But God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of Our Lord Jesus Christ. — Galatians 6:14

The Gospel of Jesus Christ always forces an issue of will. Do I accept God’s verdict on sin in the Cross of Christ? Have I the slightest interest in the death of Jesus? Do I want to be identified with His death, to be killed right out to all interest in sin, in worldliness, in self — to be so identified with Jesus that I am spoilt for every thing else but Him? The great privilege of discipleship is that I can sign on under His Cross, and that means death to sin. Get alone with Jesus and either tell Him that you do not want sin to die out in you; or else tell Him that at all costs you want to be identified with His death. Immediately you transact in confident faith in what Our Lord did on the Cross, a supernatural identification with His death takes place, and you will know with a knowledge that passeth knowledge that your “old man” is crucified with Christ. The proof that your “old man” is crucified with Christ is the amazing ease with which the life of God in you enables you to obey the voice of Jesus Christ.

Every now and again, Our Lord lets us see what we would be like if it were not for Himself; it is a justification of what He said — “Without Me ye can do nothing.” That is why the bedrock of Christianity is personal, passionate devotion to the Lord Jesus. We mistake the ecstasy of our first introduction into the Kingdom for the purpose of God in getting us there; His purpose in getting us there is that we may realize all that identification with Jesus Christ means.

Nahum 1-3; Revelation 14

Wisdom from Oswald

When you are joyful, be joyful; when you are sad, be sad. If God has given you a sweet cup, don’t make it bitter; and if He has given you a bitter cup, don’t try and make it sweet; take things as they come. Shade of His Hand, 1226 L

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I, if I be lifted up…will draw all men unto Me. — John 12:32

Very few of us have any understanding of the reason why Jesus Christ died. If sympathy is all that human beings need, then the Cross of Christ is a farce, there was no need for it. What the world needs is not “a little bit of love,” but a surgical operation.

When you are face to face with a soul in difficulty spiritually, remind yourself of Jesus Christ on the Cross. If that soul can get to God on any other line, then the Cross of Jesus Christ is unnecessary. If you can help others by your sympathy or understanding, you are a traitor to Jesus Christ. You have to keep your soul rightly related to God and pour out for others on His line, not pour out on the human line and ignore God. The great note to-day is amiable religiosity.

The one thing we have to do is to exhibit Jesus Christ crucified, to lift Him up all the time. Every doctrine that is not imbedded in the Cross of Jesus will lead astray. If the worker himself believes in Jesus Christ and is banking on the Reality of Redemption, the people he talks to must be concerned. The thing that remains and deepens is the worker’s simple relationship to Jesus Christ; his usefulness to God depends on that and that alone.

The calling of a New Testament worker is to uncover sin and to reveal Jesus Christ as Saviour, consequently he cannot be poetical, he must be sternly surgical. We are sent by God to lift up Jesus Christ, not to give wonderfully beautiful discourses. We have to probe straight down as deeply as God has probed us, to be keen in sensing the Scriptures which bring the truth straight home and to apply them fearlessly.

Micah 1-3; Revelation 11

Wisdom from Oswald

Always keep in contact with those books and those people that enlarge your horizon and make it possible for you to stretch yourself mentally.The Moral Foundations of Life, 721 R

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I came not to send peace, but a sword. — Matthew 10:34

Never be sympathetic with the soul whose case makes you come to the conclusion that God is hard. God is more tender than we can conceive, and every now and again He gives us the chance of being the rugged one that He may be the tender One. If a man cannot get through to God it is because there is a secret thing he does not intend to give up — “I will admit I have done wrong, but I no more intend to give up that thing than fly.” It is impossible to deal sympathetically with a case like that: we have to get right deep down to the root until there is antagonism and resentment against the message. People want the blessing of God, but they will not stand the thing that goes straight to the quick.

