Not To Become But To Contain

Not To Become But To Contain

by Norman Grubb

Transcribed from the original recording; may contain errors.

I’d like to say one or two things by way of a preliminary. First is, I think the whole Church of Christ has to relearn in our generation that the Spirit lives in and speaks through the whole body. A strange anomaly has arisen, which is a one-man ministry, which is not to be found in the Bible.

In the Bible you’ll find all the churches were churches with their elders, and there was a freedom of the Spirit to speak by whom He would to all members of the churches. We’ve had so little to say, we’ve got somebody else to say it for us, in our generation.

In other words, regarding ourselves as a section of the living Church of Christ these days, He lives in all of us. And He can speak by any of us. Therefore, these sessions are not meant to be sessions when merely one man speaks and you all boil inside and don’t like to say what you really think.

There are meant to be times when you also can participate if you wish to participate. So shall we all stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free? And if any folks feel whether I’d like to ask a question on that point. I’d like to touch a little further on that point. All right? Very often it’s that side word which is the most important of all. As you find in the Bible, again and again, it’s the side incidental word which is the greatest likeness of it.

And therefore, let us, these days, get the sense that we’re a company of the Spirit. Not one or two having the Spirit to minister to others, but the Spirit ministering by all to all. And let us in that way flow together in fellowship, both in the meetings and out of the meetings.

And many a time maybe we may get together in groups when we’re sitting outside to carry on conversation about some point we want to emphasize, something in our own lives which can illustrate what’s being said. For that reason, I also don’t like these illicit titles to which I have no right. I’m neither doctor, reverend, mister, anything. I’m just Norman Grubb. And the poor people in the Bible haven’t even got two names. They were just Peter, Paul and Andrew. So I’ve only got one name, that’s Norman.

Don’t seem to ask better than the Bible anyhow. I fear at first, as I think I already observe, many of you will be thinking that I talk a strange language. The trouble is you spent 150 years or so changing the language and I can’t catch up with you. It’s my fault.

So it takes a little getting used to. I’ve only lived over here and been very happy in doing so for two years. So, if you’ll be patient and can continue along with us, it’ll be a little more intelligible. As time goes on, I hope.

Now, each of us can only share what we’re given and in the way in which it is given. I’ve never been given to be a pastor. I’ve never had a church in a normal sense all my life. I’ve never been to a seminary or a Bible school.

I’ve had no background trainings of those kinds. God bless those who have. They just haven’t come my way. So I’m not speaking to you as one who has the privilege of being trained to speak. I can only speak according to the measure of faith, gift of God, as it is given to each of us.

And the way God gave His gift to me was to call me from early days to be, what was in those days, a pioneer missionary. I was a young soldier in World War I, the British Army, having been saved by grace just before the war.

And being a witness for Jesus Christ in the Army. And then I got the call to the pioneer mission field. And I had a period of just secular college training. And then went out. In 1919. I was one of those who had the privilege, found an echo in our brother’s prayer just now, and praying about those who penetrated into these remote areas. I had that great privilege of going where Christ had not been named right into the exact centre of Africa. Into the forest which had first been discovered by the American explorer Stanley, but had never been entered and, of course, evangelised. It’s a very different picture now, thank God.

So my approach to the Christian ministry, if you can call it such, was of the very simplest kind. Because I was dealing with the simplest people. I’m not talking of missionary affairs. Not that they aren’t of tremendous interest and tremendous importance these days, but they aren’t basic to our aim in these meetings, except in the way they may come in incidentally or perhaps towards the end.

I’m rather seeking to share the way God has talked to me, led me, dealt with me, in and through that missionary ministry. Even from early days in the mission field, I had a dissatisfaction of anything which would be or remain superficial.

Africans, anyhow primitive Africans, respond very easily to the gospel message. But we soon found that profession is different to possession. And I began to get deeply concerned. Is there a gospel? Is there a reality which can do the same kind of things in these very primitive African peoples, as I was trusting would be done, what was being done in myself?

Paul speaks of presenting every man perfect in Christ Jesus. Towards the end of the letter, the first chapter of the letter to the Colossians. That’s the original, apostolic New Testament standard. What could that mean for this ministry to which I was called? What could it mean to myself? Had I got my own knots untied before I started untying other peoples?

