Sit, Walk, Stand: The Process of Christian Maturity (3 page)

Do you think that if you cease trying to please God,
your good behavior will cease? If you leave all the giving and all the working to God, do you think the result will be less satisfactory than if you do some of it? It is when we seek to do it ourselves that we place ourselves back again under the Law. But the works of the Law, even our best efforts, are “dead works,” hateful to God because ineffectual.

In the parable both sons were equally far removed from the joys of the father’s house. True, the elder son was not in the far country, yet he was only at home in theory. “These many years do I serve thee, and yet . . .” (Luke 15:29)—his heart had not found rest. His theoretical position could never, as did the prodigal’s, come to be enjoyed by him while he still clung to his own good works.

Just you stop “giving,” and you will prove what a Giver God is! Stop “working,” and you will discover what a Worker He is! The younger son was all wrong, but he came home, and he found rest—and that is where Christian life begins. “God, being rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us . . . made us to sit with him in the heavenly places, in Christ Jesus” (Eph. 2:4, 6). “It was meet to make merry and be glad!” (Luke 15:32).

2

Walk

W
E have sought to make it clear that Christian experience does not begin with walking, but with sitting. Every time we reverse the divine order, the result is disaster. The Lord Jesus has done everything for us, and our need now is to rest confidently in Him. He is seated on the throne, so we are carried through in His strength. It cannot be too strongly emphasized that all true spiritual experience begins from rest.

But it does not end there. Though the Christian life begins with sitting, sitting is always followed by walking. When once we have been well and truly seated and have found our strength in sitting down, then we do in fact begin to walk. Sitting describes our position with Christ in the heavenlies. Walking is the practical outworking of that heavenly position here on earth. As a heavenly people, we are required to bear the stamp of that heavenliness upon us in our earthly conduct, and this raises new problems. What then, we must now ask, has Ephesians to say to us about walking? We shall find
that the epistle urges upon us two things. We will look now at the first of them.

“I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beseech you to walk worthily of the calling wherewith ye were called, with all lowliness and meekness . . .”
(4:1–2).

“This I say . . . that ye no longer walk as the Gentiles also walk, in the vanity of their mind” . . . But . . . “that ye be renewed in the spirit of your mind”
(4:17, 23).

“Walk in love, even as Christ also loved you, and gave himself up for us”
(5:2).

“Walk as children of light, . . . proving what is well-pleasing unto the Lord ”
(5:8–10).

Eight times in Ephesians the word “walk” is used. It means literally “to walk around” and is used here figuratively by Paul to mean “to comport oneself; to order one’s behavior.” It brings immediately before us the subject of Christian conduct, and the second section of the letter is largely taken up with this.

But we saw earlier that the body of Christ, the fellowship of Christian believers, is another great theme of Ephesians. Now, here in chapter 4, it is in view of such fellowship that we find this matter of a holy walk arises. Paul proceeds, in the light of our heavenly calling, to challenge us upon the whole field of our relationships, both domestic and public, addressing himself to neighbors, to husbands and wives, to parents and children, employers and employed, all in a most realistic way.

Let us be clear that the body of Christ is not something remote and unreal, to be expressed only in heavenly
terms. It is very present and practical, finding the real test of our conduct in our relations with others. For while it is true we are a heavenly people, it is no use just to talk of a distant heaven. Unless we bring heavenliness into our dwellings and offices, our shops and kitchens, and practice it there, it will be without meaning.

May I suggest this, dear friends, that those who are parents and those who are children look through the New Testament to see what parents should be and children should be? We may be surprised, for I fear many of us who say we are seated in the heavenlies in Christ display a very questionable walk in our homes. And husbands too, and wives—there are quite a number of passages for them. Read Ephesians 5 and then turn to First Corinthians 7. It would do every husband and every wife good to read the latter chapter carefully to discover what a real married life—a spiritual one before God and not just in theory—demands. You dare not theorize about a thing that is so practical.

Look now, in the field of Christian relationships, how forthright are the commands of God in the section here before us. “Walk . . . with longsuffering, forbearing one another.” “Putting away falsehood, speak ye truth each one with his neighbor.” “Be ye angry, and sin not.” “Steal no more.” “Let all bitterness . . . be put away from you.” “Be ye kind . . . forgiving each other.” “Subjecting yourselves to one another.” “Provoke not.” “Be obedient.” “Forbear threatening” (see Eph. 4–6). Nothing could be more realistic than this list of imperatives.

Let me remind you that the Lord Jesus Himself begins His teaching on this very note. Notice carefully the wording of this passage from His Sermon on the Mount:

“But,” you say, “I cannot do it. These are impossible demands.” Maybe, like my engineer friend, you feel you have been wronged—perhaps terribly wronged—and you cannot bring yourself to forgive.
You
were in the right, and your enemy’s action has been wholly unjust. To love him may be ideal, but it is impossible.

Since the day that Adam took the fruit of the tree of knowledge, man has been engaged in deciding what is good and what is evil. The natural man has worked out his own standards of right and wrong, justice and injustice, and striven to live by them. Of course, as Christians, we are different. Yes, but in what way are we different? Since we were converted, a new sense of righteousness has been developed in us, with the result that we too, quite rightly, are occupied with the question of good and evil. But have we realized that for us the starting point is a different one? Christ is for us the Tree of Life. We do not begin from the matter of ethical right and wrong. We do not start from that other tree. We begin from
Him
; and the whole question for us is one of life.

