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Part 3
10. Beware of one-sided truth. There are few things more dangerous or more likely to lead into open error.
Take care, for instance, of misunderstanding what the scripture says about the old man and the new man, the flesh and the spirit, and so making void your own personal responsibility for all you say and do, and also setting aside the necessity for the blood of Christ as daily needed for our whole person and the power of the Spirit as needed constantly for our whole being as long as we live. Our Lord and His apostles use many figures to show the greatness of the change produced by being begotten again. They speak of this change as being an actual indwelling of Christ Himself personally.
Christ in you, the hope of glory. Colossians 1.27 Christ liveth in me. Galatians 2.20 That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith.
Ephesians 3.17 But this living and indwelling of Christ does not make us the same as Christ, or Christ the same as we, nor does it make the blood and the spirit less necessary. It does not make Christ responsible for our sins, nor does it make us sinless. It does not lead us to say, You need not care what you do, for Christ dwells in you, and all you do is His doing.
Again, on the other hand, Scripture speaks of our being in Christ. 2 Corinthians 5.17, 1 Corinthians 1.30 But our being in Christ does not mean that we, that is, our whole man, body, soul, and spirit, are actually put into Christ as water is put into a vessel. This would destroy the sense, and besides, it would either make us sinless, or it would make Christ the author of our sins and the doer of all that we do.
These figures do mean that there is such a wonderful nearness between Christ and us, such a living connection, that we receive His power and fullness, but they do not mean that we and Christ are no longer two persons, but one, no longer two bodies, but one, no longer two souls, but one. Again in the Old Testament, the Holy Spirit says, A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you, and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh. Ezekiel 36.26 This does not mean that an actual stone, whether of granite or marble, is taken out of us, and an actual piece of flesh, created in heaven, is inserted instead.
Nor does it mean that the whole of our old nature is at once taken out of us, leaving no part behind, and that a complete new nature is substituted, so that there shall be absolutely nothing in us but what is perfect and divine. If this be the meaning of the figure, then every conversion must be the passing into instantaneous perfection, no fragment of the old nature being left behind, and no feature of the new nature being left unperfected or undeveloped. Thus there could be no conflict, no difficulty, no declension, no possibility of backsliding.
The change thus figured to us is certainly a very great one, but it cannot mean the changing of one person into another, nor the transformation of a man into an angel. Again our Lord says to Nicodemus, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. John 3.3 Nicodemus took Him literally, and so destroyed the whole meaning of this divine symbol.
Those in our day who maintain that actually and literally a new created thing is dropped into us at conversion, which they call the new man, are saying exactly what Nicodemus said. Can a man enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born? The new birth does not mean a new person. Christ did not mean that Nicodemus was no longer to be Nicodemus, or that Peter was no longer to be Peter after conversion, but that such a spiritual work was to take place as to change their whole spiritual nature and character, while leaving them still Nicodemus and Peter, with all their original and proper personalities and humanities.
Our Lord does not say, except a part of a man is born again, but except a man is born again, the change may not be perfect at first, but it affects the whole man, so that he cannot say of himself, a part of me is born again, and a part of me is not born again, but I am born again. Connected with this, there are the statements regarding the new creature. If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature, or there is a new creation.
Old things are passed away, behold, all things are become new. 2 Corinthians 5.17 It is not that a new creature has been put into a man, like new wine into old vessels, but the whole man is the new creature, and is regarded as such by God from the day of his being born again. That the transformation is perfect and complete from the outset, the figure does not imply.
That it will one day be all that is thus symbolized, it assures us beyond a doubt. So with regard to the flesh and the spirit, the old man and the new, the flesh is the man, call him Peter or Paul, with the remnants of his former self about him. The spirit is the same man, it may be Peter or Paul, with the new life unfolding itself within him.
The figure names two men, the old and the new, but we are not, like Nicodemus, to take the words in a carnal or ultra-literal sense, for, after all, the man is but one all the while. For thus the apostle speaks, I am dead to the law, that I might live unto God. I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live.
