A spiritual state is the
key to all that is of God. Spirituality is the door, and
the key to the door, beyond which lies everything that
relates to God. Without spirituality there is no way
through; the door is closed. The word ''cannot'' stands
written as an impassable barrier - ''cannot understand or
receive the things of the Spirit of God. ''
The world of things
temporal is only a shadow of another world and has no
abiding qualities or values in itself. It is governed by
the law of vanity, vanity meaning simply that it cannot
of itself realize its own destiny. It will reach a point,
and from that point turn back and in upon itself; its
efforts, its groanings, its travailings, never issue in a
final realization of its intention. Nothing of it, by its
own properties, can realize Divine purposes and ends. It
is very important to recognize this.
As we get closer to this
matter, we see how it applies specifically to Christian
work. Oh, how many things are gathered into organized
Christianity with the idea of making for effectiveness!
The idea is that if you can have these things you are
going to get results.
Money - oh, how much
could be done if only we had money! We must have money! I
ask you, how was it in the book of the Acts? Was anything
done? With all the money today, how much is done of an
abiding, eternal, spiritual value? If only you can get
names and titles on your programs and advertisements, you
are going to effect something! Are you? If you can get
reputation, scholarship, learning, ability, physical
strength, business acumen, the work will be affected.
Will it?
I want to say that not
in one of these things, nor in all of them put together, in
themselves, is there any spiritual value, and there
can be a very vast amount of spiritual value without any
of them. God has taken pains along both lines to prove
that. Along the line of their presence in abundance He
has proved their spiritual futility; and along the line
of taking the weak things and the despised and the
foolish and the things which are not, by something which
was nothing in itself, He has through the ages
demonstrated His own power and done mightily fruitful
things for eternity.
Well, that is simple and
obvious, and it is only one more contribution to this
fact, that it is spirituality that counts, that is the
effective thing, the thing that gets through, and nothing
else. The learning, the money, and all the other things
may have a place, provided they do not govern, provided
they are subservient to what is spiritual and are never
banked upon as the things which are going to do the work;
provided it is never assumed that if you have these
things, a great work for God can be done. God will make
evident the folly of that assumption. A whole range of
things is employed by organized Christianity to secure
Divine ends, but it does not work. Well, that is the
first thing that we note in connection with spirituality.
We proceed in the next
place to recognize that for spiritual - that is, Divine,
eternal, ultimate purposes, we have to be reconstituted
on a spiritual level and basis. That, of course, is the
very heart of John 3. Nicodemus is interested in, and
concerned about, the Kingdom of God, wanting to know
about it, and has come to the Lord Jesus by night,
evidently to talk about it. He had, like all other
Israelites, an entirely temporal conception of the
Kingdom, an earthly idea. It was formal, an official
matter. The Lord Jesus does not waste any time at all
with that. He simply brushes it all aside, ignores it,
and says, ''Ye must be born anew". ''Except a man be
born anew, he cannot see the Kingdom of God.'' That is
elementary, but we are coming to this fact: in order to
know anything at all about the things of God (and I take
the Kingdom of God to be that realm in which all that
obtains is of God - -that which belongs to God) we have
to be constituted according to God.
Nothing is possible
until we are reconstituted on a new principle, until we
are in other words constituted spiritual beings in a new
way. The very beginnings of things in relation to God are
that they are a new and altogether other constitution,
just as absolute as would be the reconstituting of us to
live a fish's life, and perhaps more so. We have to begin
over again. For the very first thing of God, that is
necessary. I know that I am not saying anything that is
new in itself to you, but I feel very much that there has
to be a reconsideration of the whole Christian conception
of things if we are going to have effectiveness.
The ideas of doing God's
work, and of what His work is, are very often far from
the truth. The ideas of the means by which God would work
are very often largely outside of the pale of God's
acceptance. We are concerned with real spiritual
effectiveness, are we not? Then we have to learn the
secret of it; that is what we are after. There is a
crippling, paralyzing ''cannot'' resting upon the
natural, the soulical man where the things of God are
concerned; and yet how much of that soulical life is
employed and relied upon in Christianity today to secure
spiritual ends! If only you can get high-tensioned
atmospheres, a good deal of stir and movement and
emotion; if only you can get certain conditions brought
about by a forceful, powerful personality with its impact
upon the people; then you will get results!
