THE IMMUTABLE PLEDGE

"Because I live, you shall live also." —John 14:19

God sometimes selects the most stable and enduring objects in the material world to illustrate His unchanging faithfulness and love to His Church—"As the mountains are round about Jerusalem, so does the Lord compass his people." But here, the Redeemer fetches an argument from His own everlasting nature. He stakes, so to speak, His own existence on that of His saints—"Because I live, you shall live also."

Believer! read in this "word of Jesus" your glorious title-deed. Your Savior lives—and His life is the guarantee of your own. Our true Joseph is alive. "He is our Brother. He talks kindly to us! That life of His, is all that is between us and everlasting ruin. But with Christ for our life, how inviolable our security! The great Fountain of being must first be dried up, before the streamlet can. The great Sun must first be quenched, before one glimmering disciple which He lights up with splendor can. Satan must first pluck the crown from that glorified Head, before he can touch one jewel in the crown of His people. They cannot shake one pillar without shaking first the throne. "If we perish," says Luther, "Christ perishes with us."

Reader! is your life now "hidden with Christ in God?" Do you know the blessedness of a vital and living union with a living, life-giving Savior? Can you say with humble and joyous confidence, amid the fitfulness of your own ever-changing frames and feelings, "Nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me"? "Jesus lives!"—They are the happiest words a lost soul and a lost world can hear! Job, four thousand years ago, rejoiced in them. "I know," says he, "that I have a living Kinsman." John, in his Patmos exile, rejoiced in them. "I am He that lives" (or the Living One), was the simple but sublime utterance with which he was addressed by that same "Kinsman," when He appeared arrayed in the lusters of His glorified humanity. "This is the record" (as if there was a whole gospel comprised in the statement), "that God has given to us eternal life, and this life is in His Son." Paul, in the 8th chapter to the Romans—that finest portraiture of Christian character and privilege ever drawn, begins with "no condemnation," and ends with "no separation." Why "no separation?" Because the life of the believer is incorporated with that of his adorable Head and Surety. The colossal Heart of redeemed humanity beats upon the throne, sending its mighty pulsations through every member of His body; so that, before the believer's spiritual life can be destroyed, Omnipotence must become feebleness, and Immutability become mutable! But, blessed Jesus, "Your word is very sure, therefore Your servant loves it."

"I give unto them eternal life, and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand."