The Calvary Road

The Calvary Road by Roy Hessian Chapter 6 Revival in the Home Thousands of years ago, in the most beautiful garden the world has ever known, lived a man and a woman. Formed in the likeness of their Creator, they lived solely to reveal Him to His creation and to each other, and thus to glorify Him every moment of the day. Humbly they accepted the position of a creature with the Creator, that of complete submission and yieldedness to His will. Because they always submitted their wills to His, because they lived for Him and not for themselves, they were also completely submitted to each other. Thus in that first home, in that beautiful garden, there was absolute harmony, peace, love and oneness, not only with God but with each other. Then one day the harmony was shattered, for the serpent stole into the God-centered home and with him sin. And now, because they had lost their peace and fellowship with God, they lost it with each other. No longer did they live for God, each lived for himself. They were each their own God now, and because they no longer lived for God, they no longer lived for each other. Instead of peace, harmony, love and oneness, there was now discord and hate, in other words, sin. It was into the home that sin first came. It is in the home that revival first needs to come. Revival is desperately needed in the Church, in the country, in the world. But a revived Church with unrevived homes would be sheer hypocrisy. It is the hardest place, the most costly but the most necessary place to begin. But before we go on, let us remind ourselves again of what revival really is. It simply means a new life in hearts where the spiritual life has ebbed, but not a new life of self-effort or self-initiated activity. It is not man's life but God's life, the life of Jesus filling us and flowing through us. That life is manifested in fellowship and oneness with those with whom we live, nothing between us and God and nothing between us and others. The home is the place before all others where this should be experienced. But how different is the experience of so many of us professing Christians in our homes? Little irritations, frayed tempers, selfishness and resentments, and even where there is nothing very definitely wrong between us, just not that complete oneness and fellowship that ought to characterize Christians living together. All the things that come between us and others come between us and God and spoil our fellowship with him so that our hearts are not overflowing with divine life. Now what at bottom is wrong with our homes? When we talk about homes we mean the relationship which exists between a husband and wife, a parent and child, a brother and sister, or between any others who through various circumstances are compelled to live together. The first thing that is wrong with so many families is that they are not really open with one another. We live so largely behind drawn blinds, the others do not know us for what we really are and we do not intend that they should. Even those living in the most intimate relationships with us do not know what goes on inside, our difficulties, battles, failures, or what the Lord Jesus has to cleanse us from so frequently. This lack of transparency and openness is ever the result of sin. The first effect of the first sin was to make Adam and Eve hide from God behind the trees of the garden. They who had been so transparent with God and with one another were then hiding from God because of sin, and if they hid from God you can be quite sure that they soon began to hide from one another. There were reactions and thoughts in Adam's heart that Eve was never allowed to know, and there were light things hidden in Eve's heart too, and so it has been ever since. Having something to hide from God we hide it too from one another. Behind that wall of reserve which acts like a mask we cover our real selves. Sometimes we hide in the most extraordinary way behind an assumed jocular manner. We are afraid to be serious because we do not want others to get too close and see us as we really are, and so we keep up a game of bluff. We are not real with one another, and no one can have fellowship with an unreal person, and so oneness and close fellowship are impossible in the home. This is what the scripture calls walking in darkness, for the darkness is anything which hides. The second thing that is wrong with our homes is our failure really to love one another. Well, says somebody, that could never be said of our home, for no one could love one another more than my husband and I love each other. But wait a minute. It depends on what you mean by love. Love is not just a sentimental feeling, nor even strong passion. The famous passage in 1 Corinthians chapter 13 tells us what real love is, and if we test ourselves by it we may find that after all we are hardly loving one another at all, and our behaviour is all in the opposite direction, and the opposite of love is hate. Let us look at some of the things that the passage tells us about love. Love is long-suffering, patient, and is kind. Love vaunteth not itself, does not boast, is not puffed up, is not conceited. Love does not behave itself unseemly, is not rude, seeketh not her own, is not selfish, is not easily provoked, does not get irritated, thinketh no evil, does not entertain unkind thoughts of another. How do we stand up to those tests in our homes? So often we act in the very opposite way. We are often impatient with one another, and even unkind in the way we answer back or react. How much envy too there can be in a home! A husband and wife can envy the other his gifts, even his spiritual progress. Parents may be envious of their children. How often is there not bitter envy between brothers and sisters? Also, not behaving unseemly, that is, courtesy. What about that? Courtesy is just love in little things, but it is in the little things that we trip up. We think we can let up at home. How puffed up, that is, conceited, we so often are. Conceit comes out in all sorts of ways. We think we know best, we want our way, and we nag or boss the other one, and nagging or bossing leads on to the tendency to despise the other one. Our very attitude of superiority sets us above him. Then, when at the bottom of our hearts we despise someone, we blame him for everything, and yet we think we love. Then what about seeking not our own, that is, not being selfish? Many times a day we put our wishes and interests before those of the other one. How easily provoked we are! How quick to be irritated by something in the other! How often we allow the unkind thought, the resentful feeling over something the other has done or left undone. Yet we profess there are no failures in love in our homes. These things happen every day, and we think nothing of them. They are all of them the opposite of love, and the opposite of love is hate. Impatience is hate. Envy is hate. Conceit and self-will are hate, and so are selfishness, irritability and resentment, and hate is sin. He that saith he is in the light and hateth his brother is in darkness even until now. What tensions, barriers and discord it all causes! And fellowship with both God and the other is made impossible. Now the question is, do I want new life revival in my home? I have got to challenge my heart about this. Am I prepared to continue in my present state, or am I really hungry for new life, his life, in my home? For not unless I am really hungry will I be willing to take the necessary steps. The first step I must take is to call sin, sin, my sin, not the other person's, and go with it to the cross, and trust the Lord Jesus there and then to cleanse me from it. As we bow the neck at the cross, his self-forgetful love for others, his long-suffering and forbearance flow into our hearts. The precious blood cleanses us from the unlove and ill-will, and the Holy Spirit fills us with the very nature of Jesus. 1 Corinthians chapter 13 is nothing less than the nature of Jesus, and it is all gift to us, for his nature is ours, if he is ours. This blessed process can happen every single time the beginning of sin and unlove creep in, for the cleansing founding of blood is available to us all the time. All this will commit us very definitely to walking the way of the cross in our homes. Again and again we will see places where we must yield up our rights as Jesus yielded up his for us. We shall have to see that the thing in us that reacts so sharply to another's selfishness and pride is simply our own selfishness and pride which we are unwilling to sacrifice. We shall have to accept another's ways and doings as God's will for us, and meekly bend the neck to all God's providences. That does not mean that we must accept another's selfishness as God's will for him, far from it, but only as God's will for us. As far as the other is concerned, God will probably want to use us, if we are broken, to help him see his need. Certainly if we are parents we shall often need to correct our child with firmness, but none of this is to be from selfish motives, but only out of love for the other and a longing for his good. Our own convenience and rights must all the time be yielded. Only so will the love of the Lord Jesus be able to fill us and express itself through us. When we have been broken at Calvary we must be willing to put things right with others, sometimes even with the children. This is so often the test of our brokenness. Brokenness is the opposite of hardness. Hardness says, it's your fault. Brokenness, however, says, it's my fault. What a different atmosphere will begin to prevail in our homes when they hear us say that. Let us remember that at the cross there is room for only one at a time. We cannot say, I was wrong, but you were wrong too, you must come as well. No, you must go alone saying, I'm wrong. God will work in the other more through your brokenness than through anything else you can do or say. We may, however, have to wait, perhaps a long time, but that should only cause us to understand more perfectly how God feels, for, as someone has said, he too has had to wait a long time since his great attempt to put things right with man nineteen hundred years ago, although there was no wrong on his side. But God will surely answer our prayer and bring the other to Calvary too. There we shall be one. There the middle wall of partition between us will be broken down. There we shall be able to walk in the light in true transparency with Jesus and with one another, loving each other with a pure heart fervently. Sin is almost the only thing we have in common with everyone else, and so at the feet of Jesus, where sin is cleansed, is the only place where we can be one. Real oneness conjures up for us the picture of two or more sinners together at Calvary. That friend of ours has got something in his eye. Though it is only something tiny, what Jesus called a mote, a tiny speck of sawdust, how painful it is and how helpless he is until it is removed. It is surely our part as a friend to do all we can to remove it, and how grateful he is to us when we have succeeded in doing so. We should be equally grateful to him if he did the same service for us. In the light of that, it seems clear that the real point of the well-known passage in Matthew 7, verses 3 to 5, about