Our Brilliant Heritage - Chambers, Oswald
Our Brilliant Heritage
containing also
Grow Up into Him
and
As He Walked
Oswald Chambers
Our Brilliant Heritage, 1929, Talks on the Gospel Mystery of Sanctification
Grow Up into Him, 1931, Talks on Christian Habits
As He Walked, 1930, Talks on Christian Experience
This edition copyright 1965, Oswald Chambers Publications Association
Combined hardback edition first published in 1965
Scripture versions quoted: kjv, rv, moffatt
Introduction
Source
This material is from talks and lectures given at League of Prayer1 meetings and at the Bible Training College2 in London between 1911 and 1915.
Publication History
The three parts that comprise Our Brilliant Heritage were published individually as articles and booklets before being issued as a combined volume in 1965.
.Our Brilliant Heritage: These lectures were most likely given to League of Prayer meetings in London. The Gospel Mystery of Sanctification appeared as an article in Tongues of Fire in November 1912. It was identified as verbatim notes of a lecture given by Chambers at Speke Hall, the Leagues headquarters. It is also prob- able that Chambers included this subject matter in his classes on Christian doctrine at the Bible Training College between 1911 and 1915. The material was published as five articles in Spiritual Life magazine, from October 1925 through February 1926, then as a booklet in 1929.
. Grow Up into Him: These lectures on Christian habits were given at the Bible Training College, London, from October 1 through December 17, 1914. The material was published as articles in Spiritual Life magazine over a period of two years, from August 1926 through August 1928, then published as a booklet in 1931.
. When Oswald Chambers gave these lectures in the autumn of 1914, fear and uncertainty ruled the minds of many in Britain as World War I showed no sign of the early conclusion people had hoped for. Basic necessities were being rationed. and, for most BTC students, money was in short supply. On December 17, as Oswald spoke on The Habit of Wealth, he asked, What have we to spend this Christmas-time? We ought to be going about like multi-millionaires. Externally we may have 2 1 2d.3 only, but spiritually we have all the grace of God to spend on others. As He Walked: The material in As He Walked is drawn from lectures on Christian experience given at the Bible Training College, from April 30 through July 9, 1914. The talks were published as articles in Spiritual Life magazine from September 1929 through March 1930, and published as a booklet in 1930.
1. Pentecostal League of Prayer: founded in London in 1891 by Reader Harris (18471909), prominent barrister and friend and mentor of Oswald Chambers.
2. Bible Training College (BTC): a residential school near Clapham Common in southwest London. Sponsored by the League of Prayer; operated from 1911 until it closed in July 1915 because of World War I. Oswald Chambers was principal and main teacher; Biddy Chambers, his wife, was lady superintendent.
Contents
Sanctification
Introductory Note (from the 4th edition, 1937)………………………. 916
The Mystery of Sanctification ………………………………………………..916
The Gospel of the Grace of God ……………………………………………. 919
Unrealised Truths of Sanctification…………………………………………921
In Heavenly Places ……………………………………………………………….923
The Inheritance of the Saints …………………………………………………926
Grow Up into Him
Christian Habits
Take the Initiative …………………………………………………………………929
You Won’t Reach It on Tiptoe! ……………………………………………… 931
Make a Habit of Having No Habits ……………………………………….. 933
The Habit of a Good Conscience …………………………………………… 935
The Habit of Enjoying the Disagreeable …………………………………. 937
The Habit of Rising to the Occasion ………………………………………. 939
The Habit of Wealth ……………………………………………………………. .941
As He Walked
Christian Experience
The Next Best Thing to Do …………………………………………………… 943
Not a Bit of It!……………………………………………………………………… 944
Getting There ……………………………………………………………………… 946
Get a Move On! …………………………………………………………………… 947
You Need Not Sin…………………………………………………………………. 949
What Next? …………………………………………………………………………. 950
Pull Yourself Together ………………………………………………………….. 952
Don’t Slack Off …………………………………………………………………….. 954
Practising Godliness ………………………………………………………………955
Introductory note
(from the 4th edition, 1937)
This Book will greatly help seekers after Holiness, because it meets us on the threshold of our life in Christ and leads us along a luminous path of scriptural teaching, to the full measure of the believers identification with his Risen Lord. The candidates for sanctification are those who have the first-fruits of sanctification in the initial work of grace. They are then shown that the secret of holiness is the imparted holiness of Jesus Christ. What a marvellous thing sanctification is. The perfections of Jesusours by the sheer gift of God. As Chapter II nourishes the heart by leading us to implicit trust in Jesus; so Chapter III feeds the mind with deepest scriptural truth. It might be described as Spiritualised Theology. And the Chapter on in Heavenly Places is an unveiling of the glory and strength and security of the most intimate relation- ship we can know with our Risen Lord. Jesus Christ can create in us the image of God even as it was in Himself. What an arresting sentence is this In illustrating the spiritual life, our tendency is to catch the tricks of the world, to watch the energy of the business man, and to apply these methods to Gods work. Jesus Christ tells us to take the lessons of our lives from the things men never look at. Consider the lilies: Behold the fowls of the air. How often do we look at clouds, or grass, at sparrows, or flowers? Why, we have no time to look at them, we are in the rush of things it is absurd to sit dreaming about sparrows and trees and clouds! Thank God when He raises us to the heavenly places, He manifests in us the very mind that was in Christ Jesus, unhasting and unresting, calm, steady and strong. And the last Chapter insists on the possession of the Light, and shows its marvellous ministry in illuminating through His saints the darkness around. Have we let God raise us up to the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, and are we learning to walk in the light as God is in the light?
The mystery of sanctification
And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh. 1 Timothy 3:16
By the word mystery we mean something known only to the initiated, therefore if we are going to understand the gospel mystery of Sanctification and fully experience it, we must belong to the initiated, that is, we must be born from above (rv mg) by the Spirit of God. Robert Murray McCheyne4 said, and I would like his words engraven on my own heart, The greatest need for my people is my personal holiness. Minister of the gospel, say that of your congregation The greatest need for my people is my personal holiness. Teacher, say that of your class The greatest need for my Sun- day School class is my personal holiness. Am I born again of the Spirit of God? What is the relation of my heart to holiness? Our Lord said, Every tree is known by his own fruit, and I know whether I am born of the Spirit by the desires of my heart. Do I desire holiness more keenly than I desire any other thing? Do I desire that my motives, my heart, my life, everything in me, should be as pure as God wants it to be? If so, it is a strong witness to the fact that I am amongst the initiated; I am in the place where I can understand the mystery of sanctification sufficiently to enter into it.
1. The Awakening of Desires
Be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind. (Romans 12:2)
When we are born again of the Spirit of God, the Word of God awakens great desires in us, and in times of prayer the Spirit of God renews our minds; in times of meeting with Gods people the gracious sense of Gods quickening comes until we know that the great desire of our hearts before God is to be as holy as God desires us to be. We do want to be bap- tised with the Holy Ghost so that we bear a strong family likeness to Jesus Christ. These deep desires are strong in the heart of every one who is born from above (rv mg). Paul says he speaks the mystery of God to all such, because they have the Spirit of God to enable them to understand it. We must watch and note whether these are our desires. The candidates for sanctification are those who have the first-fruits of sanctification in the initial work of grace, those who are rightly adjusted to God through the Atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ, and who hunger and thirst after holiness, and desire to do all Gods will. Do we long for holiness? Are the deepest desires of our hearts God ward? Do we know, first of all, that we are reconciled to God? Do we know that our sins are forgiven, that God has put the life of His Spirit into us, and are we learning how to walk in the light, and are we gaining victories by the power of the Spirit? Do we realise that as we rely on God we have strength to perform our duties in accordance with Gods will? All this is grand, ordinary, Christian experience in its elementary stages. Everyone who is born again of the Spirit of God experiences these things; they are the initiated, the ones who can understand the mystery of sanctification and, God grant, may enter into the experience of it. There is a type of Christian who saysYes, I have the desire for holiness, I am reading Gods word, I am trying to be holy and to draw on the resurrection life of Jesus. Never will the mystery of sanctification dawn in that way; it is not Gods way. Sin is a step aside; being born of the Spirit of God is a step inside, and sanctification is being built into all the perfect character of Jesus Christ by a gift. Another type of Christian saysWell, I have tried and striven and prayed, but I find it so hard to cut off my right arm, to poke out my right eye, that I have come to the conclusion that I am unworthy of this great blessing from God; I am not one of these special people who can be holy. I believe there are numbers of Christians who have laid themselves on one side, as it were, and come to the conclusion that sanctification is not meant for them; the reason being that they have tried to work sanctification out in their own way instead of in Gods way, and have failed. There are others who by strange penances, fastings and prayers, and afflictions to their bodies are trying to work out sanctification. They, too, have tried to penetrate the mystery in a way other than Gods appointed way. Are you trying to work out sanctification in any of these ways? You know that salvation is a sovereign work of grace, but, you say, sanctification is worked out by degree. God grant that the Spirit of God may put His quiet check on you, and enable you to under- stand the first great lesson in the mystery of sanctification which is Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us . . . sanctification.
2. Impartation, Not Imitation
Sanctification does not put us into the place that Adam was in and require us to fulfill the will of God as He makes it known to us; sanctification is some- thing infinitely more than that. In Jesus Christ is perfect holiness, perfect patience, perfect love, perfect power over all the power of the enemy, perfect power over everything that is not of God, and sanctification means that all that is ours in Him. The writer to the Hebrews does not tell us to imitate Jesus when we are tempted; he says Come to Jesus, and He will succour you in the nick of time. That is, all His perfect overcoming of temptation is ours in Him. We have heard it put in this way so often When faced with difficulties, we do not try to brace ourselves up by prayer to meet them, but by the power of the grace of God we let the perfections of Jesus Christ be manifested in us. Jesus Christ does not give us power to work up a patience like His own. His patience is manifested if we will let His life dwell in us. So many have the idea that in sanctification we draw from Jesus the power to be holy. We draw from Jesus the holiness that was manifested in Him, and He manifests it in us. This is the mystery of sanctification. Sanctification does not mean that the Lord gives us the ability to produce by a slow, steady process a holiness like His; it is His holiness in us. By sanctification we understand experimentally what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 1:30: Of Him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us . . . sanctification. When- ever Paul speaks of sanctification, he speaks of it as an impartation, never as an imitation. Imitation comes in on a different line. Paul does not say, nor does the Spirit of God say anywhere, that after we are born again of the Spirit of God, Jesus Christ is put before us as an Example and we make ourselves holy by drawing from Him. Never! Sanctification is Christ formed in us; not the Christ-life, but Christ Himself. In Jesus Christ is the perfection of everything, and the mystery of sanctification is that we may have in Jesus Christ, not the start of holiness, but the holiness of Jesus Christ. All the perfections of Jesus Christ are at our disposal if we have been initiated into the mystery of sanctification. No wonder men cannot explain this mystery for the joy and the rapture and the marvel of it all, and no wonder men see it when it is there, for it works out everywhere.
3. The Mystery of Fellowship
We will come unto him, and make our abode with him. ( John 14:23)
The nuggets of gold spoken by our Lord in the Gospels are beaten out by the apostles in the Epistles. Jesus states that the relationship between the Father and the Son is to be the relationship between the Father and the Son and the sanctified soul. Talk about nothing between! There is no possible room for anything between, unless the soul steps aside. As long as the soul realises in the simplicity of faith that all that Jesus was and is, is his, then the very life, the very faith, the very holiness of Jesus is imparted to him. Think what the fellowship of our Lord Jesus Christ with His Father was when He was here I knew that Thou hearest Me always. I do always those things that please Him. This is not an example for us: it is infinitely more. It means that this fellowship is exactly what is made ours in sanctification. Jesus said At that day . . . I say not unto you, that I will pray the Father for you: for the Father Himself loveth you. In what day? The day when we are brought into that union of fellowship with the Father and all the perfections of Jesus are made ours so that we can say with Paul I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me. Those of you who are hungering and thirsting after holiness, think what it would mean to you to go out to-night knowing that you may step boldly into the heritage that is yours if you are born of the Spirit, and realise that the perfections of Jesus are yours by His sovereign gift in such a way that you can prove it experimentally!
4. The Mystical Union
I am the vine, ye are the branches. ( John 15:5)
He that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit. (1 Corinthians 6:17) The New Testament exhausts itself in trying to expound the closeness of this union. The Spirit of God conveys to the initiated, to those who are born again, what a marvellous thing sanctification is. The perfections of Jesusours by the sheer gift of God: God does not give us power to imitate Him: He gives us His very Self. This is what sanctification means for you and me. Do you say it is too much? Do you know what it comes down to? It comes down to faith: our word is confidence. If we are born again of God by the Spirit, we have not the slightest doubt in our minds of Jesus Christ; we have absolute confidence in Him. But draw nearer still Have we confidence to let the Spirit of God explain to us what sanctification means, and lead us into the experience? If so, instead of its being painful to follow the ways of wisdom, we will find that her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace.
5. The Mystery of the Incarnation
Therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God. (Luke 1:35)
There are three big mysteries: The Mystery of the Triune God Father, Son and Holy Ghost; the Mystery of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is both human and Divine, and the Mystery we are dealing with the mystery that I, a sinner, can be made into the image of Jesus Christ by the great work of His Atonement in my life. Have you ever noticed how our Lords death is explained and applied by the Spirit of God in the Apostle Pauls teaching? For instance, Therefore we are buried with Him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life (Romans 6:4) means that all that our Lords death is stated to mean in the New Testament can be made real in our experience. We can go through identification with the death of Jesus until we are alive only to the things which He was alive to. Jesus Christ does not give us power to put the old man to death in ourselves: our old man was crucified with Him (Romans 6:6 RV); we can be identified with His death and know that this is true. We are not merely put into a state of innocence before God; by identification with Our Lords death we are delivered from sin in every bit of its power and every bit of its presence. God never removes from us the power of step- ping aside; we can step aside any moment we like. Read the First Epistle of John If any man step aside Johns thought is surely that it is a rare thing for a man to step aside. Our attitude seems to be that it is a rare thing to keep in the light! And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly placeslike Christ Jesus? No, in Christ Jesus. The very Spirit that ruled Jesus in His life now rules us. How has it come about? Read Romans 8:10. And if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the Spirit is life because of righteousness. John the Baptist said of Jesus He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire. The Spirit of God Who wrought out that marvellous Life in the Incarnation will baptise us into the very same life, not into a life like it, but into His life until the very holiness of Jesus is gifted to us. It is not something we work out in Him, it is in Him, and He manifests it through us while we abide in Him. This explains why in the initial stages of sanctification we sometimes see marvellous exhibitions of Christ-like life and patience. All that was wrought out in the life of Jesus was wrought out by the Holy Ghost Whom our Lord has shed forth by His ascended right, and by the baptism of the Holy Ghost the perfections of Jesus are made ours. We are not put into the place where we can imitate Jesus; the baptism of the Holy Ghost puts us into the very life of Jesus: Are you hungering after sanctification? Have you such confidence in Jesus that you can pray this prayer, the prayer of a child Father, in the Name of Jesus, baptise me with the Holy Ghost and fire until sanctification is made real in my life?
The Gospel of the Grace of God
Unto Me, who am less than the least of all saints, is this grace given, that I should preach among the Gen- tiles the unsearchable riches of Christ. Ephesians 3:8 To whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. Colossians 1:27
The mystery of sanctification is that the perfections of Jesus Christ are imparted to us, not gradually, but instantly, when by faith we enter into the realisation that Christ is made unto us sanctification. Sanctification does not mean anything less than the holiness of Jesus Christ being made ours manifestly, and faith is the instrument given us to use in order to work out this unspeakable mystery in our lives. There are two means; the Gospel of the Grace of God, and faith, which enables the life and liberty and power and marvel of the holiness of Jesus Christ to be wrought out in us.
1. The Instrument of Faith
Do we know anything about this mystical union whereby the unsearchable riches of Jesus Christ are made ours? If we have been born from above (rv mg) of the Spirit of God, the deep craving of our hearts is to be as holy as Jesus Christ, and just as we took the first step in salvation by faith, so we take the next step by faith. We are invited, we are commanded and pleaded with, to believe the gospel of the grace of God, which is, Christ in you, the hope of glory. The one marvellous secret of a holy life is not in imitating Jesus, but in letting the perfections of Jesus manifest themselves in our mortal flesh. Do we believe that? Do we believe it with the same simple trust and confidence we had when we first trusted Jesus to save us? The way to believe it is to listen first. So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. Have we listened? Have we ever listened with the ears of our spirit to this wonderful statement Christ in you? Do we hear that? If we are born of the Spirit of God, we do hear it, we hear it more eagerly, more passionately, more longingly than anything else that can be told. We are invited and commanded by God to believe that we can be made one with Jesus as He is one with God, so that His patience, His holiness, His purity, His gentleness, His prayer fulness are made ours. The way the gift of faith works in us and makes this real is by hear- ing. We first hear, and then we begin to trust. It is so simple that most of us miss the way. The way to have faith in the gospel of Gods grace, in its deepest profundity as well as in its first working, is by listening to it.
How many of us have brought the ears of our spirit straight down to the gospel of Gods grace? Our idea of faith has a good deal to do with the harmful way faith is often spoken of. Faith is looked upon as an attitude of mind whereby we assent to a testimony on the authority of the one who testifies. We say that because Jesus says these things, we believe in Him. The faith of the New Testament is infinitely more than that; it is the means by which sanctification is manifested, the means of introducing the life of God into us, not the effect of our understanding only. In Romans 3:2425, Paul speaks about faith in the blood of Jesus, and faith is the instrument the Spirit of God uses. Faith is more than an attitude of the mind; faith is the complete, passionate, earnest trust of our whole nature in the Gospel of Gods grace as it is presented in the Life and Death and Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.
2. Implicit Trust in Jesus
Some of us have never allowed God to make us under- stand how hopeless we are without Jesus Christ. It was my experience of the tempter, and my knowledge of my own heart under his assaults, that made me a preacher of Pauls gospel. It was my own exceeding sinfulness of heart that ever more and more taught and compelled me to preach Jesus Christ alone, His blood and His righteousness.
Everyone who is born again of the Spirit of God knows that there is no good thing outside the Lord Jesus Christ. It is no use looking for sanctification through prayer or obedience; sanctification must be the direct gift of God by means of this instrument of faith, not a half-hearted faith, but the most earnest, intense, and personal faith. Sanctification is Christ in you. Is anything we hear in testimonies to sanctification untrue of Jesus Christ? It is His wonderful life that is imparted to us in sanctification, and it is imparted by faith. It will never be imparted as long as we cling to the idea that we can get it by obedience, by doing this and that. We have to come back to one thing, faith alone, and after having been put right with God by sanctification, it is still a life of faith all through. Those who are in the experience of sanctification know that it means that the holiness of Jesus is imparted as a sovereign gift of Gods grace. We cannot earn it, we can- not pray it down, but, thank God, we can take it by faith, through faith in His blood. When we have become rightly related to God, it is the trial of our faith that is precious (see 1 Peter 1:7). Satan tries to come in and make the saint dis- believe that sanctification is only by faith in God; he comes in with his cinematograph show and says, You must have this and you must do that. The Spirit of God keeps us steadily to one line faith in Jesus, and the trial of our faith, until the perfections of Jesus Christ are lived over again in our lives.
