The question before us is what the Christian life, true spirituality, really is,
and how it may be lived in a twentieth-century setting.
The first point that we must make is that it is impossible even to begin
living the Christian life, or to know anything of true spirituality, before one
is a Christian. And the only way to become a Christian is neither by trying to
live some sort of a Christian life nor by hoping for some sort of religious
experience, but rather by accepting Christ as Savior. No matter how complicated,
educated, or sophisticated we may be, or how simple we may be, we
must all come the same way, insofar as becoming a Christian is concerned.
As the kings of the earth and the mighty of the earth are born in exactly the
same way, physically, as the simplest man, so the most intellectual person
must become a Christian in exactly the same way as the simplest person.
This is true for all men everywhere, through all space and all time. There are
no exceptions. Jesus said a totally exclusive word: "No man cometh unto the
Father, but by me" (John 14:6).
The reason for this is that all men are separated from God because of
their true moral guilt. God exists, God has a character, God is a holy God;
and when men sin (and we all must acknowledge we have sinned not only by
mistake but by intention), they have true moral guilt before the God who
exists. That guilt is not just the modern concept of guilt-feelings, a psychological
guilty feeling in man. It is a true moral guilt before the infinite-
personal, holy God. Only the finished, substitutionary work of Christ
upon the cross as the Lamb of God-in history, space, and time-is enough
to remove this. Our true guilt, that brazen heaven which stands between us
and God, can be removed only upon the basis of the finished work of Christ
plus nothing on our part. The Bible's whole emphasis is that there must be
no humanistic note added at any point in the accepting of the gospel. It is
the infinite value of the finished work of Christ, the second person of the
Trinity, upon the cross plus nothing that is the sole basis for the removal of
our guilt. When we thus come, believing God, the Bible says we are declared
justified by God, the guilt is gone, and we are returned to fellowship with
God-the very thing for which we were created in the first place.
Just as the only basis for the removal of our guilt is the finished work of
Christ upon the cross in history, plus nothing, so the only instrument for
accepting that finished work of Christ upon the cross is faith. This is not
faith in the twentieth-century or Kierkegaardian concept of faith as a jump
in the dark-not a solution on the basis of faith in faith. It is believing the
specific promises of God; no longer turning our backs on them, no longer
calling God a liar, but raising the empty hands of faith and accepting that
finished work of Christ as it was fulfilled in history upon the cross. The Bible
says that at that moment we pass from death to life, from the kingdom of
darkness to the kingdom of God's dear Son. We become, individually, children
of God. We are children of God from that time on. I repeat, there is no
way to begin the Christian life except through the door of spiritual birth,
any more than there is any other way to begin physical life except through
the door of physical birth.
Yet, having said this about the beginning of the Christian life, we must
also realize that while the new birth is necessary as the beginning, it is only
the beginning. We must not think that because we have accepted Christ as
Savior and are therefore Christians, this is all there is in the Christian life. In
one way physical birth is the most important part in our physical life,
because we are not alive in the external world until we have been born. In
another way, however, it is the least important of all the aspects of our life,
because it is only the beginning and then it is past. After we are born, the
important thing is the living of our life in all its relationships, possibilities,
and capabilities. It is exactly the same with the new birth. In one way, the
new birth is the most important thing in our spiritual life, because we are
not Christians until we have come this way. In another way, however, after
one has become a Christian, it must be minimized, in that we should not
always have our mind only on our new birth. The important thing after
being born spiritually is to live. There is a new birth, and then there is the
Christian life to be lived. This is the area of sanctification, from the time of
the new birth through this present life, until Jesus comes or until we die.
Often, after a person is born again and asks, "What shall I do next?" he
is given a list of things, usually of a limited nature and primarily negative.
Often he is given the idea that if he does not do this series of things (whatever
this series of things happens to be in the particular country and location
and at the time he happens to live), he will be spiritual. This is not so. The
true Christian life, true spirituality, is not merely a negative not-doing of any
small list of things. Even if the list began as a very excellent list of things to
beware of in that particular historic setting, we still must emphasize that the
Christian life, or true spirituality, is more than refraining from a certain list
of external taboos in a mechanical way.