Yet not I, but Christ liveth in me. Galatians 2, 19 and 20 He does not say here, my old man is dead, but I myself am dead. Not, my old man is crucified, but I myself am crucified.
And this same person, I myself, who is dead and crucified, still liveth. He does not say, one section of me is dead and another is living, but I myself am dead and I myself am living. I, the same person, am both a dead and a living man.
This is the real sense of the figure. This conflict, not between two persons, but between two parts, or conditions of one person, is that which the apostle brings out in the seventh of the Romans. I was alive, I died, I am carnal, sold under sin.
That which I do, I allow not. What I would, that do I not. What I hate, that I do.
In me, that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing. To will is present with me. How to perform, I find not.
The good that I would, I do not. The evil which I would not, that I do. It is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me.
When I would do good, evil is present with me. I delight in the law of God after the inward man, but I see another law in my members. Who shall deliver me from the body of this death? It is Paul himself, speaking for himself, speaking as one delighting in the law of God that utters these strange things, these seeming contradictions.
It is not a perfect part of Paul fighting against an imperfect part of Paul, but it is Paul himself fighting against Paul himself. The one Paul, the one person, has two conflicting elements within him, each striving for the mastery. The inward man, says he, is renewed day by day.
2 Corinthians 4.16 This process of daily renewal is that which goes on within him. The light and the darkness struggle together, but the light conquers and shines more and more unto the perfect day. Beware especially of this one-sidedness in everything connected with Christ himself.
Faith connects us with the person of Christ in all its parts and aspects. It connects us with the whole work of Christ from the cradle to the throne, from Bethlehem to the heaven of heavens. It connects us with his birth, his life, his death, his burial, his resurrection, his ascension and glory.
Out of all these it draws life and strength, life in a crucified Christ, life in a risen Christ, life in a glorified Christ. This is the heritage of faith. Out of death, the death of that cross where he was crucified through weakness, comes life and power to us.
And down from the throne on which he now sits, the possessor and dispenser of that spirit of promise, these same blessings come. In the cross is power. In the resurrection is power.
In the throne of that glory, there is power. It is as the glorified Christ, John 7, 39, that he has received for us the spirit with all his gifts. It is with the glorified Christ that we are linked by faith for blessing, for power, for life, for consolation.
Because I live, ye shall live also. You were neither born nor reborn for yourselves alone. You may not be able to do much, but do something.
Work while it is day. You may not be able to give much, but give something, according to your ability, remembering that the Lord loveth a cheerful giver. Take heed and beware of covetousness, for the love of money is the root of all evil.
Whenever worldliness comes in, in any shape, whether it be love of money or love of pleasure, you cease to be faithful to Christ and are trying to serve both God and man. Do something then for God while time lasts. It may not be long, for the day goeth away, and the shadows of evening are stretched out.
Do something every day. Work and throw your heart into the work. Work joyfully and with a right good will, as men who love both their work and their master.
Be not weary in well-doing. Work and work in faith. Work in love and patience and hope.
Don't shrink from hard labor or disagreeable duties, or a post trying to flesh and blood. Endure hardness as a good soldier in Jesus Christ. 2 Timothy 2.3 Be steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord.
1 Corinthians 15.58 Don't fold your hands or lay aside your staff, or sheathe your sword. Don't give way to slothfulness and flesh-pleasing, saying to yourselves, I can get to heaven without working. Your gifts may be small, your time not much, your opportunities few, but work and do it quietly, without bustle or self-importance, not as pleasing men but God, not seeking the honor that cometh from men, but that which cometh from God.
The day of honor is coming, and the masters well done will make up for all hardship and labor here. When the Son of Man shall come in His glory with all His holy angels, and when He shall sit upon the throne of His glory, it will be blessed to be set upon His right hand and acknowledged as those who have fed Him and clothed and visited Him in prison. And it would be a bitter thing indeed to be saved so as by fire, namely, barely saved and no more, saved, if such a thing can be thought of, without doing anything for Him that saved us, having given Him no water when He was thirsty, no food when He was hungry, no clothes when He was naked, and when in prison, having never once come nigh Him.
