Christian thinking - Chambers, Oswald
I cannot soar into the heights you show,
Nor dive into the deeps that you reveal;
But it is much that high things are to know,
That deep things are to feel.
Jean Ingelow5
The safe position in christian thinking is to remember that there are deeper depths than we can fathom, higher heights than we can know; it keeps us reverent, keeps us from hardening off into a confined, cabined experience of our own.
Thinking is not of first importance; life is of first importance. Neither in natural nor in spiritual life do we begin by thinking. Christian thinking means thinking on the basis of things, not thinking in pious terms. With many the experience is right, the life of god is there, but there has been no thinking on the basis of things, and when things hit, there is confusion. If we are going to think along christian lines and know where to place our individual experiences, it is time we exercised ourselves intellectually as well as spiritually.
1. Redemption
The gospel to me is simply irresistible. Being the man i am, being full of lust and pride and envy and malice and hatred and false good, and all accumulated exaggerated misery to me the gospel of the grace of god, and the redemption of Christ, and the regeneration and sanctification of the holy ghost, that gospel is to me simply irresistible, and i cannot understand why it is not equally irresistible to every mortal man born of woman.
Pascal
Redemption is the great outside fact of the christian faith; it has to do not only with a mans experience of salvation, but with the basis of his thinking. The revelation of redemption means that Jesus Christ came here in order that by means of his death on the cross he might put the whole human race on a redemptive basis, so making it possible for every man to get back into perfect communion with god. I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do. What was finished? The redemption of the world. Men are not going to be redeemed; they are redeemed. It is finished.
It was not the salvation of individual men and women like you and me that was finished: the whole human race was put on the basis of redemption. Do i believe it? Let me think of the worst man i know, the man for whom i have no affinity, the man who is a continual thorn in my flesh, who is as mean as can be; can i imagine that man being presented perfect in Christ Jesus? If i can, i have got the beginning of christian thinking. It ought to be an easy thing for the christian who thinks to conceive of any and every kind of man being presented perfect in Christ jesus, but how seldom we do think! If i am an earnest evangelical preacher i may say to a man, oh yes, i believe god can save you, while in my heart of hearts i don’t believe there is much hope for him. Our unbelief stands as the supreme barrier to Jesus Christs work in mens souls.
And he did not many mighty works there because of their unbelief (Matthew 13:58). But once let me get over my own slowness of heart to believe in Jesus Christs power to save, and i become a real generator of his power to men. Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved the solitary, incommunicable place of Jesus in our salvation! Are we banking in unshaken faith on the redemption, or do we allow mens sins and wrongs to so obliterate Jesus Christs power to save that we hinder his reaching them? He that believeth on me, i. E. , active belief based on the redemptionout of him shall flow rivers of living water. We have to be so faithful to god that through us may come the awakening of those who have not yet realised that they are redeemed.
We must distinguish between the revelation of redemption and the experience of regeneration. We don’t experience life; we are alive. We dont experience redemption; we experience regeneration, that is, we experience the life of god coming into our human nature, and immediately the life of god comes in it produces a surface of consciousness, but redemption means a great deal more than a man is conscious of. The redemption is not only for mankind, it is for the universe, for the material earth; everything that sin and the devil have touched and marred has been completely redeemed by Jesus Christ. There is a day coming when the redemption will be actually manifested, when there will be a new heaven and a new earth, with a new humanity upon it. If redemption is confounded with regeneration, we get confused. In the majority of cases men have had an experience of regeneration, but they have not thought about
What produced the experience, and when the great revelation fact of the redemption is expounded there is misunderstanding. All that a man experiences is believing in Jesus, but that experience is the gateway into the awe and wonder of the knowledge of god. And this is life eternal, that they should know thee the only true god (RV ).
The bible deals with the fundamental underlying things of human life, and one of these fundamental things is the presence of a disposition of sin in every man. Solidarity means oneness of interests, and the phrase, the solidarity of the human race indicates that there is an underlying connection running straight through human life; on the religious side this connection is the heredity of sin, which was introduced into the world through one man, not by the devil wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world . . . For that all have sinned (Romans 5:12), and when the apostle Paul says, knowing this, that our old man was crucified with him (RV ), he is referring to this heredity. Through the redemption we have deliverance from the disposition of sin which is within us, and severance from the body of sin to which we are connected by our old man; that is, we are absolutely and completely delivered from sin both in disposition and in domination: being then made free from sin . . . Unless the universality of sin is recognised we will never understand the need for the redemption. What the redemption deals with is the sin of the whole human race, not primarily with the sins of individuals, but something far more funda- mental, viz. : the heredity of sin. Pseudo-evangelism singles out the individual, it prostitutes the terrific meaning of the redemption into an individual possession, the salvation of my soul.
The basis of christian thinking is that god has redeemed the world from the possibility of condemnation on account of the heredity of sin, god was in christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them. The revelation is not that Jesus christ was punished for our sins, but he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of god in him. God nowhere holds a man responsible for having inherited the disposition of sin any more than he is held responsible for being born. We have nothing to do with our birth or with what we inherit, because we had no choice in either. A man will say, if i am not held responsible for having a wrong dis- position, what am i held responsible for? God holds a man responsible for not allowing jesus christ to deliver him from the wrong disposition when he sees that that is what he came to do. A man gets the seal of condemnation when he sees the light, and prefers darkness (see john 3:19).
If you look upon jesus christ from the common- sense standpoint you will never discern who he is; but if you look upon him as god manifested in the flesh (rv) for the purpose of putting the whole human race back to where god designed it to be, you get the meaning of redemption. The great marvellous revelation of redemption is that it atones for everyone; men are condemned to salvation through the cross of Christ. Discipleship is another matter. There are things to be brought about in this world that can only be done through those of us who are prepared to fulfill the conditions of discipleship. On the basis of the redemption i can, by committing myself to Jesus Christ and by receiving his spirit as a gift, become a disciple in my actual life; that is, i can exhibit in my mortal flesh the life also of Jesus.
2. Man
. . . What is man, that thou art mindful of him? (psalm 8:4)
(a) Man and mankind
And god created man in his own image, in the image of god created he him, male and female created he them. (genesis 1:27 rv )
There is only one begotten son of god, one created son of god, and multitudes of regenerated sons of god through the redemption. These three stand in different categories.
The bible speaks of only two menadam and jesus christ. Mankind is the term applied to the whole race of men, the mass of human beings. God did not make us in his own image; he made the federal head of the race in his image. In the day that god created man, in the likeness of god made he him; male and female created he them; and blessed them, and called their name adam [man, mg] (genesis 5:12 rv). Both man and woman are required for the completed creation of god. Jesus christ is the last adam in this sense, viz. : that he reveals the characteristics of el-shaddai, the father- mother god, all vested in the unique manifestation of the incarnation.
(b) Man as he was
And the lord god formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. (genesis 2:7)
Man as god created him is a revelation fact, not a fact we get at by our common-sense. We have never seen man. God created the earth and formed man of the dust of the ground, that is, god did not make mans body by a creative fiat, he deliberately builded it out of the dust of created matter according to a design in the divine mind. Adam and jesus christ both came
Direct from the hand of god. We are not creations of god, we are pro-created through progenitors, the heredity of the human race is mixed; that accounts for all the perplexities. And the lord god formed man of the dust of the groundthere is nothing the mat- ter with matter; what has gone wrong is the infection of material things by sin, which is not material. Sin is not in matter and material things; if it were, it would be untrue to say that jesus christ, who was made in the likeness of men, was without sin.
