The Life that Wins

(This was an address delivered by Dr. Trumbull in 1911 before the National Convention of the Presbyterian Brotherhood of America meeting in St. Louis, Missouri. Later, The Life That Wins was published as a pamphlet by The Sunday School Times, of which Dr. Trumbull was at one time its editor. He was one of the founders of America’s Keswick.)

by Charles G. Trumbull

There is only one life that wins and that is the life of Jesus Christ. Every man may have that life; every man may live that life.

I do not mean that every man may be Christ-like; I mean something very much better than that. I do not mean that a man may always have Christ’s help. I mean something better than that. I do not mean that a man have power from Christ. I mean something very much better than power. And I do not mean that a man shall be merely saved from his sins and kept from sinning. I mean something better than even that victory.

To explain what I do mean, I must simply tell you a very personal and recent experience of my own. I think I am correct when I say that I have known more than most men know about failure, about betrayals and dishonoring of Christ, about disobedience to heavenly visions, about conscious falling short of that which I saw other men attaining, and which I knew Christ was expecting of me.

Not a great while ago I should have had to stop just there, and only say I hoped that some day I would be led out of all that into something better. If you had asked me how, I would have had to say I did not know. But, thanks to His long-suffering patience and infinite love and mercy, I do not have to stop there, but I can go on to speak of something more than a miserable story of personal failure and disappointment.

The conscious needs of my life, before there came the new experience of Christ of which I would tell you, were definite enough. Three stand out:

1. There were great fluctuations in my spiritual life, in my conscious closeness of fellowship with God. Sometimes I would be on the heights spiritually; sometimes I would be in the depths. A strong, arousing convention, a stirring, searching address from some consecrated, victorious Christian leader of men, a searching, Spirit-filled book, or the obligation to do a difficult piece of Christian service myself, with the preparation in prayer that it involved, would lift me up; and I would stay up — for a while — and God would seem very close and my spiritual life deep. But it wouldn’t last. Sometimes by some single failure before temptation, sometimes by a gradual downhill process, my best experiences would be lost, and I would find myself back on the lower levels. And a lower level is a perilous place for a Christian to be, as the devil showed me over and over again.

It seemed to me that it ought to be possible for me to live habitually on a high place of close fellowship with God, as I saw certain other men doing, and as I was not doing. Those men were exceptional, to be sure; they were in the minority among the Christians whom I knew. But I wanted to be in that minority. Why shouldn’t we all be, and turn it into a majority?

2. Another conscious lack of my life was in the matter of failure before besetting sins. I was not fighting a winning fight in certain lines. Yet if Christ was not equal to a winning fight, what were my Christian beliefs and professions good for? I did not look for perfection. But I did believe that I could be enabled to win in certain directions habitually. Yes, always, instead of uncertainly and interruptedly, the victories interspersed with crushing and humiliating defeats. Yet I had prayed, oh, so earnestly, for deliverance; and the habitual deliverance had not come.

3. A third conscious lack was in the matter of dynamic, convincing spiritual power that would work miracle changes in other men’s lives. I was doing a lot of Christian work — had been at it ever since I was a boy of fifteen. I was going through the motions — oh, yes. So can anybody. I was even doing personal work — the hardest kind of all; talking with people, one by one, about giving themselves to my Savior! But I wasn’t seeing results. Once in a great while I would see a little in the way of result, of course; but not much. I didn’t see lives made over by Christ, revolutionized, turned into firebrands for Christ themselves because of my work; and it seemed to me I ought to. Other men did, why not I? I comforted myself with the old assurance (so much used by the devil) that it wasn’t for me to see results; that I could safely leave that to the Lord if I did my part. But this didn’t satisfy me, and I was sometimes heartsick over the spiritual barrenness of my Christian service.

About a year before, I had begun, in various ways, to get intimations that certain men to whom I looked upon were conspicuously blessed in their Christian service and seemed to have a conception or consciousness of Christ that I did not have, that was beyond, bigger, deeper than any thought of Christ I had ever had. I rebelled at the suggestion when it first came to me. How could anyone have a better idea of Christ than I? (I am just laying bare to you the blind, self-satisfied workings of my sin-stunted mind and heart.)

Did I not believe in Christ and worship Him as the Son of God and one with God? Had I not accepted Him as my personal Saviour more than twenty years before? Did I not believe that in Him alone was eternal life, and was I not trying to live in His service, giving my whole life to Him? Did I not ask His help and guidance constantly, and believe that in Him was my only hope? Was I not championing the very cause of the highest possible conception of Christ, by conducting in the columns of The Sunday School Times a symposium on the Deity of Christ, in which the leading Bible scholars of the world were testifying to their personal belief in Christ as God’s Son?

All this I was doing; how could a higher or better conception of Christ than mine be possible? I knew that I needed to serve Him far better than I had ever done, but that I needed a new conception of Him I would not admit.

And yet it kept coming at me, from directions that I could not ignore, I heard from a preacher of power a sermon on Ephesians 4:12-13:

“Unto the building up of the body of Christ, till we all attain unto the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a full grown man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ;”

And as I followed it I was amazed, bewildered. I couldn’t follow him. He was beyond my depth. He was talking about Christ, unfolding Christ, in a way that I admitted was utterly unknown to me. Whether he was right or wrong I wasn’t quite ready to say that night, but if he was right, then I was wrong.

Later I read another sermon by this same man on “Paul’s Conception of the Lord Jesus Christ.” As I read it, I was conscious of the same uneasy realization that he and Paul were talking about a Christ whom I simply did not know. Could they be right? If they were right, how could I get their knowledge?

One day I came to know another minister whose work among men had been greatly blessed. I learned from him that what he counted his greatest spiritual asset was his habitual consciousness of the actual presence of Jesus. Nothing so bore him up, he said, as the realization that Jesus was always with him in actual presence, and that this was so, independent of his own feelings, independent of his deserts, and independent of his own notions as to how Jesus would manifest His Presence.

