1 John 5:12

1 John 5:12

Christ the Life of the Soul.

It is a very difficult thing to define accurately what we mean by life. Perhaps we shall not be very far wrong if we say that in its highest sense life is that state of which any being is, or feels that it is, capable. So that when anything has reached its true condition, that is its life.

I. The life of every one lies in that Divine particle which man originally received. That particle is lost quite lost. Christ is the only Son of God. Therefore in Christ the Divine particle has descended. It is only in Christ, it can only be by connection with Christ, that any son of Adam can regain the Divine particle of life wherewith he was originally endowed, and which is essentially man's life. Therefore "he that hath the Son hath life."

II. We all have felt the difference between the cold effect of a picture we look at and the glow of the touch of its living original. We are too accustomed to deal with the holy truths of our religion as pictures. We look at them, but they do not speak to us; we admire them, but we are not influenced by them; we dream about them, but it is not action. The sentiment is strong, but there is little principle. There is much poetry, but it is not life. All this is "not to have Christ." Possession of Christ appears to me to be made up of three things. (1) The Christian has Christ's work. Believe it, as a matter of actual historical fact, that Christ did bear the cross for you, and the life for man He has received back from the Father He now holds in heaven for you; and that assent of your heart to that great truth immediately makes that great truth your own. (2) The Christian has Christ Himself. We want a presence, an all-pervading, happy, constant presence, with us. We want a love which we can grasp, which we are conscious shall never decrease. We want the glory of an eternity thrown over us. All this we have if we have Christ (3) But a man's life does not lie only in these things. There is a deep, secret, mystic being which every one holds a life within life. It is the life of the Holy Ghost. There must be the real feeding upon Christ in the soul of a man if he would maintain what is, after all, his truest life. If a man would live, he must lay up Christ always in the recesses of his innermost, secret affections.

J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons, 2nd series, p. 228.

References: 1 John 5:12 . Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xiii., No. 755. 1 John 5:13 . Ibid., vol. xxx., No. 1791. 1 John 5:13-15 . Ibid., vol. x., No. 596.