Tuesday, February 14, 2012

The Better Way


by Steve Bray

*[See an explanation of the terms “zoe” and “psuche” used in this message here.]

Then they said to Him, “What shall we do, that we may work the works of God?” Jesus answered and said to them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He sent.” (John 6:28-29 NKJV)

Then Jesus said to them, “When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am He, and that I do nothing of Myself; but as My Father taught Me, I speak these things. And He who sent Me is with Me. The Father has not left Me alone, for I always do those things that please Him.” John 8:27-29

The Son of God came into the world to provide a perfect sacrifice for our sins. He was the Lamb who was slain from the foundation of the world. It is in this sense that the Hebrew writers asks, “How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?” (Heb. 9:14) Yes, through the justification that Jesus Christ has provided, and the resulting new birth, it is now possible to have a conscience that has been completely cleansed from all sense of sin. This, in turn, sets us free from the dead and useless works that people try to use to make themselves feel right before God.

There are many people within the church today who still need to experience this great work {new birth} of the Lord that truly cleanses the conscience and makes it possible to know a deep sense of peace with God. Others have experienced this work of justification and the new birth, but have fallen short of the saving life of our Lord. They do not realize that Christ’s work of justification is merely a door that leads to His real work of saving the soul from the sinful nature.

There is a natural tendency for Christians, although living in a justified state through the new birth, to turn to the temporal world to find spiritual fulfillment. You will find them attempting to develop their spiritual life through their relationships, their possessions and by what they can make of themselves through human effort. Because they generally live by sight, they only look to God for spiritual help when their various worldly means have failed.

God never intended for His children to find their life from the temporal realm {of this world}. It was His purpose from the beginning to manifest His own eternal life {aionios zoe} through the souls of everyone who lived by faith in Him. The eternal life is more than a life that goes on forever. It refers to a very special quality of life that will manifest the Son’s “light of life” from heaven through the human vessel. This divine life {zoe} has its source in the Father, but it must flow through the Son to individuals by the power of the Holy Spirit. We are expected to receive the first-fruits of this eternal life today if we desire to share with God in His divine life forever. It is in this sense that Paul would not only tell Timothy, but every Christian, “Fight the good fight of faith, lay hold on eternal life {aionios zoe}, to which you were also called…” (1 Tim. 6:12)

When Jesus died, He removed the veil that had separated man from the divine life of God. Here is the difference between the Old and New Testaments. We have a record of people being justified before God beginning soon after the Fall of Adam. When Adam received a covering from God through the shedding of the blood of an animal, he was brought back into a justified state. But Adam was still barred from the Garden of Eden. The word Eden means pleasure. It represents the pleasure that man can enjoy within his soul when he is sharing with God in His eternal life. Because of what Christ did on the cross to rend the veil, man can now enter back into the first-fruits of the eternal life. It is a heavenly life imparted to the soul that no one from the Old Testament could experience. Christ had to actually die before He could begin sharing His eternal life {“aionios zoe”} with those who live entirely by faith in Him.

Jesus displayed the eternal life when He lived in a mortal body. He also spoke of the living water He can give as welling up from within to a display of the eternal life. He said, “Whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” (John 4:14 NIV) The word “everlasting life” refers to the special quality of “eternal life” that comes from God. This eternal life can now begin welling up from within our soul as an ever-flowing fountain and keep us from ever again thirsting for things of this world.

There was a rich young ruler in the Jewish religious system who had heard Jesus speak of the eternal life. He had also been able to see this heavenly quality of life being manifested through the mortal body of Christ. He therefore came to Jesus and asked how he too might receive this eternal life that Jesus spoke about. He ended up turning away from the promise of this eternal life because he was not prepared to follow Jesus in His way of life and begin wholly sustaining himself on the living water that comes from heaven. Once again we must say that those who depend on things from this world {desires of the flesh, desires of the eye and the pride of life, or any other temporal offering} to develop their own form of spiritual life {psuche}, cannot gain access to the living water that God will supply to those who depend on Him alone for their fulfillment.

