The “Must” of the Decreasing Self
Chapter 3
The “Must” of the Decreasing Self
When our sins have been forgiven through the sacrifice of our Lord, there is still to be considered the problem of the holy life; but this can only be satisfactorily settled by the deep teaching of the New Testament.
Three solutions have been proposed, though only the last-named will satisfy.
The Pagan Solution
This method characterized the great philosophy of the Greek world led by Plato, Socrates, and Aristotle. Their one thought was for the soul of man to lift itself by its own effort; and they placed before it the ideal of Beauty as its prime incentive. Paul, however, who had been brought up under that system, confessed sadly: “The good I would, I do not; the evil, that I would not, I do.” The Greek love of beauty remains today in the buildings, statues, and literature which have come down to us. Profound thinkers embodied their ideals in this manner, but their disciples failed to realize their spiritual and moral conceptions, though they were enamored of their ideals.
The Greek philosophy therefore ended in despair! The Fall of Troy; the wanderings of Ulysses; Tantilus always missing the tantalizing water; Sisyphus rolling the stone uphill; which always returned on him; Laocoon and his sons entangled by the serpents; Prometheus, devoured by the vulture; and Hercules, with his arduous labors – all tell the same tale of inability to realize their ideals. All confess with Paul – who had been educated in the great university of Tarsus where these ideals were taught – that the world by wisdom knew not God; and that it remained for the foolishness of preaching – foolish according to the philosophy of the age – to save those who longed to realize their ideals.
The Baptist’s Solution
There are few stories more instructive. His parents apparently died in his early life, and he was led by the Spirit into the wild mountains that stretched across to the Jordan, there he lived with God on the simplest fare and wrapped in the atmosphere of the unseen and eternal. One day, as a caravan of pilgrims was approaching the Holy City, he met and accosted them by the challenge: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand! Make ready the way of the Lord! Make His paths straight!” The startled pilgrims had a strange story to tell when they reached Jerusalem. The tidings spread like fire from lip to lip, that God had visited His people, that Elijah had again appeared; and there went out to him Jerusalem and all Judea. In fact, the whole land awoke to a new voice, which may be regarded as epitomizing and uttering the great moral code of the Old Testament.
That noble system, God-given and God-inspired, was a stepping stone to Christ, but it failed to satisfy those who came under its influence. There was a lack which John the Baptist confessed! He could administer the outward rite of baptism but could not impart salvation. He could only prepare the way for the Coming One, and eagerly wait for the manifestation of the Christ. As the morning-star, he was bound to decrease! He could not give power unto salvation! But he uttered the cry of the heart in penitence and in its yearning for a mightier spiritual dynamic, than that which up to then had prevailed. Therefore, the multitudes of earnest seekers ebbed away from him to Jesus Christ and only a comparative few remained to listen to the herald’s voice. This was resented by his immediate followers, but he rebuked them. He was only the bridegroom’s friend and forerunner! The bride was not his! It was his joy to hear the bridegroom’s voice! He was content that his own popularity should wane, whilst Christ’s must increase with overgrowing power!
The difficulty with the system taught by John the Baptist, (which indeed embodied the teaching of the moral law) consisted in the difficulty of mastering the self-life, which the apostle refers to as “the flesh.” The flesh, therefore, is the bias which continually asserts itself. It is the tendency of which we are all conscious, which, with strange persistence, determines our thought and action towards self-aggrandizement. If we drop the “h” and spell “flesh” backwards, it comes out as s-e-l-f, which follows us like a shadow and is the curse of our inward life. We become sick and tired of its constant intrusion, its haunting criticism about others, its inevitable commentary on whatever we do or say. The apostle was very sensitive to the constant assertion of this self-life; and cried out, “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me.” It seemed as though, as in the awful Roman punishment, he was bound to the decaying body of a dead criminal. “Who shall deliver me from this body of death.” Obviously, therefore, it was necessary in the process of time for the divine Spirit to reveal a method of holiness, which should do for mankind what the philosophy of Greece, and even the lofty Mosaic system, as represented by John the Baptist, had failed to realize.
