Through Death to 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:

"Here lies the great difference between the world's gospel and the Lord's gospel.

"The world says, when it bids you good-bye, 'Take care of yourself.' The Lord says, 'Let yourself go and take care of others and the glory of your God.'

"The world says, 'Have a good time, look out for number one.' But the world gets left in the end, and the last comes in first.

"The man that lets go gets all, and the man who holds fast loses what he has, and the Lord's words come true--'Whosoever will save his life shall lose it, and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it.'

"So the law of sacrifice is the greatest law in earth and heaven. The law of sacrifice is God's great law.  It is written in earth and every department of nature.

"We tread on the skeletons of ten thousand millions of generations that have lived and died that we might live.

"The very heart of the earth itself is the wreck of ages and the buried life of former generations.

"All nature dies and lives again, and each new development is a higher and larger life built on the wrecks of the former.

"A corn of wheat must fall into the ground and die, or else be a shriveled-up seed, but as it dies it lives and multiplies, and grows into the beautiful spring, the golden autumn and the multiplied sheaves.

"And so it is in the deeper life of the higher world, as you rise from the natural to the spiritual.

"Everything that is selfish is limited by its selfishness. The river that ceases to run becomes a stagnant pool, but as it flows it grows fresher, richer, fuller.

"If you turn your natural eye upon yourself, you cannot see anything. It is as you look out that the vision of the world bursts upon you.

"The very law of the natural life is love for others, caring for others by giving away and letting go. It is death and self-destruction to be selfish.

"The law of sacrifice is the law of God. God who lived in supreme self-sufficiency as the Father, Son and Holy Ghost gave Himself. God’s glory was in giving Himself, and so He gave Himself in the creation, in the beauty of the universe, so formed that every possible sort of happiness could come according to its natural law.

"And then God gave Himself in Jesus Christ. 'God so loved the world that he gave.' He gave His best, gave His all, gave His only begotten Son.

"The law of God is sacrifice. He loved until He gave ALL.

"Then it is the law of Christ Himself. He came through God’s sacrifice, and He came to sacrifice. He laid His honors down, left the society of heaven for a generation, and lived with creatures farther beneath Him than the groveling earth worm is beneath a man.  He made Himself one of them, and became a brother of this fallen race.

"He was always yielding and letting go, always holding back His power and not using it.  He was always being subject to the will of the men beneath Him, until at last they nailed Him to the cross.

"His whole life was a continual refusing of Himself,  carrying their burdens and sharing their sorrows. And so love and sacrifice is the law of Christ.

"'Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.'

"The law of Christ is the bearing of others' burdens, the sharing of others’ griefs, sacrificing yourself for another."