Moreover, he said that Christ was the home of his thoughts. Whenever his mind was free from other matters, it would turn to Christ and he would talk aloud to Christ when he was alone — on the street, anywhere — as easily and naturally as to a human friend. So real to him was Jesus’ actual presence.

Some months later I was in Edinburgh, attending the World Missionary Conference, and I saw that one whose writings had helped me greatly was to speak to men Sunday afternoon on “The Resources of the Christian Life.” I went eagerly to hear him. I expected him to give us a series of definite things that we could do to strengthen our Christian life; and I knew I needed them. But his opening words showed me my mistake, while they made my heart leap with a new joy. What he said was something like this:

“The resources of the Christian life, my friends, are just — Jesus Christ.”

That was all. But that was enough, I hadn’t grasped it yet; but it was what all these men had been trying to tell me. Later, as I talked with the speaker about my personal needs and difficulties he said, earnestly and simply, “Oh, Mr. Trumbull, if we would only step out upon Christ in a more daring faith, He could do so much more for us.”

Before leaving Great Britain I was confronted once more with the thought that was beyond me, a Christ whom I did not yet know, in a sermon that a friend of mine preached in his London church on a Sunday evening in June. His text was Philippians 1:21:

“To me to live is Christ,”

It was the same theme — the unfolding of “the life that is Christ,” Christ as the whole life and the only life. I did not understand all that he said, and I knew vaguely that I did not have as my own what he was telling us about. But I wanted to read the sermon again, and I brought the manuscript away with me when I left him.

It was about the middle of August that a crisis came with me, I was attending a young people’s Missionary conference, and was faced by a week of daily work there for which I knew I was miserably, hopelessly unfit and incompetent. For the few weeks previous had been one of my periods of spiritual let-down, not uplift, with all the loss and failure and defeat that such a time is sure to record.

The first evening that I was there a Missionary bishop spoke to us on the Water of Life. He told us that it was Christ’s wish and purpose that every follower of His should be a wellspring of living, gushing water of life all the time to others, not intermittently, not interruptedly, but with continuous and irresistible flow. We have Christ’s own word for it, he said, as he quoted, “He that believeth on me, from within him shall flow rivers of living water.”

He told how some have a little of the water of life, bringing it up in small bucketsful and at intervals, like the irrigating water-wheel of India, with a good deal of creaking and grinding, while from the lives of others it flows all the time in a life-bringing, abundant stream that nothing can stop. And he described a little old native woman in the East whose marvelous ministry in witnessing for Christ put to shame those of us who listened. Yet she had known Christ for only a year.

The next morning, Sunday, alone in my room, I prayed it out with God, as I asked Him to show me the way out. If there was a conception of Christ that I did not have, and that I needed because it was the secret of some of these other lives I had seen or heard of, a conception better than any I had yet had, and beyond me, I asked God to give it to me. I had with me the sermon I had heard, “To me to live is Christ,” and I rose from my knees and studied it. Then I prayed again. And God, in His long-suffering patience, forgiveness, and love, gave me what I asked for. He gave me a new Christ — wholly new in the conception and consciousness of Christ that now became mine.

Wherein was the change? It is hard to put it into words, and yet it is, oh, so new, and real, and wonderful, and miracle-working in both my own life and the lives of others.

To begin with, I realized for the first time that the many references throughout the New Testament to Christ in you, and you in Christ, Christ our life, and abiding in Christ, are literal, actual, blessed fact, and not figures of speech. How the 15th chapter of John thrilled with new life as I read it now! And the 3rd of Ephesians, 14 to 21. And Galatians 2:20. And Philippians 1:21.

["1 I am the True Vine, and My Father is the Husbandman. 2 Every branch in Me that beareth not fruit He taketh away: and every branch that beareth fruit, He purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit. 3 Now ye are clean through the Word which I have spoken unto you. 4 Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the Vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in Me. 5 I am the Vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in Me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without Me ye can do nothing. 6 If a man abide not in Me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned. 7 If ye abide in Me, and My Words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you. 8 Herein is My Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit; so shall ye be My disciples. 9 As the Father hath loved Me, so have I loved you: continue ye in My love. 10 If ye keep My commandments, ye shall abide in My love; even as I have kept My Father's commandments, and abide in His love. 11 These things have I spoken unto you, that My joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full. 12 This is My commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you. 13 Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. 14 Ye are My friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you. 15 Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of My Father I have made known unto you. 16 Ye have not chosen Me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain: that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in My name, He may give it you. 17 These things I command you, that ye love one another. 18 If the world hate you, ye know that it hated Me before it hated you. 19 If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you. 20 Remember the Word that I said unto you, The servant is not greater than his lord. If they have persecuted Me, they will also persecute you; if they have kept My saying, they will keep yours also. 21 But all these things will they do unto you for My name's sake, because they know not Him that sent Me. 22 If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin: but now they have no cloak for their sin. 23 He that hateth Me hateth My Father also. 24 If I had not done among them the works which none other man did, they had not had sin: but now have they both seen and hated both Me and My Father. 25 But this cometh to pass, that the word might be fulfilled that is written in their Law, They hated Me without a cause. 26 But when the Comforter is come, Whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of Truth, which proceedeth from the Father, He shall testify of Me: 27 And ye also shall bear witness, because ye have been with Me from the beginning" (John 15:1-27).]

["14 For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our LORD Jesus Christ, 15 Of whom the whole family in Heaven and Earth is named, 16 That He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man; 17 That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, 18 May be able to comprehend with all Saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; 19 And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God. 20 Now unto Him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us, 21 Unto Him be glory in the Church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end. Amen" (Ephesians 3:14-21).

["I am crucified with Christ: neverthless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me" (Galatians 2:20).]

["For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain" (Philippians 1:21).]

What I mean is this: I had always known that Christ was my Saviour; but I had looked upon Him as an external Saviour, one who did a saving work for me from outside, as it were; one who was ready to come close alongside and stay by me, helping me in all that I needed, giving me power and strength and salvation.