The Solution of the New Testament
(a) We must reckon ourselves dead to sin. We have already seen that the self-life is our greatest struggle. It is so sensitive, so hungry for prominence and praise, so eager! In speaking thus, we must, of course, distinguish between our natural endowments, which are sacred gifts, for which we may thank God, and our desire to exploit them to obtain admiration and praise from our associates. As we have seen, it is the ego-bias, which hurts all and spoils the music of our lives! We are tempted to be proud of our humility! When singing God’s praise, we are apt to be proud of our voice! The minister is tempted to feel pride over his sermon on “Humility!”
We must give this ubiquitous self no quarter; but the conflict, as Paul, explains in Romans 7, will be long and arduous. As the sun rises, its beams strike lower and yet lower down the pit. We find depths of self-ness, ever lower down, affecting the motives of our life. Often shall we repeat the apostle’s cry for deliverance; and there is deliverance in our daily dying to the self-life by our union with the Cross of Christ.
Our old man, that is, our self-life, has been nailed to the Savior’s Cross. Through our union with our Lord in His death, we, in the purpose of God, have died to sin even as He died to it. We were one with Him in His grave and we are one with Him in His resurrection. That is our position, objectively; but by faith we must make it subjectively real. We must consider that our old self was crucified with Christ and that in the Cross we have passed into the glorious liberty of His resurrection. The death that Jesus died was a death to sin once for all; and the life that He lives, He lives to God. So we must regard ourselves as dead to sin and self, but as living to God through union with our Saviour. The self-life may not be dead, but we are dead to it!
One summer afternoon, when I reached the great auditorium at Northfield, I found Mr. Moody and his brother on the platform, and between them a young apple-tree just dug up and brought from the neighboring orchard. There were about eight hundred or a thousand people in the audience. When I reached the platform, the following dialogue took place:
Mr. Moody to his brother: “What have you here?”
“An apple-tree.”
“Was it always an apple-tree?”
“Oh, no, it was a forest sapling, but we have inserted an apple-graft.”
Mr. Moody to me: “What does that make you think of?”
“You and I were forest-saplings, with no hope of bearing fruit, but the Jesus-nature has been grafted into us by the Holy Spirit.”
To his brother: “Does the forest-sapling give you trouble?”
“Why, yes, it is always sending out shoots under the graft, and they drain off the sap.”
“What do you do with them?”
“We pinch them off with finger and thumb, but they are always coming out, lower down the tree.”
Then he turned to me and asked if there was anything like it in the life of the Spirit; to which I replied: “It is a parable of our experience. The old self-life is always sending out its shoots, but we must be merciless to them. In our earlier stages we deal with the more superficial appeals of the self-life to our vanity and the like. But as we grow older we become aware of their presence always lower down!”
A further illustration may be given from the experience of Dr. Tauler of Strasburg, who did much to prepare the way for Luther and the Reformation. He was a great preacher, and the whole city hung upon his lips. He was greatly startled, therefore, when a humble Switzer, one of the Society of “the Friends of God,” named Nicholas of Basle, crossed the mountains, entered his church, and said; “You must die, Dr. Tauler! Before you can do your greatest work for God, the world, and this city, you must die to yourself, your gifts, your popularity, and even your own goodness, and when you have learned the full meaning of the Cross you will have new power with God and man.”
At first, he greatly resented this intrusion, but, ultimately left his pulpit for a time, and retired for meditation, prayer, and heart-searching. As the inner vision grew clearer, he came to realize how much of his ministry had been inspired by the inveterate wish to make an impression, not simply for Christ’s sake, but with the view of maintaining and increasing his own prestige. Finally, he left “life’s glory dead” at the foot of the Cross, and resolved to have one objective, and one only, Jesus Christ and Him crucified. From that moment his preaching began to help people as never before and prepared for Luther and the reformation.
This story might be indefinitely repeated. Some of us can never forget the hymn composed by the late Pastor Theodore Monod of Paris in his first radiant vision of a life hidden in Christ with God:
“All of Self and none of Thee!
Some of Self and some of Thee!
Less of Self and more of Thee!
None of Self and all of Thee!”
“Reckon yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God, through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
(b) We must receive more of the grace of the Holy Spirit. In Romans 7, the apostle complains of being tied and bound by the self-life. He is like a caged bird, which beats its breast against the bars of its cage, in vain aspirations for liberty. Then, suddenly, in Romans 8, he changes his note and cries: “There is now no more of this self-condemnation, for those who are in Christ Jesus, who walk and live after the Spirit, because the law of the Spirit of life, in Christ Jesus, has made them free from the law of sin and death.”