If God has had His way with you, your message as His servant is merciless insistence on the one line, cut down to the very root, otherwise there will be no healing. Drive home the message until there is no possible refuge from its application. Begin to get at people where they are until you get them to realize what they lack, and then erect the standard of Jesus Christ for their lives — “We never can be that!” Then drive it home: “Jesus Christ says you must.” “But how can we be?” “You cannot, unless you have a new Spirit” (see Luke 11:13).

There must be a sense of need before your message is of any use. Thousands of people are happy without God in this world. If I was happy and moral till Jesus came, why did He come? Because that kind of happiness and peace is on a wrong level; Jesus Christ came to send a sword through every peace that is not based on a personal relationship to Himself.

Jonah 1-4; Revelation 10

Wisdom from Oswald

The great point of Abraham’s faith in God was that he was prepared to do anything for God.
Not Knowing Whither

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And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God. — Romans 8:28

It is only the loyal soul who believes that God engineers circumstances. We take such liberty with our circumstances, we do not believe God engineers them, although we say we do; we treat the things that happen as if they were engineered by men. To be faithful in every circumstance means that we have only one loyalty, and that is to our Lord. Suddenly God breaks up a particular set of circumstances, and the realisation comes that we have been disloyal to Him by not recognising that He had organised them. We never saw what He was after, and that particular thing will never be repeated all the days of our life. The test of loyalty always comes just there. If we learn to worship God in the trying circumstances, He will alter them in two seconds when He chooses.

Loyalty to Jesus Christ is the thing that we “stick at” to-day. We will be loyal to work, to service, to anything, but do not ask us to be loyal to Jesus Christ. Many Christians are intensely impatient of talking about loyalty to Jesus. Our Lord is dethroned more emphatically by Christian workers than by the world. God is made a machine for blessing men, and Jesus Christ is made a Worker among workers.

The idea is not that we do work for God, but that we are so loyal to Him that He can do His work through us — “I reckon on you for extreme service, with no complaining on your part and no explanation on Mine.” God wants to use us as He used His own Son.

Obadiah; Revelation 9

Wisdom from Oswald

Am I becoming more and more in love with God as a holy God, or with the conception of an amiable Being who says, “Oh well, sin doesn’t matter much”? Disciples Indeed, 389 L

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But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him. — 1 Corinthians 2:14

The Gospel of God creates a sense of need of the Gospel. Paul says — “If our gospel be hid, it is hid” — to those who are blackguards? No, “to them that are lost: in whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not.” The majority of people have their morality well within their own grasp, they have no sense of need of the gospel. It is God Who creates the need of which no human being is conscious until He manifests Himself. Jesus said — “Ask, and it shall be given you,” but God cannot give until a man asks. It is not that He withholds, but that that is the way He has constituted things on the basis of Redemption. By means of our asking, God gets processes into work whereby He creates the thing that is not in existence until we do ask. The inner reality of Redemption is that it creates all the time. As the Redemption creates the life of God in us, so it creates the things belonging to that life. Nothing can satisfy the need but that which created the need. This is the meaning of Redemption — it creates and it satisfies.

“I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto Me.” We preach our own experiences and people are interested, but no sense of need is awakened by it. If once Jesus Christ is lifted up, the Spirit of God will create a conscious need of Him. Behind the preaching of the Gospel is the creative Redemption of God at work in the souls of men. It is never personal testimony that saves men. “The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.”

Amos 7-9; Revelation 8

Wisdom from Oswald

If a man cannot prove his religion in the valley, it is not worth anything. Shade of His Hand, 1200 L

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Put on the full armor of God. . . And always keep on praying. — Ephesians 6:13,18

You have to wrestle against the things that prevent you from getting to God, and you have to wrestle in prayer for other souls. But never say that you wrestle with God in prayer; this idea is scripturally unfounded. Attempt to wrestle with God, and you will be crippled for the rest of your life.

