Catherine Booth's Testimony of Union With Christ

In Aggressive Christianity Catherine Booth, co-founder of the Salvation Army, stresses with fervor our union with Christ and how this makes all the difference in being able to live the life that only He can live:

ROMANS viii. 3, 4.
--"For what the Law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: That the righteousness of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit."

"Wherein does the Law fail? It does all this for me. It brings me right up, as it were, my schoolmaster lashing me right up to the cross, opening my eyes, creating intense desire after Holiness and efforts for it, and then it just fails me. Where? At the vital point. It cannot give me power. That is where the Law fails. It cannot give me power to fulfil itself. I am strengthless through the weakness of the flesh and the sinfulness of my nature to keep it, and so I struggle and wrestle for power to keep it, but I have not power. 'What the Law could not do, in that it was weak, God sent his Son to do,' and I maintain HE DOES IT, and that is the one vital point where the Son transcends the Law.

"Oh! but there is a Gospel nowadays, a Law-Gospel. A great deal of the Gospel of these days never gets any farther than the Law, and some people tell me that it is never intended to do so, and then I ask, Wherein does Christ Jesus advantage me? What am I better for such a Gospel, if my Gospel cannot deliver me from the power of sin? If through the Gospel I cannot get deliverance from this 'I-would-if-I-could religion,' this 'Oh!-wretched-man-that-I-am religion,' wherein am I benefited by it? Wherein does your Gospel do more for me than the Law? The Law convinced me of sin, and set me desiring and longing after righteousness; but wherein is the superiority of Jesus Christ, if He cannot lead me further than that? . . . Wherein then does this 'Oh!-wretched-man Gospel' supersede the Law? Will anybody point it out to me?'

"Oh! but the real Gospel does. The Gospel that represents Jesus Christ, not as a system of truth to be received into the mind, as I should receive a system of philosophy, or astronomy, but it represents Him as a REAL, LIVING, MIGHTY Saviour, ABLE TO SAVE ME now. . .

"Oh! friends, some people do not think we make enough of Christ. We make all of Christ, only it is a living Christ instead of a dead one. It is Christ in us, as well as for us. We believe in Christ for us, and we should not have been here at all, but for Christ for us up there for ever and ever, and nobody will hasten to throw the crown at His feet readier than I shall; but we believe in order to do it we must have Him in us, and if He is not in us, then it is sounding brass and tinkling cymbal to call upon Him for us. He must be in us. Christ in us as well as for us, and those whom He is not in He will not be for. If He dwell not 'in you,' ye are 'reprobates.' But Christ in us--an ever-loving, ever-present, Almighty Saviour--is just able to do what the angels said He should do, that for which He was called Jesus, viz. to save His people from their sin.

"Then how does He this? Wherein does He supersede the Law? Wherein does Christ do for me and wherein is He made to me, what the Law could not do or be to me? We have seen what the Law could do and how far it could go. We have seen that it fails just at the vital point of power. Now, how does Christ become this power to me? How is He made unto me--not for me, up in Heaven; He is there, too; but how is He made unto me down here--wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption? How does He deliver His people from their sins? How does He save us from the power of sin? Now, you who are longing to get free, try to listen to me, and, Oh! may the HOLY GHOST TEACH US.

". . . What God does for us through Jesus Christ outside of us is one thing, and what He does in us by Jesus Christ is another thing, but the two are simultaneous, or one so immediately succeeds the other, that we hardly discern the interval. Now, I say, I want power to enable me to meet that temptation which is coming on me to-morrow, as it came on me yesterday, and, if Jesus Christ pardons me ever so, and leaves me under the reigning power of my old appetites, what has He done for me? I shall be down in the mud, and to-morrow night I shall be as condemned as ever. I want power. I want regeneration--as the Holy Spirit has put it. I want the renewing of the spirit of my mind. I want to be created anew in Christ Jesus; 'made a new creature.'

"Now, this is where Jesus Christ transcends the Law. The Law could not renew the spirit of my mind. It could only show me what a guilty rebel I was. It could not put a better spirit in me. It could not extract the venom, but only show it to me, and make me writhe on account of it. But Jesus Christ comes and does this for me--gives me power. How?

". . . He unites me to Himself. I am dead to the Law. He delivers me from the condemning power of the Law when He pardons me, and then He does not leave me there, but He 'marries' me to Himself. He unites me 'to another' husband, and then I attain power to bring forth fruit unto God. A beautiful--a wonderful figure! We may not pursue it; but, Oh! what a wonderful figure!

"Alone under the Law's power, my old husband, I could do nothing but agonize, wrestle, and desire. There was no power in me but when Jesus Christ comes and unites me to Himself; then He gives me power to bring forth fruit unto God. It is by the UNION OF MY SOUL WITH HIM.

