How to Turn Evil Into Good

From Norman Grubb's book The Deep Things of God:

"We give negatives positive names, as does the Bible, because they are real entities; but at the same time, as we have already said, by doing so we tend to obscure their real condition as negatives. Basically, evil is merely not-good: bitter is not-sweet: hate is not-love: man is not-God; and so on. And when we see all negatives in their true character, we see this vital fact--that they are merely the reverse side of their positives. They are not meant to be anything apart from their positives. They have no rightful existence except as minor to major, female to male, no to yes, each by union with its positive giving distinctive birth and form and character to some manifestation of its positive, as do the minor to the major keys in music. Therefore, insofar as they have been infected and inflamed by a contrary spirit and thus removed out of their proper place in the eternal economy of God, He who is the Positive, the All in all, must necessarily find means to restore them. This He has done in what the Bible calls 'the reconciliation of all things' (Col. 1:20; Rom. 8:19-21). He will not finally permit any portion of His creation to remain 'out of temperature': He 'will gather together in one all things in Christ'.

"It is not, of course, material things which are to blame or which have gone wrong, except insofar as they share in 'the corruption which is in the world through lust'. Things are but the servant of spirit; it is the negative spirit, free, intelligent, deliberate, which has done the damage.

"We have already seen how God has effected this reconciliation through His Son, but we need to note not only the fact, but also the way in which He did it, for it is the only principle by which this contrary spirit can be dealt with throughout human history. First, in the natural He accepted vicariously all that comes to human beings in this distorted world, all the trials, privations, weaknesses that flesh is heir to, and all the persecutions right up to the final stroke the negative spirit of evil could deal Him--the death on the cross. He was 'crucified through weakness'. In the natural He did not resist evil. He went further than that: He positively accepted evil as the predetermined will of the Father. He swallowed it in its most virulent forms. But what broke His body and agonized His soul, could not touch His spirit. There neither Satan nor the threats and deeds of cruel men, nor evil in any form, could get any footing. 'The prince of this world cometh, but hath nothing in Me.' In that inner sanctuary dwelt only the living God fulfilling His own reconciling purposes through the yieldedness, faith and obedience of the One who would walk the saving way. He was 'put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit'. That vicarious process by which, as the representative human, He first embraced all that the negative spirit had loaded upon humanity even unto death, but then was raised again by the Positive Spirit as the One whom death could not hold, meant death to that negative spirit in all who join themselves to Him by receptive faith. Through death, He destroyed (or literally, annulled) him that had the power of death, that is the devil, and delivered them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.

"Released from the negative spirit, all negative conditions fall back into their rightful place for those in whom Christ lives: the bitter brings out the flavour of the sweet, light shines out of darkness, mortality is swallowed up by life, evil is overcome by good. That is to say, what comes to us in the natural as trial, sorrow, suffering, privation, persecution, and we feel as such in our bodies and souls and know the sharpness of them, in our spirits we see to be, not objectionable invasions of something contrary and frustrating, but the way in which we 'bear about in our body the dying of the Lord Jesus'. He again is dying in us (His human body) in all kinds of situations, and He is rising victorious in us. His life is manifest to all in our mortal flesh (in our visible enjoyment of the unenjoyable): the integrating victory of the Spirit is seen in us as we 'take pleasure' in things which are the opposite to natural pleasure--'infirmities, reproaches, necessities, persecutions, distresses' (2 Cor. 12:10); evil is servant to good, hate the seedplot of love.

"And inner integration in unpleasant situations has far wider repercussions than the personal. It is the continuation of Christ's vicarious sufferings and saving resurrection (Col. 1:24). Christ still dies and rises again for the world through His spiritual Body, as He did in His earthly one. That does not mean that Christ's unique redemptive work for the world was not completed or could in any least degree be effected through any body except His own, conceived by the Holy Ghost and born of the Virgin Mary, the Jesus of history who was crucified at an exact location, buried in a known tomb, and viewed in His resurrection body by many witnesses. But it does mean that the application of His triumph worldwide through the succeeding centuries, in the gathering out of a people to His Name, in the building of them up in their most holy faith, is always and only by this one death and resurrection process, the way of the Cross, though not that one unique work of the Cross. It is constantly the Christ who lives in the believer walking in us the way of vicarious death and resurrection in every one of millions of situations and spheres of service, right along the line from the mother with her family, to the worker in his job, to the missionary on his field. The point so hard to learn and relearn in our Christian immaturity is God's way of the cross: confronted with the necessity of a world that must die to sin and rise to righteousness, the One, who need not so die and rise went that way first Himself; and by that vicarious act released death and resurrection power through Himself for a world. 'Death worketh in us, but life in you.'

"This is the way of the intercessor. Jesus 'poured out His soul unto death', and so , it says, 'made intercession for the transgressors' (Is. 53:12). Because of that act of death-intercession, God poured His resurrection life both into the Saviour's dead body and through Him into all who receive Him. The fruit of His intercession was the life-giving Spirit sent into the world, saving to the uttermost them that come unto God by Him. And every life of fruitful service has this at its roots: the corn of wheat must die, if the world is to feed on its fruit. We say, 'That person must change; that situation must alter.' God says, 'You change first, the other will follow.' As one has said, 'I don't like you: what's the matter with me?' The first death in a human situation in which I am involved is in me, in my natural reactions of resentment, condemnation, unbelief. Only when I am consciously 'through' to resurrection ground, experienced in my heart by peace and praise and love, can divine life through me touch the situation. As this is true in every daily detail of life, in every domestic, business, or church trial, so it is true in the mainstream of our life's ministry. All the great intercessors of the Bible were living sacrifices for the people for whom they interceded; they lived and died vicariously. Not that there is merit or power in the outpoured life of a human intercessor, but it is the Interceding Spirit in him which takes him this death way; He does that to involve him so completely and importunately in the pursuit of his intercession that the Spirit can speak by him the authoritative word of faith--God's 'I will'; and that will be followed, as surely as harvest follows seedtime, by the intercession gained--the wonderful works of God. The patriarchs, Moses, Joshua, David, the disciples, Paul, and countless others through history, were all intercessors who gained their intercessions, serving their own generation in the will of God."