The absoluteness of Jesus Christ
My Goal is God Himself. . .
At any cost, dear Lord, by any road.
"He shall glorify
Me. John 16:14.
"The pietistic [or
emergent, universalist, mystical] movements of to-day have none of the
rugged reality of the New Testament about them.... This type of experience is not
supernatural nor miraculous, it did not cost the passion of God, it
is not dyed in the blood of the Lamb,
not stamped with the hall-mark of the Holy Ghost.
It has not that mark on it
which makes men say, as they look with awe and wonder—‘That is the work of
God Almighty.’ That and nothing else is what the New Testament talks about.
The type of Christian
experience in the New Testament is that of personal, passionate devotion to
the Person of Jesus Christ. Every other type of Christian experience, so
called, is detached from the Person of Jesus. There is no regeneration,
no being born again into the Kingdom in which Christ lives, but only the
idea that He is our Pattern.
In the New Testament Jesus Christ is Saviour
long before He is Pattern. To-day He is being despatched as the Figurehead
of a religion, a mere Example. He is that, but He is infinitely more; He is
salvation itself. He is the Gospel of God.
Jesus said—“When He, the
Spirit of truth, is come, . . . He shall glorify Me.” When I commit myself
to the revelation made in the New Testament, I receive from God the gift of
the Holy Spirit Who begins to interpret to me what Jesus did, and does in me
subjectively what Jesus Christ did for me objectively.
Oswald Chambers, My utmost for his highest :
November 29