Natural Growth In supernatural Grace - Chambers, Oswald
1 Peter 2:7–12
Our Lord’s maxims
Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow.
Behold the fowls of the air.
Become as little children
Our lord did not point out wonderful sights to his disciples all the time; he pointed out things that were apparently in significantlilies and grass and sparrows. God does not deal with the things that interest us naturally and compel our attention; he deals with things which we have to will to observe. The illustrations jesus christ used were all taken from his fathers handiwork because they express exactly how the life of god will develop in us. We draw our illustrations from the works of men, consequently we get into a hustling condition and forget our lords maxims. Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow in the dark! We are apt to consider a lily when it is in the sunshine only, but for the greater part of the year it is buried in the ground; and we imagine that we are to be always above ground, shedding perfume and looking beautiful; or continually being cut and put into gods show-room to be admired, forgetting altogether that we cannot be as lilies unless we have spent time in the dark, totally ignored. As a disciple, jesus says, consider your hidden life with god. When we breathe fresh air we are not consciously exhilaratingly different all the time; but if we continue to take in fresh air, it makes a profound difference. This is true of our life in christ. If we receive the holy spirit and obey him, he makes a profound difference, and it will be manifested one day as a great surprise. It is not done in a minute as far as our consciousness is concerned, but when we come to a crisis we find to our astonishment that we are not upset or perplexed, as we might have expected, but we realise that our whole outlook has been altered. The spirit of god awaits his own time to bring the crisis, we are apt to say, i want the crisis now. We shall never see gods point of view as long as we bring our own ideas to him and dictate to god what we expect him to do. We must become as little children, be essentially simple, keep our minds brooding on what god tells us to brood on, and let god do as he likes. The difficulties come because we will not be simple enough to take god at his word.
Our natural reactions are not wrong, although they may be used to express the wrong disposition. God never contradicts our natural reactions; he wants them to be made spiritual. When we are saved god does not alter the construction of our bodily life, but he does expect us to manifest in our bodily life the alteration he has made. We express ourselves naturally through our bodies, and we express the supernatural life of god in the same way, but it can only be done by the sacrifice of the natural.
How many of us are spiritual in eating and drinking and sleeping? Those acts were spiritual in our lord; his relationship to the father was such that all his natural life was obedient to him, and when he saw that his fathers will was for him not to obey a natural reaction, he instantly obeyed his father (see Matthew 4:14). If our lord had been fanatical he would have said i have been so long without food, i will never eat again. That would have been to obey a principle instead of god. When god is educating us along the line of turning the natural into the spiritual, we are apt to become fanatical. Because by gods grace things have been done which are miraculous, we become devoted to the miracle and forget god, then when difficulties come we say it is the antagonism of the devil. The fact is we are grossly ignorant of the way god has made us. All that we need is a little of what we understand by pluck in the natural world put into the spiritual. Dont let your body get on top and say there is nothing after all in what god said. Stand up to the difficulty, and all that you ever believed about the transforming grace of god will be proved in your bodily life.
Curiosity (1 peter 2:7)
Curiosity is the desire to come to a full knowledge and understanding of a thing; it is a natural reaction. Imagine a child without curiosity! A child cannot sit and listen to a lecture, but let him see something bright and instantly he is curious and wants to get hold of it, whether it is the moon or a ball. The reaction is based not so much on the desire to have it for himself as on the desire to know more about it. As men and women we are curious about intellectual or philosophic or scientific things, and when a particular quality is presented our curiosity is aroused i want to know more about this matter, can anyone explain it to me satisfactorily? It is the natural reaction of the way we are made, and to ignore it is fanatical. The instinct of curiosity can be used in the wrong way (see genesis 3:6), but that does not mean that the reaction itself is wrong, it depends upon the motive. A point that is frequently missed in dealing with the questions of a child is that he asks them from a dis- interested motive; a teacher can always appeal to the disinterested curiosity of a child. A childs questions are at the very heart of things, questions that scarcely occur to a philosopher. In natural life we grow by means of curiosity, and spiritually we grow by the same power. The spirit of god uses the natural reaction of curiosity to enable us to know more about the one who is precious. The instinct is not denied, but lifted on to a different platform and turned towards knowing jesus christ. As saints our curiosity must not be all abroad; we become insatiably curious about jesus christ; he is the one who rivets our attention. Think of the avidity with which you devour anything that has to do with expounding the lord jesus christ unto you therefore which believe he is precious.
