His Unrecorded Years and Our Hidden Life
His Unrecorded Years and Our Hidden Life
The Unrecorded Years
His Physical Development
His Physical Development (Luke ii. 40)
His Personal Development
Our Unconscious Form
Our Subconscious Mind (Colossians iii. 3)
Our Conscious Self
The Unveiled Year (Luke ii. 40–52)
His Environment and Ours (Matthew ii. 13–14, 19–21)
His Intimates and Ours (Matthew xiii. 55–56; Mark iii. 21; Luke ii. 51 John vii. 5)
his Imaginations and Ours (Luke ii. 49; Colossians iii. 1–3)
His Unageing Youth
(John viii. 58; Matthew xviii. 3–5)
The new birth is illustrated by the supernatural advent of our Lord, not by the birth of a child into the world. Just as our Lord came into history from the outside, so He comes into our human nature from the outside. Our new birth is the birth of the Son of God into our old human nature, and our human nature has to be transfigured by the indwelling life of the Son of God. Mary, the mother of our Lord, is the type of our natural human life, which at critical moments so misunderstands the aims and objects of the Son of God. It was so in the historic life of our Lord, and it is true in our own personal experience. We make the blunder of imagining that when we are born from above, we cease to be ordinary human beings, whereas we become much more ordinary human beings than we were before. Our human nature goes on all the time. All through the unrecorded years of our Lord’s life His ordinary human life was being lived, nothing is recorded simply because there is nothing to record. After our birth from above there is a corresponding phase in our lives when the life of God goes on in the deep unconscious part of our lives and there is nothing to record.
The new birth is not the working of a natural law. The necessity for being born again is indicative of a huge tragedy. Sin has made the new birth necessary; it was not in the original design of God. New birth does not refer simply to a man’s eternal salvation, but to his being of value to God in this order of things.
The Unrecorded Years
“And the child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom: and the grace of God was upon Him ” (Luke ii. 40).
When a young life passes from early childhood into girlhood or boyhood, there is a new birth of the mind, and the boy or girl becomes interested in literature, in poetry, and usually in religion; but that is not spiritual new birth, and has nothing to do with the working of the Spirit of God; it has to do with the ordinary natural development of the life. At this stage great devotion to God and to Christian service may be manifested, and this is apt to be looked on as an evidence of the work of the Spirit of God, whereas it is the mere outcome of the natural life beginning to unfold itself in the process of development. These things always go together—physical development, an alteration in bodily organs, and mental, moral, and spiritual development. The boy or girl sees more purely and clearly than the man or woman. No man thinks so clearly at any time or is ever so thrilled as he is in his ‘teens.’ Generally speaking, thirty years of age is the age of maturity. Some reach maturity before thirty and some after, but round about thirty is the age at which all the bodily and personal powers are matured. Up to that age, or what is represented by that age, life is full of promise, of visions, of uncertainties and expectations; after that there is no more promise, no more vision, the life has to be lived now in accord with all the visions it has had. There is a stage in ordinary natural life when maturity is reached, and if it is not reached someone is to blame. That is in the physical domain. In the spiritual domain the passing of the years counts for nothing. When we are born from above and the Son of God is formed in us, it is not the passing of the years that matures His life in us, but our obedience.
The angel said to Mary, “The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the most High shall over-shadow thee: wherefore also the holy thing which is to be born shall be called the Son of God” (Luke i. 35, R.V. marg.). That is symbolical of what happens when the Holy Ghost overshadows us: our natural life is made the mother of the Son of God. What have we done with Him? Has He grown and developed? Has He been nourished and looked after, or has He been buried? When God comes does He find something dead in us instead of the real living Son of God? We have to nourish the life of the Son of God in us, and we do it by obedience, that is, by bringing our natural life into accordance with His life and transforming it into a spiritual life.
There is another element in this new life which is often overlooked, viz., that it is unconscious in its growth When Jesus said “Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow,” He was referring to the new life in us. If we make His words apply to the natural life only, we make Him appear foolish. If we are born of God and are obeying Him, the unconscious life is forming in us just where we are. God knows exactly the kind of garden to put His lilies in, and they grow and take form unconsciously. What is it that deforms natural beauty? Overmuch cultivation; and overmuch denominational teaching will deform beauty in the spiritual world. Our danger is to take the place of God in regard to the new life. Jesus said, ‘Disciple in My Name ’, My nature. The new life is in Him, and we have to remember that it grows like the lily. The right atmosphere for the new life to grow in is exactly where our natural life is placed. The things we cannot touch are not things for us to pout over, but things for us to accept as God’s providential order for us. As natural men, we are not inclined to like the things God makes. At certain stages of our life we much prefer the friends we make to our God-made relations, because we can be noble with our friends, we have no past history with them. We cannot be noble with our relations, because they knew us when we were mean, and now when we are with them we cannot put on the pretence, it won’t work.
