Christ's laying hold of me, blessed and powerful as it is, does not of
itself secure that I shall reach the end which He had in view in His
arresting of me. What more is wanted? My effort. 'I follow after if I
may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended.' Now, notice, in the
one case, the Apostle speaks of himself, not as passive, but certainly
not as active. 'I was laid hold of.' What did he do? As I have said, he
simply yielded to the grasp. But 'I may lay hold of' conveys the idea of
personal effort; and so these two expressions, 'I was apprehended,' and
'I apprehend,' suggest this consideration, that, for the initial
blessings of the Christian life, forgiveness, acceptance, the sense of
God's favour, and of reconciliation with him, nothing is needed but the
simple faith that yields itself altogether to the grasp of Christ's
hand, but that for my possessing what Christ means that I should possess
when He lays His hand on me, there is needed not only faith but effort.
I have to put out _my_ hand and tighten my fingers round the thing, if I
would make it my own, and keep it.
So--faith, to begin with, and work based on faith, to go on with. It is
because a man is sure that Jesus Christ has laid His hand upon him, and
meant something when He did it, that he fights on with all his might to
realise Christ's purpose, and to get and keep the thing which Christ
meant him to have. There is stimulus in the thought, I was laid hold of
by Him for a purpose. There is all the difference between striving,
however eagerly, however nobly, however strenuously, however constantly,
after self-improvement, by one's own effort only, and striving after it
because one knows that he is therein fulfilling the purpose for which
Jesus Christ drew him to Himself.
And if that be so, then the nature of the thing to be laid hold of
determines what we are to do to lay hold of it. And since to know
Christ, and the power of His Resurrection, and the fellowship of His
sufferings, is the aim and end of our conversion, the way to secure it
must be keeping in continual touch with Jesus by meditating upon Him, by
holding many a moment of still, sacred, sweet communion with Him, by
carefully avoiding whatever might come between us and our knowledge of
Him, and the influx of His life into us, and by yielding ourselves, day
by day, to the continual influence of His divine grace upon us and by
the discipline which shall make our inward natures more and more capable
of receiving more and more of that dear Lord. These being the things to
do, in regard to the inward life, there must be effort too, in regard to
the outward; for we must, if we are to lay hold of that for which we are
laid hold of by Jesus Christ, bring all the outward life under the
dominion of this inward impulse, and when the flood pours into our
hearts we must, by many a sluice and trench, guide it into every corner
of the field, that all may be irrigated. The first thing they do when
they are going to sow rice in an Eastern field is to flood it, and then
they cast in the seed, and it germinates. Flood your lives with Christ,
and then sow the seed and you will get a crop.