The Habit of Wealth
The Habit of Wealth
You will thus be richly furnished with the right of entry into the eternal realm of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. 2 Peter 1:11 (Moffatt)
Through the promises we are made partakers of the Divine nature (v. 4); then we have to “manipulate” the Divine nature in our human nature by habits. Jesus prayed “that they may be one, even as We are one,” and Paul urges, on the most practical lines, that we form in our actual lives the habits that are in perfect accordance with oneness with God. Our bodies are the temples of the Holy Ghost†† in which Jesus Christ is to manifest His life; and He can only do it as we put on the new man† and see to it that our external conduct springs from a right relationship to Him. Verses 3-4 describe the super-natural works of grace; then we have to form the habit of working out all that God has worked in. “Add to your faith virtue. . . .” “Add” means there is something we must do.
1. The Habit of Realising the Provision
For so an entrance shall be ministered unto you . . .
The entrance is “by a new and living way,” viz., our Lord Jesus Christ, and the outgoing is to God Himself —“filled with all the fulness of God.” We get impoverished spiritually because we will stop at the barrier of consciousness. We will believe only in what we consciously possess; consequently we never realise the provision. If the grace and majesty and life and power and energy of God are not being manifested in us to the glory of God (not to our consciousness), God holds us responsible; we are wrong somewhere. There is always a danger of placing experience and consciousness in the wrong place. If we want something conscious from God, it means there is a reserve; the will has not been surrendered; immediately we do surrender, the tidal wave of the love of God carries us straight into all the fulness of God. “O fools, and slow of heart to believe”! We will believe only in what we have experienced. We never can experience Jesus Christ, that is, we can never hold Him within the compass of our own hearts. Jesus Christ must always be greater than our experience of Him, but our experience will be along the line of the faith we have in Him.
“If these things be in you, and abound.” Have we formed the habit of wealth spiritually, or are we gambling with what is not ours, hoodwinking ourselves with delusions? “These things”—self-control, patience, love—are not in us if we are not born from above (rv mg). Are we trying to persuade ourselves that we are right with God when we know we are not? Earthly inheritances are particular possessions of our own, and in taking them we may impoverish others; but the marvellous thing about spiritual wealth is that when we take our part in that, everyone else is blessed; whereas if we refuse to be partakers, we hinder others from entering into the riches of God.
“Unto me . . . is this grace given, that I should preach . . . the unsearchable riches of Christ.” In the natural world it is ungovernably bad taste to talk about money; one of the worst of lies is tucked up in the phrase we so often hear—“I can’t afford it.” The same idea has crept into the spiritual domain; and we have the idea that it is a sign of modesty to say at the close of the day—“Well, I have got through, but it has been a severe tussle!” And all the grace of God is ours without let or hindrance through the Lord Jesus, and He is ready to tax the last grain of sand and the remotest star to bless us. What does it matter if circumstances are hard? Why shouldn’t they be! We are the ones who ought to be able to stand them.
It is a crime to allow external physical misery to make us sulky with God. There are desolating experiences, such as the Psalmist describes in Psalms 42-43, and he says, “Then will I go . . unto God my exceeding joy”—not “with joy,” but unto God Who is my joy. No calamity can touch that wealth. No sin is worse than self-pity because it puts self-interest on the throne; it “makes the bastard self seem in the right”; it obliterates God and opens the mouth to spit out murmurings against God; and the life becomes impoverished and mean, there is nothing lovely or generous about it. Always beware of the conscious superiority that arises out of suffering—“I am so peculiarly constituted.” If we indulge in the luxury of misery, we become isolated in the conception of our own sufferings; God’s riches are banished and self-pity, the deeply entrenched essence of Satanhood, is enthroned in the soul.
2. Rejoicing in the Privilege
abundantly into the everlasting kingdom . . .
Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world: if My kingdom were of this world, then would My servants fight,” i.e. they would do the same thing that every rational being does, but “My kingdom is not of this world”; it belongs to eternal realities. The idea of a kingdom that is not maintained by might is inconceivable to us, and the “otherworldly” aspect of Jesus Christ’s Kingdom is apt to be forgotten. Jesus Christ’s kingdom is not built on principles that can be discerned naturally, but on “otherworldliness,” and we must never adapt principles that He did not adapt. If we have come to a dead stop spiritually, is it not because we have ceased to be “otherworldly”? Are we prepared to obey the scrutiny of the Holy Ghost when He brings the “otherworldly” standpoint of Jesus to bear upon our practical life? If we are, we shall be considered fools from every standpoint but the standpoint of the Holy Ghost. We are to be in the world but not of it. Are we letting God’s light break on us as it did on Jesus? Are we showing in the prevailing bent of our lives the characteristics that were in Him? “The kingdom of God is within you.” Jesus Christ is the King and the Kingdom. “This is life eternal, that they might know Thee.” Eternal life is God and God is eternal life; and the meaning of the At-one-ment is that Jesus produces that life in us. By sanctification we enter into the kingdom of perfect oneness with Jesus Christ; everything He is, we are by faith. He is “made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption,” we have nothing apart from Him. Have we formed the habit of rejoicing in this privilege?
3. Recognising Him Personally
. . . of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ is Saviour and Lord in experience, and Lord and Saviour in discernment. “Ye call Me, Master, and, Lord: and ye say well; for so I am” (rv)—but is He? The witness of the Holy Spirit is that we realise with growing amazement Who Jesus is to us personally, our Lord and Master. The baptism of the Holy Ghost makes us witnesses to Jesus, not wonder-workers. The witness is not to what Jesus does, but to what He is. “Ye shall be witnesses unto Me.” We have had such an abundant entrance ministered unto us into His Kingdom, i.e. into oneness with Himself, that we are a delight to Him and His heart is being satisfied with us. When God is beginning to be satisfied with us, He impoverishes every source of fictitious wealth. After sanctification God will wither up every other spring until we know that all our fresh springs are in Him (pbv). He will wither up natural virtues; He will break up all confidence in our own powers, until we learn by practical experience that we have no right to draw our life from any other source than the tremendous reservoir of the unsearchable riches of Jesus Christ. Thank God if you are going through a drying-up experience! And beware of pumping up the dregs with the mud at the bottom of the well when all the Almighty power and grace of God is at your disposal. We have superabounding supplies, the unsearchable riches of Jesus Christ; and yet some of us talk as if our Heavenly Father had cut us off with a shilling!
What have we to spend this Christmas-time? We ought to be going about like multimillionaires. Externally we may have 2£d. only, but spiritually we have all the grace of God to spend on others.
“He that believeth on Me,” out of him “shall flow rivers of living water.” If you turn away from the Source and look at the outflow, at what God is doing through you, the Source will dry up and you will sit down on the outskirts of the entrance and howl—“It is dreadfully hard to live the Christian life!” Turn round and enter into the kingdom, pay attention to the Source, our Lord Himself, and you will experience the hilarity of knowing that you see God. Never be surprised at what God does, but be so taken up with Him that He may continue to do surprising things through you.
Are you sulking before God? Are the corners of your mouth, morally and spiritually, getting down and are you feeling sorry for yourself? You have turned your back upon God and are marching away from Him. Get straight to God, be abundantly stamped with His grace and His blessing will come through all the time; and when you get to heaven you will find that God has bound up the broken-hearted through you, has set at liberty the captives† through you—but not if you have a murmur in your heart—“God is very hard.” There is no self-pity left in the heart that has been bound up and succoured by the Lord Jesus Christ.