Genesis 2:7 reveals that mans nature was a spiri- tual, sensuous naturehe was made of the dust of the ground, and god breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. These two things, dust and divinity, make up man. It is impossible for us to conceive what adam was like before the fall; his body must have been dazzling with light through his spiritual commu- nion with god. When he took his rule over himself he not only lost his communion with god, lost the covering of glory and light inconceivable to us, he lost the dominion god intended him to have hadthou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands (psalm 8:6). Men who are their own masters are masters of nothing else. A man may feel he ought to be master of the life in the sea and air and earth, but he can only be master on the line god designed he should, viz. : that he recognised gods dominion over him. The only being who ever walked this earth as god designed man should was jesus christ. He was easily master of all created things because he main- tained a steadfast obedience to the word and the will of his father. What manner of man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey him? (matthew 8:27 rv).
Mans personal powers are apt to be looked at as a marvellous promise of what he is going to be; the bible looks at man as a ruin of what he was designed to be. There have come down in mankind remnants, broken remnants, of the first creation, they are evidence of the magnificent structure god made in the beginning, but not promises of what man is going to be.
(C) Man as he is
. . . And were by nature the children of wrath. (ephe- sians 2:3)
The words ye are of your father the devil, john 8:44, were not addressed by jesus to men generally, but to persistent religious disbelievers in himself.
By nature the children of wrath. The love of god and the wrath of god are obverse sides of the same thing, like two sides of a coin. The wrath of god is as positive as his love. God cannot be in agreement With sin. When a man is severed from god the basis of his moral life is chaos and wrath, not because god is angry like a moloch,6 it is his constitution of things. The wrath of god abides all the time a man persists in the way that leads away from god; the second he turns, he is faced with his love. Wrath is the dark line in gods face, and is expressive of his hatred of sin. Civilisation is the gloss over chaos and wrath, we are so sheltered that we are blinded to our need of god, and when calamity comes there is nothing to hold to. Over and over again in the history of the world man has made life into chaos. Men try to find their true life in everything but god, but they cannot, they find the insistence of the feet behind them all the time.
But with unhurrying chase,
And unperturbed pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
They beat—and a Voice beat
More instant than the Feet—
“All things betray thee, who betrayest Me.”
The Hound of Heaven
Francis Thompson7
Every love and justice and nobility in the world is loyal to jesus christ, and only loyal to me when i recognise him as their source. The incarnation is the very heart of god manifested on the plane of chaos and wrath; what jesus christ went through in a time phase is indicated in such words as these, my god, my god, why hast thou forsaken me? Jesus christ came right straight down into the very depths of wrath, he clothed himself with the humanity of the race that had fallen and could not lift itself, and in his own person he annihilated the wrath until there is no condemnation, no touch of the wrath of god, on those who are in christ jesus.
(d) Man as he will be
. . . He also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his son. (romans 8:29)
Gods order is seen in the first and the last; the middle is the record of mans attempt to arrange things in his own way. Man is to be again in the image of god, not by evolution, but by redemption. The meaning of redemption is not simply the regenera- tion of individuals, but that the whole human race is rehabilitated, put back to where god designed it to be, consequently any member of the human race can have the heredity of the son of god put into him, viz. : holy spirit, by right of what jesus did on the Cross. The task which confronted jesus christ was that he had to bring man, who is a sinner, back to god, forgive him his sin, and make him as holy as he is himself; and he did it single-handed. The revela- tion is that jesus christ, the last Adam, was made to be sin (rv ), the thing which severed man from god, and that he put away sin by the sacrifice of himselfthat we might become the righteousness of god in him. He lifted the human race back, not to where it was in the first adam, he lifted it back to where it never was, viz. : to where he is himself. And it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is.
3. Sin
To-day the bible revelation of sin as a positive thing has been revolted against, and sin is dealt with only as something which is ostensibly wrong; the bible view is that there is something profoundly wrong at the basis of things. Sin is a revelation fact, not a common-sense fact. No natural man is ever bothered about sin; it is the saint, not the sinner, who knows what sin is. If you confound sin with sins, you belittle the redemption, make it much ado about nothing. It is nonsense to talk about the need of redemption to enable a man to stop committing sinshis own will power enables him to do that, a decent educa- tion will prevent him from breaking out into sinful acts, but to deny that there is an heredity of sin run- ning straight through the human race aims a blasphe- mous blow at the redemption. The only word that expresses the enormity of sin is calvary.
Guilt remains guilt; you cannot bully god into any such blessing as turns guilt to merit, or penalty to rewards.
Ibsen
Ibsen saw sin, but not Calvary; not the son of god as redeemer. If it cost god Calvary to deal with sin, we have no business to make light of it.
God created Adam innocent, that is, he was intended to develop, not from evil to good, but from the natural to the spiritual by obedience, it was to be a natural progress. Adam switched off from gods design, instead of maintaining his dependence on god he took his rule over himself, and thereby introduced sin into the world. Sin is not wrong doing, it is wrong being, deliberate and emphatic independence of god. Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world . . . For that all have sinned (Romans 5:12). it is not now a question of development, the problem is that an opposing force has come in which always says i wont and never can be made to say i will. I wont is not imperfect i will; it never develops into i will, its very nature is shant and wont. Sin is mutiny against gods rule; not vileness of conduct, but red-handed anarchy. When you get sin revealed in you, you know that that phrase is not too strong. It is not that men are conscious anarchiststhe devil is the only being in whom sin is conscious anarchybut that a man perceives that that is the nature of sin once the light of god is thrown upon it; it is enmity against god, not at enmity, it is enmity. This opposing principle is abnormal, it was not in human nature as god designed it. The exposition of the nature of sin rarely enters into my human consciousness, when it does i know there is nothing in my spirit to deliver me from it, i am powerless; sold under sin, said paul. Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin.
Bear in mind that it requires the holy ghost to convict a man of sin; any man knows that immorality is wrong, his conscience tells him it is; but it takes the holy ghost to convince a man that the thing he most highly esteems, viz. : his own self-government, is an abomination in the sight of god (rv). There is nothing more highly esteemed among men than self-realisation, but it is the one thing of which jesus christ is the enemy because its central citadel is inde- pendence of god. If a man can stand on his own feet morallyand many a man canwhat does he want with jesus christ and his salvation? With for- giveness? Some men are driven to god by appalling conviction of sins, but conviction of sins is not con- viction of sin. Conviction of sin never comes as an elementary experience. If you try to convict a man of sin to begin with you draw him to a plan of salvation, but not to jesus christ.
