The Breaking of the Outer Man

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

If there is one book of Watchman Nee’s that his own generation of workers found most searching, it is the short volume published in English as The Release of the Spirit. Its argument can be stated in a sentence, and the sentence is uncomfortable. The believer’s greatest hindrance is not his weakness. It is his unbroken strength.

The alabaster box

Nee took his controlling image from Bethany.

And being in Bethany …there came a woman having an alabaster box of ointment of spikenard very precious; and she brake the box, and poured it on his head. MARK 14:3

The value was in the ointment, not the alabaster. But so long as the box remained whole, the fragrance stayed inside, and the house smelled of nothing at all. Only when the alabaster was broken did the perfume fill the room. So, Nee argued, with the believer. Christ dwells within by His Spirit — that is the treasure. But around that treasure is the outer man: our natural capability, our personality, our cleverness, our forcefulness, our charm, our opinions, our self-love. And the outer man does not automatically transmit the inner life. Frequently it imprisons it.

But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us. 2 CORINTHIANS 4:7

The next verses describe the vessel being knocked about — troubled, perplexed, persecuted, cast down — and Paul draws the conclusion himself: always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body (2 Corinthians 4:10). The dying is the condition of the manifesting.

Gifted, and useless

Nee made an observation about ministry which is easier to accept in principle than in practice.

Two men may preach the same sermon from the same text with the same accuracy, and one leaves the hearers informed while the other leaves them undone. The difference is not the content, the intelligence, the eloquence, or even the sincerity. It is whether the man himself has been broken. An unbroken servant of God can be enormously impressive and spiritually sterile. His natural gifts are so strong that people meet the gift and never reach the Christ behind it. He gets in the way without ever intending to, and he is usually the last person to know. This is why, in Nee’s view, God’s central work in a servant is not the augmenting of his abilities but the reduction of his self-confidence.

How the breaking comes

And how does God do it? Not, Nee said, by our arrangement. We cannot break ourselves. Every attempt at self-imposed brokenness produces a new and subtler form of self-admiration — the man is now proud of his humility. God alone knows where the shell is thickest, and God alone can strike accurately. The instruments He uses are ordinary. A ministry that does not open as we expected. A rebuke we did not deserve, or one we did. A colleague who is promoted over us. Illness. Failure. The long, grinding disappointment of a work that never becomes what we envisioned. Nee’s counsel was to recognise the hand of God in these and to stop resisting.

The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise. PSALM 51:17

He drew attention to Jacob at Peniel — the man who wrestled and prevailed and went away limping for life. The limp was the blessing. The strong man had at last met Someone stronger, and the name he was given afterwards belonged to the crippled man, not the wrestler.

Broken, not destroyed

An important balance. Breaking is not the annihilation of personality. The alabaster box is broken; the ointment is not. Peter after Pentecost is still recognisably Peter — bold, quick, impetuous by temperament — but the boldness now serves Christ instead of Peter. God does not want colourless servants. He wants servants whose distinctiveness has been brought under the cross so that it conveys Christ rather than obstructing Him.

There is no shortcut here, and Nee offered none. He simply asked his hearers to stop defending the shell. Most of us spend our lives protecting exactly what God is trying to break — our reputation, our right to be understood, our record of being right. To lay those down voluntarily is not to be broken; only God does that. But it is to cease fighting Him while He does it.

Receiving the discipline

Since we cannot break ourselves, the question becomes how to respond when God does it. Nee taught that everything depends on the attitude taken to the instrument.

My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of him. HEBREWS 12:5

Two failures are named there, and Nee treated them as the two ditches on either side of the road. To despise the chastening is to refuse its meaning — to treat the difficulty as an accident, a mere administrative problem, an injustice to be resisted or a personality clash to be managed. The man does everything about his circumstances and nothing about himself. He may even succeed in escaping the situation, in which case God will generally arrange another. To faint is the opposite error: to be crushed, to conclude that God is against us, to give up. Nee had pastoral sympathy here, because the process is genuinely painful and often prolonged. But he insisted the two errors have the same root — both misread the hand behind the event.

Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby. HEBREWS 12:11

He drew attention to the last clause. The fruit is not automatic; it belongs to those exercised thereby. Two men may pass through identical trouble; one emerges softened and the other hardened, and the difference lies in how each received it. Nee added two observations that have comforted many. First, God chooses the instrument, and He chooses accurately. The thing that breaks us is rarely the thing we would have picked, and is almost always the thing we most wished to avoid. That precision is not cruelty. It is evidence of attention. Second, God does not break more than is necessary, and He does not break carelessly. The purpose is release, not ruin. He is after the fragrance, not the destruction of the vessel.

A bruised reed shall he not break, and the smoking flax shall he not quench. ISAIAH 42:3

The One who does this work is the same One who would not break what was already bruised. That is worth remembering at two o’clock in the morning.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Identify your strongest natural gift. Ask God whether it has come under the cross or whether people meet it before they meet Christ. 2. Recall the most painful thing God has permitted in the last five years. Ask whether you have been resisting it as an obstacle rather than receiving it as a hand upon the shell. 3. The next time you are misunderstood, do not explain yourself. Let it stand for one day and watch what rises in you. 4. Stop protecting your reputation in one specific relationship this week. 5. Ask a trusted friend where your personality gets in the way of your ministry. Do not defend the answer.

A PRAYER

Lord, I have asked You many times to increase my usefulness, and I do not think I have ever asked You to break me.

I have guarded my reputation. I have insisted on being understood. I have defended the very shell that keeps Your fragrance shut inside me.

I cannot break myself, and if I tried I would only become proud of it. So I ask instead: do it Yourself, in Your own way, at Your own hour, and hold me steady when it hurts. Let there be less of me, so there may be more of You. Amen.