HOW DECLENSION BEGINS
HOW DECLENSION BEGINS
We enjoy “every spiritual blessing” by faith, that is, we attain to it by faith, and yet no blessing is acquired by attainment. Every spiritual blessing is ours through grace; faith appropriates what is ours already, yet every one does not enjoy what is really his own, because he has not faith to lay hold of it. “If ye have not been faithful in that which is another man’s, who shall give you that which is your own?” “Faith is ... the evidence of things not seen”. You attain by faith, and as you walk by faith, there is progress; but the moment you look at what you have attained to, you turn from faith, which always reaches on to a still fuller evidence of things not seen; you are declining, and the simple reason of your declension is that you are not in the energy of the Spirit of God. You are not following after, that you may apprehend that for which you are apprehended of Christ Jesus. You have by faith reached a certain truth, and you accept it as your standing; but when that which you have reached becomes prominent, then faith, which alone can keep you up to it, and which enables you really to enjoy it, wanes, and you are declining.
Declension does not begin with surrendering the standing, but with losing the state which answers to the standing; that is, you are not holding in faith what you have reached in faith. You are contenting yourself with your attainment. Faith is a power which is only sustained while it is in exercise, as a bird only knows the power of flying while it is flying, or as a steam-engine is useless without steam. No motion from previous activity will continue when a bird ceases to fly, or a steam-engine ceases to act; no past performance can prolong the power of either. Thus when faith is unexercised, no former faith can impart or confer any enjoyment or prospect. The fact that I have seen a [p. 424] truth is light, a fact for information, but it is not necessarily possession. I must be living in it in order to derive from it that which, as a reality, it can contribute to me. If I have been to a foreign country, and have seen something very beautiful there, when I return, I can no longer see it, and though I may very accurately remember that I have seen it, yet memory is simply the mind retaining a remembrance of the objects as they have been impressed on it. Memory is not faith, and as soon as faith drops down to memory, then there is declension. Power is only effective when used.
The desire and the tendency to consider for one’s natural feelings and wants is, when yielded to, the beginning of declension; I myself am more before my mind than God. Hence, when Abraham in the path of faith had by faith reached the true place or standing to which he was called, he drops out of faith for a time because of the pressure of circumstances, the famine, and goes down to Egypt; Genesis 12: 10. He does not actually retrace his steps, or say that he made a mistake in coming into the land, but he does not keep in faith what he has reached by faith. Without doubt faith had brought him to the desired place; and he lost it, not because he could not get up to it, but because he could not keep it after possessing it. It was not right nor title he failed in, but in the power that brought him there, and he turned aside to Egypt. Memory then could only have proved his declension, because if he remembered having been between Bethel and Hai, it was only a proof that he was not there now. It is thus with many nowadays; they betray themselves and their present declension, when they talk of what they were by faith years ago. A man who recalls you to what he used to be is like a superannuated soldier, who is clearly not in the vigour of active service now.
Lot still more grievously surrendered faith, while in the place of faith. There was no pressure compelling him to give it up; there was no trying of faith in his [p. 425] case; he did not give up the standing in which faith had formally set him, but he gave up faith as the principle of his life there, and his declension is marked enough, and describes that class of saints now, who give up their light for present advantages.
Isaac fails in faith in a very humbling way in Genesis 27; he decides to give the blessing to Esau because he did eat of his venison. This seems a very unworthy reason, but it shows how declension may begin when there is no intention of giving up one’s standing, which is the inheritance of faith. Immense sorrow and humiliation were entailed on Isaac’s family because of this unbelieving decision. A man of faith acting without faith is more incongruous than a bird without a wing, or a steam-engine without steam; but it is not only that he is incongruous and powerless, he is mischievous too. The class represented here are those who misapply the truth of God — for instance, such truths as brotherly love and charity — in order to benefit those who have endeared themselves to them personally by kindness and attention.
Jacob had gone through much before he recovered his true standing in returning to the land, and had known deep exercises of soul after he had reached it; yet even after all this, and after the name of Israel is given him in chapter 32, declension sets in. He surrenders faith which required him to go on up to Bethel, and settles down at Shalem, where he tries to quiet his conscience by religiousness, erecting an altar the very name of which exposes his true state, and discloses that he had lost faith, and had become occupied exclusively with what God was to him, having lost sight of what God is in Himself. Jacob at this stage of his history represents that class of saints who look for mercies on earth, and would limit God to themselves, as if they were His object on the earth.