“He touched the socket of Jacob’s hip so that his hip was wrenched”

(Genesis 32:25). If God comes into your life in some way you don’t like, and you try, as Jacob did, to wrestle with him, you compel God to put your hip out of joint. You should wrestle; God doesn’t want you to hobble along weakly in his ways. Just make sure you’re wrestling the right things. Be someone who wrestles before God for other souls and against those things that would keep you from him, and you will be more than a conqueror through him (Romans 8:37).

Wrestling before God in prayer prevails in his kingdom, so long as the one praying is complete in Christ. If you ask me to pray for you and I’m not complete, my prayer counts for nothing. But if I’m complete in him, my prayer always prevails. I have to put on the full armor of God before I pray; prayer is effective only when there is completeness.

Always distinguish between God’s order and his permissive will. God’s order is unchangeable; the things he allows by his permissive will are what we have to wrestle against. God uses his permissive will providentially to turn us into his sons and daughters. Our reaction to the things he permits is what enables us to get at his order. He asks us to meet these things head–on, not to be like jellyfish, floating along and saying, “Oh, well, it’s the Lord’s will.” Beware of drifting lazily before God instead of putting up a glorious fight so that you may lay hold of his strength.

Amos 4-6; Revelation 7

Wisdom from Oswald

It is not what a man does that is of final importance, but what he is in what he does. The atmosphere produced by a man, much more than his activities, has the lasting influence. Baffled to Fight Better, 51 L

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That they may be one, even as We are one. — John 17:22

Personality is that peculiar, incalculable thing that is meant when we speak of ourselves as distinct from everyone else. Our personality is always too big for us to grasp. An island in the sea may be but the top of a great mountain. Personality is like an island; we know nothing about the great depths underneath, consequently we cannot estimate ourselves. We begin by thinking that we can, but we come to realize that there is only one Being Who understands us, and that is our Creator.

Personality is the characteristic of the spiritual man as individuality is the characteristic of the natural man. Our Lord can never be defined in terms of individuality and independence, but only in terms of personality, “I and My Father are one.” Personality merges, and you only reach your real identity when you are merged with another person. When love, or the Spirit of God strikes a man, he is transformed, he no longer insists upon his separate individuality. Our Lord never spoke in terms of individuality, of a man’s “elbows” or his isolated position, but in terms of personality — “that they may be one, even as We are one.” If you give up your right to yourself to God, the real true nature of your personality answers to God straight away. Jesus Christ emancipates the personality, and the individuality is transfigured; the transfiguring element is love, personal devotion to Jesus. Love is the outpouring of one personality in fellowship with another personality.

Hosea 9-11; Revelation 3

Wisdom from Oswald

The message of the prophets is that although they have forsaken God, it has not altered God. The Apostle Paul emphasizes the same truth, that God remains God even when we are unfaithful (see 2 Timothy 2:13). Never interpret God as changing with our changes. He never does; there is no variableness in Him. Notes on Ezekiel, 1477 L

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Abraham had two sons, the one by a bondmaid, the other by a freewoman. — Galatians 4:22

Paul is not dealing with sin in this chapter of Galatians, but with the relation of the natural to the spiritual. The natural must be turned into the spiritual by sacrifice, otherwise a tremendous divorce will be produced in the actual life. Why should God ordain the natural to be sacrificed? God did not. It is not God’s order, but His permissive will. God’s order was that the natural should be transformed into the spiritual by obedience; it is sin that made it necessary for the natural to be sacrificed.

Abraham had to offer up Ishmael before he offered up Isaac. Some of us are trying to offer up spiritual sacrifices to God before we have sacrificed the natural. The only way in which we can offer a spiritual sacrifice to God is by presenting our bodies a living sacrifice. Sanctification means more than deliverance from sin, it means the deliberate commitment of myself whom God has saved to God, and that I do not care what it costs.

