Dust and divinity - Chambers, Oswald

Genesis 2:7
[N.B.—a ll divisions of the human personality are arbitrary.]

Genesis 2:7 reveals that man is made up of dust and divinity. This means that in practical psychology we must always make allowance for the incalculable. You cannot exhaust mans nature by examining his dust qualities, nor by describing him in terms of poetic sentiment, for after you have described as much as you can, there is always an incalculable element to be taken into account. There is more than we know, therefore we cannot deal with ourselves as machines. One part of ourselves must be dealt with as a machine, and the more we deal with it as a machine the better; but to try and sum up a man as a machine only is to miss out the bigger part; or to say that man is altogether a spiritual being without anything mechanical in him is to miss out the incalculable element that cannot be summed up. These two things, dust and divinity, make up man. That he is made of the dust is mans glory, not his shame; it has been the scene of his shame, but it was designed to be his glory. A certain type of mind gets impatient when one talks about the incalculable element in man, and says it is nonsense to talk of man being a spiritual personality, man is nothing more than an animal. That outlook is prevalent to-day, it is called healthy-mindedness; it is rather blatant ignorance. We all say what is obvious until we are plunged into the deeps; but when a man is profoundly moved he instantly finds himself beyond the reach of help or comfort from the obvious. The obvious becomes trivial, it is not what his heart wants. What he needs is something that can minister to the incalculable element. When once real thought begins to trouble the mind, the disturbance goes on throughout the whole personality until the right centre is gained for thought. In the spiritual domain when a man is convicted of sin, he realises that there are deeper depths in himself than he has ever known, and the things that can be clearly explained become utterly shallow, there is no guidance whatever in them. We begin by thinking we know all about ourselves, but when a man gets a dose of the plague of his own heart, it upsets all his thinking. Immediately man begins to examine himself, he finds he is inscrutable; there are possibilities below the threshold of his life which no one knows but god.

The explorer of the will (philippians 2:1113)

Psalm 139 is the classic in all literature concerning a mans personality. In this psalm the tendency in man which makes him want to examine himself takes the form of prayer, o lord, explore me. The psalmist implies: thou art the god of the early mornings and late at nights, the god of the mountains and the fathomless deep; but, my god, my soul has farther horizons than the early mornings, deeper darkness than the nights of earth; higher heights than any mountain peaks, greater depths than any sea in nature; search me out, and see if there be any way of grief in me. The psalmist realised that god knew all about the vast universe outside him, but there was some thing more mysterious to him than the universe outside, and that was the mystery of his own heart, and he asks the great creator to come and search him. God does not search a man without he knows it, and it is a marvellous moment in a mans life when he is explored by the spirit of god. The great mystic work of the holy spirit is in the dim regions of a mans personality where he cannot go. God himself is the explorer of mans will, and this is how he searches us. It is god which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure. Will is not a faculty; will is the whole man active, and the springs of will go deeper down than we can go. Paul says it is god who works in us to enable us to will, that is, the holy spirit, who is the expression of god, will come into our spirit and energise our will so that we have power to actively will to do according to the standards of jesus christ. The holy spirit does not become our spirit; he invades our spirit and lifts our personality into a right relationship with god, and that means we can begin now to work out what god has worked in. The holy spirit enables us to fulfil all the commands of god, and we are with- out excuse for not fulfilling them. Absolute almighty ability is packed into our spirit, and to say cant, if we have received the holy spirit, is unconscious blasphemy. We have not sufficiently realised the practical moral aspect of the atonement in our lives. If we walk in the light, as he is in the lightthen comes the amazing revelation, that the blood of jesus christ his son cleanseth us from all sin. Cleansing from all sin does not mean conscious deliverance from sin only, it means infinitely more than we are conscious of. The part we are conscious of is walking in the light; cleansing from all sin means something infinitely profounder, it means cleansing from all sin in the sight of god. God never bases any of his work on our consciousness. Do you mean to tell me that god can search me to the inmost recesses of my dreams, my inmost motives, and find nothing to blame? That god almighty can bring the winnowing fan of his spirit and search out my thoughts and imaginations, and find nothing to blame? Who can stand before god and say, my hands are clean, my heart is pure? Who can climb that hill of the lord? No man under heaven, saving the man who has been readjusted at the cross of christ. That man can stand before the scrutiny of god and know with a knowledge that passeth knowledge that the work of gods son in him passes the scrutiny of god. No soul ever gets there saving by the sovereign grace of god through the atonement.