3. Identification with Jesus
God says that He will give us the desires of our heart. What are our desires? What do we desire more than anything else on earth? If we are born again of the Spirit of God, our one desire is a hunger and thirst after nothing less than holiness, the holiness of Jesus, and He will satisfy it. Whoso eateth My flesh, and drinketh My blood, hath eternal life. Just as we take food into our bodies and assimilate it, so, Jesus says, we must take Him into our souls. Faith is not seeing food and drink on the table; faith is taking it. So many say, Oh, yes, I have faith that the Lord Jesus will save me. If we have faith that the Lord Jesus will save us, we are saved, and we know it.
When by the Spirit of God Jesus is made real to us, His presence makes everything as natural as breathing. His presence is the reality. What do we do to earn a gift? Nothing; we take it. If we have the slightest remnant of thinking we can earn it, we will never take it; if we are quite certain we do not deserve it, we will take it. We come with the sense of abject unworthiness, knowing that in me (that is, in my flesh, ) dwelleth no good thing; if ever I am to be holy, I must be made holy by Gods sovereign grace. That is the Gospel. We receive it by faith; and the Spirit of God is the One Who makes the simple act of faith the supernatural work of God. To those outside Christian experience it sounds foolish; to those inside it is wonderfully real.
Immediately we stretch out the instrument of faith with implicit trust, the Spirit of God imparts to us the holiness of Jesus Christ and all that that means; and it is on this line alone we live. Obedience is the means whereby we show the earnestness of our desire to do Gods will. We receive this perfect adjustment to God as a gift, and then begin to manifest the life of Jesus Christ in our mortal flesh. Those of you who have never had this experience of sanctification, think! The perfections of Jesus Christ made yours entirely! The Lord showing His love, His purity, His holiness through you! I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me. It is not power to live like Jesus; it is Christ living in us, and it is His life that is seen, but it is only seen as by faith we walk in the light. What does Paul say? My little children, of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you, and again, We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works. How many of us can look up into Gods face by simple faith, trusting entirely in the great gospel of His grace, and say Lord, make the sanctification in me as real as the sanctification revealed in Thy Word? Are we willing for Him to do it?
Then we must turn from every other thing and trust in Him. Jesus Christ re-creates us by His marvellous life until we are a new creation (rv mg) in Him, and all things are of God. The life is lived naturally as we lived the old life. Consciously? No, infinitely deeper; it is lived moment by moment by the faith of the Sons of God; only in rare moments are we conscious of it. When we come up against a crisis, for a moment we hesitate and wonder how we are going to meet the difficulty then we find that it is the perfections of Jesus Christ imparted into us that meet it, and slowly and surely we begin to live a life of ineffable order and sanity and holiness, kept by the power of God. No wonder the Apostle Paul says, When He shall come to be glorified in His saints, and to be admired in all them that believe! Have you any doubt about the gospel of the grace of God? None whatever, you say. Then launch out in simple faith and say, My God, make the sanctification of the New Testament mine; make the unsearchable riches of Jesus Christ mine till my Lord and I are one so much one that it never consciously occurs to you to be anything else, and in all the circumstances of life you will find that you have the perfections of Jesus Christ at the back of you? No, dwelling in you! No wonder the Apostle John is so eager that we should walk in the light!
Unrealized truths of sanctification
Here fore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to Himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation. 2 Corinthians 5:1718
I want to deal with some of the unrealised truths of sanctification, the things we do not readily notice, from the standpoint of the new creation (rv mg) in Christ Jesus. As we have seen, the idea of sanctification is not that God gives us a new spirit of life, and then puts Jesus Christ in front of us as a copy and says, Do your best and I will help you; but that God imparts to us the perfections of Jesus Christ. By the perfections of Jesus we do not mean His attributes as Son of God. What is imparted to us is the holiness of Jesus, not a principle of life that enables us to imitate Him, but the holiness of Jesus as it met life in Him.
1. Creation through Christ
For by Him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by Him, and for Him. (Colossians 1:16) And unto the angel of the church of the Laodiceans write; These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God. (Revelation 3:14) These verses are chosen out of a number in the Bible which reveal that God Almighty created the world and everything that was created, through the Eternal Son. Some people tell us that Revelation 3:14 means that the Son was the first Creation of God Almighty. The Bible does not say so. The Bible says, He is before all things, and by Him all things consist. Jesus Christ was introduced into the world in this way: the Spirit of God took hold of a part of that creation, of which the Son of God was Himself the Creator, in the Virgin Mary and formed in her the Son of God therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God (Luke 1:35). That is the last reach of the creation of God. The Son of God was the One Whom we know as Jesus Christ, and in the life of Jesus we have the pattern life of all God desires man to be, and also the pattern life of sanctification.
2. Creation in Christ
All things were made by Him; and without Him was not anything made. That which hath been made was life in Him; and the life was the light of men. ( John 1:34 rv mg)
By creation we are the children of God; we are not the sons and daughters of God by creation; Jesus Christ makes us sons and daughters of God by regeneration ( John 1:12). The idea of the Fatherhood of Jesus is revealed in the Bible, though rarely mentioned. Ever- lasting Father refers to the Being we know as the Son of God. Paul in talking to the Athenians said, We are the offspring of God. But the creator-power in Jesus Christ is vested in a more marvellous way even than when God created the world through Him for He has that in Himself whereby He can create His own image. God created the world and everything that was made through the Son, and that which hath been made was life in Him (rv mg); therefore just as God created the world through Him, the Son is able to create His own image in anyone and everyone.
Have we ever thought of Jesus as the marvellous Being Who can create in us His own image? Wherefore if any man is in Christ, there is a new creation [mg]! (2 Corinthians 5:17 rv). We do not sufficiently realise the wonder of it. Those of us who are in the experience of Gods mighty salvation do not give ourselves half enough prayerful time, and wondering time, and studying time to allow the Spirit of God to bring this marvellous truth home to us. Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that believeth on Me hath everlasting life. The very life that was in Jesus is the life of the soul who believes in Him, because it is created in him by Jesus. This life is only in Jesus Christ, it is not in anyone else, and we can- not get it by obeying or by praying, by vowing or by sacrificing. Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again. We must have the image of God in our spirits, and Jesus will create His image in us by His sovereign right. The fullest and most gracious meaning of regeneration and sanctification is that in Christ Jesus we can be made a new creation (rv mg).
Sanctification is not being given a new start, not that God wipes out the past and says it is forgiven, but something inconceivably grander, viz. , that Jesus Christ has the power to create in us the image of God as it was in Himself. Paul says, My little children, of whom I travail in birth again every strand of my spirit and soul and body aches until Christ be formed in you. I fear, he says, lest by any means . . . your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.
Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy. We have already dealt with this along the line of faith; we have to receive Jesus Christ in implicit confidence and let Him do His work in us. Creation in Christ means that Jesus Christ is able to create us into His own image, not merely re-create us, because what we get in Jesus Christ is something that Adam never had. Adam was created a son of God, an innocent being with all the possibilities of development before him; God intended him to take part in that development by a series of moral choices whereby the natural life was to be sacrificed to the will of God and turned into a spiritual life. Adam failed to do this. Jesus Christ creates in us not what was in Adam, He creates in us what He was and is. Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us . . . sanctification. This is the meaning of the grand old evangelical hymn My hope is built on nothing less Than Jesus blood and righteousness. Edward Mote
3. Creation like Christ
As He is, so are we in this world. (1 John 4:17)
Those of us who are Gods children ought to stand in determined reverence before this verse. It can mean only one thing, and that is that the image and character and holiness of Jesus Christ is ours by the sover- eign right of His creation. Sanctification means that we are taken into a mystical union which language cannot define (cf. 1 John 3:2). It is Jesus Christs holiness that is granted to us, not something pumped up by prayer and obedience and discipline, but some- thing created in us by Jesus Christ. No wonder the New Testament puts Jesus Christ upon the throne! No wonder Jesus said that the Holy Ghost would glorify Him! And no wonder this talk is called unrealised truths of sanctification! We are potentially sons and daughters of God through Gods claim upon us in Christ, but we are only sons and daughters of God in reality through our will.
Do we will, not to imitate Jesus, but to hand our- selves over to God until His claim is realised in us? Paul says, We pray you, we passionately entreat you, as though God did beseech you by us, . . . be ye rec- onciled to God. It is one thing to realise in speechless wonder, when the heart is attuned to an impulse of worship, what the claim of God is, and another thing to tell God that we want Him to realise His claim in us. My God, I am Thine by creation, I am Jesus Christs through His Atonement, and I choose that Thy claim shall be realised in me. Wherefore if any man is in Christ . . . (rv). Any man means ourselves men of no account. Our Lord never taught individualism; He taught the value of the individual, a very different thing. Does Paul mean that I, an ordinary man with no particular education, with ordinary common-place work, surrounded by common- place people, can be made a new creation (rv mg) in Christ Jesus? He does, because he says any man, and you must come in there. Will you choose to be one of the ordinary common rut, the any man, and let God get hold of you? You are part of the creation of God, then let Jesus Christ make His creation good in you. Jesus Christ does not make us original characters, He makes our characters replicas of His own; conse- quently, argues the Spirit of God, when men see us, they will not say, What wonderful, original, extraordinary characters. No, none of that rubbish! They will say, How marvellous God must be to take poor pieces of human stuff like those men, and turn them into the image of Jesus Christ! . . . which things the angels desire to look into. We are too free from wonder nowadays, too easy with the Word of God; we do not use it with the breathless amazement Paul does. Think what sanctification means Christ in me; made like Christ; as He is, so are we.
4. The Transient Life
Old things are passed away.
By old things Paul does not mean sin and the old man only, he means everything that was our life as natural men before we were re-created in spirit by Christ. That means a great deal more than some of us mean. The old things means not only things that are wrong, any fool will give up wrong things if he can, but things that are right. Watch the life of Jesus and you will get Paul’s meaning. Our Lord lived a natural life as we do, it was not a sin for Him to eat, but it would have been a sin for Him to eat during those forty days in the wilderness, because during that time His Fathers will for Him was otherwise, and He sacrificed His natural life to the will of God. That is the way the old things pass away. In his Second Epistle to the Corinthians Paul uses as an illustration of this the glory which came from Moses. It was a real glory, but it was a glory that was to be done away (3:7); and the writer to the Hebrews writes of a covenant which was doomed to vanish away (8:13). The natural life of man is a real creation of God, but it is meant to pass away into a spiritual life in Jesus Christs way. Watch Paul’s argument in the Epistle to the Romans But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit . . . (8:9). Paul was talking to flesh and blood men and women, not to disembodied spirits, and he means that the old order is passed. You used to look at things differently from Jesus Christ, he says, but now that you have turned to the Lord (God grant you may if you have not) the veil is taken away, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.
5. The Transfigured Life
Behold, all things are become new
Have those of us who are in the experience of sanctification learned the practical insistent habit of realising that the old things are passed away, and that all things are become new? In their testimony people put it in this way God alters the thing that matters; it used to matter to me what certain people thought, now it does not matter at all. Old things are passed away, not only sin and the old disposition, but the whole old order of things, and behold, all things are become new. Paul is trying to get us to an amazed state of mind Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature! Some of us talk about sanctification as if we were talking of a new book, or an article in the news- paper. With Paul the wonder never ceased; however often he talked about it, each time he was more full of wonder than the last. The great mighty work of Gods grace in sancti- fication is a Divine work. Do we choose to walk in Gods way and let Him make it real in us? Then let the things that are passed be passed, and when the circumstances come again that tempt us to self-pity, remember that the old things are passed away. Do we choose never to let things affect us that never affected Jesus Christ? Immediately we do, we will find it is possible because the perfections of Jesus Christ are made ours by the sovereign right of His creation. No wonder Paul talks of the unsearchable riches of Christ! No wonder the marvel of the revelation breaks through his language and escapes until those who are not sanctified think him mad; and John is called an old man in the sere and yellow leaf who talked vaguely about the possibility of living without sin! Those who talk in this way have never entered into the wonderful experience of sanctification, but, thank God, it is for any man.
6. The Truest Life of All
All things are of God.
Be ye therefore followers of good principles? Of holiness? Of the life Jesus lived on earth? No! Be ye therefore followers of God. Be ye therefore perfect, as your Father which is in heaven is perfect. God by sanctification creates us into the image of His Son. Do we choose to walk in the light of that life? Never make excuses, never turn to the right hand nor to the left. Keep the life concentrated on this marvellous gift of God, Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us . . . sanctification.
In heavenly places
And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places, in Christ Jesus. Ephesians 2:6
Sanctification is the importation to us of the holy qualities of Jesus Christ. It is His patience, His love, His holiness, His faith, His purity, His godliness that are manifested in and through every sanctified soul. The presentation that God by sanctification plants within us His Spirit, and then setting Jesus Christ before us says There is your Example, follow Him and I will help you, but you must do your best to follow Him and do what He did, is an error. It is not true to experience, and, thank God, it is not true to the wonderful Gospel of the grace of God. The mystery of sanctification is Christ in you, the hope of glory. That which hath been made was life in Him (RV mg), that is, Jesus Christ can create in us the image of God even as it was in Himself.
1. The Impartial Power of God
And hath raised us up. Who are the us He has raised up?
We have pointed out the any man aspect, and it needs pointing out because we often hear a man say Well, it cannot mean me, Im not a true, fine-spirited person; my past life has been very sordid; I have not had the advantages of other people, and it cannot mean me; God cannot mean that by His marvellous grace He can raise me up. Yes, He can, and it is just such a man He does mean. God stoops down to the very lowest, to the very weakest, to the sons of disobedience, the children of wrath, and raises them right up. In this particular instance Paul is driving home the impartiality of God with more than usual insistence; he is talking to Gentiles and he says that God by the Cross of Jesus Christ makes no distinction between Jew and Gentile in the matter of personal salvation. Thank God for the impartiality of His grace! Any man, every man, we ourselves, may partake of this marvellous raising up whereby God puts us into the wonderful life of His Son, and the very qualities of Jesus Christ are imparted to us. There is plenty of room to grow in the heavenly places; room for the head to grow, for the heart to grow, for the bodily relationships to grow, for the spirit to grow plenty of room for every phase of us to grow into the realisation of what a marvellous Being our Lord Jesus Christ is. And hath quickened us together with Christ. The illustration Paul uses is that as God raised the dead body of Jesus, so He has quickened those who were dead in trespasses and sins and has raised them up with Jesus. It means that there is a participation now in all the wonderful perfections of Jesus Christ, and that ultimately we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is.
2. The Inviolable Place of God
Heavenly places in Christ Jesus.
That is where God raises us. We do not get there by climbing, by aspiring, by struggling, by consecra- tion, or by vows; God lifts us right straight up out of sin, inability and weakness, lust and disobedience, wrath and self-seekinglifts us right up out of all this, up, up to the whiter than snow shine, to the heavenly places where Jesus Christ lived when He was on earth, and where He lives to this hour in the fullness of the plenitude of His power. May God never relieve us from the wonder of it. We are lifted up into that inviolable place that cannot be defiled, and Paul states that God can raise us up there now, and that the wonder of sitting in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus is to be manifested in our lives while we are here on earth. And made us sit together. Sit? But I have to earn my living! Sit? But I am in the midst of the wild turmoil of city life! Sit? But I have my calling in life and my ambitions to fulfill! Paul says that God has raised us up and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. We must have in our minds that by heavenly places is meant all that Jesus Christ was when He was down here, and all that He is revealed to be now by the Word; and God raises us up to sit together with Him there. There is ample time and ample room to grow in the heavenly places.
3. The Symbols in the Heavenly
Places Have you ever noticed the kind of pictures God gives to the saints?
They are always pictures of creation, never pictures of men. God speaks of the unfailing stars and the upholding of the worm Jacob. He talks about the marvels of creation, and makes His people forget the rush of business ideas that stamp the kingdoms of this world. The Spirit of God says Do not take your pattern and print from those; the God Who holds you is the God Who made the world take your pattern from Him. The marvel- lous characteristic of the Spirit of God in you and me when we are raised up to the heavenly places in Christ Jesus is that we look to the Creator, and see that the marvellous Being Who made the world and upholds all things by the word of His Power is the One Who keeps us in every particular. Our Lord always took His illustrations from His Fathers handiwork. In illustrating the spiritual life, our tendency is to catch the tricks of the world, to watch the energy of the business man, and to apply these methods to Gods work. Jesus Christ tells us to take the lessons of our lives from the things men never look at Consider the lilies; Behold the fowls of the air. How often do we look at clouds, or grass, at sparrows, or flowers? Why, we have no time to look at them, we are in the rush of thingsit is absurd to sit dreaming about sparrows and trees and clouds! Thank God, when He raises us to the heavenly places, He manifests in us the very mind that was in Christ Jesus, unhasting and unresting, calm, steady and strong.
4. The Safety of the Heavenlies
My peace I give unto you. ( John 14:27) Your life is hid with Christ in God. (Colossians 3:3)
We are familiar with these verses, but has God ever struck the marvel out of them until we are lost in wonder, love, and praise as they are applied to us as sanctified souls? My peace I give unto you. We talk about the peace of Jesus, but have we ever realised what that peace was like? Read the story of His life, the thirty years of quiet submission at Nazareth, the three years of service, the slander and spite, backbit- ing and hatred He endured, all unfathomably worse than anything we shall ever have to go through; and His peace was undisturbed, it could not be violated. It is that peace that God will exhibit in us in the heavenly places; not a peace like it, but that peace. In all the rush of life, in working for our living, in all conditions of bodily life, wherever God engineers our circumstances My peace; the imperturbable, inviolable peace of Jesus imparted to us in every detail of our lives. Your life is hid with Christ in God. Have we allowed the wonder of it to en-wrap us round and soak us through until we begin to realise the ample room there is to grow there? The secret place of the Most High, absolutely secure and safe. As we go on in life and grow in grace, we realise more and more wonderingly what the peace of Jesus means. Watch the saint who is sanctified, in tumults, Paul says tribulation, turmoil, trouble, afflictions all around everywhere, yet the peace of Jesus is gifted and manifests itself, and the life grows as the lily spiritually. Tols to i made the blunder of applying the teaching of Jesus to men who were not born again of the Holy Ghost, and with what result? They found it impossible to carry it out. But when we are born again from above (rv mg), quickened and raised up by God, we find it is possible to consider the lilies because we have not only the peace of God, but the very peace that characterised Jesus Christ; we are seated in heavenly places in Christ Jesus, absolutely safe, the mind imperturbably ensphered in Christ. For ye are dead, says Paul; that is, the old way of looking at things, the old way of doing things, the old fuss and fume are dead, and we are a new creation (RV mg) in Christ Jesus, and in that new creation is manifested the very peace that was manifested in Jesus Christ.
