God has made full provision for
our redemption in the Cross of Christ, but He has not stopped
there. In that Cross He has also made secure beyond possibility
of failure that eternal plan which Paul speaks of as having been
from all the ages "hid in God who created all things".
That plan He has now proclaimed "to the intent that now unto
the principalities and the powers in the heavenly places might be
made known through the church the manifold wisdom of God,
according to the eternal purpose which he purposed in Christ
Jesus our Lord" (Eph. 3:9-11).
We have said that the work of the
Cross has two consequences which bear directly upon the realizing
of that purpose in us. On the one hand it has issued in the
release of His life that it may find expression in us through the
indwelling Spirit. On the other hand it has made possible what we
speak of as 'bearing the cross'; that is, our co-operation in the
daily inworking of His death whereby way is made in us for the
manifestation of that new life, through the bringing of the
'natural man' progressively into his right place of subjection to
the Holy Spirit. Clearly these are the positive and the negative
sides of one thing. Equally clearly we are now touching more
particularly on the matter of progress in a life lived for God.
Hitherto in dealing with the Christian life we have placed our
main emphasis upon the crisis by which it is entered. Now our
concern is more definitely with the walk of the disciple, having
especially in view his training as a servant of God. It is of him
that the Lord Jesus said: "Whosoever doth not bear his own
cross, and come after me, cannot be my disciple" (Luke
14:27).
So we come to a consideration of
the natural man and the 'bearing of the cross'. To understand
this we must, at the risk of being tedious, go back once more to
Genesis and consider what it was that God sought to have in man
at the beginning and how His purpose was frustrated. In this way
we shall be able to grasp the principles by which we can come
again to live in line with that purpose.
If we have even a little
revelation of the plan of God we shall always think much of the
word 'man'. We shall say with the Psalmist, "What is man,
that thou art mindful of him?" The Bible makes it clear that
what God desires above all things is a man -- a man who will be
after His own heart.
So God created a man. In Genesis
2:7 we learn that Adam was created a living soul, with a spirit
inside to commune with God and with a body outside to have
contact with the material world. (Such New Testament verses as 1
Thessalonians 5:23 and Hebrews 4:12 confirm this threefold
character of man's being.) With his spirit Adam was in touch with
the spiritual world of God; with his body he was in touch with
the physical world of material things. He gathered up these two
sides of God's creative act into himself to become a personality,
an entity living in the world, moving by itself and having
powers of free choice. Viewed thus as a whole, he was found
to be a self-conscious and self-expressing being, "a living
soul".
We saw earlier that Adam was
created perfect -- by which we mean that he was without
imperfections because by God -- but that he was not yet
perfected. He needed a finishing touch somewhere. God had not yet
done all that He intended to do in Adam. There was more in view,
but it was as yet in abeyance. God was moving towards the
fulfillment of His purpose in creating man, a purpose which went
beyond man himself, for it had in view the securing to God of all
His rights in the universe through man's instrumental in this?
Only by a co-operation that sprang from living union with God.
God was seeking to have not merely a race of men of one blood
upon the earth, but a race which had, in addition, His life
resident within its members. Such a race will eventually compass
the downfall of Satan and bring to fulfillment all that God has
set His heart upon. It is that that was in view with the creation
of man.
Then again, we saw that Adam was
created neutral. He had a spirit which enabled him to hold
communion with God; but as man he was not yet, so to speak,
finally orientated; he had powers of choice and he could, if he
liked, turn the opposite way. God's goal in man was 'sonship',
or, in other words, the expression of His life in human beings.
That Divine life was represented in the garden by the tree of
life, bearing a fruit that could be accepted, received, taken in.
If Adam, created neutral, were voluntarily to turn that way and,
choosing dependence upon God, were to receive of the tree of life
(representing God's own life), God would then have that life in
union with men; He would have realized 'sonship'. But if instead
Adam should turn to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,
he would as a result be 'free' to develop himself on his own
lines apart from God. Because, however, this latter choice
involved complicity with Satan, Adam would thereby put beyond his
reach the attaining of his God-appointed goal.
