In these
talks, we are seeking to be pre-eminently practical. That
is, we are not occupied with the presentation of
Christian doctrine in itself. Christian doctrine will be
here, but we are not interested in presenting the
doctrines of Christianity in the abstract, important as
they are. What we are concerned with is that everything
shall be practical and experimental, and capable of being
immediately put to the test.
There
is, of course, a difference between the facts and truths
of the Christian life, and the explanation of them. That
is, it is possible for all the facts to be present in the
life without the person concerned being able to explain
those facts. It is a part of our present business to try
to explain the facts, and to challenge as to the facts.
Now, any explanation of the Christian life should be
corroborated by the experience. That is, it ought to be
possible for you to say, 'Well, I could not have
explained it like that, but I know exactly in my
experience what you mean - that does just express my own
life.' So that the explanation must be borne out by the
experience: the experience must corroborate the
explanation.
Let us,
then, consider what happens when we become Christians. We
shall spend some of our time in seeking to get behind
this matter of becoming a Christian, to get to certain
other facts - facts stated or revealed in the Bible, and
true to human experience.
MAN'S RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD
DISLOCATED
When we
come to consider man as we know him, man by nature, the
first thing we find is that his relationship with God is
completely dislocated. We say 'dislocated', because we
believe what the Bible teaches: that things were all
right once, and they have gone wrong. If for the time
being you prefer to waive the word 'dislocated' and
substitute 'severed', you may do so. We shall probably at
least agree that things are not in order between man and
God. The relationship between man and God is in a
broken-down condition. That is the fundamental fact. The
relationship is disjointed; it is in a state of strain.
There is distance between man and God. The relationship,
or perhaps we should say 'non-relationship', is a very
unhappy thing: it is altogether unproductive; there is
nothing coming from it. It is barren and desolate, quite
unfruitful. With many God does not seem to matter, and is
quite ignored.
But that
is more or less neutral or negative. In most cases the
situation is much worse than that - it is positively
antagonistic. Man is in a state of antagonism to God in
his nature, and often in his mind, in his attitude, and
in his reference to God; there is a state of conflict,
there is suspicion in man's mind as to God. A great deal
of resentment exists in many human hearts. And we can go
further - for the Bible goes this far - and say that in
some cases, perhaps in not a few, there is even hatred in
the human heart for God. We meet that sometimes. So that
is the first fact - the relationship between man and God
is chaotic, broken-down, dislocated or disrupted.
SPIRITUAL FACULTIES WHICH ARE NOT
FUNCTIONING
That is
not all. We need to get inside of that and go further.
Man has a set of senses belonging to his spiritual being
which are not functioning - a set of senses which
correspond to his physical senses. The physical senses,
as we know, are: seeing, hearing, feeling, tasting,
smelling. But man has another set of five senses which
are not physical, but which belong to his inner man. They
are the counterpart of those five physical senses, and in
man by nature these other senses are not functioning. The
Bible speaks of all these senses in a spiritual way in
relation to God.
The
Bible speaks of a SEEING of God, which is not
physical at all; it is not with the natural eye. There is
that little fragment known to most: "The pure in
heart... shall see God" (Matt. 5:8). That is
certainly not a physical matter.
Again, HEARING.
There is a spiritual hearing of God which is not
audition through the natural or physical ear. It is
something in the heart. It is not the hearing of an
audible voice, but it corresponds to that in a spiritual
way. People are able to say they have heard the Lord
speak to them, but they never heard anything with their
natural ear.
TASTING?
Yes, the Bible says: "Taste and see that
the Lord is good" (Ps. 34:8), and no one thinks that
that is a physical matter.
SMELLING?
- that seems to be difficult, perhaps. But we know what
we mean, without any physical factor coming in, when we
say that we are 'scenting' something. We go into a room,
and somehow we detect that there is 'something in the
air'. People have been talking, and when we go in we see
embarrassment on their faces, and they suddenly become
quiet and look at one another, and we 'scent' something.
