The Loosing

The apostle gives a command about the direction of the heart. Set your affection on things above, he says, not on things on the earth. The word he uses means to fix the mind, to set the whole bent of the inner man, to lean the affections in one direction. And the two directions are opposite, upward toward the things above, or downward toward the things on the earth. The heart leans one way or the other, and the whole tenor of a life follows the lean. This is a command to loose the heart from the earth and fix it above.

He had just said, if ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. The reasoning is that we have been raised with Christ into a new order of life, and our hearts should therefore be set where our life now is, above, with him. The affections are to be lifted from the earth we are passing through to the heaven we belong to. And this lifting is not automatic; it is commanded, which means it must be done, deliberately, against the downward pull of a heart that clings to the earth by nature.

THE GRASPING HEART

For the heart by nature grasps. Its fingers close around earthly things, possessions and comforts and reputation and the people we love, and the grasping enslaves us, for we are held by what we hold. The Lord told of a rich man whose ground brought forth plentifully, and who said to his soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years, take thine ease, and God said, Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee. His heart was so closed around his barns that he had no room for God or eternity, and he lost both his goods and his soul in a night. The grasping heart is a captive heart, chained to the very things it clutches.

This is why the loosing is a mercy and not a deprivation. To set the affection above is to have the fingers pried gently open, to be freed from the tyranny of the things we clutch. For where your treasure is, the Lord said, there will your heart be also, and a heart whose treasure is on earth is an earthbound heart, anxious for what it holds, grieved at its loss, unable to rise. Loose the grip, set the treasure above, and the heart is freed to rise after it, no longer weighed down by a clutching it mistook for love.

NOT COLDNESS, BUT RIGHT ORDER

We must be careful here, for detachment can be misunderstood as coldness, a numbing of the heart to all earthly loves, a Stoic indifference that feels nothing and loves nothing. But this is not the loosing the apostle commands. He does not tell us to love less, but to love rightly, to set the supreme affection where it belongs, on God and the things above, and then to love all earthly things in their proper place, under God and for his sake. Love not the world, the Scripture says, yet God so loved the world that he gave his Son. The difference is order. The detached heart is not the heart that has stopped loving, but the heart that loves God first and everything else in him, so that no earthly love has become an idol.

For the trouble was never that we loved earthly things, but that we loved them too much and in the wrong order, giving to the creature the supreme place that belongs to the Creator. The loosing does not empty the heart of love; it re-orders it, lifting God to his rightful throne and setting all else beneath him. And when God is loved supremely, the earthly loves are not lost but purified, held now as gifts from his hand rather than as idols in his place, loved more truly because loved in their right order.

DEAD, AND RISEN

And the deep ground of this whole loosing is that we have died. Ye are dead, the apostle says, and your life is hid with Christ in God. We have died with Christ to the old order, and the things of earth have lost their claim on a dead man. A corpse does not clutch its possessions; it is loosed from them all. And we are not only dead but risen, risen with Christ into a new life whose treasure and whose home are above. So the loosing of the heart from earth flows from our death and resurrection with Christ, and is not a strain we must produce by willpower but a reality we grow into, the living out of a death and a rising that have already happened.

This is why the apostle could hold everything so loosely, counting all things loss, for his life was hid with Christ in God, safe where no earthly loss could reach it. Our conversation, he says, our very citizenship, is in heaven, and a citizen of heaven passing through the earth holds its goods as a traveler holds the furnishings of an inn, using them gratefully, clutching none of them, ready to leave them all behind when the summons home comes. The one whose true wealth is above can afford to hold the earthly with an open hand.

HOLDING LOOSELY

So the practical shape of this loosing is to hold earthly things loosely, as a steward and not an owner. They that weep, the apostle says, should be as though they wept not, and they that buy as though they possessed not, for the fashion of this world passeth away. Not that we do not weep or buy or use the world, but that we do it as those who possess nothing finally, who hold all as a trust, ready to render it up. The open hand, not the clenched fist, is the posture of the loosed heart, and the open hand can both receive God’s gifts and let them go when he takes them.

Job is our teacher here, who in a single day lost his wealth and his children, and fell down and worshipped, and said, the LORD gave, and the LORD hath taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD. He had held it all with an open hand. He knew he had never truly owned any of it, only received it, and so when it was taken he could bless the God who gave and took, his heart already set above, not on the things on the earth that were slipping through his fingers. That is the freedom of the loosed heart, to bless God in the losing because its treasure was never in the thing lost.

THE WEANED SOUL

There is a picture in the psalms of what the loosed heart becomes, and it is the tenderest of images. Surely I have behaved and quieted myself, the psalmist says, as a child that is weaned of his mother; my soul is even as a weaned child. Think of the difference between the unweaned child, who frets and cries for the breast, who cannot be near the mother without clamoring to be fed, and the weaned child, who can rest quietly in her arms content simply to be with her, no longer craving what it once could not do without. The loosed soul is the weaned soul, no longer fretting for the earthly comforts it once could not be quieted without, content now to rest in God alone.

The weaning is not pleasant while it is happening, for the child does not understand why the comfort it craves is withheld, and it cries. So the loosing of our hearts from the earthly things we cling to is often painful, a real weaning, and we cry against it, not understanding why God withholds or removes the comfort. But the end of the weaning is a deeper peace, a soul that has learned to be quiet in God without the thing it once thought it could not live without, resting in the mother’s arms content, no longer ruled by the craving. The weaned soul has found a rest the unweaned never knew.

This is the secret the apostle had learned, and he called it exactly that, a thing learned, not a thing native to him. I have learned, he said, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content. He had been weaned, taught by abundance and by want alike to rest not in his circumstances but in Christ, so that he could be full or hungry, rich or poor, and be content in either, because his soul no longer fed on the changing circumstance but on the unchanging Lord. That is the freedom the loosing brings, a contentment that no gain can inflate and no loss can empty, because it rests on God and not on what he gives or takes.

So do not resent the weaning when God withholds or removes some comfort you have craved. He is not depriving you but freeing you, teaching your soul to be quiet in him alone, making of you a weaned child that can rest in his arms content. And do not mistake the fretting for love. The unweaned craving is not love for the mother but hunger for the milk; the weaned child’s quiet is the truer love, wanting the mother herself and not only what she gives. So let your soul be weaned, until it rests in God for himself, content in whatsoever state, its treasure and its peace above.

So examine what your heart is grasping, the possession or comfort or reputation or even the person your fingers are closed around, and loose the grip. Set your affection above, on Christ and the things where your true life is hid. Do not love the earthly things less than you should, but love God more, and let the right order free you from the tyranny of the things you clutch. Hold all with an open hand, as a steward and a pilgrim, ready to bless God in the giving and in the taking. For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth.