THE LIGHT AND JOY OF THE TRUTH BEFORE PRACTICE, OR, THE HEART BEFORE THE FEET
THE LIGHT AND JOY OF THE TRUTH BEFORE PRACTICE, OR, THE HEART BEFORE THE FEET
In grace “all things are ready”; all the purpose of God has been accomplished by the Lord Jesus Christ. “Himself hath done it”. Under law there is no reaching anything but by man’s own work; the work is the measure of the gain or success. In grace it has all been obtained for me, though I do not enjoy any of it except as I apprehend it; but as I do apprehend it, I am assured of my right to it; and consistently with it, my manner of life must undergo a corresponding change. Once we admit that everything is now on the principle of grace, we cannot fail to see that apprehension or enjoyment of the truth must precede practice. As the practice must flow from the effect of the truth, it is evident that in order to secure practice in accordance with the truth, the truth [p. 277] must be known and enjoyed before there can be any distinct or true practice. Nay, more, if the truth be not apprehended and enjoyed correctly and distinctly, there is no rule for the conscience, and there is no correct practice. To render the practice correct, the truth has to be correctly apprehended and enjoyed. Hence defects in practice can often be traced to defective or partial apprehension of the truth. It is, as I might say, necessary in grace that the heart should first be interested in the things which grace discloses and bestows, before the walk can express the effect of possession; that is, there must be in fact a known possession, before the effect proper to or consonant with it can be attempted or produced. A man to be honest must have a possession before he assumes the way or manner of an owner of it. A bird has wings before it essays to fly. In grace everything is first consciously known in order that there may be any testimony to it; otherwise it would be clouds without rain, or wells without water. On the other hand, it is equally true that if the possession does not produce an effect - if the bird does not exert its wings - it loses its sensible value.
First, then, it is necessary that the thing conferred by grace should be known as a possession and the virtue of it apprehended, before there can be any practice in keeping with it; while in the practice the heart is more assured of its possession, and then only is progress effected. The first great thing is a correct spiritual apprehension of the things which grace confers; for if there be ignorance or misapprehension, the truer the conscience, the more defective is the practice, and the more it is insisted on, the more the doer is confirmed in what is incorrect. Hence the most fruitful source of imperfect practice is an imperfect or a natural apprehension of the grace of God.
Eve heard the promise of God that her seed should bruise the serpent’s head, and she called her firstborn son Cain. Appropriating the promise of God with her [p. 278] natural mind, she failed to see the divine way by which only this great thing could be accomplished. It requires therefore the spiritual mind to comprehend spiritual things, as the apostle says, “I... could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ”, 1 Corinthians 3: 1. Spiritual things are spiritually discerned; it is “in thy light shall we see light” (Psalm 36: 9), but we see it before we can walk according to it.
“Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness” (Romans 4: 3), when his faith apprehended the promise of God; yet it was nearly forty years after that this scripture was fulfilled, when he offered up his son. The faith had its apprehension and enjoyment for many a year before the work of faith; the practice confirmed the faith. If the practice had not followed, the heart would have lost all that grace had conferred; and that was not possible, for it was the gift of God. In proportion as the revelation is of God, in like measure must there be an answer to it sooner or later. Effect must follow cause. If the light has been received, the day will come that it must assert and obtain an expression for itself. There is nothing hid that shall not be known with regard to light.
To Jacob was vouchsafed a vision of God’s purpose when he lay a homeless stranger, with a stone for a pillow, at Bethel. The apprehension and enjoyment he had that night must one day produce its proper practice, however perverse he is. Though twenty years elapse, though he attempts to secure a Shalem short of Bethel, yet eventually he reaches in practical power the spot where he had seen and enjoyed the bright unfoldings of God’s grace.
Joseph sees in a dream the place he will one day occupy among his people; he is assured of it, and tells his dream to his brethren, so that the father chides him. He has seen and enjoyed the disclosures made to him, though for many a year everything contradicted and opposed the fulfilment of it; yet it was all perfectly and [p. 279] practically accomplished. Surely in his dreariest hour he might recall the peculiar sense of the favour of God of which he was the conscious recipient in those dreams. The deep and true conviction of His mercy and purpose respecting him must often have proved a light in the darkness to him, but years of sore discipline were required to fit him for them practically. Thus many a one has deep and true apprehensions of the grace of being united to Christ in heaven, and enjoys his portion there, who has made very little way in practical heavenly walk here. Many a one, blessed be God, has entered Canaan by the Spirit of Christ, typified by Joshua, who answers in a very small degree to Abram’s call, leaving his country, his kindred, and his father’s house. A soul is not given to doubt his possession of the place given by grace because he so little answers to it here in walk. How truly and heartily many a one at the Lord’s supper enters into the love of Christ in dying for us, who has as yet entered little into the responsibility involved in being there! The heart enjoys largely, though the practical responsibility of the fellowship of His blood and of His body is scarcely accepted. And yet to be consistent to the heart, there must be a reaching unto the other; nay, the heart is checked and limited in its enjoyment, because the answer to the heart’s feeling is not more distinctly assumed here. How can I deeply and truly rejoice in Christ’s love in dying for me, and not shrink from everything here on account of which He died, so that fellowship with His death is my only satisfaction connected with things here?
First there is the apprehension of the grace, and then follows the process by which we are made fit to manifest it practically. There is to everyone a knowledge of life first, before there is such an acceptance of death practically that the life is manifested in his body. Abraham enters through death - the offering up of Isaac - into the practical expression of the faith which he had enjoyed forty years before. Doubtless, it was unthought [p. 280] of and unexpected by him, that he should have to pass through so great an ordeal in order to establish his faith practically. Yet his faith bore him up, and he accepted the way appointed to him without a remonstrance, nay, with readiness of heart and perfect confidence in God.
Jacob on the contrary is refractory, and has to be urged from step to step by suffering and pressure, until he reaches Bethel, the place which in the vigour of faith he had connected with God and His glory on earth.
To Paul the portion of “a man in Christ” was revealed in great distinctness; he was in the deepest enjoyment of its blessedness before he was subjected to the buffeting of Satan, lest he should be puffed up above measure. And it was many years after, when a prisoner in Rome, that, as we learn in his epistle to the Philippians, he was fully in the walk of a heavenly man.
There is danger at times lest one should mistake his joy in apprehending his portion in Christ for power to walk according to it. Many a one, too, elated with apprehending, and trusting to his own state of feeling, and not to the Lord, has been greatly distressed at finding how little he was practically able to maintain among men and things here the complacency and peace he had enjoyed with the Lord. When the Spirit is revealing the deep things of God for me, I am lost in delight, and there is nothing to ruffle me. But when I resume my place down here, I require, like Paul, personal discipline, in order that I may not receive the grace of God in vain; because the moment I return among men, I am again in connection with the flesh, which is enmity against God. And hence I must submit to the process of dying to everything here which would stand in the way of my practically expressing the traits of the new and divine position which through grace I know is mine.
The Lord grant that we may more continuously and earnestly seek to know His thoughts and counsels about us, so that we may have a larger and fuller revelation of [p. 281] what He has prepared for them that love Him. But may we at the same time be prepared to submit to the discipline, the delivering unto death, which alone can ensure a practical manifestation of the grace which in heart we enjoy. As the hands are a long way before the feet in ascending a ladder, so is the apprehension of truth a great way before the walk according to it. The feet cannot reach where the hands are without patient continuance in the truth, and unflinching zeal to leave everything behind in order to reach it; because there is no progress except as the feet are conscientiously following the hands, neither is there any progress in the grasping of the truth, unless the feet advance as much as the hands.