I CALL your attention to this incident as part of our consideration of the theme that is engaging our attention at the moment, the theme which I have described as ‘spiritual depression’.
We are considering this subject not only because it is sad and tragic that any Christian should ever be miserable, but because of the whole state of the Church today. I have no hesitation in asserting again that one of the reasons why the Christian Church counts for so little in the modern world is that so many Christians are in this condition. If all Christians simply began to function as the New Testament would have us do, there would be no problem of evangelism confronting the Church. The matter would deal with itself immediately. It is because we are failing as Christian people in our daily lives and deportment and witness that the Church counts for so little and that so few are attracted to God through our Lord Jesus Christ. So for that most urgent reason alone it behoves us to deal with this question.
We have already taken a general view of the problem, and in the previous chapter we considered one particular aspect of it. We saw there that there are some Christians in this condition because they have never really understood clearly the great central doctrine of justification by faith. Indeed that was the whole cause of the trouble before the Protestant Reformation. The Protestant Reformation brought peace and happiness and joy into the life of the Church in a way she had not known since the early centuries, and it all happened because the central doctrine of justification by faith was rediscovered. It made Martin Luther rejoice and sing and he in turn was the means of leading others to see this great truth. It produced this great note of joy, and while we might hesitate to say that people who have not clearly understood this matter are not Christians at all, the moment they do understand it, they certainly cease to be miserable Christians and become rejoicing Christians.
We now go on to another step and to a further consideration, and I want to consider it with you in terms of this extraordinary incident in the life and ministry of our Blessed Lord, recorded here in Mark 8. 22-26. You will observe at once that we are dealing with a different type, a different case; and we do so most conveniently in terms of this picture. It is in many ways one of the most remarkable of all the miracles ever performed by our Lord and Saviour. You recall the details of what He did to this blind man. He took him by the hand and led him out of the town, and He spat upon his eyes and put His hands upon him and then asked the man if he saw anything. The man said: ‘Yes, I do see. I see men as trees, walking’. Then our Lord put His hands again upon the man’s eyes and made him look up once more, and this time the man’s sight was restored and ‘he saw every man clearly’.
Now this is obviously something of very deep significance. What happened in this case was not accidental. We have other examples of our Lord healing blind people, and it is quite clear that He could have healed this man instantly by just saying to him: ‘Receive thy sight’. Our Lord had that power; nothing was impossible to Him. He had done that in another case and He could have done it here. So what He did here He obviously did with great deliberation and of set purpose. Nothing our Lord did was done haphazardly or accidentally. All his actions were deliberate, and when He varied His technique He always had a very good reason for doing so. There was nothing peculiarly difficult about the case, and the variation in the treatment was not due to such a cause. It was due to our Lord’s own determined plan to do the work in this given way in order that He might teach a lesson and give a certain message. In other words, all our Lord’s miracles are more than events, they are in a sense parables as well. That does not mean that we do not believe in the actual incident as a fact in history. I am simply asserting that a miracle is also a parable, and if that is true of all the miracles, it is especially true of this one. For our Lord obviously varied the procedure here in order to bring out and to teach an important and vital lesson.
I am very ready to agree with those who suggest that perhaps the main lesson here was intended for the disciples. You remember what had gone before. The disciples when they went into the ship had forgotten to take a supply of bread. The result was that all they had with them in the ship was just one loaf. They began to be worried about this, and were most unhappy. Our Lord, speaking to them in the boat, said: ‘Take heed, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the leaven of Herod’, and they reasoned among themselves saying: ‘It is because we have no bread’. Because He mentioned the word ‘leaven’ they thought He must be talking about bread! They were literalists, they were lacking in spiritual understanding, and so the word ‘leaven’ made them think only of bread and of their failure to take a supply. They were unhappy and uneasy, therefore, and our Lord asks them a series of searching questions ending with this: ‘Why is it that you do not understand?’ ‘Here am I’, He says in effect, ‘I have been preaching to you and teaching you and yet you still do not seem to understand. You are troubled because you have only one loaf, and yet you have witnessed two miracles which prove that with just a few loaves and fishes I could feed 5,000 or 4,000 people—how is it you do not understand?’ I believe He dealt with the blind man as He did in order to give them a picture of themselves. He adopted this technique in the case before us, in order to enable the disciples to see themselves as they were.
