Editorial March 4, 1916 Issue

Identity in Christ

John B. Willis

The Messianic psalms of David, and the wondrous prophecies of Isaiah and other Old Testament worthies, focused the spiritual aspiration and communal hope of the Hebrews upon a messenger of God who was to be both their leader and savior. However, as the result of their subjection to Babylon and to Rome, the concept of this hero to come grew less and less spiritual, until when Christ Jesus appeared his unlikeness to the martial chieftain they longed for led to his rejection at the hands of his own people.

Though the disciples came to see that the Master's kingdom was not of this world, their attachment to him naturally perpetuated this personal sense of the Messiahship, so that they were greatly puzzled, it would seem, when he told them frankly that it was better for them that he should go away. Again and again St. Paul and other New Testament writers use the word Christ when referring to the Man of Galilee, and this habit still obtains among Christian writers. One comes upon frequent Scripture passages, however, in which this interpretation of the word is manifestly impossible. Writing to the Corinthians, Paul says, "If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature;" and to the Romans, "If Christ be in you, ... the Spirit is life because of righteousness." In these and kindred passages it is apparent that the apostle is not speaking for a blend of personalities, but for the impartation of the divine Life to the individual man.

The higher apprehension of the nature of the Christ-coming and Messiahship, thus clearly glimpsed, was practically lost, however, in the mazes of later materialistic dogmatism, until through the teaching of Christian Science the world was again led to see that the coming of the Messiah is the dawning of spiritual truth in human consciousness; that the Christ is universal, the law and order of the divine appearing, of which the Christ-man or true individuality is a concrete expression. On page 230 of Science and Health Mrs. Eddy declares that the awakening from illusion, the dream of mortal sense, "is the forever coming of Christ, the advanced appearing of Truth, which casts out error and heals the sick." Here we have the revelation of divine Truth related to every individual believer, and all are to profit by it until, as one translator puts it, "We all of us arrive at oneness in faith ... at mature manhood and the stature of full grown men in Christ."

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