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THE
Watchman Nee
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION
The author of these studies, Mr. Watchman Nee (Nee
To-sheng) of Foochow, a true bondservant of Jesus Christ, placed a great many
of us in his debt when, on a visit to Europe in 1938 and 1939, he set forth so
lucidly in his ministry to many groups of young workers and others the
foundation principles of the Christian life and walk.
Several of the addresses forming the material
from which this book has been compiled have already been published
independently and have been the means of blessing to many. Others, covering
similar but wider ground, have existed for long in manuscript or note form. It
is with the conviction that their message merits a wider circulation at the
present time that I have undertaken the editing of the available material to
form this larger book.
Being deprived of personal contact or
communication with the author, I have myself to take full responsibility for
the work of editing. This has involved the bringing together of matter from a
number of sources to form a logical sequence within the framework provided by
two of the original series of studies. Due to the wide variety of this
material, including verbatim records of spoken English addresses, private notes
of Bible readings and personal conversations, and a few translations from the
Chinese, liberties, perforce, have had to be taken with the literary
arrangement -- not, of course, with the doctrine -- making the hand of the
editor more evident that I would have wished. But the privilege of close
personal contact with Mr. Nee during 1938, and the help and criticism of others
who enjoyed his ministry or who have worked with him, and who knew him better
than I, have combined, in the few places where interpretation was necessary, to
make faithfulness to his thought the more certain.
Work on this book has been a searching experience.
It goes out now with the prayer that its strong emphasis upon the greatness of
Christ and upon the finality and sufficiency of His work may be used of God to
bring His children to a place of greater spiritual effectiveness and thus of
increasing value to Him.
Angus I. Kinnear
1957
- PREFACE TO THE BRITISH EDITION
- Table of Contents
- Chapter 1: The Blood of Christ
- Chapter 2: The Cross of Christ
- Chapter 3: The Path Of Progress: Knowing
- Chapter 4: The Path of Progress: Reckoning
- Chapter 5: The Divide Of The Cross
- Chapter 6: The Path of Progress: Presenting Ourselves to God
- Chapter 7: The Eternal Purpose
- Chapter 8: The Holy Spirit
- Chapter 9: The Meaning and Value of Romans Seven
- Chapter 10: The Path of Progress: Walking In The Spirit
- Chapter 11: One Body In Christ
- Chapter 12: The Cross and the Soul Life
- Chapter 13: The Path of Progress: Bearing the Cross
- Chapter 14: The Goal of the Gospel
Chapter 1: The Blood of Christ
What is the normal Christian life? We do well at
the outset to ponder this question. The object of these studies is to show that
it is something very different from the life of the average Christian. Indeed a
consideration of the written Word of God -- of the Sermon on the Mount for
example -- should lead us to ask whether such a life has ever in act been lived
upon the earth, save only by the Son of God Himself. But in that last
saving clause lies immediately the answer to our question.
The Apostle Paul gives us his own definition of
the Christian life in Galations 2:20. It is "no longer I, but
Christ". Here he is not stating something special or peculiar -- a high
level of Christianity. He is, we believe, presenting God's normal for a Christian,
which can be summarized in the words: I live no longer, but Christ lives His
life in me.
God makes it quite clear in His Word that He has
only one answer to every human need -- His Son, Jesus Christ. In all His
dealings with us He works by taking us out of the way and substituting
Christ in our place. The Son of God died instead of us for our forgiveness: He
lives instead of us for our deliverance. So we can speak of two substitutions
-- a Substitute on the Cross who secures our forgiveness and a Substitute
within who secures our victory. It will help us greatly, and save us from much
confusion, if we keep constantly before us this fact, that God will answer all
our questions in one way only, namely, by showing us more of His Son.
Our Dual Problem: Sins
and Sin
We shall take now as a starting-point for our
study of the normal Christian life that great exposition of it which we find in
the first eight chapters of the Epistle to the Romans, and we shall approach
our subject from a practical and experimental point of view. It will be helpful
first of all to point out a natural division of this section of Romans into
two, and to note certain striking differences in the subject-matter of its two
parts.
The first eight chapters of Romans form a
self-contained unit. The four-and-a-half chapters from 1:1 to 5:11 form the
first half of this unit and the three-and-a-half chapters from 5:12 to 8:39 the
second half. A careful reading will show us that the subject-matter of the two
halves is not the same. For example, in the argument of the first section we
find the plural word `sins' given prominence. In the second section, however,
this changed, for while the word `sins' hardly occurs once, the singular word
`sin' is used again and again and is the subject mainly dealt with. Why is
this?
It is because in the first section it is a
question of the sins I have committed before God, which are many and can be
enumerated, whereas in the second it is a question of sin as a principle working
in me. No matter how many sins I commit, it is always the one sin principle
that leads to them. I need forgiveness for my sins, but I need also deliverance
from the power of sin. The former touches my conscience, the latter my life. I
may receive forgiveness for all my sins, but because of my sin I have, even
then, no abiding peace of mind.
When God's light first shines into my heart my
one cry is for forgiveness, for I realize I have committed sins before Him; but
when once I have received forgiveness of sins I make a new discovery, namely,
the discovery of sin, and I realize not only that I have committed sins before
God but that there is something wrong within. I discover that I have the nature
of a sinner. There is an inward inclination to sin, a power within that draws
to sin. When that power breaks out I commit sins. I may seek and receive
forgiveness, but then I sin once more. So life goes on in a vicious circle of
sinning and being forgiven and then sinning again. I appreciate the blessed fact
of God's forgiveness, but I want something more than that: I want deliverance.
I need forgiveness for what I have done, but I need also deliverance from what
I am.
God's Dual Remedy: The
Blood and the Cross
Thus in the first eight chapters of Romans two
aspects of salvation are presented to us: firstly, the forgiveness of our sins,
and secondly, our deliverance from sin. But now, in keeping with this fact, we
must notice a further difference.
In the first part of Romans 1 to 8, we twice have
reference to the Blood of the Lord Jesus, in chapter 3:25 and in chapter 5:9.
In the second, a new idea is introduced in chapter 6:6, where we are said to
have been "crucified" with Christ. The argument of the first part
gathers round that aspect of the work of the Lord Jesus which is represented by
`the Blood' shed for our justification through "the remission of
sins". This terminology is however not carried on into the second section,
where the argument centers now in the aspect of His work represented by `the
Cross', that is to say, by our union with Christ in His death, burial and
resurrection. This distinction is a valuable one. We shall see that the Blood
deals with what we have done, whereas the Cross deals with what we are. The
Blood disposes of our sins, while the Cross strikes at the root of our capacity
for sin. The latter aspect will be the subject of our consideration in later
chapters.
The Problem Of Our Sins
We begin, then, with the precious Blood of the
Lord Jesus Christ and its value to us in dealing with our sins and justifying
us in the sight of God. This is set forth for us in the following passages:
"All have sinned" (Romans 3:23).
"God commendeth his own love
toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more
then, being now justified by his blood, shall we be saved from the wrath of God
through him" (Romans 5:8,9).
"Being justified freely by
his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: whom God set forth to
be a propitiation, through faith, by his blood, to shew his righteousness,
because of the passing over of the sins one aforetime, in the forbearance of
God; for the shewing, I say, of his righteousness at this present season: that
he might himself be just, and the justifier of him that hath faith in
Jesus" (Romans 3:24-26).
We shall have reason at a later stage in our
study to look closely at the real nature of the fall and the way of recovery.
At this point we will just remind ourselves that when sin came in it found
expression in an act of disobedience to God (Romans 5:19). Now we must remember
that whenever this occurs the thing that immediately follows is guilt.
Sin enters as disobedience, to create first of
all a separation between God and man whereby man is put away from God. God can
no longer have fellowship with him, for there is something now which hinders,
and it is that which is known throughout Scripture as `sin'. Thus it is first
of all God who says, "They are all under sin" (Romans 3:9). Then,
secondly, that sin in man, which henceforth constitutes a barrier to his
fellowship with God, gives rise in him to a sense of guilt -- of estrangement
from God. Here it is man himself who, with the help of his awakened conscience,
says, "I have sinned" (Luke 15:18). Nor is this all, for sin also
provides Satan with his ground of accusation before God, while our sense of
guilt gives him his ground of accusation in our hearts; so that, thirdly, it is
`the accuser of the brethren' (Rev. 12:10) who now says, `You have sinned'.
To redeem us, therefore, and to bring us back to
the purpose of God, the Lord Jesus had to do something about these three
questions of sin and of guilt and of Satan's charge against us. Our sins had
first to be dealt with, and this was effected by the precious Blood of Christ.
Our guilt has to be dealt with and our guilty conscience set at rest by showing
us the value of that Blood. And finally the attack of the enemy has to be met
and his accusations answered. In the Scriptures the Blood of Christ is shown to
operate effectually in these three ways, Godward, manward and Satanward.
There is thus an absolute need for us to
appropriate these values of the Blood if we are to go on. This is a first
essential. We must have a basic knowledge of the fact of the death of the Lord
Jesus as our Substitute upon the Cross, and a clear apprehension of the
efficacy of His Blood for our sins, for without this we cannot be said to have
started upon our road. Let us look then at these three matters more closely.
The Blood Is Primarily
For God
The Blood is for atonement and has to do first
with our standing before God. We need forgiveness for the sins we have
committed, lest we come under judgment; and they are forgiven, not because God
overlooks what we have done but because He sees the Blood. The Blood is
therefore not primarily for us but for God. If I want to understand the value
of the Blood I must accept God's valuation of it, and if I do not know
something of the value set upon the Blood by God I shall never know what its
value is for me. It is only as the estimate that God puts upon the Blood of
Christ is made known to me by His Holy Spirit that I come into the good of it
myself and find how precious indeed the Blood is to me. But the first aspect of
it is Godward. Throughout the Old and New Testaments the word `blood' is used
in connection with the idea of atonement, I think over a hundred times, and
throughout it is something for God.
In the Old Testament calendar there is one day
that has a great bearing on the matter of our sins and that day is the Day of
Atonement. Nothing explains this question of sins so clearly as the description
of that day. In Leviticus 16 we find that on the Day of Atonement the blood was
taken from the sin offering and brought into the
Earlier even than this there is described in
Exodus 12:13 the shedding of the blood of the passover lamb in
God Is Satisfied
It is God's holiness, God's righteousness, which
demands that a sinless life should be given for man. There is life in the
Blood, and that Blood has to be poured out for me, for my sins. God is the One
who requires it to be so. God is the One who demands that the Blood be
presented, in order to satisfy His own righteousness, and it is He who says: `When
I see the blood', I will pass over you.' The Blood of Christ wholly
satisfies God.
Now I desire to say a word at this point to my
younger brethren in the Lord, for it is here that we often get into
difficulties. As unbelievers we may have been wholly untroubled by our
conscience until the Word of God began to arouse us. Our conscience was dead,
and those with dead consciences are certainly of no use to God. But later, when
we believed, our awakened conscience may have become acutely sensitive, and
this can constitute a real problem to us. The sense of sin and guilt can become
so great, so terrible, as almost to cripple us by causing us to lose sight of
the true effectiveness of the Blood. It seems to us that our sins are so real,
and some particular sin may trouble us so many times, that we come to the point
where to us our sins loom larger than the Blood of Christ.
Now the whole trouble with us is that we are
trying to sense it; we are trying to feel its value and to estimate subjectively
what the Blood is for us. We cannot do it; it does not work that way. The Blood
is first for God to see. We then have to accept God's valuation of it. In doing
so we shall find our valuation. If instead we try to come to a valuation by way
of our feelings we get nothing; we remain in darkness. No, it is a matter of
faith in God's Word. We have to believe that the Blood is precious to God because
He says it is so (1 Peter 1:18,19). If God can accept the Blood as a
payment for our sins and as the price of our redemption, then we can rest
assured that the debt has been paid. If God is satisfied with the Blood, then
the Blood must be acceptable. Our valuation of it is only according to His
valuation -- neither more nor less. It cannot, of course, be more, but it must
not be less. Let us remember that He is holy and He is righteous, and that a
holy and righteous God has the right to say that the Blood is acceptable in His
eyes and has fully satisfied Him.
The Blood And The
Believer's Access
The Blood has satisfied God; it must satisfy us
also. It has therefore a second value that is manward in the cleansing of our
conscience. When we come to the Epistle to the Hebrews we find that the Blood
does this. We are to have "hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience"
(Hebrews 10:22).
