WE SAW YESTERDAY that while Christ and we share a common life, there is a difference—He sustains us, we do not sustain Him, except as He chooses to limit Himself to our cooperation. This is a chosen limitation.
Our limitation is inherent: “apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). So there is no divinity in and of ourselves. That is where the divinity cults have gone overboard—they have turned a voluntary relationship in which we share the divine life, into an inherent divinity of our own. “You have all the answers within yourself” is the slogan. It is only a slogan, however, and gives you an initial lift as a reaction to the worm-of-the-dust attitude. But it centers you on you as the source, and anything that leaves you centered on yourself is off-center. There is nothing more pathetic than self-conscious mortals trying to convince themselves and others that they are divine. It produces the attitude of a spiritual self-strut instead of a spiritual self-surrender. It cuts across the deepest law of the universe: “Whoever would save his life will lose it; and whoever loses his life . . . will save it” (Matt. 16:25). All the cults that talk about self-realization, self-cultivation, self-development, all the answers in the self, cut across that law and are doomed to ultimate sterility and death. “I was on wings when I first heard this emphasis on our divinity,” said a well-equipped woman, “but I soon became flatter than a pancake, for it centered me on me, and knowing me, I knew I was not divine and those who asserted most strenuously their divinity, revealed most clearly their earthiness.”
Your significance is found in your relationship to Him and not to yourself—“apart from me you can do nothing”—and you are nothing—nothing except a bundle of problems. Every self-centered person—religious or otherwise—is a declining, decaying person.
O Jesus, Lord and Master, Thy word: “Apart from me you can do nothing” sounds the death knell of all our ego-strivings and dooms it all to sterility. I thank Thee for this word. It is purifying and redeeming. It puts Thee in Thy place and me in mine. I’m grateful. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: I shall depend not on slogan shots in the arm, but I shall depend on Thy dependable day-by-day resources.
