The Lie of the Ages

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

". . . We have stressed 'false separation' as the source of the weakness of God's people. Man was not made to be separate from God, nor indeed from his fellow-man. Pre-eminently, he was created spirit to be in union and communion with the Spirit, expressing forth the powers and glories of that inner united life through soul (personality) and body. As created spirit, he was also to be in like union and communion with other created spirits, his brethren, as with the Father of spirits.

"The fall cut the cable. Sin, the fruit of selfishness, broke the union between man's spirit and the Holy Spirit, and potentially between man and man. Man became a unitary self, fighting for his own ends against other selves, and alienated from the Father of Selves, God, Who is love, the bond of perfectness. The sense of separation replaced the sense of union, and man was henceforward shut in to the puny powers of his individual resources of mind and body impregnated by the spirit of disobedience.

"The Redeemer came, God manifest in the flesh, and made atonement by His outpoured life. He completed the work, taking into His death the all of sin, root and fruit, the self-attitude and its consequent criminal acts (He bore our sins, 1 Pet. ii. 24: He was made sin, 2 Cor. v. 21) . Thus He opened the door for  all believers to much more than just pardon and reconciliation. It was to our lost heritage of re-union that He restored us. It was for the destruction of the reality and sense of separation from God, which is the cause of our weakness, that He died. He symbolized this for us by such examples as the vine and branches--for these are inseparable, one life, one organism. The Holy Ghost through Paul used the further illustration of head and body, which cannot be conceived of as apart. Direct expressions brought home the same truth such as 'Christ our life',  'Not I, but Christ liveth in me',  'Christ is all and in all'; the strongest language that could be used was used to delineate spiritual union and unity.

"Just here lies the error of God's people, and the deceit of Satan. He will make it always appear to us that there is still this old separation, the fruit of the fall. God is still away there in heaven, while we are here on earth; whereas the Scripture says that, even with regard to the risen and ascended Christ, we are raised and seated with Him--in Him in the heavenlies, even as He is in us in the earthlies, a spiritual union beyond adequate description by human language. Satan knows that if he can keep us in the delusion of separation, we are at his mercy, weak in a crisis, wavering in a decision. We feel our weakness, bewail our ignorance, for we see our separate selves and know their limitations and corruptions; and the best we can attain to is to call on God to send help from without, and struggle to believe that He will.

"If we cast aside the suggestions of Satan, the delusions of our own feelings of separation, the sense of weakness and ignorance;  if we boldly possess our possessions in Christ, draw the sword of the Spirit upon the deceiver, declare by God's word that we are one with Christ and with one another, one mystic organism, one divine life flowing in and through all: then we are strong by faith, for His strength is in us; we are wise, for His wisdom is ours; we have love, joy or any other needed grace of the Spirit, for we are permeated with Him; and all we need to do is to go forward in this faith, as having and possessing, and we shall find that what is true in the realm of the Spirit, through our faith becomes manifest in the realm of the senses, whether it be power, love, joy, knowledge, or any other needed resource. Christ the head thus becomes manifest in and through His members.

"On this basis we can understand the reason for Christ's drastic statements concerning earthly and personal attachments--if we hate not loved ones, possessions, life itself, we cannot be His disciples. For, to enter into realized possession of universal love, resources and life in God, there has to be a dying out to the personal, human and thus narrowing earthly attachments. Does this mean loss? When Christ 'lost' the glory of His Godhead and took the form of a servant, when He 'lost' His earthly home, parents, property and life to found a world family, did He lose? When prophets and apostles of old, martyrs and missionaries of recent centuries, 'lost' all to bring men to God, did they lose? When C. T. Studd 'lost' earthly fame, fortune, and home to found a worldwide Crusade, did he lose? Nor did such surrender of earthly attachments mean loss of true love or failure to fulfil responsibilities to earthly loved ones. Rather, it means a purifying love towards them, a love which, enlarged in capacity to a whole world, becomes at the same time increased in depth and tenderness to every individual. May we see the gain, not loss, and press up this narrow path by faith and obedience to realized union with God which alone is abundant and eternal life."