Our Unclaimed Riches by A.W. Tozer

From "That Incredible Christian"

Those spiritual blessings in heavenly places which are ours in Christ may be divided into three classes:

The first is those which come to us immediately upon our believing unto salvation, such as forgiveness, justification, regeneration, sonship to God and baptism into the Body of Christ. In Christ we possess these even before we know that they are ours, such knowledge coming to us later through the study of the Holy Scriptures.

The second class is those riches which are ours by inheritance but which we cannot enjoy in actuality until our Lord returns. These include ultimate mental and moral perfection, the glorification of our bodies, the completion of the restoration of the divine image in our redeemed personalities and the admission into the very presence of God to experience the forever Beatific Vision. These treasures are as surely ours as if we possessed them now, but it would be useless for us to pray for them while we journey here below. God has made it very clear that they are reserved for the time of the manifestation of the sons of God (Rom. 8:18-25).

The third class of blessings consists of spiritual treasures which are ours by blood atonement but which will not come to us unless we make a determined effort to possess them. These are deliverance from the sins of the flesh, victory over self, the constant flow of the Holy Spirit through our personalities, fruitfulness in Christian service, awareness of the Presence of God, growth in grace, an increasing consciousness of union with God and an unbroken spirit of worship. These do not come to us automatically nor must we wait to claim them at the day of Christ’s coming. They are to us what the Promised Land was to Israel, to be entered into as our faith and courage mount.

To make things clearer let me set forth four propositions touching this heritage of joy which God has set before us:

1. You will get nothing unless you go after it.

God will not force anything on you. As Joshua fought his way into possession of the Promised Land you also must fight on toward perfection, meeting and defeating whatever enemies would stand in the way to challenge your right of possession. The land will not come to you; you must go to the land and on up into it by the way of self-renunciation and detachment from the world. “Those who travel on this road,” says John of the Cross, “will meet many occasions of joys and sufferings, hopes and sorrows, some of which are the result of the spirit of perfection, others of imperfection.”

2. You may have as much as you insist upon having.

“Every place that the sole of your foot shall tread upon, that have I given unto you,” said God to Joshua, and this principle runs throughout the entire Bible. The history of Israel is dotted with stories of those who pressed boldly on to claim their possessions; such, for instance, as Caleb who, after the conquest of Canaan, went to Joshua, demanded the mountain Moses had promised him, and got it. Again when the daughters of Zelophedad stood before Moses and pleaded, “Give unto us . . . a possession among the brethren of our father,” their request was granted. Those women received their inheritance, not by the indulgence of Moses but by the command of God whose promise was involved. When our requests are such as honor God we may ask as largely as we will. The more daring the request the more glory accrues to God when the answer comes.

3. You will have as little as you are satisfied with.

God giveth to all men liberally, but it would be absurd to think that God’s liberality will make a man more godly than he wants to be. The man, for instance who is satisfied to live a defeated life will never be forced to take victory. The man who is content to follow Christ afar off will never know the radiant wonder of His nearness. The man who is willing to settle for a joyless, barren life will never experience the joy of the Holy Spirit or the deep satisfaction of fruitful living.

It is disheartening to those who care and surely a great grief to the Spirit, to see how many Christians are content to settle for less than the best. Personally for years I have carried a burden of sorrow as I have moved among Evangelical Christians who somewhere in their past have managed to strike a base compromise with their heart’s holier longings and have settled down to a lukewarm, mediocre kind of Christianity utterly unworthy of themselves and of the Lord they claim to serve. And such are found everywhere.

4. You now have as much as you really want.

Every man is as close to God as he wants to be; he is as holy and as full of the Spirit as he wills to be. Our Lord said, “Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.” If there were but one man anywhere on earth who hungered and was not filled the word of Christ would fall to the ground.

Yet we must distinguish wanting from wishing. By “want” I mean wholehearted desire. Certainly there are many who wish they were holy or victorious or joyful but are not willing to meet God’s conditions to obtain.

That God has placed before His redeemed children a vast world of spiritual treasures and that they refuse or neglect to claim it may easily turn out to be the second greatest tragedy in the history of the moral creation, the first and greatest being the fall of man.