The Inward And The Outward

You fools! Did not he who made the outside make the inside also? ”Luke 11: 40.

Every spirit seeks to create for itself a form or shape in which its life is embodied. The outward is the visible expression of the hidden inward life. The outward is generally known before the inward; through it, the inward is developed and reaches its full perfection, as the apostle says in 1 Corinthians 15: 46. "But it is not the spiritual that is first but the natural, and then the spiritual." Understanding and maintaining the right relationship between the inward and the outward is one of the greatest secrets of the Christian life.

If Adam in paradise had not listened to the tempter, his trial would have resulted in the perfecting of his inward life. It was his sin and his ruin, and the cause of all his misery that he gave himself up to the power of the visible outward world. Instead of seeking his happiness in the hidden inward life of a heart in which God’s command was honored, in the inward dispositions of love and faith, of obedience and dependence, he fixed his desire on the world without him, on the pleasure and the knowledge of good and evil that it could give him.

All false religion, from the most degrading idolatry to the corruption of Judaism and Christianity, has its root in this, that what is outward, what can please the eye, or interest the mind, or gratify the taste, takes the place of that truth in the inward part, that hidden wisdom in the heart and life which God seeks and gives.

The great mark of the New Testament is that it is a dispensation of the inner life. The promise of the new covenant is: "I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts." “And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you.'' The promise of our Lord Jesus was "In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.” It is in the state of heart that religion consists, in a heart into which God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son, a heart in which the love of God is shed abroad, that true salvation is found.

The inner chamber, with its secret oneness with the Father, who sees in secret, is the symbol and the training school of the inner life. The true and faithful daily use of the inner chamber will make the inner hidden life strong and glad.

In all our religions the great danger is giving more time and interest to the outward means than the inward reality. It is not the intensity of your Bible study, it is not the frequency or the fervency of your prayers or good works, that necessarily constitutes a true spiritual life.

No! What we need is, to realize that, as God is a Spirit, so there is a spirit within us that can know and receive Him and become conformed to His likeness, and be partaker of the very dispositions that animate Him as God in His goodness and love.

Firmly settle this in your mind that all our salvation consists in the manifestation of the nature, life, and spirit of Christ Jesus in our outward and inward new man. This alone renews and regains the first life of God in the soul of man. Wherever you go, whatever you do, at home or abroad in the field, do all in a desire of union with Christ, in imitation of His tempers and inclinations, and long for nothing, desire nothing so much, as that which exercises and increases the spirit and life of Christ in your soul, and to have all within you changed into the temper and spirit of the holy Jesus.

Consider the treasure you have within you, the Saviour of the world, the eternal Word of God, hidden in your heart as a seed of the Divine Nature which is to overcome sin and death within you, and generate the life of heaven again in your soul. Turn to your heart, and your heart will find its Saviour, its God, within itself. You see and feel nothing of God, because you seek for Him abroad, in books, in the church, in outward exercises; but there you will not find Him till you have first found Him in your heart. Seek for Him in your heart and you will never seek in vain, for there He dwells, there is the seat of His light and Holy Spirit.