5. The Strength in the Heaven lies
All spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ. (Ephesians 1:3) The unsearchable riches of Christ. (Ephesians 3:8)
God is able to make all grace abound toward you. (2 Corinthians 9:8) These verses mean that just as the overflowing, omnipotent power of God was exhibited in and through our Lord, so it will be exhibited in and through us when we are raised up into the heavenly places. Get into the habit of saying Lord Jesus, prove Thyself sufficient in me for this thing now. Do not say Oh Lord, show me what to do; let Him do it and it will be done. It is His perfections, not ours; His patience, His love, His holiness, His strength all spiritual blessings in Christ Jesus. How blind we are! There is a danger with the children of God of getting too familiar with sublime things. We talk so much about these wonderful realities, and forget that we have to exhibit them in our lives. It is perilously possible to mistake the exposition of the truth for the truth; to run away with the idea that because we are able to expound these things we are living them too. Paul’s warning comes home to us. . . lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway.
6. The Sight in the Heavenlies
Blessed are the pure in heart. (Matthew 5:8)
What do we mean by pure in heart? We mean nothing less and nothing else than what the Son of God was and is. When God raises us up into the heavenly places He imparts to us the very purity that is Jesus Christs. That is what the sanctified life means the undisturbable range of His peace, the unshakeable, indefatigable power of His strength, and the unfathomable, crystalline purity of His holiness. There is plenty of room in the heavenly places to grow into the realisation of the unfathomable depths of the purity of Christs heart. Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God. When the Son of God walked this earth with naked feet, and wove with human hands the creed of creeds, He understood the revealed counsels of His Father to Him because His heart was pure, and to the sanctified soul God says Friend, come up higher. Jesus warns the disciple never to be afraid of the con- tempt of the world when he possesses spiritual discernment.
Those who are in the heavenly places see Gods counsels in what to the wisdom of the world is arrogant stupidity. We can never stand for one second in the heavenly places in a secular mood. Jesus never had secular moods, His heart was never defiled by secular thinking or by secular ways. What do we mean by secular ways? Secularity has to do with what we desire within, not with what happens to our bodies. What do we desire most? What the heart of Jesus wanted most was Gods glory, and sanctification means that that same desire is imparted to us. The wonder of a pure heart is that it is as pure as Jesus Christs heart. Sanctification does not mean that a purity like Jesus Christs is gifted to us, but that His purity is gifted to us. Our Lord was wonderfully sensitive to the things of God, and He says all things that I have heard of My Father I have made known unto you. His Father distinctly revealed things to Him. The sanctified soul realises with growing amazement what we are trying feebly to put into words, that all these things are ours if we are willing for God to realise His claim in us.
All things are yours . . . and ye are Christs; and Christ is Gods. To be in Christ Jesus means that we are initiated into the position of sons. Do you know how God speaks to His sons? He softly breathes His stern mes- sages in the heavenly places, with what result? There is never any panic in His sons. The Son of God had preintimations of what was to happen, and as we walk with the mind stayed where God places it by sanctification, in that way steadfastly keeping our garments white, we will find that nothing strikes us with surprise or with panic. God never allows it to; He keeps us in perfect peace while He whispers His secrets and reveals His counsels. We are struck with panic when- ever we turn out of the way; when we forget to grow up into Him in all things; when we forget to keep the childlike weakness which never dreams it can look at things in the way Jesus does apart from His Spirit. Bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ. Our Lord never pried into His Fathers secrets, neither will the saint. Some have made the blunder of trying to wrest Gods secrets from Him. That was never Jesus Christs way, nor is it communicated by the Spirit of God.
God always gifted His intimations to His Son. How many of us have allowed God to reveal His counsels to us in this way, and how many of us are being humiliated by realising that we have been trying to probe into Gods secrets some other way? When we are raised up into the heavenly places, it is a life of joy unspeakable and full of glory. One word of warning we must guard the life where the Spirit of God warns we should guard it, and the first thing to be guarded against is inordinate curiosity. Remember what Jesus said of Himself, and of the Holy Spirit: I do nothing of Myself; but as My Father hath taught Me, I speak these things. The Spirit of truth . . . shall not speak of Himself; but whatsoever He shall hear, that shall He speak. When our minds are stayed upon God and we are growing in the realisation of the purity of Christs heart and His wonderful strength and power, we will find that that same characteristic is being worked out in us, there is no mental or intellectual insubordination, but a complete subordination to Jesus Christ, even as He was subordinated to His Father. The same thing is true of our wills; just as Jesus brought His will into subjection to His Father and said I seek not Mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent Me, when we are raised up to the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, we will manifest the same. Whenever a decline comes, whenever there is a tendency to turn aside, we will find God is a consuming fire: He will hold and hurt cruelly, and we may cry out to Him to let us go, but He will not let us go. God loves us too much to let us go, and He will burn and burn until there is nothing left but the purity that is as pure as He is unless we determine to side with the impure and become as reprobate silver. Men are apt to cry to God to stop If only God would leave me alone! God never will. His passionate, inexorable love never allows Him to leave men alone, and with His children He will shake everything that can be shaken till there is nothing that can be shaken any more; then will abide the consuming fire of God until the life is changed into the same image from glory to glory, and men see that strong family likeness to Jesus that can never be mistaken.
The Inheritance of the saints
Giving thanks unto the Father, which hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light. Colossians 1:12 Sanctification means the impartation to us and through us of the Lord Jesus Christ, His patience, His purity, His holiness. It is not that Jesus Christ enables us to imitate Him; not that the power of God is in us and we try our best and fail, and try again; but that the very virtues of Jesus Christ are manifested in our mortal flesh.
1. The Possession of Light
The inheritance of the saints in light.
How often Gods book refers to God as light, to Jesus Christ as light, to the Spirit of God as light, and to the saints as light. By sanctification God places us in the light that He is in, the light in which our Lord Jesus lived His life. And the life was the light of men. Our inheritance in light means that we manifest in our mortal flesh the life of the Lord Jesus Christ. The light means the very things He exhibited, a life full of approach to God, full of under- standing of God and of man. He that followeth Me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life ( John 8:12). Supposing you are walking over a moor at night, you know there is a path but it is too dark and obscure for you to see; then the moon struggles through the clouds and you see the path, a clear strip of white, straight across the hill; in a little while all is obscure again, but you have seen the path and you know the way to go. There are times in our experience when life is just like that. We do not see the path though we know it is there, then the light shines and we see it, and when darkness comes again we can step boldly. Sometimes the light is as the moonlight or the dawn, or it comes as a terrifying flash of lightning, when all of a sudden we see the way we should go. While ye have light, believe in the light, that ye may be the children of light ( John 12:36). Have we believed in the light we have had? Can we recall the time when the light of God in the Face of Jesus Christ was clearer to us than anything else has ever been, when we saw perfectly clearly and understood exactly what the Lord wanted? Did we believe in that light; and have we walked up to the light? Can we say to-night, I was not disobedient unto the heavenly vision? So many of us see the light, we see the way across the moor; by a sudden lightning flash of Gods revealing grace we see the way to go, but we do not take it. We say, Oh, yes, I did receive the Spirit of God, and I thought that it would be like this and that, but it has not been. The reason is that we did not believe in the light when it was given. You say, I am a Christian, I have been born of the Spirit of God; I understand that sanctification is the qualities of the Lord Jesus being exhibited in me; only two weeks ago I had a wonderful time of communion with the Lord in the heavenly places; I saw the way so clearly, and I knew exactly what I should do in the circumstances I was in; but I failed to do it. While ye have light, believe in the light, and slowly and surely we shall find what our Lord said is true he that followeth Me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life. If we have entered into the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, the light has shone, and, this is the marvellous thing, as we begin to do what we know the
Lord would have us do, we find He does not enable us to do it, He simply puts through us all His power and the thing is done in His way. Thank God for everyone who has seen the light, who has understood how the Lord Jesus Christ clears away the darkness and brings the light by showing His own characteristics through us. Did I believe the light when I had it? Is there someone who had the light a year ago, last week, you saw clearly what God wanted; did you obey the light? You answer, No, I did not. Well, tell Him so, and thank God there is another opportunity; and those who have obeyed the light and have been going on, ask God to confirm you in the way that you may be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light. One remarkable thing about our Lords life is that He always understood that His Father was right. I wonder if we always do? There is much that is obscure, much we cannot understand, but are we certain that our Father understands? Have we let Jesus Christ so manifest Himself in us that we know that the Father always does things well? When we come across a dark trial, such as war, or a trial more personal and peculiarly our own, something that is a distress and a pain and a wildness, with no light or liberty, the danger is that we begin to say, Why should this happen to me? Why should I be plunged into this darkness? But if we remember our possession of light, the Son of God in all His understanding of the Father takes possession of us absolutely, and we see in our hearts just as Jesus Christ saw. That is the marvel of sancti- fication. At the threshold of every new experience, of every new phase of the truth of God, there is a margin of darkness where we have this glorious test will I let the Son of God manifest Himself in my mortal flesh in this thing, and will I possess the light that God has given me? If so, we shall see just as Jesus Christ saw.
2. Partakers of Light
There is a difference between this inheritance and an earthly inheritance. When we partake in an earthly inheritance it becomes a particular possession of our own that no one else can have, and not only so but by taking it we may impoverish someone else.
The marvellous thing about the inheritance of the saints in light is that when we take our part of the inheritance, everyone else is blessed in the taking; but if we refuse to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light, we rob others of its glory and its wonder. There is another thing about the possession of light in Jesus Christ: my possession of light is quite different from yours. Each of us has a particular possession of light that no one else can have, and if we refuse to take our possession, everyone else will suffer. In every saints life there is a particular personal edition of the possession of light, and until that is partaken of with full-hearted confidence, all the others suffer. The difficulty is that the round person wants to be in the square hole; this shows how we become deflected from the light that is in Christ.
There is a possession of light that the Spirit distributes to each one according to the perfect wisdom of God. It is Satan, not God, who makes a man say everyone must be just as he is. As we participate in the light and the Son of God is manifested in us in our particular setting, there will be marvellous blessing to all the people round about. The test for apostles and teachers is not that they talk wonderful stuff, not that they are able to expound Gods word, but that they edify the saints (Ephesians 4:12). No individual can develop a holy life with God without benefiting all other saints. I wonder if we have been obedient to the heavenly vision, or have we been hankering after being like someone else? One of the greatest dangers of Satan when he comes as an angel of light is that he tries to persuade the saint of God that he must let go the possession of what God wants him to have and take a possession belonging to someone else. If a man has a special gift for preaching Gods truth, Satan will try to persuade him that preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ is not what God has called him to do, but that he has been called to live a quiet life with God in secret. Always remember that the tiniest deflection of the eye or the heart away from God in light, and from Jesus Christ in light, and from obeying the light when it is given, will mean a deflection for a long while, much sorrow and much distress.
Thank God He does not leave His children alone; there is much pain and distress, but He will always bring them back. I wonder if we have seen Jesus Christ as a possession of light in our circumstances, in our business, in our home relations, or in whatever it may be? Have we seen clearly what God wants us to do, and have we done it? As surely as we begin to put ourselves into the path of obedience, the perfections of the Son of God are manifested through us with such a great brilliancy of light that we will never think of taking credit to ourselves for it. One step in the right direction in obedience to the light, and the manifestation of the Son of God in your mortal flesh is as certain as that God is on His throne. When once Gods light has come to us through Jesus Christ, we must never hang back, but obey; and we shall not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.
As He is, so are we. The sanctified life is a life that bears a strong family likeness to Jesus Christ, a life that exhibits His virtues, His patience, His love, His holiness. Slowly and surely we learn the great secret of eternal life, which is to know God. Every bit of knowledge that we have of God fills us with ineffable joy.
Remember what Jesus said to His disciples That My joy might be in you (rv ).What was the joy of Jesus? That He understood the Father. Do we understand God on any one point? If we do, we will know something of the joy that Jesus had. It is a wonderful possession, it is the very characteristic of Jesus. To understand the tiniest bit of truth about God is to love it with all our heart and soul and mind; all that lies dark and obscure just now is one day going to be as clear, as radiantly and joy- ously clear, as the bit we have seen. No wonder God counsels us to be patient. Little by little everything will be brought into the light until we understand as Jesus Christ understood. The whole of Eternity will be taken up with understanding and knowing God, and, thank God, we may begin to know Him down here. The sanctified life means that we begin to understand God and to manifest the life of the Son of God in our mortal flesh. Before we get hold of the Spirit of God and the Spirit of God gets hold of us, we are apt to be taken up with the outside of things, we cling to them and mistake them for the essential reality until slowly they begin to dwindle from us and to turn to ashes and dis- appointment. But when we are made partakers of light we are wedded to Gods realities behind the things that are seen, and we remain absolutely true to Him.
3. Light Indwelling
Now are ye light in the Lord: walk as children of light. (Ephesians 5:8)
What we have in the kingdom of light, we give. That is always the characteristic. If we try to picture to others the glory of communion with God without being in close contact with God ourselves, we will paralyse the imagination of those we talk to. George MacDonald, in his poem The Disciple, pictures the sense of dreary disappointment that came to a boy when he heard it said that godly people were as pillars in the temple of God.
Straightway my heart is like a clod,
My spirit wrapt in doubt:—
A pillar in the house of God,
And never more go out!
That will always be the result when we try to portray a truth of God without being partakers of the light, without being lifted into the inheritance. As we partake of this possession of light, it is as if the Son of God lifted the veil from the way God created things. He lifts our eyes up to the stars and says Do you see those? Every one of them is known to your Father in heaven, and something we cannot state in words gets hold of our souls and it means this God is so full of light that He knows us down to the tiniest detail of our lives. Then another time He shows us the makeup of a daisy and He says That was Gods thought when He created a daisy, and slowly the Spirit of God makes our lives into exactly Gods idea of what we ought to be. By sanctification we are placed in the will of God. We have not to ask what the will of God is, we are the will of God, and as we keep in the light as He is in the light, the decisions of the mind and the natural progress of the life go on like a law, and when the decision is likely to be wrong the Spirit checks. Whenever there is the tiniest inward check, we must stop, and we will find that the Lord Jesus Christ and His perfections will be there to meet every emergency. In prayer have we learned the wonderful power of that phrase . . . boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus? It means that we can talk to God as Jesus Christ did, but only through the right of His Atonement. We must never allow the idea that because we have been obedient, because our need is great, because we long for it, therefore God will hear us. There is only one way into the holiest, and that is by the blood of Jesus. Being made partakers of the light means that we are taken into the fellowship Jesus referred to when He said, the Father Himself loveth you. As we are made partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light, we begin to understand that there is no division into sacred and secular, it is all one great glorious life with God as the Son of God is manifested in our mortal flesh. Paul puts it in this way: When it pleased God . . . to reveal His Son in me. You in your shop, you in your office, you in your home, say that in your own heart The Son of God revealed in me! That is sanctification.
4. Placed in the Light
And hath translated us into the kingdom of His dear Son.
Just as the stars are poised by God Almighty, so the Apostle says the great power of the Father lifts the saints into the light that He and His Son are in, and poises them there, as eternally established as the stars. Have we ever allowed our imagination to be kindled by the light of God? God is Light, and He lifts us up in Himself, no matter who we are, and poises us as surely as He established the stars, in the very light that He is in. He makes us meet to be partakers of that wonderful inheritance, and slowly and surely the marvel of the life of the Son of God is manifested in our mortal flesh. No wonder Paul says Giving thanks unto the Father! It was never from His right to Himself that our Lord Jesus Christ spoke; He never thought from His right to Himself; that is, He never thought or spoke from His bodily conditions or the condition of His circumstances. We do talk from our right to ourselves, from the condition of our bodies, from our personal possessions; these are the things we all reason from naturally. They are the things the Son of God never reasoned from; He thought and spoke always from His Father; that is, He expressed the thought of God in light. When we are sanctified, the Spirit of God will enable us to do the same. As we go on with God we shall find that we see things in quite a different way, we see them with the eyes of Jesus Christ. When we shut ourselves in alone with God at night, with the stars and the great quietness round about, it is so easy and so wonderful to talk to God; but do we walk in the light of the talk we had when the morning comes? Do we allow the Son of God to manifest Himself in our walk and conversation, or do we forget and begin to work from ourselves, and at the end of the day do we have to say to God I am sorry, Lord, but I made a tremendous blunder, I forgot to step back and let Thee manifest Thyself. Remember, God wants to lift us up and poise us in the light that He is in, and that everything that is dark just now will one day be as clear to us as it is to Him. Think of all the things that are dark just now. Jesus said, There is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed. Things are dark and obscure to us because we are not in a right condition to understand them. Thank God for all that we have understood, for every bit of truth that is so full of light and liberty and wonder that it fills us with joy. Step by step as we walk in that light, and allow the Son of God to meet every circumstance by His virtues, by His power and His presence, we shall understand more and more with a knowledge which passeth knowledge. How many of us know anything about this Gospel Mystery of Sanctification? Are we allowing the life and liberty and power and marvel of the holiness of Jesus Christ to be wrought out in us? Do we know what it is to be made new creatures in Christ Jesus? Have we let God raise us up to the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, and are we learning to walk in the light as God is in the light?
For this is the will of God, even your sanctification.
But of Him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is
made unto us . . . sanctification.
Grow Up into Him
Take the Initiative
Add to your faith virtue. 2 Peter 1:5 (Furnish your faith with resolution. moffatt ) This love requires nothing of us but innocent and regular manners and behaviour. It would only have us do all those things for the sake of God which reason bids us practise. The thing required is not to add to the good actions we have already done, but only to do that out of love to God which men of reputation and virtuous lives do from a principle of honour and regard of themselves. We are not only to lop off evil. That we must do if we were guided by no other principle than right reason. But for everything else leave it in the order God has established in the world. Let us do all the same honest and virtuous actions, but let us do them for the sake of Him Who made us and to Whom we owe our all. Fenelon
The question of forming habits on the basis of the grace of God is a very vital one. God regenerates us and puts us in contact with all His Divine resources, but He cannot make us walk according to His will; the practising is ours, not Gods. We have to take the initiative and add to . . . faith virtue. . . . To take the initiative means to make a beginning, and each one of us must do it for himself: We have to acquaint ourselves with the way we have to go; and beware of the tendency of asking the way when we know it perfectly well. To add means to acquire the habit of doing things, and it is difficult in the initial stages. We are in danger of forgetting that we cannot do what God does and that God will not do what we can do. We cannot save ourselves or sanctify ourselves; God only can do that; but God does not give us good habits, He does not give us character, He does not make us walk aright; we must do all that. We have to work out what God has worked in (Philippians 2:1213). Many of us lose out spiritually, not because the devil attacks us, but because we are stupidly ignorant of the way God has made us. Remember, the devil did not make the human body; he may have tampered with it, but the human body was created by God, and its constitution after we are saved remains the same as before. For instance, we are not born with a ready- made habit of dressing ourselves; we have to form that habit. Apply it spiritually when we are born again, God does not give us a fully fledged series of holy habits, we have to make them; and the forming of habits on the basis of Gods supernatural work in our souls is the education of our spiritual life. Many of us refuse to do it; we are lazy and we frustrate the grace of God.
