True Spirituality

  False integration points may seem satisfactory, only to end in that which is insufficient, with bits and pieces of the total man left out. I picture false integration points as being like a garbage can into which we try to push a man. But it is not big enough, and so we jam him down, but his head sticks out. So we lift him out and then jam him down in a different way, but this time his legs stick out. So we lift him out and jam him down again, but now his arm sticks out. We never get the whole man in. It is simply not big enough. That is the weakness of all false integration points. Because of what God has made us to be in his own image, and for a specific purpose, there will always be bits and pieces hanging out of any falsely integrated life. Psychologically this means new divisions of personality and a new necessity of escape. And in all of these false integration points for the Christian there is a loss in heav­en, because there is going to be a believer's judgment, and rewards. In all these false integration points, there will be a chastising by my loving Father in the present life, because he loves me, and he wants to bring me to himself.

  But here we are talking about something else as well: we see that the loss is not only in the future, and not only in the present external world under the chastening hand of the Lord to us in his love, but also inside ourselves in the thought-world. It bears upon the problem not only in the future, and not only in our present relationship with God in his love, but now, in my relationship to myself.

  In our day we have become very aware of psychology, and of psychological problems, as we have never been before. I have already stressed that in modern psychology there are valuable insights, as these men have struggled with the problems. They often have good bits and pieces, but this is not enough without a sufficient base. If men act upon the teaching of the Word of God, and as proportionately men live according to the teaching and commands of the Bible, so they have in practice a sufficient psychological base. God is good to his peo­ple. To the extent that a man lives in the light of the command of the revelation of Scripture, he has a psychological founda­tion. Find me the faithful pastor in the old village, and I will find you a man dealing with psychological problems on the basis of the teaching of the Word of God, even if he never heard the word psychology, or does not know what it means. It is preferable to have the proper base and framework as to who man is and what his purpose is, without the bits and pieces, than to have the bits and pieces in a total vacuum.

  This does not diminish the importance of learning details from the psychologist, but with him or without him, there is no real answer to man's psychological need and crushing load apart from the Creator-creature framework, the comprehension of the fall, and the substitutionary work of Jesus Christ in history.

  If I refuse my place as the creature before the Creator and do not commit myself to him for his use, this is sin. And any-thing else is also misery. How can you enjoy God on any other level than what you are, and in the present situation? Anything else will bring misery, a torturing of the poor, divided personal­ity we are since the fall. To live moment by moment through faith on the basis of the blood of Christ, in the power of the Holy Spirit is the only really integrated way to live. This is the only way to be at rest with myself, for only in this way am I not trying to carry what I cannot. To do otherwise is to throw away my own place of rest, the substantial psychological advance I as a Christian can have in this present life.

  All this is not impersonal. In it all, I am not just acting "as if" I am rolling my burden on some impersonal something; rather, I am following the invitation of the infinite-personal Creator. His own invitation is expressed in 1 Peter 5:7: "Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you." It is not an impersonal thing. You are simply following God's own invitation when he says, "Roll your cares upon me, because I care for you." It is the very opposite of an impersonal situation. You are not rolling your care upon an impersonal mathemati­cal formula. You are rolling your care upon the infinite-personal God. Jesus says, "Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest" (Matthew 11:28). This is not only an invitation to the non-Christian to come to Christ, it is a continuing invitation to the Christian as well. He is inviting us to roll these cares not upon someone else, but upon him. Once I see this, I do not need to be afraid. We would be less than truthful, I think, if we failed to acknowledge that often we are afraid to offer ourselves for God's use, for fear of what will come. But fear falls to the ground when we see before whom we are standing. We are standing in a living relationship with a living God, who loves us, and has shown his love for us to such an extent that Jesus died on the cross. Fear falls, and we have the courage to give ourselves for his use without being afraid, when we see we are not giving ourselves in the teeth of an impersonal situation, or of a world that hates us, or an in-human world of men. We are offering ourselves before the God who loves us, and he is not a monster, but our heavenly Father. He will not leave us in the battle as a soldier discards one piece of military equipment for another, casting it into the mud. God will never deal with us in this way. He will not use us as a weapon, without care for the weapon itself. In his hand, not only will we be useful in the battle, but even the blows brought upon us in the battle will bring us closer to himself, because he is infinite and personal, and because he loves us.

  As I bow in my will in practice in this present life, it ends with communion with God as Abba, Father. Communion with God requires bowing in the area of knowledge. But communion with God also requires bowing in my will in these areas we have studied in these chapters. We are justified if we have ac­cepted Christ as Savior. But present communion with God requires continual bowing in both the intellect and the will. Without bowing in the intellect, in thinking after God; without acting upon the finished work of Christ in my present life; and without bowing in the will in practice, as the waves of the present life break over me, there is no sufficient communion with God. Without these things I am not in my place as the creature in a fallen and abnormal world. These three things are absolutely necessary if there is to be real and sufficient commu­nion with God in the present life. In the proportion that these things are so, then a person-to-person relationship to God is in place. To the extent that these things are so in practice, I am not divided from myself and against myself. The Creator, as Abba, Father, will even now dry my tears and there will be joy. This is the meaning of true spirituality in my relationship to myself.

