own power. We thus read that " Jesus, being full of the Holy Ghost, returned from Jordan, and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness; " and again, that " He returned in the power of the Spirit into Galilee " (Luke iv. 1-14). He Himself says, " If I cast out devils by the Spirit of God " (Matt. xii. 28); and St. Peter, speaking of Him, says, " How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power; who went about doing good, and healing all that were op pressed of the devil: for God was with Him" (Acts x. 38). Unless, therefore, we have the Holy Ghost, we are still without power to walk as Christ walked; for nature, as we have seen, and even the new nature of itself, cannot tread in His footsteps.

(3.) There is another important condition. I may be born again, and have the Spirit of God, and yet be not imitating Christ. I am qualified to do so; but the Spirit of God does not of necessity act because He dwells in me. Indeed, every believer carries about -with him a great hindrance — and that is the flesh, the old nature. For though it has been judged in the death of Christ; and is, therefore, judicially gone from God's sight, it is still in us, and is always in opposition to the desires and aims of the new man. Satan knows this, and finds in it the means, if we are not watchful, of hindering our progress, and even of compassing our fall. St. Paul, writing on this subject, says, " Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh. For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary the one to the other; so that ye cannot (rather, "in order that ye should not "—ἳνα μὴ ἃ ἃν θέλητε ταῦτα ποῖητε) do the things that ye would " (Gal. v. 17). The flesh and the Spirit are, therefore, in everlasting contrariety, and the object of each is to hinder the other. When the flesh desires to act, the Spirit leads in opposition; and when the Spirit would act, the flesh obstructs—both seeking to nullify the will of the other, that neither the one nor the other should obtain its desires. It may be, therefore, that though I am, as already said, qualified to imitate the example of the Lord Jesus, I shall be effectually hindered —must be so, if I allow the flesh to have its own way.

The next condition, therefore, is, that the flesh be not allowed to act, but that it be kept in the place where God has put it—under judgment in the death of the cross. Hence St. Paul says, " If ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live. For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God " (Rom. viii. 13, 14). And if we add to this scripture another, the whole subject will be explained. " Always bearing in the body the dying of Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body " (2 Cor. iv. 10). The flesh, therefore —all indeed that is of nature — has to be kept under the power of death, under the constant application of the cross, the putting to death of Jesus—the Spirit of God being our enabling power for this; that nothing of self, nature, or the flesh, may ever be expressed, but only the life of Jesus. For it is only when we are following that we can present the life of Jesus; and if the slightest thing of self, of the flesh, is manifested, the presentation is at once marred. Death must then be accepted if we would imitate Christ. This is what He Himself said, " If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me " (Matt. xvi. 24). Self must be refused, the cross—death —accepted, before we can follow. May we learn the lesson!

(4.) The eye must also be upon Christ, and upon Christ where He is. We might have, indeed, every qualification of which we have yet spoken, and still, if the eye were not on Christ, there would be most certain failure. Take the familiar illustration of Peter walking on the sea as an explanation. When he saw Jesus walking on the sea, he said, " Lord, if it be Thou, bid me come unto Thee on the water. And He said, Come. And when Peter was come down out of the ship, he walked on the water, to go to Jesus. But when he saw the wind boisterous, he was afraid; and beginning to sink, he cried, saying, Lord, save me," &c. (Matt. xiv. 25-31). At the outset Peter walked, even as the Lord Himself walked, on the sea; but the moment his eye was off Christ and on his circumstances—the difficulties that surrounded him—he began to sink.

So is it ever with us. We can never walk after His example unless our eye is upon Him. But we have said it must be on Him where He now is, not where He once was. Peter, of course, looked on the living Christ before his eyes; but we must look upon a living Christ where He now is —in the glory, at the right hand of God. Let us explain. St. Paul says, " We all with open (i.e., unveiled) face beholding as in a glass (the words, " as in a glass," are better omitted) the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, as by the Spirit of the Lord" (2 Cor. iii. 1 8). Here we are taught, as we saw in the last chapter, that our growth, our gradual transformation into the likeness of Christ, is dependent upon our eyes being fixed upon Him—upon the glory of the Lord. We gaze by faith, and the rays of that glory, falling upon our souls, are used by the Holy Spirit to change us morally into the likeness of Him on whom we thus look. Herewith is connected another thing. It is only as we are thus occupied, that we receive power to bear about in the body the dying of Jesus (2 Cor. iv. 10). Two things are thereby gained —growing likeness to Christ, and the flesh kept under the power of death. The consequence is, that Christ must be expressed; or, in other words, that we imitate His example. For imitation of Christ must come from within, and not from without. According to the principle before stated, we must be like Christ before we can imitate Him; and hence the closeness of our walk to His, will depend upon the degree of our likeness to Him.

