The Everyday Christian Life

Fred Mitchell gives some practical help when he points out that there is still an "I" who is alive after we were crucified with Christ so that He can live through us. The following is taken from Keswick's Authentic Voice selected and edited by Herbert F. Stevenson:

". . . 'I am crucified with Christ, and I live.' I am no Greek student, but anyone who knows even a little Greek will see that the translator has put 'nevertheless' in to make it vivid. 'I am crucified, and I live.' I should have thought the apostle would have written, 'I am crucified and I am dead.' No. I am crucified and I live. You see, dear friends, at Calvary there was something which perished and something which persisted, and when God showed me this truth it was a great comfort to my heart. There was an 'I' which died, and an 'I' which lived. That is important, because God does not by the cross mean the destruction of individuality or personality, but only of sin and sinful self. The 'I' which died was a master; the 'I' which lives is a servant. The 'I' which died loves to be ministered unto; the 'I' which lives ministers unto others. The 'I' which died was a source; the 'I' which lives is a vessel. And when the old 'I' is renounced and put to death, then we are able to sing—

I am an empty vessel, not one thought
Or look of love, I ever to Thee brought;
Yet I may come, and come again to Thee,
With this, the empty sinner’s only plea—
Thou lovest me,
or more suitably here,
Thou fillest me.

"There is an 'I' which God wants out of the way and which you and I want out of the way, and which brings disaster and sorrow everywhere it is manifested; and there is an 'I' which is to persist as an empty vessel for the manifestation of the glory of God. It is not the empty vessel which is to die, but the sinful self which fills it, and which when knocked falls over with bitter words and biting sarcasm. The sinful 'I' sometimes manifests itself in the prayer meeting, and indeed in other circumstances. When it prays, it says, 'I thank Thee, Lord, that I am not as other men are'; it sometimes seeks power, praying, 'Give me this power, or that,' but the command is, 'That ye may receive the Holy Ghost.' God deliver us from that 'I' in the prayer meeting where it is evidenced; it ought to be put out of the way. God has put him out of the way, we have consented that he be put out of the way, and God is going to work in us His grace that he be put out of the way day by day.

"But there is an 'I' which God, the Master Craftsman, has made to be an empty vessel which He purposes to fill with living water which will run over and flow out everywhere and every day. That 'I' which God has preserved, and will preserve, and which perhaps some young believer may have been a little anxious about, is to be like one of the stones in Aaron’s breastplate catching the Shekinah light and reflecting it in a thousand hues and different manifestations. Oh, my dear young friends, your true individuality was wonderfully made by God, when He took the woof of your parentage and wove into it the warp of your circumstances—God has made that to preserve it, in order to show forth His glory; and you will never be your real self until the sinful self is put to death, and Christ fills your own individual personality. That is the second fact. There is the 'I' which is to die, and there is the 'I' which is to live filled by the glory of God, and shining through it the light from God.

"The third fact is that we have been introduced to a new Master—'Yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.' I supply the vessel, and He fills it. There was a notice in a missionary magazine some years ago, which read something like this: 'Wanted: wicks to burn for God, oil provided free' in lavish, overflowing supply. Wicks needed, empty vessels needed, and Christ to fill them fully. I am an empty vessel, an earthen vessel, but I may be filled and can be filled by the sparkling, ever fresh water of life which takes the shape of the vessel that holds it: 'yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.' This is to be the new principle on which our life is to be lived as we go down from Keswick, 'the life which I now live.' It is to be lived in the faith of the Son of God; we are to live by faith, not by sight as the unregenerated live, not by feelings as the unsanctified: but we are to live on the principle of faith.

"Now, I take it that it will be quite accurate to translate this word in Galatians 2:20 like this—the Authorized Version reads, 'I live by the faith of the Son of God'; a revised version might correctly read, 'I live by the faithfulness of the Son of God.' The Greek word may be translated with equal truth 'faith' and 'faithfulness.' And faith on our part is never found except as it is linked with faithfulness on His part. If I may be permitted to quote Hudson Taylor again: you will remember, no doubt, the story how, while he was revising the translation of the Ningpo Testament, he came upon that word in Mark 11:22, 'Have faith in God,' and looking at it in Greek, he said to himself, 'Surely that could be translated, "Hold the faithfulness of God"'; and the thought was revolutionary in Hudson Taylor’s experience. If I may give my personal testimony, it has been revolutionary in my own case. If I look at my faith, I am easily discouraged, I can only think it is very weak and very small; but when I think of the faithfulness of Christ, it is very strong and very great; and as I think and count on His faithfulness, and not on my own faith, my faith takes hold of His faithfulness, and my need and His great fulness meet. His faithfulness provides the power and the grace, my faith applies the power and the grace.

"Last October, in China, I was in the far western city of Chungto, where missionaries had gathered together for a few days of quiet waiting upon God, and it was my privilege to open the Scriptures to them; and we prayed together over their problems and discussed the progress of the Gospel. In a lighter moment between the intense seasons of prayer we were teasing each other a little, as I think was truly permitted. Among the group was a woman missionary from London, and somebody began to say something rather derogatory concerning London, to tease and to provoke her; and the dear missionary said in reply, 'Now don’t you say anything about London, for in London you can turn the tap and get water.' Well, that may not mean very much to an audience in England, but when all your water has to be carried from a well, and then boiled before you can drink it, I began to understand—after three months under those circumstances—what a thrill it must be to a missionary from a tropical country to go to any American or British city and turn a tap and draw cold, fresh, sparkling water. In London you can turn the tap and draw the water; that is all you have to do, except to pay the water rate! The Corporation or the Water Board collects and conveys the water, and all we do when we are thirsty is to turn the tap and drink, and when we are thirsty again to turn the tap and drink again, and so the more we thirst the more we draw the water.

"That is the secret of the blessed life, drawing continually at the fountain which has been opened for us; nay, it is far better than that, we do not go to a tap and draw the water—'Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water bubbling up unto everlasting life.' So after the self-life is out of the way . . . those fountains will be opened afresh, and our lives will be blessed and refreshed and made a refreshment; and we shall drink, and drink abundantly, and drink again, and out of us shall flow rivers of living water day after day in every place, to the glory of God and to the refreshment of many. Having made such a profession, God invites us to such a life."