Nothing has done greater damage to our Christian testimony than our trying to be right and demanding right of others. We become preoccupied with what is and what is not right. We ask ourselves, Have we been justly or unjustly treated? and we think thus to vindicate our actions. But that is not our standard. The whole question for us is one of cross-bearing.

You ask me, “Is it right for someone to strike my cheek?” I reply, “Of course not!” But the question is, do you only want to be right? As Christians, our standard of living can never be “right or wrong,” but the cross. The principle of the cross is our principle of conduct.
Praise God that He makes His sun to shine on the evil and the good. With Him it is a question of His grace and not of right or wrong. But that is to be our standard also: “Forgiving each other, even as God also in Christ forgave you” (Eph. 4:32). “Right or wrong” is the principle of the Gentiles and tax gatherers. My life is to be governed by the principle of the cross and of the perfection of the Father: “Ye therefore shall be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt. 5:48).

A brother in South China had a rice field in the middle of the hill. In time of drought, he used a waterwheel worked by a treadmill to lift water from the irrigation stream into his field. His neighbor had two fields below his, and one night made a breach in the dividing bank and drained off all his water. When the brother repaired the breach and pumped in more water, his neighbor did the same thing again, and this was repeated three or four times. So he consulted his brethren. “I have tried to be patient and not to retaliate,” he said, “but
is it right
?” After they had prayed together about it, one of them replied, “If we only try to do the right thing, surely we are very poor Christians. We have to do something more than what is right.” The brother was much impressed. Next morning he pumped water for the two fields below, and in the afternoon pumped water for his own field. After that the water stayed in his field. His neighbor was so amazed at his action that he began to inquire the reason, and in course of time, he too became a Christian.

So, my brethren, don’t stand on your right. Don’t feel that because you have gone the second mile you have done what is just. The second mile is only typical of the third and the fourth. The principle is that of conformity to Christ. We have nothing to stand for, nothing to ask or demand. We have only to give. When the Lord Jesus died on the cross, He did not do so to defend our “rights”; it was grace that took Him there. Now, as His children, we try always to give others what is their due and more.

We have to remind ourselves that we are often
not
right. We fail, and it is always good to learn from our failures—to be ready to confess and willing to go beyond what is necessary in doing so. The Lord wants this. Why? “That ye may be sons of your Father who is in heaven” (Matt. 5:45). The question is one of practical sonship. True, God has “foreordained us unto adoption as sons through Jesus Christ” (Eph. 1:5), but we make the mistake of thinking that we have already “come of age”—that we are already mature sons. The Sermon on the Mount teaches us that the children attain to the responsibility of sons in the measure in which they manifest kinship of spirit and of attitude with their Father. We are called to be “perfect” in love, showing forth His grace. So Paul also writes, “Be ye therefore imitators of God, as beloved children; and walk in love, even as Christ also loved you, and gave himself up for us” (5:1–2).

We are faced with a challenge. Matthew 5 sets a
standard that we may well feel is impossibly high, and Paul in this section of Ephesians endorses it. The trouble is that we just do not find in ourselves by nature the means to attain to that standard—to walk “as becometh saints” (Eph. 5:3). Where then lies the answer to our problem of God’s exacting demands?

The secret is, in the words of Paul, “the power that worketh in us” (3:20). In a parallel passage (Col. 1:29) he says: “I labor also, striving according to his working, which worketh in me mightily.”

We are back again in the first section of Ephesians. What is the secret strength of the Christian life? From where does it derive its power? Let me give you the answer in a sentence:
The Christian’s secret is his rest in Christ
. His power derives from his God-given position. All who sit can walk, for in the thought of God, the one follows the other spontaneously. We sit forever with Christ that we may walk continuously before men. Forsake for a moment our place of rest in Him, and immediately we are tripped, and our testimony in the world is marred. But abide in Christ, and our position there ensures the power to walk worthy of Him here.

If you desire an illustration of this kind of progress, think first of all not of a runner in a race, but of a man in a car or, better still, of a cripple in a power-driven invalid carriage. What does he do? He
goes
—but he also
sits
. And he keeps going because he remains sitting. His progress follows from the position in which he has been placed. This, of course, is a far from perfect picture of
the Christian life, but it may serve to remind us that our conduct and behavior depend fundamentally upon our inward rest in Christ.

This explains Paul’s language here. He has first learned to sit. He has come to a place of rest in God. As a result, his walking is not based on his efforts but on God’s mighty inward working. There lies the secret of his strength. Paul has seen himself seated in Christ; therefore his walk before men takes its character from Christ dwelling in him. Small wonder that he prays for the Ephesians “that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith” (3:17).

How does my wristwatch go? By moving first, or by being moved? Of course it goes because first it is moved by a power outside itself. Then only will it do the work for which it was designed. And there are works for which we too are designed. “We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God afore prepared that we should walk in them” (2:10). “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling,” writes Paul to the Philippians, “for it is God who worketh in you both to will and to work, for his good pleasure” (2:12–13). God is working it in; work it out! That is the secret.

But until we are willing for God to work it in, it is useless for us to try to work it out. Often we try to be meek and gentle without knowing what it means to let God work in us the meekness and gentleness
of Christ.
We try to show love, and, finding we have none, we ask
the Lord for love. Then we are surprised that He does not seem to give it to us.