Losing ourselves - Chambers, Oswald
July 8, 1917, Zeitoun , SSunday morning Service & devotional hut
He that findeth his life [soul] shall lose it: and he that loseth his life [soul] for my sake shall find it. Matthew 10:39
We are what we are interested in. Soul refers to the way a personal spirit reasons and thinks in a human body. We talk about a man exhibiting soul in singing or in painting, that is, he is expressing his personal spirit. If you are going to be my disciple, says Jesus, you must lose your soul, i. E. , your way of reasoning, and acquire another way. When the holy spirit energises my spirit, my way of reasoning begins to alter, and jesus says unless i am prepared for that, i cannot be his disciple. It takes a long time to acquire a new way of reasoning, the majority of us who are inclined to be earnest christian people simply deal with the fact of spiritual experience without any spiritual reasoning. We have to acquire the new soul with patience (Luke 21:19).
1. The undiscovered territory of conscious realisation
he that findeth his life . . .
There is nothing more highly esteemed among men than self-realisation, but Jesus says that that which is highly esteemed among men is abomination in the sight of god. We are apt to have the notion that all Jesus Christ came to do was to deliver morally corrupt people from their corruption. A man is largely responsible for the corruption of his actual life; Jesus Christ does not deal with my morality or immorality, but with my right to myself. Whenever our lord talked about discipleship he always said if if any man will be my disciple, let him deny himself, not deny himself things as an athlete does, but let him give up his right to himself to me. If i am going to know Jesus Christ as lord and master i must realise what i have to forgo, viz. , the best thing i know, my right to myself. It is easy to say, yes, i am delighted to be saved from hell and put right for heaven, but i don’t intend to give up my right to myself. Apart from Jesus Christ, conscious self- realisation is the great thingthe desire to develop myself. My natural self may be noble, but it is a moral earthquake to realise that if i pursue the conscious realisation of myself it must end in losing my ideal of life. It is a tremendous revelation when i realise that self-realisation is the very spirit of antichrist. Self- realisation is possible in the spiritual domain as well as the natural. Much of the higher spiritual life teaching is simply self-realisation veneered over with christian terms. For a man to be set on his own salvation, on his own whiteness, to want to be the one taken, is not christian. The great characteristic of our lords life is not self-realisation, but the realisation of gods purposes. Self-realisation may keep a man full of rectitude, but it is rectitude built on a basis that ultimately spells ruin, because man is not a promise of what he is going to be, but a magnificent ruin of what human nature once was. If we go on the line of conscious self- realisation, there will be an aftermath of bitterness.
2. The untraceable troubles of consecrated renunciation
shall lose it: and he that loseth his life . . .
In certain stages of spiritual life god is dealing with us on the death side and we get the morbid conception that everything we have, we must give up the everlasting no. In the bible the meaning of sacrifice is the deliberate giving of the best i have to god that he may make it his and mine for ever: if i cling to it i lose it, and so does god. We come to our renunciations in the same way that Abraham came to his. God told Abraham to offer up Isaac for a burnt offering, and Abraham interpreted it to mean that he was to kill his son; but on mount moriah Abraham lost a wrong tradition about god and got a right insight as to what a burnt offering meant, viz. , a living sacrifice (Romans 12:12). It looks as if we had to give up everything, lose all we have, and instead of Christianity bringing joy and simplicity, it makes us miserable; until suddenly we realise what gods aim is, viz. , that we have to take part in our own moral development, and we do this through the sacrifice of the natural to the spiritual by obedience, not denying the natural, but sacrificing it.
Christianity is a personal relationship to Jesus Christ made efficacious by the indwelling holy spirit. We take Christianity to be adherence to prin- ciples. Conscience is not peculiarly a christian thing, it is a natural asset, it is the faculty in a man that fits on to the highest he knows. Our convictions and conscientious relationships have continually to be enlarged, and that is where the discipline of spiritual life comes in. A man who is on the grousing line has no brightness or joy, no time for other people, he is taken up with the diseases of his own mind.
3. The unhindered triumphs of Christ- realisation
. . . For my sake shall find it.
The characteristic of Christianity is abandon, not consciously setting myself on my own whiteness; the one thing that matters is, is Jesus Christ getting his way? The Christianity of the new testament is not individual, it is personal, we are merged into god without losing our identity that they may be one, even as we are one. Individuality is the husk of the personal life, it cannot merge; personality always merges. Am i prepared to lose my soul, lose the miserable self-introspection as to whether i am of any use? I am never of any use so long as i try to be. If i am rightly related to Jesus Christ, he says, out of you shall flow rivers of living water. The people who tell are those who don’t know they are telling, not the priggish people who worship work.
Am i prepared to go through death to my right to myself, to have a white funeral 13 and abandon myself to Jesus Christ for my sake? If i am, i shall find my soul. The holy spirit coming into my personal spirit manifests itself in my soul, in the way i reason, consequently all my previous calculations are upset and i begin to see things differently. In the ini- tial stages of discipleship you get stormy weather, then you lose the nightmare of your own separate individuality and become part of the personality of christ, and the thought of yourself never bothers you any more because you are taken up with your relationship to god.