(b)  Life of Continual Holiness

            Then there are the three sections on holiness, the highest in the whole Bible.  The first chapter which we are going to discuss is continued holiness.  The first paragraph of the third chapter is the heart of holiness, and the last paragraph of the last chapter is holiness.  So we’ve got the three passages on holiness, each pointing out some special aspect.

            (c)  Life of Perfect Love

            And, finally and supremely, you’ve got the Apostle John on perfect love, the golden verses of the Bible.  The first paragraph is in the middle of the second chapter, about the 8th verse of the second chapter.  The second paragraph is about the middle of the third chapter, where he talked about Cain, and so few things around there. 

            And then the third paragraph is the greatest paragraph pen has ever written.  There has never been a paragraph like it, never been a revelation like it, the depths are just beyond us.  That is in the middle of the fourth chapter, where he says twice over, “God is love”—the profoundest statement ever made.  And he says in another part of the statement (4:16), “He that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God and God in him.”  What a statement.  There again I’ve circled round and round that and said, “Whatever does it mean?”  “He that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God and God in him.”  There are some astounding statements in this letter and I suggest that there is no paragraph in heaven and earth that has ever been written greater than that paragraph in the middle of I John 4. 

IV.  PRESENT TENSE PERFECTION  

            Now the interesting thing about it is—who can live like this?  I think I told you in a previous meeting that you can pick it out of John four times over where he says, “Our life is to match His, our own life is to match His.”  I told you that He is the eternal life who walks it—doesn’t just talk but lives like this.  We say that One is now in us and we in Him.  If so He lives that life out in us and we’re walking like that.  So four times over he says, in the 2nd chapter, “we’re to walk as He walked;” in the 3rd chapter, “we’re to purify ourselves as He is pure.”  It also says, “we’re to be righteous as He is righteous;” and the 4th chapter says, concerning perfect love, “as He is, so are we.”  My, that’s why I say it hits the ceiling.  What standards equal to it can you get?  How can fallen—but praise God not remaining there—redeemed, sanctified, humanity live like that? 

            The answer is chapter 1.  The way it can be lived is there.  First of all, it is present tense.  Now I have mentioned this in a previous talk about perfection because that’s the key to perfection.  If any foolish person imagines that you can say, “Oh I’ve had something done in me and I’m going to live a perfect life henceforth,” you are in for a few bumps I can tell you.  There is no future-present or future-perfect; there is only a present.  But when you live in the present it is a different thing.  All God requires of me is responsibility for this moment.  

            (a) Walk in the Light

            All He requires of me now is that I walk in the light as I stand here and, as far as I know, I have no sin between Him and me.  All he requires of you as you sit there now is that you walk in the light now with no sin between you and Him.  That’s all—not two minutes ahead or two minutes past.  Leave them alone, except if there has been a sin, then put it right.  That’s all. 

            Now perfection is a different matter when it is in the present tense.  Why?  Look at verse 5 of chapter 2.  It is only one of several verses of the same type, “Whosoever is keeping . . . .” The old fashioned English veils these things a little.  It says, “keepeth.”  You all know that when that old fashioned tense is used it means “is keeping.”  It’s the continuous present always when it says “keepeth” or “believeth.”  It means “is keeping,” “is believing.” 

            So we read it like that to simplify it.  “Whosoever is keeping His word in him verily is the love of God being perfected.”  So God’s Word says—it’s very simple—if I’m keeping His Word, the love of God is now being perfected.”  That’s all.  Now God’s Word says it, I didn’t.  I wouldn’t dare say such a thing.  He said so.  In other words, are you keeping His Word now in your conscience.  That doesn’t mean a false condemnation; it doesn’t mean you have to look out idealistically and say, “Oh I ought to be a hundred times better.”  All you are responsible for at this moment is your light now.  There’s plenty more to come.  A little child may do a lot of queer things for which it is not responsible.  If he’s a little child and knocks the ink pot over, you don’t call him responsible; but if he is 20 years old and knocks the ink pot over, you do call him responsible.  So a little child may do a lot of things and you say, “Oh that’s just a little kid.  He doesn’t know any better.  That’s not wrong in him.”  Of course there are things which he can do which are wrong, but it is according to our growth.  And all we are responsible for is just to be up to the light we understand—to be pleasing to God now, cleansed in His Precious Blood, indwelt by His Spirit, walking happily, childlike, with Him.  That’s all. 

