“God so loved the world that He gave. . .” John
3:16
Salvation is not
merely deliverance from sin, nor the experience of personal holiness; the
salvation of God is deliverance out of self entirely into union with Himself.
My experimental knowledge of salvation will be along the line of deliverance
from sin and of personal holiness; but salvation means that the Spirit of God
has brought me into touch with God's personality, and I am thrilled with
something infinitely greater than myself, I am caught up into the abandonment
of God.
To say that we are
called to preach holiness or sanctification, is to get into a side eddy. We are
called to proclaim Jesus Christ. The fact that He saves from sin and makes us
holy is part of the effect of the wonderful abandonment of God.
Abandonment never
produces the consciousness of its own effort, because the whole life is taken
up with the One to Whom we abandon. Beware of talking about abandonment if you
know nothing about it, and you will never know anything about it until you have
realized that John 3:16 means that God gave Himself absolutely. In our
abandonment we give ourselves over to God just as God gave Himself for us,
without any calculation. The consequence of abandonment never enters into our
outlook because our life is taken up with Him.