The Need For Balance
"Which
He wrought in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead,
and set Him at His own right hand in the heavenly
places" (Eph. 1:20).
"To
whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory
of this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Christ in
you, the hope of glory" (Col. 1:27).
"What
shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace
may abound? God forbid. How shall we, that are dead to
sin, live any longer therein? Know ye not, that so many
of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized
into His death? Therefore we are buried with Him by
baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up
from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so
we also should walk in newness of life. For if we have
been planted together in the likeness of His death, we
shall be also in the likeness of His resurrection:
Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with Him,
that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth
we should not serve sin" (Rom. 6:1-6).
"There
is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in
Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the
Spirit. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus
hath made me free from the law of sin and death" (Rom.
8:1-2).
"Who
shall lay any thing to the charge of God's elect? It is
God that justifieth. Who is he that condemneth? It is
Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, Who is
even at the right hand of God, Who also maketh
intercession for us" (Rom. 8:33-34).
We feel
the importance of saying a word with regard to Christ in
heaven and Christ within the believer, that is, what is
objective and what is subjective. It is tremendously
important that we should keep a proper balance of truth.
A very great deal of our trouble is because of there
being an unbalanced emphasis upon some aspect of truth.
It is good to know the truth, and it is good to rejoice
in it, but it is just possible that even truth may get us
into trouble. There are many perils lying in the
direction of truth, even spiritual truth; and there are
not a few of the Lord's people who have fallen into those
perils. It is not that they suffer from want of light,
but they are suffering very much because they have not
got their light properly adjusted and balanced. Thus it
becomes very necessary for us to get things in their
right perspective and proportion. Preponderance on any
one side will always lead to spiritual injury, and very
often to disaster. The history of many instrumentalities
which have been raised up and used by the Lord is
eventually the sad story of a loss of power and
effectiveness because of striking an unbalanced emphasis,
of putting some side of truth in a place out of
proportion to that which is complementary to it.
Complementary Truths
It is not just a matter of being
all-round, that is, of having everything and being in
everything; but in the constitution of a body we find
that one law is balanced by another. All the laws, of
course, are necessary, and it is important to give due
place to every function in our bodies; but there run
parallel laws and functions, one balances the other.
There is that which is complementary to something else.
These two things are, as it were, twins, running
together, and to over-emphasize or over-develop one means
to throw the whole order out, and to bring about quite
serious limitation and weakness, and to make things far
less effective than they should be.
So it is in spiritual matters. There are
always balancing truths. There is one thing, but there is
something which goes with it, and which keeps it in its
right measure, and causes it to fulfil its purpose and to
serve its end most effectively. There is this order in
the Divine creation - one thing is necessary to another
to make that other fulfil its purpose to the full. That
is where balance has to be observed and maintained.
The Adversary Using God's Work
Against Him
Then we must remember that the adversary
is always wanting to use God's own work and God's own
truth against God Himself. That fact is made very clear
in the Scriptures, and we may observe it in experience
and in spiritual history. This line of action is more
successful for the adversary than perhaps any other,
because the result is that he immediately prejudices
God's work and God's truth. He closes the door to the
acceptance of what is of God simply by using it against
God, and one of his most successful methods is that of
securing an over-emphasis or an unbalanced apprehension
of Divine truth. You will see what I mean as we go on.
A Peril With Every Blessing
So that with every Divine blessing there
is a peril. Wherever there is something which is really
from the Lord, that has linked with it its own peculiar
peril.
Now these are merely general observations,
as leading up to this brief meditation along the specific
line of what is objective and what is subjective as to
the work of the Lord Jesus for and in the believer. We
will look at both of these separately very briefly,
seeing what the blessing is and what the perils are.
