Mysticism: January 2009
Table of Contents
No Good in Creatures
O Lord! we would delight in Thee,
And on Thy care depend;
To Thee in every trouble flee,
Our safe, unfailing Friend.
When human cisterns all are dried,
Thy fullness is the same;
May we with this be satisfied,
And glory in Thy name.
No good in creatures can be found;
All, all is found in Thee;
We must have all things and
abound,
Through Thy sufficiency.
Thou that hast made our heaven
secure,
Wilt here all good provide;
While Christ is rich, can we be
poor?
Christ who for us has died!
Ryland,
Little Flock Hymnbook, #243
Mysticism
God in His holiness, His majesty, His righteousness and His love has found His rest in the work and Person of Christ; I, too, have found mine there. A mystic never has rest, because he vainly seeks in man what he ought to seek in God, who had accomplished all before he ever thought about it. Here sin is in man; in heaven he will think only of God. This is why the imagination plays so great a part in mysticism, and Satan can so often deceive by it, because the imagination and the heart of man are called into play. I do not say that spiritual affections are never there — far from it; nor that God never reveals Himself to such affections. I doubt not that He does it and thus renders the person happy, but you will find him, after all, occupied with the affections and not with God Himself. It is the chief defect of mysticism. In a word, I see it as an effort of the human heart, trying to produce in itself something strong enough in the way of affection to satisfy a heart awakened by the excellence of its Object. (J. N. Darby, adapted.)
We who are saved cannot change ourselves. God by the Spirit changes us when we are occupied with the Christ, the perfect Object, who satisfies our divine natures. “Never try to love the Lord more than you do; just be occupied with His love for you.”
Theme of the Issue
The Essence of Mysticism
Since the fall of man, his sinful mind began to allow flights of fancy in his own heart and mind, allowing imagination to take the place of divine revelation. Paul describes it well when he writes, “They . . . became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools” (Rom. 1:21-22). Based upon his own imagination, intuition or similar subjective experience, man thinks he has come to know ultimate reality. It is this that constitutes mysticism in the natural man. Man, being religious by his very nature, then appeals to his feelings as a source of knowledge in divine things.
The Believer’s Danger
While the believer would perhaps not go to such extremes, yet ultimately this same tendency exists in him. Mysticism can spoil the believer’s enjoyment of Christ, just as it may prevent the unbeliever from coming to Christ. Although the seeds of it were present from the beginning of Christianity, mysticism began to surface in an outward way in the fourth century A.D. Alarmed at the worldliness that was coming into the church, some began to seek for a higher life and a more godly walk. Certainly this was a right desire, but instead of looking to Christ, men began to look at themselves, and the result was monasticism. All of this ministered to human pride instead of exalting Christ, because it was ultimately occupation with self.
We must remember, however, that we are living in the dispensation when the Spirit of God is here on earth, dwelling in every true believer and dwelling collectively among believers as the house of God. This precious truth carries us beyond a mere cold adherence to the truth and gives us that personal and collective communion with God Himself. “Truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ” (1 John 1:3). In the Old Testament, God’s Word was written on “tables of stone,” but in the New Testament Paul speaks of the Corinthians as an epistle written in “fleshy tables of the heart” (2 Cor. 3:3). It is by the Spirit of God that we have our enjoyment of Christ. By that same Spirit we understand the Word of God, enter into all truth, engage in worship and service to the Lord, and receive guidance in our pathway.
Understanding Truth
In the understanding of divine things in this dispensation, as also in worship, in ministry, and in guidance in our pathway, we can see that every believer must guard against falling into mysticism. The truth revealed in the New Testament can be understood only by the Spirit of God’s leading, and human imagination can easily be mixed with it. Doctrine can be distorted and a wrong thought entertained, perhaps without the individual’s realizing it. An interpretation of Scripture may be partly from the Spirit of God, yet have man’s thoughts mixed with it. In guidance for our pathway, this can also be true. Paul was prevented from going into Bithynia (see Acts 16:7), and some might well ask by what parameter he could be sure that it was the Spirit of God leading and not mere imagination. Surely in this dispensation there is the direct leading of the Spirit of God, even if there may be no definite Scripture involved. How then do we differentiate this from mysticism?
