The Real Christ is a 1920 book by Reuben Archer Torrey published by Doran. 189pp Sub-title: The Christ of Actual Historic Fact as Distinguished from the Christ of Man's Dreams and Fancies and Imaginings: The Christ of God's Own Appointment Whose Picture God Himself has Drawn in the Bible as Distinguished from the Christ of "Christian Science," "Theosophy," "Unitarianism," "Spiritualism" and Other Forms of Fiction.

Introduction

v-vii)

For years it has been on my heart to write a book on the real Christ, the Christ of actual historic fact as distinguished from the Christ of man's dreams and fancies and imaginings. I have spent many hours in the famous picture galleries of Europe studying the paintings of "The Christ" by the so-called "Masters" and I have always been disappointed and oftentimes indignant at the gross misrepresentations of the face of Jesus Christ as they presented it. Once night in a world famous center of culture and art in the Old World, a man called to see me. As he entered the room and I glanced at his face, I felt confident that his face was the model of many of the so-called portraits of our Lord. In almost his opening sentence he confirmed my suspicion. And why had he come to see me? Because he was the salve of sin in one of its most disgusting forms and he came to find if there were any way of deliverance. And the face of this moral degenerate was taken as a model by those who would portray the countenance of the Perfect Man! The representations of Christ by many poets, essayists and preachers, while not so grossly false, nevertheless are not satisfying. They no more present the real Christ than Edwin Arnold's "Light of Asia" presented the real Buddha. But there is a perfect portrayal of the real Christ, the Christ of God's own appointment, the Christ of actual fact, in all His many-sided and complete perfection, beauty and glory. That portrait is in God's own Word, the Bible. It is found in the preview of the coming Christ granted to the Old Testament prophets and in the histories of the Christ as He actually moved among men that the four evangelists were inspired by God to write, and in the explanation of that picture that the apostles who wrote the Epistles were enlightened by the Holy Spirit to give. Over that marvelous picture I have pored for many days and weeks and months and years, and my wonder has grown as I have studied it. I attempted a number of years ago to give a series of addresses on the real Christ at a Bible Conference. Not a few testified of blessing received, but I was not satisfied, and I studied on and prayed that I might see Him and tell of Him as He actually was. At last I decided to attempt, by the Holy Spirit's enabling, to interpret God's own picture of the Christ of His own appointment to my own people and then to put the interpretation into book form for wider circulation. My wife is immediately responsible for the decision. She delights not only in an instructive rather than a merely hortatory ministry, but a ministry that is coherent, orderly, progressive, systematic, symmetrical and complete in its teaching. So she said to me one day last October as we were crossing the Pacific to America from China, "About what are you going to preach a series of sermons next winter?" "I do not know." "Well, you are going to preach a series of some kind, are you not?" "I suppose so." "Well, about what?" She was insistent and there was no escape. "Perhaps about the real Christ." "I think that would be a good subject." And I prayed and a Higher Authority said, "Preach on the real Christ," and I did. I have never so enjoyed preaching any other phase of God's truth as I have in presenting this. Sometimes I could hardly go on with my dictation as I have beheld His wondrous beauty, and time and again as I have spoken to the people and I have seen the Lord, a strange, glad awe has fallen upon speaker and hearers alike. And the crowds have grown and many have been blessed and great changes have been wrought in the preacher and in the hearers. May God bless the reading of these studies as He has the preaching and hearing of them.

Excerpts

I. The Real Christ 11

"God has drawn the picture of the real Christ in the Bible and the Holy Spirit is God's interpreter of the picture." Page 14

"The Ten Commandments are not the Christian's rule of life. The Christian has a far higher rule of life that the Ten Commandments." Page 15

"Here a demon, a being of superior intelligence but inferior character, is compelled to declare the truth that Jesus was not only 'holy' but that He was 'the Holy One of God.'" Page 18

"It is not enough to love righteousness; iniquity must be hated as well. On the other hand, it is not enough to hate iniquity; righteousness must be loved as well." Page 21

"The Holiness of our Lord was not the mere negative innocence that result from being shielded from contact with evil, but the positive holiness that meets evil and overcomes it." Page 23

"Why must men who will not forsake sin and receive the Saviour perish forever? Because the real Christ is Holy." Page 27

"Men talk much of the Holiness of God and the love of Jesus, but the real Jesus is just as Holy as God, and God is just as loving as Jesus." Page 27

II. His Love to the Father 29

"Modern thought is so exclusively occupied with man that it scarcely enters our minds that God should be the supreme object of our love and that our obligation to love God is immeasurably greater that our obligation to love our fellow-man." Page 30

"No merely external League of Nations will ever set things straight. No merely external social adjustment of any kind will set things straight. No triumph of universal democracy will ever set things straight. Only love in the heart of the individual man to other men." Page 31

"Many of us talk about loving God, but our ears are not constantly listening sharply for His Word of Command and even when we are forced to hear it, we are slow to obey it." Page 33

"But it was not only on that last journey that "He steadfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem"; but when He first took upon Him the nature of man, He had steadfastly set His face to go to Calvary." Page 34

"To keep God's Word means more than to obey His commandments. A man may obey commandments without hearty love to them but we guard that which we regard as a precious treasure. So our Lord Jesus regarded the words of God. The Father's word was His most Precious treasure. He guarded it as other men guard their gold and jewels." Page 35

"Look at Prof. Kent with his infamous 'Shorter Bible,' out of which he unhesitatingly cuts what God has revealed about the propitiatory character of Christ's death in Romans 3, just because some do not relish the God-taught doctrine of substitution and Prof. Kent does not want to offend any one, even if he has to surrender God's truth to please him." Page 35

