The All and the Nothing

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

Every serious Christian teacher has had to say something about self-denial, because our Lord made it the condition of following Him. Madame Guyon said a great deal about it, in language that is sometimes breathtaking and sometimes troubling. She spoke of self-will, of appropriation, of the soul being emptied, even of the soul being annihilated before God. This chapter tries to hear what she meant, and to hold her strong words up to the light of Scripture.

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

Two truths

Near the end of her chapter on prayer and sacrifice in A Short and Easy Method of Prayer, she sums up the whole matter in a startling sentence. Prayer, she says, leads the soul into the truth of the ALL of God and the NOTHING of the creature. “There are but these two truths, the ALL and the NOTHING. All the rest is untruth.”

It is easy to hear that as extravagant, and there is extravagance in it. But first hear what is true. God is the source of everything; we are creatures who have nothing that we did not receive. Our existence, our gifts, our breath, our righteousness, our salvation — all come from Him. Paul asks the Corinthians the question that underlies her whole teaching.

For who maketh thee to differ from another? and what hast thou that thou didst not receive? now if thou didst receive it, why dost thou glory, as if thou hadst not received it? 1 CORINTHIANS 4:7

The root of sin, as she sees it, is the refusal of that truth: the creature’s claim to be something in itself, to own what it was only lent. She has a word for it — appropriation. In her closing chapter on divine union she says that nothing is opposed to God but appropriation, and that all the malignity of man lies in it. We take God’s gifts and treat them as ours. We take even our religion, our prayers and our virtues, and make them possessions to admire. That, she says, is what must die.

Emptied to be filled

She is not interested in emptiness for its own sake. The point of being emptied is to be filled. We can only honour the ALL of God by our nothingness, she writes, and “we have no sooner become nothing, than God, who will not suffer us to be empty, fills us with Himself.” How can we be filled with God? Only by being emptied of self.

I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me. GALATIANS 2:20

This is Paul’s own pattern: I am crucified, nevertheless I live. The death is real, and so is the life. The old self-ruling, self-admiring life is nailed to the cross; a new life, which is Christ living in the believer, takes its place. She is right that the Christian life is not self-improvement. It is an exchange.

Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit. JOHN 12:24

The death of self-will

In her chapter on abandonment she gives self-denial its practical shape. It should be, she says, a continual loss of our own will in the will of God, and a renunciation of all natural inclinations, however good they may appear, so that we may choose only as God chooses.

The heart of this is surely right. What must die is not our humanity but our self-will: the stubborn insistence on our own way, our own glory, our own comfort, even against God. That is the self our Lord told us to deny. Every Christian knows it, because every Christian meets it daily — in the flash of resentment when we are overlooked, the refusal to forgive, the quiet determination to have our own way while calling it God’s.

Where the language needs correcting

Here, though, careful readers must slow down, because her words sometimes say more than Scripture says.

First, she speaks of the soul being destroyed and annihilated by the force of love, and says that we must cease to be. She means this as the language of love and humility, and she draws on a long tradition that used such words. But taken literally, it is not Christian teaching. God does not destroy the persons He has made and redeemed; He renews them. We are not to cease to be; we are to be made new.

Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. 2 CORINTHIANS 5:17

Second, she says that as souls grow in love, the more they love God, the more they hate themselves. There is a sense in which that is true: our Lord spoke of hating one’s own life in comparison with Him. But she sometimes writes as if our natural inclinations as such, however good they may appear, must be renounced. Scripture does not treat our nature as the enemy. God made us, and made us well; sin has disfigured His work, not replaced it. The desire for food, friendship, beauty, meaningful work and love are gifts to be received with thanksgiving and ordered under God, not destroyed.

I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well. PSALM 139:14

Third, this kind of language can be dangerous to certain temperaments. A believer already crushed by self-contempt, or taught from childhood that they are worthless, does not need to hear that they must become nothing. They need to hear that God loves them, that Christ died for them, and that their true self is being restored in Him. The nothingness Scripture teaches is not self-hatred but dependence: without me, the Lord says, ye can do nothing.

I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing. JOHN 15:5

Hearing her rightly

Read with these corrections, her teaching remains a sharp and needed word. Most of us are not in danger of thinking too little of ourselves before God; we are in danger of quietly owning what He only lent. We take credit for gifts, treat our spiritual progress as an achievement and our prayers as a performance. Her ALL and NOTHING is a knife to that. God is everything; I have nothing I did not receive; let Him increase and me decrease — and let me find, as she did, that the one who decreases is not destroyed, but filled.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. List three gifts — abilities, possessions, spiritual privileges — that you have treated as your own. Thank God for each as His.

2. Identify one place where your self-will is resisting God at present. Name it and yield it.

3. Watch this week for moments of resentment when you are overlooked. Let each one become a small death to self.

4. If you tend to self-contempt, read Galatians 2:20 aloud and notice both halves: crucified, and loved.

5. Receive one natural good this week — a meal, a friendship, a beautiful place — with deliberate thanks to God.

A PRAYER

Lord, You are all, and I have nothing I did not receive from You.

Forgive me for treating Your gifts as my own, and even my prayers as my achievements.

Put to death my stubborn self-will, and let Christ live in me.

Empty me of myself, not to destroy me, but to fill me with You and make me new. Amen.