The Christian's Secret to a Happy Life

THE CHRISTIAN SECRET OF A HAPPY LIFE by HANNAH WHITEALL SMITH Chapter 13 BONDAGE OR LIBERTY It is a fact beyond question that there are two kinds of Christian experience, one of which is an experience of bondage, and the other an experience of liberty. In the first case the soul is controlled by a stern sense of duty, and obeys the law of God either from fear of punishment or from expectation of wages. In the other case the controlling power is an inward life principle that works out, by the force of its own motions or instincts, the will of the divine life-giver without fear of punishment or hope of reward. In the first the Christian is a servant and works for hire, in the second he is a son and works for love. There ought not, it is true, to be this contrast in the experience of Christians, for to walk at liberty is plainly their only right and normal condition. But as we have to deal with what is rather than with what ought to be, we cannot shut our eyes to the sad condition of bondage in which so many of God's children pass a large part of their Christian lives. The reason of this, and the remedy for it, are not difficult to find. The reason is legality, and the remedy is Christ. Nowhere do we find those two forms or stages of Christian life more fully developed and contrasted than in the Epistle to the Galatians. The occasion of its being written was that some Jewish brethren had come among the churches in Galatia, and, by representing that certain forms and ceremonies were necessary to their salvation, had tried to draw them away from the liberty of the gospel. And with these teachers Peter had allowed himself to unite. Therefore Paul reproves not only the Galatians, but also Peter himself. Neither Peter nor the Galatians had committed any moral sin, but they had committed a spiritual sin. They had got into a wrong attitude of soul toward God, a legal attitude. They had begun, as Christians generally do, in the right attitude, that is, they had entered by the hearing of faith into the spiritual life. But when it came to a question of how they were to live in this life, they had changed their ground. They had sought to substitute works for faith. Having begun in the spirit, they were now seeking to be made perfect by the flesh. They had, in short, descended in their Christian living from the plane of life to the plane of law. An illustration will help us to understand this. Here are two men who neither of them steal. Outwardly, their actions are equally honest, but inwardly there is a vital difference. One man has a dishonest nature that wants to steal and is only deterred by the fear of a penalty, while the other possesses an honest nature that hates thieving and could not be induced to steal even by the hope of a reward. The one is honest in the spirit, the other is honest only in the flesh. No words are needed to say of which sort the Christian life is meant to be. We are, however, continually tempted to forget that it is not what men do that is the vital matter, but rather what they are. In Christ Jesus, neither legal observances avail anything, nor the omission of legal observances, but a new creature. God is a great deal more concerned about our really being new creatures than about anything else, because he knows that if we are right as to our inward being, we shall certainly do right as to our outward actions. We may, in fact, sometimes even do right without being right at all, and it is very evident that no doing of this kind has any vitality in it, nor is of any real account. The essential thing, therefore, is character, and doing is valuable only as it is an indication of being. Paul was grieved with the Galatian Christians because they seemed to have lost sight of this vital truth, that the inward life, the new creature, was the only thing that availed. They had begun on this plane, but they had fallen from grace to a lower plane, where the oldness of the letter was put in place of the newness of the Spirit. Christ is become of no effect unto you, whosoever of you are justified by the law, ye are fallen from grace. This passage is the only one in which the expression, ìfallen from graceî is used in the New Testament, and it means that the Galatians had made the mistake of thinking that something else besides Christ was necessary for their right Christian living. The Jewish brethren who had come among them had taught them that Christ alone was not enough, but that obedience to the ceremonial law must be added. They had, therefore, imported, as being necessary for salvation, some ceremonies out of the Jewish ritual, and had tried to compel the Gentiles to live as do the Jews. Modern Christians are greatly surprised at them, and wonder how they could have been so legal. But is there not the same temptation to legality, under a different form, among these same modern Christians? They added the ceremonial law. We add resolutions, or agonizing, or Christian work, or church-going, or religious ceremonies of one sort or another. And what is there, therefore, to choose between us and them? It does not make much difference what you add. The wrong thing is to add anything at all. We are full of condemnation of the Jewsí religion, because it frustrates the grace of God, and makes Christ to be dead in vain, by depending upon outward deeds and outward ceremonies to bring salvation. But I fear there is a great deal of the Jewsí religion mixed up with the Christian religion now, just as there was among these Galatian Christians, and that the grace of God is as much frustrated by our legality as theirs, although ours may manifest itself in a slightly different form. The following contrasts may help some to understand the difference between these two kinds of religion, and may also enable them to discover where the secret of their own experience of legal bondage lies. The law says, ìThis do, and thou shalt live.