The new life must go on and take form unconsciously. God is looking after it, He knows exactly the kind of nourishment as well as the kind of disintegration that is necessary. Be careful that you do not bury the new life, or put it into circumstances where it cannot grow. A lily can only grow in the surroundings that suit it, and in the same way God engineers the circumstances that are best fitted for the development of the life of His Son in us. It is the unconscious form that is continually alluded to in the New Testament. We must allow plenty of time for God to develop that life.
We hear it asked, ‘What is the good of all this study and reading of the Bible? We get no ‘change’ out of it.’ Most of us want something to show for what we do. We are not interested in God’s life in us, but only in our life in God. We are not after the development of the unconscious life of the Son of God in us, but after the ‘small change’ which enables us to say, ‘I did this and that.’ The life of the Son of God grows feebler in a life of that order.
Every mind has two storeys, the conscious and the unconscious. Most of what we hear passes out of our conscious mind into our unconscious mind and we think we have forgotten it, but we have not, we never forget anything; we cannot always recall it when we want to, but that is a different matter. We forget nothing; it is there, although not in the conscious mind, and when certain circumstances arise, suddenly the thing we thought we had forgotten is there to our amazement right enough. This is exactly what Jesus said the Holy Ghost would do, “He shall ... bring all things to your remembrance. whatsoever I have said unto you.” The Holy Spirit is forming the unconscious mind all the time, and as we ‘mop up’ His teaching—simply take it in, not try to estimate it as we would a mathematical study—we shall find God is putting in the right soil for His life to grow in. Our one concern is to keep in the right atmosphere. Where we are actually is the Almighty’s business, nor ours. “Consider the lilies.” Our Lord knows what to do with His own lilies; if we try to transplant them they will die. We are in such a desperate hurry, but it is in the unrecorded years, the times we are apt to think are of no account, that we are developing most for the value of the Son of God. There is a time coming when He will give an unveiled year, as He did in the life of His Son, and show what has been going on all the time.
The Unveiled Year
“And the child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom: and the grace of God was upon Him ... And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man” (Luke ii. 40–52).
In the Temple the Child Jesus was astonished that even His mother did not understand what He was doing. The one thing in us that makes us misunderstand Jesus Christ is our ‘Mary’ life, i.e., our natural life.
God will bring us to an unveiled year, when we will realise how we have grown without knowing it, things have altered amazingly. For example, we go through a great personal crisis in our life with God, and we conjure up all kinds of imaginary difficulties as to how things are going to fit in now with this person and with that; but when we come up to the circumstances there is no external crisis at all, only the revelation of the tremendous alteration that has gone on in us unconsciously. When a crisis does come, it reveals that a tremendous alteration has taken place in us, and if there is any astonishment, it is in the fact that those whom we had thought would have understood us do not. Crises always reveal character. A great snare about crises is that we want to live for them. If we have had one great crisis in which the revelation has come of how wonderfully God has altered us, we will want another crisis. It is a risky business to live in crises. Most of our life is lived in ordinary human affairs, not in crises. It is comparatively easy for human nature to live in a big strain for a few minutes, but that is not what human nature is called upon to do. Human nature is called upon to live a life of drudgery. The intense awful crisis of the war will be followed by years of drudgery for the lives that are left—shattered nerves, maimed men, and marred lives. We get our moments of light and insight when we see what God is after, and then we come to where there is no crisis, but just the ordinary life to be lived. By and by God will give an unveiled year and reveal the wonder of what He has been doing in us all the time.
His Environment and Ours. “And when they were departed, behold, the angel of the Lord appeareth to Joseph in a dream, saying, Arise, and take the young child and his mother, and flee into Egypt, and be thou there until I bring thee word: for Herod will seek the young child to destroy Him. When he arose, he took the young child and his mother by night, and departed into Egypt....” (Matthew ii. 13–14, 19–21). We each make our own environment; it is our personality that does it. Our Lord in His historic life came up against the providential order of tyranny, to which He submitted; He also met hatred and detestation and compromise; and He is born into the same kind of circumstances in our bodily lives. So beware of getting on the line of ‘Oh, well, if only I had better circumstances.’ The circumstances of our Lord were anything but ideal, they were full of difficulties. Perhaps ours are the same, and we have to watch that we remain true to the life of the Son of God in us, not true to our own aims and ends. There is always a danger of mistaking our own aim and end for the aim of the life of God in us. Take it regarding the great subject of the Call of God. The call of God is a call according to the nature of God; where we go in obedience to that call depends entirely on the providential circumstances which God engineers, and is not of any moment. The danger is to fit the call of God into the idea of our own discernment and say, ‘God called me there. ’ If we say so and stick to it, then it is good-bye to the development of the life of God in us. We have deliberately shifted the ground of His call to fit our own conception of what He wants.
The curse of much modern religion is that it makes us so desperately interested in ourselves, so overweeningly concerned about our own whiteness. Jesus Christ was absolutely interested in God, and the saint is to be a simple, unaffected, natural human being indwelt by the Spirit of God. If the saint is paying attention to the Source, Jesus Christ, out of him and unconsciously to him are flowing the rivers of living water wherever he goes. (John vii. 37–39.) Men are either getting better or worse because of us.
