A Misconception of the Human Self

In 1968 Norman Grubb gave a talk called "The Hidden Secret." The following is a transcript from the closing remarks of that talk:

"We've got so used--we can't help it--to the interpretation of life is: run your own show. That's what we are. We're people. We've got homes to run, we've got businesses to run, we're selves and we've got wives and wills and emotions. So life is to us just functioning as selves. Now as a consequence of that we carry that over into our redeemed life and we've carried over a misconcept of the self . . . The tie-up in Christian living is a misconception of the human self . . . It's very basic, to understand where we misconceive ourselves . . . And the misconception starts by this, the idea that 'I'm a real person now. Good. I'm now a redeemed person. Christ's in my now. Good. He'll help me to be better now.' I'm making myself: 'I'll become better people, I'll have joy, I have power and I have the bold witness and I win souls and I have victory' and so on. And the healthy consequence is we go through--often years--of self-condemnation, guilt. Why? Because we've got a wrong idea at bottom . . . We think we ought to be better . . . Why aren't I like that? I . . . I've met it half a dozen times in this conference. Guilt . . . because I'm asking myself, 'Why aren't I different?'

"You never will be different. Then you've gotten somewhere. You'll never be any more than that bundle of funny humanity you are today so you better just laugh at yourself and accept yourself. See the key is this: there's only one unique person in the universe. And that Person doesn't shine through the others. His name isn't 'I have and give you.' His name is 'I Am,' period. 'I Am.' 'What I Am, I Am, period.' 'I'm just Myself' but what He gives is Himself, not parts of Himself.

"Now because of this wrong 'self' idea we've got: 'Well, we're people. Let's be better people.' We think God communicates certain powers to us and 'I'll have peace and I'll have victory and I'll have love and I'll have joy. I'm really looking at myself. Almost the last time you look at is 'Have I got the presence of God?' I say it's an excellent thing if you lose all sense of the presence of God. You'll get somewhere then. I hope you all have a year where you've lost all sense of the presence of God. May you be blessed.

"Why? Because I've got the presence. No, you've got to see that God is the real Person in you whether you never see Him again or hear Him again. No, no, no . . . It's of great importance. What it comes down to is this (I put it this way in a sense): we people who are proceeding with God have to have, not one collapse in our lives; we have to have two collapses to be rebuilt. The first collapse you had is as a sinner--you collapsed as a guilty sinner. You didn't do what you should do and you need the mercy of God. The second collapse you had is the collapse of the saint where you can't do what you should do. The first collapse is the collapse where you didn't do. The second collapse is that you can't do. The first collapse is guilt. The second collapse is helplessness.

"Now I tell you it's very subtle . . . You're not like that all the time: 'Why aren't I sober, why haven't I improved. . .' I, I, I all the time. Actually, I only have one enemy all my life and that's the enemy of the finger of the point of condemnation. That's that one thing that I keep that shield of faith against. I won't take it: 'Why aren't you like that fellow?' . . . 'Why did you fail like that?' He's got me every time. But actually I never shan't get better, I'm not meant to. Why? Because humanity is made to contain deity, not to become something but to contain Someone.

"That's what the revelation God gave me . . . containers, instead of obtainers. I thought in Africa [as a missionary] that I'd be improved. I desired more love, more power, and more this and that to make me a better representative of Jesus Christ . But I found that I was guilty, condemned and bound up. 'Why wasn't I free and this and that and like some of the other fellows around me?' God met me in my need by that little word, 'God is love,' not 'God has love.' That made the difference. I suddenly saw it. It doesn't say, 'God has love.' If you have a thing it isn't you; it's something that you just share. It doesn't say that God has a thing called love in His pocket and that He'll put it into you. It says God is love. I said, 'If God is love then love's a Person, of course.' I was caught. If God is love that's a Person. But how's that meet my need?

"And then I found the Scripture about power. I needed power. It says Christ is the power of God in 1 Corinthians 1. It doesn't say Christ has the power. It isn't a thing He has and He gives me. 'Power's a Person,' I said. Well, I'm stuck. If Power's a Person and Love's a Person, and everything's a Person--you go through the whole lot in life . . . Jesus didn't say, 'I have that light,' 'I am the light.' Light's a Person. How does that meet my need?

"I saw it in that Scripture which says this: 'Now Christ is all'--not Christ has all (now that's Colossians 3, verse 11). 'Christ is all and in all.' I suddenly saw it . . . Oh, I see, my humanity doesn't exist to become something but to contain Someone. It isn't, 'Am I getting better? Have I love? Why have I failed?' No, I don't change. I'm just a bundle of humanity and I remain a bundle of humanity but I contain the Person who's got all the goods . . . That was when I got that illustration I used: 'a vessel' (from the Bible). It's a perfect illustration where we're called 'vessels.' Why? Because a vessel can do nothing but contain. The only function a cup has is the capacity to contain. And the important point is: what the cup contains doesn't mix with. When you've got a cup of coffee the coffee doesn't mix with the cup. The coffee's one thing and the cup's another.

"Now we begin to get life into focus when we discover that we don't become something. We haven't got love and become loving and I become powerful and I become . . . No, no. My humanity contains an exclusive Person--the living Person, the one Person joined to me--He's the goods, He's got the lot.

"Now when I begin to do that I begin to throw off these self-guilts: 'Why aren't you so-and-so?' I say, 'No, I never will be. I'm not going to try to be. I'm not.' And I transfer my attention from 'Why aren't I so-and-so, why didn't I do so-and-so' to another Person: 'You've got the goods, You've got it. I can't . . . It's up to You now. You better express Yourself through me. I'm just going to be myself.' I begin on this new basis."