Imitation (1 peter 2:9)
Imitation is one of the first reactions of a child, it is not sinful. We come to a right knowledge of our- selves by imitating others. The instinct that makes us afraid of being odd is not a cowardly instinct, it is the only power of self-preservation we have. If you live much by yourself you become an oddity, you never see the quirks in yourself. Some people wont live with others spiritually, they live in holes and corners by themselves. The new testament warns of those who separate themselves ( jude 19). By the grace of god we are taken out of the fashion we were in and we become more or less speckled birds.19 immediately you introduce a standard of imitation which the set to which you belong does not recognise, you will experience what peter says, they think it strange that ye run not with them to the same excess of riot (1 peter 4:4). The spirit of god lifts the natural reaction of imitation into another domain and by gods grace we begin to imitate our lord and shew forth his praises. It is the natural instinct of a child to imitate his mother, and when we are born again the holy spirit lifts this instinct into the spiritual domain and it becomes the most supernaturally natural thing for us to imitate our lord. We grow in grace naturally, not artificially. Mimicking is the counterfeit of imitation and produces the pi person, one who tries his level best to be what he is not. When you are good you never try to be. It is natural to be like the one we live with most; then if we spend most of our time with jesus christ, we shall begin to be like him, by the way we are built naturally and by the spirit god puts in.
Emulation (1 peter 2:9)
Emulation is the instinct to imitate what you see another doing, in order not to appear inferior. A boy who accepts the place of inferiority is either lazy or is becoming heartbroken; he has no right to sit down
And submit to being inferior, he is not built that way naturally. A child always admires anyone with skill, and the teacher who says, do this and that, has no influence over a child compared with the one who says, come and do this with me. When a child has seen his teacher do a thing and is asked to do it, instantly the instinct of emulation is at work. Our lord builds his deepest teaching on the instinct of emulation. When his spirit comes in he makes me desire not to be inferior to him who called me. Our example is not a good man, not even a good christian man, but god himself. By the grace of god i have to emulate my father in heaven. Be ye therefore perfect, even as your father which is in heaven is perfect (matthew 5:48). The most natural instinct of the supernatural life of god within me is to be worthy of my father. To say that the doctrine of sanctification is unnatural is not true, it is based on the way god has made us. When we are born again we become natural for the first time; as long as we are in sin we are abnormal, because sin is not normal. When we are restored by the grace of god it becomes the most natural thing to be holy, we are not forcing ourselves to be unnatural. When we are rightly related to god all our natural instincts help us to obey him and become the greatest ally of the holy spirit. We disobey whenever we become inde- pendent. Independence is not strength but unrealised weakness, and is the very essence of sin. There was no independence in our lord, the great characteristic of his life was submission to his father. Emulation and imitation both centre around whatever is our ideal. When once we see jesus, it is good-bye to all ideals; we cannot have them back again, nor do we want them back again if we are true to him. We have to keep the one lodestar, the lord jesus christ, in front and be absorbingly taken up with him; consequently we have to put ourselves through discipline and fast from every other type of emulation.