î The gospel says, ìLive, and then thou shalt do.î The law says, ìPay me that thou owíst.î The gospel says, ìI frankly forgive thee all.î The law says, ìMake you a new heart and a new spirit.î The gospel says, ìA new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you.î The law says, ìThou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.î The gospel says, ìHerein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.î The law says, ìCursed is every one who continueth not in all things written in the book of the law to do them.î The gospel says, ìBlessed is the man whose iniquities are forgiven and whose sins are covered.î The law says, ìThe wages of sin is death.î The gospel says, ìThe gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.î The law demands holiness. The gospel gives holiness. The law says, ìDo.î The gospel says, ìDone.î The law extorts the unwilling service of the bondsman. The gospel wins the loving service of a son and freemen. The law makes blessings the result of obedience. The gospel makes obedience the result of blessings. The law places the day of rest at the end of the weekís work. The gospel places it at the beginning. The law says, ìIf.î The gospel says, ìTherefore.î The law was given for the restraint of the old man. The gospel was given to bring liberty to the new man. Under the law, salvation was wages. Under the gospel, salvation is a gift. These two forms of the religious life begin at exactly opposite ends. The religion of legality is as though a man should decide to have an apple orchard and should try to make one by first getting some apples of the kind desired, and then getting a tree and fastening the apples on its branches, and then getting roots to fasten to the trunk, and finally purchasing a field in which to plant his manufactured tree. That is, first the fruit, second the branches, third the root, fourth the field. But the religion of grace follows a different order. It begins at the root, and grows up, and blossoms out into flowers and fruit. Paul tells us that the law is our schoolmaster, not our Saviour, and he emphasizes the fact that it is our schoolmaster only for the purpose of bringing us to Christ, for, after faith in Christ is come, he declares we are no longer to be under a schoolmaster. He uses the contrast between a servant and a son as an illustration of his meaning. Wherefore, he says, thou art no more a servant but a son, and he entreats us because of this to stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage. It is as if a woman had been a servant in a house, paid for her work in weekly wages, and under the law of her master, whom she had tried to please, but towards whom her service had been one of duty only. Finally, however, the master offers her his love, and lifts her up from the place of a servant to be his bride and to share his fortunes. At once the whole spirit of her service is changed. She may perhaps continue to do the same things that she did before, but she does them now altogether from a different motive. The old sense of duty is lost in the new sense of love. The cold word master is transformed into the loving word husband. And it shall be at that day, saith the Lord, that thou shalt call me Ishi, my husband, and shalt call me no more Bali, my lord. But imagine this bride beginning after a while to look back upon her low estate, and to be so overwhelmed by the retrospect as to feel unworthy of union with her husband, and to lose, consequently, the inward sense of this union. Who can doubt that very soon the old sense of working for wages would drive out the new sense of working for love, and, in spirit, the old name of my master would again take the place of the new name of my husband? We exclaim at the folly of such a course. But is it not this just what happens to many Christians now? The servitude of duty takes the place of the service of love, and God is looked upon as the stern taskmaster who demands our obedience, instead of the loving Father who wins it. We all know that nothing so destroys the sweetness of any relation as the creeping in of this legal spirit. The moment a husband and wife cease to perform their services to each other out of a heart of love and union, and begin to perform them from a sense of duty alone, that moment the sweetness of the union is lost, and the marriage-tie becomes a bondage, and things that were a joy before are turned into crosses. This lies at the bottom, I think, of the current idea of taking up the cross in the Christian church. We think it means doing something we ought to do, but dislike to do, and such service is thought to be very meritorious toward God, although we all know very well that we would not endure it a moment as toward ourselves. What wife could endure it if her husband should use toward her the language that Christians are continually using toward the Lord? If he should say, for instance, every morning as he went out to business, I am going to work for you today, but I wish you to know that it is a very great cross, and I hardly know how to bear it. Or what husband would like such language from his wife? No wonder Paul was alarmed when he found there was a danger of a legal spirit such as this creeping into the church of Christ. Legal Christians do not deny Christ, they only seek to add