ADVANTAGES AND RESPONSIBILITY
ADVANTAGES AND RESPONSIBILITY
For the ruined and lost there is no help except through grace. When there is nothing but guilt, everything must be given. To give where there is no desert, and no claim, where judgment for sin is due and impending, is grace.
Thus it is that, “when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly;” “while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us”. Man is so irretrievably lost and undone, that he can now be only a recipient. “What hast thou which thou hast not received?”
If I have had nothing, or worse than nothing, all of any good in me now must be through grace. “By the grace of God I am what I am”. Hence, in every instance, God conferred advantages upon His people. There would have been no difference between them and others if He had not. But plainly, according as He made their position different from the mere world around, so was it incumbent on them, and required, faithfully and truly to acknowledge, in life and ways, the favour conferred. Nay, they were responsible to do so, for otherwise, they would make little of the great, distinctive advantages which they had received. They would fail to realize them, and as they in any measure slighted them, they would be weakening or losing their value to themselves.
It is evident, that the more faithfully and deeply I maintain and concentrate my heart on any divine favour which I have received; the more I make of it, as a singular and wonderful expression of His mercy to me, the more must I be a witness to others of His grace; and because of this power, enjoy more deeply and fully the advantages to myself. My responsibility is simply in the first instance to be true to what I have received; as I am true to the grace and the good of it, so am I true to my responsibility. The proof that I am truly sensible of the advantages of my position, is the measure of the responsibility which I attach to it; and as I maintain my responsibility, I consciously increase in the sense of my advantages. But beside this, there has been always appointed by God a testimony or course of action, descriptive or indicative of the privileges in which He had set His people; and those privileges could not be properly or fully enjoyed, but as the testimony connected with them was duly observed.
[p. 68] The subtlety of Satan was successful when Eve was induced to forego what was due to God, for her own advantage; and thus man lost all. This effort of Satan, so fatal at the first, has been exerted continually, with great injury to souls, ever since.
Noah, overlooking the responsibility of his position, even to repress evil here, by the power committed to him, planted a vineyard, and eventually became unfitted for both.
Abraham, called to a pilgrim’s life, in faith in God, always secured the privileges of his position, while he maintained the testimony of one simply dependent on God. Let him see a famine, or let Lot see the green fields of Sodom, and the testimony or responsibility is overlooked, and all the advantages of the position lost, enfeebled, or in abeyance.
No one who has once tasted of the advantages of grace, would willingly or easily surrender them; but the snare is, that one is induced to disregard the testimony, although fully intending to retain the advantages of it. But this, I see, is not possible, nor would it be happy if it were.
Naturally speaking, every creature has its place, and the higher the order of being, the more manifest the scope of its influence. A candle is not lighted to put it under a bed, or under a bushel, but on a candlestick, “and it giveth light unto all that are in the house”.
The bird sings, itself rejoicing in the sound while gratifying others. If it did not sing aloud, it would never, like a musician, charm others; nor would it be so charmed itself. The responsibility is to charm others; but in doing so, the charmer is really charmed. The greatest heart would be ineffective, if it could not express itself. Hence it is “with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation”, Romans 10: 10.
Jacob is restored to the land; and in the night of wrestling, he is confirmed in the power of Christ; and [p. 69] yet he settles at Shechem. He attempts to confine himself to the advantages of the great position regained; he overlooks his responsibility to God. The note of testimony is not sounded out. Though his altar expresses a full retention of his own blessings, yet all are imperilled because he is for himself only, and not pre-eminently for the Lord. He must leave Shechem and escape for his life, as he says, “I shall be destroyed, I and my house”.
He goes up to Bethel, and then not only is there a true note of testimony sounded forth, but his own advantages are greatly increased and assured. Then the name of Israel is distinctly, in its true sphere, confirmed to him. The warning to Israel was that they should carefully follow the Lord in obedience in the land, in order that they might retain the blessings of it. The danger was, that they would confine themselves to the blessings selfishly, and forget what was due to the Lord; that the singing to the Lord would not be heard, and that then they would lose the good of the land. The rain would be stayed, and they would be deprived of the enjoyment which singing expresses. It is in principle, “Whoso offereth praise glorifieth me: and to him that ordereth his conversation aright will I shew the salvation of God”.
When the advantages of grace do not call forth praise to God, when God is not prominently before the soul, as the source of everything possessed, then the gifts take the place of the Giver in the heart, and must soon lose their vigour and value like flowers cut away from their roots.
