Christ In Heaven and Christ Within # 3

The Peril of Contradiction

There is a further peril 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 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 thins 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.

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 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.

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" (1 Corinthians 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 n with what is perhaps the greatest of the blessings.

~T. Austin-Sparks~

(continued with # 4 - "The Subjective Side")