In an analogous way, we know that it is possible to sense
the presence of God. There are thus a whole set of
spiritual faculties which, when they are in proper order
and function, serve to relate us to God; and in the
natural man, the unregenerate man, those senses are not
functioning at all. There is no seeing God, in that way;
there is no hearing God speak to him; there is no sensing
or feeling God - it is a tremendous thing to feel God,
not with your hands, but in an inward way. There is no
'tasting that the Lord is good' in the natural man. All
these things are out of order - and yet the Bible speaks
of them a very great deal. The Bible teaches, and man's
condition corroborates, that, where God is concerned, man
is blind, man is deaf; man is numbed, has no feelings, is
insensitive to God. Is that not so? That is a true
description of anyone - it may be you who are reading
these lines - who has not had a definite Christian
experience. You do not see God in this way, you do not
hear God, you do not feel God, you do not sense God; God
is unreal, remote, far away, if He is at all. You do not
know Him.
It is no
real contradiction of the above and of what follows when
we say that in most cases - very, very few exceptions
exist - there is a consciousness of the existence of some
supreme Object demanding recognition. Our point is that
there is no fellowship, understanding, knowledge, or
living relationship with God.
MAN BY NATURE DEAD TO GOD
But the
Bible goes further still. It says that man by natural
birth is lacking in yet another thing, which corresponds
to his - may I use the phrase? - biological existence,
his life. We have a biological existence which we call
life. Now it is a very significant thing that the New
Testament puts two different words over two different
classes of people. It uses one word (bios) for
natural life, but it never uses that word of the life of
the Christian. For that it uses an entirely different
word, with an altogether different meaning. What the
Bible says is that man by nature not only lacks the
functions of his spiritual senses, but even lacks that
which corresponds to his natural existence - life. In a
word, the Bible says that man is dead; not only blind and
deaf and insensitive to God, but DEAD. "Death
passed upon all men" (Rom. 5:12), says the Word of
God. By nature man is dead to God.
DEAD TO THE MEANING OF HIS OWN
EXISTENCE
And he
is dead to the true meaning of his own existence. Man by
nature does not know why he was born, why he has a being.
We have all sorts of accounts of his being - wild
explanations and excuses, shelving responsibility, and so
on, all proving that he is entirely dead to the real
meaning of his own existence. He makes the best of it -
and sometimes it is quite a good best that a man makes of
his life; but, after all, when set in relation to God and
in relation to eternity, he does not know why he is
alive, why he has a being. He is dead to that. He is dead
to eternal and heavenly things and values. What a futile
and hopeless thing it is to talk to man by nature about
the things of Heaven and the things of God! He looks at
you, he gapes at you, he does not know what you are
talking about. That belongs to a world with which he is
just not acquainted. It is something foreign, far off,
and he is utterly bored.
He may
be a very good man from certain standpoints, a very
educated man. He may be occupying a position of high
esteem and respect amongst men - he may even be a very
religious man. There was such a man who came to Jesus, an
outstanding specimen of the best product of humanity
outside of Christ; but over him was suspended one big
question-mark. He was full of interrogations 'How...?
How...? How...?' And Jesus said, in effect: 'Well, it is
no use talking to you about heavenly things at all. You
do not belong to that realm; you are just dead to that.'
Now, is
that true? I said at the beginning that you can put
everything to the test. This is not just a statement of
abstract Christian doctrine. This is a statement of fact
which is verifiable. Some of you may be actually knowing
the truth of it now, in your own experience. Many of you
did know it in time past, but, thank God, you know it no
longer. According to the Bible, man is dead. It is
useless to speak to a corpse - you will get nothing back.
As far as the things of God are concerned, man makes no
response. There is no correspondence, no interchange, no
communion, no fellowship possible. That is what the Bible
and human experience say as to man's condition by nature.
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN WE BECOME
CHRISTIANS
That
brings us to a very practical point in approaching this
question: What exactly happens when we become Christians?
There are two fragments of New Testament Scripture which
I think sum this up for us very concisely and very fully.
The one is that statement, so familiar and yet so little
understood even by Christians, the statement made to the
man to whom I referred just now, who came with his big
question - his multiple "How...?" Jesus simply
looked at him, and did not try to answer his question at
all, because He knew how hopeless a thing it is to talk
to a dead man. He looked at him, and said: "Ye must
be born anew", or "Ye must be born from
above" (John 3:7). The other passage, from one of
Paul's letters, is also very well known: "Wherefore
if any man is in Christ, there is a new creation" (2
Cor. 5:17). Those two words sum up what happens:
"born anew", "a new creation".