If we do not sacrifice the natural to the spiritual, the natural life will mock at the life of the Son of God in us and produce a continual swither. This is always the result of an undisciplined spiritual nature. We go wrong because we stubbornly refuse to discipline ourselves, physically, morally or mentally. “I wasn’t disciplined when I was a child.” You must discipline yourself now. If you do not, you will ruin the whole of your personal life for God.

God is not with our natural life while we pamper it; but when we put it out in the desert and resolutely keep it under, then God will be with it; and He will open up wells and oases, and fulfill all His promises for the natural.

Hosea 1-4; Revelation 1

Wisdom from Oswald

We are not to preach the doing of good things; good deeds are not to be preached, they are to be performed.So Send I You, 1330 L

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And they that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts. — Galatians 5:24

The natural life is not sinful; we must be apostatized from sin, have nothing to do with sin in any shape or form. Sin belongs to hell and the devil; I, as a child of God, belong to heaven and God. It is not a question of giving up sin, but of giving up my right to myself, my natural independence and self-assertiveness, and this is where the battle has to be fought. It is the things that are right and noble and good from the natural stand point that keep us back from God’s best. To discern that natural virtues antagonize surrender to God, is to bring our soul into the centre of its greatest battle. Very few of us debate with the sordid and evil and wrong, but we do debate with the good. It is the good that hates the best, and the higher up you get in the scale of the natural virtues, the more intense is the opposition to Jesus Christ. “They that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh” — it is going to cost the natural in you everything, not something. Jesus said — If any man will be My disciple, “let him deny himself” i.e., his right to himself, and a man has to realise Who Jesus Christ is before he will do it. Beware of refusing to go to the funeral of your own independence.

The natural life is not spiritual, and it can only be made spiritual by sacrifice. If we do not resolutely sacrifice the natural, the supernatural can never become natural in us. There is no royal road there; each of us has it entirely in his own hands. It is not a question of praying, but of performing.

Daniel 11-12; Jude

Wisdom from Oswald

For the past three hundred years men have been pointing out how similar Jesus Christ’s teachings are to other good teachings. We have to remember that Christianity, if it is not a supernatural miracle, is a sham. The Highest Good, 548 L

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I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between Me and the earth. — Genesis 9:13

It is the will of God that human beings should get into moral relationship with Him, and His covenants are for this purpose. “Why does not God save me?” He has saved me, but I have not entered into relationship with Him. “Why does not God do this and that?” He has done it, the point is — Will I step into covenant relationship? All the great blessings of God are finished and complete, but they are not mine until I enter into relationship with Him on the basis of His covenant.

Waiting for God is incarnate unbelief, it means that I have no faith in Him; I wait for Him to do something in me that I may trust in that. God will not do it, because that is not the basis of the God-and-man relationship. Man has to go out of himself in his covenant with God as God goes out of Himself in His covenant with man. It is a question of faith in God — the rarest thing; we have faith only in our feelings. I do not believe God unless He will give me something in my hand whereby I may know I have it, then I say — “Now I believe.” There is no faith there. “Look unto Me, and be ye saved.”

When I have really transacted business with God on His covenant and have let go entirely, there is no sense of merit, no human ingredient in it at all, but a complete overwhelming sense of being brought into union with God, and the whole thing is transfigured with peace and joy.

Daniel 3-4; 1 John 5

Wisdom from Oswald

Beware of pronouncing any verdict on the life of faith if you are not living it.Not Knowing Whither, 900 R

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Only in the throne will I be greater than thou. — Genesis 41:40

I have to account to God for the way in which I rule my body under His domination. Paul said he did not “frustrate the grace of God” — make it of no effect. The grace of God is absolute, the salvation of Jesus is perfect, it is done for ever. I am not being saved, I am saved; salvation is as eternal as God’s throne; the thing for me to do is to work out what God works in. “Work out your own salvation”; I am responsible for doing it. It means that I have to manifest in this body the life of the Lord Jesus, not mystically, but really and emphatically. “I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection.” Every saint can have his body under absolute control for God. God has made us to have government over all the temple of the Holy Spirit, over imaginations and affections. We are responsible for these, and we must never give way to inordinate affections. Most of us are much sterner with others than we are in regard to ourselves; we make excuses for things in ourselves whilst we condemn in others things to which we are not naturally inclined.

