BYM ONLINE DESK Blessing e magazine May 2019 | Página 3

May 2019 | www.bymonline.org
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absolutely indispensable. It is a heart that is entirely
occupied with the Lord Jesus, and depends only
upon Him that can alone hope for the fullness of the
Spirit.
They had left all for Jesus
“Nothing for nothing.” This proverb contains a deep
truth. A thing that costs me nothing may nevertheless
cost me much. It may bring me under an obligation
to the giver, and so cost me more than it is worth. I
may have so much trouble in appropriating it and
keeping it that I may pay much more for it than the
price which should be asked for it.
“Nothing for nothing”: the maxim holds good also
in the life of the kingdom of heaven. The parables of
the Pearl of great price and the Treasure hid in the
field (Matt. 13:44-45) teach us that in order to obtain
possession of the kingdom within us, we must sell all
that we have. This is the very renunciation that Jesus
literally demanded of the disciples who followed
Him. This is the requirement He so often repeated in
His preaching: “He that forsaketh not all that he
hath cannot be My disciple” (Luke 14:33).
The two worlds betwixt which we stand are in
such direct conflict with one another, and the world
in which we by nature live exercises such a mighty
influence over us that it is often necessary for us,
even by external and visible sacrifice, to withdraw
from it. It was thus that Jesus trained His disciples to
long for that which is heavenly. Only thus could He
prepare them to desire and receive the heavenly gift
with an undivided heart.
The Lord has left us no outward directions as to
how much of the world we are to abandon or in what
manner. But by His whole Word He teaches us that
without sacrifice, without a deliberate separation
from the world and forsaking of it, we shall never
make much progress in grace. The spirit of this
world has penetrated so deeply into us that we do not
observe it. We share in its desire for comfort and
enjoyment, for self-pleasing and self-exaltation,
without our knowing how impossible these things
make it for us to be filled with the Spirit.
Let us learn from the early disciples that to be
filled from the heavenly world with the Spirit that
dwells there, we must be separate from the children
of this world or from worldly Christians. We must be
ready and eager to live as entirely different men, who
literally represent heaven upon earth, because we
have received the Spirit of the King of heaven.
They had despaired utterly of themselves and all
that is of man
Man has two great enemies by whom the devil
tempts him and with whom he has to contend. The
one is the world without; the other is the self-life
within. This last, the selfish ego, is much more
dangerous and stronger than the first. It is quite
possible for a man to have made much progress in
forsaking the world while the self-life retains full
dominion within him. You see this fact illustrated in
the case of the disciples. Peter could say with truth:
“Lo, we have left all, and have followed Thee”
(Mark 10:28). Yet how manifestly did the selfish
ego, with its self-pleasing and its self-confidence,
still retain its full sway over him.
As the Lord at their first calling led them up to the
point of forsaking their outward possessions and
following Him, so shortly afterwards He began to
teach them that a disciple must deny himself and lose
his own life if he would be worthy of receiving His.
He must hate not only father and mother, where this
was necessary, but even his own life. It was love for
this self-life more than all love for father and mother
that hindered the Lord Jesus from doing His work in
the heart. It was to cost them more to be redeemed
from the selfish ego within them than to give up the
world around them. The self-life is the natural life of
sinful man. He can be liberated from it by nothing
save by death that is, by first dying to it and then
living in the strength of the new life that comes from
God.
The forsaking of the world began at the outset of
the three years' discipleship. It was at the end of that
period, at the cross of Jesus, that dying to the self-life
first took place. When they saw Him die, they
learned to despair of themselves and of everything
on which they had hitherto based their hope.
Whether they thought of their Lord and the
redemption which they had expected, or whether
they thought of themselves and their shameful
unfaithfulness toward Him, everything tended to fill
them with despair.
Little did they know that was to prove the breaking
up of their hard hearts the mortification of the self-
life and of confidence in themselves which would
enable them to receive something entirely new
namely, a divine life through the Spirit of the
glorified Jesus in the innermost depths of their souls.
Oh, that we understood better that there is nothing