The essence of sin is my claim to my right to myself, it goes deeper down than all the sins that ever were committed. Sin cant be forgiven because it is not an act; you can only be forgiven for the sins you commit, not for an heredity. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins: sin must be cleansed by the miracle of gods grace. It does not awaken antipathy in a man when you tell him god will forgive him his sins because of what jesus did on the cross, but it does awaken antipa- thy when you tell him he has to give up his right to himself. Nothing is so much resented as the idea that i am not to be my own master. If any man will be my disciple, said jesus, let him deny himself, i. E. , deny his right to himself, not give up external sins, those are excrescences. The point is, am i pre- pared deliberately to give up my right to myself to jesus christ? Prepared to say, yes, take complete control? If i am, jesus christ has gained a disciple. We dont go in for making disciples to-day, it takes too long; we are all for passionate evangelismtaken up with adding to the statistics of saved souls, add- ing to denominational membership, taken up with the things which show splendid success. Jesus christ
Took the long, long trailif any man will come after me, let him deny himself take time to make up your mind. Men were not to be swept into the king- dom on tidal waves of evangelism, not to have their wits paralysed by supernatural means; they were to come deliberately, knowing what they were doing. One life straight through to god on the ground of discipleship is more satisfactory in his sight than numbers who are saved but go no further. Over and over again men and women who should stand in the forefront for god are knocked clean out. When a cri- sis comes, the reason is not external wrongdoing, but something has never been given up, there is some- thing in which jesus christ has not had his right of way, and the discipleship is marred. God will give us ample opportunity of proving whether we have ever really given up the right to ourselves to jesus christ. The one who has offers no hindrance to the working of the holy spirit through him.
4. New birth
As soon as we begin to examine the foundations of our salvation we are up against the thoughts of god, and as christians we ought to be busy thinking gods thoughts after him. That is where we fall short; we are delighted with the fact that once i was this, and now i am that, but simply to have a vivid experience is not sufficient if we are to be at our best for god. It is because of the refusal to think on christian lines that satan has come in as angel of light and switched off numbers of gods children in their head, with the result that there is a divorce between heart and head. There is nothing simpler under heaven than to become a christian, but after that it is not easy; we have to leave the word of the beginning of christ, and press on unto full growth (hebrews 6:1 rv mg).
Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of god. ( john 3:3)
There is no natural law whereby a man can be born a second timenicodemus was right there: how can a man be born when he is old? No man ought to need to be born again; the fact that he does indi- cates that something has gone wrong with the human race. According to modern thinking, man is a great being in the making; his attainments are looked on as a wonderful promise of what he is going to be; we are obsessed with the evolutionary idea. Jesus christ talks about a revolutionye must be born again. The evolutionary idea doesnt cover all the facts. Not every man needs to be converted; conversion simply means turning in another direction, it may be a right or a wrong direction; but every man needs to be born from above if he is going to see the kingdom of god. In listening to some presentations of the gospel you get the impression that a man has to be a blackguard before jesus christ can do anything for him. It is true that jesus christ can make a saint out of any material, but the man down-and-out in sin is not the only class he deals with. It was to nicodemus, a godly upright man, not to a sinner as we understand the term, that he said, marvel not that i said unto thee, ye must be born again. Class yourself with the whole human race, it is necessary for you, the teacher of israel, to be born again. It is easier to think about the sensa- tional cases of men being transformed and lifted into a new realm by gods grace, but there are hundreds of men who are not sinners in the external sense. Does jesus christ do anything for them? Many christians dont seem to know what hap- pened to them when they were born again, that is why they continually go back to the initial experience of having had their sins forgiven, they dont press on unto full growth.
In the new testament new birth is always spoken of in terms of sanctification, not of salvation; to be saved means that a man receives the gift of eternal life, which is the gift of god; sancti- fication means that his spirit becomes the birthplace of the son of god. My little children, of whom i am again in travail until christ be formed in you (galatians 4:19 rv ). If jesus christ is going to be in me, he must come into me from the outside; he must be formed in me. It is not a question of being saved from hell, the redemption has to do with that; this is the redemption at work in my conscious life. I become a bethlehem for the life of the son of god. The part of human nature is to sacrifice itself to nourish that life, and every now and again there are things demanded by the life of the son of god in me that my human nature neither likes nor understands. What simeon said to marya sword shall pierce through thine own soul (rv)is true of my human nature. Am i willing for my human nature to be sac- rificed in order that the life of the son of god in me may be nourished, or do i only want him to see me through certain difficulties? The way the life of the son of god is nourished in me is by prayer and bible revelation, and by obedience when a crisis comes.
When i am born again my human nature is not different, it is the same as before, i am related to life in the same way, i have the same bodily organs, but the mainspring is different, and i have to see now that all my members are dominated by the new dis- position (see romans 6:13, 19). There is only one kind of human nature, and that is the human nature we have all got, and there is only one kind of holiness, the holiness of jesus christ. Give him elbowroom, and he will manifest himself in you, and other peo- ple will recognise him. Human beings know human beings too well to mistake where goodness comes from; when they see certain characteristics they will know they come only from the indwelling of jesus. It is not the manifestation of noble human traits, but of a real family likeness to jesus. It is his gentleness, his patience, his purity, never mine. The whole art of spirituality is that my human nature should retire and let the new disposition have its way. We are told to follow his steps, but we cant do it; the heredity in us is not the same as it is in jesus. Anyone who reads the sermon on the mount with his eyes open knows that something must happen if it is going to be lived out in him, for he has not the goods on board to produce the result. There is only one being who can live the sermon on the mount and that is the son of god. If i will walk in the light as god is in the light, then the holy nature of jesus manifests itself in me. It is not that i receive an impartation of the divine nature and then am left to work it out by myself jesus christ is made unto us . . . Sanctification, that is, he is the holy nature which we receive. Blessed are the poor in spirit, said jesus, because it is through that poverty i enter his kingdom; i can- not enter it as a good man or woman, i can only enter it as a complete pauper. The knowledge of my poverty brings me to the frontier where jesus christ works, as long as a man is sufficient for himself, god can do nothing for him. A man may be pagan-ly all right, in fact a pagan is a delightful man to know, he is not out at elbows, not troubled or upset, and he cannot understand why you should talk of the need to be born again. The born-again man has been put on the basis of a new construction of humanity, consequently for a time he is chaotic, disturbed, broken, and at this stage he is not so desirable as the man who represents the climax of the natural life. Other natural virtues are our deepest inheritance, but when the miracle of new birth is experienced, the first thing that happens is the corruption of those virtues because they can never come anywhere near what god demands. Jesus christ loved moral beauty (see mark 10:21), but he never said it would do. The natural virtues are a delight to god because he designed them, they are fine and noble, but behind them is a disposition which may cause a mans morality to go by the board. What jesus christ does in new birth is to put in a disposition that trans- forms morality into holiness. He came to put into the man who knows he needs it his own heredity of holi- ness; to bring him into a oneness with god which he never had through natural birth. That they may be one, even as we are one. The experimental aspect of redemption is repen- tance; the only proof that a man is born from above is that he brings forth fruits meet for repentance. That is the one characteristic of new testament regeneration, and it hits desperately hard because the holy spirit brings conviction on the most humiliat- ing lines. Many a powerless, fruitless christian life is the result of a refusal to obey in some insignifi- cant thingfirst go. It is extraordinary what we are brought up against when the holy spirit is at work in us, and the thing that fights longest against his demands is my prideful claim to my right to myself. The only sign of regeneration in practical experience is that we begin to make our life in accordance with the demands of god. Jesus christ did not only come to present what gods normal man should be, he came to make the way for everyone of us to get there, and the gateway is his cross. I cannot begin by imitating Jesus christ, but only by being born into his kingdom; then when i have been regenerated and have received the heredity of the son of god, i find that his teaching belongs to that heredity, not to my human nature. All this means great deliberation on our part. God does not expect us to understand these things in order to be saved, salvation is of gods free grace; but he does expect us to do our bit in appreciation of his so great salvation.