            Now if we are doing that, we’re keeping His Word.  If I interpret it aright, we are keeping His Word.  That’s the only Word we know.  If we are keeping His Word, that’s the love of God perfected.  Therefore, God’s Word says that at any moment I can be up to the level of what He calls “having the love of God perfected in me.”  But I may not be like that in one minute’s time.  In one minute’s time Satan may get at me; in one minute’s time something may come in.  Then I’m not there.  Don’t let me deceive myself.   I’m not there any longer.  Therefore, it is sheer nonsense to talk about permanent perfection. 

            But it isn’t sheer nonsense to say that I can walk thus with God for a moment—step, by step, by step—because God’s Word says so.  That’s the answer.  It is the present tense that solves the thing.  That’s why the spiritual crises are vital, but they must not be mistaken for the walk.  And sometimes people get mixed up with their crises because they try to make out that their crises and their continuity are the same thing.  No, the crisis is just step on the new road and then you have to walk it, walk the new road, the highway of holiness.  But if you have had the crisis, you are on the road and know how to walk. That’s the point.  You know how to walk.  I know how to walk; if I don’t walk, it is my own fault because I know how to walk.  And thank God many of us do. 

            I know how to walk with Jesus.  Well, it is my own fault if I don’t, and He’ll hold me accountable, quite rightly so, because I know how to walk.  I didn’t know how to walk until I knew my Galatians 2:20 relationship; but I know now.  Therefore, I’ve no business not to walk; I’ve got to walk.  Sure I have—those old demons will see to it!  I’ve got to walk or they will be shooting their arrows in at me.  I’m not going to go into that today but I believe that I can prove from Scripture that all sin is spirit, because all goodness is spirit.  The only love we have is the Spirit of love.  He, He’s the Spirit of Love.  The only faith you’ve got is the spirit of faith.  Paul called it “having the spirit of faith.”  All evil is spirit too.  It is “the spirit of bondage again to

fear,” “the spirit that now walketh in the children of disobedience,” and so on.  That’s what sin is.  It’s the spiritual thing.  However, that’s another point by the way. 

            Now I’m saying that the simplicity of I John 1 is that it tells us how that rest can be lived.  How can I live in invincible faith?  How can I live in continued holiness?  How can I live in perfect love?  By living step by step in chapter 1.  Chapter 1 says that you are walking with a Person who is gentle Light.  He’s gentle, hot, fierce light.  He’s light, but light is a very gentle thing, very gentle.  It doesn’t push me or burn me, or shout at me; it just shines.  It only calls on me to do one thing and that is to respond honestly to it; that’s all.  Thus Paul says, “Whatsoever doth make manifest is light.”  Therefore, as I have often said in other talks, that’s all light does.  If I come into a hall like this in the dark, I’m not responsible to discern between thing and thing.  Supposing I come into this hall in the darkness, having never been here before.  I can kick that piano and call it a desk and you can’t hold me responsible because I can’t tell the difference between a piano and a desk in darkness.  The one thing light does is to hold me responsible.  It holds me responsible to say to you, “This is a desk,” and not call it a piano.  That’s all.  It’s perfectly simple, but it’s gentle; it doesn’t force me.  It just says, “Now be honest and don’t be foolish.  Call a thing what it is; don’t call it what it isn’t.”  But that’s what we are always trying to do.  We don’t like to admit sin so we call it what it isn’t.  And that’s all light does.  We walk with One Who is gentle Light, but He is Light, pure Light, pure Light.  Therefore as we walk in Him, He gently but firmly shows us ourselves as we are.  And when the arrows of pride or anger or lust or resentment or murmuring come in, He says, “There it is.  You’ve got sin.  Don’t deceive yourselves—you were murmuring.  You’ve got a heavy heart because you were murmuring. You’ve got a heavy heart because you were annoyed with somebody.  You’re thinking well of yourself ; you’ve got a proud heart.  You’ve been having a lustful thought in there.  Now don’t  deceive yourself—face it!”

