NATURAL RELATIONSHIPS SUBORDINATE TO CHRIST
NATURAL RELATIONSHIPS SUBORDINATE TO CHRIST
Your letter reached me this morning. I hope I shall be able to make my meaning plain to you. You admit that as you walk in the Spirit, Christ is the object of your heart; no one can have two objects at the same time; an object is that which has the ascendancy. Christ should ever be your object, that is, first and supreme; if He be, then every relationship, every responsibility ordained of God will be divinely fulfilled. Now Christ is not your object if a relation, however near, is your object, because if Christ be superseded from His rightful place, everything must go wrong. The sun in the sky rules the day, but if you, in your mind, were to put one of the stars in the place of the sun, every one who would hear of it would say you were foolish. Christians are worse than foolish when they supersede Christ by any of His gifts. When Christ is your object you are rejoiced to know that your body is His. If you read the end of 1 Corinthians 6 you will see that this great fact is the prelude to the exhortations of chapter 7 to which you refer. If all I am is the Lord’s, I am His slave, and glad to be. If He approves of my being married it is right to marry, but it must be “in the Lord”. Marriage is not to divert my heart from Him, but to enable me to be a better servant. If Christ is your object you think of [p. 205] Him first. Whether you marry or enter on any business you are the Lord’s bondsman, and you have no right to do, or to enter into anything except as subject to Him. He knows the training, the bridle, in fact, which you require, and the more you are in concert with Him (in conscious union with Him) the better you will fill every relationship ordained of God. You do not turn to the law to learn your responsibility, but to the Lord. You are to love your wife as Christ loved the church; you are to bring up your children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. As a Christian you come out in a wonderful way in your home circle; you act according as you are made according to God in every relationship which He has ordained.
I trust that now you see I do not in any way overlook or set aside natural relationships. On the contrary, I insist that if Christ is your object you will maintain all the natural relationships, not only up to the law, or up to Adam, but in the grace of Christ. I hope you will be much helped in dwelling on this subject.