06 - Chapter 6

CHAPTER SIX

The Spirit used another illustration to make the situation real to me. If anything should happen to my hand to cut it off from my body, it would become a mass of festering corruption in a short time. This is the condition of humanity, cut off from GOD by sin.

"Ah sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evildoers, children that are corrupters: they have forsaken the Lord, they have provoked the Holy One of Israel unto anger, they are gone away backward. Why should ye be stricken any more? ye will revolt more and more: the whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint. From the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness in it; but wounds, and bruises, and putrifying sores: they have not been closed, neither bound up, neither mollified with ointment" (Isaiah 1:4-6)

Now there is only one way to save such a hand. Law will not save it, even if it knew all the laws of a perfect hand. Example cannot save it, even if a perfect example of a healthy hand were constantly held before it. The hand needs a bloodstream of clean, powerful, health-giving blood; blood strong enough to carry off the festering poison and the corruption of the wounds, and replace the rotten, dead flesh with new, clean living flesh. It needs to be replaced in the body. So the only hope for the hand is for some physician skillful enough to graft it back into the body whence it came. This accomplished, the hand will begin to drink the blood of the body and eat its flesh, and the blood that brings food and moisture to it, will draw out the waste and poison and corruption and carry it away.

CHRIST offered His body and His blood to do this for humanity. "Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of MAN, and drink His blood, ye have no life in you" (John 6:53).

"He that is grafted into Me and abides in Me, he it is that eateth My flesh and drinketh My blood. This is the bread that I give for the life of the world."

What a shock it would be to a human body if a corrupt amputated member were grafted back into its place! No human body could stand it. But the life of GOD in CHRIST had such vitality and power that He could offer His body, His life, to be the means of bringing corrupt, rotten humanity, dead in trespasses and sins, back into vital union with GOD, the fountain of life. Thus and thus only can an amputated hand be saved.

In Gethsemane we see the shock and the horror flooding the soul of GOD, when He brings corrupt, festering humanity into union with Himself. He picks up Jerry MacAuley, a "gutter rat," filled with all the unspeakable degradation and vice of one who had sold himself to the most debasing iniquity! Who can describe the corruption of that member of humanity! Yet GOD redeems this vile man and Jerry MacAuley becomes a member of the body of CHRIST. Overnight his corruption and vileness disappear and new life and blood and flesh appear in this once "amputated hand." Where went the corruption? It was in Gethsemane’s cup. It was drunk by Him who knew that no power but the power of His own blood could deal with Jerry MacAuley’s sin. And because He loves all of us Jerry MacAuleys unto the uttermost, He returned to the place of crushing and put the cup again to His holy lips.

I say it reverently: It is not the human weakness of JESUS that we see in Gethsemane; it is the recoil, the revulsion of the nature of the holy Son of GOD, when the One who was the sharer of GOD’s holiness became sin, that we might become righteousness. The blood of my body becomes poisoned that my hand might be delivered of its poison. My heart draws the poison into it that my hand may become healthy. JESUS took me, the rotting member of humanity, and because the only way for me to be saved was to be grafted into His body, He took me into His body; He took my corruption into His own blood, and I became righteousness; He fought that corruption in His own blood. If His blood had been able to stand it without horror and anguish He would not be the holy One that the Father sent into the world.

The struggle was great and the anguish was unutterable. His sweat became as it were great drops of blood. Angels came to strengthen Him. I saw Him arise and go for the second time to His disciples. He seemed to stand and look at them a while.

I said to GOD, "Father, I understand something of the awful revulsion and horror caused by that dread cup. I understand that, but why should Thy Son rise again and go to His disciples? In answer the Spirit seemed to bring before me the picture of a Swedish mother, whose story I had heard. She had an only child, a little girl. She was a widow, and lived on a farm some distance from any other habitation. There came a severe snow, piled so deep that it was impossible for her to reach the outside world for weeks. There wasn’t enough food in the house to keep both mother and daughter alive. If the mother would save her child from death she must make the supreme sacrifice and not touch food. Of course she made her decision as only a mother can. At first it was not so hard, but when hunger came it sometimes seemed more than she could bear to prepare food for her baby and resist the temptation to satisfy her own hunger. Yet as she looked at the child she would tell herself "it would be like eating the flesh of my child," and she overcame the temptation. One day she was preparing an especially savory dish. She was hungry, and she snatched some food for her lips for a taste. The desire to eat had become almost unbearable. Struggling against it, she went to the door to look on her child as she slept. The sight of her loved baby girl brought the mother love surging back into her breast, and she said, "No, no, no, my child; never could I take that which would mean death to you." She put it down and never again was tempted. She had to give her life, but her child was spared. For her child’s sake she sanctified herself -- set herself apart. "And when I passed by thee, and saw thee polluted in thine own blood, I said unto thee when thou wast in thy blood, Live; yea, I said unto thee when thou wast in thy blood, Live" (Ezekiel 16:6).

Through that illustration GOD showed me that JESUS for the sake of His own sanctified Himself, set Himself apart, that His own might be sanctified (John 17:19). He would never have gone through Gethsemane except for one thing. Nothing could have induced Him to drink that cup except the fact that, having loved His own, He loved them to the uttermost. He arose the second time that He might look again on Peter and James and John, whom He loved (and upon you and me and all the sons and daughters whom He loved and was going to bring into glory). He looked upon us, His loved ones, again and said, "I could never do it except for thee -- except that I love thee, except that I love thee unto the uttermost. I never could take that unclean cup, but if I refuse to drink it I deny My Father’s love for thee and My love for thee, and that I cannot do." Yes, because He loves thee, my brother -- because He loves thee, my sister -- He went back and drank the last dregs of that cup of sin and iniquity. He drank it into His own blood that He might some day bring thee before the Father without sin and without blemish, and present thee before the throne of His holiest glory. Thus GOD made "His soul an offering for sin." (Isaiah 53:10)
~ end of chapter 6 ~