And a great deal of
result is obtained, but it is not spiritual; it is not
abiding and eternal. But unfortunately, the consequences
are not limited to that. There issues ever more and more
this great tragedy of people having tried and been
disappointed, and determining never to try again. The
world is strewn with people who have had an experience
and no more. Oh, the devil is clever!
We are saying that there
is an unbridged gulf between the natural and the
spiritual, and there can be no carryover; and yet in the
Christianity of our day there is a tremendous carryover
of the natural to the spiritual. We find the realm of
God's things is simply full of natural elements, and they
are all paralyzing the spiritual. There has to be a
tremendous removal of all this smother and cover of
natural elements - men coming in with their drive and
their ideas and conceptions and ways. It is killing the
work of God. Until that is really dealt with in the power
of the Cross of our Lord Jesus and all set aside, and God
is free to do His own work by His own means along His own
lines, there will be no commensurate result. God's means
and God's way is spirituality from start to finish - the
impact of a spiritual constitution.
Yes, there is an
unbridged gulf between the natural (the soulical) and the
spiritual, and there can be no carryover. Look at the
fact. It is so often very striking that a person of very
considerable natural acumen, learning intelligence and
ability in this world is nothing in real spiritual
things, though he be a Christian. Are you not often up
against that? A Christian man may be tremendously able in
business affairs and most acute in his business
transactions, full of intelligence and worldly wisdom,
able to carry the weight of an immense concern, to be the
driving force of a great business, man of weight and
consideration in this world, but when it comes to
spiritual things he may be a babe. You speak about the
things of the Lord, and that great brain is altogether
beaten by the simplest things of the spiritual life. You
can get nowhere in talking about the Lord.
I am often amazed as I
meet and talk with Christian men who are carrying great
responsibilities and who have undoubtedly great
abilities, and when you talk about spiritual things they
are unable to say anything, to make any contribution; you
are talking in another realm. And yet they know they are
born again, and they have been so for a long time. What
is the matter? Well, there is a gulf. They have all that
greatness on the natural side, but they are very small on
the spiritual. All that they have of intellectual ability
and equipment and power in every way to handle big things
naturally serves them in no stead whatever when they come
to handle the things of God; whereas somebody who has
none of it is a giant, a teacher, in the realm of things
spiritual. Well, that is a commonplace in our experience.
But it comes right back
to this, that there is a gulf, and there is no real
bridging of this gulf, there is no carrying from one side
to the other. The word ''cannot'' stands there. Here the
word is not about the unregenerate, the grossly sinful.
It is the Christian who is still natural, living on the
basis of his soul rather than in the realm of his renewed
spirit. The natural man ''cannot". That is the
closed door in things spiritual. Whatever he is in things
natural, in things spiritual he is a babe or a fool.
Let me say without any
hesitation: the measure of external ritual and formalism
and that sort of thing determines the measure of
spirituality. The more you have of that, the less you
have of true spiritual life, of real spiritual food. A
real life with the Lord is something very simple, shorn
of all the art of religion; a few children of God
gathered together in something which has no
ecclesiastical traditions, no religious embellishments,
no external forms, but just a simple meeting in the Name
of the Lord. There you have life, power, fullness. I am
not saying that things must be shoddy in order to have
spirituality; I am saying that the law of life is
spirituality.
It works in another way.
The nearer to earth we get, the more we ourselves feel
our importance. Man is biggest when he is nearest to the
earth; he is smallest when he is farthest away. I
remember my first time in an aeroplane; at ten thousand
feet up, I looked down on the ground that meant so much
weary toil to cross. It looked only inches big; the
people and animals were like toys. The nearer to heaven
you get, the less important are the things of earth. All
this religious embellishment is the importance of the
earth, of the world. The nearer you get to things
spiritual and heavenly, the less of that you want, it all
goes; you see how really petty and insignificant it is.
See the Church from heaven, and all this that goes on
down here is like playing at going to church, it is so
small. There is a great deal of difference in the
spiritual constitution.
To sum up what I am
saying, it is this: Spirituality rightly understood is
the secret of all that belongs to God. At the very
beginning of our life with God, we have to be
reconstituted as spiritual beings.
''That which is born of
the Spirit is spirit.''
''He that is
spiritual........''
"As many as are led
by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God.''
First published in "A Witness and A Testimony" magazine, Jan-Feb 1947, Vol 25-1