something to Christ. Their idea is Christ and something besides. Perhaps it is Christ and good works, or Christ and earnest feelings, or Christ and clear doctrines, or Christ and certain religious performances. All these are good in themselves, and good as the results or fruits of salvation, but to add anything to Christ, no matter how good it may be, as the procuring cause of salvation is to deny his completeness and to exalt self. Men will undergo many painful self-sacrifices rather than take the place of utter helplessness and worthlessness. A man will gladly be a St. Simeon Stylites, or even a Fakir, if only it is self that does it, so that self may share the glory. And a religion of bondage always exalts self. It is what I do, my efforts, my wrestlings, my faithfulness. But a religion of liberty leaves self nothing to glory in. It is all Christ and what he does, and what he is, and how wonderfully he saves. The child does not boast of itself, but of its father and mother, and our souls can make their boast in the Lord, when in this life of liberty we have learned to know that he, and he alone, is the sufficient supply for our every need. We are the children of God, and therefore, of course, his heirs. And our possessions come to us, not by working for them, but by inheritance from our father. Ah, dear friends, how little some of you act like the heirs of God! How poverty-stricken you are, and how hard you work for the little you do possess! You may, perhaps, point to the results of your legal working, or your asceticism, which, it is true, do seem to have a show of wisdom in will-worship, and humility, and neglecting of the body, as being a proof of the rightness of your course. But I am convinced that whatever really good results there are, have come in spite of, and not because of, your legal working. I had a friend once whose Christian life was a life of bondage. She worked for her salvation harder than any slave ever worked to purchase his freedom. Among other things, she never felt as if the day could go right for herself, or any of her family, unless she started it with a long season of wrestling, and agonizing, and conflict. Winding up her machine, I called it. One day we were talking about it together, and she was telling me of the hardness and bondage of her Christian life, and was wondering what the Bible could mean when it said Christ's yoke was easy, and his burden light. I told her that I thought she must have got things wrong somehow, that the Bible always expressed the truth of our relationships with God by using figures that did not admit of any such wrestlings and agonizings as she described. What would you think, I ask, of children that had to wrestle and agonize with their parents every morning for their necessary food and clothing, or of sheep that had to wrestle with their shepherd before they could secure the necessary care? Of course I see that would be all wrong, she said, but then why do I have such good times after I have gone through these conflicts? This puzzled me for a moment, but then I asked, what brings about those good times finally? Why, finally, she replied, I come to the point of trusting the Lord. Suppose you should come to that point to begin with, I asked. Oh, she replied with sudden illumination, I never until this minute thought that I might. Christ says that, except we become as little children, we cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven, but it is impossible to get the child spirit until the servant spirit has disappeared. Notice I do not say the spirit of service, but the servant spirit. Every good child is filled with the spirit of service, but ought not to have anything of the servant spirit. The child serves from love, the servant works for wages. If a child of loving parents should get the idea that its parents would not give it food and clothing unless it earned them in some way, all the sweetness of the relationship between the parent and child would be destroyed. I knew a little girl who did get this idea, and who went around the neighborhood asking at the doors for work that she might earn a little money to buy herself some clothes. It nearly broke the hearts of her parents when they discovered it. Legal Christians grieve the heart of their heavenly Father far more than they dream by letting the servant spirit creep in in their relations with him. As soon as we begin to work for our living in spiritual things, we have stepped out of the son's place into the servant's and have fallen from grace. One servant of whom we read in the Bible thought his lord was a hard master, and the spirit of bondage makes us think the same now. How many Christians there are who have bowed their necks to the yoke of Christ as to a yoke of bondage, and have read his declaration that his yoke is easy, as though it were a fairy tale, and gone on their way, never dreaming that it was meant to be actually realized as fact! In truth, so deeply is the idea that the Christian life is a species of bondage ingrained in the church, that whenever any of the children of God find themselves walking at liberty, they at once begin to think there must be something wrong in their experience, because they no longer find anything to be a cross to them. As well might the wife think there must be something wrong in her love for her husband when she finds all her services for him are a pleasure instead of a trial. Sometimes I think that the whole secret of the Christian life that I have been trying to describe is revealed in the child relationship. Nothing more is needed than just to believe that God is as good a