Live waiting for your Lord. He that loves Christ will long to see Him and will not be content with the interviews which faith gives. The lover seeks the absent loved one, the wife, the husband, the child, the mother.
So do you, your Lord. It is not enough that you can communicate with Him daily by the epistles which faith brings and carries. You must see Him face to face.
Otherwise, there is a blank in your life, a void in your existence, a cloud over your love, and a faltering in your song. The saved one desires to meet his Savior and feels that his joy must be imperfect till then. It is the mark of a disciple that he waits for the Son of God from heaven, 1 Thessalonians 1.10, that he loves, looks for, longs for the appearance of Christ.
Let this mark be seen on you and be like the Corinthian saints of whom it was told by their apostle, ye come behind in no gift, waiting for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, 1 Corinthians 1.7. Gird up the loins of your mind, be sober and hope to the end for the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ, 1 Peter 1.13. 13. The Lord our God. I am the Lord your God was God's greeting of love to Israel, Leviticus 11.44. It is no less now His salutation of grace to everyone who has believed on the name of His Son, Christ Jesus.
God becomes our God the moment that we receive His testimony of His beloved Son. This new relationship between God and us in virtue of which He calls us His and we call Him ours is the simple result of a believed gospel. If anyone reading these lines is led to ask, how may I become a son? We answer in the words of truth.
He that believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God. Nothing less than believing can bring about this sonship and nothing more is needed. The joy and the peace and the love and the warmth, these are the effects of faith, but they are not faith.
They are the fruit of a conscious sonship which has been formed by the belief of the divine testimony to Jesus as the Son of God and the Savior of the lost. As many as received Him, to them gave He the right of being sons of God, even to them that believed on His name. John 1.12. God's simple message of grace contains peace for the sinner and the sinner extracts the peace therein contained not by effort or feeling but by the simple belief of the true sayings of God.
Good news makes glad by being believed and they refuse to yield up their precious treasure to anything but to simple faith. Believe the tidings of peace from God and the peace is all your own. It is not to him that worketh or feeleth or loveth, but to him that believer that God says, I am the Lord your God.
And when God used the word believing, He just meant what He said and intended nothing else than what man means by that word. Had He meant anything else, He would have told us and not suffered us to be misled or deceived by our misunderstanding of a word of which the Bible is full. Had He meant working or feeling or loving, He would have said so and not allowed us to suppose that believing was really all.
What a book of deception and mystery the Bible would be if believing does not mean believing but something less or something more. To make it something less would be to take from God's word as truly as if we had struck out a book from the Bible. To make it something more would be to add to God's word as truly and as sinfully as if we had forged another gospel or another epistle or accepted the Apocrypha as part of the inspired record.
We make God a liar when we refuse to take Him at His word or give Him credit for speaking that simple truth in believing which we are saved. But let us remember the other side of His statement, namely, our being found liars by reason of our adding to His word. Every word of God is pure, Proverbs 30, 5. Can we make it purer or more transparent or more simple? We add to it lest it should be too simple, too childlike, too blessed.
We put something of our own into it to make it more substantial and complete. And that something, call it feeling or realizing or loving, destroys the divine simplicity and transparency of faith. Add thou not unto His words lest He reprove thee and thou be found a liar, Proverbs 30, 6. Does casting dust upon the sunbeam improve its quality or make it more like the sun from which it came? Would pouring filth into a cup of pure spring water make it more lucid and refreshing? Whatever we add to believing tends to destroy its real nature and to mar its effects.
If God had said that we are to be saved by believing that the deluge overflowed the earth and that the sun once stood still in the heavens, we should have understood what He meant by the word. And is there any more difficulty in understanding Him when He says, He that believeth is justified from all things? Does believing mean one thing in Genesis and another in Romans? Does it mean one thing to Abraham and another to us? Does it mean one thing today and another tomorrow? Or is it not the formula of salvation? Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved, meant to be the simplest and most intelligible of all declarations ever made to man. We believe the Holy Spirit's testimony that Jesus died and rose again, the just for the unjust.