"No man who ever lived on this earth so recoiled from death as our Lord Jesus did; for no other man was so full of life as He." Page 36

"How eagerly and persistently we seek a little admiration and praise from men. How gladly we accept it when it comes. How we treasure the fine things that are said about us in newspapers or in books. Let us have done with it! Let us so utterly love God that His approval is all we care for and all we will accept." Page 42

"Christ's sacrifice for men finds its final reason and original source in obedience to the will of the Father, Who was the object of His supreme love." Page 43

III. His Love to Men 45

"Jesus Christ loves the vilest sinner as truly as He loves the purest saint, but He does not love the vilest sinner in the same way He loves the purest saint." Page 52

"The death of Christ was not the only sacrifice He made though it was the crowning one. His whole life was a sacrifice from the manger to the cross. His becoming man at all was a sacrifice of immeasurable greatness and meaning." Page 54

"God, the Father was the object of the eternal love of Christ." Page 59

"He left us out of love for us. He left us for our good. But He is lonesome up yonder without us; even heaven, with the Father's presence, is a lonesome place for Christ without us; He so loves us." Page 61

IV. His Love for Souls 63

"Stalker well says in his 'Imago Christi,' that Jesus Christ 'made use of His miracles as stepping stones to reach the soul.'" Page 69

73, Just as I am used as sinner's prayer

V. His Compassion 83

"Suppose our Lord Jesus were to-day in Los Angeles. How would He feel toward the heedless, thoughtless, unsatisfied, unshepherded multitudes that throng our streets and parks, our places of amusement, our seaside and mountain resorts?" 85

"We are too busy, too busy sometimes in religious activities, to stop to enter into the sorrow of others and to 'weep with those who weep.'" Page 93

"Christlike compassion will minister to the masses' spiritual and moral needs before it does to their physical needs." Page 95

"The salvation that the real Christ brings is salvation for 'spirit, soul and body.' (1 Thess. 5:23.) But it puts the 'spirit' first." Page 96

"You cannot save sinners at the end of a forty-foot pole. You must get into touching distance; you must touch." Page 98

VI. His Meekness 103

"You will say, 'That is not my natural temperament.' Then get a supernatural temperament, get it by supernatural grace that transforms a wrong temperament into a Christlike temperament, get it by the filling of the Holy Spirit, for 'The fruit of the Spirit is Love, Joy, Peace, Long-suffering, Kindness, Goodness, Faith, Meekness, Self-control.' (Gal. 5:22, 23.) Page 111

VII. His Humility 118

"His own glory was nothing to Jesus, the Father's glory was everything." Page 121

"'The Father is greater that I,' was not merely a solitary utterance of Christ Jesus (John 14:28): it was the keynote of all His thinking and living." Page 122

"Of all snobs, the pious snob is the most offensive." Page 125

"The word 'minister' meant originally 'servant,' but nowadays it means too often the 'boss of the whole show,' and we are greatly concerned about the prerogatives and dignity of and the respect due to the minister. And the word 'deacon' also originally meant 'servant,' but now it means --well, it means various degrees of dignity. Oh, let us remember that the Master said, 'The Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many.'" Page 128

"Would you rather be a minister by preaching sermons to a crowd of gaping admirers or a minister by washing the sore and foul feet of some afflicted child of God." Page 129

VIII. His Manliness 133

"I do not think that the term 'Manliness' altogether accurately describes what I mean; for many women display many of the qualities I am about to describe more fully than most men. What we men in our presumption and arrogance and self-sufficiency call 'manliness' is just as much, if not more, in actual life, 'womanliness.' But I use the term 'manliness' because it comes nearer to describing to the average mind what I mean than any other term of which I can think." 134

"Christ came also to be the dauntless leader in the fiercest fight the Universe has ever known." Page 140

"To be a true follower of Jesus, the Christ of God, one must be a fearless fighter as well as a gentle comforter." Page 141

"When that New England Methodist Conference voted to rescind the historic Methodist position regarding questionable amusements, in order that they might allure the weak-kneed manikins and womanettes, who desire to bear the name of 'Christian,' but at the same time lead a soft, luxurious, self-indulgent and worldly life, they sounded the death knell of real, vital, forceful, Christ-like Christianity in that section of Methodism." 143

"It is true that the religion of Jesus Christ is preeminently a woman's religion: it has lifted woman to an eminence never dreamed before. But it also is fully as much a man's religion! Its appeal is for Heroism, Fearlessness, Holy Audacity, Self-Sacrifice, Utter Reality." Page 149

IX. His Imperturbable Peace, Constant Joyfulness and Unconquerable Optimism 151

"The world's golden age lies in the future, not in the past; the near future, not the remote future." Page 169

X. His Prayerfulness 170

"The life of Christ… had many marked characteristics, but nothing is more marked, if anything else is as marked, as His Prayerfulness." Page 173

"Thirty denominations in this country have recently undertaken what they affirm is 'the biggest thing the Church of Christ has ever undertaken.' They are putting many millions of dollars into the preliminary campaign to raise the money. They are doing such extensive advertising as the greatest business corporations in the world have never ventured upon. And what are their prayer preparations for this mighty event? The Christians of the land were urges in thousands of newspaper advertisements to give five minutes to secret prayer on the day the campaign was launched. It would be ludicrous, if it were not sad enough to almost break the heart of any one who really knows The Real Christ and the spirit and method of His life." Page 178

"Let us never forget that our Lord Jesus, while He was very God of very God, was also a real man, subject to the same temptations that we are, and, in order to set us an example, met them with the same weapons we must, the Word of God and prayer." Page 179

The Real Christ

Contents

Introduction

Excerpts