The Normal Christian Life (22 page)
This is where we are now. The age is closing, and Satan’s power is greater than ever. Our warfare is with angels and principalities and powers (Rom. 8:38, Eph. 6:12) who are set to withstand and destroy the work of God in us by laying many things to the charge of God’s elect. Alone we could never be their match, but what we alone cannot do, the church can. Sin, self-reliance and individualism were Satan’s master-strokes at the heart of God’s purpose in man, and in the cross God has undone them. As we put our faith in what He has done—in “God that justifieth” and in “Christ Jesus that died” (Rom. 8:33–34)—we present a front against which the very gates of Hades shall not prevail. We, His church, are “more than conquerors through him that loved us” (Rom. 8:37).
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OD HAS MADE full provision for our redemption in the cross of Christ, but He has not stopped there. In that cross He has also made secure, beyond possibility of failure, that eternal plan which Paul speaks of as having been from all the ages “hid in God who created all things.” That plan He has now proclaimed “to the intent that now unto the principalities and the powers in the heavenly places might be made known through the church the manifold wisdom of God, according to the eternal purpose which he purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Eph. 3:9–11).
We have said that the work of the cross has two results which bear directly upon the realizing of that purpose in us. On the one hand, it has issued in the release of His life that it may find expression in us through the indwelling Spirit. On the other hand, it has made possible what we speak of as “bearing the cross”—that is, our cooperation in the daily inworking of His death whereby way is made in us for the manifestation of that new life through the bringing of the
“natural man” progressively into his right place of subjection to the Holy Spirit. Clearly these are the positive and the negative sides of one thing. Equally clearly, we are now touching more particularly on the matter of progress in a life lived for God. Hitherto in dealing with the Christian life, we have placed our main emphasis upon the crisis by which it is entered. Now our concern is more definitely with the walk of the disciple, having especially in view his training as a servant of God. It is of him that the Lord Jesus said, “Whosoever doth not bear his own cross, and come after me, cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:27).
So we come to a consideration of the natural man and the “bearing of the cross.” To understand this we must, at the risk of being tedious, go back once more to Genesis and consider what it was that God sought to have in man at the beginning, and how His purpose was frustrated. In this way we shall be able to grasp more clearly the principles by which we can come again to live in harmony with that purpose.
If we have even a little revelation of the plan of God, we shall always think much of the word “man.” We shall say with the psalmist, “What is man, that thou art mindful of him?” The Bible makes it clear that what God desires above all things is a man—a man who will be after His own heart.
So God created a man. In Genesis 2:7 we learn that Adam was created a living soul, with a spirit inside to commune with God and with a body outside to have contact with the material world. (Such New Testament verses as First Thessalonians 5:23 and Hebrews 4:12 confirm this threefold character of man’s being.) With his spirit Adam was
in touch with the spiritual world of God; with his body he was in touch with the physical world of material things. He gathered up these two sides of God’s creative act into himself to become a personality, an entity living in the world, moving by itself and having powers of free choice. Viewed thus as a whole, he was found to be a self-conscious and self-expressing being, “a living soul.”
We saw earlier that Adam was created perfect—by which we mean that he was without imperfections because created by God—but that he was not yet perfected. He needed a finishing touch somewhere. God had not yet done all that He intended to do in Adam. There was more in view, but it was as yet in abeyance. God was moving toward the fulfillment of His purpose in creating man, a purpose which went beyond man himself, for it had in view the securing to God of all His rights in the universe through man’s instrumentality.
But how could man be instrumental in this? Only by a cooperation that sprang from living union with God. God was seeking to have not merely a race of men of one blood upon the earth, but a race which had, in addition, His life resident within its members. Such a race will eventually compass Satan’s downfall and bring to fulfillment all that God has set His heart upon. It is this that was in view with the creation of man.
Then again, we saw that Adam was created neutral. He had a spirit which enabled him to hold communion with God, but as man he was not yet, so to speak, finally orientated. He had powers of choice and he could, if he liked, turn the opposite way. God’s goal in man was “sonship,” or in other words, the expression of His life in human sons. That divine life was represented in the garden, as we saw,
by the tree of life, bearing a fruit that could be accepted, received, taken in.
If Adam, created neutral, were voluntarily to turn that way and, choosing dependence upon God, were to receive of the tree of life (representing God’s own life), God would then have that life in union with men; He would have secured His spiritual sons. But if instead Adam should turn to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, he would as a result be “free,” in the sense of being able to develop himself on his own lines apart from God. Because, however, this latter choice involved complicity with Satan, Adam would thereby put beyond his reach the attaining of his God-appointed goal.
Now we know the course that Adam chose. Standing between the two trees, he yielded to Satan and took of the fruit of the tree of knowledge. This determined the lines of his development. From then on he could command a knowledge; he “knew.” But—and here we come to the point—the fruit of the tree of knowledge made the first man over-developed in his soul. The emotion was touched, because the fruit was pleasant to the eyes, making him “desire”; the mind with its reasoning power was developed, for he was “made wise”; and the will was strengthened, so that in future he could always decide which way he would go. The whole fruit ministered to the expansion and full development of the soul, so that not only was the man a living soul, but from henceforth man will live by the soul. It is not merely that man has a soul, but that from that day on, the soul, with its independent powers
of free choice, usurps the place of the spirit as the animating power of man.
We have to distinguish here between two things, for the difference is most important. God does not mind—in fact He of course intends—that we should have a soul such as He gave to Adam. But what God has set Himself to do is to reverse something. There is something in man today which is not just the fact of having and exercising a soul, but which constitutes a living by the soul. It was this that Satan brought about in the Fall. He trapped man into taking a course by which he could develop his soul so as to derive from it his very spring of life.
