(The End of Self-Originated Life and the Confidence from Which the Struggle Is Faced)

September 23rd brings together the cross and acceptance. Chambers points to Jerusalem as the culmination of Jesus’ obedience to the Father, while Spurgeon acknowledges the continuing struggle with corruption and temptation but places that struggle within acceptance in the One who has overcome. Together they turn our attention away from preserving the independent life or attempting to establish our standing through victory. The cross reveals where self-originated life ends, and acceptance in the Son gives the believer a different ground from which to face what still opposes the life of sonship.

Jerusalem and the Culmination of the Father’s Will

Chambers writes:

“In our Lord’s life, Jerusalem was the place where He reached the culmination of His Father’s will upon the cross, and unless we go there with Jesus we will have no friendship or fellowship with Him.” (My Utmost for His Highest)

For Jesus, Jerusalem was not simply a destination.

It was where his obedience to the Father led him to the cross.

Throughout his life, Jesus had received his direction from the Father. At Jerusalem, that filial responsiveness reached its most costly expression. He did not turn aside in order to preserve himself.

The cross therefore reveals something essential about fellowship with Jesus.

We cannot participate in the life he revealed while preserving self-direction as our own governing principle.

To “go there with Jesus” is not to reproduce his crucifixion or accomplish what only he accomplished. It is to recognize what his cross means for the independent life.

Self seeks preservation.

Sonship receives its life from God.

The cross brings the first to its end and opens the way for the second to become the character of our fellowship with the Son.

Accepted in the One Who Has Overcome

Spurgeon writes:

“Thou hast to fight with corruption, and to wrestle with temptation, but thou art accepted in Him who has overcome the power of evil.” (Morning and Evening)

Spurgeon does not deny the continuing reality of struggle.

Corruption must still be confronted.

Temptation still presses upon the life.

But acceptance does not wait at the end of a successful struggle.

The believer is accepted in Him who has overcome.

That changes the ground beneath the conflict.

If acceptance depended upon our ability to overcome every temptation, the struggle would continually turn us inward. We would measure ourselves by victories and failures, attempting to determine whether we had become worthy of communion.

Spurgeon directs attention elsewhere.

Toward the One who has overcome.

Jesus has already passed through temptation, suffering, the cross, and death in faithfulness to the Father. The believer therefore does not establish acceptance by reproducing his victory through personal strength.

Acceptance is received through the Son.

The struggle continues, but it is no longer the means by which our standing with God is created.

Where the Two Meet: The Cross Changes the Ground of the Struggle

Chambers takes us to the cross.

Spurgeon places us in continuing conflict.

The two belong together.

The cross does not merely provide an example of greater determination against evil. It brings the self-originated life—the life that attempts to preserve, justify, and direct itself—to its end.

That changes how temptation is faced.

Self-direction asks:

“Can I overcome this well enough to remain acceptable?”

Sonship begins from another place:

“My acceptance rests in what God has accomplished through the Son.”

From there, the believer can face what remains without making either temptation or personal victory the center of the life.

The struggle is real.

But it is faced from communion rather than toward communion.

Pastoral Orientation

September 23rd invites us to see the cross not only as the place where Jesus died, but as the decisive revelation of a life wholly yielded to the Father.

We cannot follow that filial life while continuing to protect independence as though it were something God intends to preserve.

Yet neither must we turn the Christian life into an anxious struggle to make ourselves acceptable.

The Holy Spirit operates upon the human spirit, keeping before us what God has accomplished through the Son and forming the responsiveness of sonship. From that ground, temptation can be faced without returning to self as the source of victory.

Jerusalem tells us where independent life ends.

Acceptance tells us where the new life begins.

We do not overcome in order to persuade God to receive us.

We respond because the way to the Father has already been opened through the Son.

And as the cross brings self-preservation to its end, fellowship with Jesus takes on the character his own life revealed: a life received from the Father, remaining responsive through conflict, and finding its confidence not in itself, but in what God has already accomplished through the Son.