Not I But Christ

Not I But Christ

Here lies the great difference between the world’s gospel and Christ’s Gospel. The world says, when it bids you good-bye, “Take care of yourself.” The Lord says, “Let yourself go, and take care of others and the glory of your God.”

The world says, “Have a good time, look out for number one.”

But the world gets left in the end, and the last comes in first. The man that lets go gets all, and the man who holds fast loses what he has; and the Lord’s words come true—“Whosoever will save his life shall lose it, and whosoever will lose his life for My sake shall find it.”

The law of sacrifice is the greatest law in earth and heaven.

The law of sacrifice is God’s great universal law; it is written in every department of nature. We tread on the skeletons of millions of generations that have lived and died that we might live. The very heart of the earth itself is the wreck of ages and the buried life of former generations. All nature dies and lives again, and each new development is a higher and larger life built on the wrecks of the former.

A corn of wheat must fall into the ground and die or else be a shrivelled-up seed, but as it dies it lives and multiplies and grows into the beautiful spring, the golden autumn, and the multiplied sheaves. And so it is in the deeper life of the higher world, as you rise from the natural to the spiritual. Everything that is selfish is limited by its selfishness. The river that ceases to run becomes a stagnant pool, but as it flows it grows fresher, richer, fuller.

If you turn your natural eye upon yourself, you cannot see anything. It is as you look out that the vision of the world bursts upon you. The very law of the natural life is love for others, caring for others by giving away and letting go. It is death and self-destruction to be selfish.

The law of sacrifice is the law of God. God who lived in supreme self-sufficiency as the Father, Son and Holy Spirit gave Himself. God’s glory was in giving Himself, and so He gave Himself in the creation, in the beauty of the universe, so formed that every possible sort of happiness could come according to its natural law. And then God gave Himself in Jesus Christ. “God so loved the world that He gave . . .” The law of God is sacrifice. He loved until He gave all.

Then it is the law of Christ Himself. He came through God’s sacrifice, and He came to sacrifice. He laid down His honour, left the society of heaven, and lived with creatures farther beneath Him than the grovelling earth worm is beneath a man. He made Himself one of them and became a brother of this fallen race. He was always yielding and letting go, always holding back His power and not using it. He was always being subject to the will of the men beneath Him, until at last they nailed Him to the cross. His whole life was a continual refusing of Himself, carrying their burdens and sharing their sorrows. And so, love and sacrifice are the law of Christ. “Bear one another’s burdens and so fulfil the law of Christ.” The law of Christ is the bearing of others’ burdens, the sharing of others’ griefs, sacrificing yourself for another.

It is the law of the saints. It is the only way to be saved. From the beginning it has always been so. It was so on Mt. Moriah where Abraham, the father of the faithful, gave up his only child, the child of promise. It reached its climax on Mt. Calvary. All along, the way was marked by blood and sacrifice. Not only did Abraham give up his Isaac but Isaac gave up his life. In a way, Joseph died for those around him. Because he was to rise so high, he must go down low, down not only into banishment but into shameful imprisonment and almost into death. When Joseph was out of sight and all God’s promises concerning him seemed lost and his prospects seemed hopeless, then God picked him up and set him on Egypt’s throne.

Moses had to be a fugitive. Moses had to try and then fail; for forty years God had to teach him and train him, and when at last Moses was out of sight, He gave him his desire. At the very last moment Moses had to let go the prospect of entering the Promised Land. He died outside the gates of Canaan. Jesus Himself should bring him in to stand with Him on the Mount of Transfiguration and say, “Now, Moses, you have the thing you let go, the thing you lost and died to, and now you have a better resurrection.” And so it has been all through the past. Saul would not give up himself, would not destroy Agag and Amalek, types of the flesh. So Saul, head and shoulders above the people, all that a man could be, went down into the darkness. And Jonah, the man whom God honoured to deliver His own people and lead His kingdom into victory and mighty power in the days of Jeroboam II, the man whom God honoured to be the first foreign missionary, the man whom God had chosen and sent to Assyria, saying, Go and preach to Nineveh; go bring the world to know and honour Me. God mightily blessed him, so mightily that in that city the mightiest revival the world ever saw was consummated. And yet Jonah got angry because He did not kill all the people in Nineveh, and so Jonah compromised his reputation.

