Once again, I have gone quite awhile without writing anything on this blog.
This time, my friend William helped me understand that the reason is the "scale" at which I am addressing people.
I can't keep up with the epic tone of things around here, because I am such an ordinary guy.
So, in the good words of Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce, "From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever." I mean that I'm giving up on the extraordinary revolution, and I'm just going to relax some.
I'm just going to write stuff now, and I hope you all like it.
Monday, March 31, 2008
Saturday, March 1, 2008
Some thoughts on Consecration
I am beginning to see that it is the authority of Christ which is entirely responsible for the consecration of the Christian.
What I mean here is that they are one in the same: Consecration is not a human responsibility, because it is not a human possibility - you cannot consecrate yourself, because your personal devotion and decision-ability pertain to a nature which God cannot accept. God must consecrate you, and He does so by bringing you under the authority of Christ. God can only accept the nature of Christ, and so He can only accept your consecration when Christ performs it, which implies the action of His authority in place of your own, and thus, His nature.
So how does this work? How does it become meaningful to us?
I think it is imperative to see at the onset that consecration, like atonement, has its completeness in the work of God in Christ, and is not something that can or should be accomplished now in us as individuals. Our consecration is only our entering into God's consecration of us, in Christ. We can not contribute to it in a fundamental sense, as though to alter what it is, how it works, or who's decisions it involves; but we can make God's consecration of all mankind in Christ effective to us individually by faith, and by faith (and only so) we may experience the benefit of it.
And so what is the benefit of consecration?
Consecration is when I see that I am God's possession (and it is the authority of Christ that makes His possession of me certain; thus, it is not dependent on any working of my own). The good of it is this: That only as I get a sense of God's possession of me can I have a lasting sense of His presence with me.
I may very well believe that God is with me, and I may try very hard, through belief, to substantiate a sense of that presence. Going about it this way though will only produce despair, because there is no lasting effect when I try to work out the purposes of God through the resources of my natural man - that is, through my effort rather than deferring to the effort of God in Christ. I may have a natural hour where I sense God's presence, and the comfort and wisdom of it, but then with an incidence of my temper, or careless thoughts, or indifference, it is gone, and I find myself wandering around again looking for what is seemingly a scarce and anomalous experience.
This is not what the Lord has for us. His working in Christ was not to affect us such that we might be "better" sinners, or sinners of a more effective sort in His purposes, or that we might have a higher incidence of ideal moments as otherwise people of a useless quality. You would not wash and iron clothing that were going to throw away, and in the same sense, God has made no provision for the participation of the natural man in the newness of life that He has ordained in Christ. The natural is not brought into the new, but was discarded by the cross through Jesus' working as "the last Adam" (I Cor. 15:45). There is a higher way of approaching every good thing that God has for us, including the continual experience of His presence: Our way unto every good thing of God is to see more thoroughly what He has already accomplished in Christ, and then to rest in the fact of it, accepting it to be true of ourselves because God has made it so.
In the words of Watchman Nee:
"We work where we have not seen the work of Christ."
So then, our consecration is a historical fact, just as is our atonement, forgiveness, and deliverance from the principle of sin. As with these other things, consecration will have only have its good effect on us if we come into it through knowing it, reckoning it to be so, and then presenting ourselves to God according to it. That is the divine order for experiencing grace, and it always refers to His past working in Christ, and not to His present working in us. His present working in us is to make true of us what is already true in Christ.
What I mean here is that they are one in the same: Consecration is not a human responsibility, because it is not a human possibility - you cannot consecrate yourself, because your personal devotion and decision-ability pertain to a nature which God cannot accept. God must consecrate you, and He does so by bringing you under the authority of Christ. God can only accept the nature of Christ, and so He can only accept your consecration when Christ performs it, which implies the action of His authority in place of your own, and thus, His nature.
So how does this work? How does it become meaningful to us?
I think it is imperative to see at the onset that consecration, like atonement, has its completeness in the work of God in Christ, and is not something that can or should be accomplished now in us as individuals. Our consecration is only our entering into God's consecration of us, in Christ. We can not contribute to it in a fundamental sense, as though to alter what it is, how it works, or who's decisions it involves; but we can make God's consecration of all mankind in Christ effective to us individually by faith, and by faith (and only so) we may experience the benefit of it.
And so what is the benefit of consecration?
Consecration is when I see that I am God's possession (and it is the authority of Christ that makes His possession of me certain; thus, it is not dependent on any working of my own). The good of it is this: That only as I get a sense of God's possession of me can I have a lasting sense of His presence with me.
I may very well believe that God is with me, and I may try very hard, through belief, to substantiate a sense of that presence. Going about it this way though will only produce despair, because there is no lasting effect when I try to work out the purposes of God through the resources of my natural man - that is, through my effort rather than deferring to the effort of God in Christ. I may have a natural hour where I sense God's presence, and the comfort and wisdom of it, but then with an incidence of my temper, or careless thoughts, or indifference, it is gone, and I find myself wandering around again looking for what is seemingly a scarce and anomalous experience.
