In the Hands of the Master Workman
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This article has been excerpted from The Christian’s Secret of a Happy Life by Hannah Whitall Smith.
God’s ultimate purpose in our creation was that we should finally be “conformed to the image of Christ.”
Christ was to be the firstborn among many brethren, and His brethren were to be like Him. All the discipline and training of our lives is with this end in view; and God has implanted in every human heart a longing, however unformed and unexpressed, after the best and highest it knows.
Christ is the pattern of what each one of us is to be when finished. We are “predestinated” to be conformed to His image, in order that He might be the firstborn among many brethren. We are to be “partakers of the divine nature” with Christ; we are to be filled with the spirit of Christ; we are to share His resurrection life, and to walk as He walked. We are to be one with Him, as He is one with the Father; and the glory God gave to Him, He is to give to us. And when all this is brought to pass, then, and not until then, will God’s purpose in our creation be fully accomplished, and we stand forth “in his image and after his likeness.”
Our likeness to His image is an accomplished fact in the mind of God, but we are, so to speak, in the factory as yet, and the great master Workman is at work upon us. “It doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is.”
“Christ is the pattern of what each one of us is to be when finished. ”
And so it is written: “The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit. Howbeit that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural; and afterward that which is spiritual. The first man is of the earth, earthy; the second man is the Lord from heaven. As is the earthly, such are they also that are earthy; and as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly. And as we have borne the image of the earthly, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly.”
It is deeply interesting to see that this process, which was begun in Genesis, is declared to be completed in Revelation, where the “one like unto the Son of man” gave to John this significant message to the overcomers: “Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God; and he shall go no more out: and I will write upon him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God which is new Jerusalem, which cometh down out of heaven from my God: and I will write upon him my new name.” Since name always means character in the Bible, this message can only mean that at last God’s purpose is accomplished, and the spiritual evolution of man is completed—he has been made, what God intended from the first, so truly into His likeness and image, as to merit having written upon him the name of God!
Words fail before such a glorious destiny as this! But our Lord foreshadows it in His wonderful prayer when He asks for His brethren that “they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them: that they may be one even as we are one. I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one.” Could oneness be closer or more complete?
Paul also foreshadows this glorious consummation when he declares that if we suffer with Christ we shall also be glorified together with Him, and when he asserts that the “sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed in us.” The whole Creation waits for the revealing of this glory, for Paul goes on to say that the “earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God.” And he adds finally: “And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.”
In view of such a glorious destiny, at which I dare not do more than hint, shall we not cheerfully welcome the processes, however painful they may be, by which we are to reach it? And shall we not strive eagerly and earnestly to be “laborers together with God” in helping to bring it about? He is the great master Builder, but He wants our co-operation in building up the fabric of our characters, and He exhorts us to take heed how we build. We are all of us at every moment of our lives engaged in this building.
“A classic of joyous Christianity…”
- Richard J. Foster
Weary readers who “know there must be an entire surrender of self to Him… and have tried over and over to do it, but hitherto without any apparent success,” will find in this book a healing balm and rousing charge to continue in faith until they have laid hold of this abundant life — the “life hid with Christ in God.”
