Total Commitment To Christ # 2

Total Commitment To Christ # 2

We used to sing, "High heaven that heard my solemn vow, that vow renewed shall daily hear." People are afraid of that kind of thing now, but I believe that just as Daniel determined that he would not eat of the king's meat and as Jesus set His face like a flint, and just as Paul said "one thing I do," the true follower of Christ must be a man whose will has been sanctified. He dare not be a will-less man. I never believed that when we teach the deeper life we should teach that God destroys our will. But God unites our will with His will and our will becomes strong in His will, and sometimes as we go on in God we hardly know whether it is our will or God's that is working at a given moment.  [I agree totally! and I cannot agree more fully!]

Exclusive Attachment

Now I go on to the exclusive attachment. Our attachment to the Person of Christ must exclude all that is contrary to Christ. These are the days when we are trying to be 100 percent positive. But the Scripture says of Jesus, "You love righteousness and hate wickedness" (Psalm 45:7). That was said of the very Holy Christ Himself, who is higher than the highest heavens and separate from sinners. If He had to hate in order to love, so do you and I. To be 100 percent positive would be as fatal as to inhale steadily all your life without exhaling. You can't do that!

The human body requires that you inhale to get oxygen and exhale to get rid of the poison. And so the Church of Christ has to inhale and exhale. When she inhales she must exhale. When the Church inhales the Holy Spirit she must exhale everything that is contrary to Him!

I don't believe any man can love until he's able to hate. I don't think any man can love God unless he hates the devil. I don't think he can love righteousness unless he hates sin; for the Scripture leaves us with the belief that in order to accept there are some things you must reject. In order to affirm there are things you have to deny; in order to say yes you have to be able to say no.

For my part I have long ago come to the conclusion that I can't get along with everybody. In an effort to please everybody you will succeed in pleasing nobody! I don't want a watered-down Christianity. I want to be able to say no. I say no to the devil and no to the Pope and no to everybody who has anything to say that's contrary to the Lord. I adore Him and I am attached to Him. With an intellectual attachment that is theological and with a volitional attachment that is final and with an exclusive attachment that would exclude everything that's contrary to Christ.

Inclusive Attachment

Then there is the inclusive attachment. What do I mean by that? Well, that's the inhaling, you see. All that Christ is and does and says and promises and commands, and all the glories that circle around His head and all the offices He holds and all the shining beauties and varied facets of His infinite nature, all that He is and all that He has said and all that He has promised - I take all that, I include all that. In addition, since I'm identified with Him, I accept His friends as my friends. I love all the people of God and preach to them all - and some of them listen!

You know, the Lord has some old friends, really. That fellow that goes down the street with a "Jesus Only" button or a "Jesus Saves" button as big as a dinner plate, and his hair not combed too well, staring ahead - if he belongs to Jesus I'm going to own him. An old bishop once said the Lord had His treasure in earthen vessels and some of the vessels are a bit cracked! You've got to be willing to own the friends of the Lord wherever they are. His friends are my friends and His enemies are my enemies. This "togetherness" that everybody is talking about - I don't like it. I want to know what you stand for. Whom do you love and what do you hate?

A good definition of a Christian is somebody who is back from the dead. I think that Paul was one of the oddest and strangest and one of the most glorious of all the Christians that have ever lived, and he gave us a little text that no contemporary editor would ever accept in a manuscript without recasting it. "I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live..." Now how did he get that way? "I am crucified with Christ." He's dead. "Nevertheless I live." He's alive. Is he alive or is he dead? "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). See Paul contradicting himself there. And yet within all this contradiction there is the synthesis of a marvelous and glorious truth; that a Christian is one who was crucified and is alive, being joined to Jesus Christ as He joined humanity to the deity in the hypostatic union forever - the eternal God joined to the nature of man, never to be reversed.