Israel, after being established in the land, forfeited the greatest of God’s favours to them there, because of [p. 426] unbelief. For 490 years they did not keep the sabbatical year; they had not faith for it, and thus they lost the most remarkable and visible interposition of God on their behalf. God’s promise was that He would cause every sixth year to bring forth fruit for three years, in order that the seventh year might be a sabbath of rest (Leviticus 25); but this divine interposition they surrendered for their own labours. Thus they represent those saints in this day who, from lack of faith, lose the intervention of the Holy Spirit, and think their own exertions paramount or more to be relied on.
One more example; when the captives, on their return to Jerusalem, were prevented from building the temple, they at length accepted it as inevitable (Ezra 4: 24), and devoted themselves to their own blessing, which they were zealous enough in seeking; see Haggai 1 They had suffered much to regain their lost inheritance, yet from lack of faith they grew indifferent about the chief thing, the house of God. In like manner many in the present day, while seeking their own enjoyment and blessing, often lose sight of what is due to Christ on earth; and their efforts, even for themselves prove ineffectual. “Ye looked for much, and, lo, it came to little; and when ye brought it home, I did blow upon it. Why? saith the Lord of hosts. Because of mine house that is waste, and ye run every man unto his own house”. The sum of the matter is this: faith always holds on to what the word of God by the Spirit reveals to the soul, and when faith is in exercise, then assuredly God is before the soul, in a scene where everything is of man, the more I walk with God, the more absolutely must it be by faith. Hence when faith wavers there is declension; knowledge is not lost, but all spiritual progress is stopped.
If Abraham had faltered in his faith at the last step to Mount Moriah, or even when he took the knife in his hand to slay his son, all the previous faith which had enabled him to ascend that trying path would have [p. 427] been fruitless. Where all depended on it, he would have failed. There must be no cessation in faith; no nearness to the finish is of any use if the point, the finish itself, be not gained. Where there is a wavering there is an end to progress; for where there is no faith, there is no power to hold on, and there must be a dropping down to a spot where faith would not be needed. Self comes in in some form or other, and God is lost sight of.
The one walking in faith has God ever before him as the strength of his heart, but he presents a different expression according to the side on which he has to act. To God He is beside himself; to man he is sober; 2 Corinthians 5: 13. When I am dependent on God, I am always as He would have me to be. But on either side, be it God’s side or man’s side, it is with God sensibly that I have to do. It is as necessary to maintain faith on God’s side, as it is on man’s side. Saints often think it necessary to depend on God with respect to things here, because they are so trying; but there is quite as much need of faith in accepting and enjoying the things of God. In the exercise of faith, I learn its power and value. Faith is like a high-mettled steed, but I must he borne by it, or I cannot enjoy its power or usefulness. I may remember how it has served me in time past; may even be certain of its usefulness, and that it is mine, but unless I am using it, I am not in the power of it. Thus it is with faith; though I know its value, though I have used it, yet I am as much apart from its power when not using it, as I am from my horse when I have dismounted. When I am walking in faith, I find the strength of Christ enabling me to surmount all things here, and as I look up, no power of the enemy can divert me from my portion in heaven, which I never enjoy by sight, but by faith. Stephen, being full of the Holy Spirit, looked up stedfastly into heaven, leading the way into it, and it is now open to faith. The more I exercise faith, the more habitual it becomes. All we have received as yet is a new nature, and the Holy Spirit, by [p. 428] which we are united to Christ in heaven. All the rest is by faith. I have a place in heaven, and as I have faith, I enjoy it, and rise above all circumstances and difficulties here. The light of Scripture is not faith, though it shows me where faith ought to reach, and where, according as the faith is in God, it does reach. Light from the word is like the rail for the train, faith is like the steam-engine which bears me along the line which light has disclosed to me. One without the other is of no use. Every believer has some of both, but often we see some with more of one, and some with more of the other. But unquestionably, the one with more faith is to be preferred to the one with more light. The latter is more ready and expressive, but the former is more deep and contemplative. In faith I am more absorbed and detained by the greatness of God, and feel unable to grasp the immense and increasing fulness presented to me, while in light I know what I see.
May the Lord keep us in faith, while daily increasing to light; for when light is deemed enough without faith, there is declension.