Tuesday, August 26, 2014

Deliverance: the cost

I have been cut to the quick by this letter by JND:

above all, we must be in earnest to have it. Who is willing to be dead to what nature and flesh would desire? Yet that is the only way of deliverance. People will tell you it is our standing in Christ. I admit it as Colossians 3, and as faith owns in Romans 6 and Galatians 2; but who is willing to be in the standing? It is standing, or else we are in the hopeless effort of Romans 7, or an honest monks' labour, which I have tried; and even if we have experimentally learned, as it must be learned, who is carrying out 2 Corinthians 4, so as to have the conscience living in it by an ungrieved spirit? Letters of J. N. Darby, Volume 3 p 90

I have to confess this describes me pretty well. I am quite content to be dead to the parts of the world that seem (in my judgment) to be a problem. But there are bits I like, and I tend to cling to those pretty desperately.

No comments: