Abide In Christ by Andrew Murray
Day 29
And Not In Self
“In me, that is, in my flesh, dwells
no good thing”
(Rom. 7:18)
To have life in Himself is the
prerogative of God alone, and of the Son, to whom the Father has also
given it. To seek life, not in itself, but in God, is the highest
honor of the creature. To live in and to himself is the folly and
guilt of sinful man. To live to God in Christ is the blessedness of
the believer. To deny his own life, to hate his own life, to forsake
his own life, to lose his own life, such is the secret of the life of
faith. "I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me” (Gal
2:20)..."not I, but the grace of God which is with me” (1 Cor.
15:10)... this is the testimony of each one who has found out what it
is to give up his own life, and to receive instead the blessed life
of Christ within us. There is no other path to true life, to abiding
in Christ, than that which our Lord travelled before us - the path
through death.
At the beginning of the Christian life,
few are able to see this. In the joy of pardon, they feel constrained
to live for Christ, and trust, with the help of God, to be enabled to
do so. They are yet ignorant of the terrible enmity of the flesh
against God, and its absolute refusal in the believer to be subject
to the law of God. They do not know yet that nothing but death, the
absolute surrender to death of all that is of nature, will suffice,
if the life of God is to be manifested in them with power. But bitter
failure soon teaches them the insufficiency of their knowledge of
Christ's power to save, and deep longings of the heart are awakened
to know Him better. He lovingly points them to His Cross. He tells
them that as, in the faith of His death as their substitute, they
found their life there, so there they will enter into its fuller
experience too. He asks them if they are indeed willing to drink of
the cup of which He drank — to be crucified and to die with Him. He
teaches them that in Him they are indeed already crucified and dead.
Though they are yet unknowing, at conversion they became partakers of
His death. But what they need now is to give a full and intelligent
consent to what they received before they understood it, by an act of
their own choice to will to die with Christ.
This demand of Christ's is one of
unspeakable solemnity. Many believers shrinks back from it. They can
hardly understand it. They have become so accustomed to a low life of
continual stumbling, that they hardly desire, and still less expect,
to be delivered. Holiness, perfect conformity to Jesus, unbroken
fellowship with His love, can scarcely be counted as parts of their
creed. Where there is not intense longing to be kept to the utmost
from sinning, and to be brought into the closest possible union with
the Savior, the thought of being crucified with Him can find no
entrance. The only impression it makes is that of suffering and
shame: such persons are content that Jesus bore the cross, and so won
for them the crown they hope to wear. How different the light is that
the believer who is really seeking to abide fully in Christ looks
upon it! Bitter experience has taught him how, both in the matter of
entire surrender and simple trust, his greatest enemy in the abiding
life, is Self. Now it refuses to give up its will; then, again, by
its working, it hinders God's work. Unless this life of self, with
its willing and working, is displaced by the life of Christ, with His
willing and working, to abide in Him will be impossible. And then
comes the solemn question from Him who died on the cross: "Are
you ready to give up self to the death?" You yourself, the
living person born of God, are already in me dead to sin and alive to
God; but are you ready now, in the power of this death, to mortify
your members, to give up self entirely to its death on the cross, to
be kept there until it is wholly destroyed? The question is a
heart-searching one: Am I prepared to say that the old self will no
longer have a word to say; that it will not be allowed to have a
single thought, however natural — not a single feeling, however
gratifying — not a single wish or work, however right? Is this
indeed what He requires? Is not our nature God's handiwork, and may
not our natural powers be sanctified to His service? They may and
must indeed. But perhaps you have not yet seen how the only way they
can be sanctified is that they must be taken from under the power of
self, and brought under the power of the life of Christ. Do not think
that this is a work that you can do, because you earnestly desire it,
and are indeed one of His redeemed ones. No, there is no way to the
altar of consecration but through death. As you yielded yourself to
be a sacrifice on God's altar as one alive from the dead (Rom. 6:13;
12:1), so each power of your nature — each talent, gift,
possession, that is really to be holiness to the Lord — must be
separated from the power of sin and self, and laid on the altar to be
consumed by the fire that is always burning there. It is in the
mortifying, the slaying of self, that the wonderful powers with which
God has equipped you to serve Him, can be set free for a complete
surrender to God, and offered to Him to be accepted, sanctified, and
used. And though, as long as you are in the flesh, there is no
thought of being able to say that self is dead, yet when the life of
Christ is allowed to take full possession, self can be so kept in its
crucifixion place, and under its sentence of death, that it shall
have no dominion over you...no, not for a single moment. Jesus Christ
becomes your second self.