Everyone who has begun experiencing a cleansed conscience and a deep sense of peace with God needs to begin asking themselves if they have been fighting the good fight of faith in order to take hold of the eternal life. Has the living water that continually wells up to perfect love, joy and peace begun to flow through your soul? Do you still find yourself thirsting for things of this world and depending on temporal relationships, possessions and self-exaltation to be lifted spiritually? If so, you need to press forward in your faith by turning away from your dependence on the temporal realm until Christ begins to manifest His eternal life through your soul. We can say with Paul, “For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved {from wrath – separation} by His {indwelling} life {zoe}.” (Rom. 5:10)

There is a full salvation to be received in this world that will establish Christ’s eternal Kingdom-life within the heart. The Kingdom-life is what enables us to fulfill all the righteous requirements made known in God’s Word, including the high standards found in our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount. It was not God’s intention for us to strive at obeying His laws through our own human efforts. His purpose was to enable us to be partakers with Him in His divine nature so we could do by nature what He requires of us. In the same sense that you do not need to command a bird to fly in order to make it respond in the way that God had purposed for it, you do not need to force a person who is sharing with God in His eternal life to act as God has purposed. It naturally occurs when we are fully sharing with God in His nature of perfect love. This supernatural and naturally self-sacrificing love is what enables us to fulfill all the righteous requirements of the law. “For the kingdom of God {within the heart}…is righteousness {perfect love} and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.” (Rom. 14:17)

Most Christians are still attempting to fulfill the righteous requirements of the law through their own human efforts. They are living by law. And some, because they are highly disciplined do quite well. Like the Pharisees, they show forth an outward display of holiness that impresses many people. But inside their hearts are far from being perfect in love. They have never truly died to the self-life that would permit the Lord to manifest His heavenly life within their soul. It is why there is a hardness displayed through their lives and actions, in spite of all their profession of holiness. They end up putting out the fire of many newborn Christians who have come to Christ with a flickering flame. Since they live by law, they use the law in a way that kills. They have not understood the following passage that Paul wrote to the Galatians:

Is the law then against the promises of God? Certainly not! For if there had been a law given which could have given life {the divine eternal life of perfect love}, truly righteousness would have been by the law… But before faith came, we were kept under guard by the law, kept for the faith which would afterward be revealed. Therefore the law was our tutor to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith. (Gal. 3:21-24)

God gave laws in order to control sin. He needed a means to keep some order in this world until Christ came and began to establish His Kingdom-life of righteousness and peace and joy within the heart. The law, when used properly, will expose the corrupt nature and convict of sin. It will turn people to Christ and the justification that supernaturally cleanses the conscience. But again, this is only the beginning of salvation. These new Christians are then expected to press forward in their faith by turning from the temporal realm as the source of their spiritual life, and waiting on Christ to manifest His eternal life through their soul. While the law cannot impart the heavenly Kingdom-life to the soul (Gal. 3:21), Christ can!

The divine life of Christ within our soul is what enables us to do by nature what God requires of us. The law exposes the fallen nature within us so we will be prepared to die to the temporal world and enter into the eternal life that enables us to fulfill all the righteous requirements of the law. “For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin: He condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteous requirements of the law might be fulfilled {fully met – NIV} in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.” (Rom. 8:3-4) The indwelling life of Christ alone can make the heart perfect in love and enable us to fulfill all the righteous requirements of the law.