            (b)  Honestly Confess Sin

            So that is all light does.  And all that our blessed God demands from us poor helpless people is acknowledgment, is honesty.  Honesty is the only thing asked of us; honesty is the only thing.  Acknowledgment of our condition.  We can’t do one thing to uplift our condition; we can’t remove a stain of sin; we can’t remove one single thing or put in a single thing, but we can acknowledge.  That’s why Jesus said, “I came not to call the righteous, who don’t acknowledge the truth; I came to call and save the sinners because they acknowledge the truth.”  And that’s what I John is; walking in the light.  According to I John 1:7, that verse which we all know so well, if we walk in the light there are two results:  one is, sin turns up.  Sin has not previously been mentioned in the whole letter; it comes in first in that verse.  Sin turns up.  Why?  Because there is pure Light which shows things exactly as they are.  And the moment conscious sin is in my heart, the Light shows it. 

            But it also shows the Blood.  Blood comes in this verse, too, for the first time in this letter.  This verse says, “Yes, if you walk in the light, sin will turn up, but praise God , Blood turns up too.”  The same holy, gentle Light which shines on the sin shines everlastingly on the shed Blood.  And the moment I say, “Yes God you are perfectly right; the devil has caught me up and I admit it,” The Lord says, “Yes, I only told you that because it is blotted out now.  It has been finished.”

            (c)  Praise The Lord for His Cleansing Blood

            It has been finished 2000 years.  Just accept it.  And so praise The Lord straight away.  That’s why I loved those Africans—because they are praising people.  They don’t live groaning and murmuring in the flesh; they clear out of the flesh as quick as they can when they get into it.  They say, “Praise The Lord. I was caught out, but praise The Lord, the Precious Blood has reached me.”  On they go again—so simple, so happy, so praising—that’s the life.  But they always recognize the sin.  Oh my, they are sensitive on it. 

            I haven’t time this morning, even if I go overtime, to give much illustration along those lines.  But today it is a simple thing.  In I John it says three times over that we wriggle out of light if we can—we wriggle out if we can, we avoid it, we sidestep it if we can.  But then there is no deliverance.  If you sidestep it by excuses there is no deliverance.  You remain bound and you can’t be in the fullness of that light with the presence of Jesus in you.  Oh no, you can’t deceive that One.  And so it says in verse 6, “If we say we have fellowship and walk in darkness, we lie.”  We often do that.  We are hold-our-own-ers—of course, we are in fellowship with God; why, aren’t we missionaries?  We lie very often because we are really in our hearts walking in darkness.  We lie.  No half measures in this writer, are there?  Look at verse 8, “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves.”  Or verse 10, “If we say we have not sinned, we make Him a liar.”  That’s expressing our controversial viewpoint, our self-defensive viewpoint, because we don’t want to break about it and confess it. 

            Of course the explanation of verse 7 is verse 9.  Verse 7 says that we are to walk in the light for “if we walk in the light the Blood cleanses sin;” verse 9 says that walking in the light means we confess our sins.  The word “confess” as you know, in its original, is the same word as “say” with the preposition “con” added. I say that I’ve no sin—that’s my opinion.  I say that I’ve not sinned—that’s my opinion; I’m trying to defend myself.  Confess says, “Wait, somebody else has said something.  God has said something.”  I say with Him—“con” is “with”—I say with Him.  I cease to say my false word; I now say with God what He says in the light.  That’s confession.  He says it is sin; I say it is sin.  Immediately when I do that “He is faithful and just to forgive my sin and to cleanse me from all unrighteousness.”  So that’s the simple way. 

            If we briefly glance for a moment at a sin or two, at those subtle things, it might help us. 

