More Tozer on "the self-sins."
From "The Pursuit Of God:"
"One should suppose that proper instruction in the doctrines of man's depravity and the necessity for justification through the righteousness of Christ alone would deliver us from the power of the self-sins, but it does not work that way. Self can live unrebuked at the very altar. It can watch the bleeding Victim die and not be in the least affected by what it sees. It can fight for the faith of the reformers and preach eloquently the creed of salvation by grace, and gain strength by its efforts. To tell the truth, it seems actually to feed upon orthodoxy and is more at home in a Bible conference than in a tavern. Our very state of longing after God may afford it an excellent condition under which to thrive and to grow.
Self is the opaque glow that hides the face of God from us. It can be removed only in spiritual experience, never by mere instruction. We may as well try to instruct leprosy out of our system. There must be a work of God in destruction before we are free. We must invite the cross to do its deadly work within us. We must bring our self-sins to the cross for judgment. We must prepare ourselves for an ordeal of suffering in some measure like that through which our Savior passed when He suffered under Pontius Pilate."
posted by Bobby @ 5:05 AM
3 comments
3 Comments:
"There must be a work of God in destruction before we are free." This reminds me of something I recently heard someone say about how God forgives REAL sin, not hypothetical sin. The kind of destruction it takes to make our sin real is painful and horrific- the kind of growth and conviction that we say we want, but secretly shrink from.
Yeah, that's a good way to put it. Really, when we think about the imagery the Bible uses -- putting sin, and the old self, to death ... that's dramatic stuff. We've become blind to how dramatic that is. There's nothing naturally pleasant about death. Our old selves will fight it tooth and nail.
And I have to say, I can SO identify with this. I know from personal experience that self-sin can thrive at the altar and inspite of doctrinal and theological instruction. All that stuff is very, very true.
This is from my favorite chapter in that book.
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