Biblical Psychology

(c) THIRD POWER. Self -living. Job 2: 6; John 10: 11.

(e) FIFTH POWER. Stirred Sensually or Spiritually. Ex 23: 9* 1 Pet. 2: 11.

"We mean by " fundamental, ' ' the powers that work in the interior of the soul. The existence of the soul has its origin in the spirit, and in its struggle to realize itself. This is the counterpart of the statement made in the last chapter, viz.: that the soul is the holder of the body and spirit together.

By Contraction, we mean that the soul is a substance, so to speak, that has power to contract into itself. By Expansion, we mean that the soul has power to strive away from itself, reaching beyond itself, and by Eotation, we mean that the soul has the power of expressing itself by the restlessness of becoming.

(This mechanical division is merely an arbitrary way of presenting a complex truth. All man's scientific laws and regulations are simply the mental work, attempting to explain observed facts. All scientific laws exist in men's heads. It is dangerous and wrong to talk about the law of gravitation as if it were a thing. The law of gravitation is the name given by scientific men in explanation of certain observed facts, and to say that when Jesus Christ walked on the sea or ascended, He " broke the law of gravitation," is a misstatement. He brought in, so to speak, a new series of facts which the so-called law of gravitation could not account for. This view-point will facilitate matters when made familiar to the mind of the student.)

The First Power is called (a) Self -Comprehending: (Deut. 13:6, 7; 1 Sam. 18:1.) The description indi^ cated is the power to comprehend itself as an individual separate from every other. Watch your own experience, and you will at once recognize this soul power. "When a, child begins to be "self-conscious," it is this power that is awakening, the power to contract into itself and to realize that it is different from its father and mother and from all other children, and the tendency increases to shut the life up to itself. This power begins to show itself in a feeling of isolation and separation, and it alternates between pride and shyness. Self -consciousness drags down the harmony of the soul. The more you meditate on that line, the more you will find it revealed in God's Book and in your own life. In some people it lasts a long time; some never get beyond the first manifestation of the power of their own soul life, viz., they realize they have a. power to contract into themselves, a power to be different from everybody else, but they do not have the power to expand, to realize that they can come in contact with other souls -and need not be afraid or timid.

That is this first power in a natural soul; but take it in the spiritual. I mean by spiritual, a soul "born again" of the Spirit of God. How does this first power of the soul express itself? This power of selfcomprehension in a soul that is born again of the Spirit of God shows itself in opposition to sinfulness. "Watch the "swing of the pendulum," as it were, in your own life, and in the life of anybody who is newly born again of the Spirit of God; it goes to the most extreme limit, which corresponds with the other extreme limit it lived in when it was in the "world." For instance, if the soul was given to finery and dress in the world, it will go to exactly the opposite extreme in its first introduction to the new life. This is the first recognizable power an individual soul has.

The Second Power (b) is called "Stretching Beyond Itself." (Psa. 27: 12.) You will find that this aspect of the soul always enables the soul first to find the forces and people that are different to it. It does not find the things in favor with it, but exactly the opposite. The things outside are enemies, and the powers outside seem to* be against it. (Prov. 23:2.) Then that power of the soul begins to realize that it can do pretty well what it likes with its body — a dangerous moment in a human life. (Eph. 6: 6.) Or again, this second power realizes itself in a way that makes a soul able to know it can deceive everybody else. (Col. 3:23.)

The person is conscious of things against it; other souls seem to be in opposition fro it. The boy who is self-conscious always first realizes that every other, boy is his natural enemy; he is suspicious of every boy who wants to make himself his friend. With that power comes the power to realize that I have a body, and also with it comes the knowledge that I can do what I like with my body. There is no restriction at all when that power first dawns: I can satisfy my bodily appetites as I choose. That is the dangerous moment in a soul's life. It enables me to know that I can cunningly deceive everybody else. If I am a servant, I can easily defraud my master or mistress; if I am a business man, I can easily defraud the public, and the whole question of this power of the soul is worked out to its complete issue in the life of the world.

