Andrew Murray
Andrew Murray grew up in South Africa, but was the son of a pastor from the Scottish Presbyterian Church. His father had moved to South Africa to serve the Reformed Church there, which was short of pastors but whose theology was similar to that of the Scottish Presbyterian Church.
South Africa in the 19th century was described as a “spiritual desert.” There were several reasons for this. Christian communities were still relatively small and scattered, and consisted largely of settlers who were descendants of Dutch and French immigrants. In the small settlements, there was often a small church with a priest or pastor. However, most of the clergy had been educated in the Netherlands or Scotland, and church services were often conducted in Dutch, a language that was unfamiliar and foreign to the native settlers, who spoke Afrikaans.
As a result, they viewed church services and churches as something detached from reality, stilted and rigid, and of little relevance to everyday life. Life was hard enough as it was. It was often a struggle for survival, marked by hard work, illness, drought, and conflict with local African tribes.
Revivals
Andrew Murray’s father had been praying for a revival for decades. In the late 1850s and early 1860s, a revival broke out among members of the Reformed Church. A call from three pastors to preach “the nature of God, the mission of the Holy Spirit, and the need for prayer meetings” served as the catalyst for the revival, which soon spread throughout the country.
Murray realized that the congregation he was serving needed something completely different from the formal and detached Christianity they were accustomed to in church services. They needed to be baptized with the Holy Spirit, to receive the power to live a true Christian life. All these experiences gave Murray a strong belief in the power of prayer and the impact that praying to God has on people’s lives. When Murray began writing books, faith in prayer was a central theme in much of his work.
Jesus’ parable of the vine and the branches was also a central theme for Murray. He wrote the book Abide in Christ, in which he explores this theme in depth and emphasizes the significance of Jesus’ words on this subject in the Gospel of John:
“Abide in me, and I in you. Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me.”
(John, 15:4. Source: https://app.hiddentreasures.org/en/bible/ESV/JHN.15 ).
The Keswick Movement
Murray gradually gained international recognition, largely due to his writings, and his works were widely read within the so-called Keswick movement, also known as the Higher Life movement, named after the book The Higher Christian Life by William E. Boardman. The movement is committed to preaching repentance and the baptism of the Holy Spirit, but also to what must necessarily follow the baptism of the Holy Spirit, namely sanctification. And this is something Murray was enthusiastic about as well. He attended the Keswick conferences, which were held in the idyllic town of Keswick in the Lake District of northwest England.
“I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”
Galatians 2:20. Source: https://app.hiddentreasures.org/en/bible/ESV/GAL.2).
Murray was enthusiastic about this Bible verse and the opportunities it offered him. He writes about this:
“To say, my old man has been crucified with Him, I have been crucified with Christ means this: I have seen that my old nature, my self, deserves the curse: that there is no way of getting rid of it but by death. I voluntarily give it to the death . . . I give my old man, my flesh, with its will and work, as a sinful accursed thing, to the Cross.”
https://app.hiddentreasures.org/en/hidden-treasures/1914/4/5-rays-of-light
The cross, and the fact that my old self—that is, the will that seeks to obey my passions and desires—is crucified, thus becomes the gateway to new life. The old can be put off, and something new, created by God, can fill my thoughts.
For Murray, this was not a passive attitude, where he was simply to lie still and wait for good feelings, but an active life, a course of action, in following and obeying the Word.
In another excerpt from Murray’s writings, taken from the book Like Christ, he quotes a well-known Bible verse from Paul’s letter to the Philippians, chapter 3, verse 10:
“That I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death.”
(Philippians 3: 10. Source: https://app.hiddentreasures.org/en/bible/ESV/PHP.3)
Murray describes how the message that “What were Christ’s glory and blessedness must be his victory” was extremely appealing to Paul. (Source: https://app.hiddentreasures.org/en/hidden-treasures/1915/10/3-being-made-conformable-to-his-death)
In his book The Prayer Life, he writes:
“I feel deeply that, as the cross is Christ’s highest glory, and as the Holy Spirit neither has done, nor can do, anything greater or more glorious than He did when He ‘through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God,’ so it is evident that the Holy Spirit can do nothing greater or more glorious for us than to take us up into the fellowship of that cross, and to work out also in us the same spirit of the cross which was seen in our Lord Jesus.”
(Source: https://app.hiddentreasures.org/en/hidden-treasures/1916/4/1-the-deepest-secret-of-pentecost).
The death on the cross is, therefore, a liberating glory, not something dark, negative, and depressing. To be taken up into the fellowship of that cross and to share in the Spirit of the cross, just as Jesus did, is the greatest glory anyone can experience.
Jesus—a true human being?
A central point of discussion dating all the way back to the early Church had been the view of Jesus’ humanity. The fact that Jesus was a human being like us and was tempted was a central point of contention that several of the early Church Fathers fought to preserve as a truth.
Murray was also concerned with this issue. In his book The Holiest of All, a commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews, he writes:
“And what was that way? The way through the veil, that is, His flesh. […] The veil that separated man from God was the flesh, human nature under the power of sin. Christ came in the likeness of sinful flesh and dwelt with us here outside the veil. The Word was made flesh. He also Himself in like manner partook of flesh and blood. In the days of His flesh, He was tempted like as we are; He offered up prayer and supplication with strong crying and tears. He learned obedience even to the death.”
(Source: https://app.hiddentreasures.org/en/hidden-treasures/1946/4/1-the-way-into-the-holy-of-holies)
Here, Murray touches on a crucial—yet often misunderstood—biblical truth. The fact that Jesus came in the “likeness of sinful flesh” does not mean that he ever sinned. But it means he shared our human nature and was tempted. After all, temptation isn’t the same thing as sin. Sin occurs when we consent to it. Because Jesus had a will of his own that could be tempted, yet always chose to surrender it to death—”Not my will, but yours, be done”—he was able to break the power of sin in human nature once and for all.
Murray and Gregory of Nazianzus
Murray is in agreement with the Church Father Gregory of Nazianzus on this point. Gregory is known for the quote: “That which is not assumed is not healed.” Gregory’s point was that unless Jesus took upon himself a true human nature—and thereby became fully and completely subject to human conditions—he could not save humanity.
Throughout history, many have considered the idea that Jesus was a human being like us, and was tempted in the same way, to be blasphemous. But for Gregor, Andrew Murray, and others throughout history, this has been a source of great comfort and deliverance. It is precisely the fact that Jesus truly shared our condition that makes him more than just an atoning sacrifice. That doesn’t make him superhuman either. But it makes him someone we can truly follow.
This changes everything—when it comes to our own Christian life. If Jesus were a divine superhuman who was immune to our struggles, his life would be an unattainable ideal. But when we, like Murray and Gregory, see that he truly shared our plight and overcame, he becomes our forerunner.
The cross goes from being a burden to becoming the way to liberation. This gives us a living faith that we can be transformed into the likeness of Christ today—by following in his footsteps, in the same Spirit of the cross.
Watch the film about Andrew Murray here