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THE OBSTINATE TOY SOLDIERS

The Son of God became a man to enable men to become sons of God We do not know - anyway, I do not kno things would have worked if the huainst God and joined the enemy Perhaps every man would have been &039;in Christ,&039; would have shared the life of the Son of God, from the moment he was born Perhaps the Bios or natural life would have been drawn up into the Zoe, the uncreated life, at once and as a uesswork You and I are concerned with the way things work now

And the present state of things is this The two kinds of life are now not only different (they would always have been that) but actually opposed The natural life in each of us is so that wants to be petted and ade of other lives, to exploit the whole universe And especially it wants to be left to itself: to keep well away fro that ht and air of the spiritual world, just as people who have been brought up to be dirty are afraid of a bath And in a sense it is quite right It knows that if the spiritual life gets hold of it, all its self-centredness and self-will are going to be killed and it is ready to fight tooth and nail to avoid that

Did you ever think, when you were a child, what fun it would be if your toys could coht the a tin soldier into a real littlethe tin into flesh And suppose the tin soldier did not like it He is not interested in flesh; all he sees is that the tin is being spoilt He thinks you are killing hi he can to prevent you He will not be made into a man if he can help it

What you would have done about that tin soldier I do not know But what God did about us was this The Second Person in God, the Son, became human Himself was born into the world as an actual ht, with hair of a particular colour, speaking a particular language, weighing soand who created the whole universe, became not only a man but (before that) a baby, and before that a foetus inside a Wo of it, think how you would like to beco or a crab

The result of this was that you now had one man who really hat all men were intended to be: one man in whom the created life, derived from His Mother, allowed itself to be cootten life The natural human creature in Him was taken up fully into the divine Son Thus in one instance humanity had, so to speak, arrived: had passed into the life of Christ And because the whole difficulty for us is that the natural life has to be, in a sense, &039;killed,&039; He chose an earthly career which involved the killing of His hu from His own fa jeered at and manhandled by the Police, and execution by torture And then, after being thus killed-killed every day in a sense - the human creature in Hiain The Man in Christ rose again: not only the God That is the whole point For the first timea real man One tin soldier - real tin, just like the rest - had come fully and splendidly alive

And here, of course, we come to the point where my illustration about the tin soldier breaks down In the case of real toy soldiers or statues, if one came to life, it would obviously make no difference to the rest They are all separate But hus are not They look separate because you see the about separately But then, we are so made that we can see only the present moment If we could see the past, then of course it would look different For there was a time when every man was part of his mother, and (earlier still) part of his father as well: and when they were part of his grandparents If you could see humanity spread out in time, as God sees it, it would not look like a lot of separate things dotted about It would look like one single growing thing - rather like a very complicated tree Every individual would appear connected with every other And not only that Individuals are not really separate from God any more than from one another Everyand breathing at this oing&039;

Consequently, when Christ becomes man it is not really as if you could beco which is always affecting the whole huins, at one point, to affect the whole human h all mankind It makes a difference to people who lived before Christ as well as to people who lived after Him It makes a difference to people who have never heard of Hilass of water one drop of soives a new taste or a new colour to the whole lot But, of course, none of these illustrations really works perfectly In the long run God is no one but Hi else You could hardly expect it to be

What, then, is the difference which He has made to the whole hu a son of God, of being turned fro over froical life into timeless &039;spiritual&039; life, has been done for us Humanity is already &039;saved&039; in principle We individuals have to appropriate that salvation But the really tough work-the bit we could not have done for ourselves -has been done for us We have not got to try to climb up into spiritual life by our own efforts: -it has already come down into the human race If ill only lay ourselves open to the one Man in who God, is also a real man, He will do it in us and for us Reood infection&039; One of our own race has this new life if we get close to Him we shall catch it from Him

Of course, you can express this in all sorts of different ways You can say that Christ died for our sins You iven us because Christ has done for us e ought to have done You may say that we are washed in the blood of the Lamb You may say that Christ has defeated death They are all true If any of theet on with the for with other people because they use a different formula from yours