Jesus Himself by Andrew Murray is a very short book — two addresses on the risen Christ meeting his disciples — built on the Emmaus road, where “Jesus himself drew near, and went with them” (Luke 24:15). Its whole message can be said in a breath: what the Christian needs above every gift, blessing, or experience is not more teaching about Jesus but the living presence of Jesus himself. This guide walks through Murray’s aim, the shape of the two addresses, the themes that run through them, and how to read the book slowly today. You can read the full text free on Ochorus at Jesus Himself.
What the book is, and what Murray is after
Published in 1893, Jesus Himself gathers two spoken addresses Andrew Murray gave on the presence of the risen Lord. It is one of the briefest things in his large body of devotional writing, and that brevity is the point: he is not building an argument so much as pressing a single truth until it lodges in the heart. Murray tells us where the whole book began — with a phrase that would not leave him alone.
“How possible it is to have Jesus Himself with us and never to know it, and how possible is it to preach of, and to listen to all the truth about Jesus Himself and yet not know Him.”
Andrew Murray
That is his aim in a sentence. Many believers, he thinks, rest in the blessings of Christ — his teaching, his help, blessed experiences, times when the heart is stirred — and quietly miss the Lord who gives them. Murray’s burden is to move the reader past all of that to Christ’s own personal presence. The living Jesus, he insists, changes the whole footing of the Christian life:
“A dead Christ, I must do everything for; a living Christ does everything for me.”
Andrew Murray
Everything Murray says afterward flows from that contrast. He is not offering a new effort to attempt but a Person to receive.
The two addresses
The first address takes as its text Luke 24:31 — “their eyes were opened, and they knew him” — and reads the Emmaus road as a map of the Christian life in four stages. The disciples begin the day with sad hearts, believing Jesus dead (the angel’s rebuke, “Why do you seek the living among the dead?” in Luke 24:5, hangs over them). Then comes the slow, unbelieving heart, for the risen Christ has to say, “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe” (Luke 24:25). As he opens the Scriptures, they reach the burning heart — a real and blessed experience, yet still not the goal. Only when he breaks the bread and their eyes are opened do they arrive at the satisfied heart: they have met not merely a truth but Jesus himself. Murray warns readers not to settle in the third stage, however warm it feels, but to press on to the fourth.
He then asks a searching question — to whom does Christ reveal himself? — and answers from the passage: to those who have forsaken all to follow him (Matthew 16:24), to those willing to be convicted of their unbelief, and to those who, like the two at Emmaus, will not let him pass on but constrain him to stay. He likens this holy insistence to Jacob at Peniel: “I will not let you go unless you bless me” (Genesis 32:26).
The second address turns from the Emmaus meeting to the parting promise, “Behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20). Here Murray dwells on why the ascended Christ can be nearer than the earthly Jesus ever was to Peter or John — because, lifted above every limit of locality (Ephesians 4:10), he now fills all things by the Spirit and can be with every believer at once. This address is more practical, laying out how the abiding presence is received and kept.
“It is simply the presence of the Lord Jesus. That is the secret of the Christian’s strength and joy.”
Andrew Murray
The central themes
The personal presence of Jesus himself
The thread that ties both addresses together is Murray’s refusal to let the reader be satisfied with anything less than Christ’s own presence. It is not the water only that he wants us to seek, but the fountain:
“We ask not only to drink the living water, but we also want the fountain. We ask not only to bathe ourselves in the light, but we also want the Sun of Righteousness within our hearts.”
Andrew Murray
Holiness, for Murray, is simply Christ himself indwelling — he cites 1 Corinthians 1:30, that Christ “became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification,” and puts it starkly: “You have as much holiness as you have of Christ.” Even obedience, he argues, fails when we try to obey a distant Christ; it becomes joy only in the nearness of the living one.
When he asks what lies behind the feeble life of so many Christians, he gives one answer that gathers up all the rest:
“Each believer wants the personal full revelation of a personal Christ as an indwelling Lord, as a satisfying portion.”
Andrew Murray
That is the ache the whole book is written to name and to answer. We can be busy with Christ’s work and warmed by Christ’s truth and still be, in Murray’s phrase, “without the living Jesus.”
