The Christ Life

There is a beautiful picture recorded in Mark 11—Christ riding into Jerusalem. What do we see here? We see Divinity above the animal, we see a triumphant march, and we hear “Hosanna in the highest.”* (Mark 11:10) But reverse the order and let the animal be on top, then there is a break-down, the march ceases, and there are no more hallelujahs. This same scene is reproduced in your life and mine every day. As long as the Divine life is in the ascendency there is a victorious march heavenward. But let your old animal nature get the mastery, then you not only come to a standstill yourself, but break down and blockade the way for others.

Again, man might be likened to a three-story building—upstairs, downstairs, and basement. Most men live in the basement of their natures and take special delight in fleshly indulgences. Then there is another class who live on a higher plane and find their delight in things that please the mind, such as music, art, paintings, and fine reading. But the ideal life, the essential life, is to live upstairs—in the spiritual realm. Here one has victory over all that is groveling, sensual, and devilish; here one can view the landscape o’er and catch new visions of the coming King. O brother, if you have been living in the basement, look around and you will find a stairway leading to something better; but let not the better become enemy to the best! Keep on climbing up that stairway provided by the grace and power of God until you stand victorious upon the delectable mountain of holy vision and revelation of eternal things.

When a man is thus possessed by God, he becomes not only more of a man, but more than a man. Here is a Christian (a Christ-man), walking the earth, more completely transformed and controlled by the heavenly life than was he formerly under the control of that which was “earthly, sensual, [and] devilish.” Thanks be unto Christ who has at last completed the work He came to do. “He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied.”* (Isaiah 53:11)