What is The Christian Life?

[00:00:00] With me, or I will read to you. [00:00:03] In the passage that we read earlier together, in Philippians chapter one and verse 27, there is a little phrase, for to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. [00:00:31] For to me to live is Christ. You remember last Sunday evening we were asking ourselves a question, what is a Christian? [00:00:45] And we sought to answer as clearly as we could that question and the others that were related to it, as to what really is a Christian. [00:00:58] This evening I want to ask another question and seek by the grace of God, to answer it as clearly as last week. And that question is, what is the christian life? [00:01:13] What is the christian life really? [00:01:21] There are, of course, a tremendous number of ideas about the christian life. What it means, what it is, how you practice it, how you experience it. [00:01:36] For many people, it is simply an it, the christian life. [00:01:41] It is something bound up with going to meetings, or perhaps for saying one's prayers or even with reading the Bible. [00:01:51] Certainly it is something somehow or other connected with religion, with being religious. [00:02:00] But Paul had another answer, and he gives it in this wonderful letter to the church at Philippi. [00:02:10] He told us that for him to live was Christ. [00:02:17] He could sum it all up simply in that way, that for him to actually live a normal life, an ordinary life, a quite routine life, but just life, to live, for him to live whatever it meant to thousands of others, human beings, for Paul, for him, it meant Christ. [00:02:43] And that is essentially the christian life. [00:02:49] If we think that the christian life is something that is bound up with merely going to meetings, with becoming a member of a religious movement, or of starting to say prayers, or even of starting to read the word of God, all of which things may be good, but if we think the christian life is something like that, to be put on or to be put off at will, something or other that is somehow beyond what we are, it is something we clothe ourselves with. It is something that we superimpose upon what we are. If we think the christian life is that, we are mistaken. [00:03:37] The christian life is not that at all. [00:03:41] It is a question wholly of getting to know a person. [00:03:48] The christian life begins with a relationship established to a person. [00:03:54] The christian life proceeds with the greater and greater knowledge and experience of that person. [00:04:04] The end of the christian life is to be wholly fused and united with that person. [00:04:14] We have to understand that God is not a God of things. He is a God of people. [00:04:21] You will never find anywhere in the Bible that God is a God of things, of just, mere doctrine, of matters. He is not that at all. God is always revealed as a God of people. [00:04:37] He is interested in people. [00:04:41] There is a sense in which we can say people are his medium. [00:04:46] Always God is reaching out to people, flesh and blood. [00:04:52] Not just something mechanical, never anything, merely technical. Always that which is living, that which is animate, that which is organic, always the Lord is somehow or other related to people. [00:05:10] And it is one of the most interesting things, and surely one of the most vital things contained in the word of God. [00:05:19] That all God's purpose, whatever it is, however far it reaches, however detailed it is, however fully you analyze it, right down to its smallest, most practical, most intimate application to your life and to my life. All God's purpose. Whether you narrow it down to the smallest things, or whether you take it on the greatest and the most broadest level, to do with a whole new creation, a new heaven, a new earth, a new universe, a new humanity, eternity to come, it doesn't matter whether you take it on that level or the most small and almost petty level. You will find all God's purpose is related and found in a person. [00:06:17] All God's purpose. All God's revelation. For instance, you take God's revelation. God has spoken to us. [00:06:25] God has given something to the human race. It doesn't matter what color we are, doesn't matter who we are. God has spoken to man. Not to any particular type of man, not to any particular nation of Mendez, not to any particular race of men. He has spoken to mankind. How has he spoken to mankind? He has spoken not just truths, not just what we call doctrine, not even all. Don't misinterpret me. But not even what we call scriptures. He has spoken. Finally, in a person. [00:07:02] God's purpose is a person. [00:07:05] And all God's purpose is summed up in that person. [00:07:09] And all God's purpose is, as it were, not only secured in that person, but will be realized through that person. One day. That person will be the heart of it all. And he will be the meaning of it