The Posture of The Christian Life
Our Lord tells us what is the posture, the only safe and happy posture of His people: “Let your loins be girded about, and your lights burning and ye yourselves like unto men that wait for their Lord, when He will return from the wedding; that when He cometh and knocketh they may open unto Him immediately.” But though this posture can neither be obtained nor maintained except by special grace, yet the Lord does bless those means of His own appointment which He has afforded us; and most certain it is that without the use of these means the life of God cannot be sustained in health and vigour.
Let us glance at some of them:
1. A spirit of prayer is most certainly one of the most gracious means which the Lord employs in maintaining divine life in the soul. A spirit of prayer is something very different from a custom of prayer, a form of prayer, or even a gift of prayer. These are merely the fleshly imitations of the interceding breath of the Holy Ghost in the heart of the saints of God; and, therefore, may and do exist without it. But that secret lifting up of the heart unto the Lord, that panting after Him as the heart panteth after the water-brooks, that pouring out of the soul before Him, that sighing and groaning for a word of His grace, a look of His eye, a touch of His hand, a smile of His face, that sweet communion and heavenly intercourse with Him on the mercy-seat which marks the Spirit’s inward intercession—all this cannot be counterfeited. Such a close, private, inward, experimental work and walk is out of the reach and out of the taste of the most gifted professor. But in this path the Holy Ghost leads the living family of God, and as they walk in it under His teaching and anointings, they feel its sweetness and blessedness.
2. Having the eyes and heart much in the Word of truth is another blessed means of maintaining the life of God in the soul. Oh, what treasures of mercy and grace are lodged in the Scriptures! What a mine of heavenly instruction! What a store of precious promises, encouraging invitations, glorious truths, holy precepts, tender admonitions, wise counsels and living directions! What a lamp to our feet and a light to our path! But, oh, how little we know, understand, believe, realize, feel and enjoy of the Word of life! For four or five and thirty years have we read, studied, meditated and sought by faith to enter into the treasures of truth contained in the inspired Word; but oh how little do we understand it! How less do we believe and enjoy the heavenly mysteries, and treasures of grace and truth revealed in it! Yet only as our heart is brought not only unto but into the Word of life, and only as faith feeds on the heavenly food there lodged by the infinite wisdom and goodness of God, can we be made fruitful in any good word or work. We should seek, by the help and blessing of God, to drink more into the spirit of truth, to enter more deeply and vitally into the mind of Christ, to read the Word more under that same inspiration whereby it was written, to submit our heart more to its instruction, that it may drop like the rain and distil like the dew into the inmost depths of our soul, and thus, as it were, fertilize the roots of our faith, and hope, and love.
3. Separation from the world, and everything worldly, and that not in a monkish, austere, pharisaic spirit, but from the constraining influence of that love to the Lord which draws up the heart and affections to Him away from earthly things, is a gracious, we might almost say, indispensable means of maintaining the life of God in the believer’s breast. Nothing more deadens the soul to every gracious and heavenly feeling than drinking in the spirit of the world. As long as that is kept out, mere external contact with the world, as, for instance, in the calls of necessary and lawful business, does not injure. The world without and the world within are like two streams of different magnitude which run side by side. Keep them apart, and the smaller stream will not overflow its banks; but let the larger stream get an entrance into the smaller, in other words, let the world without rush into the world within, who shall tell the width of that flood or the havoc that it may make of the crops?
Some constitutions are so tender that every cold blast is sufficient to produce inflammation; and others are so susceptible to disease that they fall sick under the slightest taint of every epidemic disorder. Such sickly constitutions must watch against the east wind, and not expose themselves to the air of the marshy fen. But just such cold-catching, feverish invalids are we all in soul, whatever be the vigour and health of the body. Let us then be afraid of the very breath of the world lest it chill the heart, or inflame the carnal mind; let us dread exposure to its infectious influence lest it call forth into active energy our latent disease.
And above all, let us dread the influence of worldly professors. The openly profane cannot do us much harm. The foul-mouthed swearer, the staggering drunkard, the loud brawler, are not likely to do us any injury. We can give them what the sailor calls “a wide berth,” as he does to a known rock when he approaches the place as marked on the chart. Nor are we likely to suffer injury from the moral Churchman, or the zealous Arminian, or the political Dissenter. They and we are far enough apart. But the professor of the same truths which we hold dear, who sits perhaps under the same or similar ministry, whom we cannot altogether reject and yet cannot receive, who, like Bunyan’s Talkative, is swift to speak on every occasion, and on no occasion at all, that he may have the pleasure of hearing the music of his own tongue, but who the more we are in his company the more he robs us of every tender, humble, gracious and spiritual feeling—he, he is the robber, not indeed the highwayman who knocks us down with his bludgeon, but the pickpocket who steals our purse as he sits in the same carriage by our side.
4. To cleave to the Lord with purpose of heart under all cases and circumstances, under all trials and temptations, under all difficulties and perplexities, amidst a whole storm of objections and suggestions from the carnal mind, the sore thrustings of our pitiless and unwearied adversary, and every obstacle from without or within that may obstruct our path—this, too, is indispensable to the life of faith. “The kingdom of heaven suffereth violence and the violent take it by force.” It is not folding the hands and crying, “Peace, peace,” that will take us to heaven; no, nor a sound creed, a form of godliness, or a name to live. This is not running the race set before us, or fighting the good fight of faith, or wrestling with principalities and powers and spiritual wickedness in high places. Sometimes we are tempted to presume and sometimes tempted to despair. The only cure for both these diseases of the soul is to cleave to the Person and work, blood, love and grace of the Lord Jesus, so far as He has been revealed to our soul and according to the measure of faith which is given unto us. To hang upon Him at every step is the only way to be brought through.
5. The last gracious means which we shall name is to live, walk and act in the daily fear of God. This is, indeed, a most blessed fountain of life to depart from the snares of death. Only, then, as this fountain of life springs up in the soul, watering and thus making the conscience tender, the heart fruitful, the affections heavenly, and the spirit soft and contrite, can the power of grace be maintained in the breast. This heavenly grace of godly fear, the believer’s treasure, the beginning and the end of wisdom, makes and keeps the eye watchful, the ear attentive, the smell quick and and sagacious, the tongue savoury, the arm strong, the hand open, and the foot wary; and thus amidst thousands of snares and temptations he walks forward to a heavenly kingdom with his eyes right on, and his eyelids straight before him.
Rev. J.C. Philpot (1802–1869) was educated at Worchester College, Oxford, seceded from the ministry of the Church of England in 1835 to join the Strict and Particular Baptist body, and pastored congregations at Stamford, Oakham, and Croydon. The writer here deals with a vital question: What should be the posture of a child of God as he journeys heavenward?
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Bekijk de hele uitgave van vrijdag 1 juli 1988
The Banner of Truth | 28 Pagina's
Bekijk de hele uitgave van vrijdag 1 juli 1988
The Banner of Truth | 28 Pagina's