This is most important. Look carefully at what it
says. The writer does not tell us that the Blood of the Lord Jesus cleanses our
hearts, an then stop there in his statement. We are wrong to connect the heart
with the Blood in quite that way. It may show a misunderstanding of the sphere
in which the Blood operates to pray, `Lord, cleanse my heart from sin by Thy
Blood'. The heart, God says, is "desperately sick" (Jeremiah 17:9),
and He must do something more fundamental than cleanse it: He must give us a
new one.
We do not wash and iron clothing that we are
going to throw away. As we shall shortly see, the `flesh' is too bad to be
cleansed; it must be crucified. The work of God within us must be something
wholly new. "A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put
within you" (Ezekiel 36:26).
No, I do not find it stated that the Blood
cleanses our hearts. Its work is not subjective in that way, but wholly
objective, before God. True, the cleansing work of the Blood is seen here in
Hebrew 10 to have reference to the heart, but it is in relation to the
conscience. "Having our hearts sprinkled from a evil conscience".
What then is the meaning of this?
It means that there was something intervening
between myself and God, as a result of which I had an evil conscience whenever
I sought to approach Him. It was constantly reminding me of the barrier that
stood between myself and Him. But now, through the operation of the precious
Blood, something new has been effected before God which has removed that
barrier, and God has made that fact known to me in His Word. When that has been
believed in and accepted, my conscience is at once cleared and my sense of
guilt removed, and I have no more an evil conscience toward God.
Every one of us knows what a precious thing it is
to have a conscience void of offense in our dealings with God. A heart of faith
and a conscience clear of any and every accusation are both equally essential
to us, since they are interdependent. As soon as we find our conscience is
uneasy our faith leaks away and immediately we find we cannot face God. In
order therefore to keep going on with God we must know the up-to-date value of
the Blood. God keeps short accounts, and we are made nigh by the Blood every
day, every hour and every minute. It never loses its efficacy as our ground of
access if we will but lay hold upon it. When we enter the most Holy Place, on
what ground dare we enter but by the Blood?
But I want to ask myself, am I really seeking the
way into the Presence of God by the Blood or by something else? What do I mean
when I say, `by the Blood'? I mean simply that I recognize my sins, that I
confess that I have need of cleansing and of atonement, and that I come to God
on the basis of the finished work of the Lord Jesus. I approach God through His
merit alone, and never on the basis of my attainment; never, for example, on
the ground that I have been extra kind or patient today, or that I have done
something for the Lord this morning. I have to come by way of the Blood every
time. The temptation to so many of us when we try to approach God is to think
that because God has been dealing with us -- because He has been taking steps
to bring us into something more of Himself and has been teaching us deeper
lessons of the Cross -- He has thereby set before us new standards, and that
only by attaining to these can we have a clear conscience before Him. No! A
clear conscience is never based upon our attainment; it can only be
based on the work of the Lord Jesus in the shedding of His Blood.
I may be mistaken, but I feel very strongly that
some of us are thinking in terms such as these: `Today I have been a little
more careful; today I have been doing a little better; this morning I have been
reading the Word of God in a warmer way, so today I can pray better!' Or again,
`Today I have had a little difficulty with the family; I began the day feeling
very gloomy and moody; I am not feeling too bright now; it seems that there
must be something wrong; therefore I cannot approach God.'
What, after all, is your basis of approach to
God? Do you come to Him on the uncertain ground of your feeling, the feeling
that you may have achieved something for God today? Or is your approach based
on something far more secure, namely, the fact that the Blood has been shed,
and that God looks on that Blood and is satisfied? Of course, were it
conceivably possible for the Blood to suffer any change, the basis of your
approach to God might be less trustworthy. But the Blood has never changed and
never will. Your approach to God is therefore always in boldness; and that
boldness is yours through the Blood and never through your personal attainment.
Whatever be your measure of attainment today or yesterday or the day before, as
soon as you make a conscious move into the
As with many other stages of our Christian
experience, this matter of access to God has two phases, an initial and a progressive
one. The former is presented to us in Ephesians 2 and the latter in Hebrews 10.
Initially, our standing with God was secured by the Blood, for we are
"made nigh in the blood of Christ" (Eph. 2:13). But thereafter our
ground of continual access is still by the Blood, for the apostle exhorts us:
"Having therefore...boldness to enter into the holy place by the blood of
Jesus...let us draw near" (Heb. 10:19,22). To begin with I was made nigh
by the Blood, and to continue in that new relationship I come through the Blood
every time. It is not that I was saved on one basis and that I now maintain my
fellowship on another. You say, `That is very simple; it is the A.B.C. of the
Gospel.' Yes, but the trouble with many of us is that we have moved away from the
A.B.C. We have thought we had progressed and so could dispense with it, but we
can never do so. No, my initial approach to God is by the Blood, and every time
I come before Him it is the same. Right to the end it will always and only be
on the ground of the Blood.
This does not mean at all that we should live a
careless life, for we shall shortly study another aspect of the death of Christ
which shows us that anything but that is contemplated. But for the present let
us be satisfied with the Blood, that it is there and that it is enough.
We may be weak, but looking at our weakness will
never make us strong. No trying to feel bad and doing penance will help us to
be even a little holier. There is no help there, so let us be bold in our
approach because of the Blood: `Lord, I do not know fully what the value of the
Blood is, but I know that the Blood has satisfied Thee; so the Blood is enough
for me, and it is my only plea. I see now that whether I have really
progressed, whether I have really attained to something or not, is not the
point. Whenever I come before Thee, it is always on the ground of the precious
Blood. Then our conscience is really clear before God. No conscience could ever
be clear apart from the Blood. It is the Blood that gives us boldness.
"No more conscience of sins": these are
tremendous words of Hebrews 10:2. We are cleansed from every sin; and we may
truly echo the words of Paul: "Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will
not reckon sin" (Romans 4:8).
Overcoming The Accuser
In view of what we have said we can now turn to
face the enemy, for there is a further aspect of the Blood which is Satanward.
Satan's most strategic activity in this day is as the accuser of the brethren
(Rev. 12:10) and it is as this that our Lord confronts him with His special
ministry as High Priest "through his own blood" (Hebrews 9:12).
How then does the Blood operate against Satan? It
does so by putting God on the side of man against him. The Fall brought
something into man which gave Satan a footing within him, with the result that
God was compelled to withdraw Himself. Man is now outside the garden -- beyond
reach of the glory of God (Romans 3:23) -- because he is inwardly estranged
from God. Because of what man has done, there is something in him which, until
it is removed, renders God morally unable to defend him. But the Blood removes
that barrier and restores man to God and God to man. Man is in favour now, and
because God is on his side he can face Satan without fear.
You remember that verse in John's first Epistle
-- and this is the translation of it I like best: "The blood of Jesus his
Son cleanses us from every sin"[1] It is not exactly "all
sin" in the general sense, but every sin, every item. What does it
mean? Oh, it is a marvelous thing! God is the light, and as we walk in the
light with Him everything is exposed and open to that light, so that God can
see it all -- and yet the Blood is able to cleanse from every sin. What
a cleansing! It is not that I have not a profound knowledge of myself, nor that
God has not a perfect knowledge of me. It is not hat I try to hide something
nor that God tries to overlook something. No, it is that He is in the light and
I too am in the light, and that there the precious Blood cleanses me
from every sin. The Blood is enough for that!
Some of us, oppressed by our own weakness, may at
times have been tempted to think that there are sins which are almost
unforgivable. Let us remember the word: "The blood of Jesus Christ his Son
cleanses us from every sin." Big sins, small sins, sins which may be very
black and sins which appear to be not so black, sins which I think can be
forgiven and sins which seem unforgivable, yes, all sins, conscious or
unconscious, remembered or forgotten, are included in those words: "every
sin". "The blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from every sin",
and it does so because in the first place it satisfies God.
Since God, seeing all our sins in the light, can
forgive them on the basis of the Blood, what ground of accusation has Satan?
Satan may accuse us before Him, but, "If God is for us, who is against
us?" (Romans 8:31). God points him to the Blood of His dear Son. It is the
sufficient answer against which Satan has no appeal. "Who shall lay
anything to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifieth; who is he
that shall condemn? It is Christ Jesus that died, yea rather, that was raised
from the dead, who is at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession
for us" (Romans 8:33,34).
So here again our need is to recognize the
absolute sufficiency of the precious Blood. "Christ having come a high
priest...through his own blood, entered in once for all into the holy place,
having obtained eternal redemption" (Hebrews 9:11,12). He was Redeemer
once. He has been High Priest and Advocate for nearly two thousand years. He
stands there in the presence of God, and "he is the propitiation for our
sins" (1 John 2:1,2). Note the words of Hebrews 9:14: "How much
more shall the blood of Christ..." They underline the sufficiency of
His ministry. It is enough for God.
What then of our attitude to Satan? This is
important, for he accuses us not only before God but in our own conscience
also. `You have sinned, and you keep on sinning. You are weak, and God can have
nothing more to do with you.' This is his argument. And our temptation is to
look within and in self-defense to try to find in ourselves, in our feelings or
our behavior, some ground for believing that Satan is wrong. Alternatively we
are tempted to admit our helplessness and, going to the other extreme, to yield
to depression and despair. Thus accusation becomes one of the greatest and most
effective of Satan's weapons. He points to our sins and seeks to charge us with
them before God, and if we accept his accusations we go down immediately.
Now the reason why we so readily accept his
accusations is that we are still hoping to have some righteousness of our own..
The ground of our expectation is wrong. Satan has succeeded in making us look
in the wrong direction. Thereby he wins his point, rendering us ineffective.
But if we have learned to put no confidence in the flesh, we shall not wonder
if we sin, for the very nature of the flesh is to sin. Do you understand what I
mean? It is because we have not come to appreciate our true nature and to see
how helpless we are that we still have some expectation in ourselves, with the
result that, when Satan comes along and accuses us, we go down under it.
God is well able to deal with our sins; but He cannot
deal with a man under accusation, because such a man is not trusting in the
Blood. The Blood speaks in his favour, but his is listening instead to Satan.
Christ is our Advocate but we, the accused, side with the accuser. We have not
recognized that we are unworthy of anything but death; that, as we shall
shortly see, we are only fit to be crucified anyway. We have not recognized
that it is God alone that can answer the accuser, and that in the precious
Blood He has already done so.
Our salvation lies in looking away to the Lord
Jesus and in seeing that the Blood of the Lamb has met the whole situation
created by our sins and has answered it. That is the sure foundation on which
we stand. Never should we try to answer Satan with our good conduct but always
with the Blood. Yes, we are sinful, but, praise God! the Blood cleanses us from
every sin. God looks upon the Blood whereby His Son has met the charge, and
Satan has no more ground of attack. Our faith in the precious Blood and our
refusal to be moved from that position can alone silence his charges and put
him to flight (Romans 8:33,34); and so it will be, right on to the end
(Revelation 12:11). Oh, what an emancipation it would be if we saw more of the
value of God's eyes of the precious Blood of His dear Son!
Chapter 2: The Cross of Christ
We have seen that Romans 1 to 8 falls into two
sections, in the first of which we are shown that the Blood deals with what we
have done, while in the second we shall see that the Cross[2] deals with what
we are. We need the Blood for forgiveness; we need also the Cross for
deliverance. We have dealt briefly above with the first of these two and we
shall move on now to the second; but before we do so we will look for a moment
at a few more features of this passage which serve to emphasize the difference
in subject matter and argument between the two halves.
Some Further
Distinctions
Two aspects of the resurrection are mentioned in
the two sections, in chapters 4 and 6. In Romans 4:25 the resurrection of the
Lord Jesus is mentioned in relation to our justification: "Jesus our
Lord...was delivered up for our trespasses, and was raised for our
justification." Here the matter in view is that of our standing before
God. But in Romans 6:4 the resurrection is spoken of as imparting to us new
life with a view to a holy walk: "That like as Christ was raised from the
dead...so we also might walk in newness of life." Here the matter before
us is behaviour.
Again, peace is spoken of in both sections, in
the fifth and eighth chapters. Romans 5 tells of peace with God which is the
effect of justification by faith in His Blood: "Being therefore justified
by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ." (5:1mg.)
This means that, now that I have forgiveness of sins, God will no longer be a
cause of dread and trouble to me. I who was an enemy to God have been
"reconciled...through the death of his Son" (5:10). I very soon find,
however, that I am going to be a great cause of trouble to myself. There is
still unrest within, for within me there is something that draws me to sin.