all. He will be the goal of everything, Christ all. And in all. All is the great end of God. [00:07:35] Everything. [00:07:37] Heart and circumference, beginning and end, every part in him. [00:07:48] But God's revelation to us. God's reaching us the way God has spoken to us. As in a person. [00:07:58] The Lord Jesus said that all the scriptures speak of him. [00:08:02] It doesn't matter where you turn, they speak of him. He is the sum and the substance of scripture. [00:08:10] It doesn't matter if you begin with the book of Genesis or if you go right through to the book of revelation. Every single one of the 66 books of the Bible have as their heart and their substance the Lord Jesus himself. [00:08:26] So it was that the Lord Jesus was able to speak to those two on the road to Emmaus, and he was able to turn them to the first books of the Old Testament. And he was able to turn to the prophetical books of the Old Testament, and he was able to turn them to the psalms and the rest of the Old Testament, and he was able to show them how everything was fulfilled in himself, how it all found its climax, its consummation in him. [00:08:56] You see, God is not a God of things. [00:09:00] God is a God of a person. [00:09:04] Gods great object is to make this person the heart of a new universe. And every single human being who will not have God's person, this person that God has anointed and chosen as the heart of their life, the heart of their being, cannot have any part whatsoever in that new heaven and new earth. [00:09:32] God has acted, not man. [00:09:35] It has nothing to do with man. God has acted. [00:09:39] God's purpose is summed up in Christ. Christ is this person, and the whole purpose of God is centered in him. [00:09:51] God then, always reaches us through this person, the Lord Jesus. [00:09:59] And furthermore, it is true that wherever we look, we shall find that the christian life, as we like to call it, is really a question of a person. [00:10:10] It is coming to know that person. [00:10:14] It is coming to know that person in every way. [00:10:18] It is coming to know that person as the answer to every situation. [00:10:25] The christian life has at its beginning an opening up to that person. Are getting into a right relationship with that person, that one becoming the heart of your life, the throne of your life, the very center of your life, the meaning of your life. [00:10:52] Paul said, for to me, to live is Christ. [00:10:59] Well, can we find very simply how that affects us? [00:11:10] There are one or two things that we can look at, and we shall discover that the Lord Jesus Christ is made to us all that God. [00:11:28] The first thing is this, Christ is our salvation. [00:11:34] You know, to be saved is not to join some weird religious movement. To be saved is not that somehow or other something strange or an experience of some kind or other happens to you? Some people seem to think that to be converted is some weird, strange experience, but all it is is to come to know Christ as our salvation. [00:12:05] You look at one or two scriptures. [00:12:08] I read you one or two from psalm 27 and verse one. [00:12:13] We read this, the Lord is my light and my salvation. The Lord is my salvation, not the Lord gives me salvation, not the Lord has won for me salvation. Not that the Lord will save me, but the Lord is my salvation. You look at psalm 118 and verse 14 and you will find again the same thought. [00:12:44] The Lord is my strength and I song. He is become my salvation. He himself has become my salvation. [00:12:55] Then you look at Luke, chapter two and verse 30, and you find this word. He is mine eyes have seen thy salvation. [00:13:08] Mine eyes have seen, said Simeon, as he held the infant Jesus in his arms. Mine eyes have seen thy salvation. This baby, this child, this human being is the salvation of God. [00:13:23] It is not a thing. It is not something just given to us. It is a person, Simeon, who was so faithful, who waited so long, who was so utterly given to the Lord. He was able to say, mine eyes have seen thy salvation. [00:13:39] And the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. [00:13:42] What does it mean? Thou shall call his name, Jesus. It says in Matthew, chapter one, for he shall save his people from their sins. Jesus means savior or he is salvation. The Lord is salvation. That's all. The Lord is salvation. The Lord is the savior. The Lord is the salvation. [00:14:03] Do you see? Then what do we mean? [00:14:07] What does it mean to be saved? It means that somehow or other Christ has come to live within you. That's all. How can we tell someone who is saved? We can tell them by this one fact. They have got Christ living inside. [00:14:26] Christ is dwelling within them. Oh, they may be very failing people. They may be very faulty people. They may be very wayward people. But somehow or other something has happened that has marked them out from other people. Christ has come to live inside of them. [00:14:45] He is on the inside. Some people think that christians are just good people. I wish they were more good than I'm afraid we are. [00:14:56] It's not a question of being good or being bad. It is a question of whether Christ is inside. Thats all. [00:15:04] There is a lot of expression, of course, which well look at in one moment much that happens as a result of having Christ inside. [00:15:12] But you are not qualified to become a Christian because youve lived a good life. [00:15:19] There is only one qualification, and that is to have Christ within. [00:15:25] When Christ comes on the inside, you become a Christian. You become a child of God. We was talking last week about being born again, being born anew, what it meant. How does a man become a child of God? How is he born of God? By the miracle of Christ coming to live inside of him. [00:15:50] Oh, it's so simple. When we get right down to it. [00:15:54] What does it mean to be a Christian? I will ask you a question. [00:15:58] Answer in your heart. [00:16:00] Can you say by faith that Christ is living within you. [00:16:13] Can you tell me that by a simple act of faith you gave yourself to the Lord Jesus Christ? [00:16:28] And that from that point, something happened. You can't always put your finger on it. You can't always exactly define it or explain it, but a new power came in. [00:16:42] Something happened. Oh, it caused a great revolution in. It caused great upheavals, much conflict, but something happened. [00:16:51] That's what it is to be a Christian. [00:16:54] It is not to be religious. It is not to attend meetings. It is not to turn over a new leaf. It is not to be reformed. It is not even to go out and help others, good as that is. It is to have Christ come within, right within. What does the word salvation mean? I think that many people who do not understand the scripture and do not understand this term tend to smile and laugh at the word saved and salvation. [00:17:25] Some people don't like it at all. [00:17:28] It somehow makes them think of that which is rather cheap and so on. What is the word salvation really mean? It means deliverance. Let me put it another way. Rescue. To be rescued. [00:17:45] To be rescued. To be saved. [00:17:49] To be rescued is one thought within this world. [00:17:55] The idea behind salvation is that the whole world is doomed, that something has gone wrong with the whole of humanity, and that God would rescue men. That's all. Jesus Christ is God's great rescuer. [00:18:13] He is the one who's coming to the world to rescue every man and woman that he can. [00:18:18] But he is not only the rescuer, he is the very rescue. [00:18:23] He is himself the deliverance. [00:18:26] By coming within us, he saves us. How does God rescue a man and a woman? How does God rescue a man and a woman? By getting on the inside of them. [00:18:36] Not by titivating the outside, not by just somehow or other making them a little bit nicer outwardly, but coming right on the inside of them and doing something on the inside. How does God rescue men and women? How did he save them? By changing them inside. [00:18:59] Getting inside of us and changing us. [00:19:05] Now here we find Christ is God's salvation. [00:19:12] He is God's salvation. [00:19:15] Many people make this whole matter of salvation very complicated, very difficult, very hard. [00:19:25] Or they ask all kinds of questions and want to cross all kinds of bridges, want to get all kinds of ends tied up and so on, but, you know, get down to the, the most basic level of all, the most essential thing of all. Forget all your problems. You must become as a little child, said the Lord Jesus, if you would enter into the kingdom, forget all those other things, get hold of this becoming a christian, to be saved is simply to have Christ living within. [00:19:55] That's all. [00:19:57] To have him on the inside. [00:20:01] That's what it means to be a Christian. [00:20:05] But then again, Christ is not only our salvation, but we discover from the word of God that Christ is also our life. If you look at Colossians chapter three and verse three, we read this little phrase, Christ, who is our life. [00:20:26] And then in one John five and verse eleven and twelve, we read this. [00:20:35] And the witness is, God gave unto us eternal life, and this life is in his son. He that hath the son hath the life. He that hath not the son hath of God hath not life. [00:20:55] And then again, if you look at one corinthians chapter one and verse 30, we read this. [00:21:01] Christ Jesus made unto us wisdom from God and righteousness and sanctification and redemption. What is the christian life? [00:21:15] It is, first of all that you have received the Lord Jesus as a person, as God's son into your life. [00:21:26] You have surrendered yourself to him and you have received him in what. How do you go on from there? [00:21:41] There are many questions