father as the best ideal earthly father, and that the relationship of a Christian to him is just the same as that of a child to its parents in this world. Children do not need to carry about in their own pockets the money for their support. If the father has plenty, that satisfies them, and is a great deal better than if it were in the child's own possession, since in that case it might get lost. In the same way, it is not necessary for Christians to have all their spiritual possessions in their own keeping. It is far better that their riches should be stored up for them in Christ, and that when they want anything they should receive it direct from his hands. He of God is made unto us wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption, and apart from him we have nothing. When people are comparative strangers to one another, they cannot with any comfort receive great gifts from each other. But when they are united in spirit with a bond of true love between them, then, no matter how great the gifts may be that pass from one to the other, they can be accepted without any feeling of embarrassment or obligation on either side. This principle holds good in the spiritual life. When Christians are living far off from God, they cannot be brought to accept any great gifts from him. They feel as if they were too unworthy, and did not deserve such gifts, and even when he puts the blessing into their very laps, as it were, their false humility prevents them from seeing it, and they go on their way without it. But when Christians get near enough to the Lord to feel the true spirit of adoption, they are ready to accept with delight all the blessings he has in store for them, and never think anything too much to receive. For then they discover that he is only eager, as parents are, to pour out every good gift upon his children, and that, in fact, all things are theirs, because they are Christ's, and Christ is God's. Sometimes a great mystery is made out of the life hid with Christ in God, as though it were a strange mystical thing that ordinary people could not understand. But this contrast between bondage and liberty makes it very plain. It is only to find out that we really are no more servants, but sons, and practically to enter into the blessed privileges of this relationship. All can understand what it is to be a little child. There is no mystery about that. God did not use the figure of father and children without knowing all that this relationship implies, and those, therefore, who know him as their father know the whole secret. They are their father's heirs, and may enter now into possession of all that is necessary for their present needs. They will, therefore, be very simple in their prayers. Lord, they will say, I am thy child, and I need such and such things. My child, he answers, all things are thine in Christ. Come and take just what thou needest. Where the executors are honorable men, the heirs to an estate are not obliged to wrestle for their inheritance. The executors are appointed not to keep them out of it, but to help them into possession of it. I sometimes think Christians look upon our Lord as someone appointed to keep them out of their possessions, instead of the one who has come to bring them in. They little know how such an implication grieves and dishonors him. It is because legal Christians do not know the truth of their relationship to God as children to a father, and do not recognize his fatherly heart toward them that they are in bondage. When they do recognize it, the spirit of bondage becomes impossible to them. Our liberty must come, therefore, from an understanding of the mind and thoughts of God towards us. What are the facts of the case? If he has called us only to the servant's place, then the Christians whose lives are lives of weary bondage are right. But if he has called us to be children and heirs, if we are his friends, his brethren, his bride, how sadly and grievously wrong we are in being entangled under any yoke of bondage whatever, no matter how pious a yoke it may seem to be. The thought of bondage is utterly abhorrent to any of earth's true relationships, and surely it must be more repugnant to heavenly relationship. It will not, of course, hinder the final entrance of the poor enslaved soul into its heavenly rest, but it will, I am sure, put it into the sad condition of those who are described in 1 Corinthians 3.11-15. Their work shall be burned, and they shall suffer loss, yet they themselves shall be saved but so as by fire. Against such there is no law, is the divine sentence concerning all who live and walk in the Spirit. And you shall find it most blessedly true in your own experience, if you will but lay aside all self-effort and self-dependence of every kind, and will consent to let Christ live in you, and work in you, and be your indwelling life. The man who lives by the power of an inward righteous nature is not under bondage to the outward law of righteousness, but he who is restrained by the outward law alone, without the inward restraint of a righteous nature, is a slave to the law. The one fulfills the law in his soul, and is therefore free. The other rebels against the law in his soul, and is therefore bound. I would that every child of God did but know the deliverance from bondage which I have tried to set forth. Let me entreat of you, my readers, to abandon yourselves so utterly to the Lord Jesus Christ that He may be able to work in you all the good pleasure of His will, and may, by the law of the Spirit of life in Himself, deliver you from every other law that could possibly enslave you.