Surely there is a need for proper balance, as there is danger on both sides. There is a clear path of truth between the extremes of mysticism and hard literalism. As another has remarked, the Word without the Spirit makes a rationalist, while the Spirit without the Word makes a fanatic. In the former, the Spirit of God is displaced, and the whole character of this dispensation denied. Our enjoyment of Christ is lost, and obedience is reduced to a cold formality without power. In the latter, however, man’s imagination goes beyond and even eclipses divine revelation, so that God’s Word is slighted, and man is turned back on himself. In such a case, Satan uses man’s mind in a subtle way, and even in divine things, self becomes the object, instead of Christ.
What Can Happen
When mysticism takes over, its effects are far-reaching. It may begin with self-examination, which sometimes is a good thing. In the wilderness, Israel had to learn themselves and then to learn what God was. However, occupation with self, even perhaps with right motives, will never bring us happiness and will never draw us to Christ. Rather, in being occupied with self, we will either be overwhelmed by the evil of our flesh or puffed up by what we consider to be our own goodness. This was Job’s sin — he took pride in his own goodness and failed to realize that any good in his life was the result of a work of grace in his soul. Mysticism, as we have already mentioned, turns man back on himself and eventually results in unbelief in what God has said. The confusion that follows often gives rise to wild and fanciful thoughts, supposedly based on God’s Word, but frequently going beyond it. As we will see in another article in this issue, it is ultimately the denial of the entire ruin of man in the flesh.
Detecting Mysticism
How, then, do we distinguish between mysticism and what is proper to saints in this dispensation — the leading of the Spirit? We would suggest the following things that the Word of God brings before us.
First of all, Scripture never emphasizes the subjective as a basis or guide for our thoughts and affections. Rather, a risen Christ in glory is presented to us, and the Spirit of God in us delights to bring Him before us. The subjective is real and most valuable, but it is always the result of the objective — of our having Christ before us, never ourselves. The Spirit never occupies us with His work in us; rather, He occupies us with Christ. The mystic, on the other hand, is greatly taken up with the work in himself. Occupation with self is a sure sign that it is not the Spirit of God at work, unless there is some failure that He is bringing before us. In such a case, the Spirit must take up the failure with us, but only in order that we may judge it, get right with God, and then go on.
Second, the Spirit always leads according to the Word, never contrary to it. While the Spirit may lead us without a definite Scripture, He never leads contrary to the Word, for it is He that inspired that same Word. In being familiar with God’s Word, we find that the Spirit of God delights to open it up to us according to the mind of God, and in this way many questions are answered by a verse, a parallel incident, or other application of the Scriptures. A profound reverence for and subjection to the authority of Scripture distinguishes real spirituality from mysticism.
Third, when Christ is before us as an Object, our conscience is in exercise directly with God, as to His claims over us. The conscience of the mystic may be in exercise too, but because he is looking for good in himself instead of looking at Christ, everything is distorted, and he fails to see things in their true light. Legality comes in, and often an emphasis on externals is present, when inward reality is lacking. Instead of the conscience being in direct relation to God, men and their authority may become prominent, and thus God is displaced. A true desire to be like Christ may be there, but it can never be fulfilled, because the true Object is not before him. It is a false ministry which brings something between God and the conscience, while true ministry puts my conscience directly in relation to God.
Occupation With the Blesser
Finally, we must remember that all the enjoyment of our blessings is based on what we already possess. We are “dead to sin” (Rom. 6:2); we are “blessed with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ” (Eph. 1:3); we are “meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light” (Col. 1:12). We accept these things by faith, not experience. In taking, by faith, the place where God has put us, we find that we are not occupied with ourselves, but with the One who has brought us there. All that goes with it — such as joy in the heart, affection for Christ, and our not being conformed to this world — results from our enjoyment of that place, but these things themselves are not our object. Experience may be wonderful, and God intends that it be so, but occupation with experience will never produce it.
