“There is no fear in love, but perfect love casteth out fear, because fear hath torment” (1 John 4:1818There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love. (1 John 4:18)). But there is a godly fear which nips in the bud many an evil thing—a fear which, if a saint were saying, “I should like to do this or that,” would make him feel that “the eye of God will be looking at me, and I shall give it up.”
What part have I to play in connection with redemption? None but implicit subjection; forced to repudiate everything connected with self, and receive blessing of God’s providing.
The lack of a distinct apprehension of the difference between the flesh and the Spirit keeps saints in a very low state. They may be safe for eternity, and yet may grieve and quench the Spirit. If you have got salvation but have Jewish notions of a Jewish walk, you will be incessantly grieving the Spirit, accrediting something in your walk which God wants to strip off. God cannot accredit the love of present things which Demas had. He cannot accredit anything of the flesh in Christians. If the Spirit of Christ is in me, all that is of myself must be judged.
In a cup of water, how could you displace the water? By putting something heavier into the cup. If you have a heart full of lusts and vanities, how are you to give them all up? By the precious gold of God poured into the vessel; all there will be displaced by it.
Do not talk of what you have given up, if God has given you Christ. Can you compare anything with Him? Are they not unsearchable riches you have in Him? Are you not obliged to say, “Father, Thou only canst know what that gift of Thine is; Thou knowest about His cross and glory.” Oh, what heart can conceive what it will be to look in that face! What will you say then of the beauty of Christ! Oh, when one thinks of what that anointed One is personally! Who shall read the fullness of the Godhead in Him, and not feel like a little child looking at the Father who gave Him, and feeling, “He knows all about Him,” and there the heart rests.
G. V. Wigram