The Point of Spiritual Honour
The Point of Spiritual Honour
I am debtor both to Greeks and to Barbarians. Romans 1:14 (rv)
Do I feel this sense of indebtedness to Christ that Paul felt with regard to every unsaved soul I meet, every unsaved nation? Is it a point of spiritual honour with me that I do not hoard blessings for myself? The point of spiritual honour in my life as a saint is the realisation that I am a debtor to every man on the face of the earth because of the Redemption of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Paul realised that he owed everything to Jesus Christ, and it was in accordance with his sense of spiritual honour that he spent himself to the last ebb to express his indebtedness to Jesus Christ. When a man is indwelt by the Holy Spirit, he never talks in cold logic, he talks in passionate inspiration; and the inspiration behind all Paul’s utterances is the fact that he viewed Christ as his Creditor. “For I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren. . . .” The great characteristic of Paul’s life was that he realised he was not his own; he had been bought with a price, and he never forgot it. His whole life was based on that one thing. Paul sold himself to Christ—“the bondslave of Jesus.” For “I determined not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.”
We are apt to have the idea that a man called to the ministry is called to be a different kind of being from other men. According to Jesus Christ, he is called to be the “doormat” of other men; he is their spiritual leader, but never their superior. “Ourselves your servants for Jesus’ sake.” No matter how men treat me, Paul argues, they will never treat me with the hatred and spite with which I treated Jesus Christ; and as long as there is a human being who does not know Jesus Christ, I am his debtor to serve him until he does. When the realisation comes home that Jesus Christ has served me to the end of all my meanness, my selfishness and sin, then nothing I meet with from others can exhaust my determination to serve men for His sake. I am not to come among men as a superior person, I am to come among men as the love-slave of Jesus Christ, realising that if I am worth anything at all, it is through the Redemption. That is the meaning of being made broken bread and poured-out wine in reality.
I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some.
Paul attracted to Jesus all the time, never to himself. He became a sacramental personality, that is, wherever he went Jesus Christ helped Himself to his life (cf. 2 Corinthians 2:14). Many of us are subtly serving our own ends, and Jesus Christ cannot help Himself to our lives; if I am abandoned to Jesus, I have no ends of my own to serve. Paul said, “I know how to be abased” (rv)—I know how to be a “doormat” without resenting it, because the mainspring of his life was devotion to Jesus.
Thank God, when He has saved us, He does give us something to do, some way of expressing our gratitude to Him. He gives us a great noble sense of spiritual honour, the realisation that we are debtors to every man because of the Redemption of Jesus Christ. The sense of our debt to Jesus is so overwhelming that we are passionately concerned for that brother, that friend, those unsaved nations; in relation to them we are the bondslaves of Jesus.
Am I doing anything to enable Jesus Christ to bring His Redemption into actual manifestation in other lives? I can do it only if the Holy Spirit has wrought in me this sense of spiritual honour. When I realise what Jesus Christ has done for me, then I am a debtor to every human being until they know Him too, not for their sake, not because they will otherwise be lost, but because of Jesus Christ’s Redemption. Am I willing to sell myself to Jesus, to become simply His bondslave, in order that He may see of the travail of His soul and be satisfied?
The great motive and inspiration of service is not that God has saved and sanctified me, or healed me; all that is a fact, but the great motive of service is the realisation that every bit of my life that is of value I owe to the Redemption; therefore I am a bondslave of Jesus. I realise with joy that I cannot live my own life; I am a debtor to Christ, and as such I can only realise the fulfilment of His purposes in my life. To realise this sense of spiritual honour means I am spoilt for this age, for this life, spoilt from every standpoint but this one, that I can disciple men and women to the Lord Jesus. Paul was a lonely debtor in a world of repudiators. Does your brother repudiate the Redemption of Jesus? Does the net result of your life work appeal to him only on one line, the line of Redemption? Does he take no account of you on any other line? Never let anything deter you from spending for other souls every ounce of spiritual energy God gives you. There will be an actual manifestation of the Redemption in lives presently. Whatever you spend of yourself in the fulfilling of your sense of spiritual honour will come back to you in absolute re-creation, physical and moral and spiritual.
If any man see his brother sin a sin which is not unto death, he shall ask, and he shall give him life for them that sin not unto death. (1 John 5:16)
Quit praying about yourself, and be spent in vicarious intercession as the bondslave of Jesus. How many souls have we failed to bring through to God because of our crass unbelief in prayer? Jesus Christ places the emphasis on intercessory prayer—“He that believeth on Me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto the Father. And whatsoever ye shall ask in My name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If ye shall ask Me anything in My name, that will I do” (rv). That is reality; that is actuality! The actuality will take place—the almighty interaction of God on other lives in answer to prayer based on Redemption, not to prayer based on human sympathy or human plaintiveness. When we pray on the fundamental basis of the Redemption, our prayers are made efficacious by the personal presence of the Holy Ghost Who makes real in us what Jesus did for us. How God works in answer to prayer is a mystery that logic cannot penetrate, but that He does work in answer to prayer is gloriously true. We all have faith in God, but is our faith pre-eminent when it comes into contact with actualities? Our part in intercessory prayer is not to enter into the agony of intercession, but to utilise the common-sense circumstances God has placed us in, and the common-sense people He has put us amongst by His providence, to bring them before God’s throne and give the Holy Spirit a chance to intercede for them. That is how God is going to sweep the whole world with His saints.
Am I banking in unshaken faith on the Redemption of Jesus Christ? Is it my conviction among men that every man can be presented “perfect in Christ Jesus”? Or do I allow men’s sins and wrongs so to obliterate the power of the Redemption that I sink under them? Jesus said—he that believeth on Me, out of him “shall flow rivers of living water,” i.e., by active belief in Jesus based on the Redemption, and by prayer and service based on that same Redemption.