That saves. We believe the divine promise annexed to this testimony that life is the possession of every man who believeth this heavenly testimony. And this belief of the promise, which some call appropriation, assures us on God's word that life is ours personally.
We do not get life by believing that life is ours, nor do we get Christ by believing that Christ is ours. This is as absurd as the idea of getting our debts paid by believing that they are paid. But we get life and Christ by believing God's glad tidings concerning Jesus and His finished work upon the cross.
There is enough in Christ to pay every man's debt, but no man's debt is actually paid until he has taken God at His word and believed the record which God has given of His Son. It is the blood that pacifies my conscience. The sight of it is all I need to remove fear and impart confidence.
It is not my seeing that I see it that gives me boldness, but my direct and simple sight of it. My guilt passes away from me so soon as I believe, and I don't need to wait till I believe in my own act of believing before becoming conscious of this deliverance. The blood contains my pardon and my peace, and by looking at it, I extract the pardon and the peace.
I don't need to look at my looking. I need only to look at the blood. If I cannot extract from it pardon and peace, I shall never be able to extract them from my own act of seeing.
I am to believe in Jesus, not in my own faith, nor in my own feelings. I am to look to the cross, not to my own convictions or repentance. The well of peace is not within me, and to let down my bucket into my own heart for the purpose of drawing up the water of peace is mockery as well as foolishness.
I do not fill the cup of peace out of anything that is in myself. Christ has filled that cup already long, long ago, and in love, he presses it to my parched lips. Let me drink at once of it, for all the peace of God, the peace of heaven, is there.
When God said to Israel, I am the Lord your God, he added this, Ye shall therefore sanctify yourself, and ye shall be holy, for I am holy. Leviticus 11, 44, and he added this also, I am the Lord that bringeth you up, out of the land of Egypt, to be your God. Ye shall therefore be holy, for I am holy.
Leviticus 11, 45. God calls us to be holy. He becomes our God to make us like himself.
He calls us to be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust. He expects that we should represent him among our fellow men by our resemblance to himself. The carrying out of this holiness is his own work, the operation of his spirit.
Whether our perfection in holiness is to be wrought gradually or instantaneously is a question to be determined solely by his word and not by any theories of our own. But God could make each soul perfect the moment he believes we admit that he may have wise reasons for not doing this. Wise reasons for gradual growth will not be denied.
He has given us no instance in the Bible of anyone made instantaneously sinless, either at his conversion or during his afterlife. All the men of faith and holiness, the men full of the Holy Ghost, which he presents to us as our models, are imperfect men to the end of their days, needing forgiveness and cleansing constantly. He glorifies himself in our imperfect bodies, in an imperfect church, on an imperfect earth.
His object here is to glorify himself in imperfection and growth, as he is hereafter to glorify himself in perfection and completeness of every kind. Gradual growth is the law of all things here, man, beasts, trees, and flowers, so that unless we had some very notable example in Scripture of a sinless man or of miraculous and instantaneous perfection by an act of faith, we are not disposed to accept the theory of instantaneous sinlessness, as that to which we are called in believing, even though that be veiled under the spacious name of entire consecration or accompanied with the profession of personal unworthiness, a personal unworthiness which, however, does not seem to require any actual confession of sin. Yet, God calls us to be holy.
He expects us to grow in unlikeness to this world and in likeness to that world which is to come. He expects us to follow him who did no sin, even though the attainment of perfection should not be in a day or a year, but the growth of a lifetime. It is for want of daily growth, not for want of complete and constant sinlessness that God so often challenges his own.
Let us grow. Let us bring forth fruit. Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ and make not provision for the flesh to fulfill the lusts thereof.
