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The Life That Wins
(This was an address delivered by Dr. Trumbull in 1911
before the National Convention of the Presbyterian Brotherhood of America meeting
in St. Louis, Missouri. Later, The Life That Wins was published as a pamphlet
by The Sunday School Times, of which Dr. Trumbull was at one time its editor.
He was one of the founders of America's Keswick.)
by Charles G. Trumbull
There is only one life that wins and that is the
life of Jesus Christ. Every man may have that life; every man may live that life.
I do not mean that every man may be Christ-like; I mean something very much better
than that. I do not mean that a man may always have Christ's help. I mean something
better than that. I do not mean that a man have power from Christ. I mean something
very much better than power. And I do not mean that a man shall be merely saved from
his sins and kept from sinning. I mean something better than even that victory.
To explain what I do mean, I must simply tell you a very personal and recent experience
of my own. I think I am correct when I say that I have known more than most men know
about failure, about betrayals and dishonoring of Christ, about disobedience to heavenly
visions, about conscious falling short of that which I saw other men attaining, and
which I knew Christ was expecting of me.
Not a great while ago I should have had to stop just there, and only say I hoped
that some day I would be led out of all that into something better. If you had asked
me how, I would have had to say I did not know. But, thanks to His long-suffering
patience and infinite love and mercy, I do not have to stop there, but I can go on
to speak of something more than a miserable story of personal failure and disappointment.
The conscious needs of my life, before there came the new experience of Christ of
which I would tell you, were definite enough. Three stand out:
About a year before, I had begun, in various ways, to get intimations that certain
men to whom I looked upon were conspicuously blessed in their Christian service and
seemed to have a conception or consciousness of Christ that I did not have, that
was beyond, bigger, deeper than any thought of Christ I had ever had. I rebelled
at the suggestion when it first came to me. How could anyone have a better idea of
Christ than I? (I am just laying bare to you the blind, self-satisfied workings of
my sin-stunted mind and heart.)
Did I not believe in Christ and worship Him as the Son of God and one with God? Had
I not accepted Him as my personal Saviour more than twenty years before? Did I not
believe that in Him alone was eternal life, and was I not trying to live in His service,
giving my whole life to Him? Did I not ask His help and guidance constantly, and
believe that in Him was my only hope? Was I not championing the very cause of the
highest possible conception of Christ, by conducting in the columns of The Sunday
School Times a symposium on the Deity of Christ, in which the leading Bible scholars
of the world were testifying to their personal belief in Christ as God's Son?
All this I was doing; how could a higher or better conception of Christ than mine
be possible? I knew that I needed to serve Him far better than I had ever done, but
that I needed a new conception of Him I would not admit.
And yet it kept coming at me, from directions that I could not ignore, I heard from
a preacher of power a sermon on Ephesians 4:12-13:
"Unto the building up of the body of Christ, till we all attain unto the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a full grown man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ;"
And as I followed it I was amazed, bewildered.
I couldn’t follow him. He was beyond my depth. He was talking about Christ, unfolding
Christ, in a way that I admitted was utterly unknown to me. Whether he was right
or wrong I wasn't quite ready to say that night, but if he was right, then I was
wrong.
Later I read another sermon by this same man on "Paul's Conception of the Lord
Jesus Christ." As I read it, I was conscious of the same uneasy realization
that he and Paul were talking about a Christ whom I simply did not know. Could they
be right? If they were right, how could I get their knowledge?
One day I came to know another minister whose work among men had been greatly blessed.
I learned from him that what he counted his greatest spiritual asset was his habitual
consciousness of the actual presence of Jesus. Nothing so bore him up, he said, as
the realization that Jesus was always with him in actual presence, and that this
was so, independent of his own feelings, independent of his deserts, and independent
of his own notions as to how Jesus would manifest His Presence.
Moreover, he said that Christ was the home of his thoughts. Whenever his mind was
free from other matters, it would turn to Christ and he would talk aloud to Christ
when he was alone — on the street, anywhere — as easily and naturally as to a human
friend. So real to him was Jesus' actual presence.
