SELF-IMPROVEMENT A SNARE
SELF-IMPROVEMENT A SNARE
Everyone according to his moral sense, if he is true to his conscience, refuses the evil and seeks the good; but as the conscience becomes enlightened, this is more definitely insisted on. This is the principle of the law; obedience was enjoined by the law however contrary to the natural man. Now when grace comes in, the believer rejoices in the assurance of his forgiveness, and, as he knows atonement, his conscience constrains him to live to please God; but this is often taken up on the principle of law, so that self-improvement becomes his great aim, and the law his standard of walk.
[p. 398] Now it is plain to anyone who understands the gospel, that in the fulness of the grace of God, the man who offended against God is judicially terminated in the cross, and the one who believes that God has raised Christ from the dead is justified. Anyone who is clear and true as to this first step in the grace of God for us, knows that he is not now in Adam before God but in Christ, and that any attempt which he may make to improve his old man in conduct or in ways, is in reality a flagrant, though unintentional, denial of the greatness of God’s grace. This is a snare by which many are captured and detained, as by a hostile power. Almost every believer is more or less caught in this snare, and many, alas! continue in it to the end of their course. The first thought of the one who has received God’s grace must of necessity be as to how he stands with God, as we see in the ease of the prodigal son; after he was kissed by the father, he was troubled by his own unfitness for him. This is the crucial moment for every believer. Very few learn early in their history what it is to be in Christ, in the best robe, and thus fitted to enjoy God. Until this is known he is necessarily occupied with himself, and he sometimes subjects himself to much self-mortification in the effort to repress or improve the tendencies of the flesh, often losing much time in examining how certain failure came to pass, and longing for an opportunity to redeem his mistakes; and this goes on until the cry is not, Who will improve me? but “Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” (Romans 7: 24) It is generally a long time before one arrives at this point; days and years are often spent in trying to improve, until one feels that all is hopelessly in vain. Then comes the agonising cry “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?”
No one looks truly at his own history, who does not know that he thinks he has achieved a great thing if [p. 399] he can repress an evil tendency or inclination - like a teetotaller - and no one so obdurate or hard to affect, as to his state before God, as a man who has thus improved himself, because he thinks there is some good in himself. Slowly one learns it, like the rich young man whom the Lord loved (Mark 10), and who kept all the law relating to his neighbour; yet the Lord’s word to him was “take up the cross” (which meant execution) “and follow me”. Beautiful as he was, he must die!
When the believer has thus come to the true sense as to himself, that “in me (that is, in my flesh) dwelleth no good thing”, (Romans 7: 18) he turns to God; and now after this exercise, he learns to say, “I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord”. Romans 7: 25. This is the first great conflict. But as we see in type from Numbers 21, Israel was a long time in the wilderness before they were set for going to Canaan. It was in encountering the opposition to their moving onwards that they felt that the manna, typifying the grace of the humbled Christ, was not sufficient for them. I only refer to this to show that we may go on in the wilderness, regretting Egypt more than seeking Canaan. Now, the full enmity of the heart against God is disclosed, and God “sent fiery serpents .. . and they bit the people; and much people of Israel died”. (Numbers 21: 6) There can be no improvement in man from the first moment of his fall. In the agony of the serpent’s bite they are glad to embrace the message of grace. “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up”. (John 3: 14) Christ was lifted up from the earth; the One who knew no sin made sin for us, that we might not perish, but have everlasting life.
Now, deliverance is really sought; but here we must note what is very sad, and that is that one of the wiles of the devil is to divert the anxious soul from learning deliverance in the life of Christ, by the teaching that as God sees the believer without sin by [p. 400] the work of Christ, so the believer, by the reckoning of faith, is practically holy. This is a delusion, and has done much harm to souls; and from this has sprung the teaching called ‘Holiness by faith’, which has ensnared many, viz., that as God sees you in Christ without a spot, you can believe yourself to be holy. When you come to examine this teaching, you find that their idea of holiness is that you do not break the law by any overt act, quite overlooking the workings of the flesh within, and the immense amount of self-pleasing there may be without an open breach of the law. The effort to promote this produces a constraint like an affected manner. Affectation is the effort to be in manner after an order of things which is not natural to you. It is not the spontaneous expression of your nature, and an effort to imitate the divine nature is indeed hopeless work, and discloses that you have never learned the enormity of your own nature and have never said, “Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” Romans 7: 24.
It is very important to see that if a believer is really set for heaven, having a true idea of the character of the world as the wilderness, he must discover the innate enmity of his heart against God. Until this is known, one is liable to be carried away by one deceit or another; but when the cry for deliverance from the body of this death is really uttered, then comes the blessed deliverance, “I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord”. (Romans 7: 25) Then you realise that by the Spirit you are in Christ. “The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death”. (Romans 8: 2) Now, you are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit. The mind of the Spirit is life and peace. The mind of the flesh is death. It is a new day to your soul when you are in the light and blessing of this great deliverance, and the more you walk in it the more established you are in it. We see that the Corinthians were diverted from it by one snare, and [p. 401] the Galatians by another; but for Christ to get His true place was the only way of restoration in both cases. If you are beholding the Lord in glory, your own wisdom is in abeyance, Himself is paramount. As in the figure, Isaac is fully acknowledged, Ishmael is cast out. Then Christ is formed in you, and you can say, “I am crucified with Christ nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me”. Galatians 2: 20.
Now, a new history is open to you. It is not that you are never troubled by the flesh, but if you walk in the Spirit you will not fulfil the lusts of it. The Spirit is always in conflict with the flesh. “The flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh”, (Galatians 5: 17) but the Spirit always gains the day if you have not grieved Him; when you have, you are like a bird with a wounded wing. If you are walking in the Spirit, Christ is the object before you; when you are walking in the flesh, yourself is your object in some shape or form.
Thus the question is, not as to whether you are improved or not, but whether you are in Adam or in Christ; if in Christ you can say, I have “crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts”, (Galatians 5: 24) and you not only know that He lives in you, and that thus you are governed by a new Person, but as you behold His glory - the very beginning of the gospel - you are transformed into His image, and you are the expression of Him here, whether in your individual circumstances, or in the circle of His interests. I need hardly say that anyone who is at all sensible of the greatness of Christ’s place in him, is always in his conscience watchful not to be diverted from this new and blessed path by any intrusion of the flesh; but this is a very different exercise from self-improvement. Be assured that the natural inclination of the flesh is to be recognised; even apart from Satan; therefore if you sow to the flesh you will of the flesh reap corruption. It is not looking within for improvement, however careful [p. 402] and anxious you may be as to your walk, but your watchfulness and desire to be led by Christ keeps you far more circumspect and separate from everything that would attract or influence the flesh. Therefore though the believer is not watching his steps for improvement, his heart is so turned to the Lord that he shrinks from everything that would divert him from Him. He so longs for His voice that he says, “Keep not thou silence, O God”. (Psalm 83: 1) He is so conscious of the blank of the Lord’s absence that he can truly say with the apostle, “God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world”. (Galatians 6: 14) From his daily walk and work in his own circumstances, he can come fresh and happy into the Lord’s service; and the more he walks according to this rule, the more he is drawn to the Lord and attracted to Him by the way He helps him, so that in everything he can do all things through Him who gives the power.
The Lord lead our hearts to see the contrast between self-improvement and growing up unto Him in His beauty and grace, nourished and cherished by Him. Thus instead of being elated at your own improvement, or cast down because you cannot effect it, you are occupied with the grace and beauty in Christ, in which you are made to share.