Holy of Holies

Some more from A.W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God:

“We sense that the call is for us, but still we fail to draw near, and the years pass and we grow old and tired in the outer courts of the tabernacle. What hinders us? (...) What but the presence of a veil in our hearts?- a veil not taken away as the first veil was, but which remains there still shutting out the light and hiding the face of God from us. It is the veil of our fleshly, fallen nature living on, unjudged within us, uncrucified and unrepudiated. (...) It is woven of the fine threads of the self-life (...). They are not something we do, but something we are (...). Self can live unrebuked at the very altar. It can watch the bleeding victim die and not be in the least affected by what it sees. (...) There must be a work of God in destruction before we are free. (...) We must prepare ourselves for an ordeal of suffering in some measure like that through which our Saviour passed when He suffered under Pontius Pilate (…). In human experience that veil is made of living spiritual tissue, it is composed of the sentient, quivering stuff of which our whole beings consist, and to touch it is to touch us where we feel pain. To tear it away is to injure us, to hurt us and to make us bleed. To say otherwise is to make the cross no cross and death no death at all. It is never fun to die (…).

Let us beware of tinkering with our inner life, hoping ourselves to rend the veil. God must do everything for us. Our part is to yield and trust. We must confess, forsake, repudiate the self-life, then reckon it crucified. But we must be careful to distinguish lazy 'acceptance' from the real work of God. We must insist upon the work of God being done. We dare not rest content with a neat doctrine of self-crucifixion. That is to imitate Saul and spare the nest of the sheep and oxen. Insist that the work be done in very truth and it will be done. The cross is rough and deadly, but it is effective. It does not keep its victim hanging there forever. There comes a moment when its work is finished and the suffering victim dies. After that is resurrection glory and power, and the pain is forgotten for joy that the veil is taken away and we have entered in actual spiritual experience the presence of the living God.”