THE DAILY RENEWAL ~ A.Murray

THE DAILY RENEWAL -- ITS POWER

2Co_4:16.
"Though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day." -- 2Co_4:16.
"According to His mercy He saved us by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost." -- Tit_3:5.

WITH every new day the life of nature is renewed. As the sun rises again with its light and warmth, the flowers open, and the birds sing, and life is everywhere stirred and strengthened. As we rise from the rest of sleep and partake of our morning food, we feel that we have gathered new strength for the duties of the day. The inner chamber is the standing confession of THE NEED OUR INWARD LIFE HAS OF DAILY RENEWAL TOO. It is only by fresh nourishment from God's Word, and fresh intercourse with God Himself in prayer, that the vigour of the spiritual life can be maintained and grow. Though our outward man perish, though the burden of sickness or suffering, the strain of work and weariness may exhaust or enfeeble us, the inward man can be renewed day by flay.

A quiet time and place, with the Word and prayer, are the means of the renewal. But only this when as means they are animated by the divine power which works through them. That power is -- the Holy Spirit, the mighty power of God that worketh in us. Our study of the inner chamber and the inner life it represents, would be defective if we did not give its due place to the daily renewal of the inward man, which it is the function of the blessed Spirit ever to work. In the text from Titus we are taught that we have been "saved by the washing of regeneration AND RENEWING OF THE HOlY GHOST." The two expressions are not meant to be a repetition. The regeneration is one great act, the beginning of the Christian life; the renewing of the Holy Ghost is a work that is carried on continuously and never ends. In Rom_12:2 we read of the progressive transformation of the Christian life, that it is by "THE RENEWING OF THE MIND." In Eph_4:23, while the word "put off the old man" (in the aorist) indicates an act done once for all, the word, "BE RENEWED IN THE SPIRIT OF YOUR MIND" is in the present tense, and points to a progressive work. Even so in Col_3:10 we read, "ye have put on the new man, which is renewed [not, has been] in the image of Him that created him." It is the blessed Spirit to whom we are to look, on whom we can count, for the daily renewal of the inner man in the inner chamber.

Everything depends, in our secret devotions, upon our maintaining the true relation to the adorable third person of the blessed Trinity, through Whom alone the Father and the Son can do their work of saving love, through Whom alone the Christian can do his work. That relation may be expressed in the two very simple words, faith and surrender.
Faith. Scripture says, "God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father." The child of God, the very feeblest, who would in his morning devotion offer up prayer, that shall be pleasing to the Father, and be a blessing to himself, must remember that he has received the Holy Spirit as the.spirit of prayer, and that His help is indispensable to enable us to pray effectually. Even so with the Word of God. It is by the Holy Spirit alone that the truth in its divine meaning and power can be revealed to us, and do its work in our heart. If the daily renewal of the inward man in the morning hour is to be a reality, take time to meditate, and to worship, and to believe with your whole heart thai the Holy Spirit has been given you, that He is within you, and that through Him God will work the blessing which He gives through prayer and the Word.

Surrender. Do not forget that the Holy Spirit must have entire control. "As many as are LED BY THE SPIRIT of God they are the sons of God. They WALK AFTER THE SPIRIT, not after the flesh." It is the ungrieved presence of the Spirit that can give the Word its light and power, and keep us in that blessed life of child-like confidence and child-like obedience which is well pleasing to God. Let us praise God for this wonderful gift, the Holy Spirit in its renewing power, and let us look with new joy and hope to the inner chamber as the place where the inner man can indeed be renewed from day to day. So shall life be kept ever fresh; so shall we go on from strength to strength, so shall we bear much fruit, that the Father may be glorified.

If all this be true, what need that we know the Holy Spirit aright. As the Third Person, it is His office and work to bring the life of God unto us, to hide Himself in the depth of our being and make Himself one with us, to reveal there the Father and the Son, to be the mighty Power of God working in us, and to take control of our entire being. He asks but one thing, -- simple obedience to His leading. The truly yielded soul will find in the daily renewing of the Holy Ghost the secret of growth and strength and joy.

