Preface: This is longer than normal and formatted a little differently. I really thought about dividing it into two parts, but that really won’t work. So I hope you won’t be put off by the length and take the time necessary for due consideration.
AS I look at this morning’s consideration, I see some of my notes written years ago in the side margins of this book we have been using for our study, The Complete Green Letters, (Principles of Spiritual Growth – Part One). Things like: Abide in Him! Col 2:6. “…as you have received Christ Jesus, so walk in Him [by faith]”.
THIS is such a rich section. But I know it can be hard to grasp. I recall learning the hard lesson that “the way up, is down,” —this putting off the old and putting on the new life just runs against the grain of our self-centered human nature. There is nothing of the flesh acceptable to God, its all Christ. When our author says as he did in the previous offering — As growing Christians, it is time for us to see the necessity of going beyond the love motive to the life motive. “For to me to live is Christ” (Phil. 1:21) – how are we to respond to that? Our author goes on to say next,
Our consecration, surrender or commitment will never hold up if it is our responding to Him from any other motivation than the response of His life in us. Yielding to Him on any different basis will simply amount to our trying to live for Him in the self-life. And even if that were possible, He could never accept it, since in that realm there dwells no good thing (Rom. 7:18), plus the fact that He has already taken the old life to the cross and crucified it (see Rom. 6:6; Gal. 2:20; II Tim. 2:11; I Pet. 2:24).
WHAT we are talking about here are Principles of Spiritual Growth, a growth that means a continued maturing in our thinking and understanding about “self” and the realities of the Christ centered life. As I recently told my students in school, you are not the child you once were, nor will you be the person one day you are now. In your growing up your knowledge, understanding, and perspective is going to change. The motives we have as a child and our relationships we have with others will differ as they deepen and mature, or at least that should be our expectation!
I’M a C.S. Lewis fan, and a lover of the Chronicles of Narnia. I don’t know how many times I’ve read the books to myself and to my children. I have several editions on my shelf along with some interesting background books. When they came out with the recent movies, I was quite excited, especially after seeing the first, it was like “going home” to a favorite and longed for place of wonder. It was fairly accurate and true to the story. But the next two editions were a real disappointment, and I have to say I’m quite dismayed with the handling and interpretation of my favorite, The Dawn Treader. I was especially disappointed with the handling of Eustace C. Scrubb’s transformation both into and return from the horrible dragon. The screenwriters completely blew one of the most important sequences in the story. Eustace being a completely self-centered and egotistical brat, succumbs to greed upon finding a dragon’s lair treasure of gold, and turns into a dragon himself. If you saw the movie account, they completely glossed over the transformation and worse yet, distorted how Aslan frees him from the curse with some kind of magical roar. But that is not how the change goes at all.
WITH a golden bracelet Eustace had stolen from the treasure and placed on his arm, now painfully pinching his “dragon” arm, Aslan finds the forlorn Eustace and leads him to a mountain clear water well, telling him to undress and bath. At first he doesn’t understand, but then begins to claw at his own skin and peels it off. At first he feels a cleansing freedom and renewing. But as he enters the water the reflection reveals he is still his same old dragon self. Again, he begins to claw away with the same result. Three times he tries but fails to make progress in putting off the old. It is here that I have to let C.S. Lewis tell his story, to do it justice, taking up the story where Eustace recounts the event:
…Eustace, “But as soon as I looked at myself in the water, I knew it had been no good.”
“Then the lion said -but I don’t know if it spoke- ‘you will have to let me undress you.’ I was afraid of his claws, I can tell you, but I was pretty nearly desperate now. So I just lay flat down on my back to let him do it.
“The very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart. And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I’ve ever felt. The only thing that made me able to bear it was just the pleasure of feeling the stuff peel off. You know-if you’ve ever picked the scab of a sore place. It hurts like billy-oh but it is such fun to see it coming away.
“I know exactly what you mean,” said Edmund.
“Well, he peeled the beastly stuff right off- just as I thought I’d done it myself the other three times, only they hadn’t hurt- and there it was lying on the grass: only so much thicker, and darker, and more knobbly-looking than the others had been. And there was I as smooth and soft as a peeled switch and smaller than I had been, Then he caught hold of me -I didn’t like that much for I was very tender underneath now that I’d no skin on- and threw me into the water. It smarted like anything but only for a moment. After that it became perfectly delicious and as soon as I started swimming and splashing I found that all the pain had gone from my arm. And then I saw why. I’d turned into a boy again. You’d think me simply phony if I told you how I felt about my own arms. I know they’ve no muscle and are pretty mouldy compared with Caspian’s, but I was so glad to see them.
“After a bit the lion took me out and dressed me –“
“Dressed you. With his paws?”
“Well, I don’t exactly remember that bit. But he did somehow or other; in new clothes- the same I’ve got on now, as a matter of fact. And then suddenly I was back here. Which is what makes me think it must have been a dream.”
“No. It wasn’t a dream.” Said Edmund.
“Why not?”
“Well, there are the clothes, for one thing. And you have been- well, un-dragoned, for another.”
“What do you think it was, then?” asked Eustace.
“I think you’ve seen Aslan,” said Edmund.
“Aslan!” said Eustace. “I’ve heard that name …………… “
IT is hard for me to stop here, but the point is made in this wondrous narrative and metaphor. To those familiar with the Chronicles, Aslan is Christ. And even though we read the seven stories of the children – Narnian kings and queens all – coming back and forth through the storyline, it is always about Aslan, redemption accomplished and applied, and His life being worked out in the lives of His chosen.
THE metaphors are weaved throughout. Here we see again that it is the heart, that is the heart of the matter – “The very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart”, says the dragon hearted Eustace. And the joy of pain, welcomed pain that does the Saviors bidding, that precedes the new clothing by miracles way. And, “I think you’ve seen Aslan,” said Edmund, point us to so many biblical Jobs found in scripture saying, “I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear, but now [at the end of my story] my eye sees You (Job 42:5).
IN this narrative with Eustace, we again see that the way up is down. It is not through our own efforts, desires or motives, but Christ along. Roman 6 takes us to the reality of Romans 7 and the battle within that takes us to the cry of verse 24, O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?
NOTICE in Romans 7:24, it is not what, but Who that Paul looks for in his wretched need. It is only through the affirming reality of Christ’s perfect and singularly acceptable work that Paul is able to confidently proclaim in Romans 8:1, no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.
SO on the heals of this, our author shares this Green Letters insight with us to today as we read on:
The modern teaching of consecration, which is tantamount to the consecration of the ‘old man,’ seeks to bypass the death sentence and, therefore, only leads to frustration and failure. When, however, you and I are prepared, in simple humility, to make the fact of our death with Christ our daily basis of life and service, there is nothing that can prevent the uprising and outflow of new life, and meet the need of thirsty souls around us.
Here is the crux of the matter. The question is: Which life is to be consecrated to Him—the old self-life, or the new Christ-life? God can accept absolutely nothing from the old—He sees and acknowledges only that which is centered in His Son, who is our life. Hence God has but one stipulation for consecration: “Yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead” (Rom. 6:13). This is our only ground, and from this platform we are to count ourselves dead to sin, self, the law and the world and alive to God in the risen Christ—to walk in “newness of life” (Rom. 6:4), “risen life” (see v. 11). …to be continued
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I AM crucified with Christ. Gal 2:20
This is the Way!
With highest regards in Christ,
Joe
Neh. 8:10, Isa 30:15
