Humility and Sin: Learning to Live with Freedom

"The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath now made me free from the law of sin, which once led me captive" - is neither the annihilation nor the sanctification of the flesh, but a continuous victory given by the Spirit as He mortifies the deeds of the body. As health expels disease, and light swallows up darkness, and life conquers death, the indwelling of Christ through the Spirit is the health and light and life of the soul.

It is not sin, but God's grace showing a man and ever reminding him what a sinner he was, that, will keep him truly humble. It is not sin, but grace, that will make me indeed know myself a sinner, and make the sinner's place of deepest self-abasement the place I never leave.

Being occupied with self, even amid the deepest self-abhorrence, can never free us from self. It is the revelation of God, not only by the law condemning sin but by His grace delivering from it, that will make us humble. The law may break the heart with fear; it is only grace that works that sweet humility which becomes a joy to the soul as its second nature.

Not to be occupied with thy sin, but to be occupied with God, brings deliverance from self. (Andrew Murray, Humility, Chapter 8)

LEARNING FREEDOM

For most of my life I have been trying to learn how to live best in captivity.  How can I make this slavery as bearable as possible?  Weren't the Jews told to settle down in the cities of their exile?  I am also in exile in this world.  Perhaps it's best to just make the best of it.  Unfortunately, that is just my problem.

God has not removed the law of sin yet.  It is still alive and well in this life.  What he has done is supersede that law with another: the law of the Spirit of life.  The freedom I experience is not merely a future hope, otherwise no one could say they were set free, but only that they will be set free someday.  The freedom I experience is not an all-at-once sort of exchange, either.  If that were so, then I would be simply "freed" from the law of sin rather than being "hath now made. . . free" as Paul writes.

I suppose the best way to describe this freedom is that the chains are cut, but I am still like a freed slave in the South during the Civil War or like Pilgrims given leave to make a colony in the New World. The journey lies ahead of me even though freedom is mine.  I am free, but I must learn (and sometimes fight) to be free.

The Israelites' journey through the wilderness into the Promised Land gives a vivid picture of freedom.  At times they longed for their slavery back in Egypt.  Such longing buried them in the wilderness.  They may have been set free, but they never lived as free.  Perhaps my deliverance is a lot like theirs.  Maybe I am not so much doubting that the Red Sea of sin was split open for me and God fought for my soul against this "world with devils filled," but that I do not want to live in the freedom into which he has brought me.  I do not need someone telling me I have been set free so much as someone who will show me how to live free.

SIN FACES AWAY FROM GOD

The law of sin is the tendency to withdraw from the race, complain and die in the wilderness, make the "best" of this life.  The law of the Spirit of life is "continuous victory" over that temptation to "Curse God and die" or "Eat, drink, and be merry."  God does not remove the law of sin because it is merely the opposite of the law the Spirit of life.  They face opposite directions, one toward God, the other toward my self.

Murray points out that the law of the Spirit of life is evidenced by humility.  Humility is the right response to the law of the Spirit of life.  It performs two actions.  It denies the self.  When I live according to this law, I turn my back on living by the effort and power of my unaided, uncontrolled self.  Instead I embrace God through the Spirit.  I trust him.  I live for his aid and his control (which is not controlling).  The law of sin does the opposite.  Under that law, I deny God in how I live and trust my own resources to get me through.

Lord, I find myself so easily trying to manage my own sin and my own life.  Somehow I find I get so busy with trying to live my life without you, trying to make it all work.  The issue is not how good I am, but how good you are.   It is not about how bad I am, but about how you have loved me even in my badness.  Let me find the humility that empowers me to live with your grace.  Let me dispense with the false humility that drives me to despair.  Amen.

One of the best indicators of which law rules my life comes in the question, "What preoccupies my mind?

The Sacredness of Nature and Repetition

Devotional Classics, G.K. Chesterton, Excerpts from Orthodoxy

All the towering materialism which dominates the modern mind rests ultimately upon one assumption; a false assumption.  It is supposed that if a thing goes on repeating itself it is probably dead; a piece of clockwork. (333)

 The sun rises every morning.  I do not rise every morning; but the variation is due not to my activity, but to my inaction.