1. Stop Hesitating
A double minded man is unstable in all his ways. ( James 1:8)
We have to stop hesitating and take the first step; and the first step is to stop hesitating! How long halt ye between two opinions? There are times when we wish that God would kick us right over the line and make us do the thing; but the remarkable thing about Gods patience is that He waits until we stop hesitating. Some of us hesitate so long that we become like spiritual storks; we look elegant only as long as we stand on one leg; when we stand on two we look very ungraceful. Or we have stood so long on the verge of a promise of Gods that we have grown like monuments on its edge; and if we were asked to go over the edge in the way of giving our testimony or doing something for God, we should feel very awkward. It would be a good thing for us if we could be pushed over, no matter how we sprawled. If God tells us to do some- thing good we hesitate over obeying, we endanger our standing in grace. A double minded man, i. e. a discreet man, diplomatic and wise is unstable in all his ways. The man who does not put God first in his calculations is always double minded. If I do, Supposing, and But these are all in the vocabulary of the double minded man. If we begin to weigh things, we let in that subtle enemy against God, viz. , insinuation. When God speaks we have to be resolute and act immediately in faith on what He says. When Peter walked on the water, he did not wait for someone to take his hand; he stepped straight out, in recognition of Jesus, and walked on the water. Never revise decisions. If you have made a wrong decision, then face the music and stand up to it; do not whimper and say I wont do that again. Take the initiative, take the step with your will now; burn your bridges behind you I will write that letter; I will pay that debt; make it impossible to go back on the decision. Sentimentality always begins when we refuse to obey, when we refuse to take some stand God has told us to because of an insinuation that has come in from somewhere. If we hesitate, insinuations are sure to come.
2. Start Hearkening
Whosoever . . . heareth My sayings, and doeth them . . . (Luke 6:47)
Whether we are Christians or not, we must all build; the point is that a Christian builds upon a different basis. If we build to please ourselves, we are building on the sand; if we build for the love of God, we are building on the rock. Do we listen to what Jesus has to say? All we build will end in disaster unless it is built on the sayings of Jesus. He that hath ears to hear, let him hear. Before we can hear certain things, we must be trained. Our disposition determines what we listen for; and when Jesus alters the disposition, He gives us the power to hear as He hears. (Cf. John 12:2930. ) If, when no one is watching us, we are building ourselves up in the word of God, then, when a crisis comes, we shall stand; but if we are not building on the word of God, when a crisis comes we shall go down, no matter what our wills are like. Have we learned the habit of listening to what God says? Have we added this resolute hearing in our practical life? We may be able to give a testimony as to what God has done for us, but does the life we live evidence that we are not listening now, but living only in the memory of what we once heard? We have to keep our ears trained to detect Gods voice, to be continually renewed in the spirit of our mind. If when a crisis comes we instinctively turn to God, we know that the habit of hearkening has been formed. At the beginning there is the noisy clamour of our own misgivings; we are so taken up with what we have heard that we cannot hear any more. We have to hearken to that which we have not listened to before, and to do it we must be insulated on the inside. He wakeneth mine ear to hear as the learned. Once a week at least read the Sermon on the Mount and see how much you have hearkened to it Love your enemies, bless them that curse you; we do not listen to it because we do not want to. We have to learn to hearken to Jesus in everything, to get into the habit of finding out what He says. We cannot apply the teachings of Jesus unless we are regenerated, and we cannot apply all His teachings at once. The Holy Spirit will bring back to our remembrance a certain word of our Lords and apply it to the particular circumstances we are in, the point isare we going to obey it? Whosoever . . . heareth My sayings, and doeth them . . . When Jesus Christ brings a word home, never shirk it.
3. Stand Heroically
Having done all, to stand. (Ephesians 6:13)
It is a great deal easier to fight than to stand; but spiritually our conflict is not so much a fight as a standing on guard having done all, to stand. When we are in a frenzy, we attack; when we are strong, we stand to overcome. To-day in Christian work we are suffering from a phase of spiritual dyspepsia that emphasises doing. The great thing to do is to be a believer in Jesus.
With Jesus it is never Do, do, but Be, be and I will do through you. To stand, means to work on the level of the heroic. It would be a terrible thing to lose the sense of the heroic, because the sense of our duty is only realised by our sense of the heroic. Our Lord calls us to a joyful heroic life, and we must never relax: Put on the whole armour of God. If we try to put on the armour without a right relationship to God we shall be like David in Sauls armour; but when we are right with God we find that the armour fits us exactly, because it is Gods own nature that is the armour. The armour God gives us is not the armour of prayer, but the armour of Himself, the armour of God. That ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. The devil is a bully, but when we stand in the armour of God, he cannot harm us; if we tackle him in our own strength we are soon done for; but if we stand with the strength and courage of God, he cannot gain one inch of way at all. Some of us run away instead of standing; when there is a fresh onslaught of the wiles of the devil we lose heart instantly; and instead of standing we scuttle and others have to stand until we are sufficiently ashamed to come back again. We have to take the initiative in standing against panic. One strong moral man will form a nucleus around which others will gather; and spiritually, if we put on the armour of God and stand true to Him, a whole army of weak-kneed Christians will be strengthened. Remember, we have to take the initiative where we are, not where we are not.
You Won’t reach It on tiptoe!
Furnish your . . . brotherliness with Christian love. 2 Peter 1:5, 7 (moffatt)
Love, to most of us, is an indefinite thing; we do not know what we mean when we speak of love: The love Paul mentions in 1 Corinthians 13 means the sovereign preference of my person for another person, and everything depends on who the other person is. Jesus demands that the sovereign preference be for Him. We cannot love to order, and yet His word stands If any come to Me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, (i. e. , a hatred of every loyalty that would divide the heart from loyalty to Jesus) he cannot be My disciple. Devotion to a Person is the only thing that tells; and no man on earth has the love which Jesus demands, unless it has been imparted to him. We may admire Jesus Christ, we may respect Him and reverence Him; but apart from the Holy Ghost we do not love Him. The only Lover of the Lord Jesus Christ is the Holy Ghost. In Romans 5:5, Paul says that the love of God not the power to love God, but the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us. The Holy Ghost is the gift of the ascended Christ. Have I received the Holy Ghost? Not, Do I believe in Him? but, Have I received Him? Something must come into me. (Luke 11:13. ) When by a willing acceptance, I receive the Holy Spirit, He will shed abroad the love of God in my heart; and on the basis of that love I have to practise the working out of the things which Peter mentions here, and Paul mentions in 1 Corinthians 13. We cannot reach it on tiptoe; some of us tried to once for seven days, then we got tired! The springs of love are in God, not in us. It is absurd to look for the love of God in our natural hearts; the love of God is only there when it has been shed abroad by the Holy Ghost.
1. Love Where You Cannot Respect
But God commendeth His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:8)
The revelation of Gods love is that He loved us when He could not possibly respect us He loved us while we were yet sinners; when we were enemies. When we receive the nature of God into us, the first thing that happens is that God takes away all pretence and pious pose; and He does it by revealing that He loved us, not because we were loveable, but because it is His nature to love. God is love. The surest evidence that the nature of God has come into me is that I know I am a sinner I know that in me (that is, in my flesh, ) dwelleth no good thing. When God has made me know what I am really like in His sight, it is no longer possible for me to be annoyed at what others may tell me I am capable of; God has revealed it to me already. When once we have had a dose of the plague of our own heart, we will never want to vindicate ourselves. The worst things that are said about us may be liter- ally untrue; but we know that whatever is said is not so bad as what is really true of us in the sight of God. Never try to prevent a soul feeling real disgust at what he is like in Gods sight. The first thing the Holy Spirit does when He comes in is to convict, not to comfort, because He has to let us know what
we are like in Gods sight; and then He brings the revelation that God will fill us with His own nature if we will let Him. The curious thing about the love of God is that it is the cruellest thing on earth to everything that is not of Him. God hurts desperately when I am far away from Him; but when I am close to Him, He is unutterably tender. Paul says that God commendeth His own love toward us (rv ). Gods love seems so strange to our natural conceptions that it has to be commended, i. e. recommended, to us before we see anything in it. It is only when we have been awakened by conviction to the sin and anarchy of our hearts against God that we realise the measure of His love toward us, even while we were yet sinners. The Son of God, Who loved me, and gave Himself for mePaul never lost the wonder of that love.
The Lord suffereth long, and is kind. . . . If I watch Gods dealings with me, I shall find that He gives me a revelation of my own pride and bad motives towards Him, and the realisation that He loved me when He could not begin to respect me will send me forth into the world to love others as He loved me. Gods love for me is inexhaustible, and His love for me is the basis of my love for others. We have to love where we cannot respect and where we must not respect, and this can only be done on the basis of Gods love for us. This is My commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you. Love means deliberate self-limitation; we deliberately identify ourselves with the interests of our Lord in everything.
Having loved His own which were in the world, He loved them unto the end. The revelation comes home to me that God has loved me to the end of all my meanness and my sin, my self- seeking and my wrong motives; and now this is the corresponding revelation that I have to love others as God has loved me. God will bring around us any number of people we cannot respect, and we have to exhibit the love of God to them as He has exhibited it to us. Have we ever realised the glorious opportunity we have of laying down our lives for Jesus Christ? Jesus does not ask us to die for Him, but to lay down our lives for Him. Our Lord did not sacrifice Himself for death, He sacrificed His life, and God wants our life, not our death. I beseech you, says Paul, present your bodies a living sacrifice. The greatest love of a man is his love for his friends ( John 15:13); the greatest love of God is His love for His enemies (Romans 5:810); the highest Christian love is that a man will lay down his life for his Friend, the Lord Jesus Christ I have called you friends. Our Lord here connects the highest human love with the highest Divine love, and the connection is in the disciple, not in our Lord.
The emphasis is laid on the deliberate laying down of the life, not in one tragic crisis such as death, but in the grey face of actual facts illumined by no romance, obscured by the mist of the utterly common place expending the life deliberately day by day because of my love for my Friend. This is the love that never fails, and it is neither human nor Divine love alone, but the atonement of both being made manifest in the life of the disciple, The supreme moment of the Cross in actual history is but the concentrated essence of the very nature of the Divine love. God lays down His life for the very creation which men utilise for their own selfish ends. The Self-expenditure of the love of God exhibited in the life and death of our Lord becomes a bridge over the gulf of sin; whereby human love can be imbued by Divine love, the love that never fails.
2. Love Where You Are Not Respected (1 Peter 2:2021)
We shall not always be respected if we are disciples of Jesus. Our Lord said These things have I spoken unto you, that ye should not be offended. They shall put you out of the synagogues: yea, the time cometh, that whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God service, and that will be so again. The disciple is not above his Master. How much respect did Jesus Christ receive when He was on this earth? A Nazarene Carpenter, despised, rejected, and crucified. We een must love the highest when we see it is not true, for when the religious people of our Lords day saw the Highest Incarnate before them, they hated Him and crucified Him. Remember the word that I said unto you, The servant is not greater than his Lord. If they have persecuted Me, they will also persecute you. We are apt to think of a Christian merely as a civilised individual; a Christian is one who is identified with Jesus; one who has learned the lesson that the servant is not greater than his Lord. If we are despised because we have extraordinary notions, we are apt to be uplifted by that; it suits our natural pride; but Jesus said Blessed are ye, when men shall hate you, and when they shall separate you from their company, and shall reproach you, and cast out your name as evil, for the Son of Mans sake. If you want a good time in this world, do not become a disciple of Jesus. If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself, i. e. give up his right to himself to Me. There is always an IF in connection with dis- cipleship, and it implies that we need not unless we like. There is never any compulsion; Jesus does not coerce us. There is only one way of being a disciple, and that is by being devoted to Jesus.
3. Love Wherever Redemption Reaches ( John 3:16)
What has God redeemed? Everything that sin and Satan have touched and blighted, God has redeemed;
Redemption is complete. We are not working for the redemption of the world, we are working on the Redemption, which is a very different thing. Jesus Christs last command to His disciples was not to go and save the world; the saving is done. He told them to go and make disciples (rv). Our work is to open their eyes, to turn them from darkness to light, from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins, i. e. that they may receive the Redemption which is complete but which is incredible to a man until he does receive itI do not doubt that God saves men; nor do I doubt that He can do all the Bible says He can; but it is ridiculous to suppose it includes me! We have to beware of making the need the call; the Redemption is the call; the need is the opportunity, and the opportunity is in our own homes, in our work, just wherever we are, not simply in meetings. Naturally we always want to go somewhere else, but the love of God works just where we are, and His love works irrespective of persons.
Are we banking in unshaken faith on the Redemption of Jesus Christ? Is it our conviction amongst men that every man can be presented perfect in Christ Jesus? Are we filling up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ . . . for His body’s sake? That means we have to be so identified with our Lord that His love is being poured out all the time, we have to be prepared to be nothing at all so that He can pour His sweetness through us. Neither natural love nor Divine love will remain unless it is cultivated. We must form the habit of love until it is the practice of our lives.
Make a habits of having no habits
For as these qualities exist and increase with you, they render you active and fruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. 2 Peter 1:8 (moffatt )
When we are forming a habit we are conscious of it, but in the real Christian life, habits do not appear, because by practice we do the thing unconsciously. As Christians, we have to learn the habit of waiting upon God as He comes to us through the moments, and to see that we do not make common-sense our guide; we do until we have seen the Lord. When we realise that Gods order comes to us in the haphazard, our life will manifest itself in the way our Lord indicates in the Sermon on the Mount. The illustrations our Lord uses there are the fowls of the air, the lilies of the field. Birds and flowers obey the law of their lives in the setting in which they are placed; they have no consciousness of being conscious; it is not their own thought that makes them what they are, but the thought of the Father in heaven. If our child- like trust in God is giving place to self-consciousness and self-depreciation, it is a sign that there is some- thing wrong; and the cure for it is to reach the place where every habit is so practised that there is no conscious habit at all. Watch how God will upset our programmes if we are in danger of making our little Christian habits our god. Whenever we begin to worship our habit of prayer or of Bible reading, God will break up that time. We say I cannot do this, I am praying; it is my hour with God. No, it is our hour with our habit; we pray to a habit of prayer.
1. Exercising Habits until Each Habit Is Lost
For as these qualities exist and increase with you . . . (moffatt)
Are they existing in us? There are times when we are conscious of becoming virtuous and patient and godly, but they are only stages; if we stop there we get the strut of the pi person. A pi person is one who does his level best to be what he would like to be but knows he is not. Our Christian life continually resolves itself into consciousness and introspection because there are some qualities we have not added yet. Ultimately, the relationship is to be a completely simple one. Consciousness of a defect is a disease spiritually; yet it is produced by the finger of God because we have neglected to add some quality. We must acknowledge the defect, and then look out for the opportunity of exercising ourselves along the line of the quality to be added patience, godliness, love.
We have to exercise the quality until the habit is merged in the simplicity of a child’s life. We have to beware of singling out one quality only. Peter says as these qualities, faith, virtue, knowledge, temperance, patience, godliness, brotherly kindness, charity, exist and increase with you (moffatt ). Our Lord is the type of all Christian experience, and He cannot be summed up in terms of natural virtues, but only in terms of the supernatural. Come unto Me, says Jesus, and I will give you rest, the rest of the perfection of activity that is never conscious of itself. This perfection of activity can be illustrated by the spinning of a coloured top; if the top spins quickly, all the colours merge and a musical sound is heard; but if it spins slowly, it wobbles and sighs and every colour is conspicuous. If we are conscious of a defect it is because the Lord is pointing out that there is a quality to be added; and until it is added we are conscious of a black streak here, and a coloured streak there. But when the particular quality has been added we are no longer conscious of the defect, all the qualities are merged and the whole life is at rest in the perfection of activity. The dominant thing about a saint is not self- realisation, but the Lord Himself; consequently a saint can always be ignored because to the majority of eyes our Lord is no more noticeable in the life of a saint than He was to men in the days of His flesh. But when a crisis comes the saint is the one to whom men turn; and the life which seemed colourless is seen to be the white light of God.
2. Expressing Holiness until Conscious Holiness Is Lost
they render you active and fruitful . . .
It is an utter mistake to fix our eyes on our own whiteness, for all we are conscious of then is a passionate longing for a holy relationship to God. We have to come to the place where conscious holiness ceases to be because of the presence of the One Who is holiness. When we have been made partakers of the Divine nature we are taken up into Gods consciousness, we do not take God into our consciousness. If we are consciously holy we are far from simple in certain relationships, for there will be certain things we imagine we cannot do; whereas in reality we are the only ones who ought to be able to do those things. Once we come into simple relationship with God, He can put us where He pleases and we are not even conscious of where He puts us. All we are conscious of is an amazing simplicity of life that seems to be a haphazard life externally. The only supernatural life ever lived on earth was the life of our Lord, and He was at home with God anywhere. Wherever we are not at home with God, there is a quality to be added. We have to let God press through us in that particular until we gain Him, and life becomes the simple life of a child in which the vital concern is putting God, first.
3. Experiencing Knowledge until Knowledge Is Lost
. . . in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Then shall I know even as also I am known love abides, and knowledge is merged. Knowledge is faith perfected, and faith in turn passes into sight. We experience knowledge until knowledge is swallowed up in the fact of Gods presence Why He is here! Knowledge is an expression of the nature of God, and is the practical outcome of the life of God in us, but if we isolate knowledge we are in danger of criticising God. We look for God to manifest Himself to His children: God only manifests Himself in His children, consequently others see the manifestation, the child of God does not. You say, I am not conscious of Gods blessing now thank God! I am not conscious now of the touches of God thank God! I am not conscious now that God is answering my prayers thank God! If you are conscious of these things it means you have put yourself out- side God.
That the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal fleshI am not conscious that His life is being manifested, you say, but if you are a saint it surely is. When a little child becomes conscious of being a little child, the child-likeness is gone; and when a saint becomes conscious of being a saint, something has gone wrong.
Oh but Im not good enough. You never will be good enough! that is why the Lord had to come and save you. Go to your own funeral and ever after let God be all in all, and life will become the simple life of a child in which Gods order comes moment by moment. Never live on memories. Do not remember in your testimony what you once were; let the word of God be always living and active in you, and give the best you have every time and all the time.
The habit of a Good conscience
Having a good conscience. 1 Peter 3:16 We hear it said that conscience is the voice of God, but logically that is easily proved to be absurd. Paul saidI verily thought within myself that I ought to do many things contrary to the name of Jesus of Nazareth; Paul was obeying his conscience when he hated Jesus Christ and put His followers to death; and our Lord said that whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God service. If conscience were the voice of God it would be the most contradictory voice human ears ever listened to. Conscience is the eye of the soul; and how it records depends entirely upon the light thrown upon God. The God Whom Saul of Tarsus knew had the light of Judaism upon Him, and Paul’s conscience recording in that light brought him to the conclusion that he should hate Jesus and persecute His followers. Immediately the white light of our Lord was thrown upon God, Saul’s conscience recorded differentlyand he trembling and astonished said, Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do? Saul had not another conscience, but it recorded differently, and the result was a tremendous disturbance in his life. Conscience is the faculty of the spirit that fits itself on to the highest a man knows, whether he be an agnostic or a Christian; every man has a con- science, although every man does not know God.