the beam and the mote, is not the forbidding of our trying to remove the fault in the other person, but rather the reverse. It is the injunction that at all costs we should do this service for one another. True, its first emphasis seems to be a condemnation of censoriousness, but when the censoriousness in us is removed, the passage ends by saying, Then shalt thou see clearly to cast the mote out of thy brother's eye. According to the New Testament, we are meant to care so much for the other man that we are willing to do all we can to remove from his eye the mote which is marring his vision and hindering his blessing. We are told to admonish one another and exhort one another, to wash one another's feet, and to provoke one another to love and good works. The love of Jesus poured out in us will make us want to help our brother in this way. What blessing may not come to many others through our willingness, humbly, to challenge one another as led by God? A humble Swiss named Nicholas of Baal, one of the Society of the Friends of God, crossed the mountains to Strasbourg and entered the church of Dr. Tala, the popular preacher of that city. Said Nicholas, Dr. Tala, before you can do your greatest work for God, the world, and this city, you must die. Die to yourself, your gifts, your popularity, and even your own goodness, and when you have learned the full meaning of the cross, you will have a new power with God and man. That humble challenge from an obscure Christian changed Dr. Tala's life, and he did indeed learn to die, and became one of the great factors to prepare the way for Luther and the Reformation. In this passage, the Lord Jesus tells us how we may do this service for one another. Now we all know what Jesus meant by the mote in the other person's eye. It is some fault which we fancy we can discern in him. It may be an act he has done against us or some attitude he adopts towards us. But what did the Lord Jesus mean by the beam in our eye? I suggest that the beam in our eye is simply our unloving reaction to the other man's mote. Without doubt there is a wrong in the other person, but our reaction to that wrong is wrong too. The mote in him has provoked in us resentment or coldness or criticism or bitterness or evil speaking or ill will, all of them variants of the basic ill, unlove. And that, says the Lord Jesus, is far, far worse than the tiny wrong, sometimes quite unconscious, that provoked it. A mote means in the Greek a little splinter, whereas a beam means a rafter. And the Lord Jesus means by this comparison to tell us that our unloving reaction to the other's wrong is what a great rafter is to a little splinter. Every time we point one of our fingers at another and say, it's your fault, three of our fingers are pointing back at us. God have mercy on us for the many times when it has been so with us and when in our hypocrisy we have tried to deal with the person's fault, when God saw that there was this thing far worse in our own hearts. But let us not think that a beam is of necessity some violent reaction on our part. The first beginning of a resentment is a beam, as is also the first flicker of an unkind thought or the first suggestion of unloving criticism. Where that is so, it only distorts our vision and we shall never see our brother as he really is, beloved of God. If we speak to our brother with that in our hearts, it will only provoke him to adopt the same hard attitude to us. For it is a law of human relationships that with what measure ye meet, it shall be measured to you again. No, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye. That is the first thing we must do. We must recognise our unloving reaction to him as sin. On our knees we must go with it to Calvary and see Jesus there and get a glimpse of what that sin cost him. At his feet we must repent of it and be broken afresh and trust the Lord Jesus to cleanse it away in his precious blood and fill us with his love for that one. And he will and does, if we will claim his promise. Then we shall probably need to go to the other in the attitude of the repentant one, tell him of the sin that has been in our heart and what the blood has affected there, and ask him to forgive us too. Very often bystanders will tell us, and sometimes our own hearts, that the sin we are confessing is not nearly so bad as the other's wrong, which he is not yet confessing. But we have been to Calvary indeed, we are learning to live under the shadow of Calvary and we have seen our sin there and we can no longer compare our sin with another's. But as we take these simple steps of repentance, then we see clearly to cast the mote out of the other's eye, for the beam in our eye has gone. In that moment God will pour light in on us as to the other's need that neither he nor we ever had before. We may see then that the mote we were so conscious of before is virtually non-existent, it was but the projection of something that was in us. On the other hand we may have revealed to us hidden underlying things of which he himself was hardly conscious. Then as God leads us we must lovingly and humbly challenge him so that he may see them too and bring them to the fountain for sin and find deliverance. He will be more likely than ever to let us do it, indeed if he is a humble man he will be grateful to us, for he will know now that there is no selfish motive in our heart but only love and concern for him. When God is leading us to challenge another, let not fear hold us back, let us not argue or press our point, let us just say what God has told us to and leave it there. It is God's work, not ours, to cause the other to see it. It takes