The Revelation of Christ as the King

Where is He that is born King of the Jews? for we have seen His star in the east, and are come to worship Him—Matthew 2:2.

The revelation of Christ to the human heart as a King will always be subsequent to the revelation of the Savior. There need not necessarily be a long interval between these two revelations, indeed the sooner the one occurs after the other the better; but the Savior must ever be discovered first, and in the joy of that discovery the soul will be led on to find the King.

Unhappily the interval in the soul’s experience that separates these two discoveries from each other is frequently much too protracted, and hence we meet with an anomaly only too painful to contemplate. Go where you will, and mingle with Christian society as you may, and examine as carefully as you can the spiritual condition of those who profess to be real believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will find, I am afraid, a very considerable proportion, and sometimes a large proportion, of these comforting themselves with the thought that they are saved, while there seems little or nothing in their lives that indicates full and complete submission of the will to the authority and will of Christ.

As Christians, we are taught that we are not our own, but are bought with a price, and thus bound over to glorify God with our body and our spirit, which are His (I Corinthians 6:20); but if all who profess to be true Christians really held by this rule, what a different world we should soon have! Alas! how common a thing it is to meet with Christians whose whole life seems to contradict this statement, and to affirm plainly enough, for all to understand, “We are our own: who is Lord over us?”

How many professing Christians seem to live to gratify their own carnal and worldly ambition, to push their way in social life, and better their circumstances, instead of living to answer the purposes of Him who has called them to be His “people of possession.” How many waste their time and