Christ to the Believer
“My meditation of Him shall be sweet” (Psalm 104:34).
It is impossible to fully estimate what Christ is to the redeemed. But let us see from a few Scriptures something of what He is to us now.
Christ is Our Life
“When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with Him in glory” (Colossians 3:4). In John 10, He speaks of giving eternal life to His sheep, and in chapter 5 those who hear His Word and believe on God who sent Him, have everlasting life. He died because we were dead in trespasses and in sins, but now He lives again, and is forever beyond the domain of death. We are linked with Him in that deathless realm, and when He comes again, He will lift us up into that sinless, sorrowless sphere of glory, to enjoy His hallowed presence fully and eternally. Then we shall be able to comprehend, in all its fullness, the wealth of that expression: “Christ who is our life.”
Christ is Our Peace
“He is our peace” (Ephesians 2:14). All who have everlasting life ought to have peace. Peace is the result of knowing Christ as my Savior. If you have seen Christ meeting God’s righteous wrath that was due to you, and beheld Him bearing your sins in His own body on the tree, and seen Him go down into death for you, and seen Him rise from the gloomy grave for your justification, you have peace. He has “made peace through the blood of His cross” (Colossians 1:20). Jesus made peace on the cross, but we obtain it by faith (Romans 5:1).
Christ is Our Hope
“Lord Jesus Christ, which is our hope” (1 Timothy 1:1). Hope has to do with the future, and the existence of hope proves that satisfaction has not been reached. In 1 John 3:2 the Apostle says: “Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when He shall appear, we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is.”
Being “like Him” and “seeing Him as He is,” is a twofold hope, “and every man that hath this hope in Him purifieth himself, even as He is pure” (1 John 3:3). When Christ comes again, all our scriptural hopes will be realized, and all our Spirit-wrought desires be satisfied, for He is the originator, and embodiment of them.
Christ is Everything to Us
“Christ is all, and in all” (Colossians 3:11). Here we reach the very summit of the supremacy and sufficiency of Christ for the believer. The Apostle Paul wrote, “For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain” (Philippians 1:21). If he remained on earth he would live for Christ and preach of Christ, but if he departed he would be with Christ. To leave life’s raging battlefield, and to rest in the calm of His blissful presence would indeed be inestimable gain to him who labored on in “weariness and painfulness” and suffered “deaths oft” (2 Corinthians 11:23-27). But he was willing to fight with “beasts” at Ephesus, languish in a Roman prison, or be decapitated by the command of the heartless Nero, or in whatever way Christ would be most magnified, “whether it be by life, or by death” (Philippians 1:20). This valiant soldier of Christ proved by his words and his ways that to him, Christ was “all, and in all.”
It is surpassingly precious to be in that attitude of soul that counts Him “everything.”
—From Meditations on Manifold Glories of Christ by C. C. Crowston.