Now we know the course that Adam
chose. Standing between the two trees, he yielded to Satan and
took of the fruit of the tree of knowledge. This determined the
lines of his development. From then on he could command a
knowledge; he 'knew'. But -- and here we come to the point -- the
fruit of the tree of knowledge made the first man over-developed
in his soul. The emotion was touched, because the fruit was
pleasant to the eyes, making him 'desire'; the mind with its
reasoning power was developed, for he was 'made wise'; and the
will was strengthened, so that in future he could always decide
which way he would go. The whole fruit ministered to the
expansion and full development of the soul, so that not only was
the man a living soul, but from henceforth man will live by
the soul. It is not merely that man has a soul, but that from
that day on the soul, with its independent powers of free choice,
takes the place of the spirit as the animating power of man.
We have to distinguish here between
two things, for the difference is most important. God does not
mind -- in fact He intends -- that we should have a soul such as
He gave to Adam. But what God has set Himself to do is to reverse
something. There is something in man today which is not just the
fact of having a soul, but which constitutes a living by the
soul. It was this that Satan brought about in the Fall. He
trapped man into taking a course by which he could develop his
soul so as to derive his very life from it.
We must however be careful. To
remedy this does not mean that we are going to cross out the soul
altogether. You cannot do that. When today the Cross is really
working in us, we do not become inert, insensate, characterless.
No, we still possess a soul, and whenever we receive something
from God the soul will still be used in relation to it, as an
instrument, a faculty, in a true subjection to Him. But the point
is, Are we keeping within God's appointed limit -- within the
bounds set by Him in the Garden at the beginning -- with regard
to the soul, or are we getting outside those bounds?
What God is now doing is the
pruning work of the vinedresser. In our souls there is an
uncontrolled development, an untimely growth, that has to be
checked and dealt with. God must cut that off. So now there are
two things before us to which our eyes must be opened. On the one
hand God is seeking to bring us to the place where we live by the
life of His Son. On the other hand He is doing a direct work in
our hearts to undo that other natural resource that is the result
of the fruit of knowledge. Every day we are learning these two
lessons: a rising up of the life of this One, and a checking and
a handing over to death of that other soul-life. These two
processes go on all the time, for God is seeking the fully
developed life of His Son in us in order to manifest Himself, and
to that end He is bringing us back, as to our soul, to Adam's
starting-point. So Paul says: "We which live are always
delivered unto death for Jesus' sake, that the life also of Jesus
may be manifested in our mortal flesh" (2 Cor. 4:11).
What does this mean? It simply
means that I will not take any action without relying on God. I
will find no sufficiency in myself. I will not take any step just
because I have the power to do so. Even though I have that
inherited power within me, I will not use it; I will put no
reliance in myself. By taking the fruit, Adam became possessed of
an inherent power to act, but a power which played right into
Satan's hands. You lose that power to act when you come to know
the Lord. The Lord cuts it off and you find you can no longer act
on your own initiative. You have to live by the life of Another;
you have to draw everything from Him.
Oh, friends, I think we all know
ourselves in measure, but many a time we do not truly tremble at
ourselves. We may, in a manner of courtesy to God, say: 'If the
Lord does not want it, I cannot do it', but in reality our
subconscious thought is that really we can do it quite well
ourselves, even if God does not ask us to do it nor empower us
for it. Too often we have been caused to act, to think, to
decide, to have power, apart from Him. Many of us Christians
today are men with over-developed souls. We have grown too big in
ourselves. We have become 'big-souled'. When we are in that
condition, the life of the Son of God in us is confined and
almost crowded out of action.
The power, the energy of the
soul is present with us all. Those who have been taught by the
Lord repudiate that principle as a life principle; they refuse to
live by it; they will not let it reign, nor allow it to be the
power-spring of the work of God. But those who have not been
taught of God rely upon it; they utilize it; they think it is the
power.
Let us take first an obvious
illustration of this. Far too many of us in the past have
reasoned as follows. Here is a delightfully good-natured man,
with a clear brain, splendid managing powers and sound judgment.
In our hearts we say, 'If that man could be a Christian, what an
asset he would be to the Church! If only he were the Lord's, what
a lot it would mean to His cause!'
But think for a moment. Where did
that man's good nature come from? Whence are those splendid
managing powers and that good judgment? Not form new birth, for
he is not yet born again. We know we have all been born of the
flesh; therefore we need a new birth. But the Lord Jesus had
something to say about this in John 3:6: "That which is born
of the flesh is flesh". Everything which comes not by new
birth but my natural birth is flesh and will only bring glory to
man, not God. That statement is not very palatable, but it is
true.
