The Flower Brides (16 page)

She sat there silently thinking it over, and then a sudden remembrance of that glowing look with which he had welcomed her acceptance of his invitation brought a degree of comfort. How silly she was! This was his nature, and why should she question it? If he didn’t want to talk, let him remain quiet. He hadn’t had to ask her, and he likely was friendly enough and wanted her there or he wouldn’t have taken the trouble to come after her. Why be bothered by his manner? This time with him was what she had wanted, to ask him a lot of questions, why not use it? If he didn’t want to answer, he could say so.

So she summoned her courage, casting a sideways glance at his pleasant, friendly face.

“There are some things I would very much like to ask you,” she said in a strained young voice, almost wishing now that she had started that she hadn’t begun.

“Yes?” He turned a look of quick interest toward her, and all her hesitation vanished. He was again the friend who was ready and eager to help, able and understanding.

“We were speaking of worldly amusements the other day. Nightclubs and that sort of thing. Of course, I was brought up without them, but people—sometimes Christian people—are telling me that times have changed and that everybody thinks those things are all right now. They say young people can’t get along without those things. I wanted to know what you think. Is it wrong for a Christian ever to go to such things? Do you think a girl or a man could be a Christian and still do those things?”

Ethan looked at her with one of those deep, searching glances, as if he would find out through her eyes just what she thought herself before he answered. “Do you mean, do I think a person can be
saved
and still do those things? Because, yes, I suppose they can. For salvation isn’t a matter of what you do yourself. It’s something Christ did for you, and you have only to accept. But if you’re asking about those things as the practice of a person who is saved, that’s another question.”

Marigold sat thoughtfully, looking into the bright landscape ahead.

“I see,” she said earnestly. “But if they were considering whether they would accept the Savior as theirs, wouldn’t the matter of what they had to do or not do afterward have to be considered? Wouldn’t they have to be willing to renounce things if they took Christ as their Savior?”

“It doesn’t say so in the Bible. It says ‘Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.’”

“Then you think it is all right for a Christian to be worldly sometimes, do you?” she asked with evident surprise in her tone.

“I didn’t say that,” he answered quickly. “I don’t think those things are to be considered when one accepts the Lord Jesus as his Savior. The question is just that Jesus Christ died for your sins and is willing to take them and their penalty upon His own account instead of yours, and do you want Him to do that? If you say yes, if you accept what He has already done for you and believe fully that He has done it, then you are born again. You have a new nature born of God, and that nature does not desire the things of this world. Yet you still have that old sinning nature with you, will have as long as you live on the earth, that draws you in spite of your best resolves and makes you want to do the things that you have resolved over and over again you will never do. As long as that old nature has a chance to get on the top every little while, you haven’t much chance of living the steady testimony a saved soul should live. But God has provided a way of victory for you over the old nature. He has said that if you will go the whole way with Him, even to the cross, and let the old nature be crucified with Him, consider it to have
died
with Him, that He will give you His own resurrection power in your life; that is, He will live His life in you on a different plane from ordinary living. Am I making it plain?”

“I think so,” said Marigold thoughtfully. “You mean hand everything over to Him and be willing for what He wants?”

“Yes, it amounts to that. It is believing yourself to be dead to the things of the flesh and alive unto God; it is asking Him to slay self in you so that you can honestly say, ‘I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.’ When you honestly say that to Him, then He can come in and fill you with Himself, and it will be no more you who is living in your body but Jesus Christ who is living your life for you. And then if He wants you to go to nightclubs and all that sort of thing, He will tell you. He’ll make it very plain to you. It isn’t a matter of giving up things. It’s a matter of whether you are willing to
die
with Him.”

“Oh,” said Marigold softly, a strange illuminated look on her face, “that makes life all different, doesn’t it?”

She was still trying to think it through, he saw.

“Yes,” he said, looking with a great yearning upon the sweet face as she sat thinking. “It makes life very wonderful!” And there was something in his tone that showed he knew from experience the truth of what he was saying. “It puts the power of God at your command, to conquer for you the old sinful nature that is in you. It’s His resurrection power.”

She looked at him, perplexed. “I don’t exactly understand. What is the resurrection power?”

“It is the power of God that Jesus Christ brought with Him out of the tomb when He rose from the dead. He said, ‘All power is given unto me… go ye,’ meaning that they were to go forth in that power to conquer, what of themselves they never could. They were to go out to witness for Him. That was their only commission, and you know yourself that neither they nor we could ever do much witnessing for the Lord Jesus by the lives we live in our own power. Just our own resolves and beliefs wouldn’t go very far in making others accept Christ as Savior, nor even in showing them that He was the Son of God!”

“That is all new to me,” said the girl earnestly. “You mean we can have Christ’s own power instead of our own to live by?”

“Yes, if we are willing for this death-union with Him. He has promised, ‘If we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection.’ And it is just in proportion as we are willing for this death-union with Him, this daily dying with Him to the things of this world, the things of the old nature, that we shall be able to show Him to others.”

They were silent for a moment while she considered that. Then Ethan spoke again. “You know self is not easily slain. It has a habit of coming to life again, self with all its old programs and ambitions and tastes and feelings and wishes. It is a case of having to be slain continually. ‘For we which live (here on this earth, you know) are
always
delivered unto death for Jesus’ sake, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh.’ I wonder if I have made that perfectly plain. Do you see how all this affects the question you asked me about worldly ways and amusements?”

“Oh yes, I think I do,” said Marigold slowly. “That would be very wonderful living. I never dreamed that such living would be possible on this earth. I didn’t know that—we could—get so close—to God—as that! But I can see that if one lived that way, those other questions wouldn’t even come up at all. They would settle themselves, wouldn’t they?”