All the members of the Body of Christ joined to His body share in some measure in that hypostatic union, so that we are united with Him. When He died on the Cross we died on the Cross, and when He rose from the dead we rose from the dead, and when He went to the right hand of God, we went with Him. "Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God" (Col. 3:1). And it is written that we are "seated...in the heavenly realms" (Eph. 2:6), which means we are with Him where He is, members of His great mystical body. How wonderful!

Irrevocable Attachment

Then there is the irrevocable attachment. What do I mean by that? I mean that the Lord doesn't want any experimenters about. Some movie actor wrote a book one time called "Try Jesus." I never read the book. I wouldn't be caught dead reading it. "Try Jesus." All this experimentation - I don't believe in it. I believe we ought to be suicide bombers. We ought to tie ourselves in the cockpit and drive on the deck and if we go out, we go out. Sink or swim, live or die, irrevocably attached in love and faith and devotion to Jesus Christ the Lord. Christians ought to those who are so totally committed that it is final. This weak looking back over your shoulder to see if there isn't something better - I can't stand it. One time a young man came to an old saint who taught the deeper life, the crucified life, and said to him, "Father, what does it mean to be crucified?" The old man thought for a moment and said, "Well, to be crucified means three things. First, the man who is crucified is facing only one direction." I like that - facing only one direction. If he hears anything behind him he can't turn around to see what's going on. He has stopped looking back. The crucified man on the Cross is looking in only one direction and that is the direction of God and Christ and the Holy Spirit and the direction of the edifying of the church, the direction of sanctification and the direction of the Spirit-filled life.

And the old man scratched his scraggly gray hair and said, "One thing more, son, about a man on a Cross - he's not going back." The fellow going out to die on the Cross doesn't say to his wife, "Goodbye, honey. I'll be back shortly after five." When you go out to die on the Cross you bid goodbye - you're not going back! If we would preach more of this and stop trying to make the Christian life so easy it's contemptible, we would have more converts that would last. Get a man converted who knows that if he joins Jesus Christ he's finished, and that while he's going to come up and live anew, as far as this world's concerned he's not going back - then you have a real Christian indeed!

The old man went on, "Another thing about the man on the Cross, son; he has no further plans of his own." I like that, too! Somebody else made his plans for him, and when they nailed him up there all his plans disappeared. On the way up to the hill he didn't see a friend and say, "Well, Henry, next Saturday about three I'll come by and we'll go fishing up on the lake." He was going out to die and he had no plans at all! Oh, what busy-beaver Christians we are with all of our plans, and some of them, even though they are done in the name of the Lord and evangelical Christianity, are as carnal as goats!! It is beautiful to say "I am crucified with Christ" and know that Christ is making your plans. I tell you, ladies and gentlemen, twenty minutes on your knees in silence before God will sometimes teach you more than you can learn out of books and teach you more than you can ever learn in churches. And the Lord will give you your plans and lay them before you!

If the boards of the churches would only learn to spend more time with God and less time debating, they could save all those midnight meetings where everybody leans back weary from discussing things. I tell you, you can cut down your time in debating and discussing if you spend more time waiting on God. He'll give you the Holy Spirit and He'll give you and teach you HIS plans!

Now I think that's all I want to say. We are to be joined to Jesus Christ, intelligently joined by knowing who He is; we are to be volitionally joined and not to try to live on our feelings, though thank God there'll be a lot of feeling going on with it! And we are to be exclusively attached, excluding everything that's contrary to Him; and inclusively attached, taking in every thing that He surrounds Himself with; and irrevocably attached so we are expendable and are not going back!

~A. W. Tozer~

(The End)

[Tozer, just like his Master, doesn't fit neatly into our theological boxes. He was a man after God's own heart and was willing to break the rules (man-made ones that is) to get there.

The above writing by Tozer that touches on the heart of this goal. It was given by Tozer shortly before his passing and transcribed shortly thereafter.

This is meat to sink your spiritual teeth into. Tozer's writings will show you the way to satisfy your spiritual hunger.

The text above, "Total Commitment to Christ" is in the public domain.]