The Believer's Weakness

By Octavius Winslow
 

The principle of self-confidence is the natural product of the human heart. The great characteristic of our apostate race, is, a desire to live, and think, and act, independently of God. What is the great citadel, to the overthrow of which Divine grace first directs its power? What is the first step it takes in the subjection of the sinner to God? What, but the breaking down of this lofty, towering, independent conceit of himself, so natural to man, and so abhorrent to God? Now, let it be remembered, that Divine and sovereign grace undertakes not the extraction of the root of this depraved principle from the heart of its subjects. The root remains to the very close of life's pilgrimage; though in a measure weakened, subdued, mortified—still it remains; demanding the most rigid watchfulness, connected with ceaseless prayer, lest it should spring upward, to the destruction of his soul's prosperity, the grieving of the Spirit, and the dishonoring of God.

O! how much the tender, faithful discipline of a covenant God may have the subjection and mortification of this hateful principle for its blessed end, who can tell? We shall never fully know until we reach our Father's house, where the dark, and to us, mysterious dealings of that loving Father with us here below, shall unfold themselves in light and glory, elevating the soul in love and praise!

That no mere creature, angelic or human, can keep itself, is a truth fairly written out in the Word of God, and illustrated by some of the most solemn and affecting examples.

In the history of the fallen angels, God has revealed and confirmed this truth. If any creature could have kept itself from falling, why not a pure angelic spirit?

Their natures were holy,
the God whom they served was holy,
the place they inhabited was holy,
their companions were holy,
their employments were holy,
and yet they fell!

Do we ask why? Because no creature ever has or ever can, by any innate inherent strength or power of his own, keep himself. That moment God leaves him to himself, that moment he falls.

Look at Adam. He too was created in perfect holiness; not a taint of sin originally in his nature; not a cloud darkened his mind; not the least bias of his will, or a single inclination of his heart—but centered in God. Yet, he fell from his original holiness. And why? Because he could not keep himself! God left him to his natural and moral ability, which in the creature, is natural and moral weakness. God left him to his own free-will. God left him to his own innate power. The sad consequence was that he instantly fell, and in him, as their federal head, fell the whole human race! Adam was poor in himself. He was a poor pensioner upon the free bounty of God—even when he reposed amid the beauty and luxuriance of paradise, and trod the earth as the monarch of a new and glorious world, every object of which paid him homage, and submitted to his will—even then was he, as all creatures necessarily must be, poor in himself, and hung as a weak, dependent creature, upon the God that created him. And the moment that God withdrew his sustaining power, that moment Adam tore the crown of creature glory from his head, and trampled it into atoms in the dust!

Look at the histories of some of the most eminent of God's saints. What affecting confirmation do they afford to the most important truth we are now upon, that the creature left to itself, is perfect weakness! If the angels in their purity, if Adam in his state of innocence, fell in consequence of being left, in the sovereign will of God, to their own keeping—then what may we expect from a fallen, sinful, imperfect creature, even though renewed. Do we look into God's blessed word, and read what is there declared, concerning the power of a renewed creature to keep itself? How affecting, and at the same time conclusive, these declarations are:

"Having no might."
"Without strength."
"Weak through the flesh."
"Out of weakness were made strong."

Could language more forcibly set forth the utter weakness of a child of God? And what are the figures employed to impress upon the mind the same truth? They are most expressive. The believer is represented:
as a lamb among wolves,
as a dove ready to be fastened upon by the vulture,
as a lily among thorns,
as a broken reed,
as smoking flax,
as a feeble branch hanging upon the vine.

And what are their own acknowledgments?

"The Lord is the strength of my life!"

"The Lord is my shepherd."

"Hold me up, and I shall be safe!"

"Keep back your servant also from presumptuous sins."

"Hold up my goings in your paths, that my footsteps do not slip."

"We had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves."

"Yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me."

"By the grace of God I am what I am!"

And what are the examples? To select but a few from among many, look at:
the intemperance of Noah,
the unbelief of Abraham,
the adultery and murder of David,
the idolatry of Solomon,
the self-righteousness of Job,
the impatience of Moses,
the self-confidence, and trimming, temporizing policy of Peter.

Solemn are these lessons of the creature's nothingness!

Affecting these examples of his perfect weakness!

But why speak of others? Let the reader, if he is a professing child of God, pause and survey the past of his own life.

What marks of perfect weakness may he discover!

What evidences of his own fickleness, folly, immature judgment, may he trace!

What outbreakings of deep iniquity,
what disclosures of hidden corruption,
what startling symptoms of the most awful departure and apostasy from God,
does the review present!

And this, too, let it be remembered, is the history of a believer in Jesus—a renewed child of God, a partaker of the Divine nature, an expectant of eternal glory! Holy and blessed are they, who, as they read and lay aside this tract, shall relinquish all their fond conceit of self-power and of self-keeping, and shall pray, and cease not to pray, "Lord, hold me up, and I shall be safe!" "Let him that thinks he stands, take heed lest he fall."

But the Lord will cause his people to know their perfect weakness and insufficiency to keep themselves, and that, too, not notionally, not theoretically, nor from what they hear or from what they read—but from their own deep personal experience of the truth. Yes, He is perpetually causing them to learn it.

I do not allude merely to that blessed period when the Holy Spirit first lays his axe at the fabric of their self-righteousness—truly they first learn it then; but it is a truth they become growingly acquainted with; it is a lesson they are made daily to learn; and he becomes the most perfectly schooled in it:
who watches most narrowly his own heart,
who is most observant of his own way,
who deals most constantly and simply with the cross of Jesus.

With regard to the way which the Lord adopts to bring them into the knowledge of it, it is various.

Sometimes it is by bringing them into great straits and difficulties, hedging up their path with thorns, or paving it with flints.

Sometimes it is in deep adversity after great prosperity, as in the case of Job—stripped of all, and laid in dust and ashes, in order to be brought to the conviction and the confession of deep and utter vileness.

Sometimes it is in circumstances of absolute prosperity, when He gives the heart its desire, but sends leanness into the soul. O how does this teach a godly man his own utter nothingness!

Sometimes it is by permitting the messenger of Satan to buffet him—sending and perpetuating some heavy, lingering, lacerating cross.

Sometimes by the removal of some beloved prop, on which we too fondly and securely leaned—putting a worm at the root of our pleasant outspreading gourd, drying up our refreshing spring, or leading us down deep into the valley of self-abasement and humiliation.

But the great school in which we learn this painful, yet needed and wholesome lesson—is in the body of sin which we daily bear about with us. It was here Paul learned his lesson, as the seventh chapter of his letter to the church at Rome shows, and for which epistle the saints of God will ever have reason to praise and adore the blessed and Eternal Spirit. In this school and in this way, did the great apostle of the Gentiles learn that the most holy, deeply taught, useful, privileged, and even inspired saint of God, was in himself nothing but the most perfect weakness and sin.

Do not be cast down, dear reader, if the Holy Spirit is teaching you the same lesson in the same way; if He is now ploughing up the hidden evil, breaking up the fallow ground, revealing to you more of the evil principle of your heart, the iniquity of your fallen nature—and that, too, it may be at a time of deep trial, of heavy, heartbreaking affliction.