The Real Christ

There's a wonderful, refreshing sanity to the writing of William Still, pastor in Aberdeen, Scotland of a church for over fifty years. In The Work of the Pastor he recounts:

I had been 'going at it' one Sunday evening about living your whole life in Christ and for Christ, and one chap, because he thought that I must live my whole life on my knees, came to me, wringing his hands, because he was not being as holy as he thought he ought to be.

I said to him, 'You foolish boy, do you think this means winding yourself up into a kind of robot existence, forever clicking your heels before a ruthless sergeant-major Christ? You have got it all wrong. Christ is a world of being, not a set of rules. You live your life in Him, you are naughty in Him, alas, as well as good in Him. You have fun there as well as seriousness. You must learn that Christ is no mere censor, but a Saviour who saves us by gaining our trust and confidence more and more, and letting us live our total life in Him. He is much more concerned about where we are going, than about how far on we have got.'

This chap's Christ was a drill sergeant and he thought that was what I was advocating. No: I was thinking of a Christ who would be with him when he went off the deep end and betrayed his fallen self and made an ass of himself, and, in private, denied his own, true, holy nature. A Christ who was always kindly, always there, not to his sin, but to him. (48-49)