It goes beyond that, however: it is a permanent lesson always for God’s people. It is a terrible message. I am anxious to direct attention to it because there are many people like this man, there are many people who seem to be in the first stage through which this man passed in the process of healing. Our Lord, you remember, put the spittle on his eyes and asked: ‘Do you see anything?’ And he said: ‘Yes, I do see, but I see men as trees, walking’. Do you understand the position? It is difficult to describe this man. You cannot say that he is blind any longer. You cannot say that he is still blind because he does see; and yet you hesitate to say that he can see because he sees men as trees, walking. What then—is he or is he not blind? You feel that you have to say at one and the same time that he is blind and that he is not blind. He is neither one thing nor the other.
Now that is precisely the condition with which I am anxious to deal at the moment. I am concerned about those Christians who are disquieted and unhappy and miserable because of this lack of clarity. It is almost impossible to define them. You sometimes talk to this type and you think: ‘This man is a Christian’. And then you meet him again and you are thrown into doubt at once, and you say: ‘Surely he cannot be a Christian if he can say a thing like that or do such a thing as that’. Whenever you meet this man you get a different impression; and you never quite know whether he is a Christian or not. You are not happy in saying either that he does see or that he does not see. Furthermore, the difficulty is that not only do others feel like this about these people, they feel it about themselves. Let me pay them that tribute, they are unhappy because they are not clear about themselves. Sometimes when they have been in a service they will say: ‘Yes, I am a Christian, I believe this’. Then something happens and they say: ‘I cannot be a Christian. If I were a Christian I could not have such thoughts. I would not want to do the things I do’. So they are as troubled about themselves as other Christians are about them; they feel they are, and they feel they are not Christians. They seem to know enough about Christianity to spoil their enjoyment of the world, and yet they do not know enough to feel happy about themselves. They are ‘neither hot nor cold’. They see and yet they do not see. I think you will agree that I am describing the condition, alas, of large numbers of people. It is a distressing condition, and my whole message, as you may anticipate, is to say that nobody should be in it, and nobody should stay in it. I go still further—nobody need stay in that condition.
Let us follow our Lord’s teaching. The best way to do that is to put the case of these people in a different form. I have been putting it in general. Let me now give a few particulars in order to help such persons to see themselves, and also to help us all to see the condition. What is that that these people can see? They do see something. This man said: ‘Yes, I do see, I see men, but there is something wrong because I see them as trees, walking’.
What do these people see? Very often they are clear that there is something wrong with them as they are. They are unhappy about themselves. Something has happened to them which has given them a sense of dissatisfaction with themselves as they are. There was a time when they were perfectly satisfied with themselves. They went on living their kind of life and they thought that there was nothing wrong with it. But they are no longer like that. Something has happened to them which has given them an entirely new view of the kind of life they were living. I need not elaborate this, you have only to think of people who are living this kind of life at the moment, people who devour newspaper gossip, who regard as wonderful and enviable the life of the social round and the theatres, and always feel that ‘all this is really life’. But these people are not now like that. They have come to see the emptiness, the vanity, the utter hollowness of it all, and they are profoundly dissatisfied with that kind of life. They see that, apart from anything else, it is not intelligent, that it is such an empty kind of life. They become unhappy about themselves and declare that they cannot go on as they are. Now there are many people in that position, and there are many who pass through that stage. It is a stage in which a man at any rate sees that everything else is wrong, though he has not yet seen that Christianity is right. That is what often drives him to cynicism, that is what often drives him to despair.
There have been some very dramatic instances of this. I remember very well the case of a man who was an outstanding surgeon in London and in great prominence. Suddenly to the amazement and astonishment of all who knew him it was announced that he had given it all up and had become a ship’s doctor. What had happened to that man was this. He was a great man in his profession and he had legitimate ambitions with respect to certain honours in the profession. But disappointment in that respect suddenly opened his eyes to the whole situation. He arrived at the conclusion that there was no abiding satisfaction in the life he was living. He saw through it all, but he did not become a Christian. He just became cynical and left it all. There have been many other notable examples of men who have given up everything and have gone into some isolated position where they have found a measure of peace and happiness without becoming Christians. That is one possibility.
But they may even go further, they may see the excellencies of the Christian life as indicated in the Sermon on the Mount. They say: There is no question at all about it, the Christian life is the life, if only everyone lived like that! They may also have read the lives of the saints, and have recognized that these were men who had something wonderful about them. There was a time when they were not interested, but now they have come to see that the life depicted in the Sermon on the Mount is real life and living, and again, seeing life as portrayed in 1 Corinthians chapter 13, they say: ‘If only we all lived like that, the world would be Paradise’. They have come to see that much very clearly.
