Turning God’s Word Upside Down

Turning God’s Word Upside Down

It is written: “He who loses his life for My sake will find it.” What are the implications of this word for our practical life? It means that if I lose my old self-life, I will find the life of Christ. And the more I lose my self-life, the more the life of Christ will appear.

An old believing brother from a “free assembly” said, “Until now I always believed that I had to find the life first and then I would lose the old life. But now God has shown me that I have to die first in order to receive life.”

Behold! This old brother discovered that he had been deceived. He believed, together with so many others, that if only he could partake of more life, the old life would peel off, as the common expression goes. But it didn’t work.

God has given His laws for His children’s growth, and He does not break these laws so that those who turn God’s Word upside down may prosper.

Perhaps God points something out that is wrong in a believer’s life and this person says, “I do not want to see it. I will just look at You, O God, and then all of this will disappear.” However, God is present by His Spirit, daily and without interruption, pointing out the same thing. “Yes, but if I stay close to God, then these things will fall away. I have insufficient life; I have an insufficient fullness of the Holy Spirit.”

People want to have much from God: they want to be filled with the Spirit; they want to have an abundance of life and power—things that can get the heart to swell with joy. But they do not necessarily want to look the truth about themselves in the eye. While people wait and wait for an outpouring of the Spirit, while they are waiting and begging for more life, for more miracles, and dreaming about miracles, God is waiting for them to become sufficiently sober to be able to hear: “Do you want to lose your life in those areas that I am pointing out to you?” Yes, it will sting. Then they will be required to see another law in their members (Rom. 7:23) by which they were taken captive. Then they will have to leave their dreamy Christianity behind and be transported into the naked reality of their own life. Why is it necessary to see this? It causes pain, and all I am looking for is joy. It causes sufferings. Yes! This is the cross that Jesus says you must take up. This is the life that He says you must lose. This is the truth that is those “hard words.” This is the humiliation: namely, that you have to acknowledge. This is truly a narrow way. Is that the way on which I must go? Can’t I just look at Jesus instead and away from myself and thus avoid the cross, sufferings, and the humiliation? Then I can just take up my cross by suffering when I am being mocked; then I can just suffer by feeling sorry for the others; then I can just suffer humiliation by being sufficiently humble to think about the fact that God loves me. This will all be very pleasant, whereas denying myself, taking up my cross, and facing up to the truth just the way it speaks to me—that is suffering. And if you can avoid it, all the better.

This is how people get around the cross that Jesus says we must take up. This is how people want to find their life, whereas Jesus has given different laws for finding your life: namely, by first losing it.

You will seek growth and progress in vain unless you go the way of the commandments. But going the way that God has commanded is called bondage by those who avoid it. It looks nicer to go around it; it makes for many smooth and sweet words that Paul warns against.

Death is the way to life!

The spirit is life because of righteousness. Rom. 8:10. The person who wants to have life so that it gushes out agrees with the righteous judgments that God passes over his life. Then the spirit will be life.

“You have loved righteousness and hated lawlessness; therefore God, Your God, has anointed You with the oil of gladness more than Your brethren.” Heb. 1:9. This is the way of rejoicing!

This will be rejoicing that is based on a constantly increasing liberation; this will be love that is based on a constant hatred against sin.

The person who wants to have life without facing the truth about his own life and being willing to acknowledge it point for point, will never come to a life. He will wither away like a branch and become stiff and inflexible like dry branches usually are, or else he will become a dreamer and a sentimentalist who entertains a vague hope of getting everything in the future, but he never receives anything as his possession. As previously mentioned in Skjulte Skatter, he must resort to a substitute obedience, a substitute perfection, and substitute virtues because he cannot come into possession of these things on the way he is going.

On the other hand, the person who is willing to be led by the Spirit of truth sees everything in the light of this Spirit of truth, and he is willing to be humbled, to acknowledge, to suffer, and to die. He neither changes God’s commandments and way, nor perverts the Scriptures in order to avoid the cross.

Stop turning things upside down on the way of life. These false doctrines are being propagated through many of the “free” preachers’ messages that hinder God’s children from entering onto the way of life. You never hear them (or see it in their publications) speaking about taking up your cross and denying yourself. It is finished in Christ, they say. However, our obedience to God is not finished in Christ; my obedience is to be finished by me.

This applies to everyone: Life or no life!