THE ONE CERTIFICATE OF CHRISTIAN CHARACTER

By Andrew Murray

‘Let us love in deed and truth; hereby we shall assure our hearts before Him. And whatsoever we ask we receive of Him, because we keep His commandments, and do the things that are pleasing in His sight.’ Obedience is the secret of good conscience, and of the confidence that God heareth us. ‘This is the love of God, that we keep His Commandments.’ The obedience that keeps His commandments: this is the garment in which the hidden, invisible love reveals itself, and whereby it is known.

Such is the place obedience has in Holy Scripture, in the mind of God, in the hearts of His servants. We may well ask, Does it take that place in my heart and life? Have we indeed given obedience that supreme place of authority over us that God means it to have, as the inspiration of every action, and of every approach to Him? If we yield ourselves to the searching of God’s Spirit, we may find that we never gave it its true proportion in our scheme of life, and that this lack is the cause of all our failure in prayer and in work. We may see that the deeper blessings of God’s grace, and the full
enjoyment of God’s love and nearness, have been beyond our reach, simply because obedience was never made what God would have it be-the starting-point and the goal of our Christian life.

Let this, waken in us an earnest desire to know God’s will fully concerning this truth. Let us unite in praying that the Holy Spirit may show us how defective the Christian’s life is, where obedience does not rule all; how that life can be exchanged for one of full surrender
to absolute obedience; and how sure it is that God in Christ will enable us to live it out.

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Yours in Christ,
Paul N. F.