Ministries
Resources
Job 10:9-12:
9Remember, I beseech thee, that thou hast made me as the clay; and wilt thou bring me into dust again?
10Hast thou not poured me out as milk, and curdled me like cheese?
11Thou hast clothed me with skin and flesh, and hast fenced me with bones and sinews.
12Thou hast granted me life and favour, and thy visitation hath preserved my spirit.
Your spirit within you is that by which you live. It is likewise your breath of life and your spiritual inner self. Your spirit is what you are, above and aside from your body. It is that which was breathed into your "unformed substance" to make you man, as man to make you live and to make you a person among the children of men.
To give up the ghost is ordinarily nothing else than to die, to breathe out the breath of life. When, on the other hand, the Apostle says that "no man knoweth the things of a man save the spirit of man which is in him" (1 Corinthians 2:11), the word "spirit" means our conscious self, our spiritual existence as man, our inner personality.
Although this seems to be something entirely different, in Holy Writ the breath of life, which we breathe out in dying, can never be separated from our spiritual existence. Our life and our person within us are expressed by the word spirit, and both together are called our soul.
When the Psalmist cried: "O Lord, deliver my soul," or when he sang: "Thou, Lord, hast delivered my soul from death," it refers, in Psalm 116:8, to the saving of life, to deliverance from danger, and not to spiritual redemption.
But our inner spiritual existence is equally well called our soul. As in the forty-second Psalm the cry comes up out of the depths: "As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God. My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God," in verse 4: "I remember these things and pour out my soul in me;" and again: "Why art thou cast down, O my soul, and why art thou disquieted within me."
The Scripture makes no distinction between our life and our spirit. In God's Word our physical and our spiritual existence are one. In paradise God forms man from the dust of the earth. But the material form is not yet man. Man only comes into existence when God breathes life into it. But when life enters in, then it is a human life. And there is no human life save as utterance of a soul's life. Neither is there any soul's life apart from a self, a person, a spiritual being that is hidden in our heart.
Any one that is human can sully this spiritual existence within himself, he can sin it away, he can corrupt it. But he cannot shake it off, neither can he lay it aside. Death does not annihilate it. It abides, it continues to exist, even with the lost in the place of perdition.
Man's spirit is his real self. Everything else about him is but the dwelling-house, the tabernacle, as the Apostle calls it. But the real, the actual man, is the spirit that dwells in this tabernacle.
This spirit within you is yourself, your person. This includes your disposition, your nature, your consciousness, your will, powers, gifts and talents. In brief, all this together which forms your inner existence constitutes an individual being, bears its own stamp, expressing itself in its own character.
In Scripture it is always the same antithesis.
In paradise it is the form fashioned from the dust, and the spirit which God breathes into it. In Psalm 139 it is the "unformed substance" which is wrought as an embroidery, and to this, the self that was made in secret is added. The same occurs in Job (10:9-12): "Thou hast made me as the clay. Thou hast poured me out as milk, and curdled me like cheese. Thou hast clothed me with skin and flesh, and hast fenced (crocheted) me with bones and sinews." But aside from all this: "Thou hast granted me life," i.e., my spirit.
What is before our eyes, what is visible, what is tangible comes first. And afterward there enters into this what is invisible, what exists in the secrecy of your heart, and that is your spirit.
And God does not leave this spirit that is within you to itself. No, this spirit remains in His hand. It continues under His care. He watches over it. More yet. Over this spirit that is within you, God holds supervision. And of this supervision of God Job testifies: "Thy oversight, O my God, hath preserved my spirit" (10:12, Dutch Version. See Margin reading. R.V.).
At first man knows nothing about this supervision which God has over the spirit. Even as the little child that slumbers in the cradle knows nothing of the oversight which the eye of the mother keeps, or as the sick man in his sleep perceives nothing of the person who watches at his bedside.
Of this supervision of God over your spirit you only begin to notice something in later years, when the eye of your soul has been opened to the leadings, the care and the faithfulness of God.
But even then this is of slow progress.
It is provisionally a discovery of God's oversight, of the care of your Father Who is in heaven, in behalf of your outward existence. And even this occurs only in special cases of deliverance in times of special need. We are then under an impression that the course of our ordinary life runs of itself, and that only at particular times the Lord our God looks after and cares for us. It is for this reason that thanksgiving and prayer for years together assume a more fervid character only in moments of special danger or anxiety. And the years must be far advanced before this restful, blessed feeling of assurance takes hold of us, that every day and every night, in ordinary and in extraordinary circumstances we are continuously watched over, cared for and looked after by our God.
But then alongside of this there gradually dawns on us an entirely different consciousness: even the growing conviction that likewise our inward, our hidden soul's existence is in God's hand, that He likewise notices this, that therein also His continuous care is at work, and that He constantly practises an oversight over our spiritual nature within us.
The discovery of this is first made in the conscience.
He who has oversight not merely makes provision for things, but he also looks after them. He examines things, he classifies them, exercises authority and power over them and bestows praise or administers reproof. And it is this side of God's supervision over us with which we first became acquainted. In most instances it happens for the first time after a wrong has been committed, by as much as we feel the judgment of the omniscient, holy God enter painfully into our inner being.
