The Law of Spiritual Harvest

The following is taken from Norman Grubb's booklet Touching the Invisible:

"Finally, for what are we emancipated? What is the consummation of discipleship in this life? What of the Master, the Pattern? 'I came that they might have life.'  'He saved others, Himself He could not save.'  'The Son of man came . . . to give His life a ransom for many.'  With sure instinct all Christianity has chosen for its symbol the cross, for the principle which it objectified in history is woven into the very texture of the nature of God. There was the cross at the dawn of history when 'the Lamb was slain from the foundation of the world'. There was the cross when 'though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor'. There was the cross at the manger. It was there when He left His earthly home, on the mount of temptation, throughout the three years when 'the Son of man had not where to lay His head'. All was the way of the cross, and the mystery of that way, the secret revealed to the initiates of the Spirit, is both the Alpha and Omega of the disciple's way of life on earth.

"This 'way of the cross' has three aspects. The first we all know. As sinners, we see and receive Christ Crucified as our Substitute. Another went to the Cross for us and in our stead, and His dying for us in infinite mercy and grace expiated the consequences of the broken law, and gained for us forgiveness, cleansing from guilt, justification and regeneration.

"The second many know. It is clearly expounded in Scripture and realized in the experience of all who go on with God. It is commonly called identification with Christ's Cross. The Christian sees that not only has he come to the Cross, but is himself on it. For if Christ dies in my place, then in the sight of God it was I that died. 'I am crucified with Christ' sums up in a sentence Paul's many references to this vital truth. When to knowledge is added eager appropriation, then the dying of the 'old man' and rising of the 'new man' in Christ becomes a permanent inward experience in the personality, to which the outward life, as always, is conformed.

"But upon the third and final stage in this upward, rugged track to the summit of Being, only the few, Christ's very brethren, make a vigorous ascent.  It is the way of the cross for world redemption. It is the law of the spiritual harvest. The two former aspects of the cross are for my own benefit: this third is for others. Supremely is it seen in Christ. For others He went forth from His baptism and anointing to walk this way. For others He dies daily to loved ones, home and the normal enjoyments of living. For others He laid down His life. And this He did to fulfil the law of spiritual harvest. It was a necessity. Fallen man had died in the spirit to God and the kingdom of heaven, and come alive in the flesh to Satan and the kingdom of hell. A Saviour and Pioneer (Hebrews 2:10) must be found, who could and would die to the kingdom of hell as fallen Man's substitute, rise again to the kingdom of heaven for him, and thus become the seed-corn which by its death produces the hundred-fold of life-giving sustenance, not for itself, but for those who feed on it. With this 'joy set before Him',  the joy of the harvest, the joy of the mother who travails to give birth, 'He endured the Cross, despising the shame, (Hebrews 12:2).

"In His footsteps followed the first members of His Church. They saw the full stature of Christian living to consist, not merely in the enjoyment of the fruits of Christ's passion, but in the sharing of the passion itself for the saving of others. 'So death worketh in us, but life in others,' wrote Paul; and 'I now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for His body's sake.'

"Here is a final fact of vast practical importance and a door of unending opportunity. If I am Christ's, then voluntary 'deaths' to the normal advantages in the flesh, comforts, loved ones, material advancement, enlarged income, pleasures, leisure, give me the right to claim and receive the harvest in the Spirit. Instead of regarding such as losses and deprivations to be endured if necessary but avoided if possible, we deliberately embrace them and glory in them as the way of the harvest. Equally we turn all life's unsought 'trials' to the same use: tragedies, injustices, slights, insults, losses. As a matter of fact, although unsought, none are unsuited. Each comes because it just fits our case, and each is resisted as an impudent gate-crasher or welcomed as friend and ally, with corresponding destructive or constructive effect. 'Awake, O north wind; blow upon my garden, that the spices thereof may flow out.' By the practice of this principle of the Cross, losses and trials, whether unsought or deliberately chosen, become positive weapons of offense in destroying the works of the devil and loosening his grip on humanity: even as Christ's death, thus embraced, destroyed him who had the power of death, and led captivity captive.

"I know no man who understood this better than C. T. Studd, the founder of this Crusade [W.E.C.:  the Worldwide Evangelization Crusade]. In the evening of their lives, the call came to him to pioneer work in Africa, where Mrs. Studd, at that time an invalid, could not accompany him. Both realized that the call could only be fulfilled by a broken home and maybe years of separation, and both accepted it, only because they understood this law of the harvest, 'death in us . . . life in others'. From that 'way of the Cross' entered upon in 1913, and endured unflinchingly till their long separation ended in their glorification in 1931 and 1928 respectively, has sprung this great and growing work with its harvest of changed lives already being reaped in the Congo, and fresh crops showing well above ground in a dozen other lands."