There is peace with God, but there is no peace with myself. There is in fact
civil war in my own heart. This condition is well depicted in Romans 7 where
the flesh and the spirit are seen to be in deadly conflict within me. But from
this the argument leads in chapter 8 to the inward peace of a walk in the
Spirit. "The mind of the flesh is death", because it "is enmity
against God", "but the mind of the spirit is life and peace" (Romans
8:6,7).
Looking further still we find that the first half
of the section deals generally speaking with the question of justification
(see, for example, Romans 3:24-26; 4:5,25), while the second half has as its
main topic the corresponding question of sanctification (see Rom. 6:19,22).
When we know the precious truth of justification by faith we still know only
half of the story. We still have only solved the problem of our standing before
God. As we go on, God has something more to offer us, namely, the solution of
the problem of our conduct, and the development of thought in these chapters
serves to emphasize this. In each case the second step follows from the first,
and if we know only the first then we are still leading a sub-normal Christian life.
How then can we live a normal Christian life? How do we enter in? Well, of
course, initially we must have forgiveness of sins, we must have justification,
we must have peace with God: these are our indispensable foundation. But with
that basis truly established through our first act of faith in Christ, it is
yet clear from the above that we must move on to something more.
So we see that objectively the Blood deals with our
sins. The Lord Jesus has borne them on the Cross for us as our Substitute and
has thereby obtained for us forgiveness, justification and reconciliation. But
we must now go a step further in the plan of God to understand how He deals
with the sin principle in us. The Blood can wash away my sins, but it
cannot wash away my `old man'. It needs the Cross to crucify me. The Blood
deals with the sins, but the Cross must deal with the sinner.
You will scarcely find the word `sinner' in the
first four chapters of Romans. This is because there the sinner himself is not
mainly in view, but rather the sins he has committed. The word `sinner' first
comes into prominence only in chapter 5, and it is important to notice how the
sinner is there introduced. In that chapter a sinner is said to be a sinner
because he is born a sinner; not because he has committed sins. The distinction
is important. It is true that often when a Gospel worker wants to convince a
man in the street that he is a sinner, he will use the favourite verse Romans
3:23, where it says that "all have sinned"; but this use of the verse
is not strictly justified by the Scriptures. Those who so use it are in danger
or arguing the wrong way round, for the teaching of Romans is not that we are
sinners because we commit sins, but that we sin because we are sinners.
We are sinners by constitution rather than by action. As Romans 5:19 expresses
it: "Through the one man's disobedience the man were made (or
`constituted') sinners".
How were we constituted sinners? By Adam's
disobedience. We do not become sinners by what we have done but because of what
Adam has done and has become. I speak English, but I am not thereby constituted
on Englishman. I am in fact a Chinese. So chapter 3 draws our attention to what
we have done -- "all have sinned" -- but it is not because we have
done it that we become sinners.
I once asked a class of children. `Who is a
sinner?' and their immediate reply was, `One who sins'. Yes, one who sins is a
sinner, but the fact that he sins is merely the evidence that he is already a
sinner; it is not the cause. One who sins is a sinner, but it is equally true
that one who does not sin, if he is of Adam's race, is a sinner too, and in
need of redemption. Do you follow me? There are bad sinners and there are good
sinners, there are moral sinners and there are corrupt sinners, but they are
all alike sinners. We sometimes think that if only we had not done certain
things all would be well; but the trouble lies far deeper than in what we do:
it lies in what we are. A Chinese may be born
We are apt to think that what we have done is
very bad, but that we ourselves are not so bad. God is taking pains to show us
that we ourselves are wrong, fundamentally wrong. The root trouble is the
sinner; he must be dealt with. Our sins are dealt with by the Blood, but we
ourselves are dealt with by the Cross. The Blood procures our pardon for what
we have done; the Cross procures our deliverance from what we are.
Man's State By Nature
We come therefore to Romans 5:12-21. In this
great passage, grace is brought into contrast with sin and the obedience of
Christ is set against the disobedience of Adam. It is placed at the beginning
of the second section of Romans (5:12 to 8:39) with which we shall now be
particularly concerned, and its argument leads to a conclusion which lies at
the foundation of our further meditations. What is that conclusion? It is found
in verse 19 already quoted: "For as through the one man's disobedience the
many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the one shall the many
be made righteous." Here the Spirit of God is seeking to show us first
what we are, and then how we came to be what we are.
At the beginning of our Christian life we are
concerned with our doing, not with our being; we are distressed rather by what
we have done than by what we are. We think that if only we could rectify
certain things we should be good Christians, and we set out therefore to change
our actions. But the result is not what we expected. We discover to our dismay
that it is something more than just a case of trouble on the outside -- that
there is in fact more serious trouble on the inside. We try to please the Lord,
but find something within that does not want to please Him. We try to be humble,
but there is something in our very being that refuses to be humble. We try to
be loving, but inside we feel most unloving. We smile and try to look very
gracious, but inwardly we feel decidedly ungracious. The more we try to rectify
matters on the outside the more we realize how deep-seated the trouble is
within. Then we come to the Lord and say, `Lord, I see it now! Not only what I
have done is wrong; I am wrong.'
The conclusion of Romans 5:19 is beginning to
dawn upon us. We are sinners. We are members of a race of people who are
constitutionally other than what God intended them to be. By the Fall a
fundamental change took place in the character of Adam whereby he became a
sinner, one constitutionally unable to please God; and the family likeness which
we all share is no merely superficial one but extends to our inward character
also. We have been "constituted sinners". How did this come about?
"By the disobedience of one", says Paul. Let me try to illustrate
this.
My name is Nee. It is a fairly common Chinese
name. How did I come by it? I did not choose it. I did not go through the list
of possible Chinese names and select this one. That my name is Nee is in fact
not my doing at all, and, moreover, nothing I can do can alter it. I am a Nee
because my father was a Nee, and my father was a Nee because my grandfather was
a Nee. If I act like a Nee I am a Nee, and if I act unlike a Nee I am still a
Nee. If I become President of the
We are sinners not because of ourselves but
because of Adam. It is not because I individually have sinned that I am a
sinner but because I was in Adam when he sinned. Because by birth I come of
Adam, therefore I am a part of him. What is more, I can do nothing to alter
this. I cannot by improving my behaviour make myself other than a part of Adam
and so a sinner.
In
Do you see the oneness of human life? Our life
comes from Adam. If your great-grandfather had died at the age of three, where
would you be? You would have died in him! Your experience is bound up with his.
Now in just the same way the experience of every one of us is bound up with
that of Adam. None can say, `I have not been in
But it is in this very direction that we shall
find the solution of our problem, for that is exactly how God has dealt with
the situation.
As In Adam So In Christ
In Romans 5:12 to 21 we are not only told
something about Adam; we are told also something about the Lord Jesus. "As
through the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through
the obedience of the one shall the many be made righteous." In Adam we
receive everything that is of Adam; in Christ we receive everything that is of
Christ.
The terms `in Adam' and `in Christ' are too
little understood by Christians, and, at the risk of repetition, I wish again
to emphasize by means of an illustration the hereditary and racial significance
of the term `in Christ'. This illustration is to be found in the letter to the
Hebrews. Do you remember that in the earlier part of the letter the writer is
trying to show that Melchizedek is greater than Levi? You recall that the point
to be proved is that the priesthood of Christ is greater than the priesthood of
Aaron who was of the tribe of Levi. Now in order to prove that, he has first to
prove that the priesthood of Melchizedek is greater than the priesthood of
Levi, for the simple reason that the priesthood of Christ is "after the
order of Melchizedek" (Heb. 7:14-17), while that of Aaron is, of course,
after the order of Levi. If the writer can demonstrate to us that Melchizedek
is greater than Levi, then he has made his point. That is the issue, and he
proves it in a remarkable way.
He tells us in Hebrews chapter 7 that one day
Abraham, returning from the battle of the kings (Genesis 14), offered a tithe
of his spoils to Melchizedek and received from him a blessing. Inasmuch as
Abraham did so, Levi is therefore of less account than Melchizedek. Why?
Because the fact that Abraham offered tithes to Melchizedek. But if that is
true, then Jacob also `in Abraham' offered to Melchizedek, which in turn means
that Levi `in Abraham' offered to Melchizedek. It is evident that the lesser
offers to the greater (Hebrews 7:7). So Levi is less in standing than
Melchizedek, and therefore the priesthood of Aaron is inferior to that of the
Lord Jesus. Levi at the time of the battle of the kings was not yet even
thought of. Yet he was "in the loins of his father" Abraham, and,
"so to say, through Abraham", he offered (Hebrews 7:9,10).
Now his is the exact meaning of `in Christ'.
Abraham, as the head of the family of faith, includes the whole family in
himself. When he offered to Melchizedek, the whole family offered in him to
Melchizedek. They did not offer separately as individuals, but they were in
him, and therefore in making his offering he included with himself all his
seed.
So we are presented with a new possibility. In
Adam all was lost. Through the disobedience of one man we were all constituted
sinners. By him sin entered and death through sin, and throughout the race sin
has reigned unto death from that day on. But now a ray of light is cast upon
the scene. Through the obedience of Another we may be constituted righteous.
Where sin abounded grace did much more abound, and as sin reigned unto death, even
so may grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our
Lord (Romans 5:19-21). Our despair is in Adam; our hope is in Christ.
The Divine Way
God clearly intends that this consideration should
lead to our practical deliverance from sin. Paul makes this quite plain when he
opens chapter 6 of his letter with the question: "Shall we continue in
sin?" His whole being recoils at the very suggestion. "God
forbid!", he exclaims. How could a holy God be satisfied to have unholy,
sin-fettered children? And so "how shall we any longer live therein?"
(Romans 6:1,2). God has surely therefore made adequate provision that we should
be set free from sin's dominion.
But here is our problem. We were born sinners;
how then can we cut off our sinful heredity? Seeing that we were born in Adam,
how can we get out of Adam? Let me say at once, the Blood cannot take us out of
Adam. There is only one way. Since we came in by birth we must go out by death.
To do away with our sinfulness we must do away with our life. Bondage to sin
came by birth; deliverance from sin comes by death -- and it is just this way
of escape that God has provided. Death is the secret of emancipation.
"We...died to sin" (Romans 6:2).
But how can we die? Some of us have tried very
hard to get rid of this sinful life, but we have found it most tenacious. What
is the way out? It is not by trying to kill ourselves, but by recognizing that God
has dealt with us in Christ. This is summed up in the apostle's next
statement: "All we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into
his death" (Romans 6:3).
But if God has dealt with us `in Christ Jesus'
then we have got to be in Him for this to become effective, and that now
seems just as big a problem. How are we to `get into' Christ? Here again God
comes to our help. We have in fact no way of getting in, but, what is more
important, we need not try to get in, for we are in. What we could not
do for ourselves God has done for us. He has put us into Christ. Let me
remind you of I Corinthians 1:30. I think that is one of the best verses of the
whole New Testament: `Ye are in Christ'. How? "Of him (that is, `of God')
are ye in Christ." Praise God! it is not left to us either to devise a way
of entry or to work it out. We need not plan how to get in. God has planned it;
and He has not only planned it but He has also performed it. `Of him are
ye in Christ Jesus'. We are in; therefore we need not try to get in. It is a
Divine act, and it is accomplished.
Now if this is true, certain things follow. In
the illustration from Hebrews 7 which we considered above we saw that `in
Abraham' all
Many a time when preaching in the villages of
"Of him are ye in Christ Jesus." The
Lord God Himself has put us in Christ, and in His dealing with Christ God has
dealt with the whole race. Our destiny is bound up with His. What He has gone
through we have gone through, for to be `in Christ' is to have been identified
with Him in both His death and resurrection. He was crucified: then what about
us? Must we ask God to crucify us? Never! When Christ was crucified we were
crucified; and His crucifixion is past, therefore ours cannot be future. I
challenge you to find one text in the New Testament telling us that our
crucifixion is in the future. All the references to it are in the Greek aorist,
which is the `once-for-all' tense, the `eternally past' tense. (See: Romans
6:6; Galations 2:20; 5:24; 6:14). And just as no man could ever commit suicide
by crucifixion, for it were a physical impossibility to do so, so also, in
spiritual terms, God does not require us to crucify ourselves. We were
crucified when He was crucified, for God put us there in Him. That we have died
in Christ is not merely a doctrinal position, it is an eternal fact.
His Death and
Resurrection Representative and Inclusive
The Lord Jesus, when He died on the Cross, shed
His Blood, thus giving His sinless life to atone for our sin and to satisfy the
righteousness and holiness of God. To do so was the prerogative of the Son of
God alone. No man could have a share in that. The Scripture has never told us
that we shed our blood with Christ. In His atoning work before God He acted
alone; no other could have a part. But the Lord did not die only to shed His
Blood: He died that we might die. He died as our Representative.
