The
complacency of Christians is the scandal of Christianity.
Time is
short, and eternity is long. The end of all things is at hand. Man has proved
himself morally unfit to manage the world in which he has been placed by the
kindness of the Almighty. He has jockeyed himself to the edge of the crater and
cannot go back, and in terrible fear he is holding his breath against the awful
moment when he will be plunged into the inferno.
In the
meantime, a company of people exist on the earth who claim to have the answer
to all life’s major questions. They claim to have found the way back to God,
release from their sins, life everlasting and a sure guarantee of heaven in the
world to come.
These are
the Christians. They declare that Jesus Christ is very God of a very God, made
flesh to dwell among us. They insist that He is the Way, the Truth and the
Life. They testify that He is to them Wisdom, Righteousness, Sanctification,
and Redemption, and they steadfastly assert that He will be to them the
Resurrection and the Life for eternity to come.
These
Christians know, and when pressed will admit, that their finite hearts have
explored but a pitifully small part of the infinite riches that are theirs in
Christ Jesus. They read the lives of the great saints whose fervent desire
after God carried them far up the mountain towards spiritual perfection, and
for a brief moment they may yearn to be like these fiery souls whose light and
fragrance still linger in the world where they once lived and labored. But the
longing soon passes. The world is too much with them and the claims of their
earthly lives are too insistent; so they settle back to live their ordinary
lives and accept the customary as normal. After a while they manage to achieve
some kind of inner content and that is the last we hear of them.
This
contentment with inadequate and imperfect progress in the life of holiness is,
I repeat, a scandal in the Church of the First-born. The whole weight of
Scriptures is against such a thing. The Holy Spirit constantly seeks to arouse
the complacent. “Let us go on” is the word of the Spirit. The apostle Paul
embodies this in his noble testimony as found in his Philippian epistle:
But what things were gain to me, those I
counted loss for Christ. Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the
excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered
the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ, …
that I may know him, and the power of his resurrection… But this one thing I
do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those
things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high
calling of God in Christ Jesus. (3:7-8, 10, 13-14)
If we accept
this as the sincere expression of a normal Christian I do not see how we can
justify our own indifference towards spiritual things. But should someone feel
a desire to make a definite progress in the life of Christ, what can he do to
get on with it? Here are a few suggestions:
1. Strive to get beyond mere pensive
longing. Set your face like
flint and begin to put your life in order. Every man is as holy as he really
wants to be. But the want must be all-compelling.
Tie up the
loose ends of your life. Begin to tithe; institute family prayer; pay up your
debts as far as possible and make some kind of frank arrangement with every
creditor you cannot pay immediately; make restitution as far as you can; set
aside time to pray and search the Scriptures; surrender wholly to the will of
God. You will be surprised and delighted with the results.
2. Put away every un-Christian habit from
you. If other Christians practice it without compunction, God may be
calling you to come nearer to Him than these other Christians care to come.
Remember the words, “Others may, you cannot.” Do not condemn or criticize, but
seek a better way. God will honor you.
3. Get Christ Himself in the focus of your
heart and keep Him there continually. Only in Christ will you find complete
fulfillment. In Him you may be united to the Godhead in conscious, vital
awareness. Remember that all of God is accessible to you through Christ.
Cultivate His knowledge above everything else on earth.
4. Throw your heart open to the Holy Spirit
and invite Him to fill you. He will do it. Let no one interpret the
Scriptures for you in such a way as to rule out the Father’s gift of the
Spirit. Every man is as full of the Spirit as he wants to be. Make your heart a
vacuum and the Spirit will rush into fill it.
Nowhere in the
Scriptures nor in Christian biography was anyone ever filled with the Spirit
who did not know that he had been, and nowhere was anyone filled who did not
know when. And no one was ever filled gradually.
5. Be hard on yourself and easy on others.
Carry your own cross but never lay one on the back of another. Begin to
practice the presence of God. Cultivate the fellowship of the Triune God by
prayer, humility, obedience, and self-abnegation.
Let any
Christian do these things and he will make rapid spiritual progress. There is
every reason why we should all go forward in our Christian lives and no reason
why we should not. Let us go on.
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