“I beseech you,” says Paul, “present your bodies a living sacrifice.” The point to decide is this — “Do I agree with my Lord and Master that my body shall be His temple?” If so, then for me the whole of the law for the body is summed up in this revelation, that my body is the temple of the Holy Ghost.

Daniel 1-2; 1 John 4

Wisdom from Oswald

I have no right to say I believe in God unless I order my life as under His all-seeing Eye.Disciples Indeed, 385 L

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To him that overcometh… — Revelation 2:7

Life without war is impossible either in nature or in grace. The basis of physical, mental, moral, and spiritual life is antagonism. This is the open fact of life.

Health is the balance between physical life and external nature, and it is maintained only by sufficient vitality on the inside against things on the outside. Everything outside my physical life is designed to put me to death. Things which keep me going when I am alive, disintegrate me when I am dead. If I have enough fighting power, I produce the balance of health. The same is true of the mental life. If I want to maintain a vigorous mental life, I have to fight, and in that way the mental balance called thought is produced.

Morally it is the same. Everything that does not partake of the nature of virtue is the enemy of virtue in me, and it depends on what moral calibre I have whether I overcome and produce virtue. Immediately I fight, I am moral in that particular. No man is virtuous because he cannot help it; virtue is acquired.

And spiritually it is the same. Jesus said — “In the world ye shall have tribulation,” i.e., everything that is not spiritual makes for my undoing, but — “be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.” I have to learn to score off the things that come against me, and in that way produce the balance of holiness; then it becomes a delight to meet opposition.

Holiness is the balance between my disposition and the law of God as expressed in Jesus Christ.

Ezekiel 47-48; 1 John 3

Wisdom from Oswald

Awe is the condition of a man’s spirit realizing Who God is and what He has done for him personally. Our Lord emphasizes the attitude of a child; no attitude can express such solemn awe and familiarity as that of a child. Not Knowing Whither, 882 L

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All are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. — Romans 3:24

The gospel of God’s grace awakens an intense longing in the human soul, but also an equally intense resentment. We resent the revelation that we are justified freely by God’s grace, that there’s nothing we have to do to receive it. Human beings take a certain pride in giving, but receiving is a different matter. To come and accept something freely offered to us offends our pride. I’ll gladly give my life to martyrdom; I’ll gladly give myself in consecration. But don’t humiliate me by placing me on the same level as the most hell-deserving sinner and tell me that all I have to do for my salvation is to accept it as a gift through Jesus Christ.

We have to realize that we can’t earn or win anything from God. We must either receive his grace as a gift or go without. The greatest blessing spiritually is the knowledge that we are destitute. Until we arrive at this knowledge, our Lord is powerless to help us. He can do nothing for us if we think we’re sufficient without him. As long as we believe ourselves to be rich, as long as we possess anything resembling pride or independence, we won’t be able to enter his kingdom. We have to enter it by the door of destitution.

Are you knocking at the door of destitution now? Are you spiritually hungry? Only when we get spiritually hungry do we receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit makes effectual in us the very nature of God. By the Spirit, God imparts to us the quickening life of Jesus, the life that puts the “beyond” within us. The instant the “beyond” is inside us, it rises to the “above,” lifting us into the domain where Jesus lives.

Ezekiel 33-34; 1 Peter 5

Wisdom from Oswald

To those who have had no agony Jesus says, “I have nothing for you; stand on your own feet, square your own shoulders. I have come for the man who knows he has a bigger handful than he can cope with, who knows there are forces he cannot touch; I will do everything for him if he will let Me. Only let a man grant he needs it, and I will do it for him.”
The Shadow of an Agony

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. . . through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. — Galatians 6:14

When I brood on the cross of Christ, I become a person who is concentrated on and dominated by Jesus Christ’s interests. My focus is taken off myself and my own holiness. I’m no longer trapped in my private, subjective viewpoint. I’m identified with my Lord’s view-point and interests.