The Objective Side
We take the objective side first, the Lord
Jesus presented to us as in heaven. We know that He is
there, and we know that a very great deal is said in the
Word about His being there; but why is He there? In the
first place: How did He get there? Now you will notice if
you look into the Word that whenever the heavenly side of
the ascension of the Lord Jesus is presented, that is,
whenever the matter is looked at from above, it does not
speak about His going up or His ascension, but it speaks
about His being received up. In the first chapter of the
Book of the Acts it is recorded that as the disciples
were looking up into heaven after the Lord Jesus had been
taken up from among them, two angels appeared and said to
them: "Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye looking into
heaven? This Jesus, Who was received up..." (The
Authorized Version says "taken up"). That
is an angelic, or a heavenly, standpoint, and the word
"received" represents something more than just
the fact that He ascended to heaven. It carries with it
this fact, that it would be impossible for the Lord Jesus
to be received in heaven if He had not perfectly
accomplished the work which He came from heaven to do. In
effect, heaven would have been closed to Him; heaven
would have had to say to Him, 'But You have not done the
work; there can be no reception until You have'. But it
was because He had perfected the work which He came to
do, and there was nothing more to be added to it, that
heaven received Him, and it was a great reception! Psalm
24 gives us some idea of what that reception was:
"Lift up your heads, O ye gates; and be ye lifted
up, ye everlasting doors: and the King of glory will come
in. Who is the King of glory? The Lord strong and mighty,
the Lord mighty in battle." You see, it implies the
work that He has done by His Cross, in overthrowing all
His and our enemies, meeting all the demand of human need
in the matter of salvation, perfecting our salvation. And
so He is received up, and is at the right hand of
God; and the right hand is always in Scripture the place
of strength and honour. He is at the right hand of God
because the work which He came to do was finished. That
is, our salvation has been perfected by and in the Lord
Jesus. There is nothing whatever for Him to add to it.
That is the most elementary thing to say, and yet it is
so foundational. So many of the Lord's people have not
yet entered into the joyful appreciation of that - that
the Lord Jesus really has given the last stroke and the
last touch to our salvation; that when heaven received
Him, heaven set its seal to the perfected work of His
Cross; and that He is there in possession of a salvation
which has not still to be accomplished but which is
final, full, complete, utter.
Perfect Salvation When We Believe
Our salvation rests upon our faith
acceptance of that, not of anything subsequent to that.
In the day in which we believe in the Lord Jesus on the
ground of the perfection of the work of His Cross, we
receive perfection of salvation, and enter into all that
salvation to its very last degree. We shall never -
though we were to live for centuries on this earth, - we
shall never in Christ be one little bit more
perfect than we are in Him in the very moment that we
believe. All that is made good to us in the day that we
believe. There are no questions, no hazards, no risks,
the thing is settled, it is ours; full and complete in
Christ. The Blood of the Lord Jesus has dealt with
the whole sin question, root and branch, once and for
all, for us. The question of condemnation has been for
ever settled. You cannot have anything more utter than
this - NO condemnation! "There is no condemnation to
them that are in Christ Jesus." It does not say:
'There is no condemnation to those who have faithfully
been going on with the Lord for years'. It says: "to
them that are in Christ Jesus." And when are you in
Christ? You are in Christ the moment that you believe in
relation to His work on the Cross for your salvation, and
in that very moment you enter into the place of NO
CONDEMNATION, and freedom from condemnation cannot be
more complete than that.
The tremendously important thing is for us
to have that settled in our own hearts. We are saved, we
are forgiven, we are delivered from condemnation. In
Christ we are perfect. He is our perfection, and that
perfection of His is ours through faith. The people who
have the purest, clearest, fullest heart-grasp of that
are the happiest people, the people who know joy. The
people who have not grasped that are disturbed people,
they have not the fullness of joy, they are always
afraid, anxious, worrying about their salvation,
doubting; and the enemy plays many tricks with people who
have not settled that once and for all.
Now that is the blessed truth of what is
objective in salvation for the believer as in Christ. I
am so glad that He is in heaven "far above all"
with this matter. If He were here in this world I might
think that anything could happen: but He is not, nor is
He in any realm where anything can happen; He is beyond
all happenings in the matter of salvation. That salvation
of ours in its perfection has been put beyond the reach
of anything that can throw a doubt upon it, or raise a
question about it - beyond the touch of anything that can
bring it into uncertainty.
The Perils Of The Objective Apprehension
But there are perils associated even with
that blessed truth, because it is only one side of the
truth. It is the first side; it is the thing which must
come first, but it is only one side, and therefore it is
just possible to make salvation one-sided by putting all
the emphasis upon that and not giving due place to the
other side.
1. The Peril Of Shallowness
What are some of the perils? Well, we begin
with the simplest, the peril of superficiality, of
shallowness. What Christ has done for us may be a matter
of very great joy and rejoicing and satisfaction; but
contentment in that realm and with that side alone may
just prevent that deep work which is necessary, which
comes by the complementary side of the truth of Christ's
work, the subjective. Thus it is found that many people,
who are rejoicing to the full in the finality of their
salvation in Christ, are living very much
upon the surface, and not learning a very great deal
about the deeper realities and fuller meaning of Christ.
That is the first and perhaps the simplest form of peril.