In summary, we see that God sets before us His beloved Son as our Object and that in being occupied with Him, we are gradually “conformed to the image of His Son” (Rom. 8:29). But it is His work, His power and His glory. The moment we look at ourselves or become taken up with His work in us, we spoil it. We take His glory to be ours and rob Christ of what is due to Him. Only in having Christ as an Object outside of ourselves can we walk before God in a right way.
W. J. Prost
Christianity - First Objective, Then Subjective
God alone is self-sufficient. He can create objects in the display of His love, but He needs none outside Himself, as a creature does. Man has no intrinsic resources within himself, whether fallen or unfallen, nor do angels. Take away God: What are they? Nothing, or devils. So man; if money is his object, he becomes avaricious or covetous; if he seeks power, he is ambitious; if he looks for pleasure, he becomes a man of pleasure. In every case of a creature, what is objective is the source of the subjective state.
In Christianity, the two natures come into play, and the old nature will not have the divine object which is according to the new and is the foundation of faith, but the principle remains unchanged. That which is the objective is the source of the subjective state. We have the proper object set before the Christian in 2 Corinthians 3:18: “We all, with open [unveiled] face, beholding . . . the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.”
Stephen
Stephen, one beholding the glory of the Lord, is a magnificent picture to consider. The whole question between Christianity and rationalism is brought to an issue. The progress of human nature, with the very elements spoken of and the contrasted result, is stated. “Ye do always resist the Holy Spirit: as your fathers did, so do ye.” There is the relationship between man and the Spirit. He continues, “Which of the prophets have not your fathers persecuted? and they have slain them which have showed before of the coming of the Just One, of whom ye have been now the betrayers and murderers.” Such were their ways with those who unfolded the law in a more spiritual manner, even when it was with the perfect, living witness of the Lord Jesus Himself. Such was man — flesh in opposition to the law. Such was his state: He always resisted the Holy Spirit.
Now note the contrast of the objective spiritual man. Stephen, “full of the Holy Spirit, looked up steadfastly into heaven, and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God, and said, Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing on the right hand of God.” And what was the effect, the subjective effect, in one full of the Holy Spirit, of his objective perception of heavenly objects? In the midst of rage and violence and while being actually stoned, in all calmness he not merely bears, but kneels down and says, “Lord, lay not this sin to their charge.” So Jesus had said, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.” Then he said, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit,” as Jesus had said, “Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit.” He beheld, with unveiled face, the glory of the Lord and was changed into the same image from glory to glory, as by the Spirit of the Lord.
What a contrast is presented to us. On the one side is man resisting the Holy Spirit, man the murderer of the Just One, now gnashing on Stephen in a rage! On the other side is Stephen full of the Holy Spirit, who, seeing the Son of Man in heaven, is changed into His image and is killed by his fellow man.
Set Free
The beauty of Christianity is that being objective, being truth, it sets us free. The truth shall set you free, and it is a person, the Son, who shall set you free. It works effectually in those who receive Christ and requires no intellectual development to receive its power. Christ is received into the heart and, dwelling there by faith, produces the effect in us. Moreover, it takes us out of ourselves, because it is objective, and we, filled with delight in an object which is perfect, are like Him.
The Love of Virtue
It is divine wisdom. Man would produce virtue by the love of virtue in himself, but then he thinks of himself and all his virtue is rottenness. God gives us a human but divine object, and our affections are divine, because we love what is so, and we are morally what we love, but when we love it in another, we are delivered from self. I would just add that I believe that this adaptation of the character of walk to our entirely new position in Christ is what is meant by the scripture, “Created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before [prepared] that we should walk in them.” Hence, we are the epistle of Christ, engraved in the fleshy tablets of the heart by the Spirit of the living God.
The very starting point is opposite. Christianity treats man as a fallen being, not merely as imperfect but as departed from God, and needing a new nature and redemption. Christ met Nicodemus at once on this ground, when He said, “Ye must be born again.”
Adapted from
The Bible Treasury, 8:63-64
Objective and Subjective Truth
One of the main characteristics of mysticism is its distortion of objective and subjective truth. Instead of preserving the scriptural balance between the two, the subjective side is often emphasized to such a degree that the objective side, although admitted, is largely obscured.