Our Lord wasn’t a recluse or an ascetic; he didn’t cut himself off from society. He was so much in the ordinary world that the religious people of his day called him a glutton and a drunkard (Matthew 11:19). And yet our Lord maintained an inward separateness all the time. On a fundamental level, he lived in a world apart from this one. Everything he did, he did for the glory of his heavenly Father, devoting every thought and action to God.

We, too, must devote every ounce of spiritual energy God gives us to doing his work, letting nothing interfere; this is how we consecrate our lives to him. Sanctification is God’s part; consecration is our part. We have to deliberately decide to have God’s interests as our interests. The way to solve perplexing problems is to ask, “Is this the kind of thing that interests Jesus Christ? Or is it something the spirit of the devil would embrace?”

A counterfeit version of consecration is the conscious cutting off of certain activities and pleasures with the idea of storing up spiritual power for use later on. This is a hopeless mistake. The Spirit of God has prevented the sins of a great many people, yet there’s no emancipation, no fullness in their lives. The ascetic, reclusive religious life is entirely different from the robust holiness of the life of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ preached that we are to be in the world but not of it—detached fundamentally, not externally: “My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one” (John 17:15).

Ezekiel 30-32; 1 Peter 4

Wisdom from Oswald

We have no right to judge where we should be put, or to have preconceived notions as to what God is fitting us for. God engineers everything; wherever He puts us, our one great aim is to pour out a whole-hearted devotion to Him in that particular work. “Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might.”My Utmost for His Highest, April 23, 773 L

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. . . the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me. — Galatians 6:14

If you want to know the energy of God—the energy of the resurrection life of Jesus Christ—in your physical body, you must do more than simply think on the tragedy of God on the cross; you must brood upon it. Cut yourself off from distractions, stop taking an obsessive interest in your personal spiritual development, and consider, bare-spirited, the tragedy of God. The instant you do, his energy will be in you.

“Turn to me,” says God (Isaiah 45:22). God must become the dominating object of your attention. Pay attention to the objective Source and the subjective energy will follow. We lose power when we fail to concentrate on the right thing. The right thing is the cross of Jesus Christ. The cross is the only thing we are called to preach—not salvation or sanctification or healing. In much preaching today, the focus is placed not on the cross but on its effects. Churches are criticized as feeble, and the criticism is justified because there has been no concentration of spiritual energy, no brooding on the tragedy of Calvary or on the meaning of redemption.

Concentrate on the cross in your preaching, and though the members of your audience might not seem to pay attention, they’ll never be the same again. If I talk my own talk, it’s of no more importance to you than your talk is to me. But if I talk the truth of God, you will meet it again, and so will I. When you concentrate on the great point of spiritual energy—the cross—keeping in contact with this center where all the power lies, its energy will be let loose. The proclaiming of the cross of Jesus Christ does its own work.

Ezekiel 27-29; 1 Peter 3

Wisdom from Oswald

“When the Son of man cometh, shall He find faith on the earth?” We all have faith in good principles, in good management, in good common sense, but who amongst us has faith in Jesus Christ? Physical courage is grand, moral courage is grander, but the man who trusts Jesus Christ in the face of the terrific problems of life is worth a whole crowd of heroes.

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May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. — Galatians 6:14

When people are first born again, they become incoherent. They display a certain amount of unregulated emotion; their actions seem not to make sense. Yet this incoherence is only on the surface. The external life of the apostle Paul appeared haphazard, but underlying everything he did was a strong, steady coherence. Paul was rooted and grounded in God, and because of this he was able to let his external life change without it causing him distress.