In His death He included you and me.
We often use the terms `substitution' and
`identification' to describe these two aspects of the death of Christ. Now many
a time the use of the word `identification' is good. But identification would
suggest that the thing begins from our side: that I try to identify myself with
the Lord. I agree that the word is true, but it should be used later on. It is
better to begin with the fact that the Lord included me in His death. It is the
`inclusive' death of the Lord which puts me in a position to identify myself,
not that I identify myself in order to be included. It is God's inclusion of me
in Christ that matters. It is something God has done. For that reason those two
New Testament words "in Christ" are always very dear to my heart.
The death of the Lord Jesus is inclusive. The
resurrection of the Lord Jesus is alike inclusive. We have looked at the first
chapter of I Corinthians to establish the fact that we are "in Christ
Jesus". Now we will go to the end of the same letter to see something more
of what this means. In I Corinthians 15:45,47 two remarkable names or titles
are used of the Lord Jesus. He is spoken of there as "the last Adam"
and He is spoken of too as "the second man". Scripture does not refer
to Him as the second Adam but as "the last Adam"; nor does it refer
to Him as the last Man, but as "the second man". The distinction is
to be noted, for it enshrines a truth of great value.
As the last Adam, Christ is the sum total of
humanity; as the second Man He is the Head of a new race. So we have here two
unions, the one relating to His death and the other to His resurrection. In the
first place His union with the race as "the last Adam" began
historically at
When therefore the Lord Jesus was crucified on
the cross, He was crucified as the last Adam. All that was in the first Adam
was gathered up and done away in Him. We were included there. As the last Adam
He wiped out the old race; as the second Man He brings in the new race. It is
in His resurrection that He stands forth as the second Man, and there too we
are included. "For if we have become united with him by the likeness of
his death, we shall be also by the likeness of his resurrection" (Romans
6:5). We died in Him as the last Adam; we live in Him as the second
Chapter 3: The Path Of Progress: Knowing
Our old history ends with the Cross; our new
history begins with the resurrection. "If any man is in Christ, he is a
new creature: the old things are passed away; behold they are become new"
(2 Cor 5:17). The Cross terminates the first creation, and out of death there
is brought a new creation in Christ, the second
But to say that all we need comes to us in Christ
by free grace, though true enough, may seem unpractical. How does it work out
in practice? How does it become real in our experience?
As we study chapters 6, 7 and 8 of Romans we
shall discover that the conditions of living the normal Christian life are
fourfold. They are: (a) Knowing, (b) Reckoning, (c) Presenting ourselves to
God, and (d) Walking in the Spirit, and they are set forth in that order. If we
would live that life we shall have to take all four of these steps; not one nor
two nor three, but all four. As we study each of them we shall trust the Lord
by His Holy Spirit to illumine our understanding; and we shall seek His help
now to take the first big step forward.
Our Death With Christ A
Historic Fact
Romans 6:1-11 is the passage before us now. In
these verses it is made clear that the death of the Lord Jesus is
representative and inclusive. In His death we all died. None of us can progress
spiritually without seeing this. Just as we cannot have justification if we
have not seen Him bearing our sins on the Cross, so we cannot have
sanctification if we have not seen Him bearing us on the Cross. Not only
have our sins been laid on Him but we ourselves have been put into Him.
How did you receive forgiveness? You realized
that the Lord Jesus died as your Substitute and bore your sins upon Himself,
and that His Blood was shed to cleanse away your defilement. When you saw your
sins all taken away on the Cross what did you do? Did you say, `Lord Jesus,
please come and die for my sins'? No, you did not pray at all; you only thanked
the Lord You did not beseech Him to come and die for you, for you realized that
He had already done it.
But what is true of your forgiveness is also true
of your deliverance. The work is done. There is no need to pray but only to
praise. God has put us all in Christ, so that when Christ was crucified we were
crucified also. Thus there is no need to pray: `I am a very wicked person;
Lord, please crucify me'. That is all wrong. You did not pray about your sins;
why pray now about yourself? Your sins were dealt with by His Blood, and you
were dealt with by His Cross. It is an accomplished fact. All that is left for
you to do is to praise the Lord that when Christ died you died also; you died
in Him. Praise Him for it and live in the light of it. "Then believed they
his words: they sang his praise" (Psalm 106:12).
Do you believe in the death of Christ? Of course
you do. Well, the same Scripture that says He died for us says also that we
died with Him. Look at it again: "Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8).
That is the first statement, and that is clear enough; but is this any less
clear? "Our old man was crucified with him" (Romans 6:6). "We
died with Christ" (Romans 6:8).
When are we crucified with Him? What is the date
of our old man's crucifixion? Is it tomorrow? Yesterday? Today? In order to
answer this it may help us if for a moment I turn Paul's statement round and
say, `Christ was crucified with (i.e. at the same time as) our old man'.
Some of you came here in twos. You traveled to this place together. You might
say, My friend came here with me', but you might just as truly say, `I came
here with my friend'. Had one of you come three days ago and the other only
today you could not possibly say that; but having come together you can make
either statement with equal truth, because both are statements of fact. So also
in historic fact we can say, reverently but with equal accuracy, `I was
crucified when Christ was crucified' or `Christ was crucified when I was
crucified', for they are not two historical events, but one. My crucifixion was
"with him".[3] Has Christ been crucified? Then can I be otherwise?
And if He was crucified nearly two thousand years ago, and I with Him, can my
crucifixion be said to take place tomorrow? Can His be past and mine be present
or future? Praise the Lord, when He died in my stead, but He bore me with Him
to the Cross, so that when He died I died. And if I believe in the death of the
Lord Jesus, then I can believe in my own death just as surely as I believe in
His.
Why do you believe that the Lord Jesus died? What
is your ground for that belief? Is it that you feel He has died? No, you
have never felt it. You believe it because the Word of God tells you so. When
the Lord was crucified, two thieves were crucified at the same time. You do not
doubt that they were crucified with Him, either, because the Scripture says so
quite plainly.
You believe in the death of the Lord Jesus and
you believe in the death of the thieves with Him. Now what about your own
death? Your crucifixion is more intimate than theirs. They were crucified at
the same time as the Lord but on different crosses, whereas you were crucified
on the self same cross as He, for you were in Him when He died. How can you
know? You can know for the one sufficient reason that God has said so. It does
not depend on your feelings. If you feel that Christ has died, He has died; and
if you do not feel that he died, He has died. If you feel that you have died,
you have died; and if you do not feel that you have died, you have nevertheless
just as surely died. These are Divine facts. That Christ has died is a fact,
that the two thieves have died is a fact, and that you have died is a fact
also. Let me tell you, You have died! You are done with! You are ruled
out! The self you loathe is on the Cross in Christ. And "he that is dead
is freed from sin" (Romans 6:7, A.V.). This is the Gospel for Christians.
Our crucifixion can never be made effective by
will or by effort, but only be accepting what the Lord Jesus did on the Cross.
Our eyes must be opened to see the finished work of
For God's way of deliverance is altogether
different from man's way. Man's way is to try to suppress sin by seeking to
overcome it; God's way is to remove the sinner. Many Christians mourn over
their weakness, thinking that if only they were stronger all would be well. The
idea that, because failure to lead a holy life is due to our impotence,
something more is therefore demanded of us, leads naturally to this false
conception of the way of deliverance. If we are preoccupied with the power of
sin and with our inability to meet it, then we naturally conclude that to gain
the victory over sin we must have more power. `If only I were stronger', we
say, `I could overcome my violent outbursts of temper', and so we plead with
the Lord to strengthen us that we may exercise more self-control.
But this is altogether wrong; this is not
Christianity. God's means of delivering us from sin is not by making us
stronger and stronger, but by making us weaker and weaker. That is surely
rather a peculiar way of victory, you say; but it is the Divine way. God sets
us free from the dominion of sin, not by strengthening our old man but by
crucifying him; not by helping him to do anything but by removing him from the
scene of action.
For years, maybe, you have tried fruitlessly to
exercise control over yourself, and perhaps this is still your experience; but
when once you see the truth you will recognize that you are indeed powerless to
do anything, but that in setting you aside altogether God has done it all. Such
a revelation brings human self-effort to an end.
The First Step:
"Knowing This..."
The normal Christian life must begin with a very
definite `knowing', which is not just knowing something about the truth nor
understanding some important doctrine. It is not intellectual knowledge at all,
but an opening of the eyes of the heart to see what we have in Christ.
How do you know your sins are forgiven? Is it
because your pastor told you so? No, you just know it. If I ask you how
you know, you simply answer, `I know it!' Such knowledge comes by Divine
revelation. It comes from the Lord Himself. Of course the fact of forgiveness
of sins is in the Bible, but for the written Word of God to become a living
Word from God to you He had to give you "a spirit of wisdom and revelation
in the knowledge of him" (Eph. 1:17). What you needed was to know Christ
in that way, and it is always so. So there comes a time, in regard to any new
apprehension of Christ, when you know it in your own heart, you `see' it in
your spirit. A light has shined into your inner being and you are wholly
persuaded of the fact. What is true of the forgiveness of your sins is no less
true of your deliverance from sin. When once the light of God dawns upon your
heart you see yourself in Christ. It is not now because someone has told
you, and not merely because Romans 6 says so. It is something more even than
that. You know it because God has revealed it to you by His Spirit. You may not
feel it; you may not understand it; but you know it, for you have seen it. Once
you have seen yourself in Christ, nothing can shake your assurance of that
blessed fact.
If you ask a number of believers who have entered
upon the normal Christian life how they came by their experience, some will say
in this way and some will say in that. Each stresses his own particular way of
entering in and produces Scripture to support his experience; and unhappily
many Christians are using their special experiences and their special
scriptures to fight other Christians. The fact of the matter is that, while
Christians may enter into the deeper life by different ways, we need not regard
the experiences or doctrines they stress as mutually exclusive, but rather
complementary. One thing is certain, that any true experience of value in the
sight of God must have been reached by way of a new discovery of the meaning of
the Person and work of the Lord Jesus. That is a crucial test and a safe one.
And here in our passage Paul makes everything
depend upon such a discovery. "Knowing this, that our old man was
crucified with him, that the body of sin might be done away, that so we should
no longer be in bondage to sin" (Romans 6:6).
Divine Revelation
Essential To Knowledge
So our first step is to seek from God a knowledge
that comes by revelation -- a revelation, that is to say, not of ourselves but
of the finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ on the Cross. When Hudson Taylor,
the founder of the China Inland Mission, entered into the normal Christian life
it was thus that he did so. You remember how he tells of his long-standing
problem of how to live `in Christ', how to draw the sap out of the Vine into
himself. For he knew that he must have the life of Christ flowing out through
him and yet felt that he had not got it, and he saw clearly enough that his
need was to be found in Christ. `I knew', he said, writing to his sister from
The more he tried to get in the more he found
himself slipping out, so to speak, until one day light dawned, revelation came
and he saw.
`Here, I feel, is the secret: not asking how I am to get sap out of the
Vine into myself, but remembering that Jesus is the Vine -- the
root, stem, branches, twigs, leaves, flowers, fruit, all indeed.'
Then, in words of a friend that had helped him:
`I have not got to make myself a branch. The Lord Jesus tells me I am
a branch. I am part of Him and I have just to believe it and act upon
it. I have seen it long enough in the Bible, but I believe it now as a
living reality.'
It was as though something which had indeed been true
all the time had now suddenly become true in a new way to him personally, and
he writes to his sister again:
`I do not know how far I may be able to make myself intelligible about it, for
there is nothing new or strange or wonderful -- and yet, all is new! In a word,
"whereas once I was blind, now I see"....I am dead and buried with
Christ -- aye, and risen too and ascended....God reckons me so, and tells me to
reckon myself so. He knows best....Oh, the joy of seeing this truth -- I do
pray that the eyes of your understanding may be enlightened, that you may know
and enjoy the riches freely given us in Christ.'[4]
Oh, it is a great thing to see that we are in
Christ! Think of the bewilderment of trying to get into a room in which you
already are! Think of the absurdity of asking to be put in! If we recognize the
fact that we are in, we make no effort to enter. If we had more
revelation we should have fewer prayers and more praises. Much of our praying
for ourselves is just because we are blind to what God has done.