"You say, 'Explain it!' I cannot. God Himself cannot explain it. We cannot explain it, but we know it. As Jesus said to Nicodemus: 'The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit.' The mystery is too great to be explained, but there is the beautiful illustration; united to Christ I have power to conquer, to subdue, to trample under foot those things which heretofore have been my master, and by virtue of Him I retain the power, and no other way. Oh! dear friends, what a delusion there is on the subject of Christian knowledge. If knowledge could save people, what a wonderful world we should have to-day.

"Knowledge is as powerless as ignorance. A man is not a whit nearer God, or more like Christ, because he has his head crammed with this Word. In fact, some I have known who have been best acquainted with the Word, who have been the greatest slaves of sin; and even ministers of Jesus Christ have confessed to me that they have been bond-slaves of some besetting sin. The power is not in knowledge--and God is raising up thousands of witnesses to this fact, that it is not in knowledge --it is in union with Him, and the little child in intellect and intelligence, who has the real, vital union with Jesus, has more power than the most cultivated theologian has without Christ. The things of God can only be understood by those who have the Spirit of God. The world by wisdom knows not God any more now than it did in Paul's days. The things of the Spirit are only spiritually comprehended.

"Hence this beautiful union cannot be explained; I only know it is spoken of all through the Bible, both in the Old Testament and in the New, as knowing God. After God has summed up the failures of His people, He gives them a promise, and says, 'I will betroth thee unto Me in righteousness for ever, and thou shalt KNOW the Lord,' as though that were the end of the whole matter, really and truly to know Him. When they come to that living union of soul with Him, it brings the vital sap as it were into the branch of the tree--another of his own beautiful illustrations. 'Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in Me.' You know what the branch is when it is broken off. It is a branch. It retains the form of a branch; and for a while the beauty and the greenness of a branch, but it is broken off. There is no power in it. Suppose it could maintain that form. Alas! human branches often maintain their verdure in a certain beauty, as when first lopped off. But it can never bear fruit. Why? Because the communication is cut between itself and the vine, and there is no sap in its fibre. Its life is cut off. Now, my friends, you can see why a soul who has never been truly united to Christ in this living spiritual marriage, cannot bear fruit unto God.

"You can be like a branch. You can get so much scriptural knowledge, that you can look just like a real Christian. Alas! You can get many of the feelings of a Christian, and of the sentiments, as well as a great many of the aspirations and desires, of a Christian. You can be so like a branch that nobody, but Jesus Christ, may know you are not in that true Vine, and yet you have never, as the Apostle says, been grafted on to the olive tree. And, therefore, you go on weeping, and struggling, and trying to perform the function of a living branch, when all the while you are a dead one. You go on trying to bring forth fruit unto God when the one indispensable condition of fruitfulness is wanting. You have got every other condition. You may even be nailed up to the wall close to the vine. You may be such a professor that nobody may ever doubt you. You may be so close to the vine that nobody can detect your want of union, excepting the Gardener who comes and closely inspects you, and yet you may not have one fibre truly circulating the real spiritual sap. HENCE YOU HAVE NO POWER, and down you go when the temptation comes. Ah! what weary years of strife some professing Christians have--they would be ashamed to tell; death sometimes forces it from their lips before they die--trying to perform the functions of living men when they have never been spiritually made alive. All they have ever had has been what Paul depicts as the struggle of a poor convicted sinner unable to bring forth any fruit unto God.

"Now, you say, this union with Him--what is it? Well, I cannot explain it. You, who know what it is cannot explain it--so to know the Lord as to be conscious of the living sap circulating through your soul, anointing your eyes with eye-salve, giving you eyes to see, a voice to speak, feet to run, and hands to serve--making you in all respects a 'new creature.'

". . . Now, friends, you can all have this union. He is no respecter of persons. He has bought it for us. He saw our weakness. He contemplated our moral inability. He need not have come if we could have known God by the Law. If that old covenant had been perfect, there would have been no room for a second. It brought us not into the full realization and enjoyment of God, but the new covenant does. It cleanses the conscience from dead works to serve the living God, and God is henceforth revealed to His people, and they walk with Him. 'If a man love Me, he will keep My words; and My Father will love him, and We will come unto him and make Our abode with him.' And when a man has got the Father and the Son, he is a match for Satan and all his forces. Union with Christ!

"Oh! do you think this is a mere allegory of the Apostle's? It is a beautiful illustration. When He delivers us from the condemning, reigning power of the Law, we become married to Jesus Christ. Then we get a power to produce, in our affections, and hearts, and lives, and all about us, such things as God delights in.