God’s Thoughts
Let us look at the distinction between objective and subjective truth, so that we may have God’s thoughts about them. First, we get God’s thoughts in His own Word — they are His; then when we receive them from Him, they are the same in us — we think His thoughts. Objective truth is the way God reveals Himself in Christ, who is the positive expression of God before man. Then we find that subjective truth is that which is produced in us by the Holy Spirit, who does not speak from Himself, but rather glorifies Jesus in taking of His moral graces and in showing them to us as our own. It is thus that He creates in our consciences and affections a response to the objective truth presented, and by this means makes believers the effects of God’s testimony to the work in which He has been perfectly glorified and fully revealed. But observe that this subjective action is only carried on by placing an object for faith before the soul, as the Lord said, “When He, the Spirit of truth, is come . . . He shall glorify Me: for He shall receive of Mine, and shall show it unto you” (John 16:13-14).
Faith and Peace
In Romans 5:1 we read, “Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” Here we have objective faith producing subjective peace, and these must never be separated nor confounded. The word “therefore” takes us back to the end of chapter 4, where we get the object of this faith, namely, the attestation of God to the work of Christ on our behalf, for whom it was accomplished. In chapter 5:5, we get our subjective state again referred to, namely: “The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us,” but we are instantly taken to the objective truth in chapter 5:68, namely, the love that saves, which is greater than the things given, for this is the means by which God the Holy Spirit produces a subjective response which suits the Father’s affections. Thus Christ and His love are not only the source, but the intimate Object of our new and dependent life, by which the subjective state becomes developed and holiness produced, for holiness is the development of love.
Christ in Me
When the truth is received into the heart, Christ is received, and this humbles me, because it has to do with the evil that is in me; then it is not only Christ as an object outside of me, but a living Christ in me. But a mere external knowledge, that has no power over the conscience, only puffs up (1 Cor. 8:1). When, however, the evil within is discovered and judged by the conscience, I possess Christ as part of my own moral being. My senses are exercised to discern between good and evil, between what is Christ and what is “I,” as long as I am in this body with sin in me. When Christ is thus received, it is as if He were saying to me, I have settled all the question for you between the old thing and God, and now you settle the question for me between the new thing versus the world, the flesh and the devil. And this is only practically done in dying daily, by “always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body” (2 Cor. 4:10). This is the only way practically to rise above the evil (self), as God is above it.
His Workmanship
“We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them” (Eph. 2:10). This passage evidently refers to the newly-created character by which Christ is exhibited in His saints, or subjective truth, for that which is of value to God is not the amount of work we think we do, but the measure of Christ we present to others, in the lowliness, the gentleness and the grace which He exhibited when here. (Compare John 1:18 and 1 John 4:12.) And I need not say, Christ must be in the vessel by occupation with Him outside of the vessel, in order to produce these beauteous graces in the world where He has been rejected, otherwise it would be only improved self, that is, a kind of mystical mixture.
Truth and the Conscience
The conscience should never allow anything to come between itself and God (Heb. 4:12). It is the truth which commands the conscience and makes it perfect, because the truth is God’s testimony to the efficacy of atonement, of which Christ is now the display. It is the unveiled glory of God in accomplished, eternal redemption — a wonderful truth that there is now, for faith, no veil on the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ and no veil on the eye of faith that sees it. It is this that makes us superior to evil, even to the evil that is in us.
Every saint with an awakened conscience is brought into a spiritual combat between good and evil, the knowledge of which we have acquired through the fall. There are two powerful principles in every believer, one of good and the other of evil. We must either rise above the evil as God is above it, by having Christ instead of self, or we can be mystical and pharisaical in the combat and miserable, if honest with ourselves.
But when the conscience is truly awakened and when we are content to take Christ instead of self, then this Object is set before us and, acting on us, takes us above the evil as God Himself is above it, by impregnating us, in the power of the Holy Spirit, with the meaning of the unveiled glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, which is set before our faith to feed upon, as it says in 2 Corinthians 3:18; 4:4,6.
