Then Daily Living

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What followed then was the real answer to this first question of “anthropology.’ What kind of person am now that it is settled by the Word and inner witness that my real inner self is Christ in me? How do I now in fact function as a human? Paul nicely slipped into his Galatians 2:20 statement, “yet not I, but Christ, lives in me. He did not just say “lives,” as if I am Christ. So back I came to realize that I am still the lamp—now absorbed in reflecting the light but still the lamp. But now—all important—what a different understanding of the lamp! Now it is no longer a soiled lamp under constant questioning, suspicion and condemnation. I now accept myself as a right self. If I am good enough for Him to accept and dwell in and express Himself by, I am good enough to accept myself just as I am.

It was perhaps the most important and revolutionary new recognition when at last I got Romans 7:17 into focus–that I never was a “bad” sell in my God-created humanity, any more than I was a “good” self. Nor was I a soiled self, as if something had poisoned my humanity–my being as a human. No, I can accept myself because the bad or good is the expression of the deity nature in me/as me–change of deity, change of owner, not change of my humanity–except that my physical body is the mortal part of me in which I long for a change (Rom. 8:23-25; 2 Cor. 5:1-8).

So I am free to be. Where I used to live in a continuous warning red light on my failures, sins and weaknesses, now I live in a green light. I think my thoughts, make my choices, do my daily jobs as right, not wrong. I refuse waves of that old sense of self-failure sweeping over me. Impossible indeed is that old false consciousness of a self-relying self apparently running itself and merely “helped” by the Lord, and so often tricked by Satan. Now I do accept myself and act freely as a full self because I have that fixed inner witness that it is actually He as me. As C.T. Studd in the Congo used to say to the Lord, “We are put here to see Jesus Christ running about in black [and white] bodies!”

This makes my present daily living wholly “natural” and practical. I am just myself. I be! When I am practicing my profession, I am not always reminding myself I am a carpenter, plumber, lawyer, doctor, professor, nurse or housewife. No! I just do my job as such, but I am really expressing that know-how of my profession which was not part of my human self but which I had desired, accepted and trained for, and which became settled in me/as me so that I call myself by the name of my profession. So also now, as a Christian, I am not always saying I am Christ in me/as me! No! I am just myself most of the day, just being and doing. But underneath I know Philippians 2:13 is fixedly, continuously true to me. It is He working in me “to will and do of His good pleasure,” and I boldly turn my “fear and trembling” of Philippians 2:12 into the kind of confidence John speaks of in his 1 John 4:17.

I am to take no condemnation of myself (Rom. 8:1), or doubt that it is He as me. This covers my whole range of activity of mind and body. I have so old a suspicion of the misuses of myself–whether of bodily appetites formerly misused and easily responsive to temptation, or soul reactions of disturbed, negative emotions about conditions or people, or questionings or doublings of the mind–that it is new for me to accept the fact that He has taken me over. I am not to doubt or question. It is for Him to keep what He has taken possession of. I didn’t choose Him. He chose me (John 15:16), so the “heat” is on Him to do the keeping. I might well question His choices, choosing me or you, but we are His choice, so I laugh and go free.

A pastor friend of mine, Keith Lamb of Kerrville, Texas, asked his folk, who are well taught in who they really are, “Hands up, those who, like St. Augustine, say ‘I love God and do as I like.’” He said very few hands went up because we bemused folk still suspect that it we do as we like, we’ll go back down to the old flesh ways! But no, no, we who now know who we are “do as we like” because what we like is His will and ways! It is no longer singing of myself, “Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it. Prone to leave the God I love.” No, no! No more wandering or leaving, for we are fixed as He. (We will talk a little later about temptation and soul-spirit responses.) This greatly changes our songs and prayers, for why keep asking Him to bless when He has said He is blessing? Why keep asking for the power when we say with Paul, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthened! me”? Why not change “pray so’” prayers into “say so’ prayers?