  Substantial Healing

  in Personal Relationships 12

  As we turn now to the problem of personality, and specifically to the elements of love and communication, the key is the fact that God is a personal God. The Christian system of thought and life begins with a God who is infinite and personal, with a strong emphasis on his personality. Because of this, personality is truly valid and central in the universe and is not just a matter of chance.

  Throughout the Word of God it is made very plain that God deals with us first of all on the basis of what he himself is; and secondly on the basis of what he has made us. He will not violate that which he himself is, nor will he violate that which he has made us to be. So God himself always deals with man on a basis of personal relationship. It is always a person-to­-person relationship. More than this, because God is infinite he can deal with each one of us personally as though each one was the only man who existed. He can deal with us personally because he is infinite. We also find that God's dealing with men is never mechanical. There are no mechanical elements to it. His dealing with man is also not primarily legal, though there are proper legal aspects to it which are founded and rooted in God's own character. The God of the Bible differs from the gods that man makes. He is a God who has a charac­ter, and-that character is the law of the universe total and complete. When mansins1 he breaks that law, and because that law is broken, man is guilty and God must deal with us in this proper legal relationship. Therefore since we have been sinners, we must be justified before we can come to God. But though God does deal with us in the proper legal re
lationship, nevertheless centrally he does not deal with us legally, but per­sonally.

  Our theme in this section is true spirituality in relation to the problem of my separation from my fellowmen. It is ap­propriate that the first "other" we must take into consideration is God, rather than another man.

  Just as God always deals with man on the basis of what God is, and what we are, we should and must do the same in regard to our thoughts about God and our dealings with him. Our relationship with God must never be thought of as mechanical. That is why a strong sacerdotal system must always be wrong. We can never deal with God in a mechanical sense, and we should not deal with him on a merely legal basis, though there are these proper legal relationships. Our rela­tionship with God after we have become a Christian must always be centrally a person-to-person relationship.

  Of course there is this distinction which must not be for-gotten, that he is a Creator and we are creatures; therefore, in all my thoughts and acts toward God I must keep the creature-Creator relationship in mind. This, however, does not alter the person-to-person nature of our relationship. So the command is to love God with all our heart, soul, and mind. He is satisfied with nothing less than my loving him. I am not called merely to be justified. Man was created to be in personal fellowship with God and to love him. Prayer is always to be seen as a person-to-person communication, not merely a devotional ex­ercise. Indeed, when prayer becomes only a devotional exer­cise, it is no longer biblical prayer.

  Now, turning from our person-to-person relationship with God, let us think of the relationship between ourselves, that is, within our own kind. Just as it is centrally important to remember when I am dealing with God that my relationship must be kept on a creature-to-Creator basis, so when I am dealing with my own kind, I must remember that the rela­tionship must be exactly the opposite: equal-to-equal. But though it is equal-to-equal, and not creature-to-Creator, or greater-to-less, still it should be personal. The Bible presents to us no mechanical human relationships; it allows none, because God did not make us as machines. Further, our relationship to other men must not be primarily legal, although there will be proper legal relationships between men. Though this sounds simple, it is not simple at all. Very often the sin of the Church has been to forget this very point.

  Now who are my kind, when I speak about those with whom I should deal on a person-to-person level? My kind are all those who have come from Adam. In Acts 17:26 we are told: "And he has made of one all nations of men, for to dwell on all the face of the earth." We who believe the Bible insist on a literal Adam, and if we do, this carries with it something that is most practical: All who come from Adam are my kind. This is as wide as the human race, and I am to have a person-to-­person relationship, as equals, with each of those with whom I come into contact.

  The Bible is explicit that mankind is divided into two classes, and only two: those who have accepted Christ as Sav­ior, and who therefore are Christians, and those who have not accepted him: those who are brothers in Christ, and those who are not. But this must not obscure to the true Christian's think­ing that his primary dealing on a personal level is to be to all men, and not just to fellow Christians. The Church has always recognized this in insisting that marriage is given by God not just to the redeemed, but to all men. This is an ordinance of God to all men. Unredeemed man's sin and separation from God does not remove him from the human ordinances of God. As an example, when the Lord Jesus Christ was giving us our basic commandment concerning our fellowmen, he used the word "neighbor." He said, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." At this point there is to be no distinction between Christian and non-Christian. I am to love my neighbor, every man, as myself. And he made very plain what he meant by this in telling the story of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:27-37). It is most significant that the last of the Ten Commandments uses the same word; it says we are not to covet anything of our neighbor (Exodus 20:17). Every man is my neighbor and is to be treated in a proper human, man-to-man relationship. Every time we act in a machine-like way towards another man we deny the central teaching of the Word of God—that there is a personal God who has created man in his own image.

