Outward Self-Renunciation - The Union of the Inward and Outward Christ-Life Vital

“A Missionary”

This article first appeared in "The Christian" and was part of a series of articles on the Christian Life. I have never found the original periodical, nor the other periodicals, where the additional articles could be found. The article, which so ably describes the kind of life that Hudson Taylor promoted, appeared in China's Million in 1889.—Dan

Outward Self-Renunciation

TO the single eye there is divine beauty in the wisdom that has inseparably joined heart-experience and its appropriate outward expression in a life of manifest self-abnegation. There is a twofold reason for it. The one affects the spiritual growth and power of believers themselves, missionaries included. The other has reference to the effect which the divorce of the two has upon the keen-eyed world, whether at home or abroad, which ever scrutinises the professed CHRIST-life on its practical side. This latter will be considered in a later paper, dealing with the divine philosophy that underlies the methods for foreign mission work, which we believe were clearly laid down by our LORD. The first of these reasons will now occupy us. It lies in the fact that IT IS ONLY IN THE PATHWAY OF OUTWARD SELF-RENUNCIATION THAT WE CAN BECOME THE SUBJECTS OF THAT DIVINE DISCIPLINE AND DEALING WHICH ISSUES IN MATURITY AND SYMMETRY OF CHRISTIAN LIFE AND FULNESS OF SPIRITUAL POWER.

See this principle illustrated in the life of CHRIST, “who though He was rich, yet for our sakes became poor, that we through His poverty might become rich." He became poor in the material sense of the word. He chose to take the lowest place. He voluntarily passed by all the higher ranks of society, in any one of which He could have shone. He left on one side the world’s arts, sciences, and politics, upon any one of which he could have discoursed as no other could; and took from choice the place of poverty and utter dependence on the FATHER. He became a peasant, though David’s royal blood was in His human veins. He had no food save as the FATHER gave it to Him—no shelter, no earthly convenience, save as the FATHER appointed. With the elaborate appointments and refinements of life which obtained among the great of that day, as of this, He had nothing to do. In rude simplicity He ate and drank and was clothed.

Let us not lose sight of the deep reason for all this in our LORD's life. It was that, for His soul's training and perfecting, He might be, as to all that entered into His environment, pliant in His FATHER’s hands. Every experience, deprivation, deliverance, and suffering needed in the process, the FATHER could appoint. When, as with Israel in the wilderness, fasting must furnish the lesson of the hour, and He be supplied with heart-food which would become a weapon in His hand, such becomes His experience, and in His quiver is ready found the shaft for Satan, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of GOD." He was “made perfect through sufferings": sufferings in the outward realm as well as inwardly; sufferings which would have been impossible had He either delivered Himself by miracles (which He never used for Himself), or chosen other than the lowly, despised, reputationless and dependent form of a servant. In this pathway of simplicity and suffering He received and manifested the power of GOD; and when that life of lowly dependence was crowned by the utter self-abnegation of Gethsemane and Calvary, then, being risen, He could say, “All power is given unto Me, in heaven and in earth." Here is wisdom for the wise.

The time was when it was the same with CHRIST'S followers as with Him, and when the word was well understood, “the servant is not above his LORD." Let Paul yield us an example. He could have excelled in the schools of philosophy, or graced any social position. He appreciated refined surroundings and fine arts. Yet these were but “bones for the dogs" to the man whose inmost heart CHRIST had won, and who had been intrusted with the precious freightage of His name, and in whose ears the wail of a dying world was ringing. He enumerates, in Philippians, his outward advantages, and tells us he counted them but refuse. When, in that same chapter, his soul pants forth his desire for power—“the power of His resurrection"—he spoke of that to which it is indissolubly joined, “the fellowship of His sufferings; being made conformable to His death." He followed CHRIST in His outward sufferings and temptations; or, rather, he put himself into that position of simplicity and dependence in which GOD could shape his path and mould him at His will. He had the mind that was in CHRIST; he well knew that faith best flourishes in the soil of unworldliness of life and amid the rigours of poverty and outward trial, where the soul is momentarily thrown upon GOD for everything. He was one in spirit with that goodly “cloud of witnesses," to which the self-emptied and world-emptied souls of all ages belong, mean and despised in the sight of men, but of whom GOD the SPIRlT writes, “the world was not worthy”; “they wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins; being destitute, afflicted, tormented . . . they wandered in deserts and in mountains, in dens and caves of the earth."