2. The Peril Of Delayed
Maturity
Closely related to this is the peril of
making the Christian life static, settled, where it has
reached the point of accepting all the objective truth by
faith and staying there, and not going on beyond that in
spiritual experience. The truth is there, but it is
objective, external, although there is great joy, and
assurance in the heart; but the Christian life has
stopped with that, it has settled down. That is a very
real peril, and you find it marking a great many of the
Lord's people. Their attitude is, "I am saved,
nothing has to be added or can be added to my salvation;
I need have no more doubt of my salvation, I am accepted in
Christ, and I am perfect in Him; what more
do I need? I just rest upon that and enjoy that day by
day." Well, that is very good, but you see it can
bring a check, so that you live on one side of things,
and the whole of the Christian life stops there.
3. The Peril Of Contradiction
There is a further peril into which some fall who have
apprehended in a very true and blessed way the greatness
of the salvation which Christ has accomplished as theirs.
Because they know that the question of salvation is
eternally settled, and there is no room whatever for any
doubts or fears, and nothing can ever alter the fact; and
that their salvation does not rest for a moment upon
anything that they are or do, but upon what He is and has
done, - all of which is undeniably true; nevertheless,
because they are perfectly sure and have no doubts
whatever, there is found a lack of sympathy and they
become hard, cold, and legal. Sometimes they become
cruel, and too often inconsistencies arise in the life;
that is, their attitude says in effect, "I am saved,
it does not matter what I do, I shall never be
lost." They would never dream of saying that in so
many words and yet very often it works out that way, that
their very certainty of salvation opens the door for
inconsistencies and contradictions in their lives which
never reach their conscience, simply because they say
they have no more conscience of sin, that the conscience
has been once purged, and so one should never be troubled
with conscience again; salvation is absolute, nothing can
touch it. Subtly, imperceptibly, without their reasoning
or thinking, that attitude does creep in and you find
with some that if you bring home to them certain things
in their lives which you see to be glaring
inconsistencies they will hardly believe them, they will
possibly repudiate them, or simply say, "well,
nothing alters the fact of my salvation." Life is
thus thrown into an unbalanced state, and the peril comes
right in with the very fact of the fullness and finality
of salvation.
4. The Peril Of Truth Taking
The Place Of Life
There is another peril; it is that of making
progress a matter of truth rather than of life. Progress,
of course, is recognized as necessary. No true believer
would sit down and say, "Well, now there is no more
progress to be made." But for many who have so
strongly taken up the position upon the objective work of
the Lord Jesus in its perfection, the matter of progress
is not a matter of life, it is rather a matter of truth;
that is, to know more rather than to become more. Thus
you find that a very great many who are in that position
have advanced tremendously in their knowledge of truth,
but they know a great deal more than they are, and
somehow or other their own spiritual growth in
Christlikeness has not kept pace by any means or in any
proper proportion to their progress in the knowledge of
things about Christ. That is a danger which comes in with
this very thing of which we are speaking.
5. The Peril Of Missing The
Prize
Then this further peril - that of giving
less importance to the prize than should be given to it.
Salvation is not the prize. Salvation never was a prize.
You can never win or earn salvation; it is a free gift.
But to settle down with salvation in its fullness and its
finality means for a great many a failure to recognize
that there is a prize - that of which the Apostle Paul
spoke when he said: "I press on towards the goal
unto the prize of the upward calling..." (Phil.
3:14). There is something more than salvation, something
related to the Lord's full purpose in glory, something
related to the ultimate full manifestation of the Lord in
His people; and that is not simply that they are saved
people, but that they have attained (and Paul uses
that word) unto something. Paul was never in fear of
losing his salvation. When he said: "Lest... after
that I have preached to others, I myself should be
rejected" (I Cor. 9:27), he was not thinking of
losing his salvation, but he was aware that there was
something that he could miss; he could fall short of
something, that which he called "the prize";
and he related to its attainment a growth in his
spiritual life: "Not that I... am already made perfect."
If we settle down in the attitude that says, "My
salvation is perfect, complete, and final in Christ.
Nothing can be added to it and I rejoice in that" -
this may well mean that we give less importance to the
prize than we ought to give.
So you see there are perils which come in
with what is perhaps the greatest of the blessings.
The Subjective Side
That does not cover all the ground, but it
must be enough on that side for the moment. We turn just
for a moment to the other side - Christ in us, or the
subjective work of Christ. What does Christ in us mean?
