THE INNER CIRCLE THE FIRST TO BE OVERCOME

THE INNER CIRCLE THE FIRST TO BE OVERCOME

The proof of the real value and force of life - the life of Christ in us - is the way and manner in which it resists the opposition of the flesh, and not only how it resists, but how it expresses itself in place of that which it has resisted. I have a new nature, its instinct and standard is Christ; He is my life, and the only measure for my walk. The Spirit of God is the power to enable me to act according to my new nature, both as to its instinct and standard. Now if I were in heaven there would be no check to this new life; there would be perennial sunshine and everlasting verdure; but here on the contrary, everything is adverse to it, because the flesh is enmity against God, and this is in myself and in every one around me. I am here like a diver in a diving-bell, everything around me, the very element I am dwelling in, is fatal to me unless I can resist it; and I must not only resist it, but I must express an action in it, quite new and unknown to that which opposes me. It is not enough for the diver to exist under water, but he must also act there. A saint now has not only to know that he is safe in Christ, that his life is hid in Him and that he is at home with Him above, but he is set here to show forth the virtues of Him who has called him out of darkness into His ^[p. 176] marvellous light; and hence everything of the flesh in himself, and in every one whom he comes in contact with, becomes a trying of his grace. If he meets flesh with flesh, he is vanquished; if he overcomes it, he glorifies Christ. There may be great or little foes, but whatever they be, they are the enemies to whom we are not to yield; and each of us has his own foes to resist, and not only, as I said, to resist, but to set forth in place of and in contrast to that which he has resisted, the way and manner of Christ.

Now, the first opposition you meet is in yourself, and then in everybody else; it is the force of the flesh; you are called on to repel it, and if you cannot repel that force, you can repel none. Hence private life is the beginning of the campaign. If you cannot run with the footmen what will you do with the horsemen? The contrarieties begin at home, or more properly they begin first within. If you cannot resist them in the inner circle, how can you face the outer one? But they are to be resisted, and they are the force which you are called on to resist, and to set Christ on the ground which they once occupied. It will not do for you to say, ‘This is unreasonable’. Doubtless it is; the enemy, the flesh in yourself or in any one else, can never do anything that is not unreasonable to Christ. But you must meet it quite another way; you must say, ‘Here is one of the seven nations, the Canaanites whom I have to expel; I must not give him any quarter, I must resist him and set up in his place the Israel of God’. If you complain of your foes, either the inward or the outward ones, your strength is less than theirs, you are unwittingly making Christ inferior to them, or else you are thinking of yourself as still in the old man! The matter is simple and there is great gain in it. I am not merely to find fault with my enemies - the carnality in myself and in others; I am simply to resist them in the grace of Christ, and to set up, on the ruins of the foe, the beauty and comeliness of Christ.

^[p. 177] When the fir-tree forests in Canada die off, there succeeds without any interference on the part of man, a full plantation of oak and ash. One order has died off and another order has succeeded in its place. Thus must it be with you. You begin in private life, which is the closest circle to yourself. You refuse the old plantation there, and you supplant it with entirely new growths; and as you do this in the inner and home circle, you are preparing for still greater victories in the outer circle. Having learned on the parade ground how to use your weapons, you will find that they are “mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds; casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ” (2 Corinthians 10: 4, 5).