THE HEAVENLY VISION Week 4 Day 1 The Vision of the Mindless Self Indulgence Matt. 16:23-25 But He turned and said to Peter, Get behind Me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to Me, for you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of men. Then Jesus said to His disciples, If anyone wants to come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me. For whoever wants to save his soul-life shall lose it; but whoever loses his soul-life for My sake shall find it. We need to learn the lessons regarding the self so that we may be built up in the Body. As we are considering this matter of the self, I would urge you to receive more grace so that the self might be exposed. In being built up with others, the greatest problem is the self. (The Heavenly Vision, p. 35) Three terms in Matthew 16:23-25 are related to one another: mind, himself, and soul-life. Our mind is the expression of our self, and our self is the embodiment of our soul-life. Our soul-life is embodied in and lived out by our self, and our self is expressed through our mind, our thought, our concept, our opinion. When we set our mind not on the things of God but on the things of men, our mind grasps the opportunity to act and express itself. This was what happened with Peter. Hence, the Lord’s subsequent word indicated that Peter had to deny himself, that is, not save his soul-life but lose it. Losing the soul-life is the reality of denying the self. This is to take up the cross. (Matt. 16:24, footnote 2) Today’s Reading If we desire to deal with the self, we need first to define what the self is....The self is the soul-life with the emphasis on human thoughts and human opinions. We can discover this from the Bible, where the self is clearly mentioned. The Lord asked the disciples to deny and forsake the self, which meant to lay aside their own thought. When the Lord asked the disciples to receive the cross, this meant that they should receive the mind of God or the will of God. Therefore, the Lord was asking the disciples here to put aside their own thought and receive the cross, which is the will of God. From this we see that the self has much to do with human thought. Yet the self is not human thought, and human thought is not the self per se. Therefore, in Matthew 16:25 the Lord went on to say that whoever wants to save his soul-life shall lose it, and whoever loses his soul-life for the Lord’s sake shall find it. The denying of the self mentioned in the preceding verse was followed immediately by the losing of the soul-life. This indicates that the self that was mentioned is the soul-life spoken of directly following. The soul-life is the self. In this passage the word of the Lord follows step by step. In verse 22 Peter admonished the Lord to pity Himself; in verse 23 the Lord pointed out that this is human thought or human opinion; in verse 24 the Lord traced this to the root by saying that this opinion is the self. Therefore, we need to forsake and deny it. Then in verse 25 the Lord touched the root of the self by showing that the very self is the soul-life. If the soul-life is being put to death, which means that the self is being denied, there will be no more human opinion. In this passage, verse 23 speaks about the opinion, verse 24 about the self, and verse 25 about the soul-life. Therefore, we can find here a definition for the self: the self in essence is the soul-life, whereas the expression of the self is opinion. Self, soul-life, and opinion are three aspects of one thing. This may be likened to Christ Himself as the very God, and the expression of Christ as the Holy Spirit. The three are one. God incarnated and expressed is Christ, and the soul-life expressed is the self. When Christ is expressed before men and touched by men, He is the Holy Spirit. Likewise, the self is expressed before men and touched by men in the form of human opinion and human viewpoint. Just as when we touch the Holy Spirit, we touch Christ, so when we touch human opinion and viewpoint, we touch the self as well as the soul-life. (The Experience of Life, pp. 219-221) Further Reading: CWWL, 1965, vol. 3, “The Heavenly Vision,” ch. 3; The Experience of Life, ch. 10; Life-study of Matthew, msg. 48 Enlightenment and inspiration:
Posted on: Sat, 12 Jul 2014 08:08:09 +0000
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