  Or we can put it in another way. I have said that the last screen in our thinking and in our life must be nothing other than God himself. The last screen, the last point of our think­ing, must not be just things about God, it must be a rela­tionship with God himself. The same must be true in our thinking of men. The last screen cannot be anything less than the individual and personal relationship, in love and com­munication. The command is to love him, not just to think about him, or do things for him. We are not to stop with a proper legal relationship—for example, to think of a man as legally lost, which he is, in the sight of a holy God—without thinking of him as a person. Saying this, we can suddenly see that much evangelism is not only sub-Christian, but subhuman —legalistic and impersonal.

  Of course we must continue to stress the other side, especially in this modern century which has no time for legal relationships. In a period of anti-law, like that in which we are living today, we must always stress that proper legal rela­tionships are important. They are important in the area of sex and marriage; they are important in thinking of the proper legal relationship in the Church, and its purity. Nevertheless we must never lose sight of the heart of these relationships: recognizing the individual as a human being.

  Or we can look at it in another way. Man, having put him-self rather than God at the center of the universe, constantly tends to turn inward instead of outward. He has made himself the last integration point of the universe. This is the essence of his rebellion against God. Now with God this does not make a problem, for when God turns to himself, he is Trinity, and the members of the Trinity have been having love and com­munication among themselves before the creation of the world. So when God turns to himself as the center of the universe, there is still communication and love. But when I turn in-ward, there is no one to communicate with. And so each man in himself is exactly like the bullheaded minotaurus, shut up in his personal solitude in his labyrinth at Crete. This is the trag­edy of man. He is not adequate and there is no one there to answer.

  This not only leads to psychological problems, but it also destroys my relationship with others. On the other hand, when I begin really to think and act as a creature, then I can turn outward, as an equal, to other men. Suddenly I am no longer mumbling to myself. Once I accept myself as an equal to all men, I can talk as an equal to other men. I no longer have to talk to myself centrally and finally. If I acknowledge that I am really not God, and that since the fall we all are sinful, then I can have true human relationships without battering myself to pieces because they are not sufficient in themselves, or because they are not perfect. The trouble with human relationships is that man without God does not realize that all men are sinful, and so he hangs too much on his personal relationships, and they crush and break. No love affair between a man and a woman has ever been great enough to hang everything on. It will crumble away under your feet. And as the edges begin to break away the relationship is destroyed. But when I am a creature in the presence of God, and I see that the last rela­tionship is with an infinite God, and these human relationships are among equals, I can take from a human relationship what God meant it to provide, without putting the whole structure under an intolerable burden. More than this, when I acknowl­edge that none of us are perfect in this life, I can enjoy that which is beautiful in a relationship, without expecting it to be perfect.

  But most of all, I must recognize that no human relation-ships are going to be finally sufficient. The finally sufficient relationship must be with God himself. As Christians we have this relationship, and so our human relationships can be valid without being the finally sufficient thing. As sinners, acknowl­edging that we are not perfect in this life, we do not need to cast away every human relationship, including the rela­tionship of marriage, or the relationships of Christians inside the Church, just because they
prove not to be perfect. On the basis of the finished work of Christ it is possible, once I have seen this, to begin to understand that my relationships can be substantially healed in the present life. When two Christians find that their relationship has hit a wall, they can come hand­-in-hand and bring their failures under the blood of Christ, and get up again and go on. Think what this means practically in the areas of human relationships, in marriage, in the Church, the parent-child relationships, the employer-employee rela­tionship.

  Or we can put it in yet another way. The Christian is to be a demonstration of the existence of God. But if we as individual Christians, and as the Church, act on less than a personal rela­tionship to other men, where is the demonstration that God the Creator is personal? If there is no demonstration in our attitude toward other men that we really take seriously the person-to‑ person relationship, we might as well keep quiet. There must be a demonstration; that is our calling: to show that there is a reality in personal relationship, and not just words about it. If the individual Christian, and if the Church of Christ, is not allowing the Lord Jesus Christ to bring forth his fruit into the world, as a demonstration in the area of personal relationships, we cannot expect the world to believe. Lovelessness is a sea which knows no shore, for it is what God is not. And eventual­ly not only will the other man drown, but I will drown, and worst of all, the demonstration of God drowns as well when there is nothing to be seen but a sea of lovelessness and imper­sonality. As Christians, we are not to be in fellowship with false doctrine. But in the very midst of the battle against false teaching, we must not forget the proper personal relationships.