            (1) Unbelief—Examples

            Certainly one of the subtlest sins is unbelief.  Oh, what agonies we endure through unbelief, without recognizing that it is unbelief.  As I have said before, it is probably the reason why the apostle who wrote the Hebrews spoke about “the evil heart of unbelief,” because unbelief is removing our eyes from the single look at Jesus and seeing something else.  It is hardness, difficulty, our own weakness, and so on.  My, I’ve met, not in Japan for I haven’t had time, but in our own circles in other countries, agonies through unbelief, through sense of failure, missionaries going right down under a sense of failure.  Failure, a sense of failure, is that old devil making you look at yourself instead of at Him.  Of course you’re a failure, you will be eternally. Of course you are weak, but you are committing a sin in that you are looking at yourself.  You’ve no business to.  You are committing the sin of unbelief.  Our depressions, that which is one of the besetting infirmities?  No!  Sins of the missionary.  It is all that because we are allowing the devil to fix our heart or our eyes in some ways on our weakness, our failure, our inability, our surroundings, or something like that, instead of keeping our eyes firm on the living Jesus, on the living Jesus Who lives in me, the living Jesus Who is working in these surroundings, Who is the conqueror; it is sin to look away from Him. 

            Now that’s what I’ve learned—that we get through these things when we recognize them as sin.  Then you say, “Oh, I’m sinning the sin of unbelief.”  Then, the Blood remedies it.  It’s calling it “sin” that produces the remedy because calling it “sin” gives you the right to claim the Blood, it gives you the title to the Blood.  A little incident happened to me a few conferences ago, not in Japan, but it stuck with me and so I use it as an illustration.  It’s just what I mean, a tiny little thing but the kind of thing that happens to all of us.  We had the first two or three meetings of a certain convention and they were stiff—thank God these meetings haven’t been stiff, but sometimes meetings are stiff.  The stiffness may be inside here, of course.  And I remember coming away feeling, “Oh we’re not getting anywhere.”  And I spoke to a friend whom I met outside of the hall—one of our own W.E.C. men—and I said some remark like this:  “Oh, the devil is doing more work here than The Lord.”  It was something which was really naughty.  Well, no wonder I was in darkness!  And I went back to my room.  I had to prepare for the next meeting.  Well, I didn’t feel like preparing or speaking, and The Lord said to me, “You’ve got a sin in your heart—the sin of unbelief.  You’re daring to believe that the devil can do more than I can.  You had better put that right.  You can’t play with that one.”  And so of course I did:  I saw it at once.  It doesn’t take you one second to put it right because of the Precious Blood.  That’s the thing that puts it right, not your confession.  It’s the Precious Blood that puts it right.  And the moment I saw it I said, “Praise The Lord, it’s finished.”  Of course I had the confession to make to the brother later on lest I should have tripped him up also.  But that’s what I mean.  That was just a temporary moment in which the devil shoots in unbelief but we can live for weeks in it, can’t we? 

            Take fear.  You know, in some of these things our trouble is what we don’t recognize then as sin.  Fear is one, and yet lots of our fear is sheer unbelief.  I had a little lesson of that which I learned sometime ago.  I’ve always had an intense dislike of traveling in airplanes.  I only do it when in certain circumstances I feel compelled to.  The reason is that four wheels on earth are safe but four propellers in the air aren’t always safe.  Not the last time (for The Lord has been delivering me recently), but about half a dozen times ago when I was traveling in an airplane and was feeling like that, The Lord spoke to me.  He said, “You’ve got a sin; you’re fearing this thing and wondering which propeller will stop first.  What about it?”  Well now, you see, you can’t help being assaulted by these things, but you can help taking them in; you can’t help the physical assault of fear but you can help taking it in.  Well, of course, the remedy is quite simple in that case.  The Lord said to me this:  “In which are you traveling?  Are you traveling in my will or in an airplane?”  Well, I didn’t dare say I wasn’t traveling in His will or it might have crashed, so I had to admit that one!  So I said, “In your Will.”  Then He said, “Well isn’t My Will perfect?”  And He said, “If it does crash to earth, well, that’s My Will so isn’t that the quickest way to what you are waiting for—face to face?”  Praise The Lord!  I came through.  I’ve got to walk in it.  When I travel tomorrow I shall have to sit it out again, I expect, but I’ll get through by the grace of God. 

