CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 2
God’s Side and Man’s Side
There are two very decided and distinct sides to this subject, and like all other subjects, it cannot be fully understood unless both of these sides are kept constantly in view. I refer of course to God’s side and man’s side; or in other words, to God’s part in the work of sanctification and man’s part. These are very distinct and even contrasting, but they are not really contradictory, although to a casual observer they may appear so.
Suppose two friends go to see some celebrated building and return home to describe it. One has seen only the north side and the other only the south.
The first says, “The building was built in such a manner, and has such and such stories and ornaments.”
“Oh no,” says the other, interrupting him, “you are altogether mistaken. I saw the building, and it was built in quite a different manner, and its ornaments and stories were so-and-so.”
A lively dispute might follow upon the truth of the respective descriptions until the two friends should discover that they had been describing different sides of the building, and then all would be reconciled at once.
I believe there are two distinct sides in this matter. But only looking at one without seeing the other is certain to create wrong impressions and views of the truth. In brief, man’s part is to trust, and God’s part is to work. There is certain work to accomplish. We are delivered from the power of sin and are made perfect in every good work to do the will of God. This real labor is worked in us and upon us. Besetting sins are conquered, evil habits are overcome, wrong dispositions and feelings are rooted out, and holy tempers and emotions are birthed. A positive transformation takes place. So at least the Bible teaches.
Most of us tried to do it for ourselves at first, and have grievously failed. Then we discover that we are unable to do it. But the Lord Jesus Christ has come on purpose to do it, and He will do it for all who put themselves wholly into His hands and trust Him without reserve.
Plainly the believer can do nothing but trust, while the Lord, in whom he trusts, actually does the work entrusted to Him. Trusting and doing are certainly contrasted things, often indeed contradictory, but are they contradictory in this case? Obviously not, because it is two different parties that are concerned. The preacher, who is speaking on man’s part in the matter, cannot speak of anything but surrender and trust, because this is positively all the man can do. Such preachers are constantly criticized as though, in saying this, they had meant to imply there was no other part. The cry goes out that this doctrine of faith does away with all realities, that souls are just told to trust, and that they sit down from now on in a sort of religious easy chair, dreaming away a life, fruitless of any actual result. This misapprehension arises, of course, from the fact that either the preacher has neglected to state, or the hearer has failed to hear, the other side of the matter, which is, that when we trust, the Lord works, and that a great deal is done, not by us, but by Him. Actual results are reached by our trusting, because our Lord undertakes the thing entrusted to Him and accomplishes it. We do not do anything, but He does it. And it is all the more effectually done because of this. As soon as this is clearly seen, the difficulty as to the preaching of faith disappears entirely.
On the other hand, the preacher who dwells on God’s part in the matter is criticized on a totally different ground. He does not speak of trust, for the Lord’s part is not to trust but to work. The Lord’s part is to do the thing entrusted to Him. He brings to bear upon us all the refining and purifying resources of His wisdom and His love, causing us to grow in grace and conforming us, day by day and hour by hour, to the image of Christ. Sanctification is both a step of faith and a process of works. It is a step of surrender and trust on our part, and it is a process of development on God’s part. By a step of faith, we put ourselves into the hands of the divine Potter. By a gradual process, He makes us into a vessel unto His own honor. Suppose I were to describe to a person, who was entirely ignorant of the subject, the way in which a lump of clay is made into a beautiful vessel. I tell him first the part of the clay in the matter. All I can say about this is that the clay is put into the potter’s hands and then lies passive there, submitting itself to all the turnings and overturnings of the potter’s hands upon it. The potter takes the clay thus abandoned to his working and begins to mold and fashion it according to his own will. He kneads and works it; he tears it apart and presses it together again; he wets it and then suffers it to dry. Sometimes he works at it for hours together; sometimes he lays it aside for days and does not touch it. And then, when by all these processes he has made it perfectly pliable in his hands, he proceeds to make it up into the vessel he has proposed. He turns it upon the wheel, planes it, and smoothes it, and dries it in the sun, bakes it in the oven, and finally turns it out of his workshop, a vessel to his honor and fit for his use.
