Oswald Chambers
1874 - 1917
Soul Satisfaction
O Lord, Thou hast searched me, and known me. Psalm 139:1
None of them can by any means redeem his brother, nor give to God a ransom for him: (for the redemption of their soul is costly, and must be let alone for ever). Psalm 49:7-8 (rv)
Beware of believing that the human soul is simple, for it is not true. Read Psalm 139, and look into yourself, and you will soon find you are much too complex to touch. Charles Wagner* was the apostle of naturalness, “the gospel of temperament”—Be simple! How can anyone who is wide-awake be simple?
We befool ourselves into moral imbecility if we believe those who tell us the human soul is simple. As long as we think we understand ourselves we are in a lamentable state of ignorance. The first dose of conviction of sin, or of the realisation of what the Psalmist states, viz., the unfathomable depths of our own souls, will put an end to that ignorance.
The only One who can redeem the human soul is the Lord Jesus Christ and He has done it, and the Holy Spirit brings the realisation of this to us experimentally. All this vast complex “me” which we cannot begin to understand, God knows completely, and through the Atonement He invades every part of our personality with His life.
Soul is the responsible expression of the ruling personal spirit, and when the personal spirit is filled with God’s Spirit, we have to see that we obey His Spirit and reconstruct another soul. God’s Spirit entering my spirit does not become my spirit, but quickens my spirit, and I begin to express a new soul. It is not the nature of the working of the soul that is altered, that remains the same in a regenerate human spirit as in an unregenerate human spirit, but a different driving power expresses itself.
When God’s Spirit comes into my personal spirit, instantly I am introduced to a life which manifests itself in contradiction to my old way of reasoning and expressing myself, and the consequence is that the life whereby I have affinity with other people is upset and they wonder what is the matter with me, a disturbing element has come in which cannot be estimated.
The incoming of the Spirit of God disturbs the reasoning faculties, and for a while the soul that is born from above (rv mg) is inarticulate, it has no expression; the equilibrium has been upset by the incoming of a totally new spirit into my spirit, and Jesus Christ says, “In your patience ye shall win your souls” (Luke 21:19 rv)—acquire your new soul with patience .
Satisfaction and the demand for satisfaction is a God-given principle in human nature, but it must be satisfaction in the highest. “Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.”
*Charles Wagner (1852-1918): Protestant clergyman and writer in Paris; author of [i]The Simple Life,[/i] published in 1904
Oswald Chambers
The servant as His Lord
CHRISTIAN PERFECTION by Oswald Chambers
ReplyDelete"Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect. . . ." Philippians 3:12
It is a snare to imagine that God wants to make us perfect specimens of what He can do; God's purpose is to make us one with Himself. The emphasis of holiness movements is apt to be that God is producing specimens of holiness to put in His museum. If you go off on this idea of personal holiness, the dead-set of your life will not be for God, but for what you call the manifestation of God in your life. "It can never be God's will that I should be sick." If it was God's will to bruise His own Son, why should He not bruise you? The thing that tells for God is not your relevant consistency to an idea of what a saint should be, but your real vital relation to Jesus Christ, and your abandonment to Him whether you are well or ill.
Christian perfection is not, and never can be, human perfection. Christian perfection is the perfection of a relationship to God which shows itself amid the irrelevancies of human life. When you obey the call of Jesus Christ, the first thing that strikes you is the irrelevancy of the things you have to do, and the next thing that strikes you is the fact that other people seem to be living perfectly consistent lives. Such lives are apt to leave you with the idea that God is unnecessary, by human effort and devotion we can reach the standard God wants. In a fallen world this can never be done. I am called to live in perfect relation to God so that my life produces a longing after God in other lives, not admiration for myself. Thoughts about myself hinder my usefulness to God. God is not after perfecting me to be a specimen in His show-room; He is getting me to the place where He can use me. Let Him do what He likes.
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