            So you see fear.  But I want to tell you this, brothers and sisters, you can go on in these things for years undelivered.  Now I know that for this reason:  I had a strange experience in which I was in bondage quite recently, during the last world war, after I had been a missionary and missionary secretary for many years.  I was in real bondage for whole hours at a time—if not days—through the bombing.  Now I was in World War I and had my normal share of shelling and stuff.  We’d didn’t have much bombing in those days, but all that kind of thing.  And you can always make excuses out of the past—your old body is a wonderful good excuse for escaping all sorts of things.  But it doesn’t give the deliverance of the Blood; it doesn’t give us that one.  When I came to World War II, I was in London through the bombing.  Now as you know the bombing in London was pretty severe, and in the early days they continued all night.  At nighttime when it was dark from 6 p.m. till 6 a.m., the Germans would come over all night sometimes.  I never had a peaceful hour.  It really affected me.  Just fear.  I was always wondering if the next bomb would hit on me, and what it would feel like to be buried alive, and all these things.  And I lived in that, and I made a good excuse:  “Oh, it’s my nerves from the First World War.”  A wonderful excuse.  And I lived in that and had no freedom.  I finished the war like that—never got any freedom. 

            Now do you know what I learned out among the Africans five years afterwards?  These revived Africans where the Christian Kikuyu of the Kikuyu tribe are facing torture and death.  You know about the Mau Mau, of course, and the rebellions that are going on there.  The point from the Christian angle is this:  that the Mau Mau terrorists, as we call them, consider the Christian Kikuyu the worst of all cases, because he has adopted the white man’s religion.  So they single them out and torture them.  And they really do torture them, and have many, many executions.  Three or four months ago I read a letter to a fellow-missionary, and it stirred my heart.  It was a wonderful simple letter from one of these brethren just telling that “we buried Brother So-and-so on September 6, and then on October 6 we buried Brother So-and-so, and in November we buried Sister So-and-so and Brother So-and-so.  All had been murdered by the Mau Mau. And then in February we couldn’t find the body of Brother So-and-so, but we knew he died praising Jesus, and so we praised for him.”  That kind of thing.  I had never heard anything like it. 

            And then this came, “But brothers,” he said, “we’ve had to do some confessing of sin to each other.  We’ve had to confess the sin of fear, and get cleansed in the Blood.”  Fear!  Well I should think so, because it’s not death, it’s torture.  And confess the sin of fear, and get cleansed! I went back five years and said, “What a hypocrite I am!”  I never dared to come out to my own people and say I had a fearful heart, because I was the leader and leaders aren’t supposed to

fear.  I never said to them, “Look here, I’ve got a fearful heart; I need cleansing.”  If I had, I should have got free.  And there I was.  I lived all those years, those hours, under sin, the sin of fear, without trusting God, because I didn’t call it a sin.  I called it the consequence of my past nerves. 

            Those Africans have nerves the same as we have, but they have a better thing than nerves.  They have the Blood of Jesus, and the power of the Spirit.  But I got a lesson from that.  You see, I learned from that how things we never call sin have an element of sin when you look into it. 

            Again let me make it plain.  It isn’t the temptation which is sinful.  You can’t help feeling fear, because it’s a right instinct.  We are to fear God.  Fear is a right instinct as long as it is kept in its right place.  Fear is the guardian of the door to faith, to stop the wrong things going into faith; but it’s not to take the place of faith, it’s not to go on the throne.  Fear is the guardian at the door; faith is on the throne.  But very often we swap round and we put fear on the throne—that’s our trouble.  And there’s another rightful fear.  If I didn’t fear, I should be squashed under an automobile in no time.  You need a fear, but you’ve got to be sure that in that fear there isn’t that false element, because so often it is an element of unbelief, the element which isn’t really believing God.  As in all things like that, in all temptations, as I told you yesterday, there is a rightful appetite and a rightful instinct.  The point is, is it going in the wrong direction?  The instinct and the appetite aren’t wrong, but are they being diverted?  That is the point.  I was being diverted through the war into a false fear of fear.  So I had no testimony along that line.  Well, those are little illustrations. 

