by T. Austin-Sparks
Chapter 2 - The Law of Renunciation
"Have
this mind in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: who,
being in the form of God, counted it not a prize to be on
an equality with God, but emptied himself, taking the
form of a bondservant, being made in the likeness of men;
and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself,
becoming obedient even unto death yea, the death of the
cross. Wherefore also God highly exalted him, and gave
unto him the name which is above every name; that in the
name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven
and things on earth and things under the earth, and that
every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to
the glory of God the Father" (Philippians
2:5-11).
"Yea verily, and I count all things to be loss
for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my
Lord: for whom I suffered the loss of all things, and do
count them but refuse, that I may gain Christ, and be
found in him, not having a righteousness of mine own,
even that which is of the law, but that which is through
faith in Christ, the righteousness which is of God by
faith" (Philippians 3:8-9).
"By faith Moses, when he was grown up, refused to
be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter; choosing rather
to be evil entreated with the people of God, than to
enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season; accounting the
reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of
Egypt" (Hebrews 11:24-26).
In this message we shall be occupied with the realization
of the Lord's full will, unto which He has called us. We
have already considered that great law of realization and
fulfilment, the law of the government of the Word of God.
We were able only just to touch the very fringe of that
matter, and I can only trust that it at least introduced
you to a new consideration, and that, because of that
emphasis, you will have a much closer and more devoted
regard for the Word of God in every matter of your life.
All those who have been of service to the Lord to others
have been people of the Word, and not just of the letter
of the Word, but of heart relationship with the Word of
God. All who have in any way fulfilled the function of
spiritual leadership, like Joshua, have, as we saw, been
based so strongly and utterly upon the Word of God. It
has been like that all the way through, but the greatest
Servant of all, the Lord Jesus, was meticulously careful
that in everything He moved according to the Word. The
Scriptures had such a place in His whole life, conduct,
teaching and work, that He became known as "the Word
of God". The Word is not only something written in a
book. It has to become personal, personified in life, in
character, and in every way if we are going to be of use
to others, to be able to fulfil any responsibility at all
like those men in the beginning of the Church in
Jerusalem and in Antioch, who were men who waited on God
for His Word. They did not organize the Church, nor did
they decide upon programmes, plans and schemes. They
never introduced anything until they had waited upon the
Lord for His Word about it, asking: 'Is this according to
what is revealed?' That is the only way of the growth of
the Church and its building up.
Well, as you see, that opens a very large door, but we
are not going any further with that matter. I just
re-emphasize that a binding law of spiritual progress in
the individual life, in the church life, local and
universal, is the absolute government of the Word of God,
to the law and to the testimony. If it is not according
thereto, then there will be a hidden peril in it.
So we go on now to another law of this progress in the
will of God unto its ultimate realization. We must
remember that we are called unto this. It is inherent in
our calling, and not something extra to the Christian
life, nor something optional in the Christian life. It is
fundamental, intrinsic, in the Christian life. So is what
we are going to say now about another law of the will and
purpose of God in our calling, and it is what is
presented to us in the Scriptures which we selected for
this purpose out of many others and what I am going to
call 'the law of renunciation'.
THE GREAT RENUNCIATION
In
Philippians 2 the Lord Jesus is presented to us in terms
of the great renunciation. He was equal with God, but, as
the margin says, He regarded that not as something to be
grasped, or held on to, tenaciously gripped, but He
"emptied himself". He made the great
renunciation in heaven.
The Apostle Paul has caught that mind, which he exhorts
Christians to have. He has seen the point! It came to him
in the great encounter with the Lord at the beginning of
his Christian life. He saw, and then all the other
things, however great they were - and they were many and
they were great, as he tells us in that Letter to the
Philippians - lost their grip on him, because something
else had a grip on him, and he says that he made the
great renunciation, perhaps not in the same dimension as
the Lord Jesus, but for him it was everything, as it was
for the Lord. Our everything may not be as great as was
the Lord's everything, but if it is everything, well,
that is full and final. Paul says that he counted all
these things, this catalogue of advantages which were his
by birth, by upbringing, by training and by acquirement,
as refuse. He renounced them all. And by the great
renunciation of his Master and of himself the Church has
benefited through all these generations - and that is the
point we have to come to before long.