(a) A NEW ALIVENESS
I said I
would keep off negative ground and on positive, but let
me say here in parenthesis that it is NOT
becoming a Christian just to accept, or give a mental
assent to, the tenets of the Christian religion, or to
join some society which has the name of being a Christian
institution, even though it may go by the name of
'church'. That is not becoming a Christian in the New
Testament sense. The only true 'becoming a Christian' is
by way of being born anew, becoming a new creation: which
means you become a different species from what you were
before, and from what all other people are who have not
had that experience.
But when
we so become Christians, what happens? Our state of death
gives place to a state of life. This other life, this
resurrection life, which no man by nature has ever yet
had, excepting Jesus Christ; this life - which we will
not even refer to in the New Testament terminology - is
given in the day of our faith-exercise toward the Lord
Jesus as Lord and Saviour. A new aliveness takes place.
It is
the first wonderful basic experience of the Christian.
The Christian at that time leaps into life: he
immediately begins to talk a new language about now
knowing what it is to live, knowing the meaning of life,
and so on. What happens when we become Christians? Well,
we are alive from the dead! We become alive.
But it
is not just the resuscitation of something. It is the
impartation of what was never there before - a new life,
belonging to a new creation: that is, a new order, which
is a heavenly order. For this is birth "from
above". Jesus never said a truer thing than that.
"Ye must be born again." If there is someone
reading these lines who has not had that experience, you
know, after what we have said about the natural
condition, that, if you are going to see God and hear God
and feel and sense God, in the way of which we have
spoken, something has got to happen to you which is as
radical as being born all over again in another realm.
Jesus is right at any rate on that, is He not? It is
true. "You MUST..." - it is not just
an imperative of command, it is not just a declaration
that you have got to become a Christian to be accepted
with God. It is the statement of a fundamental and
inescapable fact: that you can never, never know God in a
real way, far less have living fellowship with God, until
something has happened in you that is absolutely CONSTITUTIONAL.
You have got to have a new life, which is God's own life,
to enable you to understand what God is, to know Him.
(b) A NEW CONSCIOUSNESS OF GOD
This new
life immediately introduces a new consciousness of God.
Immediately you are alive to God - you sense God. God
becomes a reality, a living reality: no longer remote,
far off, indefinite, but now very dear, very real, very
wonderful, indeed the greatest reality in your whole
life. You know God in a new way, you have a new
consciousness of God.
(c) A NEW CONSCIOUSNESS OF THE
MEANING OF OUR EXISTENCE
And then
you find you have a new consciousness of the meaning of
your own existence. Every Christian who is truly founded
upon this basis of beginning, of resurrection, almost
immediately leaps into this consciousness: 'Now I have
got the explanation of life, I have got the key to life.
I know that I was born for something! I never before knew
that I was really born for something, but I know now.
There is a sense of meaning in my being here, and of
destiny, wrapped up with this new experience. It gives an
explanation to my own life.' Is that not true,
Christians? It is - it is just like that. 'Now we know
why we are here!'
(d) A NEW CONSCIOUSNESS OF PURPOSE
AND VOCATION
And to
carry that one step further - it is a new consciousness
of purpose and vocation. It is not only that there is a
meaning in our being alive, but that a purpose has come
in with this new life, a sense of vocation. We are called
for something. You do not have to have a lot of
instruction about that. You do not even have to wait for
it. The truly born-again child of God spontaneously,
instinctively, begins to talk to other people about it.
You can test your Christian life by that. You just must
tell them, you must talk about it, you must let them
know. That is vocation coming out. You feel you are
called for something, that there is business on hand. And
that can develop, as we know, to specific vocations. But
this consciousness of purpose, meaning and vocation
springs up with new life.
(e) A NEW SET OF RELATIONSHIPS,
INTERESTS AND DESIRES
And then
we find we have a new set of relationships, of interests,
of desires. We know that; it happens. It is no use
talking to anybody who has not had the experience about
these things. They have their relationships, their
interests, their desires, and they just despise you for
not doing what they do and going where they go and
engaging in the things which are everything to them. They
do not understand you. They think you have missed the
way, that you have lost everything that is worth having.
But you know quite well that it is just the other way
round. You do not despise them, but you pity them, are
sorry for them. This is a transcendent, superlative set
of relationships. Christians know the meaning of a little
phrase that was used about some early servants of God who
were arrested because they were doing this very thing -
fulfilling, expressing, the sense of vocation, and not
keeping it in and keeping it to themselves. They were
arrested and brought before the authorities and
threatened. 'And being let go, they went to their own
company' - instinctively to their own company (Acts
4:23). We know what that means. There is a new 'company'
- a new relationship, a new fellowship, a new set of
desires and interests. No one else can understand or
appreciate it, but the Christian knows.
