The Normal Christian Life (25 page)

No, we do not lose our souls in this sense, for to do so would be to lose our individual existence completely. The soul is still there with its natural endowments, but the cross is brought to bear upon it to bring those natural endowments into death—to put the mark of His death upon them—and thereafter, as God may please, to give them back to us in glorious resurrection.

It is in this sense that Paul, writing to the Philippians, expresses the desire “that I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, becoming conformed unto his death” (Phil. 3:10). The mark of death is upon the soul all the time, to bring it to the place where it is always subordinate to the Spirit and never independently asserts itself. Only the cross, working in such a way, could make a man of the caliber of Paul, and with the natural resources hinted at in Philippians 3, so distrust his own natural strength that he could write to the Corinthians,

I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling. And my speech and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power: that your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. (1 Cor. 2:2–3)

The soul is the seat of the affections, and what a great part of our decision and actions is influenced by these! There is nothing deliberately sinful about them, mind you. It is just that there is something in us which can go out in natural affection to another person, and which, ungoverned by the Spirit, can influence wrongly our whole course of action. So in the first of the four passages before us, the Lord has to
say, “He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And he that doth not take his cross and follow after me, is not worthy of me” (Matt. 10:37–38).

You note that to follow the Lord in the way of the cross is set before us as His normal, His only way for us. What immediately follows? “He that findeth his soul shall lose it; and he that loseth his soul for my sake shall find it” (Matt. 10:39, mg.). The secret danger lies in that subtle working of the affections to turn us away from the pathway of God; and the key to the matter is the soul. The cross has to touch that. I have to “lose” my soul in the sense in which the Lord meant those words, and which we are seeking here to explain.

Some of us know well what it means to lose our soul. We can no longer lightly fulfill its desire; we cannot just give in to it and gratify it. That is the “loss” of the soul. We are going through a painful process to discourage what the soul is asking for. And many a time we have to confess that it is not any definite sin that is keeping us from following the Lord to the end. We are held up because of some secret love somewhere, some perfectly innocent natural affection diverting our course. Yes, human affection plays a great part in our lives, and the cross has to come in there and do its purifying work.

Then we pass to the verses in Mark chapter 8. I think that is a most important passage. Our Lord had just taught His disciples at Caesarea Philippi that He was going to suffer death at the hands of the elders of the Jews. Then Peter, with all his love for his Master, came up and protested, saying, “Lord, do not do it; pity Thyself. This shall never come to Thee!” Out of his love for the Lord, he appealed to Him
to spare Himself; and the Lord had to rebuke Peter, as He would rebuke Satan, for caring for the things of men and not the things of God. And then, to the multitude that gathered to Him, the word was spoken once more: “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For whosoever will save his soul shall lose it; and whosoever shall lose his soul for my sake and the gospel’s shall save it” (Mark 8:34–35,
NASB
mg.).

The whole question at issue is again that of the soul, and here it is particularly of the soul’s desire for self-preservation. There is that subtle suggestion which says, “If I could be allowed to live, I would do anything, be willing for anything; but I must be kept alive!” There you have the soul almost crying out for help. “Going to the cross, being crucified—oh that is really too much! Have mercy on yourself; pity yourself! Do you mean to say you are going against yourself and going with God?” Some of us know well that, in order to go on with God, we have many a time to go against the voice of the soul—our own or other people’s—and to let the cross come in to silence that appeal for self-preservation.

Am I afraid of the will of God? The dear saint whom I have already mentioned as having had such an influence upon the course of my life, many times asked me this question: “Do you like the will of God?” It is a tremendous question. She did not ask, “Do you do the will of God?” She always asked, “Do you like the will of God?” That question goes deeper than anything else.

I remember once she was having a controversy with the Lord over a certain matter. She knew what the Lord wanted, and in her heart she wanted it too. But it was difficult, and I heard her pray like this: “Lord, I confess I don’t like it, but
please do not give in to me. Just wait, Lord—and I will give in to Thee.” She did not want the Lord to yield to her and to reduce His demands upon her. She wanted nothing but to please Him.

Many a time we have to come to the place where we are willing to let go to Him things we think to be good and precious—yes, and even, it may be, the very things of God themselves—that His will may be done. Peter’s concern was for his Lord and was dictated by his natural love for Him. We might feel that Peter had a marvelous love for his Lord, sufficient even for him to dare to question Jesus. Only a strong love could bring one to attempt that!

Yes, we think we understand Peter; but when there is purity of spirit without that mixture of soul, we shall not be so readily led into Peter’s mistake. We shall more quickly recognize where the will of God lies, and shall discover there, and there alone, our heart’s true delight.

Once again the Lord Jesus deals with the matter of the soul in Luke chapter 17, and now it is in relation to His return. Speaking of “the day that the Son of man is revealed,” He draws a parallel between that day and “the day that Lot went out from Sodom” (17:29–30). A little later He speaks of the “rapture” of the saints in the twice repeated words: “One shall be taken, and the other shall be left” (17:34–35). But between His reference to the calling of Lot out of Sodom and this allusion to the gathering of the saints to Him, there come these remarkable words: “In that day, he which shall be on the housetop, and his goods in the house, let him not go down to take them away: and let him that is in the field likewise not return back. Remember Lot’s wife” (17:31–32). Remember Lot’s wife! Why? Because “whoever seeks to keep
his soul will lose it, and whoever loses his soul, will preserve it” (17:33,
NASB
mg.).

