(Receiving the Life of Christ within the Communion of Sonship)
We may find comfort in what Christ has accomplished for us while hesitating before the change His life brings to our own direction. Chambers draws our attention to Christ being formed in the believer. Spurgeon brings us to the relationship in which that formation unfolds: we approach God as our Father.
When the Gift Reaches the Life
Chambers writes:
“The teaching is not Christ for me unless I am determined to have Christ formed in me.” (My Utmost for His Highest)
Chambers presses upon our willingness to receive the full meaning of belonging to Christ. Forgiveness brings us into a relationship that reaches our desires, judgments, and responses.
His language of determination must remain grounded in grace. Our willingness does not accomplish redemption or make Christ’s offering sufficient. Through His death and resurrection, God has provided what we could never establish. We receive that provision through faith, and its purpose reaches into the life that follows.
Paul’s longing for Christ to be formed in the Galatians arose while they were being drawn toward bondage. Having received life through faith, they were turning toward religious observance as though it could secure their standing before God (Galatians 3:2–3; 4:9–19).
Christ being formed in them therefore involved freedom from the attempt to establish themselves through their own sufficiency.
The same searching reaches us. We can confess dependence upon Christ while continuing to defend the right to govern ourselves. We welcome reassurance, yet resist the correction that touches a cherished resentment or ambition.
Formation brings these places into communion with the Father. The character revealed in Jesus begins to shape our response: His trust, His love, His readiness to receive the Father’s will.
“Christ in us” speaks here of participation in His life through abiding communion. We remain ourselves, increasingly responsive to the life we receive through Him.
The Relationship from Which We Pray
Spurgeon writes:
“This prayer begins where all true prayer must commence, with the spirit of adoption. ‘Our Father.’” (Morning and Evening)
The opening of the Lord’s Prayer gives us our place before God.
We come as those who have been brought near through His Son. Jesus teaches His disciples to address the Father before asking for daily bread, forgiveness, or deliverance (Matthew 6:9–13). Their needs are spoken within a relationship.
Paul likewise connects redemption through the Son with receiving the adoption of sons, and with the cry, “Abba, Father” (Galatians 4:4–7). The Father has acted to bring us into this communion. Prayer becomes our response to His welcome.
That relationship makes honesty possible. We can acknowledge resistance without concealing it beneath religious language. We can confess fear without first making ourselves courageous. We can ask for help where our own resources have failed.
The word “our” also opens our attention toward others. We approach a Father whose household extends beyond our private concerns. The love we receive begins to shape whom we remember and what we desire for them.
Formation within the Father’s Welcome
Chambers’s call and Spurgeon’s assurance belong together.
The Father’s welcome gives us confidence to receive the correction through which our lives are changed. We need not treat every exposure of self-direction as evidence that we should withdraw from Him.
The Holy Spirit operates upon the human spirit, forming the responsiveness of sonship. As Scripture directs us toward Jesus, we learn to bring our will, our needs, and our relationships before the Father.
This morning, there may be something we have asked God to change around us while protecting it within ourselves. We can bring that recognition into prayer without bargaining for acceptance.
We begin where Jesus taught us to begin: Our Father.
From that place of belonging, we can receive His searching, trust His provision, and remain open to the life of His Son finding fuller expression in us.