“They certainly would! They certainly do!” said the young man with a ring of triumph in his voice.

She was still a long time, and then with a little sigh of troubled perplexity she said, “That would be all right for those who wanted to have Him as Savior like that; wanted to die with Him—were
willing
to. But what about those who are not willing?”

A shadow came over the brightness of his face. Was she then going so far and no farther? Had he been mistaken in her interest? Was she so entangled in the world that she could not surrender it?

He did not answer for a moment, and then he said with a sorrowful note in his voice, “Does it matter? If one isn’t willing to go the whole way with the Lord Jesus, just staying away from a few nightclubs and movies isn’t going to get you any nearer. There are plenty of people who don’t do any of those things and yet are not saved.”

There was such disappointment in his voice as he finished that she looked up and suddenly read what he had thought.

“I don’t mean myself,” she said quickly. “I mean somebody else. Suppose you had a friend who wanted to go to those things all the time, who couldn’t see anything wrong in them.”

“Is he saved?” asked Ethan quickly with a sharp note of tenseness in his voice.

“I—don’t—suppose he is!” she answered with down-drooping gaze and sorrowful demeanor.

He gave her another keen, furtive glance, his lips set in stern lines.

“You mean—?” he started and hesitated.

“I mean do you think a Christian should try and stop him going? Or—should perhaps go with him sometimes, when he is insistent—and try to win him away from such things?”

“I should think the question would start farther back than that. I should think a Christian who was willing to have this death-union with Christ that we have been speaking of could not possibly make a habit of companionship with one who is an acknowledged outsider, an enemy of Christ. For you know He said, ‘He that is not with me is against me.’ And Christ has made it very plain that He does not want His saved ones to choose their companions from the world. A Christian lives in a different realm.”

His voice was almost harsh as he said this. He would rather do almost anything than give advice to this girl on a subject like this. And she was still considering what he had said. At last she answered in a low voice, “Yes, I know. I was brought up to think that. And my mother has reminded me, too. But somehow I don’t seem to come into contact with many believers nowadays. The church where we go is very worldly. And—well—I was wondering whether there was anything I could do for some worldly people I know. It isn’t a question of
beginning
to go with them. I have known them for a long time. It’s a question of what I might be able to do for them now, knowing them as well as I do. Should I humor them and go with them, trying to help them to get away from such things, or should I just cut loose from them entirely?”

She waited, looking at him anxiously.

His face grew suddenly tender.

“Forgive me!” he said gently. “I’m not your dictator. God Himself will guide you in such things if you will let Him. But I am quite sure that you could never win a person away from anything by doing it with him. If you come to know Christ and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, and you share the likeness of His death, and He makes you know that these things are not for you, then surely you can see that you must be consistent in your life with what you believe. But I do not think you will have to ask me such a question. It will be something that Christ and you will settle together. And as far as you are concerned, if you know Him through dying with Him, your testimony will be such that the worldly people will drop you, and these things will likely drop away. You will no longer want to do them because you have better things to do, just as you don’t want to play with dolls now as you probably used to do when you were a child. You will be as truly dead to these things as a person lying in a coffin would be dead to any temptation that used to lead him astray in his lifetime. That is, of course, you would unless you made it a
practice
of doing those things constantly. You cannot hold hands with the world and expect to have this death-union with Christ and the resultant resurrection power in your life.”

There was a long silence while Marigold thought that over.

Once they stopped to get gas, and she watched her escort as he lifted the hood of his engine, talked a minute or two with the attendant, and then took a leaflet out and handed it to him with a smile, saying, “Good-bye, brother, I hope to see you sometime again.” Marigold could see the young man standing where they had left him, curiously reading the little tract that had been given to him. What a man this was with whom she was privileged to travel! He was trying to make men everywhere see Christ! For she sensed that he had spoken of His Savior to the stranger, and that his word had been graciously received. How was it that she had not understood how fine he was when she first met him? How was it that she had even resented his presence?

Ah, she had been looking upon him merely as another young man, judging him in the worldly sense, from her own personal interest in him. She had not realized that he was an envoy from another world who might perhaps have an important message for her own soul.

What was it that made him so different from other men she knew? Well, of course it must be this death-union with Christ he had been talking about. But how had he gotten that way? How was it that he alone of all the young men she knew anywhere should be like this? Had it been through his own efforts, through some special environment, through some experience? Then she remembered.

“You promised to tell me about your experience with high places,” she suddenly said. “May I know now? When you were in danger once, and how you got over it.”

“Yes?” he said, looking at her sharply. “Are you sure it will not make you dizzy again to hear it so soon?”

She smiled.

“No, I think you have helped me over that place,” she said. “My obsession came when I dreamed myself into a situation for which I could see no help when I woke up. I had to be continually going over and over it in my mind trying to find a way to save myself, and so the dream returned again and again. But you showed me a way out. You brought a strong arm and carried me down. You gave me the sense of being secure, anyway, even if I was in peril, and I haven’t had the dream since. I don’t believe it will ever bother me again. I can’t thank you enough for that.”

He smiled.

“I’m glad I was there!” he said with satisfaction. “Well, I’ll tell you my story. It isn’t long. I was in a high place on the scaffold of my biggest job, the biggest I had ever had then, and it was nearing completion. I was very proud of the work that I had done. I knew it was good work and was going to make me a degree of fame in my profession so that I might continue to go on up and do bigger things. I was rather swelled up about it, I’m afraid,
my
bridge over a great chasm, and
I
was the designer and builder!”