But now I know something better than that. At last I realized that Jesus Christ was actually and literally within me; and even more than that, that He had constituted Himself my very life, taking me into union with Himself — my body, mind, and spirit — while I still had my own identity and free will and full moral responsibility.

Was not this better than having Him as a helper, or even then having Him as an external Saviour, to have Him, Jesus Christ, the Son of God as my own very life?

It meant that I need never again ask Him to help me as though He were one and I another, but rather simply to do His work, His will, in me, and with me, and through me. My body was His, my mind His, my will His, my spirit His; and not merely His, but literally part of His; what He asked me to recognize was:

“I have been crucified with Christ and It Is no longer I that live, but Christ that liveth In me.”

Jesus Christ had constituted Himself my life — not as a figure of speech, remember, but as a literal, actual fact, as literal as the fact that a certain tree has been made into this desk on which my hand rests. For “your bodies are members of Christ,” and “ye are the body of Christ.”

Do you wonder that Paul could say with tingling joy and exultation, “to me to live is Christ”? He did not say, as I had mistakenly been supposing I must say, “To me to live is to be Christ-like,” nor, “to me to live is to have Christ’s help,” nor, “To me to live is to serve Christ.” No, he plunged through and beyond all that in the bold, glorious, mysterious claim:

“To me to live is Christ!”

I had never understood that verse before. Now, thanks to His gift of Himself, I am beginning to enter into a glimpse of its wonderful meaning.

And that is how I know for myself that there is a life that wins; that it is the life of Jesus Christ; and that it may be our life for the asking, if we let Him — in absolute, unconditional surrender of ourselves to Him, our wills to His will, making Him the Master of our lives as well as our Saviour — enter in, occupy us, overwhelm us with Himself, yea, fill us with Himself “unto all the fullness of God.”

What has the result been? Did this experience give me only a new intellectual conception of Christ, more interesting and satisfying than before? If it were only that, I should have little to tell you today. No, it meant a revolutionized, fundamentally changed life, within and without. If any man be in Christ, you know, there is a new creation.

Do not think that I am suggesting any mistaken, unbalanced theory that, when a man receives Christ as the fullness of his life, he cannot sin again. The ‘life that is Christ’ still leaves us our free will, with that free will we can resist Christ; and my life, since the new experience of which I speak, has recorded sins of such resistance.

But I have learned that the restoration after failure can be supernaturally blessed, instantaneous, and complete. I have learned that, as I trust Christ in surrender, there need be no fighting against sin, but complete freedom from the power and even the desire of sin. I have learned that this freedom, this more than conquering, is sustained in unbroken continuance as I simply recognize that Christ is my cleansing, reigning life.

The three great lacks of needs of which I spoke at the opening have been miraculously met.

1. There has been a fellowship with God utterly differing from and infinitely better than anything I had ever known in all my life before.

2. There has been an utterly new kind of victory, victory-by-freedom, over certain besetting sins — the old ones that used to throttle and wreck me — when I have trusted Christ for the freedom.

3. And, lastly the spiritual results in service have given me such a sharing of the joy of Heaven as I never knew was possible on earth. Six of my most intimate friends, most of them mature Christians, soon had their lives completely revolutionized by Christ, laying hold on Him in this new way and receiving Him unto all the fullness of God.

Two of these were a mother and a son — a young businessman twenty-five-years old. Another was the general manager of one of the large business houses in Philadelphia. Though consecrated and active as a Christian for years, he began letting Christ work out through him in a new way into the lives of his many associates, and of his salesmen all over the country. A white-haired man of over seventy found a peace in life and a joy in prayer that he had long ago given up as impossible for him. Life fairly teems with the miracle-evidences of what Christ is willing and able to do for other lives through anyone who just turns over the keys to his complete Indwelling.

Jesus Christ does not want to be our helper; He wants to be our life. He does not want us to work for Him. He wants us to let Him do His work through us, using us as we use a pencil to write with; better still, using us as one of the fingers on His hand.

When our life is not only Christ’s but Christ, our life will be a winning life, for He cannot fail.

And a winning life is a fruit-bearing life, a serving life. It is after all only a small part of life, and a wholly negative part, to overcome; we must also bear fruit in character and in service if Christ is our life. And we shall — because Christ is our life:

“He cannot deny himself”; He “came not to be ministered unto, but to minister,”

An utterly new kind of service will be ours now, as we let Christ serve others through us, using us. And this fruit-bearing and service, habitual and constant, must all be by faith in Him; our works are the result of His Life in us; not the condition, or the secret, or the cause of that Life.

The conditions of thus receiving Christ as the fullness of the life are simply two — after, of course, our personal acceptance of Christ as our Saviour — through His shed blood and death as our Substitute and Sin-Bearer, from the guilt and consequences of our sin.

1. Surrender absolutely and unconditionally to Christ as Master of all that we are and all that we have, telling God that we are now ready to have His whole will done in our entire life, at every point, no matter what it costs.

2. Believe that God has set us wholly free from the law of sin (Romans 8:2) — not will do this, but has done it. ["For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death" (Romans 8:2).]

Upon this second step, the quiet act of faith, all now depends. Faith must believe God in entire absence of any feeling or evidence. For God’s word is safer, better, and surer than any evidence of His word. We are to say, in blind, cold faith if need be, “Know that my Lord Jesus is meeting all my needs now (even my need of faith), because His grace is sufficient for me.”

And remember that Christ Himself is better then any of His blessings; better than the power, or the victory, or the service, that He grants.

Saving Life of Christ

By Major Ian Thomas . . . .