The expression of the conscience (acts 24:16)

Conscience is that faculty in a man that attaches itself to the highest he knows and tells him what the high- est he knows demands that he does. Never be caught away with the phrase that conscience is the voice of god. If it were, it would be the most contradictory voice human ears ever listened to. Conscience is the eye of the soul and it looks out either towards god or towards what it regards as the highest, and the way conscience records is dependent entirely upon the light thrown on god (cf. Acts 26:9 and 24:16). Take the case of a man who has had a great spiri- tual crisis and has entered into the experience of sanctification, his conscience is now looking towards god in the light that jesus christ throws upon god, what has he to do? He has to walk in that light and begin to get his bodily machine into harmony with what his conscience records, that is, he has to walk now not in the light of his convictions, but in a purer sterner light, the light of the lord. It is something he alone can do; god cannot do it for him. Supposing we say we believe god can give us the holy spirit and can energise our wills to do of his good pleasure, instantly we see that, conscience records that we must obey. Any deflection in obedience to god is a sin. We have been used to doing things in this body in accordance with the old disposition my right to myself, my self- interest; now we have to be regulated from a different standpoint. You did use the body as a servant to the wrong disposition, says Paul, see that you use it now as a servant to the right disposition (romans 6:19). It is never done suddenly. Salvation is sudden, but the working out of salvation in our life is never sudden. It is moment by moment, here a little and there a little. The holy spirit educates us down to the scruple.14 paul says he exercised himself to have a con- science void of offence toward god, and toward men. We have to endeavour to obey our conscience in our life of faith before god and in our life of fact before men. That does not mean we must not do things men will not like. Our conduct with men is measured by the way god has dealt with us, not by what men think of us. Our conscience will show us how god has dealt with us, forgiving one another, even as god for christs sake hath forgiven you. That is the standard that is void of offence toward god, and toward men. Many of us are feeble christians because we do not heed this standard. God works in the great incalculable element of our personality; we have to work out what he works in and bring it out into expression in our bodily life. It has not sufficiently entered into us that in our practical life we must do what god says we must do, not try to do it, but do it, and the reason we can do it is that it is god who works in us to will.

The expectation of the heart (psalms 27:14; 42:5)

Heart is simply another term for personality. The bible never speaks of the heart as the seat of the affections. Heart is best understood if we simply say me (cf. Romans 10:10). When once expectation is killed out of the heart, we can scarcely walk, the feet become as lead, the very life and power goes, the nerves and everything begin to fall into decay. The true nature of a mans heart according to the bible is that of expectation and hope. It is the heart that is strengthened by god (cf. Psalm 73:26), and jesus christ said that he came to bind up the brokenhearted.

The marvel of the indwelling spirit of god is that he can give heart to a despairing man. There is a difference between the human sympathy we give to a discouraged or broken- hearted man and what the holy spirit will do for him. We may sit down beside a brokenhearted man and pour out a flow of sympathy, and say how sorry we are for him, and tell him of other people with broken hearts; but all that only makes him more submissive to being brokenhearted. When our lord sympathises with the heart broken by sin or sorrow, he binds it up and makes it a new heart, and the expectation of that heart ever after is from god. The great discipline of our life spiritually is to bring other people into the realm of shadows. When god has brought other people into the realm of shadows, he can bring us into the relationship we need to be in towards himself. The expectation of the heart must be based on this certainty: in all the world there is none but thee, my god, there is none but thee. Until the human heart rests there, every other relationship in life is precarious and will end in heart-break. There is only one being who can satisfy the last aching abyss of the human heart, and that is the lord jesus christ.

The whole history of envy and cruelty in human relation- ships is summed up in the demand for infinite satisfaction from human hearts, we will never get it, and we are apt to become cruel, vindictive, bitter, and often criminal. When once the heart is right with god and the real centre of the life satisfied, we never expect or demand infinite satisfaction from a finite heart, we become absolutely kind to all other hearts and never become a snare. If our hearts are not rightly related to jesus christ, danger and disillusionment are on our track wherever we go, because other lives are not being led to god, they stick at us, they cannot get any fur- ther and they become enervated. But when once the heart is established in expectation on god, i defy other hearts to stick at you, they may try to, but all the time they are being led on to god himself.

The exhortation of the mind (2 corinthians 10:5)

Before a human spirit forms a mind it must express itself in words; immediately it expresses itself in words, it becomes a spirit of mind. In the natural man it is a spirit of mind according to the flesh, but when the holy spirit energises a mans spirit, the words he expresses give him a mind according to the spirit.

When once the spirit of god energises our spirit, we are responsible for forming the mind of christ. God gives us the disposition of jesus christ, but he does not give us his mind, we have to form that, and we form it by the way we react on external things. Let this mind be in you, which was also in christ jesus. Most of us balk forming the mind of christ; we do not object to being delivered from sin and hell, but we do object to giving up the energy of our minds to form the mind of christ. The holy spirit represents the actual working of god in a man, and he enables us to form the mind of christ if we will. We construct the mind of christ in the same way as we construct the natural mind, viz. , by the way our disposition reacts when we come in contact with external things. The mind is closely affiliated with its physical machine, the brain, and we are responsible for getting that machine into right habits. Glean your thinking, says paul (see philippians 4:8).

Never submit to the tyrannous idea that you cannot look after your mind; you can. If a man lets his garden alone it very soon ceases to be a garden; and if a saint lets his mind alone it will soon become a rubbish heap for satan to make use of. Read the terrible things the new testament says will grow in the mind of a saint if he does not look after it. We have to rouse ourselves up to think, to bring every thought into captivity to the obedience of christ (rv). Never pray about evil thoughts, it will fix them in the mind. Quit that is the only thing to do with anything that is wrong; to ruthlessly grip it on the threshold of your mind and allow it no more way. If you have received the holy spirit, you will find that you have the power to bring every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ (rv).