Wholly Sanctified # 20

Live By the Moment


We must not live by long intervals, but by the breath and by the moment.  Each instant must be dedicated and presented to God, a ceaseless sacrifice, and each breath be poured into His bosom and received back from His being.


We must learn to recover instantly from failure by frank confession and prompt faith and recommittal. It is possible to catch ourselves before we have really fallen. God does not count it a fall if we do not yield to it. Unseen hands are ever near to bear us up even when we dash our foot against a stone. The remedy is found even before the danger has become effectual.


There is provision for every failure in the blessed promise, "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness" (1 John 1:9). There is something higher and better than this, the grace that is able to keep us from stumbling, and check us even before the fall is accomplished. So He is willing to keep us even as the apple of the eye, reminded of the danger before it has become fatal, and instinctively closing the eyelids against its intrusion.


Let us remember that the whole spirit, soul and body must be trained to abide in Christ. The life He gives us is not a self-contained endowment but a link of dependence, and every part of our beings must continually draw its replenishment and nature from our living Head, and thus be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.


Even as He


John, the apostle of love, gives us a picture of perfect love, and its source in perfect faith and union with the Lord Jesus Christ. For this is the force of the passage: "Love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment, because in this world we are like him" (1 John 4:17). It is the full realization of our oneness with Jesus that gives us perfect love.


We are sitting at the feet of the greatest teacher of love. We are leaning from him who himself leaned on the Master's breast, and learned all He knew of love from the living touch of His heart.


Perfect Love


It is evident that the love he refers to is our love to God. The phrase, "Perfect love drives out all fear" (1 John 4:18), explains what he means by perfect love. It is a love that has no doubt or dread in it, but leans confidently on the bosom of the Lord, trusts in the darkest hours with unfaltering confidence. Even in the day of judgment it will stand with boldness amid the tumult and the wreck of a dissolving world, and claim its place in the friendship of the Judge who sits upon the throne.


~A. B. Simpson~


(continued with # 21)