 ”Be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.” As the “good, acceptable, and perfect will of God” was implemented by the Son through dependence on the Father, so that “good, acceptable, and perfect will of God” may be implemented by you through dependence on the Son. This divine vocation into which you have been redeemed, as “His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works which God has before ordained that you should walk in them” (Ephesians 2:10) can only be fulfilled in the energy and power of the One who indwells you now by His Spirit, as He walked once only in the energy and power of the Father who indwelt Him through the Spirit. Of Himself He said, “I can of mine own self do nothing” (John 5:19), and of you He says, in John 15:5, “Without me you can do nothing.” How much can you do without Him? Nothing! So what is everything you do without Him? Nothing! It is amazing how busy you can be doing nothing! . . . “The flesh”–everything that you do apart from Him–”profiteth nothing” (John 6:63), and there is always the awful possibility, if you do not discover this principle, that you may spend a lifetime in the service of Jesus Christ doing nothing! . . . The life which you possess as a born-again Christian is of Him, and it is to Him, and every moment that you are here on earth it must be through Him–of Him, through Him, to Him, all things! “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice” (Romans 12:1). The Lord Jesus Christ claims the use of your body, your whole being, your complete personality, so that as you give yourself to Him through the eternal Spirit, He may give Himself to you through the eternal Spirit, that all your activity as a human being on earth may be His activity in and through you; that every step you take, every word you speak, everything you do, everything you are, may be an expression of the Son of God, in you as man. If it is of Him and through Him and to Him, where do you come in? You do not! That is just where you go out! That is what Paul meant when he said, “For me to live is Christ” (Philippians 1:21). The only Person whom God credits with the right to live in you is Jesus Christ; so reckon yourself to be dead to all that you are apart from what He is, and alive unto God only in all that you are because of what He is (Romans 6:11). When the world looked at Jesus Christ, they saw God! They heard Him speak and they saw Him act. And Jesus said, “As my Father has sent Me, even so send I you” (John 20:21). The world again will hear God speak and see God act! Is is for you to BE–it is for Him to DO! Restfully available to the Saving Life of Christ, enjoying “the richest measure of the divine Presence, a body wholly filled and flooded with God Himself,” instantly obedient to the heavenly impulse–this is your vocation, and this is your victory!

Four attitudes to the Holy Spirit

By Roy Hession

      HAVING seen the place and function of the Holy Spirit among the people of God, we are in a position to ask ourselves what is our attitude to Him; are we allowing Him to do His work of conviction and revealing Jesus to us as all we need?

      The New Testament tells us that there are four possible attitudes that we may take up towards Him. The first is to grieve Him. ‘Grieve not the holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption. Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice’ (Eph. 4. 30, 31). Sin is that which grieves Him, especially those sins which are mentioned here in the context; bitterness, anger, evil speaking of others, malice and unforgiveness. When we understand that the One whom He has come to reveal to us is called by that precious name of the Lamb, meek and lowly in heart, and that He Himself is likened to the gentle dove, we can see the sort of things that do grieve Him. Whenever we manifest a disposition other than that of the Lamb (sometimes it is far more like that of the lion!) especially in our relationships with others, we cause Him grief. Although we have been forgiven so much ourselves, we sometimes stand on our rights and refuse to forgive another. He cannot go further with us in His work of blessing, until we see these sins and repent of them. For that reason, He proceeds to convict us of them, and strive with us. But it is ever the work of love; our sins do not anger Him, but rather grieve Him.

      The second possible attitude that we can adopt towards Him is to resist Him. Stephen said to the Jews of his day, ‘Ye stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Ghost: as your fathers did, so do ye’ (Acts 7. 51). When He convicts us of sin, we can resist Him. We can refuse to call something sin which He calls sin. We sometimes work out a complete alibi for ourselves, which proves us guiltless. We do so because we know that to say ‘yes’ to the Spirit’s conviction would humble us, for we should have to repent and put the thing right. This is what the scriptures call being ‘stiff-necked’, and it is indeed a serious condition to be in, and may lead to solemn judgments upon us, if persisted in. ‘He, that being often reproved hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy’ (Prov. 29:1). Our resistance to the Holy Spirit’s conviction is seen so often in our refusal to accept the challenge of some brother or sister in Christ. We would not mind if His conviction were direct from Himself to our hearts, but very often He uses somebody else’s penetrating words to show us our sin. And that makes it doubly hard to receive, because of our pride. But we must receive it none the less, if we are to be blessed.

      The third possible attitude is that of quenching Him. Says Paul, ‘Quench not the Spirit. Despise not prophesyings’ (1 Thess. 5.19, 20).

      This is the word concerning the more corporate activities of the Holy Spirit in our midst, as is seen by the phrase that follows, that we are not to despise prophesyings. We quench a fire when we pour water upon it, and we can quench the fire of the Holy Spirit’s working in another, in a fellowship, or in a meeting, by ‘pouring cold water upon it’, by way of discouraging or actually forbidding it. The Holy Spirit demands to have right of way in the assemblies of God’s people and in their fellowship. But so often we have a mental picture of the way in which He must work and we forbid all forms of His working which do not conform exactly to our ideas-especially those forms that would seem to by-pass our own pet methods and would seem to make nothing of our own special position. How prone we are to think that, if revival is to come, it must come through the Minister or the Missionary or only through those who have a special training. The Spirit, however, often brings revival through the back door, through someone of no account at all and of little official position. How often has not the Lord Jesus come knocking at the door of a situation, a Church or a Mission Station but the door has been bolted against Him because He did not come through the proper channels or along normal lines, and thus He had sadly to turn away from a situation that needed Him so desperately.

      The fourth attitude that we can take to the Spirit’s working is to be filled with Him. The Epistle of the Ephesians tells us, ‘Be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit’ (Eph. 5. 18). The One whom we were grieving, resisting and quenching is now filling us and possessing us. What a capitulation and what a reversal this implies on our part! We have at last consented to bow to His conviction and call sin, sin. He is now able without hindrance to give us continual sight of Jesus as all we need to our immense joy, release and empowering.