Jonah had said that the people would die in forty days. Before the forty days were up the people repented of their sins and God repented of what He said He would do and forgave them. Jonah said (or at least meant to say), “Where is my honour in this transaction? I will never be believed again. Why did you not destroy Nineveh and save my reputation.” And because Jonah could not let his own glory go, God had to dishonour him and leave him under the withered gourd, a sort of scarecrow to show to all generations how terrible it is to seek one’s own honour. I think there is no more shocking and ridiculous spectacle than that poor old prophet sitting under his withered gourd scolding God and begging to die just because he felt God had dishonoured him in fulfilling His mission in the repentance of the whole nation. And God just let him stand there as a spectacle of shame, dishonour and selfishness.

We need not trace through the New Testament the story of Simon Peter. The Master’s last message to him when He restored him was: “When you were young, you girded yourself, and walked where you would, But when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will dress you and carry you where you don’t want to go. This he spoke, signifying by what death he should glorify God.” Jesus sent him to a life of crucifixion to be yielded, submitted, surrendered and led about by others against his natural choice till, at last, he should be crucified.

The world says: “Every man for himself”; but Paul says: “Not I, but Christ.”

The longer I live, the longer I know myself and friends, the more thoroughly I am convinced that this is the great secret of failure in our Christian life. We come a little way with Jesus, but we stop at Gethsemane and Calvary. They followed Him in His ministry in Galilee. They loved the feeding of the thousands, and said, what a blessed King He would make! But when He stands and talks about Calvary and speaks of the cross for them as well as for Him, and how they must go with Him and go with Him all the way, they say, “This is a hard saying, who can bear it?”

And a few days after you could count them on your fingers. They said we do not understand Him; we thought He would be a king. They were not willing to go to the cross.

I am sure this is where multitudes of Christians have stopped short. They have said yes to self and no to God, instead of saying no to self and yes to God. Oh! it is so much easier to talk than to live! A believer has recently said that there are three baptisms to be baptized with. First, the baptism of repentance, when we turned from sin to God. Second, the baptism of the Holy Spirit, when we receive the Holy Spirit to live in us. Third, the baptism into death, after the Holy Spirit comes in. After you receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit, then it is that you have to go with Christ into His own dying. “If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow Me.” And so, He said about Himself, “I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how am I straightened until it be accomplished.” I have a burial to be buried with. He was going out into deeper dying every day, and His heart was all pent up with it, until He went down into Gethsemane, down to Joseph’s tomb, down into Hades, and He passed through the regions of the dead and opened first the gates of heaven. That is what Jesus saw before Him after He was baptized on the banks of Jordan.

Oh! beloved, who have received the baptism of the Holy Spirit, it is you who have to go down into His death. Now I know that, in a sense, we take all that by faith when we consecrate ourselves to Christ, and we count it all real and God counts it all real; but my dear friends, you have to go through it step by step. We must go through the narrow passage and the dark places of the stairs. There must be no fooling here. You may count it all done; but step by step it must be written on the records of your heart. Now, my friends, what does all this mean? It is dying to self-will. After you consecrate yourself to God then comes the tug of war, and tomorrow morning you will have the most awful battle of your life. Just because you have given up your will, the devil wants you to take it back. Do not think it will be an Elysian field; no, it will be a battlefield; battles with the dragon and the fiery darts. The devil will try to show you how unreasonable it is, how right it is that you should stand and have your will. It will be life or death perhaps for a week or for a month. Jesus went into the wilderness for forty days, and the devil tried to get Him to do His own will, but He stood the test. He let His own will go, “I came not to do Mine own will but the will of Him that sent Me.”

God could make Him a leader because He had been led. No man can govern until he has been governed. Joseph could not have been where he was in Egypt unless he had been set upon by the people; then he sat there a broken man in a lowly, humble spirit. His brothers came down to see him. The world would have said, make them feel how mean they were and how wicked. God said, “No, help them to forget it.” So, Joseph said, don’t be angry or grieved with yourselves, God meant it “for good.” If Joseph had not been humbled, he would have been no good as Egypt’s ruler. No man can lead until he has been led.