They may even have come further than that, they may have come to see that Jesus Christ is the only hope, that Jesus Christ is somehow the Saviour. You notice how I put it—that Jesus Christ is ‘somehow the Saviour’. They have felt that He could help them, they have come to see that Christianity is the only hope for the world, and in some way they see and know that this Person Jesus can help them. There was a time when they were not interested, when they had dismissed Him without a serious thought; but that is no longer so. Having seen the emptiness of the world, having seen something of the life lived by certain Christians, and having realized that Jesus Christ is the One Who has made the difference, they see somehow that He is a Saviour. So they are interested in Him and concerned about Him. They see that much quite clearly.
Indeed we can go further and say this about them, that unlike the people we were dealing with in the previous chapter, these people have seen that they cannot save themselves. The trouble with the man who lacks a clear understanding of justification by faith is that he is still trying to put himself right; these people see that they cannot do that. They have tried so often, but they are dissatisfied; and as they see the true nature of the Christian quality of life, they see that man cannot lift himself up to that. They see that they cannot save themselves.
‘Surely’, says someone, ‘you have gone too far, you grant them too much!’ No! I am simply describing what these people can see, even as that man in the hands of our Lord when asked the question: ‘Do you see?’ replied: ‘Yes’. He certainly could see, he could see men. And these people have come to see something, indeed they may see all of these things I have described to you.
Yet, alas, I have, in the second place, to say that they are still confused, that they still do not see clearly. They have simply seen men ‘as trees walking’. In what respect is this true of them? The difficulty here is to know what to leave out; but I will try to select what I regard as the three main and important things.
First of all they have no clear understanding of certain principles. That is why I was careful to say that they have seen that Christ is ‘somehow’ the Saviour. But they do not see how He is the Saviour. They are not clear, for instance, about the death of Christ and its absolute necessity. Neither are they clear about the doctrine of the rebirth. You talk to them about these things and you will find that they are full of confusion. They say that they do not see, and they are quite right! They do not see, they do not understand why Christ had to die, they do not see the necessity of the rebirth. You are familiar with them, they are dissatisfied with their own lives, and they praise the Christian life. They are ready to talk about Christ as Saviour, but still they ‘cannot see’ certain truths. The result is that they are troubled and unhappy and miserable.
The second thing they do not see clearly is that their heart is not fully engaged. Though they are able to see many things, they do not really find their happiness in Christianity and in the Christian position. Somehow or another they are not moved by it, they do not find real joy in it. They always have to remind themselves of it and are ever trying to pull themselves up to it. They are not happy; they still seem to find their joy, as far as they have any, somewhere else; their heart is not fully engaged. I merely mention these things here because, God willing, I hope to deal with them in much greater detail later. I am now giving a synoptic view of the condition in general.
The third thing that is true about the people under discussion is that their will is divided. They are rebellious, they do not see why a man, because he calls himself a Christian, has got to do certain things and stop doing others. They think that is being narrow. Yet they denounce the old life and embrace the Christian life in general. They acknowledge Christ as Saviour and yet when it comes to the question of the application of His teaching through the will, there is confusion and they are not clear about it. They are always arguing about this, always asking if it is right for them to do this and that. There is a lack of ease in the realm of the will. I am not caricaturing these people. I am giving a very literal, accurate and detailed description of them. There are many of us who have been through this stage and know it from actual experience; and as our Lord adopted this particular procedure physically in the case of this blind man, He seems sometimes to do something similar in conversion. There are people who see things clearly at once; there are others who go through stages. We are dealing now with those who go through this particular stage and that is how I would describe their condition.
Let me come to the next matter. Why, when our Lord was out to teach, did He put His series of questions to the disciples, and then put it all in this dramatic form in this incident? Or, to put it in another way, what are the causes of this condition? Why should people be in this nondescript condition, Christian and not Christian, yes and no as it were, at the same time? There is no doubt but that sometimes the responsibility is entirely that of the evangelist concerned when they were first awakened. Evangelists are often the cause of the trouble. In their anxiety to report results they produce this very condition.
But it is not always the fault of the evangelist; it is quite frequently, perhaps as frequently, the fault of the people themselves, and here are some of the main reasons why they are in this state. First, these people generally object to clear-cut definitions; they dislike clarity and certainty. We need not at this point go into the specific reason for this. I think they object to clarity of thought and definition because of its demands. The most comfortable type of religion is always a vague religion, nebulous and uncertain, cluttered up with forms and ritual. I am not surprised that Roman Catholicism attracts certain people. The more vague and indefinite your religion, the more comfortable it is. There is nothing so uncomfortable as clear-cut Biblical truths that demand decisions. These people therefore say: ‘You are being too precise, you are being too legalistic. No, no, I do not like this. I believe in Christianity, but you are being too rigid and too narrow in your conceptions’. You are familiar with that type. But if you start with the theory that Christianity is not clear-cut, do not be surprised if you find yourself, like this man, seeing ‘men as trees, walking’. If you start your Christian life and experience by saying that you do not want an exact focus or a precise definition in your picture, you probably will not have it!
The second cause, and very often the real trouble with these people, is that they never fully accept the teaching and the authority of the Scriptures. I suppose that ultimately that is the whole cause of the trouble. They do not come to the Bible and submit themselves utterly and absolutely to it. If only we came to the Scriptures as little children and took them at their face value and allowed them to speak to us, this sort of trouble would never arise. These people will not do that. What they do is to mix their own ideas with spiritual truth. Of course they claim that basically they take it from the Scriptures, but, and that is the fatal word, they immediately proceed to modify it. They accept certain Biblical ideas, but there are other ideas and philosophies which they desire to bring with them from their old life. They mix natural ideas with spiritual ideas. They say that they like the Sermon on the Mount and 1 Corinthians, chapter 13. They claim that they believe in Christ as Saviour, but still they argue that we must not go too far in these matters, and that they believe in moderation. Then they begin to modify the Scriptures. They refuse to accept it authoritatively in every respect, in preaching and living, in doctrine and world outlook. ‘Circumstances are changed’, they say, ‘and life is not what it used to be. We are now living in the twentieth century’. So they modify it here and there to suit their own ideas instead of taking Scriptural doctrine right through from beginning to end, and confessing the irrelevancy of talk about the twentieth century. This is God’s Word which is timeless, and because it is God’s Word we must submit to it and trust Him to employ His own methods in His own way.
Yet another cause of this condition is that almost invariably its victims are not interested in doctrine. Are you interested in doctrine? Sometimes these people are foolish enough to contrast what they regard as spiritual reading of the Scriptures with doctrine. They say that they are not interested in doctrine, that they like Bible expositions but do not like doctrine. They claim to believe the doctrines which are in the Bible and which come out of the Bible, but (it is almost incredible but it is true) they draw this fatal contrast between Biblical exposition and doctrine. But what is the purpose of the Bible except to present doctrine? What is the value of exposition unless it leads to truth? But it is not difficult to understand their position. It is the doctrine that hurts, it is the doctrine that focuses things. It is one thing to look at pictures and to be interested in words and shades of meaning. That does not disturb, that does not focus attention on sin, nor call for decision. We can sit back and enjoy that; but doctrine speaks to us and insists upon a decision. This is truth, and it examines us and tries us and forces us to examine ourselves. So, if we start by objecting to doctrine as such, it is not surprising that we do not see clearly. The whole purpose of all the creeds drawn up by the Christian Church, together with every confession of faith on doctrine and dogma was to enable people to see and to think clearly. This is how they came to be formulated. In the early centuries of the Christian Church, the gospel was preached from generation to generation. But some people began to say things that were wrong. Some, for example, said that Christ did not really come in a human body, that it was but a phantom appearance. All sorts of things were said and many were made unhappy and bewildered. So the Church began to formulate her doctrines in the form of the Apostles’ Creed, etc. Do you imagine that the early Fathers did that sort of thing simply because they enjoyed doing it? Not at all; it was done for a most practical reason. Truth must be defined and safeguarded, otherwise people will walk off into error. So, if we object to doctrine, it is not surprising if we do not see things clearly, it is not surprising if we are unhappy and miserable. There is nothing that so clears a man’s spiritual sight as the apprehension and understanding of the doctrines of the Bible.
