How to go on - Chambers, Oswald
Colossians 2:67 (RV )
1. How to think of our state
As therefore ye received Christ Jesus the lord . . . (rv )
We all start with thinking about what we have to do; paul goes a step further back, and says, think of how you stand in gods sight through receiving Jesus. It will have a tremendous influence. Have i received christ jesus the lord as my saviour? Then he is my saviour from everything that is not of god; that i enter into this realisation is another thing. We can always claim our union with Jesus christ in thinking: . . . That we may present every man perfect in Christ jesus. We know that we are not perfect yet in outer manifestation, but in thinking we have to remember what we received Jesus for, to be absolute lord, absolute saviour. When once we bring our minds to think of our state fundamentally, everything else becomes amazingly easy. We are apt to begin by thinking of our obedience, how we are going to work it out, and we forget the first thing, viz. , that we have to receive christ jesus the lord. Think what that means! It means we can go straight to the very heart of god and tell him what we want, not because we are obedient, but because we have access into the holy place by the new and living way which Jesus dedicated (RV) for us. To think of what Jesus is to us always encourages our faith; if we begin with our obedience, our faith gets paralysed. The great basis for our thinking is, what does Jesus Christ mean to me? Have i received him as lord and master, as saviour and sanctifier? Have i thought about him as that?
2. How to try our standing
So walk in him . . .
Our right standing is proved by the fact that we can walk; if we are not rightly related to god in our thinking we cannot walk properly. Walk means character. If we have only our own energy and devotion and earnestness to go on we cannot walk at all; but if we are based on the revelation that if we receive Christ Jesus the lord we are complete (rv ) in him, then we can begin to walk according to the perfection we have in him. When god brings us up against difficult circumstances that reveal the inability of our human nature it is not that we may sink back and say, oh dear, i thought i should have been all right by now; it is that we may learn to draw on our union with Jesus christ and claim that we have sufficient grace to do this particular thing according to gods will. If we are vitally connected with god in our thinking we shall find we can walk; but if we have not been thinking rightly we will succumb i cant do this. If we are thinking along the line of gods grace, that he is able to make all grace abound unto us (RV), we will not only stand, but walk as a son or daughter of god and prove that his grace is sufficient. To be weak in gods strength is a crime.
God has to deal with us on the death side as well as on the life side. It is all very well to know in theory that there are things we must not trust in, but another thing to know it in fact. When god deals with us on the death side he puts the sentence of
Death on everything we should not trust in, and we have a miserable time until we learn never any more to trust in it, never any more to look anywhere else than to god. It sometimes happens that hardly a day passes without god saying, dont trust there, that is dead.
Then he deals with us on the life side and reveals to us all that is ours in Christ jesus, and there comes in the overflowing strength of god, the unsearchable riches in Christ Jesus. Whether god is dealing with us on the death side or the life side, it is all in order to teach us how to walk, how to try our standing in Christ Jesus. God is teaching us to try our steps in faith, and it is a very tottering business to begin with, we clutch hold of everything; god gives us any amount of encouragement, ribbons of blessings, of feelings and touches that makes us know his presence; then he withdraws them and slowly we get strengthened on our feet and learn how to walk in him.
3. How to train our strength
rooted and builded up in him . . .
The strength god gives us by receiving Christ jesus the lord is the strength he manifested when he raised the dead body of Jesus (see Ephesians 1:1920). We have to train our strength by building it on that unit of measurement. When we pray for other people are we demanding more power to put them right than was wrought by god when he raised christ from the dead? That is the measure of the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward who believe. How am i measuring the power of god in my life? . . . And stablished by [mg] your faith. Think of the things you are trying to have faith for! Stop thinking of them and think about your state in god through receiving Christ Jesus; see how god has enabled you to walk where you used to totter, and see what marvellous strength you have in him. I can do all things in him that strengtheneth me (rv), says paul. Is that mere poetry or a fact? Paul never talked only poetry. All the great blessings of god in salvation and sanctification, all the holy spirits illumination, are ours not because we obey, they are ours because we have put ourselves into a right relationship with god by receiving christ jesus the lord, and we obey spontaneously. As we look back we find that every time we have been blessed it was not through mechanical obedience, but by receiving from Jesus something that enabled us to obey without knowing it and life was flooded with the power of god. We make it hard for people do this and that, and they obey and nothing happens. We have left out altogether the receiving of Christ Jesus the lord; personal relationship to jesus christ first, then faith comes naturally. When we are standing face to face with Jesus christ in this way and he says, believest thou this? No matter what the this is for sanctification, or something further on than sanctification faith is as natural as breathing; we say, why yes, lord, and are staggered and amazed that we were so stupid as not to trust him before. Whenever we find it hard and difficult and strength- less, we may be certain we are at the wrong place; when we get into the right thinking state through receiving Christ Jesus the lord, it is the easiest thing in the world to have faith.