David had to have nine years of training; it might have been better for him to have had nine more, then he would not have abused his power so shamefully when he got to the throne. Daniel in Babylon had to be disciplined by suffering before he could sit as Premier with Cyrus and Nebuchadnezzar. If God is going to make anything of you, let all your will go into His hands. You will find a good many tests after the first surrender, but these are just opportunities for allowing the work to be done.

Then comes self-indulgence, doing a thing because you like to do it. No man has a right to do a thing for the pleasure it affords, because he enjoys or likes it. I have no right to take my dinner just because I like it. This makes me a beast. I do it because it nourishes me. Doing things because they please yourself, seeking your own interest, is wrong. “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness.” We have no Divine warrant to seek for ourselves in anything. Seek God, and God will seek your good. Take care of the things of God because He will take care of you. Look not any man on your own best, but on the best of others.

Again, there is self-complacency, dwelling on the work that you have done. How easy after performing some service or gaining some victory to think, “How good.” How quickly this runs into vain glory! How many are more interested in what people think and say of them than what they are themselves.

In the work of God there is nothing we need to so on guard against as vanity. That was Jonah’s curse. The seraphim covered their faces with their wings, they covered their feet with their wings. They covered their faces because they did not want to see their beauty, and their feet because they did not want to see their service, nor have anyone else see them. They used only two to fly. Take care how you put temptation in another’s way. It is all right to encourage workers, but don’t praise them in a carnal manner. God does not say, how beautiful, how eloquent, how lovely, how splendid! That is putting on a human head the crown that belongs to Jesus. I want the Holy Spirit to enable me simply to do good, but I do not want power to bring me the honour of the world. If I had it, I should feel it the greatest peril of my life. We have no more right to take Christ’s honour here than we have to sit on Jesus’ throne and let angels worship us. We have to be so careful when God uses us to bless human souls. There is a sweetness which is not of God. God save us from all these snares woven by the tempter.

Philip, as soon as he had led the eunuch to Jesus, got out of the eunuch’s way. Beloved, there are subtle spells that come between believers. They seem sweet and right, but you need much of the Holy Spirit to keep your spirit pure. I am not talking here of sinful love. Surely, it is not needful to speak of that. I am thinking of a far more subtle and refined and spotless spell, which is more dishonouring to God and more dangerous to you, because it is so pure. God keep us from every service, and every friendship, and every thought that is not in the Holy Spirit and not to the honour of Jesus alone.

Time will not permit me to speak of the self-life of sensitiveness, that fine susceptibility of your feelings to be wounded, and of selfish affection, wanting people to love you because you like to be loved. Divine love loves that it may bless and do good. You ought to love not because it pleases you, but because it blesses them. Paul could say, “I am glad to spend and be spent for your sakes, notwithstanding the more earnestly I love you the less I be loved.” He does not say, I will help you as long as you love me. No; I gladly spend my last drop of blood to bless you. That is what is the matter with you. People hurt you, they don’t appreciate you. Well, you must be spent and be sacrificed all the more.

I know of nothing more selfish than the tears we shed for our own sorrows. When God saw Israel weeping, He was angry and said, “You have polluted My altar with your tears.” You are weeping because you have not better bread. You are weeping because something else is dearer to you than Christ. You are weeping because you are not altogether pleased or gratified.

Even our sacrifices and self-denials may be selfish. Yes, our sanctification may be selfish. A friend of mine used to say when he heard people testify about their sinlessness, “Poor old soul, he committed the biggest sin of his life for he told the biggest lie.“ Self can get up and pray, and sit down and say, “Ah what a lovely prayer!” Self can preach a sermon and go home and say, or let the devil say through him, “You did splendidly; what a useful man you are!” Self can be burned to death and be proud of its soulish fortitude. Yes, we can have religious selfishness as well as carnal selfishness.

How can we get rid of this? Well, I think above everything else we must see the reality of the thing, we must see the danger of the thing, we must see that it is our sin. We must look at it frankly and choose that it shall go.

The self says, “How that fits somebody else, not me.” Many of you are seeing this with the others and not taking it home to oneself. God means you. Pass sentence of death upon it or else it will pass sentence on you. As long as you love your life, you will hold onto it.

The Holy Spirit is able to take everything we dare to give and gives everything we dare to take. If we suffer with Him we will also be glorified with Him. This is the divine path for our lives to take.