Because this is true, there almost always comes into being another
group of Christians that rises up and begins to work against such a list of
taboos; thus, there is a tendency toward a struggle in Christian circles
between those who set up a certain list of taboos and those who, feeling
there is something wrong with this, say, "Away with all taboos, away with all
lists." Both of these groups can be right and both can be wrong, depending
on how they approach the matter.
I was impressed by this on one Saturday night at L'Abri, when we were
having one of our discussion times. On that particular night everybody
present was a Christian, many of them from groups in countries where
"lists" had been very much accentuated. They began to talk against the use
of taboos, and at first as I listened to them I rather agreed with them, in the
direction they were going. But as I listened further to this conversation, and
as they spoke against the taboos in their own countries, it became quite clear
to me that what they really wanted was merely to be able to do the things
that the taboos were against. What they really wanted was a more lax Christian
life. But we must see that in giving up such lists, in feeling the limitation
of the "list" mentality, we must not do this merely in order to be able to live a
looser life; it must be for something deeper. So I think both sides of this discussion
can be right and both sides can be wrong. We do not come to true
spirituality or the true Christian life merely by keeping a list, but neither do
we come to it merely by rejecting the list and then shrugging our shoulders
and living a looser life.
If we are considering outward things in relation to true spirituality, we
are face-to-face not with some small list, but with the whole Ten Commandments
and all of God's other commands. In other words, if I see the
list as a screen, and I say this small list is trite, dead, and cheap, and I take
hold of the screen and lift it away, then I am not face-to-face with a looser
thing; I am face-to-face with the whole Ten Commandments and all that is
included in them. I am also face-to-face with what we might call the Law of
Love, the fact that I am to love God and I am to love my fellowman.
In the book of Romans, in the fourteenth chapter, verse fifteen, we read:
"But if thy brother be grieved with thy meat, now walkest thou not charitably.
Destroy not him with thy meat, forwhomChrist died." This is the law of God.
In a very real sense there is no liberty here. It is an absolute declaration that we
are to do this. It is perfectly true that we cannot be saved by doing this, we cannot
do this in our own strength, and none of us do this perfectly in this life.
Nevertheless, it is an imperative. It is the absolute command of God. The
same thing is true in 1 Corinthians 8:12-13: "But when ye sin so against the
brethren, and wound their weak conscience, ye sin against Christ. Wherefore,
if meat make my brother to offend, I will eat no flesh while the world
standeth, lest I make my brother to offend." Therefore, when I take hold of
the screen of a trite list and say, "This is too superficial," and I push it aside, I
must see what I amdoing. I amnot now confronted with a libertine concept,
but I am confronted with the whole Ten Commandments and with the Law
of Love. So even if we are dealing only with outward commands, we have not
moved into a looser life; we have moved into something much more profound
and heart-searching. As a matter of fact, when we are done with our
honest wrestling before God, very often we will find that we will be observing
at least some of the taboos on these lists. But having gone deeper, we find that
we will be observing them for a completely different reason. Curiously
enough we often come around in a circle through our liberty, through the study
of the deeper teaching, and find we do want to keep these things. But now not
for the same reason-that of social pressure. It is no longer merely a matter of
holding to an accepted list in order that Christians will think well of us.
However, eventually the Christian life and true spirituality are not to
be seen as outward at all, but inward. The climax of the Ten Commandments
is the tenth commandment in Exodus 20:17: "Thou shalt not covet
thy neighbor's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife, nor his manservant,
nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy
neighbor's." The commandment not to covet is an entirely inward thing.
Coveting is never an outward thing, from the very nature of the case. It is an
intriguing factor that this is the last command that God gives us in the Ten
Commandments and thus the hub of the whole matter. The end of the
whole thing is that we arrive at an inward situation and not merely an outward
one. Actually, we break this last commandment, not to covet, before
we break any of the others. Any time that we break one of the other commandments
of God, it means that we have already broken this commandment
in coveting. It also means that any time we break one of the others, we
break this last commandment as well. So no matter which of the other Ten
Commandments you break, you break two: the commandment itself, and
this commandment not to covet. This is the hub of the wheel.
