(Known in Our Hiding, Kept in the Hour of Death)
There are places into which the natural man retreats because he does not want to be seen, and there is an hour before which all natural strength must finally surrender. Chambers brings us into the hidden places of the present life; Spurgeon brings us to the final boundary of that life. Yet neither place lies beyond the light of God.
The gospel does not announce that we must first climb out of our darkness so that God may receive us. It announces a life given in the Son—a life whose source is not ourselves and whose light cannot finally be overcome by either our hiding or our dying.
The God Who Knows the Gutter
Chambers writes:
“Isn’t it piercing to realize that God not only knows where we live, but also knows the gutters into which we crawl!” (My Utmost for His Highest)
There is something piercing about being known beyond the boundaries of the life we present to others.
God knows where we live—but He also knows where we retreat.
He knows the places into which we crawl when natural sufficiency fails: the hidden fears, the private resentments, the recurring temptations, the wounds we protect, the failures we would rather conceal, and those inward places where self still seeks some refuge apart from Him.
David understood something of this when he wrote:
“Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence?” (Psalm 139:7, KJV)
And again:
“Yea, the darkness hideth not from thee; but the night shineth as the day: the darkness and the light are both alike to thee.” (Psalm 139:12, KJV)
The piercing thing is not merely that God possesses information about us. It is that there is no hidden place in which the self can finally establish an independent existence.
The light exposes the illusion.
We are not our own source.
And therefore the exposure of our insufficiency need not end in despair. What appears to the natural man as humiliation can become the place of reception. When the hiding place of self-sufficiency is uncovered, we are brought again to the life that is given rather than produced.
“For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.” (Colossians 3:3, KJV)
There is a profound difference between hiding from God and having our life hid with Christ in God.
The first is the movement of self trying to preserve itself.
The second is the rest of the son whose life has been received from Another.
Light in the Hour When Natural Life Fails
Spurgeon writes:
“The Lord’s people shall also enjoy light in ‘the hour of death’.” (Morning and Evening)
Death is the final contradiction of natural sufficiency.
Whatever strength we possess, whatever reputation we have constructed, whatever resources we have accumulated, whatever control we imagine ourselves to possess—all eventually arrive at a boundary they cannot cross.
Yet Spurgeon speaks of light there.
Scripture does not locate the believer’s hope in the durability of the natural life. It locates our hope in Christ.
“For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.” (1 Corinthians 15:22, KJV)
The distinction is fundamental.
Adam cannot preserve Adam.
The natural man cannot finally rescue the natural man.
But the life given in Christ is not merely an improved continuation of what came through Adam. Christ is:
“the last Adam…a quickening spirit.” (1 Corinthians 15:45, KJV)
Therefore death does not expose the failure of God’s purpose for those who are in Christ. It exposes, finally and completely, the inability of natural life to be its own source.
The believer’s confidence is elsewhere.
“When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory.” (Colossians 3:4, KJV)
Christ is not merely the One who helps our life.
Christ is our life.
And because the source of that life is beyond the grave, the grave cannot become its final boundary.
Where the Two Meet: Nothing Hidden, Nothing Lost
Chambers takes us downward—into the gutters into which we crawl.
Spurgeon takes us forward—to the hour of death.
And Scripture reveals Christ sufficient in both.
The connection is deeper than simply saying that God is with us in difficult circumstances. Both readings confront the same fundamental question:
Where is our life actually found?
If our life is grounded in the sufficiency of the natural self, then exposure becomes terrifying and death becomes catastrophic.
But if our life has been received in the Son, then even the exposure of our insufficiency can serve the Father’s purpose.
Peter writes that we are given:
“exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4, KJV)
Participation precedes instruction.
We do not first manufacture a life worthy of God and then bring it to Him. We receive in Christ and then walk from what has been received.
Thus the light that reaches the gutter and the light that shines in the hour of death are not two different hopes.
They testify to the same reality:
Our life does not originate in us.
The Father has purposed His sons in Christ, and what He exposes in us is not exposed so that natural man might become more successful at sustaining himself. The light calls us away from self-originated life and into the reality of the life given in His Son.
Pastoral Orientation
Perhaps there are places within you that you would rather God not uncover.
Perhaps there are failures you have carried so long that you have begun to identify yourself with them.
Perhaps there are fears concerning age, loss, weakness, or death itself.
The answer is not to become sufficient enough that you no longer need the Son.
The answer is to discover again that you were never intended to be your own source.
God knows where you live.
He knows where you crawl.
And He knows the hour in which your natural strength will finally disappear.
Yet none of these places are dark to Him.
The light reaches the gutter.
The light remains at the grave.
And between those two places stands the whole course of our present life—the place in which we are learning, day by day, to cease drawing from ourselves and to live from the life we have received in Christ.
Do not therefore measure the faithfulness of God by the strength you presently possess.
Do not measure your standing by how successfully you have hidden your weakness.
And do not measure your future by the limits of natural life.
Your life is hid with Christ in God.
When the gutter exposes you, He remains your life.
When weakness overtakes you, He remains your life.
And when at last the natural man can carry you no farther, He remains your life.
For the light by which we now walk is the light in which we shall finally stand.