THE WILDERNESS MAN AND THE HEAVENLY MAN
THE WILDERNESS MAN AND THE HEAVENLY MAN
What I have feared about you is not an uncommon fear about others - namely, what is the end and aim of your life? You have been like Samson; the Spirit of the Lord has moved you. You made, or rather you [p. 321] were led a step, but you dropped back again, like a bow that has lost its power. You have lost definiteness of aim. Every saint has a mission; I do not venture to say what yours is. I was long enough finding my own.
The believer now is in two positions: he is in the wilderness and in Canaan. In the wilderness he must drink death, Marah. To the christian the world is a wilderness wide; but to the old man, still hanging about me, it is a scene of temptation, and therefore I must drink death, if I would cease from sin; and as Christ was in death for me, the tree in the bitter water, the bitter water is made sweet. I am myself in the same mind - I cease from sin. This is the wilderness man, correct, self-denying, and sustained by the Lord in every step of his daily life; in practical ways like the young man in the gospel; no infraction of the law - God’s requirement of a man. Love is the fulfilling of the law. There is also the Abraham separation from old and natural claims; and there is the Moses devotedness - counting the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt. Reproach and persecution would be incurred because of the separate, devoted path, for there is a going outside the camp, where there is an organised system, with military precision, professedly for God. This is the wilderness man. There is, besides, the heavenly man. He properly is the servant of Christ. Be he evangelist or teacher, he is from heaven, not from the wilderness. Of course, he has the loveliness of the wilderness man, but he has much more; he comes from heaven. The first thing that marks him is that it is Christ’s mind - the unity of the Spirit, the direction of the Head for His body, which engages his unremitting attention. He is now a man of quite a new order; before he was helped, in divine grace, in his circumstances; he is now in the power of Christ here, for Christ.