And then as years gone by, I only actually remained on the foreign mission field ten years, up to 1931. And after that I was asked to come home to take on in the developing end of the mission to which we’re called, which is worldwide. And I’ve been occupied at that end of the work ever since. And that, of course, has brought me into contact with many young lives. We have about over 800 in the whole work now, scattered all around the world. And so I then began to get an increasing concern about what those had who were passing through my hands as if they were to go out, the younger generation, and so I became an investigator.

And I trust, an applicator, if there’s such a word, of what one found to oneself. And it’s really those investigations, discoveries, I trust applications, that I’m wanting to share with you these days. So again, I want to make it plain that this is really not just like one set address, and then another set address on another occasion. It’s a, those like those stories in the serial magazines, we continue now next. They just go from one to the other. And those who can stay along with us, can get more of the composite whole of what is on my heart to share, will understand better than those who can only come for one or two sessions, although one trusts the Spirit of God has something through every session. But it is, in that sense, just a continued talking together, examining together, of the secret of life.

I base all I say on the authority of the scriptures, God’s written word. Even the scriptures could be a snare, unless a letter introduces to the Spirit. Because the letter can kill, only the Spirit gives life. And the written word is only a means to the living word. For it is the means by which we are introduced to Him. The authority by which we shall find Him.

So that is my source of authority in all I say. If you have Bibles with you, and you care to follow, just as you like, it is, there is a quality in God’s written word which sometimes, kind of, gets something to us which other, just, talks of men don’t.

But I shall often be referring to and quoting from, and reading from, the scriptures. Now, I want to start off tonight, not intending to be too long, being the first night, with what I believe is the profoundest discovery, profoundest revelation, which ever has been made to man, ever had to be made to man, ever could be made to man, because there is no profounder.

So we are starting right on the spot. And it has to be a revelation, because we are a deluded people. We live under a vast illusion. Misunderstanding. So it has to be a revelation. The problem we humans have, and when this problem is solved, basically all our problems are solved, is the right understanding and right use of ourselves. The right understanding of self, and its right use and right place. That’s the basic problem.

Our problem, difficulties are the misunderstanding and the misuse, and the misrepresentation and the misplacing of self. So we’ve got to discover where we have a misunderstanding concerning self, and then we’ve got to replace it by a true understanding of self. And then we’ve got to discover where self fits into the whole picture.

Then we fit into love. And then we’ve got to find out, in the real experiences of life. I think I am truly saying God has got to take us all the hard way. Because I don’t think by any other way we can really have our illusions dissolved.

That’s why the hard ways of life are the blessings of life. The prosperities of life are the dangers of life, the adversities are the blessings. Count your many adversities, name them one by one. And it will surprise you what the Lord has done. That’s the new version of the hymn. Amen.

God had to take every one of His servants the hard way. And that was the supremest, foundational blessing. Whether it was Moses, or Abraham, or Jacob, or Elijah, or Jesus Himself, or Paul, or Peter, or any of them. Right to history.

Because they had to learn, right down in the warp and woof of experience, what self is not, and what self is. Then they found their key. They had to find what self is not before they could find what self is. And the one else.

So, because we can only share, as we are given to see, or as we are given to, and expand in other men’s lives. Now the way I basically learnt that lesson, and thank God it was revolutionary to me. A very big surprise.

Was when I was a young missionary. That means I had already gone through the early experiences of the operations of the grace of God in my life. Why shouldn’t I have been a missionary? Although unfortunately you can even have unregenerate missionaries.

I’m sorry to say, but that isn’t the normal standard for a missionary. As I told you, I’d been brought to discover myself, or to see myself as I am in or was in God’s sight. A sinner needing a saviour when I was 19 years of age. And Jesus had become my Saviour. And I went through phases of separation from the world in the elementary sense. And became a zealous witness for Christ and a soul winner. And as I told you, I got a call. So I’d been through those preliminary phases of God’s dealings.

And arrived on the mission field. And there I got this basic revelation concerning self and his relationship to God. He came to me in this way. He would not come to you in this way. Although of course the principles behind are the same in every case.

