A FEW days ago I received the following laconic note from a fellow in deair, “I’ve tried and tried, but I’ve Always Failed.”
I suppose the capital letters were intended to impress me with the hopelessness of the situation.
It seems to be a fairly universal experience, this “Always Failing.” But if the Bible is true, and if we can accept the evidence of those who have gone before us, there really is a golden experience of freedom from sin open to every believer even while here on earth. To deny or minimize the fact is to proclaim that Jesus is not very “mighty to save” after all.
There is an agony behind the large sale of those Consecration and Victory-secret books, which seem to be the staple diet of the despairing. It is a grim witness to the fact that there is an army of young Christians, and older ones too, who have never yet found the way out. Personally I have devoured the very cream of these books. Each has given me fresh hope, only to be the precursor of another muddy tumble and more complete despair. Probably any one of them rightly read would have brought deliverance.
Constant defeat leads either to a morbid state of hopelessness and possibly unbelief, or to a treacherous morass of sophistry. Despair in the honest clear-sighted man, and sophistry in his less honest brother, who fights pathetically to retain his faith, and at the same time to reconcile its apparent failure to deliver him.
“How can I preach a Saviour from sin to the lost if I myself know nothing of this saving power in my own life?” cries the honest man. While the sophist makes theories to explain the discrepancy away, and preaches with redoubled earnestness to allay the fear gnawing at the roots of his being.
Again, there is a dangerous tendency to drop into morbid self-interest and introspection when we are doing the battle in the lists against sin, and “Always Failing.”
Agonizing with prayers, be they never so earnest, cannot find a way out, nor yet will mental gymnastics produce “proper repentance” or the “right kind of faith” or “full consecration.”
And yet—and yet—with one voice they tell us that there is a way; that they have found it, and proved it. The light in their eyes and their very peace, as they tell us of God’s sunshine coming in and sin’s mastery overthrown, seem to mock us.
So, as one who has known something of these conflicts, I write these few words to my friends unseen and unknown who love Him and are still voyaging discouraged. It is here, on the dark seas of life with the waves and the cold and the loneliness, that we can truly glorify God, who has called us to adventure our destiny upon His faithfulness.
“I have glorified thee on the earth,” said One who did gloriously triumph in all things, and who has called us to follow Him.
Two passages of Scripture clear the way for our study.
Colossians 2:6, 76As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him: 7Rooted and built up in him, and stablished in the faith, as ye have been taught, abounding therein with thanksgiving. (Colossians 2:6‑7). says, “As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in Him: rooted and built up in Him, and stablished in the faith, as ye have been taught, abounding therein with thanksgiving.”
Here we learn that there is nothing new involved. We are kept as we were saved, by Christ. There is no need for obscure initiation into the mysteries of faith, no strange rites, no special virtues to attain, no hills to climb, before we can enter the El Dorado of our quest, this victorious life.
“As ye received Christ—so walk in Him.”
Again Acts 20:20, 2120And how I kept back nothing that was profitable unto you, but have showed you, and have taught you publickly, and from house to house, 21Testifying both to the Jews, and also to the Greeks, repentance toward God, and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ. (Acts 20:20‑21) gives us the essence of the christian message— “I kept back nothing that was profitable unto you” says Paul, and let us note the meaning of it, “but have showed you... testifying... repentance towards God, and faith tards Our Lord Jesus Christ.”
A right attitude to sin in the sight of a holy God, and a right attitude to Jesus, God’s Christ, and our Lord—that is it.
Read it and read again. Think. Above all pray, till it soaks into your mind and heart. I cannot teach you its meaning because I am learning it myself very slowly under God’s tuition. There is no other way and no other Name, no prop to lean on, no emotion to call up. All voices must be hushed, all books (even the best) put away, as the simplicity of it comes to your heart in all the saving grace of God’s Holy Spirit, who alone can teach us the truth of it.
The fact is that there is no “secret” at all. Christ is the open secret. In Him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily—all God’s power, and available for folks like you and me!
CHRIST is made unto us—sanctification.
It is a vision hard to catch and harder to hold. We make it so by our complicated thoughts. So out of my painful experiences, hoping to simplify what is already so amazingly simple, and to meet some very persistent difficulties, I propose to set out in a further paper seven distinct secrets of defeat. There may be more and probably your own experience will suggest additions and amendments, but they shall appear, D. V., with a Prayer behind them that God will bless them with His own peculiar blessing; which maketh rich and addeth no sorrow.
A. F. S. Pollock.