A. W. Tozer Sermon: The Deeper Life (Transcript)

And then there’s the lack of moral dynamic which every Christian ought to know.

Now this is the static Christian, and I believe that if we will listen, we will hear God speaking. “He that hath an ear to hear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches.” (Revelation 3:22)

And I believe that if we hear what the Spirit says in our day, we will hear God say, “Moses, My servant is dead. Therefore arise, go over this Jordan, and into the land which I have given to you. Every place the sole of your foot shall tread upon, that have I given you.” (Joshua 1:1-3)

I believe we’ll hear the Spirit God say, ‘let us go on under perfection’. Let us go on beyond repentance from past sins. Let us go on beyond forgiveness and cleansing from past sins. Let us go on beyond the impartation of divine life. Let’s be sure, however, that we get these first things settled first to the point of absolute assurance.

There can be no deeper life until there has been life. There can be no progress in the way until we are in the way. There can be no growth until there has been birth. And all the efforts toward a deeper life will only bring disappointment, unless we have first settled the matter of repentance from dead works and the forgiveness of sins and the impartation of divine life in conversion.

But now, to break down the deeper life, I want briefly to mention that it’s two things, as I shall say today — it’s more than that, but two I want to mention today.

One is a complete forsaking of the world, and the other is a turning wholly to the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, that’s not only my opinion of it, but that is what the Bible teaches about it. And that is the standard formula that has come down to us from the very early days of the church.

You will find it written into the great hymns of the church, and you will find it written into the great books of devotion of the church down the years, that these two things are necessary for a Christian who would go on and break the static condition and become a flowing, moving, progressive, dynamic Christian.

There must be a complete forsaking of the world and a turning wholly to our Lord Jesus Christ.

Now, we’ll talk first about this FORSAKING OF THE WORLD. It’s entirely possible to be religious and not to have forsaken the world at all. The proof of this is that you will find professed Christians wherever or at least almost wherever, you will find non-Christians. I want to be as broad minded and fair as I can about this.

And I suppose there are places where you will not find men claiming to be Christians. I don’t know whether gangsters who habitually and as a system destroyed by death, those who are their rivals, take them out and shoot them. I don’t know whether you would find any Christians – professed Christians — among gangsters or not, although I do know this that when certain gangsters have died by the bullet, they have been mumbled into the kingdom of God and squirted into the kingdom of God by oil and all the rest. And their leaders have tried very hard even to get those bloody men into the kingdom of God unsaved, unblessed, unshriven, unforgiven and without time even to say ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’ And yet people try to get them in.

So I presume that there are those who claim to be some kind of Christian who even engage in the mutual extermination of each other for the sake of the south side or the north side or the west side racket.

I do remember of a young man who was a murderer who was sentenced to the chair a few years ago and was to die out here in Cook County jail. But they set his death hour for a certain day, and then later reversed it and changed it because they said it fell on a holiday of his religion and they didn’t want to put him to death on a day that was a holiday of his religion. So they changed it, so he didn’t have to die on a holiday.

So I suppose that you will find Christians just about everywhere, or men who claim they’re Christians, I mean, certainly you will find them at the racetrack and certainly there never has been a sport invented so vile and violent and vicious that you will not find Christians sitting around there with their New Testament in their hip pocket.

And I don’t think that there is a gambling hall where you won’t find some kind of Christians there. I don’t think that there’s any worldly pleasures where you don’t find them. It’s possible to be religious and not to forsake the world.

Yet nobody can be a Christian in the right sense of the world word until he has forsaken the world.

Second, it is possible to forsake the world in body and never forsake it in spirit at all. It’s possible to forsake the world externally and still be worldly inside.

Now, the situation with the monks and the nuns down the centuries has been exactly that. Now, I’m not saying this is the Protestants, I’m letting they themselves say it. Some of the great Christian souls were those who tried to reform these monasteries and nunneries and to get them to be in their real inner life what they were in their external outer life. They were hidden away from the world in their bodies and dressed a certain way in order that they might be separated from the world.

And yet some of these great souls declared that these who had thus separated themselves from the world were more surely and certainly worldly than some of those who were not thus separated. So we have Bernard and St. Francis, and we have Teresa and Nicholas of Cusa and Richard Rolle and John of the Cross, and you can name them one after the other, are those persons who were trying hard to arouse the church that they might be inwardly what their profession showed them to be outwardly.

Now, Walter Hilton lived 200 years before Luther was born, and so he never heard of Protestantism or the Reformation. And yet Walter Hilton, the English Christian, was such a Christian that he wrote a series of letters to the nuns in a certain convent, and warned them of the very thing I’m talking to you about. And they call that series of letters: The Scale of Perfection. It’s the most wonderful book. Don’t ask to borrow it, but I’ll tell you where you can buy one.

But The Scale of Perfection, the opening part of it at least, is devoted to this: It is devoted to saying to these sisters… ‘Now listen, sisters, you have come out of the world and closed the door on yourself, and put on a certain garb which indicates that you’re separated from the world. Now, [said Walter] help me look out, ladies, that you don’t take the world with you into the monastery, or into the nunnery, and be as worldly in there as if you were out on the street.’ He said, ‘Remember that it’s the forsaking of the world in your heart that makes you unworldly.’

And so there was several great chapters written urgently warning these women that it was entirely possible to put on the garb of the nun and to live in a nunnery, and still at the same time be worldly inside.

So I say it’s possible to be religious and not to forsake the world. And it’s possible to forsake the world in body and not in spirit.