I remember one day in
Just then a third brother, much used of the Lord,
came in and joined us. There was a thermos flask on the table, and this brother
picked it up and said, `What is this?' `A thermos flask.' `Well, you just
imagine for a moment that this thermos flask can pray, and that it starts
praying something like this: "Lord, I want very much to be a thermos
flask. Wilt Thou make me to be a thermos flask? Lord, give me grace to become a
thermos flask. Do please make me one!" What will you say?' `I do not think
even a thermos flask would be so silly,' our friend replied. `It would be
nonsense to pray like that; it is a thermos flask!' Then my brother
said, `You are doing the same thing. God in times past has already included you
in Christ. When He died, you died; when He lived, you lived. Now today you
cannot say, "I want to die; I want to be crucified; I want to have
resurrection life." The Lord simply looks at you and says, "You are
dead! You have new life!" All your praying is just as absurd as
that of the thermos flask. You do not need to pray to the Lord for anything;
you merely need your eyes opened to see that He has done it all.'
That is the point. We need not work to die, we need
not wait to die, we are dead. We only need to recognize what the Lord
has already done and to praise Him for it. Light dawned for that man. With
tears in his eyes he said, `Lord, I praise Thee that Thou hast already included
me in Christ. All that is His is mine!' Revelation had come and faith had
something to lay hold of; and if you could have met that brother later on, what
a change you would have found!
The Cross Goes To The
Root Of Our Problem
Let me remind you again of the fundamental nature
of that which the Lord has done on the Cross. I feel I cannot press this point
too much for we must see it. Suppose, for the sake of illustration, that
the government of your country should wish to deal drastically with the
question of strong drink and should decide that the whole country was to go
`dry', how could the decision be carried into effect? How could we help? If we
were to search every shop and house throughout the land and smash all the
bottles of wine or beer or brandy we came across, would that meet the case?
Surely not. We might thereby rid the land of every drop of alcoholic liquor it
contains, but behind those bottles of strong drink are the factories that
produce them, and if we only deal with the bottles and leave the factories
untouched, production will still continue and there is no permanent solution of
the problem. The drink-producing factories, the breweries and distilleries
throughout the land, must be closed down if the drink question is to be
permanently settled.
We are the factory; our actions are the products.
The Blood of the Lord Jesus dealt with the question of the products, namely,
our sins. So the question of what we have done is settled, but would God have
stopped there? What about the question of what we are? Our sins were produced
by us. They have been dealt with, but how are we going to be dealt with?
Do you believe the Lord would cleanse away all our sins and then leave us to
get rid of the sin-producing factory? Do you believe He would put away the
goods produced but leave us to deal with the source of production?
To ask this question is but to answer it. Of
course He has not done half the work and left the other half undone. No, He has
done away with the goods and also made a clean sweep of the factory that produces
the goods.
The finished work of Christ really has gone to
the root of our problem and dealt with it. There are no half measures with God.
"Knowing this," says Paul, "That our old man was crucified with
him, that the body of sin might be done away, that so we should no longer be in
bondage to sin" (Rom. 6:6). "Knowing this"! Yes, but do
you know it? "Or are ye ignorant?" (Rom. 6:3). May the Lord
graciously open our eyes.
Chapter 4: The Path of Progress: Reckoning
We now come to a matter on which there has been
some confusion of thought among the Lord's children. It concerns what follows
this knowledge. Note again first of all the wording of Romans 6:6:
"Knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him". The tense of
the verb is most precious for it puts the event right back there in the past.
It is final, once-for-all. The thing has been done and cannot be undone. Our
old man has been crucified once and for ever, and he can never be un-crucified.
This is what we need to know.
Then, when we know this, what follows? Look again
at our passage. The next command is in verse 11: "Even so reckon ye also
yourselves to be dead unto sin". This, clearly, is the natural sequel to
verse 6. Read them together: `Knowing that our old man was crucified,
... reckon ye yourselves to be dead'. That is the order. When we know that our
old man has been crucified with Christ, then the next step is to reckon it so.
Unfortunately, in presenting the truth of our
union with Christ the emphasis has too often been placed upon this second
matter of reckoning ourselves to be dead, as though that were the starting
point, whereas it should rather be upon knowing ourselves to be dead.
God's Word makes it clear that `knowing' is to precede `reckoning'.
"Knowing this ... reckon." The sequence is most important. Our
reckoning must be based on knowledge of divinely revealed fact, for otherwise
faith has no foundation on which to rest. When we know, then we reckon
spontaneously.
So in teaching this matter we should not
over-emphasize reckoning. People are always trying to reckon without knowing.
They have not first had a Spirit-given revelation of the fact; yet they try to
reckon and soon they get into all sorts of difficulties. When temptation comes
they begin to reckon furiously: `I am dead; I am dead; I am dead!' but in the
very act of reckoning they lose their temper. Then they say, `It doesn't work.
Romans 6:11 is no good.' And we have to admit that verse 11 is no good
without verse 6. So it comes to this, that unless we know for a fact that we
are dead with Christ, the more we reckon the more intense will the struggle
become, and the issue will be sure defeat.
For years after my conversion I had been taught
to reckon. I reckoned from 1920 until 1927. The more I reckoned that I was dead
to sin, the more alive I clearly was. I simply could not believe myself dead
and I could not produce the death. Whenever I sought help from others I was
told to read Romans 6:11, and the more I read Romans 6:11 and tried to reckon,
the further away death was: I could not get at it. I fully appreciated the
teaching that I must reckon, but I could not make out why nothing resulted from
it. I have to confess that for months I was troubled. I said to the Lord, `If
this is not clear, if I cannot be brought to see this which is so very
fundamental, I will cease to do anything. I will not preach any more; I will
not go out to serve Thee any more; I want first of all to get thoroughly clear
here.' For months I was seeking, and at times I fasted, but nothing came
through.
I remember one morning -- that morning was a real
morning and one I can never forget -- I was upstairs sitting at my desk reading
the Word and praying, and I said, `Lord, open my eyes!' And then in a flash I
saw it. I saw my oneness with Christ. I saw that I was in Him, and that when He
died I died. I saw that the question of my death was a matter of the past and
not of the future, and that I was just as truly dead as He was because I was in
Him when He died. The whole thing had dawned upon me. I was carried away with
such joy at this great discovery that I jumped from my chair and cried, `Praise
the Lord, I am dead!' I ran downstairs and met one of the brothers helping in
the kitchen and I laid hold of him. `Brother', I said, `do you know that I have
died?' I must admit he looked puzzled. `What do you mean?' he said, so I went
on: `Do you not know that Christ has died? Do you not know that I died with
Him? Do you not know that my death is no less truly a fact than His?' Oh it was
so real to me! I longed to go through the streets of
I do not mean to say that we need not work that
out. Yes, there is an outworking of the death which we are going to see
presently, but this, first of all, is the basis of it. I have been crucified:
it has been done.
What, then, is the secret of reckoning? To put it
in one word, it is revelation. We need revelation from God Himself (Matt.
16:17; Eph. 1:17,18). We need to have our eyes opened to the fact of our union
with Christ, and that is something more than knowing it as a doctrine. Such
revelation is no vague, indefinite thing. Most of us can remember the day when
we saw clearly that Christ died for us, and we ought to be equally clear as to
the time when we saw that we died with Christ. It should be nothing hazy, but
very definite, for it is with this as basis that we shall go on. It is not that
I reckon myself to be dead, and therefore I will be dead. It is that, because I
am dead -- because I see now what God has done with me in Christ -- therefore
I reckon myself to be dead. That is the right kind of reckoning. It is not
reckoning toward death but from death.
The Second Step:
"Even So Reckon..."
What does reckoning mean? `Reckoning' in Greek
means doing accounts book-keeping. Accounting is the only thing in the world we
human beings can do correctly. An artist paints a landscape. Can he do it with
perfect accuracy? Can the historian vouch for the absolute accuracy of any
record, or the map-maker for the perfect correctness of any map? They can make,
at best, fair approximations. Even in everyday speech, when we try to tell some
incident with the best intention to be honest and truthful, we cannot speak
with complete accuracy. It is mostly a case of exaggeration or understatement,
of one word too much or too little. What then can a man do that is utterly
reliable? Arithmetic! There is no scope for error there. One chair plus one
chair equals two chairs. That is true in
Why does God say we are to reckon ourselves dead?
Because we are dead. Let us keep to the analogy of accounting. Suppose I
have fifteen shillings in my pocket, what do I enter in my account-book? Can I
enter fourteen shillings and sixpence or fifteen shillings and sixpence? No, I
must enter in my account-book that which is in fact in my pocket. Accounting is
the reckoning of facts, not fancies. Even so, it is because I am really dead
that God tells me to account it so. God could not ask me to put down in my
account-book what was not true. He could not ask me to reckon that I am dead if
I am still alive. For such mental gymnastics the word `reckoning' would be
inappropriate; we might rather speak of `mis-reckoning'!
Reckoning is not a form of make-believe. It does
not mean that, having found that I have only twelve shillings in my pocket, I
hope that by entering fifteen shillings incorrectly in my account-book such
`reckoning' will somehow remedy the deficiency. It won't. If I have only twelve
shillings, yet try to reckon to myself: `I have fifteen shillings; I have
fifteen shillings; I have fifteen shillings', do you think that the mental
effort involved will in any way affect the sum that is in my pocket? Not a bit
of it! Reckoning will not make twelve shillings into fifteen shillings, nor
will it make what is untrue true. But if, on the other hand, it is a fact that
I have fifteen shillings in my pocket, then with great ease and assurance I can
enter fifteen shillings in my account-book. God tells us to reckon ourselves
dead, not that by the process of reckoning we may become dead, but because we
are dead. He never told us to reckon what was not a fact.
Having said, then, that revelation leads
spontaneously to reckoning, we must not lose sight of the fact that we are
presented with a command: "Reckon ye ...." There is a definite
attitude to be taken. God asks us to do the account; to put down `I have died'
and then to abide by it. Why? Because it is a fact. When the Lord Jesus was on
the cross, I was there in Him. Therefore I reckon it to be true. I reckon and
declare that I have died in Him. Paul said, "Reckon ye also yourselves to
be dead unto sin, but alive unto God." How is this possible? "In
Christ Jesus." Never forget that it is always and only true in Christ.
If you look at yourself you will think death is not there, but it is a question
of faith not in yourself but in Him. You look to the Lord, and know what He has
done. `Lord, I believe in Thee. I reckon upon the fact in Thee.'
Stand there all the day.
The Reckoning Of Faith
The first four-and-a-half chapters of Romans
speak of faith and faith and faith. We are justified by faith in Him (Rom.
3:28; 5:1). Righteousness, the forgiveness of our sins, and peace with God are
all ours by faith, and without faith in the finished work of Jesus Christ none
can possess them. But in the second section of Romans we do not find the same
repeated mention of faith, and it might at first appear that the emphasis is
therefore different. It is not really so, however, for where the words `faith'
and `believe' drop out the work `reckon' takes their place. Reckoning and faith
are here practically the same thing.
What is faith? Faith is my acceptance of God's
fact. It always has its foundations in the past. What relates to the future is
hope rather than faith, although faith often has its object or goal in the
future, as in Hebrews 11. Perhaps for this reason the word chosen here is
`reckon'. It is a word that relates only to the past -- to what we look
back to as settled, and not forward to as yet to be. This is the kind of faith
described in Mark 11:24: "All things whatsoever ye pray and ask for,
believe that ye have received them, and ye shall have them." The statement
there is that, if you believe that you already have received your
requests (that is, of course, in Christ), then `you shall have them'. To
believe that you may get something, or that you can get it, or even
that you will get it, is not faith in the sense meant here. This is
faith -- to believe that you have already got it. Only that which relates to
the past is faith in this sense. Those who say `God can' or `God may' or `God
must' or `God will' do not necessarily believe at all. Faith always says, `God
has done it'.
When, therefore, do I have faith in regard to my
crucifixion? Not when I say God can, or will, or must crucify me, but when with
joy I say, `Praise God, in Christ I am crucified!'
In Romans 3 we see the Lord Jesus bearing our
sins and dying as our Substitute that we might be forgiven. In Romans 6 we see
ourselves included in the death whereby He secured our deliverance. When the
first fact was revealed to us we believed on Him for our justification. God
tells us to reckon upon the second fact for our deliverance. So that, for
practical purposes, `reckoning' in the second section of Romans takes the place
of `faith' in the first section. The emphasis is not different. The normal Christian
life is lived progressively, as it is entered initially, by faith in Divine
fact: in Christ and His Cross.
