The Human Situation and the Work of Grace

Norman Grubb has some helpful and revealing words in his book God Unlimited about what it means to be human and in Christ:

"Why then do we still commit sins if we are this new man in Christ? What is it in us that sins? A sensible question. I will counter it by another. If the new man sometimes does bad things, how does the old man sometimes do good things? For he does. For an answer we go back to the name given to the forbidden tree in the Garden--the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. We might have thought that if the one was the tree of life, the other would be the tree of death; if one was plain good, the other would be plain evil; but it was a mixture of the two, which is the condition of the world to-day. Good is predominant; if it were not, nature could not survive, nor peoples. We have explained why it is that we know what we should be with the work of the law written in our hearts, why mankind constantly talks of the ideals it cannot reach: there should be world brotherhood, there should be share and share alike, there should be honesty, integrity, unselfishness.

"We never reach these because they are not our nature, but merely external influences upon us. Our unredeemed nature is the indwelling spirit of self-love [Satan]. That is the direction in which we are going. Upward influences have merely a temporary effect on us and we give temporary response, but they are not the real we. Most of us in our unregenerate days felt those influences upon us, religious ethics, social concerns for the underprivileged, 'good works.' Most of us participated to some extent--but it wasn't the real we. There was a distinct difference between our nature and the influence upon us. In our ignorance of our true condition we probably thought that we were partly good and partly bad, and others, who equally had not seen into the roots of the human situation, may have thought the same. Good people, splendid people, grand people, fine people, that's how the people of the world are usually busy complimenting each other--till one crosses the path of the other in some unpleasant way. Then the tune changes, because self-love is our basic nature, and we revert to type.

"The infinite qualitative difference between human love at its highest and divine love is given us in Rom. 5:6-10. Human love can even give its life for a cause or person it approves, 'peradventure for a good man some would dare to die.' But human love still has self at its centre, and it cannot give itself for those who hurt it. This is solely the quality of divine love. Christ died for the helpless who couldn't give a thing in return: for sinners who defied and despised Him: for enemies who would murder Him if they got a chance, and who did. That is God's love.

"In other words, our nature is one thing, influences upon our nature another. In our unredeemed condition, the influences to which we temporarily responded were upward; but such responses did not make us good, because we were owned by the evil (self-loving) spirit. We continued basically to walk that same broad road to destruction.

"It is equally so in the redeemed life. We need to get one fact clarified. We must not locate either evil or good fundamentally in us humans. Evil is a person, good is a Person. Evil is that spirit of evil, good the Holy Spirit. That is why when Jesus as a man was called 'Good Master,' He immediately repudiated the name and said, 'Why callest thou Me good? There is none good but one, that is, God.' And when Peter on one occasion urged Him to look to His own self-preservation, Jesus said to him, 'Get thee behind Me, Satan: for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men.' Jesus traced a self-interested statement back through Peter to its source in Satan. He did not mean that Peter was permanently possessed by Satan. He had just told Peter that he had the Spirit of God (Matt. 16:17); but Peter was responding to a temporary influence downward. Just as the good was not in Jesus as the Son of man, nor the evil in Peter, so with us.

"Our nature is the nature of the one who indwells us, and we share that nature and live that quality of life. Being free humans, we share responsibility also, and the consequences; but the prime mover, the real source, is not we but he or He. So in the redeemed life. Now the nature is upward, but the influences downward; but they are only influences, not nature. Just as the good deeds in our unredeemed life were temporary responses, and not the life of the life of the real us; so the sins we commit in the redeemed life are temporary responses, and not the real we. The proof, of course, is that when we commit them, we regret it. We return in spirit to Him to whom we belong, who is our new nature within. His seed remains in us, we cannot sin in the sense of giving ourselves to it, plunging into it, loving it, because we are born of God. We are certainly and often overtaken in faults, but they are responses to the influences of this mixed world.

"An illustration I sometimes use, based on John Bunyan's Holy War, is to think of the human personality as a medieval castle. A castle has a lord over it. The former lord was Satan. We have opened the gates to the conqueror, Jesus Christ, and He has evicted the former lord and taken over. Now Satan is outside, but says to himself, 'If I cannot own the castle, I at least will try and bluff them into thinking I do.' So when the sentinels on the walls are not as vigilant as they should be, he slips two of his soldiers over (two sins). Once inside, they display Satan's banner and shout out, 'We own this castle.' What a lie! Two invading soldiers don't own a castle. Throw them out again!"