Most of us aren’t spiritually coherent for the simple reason that we care more about external coherence than internal coherence. Paul lived in the basement; his consistency was down in the fundamentals, where the order of God’s purpose reigns. Most of us live in the upper stories, among the coherent critics, where external consistency is all that matters. The two spaces do not begin to touch each other. The great basis of Paul’s coherence was the agony of God in the redemption of the world—the cross of Jesus Christ.

Restate to yourself what you believe, then do away with as much of it as possible. Get back to the bedrock of the cross of Christ. Viewed as a single event in history, the cross is an infinitesimal thing; from the point of view of the Bible, it’s more important than all the empires of the world. If, when we preach, we drift away from brooding on the tragedy of God upon the cross, our preaching will produce nothing. It won’t convey the energy of God, and though it may be interesting, it will have no power. But if we preach the cross, the energy of God will be set loose. “God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. . . . We preach Christ crucified” (1 Corinthians 1:21, 23).

Ezekiel 24-26; 1 Peter 2

Wisdom from Oswald

Sincerity means that the appearance and the reality are exactly the same.Studies in the Sermon on the Mount, 1449 L

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I have brought you glory on earth by finishing the work you gave me to do. — John 17:4

The death of Jesus Christ was the performance in history of the mind of God. Jesus’s death wasn’t martyrdom; it wasn’t something that happened to Jesus or that might have been prevented. The death of Jesus Christ was on purpose. It was the very reason he came.

When you preach, take care not to belittle Jesus’s death or make his cross unnecessary. We do this when we preach that our heavenly Father forgives us because he loves us. Our Father does love us, but this isn’t the reason he forgives us. The reason is the death of Christ. To preach otherwise makes the redemption “much ado about nothing.” God could forgive humanity in no other way than by the death of his Son, and Jesus is exalted as Savior because of his death. “We do see Jesus . . . crowned with glory and honor because he suffered death” (Hebrews 2:9). The greatest note of triumph that ever sounded in the ears of a startled universe was the note sounded on the cross: “It is finished” (John 19:30). This is the last word in the redemption of humankind.

Anything that belittles or seeks to obliterate the holiness of God by a false view of his love is untrue to the revelation of God given by Jesus Christ. Never allow the thought that Jesus Christ stands with us against God out of pity or compassion. Jesus Christ became a curse for us, not out of sympathy but by divine decree. Through the conviction of sin we are able to realize the overwhelming significance of this curse. Shame and penitence are gifts, given to us by the great mercy of God, which enable us to grasp the meaning of Calvary. Jesus Christ hates the wrong in humankind, and Calvary is the estimate of his hatred.

Ezekiel 16-17; James 3

Wisdom from Oswald

The sympathy which is reverent with what it cannot understand is worth its weight in gold. Baffled to Fight Better, 69 L

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In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace. — Ephesians 1:7

Beware of the pleasant view of the fatherhood of God, the view that says the reason God forgives us is that he is so kind and loving. This idea has no place in the New Testament. The only ground on which God can forgive us and reinstate us in his favor is the tremendous tragedy of the cross of Christ. It is “through his blood” that our sins are forgiven. To put forgiveness on any other ground is blasphemy.

Forgiveness is easy for us to accept, but it wasn’t easily won. Forgiveness cost God the agony of Calvary. It’s possible for us to forget this and to take everything God gives us with the simplicity of faith—to take forgiveness and the gift of the Holy Spirit and our sanctification without recalling the enormous price he paid to make them ours. Forgiveness is the divine miracle of grace, a miracle wrought in the atonement. Never accept a view of the fatherhood of God that erases the atonement. The revelation of God is that he cannot forgive without the cross of Jesus Christ. If he did, he would compromise his holiness and contradict his nature. God’s forgiveness is natural only in the supernatural domain.

