Sit, Walk, Stand: The Process of Christian Maturity (5 page)

Astonished, he turned to his father. “Father, do you mean to say you don’t know me?”

Rapping on his desk, the father answered sternly, “Young man, I do not know you. What is your name? What is your address?” He did not of course mean by this that he did not know him at all. In the family and in the home he knew him, but
in that place and at that time
he did not know him. Though still his father’s son,
the boy must go right through the court procedure and pay his fine.

Yes, all ten virgins had oil in their lamps. What distinguished the foolish was that they had no reserve in their vessels. As true Christians, they have life in Christ, and they have a testimony before men. But theirs is a fitful testimony, for they live a hand-to-mouth existence. They have the Spirit, but they are not, we may say, “filled with the Spirit.” When the crisis comes, they must go out to buy more oil. In the end, of course, all the ten had enough. But the difference lay in the fact that the wise had sufficient oil in time, while the foolish, when at length they did have sufficient, had missed the purpose for which it was intended. It is all a question of time, and this is the point which the Lord seeks to drive home when, at the end of the parable, He urges His disciples not just to be disciples, but to be watchful disciples.

“Be not drunken with wine, wherein is riot, but be filled with the Spirit” (Eph. 5:18). In Matthew 25 it is not a question of the initial reception of Jesus Christ, nor yet of the coming of the Holy Spirit upon His servants for spiritual gifts! It is a question of the extra oil in the vessel—of the light being sustained, through however long a time of waiting, by means of the continual miraculous supply of the Spirit within (for whereas in the parable there is both a lamp and a vessel, in reality we are the lamp, and we are the vessel).

What Christian could possibly live in eternity in heaven without knowing this inner fullness? Surely not
one virgin can escape this? And so the Lord is taking all possible steps to bring us to the knowledge of that fullness now. “Watch therefore, for ye know not the day nor the hour” (Matt. 25:13).

“Be being filled” (
plerousthe
) is the unusual expression used here in relation to the Holy Spirit (see Eph. 5:18). “Allow yourselves to be continually made full.” It is not a crisis, as at Pentecost, but a state we are to be in all the time. And it is not something external, but internal; not a question of spiritual gifts and manifestations outwardly, but of the personal presence and activity of the Holy Spirit within our spirits, guaranteeing that the light in the vessel will burn undimmed—long after midnight if need be.

And moreover, it is not wholly a personal thing. As the next verse (Eph. 5:19) surely indicates, it is something which we share with other Christians in mutual dependence. For to be “filled with the Spirit” means, in the language of that verse, not merely “singing and making melody with your heart to the Lord,” but
“speaking one to another
in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.” Some of us may well find it easy to sing solos, but much harder to sing in time and harmony as a quartet or even as a duet. Yet this message of oneness in the Spirit lies at the heart of our second section of Ephesians (see 4:3, 15–16). The fullness of the Spirit is given to us that we should sing
together
a new song before the throne (Rev. 14:3).

But, to keep to our main emphasis, let me repeat that folly or wisdom hinges on this one point alone: that
if you are wise, you will seek this fullness sooner, but if you are foolish, you will put if off till later. Some of us are parents and have children. How greatly those children can differ in temperament! One will obey at once; another will think that by procrastination he can avoid the need to do so. If that is indeed the case, and you are weak enough to allow him a loophole for escape, then the one who procrastinates is in fact the wise one, for he succeeds in doing nothing. But if your word holds, if your command cannot be evaded and ultimately
must
be obeyed, then he is certainly the wiser who faces the issue squarely at once.

Get clear about the will of God. If God’s words can be discounted, then you might not be foolish to try to escape their implications. But if God is an unchanging God with an unchanging will, then be wise; redeem the time. Seek above all things to have that extra supply of oil in the vessel, “that ye may be filled unto all the fulness of God” (Eph. 3:19).

The parable does not answer all our questions. How do the foolish buy? We are not told. We are nowhere told what further steps God may have to take to bring all His children eventually to maturity. That is not our concern. We are concerned here with firstfruits. We are being urged to press on; not to speculate on what may happen if we don’t.

You cannot, by dodging the issue, avoid reaching maturity—or paying the price of it. But wisdom is connected with time. Those who are wise redeem the
time. Just as my fountain pen is now filled and ready to my hand for immediate use, so, by cooperating with the Lord, the wise provide God with what He wants: handy tools, instantly available to Him.

Look at the apostle Paul. He is consumed with a burning passion. He has seen that God’s purpose for us is bound up with the “fulness of the times” (1:10). He is one of those who have “before hoped in Christ” by resting in a salvation that is yet to be fully revealed “in the ages to come” (1:12, 2:7). And in view of all this, what does he do? He walks. And he not only walks; he runs. “I therefore so run, as not uncertainly” (1 Cor. 9:26). “I press on toward the goal unto the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 3:14).

Often when souls come into an understanding of spiritual things and begin to go on with the Lord, the feeling in my heart is, “Oh, if only they had come to see this five years earlier!” The time is so short, even if we
are
going on. There is such need for urgency. For remember, it is not a question of what we get out of it. It is a question of
what the Lord must have now
. The Lord’s need today is for ready instruments. Why? “Because the days are evil” (Eph. 5:16). The situation is desperate among the Christian public. Oh, that we might see it!

The Lord may have to deal drastically with us. Paul had to say, “I am an abortive child.” He had passed through tremendous crises to bring him to the point where he then was—and still he pressed on. It is always a question of time. God may have to do something in us
swiftly, compressing it into a short space; but He
has
to do that much. May the eyes of our heart be enlightened to know what is “the hope of his calling,” and then may we walk—nay, run—as those who “understand what the will of the Lord is” (1:18, 5:17). The Lord always loves desperate souls.

3

Stand

Finally, be strong in the Lord, and in the strength of his might. Put on the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. . . . That ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and, having done all, to stand. Stand therefore, having girded your loins . . . having put on the breastplate . . . having shod your feet . . . taking up the shield . . . . And the helmet . . . and the sword . . . praying . . . and watching” (Eph. 6:10–11, 13–18).

C
hristian experience begins with sitting and leads to walking, but it does not end with these. Every Christian must learn also to stand. Each one of us must be prepared for the conflict. We must know how to sit with Christ in heavenly places, and we must know how to walk worthy of Him down here, but we must also know how to stand before the Foe. This matter of conflict now comes before us in the third section of Ephesians (6:10–20). It is what Paul calls our “wrestling” with wicked spirits.

But let us first remind ourselves once again of the order in which Ephesians presents us with these things. It is “sit . . . walk . . . stand.” For no Christian can hope to enter the warfare of the ages without learning first to rest in Christ and in what He has done, and then, through the strength of the Holy Spirit within, to follow Him in a practical, holy life here on earth. If he is deficient in either of these, he will find that all the talk about spiritual warfare remains only talk; he will never know its reality. Satan can afford to ignore him, for he does not count for anything.

Yet the very same Christian can be made strong “in the Lord, and in the strength of his might” by knowing the values first of His exaltation and then of His indwelling (compare 6:10 with 1:19 and 3:16). It is with these two lessons well and truly learned that he comes to appreciate the third principle of the Christian life now summed up in the word “stand.”

God has an archenemy, and under his power are countless demons and fallen angels seeking to overrun the world with evil and to exclude God from His own kingdom. This is the meaning of verse 12. It is an explanation of things taking place around us.
We
see only “flesh and blood” ranged against us—that is to say, a world system of hostile kings and rulers, sinners and evil men. No, says Paul, our wrestling is not against these, “but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world-rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly
places”—in short, against the wiles of the devil himself.

