Another year is dawning!

Dear Master, let it be,

In working or in waiting,

Another year with Thee.

 

Another year of learning

Upon Thy loving breast,

Of ever-deepening trustfulness,

Of quiet, happy rest.

 

Another year of mercies;

Of faithfulness and grace;

Another year of gladness

In the shining of Thy face.

 

Another year of progress;

Another year of praise;

Another year of proving

Thy presence "all the
days."

 

Another year of service,

Of witness for Thy love;

Another year of training

For holier work above.

 

Another year is dawning!

Dear Master, let it be,

On earth, or else in heaven,

Another
year for Thee!

To the saints gathered unto our
dear Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ:

 

"Love not the world,
neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love
of the Father is not in Him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the
flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father,
but is of the world" (1 John 2:15,16).

 

These verses have been much
before me the past few months. How we need this truth and practical application
of it. When we think of the fact that whatsoever is not of God is of the world
(which is the sphere of Satan), how careful we should be to walk as He would
have us walk.

 

My main thoughts have to do with
our personal dress or adornment. We see in Genesis that man was unclothed until
sin came in; Adam and Eve first realized they were naked after they had sinned.
Then we see God making coats to cover them because of sin. We also think of
Peter when he was fishing; when he heard "that it was the Lord, he girt
his fisher’s coat unto him (for he was naked), and did cast himself into the
sea" (John 21:7). How about us today? Are we properly dressed when we are
in God’s presence?

 

We should be free from the
fashions of the world. In Scripture we are not told to follow the world’s
fashions, but rather to count the world dead with all its deeds and to
"love not the world." Our dress should be of such a nature that it
helps to display Christ in our lives. Some believers dress in a way that tends
to draw attention to the body. Should we not rather dress in a way that draws
attention to our soul and spirit—to Christ living in us? We as Christians
should have a chaste, modest appearance at all times; and this applies not only
to our outward appearance, but to our attitudes, and behavior—our spiritual
lives—as well. (See 1 Tim. 2:9, 1 Peter 3:1-7.) If we are following the world,
we can not be following Christ at the same time.

 

Many believers follow the trends
in the world not only in matters of dress but also as to length of hair. Many
brothers in Christ let their hair grow long and many sisters cut their hair,
even though Scripture instructs otherwise. "Doth not even nature itself
teach you, that, if a man have long hair, it is a shame unto him? But if a
woman have long hair, it is a glory to her:for her hair is given her for a
covering" (1 Cor. 11:14, 15). They do not understand how nature teaches
us, so they tend to disregard God’s teaching as to short and long hair.

 

Let us also remember that we are
part of God’s Church here in this world. We are not of the world, even though
we are in the world. Let us love God and His truth that he has given us. Let us
hold the truth of the Church and not the things of the world.

 

"Husbands, love your wives,
even as Christ also loved the Church, and gave Himself for it; that He might
sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the Word, that He might
present it to Himself a glorious Church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any
such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish" (Eph. 5:25-27;
read also verses 28-32). Here we have the affections of Christ brought out, and
the Church is looked at as His wife. First, He gave Himself that it might be
presented a glorious Church. The type will then be fulfilled of Adam and Eve.
In heaven the Church will be displayed as the bride, the Lamb’s wife. She will
be complete when the Lord comes, for then she will be forever united to Him in
glory.

 

Ye "are built upon the
foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief
corner stone; in whom all the building fitly framed together groweth unto an
holy temple in the Lord; in whom ye also are builded together for an habitation
of God through the Spirit" (Eph. 2:20-22). "Endeavoring to keep the
unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace" (Eph. 4:3). There is a practical
unity produced by the Holy Spirit among the people of God. This is when He is
permitted to impress the truth of the one body upon us and to lead us to act in
accordance with divine principles. Thus, all saints are members of the one
body; no one can question that, no one can undo it. But to what degree, we ask,
are God’s people keeping the unity of the Spirit? Our sorrowful answer must be,
how little! With most believers, sad to say, what concerns the glory of our
Lord and practical obedience in carrying out His will has little weight. They
seem never to have realized that Christ has a Church on earth, established upon
principles revealed in His Word. As a result, they are incapable of entering
into the unity of the Spirit. As in the days of the judges, everyone does that
which is right in his own eyes (Judges 17:6).