      When thinking of this matter of being filled with the Holy Spirit, it is important always to do so in the context of these three other attitudes to the Spirit. If we do not do so, we shall always be regarding the fullness of the Holy Spirit as a special blessing, extra to our inheritance in Christ, and that attitude will lead us only to striving and frustration. If we are not filled with the Spirit at any given moment, it is only because of one thing-sin. Through sin we have grieved Him, and are resisting Him where He has convicted us. Maybe we have been in a dry, unsatisfied condition for years, but it is all due to an accumulation of this same one thing, sin. But we have only to humble ourselves in repentance under the Holy Spirit’s conviction, and He will witness in our hearts to Jesus and His Blood, and enable us to believe that His Blood cleanses what we have confessed. Then where the Blood cleanses, the Holy Spirit fills, and that without further waiting on our part.

      This is clearly illustrated in the ceremonial cleansing of the leper in the book of Leviticus (Lev. 14). First of all, the blood of a sacrificial victim, a lamb, was placed upon his right ear, his right thumb and his right big toe. Then the holy anointing oil, picture to us of the Holy Spirit, was placed upon the blood in those same three places. First the blood, then the oil. And so it is in the experience of the believer. The Holy Spirit does not fill and empower the flesh, that is, unjudged self. He only comes where there has been repentance and where the Blood of Christ has been applied to sin by faith. Such is the value of the precious Blood to God, that, be a man never such a failure, if he has truly repented, that Blood gives him the title to expect the Holy Spirit immediately to fill his heart and life. He need go no further than the foot of the Cross. Right there, where sin is washed away, if his faith will receive it, the Holy Spirit will fill him and his cup will be running over.

      I remember when a fellow-worker and myself were taking part in a ministers’ conference in Brazil, a young American missionary flew in from his station in the mission aircraft. A great hunger of heart had brought him. In conversation he told us of the barrenness on their station and the defeat in his own life. There had been only one professed conversion in their area in the whole year. The missionaries had got so cold that if one of them would seek to talk seriously about the Lord, the others would jokingly say, ‘He’s talking like a missionary!’ He told us how recently the Lord had begun to work in his heart again and had shown him things of which he must repent to get right with God. In some matters it meant putting things right with his fellow missionaries. He told us how as a result a new fellowship had begun to grow up between the missionaries and there was a new touch of blessing on the work. We suggested he might give his testimony in the meeting that day. He did so, and as he concluded what was an impressive story of the Lord humbling him and bringing him back to the Cross, he said, ‘However I cannot say that I am filled with the Spirit yet, but I am seeking’.

      Afterwards I drew him aside and said, ‘While I praise God for your testimony I was disappointed to hear you say that you are not yet filled with the Spirit.’ As we talked further, he began to see that he did not need to go any further than the Cross to be filled with the Spirit. In that place of brokenness where the Blood was applied to his heart, Jesus was made to him all he needed. And in as much as he had come to the Cross, God did indeed fill him with the Spirit because of the Blood of Christ-if his faith would receive it. There he began to believe in the value of the Blood of Jesus on his behalf. In those days he could be seen in quiet corners under the trees and elsewhere, bowed in wonder and worship, believing it all-cleansed in the Blood, therefore filled with the Spirit, and Jesus made to him all he needed, his righteousness with God and his holiness within. He returned to his station radiant, emancipated. As he humbly gave his testimony there, the Lord began to use his testimony to make others hungry. Christians began to repent and others began to seek Christ for the first time. He wrote back. ‘It’s rivers of living water again.’

      How simple and how well within our reach is God’s way of being filled with His Spirit.

A New Creation

By T. Austin-Sparks

The all-inclusive rule of the new creation is that “all things are of (out from) God.” Concerning this fact the Apostle Paul uses the word “but” – “But all things are of God” – as though he would anticipate, intercept, or arrest an impulse to rush away and attempt life or service upon an old creation basis, or with old creation resource.

      The great question then is: What does it mean that all things in this new creation are out from God? What kind of a life will such a life be? To answer that question adequately would be a very comprehensive task and the most revolutionary thing conceivable.

      To begin with, we should have to be settled regarding the difference between the old and the new creations, and then as to how far-reaching that difference is. In addition, we should need to see that God has put these two creations asunder, utterly and forever, and however gracious and forbearing He may be with us in our ignorance and slowness of apprehension, He never accepts the overlapping or intertwining of the two. Then there would be the further need of an inward, intelligent judgment and power by which we are made aware of the Divine veto upon the one and energy toward the other.

      There are a few things which, precisely stated, sum up this matter.

      1.All things out from God means that all things, in the first place, are in God. A truism though it be, that fact is one of great significance. Whatever man may have, or think that he has, or knows, or can do in the realm of the old creation, nothing of the knowledge, ability, or power of the new creation originates with man. He has to begin as a helpless, ignorant, innocent infant. Everything for him is in God, he has nothing in himself.

      2.Whatever God may impart, of wisdom, knowledge, or ability in the new creation, He never does so outright. That is to say, He never gives the resource to be held apart from Himself. He never constitutes men gods, with independent Divine resources. He never allows man to become a possessor in himself, in such a way that man of himself is something. Everything must be held in abiding dependence upon God, both for receiving and using, and nothing can be absolute. It was the violation of this law or the attempt to have it set aside, that brought ruin in the first instance. Man had all by dependence, faith, obedience, and humility. He yielded to the suggestion to have it in himself, with freedom from this law – to “be as God.” God is not leaving that door open in the new creation, and nothing that savours of man will ever get through at last. Here is the importance for life and service of a life wholly in God.

      3.The larger the measure of what is of God the more utter will be the application by God of the law of dependence. This means that God will have no plenipotentiaries-at-large. The life and instrument related to God’s fullest thought will be kept on a basis of step-by-step guidance and strength. There will be no making over of plans, schemes, schedules; no seeing of the way from beginning to end; no resources to draw upon without Divine witness, or to endanger exactness as to the Divine intention; no making of men into authorities and courts-of-appeal by reason of their being a fountain of wisdom and knowledge: in a word, nothing that would infringe the law that for all things, at all times, and in all ways, “all things are out from God.”