time to be willing to bend the proud stiff-necked eye. When we in turn are challenged let us not defend ourselves and explain ourselves, let us take it in silence, thanking the other and then go to God about it and ask him. If he was right let us be humble enough to go and tell him and praise God together. There is no doubt that we need each other desperately, there are blind spots in all our lives that we shall never see unless we are prepared for another to be God's channel to us. Chapter 8 Are You Willing to be a Servant? Nothing is clearer from the New Testament than that the Lord Jesus expects us to take the low position of servants. This is not just an extra obligation which we may or may not assume as we please, it is the very heart of that new relationship which the disciple is to take up with respect to God and to his fellows. If he is to know fellowship with Christ and any degree of holiness in his life. When we understand the humbling and self-emptying that is involved in really being a servant it becomes evident that only those who are really prepared to live quite definitely under the shadow of Calvary, ever contemplating the humility and brokenness of the Lord Jesus for us, will be willing for that position. As we approach this subject and its personal application in detail to our lives there are three preliminary things which need to be said to prepare us to understand the low and humbling position which he wants us to take. In the Old Testament two sorts of servants are mentioned. There are the hired servants who have wages paid to them and have certain rights. Then there are the bond servants or slaves who have no rights, who receive no wages and who have no appeal. The Hebrews were forbidden ever to make bond servants of their own race. Only of the Gentiles were they permitted to take such slaves. When however we come to the New Testament the word in the Greek for the servant of the Lord Jesus Christ is not hired servant but bond servant by which is meant to be shown that our position is one where we have no rights and no appeal. Where we are the absolute property of our master to be treated and disposed of just as he wishes. Further we shall see more clearly still what our position is to be when we understand that we are to be the bond servants of one who was himself willing to be a bond servant. Nothing shows better the amazing humility of the Lord Jesus whose servants we are to be than that though he was in the form of God he counted it not a prize to be on an equality with God but emptied himself taking the form of a servant. Without rights, willing to be treated as the will of the Father and the malice of men might decree. If only he might thereby serve men and bring them back to God. And you and I are to be the bond servants of him who was and always is a bond servant whose disposition is ever that of humility and whose activity is ever that of humbling himself to serve his creatures. How utterly low then is our true position. How this shows us what it means to be ruled by the Lord Jesus. That leads us to something further. Our servanthood to the Lord Jesus is to express itself in our servanthood to our fellows. Says Paul we preach not ourselves but Christ Jesus the Lord and ourselves your servants for Jesus' sake. The low position we take towards the Lord Jesus is judged by him by the low position we take in our relationship with our fellows. An unwillingness to serve others in costly humbling ways he takes to be an unwillingness to serve him. And we thus put ourselves out of fellowship with him. We are now in a position to apply all this much more personally to our lives. God spoke to me some time ago through Luke chapter 17 verses 7 to 10. But which of you having a servant ploughing or feeding cattle will say unto him by and by when he comes from the field go and sit down to meet and will not rather say unto him make ready wherewith I may sup and gird thyselves and serve me till I have eaten and drunken and afterwards thou shalt eat and drink. Doth he thank that servant because he did the things that were commanded him. I try not. So likewise ye when ye shall have done all those things which are commanded you say we are unprofitable servants. We have done that which was our duty to do. I see here five marks of the bond servant. First of all he must be willing to have one thing on top of another put upon him without any consideration being given him. On top of a hard day in the field the servant in the parable had immediately to prepare his master's meal. And on top of that he had to wait at table and all that before he had any food himself. He just went and did it expecting nothing else. How unwilling we are for this. How quickly there are murmurings and bitterness in our hearts when that sort of thing is expected of us. But the moment we start murmuring we are acting as if we had rights and a bond servant hasn't any. Secondly in doing this he must be willing not to be thanked for it. How often we serve others but what self-pity we have in our hearts and how bitterly we complain that they take it as a matter of course and do not thank us for it. But a bond servant must be willing for that. Hired servants may expect something but not bond servants. And thirdly having done all this he must not charge the other with selfishness. As I read the passage I could not but feel that the master was rather selfish and inconsiderate. But there is no such charge from the bond servant. He exists to serve the interests of his master and the selfishness or otherwise of his master does not come into it with him. But we, we can perhaps allow ourselves to be put upon by others