Then we feel that God the Lord has an oversight over us which extends to the smallest deeds for which we incur responsibility. That He has the superintendence and supervision over our entire inner person, in everything.
Over what we do, over what we leave undone, over our inclinations, over our desires and wishes, over our thoughts and words, yea, even over the ebullitions of our imagination.
And when it has come to this, we are certain of two things:
First, that God's supervision extends over our lot in life, over our prosperity and adversity, over everything that happens to us, and that one line is drawn through the whole of our life which binds our present to our past and merges this present into the future. We then know that we are creatures of God, that He owns us, that we are His property. That He disposes of us and not we of ourselves. That the whole plan of our life has been determined by God for us, and that the course of our life shall run according to this plan.
In the second place, we then observe that in our inner life we are not lord and master ourselves, but that this selfsame God keeps His holy eye unceasingly upon our moral existence as man, and judges us at the bar of our own conscience as often as we go contrary to His holy will.
And from these two there arises gradually the still higher appreciation that God's oversight over our spirit bears not only an admonishing and a judicial character, but that it also possesses that selfsame character of faithful care which we have learned to adore in our lot in life.
We then perceive that God not only has his eye upon our inner being in order to estimate its worth, but also that He is continually busy in this inner substance of our soul, that He constantly cultivates it and ceaselessly devotes His care to it.
The Apostle describes this in the metaphor of a husbandman who cares for the crop that germinates in the field which he has cultivated and sown.
So is our soul a garden of the Lord, in which His planting germinates and blooms, which He waters with his dew, which He weeds and shields and in which He causes fruit to ripen.
We also cultivate our soul ourselves. And good and evil influences affect us equally from the world of men and spirits.
But the constant activity of God in our soul bears a far more serious character. Even though we do not notice it, God has at all times free access to our hearts. Even in our sleep He comes to us in order to cultivate our inner existence. He prepares in us the powers which we presently shall need. He disposes and directs in us the powers which must be applied to a given end. What only after ten or more years shall come to be expressed by you, He is even now already busily preparing in you. Nothing in your inner soul's existence escapes Him. Your sensations, your inclinations, your rising feelings, everything stands under His holy oversight. He feeds in you what otherwise would languish and die. He bends and turns what otherwise would wrongfully grow up in you. And as a mother cares for her babe in outward things, so your faithful Father provides against every difficulty, against every need of your soul.
This is a work of God which began in His counsel, which was reckoned with in your ancestors, which, from the cradle on, has been accomplished in you, which has never ceased all the days and all the nights of your life. A work of God on your soul which goes on when you are alone and when you mingle in the crowds, which does not desist while you are at work, and which is directed with a firm hand to what God has intended by Himself to make of you now and eternally.
Your own plan with respect to your development and formation of character does not extend for the most part farther than this brief life. But God's oversight over your spirit stretches itself out into the everlasting ages of eternity. And here preparation is made in you by the painstaking care of God of what shall only unfold itself on the other side of the grave.
This oversight of your God is simultaneously a fostering care and an educational training. It is the labor of the supreme artist, who is busy in preparing for himself from the life of your soul an ornament for his Father-house above.
And this work of God on and in your soul, this oversight of God over your spirit, you can oppose, and thereby you can grieve the Holy Spirit. But you also, as co-worker with God, can do your part. And the latter is the aim of the holy impulse of childship, which is ever seeking strength in the humble prayer of Psalm 138: "Forsake not what thy hand began, O, Source of Life, Grant thy assistance."
* * * * * * *This devotional classic offers 110 meditations on a single thought from Psalm 73: "As for me, it is good to be near to God." The author states, "The fellowship of being near unto God must become reality ... it must permeate and give color to our feeling, our perceptions, our sensations, our thinking, our imagining, our willing, our acting, our speaking. It must not stand as a foreign factor in our life, but it must be the passion that breathes throughout our whole existence."
The meditations reflect the blending of spiritual vigor with doctrinal loyalty so consistently expressed in the life of Abraham Kuyper. These are devotions with true substance, avoiding the extremes about which Kuyper adds a word of caution: "Stress in creedal confession, without drinking from the Living Fountain, runs dry in barren orthodoxy, just as truly as spiritual emotion, without clearness in confessional standards, makes one sink in the bog of sickly mysticism."
Abraham Kuyper (1837-1920) was a Dutch political leader and Calvinist theologian. Elected to parliament in 1874, he became Prime Minister in 1901 and served in that capacity until 1905. As a theologian, he revived a systematic, orthodox Calvinism. He founded the Free Reformed Church and the Free University of Amsterdam. His other works include Principles of Sacred Theology, Lectures on Calvinism, and The Work of the Holy Spirit
Further information about Abraham Kuyper's life can be seen in the translator's "Biographical Note"; further information about To Be Near Unto God can be Abraham Kuyper's "Preface" to that book.
© 2024 The Orthodox Presbyterian Church
