Simpson Larger Christian Life is a 11 chapter work which discusses key elements in living the Christian life, joy, faith, filled with the Spirit, death of self, etc.
CONTENTS of Simpson Larger Christian Life
1 The Possibilities of Faith
2 The Joy of the Lord
3 Filled with the Spirit
4 The Larger Life
5 The Death of Self
6 More than Conquerors
7 Grace Abounding
8 From Strength to Strength
9 God’s Measureless Measures
10 Spiritual Growth
11 Enlarged Work
Download: ab_simpson_larger_christian_life
Sample Chapter from Simpson Larger Christian Life
4
THE LARGER LIFE
“Be ye also enlarged.” 2 Cor. vi: 11.
The law of growth is a fundamental principle of all nature and redemption.
Whatever ceases to grow begins to die; stagnancy brings corruption; the
corpse belongs to the worm; a self-contained pool becomes a malarious
swamp. Vegetation springs from a seed, the seed grows into a tree, and the
tree into a forest. Human life commences in infancy and develops to
maturity. The word of God has all unfolded from a single promise. The
great plan of redemption has been a ceaseless progression, and will be
through the ages upon ages that are yet to come.
The experience of the soul is a growth. True, it must have a starting point.
We cannot grow into Christianity we must be born from above and then
grow. And so sanctification is progressive, and yet it has a definite
beginning. Christ is completely formed within us, but He is the infant
Christ, and grows up to the maturity of the perfect man in us just as He did
in His earthly life.
It is here that the enlargement of our text meets us. It is only the truly
consecrated Christian that grows. The other treads the ceaseless circle of
the wilderness. But he has crossed the Jordan and begun the conquest of the
land and the progressive experience of which it was the beautiful pattern
and symbol. No book in the Bible has more progress in it than the book of
Joshua, and yet from the very beginning it is the life of one who has wholly
died to self and sin and has taken Christ for full salvation and is walking in
the heavenly places in Him.
And even the book of Joshua only begins its highest advance when it is
almost ended. It is after the whole land is subdued, that the call comes,
“How long are ye slack to go up and possess all the land? There remaineth
yet very much land to be possessed.” And then it is that old Caleb, who has
the weight of eighty-four years on his honored head, steps forth and claims
the privilege of entering upon the boldest and hardest campaign of his life,
the conquest of Hebron and the Anakim. It is to us then, who know the
Lord Jesus in His fullness, that He is saying, “Be ye also enlarged.”
I. WHAT IT MEANS TO BE ENLARGED.
1. We need a larger vision. All great movements begin in great ideas. There
is no progress without a new thought as its embryo. China has remained the
same for three thousand years because China has not accepted a new idea.
Her teacher is a man who lived long before Christ, and for nearly thirty
centuries she has followed the ideas of Confucius and is just the same today as she was thirty centuries ago. Let China receive the American idea or
the Christian idea, and she will be revolutionized at once.
So the first step in our advance must be a new conception of the truth as it
is in Jesus and a larger view of His word and will for us. We do not need a
new Bible, but we need new eyes to read our Bible and brighter light to
shine upon its deep and pregnant pages. We need to see, not simply a
system of exegesis or a system of Biblical exposition and criticism; a
thorough knowledge of the letter and its wondrous framework of history;
geography, antiquities and ancient languages; but a vivid, large and
spiritual conception of what it means for us and what God’s thought in it for
each of us is. We want to take it as the message of heaven to the nineteenth
century and the last decade, nay, the living voice of the Son of God to us
this very hour, and to see in it the very idea which He Himself has for our
life and work; to take in the promises as He understands them, the
commandments as He intends them to be obeyed, and the hopes of the
future as He unfolds them upon the nearer horizon of their approaching
fulfillment. How little have we grasped the length and breadth and depth
and height of this heavenly message! How little have we realized its
authority and its personal directness to us! “Open thou my eyes, 0 Lord,
that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law!” “I will run in the way of
thy commandments when thou shalt enlarge my heart.” That ye may be
filled with “the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him;
the eyes of your heart being enlightened; that ye may know what is the
hope of His calling, and what the riches of the glory of His inheritance in
the saints.” May the Lord grant it to each of us in the largest possible
measure in accordance with His will!
2. We need a larger faith. What is the use of light if we do not use it? We
need a faith that will personally appropriate all that we understand, and a
faith so large that it will reach the fullness of God’s great promises; so large
that it will rise to the level of each emergency as it comes into our life. Do
we not often feel that a promise has been brought to us with a light and
power that we have been unable to claim and a need has arisen that we are
persuaded God is able to meet but for which we are conscious our faith is
not grasping the victory, at least according to the full measure of the
exigency? This ought not so to be. If all things are possible to him that
believeth we ought to have all things in His will for every moment of life’s
need. The Divine pattern of faith is the faith of God. Oh, let us be enlarged
to this high measure!
