1230 我们所拥有的每一种美德
歌唱的，跳舞的，都要说，我的泉源都在你里面。《诗篇87:7》
我们的主从不「修补」我们天然的美德，即我们天生特质、品质或性格。祂完全从内心塑造一个人——「穿上新人…」（以弗所书 4:24）。换句话说，要确保你的天然生命穿上了与新生命相配的一切。神放在我们里面的生命，会发展它自己的新美德，不是亚当后裔的美德，而是耶稣基督的美德。一旦神开始在你生命中开始了成圣的过程，要观察并明白神如何使你对自己天然美德和力量的信心枯萎。祂会继续这样做，直到你学会从耶稣复活生命的水库中汲取生命。如果你正在这枯竭的经历中，要感谢神！
神在我们身上作工的标志，是祂正在摧毁我们对天然美德的信心，因为它们不是我们所将是的应许，而只是神造人所是的一个无用的提醒。我们想要依赖我们的天然美德，而神却一直试图让我们与耶稣基督的生命相接触，那是一种永远无法用天然美德来描述的生命。最可悲的，是看到人们试图服事神，而倚靠的，却是神从未赐给他们的恩典；他们仅仅依赖遗传所拥有的在服事神。神不会拿走我们的天然美德并转变它们，因为我们天然美德永远无法达到耶稣基督所要的标准；没有天然的爱、天然的耐心、天然的纯洁能达到祂的要求。但是，当我们将我们天然身体生命的每一部分，与神赋予我们内在的新生命相符时，祂会在我们身上彰显出主耶稣基督特有的美德。
我们所拥有的每一种美德，都是祂独有的。
来自章伯斯的智慧
亚伯拉罕的一生是两件事的例证：毫无保留地降服于神，以及神为了祂自己至高目的而完全拥有祂的孩子。《不知往何处去》
1230 “And Every Virtue We Possess”
…All my springs are in you. —Psalm 87:7
Our Lord never “patches up” our natural virtues, that is, our natural traits, qualities, or characteristics. He completely remakes a person on the inside— “…put on the new man…” (Ephesians 4:24). In other words, see that your natural human life is putting on all that is in keeping with the new life. The life God places within us develops its own new virtues, not the virtues of the seed of Adam, but of Jesus Christ. Once God has begun the process of sanctification in your life, watch and see how God causes your confidence in your own natural virtues and power to wither away. He will continue until you learn to draw your life from the reservoir of the resurrection life of Jesus. Thank God if you are going through this drying-up experience!
The sign that God is at work in us is that He is destroying our confidence in the natural virtues, because they are not promises of what we are going to be, but only a wasted reminder of what God created man to be. We want to cling to our natural virtues, while all the time God is trying to get us in contact with the life of Jesus Christ— a life that can never be described in terms of natural virtues. It is the saddest thing to see people who are trying to serve God depending on that which the grace of God never gave them. They are depending solely on what they have by virtue of heredity. God does not take our natural virtues and transform them, because our natural virtues could never even come close to what Jesus Christ wants. No natural love, no natural patience, no natural purity can ever come up to His demands. But as we bring every part of our natural bodily life into harmony with the new life God has placed within us, He will exhibit in us the virtues that were characteristic of the Lord Jesus.
And every virtue we possess Is His alone.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
The life of Abraham is an illustration of two things: of unreserved surrender to God, and of God’s complete possession of a child of His for His own highest end. Not Knowing Whither, 901 R