[Children] always say, "Do it again"; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead.  For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony.  But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony.  It is possible that God says every morning, "Do it again" to the sun; and every evening, "Do it again" to the moon.  It may not be automatic necessity that makes all the daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them.  It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we. (334)

In short, I had always believed that the world involved magic: now I thought that perhaps it involved a magician.  And this pointed a profound emotion always present and sub-conscious; that this world of ours has some purpose; and if there is a purpose, there is a person.  I had always felt life first a story: and if there is a story there is a story-teller.  (335)

The one thing [modern thought]loved to talk about was expansion and largeness. . . .  Why should  a man surrender his dignity to the solar system any more than to a whale?  If mere size proves that man is not the image of God, then a whale may be the image of God.  (335) 

 I felt in my bones; first, that this world does not explain itself.  It may be a miracle with a supernatural explanation; it may be a conjuring trick, with a natural explanation.  But the explanation of the conjuring trick, if it is to satisfy me, will have to be better than the natural explanations I have heard.  The thing is magic, true or false.

 Second, I came to feel as if magic must have some meaning, and meaning must have someone to mean it.  There was something very personal in the world, as in a work of art; whatever it meant it meant violently.

 Third, I though this purpose beautiful in its old design, in spite of its defects, such as dragons.  Fourth, that the proper form of thanks to it is some form of humility and restraint: we should thank God for beer and Burgundy by not drinking too much of them.  We owed, also an obedience to whatever made us.

And last, and strangest, there had come into my mind a vague and vast impression that in some way all good was remnant to be stored and held sacred out of some primordial ruin.  Man had saved his good as Crusoe saved his goods: he had saved them from a wreck.  (336)

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.  For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him.  He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.  (Colossians 1:15-17)

Recently, I was taking quiet walks in the woods near our house.  In the silence I began to be aware of the trees and clouds in particular.  By going out among the trees and clouds and spending time there, I began to have a sense of friendship with them.  I could see how pagan religions would life up the natural elements as “brothers and sisters” or even as gods.  There was something comforting and close about Nature.

I saw the trees lifting their branches to greet the morning, a congregation of praise and worship.  I saw the clouds dance across the sky, sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly.  The birds sang in unison with these quieter cousins.  I could join them in my heart or even with my voice.  There was so much praise.

In the Fall, I could hear the trees going to sleep.  The ground itself rested as blankets of snow were laid on it.  The silence was not death, but rest and expectation.  I was taught that times of resting and waiting  were times of life as well.

I am used to thinking of such thoughts and feelings as “poetic” and “imaginative.”  Nature, like life, seemed to be a “tale told by an idiot, signifying nothing.”  As Nature is, so is my life.  My life, then became a microcosm of meaningless repetition and the gratification of whatever fancies hit me.  My sense of trees and clouds “telling” me something or showing any “meaning” in life were creations of my fancy.

No doubt, I have had my fanciful moments.  Usually, I had the sense that the universe was somehow against me.  “Murphy’s Law” was one I thought might have some merit.  “If anything can go wrong, it probably will.”  I was “Christian” enough to blame God for my misfortunes and troubles.  Funny how Nature is devoid of meaning until something bad happens and then I shake my fist at the sky and ask, “Why?”

What Chesterton seemed aware of from an early age, I have had to fight to understand later in my life.  The universe is not mostly empty space, but full of God and the heavens.  The beauty I see is not merely fanciful, but a “purpose beautiful in its old design.”  The pain and struggle indicate “some primordial ruin.”  My work in these days is like Robinson Crusoe, was to find in this wreckage that “all good was a remnant to be stored and held sacred."

At the heart of this universe is purpose.  The explanation of purposelessness cannot be sustained in my mind for long.  Meaning is as important to human life as food and drink (Viktor Frankl).  Where there is a hunger, there is most likely a corresponding supply.  The meaning at the heart of the universe is Christ.  All things were created for him.  People, specifically, were “called according to [God’s] purpose, . . . to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.”  (Romans 8:28-29)

Lord, each blade of grass, each cloud in the sky, each animal that lives and breathes, and each stream which flows lives (in its own way) to do your will.  Your will is that this would house your Son and his siblings, each person who by their desire and choice live a life as he would live in their place.  May the ruin I face in this world and in my life not overcome me, but by your grace inspire me to store and hold sacred the good of this world and this life for your sake.  Amen.

The roots of Christian unity, indeed, human unity are to be found in this purpose embedded in the universe.  I know that such unity will not be found by simply announcing it or by changing laws to enforce it, but rather by inner transformation  that yields a life conformed to the likeness of Christ.  This will be our unity, or nothing.  My part is to join the revolution of renewal, being in Christ and like him even as I go about my daily life of work, rest, eating, and relating.  For me, frequent  blessings and prayers remind me of whose world I live in and what purpose he has.