The true Christian life, which begins with a supernatural transition, consists and continues in a supernatural transfusion. The very life and nature of Christ are transfused into the innermost being of the Christian believer by the Holy Spirit.
Thus our Saviour’s word is fulfilled: “Because I live, ye shall live also” (John 14:19). “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me…” (Galatians 2:20). Paul not only says, “I live, yet not I”; he goes on to say, “but Christ liveth in me.” There is not only transition; there is transfusion. This is the most precious and sacred secret of the Christian life… The man of the world neither understands it nor even suspects it. Yet oh, how real it is to our Lord’s own!
Now just because of this supernatural transfusion, the New testament ideal for our Christian life is that there shall be within us a continual displacement of the old self-life, and an ever-clearer enthronement of the new Christ-life. All of us, by nature, are ego-centric, self-centered; but we are meant to become Christo-centric, or Christ-centered. Christ is to be the new life within our life; the new mind within our mind; the new will within our will; the new love within our love; the new Person within our personality.
We cannot always be on the mountaintop of transfiguration, seeing heavenly visions and hearing heavenly voices. We cannot always be experiencing spiritual raptures and sensory ecstasies. A high frequency of these is neither necessary nor desirable in our present state; nor could our nervous system sustain too much of it.
Often we must be down on the long-stretching plains of everyday humdrum realities; and sometimes we must needs be down in some grim valley, drawing the sword in fierce battle against Apollyon himself.
Yet whether up on the mountain top, or down on the monotonous plain, or deep in some valley of trial, I am convinced of this that we Christian believers need never lose an uninterrupted consciousness of our indwelling Saviour. Surely this is implied in the words, “Christ liveth in me.” To be Christo-centric is to be all the while Christ-conscious.
The whole of our consciousness is meant to be interpenetrated with the consciousness of His indwelling life and mind and will and love, even as the air in Summer is transfused with sunshine.
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