 

The consciences of the saints
are shocked, and rightly so, at any moral delinquency, any lapse into fleshly
ways, measured by ordinary standards. But are we equally shocked by a
deliberate and persistent ignoring of the unity of the Spirit? The Scriptures
bear ample witness to the oneness of the Church; its heavenly, separate
character; its divinely appointed order. But we find God’s people establishing
churches and setting up order and procedures according to their own devising.
Is this an endeavor to keep the unity of the Spirit?

 

Let us all desire and endeavor,
by God’s grace, to walk in obedience to the truth set forth in God’s Word. May
we allow God’s Word and perfect will to govern all our ways, to His honor and
glory.

 

I close with Christian love to
all.

 

 

The sympathy of Christ is
associated with His priesthood on high. He sympathizes not with sin, nor with
sinners as such, but with the suffering saints of God. When Christ was on earth
He was tempted, but the temptation was not in any way from within. There was in
Him no propensity to evil that answered to the trial of Satan. On the contrary,
all that the enemy found was dependence on God, simple unwavering faith in His
Word. There was in Christ the total absence of self-will inwardly; He in every
respect hated and rejected evil. He "knew no sin" (2 Cor. 5:21).

 

Christ was on earth, as He will
soon appear in glory, wholly without sin (Hebrews 4:15; 9:28). Indeed, had
there been an infinitesimal particle of fallen humanity in Christ, how could He
be a meet sacrifice to God for sin? Even the typical animals must needs be
unblemished. No offerings, it is remarkable, were so stamped with holiness as
the meat offering and the sin and trespass offerings. They emphatically were
"most holy" (Lev. 6:17), and they speak of Christ in His human
activity and Christ made sin for us. Had Christ been, as born of woman, under
the yoke of fallen manhood in any sense or degree, even without question of a
single failure in His ways, He never could have been an adequate sacrifice for
us, because there must have been thus the gravest possible defect in His humanity.
For what is so serious in such an offering as the signs of the fall, no matter
how suppressed or attenuated? Thus, atonement would be made impossible, unless
God can accept a fall-stained victim.

 

If Christ could not sin, how
then is He able to help and sympathize with those who are tempted? First of
all, in Hebrews 2:18 we read, "For in that He Himself hath suffered being
tempted, He is able to succor them that are tempted." It does not say that
He suffered after being tempted, for this a man may do who yields and
repents. There was not, there could not be, distress of conscience in the Lord
Jesus, any more than the workings of unbelief, such as we may feel. He suffered
in the entire moral being the sufferings of holiness and grace; He loathed and
rejected all that the enemy presented to His holy nature. Hence He, who in
human nature knew trial and suffering beyond all, is able to comfort the tried
saint. This is the real idea and application of temptation here. It does not
mean inward susceptibility or proclivity to evil, as it does in James 1:14
where it is expressly connected with lust. But James, in the same chapter
(verses 2 and 12) uses the word in its more ordinary scriptural application to
trials. The confusion arises from not heeding the difference between such an
inward working of fallen nature as is described in James 1:14, and the being
tried by Satan without.

 

Let us now look at Hebrews 4:15:
"For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling
of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without
sin." There is a notion too prevalent among theologians and their
followers that the blessed Lord Himself was compassed with infirmities. If they
call it infirmity for a man here below to eat, drink, sleep, or feel the lack
of these things, then in this sense the Lord surely was compassed with
infirmities. But it is feared that all too many go farther than this and
associate an inward moral infirmity with the Lord.

Christ could be touched with the
feeling of our infirmities; He was in all points tempted as we are, sin
excepted. He was tempted in all things in a way similar to the manner in which
we are tempted; but in this He differed essentially from us in that He had
absolutely no sin in His nature. Consequently we have inward
temptations connected with sin in us, such as James speaks of, which Christ never
had. He had nothing to do with sin in temptation, though He had all to do with
it in suffering on the cross. He had not the smallest tendency to sin in His
humanity. Though a partaker of blood and flesh, He had not what the apostle
Paul calls "the flesh." There was no liability to sin in Him who was
perfect man. There was such a propensity in the first man Adam, and he
accordingly fell. But the second man, the last Adam, had no such infirmity,
though He did have the capacity to suffer in body and soul and to die on the
cross for our sins. Of inward moral infirmity He had none.

