All our blessings are accomplished by Christ and vested in Him; our place is to possess and enjoy them. To possess and enjoy God’s gifts, we must first value them as gifts, and here is our difficulty; our pride blunts our sense of need. Grace has provided and laid up in Christ; I can enjoy it when I am in a position to enjoy it. We see this in the apostle’s prayers in Ephesians. In the first, he prays that the saints might know the power which wrought in Christ and what He has accomplished for them; in the second, that they might know Christ Himself—that they might be filled with all the fullness of God. By knowing their place in Him, they could then enjoy Him and it.
As the soul enters into the knowledge of the place into which it has been brought, it learns the power which wrought in Christ. Truly, God’s power must first work in me to raise me to that position. Being in the position, I not only know the power but enjoy the fruit of it, and while I keep it I enjoy power efficiently. I do not gain the position. Through grace it is mine, and I take it. There is power in the taking of it, and still greater, evidently, in keeping it, because it is its effect.
I am bound to take every position in which the grace of Christ has set me, and my weakness is that I do not. The position is the verification of Christ’s power, and in taking it and maintaining it, I am acknowledging Him, even though in that position my own infirmities are more openly disclosed. When we are impressed with the largeness of Christ’s work and what grace is, we take up the position to which we are called, as we have light. Also we are taught instinctively that it is a moral error to surrender it in our walk, for doing so is a return to nature.
Fitness to Walk Worthy
We are, however, constantly allowing the question of fitness to mar our enjoyment. Our fitness did not put us there. Grace put us there, and while we own Christ and His work we enjoy the effect of it. Our eye rests on the goodness and worth of the Giver, not on the unworthiness of the receiver. Our labor is not to make ourselves fit to express the grace shown to us, but to walk worthy of the vocation. Let a soul refuse to acknowledge the vocation as his, and his action, however sincere, must, at least, be legal and coerced.
Another hindrance is the tendency to measure ourselves with the difficulties in the path, and not to look at Him who puts us there. Difficulties in the way always occur to those who have no heart to encounter them. Thus Israel lost Canaan for the giants, and the cities walled up to heaven shut out the goodness and majesty of God. Caleb as an individual held the position and he had the power of it. Years afterward, when he laid low the giants and cities, he had the full fruition of it.
To Lose It
It is possible to have enjoyed our position, and then to lose it, or rather the sense of it. We have not walked worthy of it, and the effect is a craving for enjoyment and deliverance which were once known. Alas! In this state how many things are offered to compensate for our loss! Attention to forms, good works, acts of obedience and the like are freely proposed and adopted, but if we had kept our position, we should not only have known the power which wrought in Christ, but the reaching forward, according to the second prayer in Ephesians, would be unto Christ Himself and all the fullness of God. We can have no genuine power to act in any position if we doubt our title to it. If I have learned distinctly the real value of Christ for me, though I may make many mistakes, yet the light gradually breaks in on my understanding and I advance in acquaintance with the power which wrought in Christ.
Never Surrender
Any position we are led to by God’s grace, let us never surrender. “Continue thou in the things which thou hast learned” (2 Tim. 3:1414But continue thou in the things which thou hast learned and hast been assured of, knowing of whom thou hast learned them; (2 Timothy 3:14)). It is to call in question the excellence of the position when we surrender it, for how then could we prove our appreciation of its worth as God’s calling? This applies to every truth we learn. If a believer acts unlike a child of God, he may surrender the fact that he is a child of God, or he may maintain that he is one, and being humbled, cast himself upon the grace which has given him so undeserved a calling. In the first case he escapes censure, for he denies responsibility, but in the other, he learns from the censure, though he is thereby afflicted. This desire to escape censure by denying responsibility is a great evil and arises from a low state of communion, because the soul has been imperceptibly filled with other things, and the sense of grace has become faint. Either trial or more deadness follows.
The Place of Power
I might try to keep my position, but in a careless way. This would not be power and would lead to judgment. This happens when there is more of imitating others than learning for myself. The position to be of power must be in spirit and energy according to God, or it is merely human, which is worthless. Eli is an example. Rightly a priest, he had neither the discernment nor the energy suited for such a place. The man that is not true to God is true to anyone else.
Let us not excuse ourselves from a position to escape the responsibilities of it. There are inalienable, ever-existing rights and privileges to the church—privileges of which it may lose the enjoyment by failure. Still, repentance always puts us at the open door to possession. The church has never lost its right to the affections of Christ, or the privilege of His lordship. The moment it occupies a true position, be its state ever so low, it is in the power suited to it. I desire to insist on this, that my taking my proper position irrespective of former failure is the place of power. Could the soul do a worse thing than seek a lower place than the one assigned it by God? Certainly not. And it is not humility.
Consider Ezra and Nehemiah
Ezra and Nehemiah eagerly and unhesitatingly return to the position to which God had called their nation. True, they also returned to Jerusalem shorn judicially of the physical power with which the nation was once honored. But though conscious of all this, yet they confidently resume their old position with God, and though there were many enemies, yet as long as they retained it they had power and blessing. Some would say to them, “The time is not come” (Hag. 1:22Thus speaketh the Lord of hosts, saying, This people say, The time is not come, the time that the Lord's house should be built. (Haggai 1:2)), and the result was, “Ye looked for much and ... I did blow upon it” (Hag. 1:99Ye looked for much, and, lo, it came to little; and when ye brought it home, I did blow upon it. Why? saith the Lord of hosts. Because of mine house that is waste, and ye run every man unto his own house. (Haggai 1:9)). But when they were admonished and resumed the work, the Lord says, “From this day I will bless you” (Hag. 2:1919Is the seed yet in the barn? yea, as yet the vine, and the fig tree, and the pomegranate, and the olive tree, hath not brought forth: from this day will I bless you. (Haggai 2:19)). Now we learn here what has been a sore evil even today, namely, that because we are not able to present as great a front to the world as we once were permitted to do, consequently we say “the time is not come.” From this comes all our weakness, I am persuaded.
We want to learn all that from the beginning God has called us to; nothing short of His vocation will satisfy Him nor bless us. May our souls indeed learn that if we would have power to serve Him, we must own the place, and take the place, His grace sets us in. To go back to a lower position or to remain in one is to have the Lord “blow on what we bring home.” The church may be feeble and faltering, but she is loved in spite of it all, and she but crowns her sin when she does not own it. If we have conflict with wicked spirits in heavenly places, it is because we are in heavenly places and have fellowship with Christ’s victory over all the power of evil. The true soul always wants the sense of this victory, and as long as it owns the full service of Christ and where His grace sets us, it is satisfied and progresses with energy. But if we lose our place, as in this dreary journey we are apt to do, we will become occupied with expressing our own victory instead of Christ’s. Such attempts are unsatisfying and so powerless that there is an insensible but decided return to worldliness. Nothing but true position is power, for nothing else is grace.
G. V. Wigram (adapted)