Christ Viewed in Three Ways
In order to facilitate our spiritual understanding of what this blessed Object conveys, we may look at three distinct ways the Scripture views Christ. First, Scripture shows Him to our faith before incarnation. We read of Him in John 1: “In the beginning was the Word.” Here we get His eternity. The second way Scripture views Him is in the lowliness of incarnation: “The Word [became] flesh.” “God was manifest in the flesh.” But, observe, He is the same Person here as He was before He became a Man. When He had given up “the form of God,” according to Philippians 2, He never ceased to be the One who had given it up. It is thus we find the moral glories of His humiliation far more wonderful than the dazzling brilliancies of those glories which He had with the Father before the world was, but which He had clothed with the humiliation and lowliness of the One who, “though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that ye through His poverty might be rich.” Finally, Scripture looks at the Lord in a present way — the One who went into death and is now risen out of death, creating a place of acceptance for us. In His present, risen state out of death, He has become the life of every believer, as well as his righteousness before God. Thus, righteousness is not in me, although there is an answer in my conscience to what Christ is now, for me, as righteousness before God, instead of in my sins. Because of all this, I am able to reckon the old thing dead.
Transformation
In 2 Corinthians 3:18 we get another forcible teaching, showing the distinction between objective and subjective truth and the impossibility of separating them. Faith lays hold of the first part of the verse, “We all, looking on the glory of the Lord, with unveiled face, are transformed,” because the communication of the truth, through faith, changes us into the image of that which has been communicated. We “are transformed according to the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Lord the Spirit” (JND).
Such exhibitions of Jesus as He now is create an answer to and make the poor vessel resemble the Object of its delights. We are changed into the same image from glory to glory, our state being formed by the revelation of that into which Christ has entered. There is first the Object, and then there is an answer in the conscience and heart to this “glory that excelleth.”
H. H. McCarthy, adapted
Goodness in God, Not in Man
Man can never be suited to the eye and approval of God by loving goodness in himself, because there is no power to subdue self in this way. Those trying to be what they would like do not succeed, but if we contemplate the goodness in Christ, He says of all such, to the Father, “I have given them Thy words, and they have received them.” His given words put us in the place of those that are dependent, and in obedience to those words, derivative goodness is found.
The Dependent Man
This is the opposite to mysticism: It is the truth — the very contrast to the mystic vanities, which, alas, are often active in a saint, but which God exposes by the contrast in Christ’s lowliness, who became so dependent as to be able to use the following language, suited to express His feelings in His manhood: “I can of Mine own self do nothing.” “If I bear witness of Myself, My witness is not true.” “My goodness extendeth not to Thee.” “Why callest thou Me good; there is none good but one, that is God.” “Not what I will, but what Thou wilt.” “I will put My trust in Him.” “My doctrine is not Mine, but His that sent Me.” “He that speaketh of himself, seeketh his own glory; but He that seeketh His glory that sent Him, the same is true, and no unrighteousness is in Him.” “I seek not Mine own glory.” “As the living Father hath sent Me, and I live by the Father: so he that eateth Me, even he shall live by Me.”
Oh, how such language marks the infinitely wonderful grace of “the Word become flesh” and who thus introduced into Manhood as perfect a holiness as was His before He became a Man. This He did in order, as Man, to always look to God instead of Himself, as the foregoing Scriptures declare, “leaving us an example that ye should follow His steps.” What a wonderful privilege it is for us, now that His grace has set us in the same place as Himself, to take Him for our example in all things, except, of course, the awful sin-atoning agony and its connections.
Dead With Christ
Only, in our case, we have to take Christ instead of ourselves practically, by bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, by which means Christ then comes out, instead of self.
We thus display goodness which is unceasingly derivative, while we live at Gilgal, which is a picture of the place where everything in self was put away. It is the place where the Lord Jesus stood in our stead in death under the judgment of God, putting man away once for all.
It is the communication of risen life in Christ which enables us to treat the old man as dead. We are told by some that, when we treat the old man as dead, we are entitled to have life, which really supposes that there is good and power in fallen men to do it. But it is the consciousness of being dead and risen with Christ that enables a saint to keep in the place of death anything in him which is not Christ. It enables him, according to 2 Corinthians 4:10, to keep in the place of death all that God has put there.
