Session 8 - Counting The Cost. (10)

Mere Christianity Chapter 9: Counting the Cost

That is why He warned people to ‘count the cost’ before becoming Christians. ‘Make no mistake,’ He says, ‘if you let me, I will make you perfect. The moment you put yourself in My hands, that is what you are in for. Nothing less, or other, than that.

Mere Christianity Chapter 9: Counting the Cost

The process will be long and in parts very painful, but that is what we are in for. Nothing less. He meant what He said.

Luke 14:27-28

English Standard Version Chapter 14

27 qWhoever does not rbear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.

28 For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not sfirst sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it?

Mere Christianity Chapter 9: Counting the Cost

The job will not be completed in this life; but He means to get us as far as possible before death.

The Kilns, Oxford England.

Eric Metaxas - Author

Regarding Death Lewis, shortly before his death, asked “Can you not see death as the great friend and deliver?” What is there to be afraid of? There are greater things ahead than anything we leave behind.

Nov. 22, 1963 C.S. Lewis passed away.

Christ’s command “Be Ye Perfect”.

He, Christ, meant it. Those who put themselves in Christ’s hands will be perfect as He is Perfect in Love, Reason, Joy, … and Mortality.

Change takes time and death is part of it. How far one gets on earth is uncertain.

He is going to make us into creatures that can obey that command.

Lewis, C. S. (2001). Mere Christianity (p. 205). New York: HarperOne.

Devon Brown - Lilly Scholar & Professor of English, Asbury University.

Lewis believed Christ would help us be perfect as He was Perfect. Nothing less, whether we wanted “all of it, or not”. God wants us “fixed”. Not part of us but all of us. The “full treatment”.

We have Free Will to turn from Christ but if we stay He will “see the job through”.

Mere Christianity (Chapter 9: Counting the Cost)

‘Make no mistake,’ He says, ‘if you let me, I will make you perfect. The moment you put yourself in My hands, that is what you are in for. Nothing less, or other, than that.

Mere Christianity (Chapter 9: Counting the Cost)

I think He meant ‘The only help I will give is help to become perfect. You may want something less: but I will give you nothing less.’

Be made Perfect. Be made Fully Holy. Be made like Christ. ----> Greater Happiness/Holiness. (Become “New” - True “Self” will Emerge.)

Holiness and Happiness are connected. Happiness comes out of Holiness.

“Faith without Works” - Faith produces Works.

In Lewis’ opinion, Holiness/Happiness may not be reached in your lifetime.

Christ, if we let Him will get us as far as He can before we die.

Mere Christianity (Chapter 9: Counting the Cost)

The job will not be completed in this life; but He means to get us as far as possible before death.

What happens to us when we die?

“Zap” and we’re Holy (“Perfect”)? Possibly.

But what about earthly progress. Couldn’t it continue after death (Further in - Further up)?

Mere Christianity (Chapter 10: Nice People or New Men)

If conversion to Christianity makes no improvement in a man’s outward actions—if he continues to be just as snobbish or spiteful or envious or ambitious as he was before—then I think we must suspect that his ‘conversion’ was largely imaginary; and after one’s original conversion, every time one thinks one has made an advance, that is the test to apply.

Mere Christianity (Chapter 10: Nice People or New Men)

Fine feelings, new insights, greater interest in ‘religion’ mean nothing unless they make our actual behaviour better; just as in an illness ‘feeling better’ is not much good if the thermometer shows that your temperature is still going up. In that p 208 sense the outer world is quite right to judge Christianity by its results.

Doesn’t “Purification” involve suffering.

Doesn’t it require behaving differently?

How can there be “Purification” in unchanging behavior. There can’t be. It’s imaginary.

Real Purification produces “New” behavior under “New Management”.

God wants us to detach ourselves from ourselves (Abandon the clamor of selfwill.) so that we can become “perfect” thru Christ, in the way God wanted us to be from the beginning.

Once the “clamoring of self-will” disappears God returns our personality! We’ll become more ourselves than ever.

My Utmost for His Highest (December 11th—Individuality)

individuality must go in order that the personal life may come out and be brought into fellowship with God

My Utmost for His Highest (December 11th—Individuality)

break the husk of individuality and let the personal life emerge

What would she be like if she were not a Christian? What would he be like if he were a Christian?

Lord, look at my unbelief.

Give me more Faith. Help me to trust you more.

Mere Christianity (Chapter 10: Nice People or New Men)

Christianity professes to put both temperaments under new management if they will allow it to do so. What you have a right to ask is whether that management, if allowed to take over, improves the concern.

Mere Christianity (Chapter 10: Nice People or New Men)

To judge the management of a factory, you must consider not only the output but the plant.

New Men & Women. (Our “New” Selves.)

Abandon the clamour of self-will.

Become our “best” selves in the service of God.

The Screwtape Letters (Letter 13)

Of course I know that the Enemy (God) also wants to detach men from themselves, but in a different way. Remember always, that He really likes the little vermin, and sets an absurd value on the distinctness of every one of them.

The Screwtape Letters (Letter 13)

When He talks of their (Men) losing their selves, He only means abandoning the clamour of self-will; once they have done that, He really gives them back all their personality, and boasts (I am afraid, sincerely) that when they are wholly His they will be more themselves than ever.

Headinton, England

Holy Trinity Church -

C.S. Lewis is buried to write a new book. Where each chapter is better than the one before. (Last Battle)

Personal Study.

Mere Christianity (Chapter 5: We Have Cause to Be Uneasy)

Of course, I quite agree that the Christian religion is, in the long run, a thing of unspeakable comfort. But it does not begin in comfort; it begins in the dismay I have been describing, and it is no use at all trying to go on to that comfort without first going through that dismay. In religion, as in war and everything else, comfort is the one thing you cannot get by looking for it. If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end: if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth—only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin with and, in the end, despair.

I am before I AM/ Being Perfect? Impossible!

I AM before I am/ Being Perfect? Inevitable!