Parables of the Christ-life | Page 4

and the new begins to
triumph at its cost.
In the plant life the two are absolutely and for ever separate--there is no
possibility of confounding the perishable existence of leaf and stalk
with the newborn seed-vessel and its hidden riches. In the heavenly

light the distinction stands out as ineffaceably. "That which is born of
the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit." But our
eyes are too dim at first to distinguish them in detail: with most of us it
is only when the cleansing Blood has dealt with the question of known
sin, and the Spirit's incoming has cleared our vision, that the two lives,
natural and spiritual, begin to stand out before us, no longer shading
into each other, but in vivid contrast. The word of God in the hand of
the Holy Ghost pierces to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and
we see bit by bit as we can bear it, how we have made provision for the
flesh, given occasion to the flesh, had confidence in the flesh, warred
after the flesh, judged after the flesh, purposed after the flesh, known
each other after the flesh. The carnal nature with its workings stands
out as the hindrance in the way of the Divine, and the time comes when
we see that no more growth is possible to the Christ in us unless a
deliverance comes here.
We are helpless in the matter. There is no system of self-repression or
self-mortification that will do anything but drive the evil below the
surface, there to do a still more subtle work, winding down out of reach.
The roots will only strike deeper and the sap flow stronger for the few
leaves trimmed off here and there. If self sets to work to slay self it will
only end in rising hydra-headed from the contest. How is the
deliverance to come?
The annuals give us the secret. Look back at the vetch seed-vessels.
Why is it that the leaves which used to stand firm and fresh like those
of the flowering clover, have begun to shrivel and turn yellow? It is
because they have acquiesced wholly now in the death sentence of their
new birth, and they are letting the new life live at the expense of the old.
Death is being wrought out by life.
And the same triumphant power of the new life is set free as we come
to accept to its utmost limits the sentence of Calvary, that "our old man
was crucified with Him," in its sum-total, seen and unseen, root and
branch. Christ is our Life now--our only Life--and we begin to find that
He is dealing with the old creation, we hardly know how. We only
know that as we bring the judgment, the motive, the aim that were ours,

not His, into contact with Him, they shrivel and wither like the dying
leaves. The impulses and the shrinkings of the flesh perish in His
Presence alike. The new life wrecks the old. "If ye through the Spirit do
mortify the deeds of the body ye shall live"--that is what the withering
leaves say. We are "saved by His life."
The great North African aloe plant shows this very strikingly. It is like
our annuals on a large scale, for it flowers and seeds but once in its
career, though that numbers more years than these can count weeks.
Up till then its thick hard leaves look as if nothing could exhaust their
vigour. The flower stalk pushes up from a fresh sheaf of them--up and
up twelve or fourteen feet--and expands into a candelabra of golden
blossom, and not a droop comes in the plant below. But as the seed
forms, we see that life is working death, slowly and surely; the swords
lose their stiffness and colour and begin to hang helplessly, and by the
time it is ripe, every vestige of vitality is drained away from them, and
they have gone to limp, greyish-brown streamers. The seed has
possessed itself of everything.
And the meadow plants that we have been watching follow, on their
small pattern, the same law.
All gives way to the ripening seed. In the grasses the very root perishes
by the time the grain is yellow, and comes up whole if you try to break
the stem. They "reign in life" above through the indwelling seed, while
all that is "corruptible" goes down into dust below. They have let all go
to life--the enduring life: they are not taken up with the dying--that is
only a passing incident--everything is wrapped up into the one aim, that
the seed may triumph at any cost. Death is wrought out almost
unconsciously: the seed has done it all.
Can we