"How can you believe, receiving honor from one another, and not picking up the honor that comes only from God?"
(John 5.44).
In a preaching that I heard recently, the exponent said that the blessings of the highest Christian life were often like the objects displayed in a shop window: you could see them clearly, but you could not reach them. If a man were told to reach out and pick up, he would respond: "I can not, there is a thick glass between me and them."
Even Christians can clearly see the promises of perfect peace and rest, of overflowing love and joy, of permanent communion and fruition, and still feel that there is something in between obstructing true possession. And what would that be? Nothing but pride. The promises made to the faith are so free and correct, the invitations and the wonderful power of God that faith can count on is so close and accessible that what prevents the blessing from being ours can only be something that impedes faith.
In the biblical text mentioned, Jesus reveals to us that it is, in fact, the pride that makes faith impossible.
"As you can believe, you who accept glory from one another?" When we see how, in nature, pride and faith are irreconcilable by their divergence, we will learn that faith and humility are one at the root, and that we can never have more of true faith than we have that true humility; we must see that we can, in truth, have a strong intellectual conviction and security of truth while pride is maintained in the heart, but that makes faith alive, that has the power of God, an impossibility. We need only think for a moment about what faith is. It is not the confession of nothingness-being and abandonment, is it not surrender and waiting to let God work? It is not in itself the most humiliating thing that can be: the acceptance of our position as dependents, that can not claim or achieve or do anything not to be what grace grants? Humility is simply the disposition that prepares the soul to live in confidence. And everything, even the most secret breath of pride, in the form of self-seeking still, gains self, self-confidence or self-exaltation, is only the strengthening of the fact that the ego can not enter the kingdom nor possess the things of the kingdom, because it refuses to allow God to be what He is and must be there: All in all.
Faith is the organ or sense for the perception of the celestial world and its blessings. Faith collects the glory that comes from God, which comes only from where God is everything. As long as we accept glory from one another, as long as we gather and love always and we jealously guard the glory of that life - the honor and reputation that comes from men - we do not collect, and we can not receive, the glory that comes from God. Pride makes faith impossible. Salvation comes by means of a cross and a crucified Christ. Salvation is communion, in the Spirit of His cross, with Christ crucified. Salvation is union with the humility of Jesus and delight in it, salvation is participation in the humility of Jesus. And admirable that our faith is so weak when pride still
reigns so much and we still have not learned that humility is a more necessary and blessed part of salvation, nor do we pray for that?
Humility and faith are more intimately associated in the Scriptures that many know. See that in the life of Christ. There are two cases to us which He spoke of a great faith. The centurion, of whose faith He marveled, saying: "Truly I affirm to you that not even in Israel did I find faith like this," He did not speak to Him: "Lord, I am not worthy to enter into my
"And the mother for whom He said:" Oh, woman, your faith is great! "He did not accept being called a dog and said:" Yes, Lord, nevertheless the dogs eat of the crumbs? "That is humility that it takes a soul to be nothing before God, that also removes all impediment to the faith, and makes the only fear dishonor by not trusting Him in its entirety.
Brother, do we not have here the cause of failure in the pursuit of holiness? Is not that what makes our consecration and our faith so superficial and life so short? We had no idea that extensive pride and ego were still working secretly within us, and as only God, by His entrance and His wonderful power, could drive them out. We did not understand as nothing, not being the new and divine nature taking entirely the place of the old ego, could make us really humble. We did not know that absolute, incessant, universal humility must be the root-disposition of all prayer and all access to God as well as of all treatment with man, and that we can see without eyes or live without breathing as much as believing or approaching God or dwell in His love, without permanent humility and humility of heart.
