Walking As Christ Walked

"He that saith he abideth in him, ought himself also so to walk, even as he walked."—1 John 2:6.

Sweet testimony to the truth as it is in Jesus, when, from being in Christ, we are walking with Christ; and one and the same spirit runs through both. As a man never walks as Christ walked, before he is first united to Christ; so when truly united to Christ, the evidence is made to appear by loving what Jesus loves, and hating what Jesus hates. As Ruth said to Naomi, so the believer saith to the Lord Jesus: "Where thou goest, I would go, and where thou lodgest, I would lodge; thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God!" And, my soul, think what a blessed unanswerable proof doth it afford, both to thyself and to the world around, when, from abiding in Christ, we live as Christ; that is, his Holy Spirit moves in us, speaks in us, walks in us, yea, doth all in us; and as the soul of man gives life and action to the body, so Christ, who is the soul of the believer, gives life and action to the soul. Hence Paul considered himself so wholly actuated, in every part of the spiritual life, by the in-dwelling residence of the Spirit of Christ, that he said, it was not he that lived, but Christ that lived in him: "The life," saith he, "which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me:" Galatians 2:20. My soul, canst thou subscribe to the same? "If Christ be in thee, the body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit is life because of righteousness;" Romans 8:10. Oh! for grace so to abide in Jesus, that every act of my life may testify" whose I am, and whom I serve;"...so, my soul, may every act, every word, yea, every thought of thine, so proclaim Jesus, and thy union and oneness with him, that all with whom thou hast to do may plainly discover thou art no longer thine own, but that, "being bought with a price, thou dost glorify God in thy body, and in thy spirit, which are both his."

- excerpt from Richard Hawker's The Poor Man's Morning and Evening Portions, September 18, Evening