people ask. They say, can we keep it up? If I come to the Lord, I don't think I'll be able to keep it up. Others say, you know, I'm so worldly, I've got such a problem like this, or I've got such a problem that I'm not sure that I'll be able to go through with it. What is the Christian like? The christian life is simply this, that once you receive the Lord Jesus Christ as your salvation, you should then yield to him at each step of the way. That's all he is to become your very life. [00:22:13] That's all. [00:22:15] All this question of being transformed, of being changed, of somehow or other coming into that experience of the Lord Jesus as the answer to all our practical needs is all bound up with getting to know him as our life. [00:22:34] Many people say to me, but how? But how can we do this? How can we do that? [00:22:39] I can't. I can't. [00:22:43] The whole point goes down to a question of the lordship of Christ. [00:22:48] When we say, I can't, I. We're talking rubbish. [00:22:52] What we mean is, we won't. I won't. That's all. [00:22:58] It's always a question of the Lordship of Christ. [00:23:01] Some people say that they can't really get the victory over some point or other, but really it is a question that deep down within them, they don't want to have the victory over it. [00:23:14] Sometimes we don't want to end the victory things we just don't want to. On the one hand, we're miserable with ourselves. We don't like ourselves. We get sick to death of ourselves. Then the Lord says, all right, I'll change you. And we say, no, no, no, don't want to be changed. That's the one thing really I don't want to be. It's a strange thing that when we are saved, some of us, we've got down to the lowest depths we can wish. [00:23:43] We've got to somehow be rescued. And yet, you know the strange thing? There's something in us that doesn't really want to be changed. [00:23:51] We're so absolutely miserable with our life. We're so absolutely sick of it and of ourselves. And yet, when it really comes to it, whilst we want to, we want to be happy, we want to be satisfied, we want to be contented, we want somehow to be lifted out of the ditch. But we don't really want to be changed. [00:24:15] We're afraid that somehow or other, if the Lord goes too deep, we shall somehow lose a lot. We shall become miserable. And I've often thought to myself how strange it is when I am most miserable, and I know what I'm miserable about because it's something inside that needs to be changed or something that needs to be touched by the Lord, something that needs to come under the hand of the Lord, and I'm very miserable about it. And then I think to myself, but you know, if I give that up, I shall be so miserable. [00:24:49] I think to myself, if I get through on that point, I should be so miserable, the Lord will take me away. [00:24:57] How deluded we are, how deceived we are when it comes to this question of the Lord changing us. [00:25:06] I have never yet met a person who has really gone on with the Lord and really been changed, who is really miserable. [00:25:13] That is the strange fact. [00:25:15] Never. Now, I have met, on the other hand, many christians who are really miserable. [00:25:23] And in every case it is because they are not prepared to yield certain issues. [00:25:28] What is this christian life? It is simply this. When we are saved, God plants a seed. That seed will start to grow. [00:25:39] As it grows, it will produce a kind of character. It will overcome everything. If only you will obey the law of its life, it will produce itself in us. [00:25:53] What does it mean to be conformed to the image of God's son? It means that God has planted a seed of Christ inside of us, not outside, but inside of us by the Holy Spirit. And now that seed is going to germinate and grow until Christ is fully formed within us. [00:26:12] You know, forgive. I often mention this, but it's always a miracle to me. You go out afterwards and the garden and have a look around. This garden, it's a bit of a mess, I must agree, but nevertheless, you. It's good enough for the things I want to illustrate. [00:26:28] You go out and you see some of those little seedlings that are growing. You will see poppies, you will see cosmos, you will see pansies, you will see marigolds. I hope you all know the difference between these things, but you'll go out and take someone who knows about them, and they will explain them to you. But here's the point. Each one of those was a seed. Now, to the uninitiated, the seed will not look so very different. There are lots of little dried up, brown things, but put them into the earth, and the strange thing happens. A cosmos seed never becomes a marigold. A marigold never becomes a poppy. A poppy never becomes a pansy. [00:27:14] They're all different. [00:27:17] What is it? [00:27:19] When you look at that little seed, it's so dried up, it's so minute, it's so small, you think, oh, dear, can I trust