5. Repentance
Never mistake remorse for repentance; remorse sim- ply puts a man in hell while he is on earth, it carries no remedial quality with it at all, nothing that betters a man. An unawakened sinner knows no remorse, but immediately a man recognises his sin he experiences the pain of being gnawed by a sense of guilt, for which punishment would be a heaven of relief, but no punishment can touch it. In the case of cain (see genesis 4:914) remorse is seen at its height: mine iniquity is greater than can be forgiven (4:13 rv mg) cain was in the condition of being found out by his own sin; his conscience recognised what he had done, and he knew that god recognised it too. Remorse is not the recognition that i am detected by somebody else, i can defy that; remorse comes when intellectu- ally and morally, i recognise my own guilt. It is a desperate thing for me to realise that i am a sneak, that i am sensual and proud, that is my sin finding me out. The holy spirit never convicts of sin until he has got jesus christ pretty close up; a human being would like to convict of sin before jesus christ is there. The classic experience of cain has all lesser experiences folded up in it; few of us are actually murderers, but we are all criminals in potentiality whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer (1 john 3:15); and one of the greatest humiliations in work for god is that we are never free from the reminder by the holy spirit of what we might be in actuality but for the grace of god. When any sin is recalled with a gnawing sense of guilt this biting again of remorse, watch carefully that it does not make you whine and indulge in sulks about the consequences. The beginning of sulks is the blaming of everybody but yourself, and every step you take in that direction leads further away from god and from the possibility of repentance. Whenever the lash of remorse comes, never try to prevent it, every bit of it is deserved. And if you are a worker, never tell a lie out of sympathy and say, oh well, you dont need to feel like that, you couldnt help it. Never tell a lie to another soul.
The temptation is tremendously strong to sympathise with a man and prove a traitor to his souls true instincts; he may fling off from you at a tangent, but truth will tell in the end. Reformation, which means to form again or renew, is a law that works in human nature apart from the grace of god as well as after regeneration; if it takes place apart from regeneration it is simply the reformation of a rebel. Certain forms of wild oats bring forth their crop and pass and a man becomes different in conduct, but he is a deeply entrenched unregenerate person. That a man stops being bad and becomes good may have nothing to do with salva- tion; the only one sign that a man is saved is repentance. Instances of reformation apart from the grace of god can be multiplied because there is something in human nature that reacts towards reformation when once the right influence is brought to bear at the right time, e. G. , the boy who wont reform for his fathers threats or his schoolmasters punishment, will experience a reaction towards reformation through his mothers love. Again, though a bad man become worse in the presence of suspicious people, when with little children he experiences a reaction towards reformation. If being in the presence of a good man or woman does not produce a reaction towards goodness in me, i am in a bad way. The apostle paul sums up this law when he says, . . . Not knowing that the goodness of god leadeth thee to repentance? (Romans 2:4).
And zacchaeus stood, and said unto the lord, behold lord, the half of my goods i give to the poor; and if i have taken anything from any man by false accusation, i restore him fourfold (luke 19:8). Why did zacchaeus say that? Who had said a word about his peculations! The desire to make restitution was stirred through his coming into the presence of jesus, and was a sign of the working of this inevitable law of reaction. Restitution means the determination to do right to everybody i have done, and it is aston- ishing the things the holy spirit will remind us of that we have to put right. Over and over again during times of revival and great religious awakening workers are presented with this puzzle, that people do unquestionably make restitutionmen who stole pay up like sheep, with no notion why they do it, and if the worker is not well taught he will mistake this for the work of the holy spirit and a sign that they are born again, when the fact is that the truth has been so clearly put that it caused their nature to react towards reformation.
The thing to do with people in that condition is to get them to receive something from god. Luke 11:25 is a picture of clear, sweeping refor- mation, the house swept and garnished; but what our lord points out is the peril of a moral victory unused because the heart is left empty. The man who reforms without any knowledge of the grace of god is the subtlest infidel with regard to the need of regeneration. It is a good thing to have the heart swept, but it becomes the worst thing if the heart is left vacant for spirits more evil than itself to enter; jesus said that the last state of that man becometh worse than the first (rv ).
Reformation is a good thing, but like every other good thing it is the enemy of the best. Regeneration means filling the heart with something positive, viz. , the holy spirit. Repentance is the experimental side of redemption and is altogether different from remorse or reformation. Repentance is a new testament word and cannot be applied outside the new testament. We all experience remorse, disgust with ourselves over the wrong we have done when we are found out by it, but the rarest miracle of gods grace is the sorrow that puts an end for ever to the thing for which i am sorry. Repentance involves the receiving of a totally new disposition so that i never do the wrong thing again. The marvel of conviction of sin, of forgiveness and of the holiness of god are so interwoven that the only forgiven man is the holy man.
If god in forgiving me does not turn me into the standard of the forgiver, to talk about being saved from hell and made right for heaven is a juggling trick to get rid of the responsibility of seeing that my life justifies god in forgiving me. The great element in practical christianityand that is the only kind of christianity there isis this note of repentance, which means i am willing to go all lengths so long as gods law which i have broken is cleared in my case. . . That thou mayest be justified when thou speakest, and be clear when thou judgest (psalm 51:4 rv). Have i ever had a moment before god when i have said, my god, i deserve all that thou canst bring on me as punishment for breaking thy holy lawagainst thee, thee only, have i sinned, and done that which is evil in thy sight ? The essence of repentance is that it destroys the lust of self-vindication; wherever that lust resides the repentance is not true. Repentance brings us to the place where we are willing to receive any punishment under heaven so long as the law we have bro- ken is justified. That is repentance, and i think i am right in saying that very few of us know anything at all about it. We have the idea nowadays that god is so loving and gentle and kind that all we need do is to say we feel sorry for the wrong we have done and we will try to be better. That is not repentance; repentance means that i am re-made on a plane which justifies god in forgiving me.
Once get this kind of thing into your mind and you will understand what is meant by conviction of sin. The repentant man experiences the humiliating conviction that he has broken the law of god and he is willing to accept, on gods terms, the gift of a new life which will prove sufficient in him to enable him to live a holy life, not hereafter, but here and now. Strictly speaking, repentance is a gift of god; a man cannot repent when he chooses. Repentance does not spring out of the human heart, it springs from a ground outside the human heart, viz. , the ground of the redemption.
6. Reality
(a) The will to believe the redeemer . . . Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed. ( john 20:29; cf. John 11:40)
Reality is the thing which works out absolutely sol- idly true in my personal life, but i must be careful not to confound the reality of my experience with reality itself. For instance, when i am born again i am not conscious of the redemption of my lord, the one thing that is real to me is that i have been born again; but if i watch the working of the holy spirit i find that he takes me clean out of myself till i no longer pay any attention to my experiences, i am concerned only with the reality which produced those experiences, viz. , the redemption. If i am left with my experiences, they have not been produced by the redemption. If experience is made the only guide it will produce that peculiar type of isolated life that is never found in the new testament.
