Self Renunciation # 2

Self-Renunciation # 2 

Why do believers murmur at the painful dispensations of Providence, and find submission so hard an achievement? Because "self" is disturbed in its enjoyment! Why are they so easily offended, and experience such difficulty in showing forgiveness? Because self-esteem has been wounded! Why are they covetous? Because self is gratified by its increasing stores.

What is vanity - but the indulgence of self-love? What is ambition - but the exultation of self? What is pride - but the worship of self? Why are they so reluctant to give their time and labor for the good of others, and the glory of God? Because they want it for ease, and the enjoyment of self? Why are they peevish, quarrelsome, and discontented with the little annoyances of life, which are everywhere and continually occurring? Because they want to settle down in unmolested ease, and undisturbed quiet, to enjoy themselves!

But is this right? Is not this living as if we were our own? Is not this living for ourselves? I not this forgetting that we are purchased property, belonging to another? My dear friends, do consider this subject. Weigh well the import of the condition of Christian discipleship, as laid down by our Lord: "If any man will come after me, LET HIM DENY HIMSELF." Self-denial, not self-pleasing, is your business; and the evidence of our being disciples is in exact proportion to our disposition thus to take up our cross. If we are coveting ease, quiet, soft indulgence, luxurious gratification; and are dissatisfied, and discontented, and contentious, and peevish, because we cannot please ourselves, nor get others to please us, as the supreme end of life, how can we dream that we are the disciples of Him, of whom it is declared, "he pleased not himself;" especially since it is said, "Let the same mind be in you which was in Christ Jesus?"

For whom then are to to live, and whom are we to please, if not ourselves? Who is to come in the place of self? GOD! And for this obvious reason. We are God's! God's servants! God's property!

Many of you have hired servants, both in your house and in your shops, with whom you have contracted for so much wages given to have so much work in return. To their bodily labor, to their time, in short to their whole energies of body and mind, up to the stipulated amount of work, you have therefore an undoubted and equitable right and if instead of living for you, they live for themselves; if instead of seeking to please you, they seek to please themselves; if instead of making it their aim and business to serve you, they make it their aim and business to enjoy and gratify themselves - you consider them as dishonest, and yourself defrauded of your property.

Apply this to God. You are His, not only by the right of creation, and preservation; but by the more sacred right of redemption. You, your body, soul, time, talents, property, influence - are all his - bought and paid for by the price of His Son's most precious blood.He is forever following you with His demand, and pressing it upon you. He does not allow it to lie in abeyance. He does not permit it to sleep and be forgotten, but is ever saying, "You are not your own - you are mine!" He says to you in His Word, "You are mine." He bids His ministers enforce the claim every Sunday. He collects you around the sacramental table, where the symbols of the body and blood of the Lord, with silent yet impressive demand, say to you, "you are bought with a price - you are therefore not your own - you are God's."

Nor can you be at a loss in what way the claim of God is to be acknowledged and met, for this is specified: "Glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God's." You cannot of course add to His glory: the glowworm might as well think of adding to the effulgence of the sun. A worthless bit of tin, or glass, cannot increase the rays of the great luminary, but even these insignificant substances can "reflect" them. So the believer, though he cannot increase the glory of Jehovah - can manifest it. God is glorified, when He is acknowledged, loved, served, imitated. The glory of God consists of His attributes, especially His moral perfections of holiness, justice, truth, love and mercy. Hence the imitation of these in the conduct of the believer glorifies God, for these attributes in Him are the same in kind as, though infinitely less in degree, than in God, and therefore they are the rays of God's glory falling upon the spirit, and reflected by Him before the eyes of mankind.

The apostle, speaking of the great spiritual change wrought in the soul of a real Christian, calls it a participation of the "Divine nature," (2 Peter 1:4). Now as God is always glorified when He is seen, the very manifestation of Him being to His own praise, He is glorified by His people, because He is seen, very imperfectly I admit, but in measure, in their holy character. Hence man was said to be created in the image of God and is now new-created in that same image, in conversion. A Christian is God's witness, image, representative in the world; and his great business is, by an imitation of God's attributes, to remind men of God; and to teach them who and what He is.

~John Angell James~

(continued with # 3 - "How It's Done")