We have spoken of soul-power or
natural energy. What is this natural energy? It is simply what I
can do, what I am of myself, what I have inherited
of natural gifts and resources. We are none of us without the
power of the soul, and our first need is to recognize it for what
it is.
Take for example the human mind. I
may have by nature a keen mind. Before my new birth I had it
naturally, as something developed from my natural birth. But the
trouble arises here. I become converted, I am born anew, a deep
work is effected in my spirit, and essential union with God that
has been set up in my spirit, but at the same time I carry over
with me something which I derive from my natural birth. Now what
am I going to do about it?
The natural tendency is this.
Formerly I used to use my mind to pore over history, over
business, over chemistry, over questions of the world, or
literature, or poetry. I used my keen mind to get the best out of
those studies. But now my desire has been changed, so henceforth
I employ the same mind in the things of God. I have therefore
changed my subject of interest, but I have not changed my method
of working. That is the whole point. My interests have been
utterly changed (praise God for that!), but now I utilize the
same power to study Corinthians and Ephesians that I used before
to pursue history and geography. But that power is not of God;
and God will not allow that. The trouble with so many of us is
that we have changed the channel into which our energies are
directed, but we have not changed the source of those energies.
You will find there are many such
things which we carry over into the service of God. Consider the
matter of eloquence. There are some men who are born orators;
they can present a case very convincingly indeed. Then they
become converted, and, without asking ourselves where they really
stand in relation to spiritual things, we put them on the
platform and make preachers of them. We encourage them to use
their natural powers for preaching, and again it is a change of
subject but the same power. We forget that, in the matter of our
resource for handling the things of God, it is a question not of
comparative value but of origin -- of where the resource
springs from. It is not so much a matter of what we are doing,
but of what powers we are employing to do it. We think too little
of the source of our energy and too much of the end to which it
is directed, forgetting that with God the end never justifies the
means.
The following hypothetical case
will help us to test the truth of our argument. Mr. A. is a very
good speaker: he can talk fluently and most convincingly on any
subject, but in practical things he is a very bad manager. Mr.
B., on the other hand, is a poor speaker: he cannot express
himself clearly but wanders all round his subject, never coming
to a point; yet on the other hand he is a splendid manager, most
competent in all matters of business. Both these men get
converted, and both become earnest Christians. Let us suppose now
that I call on them both and ask them to speak at a convention,
and that both accept.
Now what will happen? I have asked
the self-same thing of both men, but who do you think will pray
the harder? Certainly Mr. B. Why? Because he is no speaker. In
the matter of eloquence he has no resources of his own to depend
upon. He will pray: 'Lord, if you do not give me power for this,
I cannot do it'. Of course Mr. A. will pray too, but maybe not in
the same way as Mr. B. because he has something of natural
resource upon which to rely.
Now let us suppose that, instead of
asking them to speak, I ask them both to take charge of the
practical side of affairs at the convention. What will happen?
The position will be exactly reversed. Now it will be Mr. A.'s
turn to pray hard, for he knows full well that he has no
organizing ability. Br. B. of course will pray too, but perhaps
without quite the same urgency, for though he knows his need of
the Lord he is not nearly so conscious of his need in business
matters as is Mr. A.
Do you see the difference between
natural and spiritual gifts? Anything we can do without prayer
and without an utter dependence upon God must come from that
spring of natural life, and is suspect. We must see this
clearly. Of course it is not true that those only are suited for
a particular work who lack the natural gift for it. The point is
that, whether naturally gifted or not, they must know the touch
of the Cross in death upon all that is of nature, and their
complete dependence upon the God of resurrection. All too readily
do we envy our neighbor who has some outstanding natural gift,
and fail to realize that our own possession of it, apart from
such a working of the Cross, may easily prove a barrier to the
very thing that God is seeking to manifest in us.
Shortly after my conversion I went
out preaching in the villages. I had had a good education and was
well versed in the Scriptures, so I considered myself thoroughly
capable of instructing the village folk, among whom were quite a
number of illiterate women. But after several visits I discovered
that, despite their illiteracy, those women hand an intimate
knowledge of the Lord. I knew the Book they haltingly read; they
knew the One of whom the Book spoke. I had much in the flesh;
they had much in the Spirit. How many Christian teachers today
are teaching others as I was then, very largely in the strength
of their carnal equipment!
