Confusion to Clarity

John Whittle's little book, Man Alive, contains precious truths of God's practical dealings with us that bring us into the abundant life in Christ. This is from the chapter titled "Confusion to Clarity":

"What we call theologically 'The Fall' has put man persistently in the foreground in his own thinking with the illusion that he has to work himself up through his problems and develop himself in a rather lonely universe. With this sort of outlook, the Christian is apt to feel that he now has to measure up and struggle through to the attainment of certain standards. This creates a conflict, bringing him almost to despair as he finds himself unable to be like Christ, even while constantly calling upon divine aid. He cannot love himself at this point because with all his efforts, he sees himself as being unable to meet the standards required. The conflict is that he loves God and now rejects himself as being unable to meet the standards required. The conflict is that he loves God and now rejects himself because of his inadequacy, the self whom God has loved and accepted! Now a period of education must start in which God weans him from self-dependence by sometimes painful experiences. This illusion of self-dependence is the carry-over from the primal downfall of the human spirit.

"What has to happen is that my mind must drastically change concerning myself as well as concerning God, the problem being a false concept I have of myself. The conflict arises because I have received life and love but cannot make life work along the old lines of self effort, of keeping laws and meeting standards. The reason for the conflict is far from a lack of desire for the ways of God. The most earnest and consecrated are frequently the ones who suffer most until the newness of life and spirit permeates and reshapes their thinking.

"There is no more superb account of God's bringing a person through into liberation from the false idea of self than that of Moses. It is the account of a God-lover and a devoted person who, nevertheless, cannot find the way. The Call, the Commission, the undeniable and possibly unequaled Surrender and Renunciation of the best in Moses' world, are all there in detail with no lack in attachment to the purposes of God. The fact that he valued 'the reproach of Christ' more highly than the best in his world makes it all the more poignant when the weight of all this could not bring him a whit nearer the accomplishment of God's will. The truth is that God had to let His man fall flat on his face, with no divine assistance and no whispered words of encouragement at the time when Moses tried his hand at correcting the wrongs of his brethren. There might just as well have been no God for Moses to serve, so completely absent was He from this scene of His servant's endeavor! For what exactly had he taken these giant strides away from worldly power and prestige into this new world of his brethren's rejection of him? Was it only to be rejected by God also who had precipitated the whole action? No wonder if the seeds of an attempted atheism were in the heart of this man Moses at that dreadful moment when he had to flee in a cloud of dust in direst defeat! I am fairly sure they would have been in mine, and with very good reason, had I been the man in this costly school of reeducation concerning the real place and function of the human.

"The service of God can be a devastating affair, as many can testify, if carried on from the viewpoint of 'my work for God.' Has God gone out of business? Is He still not the Worker, as Jesus said, 'My Father works, and I work,' meaning that God is the Worker and we are His manifesters? Moses had looked upon himself as the one who was doing this for God by reason of his training, ability, and gifts, along with the renunciation and the consecration of his excellent manhood to the task! Do you not see that an extended self even of the stature of a Moses or a Paul, cannot do God's work? Only God does God's work, but He does it by a man who has come into right relationship with Himself, the man who is small enough for God to use. So much for Moses' mistake. Now for the correction.

"While God affirms man, He does not affirm man's self-dependence. This has to be changed. When some years later, after Moses had passed through a long period of inner training and enlightenment, and was ready for the call of God again, he was faced with an ordinary bush. How extraordinary Moses had been! The bush, burning continuously without being consumed, was the picture of the true relationship of Moses to God. It was a duality in unity. Only God can chase and destroy the Pharaohs of evil. The truth that Moses came vividly to see was that while he had parted with everything, he had still depended on Moses. Now the vision is corrected; the way of life and work had been found. It is rest in the midst of the most intense activity because it is God working through Moses, not Moses working for God.

