When we see the Body of Christ, we will also see the self as the greatest enemy of the Body. For us to have the Body of Christ in reality, the self needs to be denied and rejected. But what does it mean to deny the self? What is the self?
The Bible has a few hints concerning what the self is, and in the book, The Experience of Life (see pp. 188-189) we can see that there are many aspects of the self.
The world today cultivates and develops the self, helping and training people to have a better and bigger self, but in God’s eyes the self is the soul declaring independence from God and doing things without God and without the Body of Christ. Therefore, in God’s eyes the self is like leprosy – unclean and contagious.
Whenever we live in the self, we are leprous – we are sick and contaminated, and we want to isolate ourselves from others and do things by ourselves. In Lev. 14:9 we see that if a leper wanted to be cleansed from his leprosy, he had to go through a long process. When we deal with the self it is not just “deny the self and get on with it” once and for all, but it is a long process, very thorough and detailed.
The leper had to shave the hair of his head, his beard, his eyebrows, and the hair of his whole body. Our self is like the hair on our body: it brings us a lot of difficulties and gets us into a lot of trouble, but we are very proud of it and we grow it, groom it, and love it.
How we need to come into the Lord’s light and see that we need to allow the razor of the cross to deal with us so that we may live and do things through the cross and by the Spirit for the sake of the Body of Christ! It is only when we apply the cross by the Spirit with our spirit that we can dispense Christ into others for the building up of the Body of Christ.
Dealing with the Self as Portrayed in Lev. 17:8-9
We may think we are quite a good person – we are OK, we’re not as bad as others, and we don’t sin that much….but in God’s eyes, as long as we live in the self (which is most of the time – it is our “default mode of living”) we are lepers – unclean, contagious, and isolated.
Because we live in the self, we love to do things our way. We prefer to do things by ourselves and not in fellowship with others. We have so many difficulties with others, there are misunderstandings, we justify ourselves, and we are always right (in our own eyes).
But we need to come to the Lord to shine on us and allow the razor of the cross to “shave us” again and again so that we may have a thorough dealing with the self. As seen in Lev. 14:8-9, we need to have very specific dealings with the many aspects of the self through the cross (which is in the Spirit):
Shaving the Hair of the Head – the hair of the head signifies man’s glory, man’s boasts (that’s why we comb it and groom it and gel it and…do all kinds of things with it to make it look nice). Many people boast in their ancestry, their good family and grandparents, their heritage, their relatives. Others boast in their education, their master degree, their Ph.D., the university they graduated from, etc.
Others boast in their virtues: some are naturally good, kind, understanding, polite, helpful, smart, etc. Even more, some boast in their love for the Lord, considering themselves better than others because they feel “they love the Lord more than the rest”. We need to allow the razor of the cross to deal with our boasts and achievements, so that we may boast only in Christ Jesus and His cross (Phil. 3:3), and we may express not ourselves but God (1 Cor. 10:31; 2 Cor. 4:5).
Shaving the Beard – the beard is honor of man, the natural good and strong points of man. We may have a superior feeling that we are not as sinful as others but rather we are more kind, more gentle, more refined and cultivated. Some esteem themselves more honorable with regard to their position, their family background, or even their spirituality and their love for the Lord.
When we get offended by someone, they offend our honor and affect our glory – they affect our reputation and our honor. All these are natural, and they need to go through the cross, so that by the Spirit we may not display our natural good and strong points but Christ in His human virtues which are filled with the divine attributes. We need to deal with this aspect of the self for the building up of the Body of Christ!
Shaving the Eyebrows – the eyebrows signify the natural good and strong points we have in our being, which don’t issue out from the experience of God’s salvation. There are many natural good points and strong aspects of our natural being that come from natural birth and not from the experience of God’s salvation, and they are part of the self.