This second power of the soul in a spiritual nature shows itself in opposition to sinful craving. Jesus Christ says, in effect: "If you are My disciples, you will be defrauded easily, but you will not allow yourself to be defrauded from the simplicity that is in the Gospel." Knowledge of evil broadens a man's mind, makes him tolerant, but paralyzes action. The knowledge of good broadens a man's mind, and makes him intolerant of all sin, and shows itself in intense activity. A bad man, an evil-minded man, may be amazingly tolerant of everything and every one, no matter whether they are good or bad, Christian or not, and his action is paralyzed entirely; he is tolerant of everything, — of the devil, the flesh, the world, sin and everything else. A soul born again of God shows itself at once in intolerance. Jesus Christ never tolerated sin for one moment, and when His nature gets its way in my soul, the same intolerance is shown, and it manifests itself not in eye-service. If I am a servant, I won't serve my mistress or master with this cunning power of my soul, realizing I have power to deceive; but I will use this power of my soul to show that I belong to Jesus Christ. And I won't use this power of my soul to do what I like with my body. This power of the soul will show itself in a spiritual soul in intense opposition to all sinful cravings. When a soul is born again of the Spirit of God, it does everything, from sweeping a room to preaching the Gospel, from cleaning streets to governing a nation, for the glory of God. The whole mainspring of the soul's life is altered, and this power manifests itself in stretching beyond itself in this peculiar manifestation.

The Third /Power (c) is Self -living. (Job 2: 6; John 10: M^ These two passages refer to the one power in a man that neither God nor the devil can touch without the man's sanction. The devil has power up to a certain point, but he cannot touch my life (see Job), and whenever Jesus Christ presents the Gospel of God to a soul, it is always on the line of "Are you willing!" No coercion. This is at once the most fearful and the most glorious power in a human soul. It can withstand the devil successfully, and it can withstand God quite as successfully. This self-living power is the human spirit, which is as immortal as God's Spirit, whether the human spirit be good spirit or bad spirit; it is as immortal as God, and as indestructible. You will find this is the power in a soul that can make itself on a par with GodL It is the very essence of Satan, and the power that can make a man either a compeer of the devil or a compeer of the Lord is the most tremendous and terrible power in the soul. Jesus Christ, speaking of His own incarnation, refers to this self-living power. He says, "I lay down My life of Myself; no man taketh it from Me." God has so constituted us that there must be a free willingness on our part.

How does this power show itself when the soul is born again of the Spirit of God, lifted into the domain our Lord lives in? This power shows itself in opposition to sinful passionateness. Passionateness simply means something that carries everything before it. The prince of this world is intense, and the Spirit of God is intense. When Paul talks about the two working in a man's soul, he mentions the intensity in the word "lust." The Spirit lusteth, intensely, passionately desires the whole soul and life and body for God; and the mind of the flesh intensely and passionately longs for the whole soul and life and body back again to the service of the world. The Bible points out that passionateness in the spiritual realm means something that overcomes every obstacle. When the writer to the Hebrews talks about "Christian perfection," he talks about this very thing, this overwhelming passion that carries the soul right on to all God has for it. "Be filled with the Spirit," this is the key word of life. The way Jesus Christ indicates that we overcome the world is not by passionlessness, not only by the patience of exhaustion, but by passion, by the passion of an intense and allconsuming love to God. This is the characteristic in a born-again soul — opposition to every sinful passionateness. Do insist in your own mind on this thing, that God does not work in vague, gentle impressions when He begins these works in a human soul; but in violent oppositions that rend and tear the soul life from what it was, and make it instead of being a place of harmonious happiness, exactly the opposite for a season. You find this kind of experience in every one of us when we are going on with God. "When we are first introduced to the life of God, there is always that violent opposition to everything that used to be prevalent, and it is not a mistake; it is what God intends, because it is the force of a totally new life.