Then we read of Moses, though we could have mentioned
many others in that chapter 11 of Hebrews. We picked out
Moses, who renounced all that he had in Egypt, the
learning of the Egyptians, the court of Pharaoh, and all
the advantages that were there. He made the great
renunciation. Why? Again, because of the people of God.
THE DISTORTION OF GOOD INTO EVIL
Now, that
is the point, but before we come to its application, let
me remind you that one of the clear marks and traces of
the devil and his handiwork is the distortion of good
into evil, of good things made into bad things. Satan CREATES
nothing, for he is not a creator, but he attempts to turn
what has been made for good into bad. Hence you have a
whole list of paradoxes in the Bible, and it is
fascinating to follow them through, but I am not going to
do so. I will just give you a hint. There is a whole list
of paradoxes, of seeming contradictions, and they are in
this realm of good things in Divine intention turned into
bad things.
Take the matter of ambition. Ambition indeed is the
parent of many evils. Look at what ambition in the world
leads to! There are so many ambitious men and women who,
to realize their ambition, will tread upon all principles
and will ride roughshod over all sensibilities. Ambition
is a driving force to get, to be, to master, to dominate,
to rule, and have we not in our lifetime seen something
of that? My, these ambitious people whose names we could
mention, who have thrown the world into the most
distressing and awful state! Literally multitudes have
been murdered for one man's ambition! We need not dwell
upon it, but that is what ambition can be, and it has
come into the Church of God. Men, as Peter calls it,
"lording it" over God's heritage, wanting to be
something in the Church, and to have power. They are just
fulfilling some secret ambition, and perhaps do not mean
it or realize it, but others do.
Well, here is something that is evil, BUT God
created ambition! It is a Divine thing. Our translations
do not help us too much in this, but Paul said: "We
make it OUR AMBITION... to be well-pleasing unto
Him" (2 Corinthians 5:9 - R.V. margin). Paul, you
have redeemed a bad word! You have salvaged something
that has gone astray, that the devil has captured and
turned to his own use, for it was ambition in Satan
before his fall that led to that fall, and he, like a
serpent, has injected that poison into human nature.
Surely we should keep that word 'ambition' out of the
sacred language? No! It is something Divine.
We could go on with a whole lot of paradoxes and
contradictions like that. Paul gave us a list in one
place: "As sorrowful, yet alway rejoicing; as poor,
yet making many rich; as having nothing, yet possessing
all things" (2 Corinthians 6:10). Those are
paradoxes, are they not?
Here, in this very chapter, Philippians 2, and in this
very consideration of the great renunciation, we are in
the presence of one of these things which have been
distorted. Satan has taken hold of something that God
created and put into man and into His universe. What is
it? The desire to acquire, to possess, to have. It is not
wrong in itself to have, to acquire, to possess. Do you
not have many battles over this very matter, whether you
ought to have this, and whether it is right to possess
that? In your very nature there are the traces of this
Divine thing, this acquisitiveness. Yes, God put that in.
The Bible is full of it. We were looking at Israel
earlier, and what a lot the Lord said to them about
'having'! 'I will bring you into a land flowing with milk
and honey, and this is for you to HAVE. I mean you
to have it, to be a wealthy people. It is all for you.
Every place that the sole of your foot shall tread upon I
have given to you.'
Over against that there is the great renunciation. Is
that a contradiction? Renunciation is a law of having -
the Lord Jesus let go, and He was given. He renounced,
and was endowed with all the fullness of heaven.
Satan, then, uses this Divine thing, twists something
which is of God and is quite right in its own nature, and
gives it this distortion to make it an evil thing, so
that in this world now we have this terrible
assertiveness, this wanting to get control, to possess,
to have.
WHAT IS IT FOR?
The answer
to that question is the answer to the paradox. What do
you want it for? And, you see, it is just there that the
enemy has done his work by introducing the selfhood
power, this drawing to self, having for self, holding for
self, prizing it for self. So when we read: "He
emptied HIMSELF", there is the whole story of
redemption in the emptying of self, and of the wonderful
issue in this universe along the line of the redemption -
what man is going to have by God's gift and what we may
have now by His gift in a spiritual way. Every blessing
of the spirit in the heavenlies in Christ and the
fullness into which we are called in the will of God
comes along the line of the conversion of self, this
turning round from self to God.