The Hebrew writer therefore explains how Christ, the Great High Priest, came “according to the power of an endless life.” (Heb. 7:16) He came to overcome the old Adam-life that everyone has inherited through the fall and has begun a new line of people who live through the eternal life, as He did. While the laws of God reveal how we are expected to live, we are not expected to fulfill these requirements through our own efforts. We are expected to press forward in our faith until Christ comes to us in “the power of an endless life” so we may manifest His life of perfect love in everything we do. Only then will all our actions be right before God. “For on the one hand there is an annulling of the former commandment because of its weakness and unprofitableness, for the law made nothing perfect...” (Heb. 7:18-19) But praise our God, Christ can! “Therefore He is also able to save to the uttermost those who come to God through Him…” (Heb. 7:25)

We can see that faith has a much greater work to do than to enter us into a justified state through our dependence on Christ’s shed blood. You are to “Fight the good fight of faith, lay hold on eternal life, to which you were also called…” (1 Tim. 6:12) It will require a much greater faith to enter into this much fuller salvation. You must choose to die to the ways that this world uses to develop spiritual life. You must learn to find spiritual life from Jesus and sustain your spiritual life on Him alone. You can also expect to be tested. The Lord will often leave us without anything to hold us up spiritually other than the promises found in His Word. Here is where faith is tested. If you will hold on by continuing to wait on the Lord to do what He has promised, without turning back to temporal means {heart idols} to develop your spiritual life, He will lift you up spiritually in due time by manifesting His eternal life within your soul.

He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me…and I will love him and manifest Myself to him {in due time}. (John 14:21)

Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time, casting all your cares upon Him, for he cares for you. Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. Resist him, steadfast in the faith, knowing that the same sufferings are experienced by your brotherhood in the world. But may the God of all grace, who called us to His eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after you have suffered a while {in dying out to the “self”-gratifying ways of the world}, perfect, establish, strengthen, and settle you.” (1 Pet. 5:6-10)

Christ will surely fulfill His promise by manifesting His eternal life within your soul if you will hold on through the time of testing. Avoid turning back to the world for fulfillment. There will also come a point when you must stop depending on other human beings for your spiritual support. God expects to be your all in all. When you reach that point where you are truly dead to the temporal ways of the world, He will lift you spiritually into His eternal Kingdom-life where you can always enjoy “righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.”

To help distinguish between the way of law and the way of grace through faith, the following testimony of Hannah Whitall Smith has been provided. As she has noted, it sometimes takes years for Christians to make this great transition. But this process does not need to take so long. This death to self and the ways of the world can take place in a short period of time. If you have an understanding of the truth and are willing to press forward in your faith according to your understanding, this death can be a short process. But you must know that a real death to the old Adam-life must take place before it is possible to enter into an enjoyment of Christ’s eternal life.

I {Hannah Whitall Smith} was born in Philadelphia, Pa., February 7, 1832, and was converted in my twenty-sixth year. My conversion was very clear and unmistakable. After long years of legal striving, in which I resorted in vain to every expedient my soul could devise for gaining the favor of God and the forgiveness of all my sins, I was taught to see my own utter helplessness in the matter, and to trust entirely to Christ to save me. I knew that I was born again; and never from that time have I doubted this…

As time passed on the Lord graciously led me into the knowledge of much truth. My guarded education in the Society of Friends, of which I was at the time a member, had already separated me very much from the vain fashions and amusements of the world, and my chief interests were all centered around the religion of Jesus Christ.

But my heart was ill at ease. That I grew in knowledge I could not deny; but neither could I deny that I did not grow in grace; and, at the end of eight years of my Christian life, I was forced to make the sorrowful admission that I had not even as much power over sin as when I was first converted. In the presence of temptation, I found myself weakness itself. It was not my outward walk that caused me sorrow, but it was the sins of my heart that troubled me—coldness, deadness, want of Christian love, intellectual apprehension of truth without any corresponding moral effects, roots of bitterness, want of a meek and quiet spirit—all these inward sins over which the children of God are so often forced to mourn.

At times some new discovery of the truth of God in the Bible would seem for awhile to carry me above temptation and make me more than conqueror. And my heart rejoiced at the thought that now at last I had found the secret of living, and that henceforth my continued defeats would be turned into continued victories. But after a while, as the aspect of truth in which I had been rejoicing became familiar to me, I found to my further sorrow that it seemed to lose its power, and I was left as helpless as ever, only under deeper condemnation because of the increased responsibilities of increased knowledge. [She rejoiced in the law as every born again child of God will do. But she did not have the power and the fullness of heavenly life that would enable her to do by nature what the law requires.]

