Experiencing The Inner Life

"I had heard of You only be the hearing of the ear,

but now my spiritual eye sees You. Therefore I loathe

my words and abhor myself and repent

in dust and ashes."

Job 42:5-6

Job

Jacob Jordaens

(1620)

It will help us in interpreting this experience to see

that it came, not to Job alone, but to every man greatly

used of God. The circumstances differ but the essence is

the same-God is realized, self-strength is turned to helplessness,

new power and blessings are given.

Joshua fell at the feet of the Man with the drawn sword.

(Josh. 5:13-15). 

Isaiah must cry, "Woe is me"

(Isaiah 6:5-8)

only to be cleansed and recommissioned;

Jeremiah must learn that he "cannot speak" before the Lord

will touch his mouth.

 (Jer. 1: 6-10);

Ezekiel, prostrated by the glory, must fall on his face

in the collapse of self before the Spirit can fill him, and

Jehovah can say, "I send thee."

Daniel must say, "I saw...and my comeliness was turned

in me into corruption." 

(Daniel 10:5-12)

Even John the Beloved, before the vision of the

glorified Christ, must fall,

"at His feet as one dead" before the "right hand"

can be laid upon him, and he can hear the "Fear not."

It is neither the entire eradication of the flesh, the death,

the extinction of self, nor is it sinless perfection.

Self is abhorred, distrusted, detested, set at naught.

But so uniform are the characteristics of this experience,

whatever age or dispensation, that it is not difficult to state

both by the result accomplished and the steps by

which it is wrought.

We have, then, in this supreme experience, the revelation

of God Himself to the soul. It is not something about God;

some new testimony concerning God, or some lesson

of sorrow or trial. It is God's own act, His self-revelation

of something which testimony had never communicated to

heart or conscience, so there is a new and intense 

apprehension of Himself.

The instances quotes from the Scriptures agree, too, in

the effect of this unveiling of God.

Before that vision of God self is abhorred. So absolute is

this effect that, as we have seen, it is constantly spoken of as

the utter deprivation of strength.

The self-life is not slain, but it is seen in that glory as never

again to be trusted, or in any way counted on in the things of God.

As Paul said, "We had the sentence of death in ourselves,

 that we should not trust in ourselves

 but in God, which raiseth from the dead",

in the God of the resurrection,

 in the God of the new, undying life.

In agreement, too, are the biblical

 instances that this destruction of

self-confidence is followed by

 the infilling of strength of Him Who was

dead and is alive again.

 Not once is the man on his face before the

awful, beautiful vision left prostate.

"I received strength" is the unvarying testimony.

And then comes the new and higher service.

This is the blessed consummation; this and the new fruitfulness.

Could I covet anything better for you than that you should see

God face to face?

Than that there should come to you this highest word in the

epic of the inner life?  

May He grant it for His name's sake.

C.I. Scofield

Excerpt from the chapter, "The Inner Life"

from the book, "The New Life in Christ Jesus"

By C.I. Scofield

(1915)