THE DAILY RENEWAL -- THE PATTERN

Col_3:9-10.
"Seeing that ye have . . . put on the new man, which is being renewed unto knowledge after the image of Him that created him." -- Col_3:9-10.
"If so be that ye heard Him and were taught in Him . . . that ye be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new man, which after God hath been created in righteousness and holiness of truth." -- Eph_4:21, Eph_4:23, Eph_4:24.

IN every pursuit it is of consequence to have the goal clearly defined. It is not enough that there be movement and progress, we want to know whether the movement be in the right direction, straight for the mark; and especially when we are acting in partnership with another, on whom we are dependent, do we need to know that our aim and his are in perfect accord. If our daily renewal is to attain its object We need to know clearly, and hold firmly to what its purpose is.

"Ye have put on the new man, which is being renewed unto knowledge." The Divine life, the work of the Holy Spirit within us, is no blind force, as in nature. We are to be workers together with God; our co-operation is to be intelligent and voluntary, "The new man is being renewed day by day UNTO KNOWLEDGE." There is a knowledge which the natural understanding can draw from the Word, but which is without life and the power, the real truth and substance, which the spiritual knowledge brings. It is the renewing of the Holy Ghost that gives the true knowledge, which does not consist in thought and conception, but in an inward tasting, a living reception of the very things themselves of which the words and thoughts are but the images. "The new man is being renewed unto knowledge." However diligent our Bible study may be, there is no true knowledge gained any farther than the spiritual renewal is being experienced; "the renewal in the spirit of the mind," in its life and inward being, alone brings true Divine knowledge.

And what is now the pattern that will be revealed to this spiritual knowledge which comes out of the renewal as its true and only aim? The new man is being renewed unto knowledge, AFTER THE IMAGE OF HIM THAT CREATED HIM Nothing less than the image, the likeness of God. That is the one aim of the Holy Spirit in His daily renewing; that must be the aim of the believer who seeks that renewing.

This was God's purpose in creation, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness." How little the infinite glory of these words is considered. For nothing less than this, did God breathe His own life into man, that it might reproduce in man on earth a perfect likeness to God in heaven. In Christ, that image of God has been revealed and seen in human form. We have been predestined and redeemed and called, we are being taught and fitted by the Holy Spirit, to be conformed to the image of the Son, to be imitators of God, and to walk even as Christ walked. How can the daily renewal be carried on, what can the daily Bible study and prayer profit, unless we set our heart on what God has set His on, -- THE NEW MAN BEING RENEWED DAY BY DAY AFTER THE IMAGE OF HIM THAT CREATED HIM.

In the second passage, we have the same thought expressed somewhat differently. Be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new man, which AFTER GOD, according to the likeness of God, hath been created in righteousness and holiness of truth. Righteousness is God's hatred of sin, and maintenance of the right. Holiness is God's ineffable glory, in the perfect harmony of His righteousness and love, His infinite exaltation above the creature, His perfect union with him. Righteousness in man includes all God's will for our duty to Him or our fellowmen: holiness our personal relation to Himself. As the new man has been created, so it has daily to be renewed, "after God in righteousness and holiness of truth." It is to secure this that the power of the Holy Ghost is working in us. It is to secure this that He waits for us day by day to yield ourselves to Him, in His renewing grace and power.

The daily returning morning hour is the time for securing the daily renewing of the Holy Ghost into the image of God as righteousness and holiness of truth. What need of meditation and prayer to get the heart set upon what God is aiming at, and get a true vision of the wondrous possibility: the inward man renewed day by day into the very likeness of God, changed into the same image as by the Spirit of the Lord. Christian student! let nothing less be thy aim, or satisfy thine aspirations. The image of God, the life of God is in thee, His likeness can be seen in thee. Separate no longer God and His likeness, let everyone approach to Him, let all trust in Him, mean nothing less than finding Him, in His likeness wrought into thee by the renewing of the Holy Spirit.
Let this be thy daily prayer, to be renewed after the image of Him who created thee.