Let us stand together on the deck of an ocean-bound steamer and watch the flight of a sea-gull. There is, of course, the downward pull of gravitation; but, for every pull downward, there is a stroke of the live bird’s wing on the elastic air; and this more than compensates for the downward pull. That stroke, we know, is due to the spirit of life, which throbs in the bird’s breast. So, by the Holy Spirit, who indwells our spirit, there is given to each one of us the very life of our glorious Saviour. The regularity, immediacy, and quality of the Christ-life are more than sufficient to counteract the downward pull of sin. At the first slight suggestion of sin, the Holy Spirit resists the self-life, so that we may not do the things that we otherwise would; nor shall we fall into those sins of will and thought and act, which were once natural to us. “If we live by the Spirit, by the Spirit let us walk.” See Galatians 5:16-26. The Spirit will lust against the flesh and obtain absolute victory which will fill our hearts with joy. Indeed, temptation may even promote a stronger character by making Jesus a more living reality.
Some years ago, a number of Christian men of whom I am thankful to have been one, were spending an autumn evening around the fire in the study of the late Canon Wilberforce. We were discussing the problem of the inner life. After one or two had laid stress on fleeing temptation, an elderly clergyman stood up and said:
“I am naturally of a very irascible temper. When addressing the children of my Sunday-school recently, they were more than usually restless. I was on the point of losing my temper, but was led to look up, and I saw the Saviour standing there, so calm, and sweet, and strong that I felt led to say: ‘Lord, give me Thy patience for mine is giving out.’ At once, He seemed to drop into my heart a lump of His own patience, and I could have stood twice as many children, and twice as much inattention, without losing myself. From that moment, I have followed the same method. When tempted to pride, I have said, ‘Thy humility, Lord.’ In temptations to quick temper, I have said, ‘Thy patience, Lord.’ Thus, temptation has become to me a positive means of grace.”
There our conversation stopped. Nothing better could be said. When we met next morning, Wilberforce and I confessed that the old clergyman’s experience should henceforth be our own, and that we would take advantage of temptation for the fresh claiming of the life of our risen Lord! Thus, the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus would make us more than conquerors because each temptation would prompt us to obtain fresh supplies through the Holy Spirit.
(c) We must make more and more of the personal love between the Lord Jesus and ourselves. “We are married to Another, even to Him that was raised from the dead.” The cruel, old man is dead, and we are married to a new, splendid and loving bridegroom. As the apostle says, we are married to Another, even to Him that arose from the dead, the Lover and Saviour of men, and we cling closer to Him whenever the old, evil self-life appears.
When the wife of Tigranes came out of the pavilion of Alexander the Great, they asked her what she thought of the costly adorning and furniture of the interior, and she replied that she had no eyes except for the man – her husband – who had willingly offered to die if she might be spared. Oh, that we knew more of that kind of love! So that the least suggestion of self-ness, of self-aggrandizement, of self-pride or self-pity might be wiped out before our love for Jesus. May that love be shed abroad in our hearts, so that Jesus, Jesus only, and Jesus always, may be our supreme passion.
When Ulysses passed the Siren Sisters, whose enticing songs tempted mariners to the cruel rocks, he tied his sailors and rowers to their seats; but when Orpheus made the same voyage, he had no need of ropes and bands, because his music was sweeter than theirs.
I heard of a young girl, a student in the Edinburg University, who loudly declared her dislike of mathematics; but her whole attitude was reversed when she was loved by and loved the finest mathematician in the university.
So may the love of Christ bind us to Him and may love take up the harp of life and smite on all its cords with might, smite the cord of self, so that it may pass in trembling out of sight!
“The love of Christ constraineth us, that we should no longer live unto ourselves but unto Him that loved us and gave Himself for us.” That is the secret of a holy life!
It is good to reckon ourselves dead to sin!
It is good to draw constantly on the resources of our Saviour.
But it is best when we are lost in the overmastering love of Jesus.
It was said of Count Zinzendorf, the friend of the Moravians, that he had one passion, and one passion only – “the love of Christ!”