If there be one thing of importance now, it is Christian devotedness. I do not separate this from Christian doctrine, but founded on it; I do not surely separate it from the presence and power of the Spirit (one of the most important of these doctrines), for it is produced by it. But Christian devotedness founded on the truth and produced by the power of the Spirit I believe to be of the utmost importance for the saints themselves and for the testimony of God. I believe surely that doctrine is of deep importance now: clearness as to redemption, the peace that belongs to the Christian through divine righteousness, the presence and living power of the Comforter sent down from heaven, the sure and blessed hope of Christ’s coming again to receive us to Himself that where He is we shall be also, that we shall be like Himself seeing Him as He is, and that if we die we shall be present with Him, the knowledge that risen with Him we shall be blessed not only through but with Christ, and the deep, practical identification with Him through our being united with Him by the Holy Spirit. All these things, and many things connected with them, held in the power of the Holy Spirit, separate us from the world, shelter the soul by the spiritual possession of Christ glorified, the conscious possession of Christ, from the cavils of current infidelity, and give a living spring to the joy and hope of the whole Christian life. But the expression of the power of them in the heart will manifest itself in devotedness.
Christianity has exercised a mighty influence over the world, even where it is openly rejected, as well as where it is professedly received. Care of the poor and the supply of temporal wants have become recognized duties of society. And where the truth is not known and Christianity is corrupted, diligent devotedness to this, on the false ground of merit, is largely used to propagate that corruption. And even where infidelity prevails, the habits of feeling, produced by Christianity, prevail, and man becomes the object of diligent, though often of perverted, care. The testimony of the true saint surely should not be wanting where falsehood has imitated the good effects of truth. But there are higher motives than these, and it is of the true character of devotedness I would speak.
Motive and Merit
As to reward, as motive or merit, it is clear that any such thought destroys the whole truth of devotedness, because there is no love in it. It is self, looking, like “James and John,” for a good place in the kingdom. Reward there is in Scripture, but it is used to encourage us in the difficulties and dangers which higher and truer motives bring us into. So Christ Himself, “who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame.” Yet we well know that His motive was love. So Moses: “He endured as seeing Him who is invisible, for he had respect to the recompense of reward.” His motive was caring for his brethren. So reward is ever used, and it is a great mercy in this way. And every man receives his reward according to his own labor.
The Spring and Source
The spring and source of all true devotedness is divine love filling and operating in our hearts, as Paul says, “The love of Christ constraineth us.” Its form and character must be drawn from Christ’s actings. Hence grace must first be known for oneself, for thus it is I know love. Thus it is that this love is shed abroad in the heart. We learn divine love in divine redemption. This redemption sets us, too, in divine righteousness before God. Thus all question of merit, of self-righteousness, is shut out, and self-seeking in our labor set aside. “Grace,” we have learned, “reign[s] through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ.” The infinite, perfect love of God gives us now to enjoy divine love. I speak of all this now in view of the love shown in it. This knits the heart to Christ, bringing it to God in Him, God in Him to us. We say nothing separates us from this love.
The Order of Effect
The first effect is to lead the heart up, thus sanctifying it: We bless God, adore God, thus known; our delight is in Jesus. But thus near to God and in communion with Him, divine love flows into and through our hearts. We become animated by it through our enjoyment of it. It is the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord; not the less God, but God revealed in Christ, for there we have learned love. Thus, in all true devotedness, Christ is the first and governing object; next, “His own which are in the world”; then, our fellow-men. First their souls, then their bodies, and every want they are in. His life of good to man governs ours, but His death governs the heart. “Hereby know we love because He laid down His life for us.” “The love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead: and that He died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but to Him which died for them, and rose again.”
We must note, too, that all idea of merit and self-righteousness is utterly excluded, so it is a new life in us which both enjoys God and to which His love is precious. It is not the benevolence of nature, but the activity of divine love in the new man. Its genuineness is thus tested, because Christ has necessarily the first place with this nature, and its working is in that estimate of right and wrong which the new man alone has, and of which Christ is the measure and motive.
But it is more than a new nature. Our bodies are the temples of the Holy Spirit, and God’s love is shed abroad in the heart by the Holy Spirit which is given to us. And as it springs up like a well in us unto eternal life, so also living waters flow out from us by the Holy Spirit which we have received. All true devotedness, then, is the action of divine love in the redeemed, through the Holy Spirit given to them.
Natural Benevolence
There may be a zeal which compasses sea and land, but it is in the interest of a prejudice or the work of Satan. There may be natural benevolence clothed with a fairer name, and irritated if it be not accepted for its own sake. There may be the sense of obligation and legal activity, which, through grace, may lead farther, though it be the pressure of conscience, not the activity of love. The activity of love does not destroy the sense of obligation in the saint, but alters the whole character of his work. “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.” In God, love is active, but sovereign; in the saint it is active, but a duty, because of grace. It must be free to have the divine character to be love. Yet we owe it all and more than all to Him that loved us. The Spirit of God which dwells in us is a Spirit of adoption, and so of liberty with God, but it fixes the heart on God’s love in a constraining way. Every right feeling in a creature must have an object, and, to be right, that object must be God, and God revealed in Christ as the Father, for in that way God possesses our souls.
