"Knowing God" [X]

~ These Inward Trials ~

Two Extremes of Error Regarding the Christian Life. “[Some types of ministry stress] the difference that becoming a Christian will make. Not only will it bring a man forgiveness of sins, peace of conscience, and fellowship with God as his Father; it will also mean that, through the power of the indwelling Spirit, he will be able to overcome the sins that previously mastered him, and the light and leading that God will give him will enable him to find a way through problems of guidance, self-fulfillment, personal relationships, heart’s desire, and such like, which had hitherto defeated him completely. Now, put like that, in general terms, these great assurances are scriptural and true—praise God, they are! But it is possible so to stress them, and so to play down the rougher side of the Christian life—the daily chastening, the endless war with sin and Satan, the periodic walk in darkness—as to give the impression that normal Christian living is a perfect bed of roses, a state of affairs in which everything in the garden is lovely all the time, and problems no longer exist—or, if they come, they have only to be taken to the throne of grace, and they will melt away at once. This is to suggest that the world, the flesh, and the devil, will give a man no serious trouble once he is a Christian; nor will his circumstances and personal relationships ever be a problem to him; nor will he ever be a problem to himself. Such suggestions are mischievous, however, because they are false… [But you] can so stress the rough side of the Christian life, and so play down the bright side, as to give the impression that Christian living is for the most part grievous and gloomy—hell on earth, in hope of heaven after!... But it must be said that of these two extremes of error, the first is the worse, just to the extent that false hopes are a greater evil than false fears. The second error will, in the mercy of God, lead only to the pleasant surprise of finding that Christians have joy as well as sorrow. But the first, which pictures the normal Christian life as trouble-free, is bound to lead to bitter disillusionment sooner or later.”

The Christian Life: An Uphill Climb. “The truth here is that the God of whom it was said, ‘he shall feed his flock like a shepherd; he shall gather the lambs in his arms’ (Isaiah 40:11), is very gentle with very young Christians, just as mothers are with very young babies. Often the start of their Christian career is marked by great emotional joy, striking providences, remarkable answers to prayer, and immediate fruitfulness in their first acts of witness; thus God encourages them, and establishes them in ‘the life’. But as they grow stronger, and are able to bear more, He exercises them in a tougher school. He exposes them to as much testing by the pressure of opposed and discouraging influences as they are able to bear—but not more [1 Corinthians 10:13), but equally not less [Acts 14:22]. Thus He builds our character, strengthens our faith, and prepares us to help others. Thus He crystallizes our sense of values. Thus He glorifies Himself in our lives, making His strength perfect in our weakness. There is nothing unnatural, therefore, in an increase of temptations, conflicts, and pressures, as the Christian goes on with God—indeed, something would be wrong if it did not happen. But the Christian who has been told that the normal Christian life is unshadowed and trouble-free can only conclude, as experiences of inadequacy and imperfection pile upon him, that he must have lapsed from normal.”

On Backsliding. “[It] is true that if the Christians grow careless towards God, and slip back into ways of deliberate sin, their inward joy and rest of heart grows less, and discontent of spirit comes to mark them more and more. Those who through union with Christ are ‘dead to sin’ (Romans 6:1)—done with it, that is, as the ruling principle of their lives—cannot find in sinning even that limited pleasure which it gave them before they were reborn. Nor can they indulge in wrong ways without imperiling their enjoyment of God’s favour—God will see to that! ‘Because of the iniquity of his covetousness I was angry, I smoke him, I hid my face and was angry; but he went on backsliding…’ (Isaiah 57:15). That is how God reacts when His children lapse into wrong ways. Unregenerate apostates are often cheerful souls, but backsliding Christians are always miserable.”

On Divine Discipline. “Sooner or later, the truth will be that God is now exercising His child—His consecrated child—in the ways of adult godliness, as He exercised Job, and some of the psalmists, and the addressees of the epistle to the Hebrews, by exposing them to strong attacks from the world, the flesh, and the devil, so that their powers of resistance might grow greater, and their character as men of God become stronger… [All] the children of God undergo this treatment—it is part of the ‘chastening of the Lord’ (Hebrews 12:15, echoing Job 5:17; Proverbs 2:11), to which He subjects every son whom He loves.”

The Will & Work of Grace. “What is grace? In the New Testament, grace means God’s love in action towards men who merited the opposite of love. Grace means God moving heaven and earth to save sinners who could not lift a finger to save themselves. Grace means God sending His only Son to descend into hell on the cross so that we guilty ones might be reconciled to God and received into heaven… The New Testament knows both a will of grace and a work of grace. The former is God’s eternal plan to save; the latter is God’s ‘good work in you’ (Philippians 1:6), whereby He calls men into living fellowship with Christ (1 Corinthians 1:9), raises them from death to life (Ephesians 2:1-6), transforms them into Christ’s image (2 Corinthians 3:18), and will finally raise their bodies in glory (Romans 8:30; 1 Corinthians 15:47-54).”

The Purpose & Prosecution of Grace. “When God lays the foundation of this restored relationship, by forgiving our sins as we trust His Son, He does so in order that henceforth we and He may live in fellowship, and what He does in renewing our nature is intended to make us capable of, and actually lead us into, the exercise of love, trust, delight, hope, and obedience Godward—those acts which, from our side, made up the reality of fellowship with God, who is constantly making Himself known to us. This is what all the work of grace aims at—an ever deeper knowledge of God, and an ever closer fellowship with Him. Grace is God drawing us sinners closer and closer to Himself. How does God in grace prosecute this purpose? Not by shielding us from assault by the world, the flesh, and the devil, nor by protecting us from burdensome and frustrating circumstances, nor yet by shielding us from troubles created by our own temperament and psychology; but rather by exposing us to all these things, so as to overwhelm us with a sense of our own inadequacy, and to drive us to cling to Him more closely. This is the ultimate reason, from our standpoint, why God fills our lives with troubles and perplexities of one sort and another—it is to ensure that we shall learn to hold Him fast. The reason why the Bible spends so much of its time reiterating that God is a strong rock, a firm defence, and a sure refuge and help for the weak, is that God spends so much of His time bringing home to us that we are weak, both mentally and morally, and dare not trust ourselves to find, or to follow, the right road… God wants us to feel that our way through life is rough and perplexing, so that we may learn thankfully to lean on Him. Therefore He takes steps to drive us out of self-confidence to trust in Himself—in the classical scriptural phrase for the secret of the godly man’s life, to ‘wait on the Lord.’”