 

It is argued that Christ could
not sympathize without personal consciousness of fallen humanity. But if this
argument is carried to its logical conclusion, it requires actual failure (and
to what amount?) in the Mediator in order fully to sympathize with us! The
sympathy of Jesus is in Scripture based on wholly different grounds. Never
having known sin (which, if known, narrows and blunts the heart), but having
suffered infinitely, His affections are large and free to go out to us in our
sore distresses as saints, who have not only the same outward enemy to try us,
but also a treacherous nature within.

 

The truth is that the believer,
resting by faith on redemption as a work already and perfectly accomplished for
him, does not want Christ to sympathize with His indwelling sin, any more than
with his sins. Christ bore our sins in His own body on the tree. Sin and the
flesh are condemned in Christ crucified. The sympathy of Christ with sin (or
even with sinners as such) would be an opiate for sin, to us most perilous, to
Him most dishonoring. On the contrary, His sympathy is with the regenerate in
their great weakness, who hate sin, who have to endure the contradiction of
sinners, and who are opposed by Satan acting on the flesh and in the world.
This therefore is the needed and the spiritual consolation:"We have not a
high priest not able to sympathize with our infirmities, but tempted in all
things in like manner, sin apart. Let us approach therefore with boldness to
the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy, and find grace for seasonable
help" (Heb. 4:15, 16 JND).

 

(Extracted from "Christ
Tempted and Sympathizing" in Bible Treasury, Volume 20.)

 

 

FRAGMENT. The gospels display
the One in whom was no selfishness. They tell out the heart that was ready for
everybody. No matter how deep his own sorrow, He always cared for others. He
could warn Peter in Gethsemane, and comfort the dying thief on the cross. His
heart was above circumstances, never acting under them, but ever according to
God in them.                                                                                                                         J. N.D.

 

Some people talk of "a
believing sinner," or speak of the worship offered to God by "poor
sinners." Many hymns indeed never bring the soul beyond this condition.
But what is meant by "sinner" in the Word of God is a soul altogether
without peace, a soul which feels its want of Christ, without the knowledge of
redemption. It is not truthfulness to deny what saints are in the sight of God.
If I have failed in anything, will taking the ground of a poor sinner make the
sin to be less, or give me to feel it more? No! If I am a saint, blessed with
God in His beloved Son, made one with Christ, and the Holy Spirit given to
dwell in me, then I ought to feel and say, "How terrible that I have
failed, and broken down, and dishonored the Lord, and been indifferent to His
glory!" If I feel my own coldness and indifference, it is to be treated as
baseness and hated as sin. On the other hand, to take the ground of a
"poor sinner" is really, though it may not be intended, to make
excuses for evil. Which of the two ways would act most powerfully upon the
conscience? Which humbles man and exalts God most? Clearly the more that you
realize what God has given you, and made you in Christ, the more you will feel
the sin and dishonor of your course if you are walking inconsistently. But if
you keep speaking about yourself merely as a sinner, it may seem lowly to the
superficial, but it only becomes a kind of palliative of your evil, and never
causes such thorough humbling as God looks for in the child of faith.

 

(From Lectures
on the Epistle to the Galatians.)

A writer in a well-known
magazine of Christian psychology states that a person must first love himself
before he can love others. He supports this statement by quoting Mark 12:31-33:
"Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself."

 

Another contemporary Christian
writer opposes this view and says that the verse does not mean love your
neighbor as you should love yourself, but love your neighbor as you are
so apt to love yourself. He also says we should not accept ourselves as we are,
but acknowledge our unworthiness and ask God to make us what we ought to be.

 

Is one of these men right and
the other wrong? I believe they are both right but about different aspects of
human personality. We should never love ourselves in the sense of wanting to
please ourselves, or have our own way; or in the sense of being puffed up over
ourselves, our accomplishments, our genealogy, our socioeconomic status. This
is the kind of self-love concerning which the apostle Paul warns Timothy as
being characteristic of the last days:"Men shall be lovers of their own
selves" (2 Tim. 3:2). We should never accept any aspect of sin in
ourselves, but should always judge it in humility before God. Neither must we
accept or be satisfied with our measure of spiritual growth or attainment. If
we are really going on with the Lord, we will feel keenly how far short we come
as to our knowledge of Christ and of His Word, our devotedness to Him, our
consistency of walk, our obedience to His Word and will, our practical
sanctification unto Himself, our service for Him, and our use and development
of the gifts He has given us.

