My relation to myself - Chambers, Oswald

My right to myself versus my wrong to myself

What commandment is the first of all? . . . The first is, . . . Thou shalt love the lord thy god from all thy heart, and from all thy soul, and from all thy mind, and from all thy strength. The second is this, thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. Mark 12:2831 (rv mg)

My self is my conscious personality, the sum-total of all i call me and mine. Our lord never taught the annihilation of self, he revealed how self might be rightly centred, viz. , in love to god. Love is the highest moral issuegod is love. The bible makes no distinction between divine love and human love, it speaks only of love. The majority of us have an impersonal, ethereal, vague abstraction we call love to god; jesus says i must love god with all my heart and soul and mind and strength, then my love for my fellow men will be relative to that centre. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word, even in this; thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself (Galatians 5:14 rv ; see also James 2:8). The love of self that jesus not only justified but distinctly enjoined, is the direct product of the indwelling holy spirit; its perversion is the deification of my self. How is it possible for me to love my neighbour as myself ? The best example of a lover of men is jesus christ, and the mainspring of

His love for men was his love for god. Whenever you deal with a principle always take the best possible incarnation of it, never deal with it in the abstract. If i deify an abstraction called love to god i can jargon to further orders6 as though i really loved my fellow men, but the crucial test when it comes will prove i don’t. When i disassociate myself from god i become a law unto myself, and the first thing that happens is i dont love my neighbour as myself i am so sure i am right and everyone else is wrong. The only way i can love my neighbour as myself is by having the love of god shed abroad in my heart, then i can love others with that same love. Self is not to be absorbed into god, it is to be centred in god.

Man was created to be the friend and lover of god and for no other end, and until he realises this he will go through turmoil and upset. Human nature must rise to its own source, the bosom of god, and Jesus Christ by his redemption brings it back there. God is the only one who has the right to myself and when i love him with all my heart and soul and mind and strength, self in its essence is realised. All the teaching of jesus is woven around self; i have a moral self-love to preserve for god; not, oh, im of no account, a worm, that would spell selflessness. I hold not my life of any account, as dear unto myself, says Paul, so that i may accomplish my course, and the ministry which i received from the lord jesus, to testify the gospel of the grace of god (rv). That is, he refused to use himself for any other interest but gods, and for what glorified god. Fundamentally it is impossible to love a human being wrongly it is possible to have an affection for a human being as a sop to my personal conceit: it is never possible to love a human being rightly if i love from the centre of self-interest. The love which springs from self-conceit or self-interest ends in being cruel because it demands an infinite satisfaction from another human being which it will never get. The love which has god as its centre makes no demands. Why our lord appears to be the enemy of natural love is because we do not understand that he deals with fundamentals always. For instance, whenever he brings his challenge against the mutual relation- ships of life (e. G. , Matthew 10:3539; Luke 14:26), it is because the love born of those relationships is chained about by a perverted disposition which he calls sin; and where in the interests of self-love those claims are held to, he has to disillusionise me over them until the entire life is rightly related to him.

When i love him supremely so that all other loves are hatred in comparison, then he can trust me with the hundredfold more because the interest of self- love no longer rules. Every human relationship is put by Jesus on an eternal basis, otherwise the relation- ships born from the centre of what we call natural love end with this life, there is nothing more to them; but when they are rooted in the nature of god they are as eternal as god himself. We can easily slander god by the things we say when we are really desirous of presenting his character because i loved the creature god took him, or her, away. That is a lie. The only way it could be true would be if i loved in order to gratify myself, then my love, which in the sight of god was lust, was hurtful because it sprang from the center of self- gratification. It may mean the gratification of others, but if my motive in making them happy is in order to get a better state of self-complacency, i am doing harm the more good i do. But let the lowliest soul whose influence apparently amounts to nothing get rightly related to god, and out of him will flow rivers of living water which he does not see, but one day we shall find that it is those lives which have been spreading the lasting benediction. Love is of god; it never came from the devil and never can go to the devil. When i am rightly related to god, the more i love the more blessing does he pour out on other lives. The reward of love is the capacity to pour out more love all the time, hoping for nothing again. That is the essential nature of perfect love. The true import of love is the surrender of my self, i go out of myself in order to live in and for god.

To be indwelt by the spirit of Jesus means i am willing to quit my own abode from the self- interested standpoint and live only in and for god. It is not the surrender to a conqueror, but the surrender of love, a sovereign preference for god. I surrender myself not because it is bad, self is the best thing i have got, and i give it to god; then self-realisation is lost in god-realisation. There is a subtle form of pride which is set on my holiness; in sanctification there is no pride. Go to the death of independence of god and you will never be bothered about yourself because you and god are one. For we preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus as lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus sake (2 Corinthians 4:5 RV). When you are sentimentally interested in a person you are conscious of it; when you are in love with a person you are not conscious of it because the love is deeper than consciousness and is only revealed in a crisis. When you love god you become identified with his interests in other people, and he will bring around you those he is interested In the sinners, the mean, the ungrateful, and you will soon know by your attitude to them whether you love god. The love described in 1 Corinthians 13 is impossible unless i get to the point of white-heat love for god: love suffereth long, . . . Seeketh not its own, . . . Taketh not account of evil (rv ). The discovery of whose honour i stand for is a clear rev- elation of who my god is. If it is my own honour that is at stake, my self is my god. The honour in the life of a saint is the honour of Jesus. When i am met by exacting and meanness, i do not say, that hurts me; i do not know it does, because i am taken up with the pain of the holy ghost over the hurt to Jesus. There is no greater miracle possible for a human life than that, and it can never be imitated. Our first introduction to the miracle is the realisation that we need to have it wrought in us. To fill up on my part that which is lacking of the afflictions of christ (rv ) is the supreme calling of a saint.

The redemption deals not only with moral imperfections, but with every phase of self-interest. Self-interest in the spiritual domain is a demoralising force, it keeps me an individual, all elbows; 7 keeps me looking after my rag rights8 and if anyone drags them aside i am mortally offended. The only way self-interest can be effaced is by presenting my body to god as a living sacrifice, that is, self-interest must be put to death, by my most deliberate wish, or it will never be put to death. As long as self-interest is there and has to be suppressed, the holy spirit will reveal that something else has to go. I may be under conscious apprehension for discipleship, and i go through the form of being willing to give up my right to myself, but the holy spirit reveals that i have never really done iti will spend myself for Jesus, i will do everything he asks me to dobut not one thing, and it is the only thing i can do, viz. , give up my right to myself to him. There is only one crisis and the majority of us have never been through it, we are brought up to it, and kick back every time, until god by his engineering brings us right to the one issue, deny for ever your right to yourself. It is a stubborn detachment, yielding bit by bit, not because the character is noble, but because it is despicably proud.

Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice. Self- sacrifice may be simply a disease of the nerves, a morbid self-consciousness which is the obverse of intense selfishness. Our lord never confounds selfishness and self. Whenever i make self-sacrifice the aim and end of my life, i become a traitor to Jesus; instead of placing him as my lodestar i place him as an example, one who helps me to sacrifice myself. I am not saved to sac- rifice; i am saved to fulfill my destiny in Christ. It is much easier to sacrifice myself, to efface myself, than to do gods will in his way. Self-sacrifice is always eager to do things and then say, that is gods will. There was no trace in our lords life of self-sacrifice being the idea for their sakes i sanctify myself. These words give the key to the saints life; i have deliberately to give god my self, my self which he has sanctified, that he might use me as his hands and his feet.