      The only certainty is God. An apostle may be led to move in a particular direction, and then by reason of need and opportunity he may conclude that certain regions are the objective, but when he reaches a point he will be met by a double, Divine “No” to those thoughts, and be shown something unthought of. (Acts 16:6-10.)

      To the old creation such a life is most unsatisfactory and irregular. Yes, and in a thousand other things this life is utterly different from what man naturally wants and likes. But that does not mean that God is not more honoured, glorified, and satisfied. Let us read the New Testament with this one thought in mind, the Gospels as well as the rest, and see if it was not true in the case of Christ, the Apostles, and the teaching.

      4.If this is all true, then it is its own reflection upon those other major questions. The difference between the two creations, their extent, and the Divine attitude toward them, is clearly and forcefully revealed by such issues as we have pointed out. The difference is irreconcilable and cannot be bridged. The extent reaches to mind, heart, and will. It is a matter of mentality, capacity, and the very springs of life. We are not only confronted with the fact of limitation when we come to probe the question of the old creation, but with a state with which God can have nothing to do. Even though it appear in religious form, and that in the red-hot devoutness of Saul of Tarsus, its deeper nature will be proved inimical to God.

      5.There remains one thing to be referred to. In the divide between the two creations there is planted the Cross of Christ. The Cross has a death side and a life side; death to the old, life to the new. The recognition and acceptance of the Cross in this twofold meaning is God’s only way to the new creation. To the believer who receives Him by faith the Holy Spirit is given as the inward intelligent power for witnessing to the Cross against the one and for the other. Hence the immeasurably great importance of a life governed by the Holy Spirit at all points and in all things. Only that which, by the Spirit, is immediately out from God will survive or get through. All else must perish with the creation which God has placed under condemnation.

      It is not what is done for God that will last, but what is done by God.

      The measure of spiritual value is determined by the measure in which God promotes it, not the measure of human activities according to human judgments and energies in the name of God.

First published in “A Witness and A Testimony” magazine, Jan-Feb 1937, Vol 16-1

In keeping with T. Austin-Sparks’ wishes that what was freely received should be freely given, his writings are not copyrighted. Therefore, we ask if you choose to share them with others, please respect his wishes and offer them freely – free of changes, free of charge and free of copyright.

Detachment

By Watchman Nee

We have seen the Church as a thorn in Satan’s side, causing him acute discomfort and reducing his freedom of movement. Though in the world, the Church not only refuses to aid in the world’s construction but persists in pronouncing judgment upon it. But if this is true, if the Church is always a source of irritation to the world, then equally the world is a source of constant grief to the Church. And because the world is always developing, its power to distress God’s people is ever expanding; in fact the Church has to meet a force in the world today with which in the early days she was not confronted at all. Then the children of God met open persecution in the shape of outward physical assault upon their persons (Acts 12; 2 Corinthians 11). They were always coming into collision with material, tangible things. Now the chief trouble they meet in the world is more subtle, an intangible force behind its material things, that is not. holy but spiritually evil. The impact of that spiritual force today is far greater than it was then. And not only is it greater; there is an element present now that was not there formerly.

In Revelation 9 we read of a development which, to the author of that book, lay far in the future. “The fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star from heaven fallen unto the earth: and there was given to him the key of the pit of the abyss. And he opened the pit of the abyss; and there went up a smoke out of the pit, as the smoke of a great furnace…. And out of the smoke came forth locusts upon the earth; and power was given them, as the scorpions of the earth have power. And it was said unto them that they should not hurt the grass of the earth, neither any green thing, neither any tree, but only such men as have not the seal of God on their foreheads” (verses 1-4). This is figurative language, but the star falling from heaven obviously refers to Satan, and we know that the bottomless pit is his domain, his storehouse, we might say. Thus it appears that the end time is to be marked by a special release of his forces, and men will find themselves up against a spiritual power with which they had not before to contend.

Surely this accords with conditions in our day. While it is true that sin and violence will be greater than ever at the close of this age, it is apparent from God’s Word that it is not specifically these with which the Church will have to grapple then, but with the spiritual appeal of far more everyday things. “As it came to pass in the days of Noah, even so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man. They ate, they drank, they married, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all. Likewise even as it came to pass in the days of Lot; they ate, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded; but in the day that Lot went out from Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all” (Luke 17:26,29). The point being made here by Jesus is not that these things-food, marriage, trade, agriculture, engineering-were outstanding characteristics of Lot’s and Noah’s day, but that they will in a special way characterize the last days. “After the same manner shall it be in the day that the Son of man is revealed” (verse 30): that is the point. For these things are not inherently sinful; they are simply things of the world. Have you ever in all your days paid such attention to the good life as now? Food and raiment are becoming the special burden of God’s children today. What shall we eat? What shall we drink? Wherewithal shall we be clothed? For many these are almost the sole topics of conversation. There is a power that forces you to consider these matters; your very existence demands that you pay attention to them.

And yet Scripture warns us that “the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness” and so on. It bids us first of all seek the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and assures us that as we do so, all these things will be added to us. It bids us be carefree regarding matters of food and clothing, for if God cares for the flowers of the field and the birds of the air, will he not much rather care for us, his own? Yet to judge by our anxieties it would almost seem that they are cared for, but not we!

Now here is the point that needs special emphasis. This condition of things is abnormal. The undue attention to eating and drinking, whether at the extremes of subsistence or luxury,’ that characterizes so many Christians these days is far from normal; it is supernatural. For it is not just a question of food and drink that we are meeting here; we are meeting demons. Satan conceived and now controls the world order, and is prepared to use demonic power through the things of the world to lure us into it. The present state of affairs cannot be accounted for apart from this. Oh that the children of God might awaken to this fact! In past days God’s saints met all sorts of difficulties; yet, in the midst of pressure, they could look up and trust God. In the pressures of today, however, they are so confused and bewildered that they seem unable to trust him. Oh, let us realize the Satanic origin of all this pressure and confusion!