We say seeing is believing, but it is not; we must believe a thing is possible before we would believe it even though we saw it. Belief must be the will to believe, and i can never will to believe with- out a violent effort on my part to dissociate myself from all my old ways of looking at things and putting myself right over on to god. It is god who draws me, my relationship is to him, consequently the issue of will comes in at once will i transact on what god says? Never discuss with anyone when god speaks; discussion on spiritual matters is impertinent. God never discusses with anyone. Let me stake my all, blindly, as far as feelings are concerned, on the reality of the redemption, and before long that reality will begin to tell in my actual life, which will be the evidence that the transaction has taken place. But there must be the deliberate surrender of will, not a surrender to the persuasive power of a personality, but a deliberate launching forth on god and what he says. Remember, you must urge the will to an issue; you must come to the point where you will to believe the redeemer, and deliberately wash your hands of the consequences. In testing for ourselves our relation to reality we are not left in a vague fog, we have the word of god expressing god to us, and the word of god, our lord jesus christ, expresses himself to us through his teaching, made vitally applicable to every domain of our human life. Any attempt to divorce the words of god from the word of god leads to unreality; the words of god are only vitally real when we are in a right relationship to god through the word. Men worship an intellectual creed, and you cant dispute it because it is logically correct, but it does not produce saints; it produces stalwarts and stoics but not new testament saints, because it is based on adherence to the literal words rather than on a vital relationship to god, who is the one abiding reality. In the final issue christian principles are found to be antichrist, i. E. , an authority other than christ himself. It is quite possible to have an intellectual appreciation of the redemption without any experience of supernatural grace; an experience of supernatural grace comes by committing myself to a person, not to a creed or a conviction. I can never find reality by looking within; the only way i can get at reality is by dumping myself outside myself on to someone else, viz. : god, imme- diately i do i am brought in touch with reality.
(b) The will to receive the redeemer
but as many as received him . . . ( john 1:12)
We do not create truth, we receive it. There are things which you perceive clearly, but are they real to you? They are not real if you have never been through a transaction of will in connection with them, your perception is based on the weaving of your own brain, not on the knowledge of someone who knows you. The giver is god, and every gift he offers is based on his knowledge of us; our attitude is to be that of receiving from him all the time, and in this way we become sons and daughters of god. It requires the greatest effort, and produces the greatest humility, to receive anything from god, we would much sooner earn it. Receiving is the evidence of a disciple of the lord; reasoning about it is the indication of a dictator to god. Effective repentance is witnessed to by my receiving from god instead of reasoning why god should give it to me. When i am willing to be such a fool as to accept, that is repentance; the other is rational pride. We can only get at reality by means of our conscience which ultimately embraces both head and heart. There is always a practical proof when we do get at reality, viz. , actuality is made in accord with it. Does your intellect make you in accord actually with what you think? Of course it does not. Read the lives of some of the most intellectual men, men
Whose aesthetic sensibilities are of the finest order, but their actual life wont bear looking at. I cannot get at reality by my intellect or by emotion, but only by my conscience bringing me in touch with the redemption. When the holy spirit gets hold of my conscience he convicts me of unreality, and when i respond to god i come in touch with reality and experience a sense of wonder that he should have done this for me! It is not extravagant, it is the result of a totally new adjustment, a relation to the reality which has been created in me by means of my abandonment to Jesus Christ.
(c) The will to obey the redeemer
If ye love me, keep my commandments. ( john 14:15; see vv. 21, 23; 15:1112) these verses are specimens of many that reveal what is to be the abiding attitude of the saint, viz. : obeying the commandments of one whom we can only believe by will, and whose gifts we can only receive by will. We will to believe him, then we obey by will. These exercises of the will are essential to the wholesome upkeep of a saints actual life. The effort on the human side is to maintain the childlike relation to god, receiving from him all the time, then obedience works out in every detail. When a man is rightly related to god it is the holy ghost who works through him, and as long as he maintains the will to believe, the will to receive and the will to obey, the life of Jesus is manifested in his mortal flesh.
Beware of any hesitation to abandon to god. It is the meanest characteristics of our personality that are at work whenever we hesitate, there is some element of self-interest that wont submit to god. When we do cut the shore lines and launch forth, what happens is a great deal more than a vision of the indwelling of god; what happens is the positive miracle of the redemption at work in us, and we have patiently to make it permeate everything. Our relationship to god is first that of personality, not of intellect; intellect comes in after to explain what has transpired, and it is the ordering of the mind that makes a man a teacher and an instructor. Be stably rooted in god and then begin to know, begin to use those rusty brains.
Beware of having an overweening interest in your own character so that you are inclined to believe in god on that account; at the same time be careful to allow nothing that would hinder your relationship to god, because any impairing of that relationship hinders him in getting at other souls through you. Continually revise your relationship to god until the only certainty you have is not that you are faithful, but that he is. Priggishness is based on concern for my own whiteness, a pathetic whine i am afraid i am not faithful; i am afraid i shall never be what god wants me to be. Get into contact with reality and what you feel no longer matters to you, the one terrific reality is god.
An abiding way of maintaining our relation to reality is intercession. Intercession means that i strive earnestly to have my human soul moved by the attitude of my lord to the particular person i am praying for. That is where our work lies, and we shirk it by becoming active workers; we do the things that can be tabulated and scheduled, and we wont do the one thing that has no snares. Intercession keeps the relationship to god completely open. You can- not intercede if you do not believe in the reality of redemption, you will turn intercession into futile sympathy with human beings which only increases their submissive content to being out of touch with god. Intercession means getting the mind of Christ about the one for whom we pray, that is what is meant by filling up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ; and that is why there are so few intercessors. Be careful not to enmesh yourself in more difficulties than god has engineered for you to know; if you know too much, more than god has engineered, you cannot pray, the condition of the people is so crushing that you cant get through to reality. The true intercessor is the one who realises pauls meaning when he says, for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the spirit [himself] maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered (Romans 8:26).
7. The holy spirit
(a) the holy spirit and revelation purpose
. . . Holy men of god spake as they were moved by the holy ghost. (2 peter 1:21)
Bear in mind that there is a twofold attitude to be maintained in dealing with the self-revelation of God first, its historic setting; second, its value to me personally. It is essential to have an historic basis for our christian faith: our faith must be centred in the life and death of the historic jesus. Why is it that that life and death have an importance out of all proportion to every other historic fact? Because there the redemption is brought to a focus. Jesus christ was not a man who twenty centuries ago lived on this earth for thirty-three years and was crucified; he was god incarnate, manifested at one point of history. All before looked forward to that point; all since look back to it. The presentation of this fact produces what no other fact in the whole of history ever could produce, viz. : the miracle of god at work in human souls. The death of jesus was not the death of a mar- tyr, it was the revelation of the eternal heart of god. That is why the cross is gods last word; that does
Not mean god is not speaking still, it means that he is saying nothing contrary to the cross.
The tendency abroad to-day is to do away with the historic setting of the revelation of god in christ in the gospels, to do away with what the apostles wrote, and say, all that is needed is to receive the holy spirit and we will have a private interpretation of our own. But no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation. For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men . . . Spake as they were moved by the holy ghost. That makes it incumbent upon us to be reverent to a degree with what the apostles wrote. The epistles are not the cogitations of men of extraordinary spiritual genius, but the posthumous work of the ascended christ and they have therefore a peculiar significance in the programme of redemption. The holy ghost used these men, with all their personal idiosyncrasies, to convey gods message of salvation to the world. Our lord, so to speak, incarnated himself in them the message of god must always be incarnated, but it remains the message of god. The epistles are the exposition of why god became manifest in the flesh, and when by submissive reception i commit myself to that revelation, the holy ghost begins to interpret to me what jesus christ did on the cross.