It would save much disappointment, and many mistakes, were this remembered. For it would then be seen, that to walk as Christ walked is not the result of any effort we can make—we can never imitate Him by any efforts of our own—but that it must be the outcome of what we are. See how beautifully this was exemplified in the case of Stephen, when he was martyred. " He being full of the Holy Ghost, looked up steadfastly into heaven, and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God, and said, Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing on the right hand of God" (Acts vii. 55, 56). Such was his attitude; but his testimony did but enrage his persecutors; " for they cried out with a loud voice, and stopped their ears, and ran upon him with one accord, and cast him out of the city, and stoned him...... and they stoned Stephen, calling upon, and saying, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. And he kneeled down, and cried with a loud voice, Lord, lay not this sin to their charge. And when he had said this, he fell asleep" (vers. 57-60). Now if we compare this scene with the death of the Lord Jesus, as recorded by St. Luke, we shall find a remarkable correspondency. He also uttered two prayers. When on the cross, He cried, " Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do; " and also, " Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit" (Luke xxiii. 34, 46). Even on the surface one cannot fail to be struck with the similarity of the two cases. "Why was it, then, that Stephen followed so exactly in the footsteps of his Lord? Was it because that he had heard that the Lord had uttered such prayers, and he thought, therefore, that he would copy His example? This would have been a valueless imitation, if not altogether a counterfeit. No; he was occupied in beholding the glory of the Lord, and the effect was that he was changed into the same image, and therefore of necessity he expressed himself in the same way. And this is the secret of all likeness to Christ in our ways. If the eye is upon Christ as He was down here, and we say, " He did this," or " He did that," and we, therefore, will do the same, we shall most certainly, and repeatedly, fail. But when the eye is upward, fixed on Him where He now is, the dying of Jesus will be always borne about in our body, and the Spirit of God, ungrieved and unhindered, will work mightily within us in transforming power, and then of necessity lead us in the footsteps of our Great Example, because His pathway was that of the Perfect Man.

It is the same even in the natural domain. Suppose, now, an artist desires to reproduce one of the great masterpieces. How does he begin? Does he at once go and copy the picture? Not at all; but his first task will be to study it, to get the impression of it in his mind; and then, when he is imbued with the spirit and colour of his model, he can reproduce it. So Milton once wrote, " He who would write an heroic poem must first live a hero's life." This is the true principle for the imitation of Christ; and hence the more we are occupied with Him in glory, the more faithfully we shall repro duce His life in our walk and ways.

Does any one say, Are we, then, not to trace out the life of the Lord Jesus here below? Certainly; for what greater enjoyment can the believer have than to follow Him in His wondrous path, to study every detail recorded, to hear His every word, to watch Him in every possible circumstance, to note how He comported Himself, before both friends and enemies, to mark His ways in His secret retirement, His communings with His disciples, especially with those whom He was able to admit to greater intimacy, to follow Him in that blessed home of Bethany —all these things we shall ever delight to trace, and to retrace, and perhaps even in the glory. But it is not thus that we receive power to walk in the same steps; this can only come from be holding Him —looking by faith to Him where He now is, at the right hand of God. We shall feed upon Him (as explained in another chapter) as He was down here; for the manna is a humbled Christ — Christ in the unfoldings of His life in His sojourn in this scene. And very blessed it is to have Christ in our circumstances — to have His grace, His tenderness, His sympathy as we follow His example. Blessed, however, as all this is, we reiterate, that if we would walk as He walked, it can only be by occupation with Him in the glory.

There are, however, uses in the consideration of Christ's example which must not be overlooked. His example is our standard; and hence nothing can be more profitable than to measure ourselves by it, that we may discover our defects, and learn our failures. It is on this account that St. Peter, when exhorting servants to take it patiently, even when they might suffer for well-doing, adds, " For even hereunto were ye called: because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that ye should follow His steps: who did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth: who, when He was reviled, reviled not again; when He suffered, He threatened not; but committed Himself to Him that judgeth righteously: who His own self bare our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sin, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed" (i Peter ii. 21-24). The apostle thus held up the example of Christ as their model, that they might see in its light their failure, and be encouraged to walk in the same steps.

The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews adduces it, in like manner, as an encouragement and stimulus to those who might be suffering from persecution. For after urging them, in the race set before them, to look off themselves unto " Jesus, the Author and Finisher of faith; who, for the joy that was set before Him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God," he says, " For consider Him that endured such contradiction of sinners against Himself, lest ye be wearied and faint in your minds. Ye have not yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin" (Heb. xii. 2-4). The word " consider" in this scripture is a most striking one; it means, to draw an analogy, or to make a comparison, between Christ and yourselves. You may be pressed, almost beyond measure, by your sufferings and persecutions; but compare your circumstances with His; follow Him in His course, and behold Him at last dying as a martyr (for this is the aspect of His death here presented) for righteousness' sake. Ye have not yet resisted unto blood (as He did); you have not yet been made martyrs, striving against sin. Be encouraged, strengthened, therefore, by His example: learn from Him to endure, and to be faithful even unto death.

The Lord Himself gave the same kind of instruction to His disciples. He reminded them, that if the world hated them, it had first hated Him; that " if they have persecuted Me, they will also persecute you; if they have kept My sayings, they will keep yours also " (John xv. 18-20). The path of the disciple must correspond with his Lord's; and hence it is that His example must ever be our model and standard. But let it be once more added, that while we cannot too often, or too lovingly, trace out the course of our blessed Lord through this world, to learn what our conduct should be, to detect our failings, and to gather encouragement and consolation, it is only by having our eyes fixed upon Him where He now is, that we shall be enabled to tread in His steps. May He ever fill our gaze, that we may reflect His likeness in our walk and ways!

"Master! we would no longer be
Loved by the world that hated Thee,
But patient in Thy footsteps go,
Thy sorrow as Thy joy to know;
We would —and oh, confirm the power —
With meekness meet the darkest hour,
By shame, contempt, however tried,
For Thou wast scorned and crucified."

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