Breaking the spell

Don't consort with the flesh, don't consort with the devil, have no truck with them at all! Consort with the Spirit! The Spirit is the One who has come alongside: the very meaning of His Name, 'Advocate' or 'Comforter' (Gk. parakletes) is One who is called alongside.

 Consort with the One alongside. Have your communion with the Spirit. Challenge yourself, and challenge the enemy, on this: Is this really of the Spirit, does this correspond to the Word of God, is this true according to the gospel of grace? If the answer is: No, of course it is not! then repudiate it! That is consorting with the Spirit, always moving on the ground of grace, the Spirit of grace. Breaking the spell: >Galatians 3:1 “O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched (lit. cast the witch’s spell over) you...?” The apostle says that these people had come under a spell. Have you ever been under a spell? I should think (without having had any experience) that to come under a witch’s spell is to wake up at some point and realise that you have been in an unreal realm. It may have been pleasant for the time being, like the effect of opium, but afterwards it was revealed to have been an illusion, an unreality, a false world, everything had been suggesting what was not true after all.

During that time of the spell you have been deprived of your normal state of good sense, you were not yourself, and the effects were quite different from those which had been presented to your mind under the spell. To look closely into this letter to the Galatians is to see that that is exactly what had happened. It was a spell indeed, and a spell which meant that they were taken out of the realm of the greatest of all realities, and put into the realm of things which were false and deceiving, and where they were robbed of their true spiritual position, and placed in a false one. What was the nature of the spell?

The Holy Spirit is very apt in His way of describing things. The phrase: “the witch’s spell” could not be improved upon as a description of what had happened to these believers. These believers had come right out into a living place with Christ, and they had, through faith, received the Holy Spirit. They had been emancipated and set free from all the old thraldoms. They had been put in a place of spiritual liberty, spiritual ascendency, spiritual power, spiritual life, and they had had a great enjoyment of the Lord. But, being Gentiles, and having turned to Christ, certain things had entered into their experience outwardly.

Outwardly they had become involved in a great deal of persecution. They had found tremendous antagonism levelled against them. Inwardly they had become aware of the fact of two natures, an old and a new, that which the apostle speaks of in this letter as the flesh and the Spirit. And, while they had come to the place where the old and fleshly nature was triumphed over by a life in the Spirit, they knew only too well that the old and the fleshly nature was not annihilated, and that to maintain their position of ascendency, every day they must maintain a walk in the Spirit.

The walk in the Spirit demanded a continuous appropriation of Christ and obedience to Him. These were two of the things which had come into their lives, and represented a certain amount of difficulty. It was not easy to suffer persecution. It was not always easy to be obedient and to walk in the Spirit. It represented a continuous yielding to the Lord. The other thing which governed their life entirely was that it was a life of faith. While a life of faith brings into a wonderful realm of ever fresh discoveries and blessing, it is a life of faith, and the old and natural life never takes kindly to a life of faith, but is always seeking the seen and the felt, that which can be provided by the senses; that realm of outward perception, as over against the life which is entirely by faith in God. While these Galatians went on with the Lord they had a life of knowing and enjoying the Lord. We all know that the Christian life is not a picnic every day.

The Word of the Lord never promises that it will be. We are not in the playground; we are in the school. We are not here for pleasure and enjoyment; we are here for real business and grim conflict. A day of unmixed pleasure and glory lies ahead for us; in the meantime it is a life of training, discipline, equipping for that day, and it becomes strenuous sometimes. We would deceive nobody who is not a believer by saying that if you become a believer you are going to float about in the air, play upon imaginary harps all the days of your life and never have any trouble.

You will come up against the grim realities, of which you may be altogether unconscious at present. You will find that you are precipitated into the battle, and are taken into a place of deep training and discipline. It is in that realm that we make our discoveries, and find our wonderful enlargement. That does not mean for one moment that while such things obtain there can be no joy. The New Testament is a strange paradox throughout: “Sorrowing, yet always rejoicing”; “Rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation...” It is a strange contradiction, and the man of the world understands nothing of that.