Christ the Life

A. B. Simpson was an author, hymn writer, conference speaker, evangelist to the urban masses of New York City, and a missionary statesman.  He founded The Christian and Missionary Alliance and Nyack College.

The following is from his book The Christ Life:

"For the life was manifested, and we have seen it, and declare unto you that eternal life, which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us" (1 John 1:2).

"This is the true God, and eternal life" (1 John 5:20).

"This significant word is the keynote of the two profoundest books in the New Testament, the Gospel and the Epistle of John. The others tell us of truth and character and righteousness, but these tell us of life. The others tell us what to do and be, but these tell us the secret how we may become and how we may accomplish the things set before us.

"The mystery of nature is life. The one thing short of which all man's wisdom and resources reach is life. Science can give us the principles of things, and can even construct the forces of nature, but only God can give this strange and subtle thrill which sets all in spontaneous motion, and gives it life.

"The Sermon on the Mount tells us what an ideal life should be, but the Gospel of John tells us how that ideal may become a reality. It starts with the mysterious secret of the New Birth, where life begins, and it leads up to the highest developments of the sanctified and glorified life in the age to come.

"The Epistle of John still more fully unfolds the source, the evolution, and the outflow of divine life. Let us follow it through five successive stages.

I. Christ is the Eternal Life.—Before a planet rolled, an insect hummed, or an angel sang, Christ was Himself the eternal life. Our text has in the original a stronger emphasis than the Revised Version expresses, and it reads literally thus: 'We show unto you that life, the eternal, which was with the Father and was manifested unto us.'

"And so our second text more fully expresses the same thought, 'This is the true God, and the life eternal.'

"Jesus is the Life, and from Him all life has come. The life of nature is the outflow of His creating power. The life of mind and thought and intellect is but a radiation from His infinite mind.

"The power that moves the universe from the mightiest sphere to the minutest spray is His personal life, for 'By him all things consist,' and 'In him we live and move and have our being.'

"The tint of the Easter lily, the fragrance of the hyacinth, the teeming life of the vegetable world all come from Him.

"The birth of every new-born soul is begotten of His life. The Church of every age and clime is the new creation of His life and power.

"The life of every saint is sustained every moment by the life of the living Head. It is so good, therefore, to know that His life is life eternal, and that in Him there is a fountain of life that never can be dry, a sufficiency that never can fail.

"The word 'eternal' here does not merely convey the idea of existence that has neither beginning nor ending, but it lifts us into a higher sphere of life. It is a kind of life that belongs to a loftier plane than the things that are seen and temporal. It is a life that is as infinite in its scope as it is enduring in its length, a great unfathomable ocean of boundless fullness and glorious all-sufficiency.

"Let us adore the Prince of Life, the Living One, the Glorious Son of God who stands before us in His radiant and eternal life, proclaiming, 'I am he that liveth, and was dead ; and, behold, I am alive for evermore.'

2. The Life Manifested.—'The life was manifested.'  This includes the whole story of the incarnation and earthly life of the Lord Jesus. This also covers the meaning of the phrase so often used by John in his Gospel and Epistle, 'The Word of Life.'

"Here it is in the original, 'The Word of the Life.'  Just as a word is the expression of a human thought, so He is to us the expression of God’s thought and will, the manifestation to us of what was already there, but unrevealed.

"Instead of giving us merely a written word, He sends us a living person to exhibit in the actual details of His earthly life the character of God and His purposes of love to the human race."