Neither pray i for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word ( john 17:20). Everyone who believes on jesus, believes on him through their word. In the experience of salvation all are alike; in the matter of authoritative inspiration the apostles stand alone; their word is as final as jesus christs. We have no counterpart to that. The inspiration the holy ghost gives us is not for revelation purposes, but for insight into the revelation already given. Apostolic inspiration is not an experience, it is as great a miracle as the incarna- tion. The one great need is for the holy spirit to be received, because he will open up to us not only our own salvation, and the whole of the new testament revelation, he will open up the treasures of the old testamenteven the mystery which hath been hid from ages and from generations, but now is made manifest to his saints: . . . Which is christ in you, the hope of glory (colossians 1:2627).
(b) The holy spirit and redemptive preaching
For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness. . . . It pleased god by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. (1 corinthians 1:18, 21)
We are nowhere told to preach salvation, or sanctification, or divine healing; we are told to lift up Jesus, who is the redeemer, and he will produce his redemptive results in the souls of men. If i preach only the effects of the redemption, describe in persuasive speech what god has done for me, nothing will hap- pen. It is only when i am humble enough, and stupid enough, to preach the cross that the miracle of god takes place. The preaching of the cross creates that which enables a man to believe in god, because the cross is the manifestation of the redemption. The cross condemns men to salvation. The foolishness of preaching is the way god has chosen to make the redemption efficacious in human lives. You cant persuade a man to believe in god; belief in god is not an act of the intellect, it is a moral creation produced by the interaction of gods spirit and my spirit in willing obedience; intellect comes in afterwards to explain what has happened. In preaching the cross we use our intellect, not to prove that Jesus died, but to present the fact of his death. The danger is to give expression to subjective experiences we have had; but that will never produce the same experiences in others, it is personal testimony and has its right place, but it is not preaching the cross. The bedrock permanent thing in christian experience is not the accidental bits of gods particular manifestation of it in you and me, the bedrock permanent thing is the redemption, and our particular experiences of it, slight or profound, are simply meant to introduce us to that reality.
(c) The holy spirit and revealing power
howbeit when he, the spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth. . . . He shall glorify me. ( john 16:1314)
If an expositor has never realised the need to receive, recognise and rely on the holy spirit, he takes little account of the cross but says, let us come to the teachings of Jesus. Our lord never placed the emphasis on what he taught, neither do the apostles; they place all the emphasis on the cross. Why? Because they were shrewd and intelligent? No, because the holy ghost inspired them to put the emphasis there. But god forbid that i should glory save in the cross of our lord Jesus christ. Our lord is not the great teacher of the world, he is the saviour of the world and the teacher of those who believe in him, which is a radically different matter. His teaching is of no use saving to agonise mankind with its unattainable ideals until men are made anew through the cross. Unless i am born from above (rv mg) the only result of the teachings of jesus is to produce despair. People say that jesus christ came to teach us to be good; he never did! All the teaching in the world about a man having a pure heart wont make it pure. Our lords teaching has no power in it unless i possess his nature. When i am born from above it is the conscientious relationship between my individual life and jesus christ that keeps my conduct right. Once i am brought into
Contact with reality i begin to experience the power of the redemption as it applies to every phase of life.
For he shall receive of mine, and shall shew it unto you. ( john 16:14)
The spirit of antichrist is that spirit which dis- solves by analysis (rv mg) the person of jesus someone unique, but not what the new testament claims. To preach the jesus of the gospels at the expense of the christ of the epistles is a false thing, such a false thing that it is antichrist to the very core, because it is a blow direct at what jesus said the holy spirit would do, viz. : expound him to the disciples, and through their word to innumerable lives to the end of time. If i say of course god would never convey a right interpretation of himself through a handful of men like the disciples, i am casting a slur on what jesus said, telling him that his reliance on gods promise of the spirit was without justification; that his basis of confidence on the holy spirits rev- elation of himself to the disciples was misplaced. When our lord told the disciples they would do greater works, his reliance was not on them, but on the gift of the spirit which he was to receive from the father and shed forth on them. Everything jesus said the holy spirit would do, he has done and the new testament is the revelation of it.
(d) The holy spirit and revealed proclamation
He gave some, apostles . . . For the edifying of the body of christ. (ephesians 4:1112)
Our lord gave the disciples the gift of the holy spirit as their equipment for proclaiming the gospel to the world; in the same way the holy spirit comes into my personal life to bring me out of my individual narrowness into the universal purpose of god. When i want to translate all gods redemptive work into the consciousness of being saved, i become a pious humbug. God does not save me in order that i may feel saved, but to take me up into his redemptive purpose. Christian experience must be expounded as it emerges in its most extraordinary and tragic form, not in order to make that form the standard, but as giving the basis to which every experience is to be traced. You say, i have never had such profound conviction of sin, such depth of repentance, as the apostle paul, therefore i cant be a true christian. We are not meant to imitate Paul in his experience, but to remember that that profound experience gives us the right direction for tracing where our own experience comes from. Paul never says, follow my way of getting into christ, because no two people ever come the same way into christ, yet they must fol- low the same ways in christ. Experience is simply the doorway into reality, if i stick in the doorway i get cold and die, die away from reality; i must go through the doorway, and in the classic experiences we get the door widest open. For the edifying of the body of christ. The new testament is the product of the holy ghost, we are literally fed into the body of christ by its words. Feed my sheep, said jesus, and all down the ages the words of the new testament have fed the children of god; if we try to nourish ourselves in any other way we produce abortions, what the writer to the hebrews calls bastards. The point for me is not simply that i appreciate with my mind what the new testament declares, but that i am brought into such a relationship with god that his words become serviceable through me to others. It sounds pathetic to talk about drawing on the life of jesus to keep the needs of my physical life supplied; but that is not his meaning; it is drawing on the life of jesus through his word that he might serve out nourishment to others through me.
8. Natural and personal life
Never run away with the idea that you are a person who has a spirit, has a soul and has a body; you are a person that is spirit, soul and body. Man is one; body, soul and spirit are terms of definition. My body is the manifest me. Some of us are so dominated by the body that our spirit lives only in the physical domain, instead of the physical being slowly taken into the spiritual by a series of moral choices. Our spirit goes no further than we bring our body. One of the best means of spiritual progress is to learn to deny the body in a great number of unnecessary ways (cf. 1 Corinthians 9:27).
First Corinthians 15:46 (howbeit that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural; and afterward that which is spiritual) lays down the fundamental basis of the way god deals with man all throughfirst the natural, then the spiritual. The whole purpose of a human personality is to turn the natural life into a spiritual life by sacrifice. The bible never speaks of the natural life as sinful, it contrasts it with the spiritual, e. G. , the natural man receiveth not the things of the spirit of god: . . . Neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. But he that is spiritual [discerneth] all things (1 Corinthians 2:1415).
Adam, the federal head of the human race, was designed by god to take part in his own development, that is, he was intended to turn the natural into the spiritual by a series of choices, which would mean moral progress. The natural life is the lamb for sacrifice. It is not fanaticism, but the sacrificing of what is absolutely legitimate and right and making it spiritual by obedience. That is the only way personality is exhibited in its true form. It has nothing to do with sin; there would have been sacrifice whether there had
Been sin or not because of gods design of man. It was not a sin for our lord to have a human body, it was not a sin for him to eat, but it would have been sin for him to eat during the forty days in the wilderness because his fathers will was otherwise.