Once I met a young brother --
young, that is to say, in years, but who had learned a good deal
of the Lord. The Lord had brought him through much tribulation to
gain that knowledge of Himself. As I was talking to him I said,
'Brother, what has the Lord really been teaching you these days?'
He said, 'Only one thing: that I can do nothing apart from him.'
'Do you really mean', I said, 'that you can do nothing?' 'Well,
no', he replied. 'I can do many things! In fact that has
been just my trouble. Oh, you know, I have always been so
confident in myself. I know I am well able to do lots of things.'
So I asked, 'What then do you mean when you say you can do
nothing apart from Him?' He answered, 'The Lord has shown me that
I can do anything, but that He has said,
"Apart from me ye can do nothing". So it comes to this,
that everything I have done and can do apart from Him is
nothing!'
We have to come to that valuation.
I do not mean to say we cannot do a lot of things, for we can. We
can take meetings, and build churches, we can go to the ends of
the earth and found missions, and we can seem to bear fruit; but
remember that the Lord's word is: "Every plant which my
heavenly Father planted not, shall be rooted up" (Matt.
15:13). God is the only legitimate Originator in the universe
(Gen. 1:1). Anything that you plan and set on foot has its
origin in the flesh, and it will never reach the realm of the
Spirit however earnestly you seek God's blessing on it. It may
last for years, and then you may think you will adjust here and
improve there and maybe bring it on a better plane, but it cannot
be done.
Origin determines destination, and
what was "of the flesh" originally will never be made
spiritual by any amount of 'improvement'. That which is born of
the flesh is flesh, and it will never be otherwise. Anything for
which we are sufficient in ourselves is 'nothing' in God's
estimate, and we have to accept His estimate and write it down as
nothing. "The flesh profiteth nothing." It is only what
comes from above that will abide.
We cannot see this simply by being
told it. God must teach us what is meant, by putting His finger
on something which He sees and saying: 'This is natural; this has
its source in the old creation; this cannot abide.' Until He does
so, we may agree in principle but we can never really see
it. We may assent to, and even enjoy, the teaching, but we shall
never truly loathe ourselves.
But there will come a day when God
opens our eyes. Facing a particular issue we shall have to say,
as by revelation: 'It is unclean, it is impure; Lord, I see it!'
The word 'purity' is a blessed word. I always associate it with
the Spirit. Purity means something altogether of the Spirit.
Impurity means mixture. When God opens our eyes to see that the
natural life is something He can never use in His work, then we
find we do not enjoy the doctrine any longer. Rather we
loathe ourselves for the impurity that is in us; but when that
point is reached, God begins His work of deliverance. We are
going on shortly to look at the provision He has made for that
deliverance, but we must stay for a little longer with this
matter of revelation.
Of course, if one does not set
out to serve the Lord whole-heartedly, one does not feel the
necessity for light. It is only when one has been apprehended by
God, and seeks to go forward with Him, that one finds how
necessary light is. There is a fundamental need of light in order
for us to know the mind of God; to know what is of the spirit and
what is of the soul; to know what is Divine and what is merely of
man; to discern what is truly heavenly and what is only earthly;
to understand the difference between things which are spiritual
and things which are carnal; to know whether God is really
leading us or whether we are walking by our feelings, senses or
imaginations. It is when we have reached a position where we
would like to follow God fully that we find light to be the most
necessary thing in the Christian life.
In my conversations with younger
brothers and sisters one question comes up again and again. It
is: How can I know that I am walking in the Spirit? How do I
distinguish which prompting within me is from the Holy Spirit and
which is from myself? It seems that all are alike in this; but
some have gone further. They are trying to look within, to
differentiate, to discriminate to analyze, and in doing so are
bringing themselves into deeper bondage. Now this is a situation
which is really dangerous to Christian life, for inward knowledge
will never be reached along the barren path of self-analysis.
We are never told in the Word of
God to examine our inward condition.[15]
That way ends only to uncertainty, vacillation and despair. Of
course we have to have self-knowledge. We have to know what is
going on within. We do not want to live in a fool's paradise; to
have gone altogether wrong and yet not know we have gone wrong;
to have a spartan will and yet think we are pursuing the will of
God. But such self-knowledge does not come by our turning within;
by our analyzing our feelings and motives and everything that is
going on inside, and then trying to pronounce whether we are
walking in the flesh or in the Spirit.