And it’s never possible, however, to forsake it in spirit and not forsake it in practice.

Now, I feel it necessary to mention this, because there are some supposed broad-minded Christians who will do almost anything that anybody will do. I’ve noticed this, brethren. Maybe I’ve mentioned it before, but I’ve noticed this, that in this day in which we live, all you have to do is to add for God or for Jesus onto a thing. And lo and behold, that which the church has repudiated and all earnest Christians have [written] years is suddenly sanctified, I’m doing it for God. I’m doing it for Jesus.

And if you can just get for God and for Jesus, those little prepositional phrases dangling on the end and lo and behold, that which wasn’t any ever counted right by the church down the generations is now suddenly counted right because we’ve added I’m doing it for Jesus. That takes in almost everything that the world has ever done.

And I’m expecting one of these days to hear about the association of Christian bartenders who are doing it for Jesus. They say, oh, we’re not like the world. We’re not serving up this poison just in our own name. We used to before we accepted Christ. We used to deal this out for our sakes and for the money we made out of it. Now we’re doing it for Jesus.

Now, we haven’t got that far yet, but give us time, brother, we’re on our way. And all we have to do is wait a little and we will sanctify almost anything by saying, you can do it for Jesus.

I warn your brother, you can’t do anything for Jesus that Jesus wouldn’t do, and you can’t do anything for God that God has interdicted and turned the [canon] of His judgments against.

The only thing that I can do for God is that which is holy like God. And the only thing that I can do for Jesus is that which Jesus has allowed and permitted and commanded me to do. But to live like the world and say, I’m separated from the world in spirit.

I’m separated in spirit and I don’t have to come out of the world because I’m separated in spirit. I know where that came from, boy. I know where that came from. If you would sniff that a little, I know what you’d smell: You smell brimstone, because that argument came from hell and certainly belongs there and doesn’t belong in the Church of Christ. Never possible to forsake the world in your spirit and not forsake it in reality.

Now, let me give you an example of what I mean. Bible examples, I have here NOAH. God said to Noah, ‘I’m going to destroy the world, make Me an ark and make it of a gopher wood and so on’, and Noah did that thing.

Now, suppose that I preached on separation from the world, might have said to Noah… ‘Noah, don’t you think you ought to get into the ark?’

Noah said, ‘That’s the old-fashioned idea. After all, what is the world? Give me a definition of what you mean by the world. The church can’t agree on what’s meant by the world, and therefore I’m separating from the world in my heart, but I’m going to stay right down here on the ground and sleep under the bush and eat off the tree and live like other people. But I won’t be like other people because I’m separated in my heart.’

You know what would have happened to Noah? He’d been sending up bubbles before very long when the fountains of the great deep broke and the rain came down and the flood covered the mountaintops, Noah’s carcass would have floated, bloated and distended along with the rest.

But Noah knew that to forsake the world, meant to forsake the world. So it said, ‘He went into the ark, and God closed the door.’ (Genesis 7:6)

Take Abraham.

God said to Abraham, ‘Get thee out of thy country and away from thy kindred, unto a land which I will show thee.’ (Genesis 12:1)

Now, Abraham could have said, now, I have had a call from God to forsake my country and my people and to go to another land. But he said, I don’t think I should take that literally. I think that that means forsake them in spirit. And so I’m going to live right here in Ur of the Chaldees, but I’m going to go into the Holy Land in spirit.

No, my brother, Abraham had to go out, in fact. And ‘so Abraham departed and Lot with him,’ it said. (Genesis 12:4) Abraham went and took some people with him.

And then take LOT, for example. When Lot finally got into Sodom and become mayor of the town, they say, the angels said, “Escape for thy life and look not behind thee.” (Genesis 19:17)

Well, Lot could have said no. He could have even written several articles on it. He could have had a debate on it and a panel discussion on it, especially among young people who always know it all.

He could have said, ‘Now let’s have a panel discussion on ‘Escape for thy life; look not behind thee’, what it means.’

And while they were discussing it, the fire could have fallen and destroyed Sodom and a Lot along with it. But Lot knew that ‘Escape for thy life’ meant get out of Sodom and stay out; I’m sending fire on it.’

And then when those first Christians were told that to love the world and the things of the world meant that if men didn’t love God, they didn’t hold discussions on what the world meant or what was meant by the world or how far they could go and still, please God, they got out of the world and they separated themselves completely from everything that had the world spirit.

And the result was: they brought down fury on their own heads and that same world exists today that existed then, and hear me say this again: some of you have told me you don’t believe it, but listen to me when I tell you again and repeat it again, and the great God Almighty, either now or later, will confirm the truth of it that the world is no different now from what it was when it crucified Jesus and martyred the first Christians. It’s the same world.

Adam is always Adam wherever you find him and he never changes. And the reason we get along so well is that we have compromised our position and we have allowed the world to dictate to us while we in turn are permitted to dictate a little to the world. And so we have compromised this.

The result is there are very few people that are in any way embarrassed from the world. I’m afraid if we ever get too popular or the community accepts us here, I’m afraid of that. The church that this unsaved worldly community accepts is never a church full of the Holy Ghost.

A church full of the Holy Ghost who separated from the world and is walking with God will never be accepted by the community. It will always be looked upon as being somewhat off-center.

So maybe if the laws are such that you’re protected and civilization is such as it is now, you won’t be attacked but you will be looked upon as being a little bit off center.

