Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away
the sin of the world! John 1:29
What
is the sin of the world? It is pride. You may not think so; you may
not see it: but I would ask you to consider again and see if all that is called
sin cannot be traced to this, if it is not this in some form of expression. For
what is the root of pride? What is pride? It is selfhood come to
life, risen up, active – that is the root of pride; and the branches and the
fruit – how many they are! – jealousy, covetousness, wrath, and all the rest.
How is wrath pride? Well, wrath, if it is not holy, purified, blood-purged
wrath like the wrath of the Lamb, if it is wrath which is actuated by ourselves
and our interests, is the wrath of selfhood. So often our anger is our
self-preservation, our reaction to some threat to our interests or our likes.
Rebellion, stubbornness, prejudice, and much of our fear, are all traceable to
pride. What are we afraid of? What are we fearing? If we examined our fears,
why are we afraid? If we were utterly severed from the personal interest – that
is, if we could hand entirely over to the Lord and get out of the picture
ourselves – would not a lot of our fear go? And so we might go on: but we do
not want to indulge in a wholesale analysis of human nature or of pride. We
have mentioned enough to show that pride is the root and that there are
countless fruits traceable to that root....
So may
this be a word of interpretation as to why the Lord is dealing with us as He
has and does – on the one hand, overcoming this evil thing, breaking, emptying,
grinding to powder, until there is nothing of us left in the matter of
self-sufficiency; on the other hand, giving Himself, increasing Himself. Now
this is not a word, perhaps, of great inspiration, but I feel it to be a word
of very great importance. This must be true of us individually. There must also
be a corporate humility. This is the way along which the Lord will commit
Himself. He will never give us anything to feed our flesh, to enlarge and
strengthen our natural life. He will hold us to the way that keeps us safe
where that is concerned. How wonderfully the Bible becomes alive when you look
at it in this way!
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