            (2)  Impatience

            Some of our sins takes a long time to conquer.  Now one thing I find a job to conquer is immediate impatience.  Now I’ve learned as the secretary of a mission that it isn’t wise to be too impatient in public and so I’m not too impatient with our missionaries.  I keep off that one, but I’m mighty impatient with things.  Just in a flash, I hit the wrong typewriter key with my finger.  “Bother the typewriter, whatever is the matter with the thing!”  Not “bother the typewriter,” but “bother these clumsy fingers” is the point. 

            I hit my head against a beam—“Why is the beam so low?”  And I feel the scowl on my face when I do it.  And all those kinds of things.  And you know The Lord has taught me but I’m not yet quick enough to pick it up before it happens and I ought to be.  I have said the “bother” before I pick it up.  I must learn, I am learning to be quick as lightning.  I have no business to be impatient.  God has taught me at least to look back afterwards and say this:  “No, no, this is my servant.”  I have been blessed by this often—I don’t know if you have.  How wonderfully God has given us a world which serves us.  I think of the way a chair serves me silently sitting there to carry my heavy body.  Think of the way a typewriter serves me.  The whole world is made to serve us.  They are gifts of our blessed God.  Isn’t that wonderful?  Our constant silent servants, and we kick them and we “bother” them; and we’re the people who need the kicking and the bothering.  My, my! 

            So I have learned to bless the goods of this earth and say, “Thank you that you are so quiet and silent and don’t bust on me when I sit on you.  Bless them!  Be very good, and bless the God Who gives them to me.”  But those are little things aren’t they?  I’m caught out there, you know.  I come and preach here and, as I say, something happens up in my room which no one else sees, but I scowl and say, “Bother that thing.”  I’ve seen the sin of impatience, or irritability, if you like.  I have to be cleansed from that.  I want to be a little quicker though, to jump in before I even begin to do it.  I want to learn that one. 

            ( 3)  Attitudes

            I find the same thing in attitudes.  Now we have had a blessed, blessed Word of God on attitude earlier in the Conference and so I needn’t spend much time on that.  Our brother searched us to the bottom on that.  I am only talking on one aspect, and that is the immediate reaction—just that.  He talked of the deeper reactions which followed, the seed which becomes the root and produces the fruit.  He talked on that one. 

            But I don’t know—perhaps it’s good that I haven’t natural love.  I have natural criticism and natural reserve.  I thank God I don’t have it because therefore it has to be God’s love.  Now I find this all the time.  Nearly always my first reaction to a brother and sister is the critical and the cold one.  I’m amazed at myself that way.  My first reaction when I meet people, and so on, is to tend to pick a hole, to be cold.  It isn’t natural love.  I find that in anything, all over the place:  I’m naturally hard; I naturally see the world in a worldly person, or the flesh in a Christian if I can, and so on.  And the other has to be supernatural. 

            I have to learn again and again—of course I am learning—learn to be quick to put it out in a moment, and say, “Oh no, one Christ is in us.”  One Christ; and so of course we are one.  The same Person lives in me as in you and I should think we are one.  That blessed One lives in you and lives in me—we are indeed one.  And then the power of love is there and flows.  Or if it is an unsaved person, I’ve got to say, “Well if there had only been you in the world, Christ would have died for you.  That’s His love.  If you had been the only person in the world . . . you are individually precious to Him.” 

            And so I must look with the eyes of love on people.  But I don’t find that natural.  I find I have to walk that even though I’ve been 35 or 40 years on the road.  Still, my natural reaction is not to love, but to criticize and to pick holes; and I have to walk again and again, and replace that false thing with the real thing, which is the Divine Person loving through me.  These are little things now, but they are the seed out of which the fruit comes.  Out of those seeds come the roots which dig down into us, and the evil fruits of quarrels and divisions and all these things. 

