The ethics of enthusiasm - Chambers, Oswald
Ephesians 5
Enthusiasm means, to use the phrase of a German mystic, intoxicated with god; the word has come down in the world and popularly means anything that enthuses. Christianity takes all the emotions, all the dangerous elements of human nature, the things which lead us astray, all feelings and excitabilities, and makes them into one great power for god. Other religions either cut out dangerous emotions altogether or base too much on them. The tendency is in us all to say, you must not trust in feelings; perfectly true, but if your religion is without feeling, there is nothing in it. If you are living a life right with god, you will have feeling, most emphatically so, but you will never run the risk of basing your faith on feelings. The christian is one who bases his whole confidence in god and his work of grace, then the emotions become the beautiful ornament of the life, not the source of it.
1. The excitable course of personal energy (Ephesians 5:113)
Anything that awakens the strong emotions of a man will alter his mental outlook, e. G. , the incoming of the holy spirit breaks every habit and every arranged set of ideas he has, and if he will obey the spirit, he can re-make himself according to gods plan.
(a) the drift of ideas
If a man is unexcited his ideas are dull, he drifts impersonally; but let the excitement of anger, or of love, or hate, or jealousy come in, or let the holy spirit come in, and the drift stops and his whole mind is concen- trated at once along one line. Human nature, if it is healthy, demands excitement, and if it does not obtain its thrilling excitement in the right way, it will take it in the wrong. That is a law of human nature which the spirit of god does not contradict, but exalts. Every
False religion and false order of culture tries to make out that we ought to be absolutely unmoved the passionlessness of exhaustion; but a healthy, fullorbed life is continually seeking excitement. God never makes us bloodless stoics, he makes us passionate saints. The word used of Jesus Christ has in it the very essence of christian it your lords passion; you could never speak of his passionlessness, the one characteristic of our lords life was its condensed intensity.
(b) the direction of ideas
Obedience to the holy spirit will mean that we have power to direct our ideas. It is astonishing how we sit down under the dominance of an idea, whether a right or wrong idea, and saints have sat down under this idea more than any other, that they cannot help thoughts of evil. Thank god thats a lie, we can. If you have never realised this before, put it to the test and ask yourself why the spirit of god through the apostle paul should say, . . . Bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of christ if we cannot do it? Never sit down under ideas that have no part or lot in gods book; trace the idea to its foundation and see where it comes from. The bible makes it plain that we can help thoughts of evil; it is satans interest to make us think we cannot. God grant the devil may be kept off the brains of the saints!
(c) the divine inhibition of ideas
The holy spirit not only instructs us, but as we obey him he inhibits our ideas. Those of you who have been a while in grace, examine yourselves and you will be astonished to find how much has been shed off your life, like autumn leaves. Ideas you never imagined you could get rid of have gone completely because gods spirit has been definitely selecting out of your mind the ideas he can use, and as you obey him and keep on that line the other ideas die out. It is only done by obedience, not by impulses, but by keeping at it.
2. The emotional center of personal energy (Ephesians 5:1420)
(a) the scarcity of emotions awake, thou that sleepiest, and arise from the dead. (Ephesians 5:14)
The bible reveals that apart from the spirit of god men have no moving emotion towards god, they are described as dead; the preaching of the gospel, the reading of the word of god, has no answering emotion. Religious enterprise that has not learned to rely on the holy spirit makes everything depend on the human intellect god has said so-and-so, now believe it and it will be all right, but it wont. The basis of Jesus Christs religion is the acceptance of a new spirit, not a new creed, and the first thing the holy spirit does is to awaken us out of sleep. We have to learn to rely on the holy spirit because he alone gives the word of god life. All our efforts to pump up faith in the word of god is without quickening, without illumination. You reason to yourself and say, now god says this and i am going to believe it, and you believe it, and re-believe it, and re-re-believe it, and nothing happens, simply because the vital power that makes the words living is not there. The spirit of god always comes in surprising ways the wind bloweth where it listeth, . . . So is every one that is born of the spirit. No creed or school of thought or experience can monopolise the spirit of god. The great snare of some aspects of presenting the gospel is that everything is put in the head, everything must be rational and logical, no room is left for the great power of life which shows itself in surprising ways. In natural life people without any emotions are undesir- able to have as friends, and a christian life that is without the continual recurrence of divine emotion is suffering from spiritual sleeping-sickness.