1. The Sensitive Conscience
And herein do I exercise myself, to have always a con- science void of offence toward God, and toward men. (Acts 24:16)
If I am in the habit of steadily and persistently facing myself with God, my conscience will always introduce Gods perfect law to me; the question then is will I do what my conscience makes me understand clearly I should do? When conscience has been enlightened by the Son of God being formed in me, I have to make an effort to keep my conscience so sensitive that I obey that which I perceive to be Gods will. I have to be so keen in the scent of the Lord, so sensitive to the tiniest touch of His Spirit, that I know what I should do. If I keep my soul inwardly open to God, then when I come in contact with the affairs of life outside, I know immediately what I should do; if I do not, I am to blame. I should be living in such perfect sensitiveness to God, in such perfect sympathy with His Son that in every circumstance I am in, the spirit of my mind is renewed, and I prove, i. e. make out, what is Gods will, the thing that is good, and acceptable, and perfect.
We avoid forming a sensitive conscience when we say Oh well, God cannot expect me to do this thing, He has not told me to do it. How do we expect God to tell us? The word is not in heaven . . . neither is it beyond the sea . . . but the word is very nigh unto thee, in thy mouth, and in thy heart, that thou mayest do it (Deuteronomy 30:1214). If we are Christians that is where the word of God isin our hearts. In the engineering of our circumstances, God gives us opportunities to form a sensitive conscience, and in this way He educates us down to the scruple.5 When we come to a crisis it is easy to get direction, but it is a different matter to live in such perfect one- ness with God that in the ordinary occurrences of life we always do the right thing. Is my conscience so sensitive that it needs neither terrible crime nor sublime holiness to awaken it, but the ordinary occurrences of life will awaken it? Grieve not the Holy Spirit.
He does not come with a voice of thunder, but with a voice so gentle that it is easy to ignore it. The one thing that keeps the conscience sensitive is the continual habit of seeing that I am open to God within. Whenever there is debate, quit. Why shouldn’t I do this? You are on the wrong track. When conscience speaks there must be no debate whatever. In a crisis human nature is put on the strain, and we usually know what to do; but the sensitive conscience of the Christian is realised in the ordinary things of life, the humdrum things. We are apt to think of conscience only in connection with something outrageous. The sensitiveness of conscience is maintained by the habit of always being open towards God. At the peril of your soul you allow one thing to obscure your inner communion with God. Drop it, whatever it is, and see that you keep your inner vision clear.
2. The Seared Conscience
Having their conscience seared with a hot iron. (1 Timothy 4:2)
The conscience referred to here has been damaged by some terrific iron cramp. 6 Conscience is the eye of the soul recording what it looks at, but if what Ruskin calls the innocence of the eye is lost, then the recording of conscience may be distorted. If I continually twist the organ of my souls recording, it will become perverted. If I do a wrong thing often enough, I cease to realise the wrong in it. A bad man can be perfectly happy in his badness.
That is what a seared conscience means. Our critical faculties are given us for the purpose of self-examination, and the way to examine our- selves under the control of the Spirit of God is to ask ourselves Am I less sensitive than I used to be to the indications of Gods will, less sensitive regarding purity, uprightness, goodness, honesty and truth? If I realise that I am, I may be perfectly certain that some- thing I have done (not something done to me) has seared my conscience. It has given me, so to speak, a bloodshot eye of the soul and I cannot see aright. Conscience may be seared by means of a desperate crime as in the case of Herod. Herod ordered the voice of God to be silent in his life (see Mark 6:1628), and when Jesus Christ stood before him we read that He answered him nothing (Luke 23:89). The human eye may be damaged by gazing too much on intense whiteness, as in the case of snow blindness when men remain blind for months. And conscience may be damaged by tampering with the occult side of things, giving too much time to speculation; then when we turn to human life we are as blind as bats. It may be all right for angels to spend their time in visions and meditation, but if I am a Christian I find God in the ordinary occurrences of my life. The special times of prayer are of a different order.
If I sequester myself and press my mind on one line of things and forget my relation to human life, when I do turn to human affairs I am morally blind. Am I trying to embrace a sensation of God spiritually for myself ? When God has saved and sanctified us there is a danger that we are unwilling to let the vision fade; we refuse to take up our ordinary work, and soon we will be completely at a loss because we have hugged an experience to our souls instead of maintaining a right relationship to God Who gave us the experience. My mortal flesh does not come in contact with God, it comes in contact with other mortal flesh, with earthly things, and I have to manifest the Son of God there by putting on the new man in connection with all these things. Am I doing it? Have I formed the habit of keeping my conscience sensitive to God on the inside and equally sensitive to man on the out- side by always working out what God works in? God engineers our circumstances and He brings across our paths some extraordinary people, viz. , embodiments of ourselves in so many forms, and it is part of the humour of the situation that we recognise ourselves. Now, God says, exhibit the attitude to them that I showed to you. This is the one way of keeping a con- science void of offence toward God and man.
3. The Saintly Conscience
Having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience. (Hebrews 10:22)
Can God readjust a seared conscience and make it sensitive again? He can, and it is done by the vicarious Atonement of our Lord. How much more shall the blood of Christ . . . purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? (Hebrews 9:14). When the Holy Spirit comes into me, my whole nature is in a desperate turmoil because immediately a man sees Jesus and understands Who He is, that instant he is criticised and self-condemned. If the Holy Spirit is obeyed He will make the Atonement of the Lord efficacious in me so that the blood of Christ cleanses my conscience from dead works and I become readjusted to God. The experimental element that works this transforming mystery of the Atonment becoming my vital life is repentance wrought in me by the Holy Spirit.
The deepest repentance is not in the sinner, but in the saint. Repentance means not only sorrow for sin, it involves the possession of a new disposition that will never do the thing again. The only truly repentant man is the holy man. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. To admit instead of confess is to trample the blood of the Son of God under foot, but immediately we allow the Holy Spirit to give us the gift of repentance, the shed blood of Christ will purge our conscience from dead works and send us into heart-spending service for God with a passionate devotion. If I allow the saintly conscience to have way in me it will mean that I keep my own life steadfastly open towards God and keep steadfastly related to Him on the line of intercessory prayer for others. The clearing house for a guilty conscience is that by our intercession Jesus repairs the damage done to other lives, and the consolation to our conscience is amazing. The saintly conscience means that I maintain an open scrutiny before God, and that I carry out the sensitiveness gained there all through my life.
The habit of enjoying the disagreeable
Whereas he who has not these by him is blind, short- sighted, oblivious that he has been cleansed from his erstwhile sins. 2 Peter 1:9 (moffatt )
In order to express what Gods grace has done in us we have to form habits until all habits are merged in the perfect relationship of love. It is the relationship of a child wherein we realise that everything which God tells us to do we must do and not debate. Gods commands are made to the life of His Son in us, not to our human nature; consequently all that God tells us to do is always humanly difficult; but it becomes divinely easy immediately we obey because our obedience has behind it all the omnipotent power of the grace of God. The meaning of sanctification is that the Son of God is formed in us (Galatians 4:19); then our human nature has to be transfigured by His indwelling life, and this is where our action comes in. We have to put on the new man in accordance with the life of the Son of God in us. If we refuse to be sanctified, there is no possibility of the Son of God being manifested in us, because we have prevented our lives being turned into a Bethlehem; we have not allowed the Spirit of God to bring forth the Son of God in us. Are we put- ting on the new man in accordance with the Son of God, or are we choking His life in us? If we allow things which do not spring from the Son of God, we will put His life in us to death. The historic life of our Lord is the type of the life that will be produced in us if we take care to work out what God works in. Our human nature is meant for the Son of God to manifest Himself in, and this brings us to the margin of our responsibility. Scriptural language may seem to destroy individual responsibility, but in reality it increases it a hundredfold. For example, to say with PaulI have been crucified with Christ; yet I live; and yet no longer I, but Christ liveth in medoes not mean that I am without responsibility; it means that I have the responsibility now of seeing that the Son of God works through me all the time. I have to see that the outer courts in which He lives are kept in perfect trim for Him to work through. I must not allow them to be choked up with prejudices or notions of my own.
1. By Keeping Yourself
Fit But he that lacketh these things is blind
. . . When Christ is formed in us we have to see that our human nature acts in perfect obedience to all that the Son of God reveals. God does not supply us with character, He gives us the life of His Son and we can either ignore Him and refuse to obey Him, or we can so obey Him, so bring every thought and imagination into captivity, that the life of Jesus is manifested in our mortal flesh. It is not a question of being saved from hell, but of being saved in order to manifest the Son of God in our mortal flesh.
Our responsibility is to keep ourselves fit to manifest Him. Are we lacking in the things that Peter through the Spirit of God says we must add the things which ought to mark the life of the saint? For instance, do we exhibit the virtue of self-control, the virtue of godliness, in the letters we write, in the conversations we hold? If not, then we not only give a wrong impression of the Son of God, but we hurt His life in us. If we are lacking in these things, it is because we have become short-sighted; we have forgotten that we have been cleansed from our old sins and are in imminent peril of being taken up with an experience and an illumination, and of forgetting that the life of Jesus is to be manifested in our mortal flesh.
The only way to keep yourself fit is by the discipline of the disagreeable. It is the disagreeable things which make us exhibit whether we are mani- festing the life of the Son of God, or living a life which is antagonistic to Him. When disagreeable things happen, do we manifest the essential sweetness of the Son of God or the essential irritation of ourselves apart from Him? Whenever self comes into the ascendant, the life of the Son of God in us is perverted and twisted; there is irritation, and His life suffers. We have to beware of every element in human nature which clamours for attention first. Growth in grace stops the moment we get huffed. We get huffed because we have a peculiar person to live with just think of the disagreeable person you have been to God! Every disagreeable person you ever met is an objective picture of what you were like in the sight of God. We have to learn to get in the first blow at the thing that is unlike God in ourselves.
We can take in our human nature the blow that was meant for Him and so prevent the tramp of feet on Him. That is what Paul means when he speaks of filling up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for His body’s sake. It is one thing to go into the disagreeable by Gods engineering, but another thing to go into it by choice. If God puts us there, He is amply sufficient. No matter how difficult the circumstances may lie, if we will let Jesus Christ manifest Himself in them, it will prove to be a new means of exhibiting the wonderful perfection and extraordinary purity of the Son of God. This keen enthusiasm of letting the Son of God manifest Himself in us is the only thing that will keep us enjoying the discipline of the disagreeable. Let your light so shine before men. . . . Our light is to shine in the darkness; it is not needed in the light. It is on earth, in this condition of things, that we have to see that the life of the Son of God is manifested in us, and we must keep ourselves fit to do it.
2. By Keeping Your Sight
Fit and cannot see afar off . . .
In human sight we soon lose the innocence of sight; we know what we see, but instead of trusting the innocence of sight we confuse it by trying to state what we ought to see. Jesus restores the spiritual innocence of sight Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Paul said that he was sent by God to open mens eyes. If you are being trained as an art student you will first of all be taught to see things as a whole, in mass outline, and then in detail. The meaning of perspective is that we keep the view of the whole whilst paying attention to the detail. What is the thing that is pressing just now so that you cannot see aright? The reason it presses is that you have forgotten the One Who is far off to human sight, but very near to spiritual sight God Himself. And there we saw the giants . . . and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight. When we see God we see neither the obstacle, nor ourselves, but, like Moses, we endure as seeing Him Who is invisible. Can I see the Invisible One in the thing that is nearest to me my food, my clothes, my money, my friendships? Can I see these in the light of God? Everything that came into the life of our Lord externally was transfigured because He saw always Him Who is Invisible I knew that Thou hearest Me always: I do always those things that please Him. I cannot keep my sight right if I give way to self- pity. Why should this happen to me? To talk in that way is a grief to Jesus because it is a deliberate refusal on my part to take His yoke upon me. He was meek towards His Fathers dispensations for Him and never once murmured. The reason the thing has happened to you will only be seen when you are identified with Jesus in it; see that you remain in entire connection with Him. If you indulge in self-pity and the luxury of misery, it means that you have forgotten God, forgotten that you have been purged from your old sins, and that you have to put on the new man, in accordance with the life of the Son of God in you. While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. The way to keep our sight fit is by looking at the things which are not seen, and external things become a glorious chance of enabling us to concentrate on the invisible things. Once we realise that Gods order comes to us in the passing moments, then nothing is unimportant. Every disagreeable thing is a new way of bring- ing us to realise the wonderful manifestation of the Son of God in that particular. What was the thing that obliterated God and you know it had no business to? You forget to take your heart to God and spill it. The thing that ought to make our hearts beat is a new way of manifesting the Son of God in us.
3. By Keeping Your Soul Fit
. . . and hath forgotten that he was purged from his old sins.
Jesus says that a man must lose his soul in order to find it whoso ever will lose his life [i. e. soul] for My sake shall find it. Soul is me, my personal spirit, manifesting itself in my body, my way of estimating things. The incoming of the Holy Spirit into my spirit enables me to construct a new way of reasoning and looking at things. Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus. Our Lords way of reasoning certainly is not ours naturally; we have to form His mind. We cannot form the mind of Christ without having His Spirit, but we may have the Spirit of Christ and refuse to form His mind. We cannot alter our reasoning until God calls us up short. We may have been going steadily on not realising that we had to readjust our views, and then the Holy Spirit brings to our conscious mind what we knew perfectly well, but had never seen in that connection before. There must be instant obedience.
The moment we obey the light the Spirit of God brings, the mind of Jesus is formed in us in that particular, and we begin to reason as He reasons; but if we debate and go back to our old way of reasoning we grieve the Spirit of God. In new circumstances there are always readjustments to be made. No matter how disagreeable things may be, say Lord, I am delighted to obey Thee in this matter, and instantly the Son of God presses to the front and in our human minds there is formed the way of reasoning that glorifies Jesus. We have to keep our soul fit to form the mind of Christ.
The habit of rising to the occasion
So be the more eager, brothers, to ratify your calling and election, for as you exercise these qualities you will never make a slip. 2 Peter 1:10 (moffatt)
In natural life our aims shift and alter as we develop; but development in the Christian life is an increasing manifestation of Jesus Christ. Christian faith is nourished on dogma, and all young Christian life is uniform; but in the mature Christian life there are diversities. We must be careful that we do not remain children too long, but see that we grow up into Him in all things. We have to assimilate truth until it becomes part of us, and then begin to manifest the individual characteristics of the children of God. The life of God shows itself in different manifestations, but the aim ultimately is the manifestation of Jesus Christ. Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. If Jesus Christ is not being manifested in my mortal flesh, I am to blame; it is because I am not eating His flesh and drinking His blood. Just as I take food into my body and assimilate it, so, says Jesus, I must take Him into my soul. He that eateth Me, even he shall live by Me. Food is not health, and truth is not holiness. Food has to be assimilated by a prop- erly organised system before the result is health, and truth must be assimilated by the child of God before it can be manifested as holiness. We may be looking at the right doctrines and yet not assimilating the truths which the doctrines reveal. Beware of making a doctrinal statement of truth the truth I am . . . the Truth, said Jesus. Doctrinal statement is our expression of that vital connection with Him. If we divorce what Jesus says from Himself, it leads to secret self- indulgence spiritually; the soul is swayed by a form of doctrine that has never been assimilated and the life is twisted away from the centre, Jesus Christ Himself.
1. The Habit of Ratifying Your Election
Wherefore the rather, brethren, give diligence to make your calling and election sure . . .
To ratify (moffatt ) is to make sure of. I have to form the habit of assuring myself of my election, to bend the whole energy of my Christian powers to realise my calling, and to do that I must remember what I am saved for, viz. ; that the Son of God might be manifested in my mortal flesh. How much attention have I given to the fact that my body is the temple of the Holy Ghost? When the Son of God is formed in me is He able to exhibit His life in my mortal flesh, or am I a living contradiction of what my mouth professes? Am I working out what God works in or have I become divorced from Jesus Christ? I become divorced from Him immediately I receive anything apart from His indwelling. Have I a testimony to give that is not me? If my testimony is only a thrilling experience, it is nothing but a dead, metallic thing; it kills me and those who listen to me. But when I am in contact with Jesus Christ every testimony of mine will reveal Him. That ye may know what is the hope of His call- ing, and what the riches . . . of His inheritance in the saints. That which is taken for humility before men is blasphemy before God. To say, Oh Im no saint; I cant stand the folks who testify that they are sanctified, is acceptable with men; they will say it is true humility to talk in that way. But say this before God, and though it may sound humble, it is blasphemy because it means God cannot make me a saint. The one whom men call proud is really unutterably humble before God Nothing in my hands I bring.
2. The Habit of Realising Your Exercises
for if ye do these things . . .
We cannot do anything for our salvation, but we must do something to manifest it; we must work it out. Am I working out my salvation with my tongue, with my brain, and with my nerves? We are all apt to say with Rip Van Winkle I wont count this time. We put off the realisation that if we are going to grow up into Him in all things, there are things that we must do. If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them. said Jesus. Character is the way we have grown to act with our hands and our feet, our eyes and our tongue; and the character we make always reveals the ruling disposition within. If any man is in Christ, there is a new creation (rv mg). Where is the new creation? If I am still the same miserable cross-patch, set on my own way, it is a lie to say that I am a new creature in Christ. Have I learned to submit my will to Jesus? When we are rightly related to God we have uncovered to us for the first time the power of our own wills.
Our wills are infirm through sin, but when we are sanctified there is revealed to us the pure pristine will- power with which God created us, and which the Holy Ghost calls into action. Then we have to sub- mit our will to Jesus as He submitted His will to His Father. How was Jesus one with His Father when He was in this human frame? By complete obedience, complete dependence, and complete intercourse with Him all the time.
If ye do these things am I adding resolution to my faith, self-control to my knowledge, steadfastness to my piety? We ought to be infinitely more humble in exercising ourselves in these ways. Gods order for the saint is trusting imperially, and working humbly in the midst of things as they are, not thinking imperially, and contemptuously ignoring things as they are. God knows where we are, and His order comes to us moment by moment. We are not called to manifest Jesus in heaven; we have to be the light in the darkness and the squalor of earth. Our place is in the demon- possessed valley, not on the Mount of Transfiguration. It is in the valley that we have to exercise these things. God will never shield us from any requirements of a child of His. Think it not strange, says Peter, concerning the fiery trial which is to try you. God is the Master Engineer; He allows difficulties to come to see if we can vault over them properly. By my God have I leaped over a wall. Do the thing; it does not matter how it hurts so long as it gives God a chance to manifest Himself in our mortal flesh. May God not find the whine in us any more, but may He find us full of spiritual pluck and athleticism, ready to face anything He brings and to exercise ourselves in order that the Son of God may be manifested in our mortal flesh. Remember, we go through nothing that God does not know about.
3. The Habit of Recognising
Your Expectations . . . ye shall never fall.
What do you expect? One way to detect inordinate imagination is to try and locate to yourself what you expect God to do. One expectation you cannot have, and that is the expectation of successful service. When the Lord sent out the disciples on their first evangelical tour, they came back hilarious over their success Lord, even the devils are subject unto us through Thy name. That is all they thought about. Our Lord said, Dont rejoice in successful service, but rather rejoice, because your names are written in heaven. We are not called to success but to faithfulness. The life of our Lord is given to us that we may know the way we have to go when we are made sons and daughters of God. We must be careful not to have the idea that we are put into Gods show room. God never has museums. We are to have only one aim in life, and that is that the Son of God may be manifested; then all dictation to God will vanish.