Some months later I was in Edinburgh, attending the World Missionary Conference,
and I saw that one whose writings had helped me greatly was to speak to men Sunday
afternoon on "The Resources of the Christian Life." I went eagerly to hear
him. I expected him to give us a series of definite things that we could do to strengthen
our Christian life; and I knew I needed them. But his opening words showed me my
mistake, while they made my heart leap with a new joy. What he said was something
like this:
"The resources of the Christian life, my friends, are just — Jesus Christ."
That was all. But that was enough, I hadn't grasped it yet; but it was what all these
men had been trying to tell me. Later, as I talked with the speaker about my personal
needs and difficulties he said, earnestly and simply, "Oh, Mr. Trumbull, if
we would only step out upon Christ in a more daring faith, He could do so much more
for us."
Before leaving Great Britain I was confronted once more with the thought that was
beyond me, a Christ whom I did not yet know, in a sermon that a friend of mine preached
in his London church on a Sunday evening in June. His text was Philippians 1:21:
"To me to live is Christ,"
It was the same theme — the unfolding of "the
life that is Christ," Christ as the whole life and the only life. I did not
understand all that he said, and I knew vaguely that I did not have as my own what
he was telling us about. But I wanted to read the sermon again, and I brought the
manuscript away with me when I left him.
It was about the middle of August that a crisis came with me, I was attending a young
people's Missionary conference, and was faced by a week of daily work there for which
I knew I was miserably, hopelessly unfit and incompetent. For the few weeks previous
had been one of my periods of spiritual let-down, not uplift, with all the loss and
failure and defeat that such a time is sure to record.
The first evening that I was there a Missionary bishop spoke to us on the Water of
Life. He told us that it was Christ's wish and purpose that every follower of His
should be a wellspring of living, gushing water of life all the time to others, not
intermittently, not interruptedly, but with continuous and irresistible flow. We
have Christ's own word for it, he said, as he quoted, "He that believeth on me, from within him shall flow
rivers of living water."
He told how some have a little of the water
of life, bringing it up in small bucketsful and at intervals, like the irrigating
water-wheel of India, with a good deal of creaking and grinding, while from the lives
of others it flows all the time in a life-bringing, abundant stream that nothing
can stop. And he described a little old native woman in the East whose marvelous
ministry in witnessing for Christ put to shame those of us who listened. Yet she
had known Christ for only a year.
The next morning, Sunday, alone in my room, I prayed it out with God, as I asked
Him to show me the way out. If there was a conception of Christ that I did not have,
and that I needed because it was the secret of some of these other lives I had seen
or heard of, a conception better than any I had yet had, and beyond me, I asked God
to give it to me. I had with me the sermon I had heard, "To
me to live is Christ," and I rose from
my knees and studied it. Then I prayed again. And God, in His long-suffering patience,
forgiveness, and love, gave me what I asked for. He gave me a new Christ -- wholly
new in the conception and consciousness of Christ that now became mine.
Wherein was the change? It is hard to put it into words, and yet it is, oh, so new,
and real, and wonderful, and miracle-working in both my own life and the lives of
others.
To begin with, I realized for the first time that the many references throughout
the New Testament to Christ in you, and you in Christ, Christ our life, and abiding
in Christ, are literal, actual, blessed fact, and not figures of speech. How the
15th chapter of John thrilled with new life as I read it now! And the 3rd of Ephesians,
14 to 21. And Galatians 2:20. And Philippians 1:21.
What I mean is this: I had always known that Christ was my Saviour; but I had looked
upon Him as an external Saviour, one who did a saving work for me from outside, as
it were; one who was ready to come close alongside and stay by me, helping me in
all that I needed, giving me power and strength and salvation.
But now I know something better than that. At last I realized that Jesus Christ was
actually and literally within me; and even more than that, that He had constituted
Himself my very life, taking me into union with Himself — my body, mind, and spirit
— while I still had my own identity and free will and full moral responsibility.
Was not this better than having Him as a helper, or even then having Him as an external
Saviour, to have Him, Jesus Christ, the Son of God as my own very life?
It meant that I need never again ask Him to help me as though He were one and I another,
but rather simply to do His work, His will, in me, and with me, and through me. My
body was His, my mind His, my will His, my spirit His; and not merely His, but literally
part of His; what He asked me to recognize was:
"I have been crucified with Christ and It Is no longer I that live, but Christ that liveth In me."
