FAITH AND ITS ALTERNATIVE
[p. 370] FAITH AND ITS ALTERNATIVE
In every step I am led either by the Spirit of God, and then it is in faith, or I refuse His leading, and then I turn to the natural, that which the natural mind would suggest and conscience commend. “The path of the just” - or righteous - “is as the shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day”. There is advance. If I am led by the Spirit, I grow, because there is ever a new exercise. I am like a tree planted by the rivers of water. The branches advance concurrently with the roots. The works of the believer indicate the nature and measure of his soul’s progress. When the root or the internal state is damaged, the external, the manner of life or the course betrays it. Growth is marked by the divine superiority in which faith leads: “By my God have I leaped over a wall”. If I am not in this superiority, I am baffled, and I resort to a humanly approved expedient. The cause is plain enough, you have departed from faith, you have refused the Spirit’s leading, and you trust to your own heart. You are like a bird that has lost its wings, and you are in a way worse off than if you never had wings. It is not merely that you make no progress, but you talk of what you did when you had wings - your past is your brightest day. When there is faith there is growth, a fuller apprehension of the truth, and a vigour in testimony; but when this is checked, there springs up a variety of human resources: “The backslider in heart shall be filled with his own ways”. If he had walked in faith in the Spirit’s power he would have advanced in everything, he would have reached a sense of wanting in nothing. When this is refused, there is a taking refuge in the next best thing. It is not that the grace already possessed is forfeited. God’s work cannot fail, but it becomes almost dormant while there is some new activity to compensate or conceal the loss sustained, and with this peculiar mark, that the alternative, the new course adopted, commands the approbation of the unspiritual, because departure is not from the spiritual to the worldly, but from the spiritual to the natural conscience. I mean that which is commendable to man’s judgment, and therefore outside faith, which cannot be understood except by the spiritual. The attempt to win over the many to even a right judgment by an appeal to the natural mind, is fraught with much injury. The few led by faith, and thus able to leap the wall, will do more real service than any number who, because they have not faith, adopt the alternative, which is the human way of getting out of the difficulty. It often commands general commendation, and thus it is promoted.
It is very evident, that if I do not walk in faith, I am drawn into another path. Now there is a peculiarity about this latter. It is not an openly worldly one, but it is the path that the human mind suggests, and natural conscience supports. This is ever the alternative to faith with the godly, and it is here that he is so often deceived and led astray.
When Abram loses faith he adopts the alternative that every sensible man would approve, he goes to the land where there was plenty of food.
When Lot is permitted to choose, he does not think of faith; that is, he does not look for the Lord’s leading, the green fields sway him; any natural conscience would approve of his course. The desire to do the commendable thing, in which the human conscience will support me, is always the alternative where there is no faith. Rebecca had a poor opinion of Isaac’s reverence for the word of God, which is always the guide to faith, when she descended to work on his senses; but this is ever the alternative to [p. 372] faith. One may assert that he succeeds, like Rebecca, when he has wrought on another’s feelings, when he has moved him to a right decision, forgetting that a bad beginning can never have a good finish: “That which is crooked cannot be made straight”. Isaac, though divinely repentant, eventually sanctions and recommends Jacob’s return to Syria, which his own father had strictly interdicted on his behalf.
It is clever, but most deceitful and eventually most injurious, when I induce a person to enter on a right course by any means or instrumentality except faith in God. It is like inducing a man to accept a post for which he is not qualified, pandering to his vanity, forgetting that very soon he must betray his incapacity to his own great discomfiture. One man in faith is more helpful than thousands of supporters without it, who approve because a lower motive influences them. The hard bondage in Egypt drove the mass of Israel out of it, but what a burden and a spectacle they proved to be because they had no faith.
But this is not all. When once you are induced to accept the alternative, you never recover lost ground until you return to faith. Be it Abraham, Israel, Mark or Barnabas, you are never in divine power until you return to faith.
The alternative is the course which the natural conscience approves, and is therefore adopted by the conscientious when faith is not in exercise. Faith would not omit anything due to the conscience, for it works from the highest point: it begins with God, and acts by Him and for Him. The alternative always savours of the things of man, the leading element ever in it is ‘Pity thyself’; man’s rights are prominent.
Possibly nothing has wrought more mischief and hindrance to souls than the way by which many have been induced, by working on their feelings, in one form or another, to take a stand for which they had not faith. Some have advocated a lower ground when [p. 373] they felt their inability to stand for God; but the alternative, though commanding more followers, could not be as effective as the few led by faith acting for God.
Again we see in every case where anyone declines from the path of faith, as Mark had done, the alternative is a return to a lower measure of light and truth than had been accepted; and, as with Mark, there is no real progress until there is a return to the path of faith.
In the one case, if I decline from faith I descend to man’s power and judgment, like Israel, who when they failed to drive out the old inhabitants, adopted the alternative of making them tributaries. They lapsed from faith, and were eventually overcome, though in the land. I may influence many, but it is building on a bad foundation, and great will be the fall thereof. In the other case, when anyone departs from faith as to his calling - Mark, Barnabas or Demas - he necessarily descends to a lower walk, and he cannot recover until he returns to the path of faith which he had abandoned. In the alternative there are no evidences of spiritual power beyond man’s benefit in the gospel, and works of benevolence, and consequently there is no ability to give or to receive the portion of meat in due season.