Self Superseded With Christ
It is thus that self is removed as an object, being superseded with Christ, so that all our goodness might be a risen Christ in a derivative way and we replenished by being occupied with “the glory that excelleth.” This gives us the sense of the value to God of Christ’s death and keeps our faith unfeigned and our consciences pure, so as to be always rejoicing in Him for “the health of His countenance,” which thus becomes “the health of ours,” always remembering never to make the health of our countenance the object, but the health of His.
H. H. McCarthy, adapted
The Right Balance
Understanding the concepts of objective and subjective things is difficult, but the real challenge to most of us is to keep the right balance of these two things in our daily lives. Let us compare it to someone learning to drive. No matter how many books the person may have read about the mechanics of a car and the right way to drive, practice is necessary to drive well. The first time the student sits down at the wheel, everything about the use of the accelerator, the brake, the gear shift and all the other buttons is unfamiliar. Practice is necessary to learn how to use them together. But the number one fundamental rule of driving is to keep your eyes on the road. It is a simple concept, but it is difficult to do while concentrating on the other skills of shifting, braking and so forth. In our Christian lives it is similar, in that we need to keep the focus always on Christ as our object, while at the same time allowing the Holy Spirit to direct the ongoing work in us. In this way our lives will be a light and testimony of Christ, not ourselves. No difficult mental activity is necessary for anyone to have a single eye on Christ and a willing heart which allows the Spirit of God to order their lives, but some teaching may be helpful.
D. C. Buchanan
Subjection to Scripture
Subjection of mind to the authority of Scripture distinguishes the guidance of the Holy Spirit from the spirit of the world and distinguishes real spirituality from cloudy mysticism.
The Christian Friend
Heavenly Standing and State
It is quite possible to take up the heavenly standing of a believer in a legal way and to demand of the soul, as it were, that the truth be accepted, and when this is the case, Christ is dissociated from the doctrine, and self, though it may not be verbally, is allowed a place. An analogous series of mental work follows in those who have a partial knowledge of Ephesian truth without the soul having been rendered receptive by the Holy Spirit.
It is impossible to learn Christ legally. Doctrines, separated from Christ, only wither the vitality of the soul. And the higher the truth, the more sorrowful will be the results when it is pressed legally. A man, who has the doctrine of the heavenly standing of believers but has not apprehended Christ where He is, will be in danger of far worse elation than a simply self-righteous person. How often we hear of the heavenly places spoken of by the believer without mentioning that it is in Christ that we are in the heavenly places! It is easy for the soul to boast or be occupied with the standing in heaven, even to the leaving out of “in Christ.” “I am a heavenly man” may mean, I am nothing but I am in Christ in heaven, or it may mean, I am one who has attained to what others have not.
State and Standing
No doubt there is often a confusion between the heavenly standing of the believer and his state in relation to that standing. The standing is unchanging; the state is just where the soul is. But a man, who thinks that he has reached a heavenly state because he has been taught his heavenly standing, makes a grave mistake. Indeed, he is in imminent peril of boasting in the doctrine, or in himself as knowing it. When this is the case, there is a peculiar way of looking down upon other believers, a tone of soul which seems to say, “I am a superior person.” It is a chip off the old block of Phariseeism: “This people who [know] not the law.”
Freedom from self-occupation needs to result in occupation with Christ, otherwise there will not be holiness. In a similar way, persons who have their eyes opened as to the believer’s heavenly standing, simply because they know the standing, imagine themselves practically heavenly. It is a very great mistake indeed, and if this confusion between standing and state be allowed to remain in the soul, anything but holiness will be the result.
Practical Christianity
The neglect of “pure religion” is not infrequently to be traced in such cases (James 1:27). Such simple acts of practical Christianity as visiting the sick, caring for the poor, and, in some cases, even the gospel to sinners are regarded as inferior occupations unsuited to the “heavenly” atmosphere. It seems to be forgotten that there are chapters 46 in the Ephesians and that to be heavenly is downright practical in the home, in the relationships of life, and in Christian warfare.
Humility never advertises itself. It is utterly hateful to read a man’s statement of himself. Humility is one of the first blossoms of grace in the soul.