(b) the successive emotions
see then that ye walk circumspectly. (Ephesians 5:15)
Emotions in nature and in grace succeed one another very rapidly and need a strong controlling power. In natural life people who have successive emotions are in danger of becoming sentimentalists; in spiritual life successive emotions lead to being driven about by every wind of doctrine that savours of piety. A sentimentalist is one who likes to live in a great swim of emotions, but he is unfit to meet the facts of life, and when real trouble comes his way he tries to hide himself away from it and becomes intensely selfish. The anxiety lest you should sufferit is such a dis- tress to me to see you in pains really anxiety lest he should suffer. In spiritual life successive emotions are more dangerous. If you are without the control of the spirit of god, devotional emotion and religious excitement always end in sensuality. Emotions that stir feelings must act themselves out, whether rightly or wrongly will depend on the person. If you feel remarkably generous, then be generous at once, act it out; if you dont, it will react and make you mean. 18 if you have a time of real devotion before god and see what god wants you to do and you do not work it out in your practical life, it will react in secret immorality. That is not an exceptional law, it is an eternal law, and i wish it could be blazed in letters of fire into the mind of every christian. Very often you will find that god paralyses your emotional nature and allows you to feel nothing; it is a sure sign that he is guiding, because your life has been too full of emotions you have not been working out. (c) the sovereign emotions . . . Be filled with the spirit. (Ephesians 5:18) the sovereign emotions are guided and controlled by love, but bear in mind that love in its highest moral meaning is the preference of one person for another person. A Christians love is personal passionate devotion to Jesus Christ, and he learns to grip on the threshold of his mind as in a vice every sentiment awakened by wrong emotions. God holds the saints responsible for emotions they have not got and ought to have as well as for the emotions they have allowed which they ought not to have allowed. If we indulge in inordinate affection, anger, anxiety, god holds us responsible; but he also insists that we have to be passionately filled with the right emotions. The emotional life of a christian is to be measured by the exalted energy exhibited in the life of our lord. The language applied to the presence of the holy spirit in the saint is descriptive of the energy of emotion that keeps the inner and outer life like our lords own life. We must find out for ourselves the particular psalms and hymns and spiritual songs (Ephesians 5:19) which will keep our emotional life right with god, and we shall find that the holy spirit insists on intellectual fasting as well as on intellectual control. The apostle Paul continually urges the saints to stir up their minds; we have no right to be stagnant and dull. If we have no emotional life, then we have disobeyed god. Be filled with the spirit; it is as impossible to be filled with the spirit and be free from emotion as it is for a man to be filled with wine and not show it. The reason some of us are so amazingly dull and get sleeping-sickness is that we have never once thought of paying attention to the stirring up the spirit of god gives the mind and our emotional nature. How many of us are terrified out of our wits lest we should be emotional! Jesus Christ demands the whole nature, and he demands that part of our nature the devil uses most, viz. , the emotional part. We have to get the right bed-rock for our nature, the life of Jesus Christ, and then glean the things which awaken our emotions, and see that those emotions are expressed in ways like the character of our lord.
3. The expansive character of personal energy (Ephesians 5:2133)
(a) transformation of self-hood
. . . Submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of god. (Ephesians 5:21)
when the holy spirit first comes into us he seems to put us into a prison house; then he opens our eyes and causes us to expand in the realisation that all things are yours, from the tiniest flower that blooms to god on his throne. When we have learnt the secret that god himself is the source of our life, then he can trust us with the expansion of our nature. Every expansion of our nature transforms self-hood into unselfishness. It is not peculiar to Christians, it is true of human nature apart altogether from the grace of god. Inspiration, either true or false, unites the personality, makes a man feel at one with himself and with everyone else, and he is unselfish as long as the inspiration lasts. Paul says, don’t be drunk with wine, which is the counterfeit of the true transformation, but be filled with the spirit, and all self- interested considerations are transformed at once, you will think only, without trying to, of the good of others and of the glory of god. Be careful what you allow to unite you and make you feel unselfish; the only power we must allow as Christians is the holy spirit who will so transform us that it will be easy to submit one to another in the fear of god.
(b) transfiguration of self-hood
Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the lord. (Ephesians 5:22)
With a sudden abruptness Paul mentions the closest practical relationships in life, and immediately it becomes clear why he does so. If the expansive character of the holy spirit is at work in us as saints, it will transfigure the life in all these relationships. The holy spirit keeps us on the line of the transfiguration of self-hood and the thought of good to ourselves never enters in, unless it is introduced by someone else.
(c) tenderness of sainthood
The characteristic of the expansive power of the holy ghost in a saint appears in a tenderness just like Jesus Christs. . . Even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it (Ephesians 5:25). These characteristics never come by impulse. Impulse is the impertinence of human nature keeping on tiptoe to try and look as big as god. The holy spirit always checks impulse, and the saint learns through humiliation to bring it to heel. Watch how Jesus Christ not only checked, but rebuked impulse in the disciples. The vagaries of modern spiritual life come in because our impulses are insubordinate no, i wont submit, i have illumination. The holy spirit never works like that. Be being filled with the spirit, and as we walk in the light the life of god is worked out moment by momenta life of glorious discipline and steady obedience.