(f) A NEW SET OF CAPACITIES
Further,
we have a new set of capacities. This is a wonderful
thing about the new creation life, this 'born-anew' life,
this true Christian life. We get a new set of mental
capacities, something different from, and additional to,
and altogether transcending natural mental capacity. It
is a new understanding of things, and it is one of the
wonders of the Christian life. You may find a person who
has had no great advantages academically, educationally,
or in any other realm, a very ordinary person: and yet,
when they come into a real experience of the Christian
life, it is remarkable how they acquire an entirely new
understanding and intelligence. They have an insight into
things that a man of the highest education and the
biggest brain is - by these means alone - entirely
incapable of grasping or understanding.
This is
something that the Christian knows to be so true. Very
often we may think that a certain person, because of such
academic achievements and qualifications, is bound to be
able to understand, we are bound to have good interchange
and fellowship with them: yet, when we begin to speak
about the things of the Lord, we meet a blank - they do
not know what we are talking about. But here is this
simple man or woman who knows. They have a new mental
faculty, a new set of capacities and powers for
understanding the things of the Spirit of God, for
knowing what no natural man can know - not by the way of
study, but by the way of communion with God.
And
these wonderful new capacities grow and develop as the
Christian goes on. We find that we have new powers of
transaction and enaction - of 'doing'. The Christian has
the power of doing things that other people cannot do: a
power of endurance, a power of overcoming, and a power of
working. Many of my readers will understand me when I say
that sometimes - indeed very often - it seems that the
Lord takes pains to undercut our natural ability for
doing, in order to lead us into a life where we can do
without 'abilities', without any natural explanation at
all. If you look at much that has been done through true
Christians, in this world's history, you will not be able
to account for it at all on natural grounds. They were
weak things, frail things, things at a discount in this
world. But just see what God has done through the
"weak things" and the "things that are
not"!
(g) A NEW HOPE
A new
hope - that is characteristic of the true Christian. An
altogether new prospect has leapt into view; we shall see
more of that later. But here it must be stated that the
Christian, if a true Christian, is not one characterized
by despair, by hopelessness, by a sense of final
frustration and disappointment. A Christian is one, deep
down in whose very being there is rooted the
consciousness that there is something wonderful ahead,
something beyond. The final argument for the afterward is
not in any system of teaching about Heaven or its
alternative. It is found in the heart, in the life - it
is found in a mighty dynamic. What is it that has kept
Christians going in the face of unspeakable difficulties
and sufferings and opposition? What is it? Others
capitulate, give up, let go, fall into despair. The
Christian just goes on. And it is not because the
Christian is of any better natural calibre than others,
with more tenacity and doggedness. Not at all. So often
they are the weak ones, as counted by men; but there is
this going on. They are gripped by an inward conviction
that this is not the end, this is not all, there is
something beyond. There is this HOPE, which has
come from the "God of hope".
THE SECRET OF THE "ALL THINGS
NEW"
Now what
is the explanation of it all - a new life, a new
consciousness, new relationships, all things new? We are
not exaggerating the Christian life. What does it amount
to? What is the inclusive secret of it? You see, it is
not just that the Christian receives some abstract THINGS.
You may call it life, you may call it
understanding, you may call it hope, you may call it
power, but these are not merely abstract things. The
true, born-anew Christian has received, not abstractions,
but a PERSON. The inclusive explanation of it all
is the gift of the Holy Spirit. God gives His Spirit to
them that obey Him (Acts 5:32).
Now, the
Holy Spirit is God, no less than God, and the Holy Spirit
has all the intelligence and knowledge of God, all the
eternal prospect of God; the elements of eternity,
timelessness. All that is true of God is true of the Holy
Spirit. If, then, God gives the Holy Spirit to become
resident inside a person, and that person learns from the
beginning, like a babe, day by day, year by year, to walk
in fellowship with the indwelling Holy Spirit, that
person is bound to grow in all these characteristics that
we have mentioned.