In this time of sore need (1863) God threw into my company some whose experience seemed to be very different than mine. They declared that they had discovered a “way of holiness” wherein the redeemed soul might live and walk in abiding peace and might be made “more than conqueror” through the Lord Jesus Christ. I asked them their secret and they replied, “It is simply ceasing from our own efforts and trusting in the Lord to make us holy.”

Never shall I forget the answer. “What! – do you really mean that you have ceased from your own efforts altogether, and that you do nothing but trust the Lord? And does He actually and truly make you conquerors? “Yes,” was the reply, “the Lord does it all. We abandon ourselves to Him. We do not even try to live our own lives; but we abide in Him, and He lives in us. He works in us to will and to do of His good pleasure, and we hold our peace.”

Breaking away from Smith’s testimony we need to consider what is being said from a biblical perspective. Jesus said we are to follow Him and live in the same way He lived. A careful study of the Gospel of John will reveal how Jesus did not do anything out from Himself. He said such things as, “I can of Myself do nothing.” (John 5:30) “It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh {human effort} profits nothing.” (John 6:63) “When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am He, and that I do nothing of Myself.” (John 8:28) In other words, when we enter into the kind of walk by faith that Jesus Himself had taken, we too will learn that all true life – divine life – flows through the soul by the power of the Holy Spirit. Everything has its source in God. Human efforts do not profit anything. We receive the eternal life by grace, through faith alone.

Once we begin to realize that Jesus did not do anything out from Himself, but was required to depend on the Father for everything if He was to walk fully as man {as God originally designed and created him to live}, we can begin to see why He asked us to learn of Him and His ways. If we will truly die to the self-originated way of life that everyone inherits from the first Adam, we will be in a position to enter into the eternal Kingdom-life where God becomes the source of everything. When Jesus came as the Second Adam to begin a new line of people who live this way, nothing He did was self-originated. He died to Himself before He was ever nailed to the cross, for the purpose of permitting the Father to live through Him. He could therefore say that everyone who had seen His life had actually seen the life and works of the Father. Similarly, God has made it possible for others to see the life of Christ through our mortal bodies when we have truly died to the old self-originated Adam-life. It is in this sense that we are to make every effort to cease from our own works and live through the life of our Lord. (Heb. 4:9-10) Of course, not everyone can take this truth in {and submit to it} right away, as Smith testifies.

Like a revelation, the glorious possibilities of such a life flashed upon me; but the idea was too new and wonderful for me to grasp. I had never thought of Christ as being such a Saviour. I had known, indeed, that He gave me life as a free gift without I myself being able to do a single thing toward obtaining it except to believe and to receive. But that He should now live my life for me in the same way, without my doing anything except believe and receive, surpassed my utmost conceptions. I had learned how to trust Him for the forgiveness of sins; but I had always trusted myself to conquer them. I had seen the sad error of legality as regarding my redemption; but I was altogether legal in my thoughts as regarding my daily holy living. I had never dreamed of trusting the Lord for that, and I did not know how.

So I went to work harder than ever. Over and over again I tried to dedicate myself to God. I sought to bind my will with chains of adamant [unbreakable chains], and to present it a holy offering before the Lord. I lay awake whole nights to wrestle in prayer that God would grant me the blessing He had granted these other Christians. I did everything, in short, but the one thing needful. I could not believe; I did not trust; and all else was worse than useless. But perhaps not altogether useless; for it taught me my own utter and absolute helplessness.