and are willing perhaps not to be thanked for what we do. But how we charge the other in our minds with selfishness. But that is not the place of a bond servant. He is to find in the selfishness of others but a further opportunity to identify himself afresh with his Lord as the servant of all. But there is a fourth step still to which we must go. Having done all that there is no ground for pride or self-congratulation. But we must confess that we are unprofitable servants. That is that we are of no real use to God or man in ourselves. We must confess again and again that in us that is in our flesh there dwelleth no good thing. That if we have acted thus it is no thanks to us whose hearts are naturally proud and stubborn but only to the Lord Jesus who dwells in us and who has made us willing. The bottom of self is quite knocked out by the fifth and last step. The admission that doing and bearing what we have in the way of meekness and humility we have not done one stitch more than it was our duty to do. God made man in the first place simply that he might be God's bond servant. Man's sin has simply consisted in his refusal to be God's bond servant. His restoration can only be then a restoration to the position of a bond servant. A man then has not done anything specially meritorious when he has consented to take that position for he was created and redeemed for that very thing. This then is the way of the cross. It is the way that God's lowly bond servant first trod for us and should not we the bond servants of that bond servant tread it still. Does it seem hard and forbidding this way down? Be assured it is the only way up. It was the way by which the Lord Jesus reached the throne and it is the way by which we too reach the place of spiritual power, authority and fruitfulness. Those who tread this path are radiant happy souls overflowing with the life of their Lord. They have found he that humbleth himself shall be exalted to be true for them as for their Lord. Where before humility was an unwelcome intruder to be put up with only on occasion, she has now become the spouse of their souls to whom they have wedded themselves for ever. If darkness and unrest enter their souls it is only because somewhere on some point they have been unwilling to walk with her in the paths of meekness and brokenness, but she is ever ready to welcome them back into her company as they seek her face in repentance. That brings us to the all-important matter of repentance. We shall not enter into more abundant life merely by resolving that we shall be humbler in the future. There are attitudes and actions which have already taken place and are still being persisted in, if only by our unwillingness to apologise for them, that must first be repented of. The Lord Jesus did not take upon him the form of a bond-servant merely to give us an example, but that he might die for those very sins upon the cross and open a fountain in his precious blood where they can all be washed away. But that blood cannot be applied to the sins of our proud hearts until we have been broken in repentance as to what has already happened and as to what we already are. This will mean allowing the light of God to go through every part of our hearts and into every one of our relationships. It will mean that we shall have to see that the sins of pride, which God will show us, made it necessary for Jesus to come from heaven and die on the cross that they might be forgiven. It will mean not only asking him to forgive us, but asking others too, and that will be humbling indeed. But as we crawl through the door of the broken ones, we shall emerge into the light and glory of the highway of holiness and humility. The power of the blood of the Lamb. The message and challenge of revival which is coming to many of us these days is searching in its utter simplicity. It is simply that there is only one thing in the world that can hinder the Christian's walking in victorious fellowship with God and his being filled with the Holy Spirit, and that is sin in one form or another. There is only one thing in the world that can cleanse him from sin, with all that that means of liberty and victory, and that is the power of the blood of the Lord Jesus. It is, however, most important for us that we should see what it is that gives the blood of Christ its mighty power with God on behalf of men, for then we shall understand the conditions on which its full power may be experienced in our lives. How many achievements and how many blessings for men the Scriptures ascribe to the power of the blood of the Lord Jesus! By the power of his blood peace is made between man and God. By its power there is forgiveness of sins and eternal life for all who put their faith in the Lord Jesus. By the power of his blood Satan is overcome. By its power there is continual cleansing from all sin for us. By the power of his blood we may be set free from the tyranny of an evil conscience to serve the living God. By its infinite power with God the most unworthy have liberty to enter the Holy of Holies of God's presence and live there all the day. We may well ask what gives the blood its power? To that question we need to link this other question. How may we experience its full power in our lives? Too often that precious blood does not have its cleansing, peace-giving, life-giving, sin-destroying power in our hearts and too often we do not find ourselves in God's presence and fellowship all the day. The answer to the first question is suggested by the phrase in the book of Revelation which describes the blood of Christ by the tender expression, the blood of the Lamb. Not the blood of the