Dear Ray,
I am beginning to see that I can leave Christ without leaving Christianity.
I can leave the Source while speaking about life. I can fall from grace while pursuing holiness. I can return to myself while trying to overcome myself. I can become occupied with fruit while appearing to care deeply about the Vine. I can even turn abiding into a spiritual achievement and lose the very rest that abiding was meant to describe.
This comes painfully close to home.
I do not merely see it in Christianity, in the recovery, in ministry, or in other believers. I see it in myself. I see how quickly I take something that belongs to Christ and separate it from Christ. Then I pursue that separated thing with my own mind, determination, and concern.
Holiness comes from the Source. Overcoming comes from the Source. Fruit-bearing comes from the Source. Love, patience, purity, prayer, discernment, and genuine ministry all come from the Source.
But even that does not go far enough.
They do not merely come from the Source. They are the Source appearing in different forms.
Holiness is Christ appearing as holiness. Victory is Christ appearing as victory. Love is Christ appearing as love. Fruit is Christ reproduced in another person. Ministry is Christ flowing from one member of His Body into another. None of these exists spiritually apart from Him.
These are not possessions Christ hands to me so I can take them away and use them. They are not separate powers stored within my Christian personality. They remain Christ. The holiness in me must continue to be Christ. The love in me must continue to be Christ. The victory in me must continue to be Christ. The moment I separate the quality from the Person, I begin trying to maintain through myself what can exist only as the present movement of His life.
This is where I derail.
I say, “I want to stop sinning.”
It sounds right. It sounds humble. It sounds spiritual. But almost immediately, sin becomes the center of my attention. I begin watching myself. I study my weakness. I fear the next failure. I make inward promises. I prepare defenses. I measure my progress. I become occupied with whether I am winning or losing.
Without realizing it, I have left Christ as my immediate object and made freedom from sin my object.
I may still pray to Christ. I may ask Him to help me. But He is no longer the destination. Freedom from sin is the destination, and Christ has become the means I am trying to use to get there.
In that moment, I have fallen from grace.
I do not mean that I have lost salvation or that God has abandoned me. I mean that I have changed the ground on which I am living. I have stepped away from Christ as everything and returned to the self as the responsible spiritual worker. I am again trying to produce through effort what grace gives only through union.
The desire not to sin is understandable. But if that desire turns me toward myself, it has already carried me into the wrong realm. My examination of sin does not deliver me from sin. My determination not to sin does not replace my fallen life. The self that promises to overcome is the same self that needs to be displaced.
My deliverance is not that I finally become strong enough to say no.
My deliverance is that Christ becomes my present yes.
Then I say, “I want to be holy.”
Again, the words sound beautiful. But what do I mean? Do I mean that I want Christ, or do I mean that I want to possess a condition called holiness? Do I want Him, or do I want to become a person who can look at himself and say, “I am becoming holy”?
The difference is almost invisible, but it is enormous.
If I pursue holiness as an aspect of Zoe, I have divided Zoe. I have taken one expression of divine life and made it a separate goal. In trying to obtain something from life, I have stopped pursuing life itself.
Really, Zoe cannot be divided. The life of God is not a collection of spiritual virtues. Zoe is the living Christ Himself. I cannot take holiness out of Him any more than I can take warmth out of fire and preserve it independently. The warmth exists because the fire is present. Holiness exists because Christ is present.
Therefore, pursuing an aspect of Zoe can become a way of failing to pursue Zoe.
I may become more serious about holiness while becoming less occupied with Christ. I may improve my outward conduct while losing the inward freshness of His presence. I may appear more separated from the world while becoming more deeply joined to religious self-consciousness.
This is a terrible possibility: I can become more Christian in appearance while becoming less dependent upon Christ.
Then I say, “I want to overcome.”
But overcome what? And by whom?
If I become occupied with overcoming my temper, my fear, my appetite, my pride, or my need for recognition, I have again placed the problem at the center. I am now circling my weakness. I am looking at myself to see whether I am stronger than I was yesterday. I am evaluating the success of my Christian life by the condition of my behavior.
Even when I succeed, I may lose Christ.