Our Lord never dictated to His Father, and we are not to dictate to God; we are to submit our wills to Him so that He works through us what He wants. I do not know why I should have to go through this the moment that thought is produced in us, no matter what our experience may be, we are no longer saints. It is a thought that has neither part nor lot with the life of the Son of God in us, and it must be put away instantly. We are the only ones who should go through these things, though we need not unless we like. If we refuse to, the trample will go back on the Lord, and we will never hear Him complain.
We will get off scot free That was rather smart of me, that man thought he was going to put on me! What is that mark on Thy hand? That is the mark of the blow that should have been taken by you, but it came back on Me. Always go the second mile with God. It is never our duty to do it; but if we make duty our god we cease to be Christians in that particular. It is never our duty to go the second mile, to turn the other cheek, but it is what we shall do if we are saints. The Lord is doing it with us just now; we compel Him to go the second mile; we wont do this and that, and He has to do it for us. Are you saying to God, I shall not accept these circumstances? God will not punish you; but you will punish yourself when you realise that He was giving you a glorious opportunity of filling up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ.
It is Peter, the man who denied his Lord and Master, who tells us that we should follow His steps. Peter had come to a recognition of himself by means of a strange and desperate fall Simon, Simon, . . . Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat: but I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not: and when thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren. Peter understands these words of Jesus now by the indwelling Spirit bringing them back to his remembrance. Are we following in the steps of His unseen feet? Where did Jesus place His feet? He placed them by the sick and the sorrowful, by the dead, by the bad, by the twisted and by the good. He placed His feet exactly where we have to place ours, either with or without Him, in the ordinary rough and tumble of human life as it is. I will make the place of My feet glorious.
As we walk in this body according to the new life that has been imparted to us by the Holy Spirit, we shall find it is no longer mounting up in ecstasy, running and not being weary, but walking with an infinite, steady, uncrushable, indescribable patience until men take knowledge that the Son of God is walking through us again.
The habit of Wealth
You will thus be richly furnished with the right of entry into the eternal realm of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. 2 Peter 1:11 (moffatt)
Through the promises we are made partakers of the Divine nature (v. 4); then we have to manipulate the Divine nature in our human nature by habits. Jesus prayed that they may be one, even as We are one, and Paul urges, on the most practical lines, that we form in our actual lives the habits that are in perfect accordance with oneness with God. Our bodies are the temples of the Holy Ghost in which Jesus Christ is to manifest His life; and He can only do it as we put on the new man and see to it that our external conduct springs from a right relationship to Him. Verses 34 describe the super-natural works of grace; then we have to form the habit of working out all that God has worked in. Add to your faith virtue. . . . Add means there is something we must do.
1. The Habit of Realizing the Provision
For so an entrance shall be ministered unto you . . .
The entrance is by a new and living way, viz. , our Lord Jesus Christ, and the outgoing is to God Him- selffilled with all the fullness of God. We get impoverished spiritually because we will stop at the barrier of consciousness. We will believe only in what we consciously possess; consequently we never realise the provision. If the grace and majesty and life and power and energy of God are not being manifested in us to the glory of God (not to our consciousness), God holds us responsible; we are wrong somewhere. There is always a danger of placing experience and consciousness in the wrong place. If we want something conscious from God, it means there is a reserve; the will has not been surrendered; immediately we do surrender, the tidal wave of the love of God carries us straight into all the fullness of God. O fools, and slow of heart to believe! We will believe only in what we have experienced. We never can experience Jesus Christ, that is, we can never hold Him within the compass of our own hearts. Jesus Christ must always be greater than our experience of Him, but our experience will be along the line of the faith we have in Him. If these things be in you, and abound. Have we formed the habit of wealth spiritually, or are we gambling with what is not ours, hoodwinking our- selves with delusions?
These thingsself-control, patience, loveare not in us if we are not born from above (rv mg). Are we trying to persuade ourselves that we are right with God when we know we are not? Earthly inheritances are particular possessions of our own, and in taking them we may impoverish oth- ers; but the marvellous thing about spiritual wealth is that when we take our part in that, everyone else is blessed; whereas if we refuse to be partakers, we hinder others from entering into the riches of God. Unto me . . . is this grace given, that I should preach . . . the unsearchable riches of Christ. In the natural world it is un-governably bad taste to talk about money; one of the worst of lies is tucked up in the phrase we so often hear I cant afford it. The same idea has crept into the spiritual domain; and we have the idea that it is a sign of modesty to say at the close of the day Well, I have got through, but it has been a severe tussle! And all the grace of God is ours without let or hindrance 7 through the Lord Jesus, and He is ready to tax the last grain of sand and the remotest star to bless us.
What does it matter if circumstances are hard? Why shouldn’t they be! We are the ones who ought to be able to stand them. It is a crime to allow external physical misery to make us sulky with God. There are desolating experiences, such as the Psalmist describes in Psalms 4243, and he says, Then will I go . . . unto God my exceeding joy not with joy, but unto God Who is my joy. No calamity can touch that wealth. No sin is worse than self-pity because it puts self-interest on the throne; it makes the bastard self seem in the right; it obliterates God and opens the mouth to spit out murmurings against God; and the life becomes impoverished and mean, 8 there is nothing lovely or generous about it. Always beware of the conscious superiority that arises out of suffering I am so peculiarly constituted. If we indulge in the luxury of misery, we become isolated in the conception of our own sufferings; Gods riches are banished and self- pity, the deeply entrenched essence of Satan hood, is enthroned in the soul.
2. Rejoicing in the Privilege
abundantly into the everlasting kingdom . . .
Jesus said, My kingdom is not of this world: if My kingdom were of this world, then would My servants fight, i. e. they would do the same thing that every rational being does, but My kingdom is not of this world; it belongs to eternal realities.
The idea of a kingdom that is not maintained by might is inconceivable to us, and the otherworldly aspect of Jesus Christs Kingdom is apt to be forgotten. Jesus Christs kingdom is not built on principles that can be discerned naturally, but on other worldliness, and we must never adapt principles that He did not adapt. If we have come to a dead stop spiritually, is it not because we have ceased to be otherworldly? Are we prepared to obey the scrutiny of the Holy Ghost when He brings the otherworldly standpoint of Jesus to bear upon our practical life? If we are, we shall be considered fools from every standpoint but the standpoint of the Holy Ghost. We are to be in the world but not of it. Are we letting Gods light break on us as it did on Jesus? Are we showing in the prevailing bent of our lives the characteristics that were in Him? The kingdom of God is within you. Jesus Christ is the King and the Kingdom. This is life eternal, that they might know Thee. Eternal life is God and God is eternal life; and the meaning of the At-onement is that Jesus produces that life in us. By sanctification we enter into the kingdom of perfect oneness with Jesus Christ; everything He is, we are by faith.
He is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption, we have nothing apart from Him. Have we formed the habit of rejoicing in this privilege? 3. Recognising Him Personally . . . of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is Saviour and Lord in experience, and Lord and Saviour in discernment. Ye call Me, Master and, Lord: and ye say well; for so I am but is He? The witness of the Holy Spirit is that we realise with growing amazement Who Jesus is to us personally, our Lord and Master. The baptism of the Holy Ghost makes us witnesses to Jesus, not wonder- workers. The witness is not to what Jesus does, but to what He is. Ye shall be witnesses unto Me. We have had such an abundant entrance ministered unto us into His Kingdom, i. e. into oneness with Him- self, that we are a delight to Him and His heart is being satisfied with us. When God is beginning to be satisfied with us, He impoverishes every source of fictitious wealth.
After sanctification God will wither up every other spring until we know that all our fresh springs [pbv ]9 are in Him. He will wither up natural virtues; He will break up all confidence in our own powers, until we learn by practical experience that we have no right to draw our life from any other source than the tremendous reservoir of the unsearchable riches of Jesus Christ. Thank God if you are going through a drying-up experience! And beware of pumping up the dregs with the mud at the bottom of the well when all the Almighty power and grace of God is at your disposal. We have super abounding supplies, the unsearchable riches of Jesus Christ; and yet some of us talk as if our Heavenly Father had cut us off with a shilling! What have we to spend this Christmas-time? We ought to be going about like multimillionaires. Externally we may have 21 2d. only, but spiritually we have all the grace of God to spend on others. He that believeth on Me, out of him shall flow rivers of living water. If you turn away from the Source and look at the outflow, at what God is doing through you, the Source will dry up and you will sit down on the outskirts of the entrance and howl It is dreadfully hard to live the Christian life! Turn round and enter into the kingdom, pay attention to the Source, our Lord Himself, and you will experience the hilarity of knowing that you see God.
Never be surprised at what God does, but be so taken up with Him that He may continue to do surprising things through you. Are you sulking before God? Are the corners of your mouth, morally and spiritually, getting down and are you feeling sorry for yourself ? You have turned your back upon God and are marching away from Him. Get straight to God, be abundantly stamped with His grace and His blessing will come through all the time; and when you get to heaven you will find that God has bound up the brokenhearted through you, has set at liberty the captives through you but not if you have a murmur in your heart God is very hard. There is no self-pity left in the heart that has been bound up and succoured by the Lord Jesus Christ.
As He Walked
The Next Best Thing to Do
Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. (Matthew 7:7)
Experience is not what a man thinks through, but what he lives through. The Bible is like life and deals with facts, not with principles, and life is not logical. Logic is simply a method of working the facts we know; but if we push the logical method to the facts we do not know and try to make God logical and other people logical, we shall find that the experience of life brings us to other conclusions. God sees that we are put to the test in the whole of life. We have to beware of select- ing the portions of life only where we imagine we can live as saints and of cutting off any part of life because of the difficulty of being a Christian there. Christian experience means that we go to the whole of life open- eyed, wearing no doctrinal or denominational blinkers which shut off whole areas of unwelcome fact. Our faith has to be applied in every domain of our lives. Our Lords teaching is so simple that the natural mind pays no attention to it, it is only moral perplexity that heeds. For instance, Our Lord said: Ask, and it shall be given you. These words have no meaning for us if we are wearing any kind of ecclesiastical blinkers, and are refusing to see what we do not wish to see. I can live beautifully in my own little religious band- box.10 That is not Christian experience. We have to face the whole of life as it is, and to face it fearlessly.
The difficulty of Christian experience is never in the initial stages. Experience is a gateway, not an end. There are definite stages of conscious experience, but never pin your faith to any experience; look to the Lord Who gave you the experience. Be ruthless with yourself if you are given to talking about the experiences you have had. Your experiences are not worth anything unless they keep you at the Source, viz. , Jesus Christ. It is tremendously strengthening to meet a mature saint, a man or woman with a fullorbed experience, whose faith is built in strong emphatic confidence in the One from Whom their experience springs. The next best thing to do is to ask, if you have not received; to seek, if you have not found; to knock, if the door is not opened to you.
1. Ask, and It Shall Be Given You
Nothing is more difficult than to ask. We long, and desire, and crave, and suffer, but not until we are at the extreme limit will we ask. A sense of unreality makes us ask. We cannot bring ourselves up against spiritual reality when we like all at once the staggering realisation dawns that we are destitute of the Holy Spirit, ignorant of all that the Lord Jesus stands for. The first result of being brought up against reality is this realisation of poverty, of the lack of wisdom, lack of the Holy Spirit, lack of power, lack of a grip of God. If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, . . . but be sure you do lack wisdom. Have you ever asked out of the depths of moral and spiritual poverty? If you realise you are lacking, it is because you have come in contact with spiritual reality. Dont put your reasonable blinkers on again Preach us the simple gospel; Dont tell me I have to be holy; that produces a sense of abject poverty, and it is not nice to feel abjectly poor. Some people are poor enough to be interested in their poverty, and some of us are like that spiritually. Ask means beg. A pauper does not ask from any desire save the abject, panging condition of his poverty.
Never deceive yourself by saying that if you do not ask you will not receive (cf. Matthew 5:45), although you’ll never receive from God until you have come to the stage of asking. Asking means that you have come into the relationship of a child of God, and you now realise with moral appreciation and spiritual understanding that every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights. Ye ask, and receive not, says the Apostle James, because ye ask amiss. We ask amiss when we ask simply with the determination to outdo the patience of God until He gives us permission to do what we want to do. Such asking is mere sentimental unreality. And we ask amiss when we ask things from life and not from God, we are asking from the desire of self-realisation, which is the antipodes of Christian experience. The more we realise ourselves the less will we ask of God. Are we asking things of God or
of life? We shall never receive if we ask with an end in view, we are asking not out of our poverty, but out of our lust.
2. Seek, and Ye Shall Find
Get to work and seek, narrow your interests to this one thing. Have you ever really sought God, or have you only given a languid cry to Him after a twinge of moral neuralgia? Seek, concentrate, and you will find. To concentrate is to fast from every other thing. Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the water sare you thirsty, or are you smugly indifferent, so satisfied with your experience that you want nothing more of God? If you build your faith on your experience, the censorious, metallic note comes in at once. You can never give other people what you have found, but you can make them homesick for the same thing. That is the meaning of these words of Our Lord Ye shall be My witnesses you will exhibit a oneness with Jesus Christ whilst He carries out His will in your life in every detail.
3. Knock, and It Shall Be Opened unto You
Draw nigh to God the door is closed, and you suffer from palpitation as you knock. Cleanse your hands knock a bit louder, you begin to discover where you are dirty. Purify your heart, ye double minded this is more personal and interior still, you are desperately in earnest now, you will do anything. Be afflicted and mourn and weep have you ever been afflicted before God at the state of your inner life? When you get there, there is no strand of self-pity left, only a heart-breaking affliction and amazement at finding the kind of man you are. Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord. It is a humbling thing to knock at Gods door, you have to knock with the crucified thief, with the cunning crafty publican, but to him that knocketh, it shall be opened.
Not a bit of It!
Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. (2 Corinthians 5:17)
Christian experience must be applied to the facts of life as they are, not to our fancies. We can live beautifully inside our own particular religious compartment as long as God does not disturb us; but God has a most uncomfortable way of stirring up our nests and of bringing in facts that have to be faced. It is actualities that produce the difficulty the actual people we come in contact with, the actual circumstances of our lives, the actual things we discover in ourselves; and until we have been through the trial of faith in connection with actualities and have transfigured the actual into the real, we have no Christian experience. Experience is what is lived through.
1. The Experience of Useless Solemnity
Why do we and the Pharisees fast oft, but Thy disciples fast not? (Matthew 9:14)
When the disciples of Jesus were criticised for not fasting and being solemn, Jesus did not apologise for them, all He said was They are not in the mood to be gloomy. Can the children of the bride chamber mourn, as long as the bridegroom is with them? Our Lord was never careful not to offend the Pharisees, nor careful to warn His disciples not to offend them; but Our Lord never put a stumbling-block in the way of anyone. The one thing about Our Lord that the Pharisees found it hard to understand was His gaiety in connection with the things over which they were appallingly solemn. And what puzzled the religious people of Paul’s day was his uncrushable gaiety; he treated buoyantly everything that they treated most seriously.
Paul was in earnest over one thing only, and that was his relationship to Jesus Christ. There he was in earnest, and there they were totally indifferent. Reverence and solemnity are not the same. Solemnity is often nothing more than a religious dress on a worldly spirit. Solemnity which does not spring from reverence towards God is of no use whatever. The religious solemnity of the Pharisees was grossly offended at the social life of Our Lord (see Matthew 11:19). Our Lord paid the scantiest attention to all their solemnity; but one thing Our Lord was never lacking in, and that was reverence. The religion of Jesus Christ is the religion of a little child. There is no affectation about a disciple of Jesus, he is as a little child, amazingly simple but unfathomably deep. Many of us are not childlike enough, we are childish.
Jesus said Except ye . . . become as little children . . . It is part of moral and spiritual education to watch how God deals with prejudices. We imagine that God has a special interest in our prejudices, and we magnify our conceptions and prejudices and put them on the throne. We are quite sure that God will never deal with our prejudices as we know He must deal with other peoples. God must deal very sternly with other people, but of course He knows that my prejudices are all right, they are from Him. We have to learn not a bit of it! Instead of God being on the side of our prejudices, He deliberately wipes them out by ignoring them. God mortifies our prejudices, runs clean athwart them by His providence. God has no respect for anything we bring Him, He is after one thing only, and that is our unconditional surrender to Him.
2. The Experience of Useless Garments
No man putteth a piece of new cloth unto an old garment, for that which is put in to fill it up taketh from the garment, and the rent is made worse. (Matthew 9:16)
The way the Holy Spirit corrupts our natural virtue when He comes in is one of the most devastating experiences. He does not build up and transfigure what we possess in the way of virtue and goodness by natural heredity; it is corrupted to death, until we learn that we
. . . dare not trust the sweetest frame, But wholly lean on Jesus, name.
Edward
Mote It is a deep instruction to watch how natural virtues break down. The Holy Spirit does not patch up our natural virtues, for the simple reason that no natural virtue can come anywhere near Jesus Christs demands. God does not build up our natural virtues and transfigure them, He totally recreates us on the inside. And every virtue we possess is His alone. As we bring every bit of our nature into harmony with the new life which God puts in, what will be exhibited in us will be the virtues that were characteristic of the Lord Jesus, not our natural virtues. The super- natural is made natural. The life that God plants in us develops its own virtues, not the virtues of Adam but of Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ can never be described in terms of the natural virtues. Beware of the hesitation of the natural against being turned into the spiritual do not mind being a saint if I can remain natural and be a saint entirely on my own initiative; if I can instruct God in regard to my temperament, my affinities, and my upbringing. If we have a religious strut about us, some preju- dice, some particular refinement, some possession of natural heredity, it is like putting a piece of new cloth into an old garment. All has to go. If any man be in Christ . . . , old things are passed away. The Holy Spirit begins to work in us the manifestation of the new creation (rv mg) until there comes a time when there is not a bit of the old order left. The old solemnity goes, the old attitude to things goes, the old confidence in natural virtues goes, and a totally new life begins to manifest itself, and all things are of God. It is time some of us had a new set of clothes! The outstanding characteristic of Our Lord and His disciples is moral originality.
3. The Experience of Useless Bottles
Neither do men put new wine into old bottles: else the bottles break, and the wine runneth out, and the bottles perish: but they put new wine into new bottles, and both are preserved. (Matthew 9:17)
The old systems of religion were distinctly ordained of God. All the ordinances to which the Pharisees held had been given by God, but the Pharisees had become second editions of the Almighty, they had usurped the place of God. There is always a danger of Phariseeism cropping up. In our own day its form is evangelical, man becomes a little god over his own crowd doctrinally. The idea the Pharisees had of the Kingdom of God was that it belonged to certain favourites of God and its laws were to be worked out by the select few. According to Jesus, the Kingdom of God is love. How sweet and simple, you say! But where are we going to begin? How are we going to have the love that has no lust in it, no self-interest, no sensitiveness to pokes, the love that is not provoked, that thinketh no evil, is always kind? The only way is by having the love of God shed abroad in our hearts until there is not a bit of the old order left. The love of God in us will produce an amazing sweetness in disposition towards Jesus Christ; but if we try to put that sweetness into the bottle we give to some earthly friend, the bottle will break and the wine will be lost. We have to be careless of the expression and heed only the Source. We say No, I must pay attention to the outflow, I am going to try and be a blessing there. We have to pay attention to the Source, Jesus Christ, see that we love Him personally, passionately and devotedly, and He will look after the outflow. Then it is not new wine in old wineskins, it is new wine creating its own wine skin. Is the love that is being exhibited by us the love of God or the love of our own natural hearts? God does not give us power to love as He loves; the love of God, the very nature of God, possesses us, and He loves through us. How many amateur providences there are! I must do this and that, and this one must not do this and that, and God retires and lets us go our own way. When we say But it is common sense to do this and that, we make our common sense almighty God, and God has to retire right out, then after a while He comes back and asks us if we are satisfied. There must not be a bit of that order left. God totally re-creates us on the inside until all things are of God. May God enable us to stop trying to help Him, and may we let Him do what He likes with us.