Well, but he said you preaching, brother told you that everybody should probably get in a space suit and zoom out of here and get away from the world. No, I’m not saying that at all. I am saying that there is a part, a world that is not the world God means when He said forsake the world; you can eat and work and live and drink and sleep and bathe and grow and beget your kind and bring them up and that’s God made that. That’s not the world.

The world is that organized thing filled with unbelief which has got to amuse itself and which is built upon doubts, unbelief, self-righteousness and Adam.

And the other, of course, Jesus was in the world but not of the world. There’s no contradiction here in what I’m saying. I’m making a distinction between that part of the world which is divinely given: to plant and reap, and cook and sow and do our work and live in the world right; God meant it to be so. And that’s not worldliness.

But the worldliness is the pride of life, the pride of the eye and the longing of the ambitious soul for position and all of that which the world does because of the rising of its sin within it, all that’s the world. And it overflows into a thousand things that the church has habitually rejected… down the years the church has rejected.

Now second matter is: turn wholly to our Lord Jesus Christ. First is forsake completely the world and that’s all negative. Notice that, that’s all negative. Somebody says Tozer is a negative preacher; I believe in the negative and in the positive. I do not apologize for preaching negative.

I have a quarter here in my hand. On one side there’s a head of Benjamin Franklin and on the other side is an eagle with his wings outspread and one of those is a negative and one on the positive side. And the electricity that lights this building has a negative and a positive. And so the negative and positive goes all through the world.

You turn your back on the north that’s negative and travel towards the south, that’s positive. And so I turn my back on the world, that’s negative. And then I turn wholly to the Lord Jesus Christ. That’s positive. And every effort to preach the positive without the negative is like dividing this quarter edgewise, cutting it through and then try to ride on a bus with that. He’d fling that back to you and say that’s only half here, you need the other side.

I bet you’d say I got the head of Benjamin Franklin there, I know, but I want vehicle on too. That’s the other side.

How can you have an electric light with only the positive pole? You have to have both. And so if we’re going to turn ourselves wholly to the Lord Jesus Christ, there’s going to have to be a complete forsaking of the world — all that is worldly in its spirit, all that is wrong per se, all that is unlike Jesus, all that is unlike God — you must forsake that no matter what the world thinks about us, that’s negative and then turn wholly to our Lord Jesus Christ. And this turning unto the Lord Jesus Christ I want to talk about a lot more next week. I want to talk about that a little more and I want to talk also next Sunday morning, developing this thought further about the deeper life in Christ, leading us to a place where we’re free in our hearts from fear and inordinate lust.

Now it’s this that gives a deeper life. After turning away — that’s negative — you can forsake the world: quit gambling, quit drinking, quit smoking, quit living for the world, never go to any of the worldly places of amusement, don’t gamble, don’t dance, don’t do any of these things — you can quit all that and that’s negative that has no power to impart any life of any kind. That’s negative. But it’s necessary before there can be any positive.

Well the positive is then that you turn to Jesus Christ, that gives the power and the purity and the deep satisfaction and the joy unspeakable and full of glory. The negative can never shine, the negative can never be musical, the negative can never be fragrant.

The man can go to a cave. You can go to a cave and leave it all in utter disgust like time in a vacuum; go into the woods and live in a cave and still not have any power, any radiance, any joy, any inward glory. It’s turning unto Jesus Christ that gives that.

And the two can be done in one act. If I’m facing north and God commands me to turn south, I’d still remember I don’t know whether I could outface the north anymore and do it in two motions — used to be able to do it during the time I was in the service.

But if God says you’re facing north and it’s the wrong direction for you, outface march, you can turn from the north and to the south in one easy motion. And so when God says forsake the world and turn to Christ at one motion, I do it in one free easy act. And my turning from the world is my turning come to Christ. It doesn’t always work that way, but it can be, I say.

So the joy unspeakable is when we see Jesus… deep satisfaction. Suppose let’s hunt around for an illustration. Maybe it’s ridiculous, but it will illustrate anyway.

Suppose that somebody decided to have the power to do it and he had a lot of gremlins or angels or something at his command. And he said now I’m tired of this darkness. I’m tired of this darkness. I want you to wipe the head as clean as darkness. And he got 1000 or million or 2 million or 10 million gremlins or some of the kind of imaginary beings with mops. And they mop the heavens of all darkness, and still be dark.

You don’t have to worry. Let’s go back to bed, gremlin. Just wait till the sun comes up. The coming up of the sun will do what all the mopping of the heavens would never do; just wait for the sun.

So some people try by the negatives to get themselves blessed. They won’t do this. I remember one boy wouldn’t drink pop and he stood at a soft drink counter over in Ohio and was very disturbed about a glass of pop. He said that he thought it was worldly. Well, he was an unhappy man.

And I have never seen a happy Christian yet that was ever world conscious. Never. If he’s trying to get loose from the world, or if he’s worrying about what is the world, or if he’s writing letters to find out what the world means, he’s never a happy man. He’s busy with these negatives.

And I’ve never seen a happy man yet it wasn’t taken up with Jesus Christ the Lord. The sun comes up from the darkness, goes out. Not all the little creatures in the universe could wipe the heavens clean of darkness as long as there’s no sun. But when the sun peeps up, the night departs and the clouds flee away and the shadows are no more.

So when we turn with all our hearts unto Jesus Christ our Lord, then we find the deeper life. Then we find in Him the power and the purity and the satisfaction and the joy unspeakable and full of glory. Nothing can’t be something and the negative can’t sing. The negative doesn’t smell good. The negative can’t give off fragrance. The negative can’t feel the light. Only the positive. Only when I turn my eyes and gaze upon the Son of God and my inner heart is taken up with His person, then every instrument inside my music room gets tuned and the music starts.

