The Application of Christ to the Soul

Of all these great doctrinal things, there still remains one lesson to be learned—-how to apply Christ rightly to your soul. Learn that and you have everything. If you have learned this well, you are a great theologian. For the right application of Christ to the sick soul, to the wounded conscience, and the diseased heart, is the fountain of all our felicity, and the well-spring of all our joy., In order to understand how this application operates (provided that you want Christ in your soul), think of what the presence of your soul within you does to this earthly body, to this lump of clay. It is by the presence of the soul that it lives, moves, and feels. As the soul gives to the body, life, movement, and sensation, so Christ does the very same thing to your soul. Have you ever grasped and applied Him to yourself? As the soul quickens the body, so He quickens the soul, not with an earthly or temporal life, but with the life which He lives in heaven. He makes you live the same life which the angels live in heaven. He makes you move, not with worldly motion, but with heavenly, spiritual and celestial motions. Again, He inspires I you not outward senses, but heavenly senses. He works within you a spiritual feeling, that in your own heart and conscience you may find the effect of His Word. Thus by the conjunction of Christ with my soul, I get a thousand times a greater benefit than the body does by the soul, for the body by the presence of the soul gets only an earthly and temporal life, subject to continual misery, but by the presence of Christ in my soul, I see a blessed life, I feel a blessed life, and that life daily increases in me more and more. Therefore the ground of all our perfection and blessedness consists in this conjunction and so even if you lived as long as Methuselah, and spent your whole life seeking, yet if in the last hour you were to get this conjunction, you would think your labour well worth it, for you would have gained enough. If you have gained Christ, you have gained everything with Him. Thus the applying of Christ to your soul is the fountain of all your joy and felicity.

Now let us see how we get this conjunction. This is a spiritual conjunction, hard and difficult to be acquired or procured. How then is it brought about? What are the means God uses in this conjunction, and what are the means man uses in it in order to get Christ, to put Christ Jesus in our soul, and to make Christ Jesus one with us? There is one means employed on God’s part-—God helps us to get Christ; and another means employed on our part. On the part of God, there is the Holy Spirit, who offers the Body and Blood of Christ to us. On our part there must also be a means employed, or else when He offers, we will not be able to receive. Therefore there be faith to our souls to receive what the Holy Spirit offers, to receive the heavenly food of the Body and Blood of Christ. Thus faith and the Holy Spirit are the two means employed in this spiritual and heavenly conjunction. By these two means, by faith and the Holy Spirit, I receive the Body of Christ--The Body of Christ is mine, and He is given to my soul.

--Robert Bruce
"The Lord's Supper in Particular"