He is…a Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. —Isaiah
53:3
{CHAMBERS} “We
are not “acquainted with grief” in the same way our Lord was acquainted with
it. We endure it and live through it, but we do not become intimate with it. At
the beginning of our lives we do not bring ourselves to the point of dealing
with the reality of sin. We look at life
through the eyes of reason and say that if a person will control his instincts,
and educate himself, he can produce a life that will slowly evolve into the
life of God. But as we continue on through life, we find the presence of
something which we have not yet taken into account, namely, sin— and it upsets
all of our thinking and our plans. Sin has made the foundation of our thinking
unpredictable, uncontrollable, and irrational. We have to recognize that sin is a fact of life, not just a
shortcoming. Sin is blatant mutiny against God, and either sin or God must die in my life. The New Testament brings us
right down to this one issue— if sin rules in me, God’s life in me will be
killed; if God rules in me, sin in me will be killed. There is nothing more
fundamental than that. The culmination of sin was the crucifixion of Jesus
Christ, and what was true in the history of God on earth will also be true in
your history and in mine— that is, sin will kill the life of God in us. We must
mentally bring ourselves to terms with this fact of sin. It is the only
explanation why Jesus Christ came to earth, and it is the explanation of the
grief and sorrow of life.”
{ELGIN} Sometimes I will glean the essence of the point
Oswald Chambers is making in his devotion, and other times, I must quote the
whole. That is the case today. My life is one of constant struggle. Much like Paul described in Romans chapter 7 .. “the good I want to
do I don’t do” Throughout the day I am
faced with opportunities to yield to the Spirit or to yield to my flesh (which
is a soft way of saying “sin”). Our
struggle with sin is something we will acknowledge but we really don’t like to
think about it. When you boil it down,
the problem is a matter of our will. Accepting personal sin is like walking with a light in the dark but not turning it on. I
am teaching on the subject of quenching the Spirit in Sunday School. We have the Spirit of God in us, yet, we must
decide to yield to the Spirit, every day, every moment really. That requires a spiritual awareness and that
will only result through spiritual devotion.
In other words, doing those things that draw us close to the Father and
one-ness with Jesus and the Father. What
that requires is that we stop thinking of being a Christian as an attribute of
our person – who we are … husband, father, brother, son, friend, co-worker,
Christian – and see us in terms of “whose” we are. If I have been born again, I am a son of God,
who happens to be a husband, father, brother, son, friend, and co-worker. Everything I am and everything I do must be
on the context of whose I am. If I lose
sight of that and think of myself as being merely a “son of Adam” then I should
not be surprised when sin prevails in my life.
(1 John 5:11-12) “And
this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his
Son. Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does
not have life.” Since we have “life” we should live like it, don’t you agree?
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