In His Letters to the Thessalonians
A Help t Know One's Own Disposition
Let us pause there for a minute. You know, we should get over a great many of our troubles if we knew what our temperaments were. If only we would sit down for a minute - and this is not introspection at all - sit down for a minute and say: "Now, what is my peculiar disposition and make up? What is the thing to which, by reason of my constitution, I am most prone? What are the factors, the elements, that make up my temperament?" If you can put your finger on that, you have the key to many of your troubles. Asaph, the psalmist, was having a very bad time on one occasion. He looked at the wicked and saw them prospering. He saw the righteous having a difficult time - himself included - and he got very downhearted about all this. But then he pulled himself together, he recollected, and he said: "This is my infirmity; but I will remember the years of the right hand of the Most High" (Psalm 77:10). "This is my infirmity"! This is not the Lord, this is not the truth - this is just me, this is my proneness to go down in times of difficulty. It is how I am made; it is my reaction to trouble."
Now, perhaps that sounds a very naturalistic way of dealing with things. But I have not finished yet. If you and I will understand this thing - that a lot of our trouble comes because we are made in a certain way; it is really in our own constitution - we shall have a ground upon which to go to the Lord. We shall be able to go to the Lord and say: "Lord, You know how I am made; You know how I naturally react to things. You know how, because I am made that way, I am always being caught in certain ways; You know how it is that I behave under certain strains. You know me, Lord. Now, Lord, You are different from what I am: where I am weak, You are strong; where I am faulty, You are perfect."
Do you not see that the Lord Jesus, the Perfect Man, is the perfect balance of all the good qualities in all the temperaments, that in Him are none of the bad qualities of any temperament, and that the Holy Spirit can make Christ to be unto us that which we are not in ourselves? That is the great wonder, the great mystery, the great glory, of the meaning of Christ as mediated to us by the Holy Spirit. It is the wonder of His humanity: a perfect manhood without any of all this that troubles us. Look at Him under duress: He does not go down. Look at Him from any standpoint of testing and trial: He goes through. But He is man. He is not going through on the basis of His Deity. He is going through on the basis of His perfect humanity, and that is to be mediated to us.
Spiritual growth means this, that we are becoming something other than what we are naturally. Is it not so? Naturally, we may be inclined to be rather miserable people - always taking a miserable view, always going down in the dumps. Now, when the Holy Spirit takes charge of us, the miserably inclined people become joyful, although it is not natural for them to be joyful. That is the miracle of the Christian life. We become something that we are not naturally. Naturally, we would very quickly go down under some kinds of criticism or persecution, and nurse our troubles, but when the Lord Jesus is in us, we ca take it and go on. We do not go down, we go on. He makes us other than what we are. That is the work of grace in the life of the believer.
These Thessalonians suffered very much because of their practical temperament. They expected that that of which they had been told at the first would come about immediately. They were saying to themselves: "The Lord will come - He may come today, any day - and that will be the end of all our troubles. But times is going on, and people are dying, and things are getting more and more difficult. It does not look very much as though the Lord is coming ..." They may have been almost at the point of breaking and scattering. And at that point a new presentation of the gospel of the Lord Jesus came in, bringing the hope of something different from what they were naturally.
What is true in the case of the practical temperament is true in all other temperaments. We may take this as a principle. If we only understood it, the Lord is dealing with every one of us like that. He is dealing with us according to what we are. It is no use trying to stereotype or standardize the dealings of God with people. God's dealings with me would perhaps not be very troublesome to you, but God's dealings with you might very well throw me right off my feet. He deals with us according to ourselves, in order that there may be that of Christ in us which is not of ourselves. I say again, that is the work of grace. That is the mediation of Christ - that is the very meaning of being conformed to the image of Christ. It is partaking of His nature - something utterly different. But it is a terrible process. Now we have got to get through as these people got through.
Is that good news? I think it is. I think that is the gospel, "good tidings". It is good tidings for the man who is always too ready to drop out and give up and be miserable. It is good tidings to those who, because of their own natural expectations and reactions, are disappointed in what is actually happening. It is good tidings that Christ is something other than we are, and that w can be saved from what we are by Christ. It is very practical, you see. How are we saved from what we are? By Christ! Not by Christ just coming and putting out His hands and pulling us up. That is what we are all wanting Him to do. We are appealing to the Lord to come and do something like that, literally lift us right out of where we are. What He is doing is displacing us, and putting Himself in our place in an inward way. It is a process, a deep process, and it is perhaps only over years that you can see more of Christ. That person used to be such-and-such a one, but there is a difference now, you can see Christ now; they are no longer what they used to be, they are getting over that. They are being "changed into the same image". That is good news: good news for the Thessalonians, and good news for us.
~T. Austin-Sparks~
(continued with # 26 - "A Test At the End")
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