Jesus Christ had constituted Himself my life — not as a figure of speech, remember,
but as a literal, actual fact, as literal as the fact that a certain tree has been
made into this desk on which my hand rests. For "your
bodies are members of Christ," and "ye are the body of Christ."
Do you wonder that Paul could say with tingling joy and exultation, "to me to live is Christ"?
He did not say, as I had mistakenly been supposing I must say, "To me to live
is to be Christ-like," nor, "to me to live is to have Christ's help,"
nor, "To me to live is to serve Christ." No, he plunged through and beyond
all that in the bold, glorious, mysterious claim:
"To me to live is Christ!"
I had never understood that verse before. Now, thanks to His gift of Himself, I am
beginning to enter into a glimpse of its wonderful meaning.
And that is how I know for myself that there is a life that wins; that it is the
life of Jesus Christ; and that it may be our life for the asking, if we let Him —
in absolute, unconditional surrender of ourselves to Him, our wills to His will,
making Him the Master of our lives as well as our Saviour — enter in, occupy us,
overwhelm us with Himself, yea, fill us with Himself "unto
all the fullness of God."
What has the result been? Did this experience give me only a new intellectual conception
of Christ, more interesting and satisfying than before? If it were only that, I should
have little to tell you today. No, it meant a revolutionized, fundamentally changed
life, within and without. If any man be in Christ, you know, there is a new creation.
Do not think that I am suggesting any mistaken, unbalanced theory that, when a man
receives Christ as the fullness of his life, he cannot sin again. The 'life that
is Christ' still leaves us our free will, with that free will we can resist Christ;
and my life, since the new experience of which I speak, has recorded sins of such
resistance.
But I have learned that the restoration after failure can be supernaturally blessed,
instantaneous, and complete. I have learned that, as I trust Christ in surrender,
there need be no fighting against sin, but complete freedom from the power and even
the desire of sin. I have learned that this freedom, this more than conquering, is
sustained in unbroken continuance as I simply recognize that Christ is my cleansing,
reigning life.
The three great lacks of needs of which I spoke at the opening have been miraculously
met.
Two of these were a mother and a son — a young businessman twenty-five-years old.
Another was the general manager of one of the large business houses in Philadelphia.
Though consecrated and active as a Christian for years, he began letting Christ work
out through him in a new way into the lives of his many associates, and of his salesmen
all over the country. A white-haired man of over seventy found a peace in life and
a joy in prayer that he had long ago given up as impossible for him. Life fairly
teems with the miracle-evidences of what Christ is willing and able to do for other
lives through anyone who just turns over the keys to his complete Indwelling.
Jesus Christ does not want to be our helper; He wants to be our life. He does not
want us to work for Him. He wants us to let Him do His work through us, using us
as we use a pencil to write with; better still, using us as one of the fingers on
His hand.
When our life is not only Christ's but Christ, our life will be a winning life, for
He cannot fail.
And a winning life is a fruit-bearing life, a serving life. It is after all only
a small part of life, and a wholly negative part, to overcome; we must also bear
fruit in character and in service if Christ is our life. And we shall — because Christ
is our life:
"He cannot deny himself"; He "came not to be ministered unto, but to minister,"
An utterly new kind of service will be ours now, as we let Christ serve others through
us, using us. And this fruit-bearing and service, habitual and constant, must all
be by faith in Him; our works are the result of His Life in us; not the condition,
or the secret, or the cause of that Life.
The conditions of thus receiving Christ as the fullness of the life are simply two
— after, of course, our personal acceptance of Christ as our Saviour — through His
shed blood and death as our Substitute and Sin-Bearer, from the guilt and consequences
of our sin.
Upon this second step, the quiet act of faith, all now depends. Faith must believe
God in entire absence of any feeling or evidence. For God's word is safer, better,
and surer than any evidence of His word. We are to say, in blind, cold faith if need
be, "Know that my Lord Jesus is meeting all my needs now (even my need of faith),
because His grace is sufficient for me."
And remember that Christ Himself is better then any of His blessings; better than
the power, or the victory, or the service, that He grants.
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