Here again we need to take a closer look at God’s plan of salvation. Fallen man is naturally self-sufficient. Ever since the Fall he has been living through his own efforts. He has made himself into an independent god and has tried to get by without the eternal life that only the one true God can provide. God is required to break this self-sufficient spirit in fallen man before it is possible to truly walk as Jesus did in the eternal life. That is why Peter speaks of Christians all over the world going through a time of testing and suffering before God establishes His Kingdom-life of perfect love within their heart. (1 Pet. 5:9-10) He also said, “Beloved, do not think it strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened to you; but rejoice to the extent that you partake of Christ’s sufferings, that when His glory is revealed, you may also be glad with exceeding joy.” (1 Pet. 4:12-13)

Yes, there will be a day when the Lord comes back to reveal His glory to the whole world. But Peter was also referring to a glory that was manifest to first century Christians after they went through a period of suffering. He is speaking of a time of testing that completely destroys the self-sufficient spirit that resides in fallen man. Once this old spirit has died, the Lord of Glory is able to manifest Himself to individual souls in this age of fulfillment. As promised, Christ has been coming back to individuals ever since the first Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit came to reveal God’s life of perfect love within the souls of the first disciples. (John 14:19-21)

Christ promised to give the same glory that He had received from the Father to His disciples. The glory of God is His spiritual image. For those who are willing to pass through the time of testing, which is a place where suffering occurs as the self-sufficient spirit and the self-originated way of life dies, there is the promise of receiving the glory of God within the soul. You are therefore to rejoice in the sufferings that are designed to destroy your self-sufficient spirit so that “when His glory is revealed, you may also be glad with exceeding joy.” Yes, Jesus has given us access to the glory – the life of perfect love – that He received from the Father, which is a truth that has been clearly revealed in His high priestly prayer:

And the glory which You gave Me I have given them {access to}, that they may be one {in nature} just as We are one: I in them, and You in Me; that they may be made perfect in one…that the love with which You love Me {perfect love} may be in them, and I in them. (John 17:22-26)

God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him. Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness in the day of judgment; because as He is, so are we in this world. (1 John 4:16-17)

The salvation that Hannah Whitall Smith will be describing, enters into the soul when there has been a real death to living by law through human effort. If there was a way to bring people to the end of themselves without suffering, God would do it. But God must bring us to the point where we agree to die to our own {self}-will and our own {self}-sufficiency before He can fill the soul with eternal life. Thus, the law must have its opportunity to bring about this willingness to die to our self-directed life and our self- developed righteousness before He can do the work.

At last, however, I saw clearly that I was indeed truly nothing; that I needed the Lord just as absolutely for my daily living as I had needed Him in the first place to give me life. I discovered that I was just as unable to govern my temper or my tongue as I had been long ago to convert my soul… I saw that all my efforts, instead of helping, had only hindered the work.

Then I began anew to search the Scriptures. I found that the salvation He had died to procure was declared to be a perfect salvation, and that He was able to save to the very uttermost. I found that He offered Himself to me as my life, and that He wanted to come into my heart and take full possession there and subdue all things to Himself. I felt that a salvation such as this would satisfy my longings, and unspeakably I desired to appropriate it as mine.

But here I was met by another enemy. It seemed as if I could not trust the Lord; as if I was actually afraid to do so. Legality had been met and conquered, but unbelief still remained and threatened to shut me out altogether from the promised land of rest {God’s Sabbeth-rest}. Although God had declared the Lord Jesus to be a perfect Saviour, sufficient for my daily and hourly needs, I could not believe he would really prove to be so. It seemed too great to trust, to repose in the divine Saviour. But in His infinite love, He broke down this last remaining barrier.

He sent to our house a young man whose soul was in great darkness because of doubts concerning his salvation. It was my privilege to point him to a Saviour just suited to meet his needs and to tell him of the completeness and present reality of the salvation purchased by Him. And as I talked to him and set forth the boundless love and the divine power of Christ to save all who come to God by Him, my heart was rebuked for my own unbelief. Was I to urge another to believe that his prayers for forgiveness were answered when I did not believe that my prayers for conformity to the image of Christ were, or ever would be!

