We can never enjoy deliverance from our self-life before we see something of its total corruption. We all are familiar with the famous parable of the Prodigal Son. We have always learnt what not to do in life to become a prodigal son/ daughter. But we sometimes forget that if our Lord had ever said a parable, He includes a particular person for some purpose and He is teaching us some important lessons through that person. So now let us look at the elder son (in Luke 15), for he illustrates, perhaps better than anyone else in the Bible, the utter rottenness of the self-life.
The younger son in the parable is usually considered the worse of the two boys. But as we look more carefully at the elder brother, we will discover that in God's eyes, he was just as bad, if not worse. True, he did not the same sins as his younger brother. But his heart was crooked and self-centered.
Man's total depravity
The human heart is basically the same in every individual. When the Bible describes the human heart as deceitful above all things and desperately wicked (Jer. 17:9), it refers to every child of Adam. The refinements of civilization, lack of opportunity to commit sin and a sheltered upbringing may perhaps have kept us from falling into the grosser sins that some others have fallen into. But we cannot, on that count, consider ourselves better than they. For if we had had the same pressures they faced, we would have undoubtedly ended up committing the same sins. This may be a humiliating fact for us to acknowledge, but it is true. The sooner we recognize this fact, the sooner we shall experience deliverance. Paul recognized that no good thing dwelt in his flesh (Rom.7:18). This was his first step to freedom (Rom. 8:2).
We human beings look at the outer appearance of man and call some good and others bad. But God knows all our hearts, He looks at the heart and sees all men in the same condition. The Bible teaches the total depravity of all men. Consider Romans 3:10-12, for example: "There is none righteous, (and just in case we think its an overstatement, it continues to say), no, not one. There is none that understand, there is no one who seeks after God. They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable. There is no-one who does good, no, not one." Romans 3:10-20 is a summing up of the guilt of all humanity - of the irreligious as well as the religious.
In Romans 1:18-32 we have a description of "the younger son"- the externally immoral and godless man. In Romans 2, we have a portrayal of "the elder son"- the religious man who is just as bad a sinner. After having described these people, the Holy Spirit sums up by saying that both groups are alike guilty. There is no difference between one and another.
Man is indeed totally depraved; and if God does not reach down and do something for him, there is certainly no hope for him.
Self-centeredness
The elder son (Luke 15:25-32) can be taken to symbolize a Christian worker. If the father in the story is a type of God, it would be only fair to consider the son as a type of an active Christian- for we see him in the parable coming home after a day's work in his father's fields. He was no lazy young man, sitting at home and enjoying his father's wealth. He was a person who worked hard for his father, one who apparently loved his father more than his younger brother did- for after all, he did not leave home and waste his father's wealth, like the latter. He was apparently more devoted, but actually, was just as selfish as his younger brother. It is a picture of a believer active in the Lord's work and apparently full of devotion to his Lord but still centered in himself.
God created this world with certain laws built into it. If those laws are violated, there will be some form of loss or injury. In the same way, Adam was created to be centered in God. The day he refused God as his Center and chose to be centered in himself, he died, as God had said he would.
There is a lesson here for us:
In the measure in which our Christian life and service are centered in ourselves, in that measure we shall experience spiritual death- in spite of our being born again and in spite of our fundamentalism. And all unconsciously, we shall be ministering spiritual death to others too. We may have a reputation as keen and zealous workers for the Father (as the elder son perhaps had), but we may still merit the rebuke of the Lord, "I know your reputation as a live and active (Christian), but you are dead" (Rev.3:1). This is a tragic but dangerous possibility in Christian work. Many a Christian worker lives on the reputation he has built up for himself. Looked up to by others, he is often unconscious of the fact, that God sees him in an altogether different light. Never having been delivered from self-centeredness himself, he is unable to deliver others- even if he preaches beautifully!
The above lesson has been taken from the book "Beauty from Ashes" by Zac Poonen.
(Next session: Recognizing the evil within. Please keep yourself updated about the posts being written here)
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