What is the use of taking so long to make us sinless, some may say? I answer, go and ask God. What was the use of taking six days to bring creation to perfection? Why did he let sin enter our world when he could have kept it out? What was the use of not making the whole church perfect at once? Why did he not make Abraham or David or Paul perfect at once? He could have done so. Why did he not? Let us study soberly and truly the word of God in regard to the past history of his saints.
Lest it be said to some in our day who think themselves on a far higher platform than others, more perfect than Paul or John. Nay, but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus? Let us grow. The impatience that demands instantaneous perfection is unbelief, refusing to recognize God's spiritual laws in the new creation.
The gradual evolution of the heavenly life in a lifelong course of conflict and imperfection is the way in which sin is unfolded, the human heart exposed to view, the power of the cross tested, the efficacy of the blood manifested, and the power as well as the love of the Father, Son, and Spirit magnified. God's purpose is not simply to reveal himself, but to reveal man. Not simply man dead in trespasses and sin, but man after he has been made alive unto righteousness, to exhibit step by step and day by day that most solemn and humbling of all processes, namely that by which the inward man is renewed day by day.
2 Corinthians 4.16 While the strength of the human will for evil is manifested, the awful tenacity of sin shone forth, and the absolute hopelessness of any sinner's salvation demonstrated, saved by the omnipotence of God himself. Let us grow daily and hourly. Let us grow down.
Let us grow up. Let us strike our roots deeper. Let us spread out our branches more widely.
Let us not only blossom and bud, but let us bring forth fruit, ripe and plentiful, on every bough. Herein is my Father glorified that he bear much fruit. So shall ye be, my disciples.
John 15.8.14 Hindrances to avoid. Many things can hinder growth and fruit bearing. Mark the following.
Unbelief. So we see they could not enter in because of unbelief. Hebrews 3.19 This poisons the tree at its very root.
Christ can do no mighty works in us or for us because of unbelief. Matthew 13.58 Only believe. Mark 5.36 Have faith in God.
Mark 11.22 He that believeth. Mark 9.23 He that believeth on me, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. John 7.38 Want of love.
No love, no fruit. Much love, much fruit. Hebrews 10.24 Labor of love means the labor which love produces, to which love stimulates.
1 Thessalonians 1.3 Love is by its very nature fruit bearing. When love waxes cold. Matthew 24.12 When we leave our first love.
Revelations 2.4 Then everything that deserves the name of fruit dies away. If there be fruit at all, it is poor and unripe. Our zeal is the zeal of Jehu.
2 Kings 10.16 Our warmth is false fire. Our energy is the vigor of the flesh. Our work is the work of men urged on by a false stimulus.
Our words, however earnest, are the words of excited self. If anyone asks, how am I to get love? I answer, look to Jesus. Deal with Him about it.
Learn anew to love by learning anew His love to you. I do not say work and that will stimulate you to love. No.
It is not first work and then love. But first love and then work. Get more love by dealing more with Jesus personally.
And then love will set you all on fire. You will work unbidden. You will work in the liberty of fellowship and in the joy of love.
1 Thessalonians 3.12 Galatians 5.6 2 Corinthians 5.14 Selfishness. Mark 8.34 Self in all its forms is a hindrance to our growth. Romans 14.7 Self-will, self-sufficiency, self-indulgence, self-importance, self-glory, self-seeking, self-brooding.
All these mar fruitfulness. Denying self is the beginning, the middle and the end of our course here as followers of Christ. Selfishness takes the form of covetousness or love of money, of luxury or love of meats and drinks and the good things of this life, of religious dissipation or love of excitement, of spiritual restlessness or running from meeting to meeting, or book to book, or opinion to opinion, or minister to minister, of craving for religious stimulants and spices with loathing of what is tame or common, however good and true.
These are some of the forms of selfishness which destroy both growth and fruitfulness. How can a man grow when he is pampering self instead of crucifying the flesh? When he is indulging and fondling the old man instead of nailing him to the cross? When he is enjoying all softness and ease and worldly comfort instead of enduring hardness and taking up his cross and mortifying his members which are upon the earth? Romans 8.13 Galatians 5.24 Colossians 3.5