604 The Spiritual Man
Let us consequently keep in mind that what people commonly
term “death to self” in essence signifies death to the life, power,
exercise and activity of self; in no way does it refer to the death of
one’s personality. We must not efface ourselves and render our
personalities non-existent. This is a distinction we must comprehend.
When we say without self, we mean without any self-activity, not
without self-existence! If a Christian accepts the interpretation which
envisages a loss of personality and refuses to think, feel or move, he
shall live as one in a dream. Though he conceives himself to be truly
dead, entirely selfless, and intensely spiritual, his consecration is ‘not
towards God but is as to the evil spirits.
God’s WorkingAnother text easily mishandled is Philippians 2.13: “it is God who
worketh in you both to will and to work, for his good pleasure”
(ASV). To some this passage seems to teach that God performs both
the willing and the working; that is, that He puts into His child what
He has willed and worked. Since God wills and works instead of
him, he himself need not do so. The believer has become a kind of
superior creature having no need to will and to do work now that
God has done so for him. He is like a mechanical toy which exercises
no responsibility of its own to will and do. These saints do not see
that the correct substance of this verse is that God works in us up to
the point of our readiness to will and to work. He undertakes only to
that point and no farther. He never wills or acts in place of man. He
merely endeavors to bring man to the position of being disposed to
will and to do His excellent will.
Man himself must perform the willing and the working. The
Apostle carefully states, “you both to will and to work”—not God
wills and works, but you; your personality continues to exist and
hence you yourself must will and act because the responsibility is
yours. God is indeed at work, but never does He substitute Himself