I very soon found I hadn’t got what it took for my job. That’s a very healthy experience we all have in different ways. We haven’t got what it takes to live the life we ought to live. And I found I hadn’t. Of course I was concerned for, well mainly concerned for, ministry at that time. I found when I arrived I hadn’t got what I needed to be a representative of Jesus Christ to these primitive people very, very supremely hadn’t loved. If you have a kind of sentimental love six thousand miles away from people, there’s nothing to live with them.

And I hadn’t got, and recognized I hadn’t got, this love which could flow over into, and make the bridge between, myself and the people who might go on. So I needed love. And with that I very soon found I needed other impartations of the grace of God. Power. Again, any earnest follower of Jesus Christ finds that need. Probably all of us in our lives know that. Need of power. I hadn’t the sense of power that God could really do, but I come that He should do, in this corner. So I needed power.

Basically I needed faith. I don’t mean hit and miss faith which can believe everything today and nothing tomorrow, but the faith which believes everything every day. That one. I hadn’t got that one. And deep down, I don’t think I did believe. I didn’t look, what? Pretty obvious. I didn’t really believe that again that God would do what He said me to do.

I remember how those needs stood out before me. They did have a reflex action on my life. Most missionaries will tell you this. Sometimes attitudes and habits which don’t need to bother you too much at home come on you in the mission field. I found myself very irritable. My wife knew it. I even would preach victory to the Africans and go back and make my wife cry in my hut where we live. I’ve got over that one recently since then, but I’ve still had other things to get over us too.

But it had this action, I suppose, really it had this action of irritability and criticism. You compensate, you avoid your own troubles by seeing them in the other pillar of course. Missionaries, only missionaries do that. Nobody else.

And so I was in this condition. Now, that’s a very good condition to be in. A condition of adversity. I tell you, not prosperity but adversity. A condition of need. It wasn’t the condition that I was in which was the problem. It was my attitude towards the condition which was the problem. Now, this is where I had to get the re-education, re-orientation in my whole outlook.

My concept, and deep down, is the concept of the vast majority of God’s people. It sticks right out in the tremendous amount of our hymnology. In a vast amount of our preaching. My concept of Christian living and Christian service was that I should be improved as a servant of Jesus Christ. That I should be improved. I needed it. That God would impart to me, to be settled of these graces of which I raised in God’s Word, love, faith, power, holiness, and put them into me, and make me holier, and more powerful, and more loving, and more belief. That I would become somebody who represented Jesus Christ better, did His job better. Now, you see the subtlety.

You see that although basically it was true that Jesus Christ had become the centre of my life, basically it was true. Because that’s what it is to be regenerative, as we shall see as we dig further into these things. Yet in actual practice my concept now of the Christian life was, if I wasn’t in the centre, I was nothing near it, that I must be improved. Jesus Christ would be to be a kind of appendage which would improve me. That was my point. Jesus Christ would be an assistant, an assistant to me, not I to Him. I would have love put into me. I’d have power put into me. I’d have, certainly they came from Him. But I’d have them. And I’d become a better, more worthy, more credible servant of Jesus Christ.

In other words, although it isn’t exactly true to say self was basically the centre, that isn’t true to say, because Christ had taken that place, but somehow in my way of working it out, self was mighty near the centre, or, and it was the new self, not the old. Now you watch. Our problem isn’t the old self, it’s a new one. Our problem isn’t trying to do bad, it’s trying to do good. That’s our problem.

It’s the world’s problem, to a point. The world has them both, good and evil. It’s so much a problem that it is the only problem you have. Every single strain, stress, frustration, difficulty, burden, discomfort, doubt, fear, every single one is because you have given self a place which is not entitled. Every single one.

Because you are taking upon yourself what you have no business taking upon yourself, which you may take upon yourself. That’s what I say. If we find the solution, an understanding of our illusory concept of self, and have that replaced by the true concept of what self is and where it fits into the picture, we’ve got our key.

Now this was the illusory concept of self I had. Now this young servant of Jesus Christ, that I was to be the one to be made so and so and so and so and so and better and all the rest of it and to be an etiquid agent of Jesus Christ. Do you know what I found from the Bible? The Bible, in a few phrases, knocked my whole foundation clean from under me. Thank God it did. It took a little time to sink in, may take a little time to sink into you too. If it hasn’t already, some of you have seen these things.

