Redemption - Chambers, Oswald
1. Not thought but fact
We have to live, thought is second. We are saved in only one way, by the supernatural efficacy of the redemption; but to be saved and never think about it is a crime. My people doth not consider, says god; they wont think. We can never become gods people by thinking, but we must think as gods people. It is possible to understand all about the plan of salva- tion without being personally related to the reality of redemption.
My reason and my intellect are the finest instruments i have, but they are not me, i am much more than my intellect and my reason. If i am going to get at reality i must have my conscience at work as well as my intellect and reason, otherwise i will ignore the fact of sin, ignore all the moral perplexi- ties, ignore the fact that god became incarnate. Intellect is meant to be the handmaid of god, not the dictator to god. The rationalist dictates to god and dictates him off his throne, consequently we hear it asked, what need is there for the redemption? For concentration on the historic fact of the life and death of Jesus? Intellect must get into the place of receptivity, which it wont ever do if it is on the throne. All the idolatrous perversions in nature and in grace come from exalting the instrument into the place of the life. When intellect is put in the right place it receives, then the spirit of god creates wherefore if any man is in christ, there is a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17 RV mg) then intellect
Comes in to explain, exactly as it does in nature. God reveals nothing in nature. I must use my wits, my ingenuity and common-sense, in order to discover; in the spiritual domain i only penetrate by submissive obedience. Our natural make-up is to want to have dominion; in the spiritual domain that is not the procedure, it is surrender. Commit yourself to me, says Jesus; get into contact with reality and the understanding will follow. We have to work out, not our redemption, but our human appreciation of our redemption. We owe it to god that we refuse to have rusty brains. Why should i understand? Because god wants intelligent sons and daughters; he is bringing sons to glory, not mechanisms. Thought is not the sum-total of a mans personal- ity, it is simply the garment personality wears. Think, for instance, of the beautiful things you write in your essays, and think of the mean scrubs you are outside your essays, proving that your beautiful thinking is not the garment that fits you yet. The only way the garment will fit you will be when you are working out your thinking in actualities. The words Jesus spoke were the exact garment of his person, they exactly revealed him, because he spoke out of actualities all the time. I spake openly to the world; . . . And in secret have i said nothing. I cant stand coming in contact with other people why? Because when you do you find the beauti- ful conceptions and thoughts you get when you are alone, don’t work. Separating myself from other people is the greatest means of producing deception because there is nothing to clash against me. Immediately people clash against me i know whether my beautiful thinking really expresses me, or is a garment that disguises the real me. If my actual life is not in agreement with my thinking the danger is that i exclude myself from actualities which bring home to me the knowledge of what i am, in spite of what i think. I am a christian worker and must put on this garb! That is sanctimonious jargon; the only thing that will hold me right is a personal relationship to Jesus, and that life is essentially simple, there is no break into secular and sacred, the one merges into the other, exactly as it did in the life of our lord. A false mysticism is produced if we refuse to have regard to the basal principle of our make-up, viz. , that the garment of our thinking is meant to fit the actualities of life.
2. Thought and fact united
My christian faith must be related to the historic Jesus. The one abiding reality is the redemption which is focused for us in the historic event of the life and death of Jesus. That fact is of more value than any other historic fact because the holy spirit working through it creates in me what could never be produced otherwise. It is the preaching of the cross that produces the crisis we call new birth. We are in danger of preaching the new birth instead of proclaiming that which produces the new birth, viz. , the preaching of Jesus Christ, and him crucified. I cannot save a soul, or sanctify a soul, but if i will preach the cross with all the mighty emphasis of gods spirit on it, instantly the holy spirit creates the very thing which the redemption has made possible the miracle of god in human souls, not by magic, but by surrender. We have to preach, not the explanation of how it is done, but the fact that does it. I have to see that i manifest in my mortal flesh the fact that the son of god is born in me, my exposi- tion of it is the expression in testimony that he did it. The danger is that i praise jesus christ for all i am worth while i evade the moral and essential necessity of surrendering to him. There must be a fact which is not me to be sure of before i am real.
It was gods good pleasure through the foolishness of the thing preached [mg] to save them that believe (1 Corinthians 1:21 rv). Those are the words of the apostle Paul. Think of his former fiery opposition to Jesus! Think of his learning, his conscientious integrity! And then tell me what power of reasoning is going to touch such a man? And by the sheer cre- ative energy of the spirit of god he is turned from a strong-willed intense pharisee into a humble devoted slave of the lord Jesus. The word of god through the spirit is creative, not persuasive. It hinders the work of the spirit when we try and persuade people, it puts the basis not on redemptive reality but on our ingenious reasoning.
The spirit of god working, by gods decree, through the historic fact of the life and death of Jesus, does not convince a mans mind: he creates something in him, makes him a new creation in Christ Jesus (rv mg). The preaching of Christ crucified is a stumbling-block to the Jews and foolishness to the Greeks; but unto them which are called, both jews and Greeks, it is the power of god, and the wisdom of god. The presentation of the fact of the life and death of jesus creates the new testament belief about it in me. Our certainty of salvation is realisable long before it is reasonable to our understanding.
Beware of preaching a redemption that is past; it is past, but it must be seen to be ever-present, and i can only make it an ever-present reality by becoming a new creation in Christ Jesus.
How is the historic Christ interpreting himself to me? Is he to me what he undoubtedly was in his own consciousness, or something less? Am i patronising him? Have i brought my curiosity, which is meant to deal with natural facts, into the domain of revelation facts and begun to let it dominate there too? I command what i can explain, and immediately i bring the natural desire to explain into the spiritual
Domain, i am in danger of explaining Jesus away, i dissolve him by analysis (see 1 john 4:3 RV mg). There is no thinking that will explain me to myself, then how can i think to explain the son of god? No one knoweth the son, save the father (RV), said Jesus. The only way i can begin to understand the son of god is by receiving his spirit through regen- eration; then when i am regenerated it is my duty to think about the son of god, that is, i must see that i put my intellect at the disposal of the holy spirit, who will reveal the son of god in me (Galatians 1:16).