"I ABHOR MYSELF"

“I ABHOR MYSELF”

To a man without grace or Christ in his soul there would be no incentive or heart to amend, were he consciously to lose all self-respect in the eyes of others; and generally when it is so, he either becomes more reckless, or not infrequently destroys himself in despair. It cannot in any way tend to retrieve a man to convince him that he is irrevocably bad unless you can assure him of that which is infinitely good in place of that which is worthless.

We press on the unconverted their guilt and inability to meet the claims of God, and that as guilty they are lost, unless saved by Christ; and the more unflinchingly and distinctly this is pressed and received, the more is the moral distinction between Adam and Christ made known. When the conduct is bad, there is no difficulty in convincing of guilt; so much so, that the conversion of the wicked is often brighter, and more marked, than that of the blameless, though with the latter, where there is a true sense of being morally worthless, there is a deeper repudiation of oneself. I suppose a more terrible shock can never be known to the heart of man, than the discovery, that while his conduct is unimpeachable, while he is consciously entitled to a blameless reputation, yet that really and truly, in God’s sight, he is morally corrupt, so much so, that bowed under the irresistible fact, he exclaims, “I abhor myself”. This was the experience of Job. Through much exercise and suffering, this most amiable and blameless man is brought to this deep and true experience; an experience which is the groundwork of all divine virtue, and without which there is really no true nor divine progress. The process adopted toward Job would not have been detailed for us at such length, were it an easy thing, or a day’s work, to reach truly and deeply this experience. A converted man whose conduct had been bad or unamiable, would because of grace and light in his soul admit that he had nothing to say for ^[p. 232] himself; but what he is required to learn is, that though all his ways may be respectable, and approved like Job’s, yet were he to see Christ’s beauty and nature, he would abhor himself. It is not, I repeat, that he abhors his bad conduct, but when all was invariably good, can he then, and had he then, before God, felt and said, “I abhor myself”?

The blessed God said of Job to Satan, “Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil?” Yet Job had to learn this experience; it was not merely that he learned that God abhors the flesh in its best estate, but Job himself was brought first to a sense that he was “vile” (see chapter 40: 4), which the soul of the sinner must feel before God, but next he must learn that there is nothing in Him to suit God, so that, not only does his satisfaction in his own amiability give way, not only does he say “I am vile” but he cannot tolerate himself before God; he abhors and repudiates himself and repents in dust and ashes.

Now this experience being indispensable for the highest place with God in every line, be it for rest of heart, communion, or service, not Job only, but every saint, in order to reach to the blessedness of either, must first practically enter on this experience. There is no other road to the divine reality of any one of them. There is a moral necessity for this experience, for man has not only sinned and become alienated from God in his mind by wicked works, but after having been subjected to every trial by God, without law, under law, and by the coming of Christ, he has been proved to be utterly worthless and incapable as has often been shown. No sooner was any new responsibility committed to him than he failed, like a cup upsetting the moment it was filled, and this on every occasion and under every trial. Hence all our blessing of every kind and order being simply and entirely God’s gift, and from His favour, the ^[p. 233] more distinctly the heart is convinced that man in his most amiable state is utterly weak and profitless, the more will it be sensibly dependent on God, acknowledging that every good thing is from and in Christ Jesus.

However clear one is as to the doctrine of grace, that is, our absolute need of receiving pardon from a holy God, through the blood of Christ, yet this sense may be partial, and may be limited to the need of forgiveness and the conviction of absolute nothingness and imperfection may not be known for a long time after. Nay, how many, after the knowledge of forgiveness, seek to keep the law, making it the rule of life, and the measure of holiness. Such are barred from a knowledge of the height, in every line, as I have stated, because they have not reached the experience of Job, even “I abhor myself”.

Let us look at some examples. No one ever gets clear of Romans 7 who has not reached this experience; it is the lack of it which detains souls in the struggles of that chapter. There is, as we see there, the sense of what is right. Nay, there is delight in the law of God after the inner man, and yet no deliverance until he comes to this, “in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing”. However amiable you are, when you come to this, you must abhor yourself, and then you can say heartily, I have nothing more to do with myself. “I thank God through Jesus Christ”. I turn over absolutely and completely to the Lord Jesus Christ, and in Him I get power to fulfil the desires of His nature.

It is on this principle that the Syrophenician woman obtains help from the Lord. She took the place of a dog, worthless, contemptible; and thus she became entitled to the manifestation of His power in the expulsion of the evil spirit.

Thus too, in Psalm 73. When I get into the sanctuary, one of the marks that I am there is the sense of my own nothingness, “I was as a beast before thee”, and this is ^[p. 234] coupled with the deepest fullest sense of being an object to God; “nevertheless I am continually with thee”, etc.

I adduce these examples to show how necessary and inseparable is this experience from every place of nearness or privilege with God.

Thus also for devotedness. There never was an instance of real devotedness yet until the soul had entered into the experience of being entirely indebted to Christ, concurrent with the sense of being unfit for Him. Like Peter in Luke 5, when his conduct was excellent, and when he was receiving miraculous favour from God, he exclaims, “Depart from me; for I am a sinful man, O Lord”. In the midst of everything commendable he loses self-respect, and having found in Christ that which set him without fear in the presence of God, which evidently his own conduct and even God’s favours to him had failed to do, he leaves all and follows Him.

Thus also for service. The servant is never fitted for his work until he has seen, like Moses or Isaiah, that he is nothing before God, but that being nothing, and undone, he has acceptance with God. If the servant has not reached this experience, he is self-confident; he is like Moses using his own hands in the service of the Lord (Exodus 2: 12); he has no support, no base to fall back on when violently assailed. It is a moment of unparalleled blessing to the servant when these two things are concurrently known to him, the sense, that in himself there is nothing to trust in, but that with God there is perfect favour and countenance. Then is he ready for any service, but not till then.

Now in Job are set forth the stages, as I may say, which a soul passes through in learning this experience. Here is a man of the most exemplary conduct, marked with every divine favour, first deprived by Satan of all his children and all his property in the one day and as if by the one stroke, and then deprived of his health. Satan’s object in all this suffering was to compel Job to turn from God, and to deny Him. Job remains true, but ^[p. 235] this is not enough. God subjects him to exercise of soul, first through his friends, who insist that his sufferings are retributive; and this which was not true, but man’s judgment of God’s discipline, only elicits from Job his confidence in his own goodness and amiability. No one was like him among men according to God’s own testimony, and as long as Job viewed himself in his relation to men, he adhered to his conviction of his own righteousness; like the young man in the gospels, he could say of all the commandments relating to his fellow men, “all these have I kept from my youth up”. While he remains on this legal level, to which his friends confine him, there is no altering his assured conviction of his goodness and uprightness; while this level is persevered in, there is no alteration in his sense of what he is himself. The sense of uprightness, it is evident, can be reached on this level of man merely; but the teaching of God is to lead a man, thus assured and self-satisfied, with undeniable grounds for it, in the eyes of every man, and in the most truthful conviction of his own mind, to see that he, such an one among men, and before men, and with such a laudatory feeling of himself, can arrive at the most opposite and humiliating conviction when he changes from the level of man to that of God, and is really confronted before God. When he can say, “now mine eye seeth thee”, then he exclaims, “I abhor myself”. And then he realises for the first time that he is in himself entitled to nothing, yet God is the one he can turn to; and he prays for his friends, in evidence that his selfishness is gone, and his dependence on God unqualified. He is thus led to the deepest, truest, happiest ground ever known to the soul - God known as everything and himself nothing.