Getting there
Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. (Matthew 11:28)
1. Where the Sin and Sorrow Cease and the Song and the Saint Commence
Come unto Me (Matthew 11:28)
The questions that matter in life are remarkably few, and they are all answered by these words Come unto Me. Not Do this and Dont do that, but Come. Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy ladenwhy labour ? The word labour is a picture of the type of mind that realises that longings and ideals are not being worked out, the reality is not there, and there is an encroachment of sorrow which makes these words a description of the soul. You say I have thought about sanctification, and of the way God delivers from sin and gives the Holy Spirit, and alters the shadow of death to life but are you actually sanctified? Are you actually delivered from sin, from sorrow, from meanness are you actually delivered from the things that make you un-Christ- like? If you are not, you have no Christian experience. Come unto Me, says Jesus, and by coming to Him your actual life will be brought into accordance with the reality revealed in Jesus. You will actually cease from sin and from sorrow, and actually find the song of the Lord begin; you will actually find that He has transformed you, the sinner, into a saint. But if you want this actual experience, you must come to Jesus. Our Lord makes Himself the touchstone. Have you ever come to Jesus? Watch the stubbornness of your heart and mind, you will find you will do anything rather than the one simple, childlike thing Come. Be stupid enough to come, and com- mit yourself to what Jesus says. The attitude of coming is that the will resolutely lets go of everything and deliberately commits the whole thing to Jesus. At the most unexpected moments there comes the whisper of the Lord Come unto Me, and we are drawn to Him. Personal contact with Jesus alters everything. He meets our sins, our sorrows, and our difficulties with the one word Come. And I will give you rest. Rest means the perfection of motion. I will give you rest, that is, I will stay you. Not I will put you to bed and hold your hand and sing you to sleep; but I will get you out of bed, out of the languor and exhaustion, out of being half dead while you are alive; I will so imbue you with the spirit of life that you will be stayed by the perfection of vital activity. It is not a picture of an invalid in a bath chair, but of life at such a pitch of health that everything is at rest, there is no exhaustion without recuperation. Physical health is a delight because it is an exact balance between our physical life and outer circumstances. Disease means that outer circumstances are getting too much for the vital force on the inside. Morally it is the same. No one is virtuous naturally, we may be innocent naturally, but innocence is often a hindrance because it is nothing in the world but ignorance. Virtue can only be the outcome of conflict. Everything that does not partake of the nature of virtue is the enemy of virtue in us. Immediately we fight we become moral in that particular. Spiritually it is the same, everything that is not spiritual will make for our undoing. In the world ye shall have tribulation, said Jesus, but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world. Spiritual grit is what we need. We become spiritual whiners and talk pathetically about suffering the will of the Lord. Where is the majestic vitality and might of the Son of God about that! Come unto Me, . . . and I will give you rest, i. e. ; I will imbue you with the spirit of life so that you will be stayed by the perfection of vital activity. Jesus will produce in us the actual experience that is exactly like the reality; that means that the very life of Jesus will be manifested in our actual lives if we will face the music in His strength. Faith is not a mathematical problem, the nature of faith is that it must be tried. How many of us are laying up gold for a rainy day? When we go through the trial of faith we gain so much wealth in our heavenly banking account, and the more we go through the trial of faith the wealthier we become in the heavenly regions.
2. Where the Self-Interest Sleeps and the Real Interest Awakens
Come with Me ( John 1:39)
They abode with Him that day that is about all some of us have ever done, and then we awoke to actualities, self-interest arose, and the abiding was over. There is no condition of life in which we can- not abide in Jesus. We have to learn to abide in Him wherever we are placed. Thou art Simon. . . . Thou shalt be called Cephas. Jesus writes the new name in those places in our lives where He has erased our pride and self- sufficiency and self-interest. Some of us have the new name in spots only like sanctified measles. When we have our best spiritual mood on, you would think we were high-toned saints, but don’t look at us when we are not in that mood! A disciple is one who has nothing but the new name written all over him; self- interest and pride have been erased entirely. Pride is the deification of myself, and that nowadays is not the order of the Pharisee, but of the publican Oh, Im no saint. To talk like that is acceptable to human pride, but it is unconscious blasphemy against God. It literally means I defy God to make me a saint. The reason I am not a saint is either that I do not want to be a saint or I do not believe God can make me one. I would be all right, we say, if God saved me and took me straight to heaven. That is exactly what He will do! We will come unto him, and make Our abode with him the Triune God abiding with the saint. Do we believe it? It is a question of will. Make your will let Jesus do everything, make no conditions, and He will take you home with Him not only for a day but for ever; self-interest will be done with, and the only thing left will be the real interest that identi- fies you with Jesus.
3. Where the Selective Affinity Dies and the Sanctified
Abandon Lives Come after Me (Mark 1:17)
If you do come after Jesus, you will realise that He pays no attention whatever to your natural affinities. One of the greatest hindrances to our coming to Jesus is the talk about temperament. I have never seen the Spirit of God pay any attention to a mans temperament, but over and over again I have seen people make their temperament and their natural affinities a barrier to coming to Jesus. We have to learn that Our Lord does not heed our selective natural affinities. The idea that He does heed them has grown from the notion that we have to consecrate our gifts to God. We cannot consecrate what is not ours. The only thing I can give to God is my right to myself (Romans 12:1). If I will give God that, He will make a holy experiment out of me, and Gods experiments always succeed. The one mark of a disciple is moral originality. The Spirit of God is a well of water in the disciple, perennially fresh. When once the saint begins to realise that God engineers circumstances, there will be no more whine, but only a reckless abandon to Jesus. Never make a principle out of your own experience; let God be as original with other people as He is with you. Come unto Me. Have you come? Will you come now? If you do come and abandon yourself to Jesus, He will continue to say Come through you to others. If you have come to Jesus Christ and to the truth of God through a servant or a handmaid of God, you never think of the one who brought you there, because that one is so completely one with the Lord Jesus that the thought of himself or herself is never obtruded. Other people come to Jesus not through you, but through His word speaking through you. Is your life producing the echo of Christs come?
Get a move on!
And beside this, giving all diligence, add . . . (2 Peter 1:5)
We are made partakers of the Divine nature through the promises (see v. 4), now, says Peter, giving all diligence, add . . . , screw your attention down and form habits. No one is born with habit, we have to form habit, and the habits we form most easily are those which we form by imitation. When we begin to form a habit we are conscious of it. There are times when we are conscious of becoming virtuous and patient and godly, but that is only a stage; if we stop there we get the strut of the spiritual prig.
1. In the Domain of Drudgery
Jesus . . . took a towel . . . , and began to wash the disciples feet. ( John 13:35)
Are we refusing to enter the domain of drudgery? Drudgery is the touchstone of character. It is a drudging thing to be virtuous. Necessity is not virtue; virtue can only be the outcome of conflict. The virtuous man or woman is like one who has gone through the fight and has added virtue, added it on the basis of the Divine nature, not on the basis of human determination. The greatest hindrance of our spiritual life lies in looking for big things to do; Jesus Christ took a towel. . . . We are not meant to be illuminated versions; we are meant to be the common stuff of ordinary human life exhibiting the marvel of the grace of God. The snare in Christian life is in looking for the gilt-edged moments, the thrilling times; there are times when there is no illumination and no thrill, when Gods angel is the routine of drudgery on the level of towels and washing feet. Are we prepared to get a move on there? Routine is Gods way of sav- ing us between our times of inspiration. We are not to expect Him to give us His thrilling minutes always.
2. In the Domain of Determination
Abide in Me. ( John 15:4)
The secret of bringing forth fruit is to abide in Jesus. Abide in Me, says Jesus, in spiritual matters, in intellectual matters, in money matters, in every one of the matters that make human life what it is. Beware of putting on your religious blinkers I can live finely in this type of meeting, or with that particular set. The Christian life is not a bandbox life. We must live where we can be tested by the whole of life. Are we preventing God from doing things in our circumstances because we imagine it will hinder our communion with Him? That is impertinence. No matter what our circumstances are, we can be as sure of abiding in Him in them as in a prayer meeting. We are not to be changing and arranging our circumstances ourselves. Our Lord and Master never chose His own circumstances, He was meek towards His Fathers dispensation for Him; He was at home with His Father wherever His body was placed. Think of the amazing leisure of Our Lords life! For thirty years He did nothing. We keep God at excitement point, there is none of the serenity of the life hid with Christ in God about us. Abide in Me. Think of the things that might take you out of abiding in Christ Yes, Lord, I will abide when once I can get this finished; I will abide, but I must do this first; when this week is over, I shall be all right. Get a move on! Begin to abide now! In the initial stage abiding is a continual effort until it becomes so much of the law of our lives that we abide in Him unconsciously. Watch it in your bodily life, in your social life are you abiding there? are you bringing forth fruit there? That is where My Father is glorified, says Jesus. Are our minds stayed on Jesus? Do we brood and dwell on this line of abiding in Him? It takes the breathless panic out of us. Our Lord was never in a panic because with Him the abiding on the inside was unsullied. It is the plague of flies, mental, moral and spiritual, that annoy us and take us out of abiding in Jesus. There is something in human pride that can stand big troubles, but we need the supernatural grace and power of God to stand by us in the little things. The tiniest detail in which we obey has all the omnipotent power of the grace of God behind it. When we do our duty, not for duty’s sake, but because we believe that God is engineering our cir- cumstances in that way, then at the very point of our obedience the whole superb grace of God is ours. It is the adding that is difficult. We say we do not expect God to carry us to heaven on flowery beds of ease, but we act as if we did! We have to live in the domain of drudgery by the power of God, and to learn to abide in Him where we are placed. Remember that God gives us the Spirit of Jesus, but He does not give us the mind of Jesus; we have to form the mind of Christ. The Spirit of Jesus is given to us by the marvel of the Atonement, then we have to construct with patience that way of thinking which is exactly in accordance with the mind of our Lord. God will not make us think as Jesus thought, we have to do that ourselves, to bring into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ. Peters counsel to add, means to form habits on the basis of the new life which God has put in.
3. In the Domain of Devotion Ye are My friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you. ( John 15:14) God created man to be His friend. If we are the friends of Jesus we have deliberately and carefully to lay down our life for Him. It is difficult, and thank God it is! When once the relationship of being the friends of Jesus is understood, we shall be called upon to exhibit to everyone we meet the love He has shown to us. Watch the kind of people God brings across your path, you will find it is His way of pic- turing to you the kind of person you have been to Him. You are My child, the friend of My Son, now exhibit to that hedgehoggy person the love I exhibited to you when you were like that towards Me; exhibit to that mean, selfish person exactly the love I showed you when you were mean and selfish. We shall find ample room to eat humble pie all the days of our life. The thing that keeps us going is to recognise the humour of our heavenly Father in it all, and we shall meet the disagreeable person with a spiritual chuckle because we know what God is doing, He is giving us a mirror that we may see what we have been like towards Him; now we have the chance to prove ourselves His friends, and the other person will be amazed and say Why the more I poke her, the sweeter she gets! and will tumble in where we tumbled in, into the grace of God.
You need not sin
Romans 6:13–18
How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein? (Romans 6:2)
We have to build in faith on the presupposition of the perfect Atonement of Jesus Christ, not build on an experience. If we construct our faith on our experience, we produce that most unscriptural type of holiness, an isolated life, with our eyes fixed on our own whiteness. If we do not base all our thinking on the presupposition of the Atonement, we shall produce a faith conscious of itself, hysterical and unholy, that cannot do the work of the world. Beware of the piety that has no presupposition of the Atonement, it is no use for anything but leading a sequestered life; it is useless to God and a nuisance to man. We have to base resolutely in unshaken faith on the complete and perfect Atonement of Jesus Christ. Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord. How many of us reckon like that, or do our prayers, our piety, come in the way? Our prayers and our piety are the evidence that we are on the right foundation. Is the Atonement the one thing that exerts a dominating influence in my life?
1. If You Obey in the Matter of Dedication
Yield . . . your members as instruments of righteousness unto God. (Romans 6:13)
There is something we must do, viz. , dedicate our members. Have we ever, as saved souls dedicated our bodies to God? Present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, not Present your all, but present your body. If you obey in this matter of dedication, you can keep your bodily life free from vice and sin. Sin dwells in human nature, but it has no light there, it does not belong to human nature as God created it. Deny the disposition of sin, says Paul, bring it to the place of crucifixion (v. 6). Let not sin i. e. , your right to yourself, rule any longer, deny that disposition and let Jesus Christ rule. Never let any member dominate and sayYou must.
2. If You Obey in the Matter of Deliverance
For sin shall not have dominion over you. (Romans 6:14)
Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that is, do not let sin command your body. Sin is a monarch ruling on the outside, demanding obedience on the inside. We can add nothing to the Atonement, we can do nothing for our deliverance, but we must manifest that we are delivered from sin. If you obey in this matter of deliverance, you will realise that there is no bondage in the Atonement. Even so reckon ye your- selves to be . . . alive unto God in Jesus Christ (rv).
3. If You Obey in the Matter of Discernment
What then? Shall we sin, because we are not under the law, but under grace? (Romans 6:15)
Do you discern that Jesus Christ means His Atonement to be recognised therein my home life, in my business? The grace of God is absolute, but your obedience must prove that you do not receive it in vain. Continually bring yourself to the bar of judgement and ask Where is the discernment of the Atonement in this matter and in that? The grace of God in a human being is proved by the discernment of the Atonement in unobtrusive practical ways. The amateur providence element, the insistence of common- sense morality, is the great enemy of the life of Jesus in a saint because it competes with the Atonement Of course God does not mean that the Atonement is to be worked out through my finger-tips, in the getting of meals, in my business! If the Atonement does not work out there, it will work out nowhere. Beware of the piety that denies the natural life, it is a fraud. We can all shine in the sun, but Jesus wants us to shine where there is no sun, where it is dark with the press of practical things.
4. If You Obey in the Matter of Debate
Know ye not, that to whom ye yield [kjv] yourselves as servants unto obedience, his servants ye are whom ye obey? (Romans 6:16 rv)
What do you debate about in your mind? When Jesus speaks, never say: Let us talk this matter over. Some of us obey God in prayer meetings only or in devotional times; we never think of obeying Him at mealtimes or in our offices, etc. We fail whenever we forget to do in the insignificant details those things we were delighted to see when we were looking into the law of God. (See James 1:2225. ) When things come out against us, do we sit down under them, or have we such a habit of mind that God is always first, not piously and pathetically, but actually? Prayer does not place God first; prayer is the evidence that our minds are fixed on God. We have to get our minds used to putting God first, it is conscious to begin with. The snare is putting common sense first. Jesus says Reverse the order, put God first. The tiniest thing that comes between you and God will blot God out. A twinge of neuralgia is sufficient to make some of us forget the Atonement.
5. If You Obey in the Matter of Delight
But ye have obeyed from the heart. (Romans 6:17)
Obedience of the heart is the heart of obedience. Whenever we obey, the delight of the supernatural grace of God meets our obedience instantly. Absolute Deity is on our side at once every time we obey, so that natural obedience and the grace of God coincide. If we look at obedience apart from the presupposition of the Atonement, it makes it seem absurd. Obedience means that we bank everything on the Atonement, and the supernatural grace of God is a delight. We cannot do anything pleasing to God unless there is this deliberate building on the presupposition of the Atonement.
6. If You Obey in the Matter of Devotion
Being then made free from sin, ye became the servants of righteousness. (Romans 6:18)
Thank God we can do what we ought to dowhen? NOW! We are free to become the servants of righteousness. Sin is nothing but a big bully. Sin was killed at the Cross of Christ; it has no power at all over those who are set free by the Atonement of Jesus and are prosecuting their life in Him: . . . in nothing terrified by your adversaries. We have to grow in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. The more we are taught, the more we can be taught, and the more we are taught the more the growth and the glorifying of God will go on in our souls. Have we ever been taught anything? Being taught of God is a delightful life, it means the discernment is exercised. God does not put us in His show room, we are here for Him to show His marvellous works in us and to use us in His enterprises. We have to prosecute our life in Christ, not be dragged in His wake or the strain will be too heavy and down we shall go. The only place to prosecute our life in Christ is just where we are, in the din of things, and the only way in which we can prosecute our life in Christ is to remember that it is God Who engineers circumstances, and that the only place where we can be of use to Him is where we are, not where we are not. God is in the obvious things. Am I banking in faith on the Eternal Fact of the Atonement? Am I so devoted to my Lord that He is working out His purposes in me? Or am I one of those miserable individuals who is working out his own particular type of religion by himself ? We have to measure every type of experience by the Lord Jesus Christ and His Atonement. We must build on the great fact of the Redemption which God has per- formed through Christ, and continually presuppose that Redemption. If we fail to prosecute our life in Jesus, and build our faith on our experiences only, then the further away we get from our experiences, the dimmer will Jesus Christ become.
What next?
Matthew 5:45–48
1. Deny Yourself More Than Others
That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven. (Matthew 5:45)
According to the Bible, self-seeking did not begin on earth, it began in heaven and was turned out of heaven because it was unworthy to live there, and it will never get back again. If we are to be Christian after the stamp Our Lord requires, we must deny ourselves more than others. Our Lord never taught us to deny sin: sin must be destroyed, not denied. Nothing sinful can ever be good. If any man would come after Me, let him deny himself (Matthew 16:24 rv). Our Lord is referring to the natural self which must be denied in order that it may be made spiritual. Our Lord does not teach Deeper Death to Self ; He teaches death right out to my self, death right out to self-realisation and self-seeing. Sin and self are not the same thing. Sin does not belong to human nature as God created it. Adam was innocent when God created him, and God intended him to take part in his own moral develop- ment, and to transform his natural life into a spiritual life by obedience; but Adam refused to do it. Our Lord continually denied the natural and turned it into the spiritual by obedience. With Our Lord everything was spiritual. His eating and drinking were acts of con- tinual subordination to His Fathers will (cf. Matthew 4:24). We have a natural life to be sacrificed and thereby turned into a spiritual, life. The meaning of sacrifice is giving the best we have to God, denying it to ourselves, that He may make it an eternal possession of His and ours.