Temptation And Failure,
The Challenge To Faith
For us, then, the two greatest facts in history
are these: that all our sins are dealt with by the Blood, and that we ourselves
are dealt with by the Cross. But what now of the matter of temptation? What is
to be our attitude when, after we have seen and believed these facts, we
discover the old desires rising up again? Worse still, what if we fall once
more into known sin? What if we lose our temper, or worse? Is the whole
position set forth above proved thereby to be false?
Now remember, one of the Devil's main objects is
always to make us doubt the Divine facts. (Compare Gen. 3:4) After we have
seen, by revelation of the Spirit of God, that we are indeed dead with Christ,
and have reckoned it so, he will come and say: `There is something moving
inside. What about it? Can you call this death?' When that happens, what will
be our answer? The crucial test is just here. Are you going to believe the
tangible facts of the natural realm which are clearly before your eyes, or the
intangible facts of the spiritual realm which are neither seen nor
scientifically proved?
Now we must be careful. It is important for us to
recall again what are facts stated in God' Word for faith to lay hold of and
what are not. How does God state that deliverance is effected? Well, in the
first place, we are not told that sin as a principle in us is rooted out or removed.
To reckon on that will be to miscalculate altogether and find ourselves in the
false position of the man we considered earlier, who tried to put down the
twelve shillings in his pocket as fifteen shillings in his account-book. No,
sin is not eradicated. It is very much there, and, given the opportunity, will
overpower us and cause us to commit sins again, whether consciously or
unconsciously. That is why we shall always need to know the operation of the
precious Blood.
But whereas we know that, in dealing with sins
committed, God's method is direct, to blot them out of remembrance by means of
the Blood, when we come to the principle of sin and the matter of deliverance
from its power, we find instead that God deals with this indirectly. He does not
remove the sin but the sinner. Our old man was crucified with Him, and because
of this the body, which before had been a vehicle of sin, is unemployed (Romans
6:6).[5] Sin, the old master, is still about, but the slave who served him has
been put to death and so is out of reach and his members are unemployed. The
gambler's hand is unemployed, the swearer's tongue is unemployed, and these
members are now available to be used instead "as instruments of
righteousness unto God" (Romans 6:13).
Thus we can say that `deliverance from sin' is a
more scriptural idea than `victory over sin'. The expressions "freed from
sin" and "dead unto sin" in Romans 6:7 and 11 imply deliverance
from a power that is still very present and very real -- not from something
that no longer exists. Sin is still there, but we are knowing deliverance from
its power in increasing measure day by day.
This deliverance is so real that John can boldly
write: "Whosoever is begotten of God doeth no sin ... he cannot sin"
(1 John 3:9), which is, however, a statement that, wrongly understood, may
easily mislead us. By it John is not telling us that sin is now no longer in
our history and that we shall not again commit sin. He is saying that to sin is
not in the nature of that which is born of God. The life of Christ has been
planted in us by new birth and its nature is not to commit sin. But there is a
great difference between the nature and the history of a thing, and there is a
great difference between the nature of the life within us and our
history. To illustrate this (though the illustration is an inadequate one) we
might say that wood `cannot' sink, for it is not its nature to do so; but of
course in history it will do so if a hand hold it under water. The history is a
fact, just as sins in our history are historic facts; but the nature is a fact
also, and so is the new nature that we have received in Christ. What is `in
Christ' cannot sin; what is in Adam can sin and will do so whenever Satan is
given a chance to exert his power.
So it is a question of our choice of which facts
we will count upon and live by: the tangible facts of daily experience or the
mightier fact that we are now `in Christ'. The power of His resurrection is on
our side, and the whole might of God is at work in our salvation (Rom. 1:16),
but the matter still rests upon our making real in history what is true in
Divine fact.
"Now faith is the assurance of things hoped
for, the proving of things not seen" (Heb. 11:1), and "the things
which are not seen are eternal" (2 Cor. 4:18). I think we all know that
Hebrews 11:1 is the only definition of faith in the New Testament, or indeed in
the Scriptures. It is important that we should really understand that
definition. You are familiar with the common English translation of these
words, describing faith as "the substance of things hoped for"
(A.V.). However, the word in the Greek has in it the sense of an action and not
just of some thing, a `substance', and I confess I have personally spent a
number of years trying to find a correct word to translate this. But the New
Translation of J.N. Darby is especially good in regard to this word:
"Faith is the substantiating of things hoped for". That is
much better. It implies the making of them real in experience.
How do we `substantiate' something? We are doing
so every day. We cannot live in the world without doing so. Do you know the
difference between substance and `substantiating'? A substance is an object,
something before me. `Substantiating' means that I have a certain power or
faculty that makes that substance to be real to me. Let us take a simple
illustration. By means of our senses we can take things of the world of nature
and transfer them into our consciousness so that we can appreciate them. Sight
and hearing, for example, are two of my faculties which substantiate to me the
world of light and sound. We have colours: red, yellow, green, blue, violet;
and these colours are real things. But if I shut my eyes, then to me the colour
is no longer real; it is simply nothing -- to me. It is not only that
the colour is there, but I have the power to `substantiate' it. I have the
power to make that colour true to me and to give it reality in my
consciousness. That is the meaning of `substantiating'.
If I am blind I cannot distinguish colour, or if
I lack the faculty of hearing I cannot enjoy music. Yet music and colour are in
fact real things, and their reality is unaffected by whether or not I am
able to appreciate them. Now we are considering here the things which, though
they are not seen, are eternal and therefore real. Of course we cannot
substantiate Divine things with any of our natural senses; but there is one
faculty which can substantiate the "things hoped for", the things of
Christ, and that is faith. Faith makes the real things to become real in
my experience. Faith `substantiates' to me the things of Christ.
Hundreds of thousands of people are reading Romans 6:6: "Our old man was
crucified with him". To faith it is true; to doubt, or to mere mental assent
apart from spiritual illumination, it is not true.
Let us remember again that we are dealing here
not with promises but with facts. The promises of God are revealed to us by His
Spirit that we may lay hold of then; but facts are facts and they remain facts
whether we believe them or not. If we do not believe the facts of the Cross
they still remain as real as ever, but they are valueless to us. It does not
need faith to make these things real in themselves, but faith can
`substantiate' them and make them real in our experience.
Whatever contradicts the truth of God's Word we
are to regard as the Devil's lie, not because it may not be in itself a very
real fact to our senses but because God has stated a greater fact before which
the other must eventually yield. I once had an experience which (though not
applicable in detail to the present matter) illustrates this principle. Some
years ago I was ill. For six nights I had high fever and could find no sleep.
Then at length God gave me from the Scripture a personal word of healing, and
because of this I expected all symptoms of sickness to vanish at once. Instead
of that, not a wink of sleep could I get, and I was not only sleepless but more
restless than ever. My temperature rose higher, my pulse beat faster and my
head ached more severely than before. The enemy asked, `Where is God's promise?
Where is your faith? What about all your prayers?' So I was tempted to thrash
the whole matter out in prayer again, but was rebuked, and this Scripture came
to mind: "Thy word is truth" (John 17:17). If God' Word is truth, I
thought, then what are these symptoms? They must all be lies! So I declared to
the enemy, `This sleeplessness is a lie, this headache is a lie, this fever is
a lie, this high pulse is a lie. In view of what God has said to me, all these
symptoms of sickness are just your lies, and God's Word to me is truth.' In
five minutes I was asleep, and I awoke the following morning perfectly well.
Now of course in a particular personal matter
such as the above it might be quite possible for me to deceive myself as to
what God had said, but of the fact of the Cross there can never be any such
question. We must believe God, no matter how convincing Satan's
arguments appear.
A skillful liar lies not only in word but in
gesture and deed; he can as easily pass a bad coin as tell an untruth. The
Devil is a skillful liar, and we cannot expect him to stop at words in his
lying. He will resort to lying signs and feelings and experiences in his
attempts to shake us from our faith in God's Word. Let me make it clear that I
do not deny the reality of the `flesh'. Indeed we shall have a good deal more
to say about this further on in our study. But I am speaking here of our being
moved from a revealed position in Christ. As soon as we have accepted our death
with Christ as a fact, Satan will do his best to demonstrate convincingly by
the evidence of our day-to-day experience that we are not dead at all but very
much alive. So we must choose. Will we believe Satan's lie or God's truth? Are
we going to be governed by appearances or by what God says?
I am Mr. Nee. I know that I am Mr. Nee. It is a
fact upon which I can confidently count. It is of course possible that I might
lose my memory and forget that I am Mr. Nee, or I might dream that I am some
other person. But whether I feel like it or not, when I am sleeping I am Mr.
Nee and when I am awake I am Mr. Nee; when I remember it I am Mr. Nee and when
I forget it I am still Mr. Nee.
Now of course, were I to pretend to be someone
else, things would be much more difficult. If I were to try and pose as Miss K.
I should have to keep saying to myself all the time, `You are Miss K.; now be
sure to remember that you are Miss K.,' and despite much reckoning the likelihood
would be that when I was off my guard and someone called, `Mr. Nee!' I should
be caught out and should answer to my own name. Fact would triumph over
fiction, and all my reckoning would break down at that crucial moment. But I am
Mr. Nee and therefore I have no difficulty whatever in reckoning myself to
be Mr. Nee. It is a fact which nothing I experience or fail to experience can
alter.
So also, whether I feel it or not, I am dead with
Christ. How can I be sure? Because Christ has died; and since "one died
for all, therefore all died" (2 Cor. 5:14). Whether my experience proves
it or seems to disprove it, the fact remains unchanged. While I stand upon that
fact Satan cannot prevail against me. Remember that his attack is always upon our
assurance. If he can get us to doubt God's Word, then his object is secured and
he has us in his power; but if we rest unshaken in the assurance of God's
stated fact, assured that He cannot do injustice to His work or His Word, then
it does not matter what tactics Satan adopts, we can well afford to laugh at
him. If anyone should try to persuade me that I am not Mr. Nee, I could well
afford to do the same.
"We walk by faith, not be appearance"
(2 Cor. 5:7), mg). You probably know the illustration of Fact, Faith and
Experience walking along the top of a wall. Fact walked steadily on, turning
neither to right nor left and never looking behind. Faith followed and all went
well so long as he kept his eyes focused upon Fact; but as soon as he became
concerned about Experience and turned to see how he was getting on, he
lost his balance and tumbled off the wall, and poor old Experience fell down
after him.
All temptation is primarily to look within; to
take our eyes off the Lord and to take account of appearances. Faith is always
meeting a mountain, a mountain of evidence that seems to contradict God's Word,
a mountain of apparent contradiction in the realm of tangible fact -- of
failures in deed, as well as in the realm of feeling and suggestion -- and
either faith or the mountain has to go. They cannot both stand. but the trouble
is that many a time the mountain stays and faith goes. That must not be. If we
resort to our senses to discover the truth, we shall find Satan's lies are
often enough true to our experience; but if we refuse to accept as binding
anything that contradicts God's Word and maintain an attitude of faith in Him
alone, we shall find instead that Satan's lies begin to dissolve and that our
experience is coming progressively to tally with that Word.
It is our occupation with Christ that has this
result, for it means that He becomes progressively real to us on concrete
issues. In a given situation we see Him as real holiness, real
resurrection life -- for us. What we see in Him objectively now operates in us
subjectively -- but really -- to manifest Him in us in that situation.
That is the mark of maturity. That is what Paul means by his words to the
Galatians: "I am again in travail until Christ be formed in you"
(4:19). Faith is `substantiating' God's facts; and faith is always the
`substantiating' of eternal fact -- of something eternally true.
Abiding In Him
Now although we have already spent long on this
matter, there is a further thing that may help to make it clearer to us. the
Scriptures declare that we are "dead indeed", but nowhere do they say
that we are dead in ourselves. We shall look in vain to find death
within; that is just the place where it is not to be found. We are dead not in
ourselves but in Christ. We were crucified with Him because we were in
Him.
We are familiar with the words of the Lord Jesus,
"Abide in me, and I in you" (John 15:4). Let us consider them for a
moment. First they remind us once again that we have never to struggle to get
into Christ. We are not told to get there, for we are told to stay there
where we have been placed. It was God's own act that put us in Christ, and we
are to abide in Him.
But further, this verse lays down for us a Divine
principle, which is that God has done the work in Christ and not in us as
individuals. The all-inclusive death and the all-inclusive resurrection of
God's Son were accomplished fully and finally apart from us in the first place.
It is the history of Christ which is to become the experience apart from
Him. The Scriptures tell us that we were crucified "with Him", that
we were quickened, raised, and set by God in the heavenlies "in Him",
and that we are complete "in Him" (Rom. 6:6; Eph. 2:5,6; Col. 2:10).