Love Yielding to God
What is supposed here is not a law contending or arresting a will seeking its own pleasure, but the blessed and thankful yielding of ourselves to the love of the blessed Son of God, and a heart entering into that love and its object by a life which flows from Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit. Hence it is a law of liberty. The heart ranges in the sphere in which Christ does. It loves the brethren, for Christ does, and all the saints, for He does. It seeks all for whom Christ died, yet knowing that only grace can bring any of them; it endures “all things for the elect’s sakes, that they may also obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory”; it seeks to “present every man perfect in Christ Jesus”; it desires to see the saints grow up to Him who is the Head in all things and walk worthy of the Lord; it seeks to see the church presented as a chaste virgin unto Christ. It continues in its love, though the more abundantly it loves, the less it be loved. It is ready to endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.
The Governing Factor
A governing motive characterizes all our walk: All is judged by it. A man of pleasure flings away money; so does an ambitious man. They judge the value of things by pleasure and power. The covetous man thinks their path folly, judges everything by its tendency to enrich. The Christian judges of everything by Christ. If it hinders His glory in oneself or another, it is cast away. It is judged not as sacrifice, but cast away as a hindrance. All is dross and dung for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus our Lord. To cast away dross is no great sacrifice. How blessedly self is gone here! “Gain to me” has disappeared. What a deliverance that is! Unspeakably precious for ourselves and morally elevating! Christ gave Himself. We have the privilege of forgetting self and living to Christ. It will be rewarded, our service in grace, but love has its own joys in serving in love. Self likes to be served. Love delights to serve. So we see in Christ, on earth, now; when we are in glory, He girds Himself and serves us. And shall not we, if we have the privilege, imitate, serve, give ourselves to Him, who so loves us? Living to God inwardly is the only possible means of living to Him outwardly. All outward activity not moved and governed by this is fleshly and even a danger to the soul, for it tends to make us do without Christ and brings in self. It is not devotedness, for devotedness is devotedness to Christ, and this must be in looking to being with Him. I dread great activity without great communion, but I believe that, when the heart is with Christ, it will live to Him.
The form of devotedness, of external activity, will be governed by God’s will and the competency to serve, for devotedness is a humble, holy thing, doing its Master’s will, but the spirit of undivided service to Christ is the true part of every Christian. We want wisdom; God gives it liberally. Christ is our true wisdom. We want power; we learn it in dependence through Him who strengthens us. Devotedness is a dependent—as it is a humble —spirit. So it was in Christ. It waits on its Lord. It has courage and confidence in the path of God’s will, because it leans on divine strength in Christ. He can do all things. Hence it is patient and does what it has to do according to His will and word, for then He can work, and He does all that is done which is good.
Opposition and Rejection
There is another side of this which we have to look at. The simple fact of undivided service in love is only joy and blessing. But we are in a world where it will be opposed and rejected, and the heart would naturally save self. This Peter presented to Christ, and Christ treated it as Satan. We shall find the flesh shrinks instinctively from the fact and from the effect of devotedness to Christ, because it is giving up self and brings reproach, neglect and opposition on us. We have to take up our cross to follow Christ, not to return to bid good-bye to them that are at home in the house. It is our home still, if we say so, and we shall at best be “John Marks” in the work. And it will be found it is ever then “suffer me first!” If there be anything but Christ, it will be before Christ, not devotedness to Him with a single eye. But this is difficult to the heart, that there should be no self-seeking, no self-sparing, no self-indulgence! Yet none of these things are devotedness to Christ and to others, but the very opposite. Hence, if we are to live to Christ, we must hold ourselves dead, and alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Obedience
It has another character: Whatever its devotedness and activity, it is obedience. There cannot be a righteous will in a creature, for righteousness in a creature is obedience. Adam fell, having a will independent of God. Christ came to do the will of Him that sent Him, and in His highest devotedness, His path was that of obedience. “The prince of this world cometh and hath nothing in Me, but that the world may know that I love the Father, and as the Father hath given Me commandment, so I do.” This both guides in devotedness and keeps us quiet and humble.
Our conclusion, then, is simple, undivided devotedness to Christ; Christ the only object, whatever duties that motive may lead to faithfulness in; nonconformity to the world which rejected Him; a bright, heavenly hope connecting itself with Christ in glory, who will come and receive us to Himself and make us like Him, so that we should be as men that wait for their Lord; His love constraining us, in all things caring for what He cares for, Christ crucified, and Christ before us as our hope, the centers around which our whole life turns.
J. N. Darby, adapted from
Collected Writings, 16:234