Believer! If you want to truly and
fully abide in Christ, prepare yourself to part forever from self,
and not to allow it, even for a single moment, to have anything to
say in your inner life. If you are willing to come entirely away out
of self, and to allow Jesus Christ to become your life within you,
inspiring all your thinking, feeling, acting, in things temporal and
spiritual, then He is ready to undertake the charge. In the fullest
and widest sense the word ‘life” can ever have, He will be your
life, extending His interest and influence to each one, even the
minutest, of the thousand things that make up your daily life. To do
this He asks only one thing: Come away out of self and its life,
abide in Christ and the Christ life, and Christ will be your life.
The power of His holy presence will cast out the old life.
To this end, give up self at once and
forever. If you have never yet dared to do it, for fear you might
fail in your engagement, do it now, in view of the promise Christ
gives you that His life will take the place of the old life. Try to
realize that though self is not dead, you are indeed dead to self.
Self is still strong and living, but it has no power over you. You,
your renewed nature — you, your new self, begotten again in Jesus
Christ from the dead — are indeed dead to sin and alive to God.
Your death in Christ has freed you completely from the control of
self. It has no power over you, except as you, in ignorance, or
unwatchfulness, or unbelief, consent to yield to its usurped
authority. Come accept by faith simply and heartily the glorious
position you have in Christ. As one who, in Christ, has a life dead
to self, as one who is freed from the dominion of self, and has
received His divine life to take the place of self, to be the
animating and inspiring principle of your life, venture boldly to
plant your foot upon the neck of this enemy of yours and your Lord's.
Be of good courage, only believe. Do not fear to take the irrevocable
step, and to say that you have once for all given up self to the
death for which it has been crucified in Christ (Rom. 6: 6). And
trust Jesus the Crucified One to hold self to the cross, and to fill
its place in you with His own blessed resurrection life.
In this faith, abide in Christ! Cling
to Him; rest on Him; hope on Him. Daily renew your consecration;
daily accept afresh your position as ransomed from your tyrant. In
turn, you are made a conqueror. Look daily with holy fear on the
enemy of self, as it is struggling to get free from its cross, as it
is seeking to allure you into giving it some little liberty, or as it
is ready to deceive you by its profession of willingness now to do
service to Christ. Remember, self seeking to serve God is more
dangerous than self refusing obedience. Look upon it with holy fear,
and hide yourself in Christ: in Him alone is your safety. Abide thus
in Him; He has promised to abide in you. He will teach you to be
humble and watchful. He will teach you to be happy and trustful.
Bring every interest of your life, every power of your nature, all
the unceasing flow of thought, will, and feeling, that make up life,
and trust Him to take the place that self once filled so easily and
so naturally. Jesus Christ will indeed take possession of you and
dwell in you; and in the restfulness, peace and grace of the new
life, you will have unceasing joy at the wondrous exchange that has
been made — the coming out of self to abide in Christ alone.
Note.
In his work on Sanctification,
Marshall, in the twelfth chapter, on "Holiness through faith
alone," puts with great force the danger in which the Christian
is of seeking sanctification in the power of the flesh, with the help
of Christ, instead of looking for it to Christ alone, and receiving
it from Him by faith. He reminds us how there are two natures in the
believer, and so two ways of seeking holiness, according as we allow
the principles of the one or other nature to guide us. The one is the
carnal way, in which we put forth our utmost efforts and resolutions,
trusting Christ to help us in doing so. The other the spiritual way,
in which, as those who have died, and can do nothing, our one care is
to receive Christ day by day, and at every step to let Him live and
work in us.
"Despair of purging the flesh or
natural man of its sinful lusts and inclinations, and of practicing
holiness by your willing and resolving to do the best that lieth in
your own power, and trusting on the grace of God and Christ to help
you in such resolutions and endeavors. Rather resolve to trust in
Christ to work in you to will and to do by His own power according to
His own good pleasure. They that are convinced of their own sin and
misery do commonly first think to tame the flesh, and to subdue and
root out its lusts, and to make their corrupt nature to be
better-natured and inclined to holiness by their struggling and
wrestling with it; and if they can but bring their hearts to a full
purpose and resolution to do the best that lieth in them, they hope
that by such a resolution they shall be able to achieve great
enterprises in the conquests of their lusts and performance of the
most difficult duties. It is the great work of some zealous divines
in their preachings and writings to stir up people to this
resolution, wherein they place the chiefest turning-point from sin to
godliness. And they think that this is not contrary to the life of
faith, because they trust in the grace of God through Christ to help
them in all such resolutions and endeavors. Thus they endeavor to
reform their old state, and to be made perfect in the flesh, instead
of putting it off and walking according to the new state in Christ.
They trust in low carnal things for holiness, and upon the acts of
their own will, their purposes, resolutions, and endeavors, instead
of Christ; and they trust to Christ to help them in this carnal way;
whereas true faith would teach them that they are nothing, and that
they do but labor in vain." *
* The Highway of Holiness, An
Abridgment of the Gospel Mystery of Sanclification, by Rev. W.
Marshall, p. 58.
No comments:
Post a Comment