2. Devote Yourself to Prayer More Than Others
Lord, teach us to pray. (Luke 11:1) ,Pray without ceasing. (1 Thessalonians 5:17)
Never say you will pray about a thing; pray about it. Our Lords teaching about prayer is so amazingly simple but at the same time so amazingly profound that we are apt to miss His meaning. The danger is to water down what Jesus says about prayer and make it mean something more common sense; if it were only common sense, it was not worth His while to say it. The things Jesus says about prayer are supernatural revelations. It is not part of the life of a natural man to pray. We hear it said that a man will suffer in his life if he does not pray; I question it. What will suffer is the life of the Son of God in him, which is nourished not by food but by prayer. When a man is born from above (rv mg), the life of the Son of God is born in him, and he can either starve that life or nourish it. Prayer is the way the life of the Son of God is nour- ished. God has so constituted things that prayer on the basis of Redemption alters the way a man looks at things. Prayer is not a question of altering things externally, but of working wonders in a mans disposi- tion. One great effect of prayer is that it enables the soul to command the body. By obedience I make my body submissive to my soul, but prayer puts my soul in command of my body. It is one thing to have the body in subjection, but another thing to be able to command it. When I command my body, I make it an ally, the means by which my spiritual life is furthered. For your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask Him (Matthew 6:8). If God sees that my spiritual life will be furthered by giving the things for which I ask, then He will give them, but that is not the end of prayer. The end of prayer is that I come to know God Himself. If I allow my bodily needs to get out of relationship to God, then those needs will keep me morbidly interested in myself all the time, much to the devils enjoyment. We have to leave ourselves resolutely in Gods hands and launch out into the work of intercession on the basis of faith in the perfect Redemption of Jesus.
3. Dedicate Yourself to Love More Than Others
Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. (Matthew 22:3738)
If ye love Me, keep My commandments. ( John 14:15)
Before we can love God we must have the Lover of God in us, viz. , the Holy Spirit. When the Holy Spirit has shed abroad the love of God in our hearts, then that love requires cultivation. No love on earth will develop without being cultivated. We have to dedicate ourselves to love, which means identifying ourselves with Gods interests in other people, and God is inter- ested in some funny people, viz. ; in you and in me! We must beware of letting natural affinities hinder our walking in love. One of the most cruel ways of kill- ing love is by disdain built on natural affinities. To be guided by our affinities is a natural tendency, but spiri- tually this tendency must be denied, and as we deny it we find that God gives us affinity with those for whom we have no natural affinity. Is there anyone in your life who would not be there if you were not a Chris- tian? The love of God is not mere sentimentality; it is a most practical thing for the saint to love as God loves. The springs of love are in God, not in us. The love of God is only in us when it has been shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit, and the evidence that it is there is the spontaneous way in which it is manifested.
4. Dispose Yourself to Believe More Than Others
Said I not unto thee, that, if thou wouldest believe, thou shouldest see the glory of God? ( John 11:40) He that believeth on Me, . . . out of [him] shall flow rivers of living water. ( John 7:38)
I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, said Paul, for it is the power of God to salvation to everyone that believeth. So as long as we live in a religious compartment, make our own theology, wear doctrinal blinkers, and live only amongst those who agree with us, we shall not see where the shame comes in; but let God shift us and bring us into contact with those who are indifferent to what we believe, and we shall realise soon the truth of what our Lord said therefore the world hateth you. If we really believed some phases of our Lords teaching it would make us a laughing stock in the eyes of the world. It requires the miracle of Gods grace for us to believe as Jesus taught us to. Said I not unto thee, that, if thou wouldest believe, thou shouldest see the glory of God? Every time our programme of belief is clear to our minds we come across something that contradicts it. Faith, before it is real, must be tried. As we dispose ourselves to believe, we see God all the time, not in spasms. We see His arm behind all the facts in individual life and in history. Are we disposing ourselves to believe more than others?
5. Determine to Know More Than Others
If any man will do His will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of Myself. ( John 7:17) If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them. ( John 13:17)
If you believe in Jesus, you will not spend all your time in the smooth waters just inside the harbour, full of exhilaration and delight, but always moored; you will have to go out through the harbour bar into the great deeps of God and begin to know for your- self, begin to get spiritual discernment. If you do not cut the moorings, God will have to break them with a storm and send you out. Why not unloosen and launch all on God and go out on the great swelling tide of His purpose? If any man will do His will, he shall know. . . . When you know you should do a thing and you do it, immediately you will know more.
If you revise where you are stodgy spiritually, you will find it goes back to the point where there was one thing you knew you should do, but you did not do it because there seemed no immediate call to, and now you have no perception, no discernment. Instead of being spiritually self-possessed at the time of crisis, you are spiritually distracted. It is a dangerous thing to refuse to go on knowing. When the Spirit of God has opened your mind by His incoming and you are determining to know more, you will find that external circumstances and internal knowledge go together, and by obedience you begin to fulfill your spiritual destiny. The counterfeit of obedience is the state of mind in which you work up occasions to sacrifice yourself, ardour is mistaken for the discernment built on knowledge. To obey is better than sacrifice.
It is a great deal better to fulfill the purpose of God in your life by discerning His will than it is to perform great acts of self-sacrifice. Beware of harking back to a past knowledge when God wants to bring you into a new relationship; beware of harking back to what you once were when God wants you to be something you have never been.
Pull yourself together
If ye abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you. ( John 15:7)
In all Christian experience there must be the presupposition of the Atonement; we have to build in faith on the great work which God has performed through Christ. We cannot save ourselves, or sanctify ourselves; we cannot atone for sin; we cannot redeem the world; we cannot make right what is wrong, pure what is impure, holy what is unholy all that is the sovereign work of God. God has made a perfect Atonement, are we in the habit of realising it? We must never put character in the place of faith, there is a great danger of doing so. Our character can never be meritorious before God: we stand before God on the basis of His grace. Character is the evidence that we are built on the right foundation. What we need is the perfect realisation of the Atonement of Jesus Christ. The need is not to do things, but to believe. What must I do to be saved? . . . Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.
1. By the Habit of Constantly Realising
If ye abide in Me . . .
If we continue to act and think and work from the centre of abiding in Jesus, then Jesus says that other things will happen, viz. , we shall bring forth fruit. Are we abiding in Jesus? Do we take time to abide? What is the dominating factor of power in our lives? Is it work, service, sacrifice for others? The thing that ought to exert the greatest power in our lives is the Atonement. Do we give one minute out of every sixty to make ourselves realise it? We must get into the habit of constantly realising the Atonement, of centralising everything there. To concentrate causes consciousness of effort to begin with. Abide in Me, says Jesus. It is imperative on our part that we abide in Jesus. It is a responsibility for us to continually realise the Eternal Fact of the Atonement.
2. By the Habit of Constantly Remembering
and My words abide in you . . .
We maintain our relationship to Jesus by the use of the means which He gives us, viz. , His words. Some of us can only hear God in the thunder of revivals or in public worship; we have to learn to listen to Gods voice in the ordinary circumstances of life. It is not the length of time we give to a thing that matters, but whether the time we give opens the door to the greatest power in our life. The greatest factor in life is that which exerts most power, not the element which takes most time. The five minutes we give to the words of Jesus the first thing in the morning are worth more than all the rest of the day. Beware of any experience that does not wed itself to the words of Jesus. Experience is simply the door- way into the great revelation of Jesus Christ. The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life. Read the Bible, whether you understand it or not, and the Holy Spirit will bring back some word of Jesus to you in a particular set of circumstances and make it living; the point is will you be loyal to that word? Never ask anyone else what the word means, go direct to God about it. Are we in the habit of listening to the words of Jesus? Do we realise that Jesus knows more about our business than we do ourselves? Do we take His word for our clothes, our money, our domes- tic work; or do we think we can manage these things for ourselves? The Spirit of God has the habit of taking the words of Jesus out of their scriptural setting and putting them into the setting of our personal lives.
3. By the Habit of Constantly Requesting
ye shall ask what ye will . . .
This solves the mystery of what we should pray for. If we are abiding in Jesus, we shall ask what He wants us to ask whether we are conscious of doing so or not. Ye shall ask what ye will, i. e. , what your will is in. The meaning of prayer is that we recognise we are in the relationship of a child to his father. Your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask Him. When once we realise that we can never think of anything our Father will forget, worry becomes impossible. Beware of getting into a panic. Panic is bad for the natural heart, and it is destructive to the spiritual life. Let not your heart be troubled it is a command. Are we in the habit of constantly requesting, of continually talking to Jesus about everything? Where we go in the time of trial proves what the great underlying power of our lives is.
4. By the Habit of Constantly Recognising
. . . and it shall be done unto you.
If we are abiding in Jesus and His words are abiding in us, then Jesus says God will answer our prayers. Do we recognise that? But, you say, suppose I ask for something not according to Gods will? I defy you to, if you are fulfilling the abiding in Jesus. The disciple who is in the condition of abiding in Jesus is the will of God, and his apparent free choices are Gods foreordained decrees. Mysterious? Logically absurd? But a glorious truth to a saint. And whatsoever ye shall ask in My Name, that will I do. Are we performing this ministry of the interior? Do we pray for those in prominent places, for the Paul’s? There is no snare or danger of infatuation or pride or the show business in prayer. Prayer is a hidden, obscure ministry which brings forth fruit that glorifies the Father. Severed from Me you can do nothing, i. e. , you will not bear My fruit, you will bear something that did not come from Me at all; but Abide in Me, and you will bring forth fruit that testifies to the nature of the vine, fruit whereby the Father is glorified. The effectual fer- vent prayer of a righteous man, one who is abiding, availeth much. Are we constantly recognising that God does answer prayer if we are abiding in Jesus? Are we building in faith on the presupposition of the Atonement and bringing everything to that one centre, or are we allowing our lives to be frittered away? Is Jesus Christ dominating every interest of our lives more and more? This does not mean that we are to be thinking about God always and giving all our time to so-called religious work, but it does mean that we are to concentrate on the great fact of the Atonement with the greatest amount of our time even to the ordinary things of life as they are engineered for us by God. Those who use the jargon of abiding in Christ, if not really abiding are an annoyance and an irritation. If we make the Atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ the great exerting influence of our life, every phase of our life will bear fruit for God. Take time and get to know whether the Atonement is the central point of all power for you, and remember that Satans aim is to keep you away from that point of power. Jesus said that the cares of this world and the lust of other things would choke His word. We can choke Gods word with a yawn; we can hinder the time that should be spent with God by remembering we have other things to do. I haven’t time! Of course you have not time! Take time, strangle some other interests and make time to realise that the centre of power in your life is the Lord Jesus Christ and His Atonement. Paul limited his knowledge to that one thing I determined not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified. We have to learn to concentrate our affinities, to determine to be limited.
Don’t slack off
2 Timothy 3:14–15
1. In What You Have Been Taught
But continue thou in the things which thou hast learned . . . (2 Timothy 3:14)
We learn very few things, because we learn that only to which we give our wits. Are we sticking to the things we have learned? We say we believe that God is love, but have we learned that He is? Have we assimilated it? We see truths, but we are not yet in the circumstances where we can learn them. Many things are taught, but we cannot learn them all at once. We say Oh yes, I would like to be that, then there comes the stick- ativeness sixty seconds every minute, sixty minutes every hour. The only way in which we learn is by the terrific iteration of the commonplace. Experience is never the ground of our confidence; experience is the opening of the door to a new life which must be continued in. Some of us are continually having doors opened, but we will not go through them. Dont slack off, keep on with the thing which you have learned. We speak about testifying to the experience of sanctification; what we really testify to is not an experi- ence of sanctification but to a revelation granted us by God of what sanctification is: the experience of sanctification is the rest of life from that moment.
2. In What You Have Tested
and hast been assured of . . . (v. 14)
Many of us believe, but we will not confess to what we believe, consequently we are assured of nothing. I did ask God for the Holy Spirit, but I do not feel sure of anything. Confess what you believe for, and instantly the assurance of that for which you believe will be made yours. We are so terribly afraid to venture on what God says. Confession is not for the sake of other people, but for our own sake. Confession means we have trusted God for this thing and we believe on the ground of His word that the work is done. We realise by confessing that we have no one saving God to stand by us. Have we ever taken the cross of confessing? When we believe with the heart, we have to confess with our mouth what we believe to those whose business it is to know. The reason some of us lack assurance is because we do not continue in what we have tested, something has made us slack off.
3. In Loyalty to Your Teachers
knowing of whom thou hast learned them . . . (v. 14)
God brings His own particular teachers into our lives, and we have to watch that we do not slack off in our loyalty to them. Loyalty to teachers is a very rare thing. The man or woman used by God to teach me is not necessarily the one used to teach you. We must not foist our teachers on everyone else. Are we loyal, to our teachers, or are we spiritual butterflies? Does every new-comer on the highway of spiritual life switch us off on to a new line? God very rarely teaches direct from His word until the way for that has been opened by His own orderand He gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers (Ephesians 4:11). God makes His own teachers; we have to see that we do not slack off in our loyalty to them.
4. In the Scripture Truth
and that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures . . . (v. 15)
It is not the thing on which we spend most time that moulds us, but the thing that exerts the greatest power. Five minutes with God and His word is worth more than all the rest of the day. Do we come to the Bible to be spoken to by God, to be made wise unto salvation, or simply to hunt for texts on which to build addresses? There are people who vagabond through the Bible, taking sufficient only out of it for the making of sermons, they never let the word of God walk out of the Bible and talk to them. Beware of living from hand to mouth in spiritual matters; do not be a spiritual mendicant. Beware of the novel things. Some of us spiritually are independent, impudent travellers Oh, I can find my way all right. The thing to do is to keep on the steady track Honour thy father and thy mother. Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy, etc. God brings back what is old in order to test our loyalty. All the novel things slip away; the essential track remains.
5. In the Salvation Testimony
. . . which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. (v. 15)
The Bible is not the word of God to us unless we come to it through what Jesus Christ says. The Scriptures, from Genesis to Revelation, are all revelations of Jesus Christ. The context of the Bible is Our Lord himself, and until we are rightly related to Him, the Bible is no more to us than an ordinary book. We cannot know the Holy Scriptures by intellectual exercises. The key to our understanding of the Bible is not our intelli-gence, but our personal relationship to Jesus Christ (cf. John 5:3940). The New Testament was not written in order to prove that Jesus Christ is the Son of God; but written to confirm the faith of those who believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. There are no problems in the New Testament. We take much for granted, but nothing is ever ours until we have bought it by pain; a thing is worth just what it costs. We seem to lose everything when we go through the suffering of experience, but bit by bit we get it back. The Bible treats us as human life does roughly. He wakeneth morning by morning, He wakeneth mine ear to hear as the learned. Do we allow ourselves to be arrested when we read the Holy Scriptures? The vital relationship of the Christian to the Bible is not that he worships the letter, but that the Holy Spirit makes the words of the Bible spirit and life to him. When we are born from above (rv mg) the Bible becomes to us a universe of revelation facts whereby we feed our knowledge of Jesus Christ.
Practicing Godliness
Work out your own salvation. . . . For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of His good plea- sure. (Philippians 2:1213)
When Our Lord is presented to the conscience, the first thing conscience does is to rouse the will, and the will agrees with God always. You sayI do not know whether my will is in agreement with God look to Jesus, and you will find that your will and your con- science are in agreement with God every time. The element in you which makes you say I shant to God is something less profound than your will, it is perversity, or obstinacy, which are never in agreement with God. Obstinacy is a remnant of the disposition of sin, and it fights against that which a mans will and conscience indicate to be right. If we persist in being perverse and obstinate, we shall ultimately get to the place where the emotions of will and conscience are stultified. Will is the essential element in the creation of man; sin is a perverse disposition that has entered into man. The profound thing in man is his will, not sin. Human nature as God made it was not sinful, and it was human nature as God made it that Our Lord took on Him. Obstinacy is an unintelligent wodge that refuses to be enlightened. It continually surprises you Why didn’t I do that thing? The only cure for obstinacy is to be blown up by dynamite, and the dynamite is obedience to the Holy Spirit. When the Holy Spirit comes into my human spirit, He makes me one with Jesus as He was one with His Father, it is an identification that raises the personality to its right place.
1. The Way of the Working of God
For it is God which worketh in you to will. . . .
Before a man is rightly related to God, his conscience may be a source of torture and distress to him, but when he is born again it becomes a source of joy and delight because he realises that not only are his will and his conscience in agreement with God, but that Gods will is his will, and the life is as natural as breathing, it is a life of proving, or making out, what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God. Is it possible for human nature to get to such a standard that it can work out actually what God wills? Gods word says it is. God not only gives me supernatural grace, but He is in me to will and to do of His good pleasure, and that means I can do all that Gods will and my conscience indicate I should do. If I am a child of God, I realise not only that God is the source of my will, but that God is in me to will. I do not bring an opposed will to Gods will, Gods will is my will, and my natural choices are along the line of His will. Then I begin to understand that God engineers circumstances for me to do His will in them, not for me to lie down under them and give way to self-pity. We are called to do Gods will here and now; are we doing it or are we murmuring Why should I be in these trying circumstances? Why should I have these disabilities? That is murmuring. Do Gods will. God not only expects me to do His will, but He is in me to do it. Doing Gods will is never hard. The only thing that is hard is not doing His will. All the forces of nature and of grace are at the back of the man who does Gods will because in obedience we let God have His amazing way with us. If some of us were taken to be specimens of doing Gods will, we should be sorry recommendations! We ought to be super abounding with joy and delight because God is working in us to will and to do of His good pleasure. The goodest thing there is is the will of God. Gods will is hard only when it comes up against our stubbornness, then it is as cruel as a ploughshare and as devastating as an earthquake. God is merciless with the thing that tells against the relationship of a man to Himself. When
once God does have His way, we are emancipated into the very life of God, i. e. , into the life that Jesus lived. The only estimate of a consistent Christian character is that the life of the Son of God is being manifested in the bodily life.
2. The Way of the Working of the Godly
Work out your own salvation. . . .
If we are practising godliness, i. e. , practising in our life day by day and week by week, working out what God works in, then we shall find when the crisis comes that our nature will stand by us, because we have disciplined and trained our nature to work out what God works in. We make what we practise second nature, and in the crisis as well as in the details of life we find that not only does Gods grace stand by us, but also our own nature, we have made it an ally. If we have not been practising in the daily round, it is not Gods grace that fails when the crisis comes, but our nature that deserts us, and we fail. God does not make our habits for us or do the practising God alters our disposition and we are left to work out the new disposition He has put in, by practice and the forming of habits. If we have had a great illumination of Gods grace, we have to go on to work out all that God has worked in; the danger is that we become stationary.
Work out your own salvation. . . . We have not to work out that which tells for our salvation, but to work out in the expression of our lives the salvation which God has worked in. What does my tongue say? What things do my ears like to listen to? What kind of bodily associates do I like to be with? These things reveal whether we are working out the salvation God has worked in. The inward working is Gods; the outward working is ours. In regeneration God puts us into line with Himself so that by the expression of that union in our bodily lives we may prove Whose we are. The first lesson to learn is that God works on the inside, and we have to work on the outside what He has wrought inside. The place for yielding and surrendering comes just there. We hinder God when we try to work on the inside. So many of us put prayer and consecration in place of Gods work; we make ourselves the workers. God is the Worker, and He is after spirituality.
God does nothing other than the profound; we have to do the practical. We have to see that we continually work out with concentration and care that which God has worked in, not work our own salvation, but work it out. We have to work out what God works in whilst we base resolutely in unshaken faith on the complete and perfect Redemption of the Lord Jesus Christ.