Life and Life Abundantly

By E. Stanley Jones


We have looked at the tragic results of being out of Christ, and now we will turn to the triumphant results of being "in Christ." There are both sides, and if we listen only to one side we become half persons, listening only to the half facts. In Europe the joyous smaller bells ring out the quarter hours while the deep-toned solemn bells sound out the hours. Life holds both the joyous silver bells and the deep-toned serious and solemn bells. In Jesus the joyous predominate -- the solemn are an undertone, the joyous, the overtone. The Christian faith proclaims life -- only its absence is death. "I have come that you might have life and have it more abundantly."

Life is ours the very moment our life is put by surrender in Christ. The moment the little boy transferred the ownership of the five loaves and two fishes from himself to Jesus, those loaves and fishes were under the law of multiplication -- under the law of life. Anything in His hands has life. It has security for time and eternity. 

The business of a silk manufacturer was ruined by the coming in of rayon and nylon. When I saw him he was running the elevator in a Y.M.C.A., and doing it joyously, a happy, integrated man. He had given a pipe organ worth fifty thousand dollars to his church. It was the only thing he saved -- the thing he gave! He delighted to go to the church and play the organ, and he delighted to run the elevator. Out of the wreck of outer fortune he saved two things: his soul and his organ. He gave them both to Christ, and then they were secure -- eternally secure. I touched that man for just a few moments at the close of a meeting, but his victory has become a part of my victory. He had life, and he passed it on to me. He wiped his hands on his apron, for he had been on kitchen duty when I saw him, but when I took his hand, I knew that I held the hand of a real king -- the greatest of them all.