warrior, but the blood of the Lamb. In other words, that which gives the precious blood its power with God for men is the Lamb-like disposition of the one who shed it and of which it is the supreme expression. The title, the Lamb, so frequently given to the Lord Jesus in Scripture is first of all descriptive of his work, that of being a sacrifice for our sin. When a sinning Israelite wanted to get right with God it was the blood of a Lamb, sometimes that of a goat, which had to be shed and sprinkled on the altar. Jesus is the divine fulfillment of all those lambs that men offered, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. But the title, the Lamb, has a deeper meaning. It describes his character. He is the Lamb in that he is meek and lowly in heart, gentle and unresisting, and all the time surrendering his own will to the Fathers for the blessing and saving of men. Anyone but the Lamb would have resented and resisted the treatment men gave him, but he in obedience to the Father and out of love for us did neither. Men did what they liked to him, and for our sakes he yielded all the time. When he was reviled, he reviled not again. When he suffered, he threatened not. No standing up for his rights, no hitting back, no resentment, no complaining. How different from us! When the Father's will and the malice of men pointed to dark calvary, the Lamb meekly bowed his head in willingness for that too. It was as the Lamb that Isaiah saw him when he prophesied, He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth. The scourging, the scoffing, the spitting, the hair plucked off from his cheeks, the weary last march up the hill, the nailing and the lifting up, the piercing of his side and the flowing of his blood, none of these things would ever have been had he not been the Lamb. And all that to pay the price for my sin. So we see, he is not merely the Lamb because he died on the cross, but he died upon the cross because he is the Lamb. Let us ever see this disposition in the blood. Let every mention of the blood call to mind the deep humility and self-surrender of the Lamb, for it is this disposition that gives the blood its wonderful power with God. Hebrews 9.14 forever links the blood of Christ with his self-offering to God. How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God? And it is this fact that bestows upon it its power with God for men. For this disposition has ever been of supreme value to God. Humility, Lamb-likeness, the surrender of our wills to God, are what he looks for supremely from man. It was to manifest all this that God ever created the first man. It was his refusal to walk this path that constituted his first sin, and it has been the heart of sin ever since. It was to bring this disposition back to earth that Jesus came. It was simply because the Father saw this in him that he could say, My Son, in whom I am well pleased. It was because the shedding of his blood so supremely expressed this disposition that it is so utterly precious to God and so all-availing for man and his sin. We come now to the second question. How can we experience its full power in our lives? Our hearts surely tell us the answer as we look on the Lamb bowing his head for us on Calvary, only by being willing to have the same disposition that ruled him and by bending our necks in brokenness as he bowed his. Just as it is the disposition of the Lamb that bestows upon the blood its power, so it is only as we are willing to be partakers of the same disposition of the Lamb that we shall know its full power in our lives, and we may be partakers of his disposition. For it has been made transferable to us by his death. All the fruits of the Holy Spirit mentioned in Galatians chapter 5—love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, self-control—what are they but the expression of the Lamb-like nature of the Lord Jesus, with which the Holy Spirit wants to fill us? Let us never forget that the Lord Jesus, though exalted to the throne of God, is still the Lamb—the book of Revelation tells us that—and he wants to reproduce himself in us. But are we willing for this? There is a hard, unyielding self which stands up for itself and resists others. That will have to be broken if we are to be willing for the disposition of the Lamb, and if the precious blood is to reach us in cleansing power. We may pray long to be cleansed from some sin and for peace to be restored in our hearts, but unless we are willing to be broken on the point in question and be made a partaker of the Lamb's humility, nothing will happen. Every sin we ever commit is the result of the hard, unbroken self taking up some attitude of pride, and we shall not find peace through the blood until we are willing to see the source of each sin and reverse the wrong attitude that caused it by a specific repentance, which will always be humbling. This does not mean that we need to try to make ourselves feel the humility of Jesus, for we have only to walk in the light and be willing for God to reveal any sin that may be in our lives, and we shall find ourselves asked by the Lord to perform all sorts of costly acts of repentance and surrender, often over what we term small and trivial matters. But their importance can be gauged by what it costs our pride to put them right. He may show us a confession or apology that has to be made to someone, or an act of restitution that has to be done. He may show us that we must give in on something and yield up our fancied rights in it. Jesus had no rights, have we then? He may show us that we must go to the one who has done us wrong and confess to him the far greater wrong of resenting it. Jesus