"In other words, Moses entered the dimension of Spirit (the realm we rather reserve for the later revelation of the Church) in which God lives in man, not assisting him from some remote region. The dreadful gap caused by the disintegrating fall of man has been effectually closed by the full sight and experience of redemption which reunites all by the Spirit of God. Unity is a fact, not an earnestly desired objective. It is Another living through me. 'For me to live is Christ living,' says Paul. Only God living in man is Christianity; anything else is less than the desired fulfillment.

"We are not to be confused then by the conflicts which arise in our minds and activities as God puts us through this educational process. I have to learn who I am and how I function, and it is more often than not a painful period we pass through. But the fruit in the case of Moses is so gloriously apparent that we cannot but ask God to hasten in us whatever destruction of the illusion of self there has to be. Compare Pharaoh and the whole Egyptian army buried in the Red Sea and the Hebrews delivered from the dreadful bondage, with one Egyptian buried in the sand and the man Moses fleeing for his life. And this was by no means the end or even the greatest accomplishment of God through Moses. He became a great redemptive figure in his day, offering himself to God in place of the rebellious people to whom he had committed himself.

"The individual who as come to a clear realization of this new relationship and for whom the yoke has become easy and the burden become light will not lightly move back into the shadows of a life disturbed by self effort. A new level has been gained, the focus of life in Christ achieved. However, a word must be said about the slips into self-trust, self-love, anger, resentment, and many other things that tend to bring us low and into the bondage of remorse and guilt. Thank God, we do not live in these distortions of the true relationship. They are transitory because we are sensitized by the Spirit so that we recognize them at once. Here again there must be a closing of the gap between awareness of the sin and the recognition that it is finished and powerless through Christ. If one sin is added to another--the sin of unbelief to the one already on the conscience--who can get free? No, the gap must be closed immediately, giving no time to indulge in remorse for this independent and sinful action. Renewal is immediate upon recognition and acknowledgement of the wrong, whether thought, word, or deed. The grace of God's acceptance is an immediate healing of the Spirit, and continuation in the light.

"Should you find yourself going down a wrong street in an unguided and self chosen excursion, remember God is not inactive in all this! He does not stand at the street corner where you departed and wave you good-bye as if He could not go on the trip with you! He goes with you for the express purpose of knocking your foolish head against the wall at the end of that dead-end street, and the quicker the better, so as to get some spiritual sense into your outlook. God does not stand aloof and leave us to our own devices. He is the involved God, the 'Hound of Heaven,' as Francis Thompson depicts Him in his marvelous poem. Yes, He hurries you along to the end of your exploit, and you find incidentally that love is not soft! Live therefore, unafraid of yourself, for God is well able to take care of your deviations. He will not and cannot gloss them over, but He is with you to bring you through, to your everlasting profit.

"Yes, we are to live freely in the assurance of the fact that 'we are His workmanship' as the Scripture says, and that 'He that hath begun a good work in you will perform it.' In our waking moments each day we are to be assured that it is He living in us. We do not have to 'find Him' or invite Him to be with us. We affirm His presence, not wondering for one moment if He is there. As someone else has said, 'We awake in the green light of His assured presence and go in that, only stopping to consider what should be done when I see that the red light has appeared.' I live in the green and the red is there in case I go off beam at any point, but to live in constant apprehension of the red is a dreadful distraction and frustration. We are intended to live a full, spontaneous, and restful life, regarding the next step to be God's will, unless He checks. Surely God is great enough in you to check effectively!

"A flood of light came to me from the words 'Work out your own salvation . . . for it is God who worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure' (Phil. 2:12, 13). My working, therefore, is His working in me, both in the realm of willing and acting! There is nothing in life outside these two realms. Willing and doing is the all of life. Therefore live boldly in this restful assurance. This, of course, will be coupled with a real willingness to recognize when I have gotten in the way, with some attempt to help God out, or to act God to others. But I must not live in the overshadowing fear that this self-dependency is going to express itself. Some suffer from this sort of self-consciousness, thinking it is true spirituality. In reality it is that I am too much concerned about my perfections, instead of the God who is in action in me with His own perfections. So the invitation is to rest in Him. The confusion of a mixed self gives place to the clear understanding that it is He who lives in and through a wholly united man."