The same is true in matrimonial affairs. Never have we met so many problems in this field as today. There is confusion abroad as young people break with old traditions but lack the guidance of any new ones to replace them. This fact is not to be accounted for naturally, but supernaturally. Marrying and giving in marriage are wholesome and normal in any age, but today there is an element breaking into these things that is unnatural.

So it is with planting and building, and so too with buying and selling. All these things can be perfectly legitimate and beneficial, but today the power behind them presses upon men until they are bewildered and lose their balance. The evil force that energizes the world system has precipitated a condition today where we see two extremes; the one extreme of utter inability to make ends meet, and the other extreme of unusual opportunity to amass wealth. On the one hand many Christians find themselves in unprecedented economic difficulties: on the other hand many are faced with no less unprecedented opportunities of enriching themselves. Both of these conditions are abnormal.

Enter any home these days and listen in on the conversation. You will hear remarks such as these: “Last week I bought such-and-such goods at such-and-such a figure, and I have thereby saved so much.” “Happily I purchased that a year ago, otherwise I would have lost badly.” “If you want to sell, sell now while the market is good.” Have you not noticed the way people are rushing here and there, feverishly making business deals? Doctors are stocking up with flour, cloth manufacturers are selling paper, men and women who have never touched such things before are being swept off their feet by the current of speculation. They are caught up in a marketing maelstrom that is whirling them madly around. Do you not realize that this state of affairs is not natural? Do you not see that there is a power here which is captivating men? People are not acting sanely; they are beside themselves. Today’s buying and selling spree is not just a question of making a little money-or losing it. It is a question of touching a Satanic system. We are living in the end time, a time when a special power has been let loose which is driving men on, whether they will or no.

So the question today is not so much one of sinfulness as of worldliness. Who would’ dare to say you do wrong to eat and drink? Who would dare to disapprove of marrying and giving in marriage? Who would question your right to buy and sell? These things are not in themselves wrong; the wrong lies in the spiritual force behind them, which, through their medium, presses relentlessly upon us. Oh that we might awake to the fact that, whereas these things are so common and so simple, they are yet being used by Satan to ensnare God’s children into the great net of his world order.

“Take heed to yourselves, lest haply your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting, and drunkenness, and cares of this life, and that day come on you suddenly as a snare” (Luke 21:34). Note the term “life” in Jesus’ words. In the Greek New Testament three words are commonly used for life: zoe, spiritual life; psuche, psychological life; and bios, biological life. The last is the word used here, appearing in its adjectival form, biotikos, “of this life.” The Lord is warning us to beware lest we be unduly pressed with this life’s cares, that is to say, with anxieties regarding quite ordinary matters such as food and dress which belong to our present existence on the earth. It was over just such a simple thing that Adam and Eve fell, and it will be due to just such simple matters that some Christians may overlook the heavenward call of God. For it is always a matter of where the heart is. We are exhorted not to let our hearts be “overcharged” or “laden” with these things to our loss. That is to say, we are not to carry a burden regarding them that would weigh us down. We are to be in a true sense detached in spirit from our goods in the house or in the field (Luke 17:31).

For let us realize who we are! We are the Church, the light of the world shining amid the darkness. As such let us live our lives down here.

There was a time when the Church rejected the world’s ways. Now she not only uses them; she abuses them. Of course we must use the world, because we need it; but let us not want it, let us not desire it. So Jesus continues, “Watch ye at every season, making supplication, that ye may prevail to escape all these things that shall come to pass and to stand (literally ‘be set’) before the Son of man” (Luke 21:36). Would God urge us to watch and pray were there not a spiritual force to guard against? We dare not take our destiny as a matter of course, but must be constantly on the alert that we be truly disentangled in spirit from the elements of this world. There are things of the world that are essential to our very existence. To be concerned with them is legitimate, but to be weighed down by them is illegitimate and may cause us to forfeit God’s best.

The book of Revelation suggests that Satan will set up his kingdom of antichrist in the political world (Ch. 13), in the religious world (Ch. 17), and in the commercial world (Ch. 18). On this threefold basis of politics, religion and commerce, his reign will find its last violent expression. In the latter two chapters this kingdom appears under the figure of Babylon, the special instrument of Satan. Babylon seems to represent corrupted Christianity-Rome perhaps, but bigger and more insidious than Rome-and it is on the ground of her commerce that she is judged. The whole record of Chapter 18 revolves around merchants and merchandise. Those who bemoan the great city’s fall, from the king right down to the ships’ helmsmen, all bewail the thought that her flourishing trade has suddenly ceased. Evidently it is neither religion nor politics but trade that causes the spirit of Babylon to flourish again, and that is bewailed in her downfall. We dare not emphatically state that pure commerce is wrong, but this we do say on the ground of God’s own Word, that its beginning is connected with Satan (Ezek. 28) and its end with Babylon (Rev. 18). And this we add from hard earned experience, that commerce is the field in which, more than in any other, “the corruption that is inthe world through lust” relentlessly pursues even the most high-principled of Christians, and apart from the grace of God, will all too easily overtake them to their undoing.

Are we sensitive to Babylon? The merchants wept, but heaven cried Hallelujah! (19:1). These (verses 1-6) are the only Hallelujahs recorded in the New Testament. Do we reecho them?

For we are in a perilous realm when we touch commerce. If by reason of our calling we engage in pure trade, and if we do so in fear and trembling, we may with God’s help escape the snare of the Devil. But if we are overconfident, then there is no hope of escape from the unscrupulous self-seeking that such business engenders. So the problem that confronts us these days is not how to refrain from buying and selling, from eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage; the problem now is to avoid the power behind these things, for we dare not let that power triumph over us.

What, then, is the secret of holding our material things in the will of God? Surely it is to hold them for God, that is to say, to know we are not hoarding useless valuables, or amassing vast bank deposits, but laying up treasures to his account. You and I must be perfectly willing to part with anything at any moment. It matters not whether I leave two thousand dollars or merely two. What matters is whether I can leave what ever I have without a twinge of regret.