". . . The result! What is the result? 'That we may bring forth fruit unto God.' Jesus Christ in this union recognizes the fact that we are still in the body; still in the world; and that we are open to the attacks of Satan. He knows--has foreseen, and has provided for, the temptations of the flesh, that is, the temptations which come to us through our natural appetites, and instincts, and desires, as they came to Him. He was hungry after enduring the great temptation in the wilderness. There was no sin in being hungry. He was intensely hungry, for He had nerves, and a brain, and a heart, as we have. He was a perfect man, and He suffered all the consequences of that lengthened strain upon His nervous system, and the Devil took advantage of the existence of that intensely excited condition of His body by tempting Him unlawfully to gratify it. For he said, 'Command these stones that they be made bread.' This was unlawful under the circumstances (we will not stop now to inquire why), and, therefore, He said, 'Get thee behind Me, Satan.' He would rather suffer the hunger than unlawfully gratify it, and, therefore, He did not commit sin.

"It matters not (and this will meet the case of some who have written to me) how intensely excited any physical appetite may be--that is not sin. The more you suffer through the excitement of the physical appetite, of whatever kind it may be, the more Jesus Christ sympathizes with you, for He was tempted in all points, like as we are, yet without sin; and if you endure temptation, He will sympathize with you, more than with the man who does not have to endure and resist. You do not sin because of the appetite merely being excited. I think Satan gets some sincere souls to bring themselves into condemnation when God does not condemn them. If you resist as He did; if you say, 'Get thee behind me, Satan'--you sin not.

". . . Under the Law you see that it is sin, and you struggle against it, but you have no power to resist, and down you go. United to Christ, you see that it is sin, and you have power to resist, and you resist it, and the Devil runs away; and that is the difference. You are married to a new husband now, and He is more than a match for the old Devil. He is a conquered foe, while you abide in Christ. He can torment, harass, and excite you, and stimulate your natural appetites, but he cannot make you sin, while you abide in Christ. 'He that is begotten of God keepeth himself and that Wicked One toucheth him not.' 'Ye are strong and have overcome the Wicked One.'

". . . Now, Satan still comes and vomits these thoughts, and tries to excite these ill feelings and these chargings of God foolishly in the believer's soul, but by virtue of his union with Christ, who came not to do His own will, but His Father's, and who spoke only the things that His Father bade Him, the believer says, 'Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him.' 'Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?'--and the Devil is gone.

"And then when the Devil is foiled at all these points, he tries higher ground. 'Really you are a wonderful Christian--you are. You have had special grace, for surely very few people can have resisted the amount of temptation that you have. Really you must be one of God's specially favoured ones. Now cast yourself down. It is written, "He shall give His angels charge concerning you."' Spiritual presumption next. When he is foiled through the world, and the flesh, and the Devil, and then he doffs his old robe and comes as an angel of light. But the soul's Bridegroom is hard by, and He says, 'Be not ignorant of Satan's devices. Behold I am thy Salvation. Trust and be not afraid.'

"And so the soul refuses to cast itself into unnecessary troubles, and is content to abide in, and walk with its Lord. That is how He gives us the victory. He shows us Satan's devices, and gives us power. I cannot tell you how. We don't know how. We only know that He gives it to us, and we only know that if one instant separated from Him we fall and become as other men. We only know that in those seasons when our faith has relaxed its grasp, we have gone down in the mud and been overcome as others. It is by faith we stand, and while, like Peter, we keep our eye on Him, and hold Him fast, the waves may roar, and the winds may howl, but He holds us by virtue of this union, and we bring forth fruit unto God. We have power over the Devil. He said, 'I will give you power over all the power of the enemy.' This is the deliverance of the SAINTS. This is the life of the saints. This is the fight of faith. THIS IS THE JOY OF SALVATION. This is the SORT OF RELIGION THAT DOES TO DIE WITH!!!

". . . This is union with Jesus that bringeth forth fruit unto God, and, Oh! the wonderful things it enables us to bring forth . . . There would be some Hallelujahs. Many of you would be surprised--how you would find your tongues. A gentleman once said to me, 'I never did shout in my life, but upon my word I couldn't help it.' I said, 'Amen. It's time, then, you began.' I hope it may be the same with many of you. When the Lord comes to His Temple and fills it with His glory, you won't know what to do. You must find vent somewhere, or you will be as the poor old negro said he was--'Ready to bust his waistcoat.'

". . . When you really get a living Christ for your husband, you will be prouder than the bride, you will have got a husband worth being proud of, and you will love to acknowledge and praise Him, and the day is coming when you will crown Him before all the host of Heaven. The Lord help you to accept Him, and put away everything that hinders His coming. Amen."