The way the Bible knocked my foundation from under me was by the simplest and most, we might say, famous and shortest statement in the whole Bible. When John in his letter twice over says, “God is love.” Now you say out of those three words, two are important and one is unimportant. You say God and love are important and is a little less important. That’s the word that’s hit me. It wasn’t God or wasn’t love that hit me, it is that hit me. And what hit me was this. It doesn’t say God has love, but God is love.

Well, I said and suddenly I tell myself, there’s a very big difference there. If you have a thing, it isn’t you. It’s just an element of some kind of thing you’ve got. Like you might have a pocket full of cash. Well, it just isn’t you. Something you’ve got in your pocket, you can share it. It’s just something you’ve got which you can share with others. It’s detached from you. But the Bible doesn’t say that. The Bible says God is love. I suddenly said to myself, then love isn’t a thing at all. It’s a person. God is love. Then the only eternal, pure, self-giving love that is in the universe is one person only. God is love. That finish is love. In other words, there is no other love in the universe, the pure, self-giving love, except one person. God is that love. Period.

So I said to myself, that isn’t the thing that can be imparted to me to one, it’s the thing He is. He’s grabbed the lot, and stuck to it. I’m getting shaken now. You see, I thought I could have love. God said you’ll quite be sake, you’ll never have love so forget it. You never have one ounce of love through eternity. So don’t try to make out you can’t because you won’t, because I’ve grabbed the lot, then that finishes it. I started by being love, I end by being love, that finishes you. Goodbye.

That’s all. God is love. You know, when you get on the track of a thing, other statements which always were there, would give a fit. And I assume we get to find other statements which said exactly the same in other words. For instance, the next thing I so much need was power. I found a verse in the first chapter of the first Corinthian letter which says this, now Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God. Christ is the power. Now Christ has the power. Christ is the power. So the power is a person. The only power that is in the universe is one person. You know, the marvel is, one of the greatest allies to Christianity today is science. When I was a young man, we used to think science was an enemy to have Christianity. Today is our greatest ally. It’s science which has discovered that everything is power. Science has blown materialists into pieces. And science says, you think that’s a material thing? Not at all. It’s just pure power. It’s nothing but power. Einstein’s famous equation, E equals MC2, or that energy, that matter is pure energy. Which is a revolutionary science, of course. Exactly. And then it says, “By Him all things consist.” Exactly. Exactly. By Him all things stand together. He is pure power. Basically, He is everything.

Everything is simply a manifestation of Him. Look at the wonderful things He is. That’s fancy, isn’t it? We’ll discuss that a little later. Ha ha. Christ is the power. But get my point again. That was, I wasn’t thinking in scientific terms then. Not that I’m capable of doing so now. But just that we amateurs can pick up a bunch of things here and there.

But what got me then was, see this? Christ is the power. The power is a person. So it’s not a thing you can have. It’s not a thing at all. It isn’t an element that can kind of be piped into you. You have power. So He cut me off, love, and cut me off power. Poor me! What’s left?

What I’m saying, well, God can pick it up. May I not quite convey to you what it did to me. But as Jesus sees something profoundly disturbing. Profoundly revolutionizing. There’s no power in the universe except one person. Not a thing. A person. He is the power. He is the love. If He is the lot, there’s none for me. That’s all about it.

I even went further. And this shook me in a healthy way. We have dimly seen this, of course, but my problem is, as I say, is a dim sight. As I say, we have, speaking to us as those who are related to Jesus Christ, of course, we have found Jesus Christ. But we haven’t got the exact relationship clarified. And our frustrations are because we haven’t got to clarify, because there’s a mixture between self and Christ. We haven’t got the two in their right proportions, in their right relationships. That’s exactly what I’m getting at. And in this next one, I was taken straight on, then, to the very basis of our living, our new living. Our new living, of course, is eternal life. The Bible never did speak of a thing called Christianity.