And then radiance comes to the light and joy breaks out. And Peter said joy unspeakable and full of glory. (1 Peter 1:8) So it is; that’s the deeper life. Two acts can be done at once: Turned from the world. Turn on to Christ. And then all the natural things — eating, drinking, buying and selling, marrying and giving in marriage, and all the natural things which God created to be done, which are not in the spirit of the world, but are natural of God, they’ll all be sanctified too. And they’ll become a part of the — they’ll become fuel for the fires of the altar that rise day and night onto God.

So the common things — things we call secular won’t be secular anymore. The mundane things won’t be mundane. They’ll be heavenly too. Because the commonest thing, the peeling of a potato, the commonest thing can be done for the glory of God. If we have turned from the world and the world’s ways and are looking full in the face of the Son of God, then the Son will shine and all the gremlins of hell can’t wipe the Son-light away.

If hell should send up a legion to wipe away the sunshine, it could wipe the face of the earth and desperately follow the sun around the earth, never succeed in keeping the sunshine away from the earth. Because when the sun shines on the earth is sunshine, so hell can’t destroy your spiritual happiness if you’re gazing at the face of Jesus, the ‘Sun of righteousness’ with healing in His wings. We have that at least: Turn from the world. Turn full hard unto Christ. Next week I’ll have more detail.

Let’s pray now.

Our Father, we well know that spiritual things can’t be reduced to formulas, even though we struggle so hard to do it. An impulse of faith, sudden reckless daring of a soul in its leap after God to do more for us than all the carefully laid out sermons could ever do. We’ve done all we can do. We’ve appealed to the intelligence, made some explanations, tried to say in our racy modern English what has been said with grade and stately dignity in our Bibles, my God, now take this that’s been spoken and apply it to our hearts. May we one after the other turn from Adam’s unbelieving world with its self confidence, its self reliance, its arrogance, its pride, mad pleasures, its love of wealth, love of praise, its love of publicity, its inordinate love of clothing and of fine things and of rich things. Turn us, we pray Thee, from it all, not only in our hearts, but in reality. And then turn us to Jesus Christ, Thy Son. We need Him, Lord. We gave up the world and didn’t have Him, we’d be in a vacuum. Thou quickly take us through that little vacuum and take us to Jesus Christ, who is the radiant source of everlasting life and peace, joy world without Him. We ask it in Christ’s name. Amen.

[SESSION 2]

Now, this morning again I want to talk on the deeper life, what it is and how we may enter into it. And I have for a kind of text, the first two verses of the 6th chapter of Hebrews.

Hebrews 6:1-2: “Therefore leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on unto perfection; not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works, and of faith toward God, Of the doctrine of baptisms, and of laying on of hands, and of resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment.”

That exhortation: Let us go on unto perfection…

Now, I wanted to talk, and have been talking about the deeper light, but I find that the expression is used to cover almost anything and everything. And I want it to be understood that by the words, I do not mean a life deeper than the Scripture indicates. I have said many times and repeat, that I do not want anything that cannot be found within the framework of the revelation, the Christian revelation. I do not want anything that’s added. I don’t need it, I do not want it, I’m not interested in it.

That is why I never buy books or go listen to lectures on how to wake up your solar plexus and tune into the cosmic process. All that is extra scriptural and any of it that’s good is found in the Word of God, and any that isn’t in the Word of God isn’t good. So I let those fellows talk to people who don’t know the Word. And I stay by the Word.

I have said in conversations with people, in private conversations that I am a Bible Christian and that if an archangel with wings spread as broad as a constellation were to come and, shining like the sun, offer me some new truth, I’d ask him for reference. And if he couldn’t give it to me and couldn’t show me where it’s found in the Bible, I would bow him out and say, I’m awfully sorry, you don’t bring any references with you.

So what I’m talking about is not a life deeper than the Scriptures indicate, but merely one that is in fact what it professes to be in name.

A CHRISTIAN IS NOT ONE WHO….

Now, a Christian isn’t one who has been baptized necessarily, though a Christian is likely to be baptized. A Christian is not one who receives the Communion, either one or both of the elements. A Christian may receive Communion and if he’s been properly taught, will. But that is not a Christian necessarily.

A Christian is not one who has been born into a Christian home, though the chances are more likely that he will be a Christian if he has a good Christian background.

A Christian is not one who has memorized the New Testament or who is a great lover of Christian song or who goes to hear the Apollo Clubs and Messiah every year.

Now, a Christian may do all of those things and I think it might be fine if we did. But that doesn’t make a Christian.

A CHRISTIAN IS ONE WHO…

A Christian is one who sustains a right relation to Jesus Christ. Now, we enjoy — Christians enjoy a kind of union with Jesus Christ, a right kind of union. Everybody sustains some relationship to Jesus Christ, but everybody has a relationship to everybody else and everybody has a relation to Jesus Christ.

You see, the relation he sustains… it may be one of adoring, faith and love. It may be one of admiration, it may be one of hostility, it may be one of complete carelessness, but it’s an attitude of some sort. A relationship of some sort exists between every human being and Jesus Christ. That is, every human being that ever heard of Jesus Christ.

But a Christian is one who sustains a right and proper relation to Jesus Christ, a Biblical relation to Christ, one that is right, and that Christian sustains two kinds of relationship, or rather the union is two kinds: it’s judicial and vital. I’ll explain those two words.

In Romans 5^th chapter, we have the judicial relationship everybody sustains toward Christ.

Romans 5:1-2: “Therefore, being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ: by whom we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.”

Then in the Book of Ephesians, the first chapter, that very oft-quoted passage… he has blessed us

Ephesians 1:3-4:… “He has blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ: According as He hath chosen us in Him before the foundation of the world…”

Now, I only quote those not to give them exposition, but only to point out the fact that we sustain toward God in Christ a certain judicial relationship, just as your son in the home has toward you a certain legal judicial relationship: being born into your family, of your wife, you have legal obligations and you can get in trouble with the law if you deny them.

All law recognizes a certain right. The courts recognize that right. A relationship that is there between you and your son. It is not only the relationship of father to son biologically, it is a judicial relationship. You are accountable before the law not to neglect him, abuse him, starve him or run away and leave him. You got to look after him as your son.

Now there is a relationship which we stain toward God in Christ. It is a relationship of some children to the father, yet we are children of God. There are so many verses that deal with that that I don’t need to quote any one of them. You, as Bible students know that.

Then there is a vital relationship which is another matter altogether. It is possible for a man to adopt a son. Husband and wife have no children, and after a lot of waiting around, they decide that they’re going to adopt a boy. So they adopt that boy.

Now, under law, he has exactly the same relationship to that man as if he were his own son. As the legal father before the law, he has the judicial relationship that makes him responsible for the care of that boy. He is responsible to feed and educate and bring up and shelter and care for that boy until he comes of a certain age so that the relationship is judicial, that of father and son.

But he has no vital relationship with that boy. He did not come from the long age old life-stream of that father. He came from some other life-stream and was adopted into the family. So he has a judicial but not a vital relationship to that son.

But a Christian has a vital relationship to God and to Christ. He said, as I shall show tonight again, ‘I am the vine and you are the branches.’ (John 15:5) And the branch is a branch because it sustains a vital relationship. The life of the vine is in the branch and the life of the branch comes from the vine, and the two are united. That’s a vital relationship… so that a Christian is one who has been judicially, legally made a brother of Jesus Christ and a child of God.

But He is more than that. He is one who has been vitally united to Jesus Christ by the power and motions of life so that he is vitally livingly related to Jesus Christ.

Now, that’s where we begin. And my brothers and sisters, that’s where almost everybody ends in our circles. That’s where almost everybody ends. And so Bible schools and Bible conferences and books and printing houses and all are dedicated to the constant repetition of the fact that we’re judicially and vitally related to Christ in salvation. And that’s as far as we go.

But there are other relationships which we can also bear toward Christ. And that’s what the writer meant in the Hebrews when he said, “let us go on unto perfection…” And that’s what was meant in the 2 Corinthian Epistle, chapters 3… when the man of God told them that they were carnal that they ought to move on out of that carnal state into a spiritual state. There are at least three other relationships that everybody ought to bear toward Jesus Christ.

Not only the one that you entered into when you believed on Christ and were born again judicially, and not only the volitional one which you entered when you were born again, so that’s how you entered.

But there are two or there are three others: volitional, intellectual and emotional. And I want to talk about these relationships, this kind of union with Christ.

VOLITIONAL RELATIONSHIP

Now, I say that our union is judicial and vital. It’s that by virtue of our faith in Christ. But there is a volitional relationship too. And what do I mean by that?

Well, it’s not as bad as it sounds. I know we preachers have a way of making things awful and then it takes ten minutes to get the people’s minds back again. By volitional, I mean that a relationship of our will to God, so that every known will of God should be mine. Every known will of God… everything that God wills, I should will so that I will not only be judicially, legally related to Him, not only vitally related to Him in life, but that I will, in my mind, in my volitional life, be united to Him, by doing and knowing and willing exactly as He does. That’s what I mean by let us go on.

Most Christians do not go on to make all the will of God their will. They seem very tenderly.

Oh sweet will of God, still bind me closer. I like that too. Don’t get me wrong, I like to hear it once every year or so. But oh will of God, still bind me closer. We can sing that and have moist eyes and yet be selfish and self-willed and not make the will of God our own. The will of God must be known and then must be adopted as my will.

And then I begin to sustain a relationship of will – a volitional relationship toward Jesus Christ.

HOW DO I KNOW THE WILL OF GOD? By listening to stories told by preachers? No.

How do I know the will of God? I know by prayer, by the Bible study and by experience. I go to the Scriptures and I read it regularly and I go to prayer and I ask God for grace to help me to understand it.

You know that song: Break Thou the Bread of Life? We have it in three stanzas in our book, but I read it in the Baptist hymn book this morning. I had it propped up while I was eating my gruel and looking at it, and I find there’s another verse in there. I do not recall the verbatim wording of it, but that third or fourth stanza of that hymn: Prays that the Holy Ghost might enlighten the Word, so we can understand it.

That’s the part we don’t sing. I don’t think there was any sinister in that. They just have to make room so they chop verses or stanzas and they chop that one.

Well, my brethren, I believe that the writer Break Thou The Bread of Life, knew what she was writing about when she said ‘Give thou the Spirit, Lord, dear Lord, to me that the Lord might give the Holy Ghost as a light upon the Scriptures.’

So if we pray and have the Spirit of God give us illumination and we read the Word of God with avidity and relish and then we watch our spiritual experiences will soon begin to crystallize within us a will that is God’s will.