never resented anything or anyone, have we any right to? He may call us to be open with our friends that they may know us as we really are, and thus be able to have true fellowship with us. These acts may well be humiliating and a complete reversal of our usual attitudes of pride and selfishness, but by such acts we shall know true brokenness and become partakers of the humility of the Lamb. As we are willing for this in each issue, the blood of the Lamb will be able to cleanse us from all sin and we shall walk with God in white, with his peace in our hearts. We have all become so used to condemning the proud self-righteous attitude of the Pharisee in the parable of the Pharisee and the Publican that we can hardly believe that the picture of him there is meant to apply to us, which only shows how much like him we really are. The Sunday school teacher was never so much a Pharisee as when she finished her lesson on this parable with the words, And now, children, we can thank God that we are not as this Pharisee. In particular, we are in danger of adopting the Pharisee's attitude when God is wanting to humble us at the cross of Jesus and show us the sins in our hearts that are hindering personal revival. We shall not understand the real wrong of the Pharisee's attitude nor of our own unless we view it against the background of what God says about the human heart. Said Jesus Christ, From within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness. The same dark picture of the human heart is given us in Paul's letter to the Galatians. The works of the flesh are manifest. Which are these? Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revelings and such like. What a picture! Jeremiah adds the same witness. The heart is deceitful above all things, that is, it deceives the man himself, so that he does not know himself, and desperately wicked. Who can know it? Here then is God's picture of the human heart, the fallen self, the old man, as the scripture calls it, whether it be in the unconverted or in the keenest Christian. It is hard to believe that these things can proceed from the heart of ministers, evangelists and Christian workers, but it's true. The simple truth is that the only beautiful thing about the Christian is Jesus Christ. God wants us to recognise that fact as true in our experience, so that in true brokenness and self-despair we shall allow Jesus Christ to be our righteousness and holiness and all in all, and that is victory. Now in face of God's description of the human heart we can see what it was that the Pharisee did. In saying, I thank thee that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, he was protesting his innocence of the very things that God says are in every heart. He said in effect, these things are doubtless true of other men, this publican is even now confessing them, but Lord not of me. And in so saying he was making God a liar, for if we say we have not sinned we make him a liar, because he says we have. Yet I feel sure that he was perfectly sincere in what he said, he really did believe that he was innocent of these things. Indeed he is ascribing his imagined innocence to God, saying, I thank thee. God's word however still stood against him, but he just had not seen it, the penny had not dropped. If the publican is beating upon his breast and confessing his sins it is not because he has sinned worse than the Pharisee, it is simply that the publican has seen that what God says is woefully true of him, and the Pharisee has not. The Pharisee still thinks that outward abstinence from certain sins is all that God requires. He has not yet understood that God looks not on the outward appearance, but on the heart, and accounts the look of lust the equivalent of adultery, the attitude of resentment and hate the same as murder, envy as actual theft, and the petty tyrannies in the home as wicked as the most extortionate dealings in the market. How often have not we too protested our innocence on the many occasions when God has been convicting others, and when he has wanted to convict us too? We have said in effect, these things may be true of others, but not of me, and we may have said so quite sincerely. Perhaps we have heard of others who have humbled themselves and have rather despised them for the confessions they have had to make and the things they had to put right in their lives, or perhaps we have been genuinely glad that they have been blessed, but whichever it is we don't feel that we have anything to be broken about ourselves. Beloved, if we feel we are innocent and have nothing to be broken about, it is not that these things are not there, but that we have not seen them. We have been living in a realm of illusion about ourselves. God must be true in all that he says about us. In one form or another he sees these things expressing themselves in us, unless we have recognized them and allowed God to deal with them. Unconscious selfishness, pride and self-congratulation, jealousy, resentment and impatience, reserve, fears and shyness, dishonesty and deception, impurity and lust, if not one thing then another, but we are blind to it. We are perhaps so occupied with the wrong the other man has done us that we do not see that we are sinning against Christ in not being willing to take it with his meekness and lowliness. Seeing so clearly how the other man wants his own way and rights, we are blind to the fact that we want ours just as much, and yet we know that there is something missing in our lives. Somehow we are not in vital fellowship with God, we are not spiritually crisp, our service does not crackle with the supernatural. Unconscious sin is