Now please do not let that principle work wrongly! This
is where Peter slipped up, because he was not converted
at the time. I know I am going to be challenged on this,
for I have been, but there is a real sense in which Peter
was not converted until the Day of Pentecost. We will not
argue that out, and you can say what you like about it,
but when the Lord came with the basin of water and the
towel to Peter in order to wash his feet, Peter said:
"Thou shalt never wash my feet!" Then the Lord
said: "If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with
me" (John 13:8). 'Oh, well', said Peter, 'I want the
part.' Do you see the point? In a very few hours after
that it was proved that it was really Peter who was in
view, who wanted all that he could get, even of Divine
things. And when I say that you will get a great fullness
if only you will learn the lesson of renunciation, be
careful as to your ambition for fullness! WHO is
it for? WHAT is it for? Is it for self, or is it
for the Lord?
GOD'S VINDICATION IN THE CREATION OF MAN
The
principle lying behind Philippians 2 is just this: The
Lord Jesus let go of all that He had of heavenly glory
and equality with God, not for Himself, for it was His
already and there was nothing whatever that He need do to
enhance His own position and rights, but for the
vindication of God in the creation of man. God created
man and took a tremendous responsibility in doing so.
Have you not often felt bad about this? Oh, some of your
natures are better than mine, but sometimes I have been
tempted to think: 'Was God justified in creating man,
collectively as he is today?' I think of the history of
man, and, really, it hardly bears thinking about! But God
did it. He took the risk and the responsibility of making
you and making me. I have to turn that back on the Lord
sometimes and say: 'Lord, You made me! You gave me a
being! It was by Your law that I came into being! It was
Your responsibility!' Well, that is helpful sometimes,
but we will leave it.
God had got to be vindicated in His creative
responsibility, and, therefore, He had to save this man
that He had made. Further, He had to be glorified in this
man, and there is no salvation and no glorification while
man is a selfish creature. Selfishness spoils everything
and robs of all glory everywhere. Therefore that deep
thing had to be touched and dealt with, not
theoretically, not doctrinally, not theologically, but
actually, and there is no way of dealing with anything ACTUALLY
except by taking it and destroying it in your own person
and work, and being the opposite yourself by a mighty,
deep work of God. So the motive that led the Lord Jesus
to the great renunciation, the letting go, was the
vindication of God, the justification of creation and the
making possible of man coming to that glory in fellowship
with the Father in heaven for ever. It was outward, first
for His Father's vindication, and secondly for man's
redemption from that twist that the devil had brought in
and by which so much mischief had been made. It was your
salvation and mine from some THING that the devil
had planted in the race which was a contradiction to what
God meant. All that was outward, and not for the Lord
Jesus Himself.
Now read His life again. All that is included in this
description in Philippians 2: 'He emptied Himself... He
humbled Himself... He took the form of a bondslave... He
was found in fashion as a man... He became obedient unto
death' - and the most shameful and ignominious form of
death that the world has ever known! It has always been
known that crucifixion is the worst form of death
possible. But He went right down to that! That is letting
go of self and all self-interest, is it not? That is
renunciation! And all that was for the Father first, and
was why He was always speaking on this earth of 'My
Father... My Father'. It was for the vindication of the
Father, and for the redemption of man unto glory, the
transformation and transfiguration of humanity.
OUR RENUNCIATION
Now, dear
friends, you and I are in the way of this. Have you not
noticed that the Lord's dealings with us when He gets us
in hand, when He really does get a purchase upon us, are
along this line? Again and again in the course of our
Christian experience we come up against a situation where
it is: 'Are we going to hold on or let go?' Are we going
to let go? Can we let go? Can we really renounce? We are
stuck until that is settled! We just cannot get past it.