Unbalance
The believer, to whom God has given for his soul an apprehension of Christ where He is and the knowledge that Christians are seated in Christ in the heavenly places will not wish to read only one set of portions from the Word of God. He will surely seek to be acquainted with the whole counsel of God. It is always a dangerous thing when only favorite scriptures are read; it shows clearly that a mind so acting is unbalanced. God has given to us the whole of His Word, and we need every verse of it, and surely none require the exhortations of Scripture more than those who rejoice, and rejoice before God, in heavenly truths, as we see evidenced by the concluding chapters of the epistles to the Colossians and the Ephesians.
Holiness
Holiness is the very yearning of divine life. God has mercifully delivered many from trying in the flesh to imitate Christ; He has shown what self is and its judicial end in the cross of Christ, and that His people are to reckon themselves to be dead unto sin. God has done more: He has opened the minds of many to the knowledge of a risen Christ, and that to His likeness all His own shall be conformed. The path of holiness is walking as Christ walked, being Christ-like on this earth, and the really heavenly man will be known by his ways.
H. F. Witherby, adapted from
The Bible Treasury, 12:272
Occupation With Our State
Occupation with our state will never bring us one whit nearer the Lord; it will only distress, enfeeble and enslave our souls. Occupation with Christ will produce every moment increasing conformity to His image. The true remedy, therefore, for a bad state is Christ so completely filling our vision — Christ in what He is and in what He has done — that self cannot be seen in the light of His glory. State is not everything, but Christ is everything, and in proportion as we learn this lesson will our state meet His mind.
The Christian Friend, 13:280
Faith and Unbelief
There are things, good and evil, which never mingle with one another, but always keep in their own company. On the one hand, faith and confidence are inseparable companions, and on the other, unbelief and mysticism are always found in the same fog of confusion.
Truth
Faith never takes counsel with what one feels or thinks or concludes, nor does it make one’s own state its object, because no object suits faith but the truth, which is Christ, an Object outside of oneself. Christ, not God, is said to be the truth, because “the truth” is that which is told of something else. It is only in Man that God makes Himself seen and known; therefore, Christ is said to be the truth as to God. He is “the image of the invisible God,” for it is only in Christ that God can be really known. Therefore, faith and confidence are always on the same high level with the truth — truth that now displays “the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ,” that is, the expression of God’s satisfaction in the work which has recovered sinners for Himself. The believer is now not only “made meet for the light,” according to the glory of Christ’s own nature, but suited for Him to have His delights in companionship with recovered man, in a way that such intimacies between God and man in innocence never could have been known.
Craving Satisfaction
Unbelief seeks to find something within ourselves to reason from and looks to get from God a testimony to one’s own state, instead of the testimony He always delights to give of His blessed Son. Hence, incredulity and mysticism are always on the same low level, in search of meeting the need elsewhere than by “the truth as it is in Jesus” — craving for a satisfaction, never in this way to be possessed or enjoyed. When we are often talking of our own happiness, it is a sure sign that happiness is the object, instead of Christ.
An Object Outside Ourselves
Faith feeds upon an object outside of oneself, which is the truth — God’s precious Christ, who satisfies fully, deeply, infinitely, while unbelief seeks an object for complacency within, which comes to mysticism, or something in man making him to be always craving and never fully satisfied. Thus we have a test by which we may always distinguish between truth and mysticism.
We read in Galatians of “faith which worketh by love” (Gal. 5:6). Allow me to ask, whose love? Surely it is the love which never grows cold, which is Christ’s, not ours. “We love because He has first loved us.” The new man, living by faith in this Object set before him and acting on him, becomes the intelligent expression of the love he feeds upon, but the instant the eye has for its object anything other than Christ for him, such as Christ in him for his state, faith becomes inactive, because Christ the true object of faith is displaced. When a man focuses on his progress, his holiness, or his testimony (although these cannot go on unless Christ, which forms his state, be in him), faith becomes inactive.
A Purified Heart
We are told in Acts 15 that God purifies the heart by faith (v. 9), but a state founded on the evidence of anything we find in ourselves does not purify the heart, for even that which is wrought in us by the Holy Spirit, which we can be pleased with, is not an object for faith. The new life cannot live on itself; it must have a positive object outside of itself to sustain its own nature. In every case of a moral creature, that which is objective is the source of the subjective state. Our hearts, therefore, are being purified by faith which conducts us into the heart of God, beholds His unveiled “glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ,” and feeds upon its object as its own.