I am not suggesting by this that we must try to dispose of everything; that is not the point. The point is that as God’s children you and I may not accumulate things for ourselves. If I keep something it is because God has spoken to my heart; if I part with it it is for the same reason. I hold myself in the will of God and am not afraid to give if God asks me to give. I keep nothing because I love it, but let it go without regret when the call comes to leave it behind. That is what it means to be detached, free, separated to God.

What is the Gospel?

 

   The gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ is the power of God unto salvation to all who believe (Rom 1:16). Since it is so powerful why do we not see a great move of God with multitudes being truly, and completely saved and re-born? Is the gospel that is preached today the same gospel of the Holy Scriptures? Ezekiel prophesied in his day that the shepherds were fouling the clear waters with their feet leaving them muddy waters instead of the pure un-adulterated water of the word (Eze 34:18-19). The apostle Paul also said, “I fear that somehow, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, our minds have been led astray from the simplicity and purity that is in Christ. Is it possible that the preaching of the gospel today is the preaching of another Jesus who Paul did not preach and as a result some are receiving another spirit through a different gospel? (2 Cor 11:3,4) We hear many messages today that are filled with entertaining stories, psychology and even secular media! If we begin to put our trust in men and make flesh our strength then we are cursed. But blessed are those who trust is in the Lord and whose hope is Him. (Jer 17:5,7) Paul says that he did not preach in cleverness of speech, that the cross of Christ should be made of no effect. (1 Cor 1:17) Neither were his messages nor preaching in persuasive words of (earthly) wisdom, (philosophy, carnal reasoning/logic) but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that people’s faith should not rest on the wisdom of men, but on the power of God.(1 Cor 2:4,5) His gospel did not come in word only, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction. (1 Thess 1:5)

   We are now, rightly so, teaching a lot on the need to allow Christ to live in us, instead of living for Christ. We are also truthfully teaching the need to claim what Christ has given us; but we are not teaching and are forgetting about the need for repentance and forsaking the world and sin. The Holy Spirit cannot work in us and change us if we continue to live in spiritual adultery against Christ. We need to die to ourselves before Christ can live in and through us. We need to repent and BELIEVE, so that we might be free and be saved. We need to take up our cross and deny ourselves daily, not just sit back and hope we will somehow be changed one-day and live a life of freedom in Christ. For he who is in Christ is a new creation, the OLD things have passed AWAY; behold, NEW things have come. The old things need to pass away; we can’t continue to live in them. We need to lay aside ALL encumbrances and the sin, which so easily entangles us. We have to lose our lived for His sake and His gospel in order to save them. We need to be transformed by the renewing of our mind and humble ourselves before the presence of the Lord and cry out to him; for He opposes the proud and gives grace to the humble and the broken and contrite of spirit he will look unto to. God delights in these things, not sacrifices.

Victory Over the Flesh

Victory over the flesh is so hard to put into a formula because no formula exists.  We are a people that want everything so neat and tidy and easy to impliment into our daily lives.  The ways of the Lord are not always so.  His ways are not our ways, neither are His thoughts our thoughts.  So it is with the flesh.  We want to repair it, to fix it up, to make it reputable and our servant.  We hang on to it like it is our very life and we believe  all the lies that our flesh speaks to us.  We take care of it and dress it up in religious attire hoping to go un-noticed for what it truly is…death and misery beyond compare.  We accept it’s delights as a child accepts candy from a stranger, only this is our familiar friend…one we can trust…God says it must die!  In fact, God says that it is already dead.  This statement flies in the face of our perceived reality…If the flesh is dead, then why do we seem to have so much trouble with it?  Or is it the flesh that we are having the trouble with?  God’s word says that “those that are in Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with it’s lusts and passions”.  His word also says “to walk in or by the Spirit and we will not fulfill the lusts of the flesh”.  Put these two together and you get “your flesh is dead…don’t let your dead flesh control your new life in the Spirit…make no provision for the flesh”.  To understand victory one must have a proper definition of the enemy…who or what it is we are fighting against.  The flesh is this…the way we lived and undestood life and our reactions to it as a lost dead person and after salvation as a deceived saved person.  Old habits are hard to break, especially if one is striving to break a habit that really no longer exists.  We are new creations in Christ Jesus…old things have passed away…all things have become new.  It is a matter of seeing by faith and believing by faith that which God says is true regardless of how we feel.  Satan’s ploy is to get you to fight against an already dead enemy so that you become a believer caught up in a kind of civil war with yourself.  Jesus said that “a kingdom divided against itself cannot stand”.  This is what we become when we enter into the conflict of suppression and renovation against the flesh.  We fall into the flesh to fight against the flesh.  We strive  to win the battle. We are trapped in an endless cycle of supposed victory and defeat…Sometimes we appear to win…sometimes we lose terribly.  This is all part of Satan’s master plan to discount the word of God, defeat our faith, and plunge us into an endless cycle of doubt and despair.  The force of sin brings about the presence of sin into our lives disconnecting us from the fellowship in Jesus that we need to have new life.  We become unable to walk in and by the Spirit and the lusts of the flesh are fulfilled.  “Sin’s desire is for you but you must master  him” (original).  Sin, the satanic counterfit of the Holy Spirit, exercises a force compelling believers to live, act, and react according to a dead entity…the believers flesh.  We never engage the real enemy in spiritual warfare because he goes unseen behind the facade.  If you end up fighting the wrong enemy how can you ever have a victory?  You can’t, and this is exactly what Satan  wants.  Jesus said “I am the vine, you are the branches…abide in me…without me you can do nothing”.  To abide in Jesus is to walk in and by the Spirit…not fulfilling the lusts of the flesh…That is victory my friend…that is freedom.  To see ones’ self crucified with Christ and living by the Spirit and not by the flesh, by faith, is to believe what God says is so…regardless of what we feel or how things may appear to be.  Jesus is the victor…We enter into His victory as we abide in Him.  Be a believing believer…trust it is so…and the response to your faith is all the grace and mercy of God to overcome decidedly.