 

But there are ways, set forth in
Scripture, in which it is right and proper to love ourselves. One such
Scripture has already been quoted:"Thou shalt love thy neighbor as
thyself." Another passage akin to this is Eph. 5:28, 29:"So ought
men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth
himself. For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth
it, even as the Lord the Church." If the self-love referred to here is
sinful, then as we grow in our relationship with Christ, we will be delivered
from this self-love; but note well that at the same time we will be delivered
from love for our neighbor and love for our wife! The clear implication of Eph.
5:28 is that a man would have to stop loving his wife in order to stop loving
himself!

 

The key to understanding these Scriptures
is to realize that it is agape love referred to in Eph. 5:28 and Mark
12:31, 33, whereas it is philia love in 2 Tim. 3:2. Agape love
is a self-sacrificing, giving kind of love, that love which characterizes
God—"God is love." Philia love, on the other hand, is more a
pleasure-seeking, self-seeking, getting land of love.* But, you ask, how can I
love myself with a selfless kind of love? This seems like a contradiction of
terms. Perhaps it would help if we recalled that we are not our own, but bought
with a price (1 Cor. 6:19, 20); that we are God’s creatures, His instruments,
His vessels, His servants; that we are members of the body of Christ and
temples of the Holy Spirit. Do we not desire to nourish and cherish—take the
best possible care of—ourselves; and not just with respect to the needs of our
bodies, but the needs of our souls and spirits as well? Thus, if I have agape
love for myself, I will, for example, abstain from alcohol and from heavy
meals in order to keep my mind alert that I might be "ready always"
to serve the Lord. Also, I will feed my soul and spirit daily with that
heavenly bread, the Word of God, that I might be able to respond to the cares
of this life on a spiritual plane.

 

(* The reader is referred to the
July, 1970, issue of Words of Truth far a fuller exposition of the
difference between these two Greek words for "love.")

 

If I have agape love for
myself, I will also accept with thankfulness the way God made me. Whatever I
may possess in talents, abilities, temperament, personality, intelligence,
beauty, or physical health and strength are gifts from God. Whatever I lack in
any of these areas is also a gift from God, for He has distributed these
characteristics according to His infinite wisdom, in keeping with the perfect
plan He has for my life.

 

A person who feels dissatisfied
with himself, who envies other people because he supposes them to be superior
to himself with respect to certain characteristics, this person cannot fully
love others. Much of his energy will be used in attempting to drag others down
or to build himself up in his own mind or in the mind of others. A person who
does not like the mind or body he was born with is actually complaining against
God and accusing Him of being unfair.

 

God does not expect us to use
talents we do not have. He does expect each one of us to develop and use the
talents He has given us for His honor and glory (not ours). He also expects us
to develop those inner qualities which are listed in Galatians 5 as fruit of
the Spirit. Each of us has a special place in the body of Christ that only we
can fill. To best fill this position, let us accept our mental and physical
selves as God has made us, and concentrate on developing our spiritual selves
and the fruit of the Spirit.

 

The apostle tells us in Romans
15:4 that "whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our
learning." The first ten or twelve chapters of 1 Chronicles are little
more than a list of names. What the "learning" is, I am frank to
confess I do not know. But in 1 Chron. 4:9, 10 something is said about the one
whose name is mentioned:"And Jabez was more honorable than his brethren:
and his mother called his name Jabez, saying, Because I bare him with sorrow.
And Jabez called on the God of Israel, saying, Oh that Thou wouldest bless me
indeed, and enlarge my coast, and that Thine hand might be with me, and that
thou wouldest keep me from evil, that it may not grieve me! And God granted him
that which he requested." Why are we told something about Jabez, while
nothing is said about others? The fact that the Spirit of God lingers over him
encourages us to do so also. We are told he "was more honorable than his
brethren." Naturally we ask, What made him so?

 

The Chronicles are a history, a
review book; and in this way suggest to us the judgment seat of Christ. We are
making our histories now, and a review day is coming. At the judgment seat of
Christ our stories will be told. Will it be said of any of us, "He was
more honorable than his brethren"? I suppose we would like that to be said
of us. Let us then linger over these verses to see if we can find out what it
was that made him honorable.