This is not what the Lord has for us. His working in Christ was not to affect us such that we might be "better" sinners, or sinners of a more effective sort in His purposes, or that we might have a higher incidence of ideal moments as otherwise people of a useless quality. You would not wash and iron clothing that were going to throw away, and in the same sense, God has made no provision for the participation of the natural man in the newness of life that He has ordained in Christ. The natural is not brought into the new, but was discarded by the cross through Jesus' working as "the last Adam" (I Cor. 15:45). There is a higher way of approaching every good thing that God has for us, including the continual experience of His presence: Our way unto every good thing of God is to see more thoroughly what He has already accomplished in Christ, and then to rest in the fact of it, accepting it to be true of ourselves because God has made it so.
In the words of Watchman Nee:
"We work where we have not seen the work of Christ."
So then, our consecration is a historical fact, just as is our atonement, forgiveness, and deliverance from the principle of sin. As with these other things, consecration will have only have its good effect on us if we come into it through knowing it, reckoning it to be so, and then presenting ourselves to God according to it. That is the divine order for experiencing grace, and it always refers to His past working in Christ, and not to His present working in us. His present working in us is to make true of us what is already true in Christ.
New Direction for This Blog
If you are a regular visitor to this blog, you may have noticed that about half of the postings have disappeared.
I haven't written anything on here for awhile, and I realized this week that this is because the blog has lost the purity to me that it had early on, taking away much of the invitation to continue writing.
I am not really a "blogger" type, in my own thinking. My family, my work, and my personal devotions are all that I really consider being at the core of my life, and I am anything but an extrovert. Anyone who has known me for awhile will remember that this was not always the case, but it is now. Marriage, having a son, and having a real career has changed me. It is difficult for my friends to even get me on the phone for 10 minutes most weeks, and this is not so much that I am incredibly busy as it is that I am certain about where I belong and who I need to be available to.
This blog became important to me because I saw it as an opportunity to synthesize conversations that I would not ordinarily be able to have, especially regarding the intricacies of what God has done in Christ, which I am fascinated with from both a scientific and humanitarian point of view.
I have somewhat misused the privilege of this forum though, not as though it were offensive to anyone else, but in that doing so took away the better use of it from me: I want to write about God, and in such a way that appreciates the idealistic nature of writing - that I can exclude all the ordinary thoughts that occur to me while considering the extraordinary; that I can get away with thinking through things that you would easily see I am not qualified to speak about, if you knew how ordinary and unacceptable I can be.
This blog is a place where I can explore the very best, even if unnatural, thoughts that interest me, and I do not want to fill it with common emotionalism or careless expression anymore.
I am purposing now to use this forum only to expound upon the study of the gospel of Christ:
I believe that to continue on in studying the gospel beyond its initial inception is useful in that doing so will persuade us, progressively, to stop working for what we already have.
In the good words of Watchman Nee, "We work because we have not seen the work of Christ."
So I will now devote the use of this blog to bringing people onto the proper side of that equation - to see the work of Christ more fully, that we may cease to work ourselves and may find more thorough rest and peace in the grace of God.
I haven't written anything on here for awhile, and I realized this week that this is because the blog has lost the purity to me that it had early on, taking away much of the invitation to continue writing.
I am not really a "blogger" type, in my own thinking. My family, my work, and my personal devotions are all that I really consider being at the core of my life, and I am anything but an extrovert. Anyone who has known me for awhile will remember that this was not always the case, but it is now. Marriage, having a son, and having a real career has changed me. It is difficult for my friends to even get me on the phone for 10 minutes most weeks, and this is not so much that I am incredibly busy as it is that I am certain about where I belong and who I need to be available to.
This blog became important to me because I saw it as an opportunity to synthesize conversations that I would not ordinarily be able to have, especially regarding the intricacies of what God has done in Christ, which I am fascinated with from both a scientific and humanitarian point of view.
I have somewhat misused the privilege of this forum though, not as though it were offensive to anyone else, but in that doing so took away the better use of it from me: I want to write about God, and in such a way that appreciates the idealistic nature of writing - that I can exclude all the ordinary thoughts that occur to me while considering the extraordinary; that I can get away with thinking through things that you would easily see I am not qualified to speak about, if you knew how ordinary and unacceptable I can be.
This blog is a place where I can explore the very best, even if unnatural, thoughts that interest me, and I do not want to fill it with common emotionalism or careless expression anymore.
I am purposing now to use this forum only to expound upon the study of the gospel of Christ:
I believe that to continue on in studying the gospel beyond its initial inception is useful in that doing so will persuade us, progressively, to stop working for what we already have.
In the good words of Watchman Nee, "We work because we have not seen the work of Christ."
So I will now devote the use of this blog to bringing people onto the proper side of that equation - to see the work of Christ more fully, that we may cease to work ourselves and may find more thorough rest and peace in the grace of God.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
