WE COME BACK to this relationship of self-surrender. The relationship of the Vine and the branches is not a relationship of equality—the branches are dependent on the Vine. “Every branch of mine” (John 15:2)—of Mine—they belong to Him! That phrase from the Revised Standard Version clarifies the phrase found in the King James Version: “Every branch in me”—being in Me means you are Mine. The relationship is primarily self-surrender to the Vine—to Jesus. Being in Him means you belong to Him. That saves you from the fallacies of self-realization and gets your eyes on Jesus Christ, which brings Christ-realization, which brings as a byproduct self-realization. You lose your life and you find it. It also saves you from striving after self-perfection. To strive after self-perfection makes you self-conscious.
I was talking to a young woman whose goal in life was self-perfection. She used everything and everybody for that end, and it crept into her conversation. Was the result perfection? The result was the opposite—she was a perfect nuisance to herself and everybody else. It disrupted her so that her engagement to a very noble young man had to be broken off. Had she surrendered herself to Christ and put the focus of her attention right—on Christ, fixing her eyes and attention and love on Him—she would have grown into His likeness, which would have been the goal. The goal is not my perfection, but my following with an all-out following the perfect Person. There “with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, [we] are being changed into his likeness from one degree of glory to another” (2 Cor. 3:18).
We are called to belong to Jesus Christ, and when we belong to Him we belong to His perfection, to His perfect everything. It is all ours—because we are all His.
O Jesus, my Lord, I am so grateful I belong to Thee and that everything Thou hast thereby belongs to me. It is so simple, so profound, so altogether sensible and right. I dance with joy over its simplicity, and then I’m at Thy feet over its profundity. I thank Thee. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: I am not after self-conscious perfection, but after Christ-conscious perfect obedience.