In Romans 7:7-9, Paul states very clearly that this was the commandment
which gave him a sense of being sinful:
What shall we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid. Nay, I had not
known sin, but by the law: for I had not known lust except the law
had said, Thou shalt not covet. But sin, taking occasion by the commandment,
wrought in me all manner of concupiscence. For without
the law sin was dead. For I was alive without the law once: but
when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died.
Now he did not mean he was perfect before; this is clear from what
Paul has said. What he is saying here is, "I did not know I was a sinner; I
thought I would come out all right, because I was keeping these outward
things and was getting along all right in comparison with other people." He
would have been measuring himself against the externalized form of the
commandments that the Jews had in their tradition. But when he opened
the Ten Commandments and read that the last commandment was not to
covet, he saw he was a sinner. When did this take place? He does not tell us,
but personally I feel that God was working inwardly in him and making him
feel this lack even before the experience on the Damascus road-that
already he had seen he was a sinner and had been troubled in the light of the
tenth commandment-and then Christ spoke to him.
Coveting is the negative side of the positive commands, "Thou shalt
love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all
thy mind. . . . [And] thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself" (Matthew
22:37, 39).
Love is internal, not external. There can be external manifestations,
but love itself will always be an internal factor. Coveting is always internal;
the external manifestation is a result. We must see that to love God with all
the heart, mind, and soul is not to covet against God; and to love man, to
love our neighbor as ourselves, is not to covet against man. When I do not
love the Lord as I should, I amcoveting against the Lord. And when I do not
love my neighbor as I should, I am coveting against him.
"Thou shalt not covet" is the internal commandment that shows the
man who thinks himself to be moral that he really needs a Savior. The
average such "moral" man, who has lived comparing himself to other men
and comparing himself to a rather easy list of rules (even if they cause him
some pain and difficulty), can feel, like Paul, that he is getting along all
right. But suddenly, when he is confronted with the inward command not
to covet, he is brought to his knees. It is exactly the same with us as Christians.
This is a very central concept if we are to have any understanding or
any real practice of the true Christian life or true spirituality. I can take
lists that men make and I can seem to keep them, but to do that, my heart
does not have to be bowed. But when I come to the inward aspect of the
Ten Commandments, when I come to the inward aspect of the Law of
Love, if I am listening even in a poor fashion to the direction of the Holy
Spirit, I can no longer feel proud. I am brought to my knees. In this life I
can never say, "I have arrived; it is finished; look at me-I am holy." When
we talk of the Christian life or true spirituality, when we talk about freedom
from the bonds of sin, we must be wrestling with the inward problems
of not coveting against God and men, of loving God and men, and
not merely some set of externals.
This immediately raises a question. Does this mean that any desire is
coveting and therefore sinful? The Bible makes plain that this is not so-all
desire is not sin. So then the question arises, when does proper desire become
coveting? I think we can put the answer down simply: desire becomes sin when
it fails to include love of God or men. Further, I think there are two practical
tests as to when we are coveting against God or men; first, I am to love God
enough to be contented; second, I am to love men enough not to envy.
Let us pursue these two tests. First, in regard to God: I amto love God
enough to be contented, because otherwise even our natural and proper
desires bring us into revolt against God. God has made us with proper
desires, but if there is not a proper contentment on my part, to this extent I
am in revolt against God, and of course revolt is the whole central problem
of sin. When I lack proper contentment, either I have forgotten that God is
God, or I have ceased to be submissive to him. We are now speaking about a
practical test to judge if we are coveting against God. A quiet disposition and
a heart giving thanks at any given moment is the real test of the extent to
which we love God at that moment. I would like to give some strong words
to you from the Bible to remind us that this is God's own standard for Christians:
"But fornication, and all uncleanness, or covetousness, let it not be
once named among you, as becometh saints; neither filthiness, nor foolish
talking, nor jesting, which are not convenient; but rather giving of thanks"
(Ephesians 5:3-4).
Thus, the "giving of thanks" is in contrast to the whole, black list that
stands above. In Ephesians 5:20 it is even stronger: "Giving thanks always
for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ."
How inclusive are the "all things" for which we are to give thanks? These
same "all things" are also mentioned in the book of Romans: "And we know
that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who
are the called according to his purpose" (8:28). This is not a kind of magic-
the infinite-personal God promises that he will work all things together for
the Christian's good.