Thus it was with Israel after the captivity. They had returned to the land, at great personal cost, and with great zeal they addressed themselves to the rebuilding of the temple; but when they were opposed, they suspended the work, and grew indifferent about it, while all the time they were most diligent to secure their own advantages in the land. “Is it time for you, O ye, to dwell in your cieled houses, and this house lie waste? Now therefore, thus saith the Lord of hosts; Consider your ways.... Ye [p. 70] 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. Therefore the heaven over you is stayed from dew, and the earth is stayed from her fruit. And I called for a drought upon the land, and upon the mountains, and upon the corn, and upon the new wine, and upon the oil, and upon that which the ground bringeth forth, and upon men, and upon cattle, and upon all the labour of the hands”. Haggai 1:4,5, Haggai 1:9-11. They were endeavouring to secure their own advantages, apart from their responsibility to God, and the end was that both were lost.
Wherever there is power, there must be an expression, or testimony, commensurate with its quality, as life shews itself in health. The power to sing is disclosed in the note. Whatever God gives must have an expression corresponding to Himself in giving it, or it is not a living thing. He only could determine the form which He considered adequate to express it. The expression, or the testimony, must necessarily be the greater, because it definitely expresses what is due to God, like the fruit of the vine. The greatest glory to the tree is its fruit, and it is the fulfilment of its responsibility. If I cannot reach it, I have failed to enjoy the strength of His grace in me, or the beauty and glory in which it would set me. Thus when the Holy Spirit was given to separate us from the flesh unto Christ, there were not only the direct advantages to ourselves, but there was the positive responsibility with regard to Him, and any failure with regard to the source necessarily was with loss to the receiver. Of the Holy Spirit it is said, “Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life”, John 4: 14.
The greatest advantages flow from the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, but besides, “If any one thirst, let him [p. 71] come to me, and drink. He that believes on me, as the scripture has said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. But this he said concerning the Spirit, which they that believed on him were about to receive; for the Spirit was not yet, because Jesus had not yet been glorified”, John 7: 37 - 39.
Here there is another action; a stream flowing from the believer, and this the natural consequence or effect of His presence. These two actions of the Spirit are first spoken of as they are to us personally, but in John 14: 26; 15: 26, they are spoken of in connection with Christ; the first, setting forth the advantages of the Holy Spirit to us, as Comforter in the absence of Christ, the other our testimony for Christ during His absence. According to the analogy of preceding times, the tendency and danger of the hour is the attempt to retain the advantages of the Holy Spirit’s presence, while displacing and overlooking the Holy Spirit as the only means here to act for Christ. The Corinthians had no intention of surrendering these individual advantages from the Holy Spirit, while they allowed the flesh to remain unchecked, while there was not expression, in private or in public, of their possessing a power whose very presence is essentially opposed to the flesh. Nor, again, did the Galatians contemplate losing the power and zeal of the Spirit, because they were seeking to be made perfect in the flesh. They plainly were forfeiting all the virtues of the Spirit, because they were trying to check the flesh by the law, and not by the Spirit.
I need not multiply examples. The important thing is, to be awakened to the tendency and snare, to separate between the advantages of our calling and the responsibility.
This is the Laodicean element, the sense of importance because of the possession of great truths, but practical indifference as to their producing their true effect; the possession of them, and not the effect, the ground of extreme boastfulness.
[p. 72] This betrays itself in the present day in the way the Holy Spirit is owned and assumed by souls individually, and in meetings; while in the eye of the world they adopt and use the means common among men for the testimony of Christ and the publication of the gospel. Thus the responsibility and the advantages are not derived and maintained, even in appearance, from the same source, the Spirit of God; and thus the question arises, Can a soul really enjoy the personal advantages of the Spirit of God, while the responsibility imposed by the possession of the Spirit of God is practically denied? Grace, the gift of God, must conform us in our acts and ways, into a response expressive of its own power and intent, and it could not begin merely in us, and have no controlling effect on us, without being very weak in its incipient stage. As it is in force and extent in us, it must express itself, and assert its power and qualities in manifest superiority to that which is not of God, and infinitely below it. Hence, if the Spirit of God flow out from us in rivers, it is simply evident that He has filled the affections. The expression demonstrates the extent of power enjoyed within, so that of a decided action, it can be alleged, “These men are full of new wine”. The faith or the power is shewn by the works. The works are the real measure of the inherent possessed power, and when there is any dereliction or defalcation of action in the Spirit, there is evidence of defect or deficiency within; and therefore the deficiency in responsibility would indicate deficiency in the advantages, as was seen in Israel in Haggai’s time, or as we see commonly now, when there is failure in the act, be it a song or a step. The lack in either is evidence of lack in internal power of some kind. You learn the power of the songster by the song. You judge of a horse’s power by the test of its running or the height it can jump. The external act indicates the measure and nature of the internal power, and when there can be little externally, there must be correspondingly little internally. Therefore [p. 73] any one who cannot act in the energy of the Holy Spirit, in testimony for Christ outwardly, before the world - that man, whatever he may assert to the contrary, is defective, and wanting in divine energy and power in his soul.