Magnify, Mortify, Simplify

"If ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live" (Romans 8:13)

Christ calls men to carry a cross, we call them to have fun in His Name. He calls them to forsake the world; we assure them that if they but accept Jesus the world is their oyster. He calls them to suffer; we call them to enjoy all the bourgeois comforts modern civilization affords. He calls them to self-abnegation and death. We call them to spread themselves like green bay trees or perchance even to become stars in a pitiful fifth-rate religious zodiac. He calls them to holiness; we call them to a cheap and tawdry happiness that would have been rejected with scorn by the least of the Stoic philosophers.

In a world like this, with conditions being what they are, what should a serious-minded Christian do? The answer is easy to give but hard to follow. First, accept the truth concerning yourself. Seek the kingdom of God and His righteousness. Seek through Jesus Christ a right relationship to your fellow man. Set about reverently to amend your doings. Magnify God, mortify the flesh, simplify your life.

We must obey God. What a joy it brings to the soul to be thus consciously submissive and doing the whole will of God. satan feels helpless before a man with faith in heart and perfect obedience to God in life.

~A. W. Tozer~

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Fruit, Not Trees

"Either make the tree good, and his fruit good; or else make the tree corrupt, and his fruit corrupt: for the tree is known by his fruit" (Matthew 12:33)

Rightly understand, faith is not a substitute for moral conduct but a means toward it. The tree does not serve in lieu of fruit but as an agent by which fruit is secured. Fruit, not trees, is the end God has in mind in yonder orchard; so Christlike conduct is the end of Christian faith.

To oppose faith to works is to make the fruit the enemy to the tree; yet that is exactly what we have managed to do. And the consequences have been disastrous.

A miscalculation in laying the foundation of a building will throw the whole superstructure out of plumb, and the error that gave us faith as a substitute for action instead of faith in action has raised up in our day unsymmetrical and ugly temples of which we may well be ashamed and for which we shall surely give a strict account in the day when Christ judges the secrets of our hearts.

If there is true faith within, there will be obedience to God without. They walk together and they go down together. When faith fails, disobedience sets in.

~A. W. Tozer~