Here I am told that if I am a true Christian, "all things" work
together for my good. It is not all things except the sorrow; it is not all
things except the battle. We throw the words "all things" in Romans 8:28
around all things.We do honor to God and the finished work of Christ as
we throw that circle around the whole; all things work together for good to
those "who love God," for those "who are the called according to his purpose."
But to the extent to which we properly throw the term "all things"
around all things, it carries with it also the "all things" of Ephesians 5:20:
"Giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father. . . ."We cannot
separate these two. The "all things" of Ephesians 5:20 is as wide as the
"all things" of Romans 8:28. It must be giving of thanks for all things-this
is God's standard.
Philippians deals with this also. In Philippians 4:6 we read, "Be careful
for nothing; but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving
let your requests be made known unto God."
"Be careful for nothing" here means: Do not be overcome by care in
anything, by worry in anything, but rather "by prayer and supplication with
thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God." Of course, this is
a statement concerning prayer in contrast to the worry, but at the same time
it carries with it the direct command to thank God in the midst of the prayer
for the "everything." Or we may note Colossians 2:7: "Rooted and built up
in him, and stablished in the faith, as ye have been taught, abounding
therein with thanksgiving." You will notice this is linked to the sixth verse:
"As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him."
What does it mean to walk in Christ? It is to be "rooted and built up in him,
and established in the faith." (And there are many of us who think this is by
faith; the instrument to do this is faith) "Abounding therein with
thanksgiving"; the final note is on the thanksgiving.
Then we find in Colossians 3:15: "And let the peace of God rule in your
hearts, to the which also ye are called in one body; and be ye thankful." And
verse 17: "And whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the
Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by him." And again in
Colossians 4:2: "Continue in prayer, and watch in the same with thanksgiving."
These words about thanksgiving are, in one sense, hard words. They
are beautiful, but they do not give us any room to move-the "all things"
includes all things.
Weread in 1 Thessalonians 5:18: "In every thing give thanks: for this is
the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you." And this is linked to the
next verse, verse 19: "Quench not the Spirit." Surely one thing is clear. God
says to us: in everything give thanks.
I think we can see all this in its proper perspective if we go back to
Romans 1:21: "Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as
God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and
their foolish heart was darkened." This is the central point: They were not
thankful. Instead of giving thanks they "became vain in their imaginations,
and their foolish heart was darkened." Professing themselves to be wise,
they became fools. The beginning of man's rebellion against God was, and
is, the lack of a thankful heart. They did not have proper, thankful hearts-
seeing themselves as creatures before the Creator and being bowed not only
in their knees, but in their stubborn hearts. The rebellion is a deliberate
refusal to be the creature before the Creator, to the extent of being thankful.
Love must carry with it a "thank-you," not in a superficial or "official" way,
but in being thankful and saying in the mind or with the voice "Thank you"
to God. As we shall see later, this is not to be confused with failing to stand
against what is cruel in the world as it now is, but it does mean having a
thankful heart toward the God who is there.
Two things are immediately involved here, if we are to see this in the
Christian framework rather than in a non-Christian one. The first is that as
Christians we say we live in a personal universe, in the sense that it was created
by a personal God. Now that we have accepted Christ as our Savior,
God the Father is our Father. When we say we live in a personal universe and
God the Father is our Father, to the extent that we have less than a trusting
attitude we are denying what we say we believe. We say that, as Christians,
we have by choice taken the place of creatures before the Creator, but as we
show a lack of trust, we are exhibiting that at that moment, in practice, we
have not really so chosen.
The second thing we must comprehend in order to understand a contented
heart in the Christian framework, rather than in a non-Christian
one, is illustrated by Camus's dilemma in The Plague. As Christians we say
we live in a supernatural universe and that there is a battle, since the fall of
man, and that this battle is in both the seen world and the unseen world.
This is what we say we believe; we insist on this against the naturalists and
against the anti-supernaturalists. If we really believe this, first, we can be
contented and yet fight evil, and second, surely it is God's right to put us as
Christians where he judges best in the battle.
