When you were young, you used to dress yourself and walk wherever you wanted. (John 21:18 ESV)
The "eyes which are as a flame of
fire" are looking for reality. They pierce through many things. In the first
place, they pierce through traditional and formal religion or "Christianity."
Their interrogation is – Is your religion a matter of attachment or adherence to
a system, a historical tradition, a family inheritance; and so on? Or is it born
– is it a birth in you; is it something that has happened to you; is it
your very life, your very being? Secondly – and I concentrate more especially
upon this for the moment – they pierce through temperament and disposition. They
demand to know whether the reason why you are where you are, are concerned for
what you are concerned for, are connected with what you are connected with, and
are disposed as you are, is because your particular temperament leans that way.
You are artistic and mystical in your tastes and constitution: therefore you
choose or make your religion after your own image. Your temperament is
melancholic, and so the more abstract, profound, serious, intense,
introspective, and speculative, appeals to you and finds a natural
response in you. You make God, Christianity, Christ, the Bible, after your
image.
Or again, you are of the practical
temperament. To you everything is only of value as it is "practical." You have
no patience with these contemplative people. You are irritated by the "Marys,"
for "many dishes" are your concern. To you, how the end is reached is of much
less importance than the end itself. You are not bothered much with imagination,
and you would put all the value on things done – how much there is actually to
show for your day. Your God and your Christianity are entirely, or
almost entirely, of the practical kind, after your own image. And so we
could go on with all the other temperaments. But this will not do, for Christ is
not any one of these; He is different. He may combine the good in all, but that
does not wholly mean Divine nature. He is different. All this is the
human soul, but the essential nature of Christ and true Christianity is of the
Divine Spirit – it is heavenly! If new birth means anything, it means this, that
another nature and disposition is born into the believer, so that he or she is
"carried whither they (naturally) would not."