shrink from this, delay the reconciliation and with each day of delay the gap be tween us widens. We make the other fel low’s sin great that we may diminish our own. It is a species of “ self-saving by other-damning.” It is too hard to say: “ I was wrong; forgive me.” But it is ever true that only by the altar experi ence can God work His blessing in our souls. Naturally we want a soft religion. We like religious services or exercises which do not disturb our way of life. “ Religion is the opiate of the people,” declares the Marxist. While we repudiate Communism in its antagonism toward God, His Christ, and the Bible, we must agree that religion, without an altar ex perience, is just that: an opiate. Christ said, “ If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow me.” There must be a cross experience in our lives. Some things must be brought to the place of death. The cross of Calvary accomplish ed an eternal sacrifice for our guilt of sin, but there must be a personal ex perience of that cross within our lives. “He died for all, that they which live should not henceforth Jive unto them selves, but unto him, which died for them, and rose again.” Paul testified, “ I die daily.” And again, “ I am crucified with Christ” ; “ God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world.” This dying to self-will, to the world’s approval, .is the altar experience from which we instinctively draw back. Yet it is the only way God can bring us out into the resurrection newness which lies beyond the altar experience. The great peril among fundamentalists who love the truth of the gospel is that we may hold that truth in unrighteous ness. “ The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness” (Rom. 1:18)". God’s truth in our minds—the world in our hearts! The gospel in our thinking —our own will and way in our heart- life! Knowing the gospel, but refusing to live in its power! Christ died FOR us that God might work death, this spiritual reality, IN us. This present generation will never be touched for God by Christians who live uncrucified lives. Nothing less than spiritual reality—a death to sin and self with life unto righteousness and God’s glory on the other side of the altar—will ever come to grips with the needs in the souls of men of our generation. The horror of war has not kept men from fighting. The slogan, “ Crime does not pay,” does not prevent the commis sion of crime. Warnings of fruitlessness of uncrucified living will not break us away from our love of self and the ways of the world. Only the love of God in Christ can woo us unto this fuller and deeper reality, “ I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by
the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me” (Gal. 2 : 20 ). There is ianother side of the picture as presented in the text. On the other side of the altar, beyond the death ex perience to self and sin, lies God’s resur rection power. Christ dealt with this when He stated, “ Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit” (John 12:24). Our trouble is that we desire spiritual lives of power without this cross experience to self, this dying to the world. Peter said to Christ concerning the coming cross, “ This shall not be unto thee.” So say we to ourselves, “ Let us have Christ and the Christian life without this cross ex perience.” But Christ’s own word stands: “ Get thee behind me, Satan . . . thou savourest not the things that be of God, but those that be of man.” Man has no place for an altar experience as the means of spiritual reality and ful ness in his life. Whenever the world sees a life changed by the power of Christ, freed from self, triumphant over temptation and sin, radiant in the midst of every trial and testing, it turns aside to see this strange thing. Such Christian living is effective in producing spiritual hun ger and thirst in the hearts of non- Christians. But such living comes only at the price of identification with Christ in this cross experience. Not only His cross FOR us, but His work IN us! This is what Paul meant in Second Cor inthians 4:12: “ Death worketh in us, but life in you.” The world has no medi cine for sin, no cure for self. Why then should we as Christians draw back from the altar? Let us rejoice that the heifer did not sacrifice herself at that altar. The high priest did the slaying. We have but to put ourselves completely in the control of our High Priest, Christ Jesus, and He will work in us that good will of God. “ Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ has made you free.” When we come to the place that we love to see old things, things contrary to God, put to death within us; when we cry out unto God to carry on this work to completion in our lives, then we are in His hands for blessing in the lives of others. The uncrucified Chris tian life has no resurrection, life-giving power, in its testimony and no harvest of souls won for Christ. There is no gain, but by a loss; You cannot save but by a cross. The corn of wheat to multiply Must fall into the ground and die. Wherever you ripe fields behold Waving to God their sheaves of gold, Be sure some com of wheat has died, Some soul has there been crucified. Someone has wrestled, wept, and prayed, And fought hell’s legions undismayed.
are doing this today. Knowing God’s will in His Word, they are drawing, back from the costliness of consecration; they are backsliding from the altar experi ence. Must the Lord Jesus say of the church today as He did in the Laodicean message of Revelation 3:16: “ So then because thou art lukewarm and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth” ? When preachers in the pulpit and peo ple in the pews refuse to heed the whole counsel of God, they begin to pull away from the altar. This is brought out in the ninth verse of this fourth chapter of Hosea, “ And there shall be, like peo ple, like priest.” Later Christ described them as “ Blind leaders of the blind . . . both shall fall into the ditch.” Reject ing God’s Word, we turn to our own idols which we substitute for the Lord in our lives. Hosea saw this clearly and wrote: “My people ask counsel at their stocks . . . they have gone a whoring from under their God” (4:12). We have put material prosperity be fore spiritual wealth. Again Hosea speaks: “ For they shall eat, and not have enough: they shall commit whore dom, and shall not increase: because they have left off to take heed to the Lord” (4:10). Whatever is put before God in our lives is idolatry. But our idols will not satisfy us. Furthermore, such half hearted Christian living is rejected both of God and man. “ Let him alone.” Just what is this altar experience? Naturally, like the doomed heifer, we shrink from death. During more than twenty-five years in the gospel ministry, I have witnessed the deaths of many people. There is in the hour of death a clutching at life, an unwillingness to let go. Our bodies seem to resist the hand of death; we draw back from it. One of the dearest saints I ever knew exclaim ed in the hour of her death, “ Oh, isn’t death an awful thing?” Yet at the same time she wanted to go home to be with the Lord. This experience of death in its spiritual significance is the altar ex perience from which we draw back. Death to self, to sin, to the world, to popularity at the price of Christian tes timony—this is the altar from which we shrink. Instead of placing these un worthy things upon the altar, we lay our faith upon the altar of popularity and slay it there. This is Christ’s mes sage in John 5:44: “How can ye believe, which receive honour one of another, and seek not the honour that cometh from God only?” Upon the altar of pop ular approval and prestige with the non-Christian crowd, we sacrifice our Christian devotion, even our faith. There are many spiritual realities which we do not want at the price of ostracism by the world. Let us look at this in a very practical way. We draw back from acknowledg ment of our faults to each other. If we are out of fellowship with other Chris tians, we should go to them at once, con fessing our wrong-doing. Instead, we
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