In a Christian understanding of contentment, we must see contentment
in relation to these things. To summarize, there is a personal God. He
is my Father since I have accepted Christ as my Savior. Then surely when I
lack trust, I amdenying what I say I believe. At the same time, I say there is a
battle in the universe, and God is God. Then, if I lack trust, what I amreally
doing is denying in practice that he has a right, as my God, to use me where
he wants in the spiritual battle that exists in the seen and the unseen world.
The trust and contentment must be in the Christian framework, but in the
proper framework the contentment is deeply important.
If the contentment goes and the giving of thanks goes, we are not loving
God as we should, and proper desire has become coveting against God.
This inward area is the first place of loss of true spirituality. The outward is
always just a result of it.
The second test as to when proper desire becomes coveting is that we
should love men enough not to envy, and this is not only envy for money; it is
for everything. It can, for instance, be envy of his spiritual gifts. There is a simple
test for this. Natural desires have become coveting against a fellow creature,
one of our kind, a fellow man, when we have a mentality that would give
us secret satisfaction at his misfortune. If a man has something, and he loses it,
do we have an inward pleasure? A secret satisfaction at his loss? Do not speak
too quickly and say it is never so, because you will make yourself a liar. We
must all admit that even when we get on in our Christian life, even in these
areas where we say we are longing for the church of Jesus Christ to be more
alive in our generation, often we have this awful secret satisfaction at the loss
of other men, even at the loss of brothers in Christ. Now if this mentality is
upon me, in any way, then my natural desires have become coveting. I am
inwardly coveting, and I am not loving men as I should.
Inward coveting-lack of love toward men-soon tends to spill over
into the external world. It cannot be kept in the internal world completely.
This occurs in various degrees. When I have a wrong regret that others have
what I do not possess, and this regret is allowed to grow, very quickly it
comes to make me dislike the person himself. Surely we all have felt this. As
the Holy Spirit makes us increasingly honest with ourselves, we must
acknowledge that often we have a dislike of a person because we have had
wrong desire toward something of his. More than this, if I would be happy if
he were to lose something, the next step in the external world is moving
either subtly or more openly to cause him to have the loss, either in lying
about him, stealing from him, or whatever it may be.
In 1 Corinthians 10:23-24 I amtold that my longing in love should be
to seek for the other man's good and not just my own: "All things are lawful
for me, but all things edify not. Let no man seek his own, but every man
another's wealth." And the same is true in 1 Corinthians 13:4-5: "Charity
suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is
not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own. . . ."
When we read these things and understand that failure in these areas
is really coveting, a lack of love, every one of us must be upon his knees as
Paul was upon his knees when he saw the commandment not to covet; it
destroys any superficial view of the Christian life.
These are the areas of true spirituality. These are the areas of true
Christian living. They are not basically external; they are internal, they are
deep; they go down into the areas of our lives we like to hide from ourselves.
The inward area is the first place of loss of true Christian life, of true spirituality,
and the outward sinful act is the result. If we can only get hold of
this-that the internal is the basic, the external is always merely the
result-it will be a tremendous starting place.
However, true spirituality, the Christian life, is even one step beyond
this. So far we have moved from the concept of a small, limited list of things to
the whole Ten Commandments and the whole Law of Love. And then we
have moved from the external to the internal. But in both of these cases we
have dealt largely with that which is negative. But true spirituality, the Christian
life, is deeper than even a profound concept of a proper negative. True
spirituality, the true Christian life, is finally positive. We have touched on this
in "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul,
and with all thy mind," and "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself" (Matthew
22:37, 39). But let us now especially emphasize that true spirituality, that
true Christian life, is not even simply the proper negative in the deepest
realms of our being. There is a biblical negative and then a positive.
As this study goes on, we shall deal more extensively with the following
passages, but let us look at them quickly at this stage. Romans 6:4 is a biblical
negative (and the tenses I read are the tenses as they are in Greek rather than
the way they are translated in our King James translation): "Therefore we
were buried with him by baptism into death." This is a negative.Wewere buried
with him by baptism into death. We find the same thing in the first part of
the sixth verse: "Knowing this, that our old man was crucified with him."