His Intimates and Ours. “Is not this the carpenter’s son? is not his mother called Mary? and his brethren, James, and Joses, and Simon, and Judas? And his sisters, are they not all with us? Whence then hath this man all these things?” (Matthew xiii. 55–56). (See also Mark iii. 21; Luke ii. 51; John vii. 5.) These were the intimates our Lord grew up with in His own historic life. We say, ‘Oh, but the Lord must have had a sweet and delightful home life.’ But we are wrong. He had an exceedingly difficult home life. Jesus Christ’s intimates were brothers and sisters who did not believe in Him, and He says that the disciple is not above his Master (Luke vi. 40). Jesus Christ was a Man among men, a Man living in unsullied communion with God. That is the kind of man He expects us to be through His regeneration of us. He went down to Nazareth, and “was subject unto them.” An amazing submission! The next time you feel inclined to grouse over uncongenial companions, remember that Jesus Christ had a devil in His company for three years.
Our Lord preached His first public sermon in the place where He was brought up, where He was most intimately known, and they smashed up His service and tried to kill Him. ‘Oh, but,‘ we say, ’I expected that when I was saved and sanctified, my father and mother and brothers and sisters would be made right, but instead they seem to be all wrong.’ If the mother of our Lord misunderstood Him, and His brethren did not believe in Him, the same things will happen to His life in us, and we must not think it strange concerning the misunderstandings of others. The life of the Son of God in us is brought into the same kind of circumstances that the historic life of Jesus Christ was brought into, and what was true of Him will be true also of His life in us.
It is not only our intimates who will misunderstand Him, but we ourselves. There is a good deal in our natural human nature that will not understand the life of the Son of God, that will say to Him, as His own mother did, ‘Now is Your time to work a miracle.’ The natural in us will always want the Son of God to work in our way. Jesus said, “Woman, what have I to do with thee? Mine hour is not yet come,” and Mary accepted the rebuke. Some of the things which belong to the life of the Son of God in us do not look sane or practical to the natural man, and when Christ is formed in us by His regenerating power, our natural life experiences what Mary experienced, “A sword shall pierce through thy own soul also,” a sword we should never have known if we were not born of God; a type of suffering we should have known nothing about if the Son of God had not been formed in us. A sword had to go through the heart of Mary because of the Son of God, and because of the Son of God in us, a sword must go through our natural life, not our sinful life.
His Imagination and Ours. “And He said unto them, How is it that ye sought Me? wist ye not that I must be about My Father’s business” (Luke ii. 49). (See also Colossians iii. 1–3.) Our Lord was absolutely taken up with His Father, that was the inner state of His mind. To Jesus the earth was His Father’s house, and His Father’s concerns possessed His imagination. The teaching in the Sermon on the Mount is on this line. Jesus says—‘Don’t make the ambition of your life in accordance with your old human nature, but be the children of the Highest—put your concentration on the things of God.’ Jesus Christ is not simply making fine characters or virtuous men; His end and aim is that we may be the children of our Father in heaven (Matthew v. 48).
Where is our imagination? In Colossians iii. we are told to set our affections on things above. That means concentration, and concentration is spiritual determination to fix the mind on the things of God. Don’t say, ‘What shall I eat? What shall I drink?’, but seek first the Kingdom of God. ‘Oh yes, I did get born again, but ...’ ‘Yes, God did do something for me, but ... ‘ You will soon ‘but’ the whole thing out and leave yourself as you were before. Jesus says, ’Be anxious for nothing, fix your mind on Me, be carefully careless about everything saving your relationship to Me.’ This will take time to do. When the unveiled year came it revealed where our Lord’s mind was, and He was amazed that His mother’s mind was not there too. “Wist ye not that I must be about My Father’s business?” It was the question of an amazed and wistful child who felt His mother should have understood. Neither have we any excuse for not understanding what Jesus Christ is after; when we are born again, we ought to know exactly why His life is born into us—for the glory of God.
His Unageing Youth
“Jesus said unto them, verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am ”(John viii. 58). (See also Matthew xviii. 3–5.)
Spiritually we never grow old; through the passing of the years we grow so many years young. The characteristic of the spiritual life is its unageing youth, exactly the opposite of the natural life. “I am ... the First and the Last.” The Ancient of Days represents the Eternal Childhood. God Almighty became the weakest thing in His own creation, a Baby. When He comes into us in new birth we can easily kill His life in us, or else we can see to it that His life is nourished according to the dictates of the Spirit of God so that we grow “unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.” The mature saint is just like a little child, absolutely simple and joyful and gay. Go on living the life that God would have you live and you will grow younger instead of older. There is a marvellous rejuvenescence when once you let God have His way. If you are feeling very old, then get born again and do more at it.