The Self Life and the Christ Life

I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me. GALATIANS 2:20

One of Simpson’s most searching books carries the title The Self Life and the Christ Life, and its argument is that the Christian’s fundamental problem is not his sins but his self.

The root beneath the branches

Most of us deal with our Christian lives at the level of particular faults. We notice a bad temper, a sharp tongue, a habit of exaggeration, and we address each as it appears — pruning branches, one at a time, for decades. Simpson’s contention is that the branches keep growing because the root is untouched. Beneath the individual sins lies a single organising principle: the self at the centre, arranging everything around its own comfort, reputation and will. He was fond of listing the forms it takes, and the list is uncomfortable reading because it catches almost everyone somewhere. Self-will, which must have its own way. Self-love, which cannot be neglected without pain. Self-confidence, which undertakes God’s work in its own strength. Self-consciousness, which is paralysed by what others think. Self-pity, which nurses its grievances. Self-seeking, self-defence, self-indulgence, self-justification. And most elusive of all, self-righteousness — the self admiring its own progress in crucifying itself.

And he said to them all, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me. LUKE 9:23

Simpson pointed out that the Lord does not say deny yourself things. He says deny yourself — disown the self as the governing principle. The denial of things is easy by comparison, and can be performed with considerable self-satisfaction.

Not suppression, but exchange

Here Simpson parts company with mere asceticism, and the distinction is the heart of his teaching. You cannot remove the self by attacking it. Every attempt produces a new and subtler form of the same thing, because the one doing the attacking is the self. A man may starve his body, renounce his ambitions and cultivate a reputation for humility, and be more thoroughly self-occupied at the end than at the beginning. The remedy is not subtraction but substitution. The self life is displaced by the Christ life, as darkness is displaced by light rather than removed by effort.

He must increase, but I must decrease. JOHN 3:30

Simpson insisted on the order in that verse. The increase comes first, and the decrease follows from it. We do not diminish ourselves in order to make room for Christ; we receive Christ, and our own importance quietly collapses because something larger has arrived.

The daily cross

Note the word daily in Luke 9:23. Simpson took it seriously, and it guards his teaching against the misuse that has attended every doctrine of surrender. The reckoning of Romans 6 is settled once. Its application is renewed every morning, and generally in circumstances we did not choose. The cross is presented to us not as an abstraction but as an interruption, a slight, an inconvenience, a person who will not do what we want.

For we which live are alway delivered unto death for Jesus’ sake, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh. 2 CORINTHIANS 4:11

The clause at the end is the point. The dying is never an end in itself. It is always in order that something else may appear.

Personality is not the enemy

A caution that Simpson supplied himself, and that his followers sometimes lost. The self life is not the same as personality, temperament or natural ability. God made those and intends to use them. The goal is not a colourless Christian — Simpson himself remained recognisably a driven, visionary, organising Scotsman to the end of his days, and the movement he built could not have existed otherwise. What goes to the cross is the self as centre, not the self as creature. Peter after Pentecost is still impetuous Peter; the impetuousness now serves Christ instead of Peter.

For to me to live is Christ. PHILIPPIANS 1:21

There is a test in this that requires no theology to apply.

Watch what happens in you the next time you are contradicted, overlooked, or corrected in front of others. Whatever rises in that moment, unbidden, before you have time to arrange your face — that is the thing this chapter is about.

Self in the Lord’s work

The subtlest form of the self life, Simpson observed, does not appear in worldly pursuits at all. It appears in ministry, where it is nearly invisible because everything about it looks like devotion. Self can want a platform and call it a burden for souls. It can resent a colleague’s success and call it concern for sound doctrine. It can labour to exhaustion and call it consecration when the real engine is the need to be needed. It can defend its position tenaciously and call it contending for the faith. The New Testament knows this problem and names names.

I wrote unto the church: but Diotrephes, who loveth to have the preeminence among them, receiveth us not.

Paul, remarkably, was able to distinguish between the message and the motive of those who preached it, and to rejoice even where the motive was bad.

Some indeed preach Christ even of envy and strife …What then? notwithstanding, every way, whether in pretence, or in truth, Christ is preached; and I therein do rejoice. PHILIPPIANS 1:15, 18

Simpson drew two things from this. First, that God is able to use a ministry in which self is heavily involved, which should relieve us of the anxiety that nothing will be blessed until our motives are pure — they never will be entirely. And second, that this must never become an excuse for leaving the motives unexamined. The practical test he suggested is uncomfortable and quick. How do you feel when someone else is used to do the thing you wanted to do? The answer arrives before you can arrange it, and it is generally accurate.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Go through Simpson’s list — self-will, self-pity, self-defence, self-seeking — and name the one that fits you most exactly. 2. Stop attacking the self directly. Give the same energy to receiving Christ, and watch what happens to the other.

3. Take the next contradiction or slight as the day’s cross rather than as an obstacle to your spiritual life. It is the material. 4. When you are misunderstood this week, decline to defend yourself once, and observe what rises. 5. Distinguish self from personality. Do not seek to be less yourself; seek to be less your own centre.

A PRAYER

Lord Jesus, I have been trimming branches for years, and the root is untouched.

I see it now: not merely my sins, but myself — at the centre, arranging everything, wanting my own way and calling it conviction.

I cannot crucify myself; every attempt has made me proud of the attempt. So come and increase, and let me decrease as a consequence rather than an achievement.

Give me today’s cross, and let me take it without complaint — that the life of Jesus might be seen in me. Amen.