Spiritual construction—II - Chambers, Oswald

The Alloy

1. The divine and the human

But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of god, and not of us. (2 Corinthians 4:7)

In spiritual reconstruction after the war the purely spiritual line, if it ignores the human, will be use- less; and the purely human will not be any good; there must be the amalgam, i. E. , the pure divine and the pure human mixed not divine and sinful, but divine and human. Paul is not despising the earthen vessel, it is in the earthen vessel that the excellency of gods power is to be manifested.

In the incarnation we see the amalgam of the divine and the human. Pure gold cannot be used as coin, it is too soft; in order to make gold serviceable for use it must be mixed with an alloy. The pure gold of the divine is of no use in human affairs; there must be an alloy, and the alloy does not stand for sin, but for that which makes the divine serviceable for use. God almighty is nothing but a mental abstraction to me unless he can become actual, and the revelation of the new testament is that god did become actual: the word was made flesh. Jesus Christ was not pure divine, he was unique: divine and human.

The christian doctrine of the incarnation is not only that god was manifest in the flesh, but that the same thing will take place in anyone who receives the holy spirit: he receives from god a totally new heredity, the life of the son of god, until Christ be formed in you. Human nature is the home where the divine manifests itself. Holiness movements are apt to ignore the human and bank all on the divine; they tell us that human nature is sinful, forgetting that Jesus Christ took on him our human nature, and in him is no sin. It was god who made human nature, not the devil; sin came into human nature and cut it off from the divine, and Jesus Christ brings the pure divine and the pure human together. Sin is a wrong thing altogether and is not to be allowed for a moment. Human nature is earthly, it is sordid, but it is not bad, the thing that makes it bad is sin. Sin is the outcome of a relation- ship set up between man and the devil whereby man becomes boss over himself, his own god (see genesis 3:8). No man was ever created to be his own master, or the master of other men; there is only one master of men, and that is Jesus Christ. We can be fanatical and ignore the human, or sinful and ignore the divine, or we can become the mixture of the divine and the human. No man is constituted to live a pure divine life on earth; he is constituted to live a human life on earth presence with divinity. When the pure divine comes into us we have the difficulty of making our human nature the obedient servant of the new disposition, it is difficult, and thank god it is! God gives us the fighting chance. A saint is not an ethereal creature too refined for life on this earth; a saint is a mixture of the divine and the human that can stand anything.

2. The preacher and the philosopher

. . . It was gods good pleasure through the foolishness of the thing preached to save them that believe. (1 Corinthians 1:21 RV mg)

The preacher is there not by right of his personality or oratorical powers, but by right of the message he proclaims. Who is the man that attracts us to-day? The man with a striking personality and we don’t care about his message. Paul said, yea, woe is unto me, if i preach not the gospel! An orator rouses human nature to do what it is asleep over: the new testament preacher has to move men to do what they are dead-set against doing, viz. , giving up the right to themselves to Jesus Christ; consequently the preaching of the gospel awakens a terrific longing, but an equally intense resentment. The aspect of the gospel that awakens desire in a man is the message of peace and good will but i must give up my right to myself to get there. The basis of human life has been put on redemption, and on the ground of that redemption any man can be lifted into right relationship with god. The gospel is the power of god unto salvation to everyone that believeth. There is no room for despair on the part of any man if he will only believe what the new testament preacher proclaims but it takes some believing. No thinking will ever make me a christian; i can only become a christian through listening to what is preached and accepting salvation as a gift; but i must think after i am a christian.

The shaking through this war15 has revealed the shallowness of our Christianity, there is no moral power in it not sufficient moral power to make a man live as a disciple of Jesus Christ in his home life, let alone his business life or his camp life. The consequence is the moral emphasis has been coming from the world, not from the church. There needs to be a radical change in many of us who name the name of Christ if we are going to measure up to the nobility and self-sacrifice exhibited by men and women of the world. Now is the time when the preaching of the cross will have a chance it never had before. The war has hit rationalism a severe blow, but rational- ism will gather itself together and take its revenge. Rationalism fundamentally is rotten. The boldness of rationalism is not in what it does, but in the way it criticisms. The basis of things is not rational, it is tragic; there is something wrong at the heart of life that reason cannot account for. According to rationalism there is no need to be born again develop the best in yourself. That was gods original design for the human race, viz. , that man should take part in his own development by a series of moral choices whereby he would transfigure the natural into the spiritual; but sin entered and there came an hiatus, a break, and mans development is not now based on the rational progression god designed, but on the redemption, which deals with the tragedy caused by sin. No man can get at god as Jesus Christ presents him by philosophy. The philosopher has vision, so has the poet, but neither of them has any memory; the preacher of the gospel has vision and memory; he realises there is a gap between god and man, and knows that the only way that gap can be bridged is by Jesus Christ making the divine and the human one. The goal of human life is to be one with god, and in Jesus Christ we see what that oneness means. In spiritual construction after the war the emphasis must be laid on what the preacher proclaims, not on what the philosopher reasons about. The great mes- sage of the incarnation is that there the divine and the human became one, and Jesus Christs claim is that he can manifest his own life in any man if he will co-operate with him. If i am going to nourish the pure divine in my human life i must first of all let god deal drastically with sin; by my own willing agreement i must let him put his axe to the root of sin, and then when his life has come into me, i must obey it. Do i as a preacher of the gospel really believe the gospel i preach? The test is in the soul of the preacher him- self, in the one who says he believes the gospel. For instance, do i believe that that man who did me a cruel wrong, that man who thwarted me, can be presented perfect in Christ Jesus?

We are rarely taught to think along these lines. Thinking is not of first importance, but it is of mighty importance secondarily. The man who prefers to be lazy in his spiritual life may do well enough, but it is the man who has thought on the basis of things who is able to give intelligent help to those who are up against it. Men have been hit during the war and few of us have been able to help them, we are inarticulate, we don’t know how to put things because we have not thought about them. My people doth not consider, says god, they do not think. We are not called on to preach a philosophy of thought, which is the tendency now a days but to preach Jesus Christ, and him crucified, because that preaching enables god to create his miracles in human lives. If i prefer to preach my philosophy i prevent god creating his miracles, but when i am simple enough to preach the cross, god performs his miracles every time.