This is the clay’s part in the matter. I now speak of the potter’s part. These two are necessarily contrasted, but not in the least contradictory. The clay is not expected to do the potter’s work, but only to yield itself up to his working.
Nothing, it seems to me, could be clearer than the perfect harmony between these two apparently contradictory sorts of teaching.
What can be said about man’s part in this great work but that he must continually surrender himself and continually trust? When we come to God’s side of the question, what is there that may not be said as to the many and wonderful ways in which He accomplishes the work entrusted to Him? It is here that the growing comes in. The lump of clay could never grow into a beautiful vessel if it stayed in the clay pit for thousands of years. But when it is put into the hands of a skillful potter, it grows rapidly, under his fashioning, into the vessel he intends it to be. And in the same way the soul abandoned to the working of the heavenly Potter is made into a vessel unto honor, sanctified, and meet for the Master’s use.
Having, then, taken the step of faith by which you have put yourself wholly and absolutely into His hands, expect Him to begin to work. His way of accomplishing that which you have entrusted to Him may be different from your way, but He knows, and you must be satisfied.
I knew a lady who had entered into this life of faith with a great outpouring of the Spirit and a wonderful flood of light and joy. She supposed, of course, this was a preparation for some great service and expected to be put forth immediately into the Lord’s harvest field. Instead of this, almost at once her own husband lost all his money, and she was shut up in her own house to attend to all sorts of domestic duties with no time or strength left for any gospel work at all. She accepted the discipline and yielded herself up as heartily to sweep and dust and bake and sew, as she would have done to teach, or pray, or write for the Lord. And the result was that, through this very training, He made her into a vessel “meet for the Master’s use, and prepared unto every good work.”
Another lady, who had entered this life of faith under similar circumstances of wondrous blessing and who also expected to be sent out to do some great work, was shut up with two peevish invalid children to nurse and humor and amuse all day long. Unlike the first one, this lady did not accept the training, but chafed and fretted, and finally rebelled, lost all her blessing, and went back into a state of sad coldness and misery. She had understood her part of trusting to begin with, but, not understanding the divine process of accomplishing that for which she had trusted, she took herself out of the hands of the heavenly Potter, and the vessel was marred on the wheel.
The maturity of a Christian experience cannot be reached in a moment but is the result of the work of God’s Holy Spirit, who, by His energizing and transforming power, causes us to grow up into Christ in all things. And we cannot hope to reach this maturity in any other way than by yielding ourselves up, utterly and willingly, to His mighty working.
All that we claim, then, in this life of sanctification is that by an act of faith we put ourselves into the hands of the Lord, for Him to work in us all the good pleasure of His will, and then, by a continuous exercise of faith, keep ourselves there. When we do it, and while we do it, we are, in the scripture sense, truly pleasing God, although it may require years of training and discipline to mature us into a vessel that shall be in all respects to His honor and fitted to every good work.
Our part is the trusting; it is His to accomplish the results. And when we do our part, He never fails to do His, for no one ever trusted in the Lord and was destroyed. Do not be afraid, then, that if you trust or tell others to trust, the matter will end there. Trust is the beginning and the continuing foundation.
And this explains that apparent paradox that puzzles so many. They say, “In one breath you tell us to do nothing but trust, and in the next you tell us to do impossible things.”
They are to reconciled, just as we reconcile the statements concerning a saw in a carpenter’s shop, when we say, at one moment, that the saw has sawn asunder a log, and the next moment declare that the carpenter has done it. The saw is the instrument used; the power that uses it is the carpenter’s.
In the divine order, God’s working depends upon our cooperation. Of our Lord it was declared that at a certain place He could do there no mighty work because of their unbelief. It was not that He would not, but He could not. Just as the potter, however skillful, cannot make a beautiful vessel out of a lump of clay that is never put into his hands, so neither can God make out of me a vessel unto His honor unless I put myself into His hands. In this book, I shall of course dwell mostly upon man’s side, as I am writing for human beings, in the hope of making it plain how we are to fulfill our part of this great work. But I wish it to be distinctly understood all through, that unless I believed with all my heart in God’s effectual working on His side, not one word of this book would ever have been written.