I wonder if that’s what Jesus meant when He said ‘But ye have the mind of Christ.’ There is a mind, there is a set of an infinite number of attitudes and relationships within our heart. These are all wrong to start with, and they don’t all get corrected when we get converted either. And they don’t all get corrected after we’ve been to Bible school.

They get corrected only by working on them: by prayer, by study, by spiritual experience, by the illumination of the Holy Ghost. Those attitudes begin to become spiritual instead of carnal. They begin to get right straightened out.

INTELLECTUAL RELATIONSHIP

Then there is a second relationship that I would mention to go on to and that is an intellectual relationship to Jesus Christ. Now of course there is a sense in which the volition and the intellectual come as soon as we’re converted. But there is another one sense in which they do not but wait development and growth.

So by the intellectual I mean that we should have, that we should think the way Jesus Christ thinks, that we should think Scripturally, that we should see things the way the Lord Jesus sees them. That we should learn to feel the way the Lord Jesus feels about anything or anybody. That we should love what He loves and hates what He hates.

Now, some of your hackles will get up here and you will say “Mr. Tozer, do you think God hates anything?” Sure I do say soes.

Hebrews 1:9: “Thou hast loved righteousness, and hated iniquity; Therefore God, Thy God, hath anointed You with the oil of gladness above Thy fellows.”

It is a psychological impossibility to love anything without hating its opposite. If I love holiness, I hate sin. If I love truth, I hate lies. If I love honesty, I hate dishonesty. If I love purity, I hate filthy. Can’t help that. Don’t think that’s bad.

Hate is only bad when it’s aimed against people made in the image of God, or when it springs out of someone worthy, or low motive like jealousy or envy or anger. But we should learn to hate what Jesus hates. And I’m sure that if we had the mind of Christ intellectually so that we judge things the way He judges them, that there would be less need for preaching separation from the world than there is today among the Christians.

MIND OF CHRIST

Talking about getting the mind of Christ and having the intellect sanctified, I want to talk again about two men. I think I gave this either on the air or here at the church within recent months. But you can open a window anytime to get light. And this is a window. It’ll let know the illustration.

They tell me that there were in England two men, both of them, of course, Englishmen: Keats and Milton. In my earlier Christian life, I read them a great deal. Then I got away from Keats. I still admire him very greatly for the marvelous music of his poetry, but there’s nothing of God in it, nothing of Christ. So I don’t find it very helpful anymore.

Milton, of course, will be all right. I think we’ll read Milton in heaven.

But here’s what they said — the critics said about these two men. They said “Keats was an Englishman, born of English stock, reared in England, and I think never left England, and died when he was in his 20s: an Englishman of the Englishman. But that Keats had read Greek literature so much that he had developed a Greek mind and that his mind was not an English mind. He had nothing of the restrictions and strengths and weaknesses of the British mind at all. It was a Greek mind. He thought like the Greeks.”

Then they said to Milton: “Milton was an Englishman, born English of the English, lived in England all his life, or perhaps a few trips abroad, but not many. He lived and died in England, and is one of the second of all the great English poets.”

“Yet”, they said, “Milton read the Bible so much, memorized it so much and lived in it so much that he was a Hebrew in his heart, and that Milton had a Bible mind, and that it got into everything he wrote. He couldn’t knock off a common sonnet of 14 lines but somewhere in it would be the rhythm of the Hebrew melodies; Old or New Testament.”

Because I understand the New Testament was written in Greek. I also understand that it’s Hebrew in its thought pattern.

Now, there we have two minds, both of them English, living in the same country and eating the same kind of foods and seeing the same scenery and having the same kind of basic education. And yet one of them became a Greek in everything but nationality, because they all loved Greeks so much.

The other became Hebrew — Bible rather than Hebrew, because he loved the Bible so much. That’s what I mean. That illustrates it, anyway.

You can have a Christian mind, a Bible mind. You can be Bible minded in the sense that it is not George Washington or even Abraham Lincoln, incidentally he vowed to the fact he was born in this state or Benjamin Franklin or any of the rest of them not Longfellow, Whittier or Byron and certainly not Whitman but the New Testament. Even though you’re an American, you’re a New Testament — you have a New Testament mind.

I believe that that’s what the Holy Ghost wants to do for us. I believe that He wants our intellectual relationship to Jesus Christ to become so close, so intimate, so all embracing that we’ll think as Jesus thought, I say, and love as He loved and hate what He hated and value what He valued and have the mind of Christ in us.

And that doesn’t come by believing on Jesus Christ buying Scofield Bible and singing courses. Brother, you’ve got to go beyond… “let us go on”… Those things are all basically sound and rank and good, and I have no objection. Stick by your Scofield Bible. It’s good. And it did in the early part of this century, wonderful yeoman service in helping us stand against liberalism and modernism. But it has its limitations.

Its limitations consist of an excessive emphasis upon the judicial relationship to Jesus Christ and very little about going on unto perfection. But that’s the same criticism that I bring against most of evangelicalism today.

So I say there’s a volitional and an intellectual relationship to Jesus Christ which we Christians should go on to cultivate.

EMOTIONAL RELATIONSHIP

Then thirdly, there’s an emotional relationship that is a love attachment to Christ.

Do you love the Lord Jesus Christ really? Do you really love Him now? I know we sing that we do. We sing things that aren’t very true sometimes.

Do you really love Christ? A half comical answer given to Moody one time when he inquired of a man on the street, do you love Jesus?