3. We need a larger love. We need a love that will meet God’s claim of
perfect love, that we shall “love the Lord our God with all our soul and with
all our mind and with all our strength.” We need a love that will love one
another ” even as He has loved us.” We need a love that will “love our
enemies and pray for them that despitefully use us and persecute us.” We
need a love that will love the lost as He loves them, overcoming our
repugnance to every personal condition, and delighting to suffer or sacrifice
for their salvation with the joy that counts it no sacrifice. We need a love
that will take our brother’s need and pain as if it were our own, and
“remember those in bonds as bound with them, and them that suffer
adversity as being also in the body.” We need a love that “suffers long and
is kind; that envieth not: that vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, seeketh
not her own, is not provoked, thinketh no evil, rejoiceth not in iniquity but
rejoiceth in the truth; beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all
things, endureth all things; that never faileth.”
4. We need a larger joy. We need a joy that will not only rejoice in the gifts
of God, but will rejoice in God Himself and find in Him our portion and
our boundless and everlasting delight. We need a joy that will not only
rejoice in the sunshine but in the hour of darkness and apparent desertion,
when men misunderstand us, when circumstances are against us and when
even God seems to have forgotten us. We need a joy that will not only rejoice
in all things, but rejoice evermore. We need a joy that even when we
do not feel the joy, will “count it all joy,” and rejoice by faith. We need a
joy so large, so deep, so divine that it will not feel its sacrifices, will not
talk about its trials, but will “endure the cross, despising the shame,” “for
the joy set before us.”
5. We need a larger experience. We do not mean by this any mere state of
emotional feeling, but a larger range of Christian living, a bringing of
Christ more into everything; an experience that will prove Him in all
situations, amid secular business, exasperating circumstances, baffling
perplexities, extreme vicissitudes; and, going all round the circle of human
life, will be able to say, “I have learned the secret, in every state in which I
am therewith to be content. I know how to be abased and how to abound; I
know how to be full and to be hungry, to abound and to suffer need. I can
do all things through Christ who strengtheneth me.” That is a large
experience. That is a degree in the school of Christ that will outweigh all
the D.D.’s of all the colleges.
6. We need a larger work. We do not mean by this that we need a larger
sphere. That may not be. That certainly is not the case if we are not filling
our present; but we need a better quality of work. We need to finish our
unfinished work. We need to do the things that we have thought of doing,
intended to do, talked about doing, and are abundantly able to do. We need
to do the work that can be done in the intervals and interstices of life, the
work that can be done on the way and on the wing, between times as well
as in times of special service and appointment; the word that can be spoken
as we casually meet people; the work that can be done by the wayside and
on the crossroads of life, where souls meet that never meet again.
Sometimes the ministry that can be performed at such a moment becomes
the pivot for hundreds of souls and eternal ages to turn upon. We need a
work that is larger in its upward direction, more wholly for God, more
singly devoted to His glory, and more satisfied with His approval whether
men are pleased or not. And we need a larger conception and realization of
the work that He expects of us in the special line in which He has been
developing our Christian life. Most of those who read these lines or hear these
words have been called to know Christ in a measure unknown to the
great mass of the people of God, and we have not yet realized what God
expects of us in spreading these special truths and extending this blessed
movement, of which Christ is the centre and substance, over all the land
and over all the world. God is calling us at this time to a larger faith for this
special work-the testimony of Jesus in all His fullness to all the world.
7. We need a larger hope. We need to realize more vividly, more personally,
more definitely, what the coming of the Lord means, and means to us, until
the future shall become alive with the actual expectation and ever
immanent prospect of His Kingdom and His reward. Oh, how little this
great hope has been to the hearts and lives of most of us until within a few
years! How utterly blind the majority of Christians are to it as an actual
experience! How much inspiration is it fitted to afford to the heart that truly
realizes it! May the Lord enlarge our hopes and intensify them until this
becomes, next to the love of Jesus, the most inspiring, stimulating,
quickening motive of our Christian life and work!
8. We need a larger baptism of the Holy Spirit, for this is the true summing
up of all that we have said. It is one thing, not many things, that we need;
and, filled with the Spirit in still larger measure, the fruit of the Spirit shall
expand and increase in proportion. We need more room for His indwelling,
more scope for His expanding, more channels for His outflow. We are not
straitened in Him, we are straitened in ourselves. “He giveth not the Spirit
by measure,” but we receive Him in very confined and small capacities. He
wants more room; He wants our entire being, and He wants so to fill it that
we shall be expanded into larger possibilities for His inworking and His
outflowing.
Beloved, “be ye enlarged.” And not only in all these senses and directions,
which no doubt have searched us and made us realize the limitations of our
present lives, but we want to be enlarged in the quality of our life; we want
not only more breadth and length, but we want depth and height, a more
spiritual, a more mellow, a more mature fruition, and a more established,
settled and immovable standing in and for Him.
II. CONSIDERATIONS AND DIRECTIONS WITH A VIEW TO OUR
ENLARGEMENT….