From absence to nearness
The four Emmaus stages describe a movement that many readers will recognize in themselves: from the grief of a Christ who seems dead and far off, through the frustration of unbelief, to warm passing experiences, and at last to settled fellowship. Murray’s diagnosis is gentle but pointed — the obstacle is usually not that Jesus is absent but that we fail to reckon on his presence. Christ is near; our eyes are held.
Faith that receives him
When Murray finally answers the question, “How can I get and keep this presence?”, his first word is believe. Faith is more than trust; it is the organ by which the unseen Lord is seen.
“Faith is my spiritual eyesight for the unseen and heavenly.”
Andrew Murray
To this he adds three companions of faith. First, obey — he tells of a gatekeeper who would not let even the Prime Minister pass without his fee, admiring the man who simply stuck to his orders, and he presses the same soldier’s readiness on the believer: “I must obey.” Second, keep close intercourse with Christ every day, for the joy of friendship is found in meeting. And third, work for him, since a Christ who has taken possession of the heart will not stay hidden any more than a child can keep from singing what she loves. On the daily meeting he is careful to distinguish real fellowship from mere routine:
“Prayer and Bible reading are not fellowship with Jesus. What we need every morning is to meet Jesus.”
Andrew Murray
Joy and rest
The fruit of the abiding presence is peace. Murray tells the mother-and-child picture that recurs through the book: the infant does not think of its mother, yet the mother never stops thinking of the child. So, he says, “while I have to think of my business, Jesus will think of me, and He will come in and take charge of me.” The banker at his desk, the busy woman in her household, the man weighed with care — none of them can be always thinking of Jesus, and none of them needs to. It is enough that Jesus is thinking of them. Out of that trust comes a rest the anxious heart could never manufacture, and a self-forgetful obedience that flows, as Murray says of Christ himself, into the Father’s will (John 6:38; Romans 13:14, “put on the Lord Jesus Christ”).
Who should read it
This is a book for the Christian whose faith has quietly hardened into duties and doctrines and lost its sense of a living Companion — the reader who can say, with Murray’s hearers, that they know great truths about Christ and yet do not know that it was Jesus himself who drew near. It suits new believers and seasoned ones alike, because its call is not to advanced knowledge but to a simpler, deeper reliance. Because it is so short and so warm, it also makes a fine first taste of Andrew Murray for anyone who has heard his name but never opened him. Readers who love it will find the same current running through his companion classics — see the author’s page for Andrew Murray, and his sustained teaching on the life of prayer in The Inner Chamber.
How to read it today
Read it slowly, and read it as prayer rather than information — Murray plainly means it that way, closing the first address by taking the reader “by the hand” to plead for the presence of Christ. A few suggestions:
- Read the whole book in one or two unhurried sittings; it is only two addresses, and the argument loses its force when broken into fragments.
- Keep Luke 24 open beside it. Let the four stages — sad, slow, burning, satisfied (Luke 24:5, 24:25, 24:32, 24:31) — become a mirror, and ask honestly where you are standing.
- Do not chase feelings. Murray warns explicitly against waiting for experiences; the path he marks is to believe, to obey, and to meet Jesus daily, trusting the promise of Matthew 28:20 rather than measuring your mood.
- Turn each theme into a short prayer before moving on. The book is built to be answered, not merely finished.
Because it is brief, it rewards return visits; many readers keep it near their morning fellowship and reread an address when the sense of Christ’s nearness grows faint.
For reflection
Use these questions alone, in a journal, or with a small group:
- Which of Murray’s four stages — the sad heart, the slow heart, the burning heart, the satisfied heart — best describes you right now, and what would it mean to move on from there?
- Murray says a dead Christ is one we must do everything for, while a living Christ does everything for us. Where are you still trying to do for Jesus what he longs to do for you?
- What “blessings” of Christ — teaching, experiences, service — might you be resting in instead of Christ himself?
- Murray distinguishes prayer and Bible reading from actually meeting Jesus. What would it change in your mornings to seek the Person and not only the practice?
- Are you willing, like the disciples at Emmaus, to “constrain him” and not let him pass on — to keep asking until his presence is real to you?
When you are ready, begin with the book itself: read Jesus Himself free in full, then carry Murray’s theme further in The Inner Chamber.