He answered, “I have nothing against Him”, and I think that is about as far as a lot of people go. We have nothing against Jesus, but to say we love Him. Ask the young mother with a three months old baby, just maybe howling with his first little tooth and able to smile all over his face when he looks up at his parents. Ask the mother, do you love your baby? You know what will happen? She will break out and every inch of her face will wrinkle up into a smile.

‘Of course, yes.’

Do you love your baby of our Alliance missionary? We’ve been in China a long long time, and his name is Jacobson. He’s retired now. He’d been in China, oh, I don’t know how long, years ago. And there, while in China, children were born to them, then they just were sent home. They came home by way of the West Coast to San Francisco and every port of call, the children would say, ‘Is this America, Daddy? Is this America?’

No, he’d say, this isn’t America. And then after few ports such disappointing incidents, he said at set of sun. The boat came in to the harbor of San Francisco. There they saw the golden gates. Some of you have seen the golden gates of San Francisco.

And he said, way there was the shoreline and two peaks with the sun shining down bright on. And he stood on the deck and looked, and the little children said, ‘Daddy, is this America?’

He said, suddenly he went all the pieces and let himself go in a welfare of homesickness and patriotism and love and memories and said through his sobs, ‘Yes, yes, children, this is America.’ He didn’t know how much he loved her. He didn’t know how dear her rocks and rails or woods and temple hills had been to his American park until he’d been shut away there so long and his first sight of his homeland broke him all up. So he cried like the child that he was for a moment.

Ask that man, do you love America? He’llgrin at you sheepishly and tell you that story, yes, he loves America.

Do you love Jesus really?

Well, I think it’s possible to be a Christian that is, to have faith in His power and His work and His atonement. I think it’s possible even to have a vital relation to Him in the new birth and yet not have cultivated His fellowship to a point where we love Him very much. We’re not done yet. We’re not finished until the love attachment to Christ has become so strong that it burns and grows and consumes.

When I read the writings of the old mystics and the old devotional writings and hymn writers of the Middle Ages and later, I get sick in my heart and I tell God… I tell Him, I tell Him, ‘God, I’m sorry. I apologize and I’m ashamed. I don’t love the way these loved Thee.’

Read the writings, read the letters of Samuel Rutherford. If you haven’t, you should; read those letters and then see how sick it’ll make you. You fold that book shut and get down on your knees, very likely and say, ‘Lord Jesus, do I love You at all?’ Considering that this was lovely, and what have I… what have I got?

Now there should be an emotional relationship to Jesus Christ, about a relationship of love. ‘Thou hast left thy first love’, said the Lord Jesus. And maybe that’s what it means, that you’ve allowed things to cool you off. So, like the young husband who really loves his bride but he’s so busy making a living for that he neglects her. And I wonder if Jesus might not have had something like that in mind: ‘You’re busy for Me. You’re dashing here and there in My service. But, oh, you’ve left your first love.’

Right here I ought to break this off, but I won’t because not be preaching next Sunday here.

Now, WHAT IS THIS CHRISTIAN THEN, who has gone on until he sustains toward our Lord a right, a scriptural, a Spirit inspired volitional and intellectual and emotional attitude toward the Savior?

Well, he is one who has been freed from earthly loves and fears. I want you to put that down. He is one who has been released from earthly loves and fears.

WHAT DO I MEAN BY EARTHLY LOVE?

I mean any love out of the will of God, any love that we would not allow God to take away. If you have anything in this world or anybody in this world that you would not let God take away from Him, then you don’t love Him as you should. And you don’t know anything about the deeper life in experience.

For the deeper Spirit-filled Christian life means that I am delivered from earthly loves to a point where there is no love that I would not allow Jesus Christ to take away, be it money, be it reputation, be it my home, be it my friends, be it my family, whatever it may be. There is nothing — the love of Jesus Christ has come in and swallowed up all other loves and sanctified them, purified them, made them holy, and put them in the right relationship to that all-consuming love of God so that they’re secondary and never primary.

If there’s anything… now think with me a little bit. You believe you were [elect] in the Alliance Church and you believe you know something about the deeper things of God. All right, I want to ask you this question: Is there anything or body on earth that you love so much that you fight God if God wanted to take it and you are not where you should be, and we might as well face up to it and not pretend to be something we’re not?

Complete freedom means that I want the will of God only. And if it’s the will of God for me to have these things, then I love them for His sake. But I love them with a tentative and relative love, not with an all poured out love that binds me a slave. It means that I love nothing outside the will of God and that I love only what and who He wills that I should love. And you can love everybody.

I think Paul loved Timothy and Silas and Titus and the rest of them were the love that glow like a furnace. But he didn’t love them to a point where he couldn’t separate from them or where he would fight God for them. He only loved them in the margin of his heart. He loved God at the center, and he loved them for God’s dear sake.

This Christian… you say you mean to tell me that I’m not to love my baby? No, I mean to tell you that you are to love God so much that you love your baby in its right context.

You mean to say I’m not to love my husband? No, you’re to love him, but you’re to love him in right context and right relationship.

My old mother-in-law had a baby that died and she was going through fire and water and blood and tears and toil, I tell you, and coming through to a wonderful spiritual experience. She had to sit up in bed, weak and weary as she was, and make the baby’s coffin. The husband made it out of wood. She made not silk, but whatever she could get hold of the lining so great was the not poverty maybe, but at least they weren’t rich.

When the funeral was held she stood by the grave of the rest and when everybody was expecting her to break down she said, shall we sing together? And she led off in the dark solitude.

