The Saul In Us All
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The stories of contention between Abel & Cain, Isaac & Ishmael, Jacob & Esau, Rachel & Leah, Joseph & his brethren, David & Saul. . .are all types and shadows of the inward struggle existing within every man. For example: in one sense, Esau represents fallen Adam whom God the Father would love to bless but cannot because he has rejected his birthright by selling it for a plate of stew, just as Adam traded his divine birthright (right of the firstborn who gets the lion’s share of the father’s heritage) for an animal skin. . .yet, in other cases, Esau represents the flesh which lusts against the things of the Spirit and must therefore be repudiated. As we will see, these types can change. . .even within the life of the same person, as with the life of Pharaoh. . .sometimes Pharaoh represents God the Father (as in the story of Joseph) and sometimes he represents the devil who has captured mankind and enslaved him, as did the story of Moses.
When it comes to David and Saul, we begin to see what is going on in the story when the people of Israel tell Samuel that they want a king to rule over them so they can be like all of the nation’s surrounding them. This story is reminiscent of Adam and Eve because although the Israelites were under the direct kingship of God through the prophet and judge Samuel, they desired an earthly king. God conceded to their wishes knowing they must experience the wrong way in order to know the right way. And so, what does God do? He gives them the kind of king that they, in their immaturity, think they want. He gives them a great-looking guy, who stands a head taller than everybody else. A man impressive to the flesh and intimidating to their enemies. Someone they can pin their hopes on, who will take care of all their needs, protect the land, and give them peaceful lives in security and prosperity. Something mankind is still doing even today, thinking that they know how to rule over themselves better than God the Father!
When we come to God and do not yet know who we are - thinking it’s about being good and obeying rules - it is this Saul whom we desire to reign over us. Saul is the “self” that we have always known ourselves to be, that self which is helped and improved by God and made into a fit and proper king! Our Saul is impressive to our friends, and intimidating to our enemy, the devil. Is it not true that we say, “Help me, Lord, be this and that. Make me better. . .give me more love, more patience, more kindness”? We want to stand up and be the one who is a head taller than everyone else! In our immaturity we cannot help but think and pray this way. We do not know that we are praying for the kingship of a false hope. . .a mere wisp of “self” that is a persona the devil has created! Oh yes! our real self is in there somewhere, and yet there is also the anointing of God. . .a God who grants our desires, even those which are wrong sometimes for us in order to bring us to the fullness of Himself by our failure. And that self, like Saul, must fail because that self thinks that it is where the holiness resides. It is a presumptuous self, thinking (wrongly, of course) that itself is the life of God, who alone is in control, i.e., the decider.
Now let’s step back a moment and consider Saul. He is first of all, “goodlier” than any other in Israel. He looks the part, and at first is humbled by the fact he has been chosen of God. And God puts His Spirit upon him and anoints him king. Now, why is this so if God already knew Saul was not going to work out?
This is where this purpose of God in bringing us into the consciousness of our sonship begins to be revealed. Saul is the false image of ourselves that we are born with, an image we know as ourselves all our lives - even into our new birth - and yet, God honors it, anoints it, blesses it, leads it, thus granting our desires in order to finally bring that self to its own self-destruction, as Saul at Gilboa fell on his sword before he was overrun by the Philistines. The first generation out of Egypt into the wilderness is the same. They are given the law, and they all agree to keep the law, which of course they cannot do. They are presumptuous, rebelling against Moses who they think is no better than they. They complain. Every time they are challenged, they revert to their former selves they have always been but are rescued by God anyway. Even after they refuse to go into the Promised Land the first time, afraid of the giants and great walled cities thereby receiving God’s curse on their generation - by which they must all perish in the wilderness and never see the Promise. . .still, God leads them by His Spirit in the form of a cloudy pillar by day and a fiery pillar by night. God honors them, cares for them, leads them by His Spirit, feeds them bread from heaven, gives them Christ in the form of water out of a rock, yet they cannot come to the Promise. They were born in Egypt and are perpetually in consciousness only to the flesh so that they cannot touch the mountain of God.
Saul is this same as this first-generation version of ourselves trapped in a sense of false independence. We, in our wrong consciousness, think it is God who blesses and uses us for our own ministries and purposes. And for a time, God goes along with that. He blesses this false self, loves it, anoints it, even while it presumes upon itself its own deity. Not consciously in the sense that it believes it is God, but in an unconscious sense because its lifelong independence is something it cannot part with - it MUST remain - it MUST be the chooser, the doer, the decider, thereby making itself as God. The false self created by reaching out and taking the fruit cannot change. It can only die. And die it must!
Enter David. David is the type of the new man - Christ in us, who first sprouts as a very small seed within us. At first Saul is delighted with David. David will serve him, will do his bidding, will kill his enemies. He is glad to have such a champion. But things change as Saul begins to see the handwriting on the wall. He senses David is going to replace him as king, and he cannot accept this. It is his own posterity he protects and lifts up, and, forgetting that he is a servant of the Lord God, he begins persecuting David who clearly is God’s man. His favor toward David turns to anger as his visible presumption of taking the things of God to himself causes him to lose the favor of God, which is transferred to David. Even though David comforts him with his songs when he is overtaken by his melancholia, which happens more and more often (this is the beginning of Romans 7 struggle), still he begins to hate David more and more. And so, the struggle begins, with Saul some days loving David and some days hating him and trying to kill him.
When he is confronted with his ill treatment of David and with David’s continuing loyalty to him, even after David has been anointed to be the next king, Saul repents over and over, but he cannot change. He “rededicates” himself, but he still wants to be king. He still wants the people to follow him, to love him, to recognize that HE is their leader and is greater than David. This is a perfect picture of the wrong self that we have been deceived into believing all our lives IS our self. It is gearing up to know and finally accept its own death, but this struggle between Saul and David, between the mind of the flesh and the mind of the Spirit, is what finally brings him to that final self-destruction on Mt. Gilboa. There, Saul finally realizes this version of “self” cannot do what it is supposed to do — defeat the enemies of the Lord! They are finally too much for Saul, and overrun him, so that he becomes the “O wretched man,” and falls on his own sword. He takes the death that must be, “I am crucified with Christ,” so that “it is no longer I, but Christ” can then take the throne!
Looking at it from David’s perspective, this is the true man, the man who we really are in Christ. Christ in us, and us in Christ. As demonstrated by his humble beginnings, David is the man of the Spirit, who we hardly know at first. He is ourselves. . .our unified self in Christ and, because we are still carnal in our minds, he is as if he is separate from us. At first, we delight in him, but like Saul, we become suspicious of him. He is too free. He is dangerous. We are afraid to let him live.
David, unlike Saul, takes nothing to himself or for himself. Though he is continually tempted to reach out and take the kingdom from Saul, he knows he cannot touch Saul, for he is still God’s beloved, still the “anointed of the Lord,” and he cannot reach out and take for himself. Even though he knows that the kingdom is his, still he must receive it as a gift, and not as something he presumptuously takes. He becomes Saul’s secret helper, in that he protects the borders of Israel from marauders, from the Philistines. Little by little the people begin to come to him, though he finds himself hiding in caves and in the desert. Many of his followers urge him to kill Saul and take the kingdom, and though he easily could do this, David continually refuses, knowing that if the kingdom is to be his, and he does know it, it will be given as a promise and a gift of grace, and that he won’t gain it by his own hand.
This is very much likened to Abraham’s story with Ishmael and Isaac. God gave the promise which was to be fulfilled in Sarah, but Abraham and Sarah decided to hurry things up a bit and bring a son by Hagar. Like Saul, God does bless Ishmael and has a plan for him, but he is not the son of Promise - he is the presumption of the flesh. All this is for our understanding of this same point: the first birth, Adam, Cain, Ishmael, Esau, Reuben, the generation born in Egypt, Saul, etc., all point at the man of the flesh who is deceived into thinking he is the ruler and should reign on earth, while the second birth, Christ (second Adam), Abel, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, the generation born in the wilderness, David, etc., all point at the new man, Christ in us as one with us, who as the Stone Cut out without Hands, smashes the image of iron and clay — our false selves in independence, so that that Stone fills the whole earth (Daniel 2:34-35), and we finally recognize Christ in us as All in all, and therefore, as us.
This is the mystery of Christ revealed in simple stories by the Holy Spirit, that we might know that He does the same in us, to accomplish the same, to move us in consciousness from Cain to Abel (Christ Who died) and Seth (Christ Who rose), from Ishmael to Isaac, from Esau to Jacob, from Saul to David, that we might come in our understanding into the fullness of Him who fills all in all, in and through ourselves. All this is the fulfillment of Galatians 2:20, told over and over and over throughout the scriptures, because it is really all there is.
Once Christ is formed in our consciousness, then we stand up as David, as Moses, as Paul, and all the fathers John spoke of as living out of the eternal water of life which we now recognize flows out of us, not by anything we have done, could do, or should do, but by the grace of the One Who favors us, Who is pleased with us, Who sees us as “the beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. . .hear ye Him!”
What joy besets us when we realize that the Bible is a book with only one purpose mind — to reveal Christ - firstly to us, and secondly in us, and then finally, AS us. We, like Christ, can be found at the center of every story and every parable. Once we have seen “Christ in us”, that is, in the very person that we are by the revelation of the Holy Spirit, the context of all scripture changes to that new inwardly view. And, like Paul, it is then that our converted hearts can sing, “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me!”
Ray Prizing once said, “Lucifer didn't fall, he was thrust into the negative realm to become the loyal opposition. He was part of the glory of Christ - the covering cherub - therefore, he will be restored."
This article adapted in part from Fred Pruitt’s: Consciousness of Christ - The Why of Everything
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