Frontiers of the worker’s life - Chambers, Oswald
2 Corinthians 11:3
There must be two centres to our mental life as workers: the first is personal faith in Jesus Christ; the second, personal reliance on the human reason that god made. Most of us think from one centre only, the centre of human reason, consequently all that Jesus Christ stands for beyond the reach of human reason is ignored. I fear, says Paul, lest . . . Your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ. Beware of making simple what the bible does not. The line of our simplicity is in christ i am the way, the truth, and the life.
The way the simplicity that is in Christ is corrupted is by trying to live according to a statement made by mens heads. It must be the relationship of a child all through (see Matthew 11:25). To be able to state explicitly in words what you know by faith is an impossibility; if you can state it in words, it is not faith. The way the serpent beguiled eve through his subtlety was by enticing her away from personal faith in god to depend on her reason alone. Confusion comes when we are consistent to our convictions instead of to Christ. The error of the modern standard is that it begins at the wrong end, viz. , with human reason. How much do we understand? The conceit of modern life is that it does understand. It reconstructs human society and leaves out rebel- lion against god. It reconstructs the world by human sympathy and leaves out love for wrong. Canst thou by searching find out god? ( job 11:7). We must be prepared to be led, and the way we come to an understanding is by the relationship of our personal life to the person of Jesus Christ, then bit by bit we begin to understand.
Never have the idea that you are going to persuade men to believe in god; you can persuade them of his standard. You have to force an issue of will; but remember, along with your faithful preaching comes a thing you cannot intellectually state, the working of the spirit of god (see john 3:8). The thing that staggers the worker is that men will not believe. How can they believe, when every spring of life is impure? The great need is to have a channel through which
The grace of god can come to men and do something in their unconscious life, then slowly as that breaks into the conscious life there will come an expression of belief, because they see Jesus; but the way they see him is through the worker who is a sacramental personality (see acts 26:18). Christian workers rarely face men in this way. You cannot argue men into coming to Jesus, or socialise them into coming; only one thing will do it, and that is the power of the gospel drawing men by the constraint of gods grace.
The centre of life and of thinking for the christian worker is the person of Jesus christ. We get deadly respectable when we face only the problems we have been used to facing; but if we will obey the holy spirit he will bring us to face other problems, and as we face them through personal relationship to Jesus Christ we shall go forth with courage, confident that whether it be in the domains of heathendom or in our own land, jesus Christ is never nonplussed, never worsted