It is not just something that is still to be effected in us (though it is
that, of course). It is something that has already been effected, in
association with Him.
In the Scriptures we find that no Christian
experience exists as such. What God has done in His gracious purpose is
to include us in Christ. In dealing with Christ God has dealt with the
Christian; in dealing with the Head He has dealt with all the members. It is
altogether wrong for us to think that we can experience anything of the
spiritual life in ourselves merely, and apart from Him. God does not intend
that we should acquire something exclusively personal in our experience, and He
is not willing to effect anything like that for you and me. All the spiritual
experience of the Christian is already true in Christ. It has already
been experienced by Christ. What we call `our' experience is only our entering
into His history and His experience.
It would be odd if one branch of a vine tried to
bear grapes with a reddish skin, and another branch tried to bear grapes with a
green skin, and yet another branch grapes with a very dark purple skin, each
branch trying to produce something of its own without reference to the vine. It
is impossible, unthinkable. The character of the branches is determined by the
vine. Yet certain Christians are seeking experiences as experiences.
They think of crucifixion as something, of resurrections as something, of
ascension as something, and they never stop to think that the whole is related
to a Person. No, only as the Lord opens our eyes to see the Person do we have
any true experience. Every true spiritual experience means that we have
discovered a certain fact in Christ and have entered into that; anything that
is not from Him in this way is an experience that is going to evaporate very
soon. `I have discovered that in Christ; then, Praise the Lord, it is
mine! I possess it, Lord, because it is in Thee.' Oh it is a great thing to
know the facts of Christ as the foundation for our experience.
So God's basic principle in leading us on
experimentally is not to give us something. It is not to bring us through
something, and as a result to put something into us which we can call `our experience'.
It is not that God effects something within us so that we can say, `I
died with Christ last March' or `I was raised from the dead on January 1st,
1937,' or even, `Last Wednesday I asked for a definite experience and I have
got it'. No, that is not the way. I do not seek experiences in themselves
as in this present year of grace. Time must not be allowed to dominate my thinking
here.
Then, some will say, what about the crises so
many of us have passed through? True, some of us have passed through real
crises in our lives. For instance George Muller could say, bowing himself down
to the ground, `There was a day when George Muller died'. How about that? Well,
I am not questioning the reality of the spiritual experiences we go through nor
the importance of crises to which God brings us in our walk with Him; indeed, I
have already stressed the need for us to be quite as definite ourselves about
such crisis in our own lives. But the point is that God does not give
individuals individual experiences. All that they have is only an entering into
what God has already done. It is the `realizing' in time of eternal things.
The history of Christ becomes our experience and our spiritual history; we do
not have a separate history from His. The entire work regarding us is not done
in us here but in Christ. He does no separate work in individuals apart from
what He has done there. Even eternal life is not given to us as individuals:
the life is in the Son, and "he that hath the Son hath the life". God
has done all in His Son, and He has included us in Him; we are incorporated
into Christ.
Now the point of all this is that there is a very
real practical value in the stand of faith that says, `God has put me in
Christ, and therefore all that is true of Him is true of me. I will abide in
Him.' Satan is always trying to get us out, to keep us out, to convince us that
we are out, and by temptations, failures, suffering, trial, to make us feel
acutely that we are outside of Christ. Our first thought is that, if we were in
Christ, we should not be in this state, and therefore, judging by the feelings
we now have, we must be out of Him; and so we begin to pray, `Lord, put me into
Christ'. No! God's injunction is to "abide" in Christ, and that is
the way of deliverance. But how is it so? Because it opens the way for God to
take a hand in our lives and to work the thing out in us. It makes room for the
operation of His superior power -- the power of resurrection (Rom. 6:4,9,10) --
so that the facts of Christ do progressively become the facts of our daily
experience, and where before "sin reigned" (Rom. 5:21) we make now
the joyful discovery that we are truly "no longer ... in bondage to
sin" (Rom. 6:6).
As we stand steadfastly on the ground of what
Christ is, we find that all that is true of Him is becoming experimentally true
in us. If instead we come onto the ground of what we are in ourselves we will
find that all that is true of the old nature remains true of us. If we get there
in faith we have everything; if we return back here we find nothing. So
often we go to the wrong place to find the death of self. It is in Christ. We
have only to look within to find we are very much alive to sin; but when we
look over there to the Lord, God sees to it that death works here but that
"newness of life" is ours also. We are "alive unto God"
(Rom. 6:4,11).
"Abide in me, and I in you." This is a
double sentence: a command coupled with a promise. That is to say, there is an
objective and a subjective side to God's working, and the subjective side
depends upon the objective; the "I in you" is the outcome of our
abiding in Him. We need to guard against being over-anxious about the
subjective side of things, and so becoming turned in upon ourselves. We need to
dwell upon the objective -- "abide in me" -- and to let God take care
of the subjective. And this He has undertaken to do.
I have illustrated this from the electric light.
You are in a room and it is growing dark. You would like to have the light on
in order to read. There is a reading-lamp on the table beside you. What do you
do? Do you watch it intently to see if the light will come on? Do you take a
cloth and polish the bulb? No, you get up and cross over to the other side of
the room where the switch is on the wall and you turn the current on. You turn
your attention to the source of power and when you have taken the necessary
action there the light comes on here.
So in our walk with the Lord our attention must
be fixed on Christ. "Abide in me, and I in you" is the Divine order.
Faith in the objective facts make those facts true subjectively. As the apostle
Paul puts it, "We all ... beholding ... the glory of the Lord, are
transformed into the same image" (2 Cor. 3:18 mg.). The same principle
holds good in the matter of fruitfulness of life: "He that abideth in me,
and I in him, the same beareth much fruit" (John 15:5). We do not try to
produce fruit or concentrate upon the fruit produced. Our business is to look
away to Him. As we do so He undertakes to fulfill His Word in us.
How do we abide? `Of God are ye in Christ Jesus.'
It was the work of God to put you there and He has done it. Now stay
there! Do not be moved back onto your own ground. Never look at yourself as
though you were not in Christ. Look at Christ and see yourself in Him. Abide
in Him. Rest in the fact that God has put you in His Son, and live in the
expectation that He will complete His work in you. It is for Him to make good
the glorious promise that "sin shall not have dominion over you"
(Rom. 6:14).
Chapter 5: The Divide Of The Cross
The kingdom of this world is not this
Two Creations
Thus, in Satan's hands, the first creation has become
the old creation, and God's primary concern is now no longer with that but with
a second and new creation. He is bringing in a new creation, a new kingdom and
a new world, and nothing of the old creation, the old kingdom or the old world
can be transferred to the new. It is a question now of these two rival realms,
and of which realm we belong to.
The apostle Paul, of course, leaves us in no
doubt as to which of these two realms is now in fact ours. He tells us that
God, in redemption, "delivered us out of the power of darkness, and
translated us into the kingdom of the Son of his love" (Col. 1:12,13).
But in order to bring us into His new kingdom,
God must do something new in us. He must make of us new creatures. Unless we
are created anew we can never fit into the new realm. "That which is born
of the flesh is flesh"; and, "flesh and blood cannot inherit the
Once we really understand what God is seeking,
namely, something altogether new for Himself, then we shall see clearly that we
can never bring any contribution from the old realm into that new thing. God
wanted to have us for Himself, but He could not bring us as we were into
that which He had purposed; so He first did away with us by the Cross of
Christ, and then by resurrection provided a new life for us. "If any man
is in Christ, he is a new creature (mg. `there is a new creation'): the old
things are passed away; behold, they are become new" (2 Cor. 5:17). Being
now new creatures with a new nature and a new set of faculties, we can enter
the new kingdom and the new world.
The Cross was the means God used to bring to an
end `the old things' by setting aside altogether our `old man', and the
resurrection was the means He employed to impart to us all that was necessary
for our life in that new world. "We were buried therefore with him through
baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory
of the Father, so we also might walk in newness of life" (Rom. 6:4).
The greatest negative in the universe is the
Cross, for with it God wiped out everything that was not of Himself: the
greatest positive in the universe is the resurrection, for through it God
brought into being all He will have in the new sphere. So the resurrection
stands at the threshold of the new creation. It is a blessed thing to see that
the Cross ends all that belongs to the first regime, and that the resurrection
introduces all that pertains to the second. Everything that had its beginning
before resurrection must be wiped out. Resurrection is God's new
starting-point.
We have now two worlds before us, the old and the
new. In the old, Satan has absolute dominion. You may be a good man in the old
creation, but as long as you belong to the old you are under sentence of death,
because nothing of the old can go over to the new. The Cross is God's
declaration that all is of the old creation must die. Nothing of the first Adam
can pass beyond the Cross; it all ends there. The sooner we see that, the
better, for it is by the Cross that God has made a way of escape for us from
that old creation. God gathered up in the Person of His Son all that was of
Adam and crucified Him; so in Him all that was of Adam was done away. Then God
made, as it were, a proclamation throughout the universe saying: `Through the
Cross I have set aside all that is not of Me; you who belong to the old
creation are all included in that; you too have been crucified with Christ!'
None of us can escape that verdict.
This brings us to the subject of baptism.
"Are ye ignorant that all we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were
baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him through baptism into
death" (Rom. 6:3,4). What is the significance of these words?
Baptism in Scripture is associated with
salvation. "He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved" (Mark
16:16). We cannot speak scripturally of `baptismal regeneration' but we may speak
of `baptismal salvation'. What is salvation? It relates not to our sins nor to
the power of sin, but to the cosmos or world-system. We are involved in
Satan's world-system. To be saved is to make our exit from his world-system
into God's
In the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, says Paul,
"the world hath been crucified unto me, and I unto the world" (Gal.
6:14). This is the figure developed by Peter when he writes of the eight souls
who were "saved through water" (1 Peter 3:20). Entering into the ark,
Noah and those with him stepped by faith out of that old corrupt world into a
new one. It was not so much that they were personally not drowned, but that
they were out of that corrupt system. That is salvation.
Then Peter goes on: "Which also after a true
likeness (mg. `in the antitype') doth now save you, even baptism" (verse
21). In other words, by that aspect of the Cross which is figured in baptism
you are delivered from this present evil world, and, by your baptism in water,
you confirm this. It is baptism "into his death", ending one creation
; but it is also baptism "into Christ Jesus", having in view a new
one (Rom. 6:3). You go down into the water and your world, in figure, goes down
with you. you come up in Christ, but your world is drowned.
"Believe on the Lord Jesus, and thou shalt
be saved", said Paul at
Thus it is clear that baptism is no mere question
of a cup of water, nor of a baptistry of water. It is a tremendous thing,
relating as it does both to the death and to the resurrection of our Lord; and
having in view two worlds. Anyone who has worked in a pagan country knows what
tremendous issues are raised by baptism.
Burial Means An End
Peter goes on now to describe baptism in the
passage just quoted as "the answer of a good conscience toward God"
(1 Peter 3:21 A.V.). Now we cannot answer without being spoken to . If God had
said nothing we should have no need to answer. But He has spoken; He has spoken
to us by the Cross. By it He has told of His judgment of us, of the world, of
the old creation and of the old kingdom. The Cross is not only Christ's
personally -- an individual' Cross. It is an all inclusive Cross, a `corporate'
Cross, a Cross that includes you and me. God has put us all into His Son, and
crucified us in Him. In the last Adam He has wiped out all that was of the
first Adam.
Now what is my answer to God's verdict on the old
creation? I answer by asking for baptism. Why? In Romans 6:4 Paul explains that
baptism means burial: "We were buried therefore with him through
baptism". Baptism is of course connected with both death and resurrection,
though in itself it is neither death nor resurrection: it is burial. But who
qualifies for burial? Only the dead! So if I ask for baptism I proclaim myself
dead and fit only for the grave.
Alas, some have been taught to look on burial as
a means to death; they try to die by getting themselves buried! Let me
say emphatically that, unless our eyes have been opened by God to see that we
have died in Christ and been buried with Him, we have no right to be baptized.
The reason we step down into the water is that we have recognized that in God's
sight we have already died. It is to that that we testify. God's
question is clear and simple. `Christ has died, and I have included you there.
Now, what are you going to say to that?' What is my answer? `Lord, I believe
You have done the crucifying. I say Yes to the death and to the burial to which
You have committed me.' He has consigned me to death and the grave; by my
request for baptism I give public assent to that fact.