Two thrones are at war. God is claiming the earth for His dominion, and Satan is seeking to usurp the authority of God. The church is called to displace Satan from his present realm and to make Christ Head over all. What are we doing about it?

I want now to deal with this matter of our warfare—first in general terms in relation to our personal Christian lives and then in a more special sense in relation to the work of the Lord entrusted to us. There are many direct assaults of Satan upon God’s children. Of course, we must not attribute to the devil those troubles that are the result of our own breach of divine laws. We should by now know how to put these right. But there are physical attacks upon the saints, attacks of the evil one upon their bodies and minds, of which we must take serious account. Surely too there are few of us who do not know something of the Enemy’s assaults upon our spiritual life. Are we going to let these pass unchallenged?

We have our position with the Lord in the heavenlies, and we are learning how to walk with Him before the world; but how are we to acquit ourselves in the presence of the adversary—His adversary and ours? God’s word is “stand”! “Put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.” The Greek verb “stand” with its following preposition “against” in verse 11 really means “hold your ground.”

There is a precious truth hidden in that command of God. It is not a command to invade a foreign territory. Warfare, in modern parlance, would imply a command to “march.” Armies march into other countries to occupy and to subdue. God has not told us to do this. We are not to march, but to stand. The word “stand” implies that the ground disputed by the Enemy is really God’s, and therefore ours. We need not struggle to gain a foothold on it.

Nearly all the weapons of our warfare described in Ephesians are purely defensive. Even the sword can be used as well for defense as for offense. The difference between defensive and offensive warfare is this: that in the former I have got the ground and only seek to keep it, whereas in the latter I have not got the ground and am fighting in order to get it. And that is precisely the difference between the warfare waged by the Lord Jesus and the warfare waged by us. His was offensive; ours is, in essence, defensive.

He warred against Satan in order to gain the victory. Through the cross He carried that warfare to the very threshold of hell itself, to lead forth from there His “captivity captive” (4:8–9). Today we war against Satan only to maintain and consolidate the victory which Christ has already gained. By the resurrection God proclaimed His Son victor over the whole realm of darkness, and the ground Christ won He has given to us. We do not need to fight to obtain it. We only need to hold it against all challengers.

Our task is one of holding, not of attacking. It is a matter not of advance, but of sphere—the sphere of Christ. In the person of Jesus Christ, God has already conquered. He has given us His victory to
hold
. Within the sphere of Christ, the Enemy’s defeat is already a fact, and the church has been put there to keep him defeated. Satan is the one who must do the counterattacking in his efforts to dislodge us from that sphere.

For our part, we need not struggle to occupy ground that is already ours. In Christ we
are
conquerors—nay, “more than conquerors” (Rom. 8:37). In Him, therefore, we
stand
. Thus, today we do not fight
for
victory; we fight
from
victory. We do not fight in order to win, but because in Christ we have already won. Overcomers are those who rest in the victory already given to them by their God.

When you fight to
get
the victory, then you have lost the battle at the very outset. Suppose Satan sets out to assault you in your home or in your business. Difficulties mount up, misunderstandings arise, a situation that you can neither deal with nor escape threatens to overwhelm you. You pray, you fast, you struggle and resist for days, but nothing happens. Why? You are trying to fight into victory, and in doing so are relinquishing to the Enemy the very ground that is yours. For victory is still for you a distant thing, somewhere ahead of you, and you cannot reach it.

I was in just such a situation once myself, and God brought to my mind the word in Second Thessalonians
concerning the man of sin, whom the Lord Jesus “shall slay with the breath of his mouth” (2:8). The thought came,
It will need but a breath from my Lord to finish him off, and here am I trying to raise a hurricane! Was not Satan once for all defeated? Then this victory too is already won.

Only those who sit can stand. Our power for standing, as for walking, lies in our having first been made to sit together with Christ. The Christian’s walk and warfare alike derive their strength from his position there. If he is not sitting before God, he cannot hope to stand before the Enemy.