Our lord stands as the presentation of gods normal man, and when by regeneration his life is formed in us we have to transform the natural life into a spiritual life by obedience to the will of god, letting him engineer our circumstances as he will. We are not fundamen- tally free, external circumstances are not in our hands, they are in gods hands, the one thing in which we are free is in our personal relationship to god. We are not responsible for the circumstances we are in, but we are responsible for the way we allow those cir- cumstances to affect us; we can either allow them to get on top of us, or we can allow them to transform us into what god wants us to be.
If we go under in circumstances we are held responsible because god has promised an absolutely overcoming spirit to any man who will receive him. If you are at a loss to know how to get at what god wants you to be, listen to the lord jesus. He says, if you ask god he will plant in you the very spirit that is in me (luke 11:13). If you receive the holy spirit you find that circumstances will never have power to do anything but give you the chance of sacrificing the natural to the spiritual and proving you are a son or daughter of god. And the l ord god . . . Breathed into his nostrils the breath of life (genesis 2:7), i. E. , god breathed into man that which became mans spirit, that is the indestructible factor in every human being. Man is, and he will never be un-created. Man has kinship with god as no other creation of god has; his true kinship is with god and nowhere else. When i receive the holy spirit he lifts my personality back into its primal relationship with god.
Holy spirit coming into my spirit never becomes my spirit; he energises my spirit and enables me to will and to do of his good pleasure. God has put man in an experimental sphere and if he refuses to turn the natural into the spiritual he will find himself dominated by the body, it will chain him down and make him a slave. The personality of a man apart from the spirit of god becomes enslaved to the desires of the flesh. The marvel of the life of god in a man is that he never need be dominated by anything other than spiritwalk in the spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh (galatians 5:16). But if you dont sacrifice your natural inclina- tions and impulses to the will and the word of god, you are likely to be tripped up by any of the things paul mentions: now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these. . . . It will test a man to the limit to take his stand on the redemption and the indwelling of the holy spirit and prove in actual life what god has put in him by regeneration. We are taken up with the soul-saving line instead of the line of character- building on the basis of the redemption, consequently you get people who are gloriously saved but they have never gone on to sacrifice the natural to the spiri- tualnever put the knife to the throat of an appetite, never recognised pig-headed obstinacy, never got on the track of that green-eyed monster, envy. But those things cant be in me now that i am savedand they are painted in glaring colours!
When the holy spirit begins to unearth the works of the flesh in you, dont temporise, dont whitewash them; dont call suspicion, discernment of the spirit, or ill-temper, righteous indignation; bring it to the light, come face to face with it, confess it and get it cleansed away. And they that are christs have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts. When a man is saved his human nature is not altered; human nature is marred by sin, but it is not bad. Deliverance from sin does not mean deliverance from human nature. By regeneration a man is perfectly adjusted to god, now he is required to do a mans bit, viz. : to take his human nature and make it serve the new disposition.
The honour of jesus christ is at stake in my bodily life, and if i walk in the spirit i will be ruthless to the things that wont submit to him. To crucify the flesh with the affections and lusts is not gods business, it is mans. And afterward that which is spiritual. We are made partakers of the divine nature through the promises (see 2 peter 1:4), the inherent tendency of the divine nature is implanted in us through regen- eration and we become children of god; we become, that is, not only what we are by nature, creations of god, but sons and daughters of god, with a strong family likeness to jesus.
The true conception of man is our lord. Man got out of gods order, and we are brought back not merely into the original order, but into a much better position through our lord, viz. : we are to be conformed to the image of his son. We look at the things that are expressed externally; god looks at the tendency born in us. He knows, apart from all our pious phrases and pretences, whether we have been regenerated, he sees what the life will become. Browning puts it as no other writer outside the bible:
All I could never be,
All, men ignored in me.
—This, I was worth to God
9. Discovering God
(a) Evangelical v. Eclectic expression the effort is on an individual and philanthropic scale, not on a world scale, an evangelical scaleit is unequal to the world crisis. . . . It is the climax of a generation of genial and gentle religion, with the nerve of the cross cut, which therefore breaks in our hands at a great historic crisis for lack of the moral notetonic, radical, and redemptive.
Forsyth8
Evangelicalthe belief that god was manifested in the flesh (rv) in the person of his son in order that through his death on the cross men might be redeemed. The apostle paul sums up evangeli- cal belief when he saysfor he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of god in him: that is, jesus christ takes my heredity of sin, and gives me his own heredity of holiness, and i show the altera- tion through my skin. The emphasis is apt to be put on one phase only, viz. : justification by faith; the real centre of the action of the redemption has to do with a mans ruling disposition. If a man takes the rational commonsense line he despises the evangelical view, but when he gets down to things as they are he finds that the rational view is on the fifteenth storey and the evangelical view is at the basis. The rational view misses out the fact that there is an hiatus between god and man; things are wild, there is a tragedy, something irrational not rational, at the heart of life and the way out is not by reason, but only through the cross of christ. These things are fundamental, they come straight home to the problems of a mans own heart and life. The point for me is, do i agree with god in what he condemns in the cross? That is where most of our christianity is proved to be hum- bug. We believe in what we call the plan of salva- tion, but we dont do much else. We ought to be busy thinking as christians. Up to the time of the war 9 religious people were taken up, not so much with the fundamental revelation of the redemption as with expounding a certain type of saintliness, a particular presentation of the gospel, consequently when the war struck they were not able to grasp the providen- tial order of god at all, they were found enervated, unequal to the world crisis.
(b) Temperamental v. True portrayal
God so loved, so unsparingly, as to do his sons body and soul the injury of the cross. That is the principle on which gods love dealt with the vast evil of the world. He reserved for himself what he forbade abraham to do.
Forsyth
Temperamentalthe way a man looks at life. My temperament is an inner disposition which influences my thoughts and actions to a certain extent, i. E. , i am either pessimistic or optimistic according to the way my blood circulates. It is an insult to take the temper- amental line in dealing with a human beingcheer up, look on the bright side; there are some types of suffering before which the only thing you can do is to keep your mouth shut. There are times when a man needs to be handled by god, not by his fellow men, and part of the gift of mans wisdom is to know how to be reverent with what he does not understand. To take the temperamental view of jesus christ will mean that i do not make the revelation of the bible my guide, i portray him as one who lived beyond his age and suffered in consequence; all he did was to leave us a good example which we must try to follow, so that when a man makes the supreme sac- rifice and lays down his life, he thereby redeems his own soul. A more hopeless misunderstanding of the redemption could not be. When a man lays down his life, it takes god to expound what he has done. Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. The love of god is seen in that he laid down his life for his enemies. The redemption is gods bit. None of them can by any means redeem his brother, nor give to god a ransom for him: (for the redemption of their soul is costly, and must be let alone for ever) (psalm 49:78 rv).
What forsyth is pointing out is that the tem- peramental view ignores the fact that god delib- erately paid the price of dealing with sin. It is easy if i reason from the logical common-sense point of view, to say that god created the man who became a sinner, and then condemns him to hell because he sinned. The bible says nothing of the sort. The bible says that god himself accepted the respon- sibility for sin; the cross is the proof that he did. It cost jesus christ to the last drop of blood to deal with the vast evil of the world. The true portrayal is that the cross is not the cross of a man, but the cross of god. The tragedy of the cross is the hurt to god. In the cross god and sinful man merge; consequently the cross is of more importance than all the worlds civilisations.