The last explanation of this condition I would say is that many people do not take the doctrines of the Scriptures in their right order. This is a most important point, and I hope to come back to it at some other time. But I do know this from personal experience. It is important that we should take the doctrines of Scripture in their right order. If you take the doctrine of regeneration before the doctrine of the atonement you will be in trouble. If you are interested in the rebirth and having new life, before you are clear about your standing with God, you will go wrong and you will eventually be miserable. The same applies to taking sanctification before justification. The doctrines must be taken in their right order. In other words, we can sum up all this by saying that the great cause of the condition which we are considering is a refusal to think things right through. It is the fatal danger of wanting to enjoy something before you really grasp it and possess it. It is men and women who refuse to think things right through, and who do not want to learn, and who become unteachable for various reasons—often self-protection—these are the people who generally become victims of this spiritual confusion, this lack of clarity, this seeing and not seeing at the same time.
That brings us to the last question. What is the cure for this condition? For the moment I shall give principles only. The first principle is evident: above everything else avoid making a premature claim that your blindness is cured. It must have been a great temptation to this man to do that. Here is a man who had been blind. Our Lord puts spittle upon his eyes and says to him: ‘Do you see?’ The man says: ‘I see’. What a temptation it must have been to him to take to his heels and announce to the whole world: ‘I can see’. The man, in a sense, could see, but so far his sight was incomplete and imperfect, and it was most vital that he should not testify before he had seen clearly. It is a great temptation and I can well understand it, but it is a fatal thing to do. How many are doing that at the present time (and are pressed and urged to do so), proclaiming that they see, when it is so patent to many that they do not see very clearly and are really still in a state of confusion. What harm such people do. They describe men to others as trees, walking. How misleading to the others!
The second thing is the exact opposite of the first. The temptation to the first is to run and to proclaim that they can see, before they see clearly; but the temptation to the second is to feel absolutely hopeless and to say: ‘There is no point in going on. You have put spittle on my eyes and you have touched me. In a sense I see, but I am simply seeing men as if they were trees walking’. Such people often come to me and say that they cannot see the Truth clearly. In their confusion they become desperate and ask: ‘Why cannot I see? The whole thing is hopeless’. They stop reading their Bible, they stop praying. The devil has discouraged many with lies. Do not listen to him.
What then is the cure? What is the right way? It is to be honest and to answer our Lord’s question truthfully and honestly. That is the whole secret of this matter. He turned to this man and asked: ‘Do you see ought?’ And the man said, absolutely honestly: ‘I do see, but I am seeing men as if they were trees walking’. What saved this man was his absolute honesty. Now the question is, where do we stand? The whole purpose of this sermon is just to ask that question—where do we stand? What exactly do we see? Have we got things clearly? Are we happy? Do we really see? We either do or we do not, and we must know exactly where we are. Do we know God? Do we know Jesus Christ? Not only as our Saviour but do we know Him? Are we ‘rejoicing with joy unspeakable and full of glory’? That is the New Testament Christian. Do we see? Let us be honest; let us face the questions, let us face them with absolute honesty.
What then? Well, the last step is to submit yourself to Him, to submit yourself utterly to Him as this man did. He did not object to further treatment, he rejoiced in it, and I believe that if our Lord had not taken the further step he would have asked Him to do so. And you can do the same. Come to the Word of God. Stop asking questions. Start with the promises in their right order. Say: ‘I want the truth whatever it costs me’. Bind yourself to it, submit yourself to it, come in utter submission as a little child and plead with Him to give you clear sight, perfect vision, and to make you whole. And as you do so it is my privilege to remind you that He can do it. Yea, more, I promise you in His Blessed Name that He will do it. He never leaves anything incomplete. That is the teaching. Listen to it. This man was healed and restored and ‘saw every man clearly’. The Christian position is a clear position. We are not meant to be left in a state of doubt and misgiving, of uncertainty and unhappiness. Do you believe that the Son of God came from heaven and lived and did all He did on earth, that He died on a Cross and was buried and rose again, that He ascended into heaven and sent the Holy Spirit, in order to leave us in a state of confusion? It is impossible. He came that we might see clearly, that we might know God. He came to give eternal life and ‘This is eternal life, that they may know Thee the only true God and Jesus Christ Whom Thou hast sent’. If you are unhappy about yourself as a result of this examination come to Him, come to His Word, wait upon Him, plead with Him, hold on to Him, ask Him in the words of the hymn:
‘Holy Spirit, Truth Divine,
Dawn upon this soul of mine,
Word of God, and inward Light,
Wake my spirit, clear my sight.’
He is pledged to do it and He will do it, and you will no longer be an uncertain Christian seeing and not seeing. You will be able to say: ‘I see, I see in Him all I need and more, and I know that I belong to Him’.