What is a spiritual journey?

As sinners living in alienation from God, we must begin with repentance and forgiveness by the gospel of God. This leads on to the sense of deliverance from the power of evil and complete salvation, so that we can be at home with God in the sense of His love and favour. This may be defined as soul history as it speaks of the internal struggle which is passed through in the passage from darkness to the light of God. It is the moral journey from Adam to Christ, in which is apprehended, the transfer from the status of a fallen sinner, to a new creation in Christ before God.

There is nothing mechanical, legal, nor forced in all this for God does not lift a person out of his sins and lay him down so to speak a full-grown saint all at once, as a man would transfer a log of wood from one place to another. We are moral beings and He works in the soul, producing feelings of sorrow for sin and desires after Himself and holiness which bring about moral progress by which the person travels in his consciousness from the fallen Adamic condition to a new state in Christ. The sense of the new environment follows, for there must be the position. This gives the range of things the soul is introduced into — a faith system where all things are of the God which has reconciled us to Himself by Jesus Christ.

He has already said that a living faith is a growing faith. Growth is a necessity of life, and where the life is eternal life, there is here no limit of it reached, as in natural growth. We grow on till we reach eternity. Important it is to realize this, — salvation is so often simply looked at as the end itself which is to be reached, instead of the beginning, that which starts us upon the road. It is Christ in glory who is the end before us, and if we are really travelers, the light of that glory will be shining upon us more and more fully all the way.

This is true practical sanctification. It is not any attempt at the improvement of our old nature. It is not a vain effort to reconstruct an irretrievable ruin. No; it is simply the Holy Ghost, by the powerful application of "the truth," enabling the new man to live, and move, and have his being in that sphere to which he belongs. Here there will, undoubtedly, be progress. There will be growth in the moral power of this precious truth — growth in spiritual ability to subdue and keep under all that pertains to nature — a growing power of separation from the evil around us — a growing meetness for that heaven to which we belong, and toward which we are journeying — a growing capacity for the enjoyment of its holy exercises. All this there will be, through the gracious ministry of the Holy Ghost, who uses the word of God to unfold to our souls the truth as to our standing in Christ, and as to the walk which comports with that standing. But let it be clearly understood that the work of the Holy Ghost in practical sanctification, day by day, is founded upon the fact that believers "are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once." (Heb. 10:10) The object of the Holy Ghost is to lead us into the knowledge, the experience, and the practical exhibition of that which was true of us in Christ the very moment we believed. As regards this, there is progress; but our standing in Christ is eternally complete.

"Sanctify them through thy truth; thy word is truth." (John 17:17) And again, "The very God of peace sanctify you wholly." (1 Thess. 5:23) In these passages, we have the grand practical side of this question. Here we see sanctification presented, not merely as something absolutely and eternally true of us in Christ, but also as wrought out in us, daily and hourly, by the Holy Ghost through the word. Looked at from this point of view, sanctification is, obviously, a progressive thing. I should be more advanced in personal holiness in the year 1861 than I was in the year 1860. I should, through grace, be advancing, day by day, in practical holiness. But what, let me ask, is this? What, but the working out in me of that which was true of me in Christ, the very moment I believed? The basis upon which the Holy Ghost carries on the subjective work in the believer, is the objective truth of his eternal completeness in Christ.

Redemption, complete salvation, purchased by the precious blood of Jesus, introduces the Christian into this pilgrimage With God he only passes through the world as a dry and thirsty land, where no water is; still, this pilgrimage is but the life down here, although it is the life of the redeemed.

Now pass on to the next chapter. "Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul; having your conversation honest among the Gentiles; that, whereas they speak against you as evil-doers, they may by your good works, which they shall behold, glorify God in the day of visitation" (1 Peter 2:11-12). Now it is honest conversation. Beautiful that! Now what are we? Strangers and pilgrims. What is a stranger? A stranger is a person who is away from home. Where is our Home? It is the place where Jesus is. That is home. He is not here. He is up there, and we are here, strangers, and pilgrims. We are not at home, but we are going home. A pilgrim is a man going a journey, and the point of our pilgrimage is home — heaven. Peter says, If you really understand what the grace of God is, you are a pilgrim. A pilgrim is a man who is on a journey, with the idea of returning home. Paul was a pilgrim, as he says: "And now, behold, I go bound in the spirit to Jerusalem, not knowing the things that shall befall me there: save that the Holy Ghost witnesses in every city, saying that bonds and afflictions abide me. But none of these things move me, neither count I my life dear to myself, so that I might finish my course with joy, and the ministry which I have received of the Lord Jesus, to testify the gospel of the grace of God" (Acts 20:22-24). That is the idea. You are away from home, but you are going home. Does your heart say, Yes, I am set for Him? On the road then you must have your conversation honest. You know we live in a very dishonest day. God says to you and me, See that you are honest. This is a word for all, but for men in particular. See that you have a heart, and a conscience, that is answering to the truth and light of God.

In 1 Corinthians 9 Christian service is spoken of under the figure of a race; here Christian life is the point in question. It is a figure very much to the point since a race requires energy, concentration, endurance. So here the exhortation is, "let us run with patience," and patience has the sense of endurance. The normal Christian life is not like a brief sprint of 100 yards, but rather like a long distance race in which endurance is the decisive factor.

The race, then, is the race of Christian life, and the contest that of well-pleasing to the Lord. With Christ as its starting-point, and Christ also as its goal, that race has to be run with patience by a faith which looks off from5 all other objects, to fix its gaze solely upon Him. But just as men did not, at the Grecian games, contend with halters round their necks, so neither is the Christian called to save himself by any effort or endeavour from the wrath to come; for as a sinner he has already fled for refuge to the hope set before him. He has run into the tower of his safety, and is safe.6 It is in his Saviour's name that he appears as a competitor within the lists, and by His Saviour's strength alone that he can hope to win. But there is a prize for those who overcome. And here we should note the contrast between the illustration and the living truth. At the trial of natural ability, all the competitors but one were sure to lose. In Christ, all are already more than conquerors, but such as draw back unto perdition by failing to continue in the grace of God. Yet, though in this sense every real Christian overcomes, there is another sense in which merit will be found and honoured, according to its measure, by the righteous Arbiter of all that has been wrought here in His name; a merit not original or inherent, but of grace. And it is in this latter sense, chiefly, that the apostle speaks of winning in this place.7

A fugitive is a man who has fled from home. A vagabond is a man who has no home. A stranger is a man who is absent from home. A pilgrim is a man who is on his way to home.

The actual presence of God is the true home of our souls and we are disconnected from the world system so as to be strangers in it, though left in it for a time to show forth the excellencies of God. Still, we do not wander aimlessly for we are pilgrims also, and this means that we have an objective before us — a fixed point of destiny to which we wend our way.

But when the voice of Jesus reached him in his mad career, his guilt stood forth in its terrible intensity, as he was brought to bay. And when he was allowed to read his own soul’s guilt in the presence of God, where no excuse could avail, then his conscience was purged and set at rest. But with him at this time, there may have been no question of his nature raised. This is not the question which comes foremost in the history of souls. The efforts to avoid the evil, and perform the good, to be well pleasing to the Lord, which follow true conversion, bring out this in its true and terrible depths. Saul has now to pass through this stage of the soul’s history, for his own deliverance, as a saint; I do not dwell here on the fact of its necessity afterwards for helping others — but as a vessel of mercy, which, from such a state, must be set free.