Compared with the miracle of the forgiveness of sin, the experience of sanctification is slight. Sanctification is simply the expression of the forgiveness of sins in a human life. The thing that awakens the deepest well of gratitude in a human being is that God has forgiven sin. The apostle Paul had this well awakened in him, and he never got away from it. When you, like Paul, realize what it cost to forgive you, you will be held as he was: in an iron grip, constrained by the love of God.

Ezekiel 14-15; James 2

Wisdom from Oswald

It is perilously possible to make our conceptions of God like molten lead poured into a specially designed mould, and when it is cold and hard we fling it at the heads of the religious people who don’t agree with us.Disciples Indeed, 388 R

https://utmost.org/

When he comes, he will prove the world to be in the wrong about sin. —John 16:8

Very few of us know anything about the conviction of sin. We know what it feels like to be disturbed at having done something wrong, but we don’t know conviction. To be convicted of sin by the Holy Spirit is to have every earthly relationship blotted out and to stand alone with the heavenly Father, knowing fully whom we have wronged: “Against you, you only, have I sinned” (Psalm 51:4).

When we are convicted of sin in this way, we know with every power of our conscience that God dare not forgive us—not without a price being paid. If he did, it would mean that we have a stronger sense of justice than God. God’s forgiveness is the great miracle of his grace, but it cost him the breaking of his heart in the death of Christ. Only through this death is the divine nature able to forgive while remaining true to itself. It’s shallow nonsense to say that the reason God forgives us is that God is love. Once we’ve been convicted of sin, we’ll never say this again. The love of God means Calvary and nothing less. The love of God is written on the cross and nowhere else. Only on the cross is God’s conscience satisfied.

Forgiveness doesn’t mean only that I am saved from hell and made right for heaven. It means that I am forgiven into a new relationship; I am re-created and identified with God in Christ. The miracle of redemption is that God turns me, an unholy being, into the standard of himself, the Holy One. He does this by giving me a new disposition, the disposition of his Son, Jesus Christ.

Ezekiel 11-13; James 1

Wisdom from Oswald

The Bible does not thrill; the Bible nourishes. Give time to the reading of the Bible and the recreating effect is as real as that of fresh air physically. Disciples Indeed, 387 R

https://utmost.org/

If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. —John 8:36

After we are born again, any selfish individuality remaining inside us will always say “I can’t” when God calls. We have to leave off our individuality and develop our personality instead. The full meaning of the word personality is a being, created by God, who has lived on this earth and formed a godly character. The majority of us are not personalities yet. We are beginning to be, but we haven’t yet rid ourselves of our individuality.

Personality never says, “I can’t.” When it comes into contact with God, it absorbs and absorbs and always wants more. This is the way we are built. We are designed with a great capacity for God, but sin and individuality keep us from him. God delivers us from sin, but we have to deliver ourselves from individuality. We do this by offering our natural life to him and by sacrificing that life, through obedience, until it’s transformed into a spiritual life.

God doesn’t pay attention to our natural individuality in the development of our spiritual lives, but he does expect us to pay attention to it. His order is present in every facet of our natural lives, and we have to make sure that we help that order along, not stand against it, saying, “I can’t.” God won’t discipline us; he won’t bring our thoughts into captivity. We have to do it.

Don’t go to God and say, “Oh, Lord, I suffer from wandering thoughts.” Don’t suffer from wandering thoughts. Stop listening to the tyranny of your individuality and get emancipated into personality.

“If the Son sets you free . . .” Don’t substitute “Savior” for “Son.” The Savior sets us free from sin; the Son sets us free from individuality. It is what Paul means in Galatians 2:20: “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.” Paul’s individuality has been broken, and his personality is united with his Lord’s. He is “free indeed”—free from the inside out, free in the very essence of his being.

Ezekiel 8-10; Hebrews 13

Wisdom from Oswald

It is perilously possible to make our conceptions of God like molten lead poured into a specially designed mould, and when it is cold and hard we fling it at the heads of the religious people who don’t agree with us.Disciples Indeed, 388 R

https://utmost.org/