The end of self

2 Cor. 2:16 To the one we are the savour of death unto death; and to the other the savour of life unto life. And who is sufficient for these things?

2 Cor. 3:5 Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think any thing as of ourselves: but our sufficiency is of God.

When once our souls (knowing and experiencing ourselves by our own self-consciousness) has been brought to know and experience its condition before God—the depth of its ruin, guilt and misery—its complete and hopeless bankruptcy, there can be no rest until the Holy Spirit reveals a full and an all-sufficient Christ to the mind and emotions. (Jn. 14:16-17 = 16:13-14). The ONLY possible answer to our total ruin is God’s perfect and complete remedy.

This is a very simple, but a most important truth (Jn.1:14;8:32;14:6;17:17), and with all possible assurance, the more deeply and thoroughly is it that the individual learns it for, and must learn it for themselves, the better it is and will be. (See the epistle of Hebrews).

The true secret of peace, is to get to the very end of a guilty, ruined, helpless self, and there find an all-sufficient Christ as God’s only provision for our very deepest need. This truly is rest—a rest which can never be disturbed—because it is where God Himself is resting. (Gen. 2:1-2; Zeph. 3:17; Heb. 4:1-10; Eph. 2:14).

There may be sorrow, pressure, conflict, exercise, heaviness through multiple temptations, ups and downs (Ps.139:7-17), all sorts of trials and difficulties (all these things are necessary for growth in intimacy with Christ. Jn. 3.30; Rom. 8:31-39)

When we, in our souls, our very self-consciousness, are brought (and brought we must be, Jn. 3:30=21:18) by God the Holy Spirit to see the end of self, and to rest in a full Christ fully (Jn. 1:14), we find a peace, which God’s love has established through Christ, which can never be disturbed or distracted. Heb. 12:2 (AMP)