Tozar's answer the question is this:
The answer usually given, simply that we are "cold," will not explain all the facts. There is something more serious than coldness of heart, something that may be back of that coldness and be the cause of its existence. What is it? What but the presence of a veil in our hearts? a veil not taken away as the first veil was, but which remains there still shutting out the light and hiding the face of God from us. It is the veil of our fleshly fallen nature living on, unjudged within us, uncrucified and unrepudiated. It is the close-woven veil of the self-life which we have never truly acknowledged, of which we have been secretly ashamed, and which for these reasons we have never brought to the judgment of the cross. It is not too mysterious, this opaque veil, nor is it hard to identify. We have but to look in our own hearts and we shall see it there, sewn and patched and repaired it may be, but there nevertheless, an enemy to our lives and an effective block to our spiritual progress...
To be specific, the self-sins are these: self-righteousness, self-pity, self-confidence, -self-sufficiency, self-admiration, self-love and a host of others like them. They dwell too deep within us and are too much a part of our natures to come to our attention till the light of God is focused upon them...
One should suppose that proper instruction in the doctrines of man's depravity and the necessity for justification through the righteousness of Christ alone would deliver us from the power of the self-sins; but it does not work that way. Self can live unrebuked at the very altar. It can watch the bleeding Victim die and not be in the least affected by what it sees. It can fight for the faith of the Reformers and preach eloquently the creed of salvation by grace, and yet gain strength by its efforts. To tell the truth, it seems actually to feed upon orthodoxy and is more at home in a Bible Conference than in a tavern. Our very state of longing after God may afford it [the self] an excellent condition under which to thrive and grow.
Self is the opaque veil that hides the face of God from us. It can be removed only in spiritual experience, never by mere instruction. As well try to instruct leprosy out of our system. There must be a work of God in destruction before we are free. We must invite the cross to do its deadly work within us... In human experience that veil is made of living spiritual tissue; it is composed of the sentient, quivering stuff of which our whole beings consist, and to touch it is to touch us where we feel pain. To tear it away is to injure us, to hurt us and make us bleed. To say otherwise is to make the cross no cross and death no death at all. It is never fun to die. To rip through the dear and tender stuff of which life is made can never be anything but deeply painful. Yet that is what the cross did to Jesus and it is what the cross would do to every man to set him free.This rings so true for me because my heart clings so tightly to worldly comforts, material things, the approval of man, and the love of my own family. It hurts to renounce allegiance and devotion to these things. So much of life is bound to them and enhanced by them. I feel better about myself when all these things are in place which leaves me feeling fulfilled and content... satisfied with the outer courts. They are near the holy of holies, but they are no substitute for the holy of holies. Indeed they can be a barrier when they become an end in themselves rather than a means to an end.
I want so desperately to be able to echo Paul's words from Galatians 2:20 with all sincerity, that, "I have been crucified with Christ and it is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me. And they life I know live in the flesh I live by faith in the son of God who loved me and gave himself up for me."
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