The Nature of the Christian Life

A Talk to Young Christians on the Nature of the Christian Life


I am going to talk to you very simply. I trust that the people who "know all about it" will not think it is too simple! But I feel we want to be quite clear about our foundations, our beginnings, and so in what I have to say I shall risk being as simple as I possibly can.


I am going to take as the foundation the eighth chapter of the letter to the Romans. Perhaps you immediately say: Well, we know that one! And yet, you know, we may know a lot about it, and still we may not know as it ha to be known. You will know this, to begin with, that the last section of this chapter is something immensely comprehensive. It reaches right back, takes us back into the "before times eternal" and gives us just a glimpse into what was happening with God before this world was. And then in the same section we are taken right on beyond these ages, to the 'ages of the ages,' and told what things will be like then so far as we are concerned. So this chapter has a very big context.


And in saying that, I have enunciated a law, a principle, which you will do well to remember: namely that, in order to have a Christian life that is really full, you have go to have it in its full setting. I have always felt, and the longer I live, the more strongly do I feel it, that it is a mistake just to try to keep people too little fragments - what is called the 'simple Gospel' - even at the beginning. If you are to have a great Christian life, you need to see from the beginning what a great thing it is you have come into - what a tremendous context the Christian life has! Right at the beginning, indeed even before they have made a beginning, people need to be impressed with this; that it is no little thing to be a Christian. That gives them a very good starting-point. If they start on that, they will make better progress; and they will arrive at something much fuller, in a quicker way, than if things are just doled out to them in little fragments as they go along.


So remember that, and if sometimes it seems too big for you, just say: That is a very good thing; I would not have it as small as I am; there needs to be something very big to get me anywhere! For the bigger it is the mightier is the dynamic and the motive for the Christian life.


The Gateway to the Christian Life


This eighth chapter of Romans, then, in its last section particularly, represents a strategic point in the movement of the whole letter, as you will see. You know that the first seven chapters are what we might call the Gateway into the Christian life. I am not going to stay for an explanation of them, but that is what they represent: seven chapters on the gateway into the Christian life. The word that will be written on the portal of that gate is "Faith" - you know that. And on the gate itself, "The Cross". Faith in the Cross of the Lord Jesus is the way in, and seven chapters are taken up with the "Way" in. And then, when you come to chapter 8, you find what is inside: what ind of situation, what kind of a life, this is, that you have come into.


~T. Austin-Sparks~


(continued with # 2 - "The Gateway to the Christian Life")