In fact, success can be more dangerous than failure. Failure may eventually cause me to cry, “Who will deliver me?” But success may persuade me that the method worked. I may develop confidence in my discipline, my understanding, my consecration, or my spiritual practice. I may become an improved religious self, still living from the same source.
The flesh does not care whether it is immoral or religious, as long as it remains the one living.
The fallen life will gladly pursue victory. It will gladly study the cross, practice denial of self, attend trainings, speak in meetings, and teach others about life. It will even become proud of how thoroughly it has been dealt with.
Only Christ can replace it.
True overcoming is not me becoming victorious. It is Christ living in the place where I have stopped trying to establish myself. Victory is not a condition I reach. Victory is a Person who is already present.
Then I say, “I want to bear fruit.”
Surely this must be safe. Jesus Himself spoke of bearing fruit. But here again, I can separate the branch from the Vine. I can begin thinking about usefulness, impact, increase, converts, meetings, books, messages, and people helped by my speaking.
I can call all of this fruit.
Then I look for evidence. Is anyone responding? Is anyone changing? Are people reading what I write? Is Christ being formed in them? Am I accomplishing something for the Lord?
Once again, I am measuring the branch.
The branch cannot produce fruit by caring more intensely about fruit. Fruit is the Vine extending Himself through the branch. If Christ truly reaches another person through me, that is not my fruit as a personal accomplishment. It is His life traveling through His own Body.
My only place is in Him.
The instant I make fruitfulness my object, I become divided. Part of me is supposedly abiding, while another part is standing outside the experience, inspecting it. I become both the branch and the fruit inspector. But the branch was never created to occupy both positions.
Then I say, “I want to preach life.”
I can preach life while living from my mind. I can explain the Source after I have left the Source. I can arrange truths about Christ, develop language about Zoe, criticize religious systems, expose dead practices, and still be operating from myself.
I can become intensely committed to the message of life while losing contact with life.
Then my message becomes a possession. It becomes my insight, my burden, my correction, my contribution. I feel responsible to make others see what I see. I become frustrated when they do not understand. I sharpen my arguments. I gather more evidence. I find better ways to expose what is wrong.
Before long, I am using Christ to build a case for Christ.
I have fallen from grace again.
The words may be right. The burden may be real. The diagnosis may even be accurate. But the source has changed. The living Christ is no longer simply flowing. I am trying to make something happen for Him.
Ray, I am writing because I see how easily I derail myself. I take what the Lord shows me and begin working on it. I turn revelation into a responsibility. I turn a living touch into a message. I turn the message into a burden. I turn the burden into a project. Then I become anxious about whether the project succeeds.
At every step, Christ can become slightly more distant while His things become increasingly important.
I can write about abiding without abiding. I can defend grace through self-effort. I can expose religion religiously. I can condemn intellectual Christianity through an intellectual argument. I can pursue freedom and put myself under another law.
I can speak against human organization while organizing my own spiritual identity around being the man who sees through it.
This is how close the danger is.
The answer is not for me to stop writing, speaking, caring, or acting. The answer is not passivity. The answer is to refuse to move independently of the Source. If He is not presently living the thing in me, I must not try to produce it for Him.
I do not need more determination to remain in Christ. I need to surrender the habit of turning away from Him toward His results.
I do not need to become holy. I need Christ. I do not need to become victorious. I need Christ. I do not need to become fruitful. I need Christ. I do not need to become a preacher of life. I need Christ.
And when I truly have Him—not merely as doctrine, memory, language, or belief, but as my present source—He will be holiness. He will be victory. He will be fruit. He will speak if He wishes to speak and remain silent if He wishes to remain silent.
My responsibility is not to manufacture the branches.
My place is in the Vine.
Perhaps the entire Christian life is the continual discovery that there is nothing beyond Christ, nothing alongside Christ, and nothing that can be taken from Christ and lived independently.
Christ is not the first item on a list of spiritual necessities.
Christ is the list.
And every time I derail, grace does not ask me to repair the train. Grace simply calls me back to Him.
Your brother,
Brent
Continue reading: The Quiet Turning of the Heart.
For brief explanations of terms I use in these letters, see Words in These Letters.
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