Some people went away and said Mrs. Fouls is insane, others went away with moist eyes and said there’s faith… there’s faith and love that can give her newborn type of grave, dancing, praise God, for whom all blessings flow beside that grave…

Do you love anything? If there’s any question about whether God can have it or not, you know nothing about the deeper life. You’re a slave. You’re a slave to that love, whatever it is.

So if we’ve been freed from every earthly love, then we have no unsatisfied longings and we have no wishes and no dreams. I never used the word wish, never. Years ago I quit it. And if it ever breaks out in my speech or drinking, it’s only colloquialism. I never mean wish is something I never use.

If God wants me to have it, I’ll pray for it. And if He doesn’t want me to have it, I don’t want.

EARTHLY FEARS

Now earthly fears. The Christian who goes on gets freed from earthly fears. I was thinking of this the other day. I still think a little at times. And I was thinking, you know those two chains bind the whole human race: Loves and fears. We love something and can’t get it, but we love something and we’re afraid we’re going to lose it. So we’re bound with that chain.

Or we’re afraid we’ll get something we don’t want. We’re afraid we’d lose something we have. We’re bound with that chain.

Fear and love binds humanity in two golden chains and the gospel of Jesus Christ never is finished until it goes on to set us free from loves and fears.

We love our family more than we ever loved Him before. We love our country with cheerful devotion. We love every good thing there is in the world, but we’ll love it in its right context. And we’ll love it for Jesus’ sake. And we’ll love it and hold it this way so we can let go of it any second for the Lord’s sake; that’s to be free from earthly loves.

Free from earthly fears means that I choose the will of God now and forever. It’s my treasure. It’s my whole Beatitudes. The only fear I have is the fear to get out of the will of God. That won’t bother me any. Won’t bother me.

Outside of the will of God, there’s nothing I want; in the will of God there’s nothing I fear: for God has sworn to keep me in His will. If I’m out of His will, that’s another matter. But if I’m in His will, He’s sworn to keep me, He’s able to do it. He’s wise enough to know how to do it and He’s kind enough to want to do it.

So really there’s nothing to fear. I get kidded around with my family and friends, but McAfee especially likes to do it. But I don’t really think I’m afraid of anything. Somebody says, but you’ll die of cancer. Maybe so. Going to have to hurry up, though. I’ll die old age first.

But I’m not too badly worried because a man who dies of cancer in the will of God, he isn’t injured, he’s just dead. He isn’t injured. You can’t harm a man in the will of God.

An old Socrates, a heathen stoic, could die saying, ‘No harm can come to a good man in this world or the next.’ If he could say it, a pagan, why should I tremble and walk softly through this world looking over my shoulder furtively?

Rather, should I, by the grace of God, say ‘Lord, I believe at least as much as a pagan, I believe no harm can come to a good man in this world or the next.’

But I’ll lose my job. Well, you lose your job, then you won’t lose your head. But if you… I’ll lose my head. Well, if you lose your head, you won’t lose your Savior. Can’t harm a good man. So a man gets freed from fear.

I pity the preacher that’s afraid of his congregation or afraid of his superiors in his denomination. Maybe I’m a little abnormal on that, but I never knew up to now, so help me God, one single twinge of fear of my superiors and only rarely do I ever get self conscious for congregation if there’s somebody who really is a great preacher present. And I know that my poor little sermon sound rather amateurish by comparison and I sometimes don’t care to preach before great preachers, but I’m not afraid of it. I’m just what would you say, child?

But nothing can harm you if you’re in the will of God. So that if you’ll do these two things, let the love of God burn and burn within you until it consumes everything, then you will never be a slave to any earthly yearnings. You will have them, and you will have earthly loves and you will have people you love and care for and would weep to part with.

Jesus wept beside the grave of his loved friend Lazarus. There’s no harm in weeping when we must say goodbye and you can have your dislikes. I run a mile to keep [indiscernible] my arm, but I can clear out the house one time from somewhere around, you see I don’t know where… somebody is saying, for him I don’t know who McAfee, I guess. He’d come out soon.

Well, he came out and he came up and into my own room, sat down beside my bed. He was a heart specialist. And when he came in he had this huge rocket in his hand with a long sucker affair. And I saw it.

Brother, did I argue him down.

And he said, no, I’ll give you this and you’ll sleep and you’ll be all right. It’s just be a sedative.

And I said, you won’t give me that.

And he said, well, if you’re going to make so much of it, probably you’d be worse off if you do.

So he said goodbye and left.

I go, all right.

So I don’t say that the deeper life, the Spirit-filled life means that you won’t be normally human. If the lightning strikes near you, you will jump. And if somebody comes at you with a needle, you will shrink. You’re human. But that’s one thing.

It’s quite another thing to walk around chained by human fears. Chained by the fears of death and the fear of sickness and the fear of poverty and the fear of friends and the fear of enemies. God never means that His children should thus be afraid.

Well, all that I preached to you now isn’t a dream. It isn’t a misty ideal that nobody can reach. It’s the normal Christian life. Anything short of it is abnormal or subnormal.

Shall we not obey God and go on to perfection? I believe you want to, or I wouldn’t be preaching to you. May God grant that together we may press on out into the deep waters to swim.

For Further Reading:

Zac Poonen Sermon: The Fear Of God And Humility (Transcript)

What The Bible Teaches Us About Our Body? God’s Plan For Your Body: Derek Prince Sermon (Transcript)

Derek Prince Sermon: ‘It Cost All He Had’ (Transcript)

Love The Lord Your God With All Your Mind: R.C. Sproul Sermon (Transcript)

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