You diligently study the Scriptures
because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the
Scriptures that testify about Me, yet
you refuse to come to Me to have life. (John 5:39-40 NIV)
The value of everything is its livingness. The
value of the Scriptures is not that we know our Bibles and can handle our Bibles
and can give addresses, wonderful addresses, from our Bibles, and that we can
quote Scripture fully and accurately and all that sort of thing. It is not that we
bear the name of associates of Christ, Christians, not that we have this great
inheritance and tradition. It is the livingness of it all which is proving
itself in all ways, that this risen Life of Christ should prove itself.... That is a strong thing to say, it is a searching thing to
say. You have the Christian tradition and a great deal of Christian teaching,
perhaps you know your Bibles very well, or think you do, perhaps you have many
advantages in your associations, but the question arises. Not do you know it
all, have you got it all, all the teaching, the truth, the Bible knowledge, the
association, and that you are at all the meetings and you have heard it for
years and years past and your association with it has been very close. That is
not it. You can have all that and yet you yourself not be marked by this vital
something that you become a vital factor in the whole thing. You are still a
passenger, perhaps a parasite; not really in the good of it yourself. Let us be
frank about it. We must face this as a personal matter.
The answer is in the resurrection.... Resurrection is not to be only something that happened with Jesus, but
it
is something that has happened in us and taken place inside of us. There is a
counterpart of that by His risen Life imparted, that we have been raised
together with Him. And that is not just doctrine either. That is real, that is
vital truth and something to happen in us as well as in Jerusalem so many years
ago. It is not just history and tradition, it is experience.... We have not only to
believe that Jesus rose from the dead, but we have got to be alive ourselves
with Him in that resurrection and on that ground.