If I mistake not, this is the one passage in the New Testament that tells of our reaction to the rapture call. We may have thought that, when the Son of man comes, we shall be gathered to Him automatically, as it were, because of what we read in First Corinthians 15:51–52: “We shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump.” Well, however we reconcile the two passages, this one in Luke’s Gospel should at least make us pause and reflect; for the emphasis is here very strongly upon one being taken and the other left. It is a matter of our reaction to the call to go, and on the basis of this, a most urgent appeal is made to us to be ready (compare Matt. 24:42).

There is surely a reason for this. Clearly that call is not going to produce a miraculous last-minute change in us out of all relation to our previous walk with the Lord. No, in that moment we shall discover our heart’s real treasure. If it is the Lord Himself, then there will be no backward look. A backward glance decides everything.

It is so easy to become more attached to the gifts of God than to the Giver—and even, I should add, to the work of God than to God Himself.

Let me illustrate. At the present time
¹⁷
I am engaged in writing a book. I have finished eight chapters and I have another nine to write, about which I am very seriously exercised before the Lord. But if the call to “Come up hither” should come and my reaction were to be, “What about my book?” the answer might well be, “All right, stay down and finish it!” That precious thing which we are doing downstairs
“in the house” can be enough to pin us down, a peg that holds us to earth.

It is all a question of our living by the soul or by the spirit. Here in this passage in Luke, we have depicted the soul-life in its engagement with the things of earth—and, mark you, not sinful things either. The Lord only mentioned marrying, planting, eating, selling—all perfectly legitimate activities, with which there is nothing essentially wrong. But it is occupation with them, so that your heart goes out to them, that is enough to pin you down. The way out of that danger is by the losing of the soul.

This is beautifully illustrated in the action of Peter when he recognized the risen Lord Jesus by the lake-side. Though, with the others, he was back for the moment in his former employment, there was now no thought of the ship, nor even of the net full of fishes so miraculously provided. When he heard John’s cry of recognition, “It is the Lord,” we read that “he cast himself into the sea” to go to Jesus.

That is true detachment. The question at issue is always, Where is my heart? The cross has to work in us a true detachment in spirit from anything and anyone outside of the Lord Himself.

But, even here, we are as yet only dealing with the more outward aspects of the soul’s activity. The soul giving reign to its affections, the soul asserting itself and trying to manipulate things, the soul becoming preoccupied with things on the earth: These are still small things, and do not yet touch the real heart of the matter. There is something deeper yet, which I will try now to explain.

Let us read again John 12:24–25. “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a grain of wheat fall into the earth and die, it abideth by itself alone; but if it die, it beareth much fruit. He that loveth his life (“soul,” in the Greek, as in the above passage) loseth it; and he that hateth his life (“soul”) in this world shall keep it unto life eternal.”

Here we have the inward working of the cross of which we have been speaking—the losing of the soul—linked with, and likened to, that aspect of the death of the Lord Jesus Himself which we have already seen depicted in the grain of wheat, namely, His death with a view to increase. The end in view is fruitfulness. There is a grain of wheat with life in it, but “it abideth alone.” It has the power to impart its life to others, but to do so it must go down into death.

Now we know the way the Lord Jesus took. He passed into death, and as we saw earlier, His life emerged in many lives. The Son died, and came forth as the first of “many sons.” He let go His life that we might receive it. It is in this aspect of His death that we are called to die. It is here that He makes clear the value of conformity to His death, whereby we lose our own natural life in order that, in the power of His resurrection, we may become life-imparters, sharing thereafter with others the new life of God which is in us. This is the secret of ministry, the path of real fruitfulness to God. As Paul says, “We who live are always delivered unto death for Jesus’ sake, that the life of Jesus may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So then death worketh in us, but life in you” (2 Cor. 4:11–12).

We are coming to our point. In us who have received Christ, there is a new life. We all have that precious possession,
the treasure in the vessel. Praise the Lord for the reality of His life within! But why is there so little expression of that life? Why is there an “abiding alone?” Why is it not overflowing and imparting life to others? Why is it scarcely making itself apparent even in our own lives?

The reason why there is so little sign of life where life is present is that the soul in us is enveloping and confining that life (as the husk envelops the grain of wheat) so that it cannot find outlet. We are living in the soul; we are working and serving in our own natural strength; we are not drawing from God. It is the soul that stands in the way of the springing up of life. Lose it; for in that way lies fullness.

So we come back to the almond rod, which was brought into the sanctuary for a night—a dark night in which there was nothing to be seen—and then in the morning it budded. There you have set forth the death and resurrection, the life yielded up and the life gained, and there you have the ministry attested. But how does this work out in practice? How do I recognize that God is dealing with me in this way?

First, we must be clear about one thing: The soul, with its fund of natural energy and resource, will continue with us until our death. Till then there will be an unending, day-by-day need for the cross to operate in us, dredging deeply that wellspring of nature. This is the lifelong condition of service laid down by Jesus in the words “Let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me” (Mark 8:34). We never get past that. He who evades it “is not worthy of me” (Matt. 10:38); he “cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:27). Death and
resurrection must remain an abiding principle of our lives for the losing of the soul and the uprising of the Spirit of life.

Yet here too there may be a crisis that, once reached and passed, can transform our whole life and service for God. It is a wicket gate by which we may enter upon an entirely new pathway.

Such a crisis occurred in the life of Jacob at Peniel. It was the “natural man” in Jacob that was seeking to attain God’s end. Jacob well knew that God had said, “The elder shall serve the younger,” but he was trying to compass that end through his own ingenuity. God had to cripple that strength of nature in Jacob, and He did so when He touched the sinew of Jacob’s thigh. Jacob continued to walk thereafter, but he continued to be lame. He was a different Jacob, as his change of name implies. He had his feet and he could use them; but the strength had been touched, and he limped from an injury from which he would never quite recover.