p. 6 | HAVE IT TO THYSELF by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Apr 20, 1904

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 30, No. 16.

"HAVE IT TO THYSELF."

By Editor

IN the conclusion of his masterly argument and appeal in Romans 14, the apostle Paul uses these words: "Hast thou faith? have it to thyself before God." We can not get the force and application of this exhortation unless we keep in mind the one great thought of the chapter, expressed in its negative form by "judge not," in its positive, by "charity."

Why should we not judge our brother?—(1) Because judgment belongs unto God. He knows all and is infinitely just. He only can render justice to His creatures. (2) We are short-sighted, limited in wisdom and knowledge, sometimes swerved by prejudice, and are in ourselves equally guilty with our brother. "Wherefore thou art without excuse, O man, whosoever thou art that judgest: for wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest thyself; for thou that judgest dost practise the same things." Rom. 2:1.

This is a difficult thing for poor mortals to see, and yet a great deal of that wonderful epistle to the Romans is used of the Spirit to convince us of that very fact. We pride ourselves, perhaps, on our morality. We see the drunkard in the ditch, or the thief in the jail; and we feel the robes of our self-righteousness about us, and thank ourselves that we are not as those men. We never got drunk. We never stole. Our reputation is all right. We feel indignant that it should even be suggested that we were one with the drunkard, the thief, the adulterer.

But pause a moment, friend. If you have not done these outward things, have they not clamored in your flesh for indulgence? And who or what has kept you from them? Was it pride in yourself and your own virtue? That pride may be more hateful in God's sight than the sin of drunkenness or theft; for you cherish and love the foolish pride, while the drunkard and thief are sorry for their enslavement and ashamed of their sin. What kept you from the grosser sins? Your ancestors were a few generations ago pagans, perhaps of the grossest sort. They reveled in drunkenness and licentiousness, made it, in fact, a part of their religion. If paganism had continued among them, their posterity till extinct would have been more outwardly corrupt and degenerate than they.

Then what changed their course and kept you?—It was the mighty, regenerating, restraining power of the Gospel of Jesus Christ in the Bible, which has wrought it all. Some who have yielded to it have been regenerated and reformed, while others have been convicted, made ashamed, and have been restrained. Many, very many, through godly parents and teachers, have imbibed blessed principles of righteousness and truth from earliest infancy to manhood, and these principles have had a moulding influence on their lives, even tho they are converted, they have restrained.

And all this regenerating, restraining goodness is of the grace of God, in Christ Jesus, and not of the flesh. That is the teaching of Romans, that is the teaching of the whole Bible. Paul, himself a boaster of his own morality, a Pharisee of the Pharisees, came at last under the influence of God's Spirit to see it, and thus he expressed the important truth: "For I know that in me, that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing."

It is a great universal fact. Sin is incarnate, infleshed in all mortals; and he who follows the flesh and its life, will inevitably manifest "the works of the flesh," "fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, sorceries, enmities, strife, jealousies, wraths, factions, divisions, parties, envyings, drunkenness, revelings, and such like." Gal. 5:19-21. There is where the world stands apart from Christ. The form may be erect and strong, the face fair and beautiful, the eye bright and pleasant, but the flesh is corrupt, and its impulses ever tend downward. There may be no open adultery, but the consuming lust may be there. Drunkenness may not be manifest, but hatred and strife may be enthroned. And all are fruits of the same flesh, and the end of all is death.

It has been the studied plan of the arch-enemy of God to deceive mankind into believing that goodness dwelt in them; that they, themselves, were a part of God; that God dwelt in them, whatever their condition, and so lead them to exalt in various forms and phases every corrupt impulse of the flesh as divine. But the whole teaching is the outgrowth of that first deceiving lie, "Ye shall not surely die; . . . ye shall be as God." And the lusts of the flesh have been deified, man has been exalted, God forgotten, Christ and His cross hidden, and His truth which would save perverted.

In the light of the Gospel it is not too much to say,—nay more, it is the only true thing to say,—that he who will not accept this great fundamental fact of his own inherent sinfulness, his own innate corruption, never will in the very nature of the case receive Jesus Christ as his only personal Saviour, and hence will not be saved; for "they who practise such things [the works of the flesh] shall not inherit the kingdom of God." Gal. 5:21.

And that is what God wants us to believe, not that it may be so, but because it is so. We are hopelessly sick in sin. "The heart is deceitful above all things, and it is desperately sick," reads the Revised Version of Jer. 17:9. The American Revised Version states the same truth, "it is exceedingly corrupt." We see it in past generations; we see it in other people; but in our selfish blindness we can not, because we will not, and do not wish to, see it in ourselves. Yet we are the same as others, and from the fountain of our heart proceed the vile train of thoughts that are evil, "fornications, thefts, murders, adulteries, covetings, wickednesses, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, railing, pride, foolishness." Mark 7:21, 22. No profession of religion will change the heart; no form of godliness will heal leprosy of sin. We may call it New Thought, or Theosophy, or Christian Science, or Christianity; if we do not possess more than the form, we are still inextricably bound, so far as man is concerned, to the body of the flesh of sin and death.

Now faith is the acceptance of what God says. It is believing God as to our condition, as much as to His power to save. Unless we know we are lost, we will not desire salvation. Unless we know we are hopelessly sick in sin, we will not accept the only Physician. Therefore, the emphasis of His diagnosis, "Hast thou faith? have it to thyself before God." Know yourself as He reveals you. See yourself as He describes you.

"But that would bring despair," you say. Nay, not at all. It may reveal you the very chief of sinners, but it will reveal Christ Jesus the chief of saviours, the One mighty to save. And then you will know that Gospel message for these days: "Fear God, and give Him glory." You will know there is naught in man of which to glory.