“Abide in Me” (John xv. 4).
Christianity may mean nothing more than a religious system. Christian life
may mean nothing more than an earnest and honest attempt to follow and
imitate Christ.
Christ life is more than these, and expresses our actual union with the
Lord Jesus Christ, and He is undoubtedly in us as the life and source of
all our experience and work.
This conception of the highest Christian life is at once simpler and
sublimer than any other. We do not teach in these pages, that the purpose
of Christ’s redemption is to restore us to Adamic perfection, for if we
had it we should lose it to-morrow; but rather to unite us with the Second
Adam, and lift us up to a higher plane than our first parents ever knew.
This is the only thing that can reconcile the warring elements of diverse
schools of teaching with respect to Christian life.
The Spirit of God will lead us to have no controversy respecting mere
theories, but simply hold to the person and life of Jesus Christ Himself,
and the privilege of being united to Him, and living in constant
dependence upon His keeping power and grace.