He that spared not his own son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things? What does that mean? It means that i can receive a new disposition the second i see my needif ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children: how much more shall your heavenly father give the holy spirit to them that ask him? It is so simple that the majority of us blunder over it, we wont come the bairn way; but when a man is up against things the words of jesus become the deepest philosophy in life come unto me; believe also in me. My relation to things proves whether or not i do believe in jesus. The life of a child of god is always the life of a child, simple and open-hearted, no ulterior motive. The bible makes more of the death of jesus than of his life and his teaching, because the teaching of jesus does not apply to you and me unless we have received his spirit. What is the good of telling me to love my enemies? I hate them! To be fathomlessly pure in heart? To have no unworthy motive? The teaching of jesus is for the life he puts in, and i receive that life by means of the cross.
(c) Dogmatic creed v. Deity of christ
No man begins his christian life by believing a creed. The man with a dogmatic creed says, you must believe this and that. Jesus says, do the will, i. E. , commit yourself to me. Truth is not in a particular statement; truth is a person, i am . . . The truth. It is a mistake to attempt to define what a man must believe before he can be a christian; his beliefs are the effect of his being a christian, not the cause of it. Immediately you lose sight of the central, majestic figure of jesus christ you are swept off your feet by all kinds of doctrine, and when big things hit you find your religion does not stand you in good stead because your creed does not agree with the truth.
The revelation of the deity of christ does not come first to a mans intellect, but to his heart and life, and he says with amazement, thou art the christ, the son of the living god. The great point of the bible revelation of god is not only that god was in christ, but that jesus christ is god. If jesus christ is not god, then the only god we have is an abstraction of our own minds. I know no other god in time or eternity than jesus christ; i have accepted all i know of god on the authority of the revelation he gave of him. He that hath seen me hath seen the father.
We never discover god until we come to a per- sonal need for him, and that drives us to jesus. The whole meaning of life is that a man discovers god for himself. It is not sin that keeps us away from jesus, but our own goodness. I am not come to call the righteous, jesus said, but sinners to repentance. We dont seem to need god until we come up against things. The basis for thinking with most of us is our ordinary logical common-sense, but when a man comes up against things he has to go deeper down than his common-sense, to fall back on something else, either fatalism or god. The christian thought is not fatalistic, it is based on the revelation of god given by jesus christ.
10. Common christian thinking
(a) The divine unction of christian teaching but ye have an unction from the holy one, and ye know all things. (1 john 2:20)
The apostle john in these verses does away with the idea that there are specialists in christian thinking as there are specialists in other domains; he says, no, the holy spirit is the one teacher, and the teach- ing he imparts is common to us all, consequently there is no excuse for any of us, no room for saying, i havent had a good education; i havent had time to study. The majority of us recognise the neces- sity of receiving the holy spirit for living, but we do not sufficiently recognise the need for drawing on the resources of the holy spirit for thinking. Many of us dont realise that we can think, we lie all abroad in our minds, wool-gathering. When we receive the holy spirit he imparts the ability to see things by intuition. Spiritual intuition lives in the same sphere as natural intuition plus the holy spirit.
I do not like thee, Dr. Fell,
The reason why I cannot tell;
But this I know, and know full well—
I do not like thee, Dr. Fell
That is natural intuition, i. E. , instant perception of the truth of things without reasoning or analysis. Instruction in spiritual intuition is what we need. The holy spirit will curb and check natural intuition until he brings it into accord with what jesus meant when he said, my sheep hear my voice. When you listen to a preacher, how are you going to know whether he is teaching the truth of god? Only by spiritual intu- ition. You may know that god has wonderfully used a man in the past, but never make that your ground for heeding what he says now, for at any minute a man may be out of touch with god (cf. 1 corinthians 9:27). Never pin your faith to a mans reputation as a servant of god, always watch for the holy spirit. If a man is talking the truth of god those who listen will meet it again whether they like it or not; if he is not talking gods truth they wont come across it any more. Whenever the grand simple sanity of the holy spirits interpretation is wanting, hold the matter in abeyance. The one stamp of the right interpretation is its warm natural sanity, it is not fantastic or pecu- liar, it doesnt twist your brain, its makes you feel, how marvellously simple and beautiful that is!
The holy spirits anointing abideth in you, says john. At the beginning of your spiritual life you wanted to run off to this man and that, to this book and that, until you learn that the anointing . . . Abideth in you. John and paul and peter all insist on the superb right of the humblest believer to test the teacher by the anointing which is in him. If we
Put teachers over against the holy ghost, when god removes them we go down, we mourn and say, what shall we do now? Watch how paul deals with the people who say, i am of paul; and i of apollos; and i of cephas; he says in effect, all teachers are yours. A teacher is simply meant to rouse us up to face the truths revealed in the bible and witnessed to by the holy ghost. Watch the tendency which is in us all to try and safeguard gods truth. The remarkable thing is that god never safeguards his own truth; he leaves statements in this book we can easily misrepresent, the only test is the holy spirit who leads us into all truth.
And ye need not that any man teach you. It is here that satan comes in as an angel of light and says, if you are anointed by the spirit, everything you think is right. Not at all. Only as we obey the spirit and keep in the light does the anointing abide. Our thinking and common-sense reasoning must be rig- orously subordinated to the spirit, and if we abide true to him he repairs the damage sin has done to conscience and mind and keeps our thinking vital and true. Notice in your own life how he works. He begins with the big general principles and then slowly educates you down to the scruple.10
(b) The divine union of christian thinking
But as the same anointing teacheth you of all things. (1 john 2:27)
We have perennially to rely on the one great source of all teaching, viz. : the holy spirit; he puts us in an independent position towards all other teachers, and makes our dependence on himself as the one teacher the only basis of union there is, the unity of the spirit. . . . There is one body, and one spirit, . . . One lord, one faith, one baptism. Be filled with the spirit, says paul. We have all seen the seashore when the tide is out, with all its separate pools, how are those pools to be made one? By digging chan- nels between them? No, wait till the tide comes in, and where are the pools? Absolutely lost, merged in one tremendous floodtide. That is exactly what hap- pens when christians are indwelt by the holy spirit. Once let people be filled with the holy spirit and you have the ideal of what the new testament means by the church. The church is a separated band of people who are united to god by the regenerating power of the spirit, and the bedrock of membership in the church is that we know who jesus is by a per- sonal revelation of him. The indwelling spirit is the supreme guide, and he keeps us absorbed with our lord. The emphasis to-day is placed on the further- ance of an organisation; the note is, we must keep this thing going.
If we are in gods order the thing will go; if we are not in his order, it wont. Think of the works that are kept on after god wanted to rule them out of the way because they have a source of inspiration apart from himself. Ye shall abide in him. The test that we are being taught by the holy spirit is that our lives are proving identical with the life of the son of god. You can- not have identity without individuality. False teaching says we lose our personality; we never do. Jesus christ emancipates personality, and he makes individuality pronounced; but it is personality absolutely free from my right to myself, free from identity with any other personality, manifesting a strong family likeness to jesus, and the transfiguring element is love to himself.