            Well, I just mention those as one or two things of a minute kind, but it’s those “little foxes,” of which our brother reminded us, that are the trouble.  Look for a moment at James.  I suppose I won’t have time to say much more.  You get that problem in James very clearly, I think.  James is troubled with double attitudes.  When I first read James that puzzled me.  You see he speaks again and again of the “double.”  The first chapter speaks of the “double mind” in prayer, James 1:8, “A double minded man is unstable in all his ways.”  Chapter 2 speaks of a “double” in our attitude to our brethren, partiality, James 2:4, “Are ye not then partial in yourselves . . . ?”  That’s double, of course, in our attitude toward different classes of people in The Lord’s Body.  Chapter 3 talks about “doubleness of the tongue,” James 3:9, “Therewith bless we God, even the Father; and therewith curse we men . . . .”  A double tongue.  Chapter 4 talks about “double motives”.  James 4:3, “Ye ask amiss that ye may consume it upon your lusts.”  James 4:8, “Purify your hearts, ye double minded.” 

            So you see it bothers him by the Spirit.  Doubleness.  I don’t know whether any of you have seen it like this but I couldn’t see through James while I regarded myself as double.  That puzzled me—double, double, double?  I couldn’t get light and liberty when I took it—double.  But when I saw this—no, no, no, you’re single, but the point is:  you mustn’t let the double in.  If you’re a sanctified person, you are not double, you’re single.  You’re the single heart and a single tongue and a single purpose and a single attitude.  That’s the blessing of this life, where the old independent “I” is crucified, the heart is purified and Christ is in the heart, and Christ is single.  No, you’re single.  But always the problem is the double shooting in.  That’s the thing.  It’s becoming double.  We who are The Lord’s holy people are not double, we’re single.  But the double is always shooting into us and the point is to learn to recognize it and put it out. 

            Now you take that first one in James.  You pray, but you don’t pray deliberately double—  you pray single; you ask in faith.  Verse 5—you ask wisdom in your trial.  When you ask, you

ask sincerely; you mean it; it’s not double.  Verse 6—you ask in faith.  All right.  Now then, it goes on to say, “But he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea.  Don’t let that man think he will receive anything.”  A double-minded man is not stable.  What’s happened?  On the top of your act of faith has shot in a double thought.  The devil’s put it in.  You see, you pray, you ask, you believe, and you come out from your prayer and at once say, “Mm, I don’t know that it will really come to pass.”  You have let the double in.  Now what we have learn to do is keep the double out, you see, keep it out.  You are single.  Walk in your singleness of heart and the moment you are conscious that that unbelieving thing is coming in, take it out.  If it has come in, confess it, and say, “Lord, I have let that in.  I take it to Your Precious Blood and confess it.”  I had no business to let that in.”  And it goes!  Or, if you are quick enough, put up the shield of faith and say, “Clear out!  In the name of The Lord Jesus, I won’t take you,” as we said yesterday.  See what I mean? 

            So I find the key to James is not that we poor dragging people are dragging along double. No, no, no, thank God, we are not.  We’ve become single-eyed in Christ, purified in heart, and so on.  But the devil is always pushing the double into us if he can, and we have to watch that to see it goes out again, or that it doesn’t get in when he shoots it at us. 

            He traces it all the way through.  Trace now the Christian man and his tongue.  Now we don’t go about deliberately with a dirty tongue, do we?  We aren’t people who are going about to smear with our tongue; we aren’t people who are going about to be malicious with our tongue.  God has purified our tongues as He has purified our hearts.  We desire to praise The Lord Jesus, don’t we?  We desire to speak of The Lord.  Our interest is to talk of the things of The Lord.  You know that as well as I do.  We don’t walk about with double tongues, but mighty quickly it comes in; mighty quickly.  Quickest of all. 