 

There are two things to be
noticed. Sorrow gave him his name, and he was a man of earnest desires. There
is no doubt a close connection between the two things.

 

First, then, sorrow gave him his
name. This is also true in a sense of us. How? Let us see. This world is a
scene of sorrow. Evil has come into it. There is not a heart that does not feel
more or less its power. The story of this world is one of human woe. The cry of
need and suffering rises up on every hand. It is impossible to be unaffected by
it. And the more we are with God about it, the more we enter into His mind, the
more serious we will be, and the more we will view the world in the light of
the reality of things as they are before the eye of God. Thus soberness will be
stamped upon us. We will not be able to mock at human need. We cannot be
indifferent to suffering or laugh at the ills and griefs of men.

 

Our Lord had this character. He
was "a man of sorrows?’ He wept in the midst of human ill and the havoc of
a scene of evil. He said, too, "Blessed are they that mourn." To
be mourners in the sense in which He was a mourner is to know the grace by
which tears are wiped away. In the scene to which we are passing there will be
no sorrow. No ill or evil will ever enter the new creation.

 

But we must pass on to the
second point, and to understand it we must look at the history of Israel. God put them in Canaan and told Joshua to divide the land among the twelve tribes.
He did so, giving an explicitly defined position to each tribe. Now when this
was done, each tribe was responsible to drive out and destroy the inhabitants
occupying land within its own territory. If we turn to the Book of Judges, we
shall find that every tribe failed. They did not drive out the inhabitants.
There was, however, much greater energy of faith in Judah than in the other
tribes. We have the story of Caleb who drove out of Hebron the three sons of
Anak; of Othniel who took Kirjath-sepher; and of Achsah who despised not her
father’s gift of a south land, but in the boldness of faith asked a further
gift of springs of water. We read of Judah going up, having asked counsel of
the Lord, and slaying the Canaanites and the Perizzites. He slew also
Adoni-bezek and took Jerusalem. He took Gaza, Askelon, and Ekron. He drove out
the inhabitants of the mountains, but he "could not drive out the
inhabitants of the valleys." Notwithstanding his greater energy of faith,
he failed. He gave up the conflict; he stopped pressing on. Why was this? And
why was it that each tribe broke down and ceased fighting before they drove out
all the enemies? Perhaps after getting possession of part of the land, they settled
down to enjoy it. They may have become satisfied with what they had acquired,
and so gave up the effort to acquire more. But whether this was so or not, it
is evident that the effort to complete the subjugation of the land was given
up.

 

If now we turn to this man,
Jabez, we find he was not content to enjoy merely the coast he already
possessed. There was in him an energy of faith that said, "My coast is a
gift of the God of Israel. It is a good coast. But He who gave me so good a
coast must delight in giving. His gifts are well worth having. I want
them." And so he prays to have his coast enlarged.

 

Have we not now gathered the
lesson of his story? If so, let us apply it. God has given us His Word as our
inheritance. We have learned something of certain parts of it, though as to
what we do know, we have to say we do not know it as we ought to know it. We
have no reason to be proud of our knowledge of God’s Word. But whatever we know
through God’s mercy, do we want to know more? Have we not to some extent
settled down to enjoy what we have learned, and given up the effort to learn
more?

 

Let us remember the words of the
Lord:"Labor … for that meat which endureth unto everlasting
life" (John 6:27). Our danger is in being satisfied with what we have
learned. Are we seeking to get out of the Bible what is in it? Have we learned
the spiritual value of all its different books? We cannot say we have. It is
true of us that there is still "much land to be possessed." Why is
not our coast being enlarged? Is it not because we have failed in respect to
what was so prominent in Jabez? Are we fervently desiring to increase in the
knowledge of God’s Word?

 

We live in a day when every
effort is made to rob us of the blessings and authority of the Scriptures. May
we be thoroughly alive to it! How prone we are to feed on certain favorite
passages. We need "every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of
God." How often we find ourselves at our wits’ end to know what to do! Why
is it so? Simply because we do not know the specific word of God that applies
to the circumstances in which we are. We cannot throw the Bible as a whole at
the enemy. We need to meet him with the particular "saying of God"
that suits the occasion. How busy the enemy is! How often he prevails! How
seldom we conquer! May the Lord give us diligence and earnest desire and
fixedness of purpose to increase in the knowledge of His Word!