There are several passages in the
Psalms which illumine this subject. The first is in Psalm 36:9:
"In thy light shall we see light". I think that is one
of the best verses in the old Testament. There are two lights
there. There is "thy light", and then , when we have
come into that light, we shall "see light".
Now those two lights are different.
We might say that the first is objective and the second
subjective. The first light is the light which belongs to God but
is shed upon us; the second is the knowledge imparted by that
light. "In thy light shall we see light": we shall know
something; we shall be clear about something; we shall see.
No turning within, no introspective self-examination will ever
bring us to that clear place. No, it is when there is light
coming from God that we see.
I think it is so simple. If we want
to satisfy ourselves that our face is clean, what do we do? Do we
feel it carefully all over with our hands? No, of course not. We
find a mirror and we bring it to the light. In that light
everything becomes clear. No sight ever came by feeling or
analyzing. Sight only comes by the light of God coming in; and
when once it has come, there is no loner need to ask if a thing
is right or wrong. We know.
You remember again how in Psalm
139:23 the writer says: "Search me, O God, and know my
heart". You realize, do you not, what it means to say
'Search me'? It certainly does not mean that I search myself.
'Search me' means 'You search me!' That is the way of
illumination. It is for God to come in and search; it is not for
me to search. Of course that will never mean that I may go
blindly on, careless of my true condition. That is not the point.
The point is that however much my self-examination may reveal in
me that needs putting right, such searching never really gets
below the surface. My true knowledge of self comes not from my
searching myself but from God searching me.
But, you ask, what does it mean in
practice for us to come into the light? How does it work? How
do we see light in His light? Here again the Psalmist comes to
our help. "The entrance of Thy words giveth light; it giveth
understanding unto the simple" (psalm 119:130 A.V.). In
spiritual things we are all 'simple'. We are dependent upon God
to give us understanding, and especially is this so in the matter
of our own true nature. And it is here that the Word of God
operates. In the New Testament the passage which states this most
clearly is in the Epistle to the Hebrews: "The word of God
is living, and active, and sharper than any two-edged sword, and
piercing even to the dividing of soul and spirit, of both joints
and marrow, and quick to discern the thoughts and intents of the
heart. And there is no creature that is not manifest in his
sight: but all things are naked and laid open before the eyes of
him with whom we have to do" (Heb. 4:12,13). Yes, it is the
Word of God, the penetrating Scripture of Truth, that settles our
questions. It is that which discerns our motives and defines for
us their true source in soul or spirit.
With this I think we can pass on
from the doctrinal to the practical side of things. Many of us, I
am sure, are living quite honestly before God. We have been
making progress, and we do not know of anything much wrong with
us. Then one day, as we go on, we meet with a fulfillment of that
word: "The entrance of Thy words giveth light". Some
servant of God has been used by Him to confront us with His
living Word, and that Word has made an entrance into us. Or
perhaps we ourselves have been waiting before God and, whether
from our memory of Scripture or from the page itself, His Word
has come to us in power. Then it is we see something which we
have never seen before. We are convicted. We know where we are
wrong, and we look up and confess: 'Lord, I see it. There is
impurity there. There is mixture. How blind I was ! Just fancy
that for so many years I have been wrong there and have never
known it!' Light comes in and we see light. The light of God
brings us to see the light concerning ourselves, and it is an
abiding principle that every knowledge of self comes to us in
that way.
It may not always be the
Scriptures. Some of us have known saints who really knew the
Lord, and through praying with them or talking with them, in the
light of God radiating from them, we have seen something which we
never say before. I have met one such, who is now with the Lord,
and I always think of her as a 'lighted' Christian. If I did but
walk into her room, I was brought immediately to a sense of God.
In those days I was very young and had been converted about two
years, and I had lots of plans, lots of beautiful thoughts, lots
of schemes for the Lord to sanction, a hundred and lone things
which I thought would be marvelous if they were all brought to
fruition. With all these things I came to her to try to persuade
her; to tell her that this or that was the thing to do.
Before I could open my mouth she
would just say a few words in quite an ordinary way. Light
dawned! It simply put me to shame. My 'doing' was all so natural,
so full of man. Something happened. I was brought to a place
where I could say: 'Lord, my mind is set only in creaturely
activities, but here is someone who is not out for them at all'.
