It is only as we know grace, that we can receive and exercise power, and a defective apprehension of the one must stand in the way of my knowing and having the other. Christ came, in His grace, and took everything out of the way that prevented our getting hold of power, and now the one thing we require, for the actually being in the place of possessing it, is to get hold of His grace. If I do not see that because of His grace I get power, there is effort on my part to arrive there, and a spurious power is the result which is either surrendered or gives me a disastrous ending. David assayed Saul's armor
but gave it up: Saul retained it, and came to his end on Gilboa. It might have appeared to have been only deficiency on man's part as to power, that he could not follow Christ to death, and that He, by His death, made up what was wanting. I see Christ breathing on them and saying, " Receive ye the Holy Ghost," which was the conferring a new; power, and not making up a deficiency. The apostle in the twelfth- of Corinthians assayed an armor which seemed only deficient, but, as soon as he learned the sufficiency of the grace, he got the power, and then he gloried, not in his deficiencies but in his weaknesses.
The power we have now received- is the Holy Ghost, and nothing could be more grievous to that Spirit than to deny His presence and power. One great result of His presence is that the flesh has become intolerable to -me. It is in me, but it has become intolerable to me, because it is so to the Spirit of God who dwells in me. What I maintain now is that I have the Spirit of God with a. new life; while until now I have maintained the flesh. I not only had it, but maintained it. I kill have it, though, of course, reckoned dead,, but I: refuse to maintain it. What I maintain now is, that I have- a new life with the Spirit of God; it is not merely that I say I have it, but I maintain it.
I cannot maintain both, and the more I maintain the one, the more intolerable the other becomes. I walk in it, I seek to cultivate what is of the Spirit; and, as I do so, I find that I am in an element so entirely new, that I cannot tolerate the old; I refuse and deny it in every possible way.
It is a conflict, but one in which the foes are quite unequal; the flesh lusts, but it can get no further. It is not now merely a question of its incompetency, but, of the Spirit's power. Having the Spirit, I have done with the flesh; its competency is not trusted in, and its incompetency is no hindrance. I do not say I have not got the flesh, but I say all the odds are against it. It has been put out of court, and I have to' keep it out. Its very presence is now suffering to me, and the more so in proportion as I understand how the Spirit is grieved by it.
Is the fact that I have the Spirit to be less real to me than that I have the flesh? If I once had to say I could not act except in the flesh, should I be less able now to act otherwise than in the 'Spirit? I cannot quietly admit that I am only a double man, and that I am improved only in this way, that before I had only the flesh, but that now I have the Spirit as well.
All truth is on the Spirit's side, and all power. There is not a particle for the flesh; it is gone judicially by Christ's death; the world, where it found everything to suit it, is gone by the same death; the deeds of the body are mortified through the Spirit-there is a thorn to keep it in its place-there is the succor of Christ against it. In fact all is for the good, nothing for the bad. I have to set all this against the one simple fact of its presence, and I have to choose between recognizing it, or bowing to the truth, and presence of the Spirit of God.
If it were a question of two powers in the field with even something on both sides; but when I find all the victory is on one side, what can I say as to any chance for the other, but simply that it is a malicious power. That I really am a new creature, Christ having gone into the field and overcome everything, and that I really can breathe an atmosphere, and enjoy a scene where everything only marks a conflict that has taken place, and has never to be repeated; with plenty to watch against, and be helped against, but nothing to maintain but that I am in Christ.
C. E. SH.
The cross leaves nothing on earth alive; everything is dead here. One man alone is alive. And His cross has made an end of all in me; I-start with a new history, a new name, a new nature, a new life altogether. (W. W.)