That immediately produces a rival in your mind. The opposite comes. Christianity? Well, what about our Islam? What about Hinduism? What about Shintoism? What about Confucianism? Whatever you like. The moment you call it a religion, but there are other religions. Which is right. The Bible doesn’t possess religion, possess it with life. You know that. But life’s all we’ve got, isn’t it? I mean, all we’ve got is life. The Bible calls it eternal life, usually. And, of course, you know where I’m going to come to. As a believing and receiving Christian, of course, I took for granted I received eternal life. As I hope all of us have. The gift of God’s eternal life from Jesus Christ our Lord. And I had a vague sense, I suppose. Of course, I related to Jesus Christ. But in a vague sense, I suppose I go out as a kind of permanent continuous of my life now in relationship to Christ. And I should go on living and living with Christ now, and so on. But do you know what I found in the Bible? The Bible didn’t say, Jesus didn’t say, “I have life.” He says, “I am life.” Exactly so. He didn’t say, life’s a thing I have and communicate to you. He says, the only eternal life there is in the universe is one person only, and that’s Jesus Christ, which is God, of course.

There’s no other eternal life. So you will never have eternal life. It’s not yours. It’s not available to you, not attainable by you. That impossible person’s taken the lot. “I am the life.” “He that hath the Son hath life.” So John, in his first letter, says, I’m going to talk to you about that eternal life, which is with the Father, manifested unto us, which we have seen, touched, handled, which is Jesus Christ. Same thought.

Well now, the obvious question which followed on was, well, where do we put people coming at all then? If we can’t have life and can’t have love and can’t have power, what was left? What are we here for?

Of course, again, you know the answer before I give it. But I had to be taken first to a statement yet more absolute than all that, before the answer came clear. And that was in the letter to the Colossians. Colossians have quite a lot in about this. That’s in the third chapter. And the eleventh verse, where, right at the end, it’s just one phrase at the end of the eleventh verse, he’s speaking about the new people, the new creation, we ourselves. The new man. In whom there are neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, and so on. Then he says, “But Christ is all, and in all.”

Christ is all. Christ is all. Now Christ has all. Christ is all. So all is a person. This is getting rather confusing, isn’t it? All is one person. Christ is all. Of course, he added one very important phrase, and in all. That’s why I found my link.

But Christ is all. Not, He makes Norman Grubb something. No, no, not that. He’s, He, the selfish person hasn’t left one thing for me. He’s taken the lot. Not one. He doesn’t make me something. He is something. But He may be in some relation to me. That’s a different thing. Some relationship to me. That’s a different thing. Christ is all and in all.

If I make this too strong, may I ask, can anything be stronger than the Bible? I remember being struck by this on previous occasions, although you know things don’t always tie up when you just see them. It comes several times over, but the famous phrase is in the 15th of 1 Corinthians, 15th chapter, 28th verse, where he speaks about the end time, the consummation of eternity, and it speaks about where all things are subdued under Jesus Christ. “And then shall the Son also himself be subject unto Him that put all things under Him, that God may be all in all.” If God’s all in all, what’s left, may I ask you? Even the elementary mathematics doesn’t last much, does it? If God’s all, what’s left? Poor us! Not much! All in all! That’s all! God is all in all! Well, it’s so extreme that we better be liberals than not, not, not believe it, I think.

The Bible has most extreme things, doesn’t it? It’s a book of extremes, my goodness. Now you see what I’m getting at. A tremendous interior revolution. Which is that the only meaning for the existence of the creature is to contain the Creator. Not to become something, but to contain someone. So the only function of the creature is the function of containment. Every other function is secondary. The function of the creature, in fact, is the function of all levels of creation, is the function of capacity to contain. Capacity to contain. That’s the most passive that there is of all functions. The capacity to contain. All other functions are secondary. All other functions are derivatives of that.

Now that’s where we’ve gone wrong. We’ve made secondary functions primary. And we’ve made activity primary, not receptivity. We’ve made receptivity, it has its place, but it’s not basic, permanent. The one basic function. Activity. We rush off. I think this. I will that. I feel that. I resent that. What shall I do with that? Activities first. We may call in God alongside you, a little receptivity, for convenience sake, on the fly. But that’s not the point. That’s how we go wrong.

I’m saying very strict, strong things. The only reason for the existence of the creature is to contain the Creator.