God? [00:27:30] If I put it into the ground, will it not come up something else? Should we not train it? Should we not somehow or other do something? But no, all you've got to do is put it into the ground and leave it to nature. [00:27:41] That's all. [00:27:43] Providing there's a bit of rain, providing there's a bit of sun, those little seeds will grow, and each one will obey the law of the life inside of it. There has never yet been a mistake. [00:27:58] Every single one of them has got a law inside of it. It doesn't matter what it is. It never changes. It always obeys basically, the law of its kind. [00:28:12] Now, why are we as christians, so foolish? [00:28:16] God has planted something inside of us that that seed is Christ born. Says Peter of an ink of the incorruptible seed of Christ. That seed of Christ has been planted inside of us. [00:28:33] Given the right conditions, given obedience to the law of its kind, it will grow and grow and grow. And what do you find? You begin to look at someone. You begin to see them somehow or other change. A family likeness begins to develop in them. Something or other somehow gets through. [00:28:55] I'm not saying that they become saints overnight. We are not saying that somehow or they get the victory over every kind of difficulty and trouble. They don't. [00:29:05] But the more they obey the law that life within, the more Christ is produced within. There's a growing up, you know, Paul spoke of some of those that had come to the Lord earlier on in his life. And he said, you know, I travail. He said, writing to them, I travail again for you that Christ may be fully formed in you. Christ was there in the beginning of formation, but he said, I travail that Christ may be fully formed, brought to full growth. There's a word in scripture which frightens a lot of us. It's the word perfection. [00:29:42] To be perfect and all. There are a tremendous number of controversial things that have resulted from this little word in the scripture. Perfection. Go on unto perfection, ye that are perfect. But do you know what the word means? It means fully grown, complete. That's all that seed inside of you. Just growing up into full stature, becoming what it is. [00:30:15] If you go out into the garden again, you will see that some of the pansies are flowering. You will see that some of the marigolds are flowering. What is happening? They have reached full stature. They have reached or are reaching the climax of their life, the goal of their life, which is to flower and to seed and to reproduce and to die. [00:30:45] That's the end of their short life. [00:30:51] That is the great illustration from nature for us. [00:30:56] When we open our lives to Christ. He comes in as our salvation. From that day we can say, he is my salvation. I thank God that I'm not going to go into the glory. I trust one day by his grace to say that somehow or other he saved me. I shall look at the Lord Jesus and I shall say, you are my salvation. [00:31:16] Thou art my salvation. My whole trust is in a person. And I'm so thankful. The person's in heaven at the right hand of God. He is my salvation, but he's my life. [00:31:31] Christ is producing himself in us. [00:31:37] Isn't that a wonderful thing? Do you not think that Christ is our life? [00:31:43] Well, you know, if we will only obey the law of that life, we shall get through on a lot of issues. And we shall find that each time we get through on an issue, something happens. We become somehow something more of the Lord comes in. We may not be so conscious of it. It may be a question of temper with some people. I don't know. It may be a question of impatience with other. It may be a question of thoughts with other. It may be a question of all kinds of things. You know, you know the thing. I know the thing in my life. You know, the things in your life which are the things that you're uneasy about. The things the Holy Spirit is speaking and the thing that gets you down, you know, you know, I know. [00:32:22] When we get to all those things, when we've really prepared to get, when we take the Lord Jesus said, lord, you are my victory in this matter. You are my answer to this. When we do that, something more of the Lord Jesus comes in. [00:32:41] How true it is. It is the key to our going on, isn't it? Again and again, that if we were depending on what we are, what we felt like, many of us wouldn't be here long ago, years ago, we would have given up and gone back, which is no good. But we've come again to the place where we had to say, lord, you are my life in this situation. You are my love or you are my patience. [00:33:07] We've had to prove the Lord as the very thing we are needing in those situations. And you see, God the Father has made the Lord Jesus to his children everything that we require. I don't know what your need is, but whatever it is, God the Father can make the Lord Jesus the answer to you. I don't know what your need is, but he can do it, and he can do it. When you, by simple faith, take hold of him, say, lord, you are my love, my patience, my joy, my stability, and so on. [00:33:59] Then again, we look very simply and we find that Christ is not only that, but he is also our unity. [00:34:06] Look at Colossians 310. [00:34:09] You will find that the Lord Jesus Christ is our unity, it says, and have put on the new man that is being renewed unto knowledge after the image of him that created him. That's rather a mouthful in some ways. Where there cannot be Greek and jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, Bondman, Freeman. But Christ is all, and in all what is here. Paul tells us that we have put on a new man. But then he tells us that in this new man there are neither jew nor Gentile, barbarian, Syrian, Bondman nor Freeman. This new man is corporate. In other words, it's not just personal. [00:34:54] If you look at Galatians, you will find that in Galatians he tells us that we have put on Christ. [00:35:02] There can be neither jew nor Greek, there can be neither bond nor free. There can be no male nor female, but Christ. [00:35:09] Ye are all one in Christ Jesus. In Romans twelve and one Corinthians twelve, you will remember, Paul speaks of the body, and he says, the body has many members, and yet all the members of that one of that body are still one person, many members. Look. Fingers, hands, feet, eyes, ears, lips, tongue, and so many other hundreds of members that make up the body. And yet every single one is vital to what we call a living, functioning body. [00:35:45] You can't do without them. For a perfect body, a complete body, they've all got to be there. [00:35:51] Now, says Paul, Christ is that kind of body. He's got all those members. [00:35:59] What does this mean? It means this. When you and I have been born into the family of God, we find we're in what we call the church. We are a member of an eternal family, of which our temporal families are but just a picture, a shadow. We are in this, in the real thing. We've been born of God into his family. [00:36:21] Christ is that unity. [00:36:26] It is not a man made unity. You can't make it. [00:36:31] It is Christ. [00:36:32] And when we are born of God, we suddenly develop a kinship. We don't know how to explain it, but suddenly we know that we belong to those people. [00:36:44] They are. We may never have seen. Seen them before. We may never have met them before. We may not really have had any dealings whatsoever. They may all come in, for the most part, from different types of background and everything else, and yet we have the strangest kinship with them. Something which is deep down within us. Some of us have known it again and again in even more wonderful ways. We've met people from the other sides of the world and we've only been speaking for a minute or two and we've had known straight away. But we're absolute blood brothers. [00:37:18] It's amazing. Now, how can you get over all these deep seated racial divisions and national divisions and social distinctions and all the rest of it that goes so deep into human society? How can you do it? By taking Christ. [00:37:38] He is a new man. A new man. [00:37:42] When you have received Christ, suddenly you find you are no longer german or French or English or Chinese or japanese or anything else. You are a child of God, and therein lies the beauty of the church of God. [00:37:59] There is no distinction. They've been abolished. I'm a Christian, you are Christians. We are super national. We are super racial. [00:38:13] Whilst we still bear in our natural bodies the marks of our own nationality and the marks of our own race. [00:38:20] Yet something else has happened which has superseded it all and is. Has transcended all those divisions and factions, those distinctions, and made us absolutely members one of another. [00:38:41] So that we don't sort of say, oh, oh, dear, he's colored. [00:38:46] We don't say, oh, he belongs to the working class. [00:38:53] I fear it happens in some christians. [00:38:57] Dear, I'm bringing back so much. [00:39:02] Well, I suppose we'll get through. [00:39:09] But where there's been a deep work of the Holy Spirit, you will find that though there are difficulties, there will always be difficult while we're here on earth. Yet the Holy Spirit transcends all those difficulties and makes the one great reality that we are one man, one new man. Do you know this world needs that more than anything else in these days? You will hear, I trust in a little while, something of the need of such an expression of the church of God in our day and generation, in a world which is torn by distinction of every kind, whether it is political or whether it is racial or national, it is torn with this teach. [00:39:56] And it's come right down now to people, right down to home, so that we have the greatest divorce rate in world history. [00:40:10] People just cannot be one. They cannot be one. There