"To Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He said not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to your Seed, which is Christ." (Galatians 3:16) "For how many soever be the promises of God, in Him is the yea; wherefore also through Him is the Amen, unto the glory of God through us." (2 Corinthians 1:20) "He is before all things, and in Him all things consist." (Colossians 1:17)
Christ is "the Beginning;" (Revelation 1:8) He is the source of all creation, visible and invisible, whether in heaven or on earth. Oh, that men would realize the absolute reality of this fact! Without Him there is not one thing. "In Him we live, and move, and have our being." (Acts 17:28)
Most people accept these Scripture statements, but in an accommodated, unreal sense. They do not realize that they are literally true, and that there is no material thing in existence outside of Christ; that outside of Him there is no existence whatever. He is; His name is "I Am;" and He is the only One who is. That which is not in Him, is not at all.
If Scripture statements were taken as literally true, spiritual life would be a practical experience, instead of the abstraction that it so often is. Nothing is more true than that the religious life of many consists largely in the repetition of certain phrases, the meaning of which they do not comprehend, and which very often have no meaning.
All this comes from the habit of making a distinction between the literal and the spiritual,--of separating the ordinary, practical, everyday life from the spiritual, religious life. As a matter of fact, the spiritual is the only reality there is. That which is seen only with the natural eyes is temporal; only the unseen is eternal.
Christ, the Word, is the Seed to whom the promise of God is made. (Galatians 3:16) All who "put on Christ," (Galatians 3:27) are the seed in Him. When seed is sown it multiplies. That is why it is sown. So Christ, the Word, being received into human hearts and lives, as He comes in the person of the Holy Spirit, multiplies himself. Everyone in whom He thus dwells is transformed, and lives a new life. He can say, "I am crucified with Christ; nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me." (Galatians 2:20)
This is the new birth, which is accomplished by the Word of truth. "Of His own will He begat us with the word of truth, that we should be a kind of first fruits of His creatures." (James 1:18) "Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which lives and abides for ever." (1 Peter 1:23)
Christ becomes the ruling factor in the life. The life is no longer ours, but His: He takes complete possession, so that He thinks and acts through us, using the organs of our body for the accomplishment of His will.
Just here comes in the trouble with many people who would gladly live this perfect Christian life, or rather, allow Christ to live it in them, that the thing seems so intangible; they cannot sufficiently grasp the idea that Christ can dwell personally in them. It seems to them a name, a theory, rather than a fact.
Now the Lord has anticipated this difficulty, and has put the Gospel into visible form, so that we may continually have an object lesson before us. In the seed that the gardener sows, God has provided us a lesson concerning the reality of the Seed by which we are begotten anew, and in the fruits of the earth He teaches us of the fruits of righteousness.
We cannot see the life that is in the seed which is sown, neither can we see it in the corn that we eat, no matter at what stage we view it. But we can see that the corn grows. We place a single seed in the ground, and we see that it multiplies, and produces thirty, sixty, or even a hundred grains. Each one of these grains has the same life that the original seed had, and just as much of it.
We take the corn, and make it into bread, and eat it, although we can see no life in it; but we know that there is life in it, for we receive life from it. The life of the corn becomes our life. All this is a common, everyday occurrence. We have been familiar with it all our lives. We cannot understand the secret of the life in the seemingly lifeless grains of corn, nor can we understand how the life becomes ours; but we know the fact, and are content with that.
Now it is just as easy for us to comprehend how Christ can dwell in us, so that His life becomes ours, as it is to comprehend the fact that we can get our life from the food which we eat. Indeed, the comprehension of the one is the comprehension of the other.
Remember that Christ is the Seed, the origin of all things. He is the Word of God, by whom all things came into existence. In Him is life. God said, "Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself upon the earth." (Genesis 1:11)
He sowed the seed whence all things come. That seed was the Word. It was the life of Christ, the Word, that made the earth fruitful. There is no life but His, for He is the life. "Jesus said unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man comes unto the Father, but by me." (John 14:6)
So when we eat the grain and fruits which the earth brings forth, and get life from them day by day, we are literally receiving the life of Christ. The life which we assimilate, and which becomes ours, is none other than the life of the Word of God, which was in the beginning, is now, and is to come.
With this simple, easily recognized fact in mind, we can see how literal were Christ's words when He took bread in His hands, and said, "this is my body." (Matthew 26:26)
In eating bread, we are partaking of the life of the Lord. The Israelites in the desert of Sinai ate bread, which they called "manna." (Exodus 16:15) It was their daily food for nearly forty years. It was "bread from heaven," (Exodus 16:4) yet just as literal food as that which we eat every day. But it was "spiritual meat." (1 Corinthians 10:3)
They did not eat by faith, hence they died; but if they had eaten by faith, discerning the body of Christ, they would not have died. "This is the bread which comes down from heaven, that a man may eat thereof, and not die. I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever: and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world." (John 6:50-51) "The just shall live by faith." (Romans 1:17)
By living faith, men become transformed into the perfect image of Christ. "With the heart man believes unto righteousness." (Romans 10:10)
We live by eating. If now men ate by faith, they would live by faith, and so be righteous. And how eat by faith? Simply recognizing the fact that the body of Christ is the substance of all reality; that His Divine life is that which we get in the food that He gives us. Then just as a person assimilates his food, and by that very process, would he assimilate Christ.
Consciously yielding to Christ, that He might live in His own way the life which He gives us, our life would be not simply modeled after, but the actual reproduction of His life. The Seed abiding in us, would keep us from sin. "Whosoever is born of God does not commit sin; for his seed remains in him: and he cannot sin, because he is born of God." (1 John 3:9)
How easy and plain is the way of life! It consists simply in the constant recognition of the great fact that Christ is the Seed, and consciously eating of Him. "O, taste and see that the Lord is good!" (Psalm 34:8)--Present Truth, September 22, 1898.