nonetheless sin with God and separates us from him. The sin in question may be quite a small thing which God will so readily show us if we are only willing to ask him. There is yet another error we fall into when we are not willing to recognize the truth of what God says of the human heart. Not only do we protest our own innocence but we often protest the innocence of our loved ones. We hate to see them being convicted and humbled and we hasten to defend them. We do not want them to confess anything. We are living in a realm of illusion not only about ourselves but about them too, and we fear to have it shattered. But we are only defending them against God, making God a liar on their behalf as we do on our own, and keeping them from entering into blessing as we do also ourselves. Only a deep hunger for real fellowship with God will make us willing to cry to God for his all-revealing light and to obey it when it is given. That brings us to the publican. With all that God says about the human heart in our minds we can see that his confession of sin was simply a justifying of God, an admission that what God said of him was true. Perhaps like the Pharisee he used not to believe that what God said about man was really true of him, but the Holy Spirit has shown him things in his life which prove God right and he is broken. Not only does he justify God in all that he has said, but he doubtless justifies God in all the chastening judgments God has brought upon him. Nehemiah's prayer might well have been his. Howbeit thou art just in all that is brought upon us, for thou hast done right, but we have done wickedly. This is ever the nature of true confession of sin, true brokenness. It is the confession that my sin is not just a mistake, a slip, a something which is really foreign to my heart, not really like me to have such thoughts or do such things, but that it is something which reveals the real I, that shows me to be the proud, rotten, unclean thing God says I am, that it really is like me to have such thoughts and do such things. It was in these terms that David confessed his sin when he prayed, Against thee, thee only have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight, that thou mightest be justified when thou speakest, and be clear when thou judgest. Let us not fear then to make such a confession where God convicts us that we must, thinking that it will let Jesus down. Rather the reverse is true, for out of such confession God gets glory, for we declare him to be right. This brings us to a new experience of victory in Christ, for it declares afresh that in me, that is in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing, and brings us to a place where we give up trying to make our incorrigible selves holy, and where we take Jesus to be our holiness, and his life to be our life. But the publican did something more than justify God. He pointed to the sacrifice on the altar and found peace with God and cleansing from sin as he did so. That comes out in the literal meaning of the words which he uttered, God be merciful to me, a sinner. In the Greek the words mean literally, God be propitiated to me, the sinner. The only way by which a Jew knew that God could be propitiated was by a sacrifice, and in all probability at that very hour the lamb for the daily burnt offering was being offered up on the altar in the temple. With us it is the same. A man never comes to this position of brokenness, but that God shows him the divine lamb on Calvary's cross, putting away his sin by the shedding of his blood. The God who declares beforehand what we are provides beforehand for our sin. Jesus was the lamb slain for our sins from the foundation of the world. In him who bore them in meekness my sins are finished, and as I in true brokenness confess them and put my faith in his blood, they are cleansed and gone. Peace with God then comes into my heart, fellowship with God is immediately restored, and I walk with him in white. This simple way of being willing to justify God and see the power of the blood to cleanse brings within our reach as never before a close walk with Jesus, a constant dwelling with him in the Holy of Holies. As we walk with him in the light, he will be showing us all the time the beginnings of things which, if allowed to pass, will grieve him and check the flow of his life in us, things which are the expression of that old proud self for which God has nothing but judgment. At no point must we protest our innocence of what he shows us. All along we must be willing to justify him and say, Thou art right, Lord, that just shows what I am, and be willing to give it to him for cleansing. As we do so we shall find that his precious blood is continuously cleansing us from sin, and that the tide is being continuously healed at its beginning, and Jesus is continuously filling us with his Spirit. This demands that we must be men of a humble and contrite spirit, that is, men who are willing to be shown the smallest thing. But such are the ones, God says, who dwell with him in the high and holy place, and who experience continuous revival. There then is our choice to protest our innocence and go down to our house unblessed, dry of soul and out of touch with God, or to justify God and to enter into peace, fellowship and victory through the blood of Jesus. You have been listening to The Calvary Road by Roy Hessian. It was read by David Birchall and recorded at the studios of Radio Worldwide. The music was written and recorded by John Grant. Further copies of these cassettes and copies of The Calvary Road and Roy Hessian's other books are available through your local Christian bookshop.