It may be an incident in our life, or it may be what we
might call a small thing in comparison with other things,
but there it is. 'Must I let go? Shall I keep hold? Shall
I get this bone between my teeth and worry it to death,
and not let it go?' I must repeat: there is no way on
until that thing is settled.
Have you not, on the other hand, experienced what it
means when at last, having sought the grace of God, you
let go and say to Him: 'All right, Lord, my hands are
off. I am not just resigning.' Be careful about becoming
resigned to your fate! That is not the will of God. There
must not be a negative or passive attitude, but a
positive one: 'Lord, if this is what You want, You have
it, and I believe You have a purpose in bringing me to
this position of letting go, of renouncing.' When we get
there something breaks in, and all that we had been
wanting we get! It is strange that it works like that,
but what about Abraham and Isaac? Could Abraham not have
held on? Could he not have argued with God? Could he not
have supported his tenacity about Isaac by reminding the
Lord of what He had said? Oh, yes, he could have built up
a tremendous argument against offering Isaac, but he came
to the point of the great renunciation. He let go to God,
and what did he get? He not only got Isaac back, but he
got a nation! "In thy seed shall all the nations of
the earth be blessed" (Genesis 22:18). It was from
inward to outward.
You see the range, the tremendous potential of
renunciation? We have picked Moses out from all those
mentioned in Hebrews 11, and he could have argued with
the Lord on the ground of sovereignty: 'Well, Lord, Your
sovereignty ordered that when all the babes were being
slaughtered I was spared, and that girl of Pharaoh's came
along that day. It was in Your sovereignty that I was
rescued and taken right INTO the palace and
brought up in Pharaoh's house, educated according to the
wisdom of the Egyptians. Your sovereignty was in this!'
But the point was - he left it all, and it was a big
'all'. He renounced it all. Why? Because he had become
converted, not in the New Testament sense, perhaps, but
converted. He turned round, inward, to people. His race,
the people of God, were, as we know, on his heart:
"Choosing rather to be evil entreated with the
people of God" - and there you have his motive: the
people of God. 'What I may lose does not matter so
long as the people of God get the benefit and the
blessing.'
Do you see the point? Christ was repeating Himself in
these men's lives on the one principle of renunciation;
and because He, the Son of God, made the great
renunciation, "wherefore" - and what a
'wherefore'! - "God highly exalted him, and gave
unto him the name which is above every name; that in the
name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven,
and things on the earth" - and here is a peculiarity
- "and things under the earth". You know,
things like that are said quite often in the Bible, but
the third dimension, "things under the earth",
is left out on other occasions when the heavens and the
earth are mentioned. I will leave that for you to think
about! But in THIS case the underworld is also
going to bow to Him! His renunciation means that the full
dimensions of the universe are affected. What a range is
affected by the ability to let go unto God!
I think I hardly need say more than that. To let go is
one of the most difficult things that you and I have to
learn! The Lord Jesus was "meek and lowly in
heart", and meekness is just selflessness, the
outward aspect of life. Not having things for ourselves,
but thinking how much others can gain if we have to lose
them, and if by OUR loss the Father can gain what
He ought to have and the people whom He has created may
be benefited.
THE LAW OF ENLARGEMENT
That is the
law of enlargement. You noticed that I stopped short in
the reading from Hebrews 11 about Moses at a certain
point, because I am always afraid of this wretched
self-interest of ours! It is always there, and ready to
pounce upon anything. I did not read: "He looked
unto the recompense of reward." The Lord has
promised enlargement along the line of renunciation and
loss, but we should not be motivated by reward, should
we? No servant of the Lord should be motivated by what he
is going to get out of his service. "When ye shall
have done all the things that are commanded you, say, we
are unprofitable servants." Nevertheless, we can put
a right and proper emphasis upon it because of where we
started. Are you following the train of thought? It is
God's will for you, for me, for mankind, to be enlarged
with all His fullness, to have ALL that He can
give, but not selfishly, not for our own use, but for His
glory, His vindication, and if you and I get to glory and
He is able to give us then of His fullness, endow us with
heavenly riches, I am quite sure that we will have found
in the discipline of renunciation the right ground upon
which to be rewarded. You see, anyone who has really been
through this, has been right in that deep and desperate
reality of facing the loss of some THING, some
possession, something which meant very much to them,
indeed, it might be everything to them, might have made
or marred their lives, for they have been faced with the
question of willingness to let go unto the Lord. It has
meant devastation to selfhood, to ambition, but when that
devastation has taken place and we come out on the other
side, it is all right. There is no battle now, for it is
done, and then the Lord has His ground for rewarding, for
giving. It is safe for Him to do it.