            Now you see how subtle it is.  It says, “Therewith bless we God.”  That’s exactly what we do in a meeting.  “Oh, praise The Lord, and so and so.”  “Curse we men.”  “Curse” is an impolite word, so we just call it, “saying the truth;” we call it, “speaking the truth.”  But the Bible calls it “cursing,” that’s all.  See, the Bible doesn’t mince its words.  It says, “When you’re saying an unkind malicious thing which hurts a person, you’re cursing a man.”  And the very same tongue which has just blessed The Lord, cursed man.  We are too polite to curse The Lord; we don’t do that one.  So we curse man instead.  But man is in the similitude of God, and in God’s sight we are cursing God—that’s the difficulty.  It says so in this verse.  You see what I mean? 

            So what I am saying to you is we don’t walk about in the bondage of a double tongue.  We do not.  We walk about in the blessing of a single tongue, but how quickly that old enemy sticks a double one in.  We are to have that watchfulness, and when we are conscious we are beginning to do it, pull back on it.  Sometimes we have to apologize, haven’t we?  One or two people lately have done that.  I’m not as quick as I ought to be on that myself, but some people have done that.  They have begun to say a thing, and have said to me, “No, brother; I don’t think I will go on.  I don’t think perhaps I ought to say that.”  Now, that’s blessed.  He’s seen, quick enough, the enemy putting in something double which would hurt somebody.  He has stopped.  That’s blessed.  Of course there are some times when we have to pull back something we have said and say, “Well, brother, I oughtn’t to have said that.  I’ve said that about a brother and I oughtn’t have said it,” or whatever it may be.  But we don’t live there.  We live in the single, but the double comes in.  And so you get the test of course later on in James chapter 3 when you get that marvelous description of the two types of wisdom.  You get the false wisdom of verses 14-15, “. . . bitter envying and strife in your hearts, glory not, and lie not against the truth.  This wisdom descendeth not from above,” but from beneath; it is “earthly, sensual, devilish.”  Then James 3:17, “. . . that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be intreated,” and so on.  That’s what the tongue brings out; that’s the double tongue.  When we are walking in the Spirit our tongue brings out that which is “pure, the peaceable, gentle, and easy to be intreated,” and so on.  When the other one comes in, it brings out the false, the wisdom which is from beneath, which has strife and bitterness and so forth in it. 

            And so with motives and all the way through.  Our motives are pure, are they not?  We shouldn’t be here with a double motive.  Praise Gcd, we aren’t living for the world, the flesh, and the devil.  We are living for The Lord Jesus Christ with pure motives, but the other one comes in.  Oh my, doesn’t it?  As Brother Thompson said, we want our rights, or we want to gain this or want to have that, and so this double motive comes in.  We don’t live in that motive but it gets in.  Now we must mighty well see it doesn’t lodge in.  Mighty well see that if the other comes in, it goes out again through confession, through cleansing, or through the shield of faith if we are quick enough. 

            Well, there are a few other things I should have said, but I’ve been the extra time and so I mustn’t keep you any longer.  There are other meetings coming along.  So I just pass on to you those few thoughts about the simplicity of this walk.  If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit, in all the simplicity of the present tense.  He in me, I in Him, like a little child, happy and free.  That doesn’t mean without taking burdens that our Brother Thompson spoke about last night.  That’s another side.  Thank God he brought that in, and there will be room for other talks along that line.  Of course we are people with another type of burden.  Now I am talking at the present moment about our own lives, and in that we live freely and happily with consciousness of Jesus’ presence.  If we haven’t felt that consciousness, if our body isn’t full of light, if, as the Africans would say, our cups are not “running over,” if we haven’t the abiding sense, there’s the cloud of sin.  Call it sin, don’t call it something else.  Find out what it is.  He will show us.  Get it cleans ed by confession, by cleansing—get it cleansed in the Precious Blood.  Then walk on again.  That’s the way by which we can live in the continuous life of God, the life of continuous life of God, the life of continuous abiding.  So may God bless us.  Amen.