We know from the Word that it means conformity to the
image of Christ. Paul uses the phrase: "Until Christ
be (fully) formed in you" (Gal. 4:19). In salvation
we have everything as to our own perfection in Him. When
we receive Christ we receive within us potentially all
that is in Him as to His present character - not only His
position but His character, mark you. It is not WHERE He
is but WHAT He is. It is not now what He possesses
but what He IS. He possesses our salvation, but we know
what He is, and "when He shall appear, we shall be
like Him; for we shall see Him as He is" (I John
3:2). So that all that He has given to us potentially
when we believed is there to be developed; and, as Paul
says, Christ is to be fully formed in us, and we are to
be conformed to the image of God's Son. That is a very
wonderful thing. It is: "Christ in you, the hope of
glory." Christ in us means that eventually we shall
be like Him to the full. But this is not the FACT of
our being saved, this is the OBJECT of our being
saved. This is not salvation in its fundamental and
initial meaning; this is salvation in its outworking to
its full meaning, the image of Christ, God's Son.
Identification With Christ
How do we accept that? We accept that by
recognizing the second side of Calvary's work. The one
side - the objective - is what Christ has done for us,
apart from us, in His own Person. We accept this other
side of conformity to His image - the subjective by
accepting that Christ not only did that FOR us but
AS us, that is, representatively. We come
to Romans 6 and recognize that when Christ died we died,
when Christ was buried we were buried, when Christ was
raised we were raised. That is His representative work.
Now we accept all that in simple faith at the beginning;
but, mark you, that does not become operative in any full
measure until the objective side has been settled. There
must be a settlement, definitely, positively, finally,
that our salvation in Christ is perfect and complete,
before there can be any full measure of the
out-working of Christ in our hearts. The Lord must have
that basis upon which to work.
This is where the danger comes in with a
great blessing. Oh! it is a great revelation, a wonderful
unveiling, that God has chosen to make us like Christ -
not only to save us with a perfect salvation so that the
question of sin and condemnation is answered finally and
for ever, but to conform us to the image of His Son; what
a revelation, what a blessing! Yes, but God cannot do
that second thing until the first thing is settled,
because it is in that realm that there is unspeakable
peril. What is the peril? It is this.
The Peril Of The Subjective
Apprehension
If the Lord were to get to work to empty
us of ourselves in order to make room for the Lord Jesus;
to show us ourselves in order to show us the Lord Jesus;
to make us to know what we are in ourselves in order to
make us know what Christ is in us; to make us know our
weakness in order to make Christ's strength perfect in
it; to make us know our foolishness in order to make
Christ as our wisdom, perfect in us; if He were to start
to do that and the question of our salvation were not
settled, the devil would jump in at once and use God's
very work against us, and when the Lord was dealing with
us to make room for His Son, the devil would begin to
say: "You are under condemnation, God is against
you, these very dealings of God with you are proofs that
your salvation is not certain." And so it is with a
great many in whom the Lord begins to work out things.
They allow the enemy to jump in and take hold of the very
work of God and turn it against God, by bringing up
doubts in their hearts as to their salvation.
Do you see that? So often that is done,
and the peril is there, running right alongside of the
greatest blessing all the time. It is thus that the enemy
tries to use God's truth against God.
Now the subjective side of God's work
demands for its effective outworking that we are settled
once and for all as to our salvation; that comes first!
If you have only the one side; the objective, and all
your emphasis is upon that, you may be shallow and you
may not grow spiritually. If you dwell only on the
subjective, you become introspective and begin to doubt
your salvation; your eyes are always turned in upon
yourself, and the result is that you begin to look for
something in yourself that can commend itself to God; and
therein lies a denial of the perfect work of salvation
accomplished by the Lord Jesus. You see it is an
undermining and undercutting of the whole of the work of
Calvary. These two things must go together. On the one
hand - fully and finally in Christ we are as
perfect in the hour when we believe as ever we shall be.
On the other hand - all that is in Christ is going
to be made, not THEORETICALLY true, but ACTUALLY
true in us by the Holy Spirit. But the second demands
the first, and we must keep the balance. We must rejoice
always in the fact that our names are written in heaven,
that we are saved with a perfect salvation; but, on the
other hand, we must remember that there is something that
the Lord wants to do - not to make salvation true, but to
make the image of Christ an inward thing. That is the
outworking of salvation.
So this balance is necessary, and we must
give equal emphasis. If we over-emphasize the subjective
we take something from the glory of Christ. If we
over-emphasize the objective we take something from God's
purpose. It is a matter of the work of God
in Christ, and the purpose of God
in Christ: and these two things must both have their
place.
May the Lord give us understanding, so
that we come into a place of rest and are delivered from
the perils which lurk in the vicinity of every Divine
blessing.
First published in "A Witness and A Testimony" magazine, May-Jun 1934, Vol 12-3