Ambition (1 peter 2:11)
Ambition is a mixture of pugnacity and pride, a reaction of unwillingness to be beaten by any difficulty. It is a natural reaction. Think of a boy without the instinct to fight! The reaction that makes one boy punch another is not bad, although the disposition behind it may be. The natural reaction of ambition in a man or woman saved by gods grace is that they will not be beaten by anything the world, the flesh or the devil can put in the way of their fulfilling gods idea for them. By the grace of god we get to the place where we do not punch other people, but punch the devil clean out of the arena. Resist the devil. How can we resist the devil unless we are ambitious not to be beaten by him! When we become spiritual the reac- tion of pugnacity is lifted on to another plane and we say to our body, it can be done and it shall be done (cf. 1 corinthians 9:27). Most of us are devoid of spiri- tual pluck. Many who are naturally plucky lose all their pluck when they get a smattering of grace and become sentimental and pathetic, every tiny ache which they would have ignored altogether before they were saved, is of the devil! God does not tell us to leave the natural life entirely alone; the natural life has to be turned into the spiritual, and it is because we do not realise this that we become whining people spiritually where we would have scorned to whine naturally. When we are born into the kingdom of god we realise that we are not fighting against flesh and blood, but against spiritual enemies, against spiritual wick- edness in high places. The book of the revelation is based on the reaction to overcome. To him that over- cometh . . . You cannot overcome if there is nothing to overcome. In natural education everything is built up on difficulty, there is always something to over- come. And this is true in the spiritual world. If the world, the flesh and the devil have knocked you out once, get up and face them again, and again, until you have done with them. That is how character is made in the spiritual domain as well as in the natural. Our prayers for gods help are often nothing but incarnate laziness, and god has to say, speak no more unto me of this matter. Get thee up. . . . The pugnacious element is a natural reaction, and as christian teachers we have to recognise it. Ambition in the spiritual domain is the reaction which refuses to bow its neck to any yoke but the yoke of the lord jesus christ. Nothing awakens scorn amongst men more than a quitter, one who funks in a game. Weakness or imbecility do not awaken contempt as much as one sign of the white feather, a refusal to face the music, the tiniest sign of the lack of pugnacity. The law of antagonism runs all through life, physical, moral, mental and spiritual. I am only healthy according to the fighting corpuscles in my blood, when the fighting millions inside get low, i become diseased and after a while i shall be snuffed out. Morally it is the same, we are not born moral, we are born innocent and ignorant; morality is the outcome of fight. Immediately i am lazy in moral matters, i become immoral. Spiritually it is the same. In the world ye shall have tribulation everything that is not spiritual makes for our undoing but be of good cheer; i have overcome the world. Why did not our lord say that he would help us to overcome? Because we have to imitate him through the power he has put in us. Think of sitting in a corner before the almighty and saying, but my difficulties are so enormous. Thank god they are! The bigger the difficulty, the more amazing is your profit to jesus christ as you draw on his supernatural grace.
Ownership (1 peter 2:1112)
the instinct of ownership is seen from the first of life to the last. As soon as an infant tongue can say anything, it will say me and mine. Is this mine? Yesthen expect to see it smashed. The child wishes you to understand that he can do what he likes with his own. It is only the discipline of life that teaches us to keep things. The instinct of ownership is a right one, though the disposition expressed through it may be wrong. In a saint the idea of ownership is that we have the power to glorify god by good works (see matthew 5:16). What we own is the honour of jesus christ. Have i ever realised that his honour is at stake in my bodily life? What? Know ye not that your body is the temple of the holy ghost which is in you? Do i own my body for that one purpose? Do i own my brain to think gods thoughts after him? We have to be intensely and personally gods. The spirit of god brings us into the realisa- tion of our ownership, and the instinct of ownership becomes a tremendous wealth in the life. All things are yours, and paul prays that the eyes of our under- standing may be enlightened that we may know what is ours in christ jesus. No personality, from a tiny child to almighty god, is without this sense of ownership. How wonderfully sprightly a dog looks when he is owned! How weary and hang-dog we become when we are convicted of sin; but when we experience gods salvation, we straighten up immediately, everything is altered, we can fling our heads back and look the world in the face because the lord Jesus christ is ours and we are his. A dominant ownership, such as the ownership of the lord means that we own everything he owns. The meek . . . Shall inherit the earth.
