The Power of Grasping your Union with Christ (Col 1 & 2, Eph 2 & 3)

Throughout the summer of 1896 Hudson Taylor’s morale was low. Irritability was his “daily hourly failure”, and sometimes he even wondered whether someone so dogged by failure could be a Christian as all. Long periods of separation from his wife Maria added to his inner tension and a bout of severe illness in August, probably pneumonia, didn’t help.

He prayed, he agonized, he fasted, he tried to do better, he made resolutions. He read the Bible more carefully, he ordered his life to give more time for rest and meditation. But all this had little effect.

Letter to his sister Amelia:

The last month or more has been, perhaps, the happiest of my life; and I long to tell you a little of what the Lord has done for my soul. I do not know how far I may be able to make myself intelligible about it, for there is nothing new or strange or wonderful - and yet, all is new! In a word, ‘Whereas I was blind, now I see’.

Perhaps I shall make myself more clear if I go back a little. Well, dearie, my mind has been greatly exercised for six or eight months past, feeling the need personally, and for our Mission, of more holiness, life, power in our souls. But personal need stood first and was the greatest. I felt the ingratitude, the danger, the sin of not living nearer to God. I prayed, agonized, fasted, strove, made resolutions, read the Word more diligently, sought more time for retirement and meditation - but all was without effect.

Every day, almost every hour, the consciousness of sin oppressed me. I knew that if I could only abide in Christ all would be well, but I could not. I began the day with prayer, determined not to take my eye from him for a moment; but… each day brought its register of sin and failure, of lack of power. To will was indeed present with me, but how to perform I found not.

Then came the question, ‘Is there no rescue? Must it be thus to the end - constant conflict and, instead of victory, too often defeat?’ How, too, could I preach with sincerity that to those who receive Jesus, ‘to them gave he power to become the sons of God’ (i.e. God-like) when it was not so in my own experience? Instead of growing stronger, I seemed to be getting weaker and to have less power against sin; and no wonder, for faith and even hope were getting very low. I hated myself; I hated my sin; and yet I gained no strength against it. I felt I was a child of God: His Spirit in my heart would cry, in spite of all, ‘Abba, Father’: but to rise to my privileges as a child, I was utterly powerless. I thought that holiness, practical holiness, was to be gradually attained by a diligent use of the means of grace.

I felt that there was nothing I so much desired in this world, nothing I so much needed. But so far from in any measure attaining it, the more I pursued and strove after it, the more it eluded my grasp; till hope itself almost died out, and I began to think that, perhaps to make Heaven the sweeter, God would not give it down here.

Throughout the period, he recalled, “I felt assured that there was in Christ all I needed, but the practical question was how to get it out.” With the biblical picture of Christ as the vine (John 15) on his mind, he wrote, “He was rich, truly, but I was poor; He strong, but I weak. I knew full well that there was in the root, the stem, abundant fatness; but how to get it into my puny little branch was the question.”

Letter from his friend McCarthy

When my agony of soul was at its height, a sentence in a letter from dear McCarthy was used to remove the scales from my eyes, and the Spirit of God revealed the truth of our oneness with Jesus as I had never known it before. McCarthy, who had been much exercised by the same sense of failure, but saw the light before I did…

How to get faith strengthened? Not by striving after faith; but by resting on the Faithful One.

As I read I saw it all! ‘If we believe not, he abideth faithful.’ I looked to Jesus and saw (and when I saw, oh, how joy flowed!) that He had said, ‘[will never leave you’. ‘Ah, there is rest!’ I thought. ‘I have striven in vain to rest in Him. I’ll strive no more. For has He not promised to abide with me - never to leave me, never to fail me?’ And, dearie, He never will!

But this was not all He showed me, nor one half As I thought of the vine and the branches, what light the blessed Spirit poured direct into my soul! How great seemed my mistake in having wished to get the sap, the fullness out of Him. I saw not only that Jesus would never leave me, but that I was a member of His body, of His flesh and of His bones. The vine now I see, is not the root merely, but all - root, stem, branches, twigs, leaves, flowers, fruit: and Jesus is not only that: He is soil and sun- shine, air and showers, and ten thousand times more than we have ever dreamed, wished for, or needed. Oh, the joy of seeing this truth! I do pray that the eyes of your understanding may be enlightened, that you may know and enjoy the riches freely given us in Christ.

Oh, my dear sister, it is a wonderful thing to be really one with a risen and exalted Saviour; to be a member of Christ! Think what it involves.

J. Hudson Taylor—A Man in Christ by Roger Steer, (Wheaton: OMF, 1990) p232f.