The Fourth Power (d) is Spirit Penetration. (Isa. 26:9; Jude 19.) I mean by "spirit penetration" the spiritual power in man which, struggles to express itself in soul. The spirit of man, in an unregenerate nature, is the power of mind not energized by the Holy Spirit and having no life ' ' in itself.? ' It proves utterly futile in lifting the body, and produces a great divorce between the ideal and real. Every type and kind of intellectual excellence is a snare of Satan unless the spirit of the man has been renewed by the incoming of the Spirit of God. A man's intellect may give him noble ideas and power to express them through his soul in language, but it has no power to carry them out in action. You will find the charge of idolatry is very apt here. For instance, we are apt to ridicule, or pass over with a smile, the descriptions given of idolatry in, say the Book of Isaiah, where the writer refers to a tree being taken, one part of it being used to cook the man's food, and the other part, carved into an idol, to which the man bows, and worships; yet this is exactly what men do with their ideas. The intellect forms ideas for guiding its physical life, and then takes other ideas and worships them as God, and if a man has made his own ideas his god, he is greater than his own god. This is not such a terrible power, perhaps, as the third power of the soul, but it is a power that works havoc, unless the soul is right with God. It is the power that produces internal hypocrisy, the power that makes me able to think good thoughts while I live a bad life, unconvicted.

How does this power show itself in "those who are born again of the Spirit of God? This power shows itself in opposition to secularity. Take your own experience, those of you who are spiritual — spiritual in the Bible sense, identified with the Lord Jesus Christ in a practical way — can you ever make a distinction now between secular and sacred? It is all sacred; but in the first beginnings of this power you will always find the line drawn clearly and strongly between what men call " secular' ' and what they call "sacred." Jesus Christ had no division of secular and sacred in His life, but when this power begins with us it always manifests itself in that line of cleavage. There are certain things I won't do; certain things I won't look at; certain things I won't eat; certain hours I won 't sleep. None of it is wrong, it is the first beginnings of this power of the Spirit of God in a soul, utilizing the powers of the soul for God; but as the soul goes on, it gets to a full-orbed condition where it manifests itself as it did in the life of Jesus and all is sacred. If you obey the Spirit of God, and practice through your physical life what God has put in your heart by His Spirit, when the crisis comes you will find your nature will ' ' stand by you. ' ' So many people misunderstand why they fall. It comes from this condition — people say, "Now I have received the grace of God, I am all right." Paul says, "Do not receive the grace of God in vain," and these people do not go practicing day by day, and week by week, working out what "God has worked in," and when a crisis comes, God's grace is there all right enough, but their nature is not; their nature has not been brought into practice, and the consequence is the nature does bot " stand by" them, and down they go, and they blame God. You must bring the bodily life into practice, steadily, day by day, and hour by hour, and moment by moment; then when the crisis comes you will find not only God's grace, but your own nature will " stand by" you, and the crisis is passed over without any disaster at all, but exactly the opposite, in building up the soul into a stronger attitude towards God.

The Fifth Power (e), Stirred Sensually or Spiritually. (Ex. 23:9; 1 Pet. 2:11.) Remember the soul is manifested itself as the spirit struggles to make itself expressed. Exodus 23: 1-9 is a magnificent passage, and the more you read it the more magnificent you will find it to be. It is intensely, movingly practical in every detail, and there this power of the soul is clearly recognizable. It fits itself on with the second power, viz., the power every one of us has to deceive everybody else, to do cunning things, to defraud, and to utilize other people for our own ends; and the warning is, be careful you are not stirred in your soul by the wrong spirit. 1 Peter 2: 11 is the corresponding passage. If the soul can be stirred by its own cunning, the cunning of a man's own nature on the inside, it can be stirred by vileness and abominable sensuality through the senses.

