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In many a hard battle for the divine Jesus was intensely human in His earthly life He repeatedly said a never-varying "no" to the self-life, and lived a constant victory until the very last triumphant shout of victory on Calvary. It was a life of constant conflict, but of splendid, calming, scarce-broken peace within, and of marvelous power without.
Teach me all thy will and word, That my life be filled with God; Teach me, Lamb of Calvary, How to live this life for thee. Man can not naturally live the Christ-life. But Christ has promised to come into our hearts and live in us. In order that we may have Christ dwell in our hearts and that we may live his life, there must be a giving up of our self-life.
The self-life was alluringly and repeatedly presented to Him by Satan, in the wilderness, in the remark of Peter, by the visit of the Greeks, in Gethsemane where the struggle of soul almost broke the tie that held body and spirit together, and many other times.
And however perverted their belief may have become, they seem in early days to have contemplated a real destruction of self, the flame of self-love and self-life being so put out that it should never more be a flame, and should not long be a spark. For instance, their writings tell us such things as follow:
Then, soul, end all this uncertainty, end all this unreality by coming now to the altar of God and placing thereon your whole self-life, body, soul, spirit, heart, talents, time, goods and gold, will, and all else. Tie it securely by one strong indomitable, irrevocable decision of your will. Count yourself all the Lord's. Begin to reckon and consider every event of your life in this light.
Suppose you fill this hollow figure with a kind of life which we shall call self-life. This life goes to using the hands and feet, and eyes, ears, tongue, in short, all the members of this brass figure, but using them in the interest of itself. Now you desire to make a change; you want that image to speak, act, and think only for you.
And therefore, if any one asks me, "How can I get rid of this compromise life?" the answer would not be, "You must do this, or that, or the other thing," but the answer would be, "A new life from above, the life of Christ, must take the place of the self-life; then alone can we be conquerors."
And Marion read, "To step out of self-life into Christ-life, to lie still and let him lift you out of it, to fold your hands close and hide your face upon the hem of his robe, to let him lay his cooling, soothing, healing hands upon your soul, and draw all the hurry and fever away, to realize that you are not a mighty messenger, an important worker of his, full of care and responsibility, but only a little child with a Father's gentle bidding to heed and fulfil, to lay your busy plans and ambitions confidently in his hands, as the child brings its broken toys at its mother's call; to serve him by waiting, to praise him by saying 'Holy, holy, holy, a single note of praise, as do the seraphim of the heavens if that be his will, to cease to live in self and for self and to live in him and for him, to love his honor more than your own, to be a clear and facile medium for his life-tide to shine and glow through this is consecration and this is rest."
To abandon yourself to God is an act of highest intelligence and wisdom. "Surrender" implies the cessation of rebellion. Of course the sinner, to be converted, must surrender, and does surrender. And you have already surrendered in that way. Yet there is a self-life or a self-will that shrinks more or less from the will of God until we enter the Canaan of entire sanctification.
Only give yourself entirely up to Christ. Abide in Him. Remain in Him. Let thought and speech and life be bathed in the influences of His Holy Spirit; Let the sap of His life flow where the sap of the self-life was wont to flow; and lo! old things will pass away, and all things will become new. The law and method of abiding.
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