Some may be naturally handsome / beautiful, and others may have some character traits that are pleasant and very good. But we need to realize that our beauty is Christ Himself. When we put on the Lord Jesus, He is our glory, our beauty, and our honor. We have no other good beyond Him – He’s our goodness and beauty (Psa. 16:2). The Lord loads us daily with good (Psa. 68:19). In God’s eyes and for the Body of Christ, there’s nothing beautiful that comes out of our self – only ugliness.
Shaving the Hair of the Whole Body – the hair of the whole body signifies our natural strength. We all are full of natural strength; we have our opinions and natural methods, and we think we can do this and that for the Lord. Sometimes, we may even think that we are capable of doing all things.
Peter was like us: he declared that even if all other disciples would betray the Lord, he would not (Matt. 26:33-34). Peter was strong in his natural man, but he denied the Lord. In our natural man we may be very strong to do this and that for the Lord, using our own methods and speaking our own opinions, but whenever we turn to the Lord and allow the Spirit to apply the cross to our self we will become weak in our natural man and strong in our inner man.
The Lord will bring us to the point where we will have no more confidence in the self – our confidence, our boast, and our power is in the Lord Himself, who is with our spirit.
Allowing the Razor of the Cross to Deal with the Self
In the Lord’s light we all have to admit that our problems are not merely outward things that we do from time to time, but they originate from within us. We are leprous – we are sick, contaminated, filled with problems from our natural birth. What’s worse is that we cannot change ourselves or cleanse ourselves of our impurities and leprosy.
We need to allow the razor of the cross to deal with all these problems so that what comes out of us would be something for the building up of the Body of Christ. This kind of dealing is deep, severe, and it will hurt us. But praise the Lord, when under the Lord’s light we allow the cross to deal with the many aspects of the self, we will be clean and purified!
Remember: the cross is in the Spirit with our spirit, so whenever we turn to our spirit, the Lord has an opportunity to shine on us and in us, exposing the self. When we agree with the light and allow the cross to “shave” / kill that aspect of the self, we deny the self and live by the Spirit! Praise the Lord for the razor of the cross in our mingled spirit!
When we are in our self, we cannot be blended. But when we allow the cross to operate in us and we live by the Spirit, we can be blended: we can be harmonized, adjusted, tempered, and mingled through much fellowship with the Lord and with the brothers and sisters the Lord put us with.
Whenever we are about to do something, we should stop and fellowship, doing things through the cross and by the Spirit, so that we may lose our distinctions in the self and become the Body in reality! How we need the cross to “cross out” all our native flavor, our natural man, and our natural human virtues that are not filled with Christ, so that we may have God’s divine attributes filling our human virtues!
Lord Jesus, we open to You. We don’t know what is in us and what our self is. Shine on us. Keep us under Your light. Lord, strengthen us into our inner man to cooperate with Your shining. We want to allow the razor of the cross to deal with the self so that we may be cleansed and purified. May we learn to stop and fellowship, allowing the fellowship with God and with the saints to temper us, harmonize us, adjust us, and mingle us more with God. Dear Lord Jesus, have a way in us. Bring us fully in the reality of the Body that we may be those who build up the Body!
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Inspiration (besides the Word of God and my Christian experience): bro. Ed Marks’ speaking in this message and portions from, The Experience of Life (pp. 188-189, by Witness Lee), as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Entering into the Fourth Stage of the Experience of Life to Arrive at a Full-Grown Man for the Fulfillment of God’s Purpose, week 2 / msg 2, The Fourth Stage of the Experience of Life (1) – Knowing the Body.
- Hymns on this topic:
# Through the Cross, O Lord, I pray, / Put my soul-life all away; / Make me any price to pay, / Full anointing to receive.
# May the Cross put me to death / That on Christ I may rely; / May His Holy Spirit fill, / That Himself I may apply. / May His death so work in me / Daily deeper than before, / That my self may be destroyed / And His life thru me may pour.
# By this Person being formed in me, / I’ll a member of His Body be, / No more acting individually, / But with the saints. / More and more our Person He must be; / That our natural personality / Be eliminated thoroughly / Till Christ is all.
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