Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 14, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 January 1915 — Walking in the Light [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Walking in the Light

Br REV. JAMES M. CRAY. D. D.

D«a cl Moodr Bibl* U*

TKXT—If wo walk to the light as he la In the light, wo have fellowship ono with another, and tho blood of Jesua Christ his son. cleanseth us from all Ma. -I John lil.

What is meant by walking in the light? According to this inspired

apostle in the first and second chapters of this epistle, It means: (1) To perceive and confess sin in the faith of Jesus Christ 2. If a man says he has no sin he is not in the light hut in darkness. The Christian believer has indeed no sin “on” him,: since Its guilt hast been borne by his) substitute, Jesusj Christ, but he still

has sin “in” him. To "confess" thlaj Bin is different from simply asking forgiveness for iL A man may ask forgiveness without! ever Identifying his sins, but wheis he confesses them he enters into dej tail and brings himself into the place; of Judgment for each. But to bo!4| fellowship with God in such oonfeej slon is to know Jesus Christ as the propitiation for sin and the ever-living! intercessor for his people. He ie thei way, the truth and the life, and nO| man can come unto God save through! him.

Jesus the Carpenter. (2) But in the second place, walking in the light means keeping God’s commandments (2:3-6); and this is no* limited to an external observance ol the decalogue, but Includes heart surrender to all bis revealed will. It in walking, even as Jesus walked, who did always those things that pleased his father. Nor does this mean only the public Jesus, the Jesus of thsi three years’ ministry, but,the prlvat# Jesus, the Jesus of the home, the village school, the shop. It means Jesus, the carpenter, who, as Campbell Morgan says, “never made a yoke that - galled an ox.” It was because the father was well pleased with those silent years at Nazareth that the greater honor of the public ministry was conferred. God gives the Holy Spirit to them that obey him. (3) Walking in the light means loving the brotherhood, verses 7-11. By the brotherhood here is meant those that are in Christ. To love one’s neighbor is an old commandment, but the “new commandment,” of which John here speaks, is loving the brethren. This love is not an emotion or passion. It is not a natural, but a supernatural experience. We see 1* defined in I Corinthians 13, as including such simple things as long-suffei*; ing, kindness, humility, courtesy, unselfishness, meekness and'the like. I am with the priest who publicly rebuked a college president for advising the graduate that the way to get along was to push and crowd other people out of the way. That may he the way of the world, hut it is not the way of Christ, and he who sets upon it will never know fellowship with God. (4) Separation from the world thus becomes a fourth means of walking in the light, verses 16-17. There is a proper Jove for the world, but it is not that which is incompatible with the love of the father. There are two ar» guments against the love of the worlds first, it passeth away and the lusts thereof, and second, “he that doeth the will of God abideth forever.” .. Chauncey M. Depew was defending the second marriage, late in life, of his colleague. Senator Platt, and said that a time came when the love of power, of wealth, of fame, of pleasure receded, and left nothing to a man but the companion of his fireside. The difference between Chauncey M. Depew and the apostle John is this, however, that in the one case we have the world slipping away from the man, and in the other the man is slipping away from the world. It Is the last that understands and appreciates the fact of fellowship with God. D. L. Moody’s Memory. On the. tombstone which marks the grave qf D. L. Moody at Round Top, Northfield, Mass., is engraved that inspiring sentence of John, "He that doeth the will of God abideth forever. 1 * How true it is that D. L. Moody abideth still in the hearts and lives of houeands in this country and Great Britain, whom, by the grace of God, he won to Jesus Christ, and in th missionary and philanthropic enterprises which were set in motion as the result of his great evangel is tie work. But he himself abideth in another sense—the literal sense that John meant, because the life of God was communicated to khn through his son, Jesus Christ In this sense it te the privilege of every one of us to abide forever. “Because I live,’* said Christ, “ye shall live also.” “The Ged Is eternal life?* Who would no* accept this gift so freely offered through the son of Godt