When I accepted Christ as Savior, when God as Judge declared me justified,
these things became legally true. My call in the Christian life is to see them
become true in my life in practice. In Galatians 2:20 we find the same thing
with a negative emphasis: "I have been crucified with Christ."
These negatives must never be overlooked, either in justification or
the Christian life, or we will not be able to understand the following
positives. In Galatians 6:14 we have this word: "But God forbid that I should
glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom [or whereby] the
world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world." This is a tremendously
strong negative. And this is not to be just a theoretical proposition; it is to be
(as we shall see later) practiced, by the grace of God. There is a place, therefore,
for a true biblical negative. But now let us go on and notice that the
Christian life, true spirituality, does not stop with this negative. There is a
positive.
So in Galatians 2:20 again, "I am crucified with Christ." Then there
comes a break in the verse. In my own Bible I have marked it with two little
lines, so that the break would be strongly apparent to me, even in a quick
reading: "I have been crucified with Christ: [break] nevertheless I live; yet
not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live
by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me." So
although there is a negative, it swept over into a positive, and to stop at the
negative is to miss the whole point. The true Christian life is not an external
life, or thought-life, of basic negatives; it is not hating life, in the way that we
are apt to do when we get into despondency or other psychological problems.
The Christian negative is not a nihilist negative-there is a true biblical
negative-but the Christian life does not stop with a negative. There is a
true life in the present as well as in the future.
In the book of Romans we feel the same force (6:4): "Therefore we
were buried with him by baptism into death; that like as Christ was raised up
from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness
of life." This is the way it should be read: that "we may walk in newness
of life." This is it; there is a positive. There is a possibility of walking in newness
of life in the present life, right now, between the new birth and our
death, or the second coming of Jesus. In Romans 6:6 it is the same:
"Knowing this, that our old man was crucified with him, in order that the
body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin." So
we died with Christ, but we rose with Christ. That is the emphasis. Christ's
death is a historic fact in the past, and we will be raised from the dead in
future history, but there is to be a positive exhibition in present history,
now, before our future resurrection. As an illustration, we read the negative
in Galatians 5:15: "But if ye bite and devour one another, take heed that ye
be not consumed one of another." He is talking of Christians. This is a negative.
But there is a positive (verse 14): "For all the law is fulfilled in one word,
even in this; Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." And there is also a
positive in verses 22 and 23 of the same chapter: "But the fruit of the Spirit is
love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance:
against such there is no law." So the context leads us from the negative
to the positive in our considerations of the Christian life.
In summary then, of this chapter, which is an introduction to all that
follows:
1. The true Christian life, true spirituality, does not just mean that we
have been born again. It must begin there, but it means much more
than that. It does not mean only that we are going to be in heaven.
It does mean that, but it means much more than that. The true
Christian life, true spirituality in the present life, means more than
being justified and knowing that I am going to heaven.
2. It is not just a desire to get rid of taboos in order to live an easier and
a looser life. Our desire must be for a deeper life. And when I begin
to think of this, the Bible presents to me the whole of the Ten Commandments
and the whole of the Law of Love.
3. True spirituality, the true Christian life, is not just outward, but it
is inward-it is not to covet against God and men.
4. But it is even more than this: it is positive-positive in inward reality,
and then positive in outward results. The inward thing is to be
positive and not just negative; and then sweeping out of the inward
positive reality, there is to be a positive manifestation externally. It
is not just that we are dead to certain things, but we are to love God,
we are to be alive to him, we are to be in communion with him, in
this present moment of history. And we are to love men, to be alive to
men as men, and to be in communication on a true personal level
with men, in this present moment of history.
When I speak of the Christian life, or freedom from the bonds of sin,
or of true spirituality, the four points listed above are what the Bible says we
should mean, and anything less than this is trifling with God-trifling with
him who created the world, and trifling also with him who died on the cross.
This is what we are to have in mind when we begin such a study; otherwise,
there is no use even beginning to talk about experiential freedom from the
bonds of sin or about an experiential reality of the Christian life, of true spirituality.
If this is not in our minds, at least in some poor comprehension and
at least in some poor aspiration, we might as well stop. Anything else is trifling
with God, and because it is trifling with God, it is sin.
Copyright © 1971, From True Spirituality by Francis Schaeffer