A. B. Simpson - Christ in You: The Christ-Life and the Self-Life

www.moodypublishers.com

An imprint of Moody Publishers

ISBN: 978-1-60066-082-6
1997 by Moody Bible Institute

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

Previously published by Christian Publications
First Christian Publications edition 1997
First Wingspread edition 2014

3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

Formerly published in two volumes
under the titles
The Christ Life
and
The Self-Life and the Christ-Life

I n the late nineteenth century A.B. Simpson, the founder of The Christian and Missionary Alliance, wrote two small books on the fullness of Christ as the answer to the Christians struggle with the self-life. For over a century these two books have ministered to those seeking a deeper walk with God. The Christ Life and The Christ Life and the Self-Life, classics in their own right, have been republished in this single volume entitled Christ in You.

Though written over a century ago this book is as up-to-date on the subtleties of the self-life as anything written today. Simpson is upbeat in the way he treats this subject. While being brutally realistic about mans self-centeredness he offers a message of hope in Christ. With great simplicity he expounds the profound passages in Johns gospel that reveal the divine intention for Christ to indwell the Christian. Christ in us provides through His own resurrection-life full victory over the power of the sin-controlled self-life. Simpsons view of Christs indwelling is instructional, inspirational, devotional, theological and practical. Applied sanctification can only be a reality when the Christian, by faith, is conscious of his union with the Lord Jesus Christ.

May God use this volume to help you learn the secret of His indwelling Presence, which truly is the hope of glory.

The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us. (1 John 1:2)

He is the true God and eternal life. (1 John 5:20)

T his significant word LIFE is the keynote of the two profoundest books in the New Testament, the Gospel of John and the First Epistle of John. The other New Testament books tell of truth, character and righteousness but these tell us of life. The others tell the believer what to do and be, but John tells the believer the secret of becoming and accomplishing the things set before him. The mystery of nature is life. The one thing short of which all mans wisdom and resources reach is life. Science can give us the principles of things and can even reconstruct 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 what an ideal life should be but the Gospel of John tells 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 ages to come. The First Epistle of John still more fully unfolds the source, the evolution and the outflow of divine life.

Before a planet rolled, an insect hummed or an angel sang, Christ was Himself the eternal life. In the original First John 1:2 is given a stronger emphasis than the Authorized 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. First John 5:20 more fully expresses this thought, He 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 (Colossians 1:17), and in him we live and move and have our being (Acts 17:28). The tint of the Easter lily, the fragrance of the hyacinth, the teeming life of the vegetable world all come from Him.

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. Every saint is sustained 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 speaks of a higher sphere of life. It is life that belongs to a loftier plane than the things that are seen and temporal. It is 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 the Living One; I was dead, and behold I am alive for ever and ever (Revelation 1:18a).

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. In the original it says, The Word of the Life. Just as a word is the expression of a human thought so He is the expression of Gods thought and will, the manifestation of what was already there but unrevealed. Instead of giving man the written word alone, He sent 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.

The story is told of a missionary who, having failed to bring conviction to the nationals in the Congo by years of preaching, at last stopped in the midst of a course of lessons on the Sermon on the Mount, and announced to the Africans that he was going to live this sermon himself among them. Before the day was over, they gave him ample opportunities of doing so by claiming all his worldly goods, and he unresistingly, gave to him that asked, and from him that would borrow turned not away.

At nightfall the missionarys wife was in dismay, for her home was stripped, and starvation stared them in the face. But that was only the first act in the drama. Before the night was over, the Africans began to reflect upon the strange example they had witnessed. This man, they said, is not like the traders. He does not ask us for things, but he gives us all he has. He must be Gods man, and we had better be careful how we treat him. And so the following day witnessed the scene of yesterday reversed and everything brought back with compound interest. This was the second act of the drama. The third act was a great revival, the conversion of a thousand souls and the organization of the largest church in the Congo. The life was manifested, and they saw it, and it was an object lesson more mighty than words.