I wonder how many of you, especially you servants of the
Lord, whoever you are, have sometimes said to the Lord:
'Lord, can You trust me with this? Can You trust me with
that blessing? Can You really trust me to do this for
You? I know my own heart. I know its pride, its
acquisitiveness, its love of place, position, influence,
and so on, and I'm afraid that if You do bless, I may,
all subtly, take some gratification to myself. Can You
trust me?'
The Lord is working to get us to the place, dear Friends,
where He can trust us with eternal, heavenly
responsibility, and He knows when that deep, evil thing
in our nature has been dealt with by the discipline of
renunciation. It is very true to spiritual life, is it
not?
There are so many tensions! Are we not suffering in this
life from nervous tensions and strains? Yes! but what is
many a nervous breakdown and a lot of this wrong kind of
intensity that does us so much harm, nervously and
physically, due to? Not getting what we want! We are not
having what we have set our heart upon! God is not giving
it to us, or doing it for us, and so we get into this
state of tension, strain, in life. Life becomes a strain,
and even the Christian life becomes a terrible strain. If
you do not know anything about that you are a very
fortunate person, but it is true for us all. We meet
people everywhere who are under strain. You can see it in
their faces. And what is the matter? They have not learnt
to let go to God. We know, by experiences that we have
had, that when we have come to the place where we let go
to the Lord (and I am very particular about saying
'letting go TO THE LORD!'), a wonderful calm comes,
wonderful rest and wonderful peace. The battle is over
and the strain has gone. That is very true.
The great renunciation made by the Lord Jesus was that He
identified Himself with fallen man. Temptation has no
meaning at all if there is not something to work upon,
and so when the devil came to Him in the wilderness and
offered Him the kingdoms of the world, it was no
temptation if He had no heart for the kingdoms of the
world and could say: 'You can have them. I am not
interested in them. The kingdoms of the world do not
matter to me at all.' There would be no temptation, would
there? But if the kingdoms of this world were the very
object for which He had come, there is a temptation, and
a subtle one, appealing to the soul life. The Son of Man
became identified with man, knowing quite well the
temptations of man and man's natural ambition. He was
tempted in ALL points as we are, sin apart, but He
conquered. How? Not by saying: 'I am not a bit interested
in that. That is no temptation to Me!' But by saying: 'I
am going to have the kingdoms of this world, but not at
your hands, Satan! Not by your gift, and not along your
line. I am going to the Cross, and there I will destroy
you and get the kingdoms on a proper ground.' So He came
in the likeness of man, knowing man's temptations,
without the sinful nature, yet with a human soul which
can have ambition for itself or for God. In that
temptation, then, it was the Father and every word that
the Father had spoken which came first. The battleground
was: 'Not for Me, but for the Father and for others.'
I wonder if you have followed me? I think we are touching
things that are very real in the spiritual life! This
whole matter of the Lord's identification with us was in
order to save us, and to save us from our selfhood, our
self-towardness, by conversion turning God-ward. The life
of a Christian, then, is simply the life which is for
God. We are tested on that so often, and when we get
through we come to rest, to peace, to quietness. The
battle is over - until the next time! But that is the way
we grow. The next time will be more severe, I am sorry to
say, but when you go into it you have learnt something.
You do not go into the more severe without the knowledge
of what it means, and you are able to say: 'Oh, well, I
had something like this before, and I have learned how to
get through by the grace of God. This is a bit more
difficult, but it is the same principle. I am not going
to fight for my own way, nor for my own interests. I am
not going to exercise this bulldog disposition of mine to
get hold of this and not let go, but I am going to be
ready to put it on the altar for God.' The solution comes
that way. It is the law of renunciation in progress
toward Divine fullness.
The Lord give us understanding and help from His Word!
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