The Cost of Victory by C. M. S.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jan 16, 1908

The Cost of Victory

By C. M. S.

WHILE Jesus Christ was our example in righteous living, he was also our example in the manner of achieving success in our undertakings for God. He emptied himself of all that he had save the love that bound him to the Father and to the human race, relinquished everything but sonship in the house of God, and gave himself to and for the salvation of this prodigal world. The key to his success was found in complete surrender. The key to our success will be found in the same act—surrender, not of that which we have, but of all,—all that we have and all that we are.

Because Christ had no other ambition than to save man and man’s forfeited possession, the tempter had no hold on him—“found nothing” in him, and the greatest work of the ages was therefore successfully done. The degree of our interest in the things of this world will determine the degree of ease with which Satan can successfully tempt us. Christ’s undertaking was a success because every other interest was abandoned for its accomplishment. It was a large price to pay; but it was no larger price than the greatness of the undertaking warranted and required. If we deserve success in the work of God as he deserved it, we shall not fail of achieving it.

Man has been left an example that he “should walk even as He walked.” Christ walked in the way that led to success. It is not to be supposed that men can take any other way, any shorter cut or easier way, and find success in carrying on the work which Christ commissioned them to do. Success does not lie in opposite directions when carrying on the same work. What was necessary to success in his case is necessary to success in our case. That was surrender.

Why is surrender necessary?—“Because the mind of the flesh is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can it be.” Rom. 8:7. Instead of retaining the “mind of flesh,” and letting that rule, “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.” God and man can not work together for the accomplishment of God’s purpose while man is at enmity with his Maker, nor while man chooses his own way in preference to God’s way. There must be unity of desire and purpose, and the one who is to carry the message must be submissive to the will of the One who has the message to be given. The one who is to use the power must use it in harmony with the will of the One who has the power to bestow, or the power can not be intrusted to him. The one who would be a successful Christian must not set up standards of his own or mark out ways of his own. There can be but one true standard, and Christ has set that up. He has set before us but one way, and that leads straight into the kingdom of God. Outside of that way is only the great “mystic maze” planned to bewilder and delude and lead to destruction; and yet how many are allowing their feet to be guided into these delusive ways whose end is hid in darkness, where ruin waits.

We must be in the channel of God’s working or we can not succeed in his work. Outside of that channel we have only our own feeble efforts. The canal barge will not travel overland. Outside the canal it is stranded. Just so with us. When we have not surrendered our ways to God’s ways, we are as useless for God’s work as the stranded canal barge is for fulfilling its mission. The tower of Babel was such an effort; and it stopped a long way short of heaven.

Paul, living in a generation of philosophers, and educated to the height of scholarship, determined to know nothing in his evangelistic labors but “Jesus Christ and him crucified.”

He had a way, but he surrendered it when he found it was not God’s way. There are many ways of our own that look pleasing to us. Hew them to the line of God’s counsel, and you will find the process has left nothing of them that is of real advantage to the cause of God. “Can two walk together except they be agreed?” That question is pertinent to this thought. God’s way is the right way; that way which is opposed to his way is necessarily a wrong way. There is no agreement between these ways; and as there is not, there can be no harmonious action between those who are taking these opposing ways. We can accomplish nothing for God, and therefore can not be successful Christians, while opposing him by refusing to yield to his way.

Whatever we retain to ourselves for our own ends stands in the way of our success in his cause. Paradoxical though it may seem, in surrendering all, we win all; we capitulate, and that makes us victors. Hoarding ourselves and our all to ourselves, we lose all—and ourselves; refusing to surrender, we take our place among the vanquished. In the complete surrender of self, the complete adoption of God’s ways in place of our own, the consecration of our all to his cause—herein lies the key to glorious triumph in the cause of Christ.

C. M. S.