Faith, Not Feeling
In Romans 10:17 (JND), we read that “faith then is by a report, but the report by God’s Word.” It is a relief to be taken away from self altogether, feelings and all, for the report is God’s testimony concerning His Son (1 John 5:6-12). It is not my believing anything because I feel it, but believing everything that God says, because God says it. Thus, what God is and says produces, sustains and energizes faith. The result is divine confidence, for when faith is active in the soul, one loves goodness, not in oneself, but in Another, and appropriates that which one loves, namely, a wonderful character of goodness in Christ, which meets one’s own want of it. Unbelief, on the other hand, is always mystical in its love of goodness, for the mischief of it is that, although it loves goodness, yet it loves it in itself — in the creature, instead of in Christ. Because of this, nothing is appropriated by the drawings of faith from an external Object, and all its imaginary goodness is only a more subtle species of self.
Christ and the Holy Spirit
How sad that saints should make their own state their object, instead of Christ ministered to us by the Holy Spirit! Some dear saints are seeking, for self, what they call “the gold promised to Laodicea,” some seek to be a testimony, while others look for devotedness and holiness for self, not seeing that self never has and never can cross the Jordan at all. When anything, no matter what, becomes an object for self, it is a sure sign that Christ has never been taken instead of self, and thus saints get enveloped in clouds of mystical piety, instead of being in the enjoyment of the truth of God.
How much better it is, as another has said, to have Christ — to walk with Him and after Him, to have communion with the Father and the Son, to walk in unfeigned obedience and lowliness, and to allow the Spirit of God to form us, through grace, more and more into His image.
H. H. McCarthy, adapted
Faith and Repentance
Repentance is to be preached as well as remission of sins. Faith must be objective, is only objective, and the way of peace and confidence; the judgment of my own state will never be objective, nor ought to be. But the faith in the objects presented—God’s free and sovereign love, and the Saviour and His work — produces a subjective state which Scripture calls repentance. This is not a preliminary to faith, but its fruit. There is the subjective fruit. There may have been a faith in Christ’s person and words which has wrought a work in the soul before a free gospel may have been even heard; it may have wrought sorrow and self-judgment and made the soul weary and heavy laden. Then a free gospel will produce outward joy. A deep subjective work is a happy and blessed thing produced by the gospel. It is not by man’s work on himself to prepare for it.
J. N. Darby,
Collected Writings, 10:217
The Mystery of Godliness
We understand the word “mystery” to imply something which the mind of man never could have understood except by revelation. “Great is the mystery of godliness [or piety]: God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory” (1 Tim. 3:16). All the vain systems of philosophy and idolatry prove that man by searching could not find out God. All was mystery as to God. This verse contains an outline of this marvelous revelation to us. The mystery is revealed in God manifest in flesh, in our very form and likeness. God is not to us a mystery that needs revealing. He was manifest before us in the man, the Holy One of God; justified; sealed by the Holy Spirit as the sinless One in the midst of all the sin and darkness. God was then seen, or made visible, to angels, not merely as the Jehovah of Israel, but God revealed and preached to the world — the Gentiles. Thus revealed, God was believed on in the world, and, as man, received up into glory. The whole character, too, of God is visibly seen in the Son. Let us, with holy reverence, remember that he that has seen the Son has seen the Father also.
Things New and Old, 26:196
Humble and Good
The mystic humbles himself because he still hopes to find good in himself, or he occupies himself in this, as if there might be some, and he finds only evil. The Christian is humble (and that is quite another thing), because he has given up seeking good in himself to adore the One in whom there is nothing else.
J. N. Darby
Without Presumption
As to the flesh, I am entitled by grace to say that I have died already, and I am called on to reckon myself henceforth and always dead. Mysticism is an effort to become dead in oneself, and sounds well, but grace gives me the title of Christ to believe in the power of His death for me and of my death in Him, so that I may, without presumption, reckon myself dead unto sin, but alive unto God in Christ Jesus.
W. Kelly