In the
first place, they are bound to know Divine life - God's
own life within. This is a most wonderful thing, when you
think of it. We have not just an 'It', but Himself, God
in Christ by the Holy Spirit, as our very life. I love
the way the Bible puts that about God: "He is... the
length of thy days" (Deut. 30:20). Think about that.
It means that if God really is our portion, resident
within, then our duration, our spell, is not dictated by
natural things. HE is the length of our
days. We shall die when He says that the time has come,
and not before. You see, all things are in His hand, and
until that time comes the threats may be many, but His
life persists, and we rise again and rise again and rise
again. We thought the end had come, but we rise again and
go on - because He is our life. The Holy Spirit is called
"the Spirit of life" (Rom. 8:2). To have such a
Person resident within is a very wonderful thing.
And so,
if He has all Divine intelligence, and we are in His
school, living with Him, keeping fellowship with Him day
by day, we shall grow in this intelligence, which no
natural man has. We shall be growing in knowledge,
growing in understanding, growing in ability to grasp the
things of God, which no man, apart from the Spirit of
God, can understand. I want to lay emphasis upon that. It
is the Holy Spirit HIMSELF. I know that Christians
as such believe in the Holy Spirit - the majority of
evangelical Christians believe in the Person of the Holy
Spirit. They put the article there - THE Holy Spirit
- whereas others speak of 'Holy Spirit'. It is a part of
our Christian faith to believe in the Holy Spirit as a
Person; to have some knowledge of the doctrine of the
Holy Spirit, His work and His power. And yet there is
among Christians a lamentable lack of understanding of
what it means to have the Holy Spirit really dwelling
within. This is disclosed and manifested by the very fact
that they can sometimes act and speak so contrarily to
the Holy Spirit without seeming to be checked up by Him.
It is truly astonishing how many Christians can speak in
a manner in which the Holy Spirit certainly cannot
acquiesce, and yet seem to be quite unconscious of the
fact that the Holy Spirit disagrees with them. Many
Christians can believe lies about others, and repeat
them, and yet never register the Holy Spirit's
disagreement. There is something wrong here in regard to
the practical expression of the indwelling Holy Spirit -
for He is the Spirit of truth.
Now the
true Christian life means that wherever the Holy Spirit
is in disagreement with anything that we say or do, or
with the way we say or do it, we should be aware of it.
At once we should register - not a voice, but a sense:
the Holy Spirit saying, in effect, 'I do not agree with
you - that is wrong, that is not right, that is not true,
that is not kind, that is not good, that is not
gracious.' There is a very great need for the reality of
the indwelling Spirit to be expressed. It is not that the
failure to recognise and sense and discern means that the
Holy Spirit is not there; it simply means that, if it is
like that, we are not walking in the Spirit. There is
something needed on our part by way of adjustment.
But,
coming to the positive side, the true Christian life can
be, and should be, like this. With the Holy Spirit
resident within, when you or I say or do anything with
which He does not agree, we know it at once. We have a
bad feeling right in the middle of us, and we do not get
rid of it. We have to say, 'Evidently I was wrong in what
I said, or did. Lord, forgive me and put it out of the
way.' If it has done someone any harm, well, let us try
to put it right. That is a life in the Spirit. It is very
practical.
That is
what happens when we become Christians. It begins like
that. The beginnings are very simple. If you are still
quite young in the Christian life, you surely must know
something of this in simple ways. Perhaps you go to do
something that you used to do, and something inside you
says, 'Oh, no, not now - that belongs to the past.' That
is a simple beginning, is it not? If you go on, you burn
your fingers - because you are alive! If you were dead,
you would do these things and not feel them. Because you
are alive, you are sensitive.
Yes,
that is what happens when we become Christians. It is
very simple; many of us know about it from experience.
But it is important for the many who are coming to Christ
in these days, who are at the beginnings of the Christian
life, to know really what they have come into, really
what has happened to them. They should be able to say:
'Yes - well, I could not have explained it, I could never
have put it into words or defined it; but I know what you
mean. That is true to my own experience.' But, you see,
it is something more than just FEELING. We need to
UNDERSTAND, we need to be INTELLIGENT about
these things. May God make us intelligent Christians -
Christians who are going on in life-fellowship with His
Spirit within, and growing all the time. God forbid that
any young Christians, reading these lines, in five, ten
or twenty years' time should be just where they are now.
That is not necessary, because of course - praise God!
being born again is not the end of things - it is only
the beginning!