THE DAILY RENEWAL -- ITS COST

2Co_4:16.
"Wherefore we faint not; but though our outward man is decaying, yet Our inward man is renewed day by, day." -- 2Co_4:16.
"Be not fashioned according to this world; but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind." -- Rom_12:2.

IT is not a little or an easy thing to be a fullgrown, strong Christian. On God's side, it means that it cost the Son of God His life, that it needs the mighty power of God to new create a man, and that nothing less than the unceasing daily care of the Holy Spirit can maintain that life.

From man's side it demands that when the new man is put on, the old man be put off. All the dispositions, habits, pleasures, of our own nature, that make up the life in which we have lived, are to be put away. All we have by our birth from Adam, is to be sold, if we are to possess the pearl of great price. If a man is to come after Christ, he is to deny himself, and take up his cross, to forsake all and follow Christ in the path in which He walked. He is to cast away not only all sin, but everything, however needful and legitimate and precious, that may become the occasion of sin; to pluck out the eye, or cut off the hand. He is to hate his own life, to lose it, if he is to live in "the power of an endless life." It is a solemn thing, far more solemn than most people think, to be a true Christian.

This is specially true of the daily renewing of the inward man. Paul speaks of it as being accompanied and conditioned by the decaying of the outward man. The whole epistle (of Second Corinthians) shows us how the fellowship of the sufferings of Christ, even to conformity to His death, was the secret of his life in power and blessing to the Churches. "Always bearing about in the body the dying of Jesus, that the life also of Jesus may be manifested in our body. For we which live are always delivered unto death for Jesus' sake, that the life also of Jesus may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So then death worketh in us, but life in you." The full experience of the life in Christ in our person, our body, our work for others, depends upon our fellowship in His suffering and death. There can be no large measure of the renewal of the inward man, without the sacrifice, the decaying of the outward.
To be filled with heaven, the life must be emptied of earth. We have the same truth in our second text, "Be ye transformed in the renewing of your mind." An old house may be renewed, and yet keep very much of its old appearance; or the renewal may be so entire that men exclaim what a transformation! The renewing of the mind by the Holy Spirit means an entire transformation, an entirely different way of thinking, judging, deciding. The fleshly mind gives place to a "spiritual understanding" (Col_1:9; 1Jo_5:20). This transformation is not obtained but at the cost of giving up all that is of nature. "Be not fashioned according to this world, but be ye transformed." By nature we are of this world. When renewed by grace we are still in the world, subject to the subtle all-pervading influence from which we cannot withdraw ourselves. And what is more, the world is still in us, as the leaven of the nature which nothing can purge out but the mighty power of the Holy Spirit, filling us with the life of heaven.

Let us allow these truths to take deep hold and master us. The Divine transformation, by the daily renewing of our mind into the image of Him who is far above, can proceed in us no faster and no farther than our seeking to be freed from every vestige of conformity to this world. The negative, "Be not fashioned according to this world," needs to be emphasised as strongly as the positive, "be ye transformed." The spirit of this world and the Spirit of God contend for the possession of our being. Only as the former is known and renounced and cast out, can the heavenly Spirit enter in, and do His blessed work of renewing and transforming. The whole world and whatever is of the worldly spirit, must be given up. The whole life and whatever is of self must be 1ost. This daily renewal of the inward man costs much, that is, as long as we are hesitating, or trying to do it in our own strength. When once we really learn that the Holy Spirit does all, and in the faith of the strength of the Lord Jesus have given up all, the renewing becomes the simple, natural, healthy, joyous growth of the heavenly life in us.

The inner chamber then becomes the place for which we long daily, to praise God for what He has done, and is doing, and what we know He will do. Day by day, we yield ourselves afresh to the blessed Lord who has said, "He that believeth on Me out of him shall flow rivers of living watery "The renewing of the Holy Ghost" becomes one of the most blessed verities of our daily Christian life.