We must, however, be careful. To remedy this does not mean that we are going to cross out the soul altogether. You cannot do that. When today the cross is really working in us, we do not become inert, insensate, characterless. No, we still possess a soul, and whenever we receive something from God, the soul will still be used in relation to it, as an instrument, a faculty, in a true subjection to Him. But the point is: Are we keeping within God’s appointed limit, that is to say, within the bounds set by Him in the garden at the beginning, with regard to the soul, or are we getting outside those bounds?
What God is now doing is the pruning work of the vine-dresser. In our souls there is an uncontrolled development, an untimely growth that has to be checked and dealt with. God must cut that off. So now there are two things before us to which our eyes must be opened. On the one hand, God is seeking to bring us to the place where we live by the life of His Son. On the other hand, He is doing a direct work in our hearts to undo that other natural resource that is the result of the fruit of knowledge.
Every day we are learning these two lessons: a rising up of the life of this One, and a checking and a handing over to death of that other soul-life. These two processes go on all the time, for God is seeking the fully developed life of His Son in us in order to manifest Himself, and to that end He is bringing us back, as to our soul, to Adam’s starting point. So Paul says, “We who live are always delivered unto death for Jesus’ sake, that the life also of Jesus may be manifested in our mortal flesh” (2 Cor. 4:11).
What does this mean? It simply means that I will not take any action without relying on God. I will find no sufficiency in myself. I will not take any step just because I have the power to do so. Even though I have that inherited power within me, I will not go ahead solely upon it as basis; I will put no reliance on myself.
By taking the fruit, Adam became possessed of an inherent power to act, but a power which, by its independence of God, played right into Satan’s hands. You lose that power to act when you come to know the Lord. The Lord cuts it off, and you find you can no longer act on your own initiative. You have to live by the life of Another; you have to draw everything from Him.
Oh, friends, I think we all know ourselves in measure, but many a time we do not truly tremble at ourselves. We may, in a manner of courtesy to God, say, “If the Lord does not want it, I cannot do it,” but in reality our subconscious thought is that really we can do it, quite well ourselves, even if God does not ask us to do it nor empower us for it. Too often we have been caused to act, to think, to decide, to have power, regardless of Him. Many of us Christians today are men with over-developed souls. We have grown too big in
ourselves. When we are in that condition, it is possible for the life of the Son of God in us to be confined and almost crowded out of action.
The power, the energy of the soul is present with us all. Those who have been taught by the Lord repudiate that principle as a life principle. They refuse to live by it; they will not let it reign, nor allow it to be the power spring of the work of God. But those who have not been taught of God rely upon it; they utilize it and they think it is the power.
Let us take first an obvious illustration of this. Far too many of us in the past have reasoned as follows. Here is a delightfully good-natured man, with a clear brain, splendid managing powers and sound judgment. In our hearts we say, “If that man could be a Christian, what an asset he would be to the church! If only he were the Lord’s, what a lot it would mean to His cause!”
But think for a moment. Where did that man’s good nature come from? Whence are those splendid managing powers and that good judgment? Not from new birth, for he is not yet born again. We know we have all been born of the flesh; therefore we need a new birth. But the Lord Jesus had something to say about this in John 3:6: “That which is born of the flesh is flesh.” Everything which comes not by new birth but by natural birth is flesh and will only bring glory to man, not God. That statement is not very palatable, but it is true.
We have spoken of soul-power or natural energy. What is this natural energy? It is simply what I can do, what I am of myself, what I have inherited of natural gifts and resources.
We are none of us without the power of the soul, and our first need is to recognize it for what it is.
Take for example the human mind. I may have by nature a keen mind. Before my new birth I had it naturally, as something developed from my natural birth. But the trouble arises here. I become converted, I am born anew, a deep work is affected in my spirit, an essential union has been wrought with the Father of our spirits. Thereafter there are in me two things: I have now a union with God that has been set up in my spirit, but at the same time I carry over with me something which I derive from my natural birth. Now what am I going to do about it?
The natural tendency is this. Formerly I used to use my mind to pore over history, over business, over chemistry, over questions of the world, or literature, or poetry. I used my keen mind to get the best out of those studies. But now my desire has been changed, so henceforth I employ the same mind in just the same way in the things of God. I have therefore changed my subject of interest, but I have not changed my method of working.
That is the whole point. My interests have been utterly changed (praise God for that!), but now I utilize the same power to study Corinthians and Ephesians that I used before to pursue history and geography. But that power is not of the new creation; and God will not be satisfied with this simple exchange of interests. The trouble with so many of us is that we have changed the channel into which our energies are directed, but we have not changed the source of those energies.
You will find there are many such things which we carry over into the service of God. Consider the matter of eloquence. There are some men who are born orators; they can
present a case very convincingly indeed. Then they become converted, and without asking ourselves where they really stand in relation to spiritual things, we put them on the platform and make preachers of them. We encourage them to use their natural powers for preaching, and again it is a change of subject but the same power.
We forget that, in the matter of our resource for handling the things of God, it is a question not of comparative value, but of origin—of where the resource springs from. It is not so much a matter of what we are doing, but of what powers we are employing to do it, and who is controlling those powers. The man God can use may well be eloquent, but there is the mark of the cross upon that eloquence, and the controlling hand of the Spirit of God is apparent in its use. We think too little of the source of our energy and too much of the end to which it is directed, forgetting that, with God, the end never justifies the means.