We humans exist that we may be the means by which He expresses Himself. Humanity itself exists to express Deity. In order to get that into focus, I had to go through stages of destruction, making room for construction.
In order to get that into focus, I had to go through stages of destruction, making room for construction. The initial stage, of course, is when we at last face the fact that we are sinners. We recognize that we are cut off from God, and that there is something that He did which we could not do, when He came in the Person of Jesus Christ and wiped out all the consequences of our sin with the shedding of His precious blood.
When we come to Him we do not receive a past option, we receive a present Person who died for us. He comes into our hearts and there is born a love for Him that is not our love. The proof that we are redeemed is that the love in our hearts for Jesus Christ is greater than our love for ourselves.
But because of the false concept of life that we have, even though we are born anew we still tend to think, “Now we have the Lord Jesus Christ. We shall live for Him and work for Him.” So once again we have to go down, not up, to learn another great lesson. We human selves do not do what we should do that is true. But it is equally true that we human selves cannot do what we should do. We have to discover not only our guilt but our helplessness.
As unredeemed sinners we come face to face with our guilt and our lost condition. As redeemed new men we have to discover our helplessness; so that instead of counting ourselves able to live the Christian life and to do the kind of good we ought, we find ourselves positively unable. So we have to come to a second crash.
The first crash found us guilty sinners; the second crash finds us helpless saints, and it is a crash that is more difficult to recognize. I must come to a place where I find that life is not I living it, with God’s assistance and His partnership; rather it is He, an entirely other Person, living it, and I am the means by which He lives it as a replacement.
The simple surprise that God gave me in Africa was contained in the little phrase in the Bible, “God is love.” I saw that John was not saying “God has love,” but “God is love.” There is a big difference. If you have a thing, it is not you. I have a coat on my back, and if I take it off and give it to you, I am still here. Thus the New Testament does not teach that God has a thing called love which He gives to you. It says, “God is love.”
If that be true, then love is a Person. If God is love, the only self-giving love in the universe is one exclusive Person. It is not what He has and gives you, it is something that He is. He is not a Person who gives something, but rather One who is something.
I began studying further. I wanted power, and I discovered that the Bible teaches that Christ is the power of God. Not that Christ has the power, and utilizes it. He powers a person because He is the Person; and all powers are manifestations of this one Person.
I came also to study the word “life.” We often speak of “having” eternal life. But I find that Jesus did not say, “I have the life and give it to you.” He says, “I am the Life.” Life is a Person. I came to the end of my pursuit when I found the little expression in Colossians 3:11, “Now Christ is all, and in all.” And there I discovered the reverse of my outlook on life.
I suddenly saw that the reason for the existence of humanity is not to become something, but to contain Someone. Not to become something built up by hard work; that is where our strains and stresses and guilt and condemnation arise. We are ashamed of ourselves; we ask, “Why am I not better?” We think that we ought to be changed, but we never change. What we receive is a new Person inside of us-which is quite a different thing.
To become something means that I have to be built up. To contain something means that the container doesn’t matter, but what it contains is important. Thus the New Testament gives us the A-B-C of living the Christian life: it tells us that we are to be vessels. “Vessel” is a very simple and humbling word. A vessel has no other reason for existing than its capacity to contain.
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