As the eye turns from these examples of heavenly life in earthly scenes, as pictured in the Word, to the average lives of the most advanced in our times, how humiliating the contrast! We see what sufficed our LORD and the ancient saints, and the deep reason for their lowly surroundings; but we must needs “reign as kings." They were “fools for CHRIST’s sake," but we are “wise in CHRIST"; they were weak, but we are strong; they were despised, but we are honourable; they hungered and were athirst, were naked and buffeted and without a certain dwelling-place; but we live in ceiled houses—the best our ample or slender means will allow. None are better clad than we; and as, in these last days, living has become more and more elaborated with its endless niceties and refinements we have adopted them all. We will be spiritual and consecrated, but will, nevertheless, cast our outward circumstances in that mould which appeals most strongly to our love of position and the material things of earth—the very opposite of the place to which GOD's Word and providence, as well as their own spiritual discernment of the fitness of things, brought CHRIST and His early disciples.

Why is all this? Why should we be better circumstanced than our LORD? Are we made of better stuff than the apostles that we need not come under the same rule? We have yet to perceive that, as one mighty in the Scriptures has said on this very point, “It is not a conventional, but an appropriate, not an expedient, but a necessary character, for every one who possesses a certain measure of GOD’s SPIRIT.” Are we “ still without understanding"? Do we not yet perceive that here is the very source of our weakness; that here are the foxes that spoil our vines?

How well we understand that emptying must precede infilling. But emptying of what? Of outward sins we agree to; but as to social position, a good deal of worldly influence, the comfortable externals of life, the great bulk of our possessions—they must be retained. We must, forsooth, use them for the LORD. We, like Saul, will keep the best of the cattle to sacrifice to the LORD our God. Oh for some trumpet-tongued Samuel to thunder in our startled ears, “Hath the LORD as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as in obeying the voice of the LORD? "Thus Saul lost the kingdom. Thus we are weak and powerless. Our riches, reputations, and positions are our snare and weakness, not our strength.

Would we be fishers of men? Would we have our missionaries such also? Then we must heed the meaning of the word of CHRIST, which will never accommodate itself to nineteenth century ideas of consecration. “Follow Me, and I will make you to become fishers of men." They became His literal followers in outward life. They left all. This opened the way for that correction and training, that suffering and emptying, that having deepest fellowship with CHRIST, that being baptised with His baptism, by which were dug out the channels through which the power of the HOLY GHOST could flow in. The pathway of power is none other now. They were free from those “cares of this life,” and “the deceitfulness of riches," and the imperious demands of society; those “weights " to be not carried, but “laid aside," that enervate faith in all, that slay it in many.

There is no escaping them, save by resolute and radical dealing. There must be a real forsaking of all, a coming down from our social heights; a deep, deliberate, practical renunciation of the world with its lust of the eye and pride of life, as well as the coarser lusts of the flesh—its luxuries, its artificial system of living, its artistic and aesthetic pleasures and occupations; an entering upon a life of evident simplicity and self-renunciation; and all by deliberate choice, rejoicing that we have somewhat to surrender for His dear Name’s sake. This is what GOD calls for. This is the price of spiritual power, or rather the door into the gymnasium where GOD trains His athletes. This is the Greater-than-David’s Cave of Adullam where are to be found His mighty men. Let not the few be pointed out of exceptional spiritual strength who rise apparently superior to the soft ease of their material surroundings. It is in spite of these forbidden things they are strong, and the fact ever remains that their example is most detrimental.

For the future, of which scene will we make our choice? Shall it be that “narrow way," that separate and lonely path whose example and inspiration is the Son of GOD on earth, wherein is much hard to the flesh, but wherein awaits for faith the power of GOD? Or shall it continue to be the broad pathway of worldly conformity? If the latter, let us not forget the beginning and the end of the boasted progress and civilisation of this age, with its cities, manufactures, multiplied inventions, fine arts, its intricacies of life and etiquette, its pride of birth, position, and wealth. It began with Cain, the murderer, who “went out from the presence of the LORD," and, with his sons, began building cities, establishing manufactures and arts, and undertook to make themselves comfortable in the scene of the curse, and to get from beneath its sharp edge. It will end in the flames that devour Babylon the Great, which is now glorifying herself and living deliciously; when her harpers and musicians, her merchants who have waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies, her craftsmen and shipowners, her “heaped-up" treasure will perish with her. “Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues."

The weakness of the movement toward holiness of life is the absence of these severer and more sombre teachings of CHRIST on which we have been dwelling. Because they are yet unlearned and unpractised, its full outcome is yet to appear.

"Outward Self-Renunciation," China’s Millions, February, 1889.