My heart shrank back at the thought of such inconsistency, and the last barrier of unbelief was broken down. The Lord revealed Himself to me as so worthy of my utmost confidence that I could not help trusting in Him. He showed Himself to me as a perfect and complete and present Saviour, and I abandoned my whole self to His care – telling Him that I was utterly helpless, that I could not feel, nor think, nor act for one moment as I ought to do, and that He must do it all for me – all. I confessed my own absolute inability to dedicate myself to His service, my powerlessness to submit my will to His, and I cast myself as it were, head-long into the ocean of His love, to have all these things accomplished in me by His almighty working. I trusted Him utterly and entirely. I believed the truth that He was my practical sanctification as well as my justification, and that He not only could save me and would save me, but that He did. The Lord Jesus Christ became my present Saviour, and my soul found rest at last – rest from all its legal strivings, rest from all its weary conflicts, rest from all its bitter failures. Christ was made unto me wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification.

At first my faith was but a weak and wavering one. Almost tremblingly I hung on to Christ moment by moment saying continually in my heart, “Lord, I trust Thee, I trust Thee. Look Lord, I am trusting Thee.” But I found to my astonishment that it was a practical reality that He did deliver me. When temptation came, I did not try to conquer it myself, but at once handed it over to Him, saying, “Lord Jesus, save me from this sin. I cannot save myself, but Thou canst and wilt, and I trust Thee.” Then I left it with Him, and he fought for me, while I stood by and held my peace. And He always came off the conqueror.

Thus, that flesh which I had discovered to be so utterly corrupt, I now found could be reckoned to be dead and consequently abandoned… And now, if I am asked what is my life – with a deep sense of my own nothingness I can only answer that, insofar as I am faithful, Christ is now my life. Once I had truth about Him, but now I have Himself! Once I tried to live in my new nature independent of Him; now I am joined to Him in a oneness that is indescribable, knowing that I have in truth no other life but His, and seeking more and more to live only there. Christ is always the same, and the way of access by faith is always open; He is faithful to keep that which I have committed to Him, and He confirms my soul steadfast and immovable in Him

We can now begin to see what it means to walk by faith. It is much more than simply believing that Jesus has saved us from our past sins and will one day take us to heaven. There is an eternal Kingdom-life that needs to be fully established within our hearts, through faith, if we are ever to have full victory over the old nature and walk in perfect love. The Hebrew writer therefore says, “Let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith…” (Heb. 12:1-2)

There is something for us to do. We are to be “diligent to enter that rest...” (Heb. 4:11) As Jesus was scourged and suffered greatly on the way to the cross, we too can expect to go through some suffering. “For whom the Lord loves he chastens, and scourges every son whom He receives.” (Heb. 12:6) He is referring to born again children who He eventually receives into His Kingdom-life of perfect love. It is a place where His children are enabled to share with Him in His own life of righteousness and holiness. In effect, He brings about the end of our self-life through suffering, “for our profit, that we may be partakers of His holiness. Now no chastening seems to be joyful for the present, but painful; nevertheless, afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.” (Heb. 12:10-11)

How then do we enter into the life and nature of our God? We do it through the faith that persistently looks to the Lord to do what He has promised. Regardless of the painful period of testing that He will permit us to go through, we need to realize it is all for our own good. You will be able to see how much of the self-life remains by your complaining spirit and by your resistance to these ways of God. Rejoice in the suffering, knowing that your Lord will soon reveal His life through you if you learn to patiently let Him do with you as He knows best.

My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing…(James 1:2-4)

…Nor complain, as some of them also complained, and were destroyed by the destroyer. (1 Cor. 10:10)

Blessed is the man who endures temptation; for when he has been approved {after the time of testing}, he will receive the crown of life {the Kingdom-life of perfect love} which the Lord has promised to those who love Him. (Jam. 1:12)

He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me…and I will love him and manifest {show, reveal, make known} Myself to him {as a new nature of perfect love} . (John 14:21)

If indeed you have heard Him and have been taught by Him, as the truth is in Jesus: that you put of, concerning your former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and that you put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness. (Eph. 4:21-24)



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