Not a Bit of It!
Not a Bit of It!
Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. 2 Corinthians 5:17
Christian experience must be applied to the facts of life as they are, not to our fancies. We can live beautifully inside our own particular religious compartment as long as God does not disturb us; but God has a most uncomfortable way of stirring up our nests and of bringing in facts that have to be faced. It is actualities that produce the difficulty—the actual people we come in contact with, the actual circumstances of our lives, the actual things we discover in ourselves; and until we have been through the trial of faith in connection with actualities and have transfigured the actual into the real, we have no Christian experience. Experience is what is lived through.
1. The Experience of Useless Solemnity
Why do we and the Pharisees fast oft, but Thy disciples fast not? (Matthew 9:14)
When the disciples of Jesus were criticised for not fasting and being solemn, Jesus did not apologise for them, all He said was—“They are not in the mood to be gloomy.” “Can the children of the bridechamber mourn, as long as the bridegroom is with them?” Our Lord was never careful not to offend the Pharisees, nor careful to warn His disciples not to offend them; but Our Lord never put a stumbling-block in the way of anyone. The one thing about Our Lord that the Pharisees found it hard to understand was His gaiety in connection with the things over which they were appallingly solemn. And what puzzled the religious people of Paul’s day was his uncrushable gaiety; he treated buoyantly everything that they treated most seriously. Paul was in earnest over one thing only, and that was his relationship to Jesus Christ. There he was in earnest, and there they were totally indifferent.
Reverence and solemnity are not the same. Solemnity is often nothing more than a religious dress on a worldly spirit. Solemnity which does not spring from reverence towards God is of no use whatever. The religious solemnity of the Pharisees was grossly offended at the social life of Our Lord (see Matthew 11:19). Our Lord paid the scantiest attention to all their solemnity; but one thing Our Lord was never lacking in, and that was reverence. The religion of Jesus Christ is the religion of a little child. There is no affectation about a disciple of Jesus, he is as a little child, amazingly simple but unfathomably deep. Many of us are not childlike enough, we are childish. Jesus said—“Except ye . . . become as little children . . . .”
It is part of moral and spiritual education to watch how God deals with prejudices. We imagine that God has a special interest in our prejudices, and we magnify our conceptions and prejudices and put them on the throne. We are quite sure that God will never deal with our prejudices as we know He must deal with other people’s. “God must deal very sternly with other people, but of course He knows that my prejudices are all right, they are from Him.” We have to learn—not a bit of it! Instead of God being on the side of our prejudices, He deliberately wipes them out by ignoring them. God mortifies our prejudices, runs clean athwart them by His providence. God has no respect for anything we bring Him, He is after one thing only, and that is our unconditional surrender to Him.
2. The Experience of Useless Garments
No man putteth a piece of new cloth unto an old garment, for that which is put in to fill it up taketh from the garment, and the rent is made worse. (Matthew 9:16)
The way the Holy Spirit corrupts our natural virtue when He comes in is one of the most devastating experiences. He does not build up and transfigure what we possess in the way of virtue and goodness by natural heredity; it is corrupted to death, until we learn that we
. . . dare not trust the sweetest frame,
But wholly lean on Jesus, name.
It is a deep instruction to watch how natural virtues break down. The Holy Spirit does not patch up our natural virtues, for the simple reason that no natural virtue can come anywhere near Jesus Christ’s demands. God does not build up our natural virtues and transfigure them, He totally recreates us on the inside. “And every virtue we possess is His alone.” As we bring every bit of our nature into harmony with the new life which God puts in, what will be exhibited in us will be the virtues that were characteristic of the Lord Jesus, not our natural virtues. The supernatural is made natural. The life that God plants in us develops its own virtues, not the virtues of Adam but of Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ can never be described in terms of the natural virtues.
Beware of the hesitation of the natural against being turned into the spiritual—“I do not mind being a saint if I can remain natural and be a saint entirely on my own initiative; if I can instruct God in regard to my temperament, my affinities, and my upbringing.” If we have a religious strut about us, some prejudice, some particular refinement, some possession of natural heredity, it is like putting a piece of new cloth into an old garment. All has to go. “If any man be in Christ . . . , old things are passed away.” The Holy Spirit begins to work in us the manifestation of the new creation (rv mg) until there comes a time when there is not a bit of the old order left. The old solemnity goes, the old attitude to things goes, the old confidence in natural virtues goes, and a totally new life begins to manifest itself, “and all things are of God.” It is time some of us had a new set of clothes! The outstanding characteristic of Our Lord and His disciples is moral originality.
3. The Experience of Useless Bottles
Neither do men put new wine into old bottles: else the bottles break, and the wine runneth out, and the bottles perish: but they put new wine into new bottles, and both are preserved. (Matthew 9:17)
The old systems of religion were distinctly ordained of God. All the ordinances to which the Pharisees held had been given by God, but the Pharisees had become second editions of the Almighty, they had usurped the place of God. There is always a danger of Phariseeism cropping up. In our own day its form is evangelical, man becomes a little god over his own crowd doctrinally.
The idea the Pharisees had of the Kingdom of God was that it belonged to certain favourites of God and its laws were to be worked out by the select few. According to Jesus, the Kingdom of God is love. “How sweet and simple,” you say! But where are we going to begin? How are we going to have the love that has no lust in it, no self-interest, no sensitiveness to “pokes,” the love that is not provoked, that thinketh no evil, is always kind? The only way is by having the love of God shed abroad in our hearts until there is not a bit of the old order left.
The love of God in us will produce an amazing sweetness in disposition towards Jesus Christ; but if we try to put that sweetness into the “bottle” we give to some earthly friend, the bottle will break and the wine will be lost. We have to be careless of the expression and heed only the Source. We say—“No, I must pay attention to the outflow, I am going to try and be a blessing there.” We have to pay attention to the Source, Jesus Christ, see that we love Him personally, passionately and devotedly, and He will look after the outflow. Then it is not new wine in old wineskins, it is new wine creating its own wineskin. Is the love that is being exhibited by us the love of God or the love of our own natural hearts? God does not give us power to love as He loves; the love of God, the very nature of God, possesses us, and He loves through us.
How many amateur providences there are! “I must do this and that, and this one must not do this and that,” and God retires and lets us go our own way. When we say—“But it is common sense to do this and that,” we make our common sense almighty God, and God has to retire right out, then after a while He comes back and asks us if we are satisfied. There must not be a bit of that order left. God totally re-creates us on the inside until “all things are of God.” May God enable us to stop trying to help Him, and may we let Him do what He likes with us.