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The Christian life is not keeping a
list of external rules. Reducing Christian life to rule keeping is a
depressing experience of living in failure. The Gospel is the "good news."
What is good about being a failure all the time, no matter how much you
try? The good news is that Christ-in-you is the way you live out the New
Covenant. "I will put my laws in their
minds and write them on their hearts."
Paul tells us to "Be strong
in the Lord and the power of His might." This
cannot be me trying, but Him working through me.
Rule keeping was what the Galatians
tried to do. Being saved by faith, they thought they could serve God by
keeping rules. "You foolish Galatians!...Did
you receive the Spirit by observing the law, or by believing what you heard?
Are you so foolish? After beginning with the Spirit, are you now trying to
attain your goal by human effort?....Does God give you his Spirit and work
miracles among you because you observe the law, or because you believe what
you heard?"
How many times does he have to say it? It is by
faith. Believing whom the Word declares I am in Him. Christ in me, which
is my hope.
Who are those who keep the
commandments of God? John tells us, "Those
who obey his commands live in him, and he in them.
And this is how we know that he lives in us: We know it by the Spirit he
gave us."
Here is the way Oswald Chambers says
it:
THE GATEWAY TO THE
KINGDOM
"Blessed
are the poor in spirit."
Matthew 5:3
Beware of placing Our Lord as a Teacher
first. If Jesus Christ is a Teacher only, then all He can do is to tantalize
me by erecting a standard I can not attain. What is the use of presenting me
with an ideal I cannot possibly come near? I am happier without knowing it.
What is the good of telling me to be what I never can be - to be pure in
heart, to do more than my duty, to be perfectly devoted to God? I must know
Jesus Christ as Saviour before His teaching has any meaning for me other
than that of an ideal that leads to despair. But when I am born again of the
Spirit of God, I know that Jesus Christ did not come to teach
only: He came to make me what He teaches I should be. The
Redemption means that Jesus Christ can put into any man the disposition that
ruled His own life, and all the standards God gives are based on that
disposition.
The teaching of the Sermon on the Mount
produces despair in the natural man - the very thing Jesus means it to do.
As long as we have a self-righteous, conceited notion that we can carry out
Our Lord's teaching, God will allow us to go on until we break our ignorance
over some obstacle, then we are willing to come to Him as paupers and
receive from Him. "Blessed are the
paupers in spirit," that is the first principle in the
Kingdom of God. The bedrock in Jesus Christ's kingdom is poverty, not
possession; not decisions for Jesus Christ, but a sense of absolute futility
- I cannot begin to do it. Then Jesus says -
Blessed are you. That is the
entrance, and it does take us a long while to believe we are poor! The
knowledge of our own poverty brings us to the moral frontier where
Jesus Christ works.
“And
we receive from Him whatever we ask, because we watchfully obey His orders
observe His suggestions and injunctions, follow His plan for us and
habitually practice what is pleasing to Him.
“And
this is His order (His command, His injunction): that we should believe in
(put our faith and trust in and adhere to and rely on) the name of His Son
Jesus Christ, and that we should love one another, just as He has commanded
us.
“All
who keep His commandments, who obey His orders and follow His plan, live and
continue to live, stay and abide in Him, and He in them.
They let Christ be a home to them and they are the home of Christ. And
by this we know and understand and have the proof that He really lives and
makes His home in us: by the Holy Spirit Whom He has given us.”
1John 3:22-24
DEPENDENT ON GOD'S PRESENCE
"They that wait upon the
Lord . . . shall walk and not faint."
Isaiah 40:31
There is no thrill in walking; it is the
test of all the stable qualities. To "walk and not
faint" is the highest reach possible for strength. The word "walk"
is used in the Bible to express the character - "John
looking on Jesus as He walked, said, Behold the Lamb of God!"
There is never any thing abstract in the Bible, it is always vivid and real.
God does not say - Be spiritual, but - "Walk
before Me."
When we are in an unhealthy state
physically or emotionally, we always want thrills. In the physical domain
this will lead to counterfeiting the Holy Ghost; in the emotional life it
leads to in ordinate affection and the destruction of morality; and in the
spiritual domain if we insist on getting thrills, on mounting up with wings,
it will end in the destruction of spirituality.
The reality of God's presence is not
dependent on any place, but only dependent upon the determination to set the
Lord always before us. Our problems come when we refuse to bank on the
reality of His presence. The experience the Psalmist speaks of - "Therefore
will we not fear, though . . ." will be ours when once we are
based on Reality, not the consciousness of God's presence but the reality of
it - Why, He has been here all the time!
At critical moments it is necessary to ask
guidance, but it ought to be unnecessary to be saying always - "O Lord,
direct me here, and there." Of course He will! If our common-sense decisions
are not His order, He will press through them and check; then we must be
quiet and wait for the direction of His presence.
DISPOSITION AND DEEDS
"Except your righteousness shall exceed the
righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into
the kingdom of heaven."
Matthew 5:20
The characteristic of a disciple is not
that he does good things, but that he is good in motive because he has been
made good by the super-natural grace of God. The only thing that exceeds
right-doing is right-being. Jesus Christ
came to put into any man who would let Him a new heredity which would exceed
the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees. Jesus says - If you are My
disciple you must be right not only in your living, but in your motives, in
your dreams, in the recesses of your mind. You must be so pure in your
motives that God Almighty can see nothing to censure. Who can stand in the
Eternal Light of God and have nothing for God to censure? Only the Son of
God, and Jesus Christ claims that by His Redemption He can put into any man
His own disposition, and make him as unsullied and as simple as a child. The
purity which God demands is impossible unless I can be remade within, and
that is what Jesus has undertaken to do by His Redemption.
No man can make himself pure by obeying
laws. Jesus Christ does not give us rules and regulations; His teachings are
truths that can only be interpreted by the disposition He puts in. The great
marvel of Jesus Christ's salvation is that He alters heredity. He does not
alter human nature; He alters its mainspring.
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