How does this power show itself in a regenerated soult It shows itself in opposition to worldly bondage. ITou will find in your own experience, and in everybody else's experience that is recorded, that when your life is going on on God's line, God is putting the fear of you on those who are on the outside, because you have a scorn against worldly bondages. The Spirit of God in you will not allow you to bow your neck to any yoke but the yoke of the Lord Jesus Christ. You will see instantly when you stand on this platform of God's grace that the bondage is in the world. The "etiquettes" and standards in the world are absolute and terrible bondages, and those who live in them are abject slaves, and yet the extraordinary thing is that when the worldling sees anybody emancipated, under the yoke of the Lord Jesus Christ, he says "they are in bondage," whereas exactly the opposite is true. True liberty only exists when the soul has gotten this holy scorn in it, "I will not bow my neck to any yoke but the yoke of the Lord Jesus Christ." He was meek to all His Father did, but intolerant to all the devil did. He would not suffer compromise with the devil in any shape or form. This power of the soul, when the soul is born again, manifests itself in opposition to all and every worldly bondage.

The Sixth Power '(f), is Speaking the Spirit's Thoughts. (Gen. 41:40.) We are now dealing with Rotation, the restlessness of becoming. This is how all these powers are going to manifest themselves in a fully matured soul. That picture in Genesis is the picture of a soul right with God, but remember that the corresponding picture is true. A man in whom all these powers of the soul are developing will get tQ a place where he shows literally, not only with his mouth, but with his eyes and every power of his body, who it is that sits on the throne of his life. If it is the " prince of this world/' the man is prime minister under the devil, of his own body. When the full power of the soul is developed I am obliged to carry out the behests of the ruling monarch.

When a soul is born again of the Spirit of God, how does this power show itself? It shows itself in opposition to worldly thoughts and customs. Take Pharaoh in Genesis 41:40 as a picture of Jesus Christ, "Only in the throne will I be greater than thou." The soul that is born again of God, and has been walking on with God, identified with Jesus Christ in practical sanctification, and has the full powers of the soul developed and manifested, that soul is prime minister of his own body under Jesus Christ's dominion. That is the ideal distinctly, and not an ideal only, but an ideal that Jesus Christ expects us to carry out, all the powers of the soul working in an express personality through my body, revealing the ruler to be the Lord Jesus Christ.

We now come to the Last Power (g), Sum Total in Unity. ( Jer. 38: 18.) The sum total is a perfect unity, either a perfect unity of badness, or a perfect unity of goodness. (Gen. 46:26.) The word "sour' there refers to the full maturity of the powers manifested in the bodily life. That is the description of a fullgrown man, whether he is a bad man or a good man, and when a soul gets into full maturity of expression, the chances are he will never alter. In Jeremiah 38: 16 the soul is mentioned in the same way. It is not the soul in its beginnings, in its chaotic state; it is the soul manifested, the soul absolutely mastered by the ruling spirit and expressing itself through the body.

How does this perfection of soul life show itself in a born-again man, a man who is thoroughly and perfectly living the life God wants him to live? It shows itself in opposition to all other powers, and manifests itself in its bodily life in the spirit of wisdom which comes from above. It literally means the uncrushable loveliness of a soul manifesting God's rule, all its powers now in harmony. This is not in Heaven; this is on the earth. This is not mental perfection, it is not bodily perfection; it is the perfection of a sours attitude when all the powers of that soul are under the control of the Spirit of God. You will find now all the "corners" are chipped away, all the extreme swinging of the pendulum regulated, all the chaotic turmoil has become ordered, and the soul is now "manifesting the life of the Lord Jesus in its mortal flesh/ '

In way of revision, you will find these powers of the soul show themselves more or less in every one of us. For instance, you never think of judging a boy or girl by the same standards of judgment that you pass on them when they are matured, because neither a boy nor a girl is in full grip of a character. But once let a soul get matured, and the character manifested meets a severe judgment; there is no excuse made for it now; its powers are consolidated, and the wrong it does is not the wrong of an impulse, it is the wrong of a "dead set." When the soul is consolidated and right with God, you find exactly the opposite. The whole character manifests something that has a strong family likeness to Jesus Christ. There is certainly a chaotic attitude in Christian experience. Read the Apostle Paul's earnest, almost motherlike solicitation over young converts; he almost seems to " croon' ' (to use an old Scotch word) and agonize in heart over the young converts, because of the chaotic state of their souls, and you will find that Jesus Christ commissioned Peter, and the other disciples through Peter, to "feed My