Self-realization possible?

[Lovelybird]

I love this book, I'd quote whole book if I can

 

Here this author talk about self-realization and what Jesus did

 

Be careful not to be caught up in the clap-trap of to-day which says, “I believe in the teachings of Jesus, but I don’t see any need for the Atonement.” Men talk pleasant, patronising things about Jesus Christ’s teaching while they ignore His Cross. By all means let us study Christ’s teaching, we do not think nearly enough along New Testament lines, we are swamped by pagan standards, and as Christians we ought to allow Jesus Christ’s principles to work out in our brains as well as in our lives; but the teaching of Jesus apart from His Atonement simply adds an ideal that leads to despair. What is the good of telling me that only the pure in heart can see God when I am impure? of telling me to love my enemies when I hate them? I may keep it down but the spirit is there. Does Jesus Christ make it easier? He makes it a hundredfold more difficult! The purity God demands is impossible unless we can be re-made from within, and that is what Jesus Christ undertakes to do through the Atonement. Jesus Christ did not come to tell men they ought to be holy—there is an “ought” in every man that tells him that, and whenever he sees a holy character he may bluster and excuse himself as he likes, but he knows that is what he ought to be: He came to put us in the place where we can be holy, that is, He came to make us what He teaches we should be, that is the difference.

 

 

Our Lord’s first requirement is a personal relationship to Himself, and then obedience to His principles. Tolstoi blundered in applying the Sermon on the Mount practically without insisting on the need to be born again of the Spirit first, and he had an enormous following of intellectual faddists, mere “spring-cleaners.” It is not a question of applying Jesus Christ’s principles to our actual life first of all, but of applying them to our relationship to Himself, then as we keep our souls open in relation to Him our conscience will decide how we are to act out of that relationship. The principles of Jesus Christ go to the very root of the matter, they have an intensely practical application to our moral life. “For I say unto you, That except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:20).

Chambers, Oswald: Biblical Ethics. Hants UK : Marshall, Morgan & Scott, 1996, c1947

 

 

[Lovelybird]

Apart from a knowledge of Jesus Christ, and apart from being crumpled up by conviction of sin, men have a disposition which keeps them perfectly happy and peaceful. The natural man is not in distress, not conscious of any disharmony in himself; he is not “in trouble as other men,” and is quite content with being once-born; the things Jesus Christ stands for have no meaning for the natural man. The Bible refers to this disposition as one of darkness—“. . . being darkened in their understanding” (Ephesians 4:18 rv). We preach to men as if they were conscious of being dying sinners, they are not, they are having a good time, and all our talk about the need to be born again is from a domain they know nothing about; because some men try to drown unhappiness in worldly pleasures it does not follow all are like that. There is nothing attractive about the Gospel to the natural man; the only man who finds the Gospel attractive is the man who is convicted of sin. Conviction of sin and being guilty of sins are not the same thing. Conviction of sin is produced by the incoming of the Holy Spirit because conscience is promptly made to look at God’s demands and the whole nature cries out, in some form or other. “What must I do to be saved?”

 

For a man to be undisturbed and in unity with himself is a good condition, not a bad one, because a united personality means freedom from self-consciousness; but if his peace is without any consideration of Jesus Christ it is simply the outcome of this disposition of darkness which keeps men alienated from the life of God. When Jesus Christ comes in He upsets this false unity; He comes not as a Comforter, but as a thorough Disturber. “If I had not come . . . , they had not had sin”—then why did He come? If I was peaceful and happy, living a clean upright life, why should Jesus Christ come with a standard of holiness I never dreamt of? Simply because that peace was the peace of death, a peace altogether apart from God. The coming of Jesus Christ to the natural man means the destruction of all peace that is not based on a personal relationship to Himself.

[/url]Chambers, Oswald: Biblical Ethics. Hants UK : Marshall, Morgan & Scott, 1996, c1947

 

 

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[Lovelybird]

This part is about self-realisation

 

God did not create Adam holy. He created him innocent, that is, without self-consciousness (as we understand the word) before God; Adam was conscious of himself only in relation to the Being whom he was to glorify and enjoy. Consciousness of self was an impossibility in the Garden until something happened, viz., the introduction of sin. To begin with Adam was not afraid of God; he was not afraid of the beasts of the field, or of anything, because there was no consciousness of himself apart from God. Immediately he disobeyed, he became conscious of himself and he felt afraid—“I heard Thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid . . .” (Genesis 3:10); he had ceased to be a child and had become a sinner. That is why our Lord says we have to become children all over again. Through the miracle of regeneration we are placed back into a state of innocence. “Sin kills the child out of us and creates the bitter sinner in us.” In other words, God’s right to me is killed by the incoming of my self-conscious right to myself—“I can do without God.” Sin is not a creation, it is a relationship set up between the devil (who is independent entirely of God) and the being God made to have communion with Himself. Disobey God, separate yourself from Him, and you will be “as God, knowing good and evil” (Genesis 3:5 rv; see Genesis 3:22). The entrance of sin meant that the connection with God was gone and the disposition of self-realisation had come in its place.

 

Our Lord never denounced wrong-doing and immorality so strongly as He denounced self-realisation. Have you ever been puzzled by His attitude to the people of His day—why He told the chief priests that “the publicans and the harlots go into the kingdom of God before you”? He could not have meant that social sins were not abominable: He was looking at something we do not see, viz., the disposition at the basis of right and wrong-doing.

[/url]Chambers, Oswald: Biblical Ethics. Hants UK : Marshall, Morgan & Scott, 1996, c1947

 

 

[quankanne]

"turn away from sin and embrace the Gospel"

 

... this is something the priest tells us as we go up for ashes on Ash Wednesday, which helps illustrate Chambers' message: The purity God demands is impossible unless we can be re-made from within, and that is what Jesus Christ undertakes to do through the Atonement.