God’s Side and Man’s Side

But now, O LORD, thou art our father; we are the clay, and thou our potter; and we all are the work of thy hand. ISAIAH 64:8

The Christian’s Secret of a Happy Life opens not with an exhortation but with a clarification, and it is one of the most useful things Hannah Whitall Smith ever wrote. She had watched two teachers of the higher Christian life hold meetings in the same place at alternate hours. One spoke only of what God does; the other spoke only of what the believer does. They were in perfect agreement with each other, and a good many of their hearers were thoroughly confused. One woman said she could not understand it at all: two preachers were teaching the same truth and seemed to contradict each other.

Two sides of one building

Hannah’s answer was an illustration. Two friends visit a famous building. One walks round the north side, the other the south, and they come home and argue about what it looks like, until they realise they have described different sides of the same thing. So it is, she said, with sanctification. There is God’s side and there is man’s side. They are distinct and even contrasting, but they are not contradictory, and the Christian who sees only one will have a lopsided faith.

Then she gave the sentence that became the motto of her life: “In brief, I would say that man’s part is to trust and God’s part is to work.”

For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure. PHILIPPIANS 2:13

The reasoning is simple. A real work has to be done in us: sins conquered, habits broken, tempers made gentle, a character changed into the likeness of Christ. Someone must do it. Either we do it ourselves, or another does it for us. Most of us try the first way and fail. Scripture and experience agree that we cannot. But Christ came to do it, and He does it for those who trust Him. Trusting and doing are opposites when one person is involved; when two are involved, one trusting and the other doing, there is no contradiction at all.

The clay and the potter

Her governing image is the potter’s house.

And the vessel that he made of clay was marred in the hand of the potter: so he made it again another vessel, as seemed good to the potter to make it. JEREMIAH 18:4

If you describe to a beginner what the clay must do to become a vessel, there is only one thing to say: it must be put into the potter’s hands and lie there, yielding to his turning. That is all the clay can do. But no intelligent hearer concludes that nothing more happens. The potter kneads and presses, wets the clay and lets it dry, works it on the wheel, sets it aside for days, smooths it, bakes it, and brings it out at last a vessel fit for use. The clay’s part is yieldedness. The potter’s part is everything else.

If a man therefore purge himself from these, he shall be a vessel unto honour, sanctified, and meet for the master’s use, and prepared unto every good work. 2 TIMOTHY 2:21

She insisted that critics who accuse the teachers of faith of encouraging idleness have simply not heard the other side. When we trust, the Lord works — and His work is very active indeed. He disciplines, trains and refines through inward exercises and outward providences, and He uses every circumstance of our lives to make us like Christ. A soul that thought faith meant a religious easy chair, she said, had understood nothing.

A step and a process

Here she makes a distinction that rescues her teaching from its most common misreading. “Now, sanctification is both a sudden step of faith and a gradual process of works.” The step is ours: the moment of handing ourselves over, which can be as definite as a signature. The process is God’s, and it takes a lifetime. By a step of faith we get into Christ; by a process we grow up into Him in all things.

But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord. 2 CORINTHIANS 3:18

To explain how a person can be pleasing to God and still very unfinished, she used the image of fruit. The apple in June is a perfect apple for June. It is not the apple of October. God’s works are perfect at every stage of their growth; man’s works are never perfect until they are complete. A new believer who has put himself wholly into God’s hands is, at that hour, what the Potter wants him to be — and still very far from what the Potter means to make.

When the Potter’s way surprises us

The most searching part of the chapter is a pair of stories. A woman entered the life of faith with a great flood of joy and supposed she was being prepared for some large service. Instead her husband lost his money, and she was shut up at home with housework that left no time for anything else. She accepted it, and swept and baked and sewed as gladly as she would have preached, and the Lord made her through it a vessel fit for His use. Another woman, blessed in the same way, found herself confined to nursing two peevish invalid relations. She chafed, then rebelled, and fell into a cold misery. She had understood her part at the start, Hannah says, but not the Potter’s ways, and she took herself out of His hands.

Whereunto I also labour, striving according to his working, which worketh in me mightily. COLOSSIANS 1:29

The lesson is that once we have handed ourselves over, we must expect God to begin working, and we must not be surprised if His methods are not ours. The wheel may turn in a kitchen rather than a pulpit.

A necessary qualification

Hannah was writing, as she says herself, about man’s side, and she deliberately described that side in the barest terms — surrender and trust. The reader should notice that Scripture also speaks of our effort, and speaks of it without embarrassment.

Wherefore, my beloved, as ye have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. PHILIPPIANS 2:12

And beside this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge; 2 PETER 1:5

Paul does not tell the Philippians to lie still; he tells them to work, because God is working in them. The language of passivity — the clay lying still — is a true picture of dependence, but it is not the whole picture of obedience. Hannah knew this. Her own illustration of the saw and the carpenter makes the point: the saw cuts the log, and yet the carpenter cut it. We act, and our acting is His. She quotes the apostle himself.

But by the grace of God I am what I am: and his grace which was bestowed upon me was not in vain; but I laboured more abundantly than they all: yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me. 1 CORINTHIANS 15:10

That is the balance: I laboured — yet not I. The reader who hears only the second half will become idle; the reader who hears only the first will become exhausted. Hannah’s gift to tired Christians was to shout the second half, because most of them had heard nothing else.

For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them. EPHESIANS 2:10

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Which side of the building have you mostly heard preached — God’s part or yours? What has that done to your faith?

2. Name one area where you have been trying to be the potter rather than the clay.

3. Take the step if you have never taken it: put yourself definitely into God’s hands for the whole work of your sanctification.

4. Look at your present circumstances, however ordinary, and ask whether this is the wheel on which God is shaping you.

5. Guard the balance: this week, do one hard duty diligently, consciously depending on God for the strength to do it.

A PRAYER

Father, I am the clay and You are the potter. I have spent years trying to shape myself, and I am tired and misshapen.

I put myself into Your hands now, the whole of me, to be made into whatever You please.

When Your ways surprise me, when the wheel turns in a kitchen and not a pulpit, keep me from taking myself back out of Your hands.

Work in me to will and to do, and let me labour gladly, knowing it is not I but Your grace. Amen.