She had but one motive, one desire, and that was for God. Written
in the front of her Bible were these words: 'Lord, I want nothing
for myself', Yes, she lived for God alone, and where that is the
case you will find that such a one is bathed in light, and that
that light illuminates others. That is real witness.[16]
Light has one law: it shines
wherever it is admitted. That is the only requirement. We
may shut it out of ourselves; it fears nothing else. If we throw
ourselves open to God, He will reveal. The trouble comes when we
have closed areas, locked and barred places in our hearts, where
we think with pride that we are right. Our defeat lies
then not only in our being wrong but in our not knowing that
we are wrong. Wrong may be a question of natural strength;
ignorance of it is a question of light. You can see the natural
strength in some but they cannot see it themselves. Oh, we need
to be sincere and humble, and to open ourselves before God! Those
who are open can see. God is light, and we cannot live in
His light and be without understanding. Let us say again with the
Psalmist: "O send out Thy light and Thy truth: let them lead
me" (Psalm 43:3).
We praise God that sin is being
brought to the notice of Christians today more than hitherto. In
many places the eyes of Christians have been opened to see that
victory over sins, as items, is important in Christian life, and
in consequence many are walking closer to the Lord in seeking
deliverance and victory over them. Praise the Lord for any
movement toward Himself, any movement back to real holiness unto
God! But that is not enough. There is one thing that must be
touched, and that is the very life of the man, not merely his
sins. The question of the personality of the man, of his
soul-power, is the heart of the matter. To make the question of
sins to be everything is still to be on the surface. Holiness, if
you only regard sins, is still something on the outside, still
superficial. You have not yet got to the root of the evil.
Adam did not let sin into the world
by committing murder. That came later. Adam let in sin by
choosing to have his soul developed to a place where he cold go
on by himself apart from God. When, therefore, God secures a race
of men who will be to His glory, and who will be His instrument
to accomplish His purpose in the universe, they will be a people
whose life -- yea, whose very breath -- is dependent upon Him. He
will be the "tree of life" to them.
What I feel more and more the need
of in myself, and what I feel that we all as the Lord's children
need to seek from God, is a real revelation of ourselves. I
repeat that I do not mean we should be for ever looking in on
ourselves and asking: 'Now, is this soul or is it spirit?' That
will never get us anywhere; it is darkness. No, Scripture shows
us how the saints were brought to self-knowledge. It was always
by light from God, and that light is God Himself. Isaiah,
Ezekiel, Daniel, Peter, Paul, John, all came to a knowledge of
themselves because the Lord flashed Himself upon them, and
that flash brought revelation and conviction. (Isa. 6:5; Ezek.
1:28; Dan. 10:8; Luke 22:61, 62; Acts 9:3-5; Rev. 1:17).
We can never know the hatefulness
of sin and the hatefulness of ourselves unless there is that
flash of God upon us. I speak not of a sensation but of an inward
revelation of the Lord Himself through His Word. It does for us
what doctrine alone can never do.
Christ is our light. He is the
living Word, and when we read the Scriptures that life in Him
brings revelation. "The life was the light of men"
(John 1:4). Such illumination may not come to us all at once, but
gradually; but it will be more and more clear and searching,
until we see ourselves in the light of god and all our
self-confidence is gone. For light is the purest thing in the
world. It cleanses. It sterilizes. It kills what should not be
there. In its radiance the 'dividing asunder of joints and
marrow' becomes to us a fact and no mere teaching. We know fear
and trembling as we recognize the corruption of man's nature, the
hatefulness of our own selves, and the real threat to the work of
God of our unrestrained soul-life and energy. As never before, we
wee now how much of us needs God's drastic dealing if He is to
use us, and we know that, apart from Him, as servants of God we
are finished.
But here the Cross, in its widest
meaning, will come to our help again, and we shall seek now to
examine an aspect of its work which meets and deals with our
problem of the human soul. For only a thorough understanding of
the Cross can bring us to that place of dependence which the Lord
Jesus Himself voluntarily took when He said: "I can of
myself do nothing: as I hear, I judge: and my judgment is
righteous; because I seek not mine own will, but the will of him
that sent me" (John 5:30).
The Normal Christian Life - Chapter 13: The Path of Progress: Bearing the Cross