is something inside of them that militates against unity. They want unity because we are born for unity. There is something inherently within us that belongs to each other. As John Donne said so beautifully, you must not ask. He said, in the days when they used to toll the bell when someone died, do not ask for whom the bell tolls. [00:40:35] It tolls for thee. [00:40:38] When someone dies, something of you has gone. [00:40:43] That's how he solved it. [00:40:45] All belong to each other, all an entity. You know, we all know that inwardly, something inside of us knows that for its peace, for its health, for its soundness, for its fulfillment, it's got to be one with other human beings. It must be. And yet I, strange enough, by this thing that we call sin, there has come in this whole anti social, individualistic thing that is, that militates against any cooperation or any real unity, whether it be in a family, whether it be on a larger level, whatever it is now, the Lord Jesus Christ is our unity. [00:41:29] Satan has done such a work in humanity that they can't be one. Believe me, we've had thousands of years of human history to prove it. They cannot be won such a terrible work that we can only have a superficial unity. And that superficial unity will only last, at the most, a few years. It always cracks up. It's because of the work of the enemy within human beings. But Christ is God's answer. And he can gather together all the thousands of fragments and all the torn ligaments, as it were. He can bring it all together into himself and present one new man, Christ. [00:42:13] Well, there are many other things we could say, because Christ is everything when it comes to scripture. But what is the christian life? I might tell you the christian life consists, in my estimation of four things. It consists, first, of being saved, secondly, of being transformed by the grace of God. Thirdly, of living in the family of God and coming into essential knowledge of the discipline of other people. [00:42:46] And fourthly, it consists of being prepared for the glory. [00:42:54] Christ is our salvation. Christ is our life. Christ is the church himself. [00:43:04] He is our unity. Christ is our hope of glory. [00:43:11] Paul said in his letter to the church at Colossae, Christ, in you the hope of glory. [00:43:19] I'm afraid that if I were to think that anything of myself by myself were to get to the. To the glory or be glorified, I would be sadly disappointed and disillusioned. But I thank God that I look within to the little that is of the Lord Jesus, the little that's been produced of the Lord Jesus, the little that's being increased of the Lord Jesus. And I know I've got a wonderful. I've got a wonderful knowledge inwardly in my heart that that little. One day, that little something of Christ is going to get to the glory. [00:43:53] It's going to get to the glory. You know, there's the most wonderful little station those birds hear. Every year the swifts come back. [00:44:02] And I always find, of course, some people think I'm sentimental, but I always wait in the first few weeks of summer for the swifts to come. I always know because I hear them screaming between this roof and the other roof of the house. [00:44:19] Every year they come back. I don't think they're the same birds, but every year, the same family, different generations of the same family, they come back to this garden. [00:44:31] And, you know, they always used to build their nests up in the wall above the study window. [00:44:41] And even when that wall was in the process of being demolished, when they came back, they tried to find their home. [00:44:50] And I thought to myself, okay, what is that innate something within them that brings them thousands and thousands of miles across continents and across seas to this land and to the spot that their parents knew where they were born, and brings them right almost to the very point where they were born, their home. What is it? It is something inside, a homing instinct inside. [00:45:18] When we have Christ within, he becomes, if I may say so reverently, the great holy instinct. Inside of us, the home, is glory. [00:45:32] And whatever else does not get to glory, that of Christ inside of us will persevere and go on and overcome until at last it's in the presence of God. [00:45:45] Now, if any of you have come to the Lord, you may be very young in the Lord. You may be meeting very great problems, but if there's something inside of you that's of Christ, it will get to the glory. [00:45:59] It may be very little, but it'll get there. [00:46:04] That's the most wonderful thing of all. Able to present us full bless, without spot or blemish, before the throne of God the Father. [00:46:17] Well, may the Lord Jesus help us very simply to understand something of that. That Christ himself is our life. And the more we get to know him, so the more we shall come into a knowledge of what God's purpose and mind is.