In
In China we have two emergency Services, a `Red
Cross' and a `Blue Cross' The first deals with those who are wounded in battle
but are still alive, to bring them succour and healing; the second deals with
those who are already dead in famine, flood or war, to give them burial. God's
dealings with us in the Cross of Christ are more drastic than those of the `Red
Cross'. He does not set out to patch up the old creation. By Him even the still
living are condemned to death and to burial, that they may be raised again to
new life. God has done the work of crucifixion so that now we are counted among
the dead; but we must accept this and submit to the work of the `Blue Cross',
by sealing that death with `burial'.
There is an old world and a new world, and
between the two there is a tomb. God has already crucified me, but I must
consent to be consigned to the tomb. My baptism confirms God's sentence, passed
upon me in the Cross of His Son. It affirms that I am cut off from the old
world and belong now to the new. So baptism is no small thing. It means for me
a definite conscious break with the old way of life. This is the meaning of
Romans 6:2: "We who died to sin, how shall we any longer live
therein?" Paul says, in effect, `If you would continue in the old world,
why be baptized? You should never have been baptized if you meant to live on in
the old realm'. When once we see this, we clear the ground for the new creation
by our assent to the burial of the old.
In Romans 6:5, still writing to those who
"were baptized" (verse 3), Paul speaks of our being "united with
him by the likeness of his death". For by baptism we acknowledge in a
future that God has wrought an intimate union between ourselves and Christ in
this matter of death and resurrection. One day I was seeking to emphasize this
truth to a Christian brother. We happened to be drinking tea together, so I
took a lump of sugar and stirred it into my tea. A couple of minutes later I
asked, `Can you tell me where the sugar is now, and where the tea?' `No', he
said, `you have put them together and the one has become lost in the other;
they cannot now be separated.' It was a simple illustration, but it helped him
to see the intimacy and the finality of our union with Christ in death. It is
God that has put us there, and God's acts cannot be reversed.
What, in fact does this union imply? The real
meaning behind baptism is that in the Cross we were `baptized' into the
historic death of Christ, so that His death became ours. Our death and His
became then so closely identified that it is impossible to divide between them.
It is to this historic `baptism' -- this God-wrought union with Him -- that we
assent when we go down into the water. Our public testimony in baptism today is
our admission that the death of Christ two thousand years ago was a mighty
all-inclusive death, mighty enough and all-inclusive enough to carry away in it
and bring to an end everything in us that is not of God.
Resurrection Unto
Newness Of Life
"If we have become united with him by the
likeness of his death, we shall be also be the likeness of his resurrection (
Now with resurrection the figure is different
because something new is introduced. I am "baptized into his death",
but I do not enter in quite the same way into His resurrection, for, Praise the
Lord! His resurrection enters into me, imparting to me a new life. In the death
of the Lord the emphasis is solely upon `I in Christ'. With the resurrection,
while the same thing is true, there is now a new emphasis upon `Christ in me'.
How is it possible for Christ to communicate His resurrection life to me? How
do I receive this new life? Paul suggests, I think, a very good illustration
with these very same words: "united with him". For the word `united'
(A.V. `planted together') may carry in the Greek the sense of `grafted'[6] and
it gives us a very beautiful picture of the life of Christ which is imparted to
us through resurrection.
In
So I asked him to explain the process of
grafting, which he gladly did. `When a tree has grown to a certain height', he
said, `I lop off the top and graft on to it.' Pointing to a special tree he
asked, `Do you see that tree? I call it the father tree, because all the grafts
for the other trees are taken from that one. If the other trees were just left
to follow the course of nature, their fruit would be only about the size of a
raspberry, and would consist mainly of thick skin and seeds. This tree, from
which the grafts for all the others are taken, bears a luscious fruit the size
of a plum, with very thin skin and a tiny seed; and of course all the grafted
trees bear fruit like it.' `How does it happen?' I asked. `I simply take a
little of the nature of the one tree and transfer it to the other', he
explained. `I make a cleavage in the poor tree and insert a slip from the good
one. Then I bind it up and leave it to grow.' `But how can it grow?' I asked.
`I don't know', he said, `but it does grow.'
Then he showed me a tree bearing miserably poor
fruit from the old stock below the graft, and rich juicy fruit from the new
stock above the graft. `I have left the old shoots with their useless fruit on
them to show the difference', he said. `From it you can understand the value of
grafting. You can appreciate, can you not, why I grow only grafted trees?'
How can one tree bear the fruit of another? How
can a poor tree bear good fruit? Only by grafting. Only by our implanting into
it the life of a good tree. But if a man can graft a branch of one tree into
another, cannot God take of the life of His Son and, so to speak, graft it into
us?
A Chinese woman burned her arm badly and was
taken to hospital. In order to prevent serious contracture due to scarring it
was found necessary to graft some new skin over the injured area, but the
doctor attempted in vain to graft a piece of the woman's own skin onto the arm.
Owing to her age and ill-nourishment the skin graft was too poor and would not
`take'. Then a foreign nurse offered a piece of skin and the operation was
carried out successfully. The new skin knit with the old, and the woman left
the hospital with her arm perfectly healed; but there remained a patch of white
foreign skin on her yellow arm to tell the tale of the past. You ask how the
skin of another grew on that woman's arm? I do not know how it grew, but I know
that it did grow.
If an earthly surgeon can take a piece of skin
from one human body and graft it on another,[8] cannot the Divine Surgeon
implant the life of His Son into me? I do not know how it is done. "The
wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the voice thereof, but knowest
not whence it cometh, and whither it goeth; so is every one that is born of the
Spirit" (John 3:8). We cannot tell how God has done His work in us, but it
is done. We can do nothing and need do nothing to bring it about, for by the
resurrection God has already done it.
God has done everything. There is only one
fruitful life in the world and that has been grafted into millions of other
lives. We call this the `new birth'. New birth is the reception of a life which
I did not possess before. It is not that my natural life has been changed at
all; it is that another life, a life altogether new, altogether Divine, has
become my life.
God has cut off the old creation by the Cross of
His Son in order to bring in a new creation in Christ by resurrection. He has
shut the door to that old kingdom of darkness and translated me into the
kingdom of His dear Son. My glorying is in the fact that it has been done --
that, through the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ , that old world has
" been crucified unto me, and I unto the world" (Galations 6:14). My
baptism is my public testimony to that fact. By it, as by my oral witness, my
"confession is made unto salvation" (Romans 10:10).
Chapter 6: The Path of Progress: Presenting Ourselves to God
Our study has now brought us to the point where
we are able to consider the true nature of consecration. We have before us the
second half of Romans 6 from verse 12 to the end. In Romans 6:12,13 we read:
"Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey the
lusts thereof: neither present your members unto sin as instruments of
unrighteousness; but present yourselves unto God, as alive from the dead, and
your members as instruments of righteousness unto God." The operative word
here is "present" and this occurs five times, in verses 13, 16 and
19.[9]
Many have taken this word "present" to
imply consecration without looking carefully into its content. Of course that
is what it does mean, but not in the sense in which we so often understand it.
It is not the consecration of our `old man' with his instincts and resources --
our natural wisdom, strength and other gifts -- to the Lord for Him to use.
This will be at once clear from verse 13. Note
there the clause "as alive from the dead". Paul says: "Present
yourselves unto God, as alive from the dead". This defines for us the
point at which consecration begins. For what is here referred to is not the
consecration of anything belonging to the old creation, but only of that which
has passed through death to resurrection. The `presenting' spoken of is the
outcome of my knowing my old man to be crucified. Knowing, reckoning,
presenting to God: that is the Divine order.
When I really know I am crucified with Him, then
spontaneously I reckon myself dead (verses 6 and 11); and when I know that I am
raised with Him from the dead, then likewise I reckon myself "alive unto
God in Christ Jesus" (verses 9 and 11), for both the death and the
resurrection side of the Cross are to be accepted by faith. When this point is
reached, giving myself to Him follows. In resurrection He is the source of my
life -- indeed He is my life; so I cannot but present everything to Him,
for all is His, not mine. But without passing through death I have nothing to
consecrate, nor is there anything God can accept, for He has condemned all that
is of the old creation to the Cross. Death has cut off all that cannot
be consecrated to Him, and resurrection alone has made consecration possible.
Presenting myself to God means that henceforth I consider my whole life as now
belonging to the Lord.
The Third Step:
"Present Yourselves ..."
Let us observe that this `presenting' relates to
the members of my body -- that body which, as we say earlier, is now unemployed
in respect to sin. "Present yourselves ... and your members", says
Paul, and again: "Present your members" (Romans 6:13,19). God
requires of me that I now regard all my members, all my faculties, as belonging
wholly to Him.
It is a great thing when I discover I am no
longer my own but His. If the ten shillings in my pocket belong to me, then I
have full authority over them. But if they belong to another who has committed
them to me in trust, then I cannot buy what I please with them, and I dare not
lose them. Real Christian life begins with knowing this. How many of us know
that, because Christ is risen, we are therefore alive "unto God" and
not unto ourselves? How many of us dare not use our time or money or
talents as we would, because we realize they are the Lord's not ours? How many
of us have such a strong sense that we belong to Another that we dare not
squander a shilling of our money, or an hour of our time, or any of our mental
or physical powers?
On one occasion a Chinese brother was traveling
by train and found himself in a carriage together with three non-Christians who
wished to play cards in order to while away the time. Lacking a fourth to
complete the game, they invited this brother to join them. `I am sorry to
disappoint you', he said, `but I cannot join your game for I have not brought
my hands with me.' `Whatever do you mean?' they asked in blank astonishment.
`This pair of hands does not belong to me', he said, and then there followed
the explanation of the transfer of ownership that had taken place in his life.
That brother regarded the members of his body as belonging entirely to the
Lord. That is true holiness.
Paul says, "Present your members as servants
to righteousness unto sanctification (A.V. `holiness')" (Romans 6:19).
Make it a definite act. "Present yourselves to God."
Separated Unto The Lord
What is holiness? Many people think we become
holy by the eradication of something evil within. No, we become holy by being
separated unto God. In Old Testament times, it was when a man was chosen by God
to be altogether His that he was publicly anointed with oil and was then said
to be `sanctified'. Thereafter he was regarded as set apart to God. In
the same manner even animals or material things -- a lamb, or the gold of the
temple -- could be sanctified, not by the eradication of anything evil in them,
but by being thus reserved exclusively to the Lord. "Holiness' in the
Hebrew sense meant something thus set apart, and all true holiness is holiness
"to the Lord" (Exodus 28:36). I give myself over wholly to Christ:
that is holiness.
Presenting myself to God implies a recognition
that I am altogether His. This giving of myself is a definite thing, just as
definite as reckoning. There must be a day in my life when I pass out of my own
hands into His, and from that day forward I belong to Him and no longer to
myself. That does not mean that I consecrate myself to be a preacher or a
missionary. Alas, many people are missionaries not because they have truly
consecrated themselves to God but because, in the sense of which we are
speaking, they have not consecrated themselves to Him. They have
`consecrated' (as they would put it) something altogether different, namely,
their own uncrucified natural faculties to the doing of His work; but that is
not true consecration. Then to what are we to be consecrated? Not to Christian
work, but to the will of God to be and do whatever He wants.
David had many mighty men. Some were generals and
others were gatekeepers, according as the king assigned them their task. We
must be willing to be either generals or gatekeepers, allotted to our parts
just as God wills and not as we choose. If you are a Christian, then God has
marked out a pathway for you -- a `course' as Paul calls it in 2 Timothy 4:7.
Not only Paul's path but the path of every Christian has been clearly marked
out by God, and it is of supreme importance that each one should know and walk
in the God-appointed course. `Lord, I give myself to Thee with this desire
alone, to know and walk in the path Thou hast ordained.' That is true giving.
If at the close of a life we can say with Paul: "I have finished my
course", then we are blessed indeed. There is nothing more tragic than to
come to the end of life and know we have been on the wrong course. We have only
one life to live down here and we are free to do as we please with it, but if
we seek our own pleasure our life will never glorify God. A devoted Christian
once said in my hearing, `I want nothing for myself; I want everything for
God.' Do you want anything apart from God, or does all your desire center in
His will? Can you truly say that the will of God is "good and acceptable
and perfect" to you? (Romans 12:2)
For it is our wills that are in question here.
That strong self-assertive will of mine must go to the Cross, and I must give
myself over wholly to the Lord. We cannot expect a tailor to make us a coat if
we do not give him any cloth, nor a builder to build us a house if we let him
have no building material; and in just the same way we cannot expect the Lord
to live out His life in us if we do not give Him our lives in which to live.
Without reservations, without controversy, we must give ourselves to Him to do
as He pleases with us. "Present yourselves unto God" (Romans 6:13).
Servant Or Slave?
If we give ourselves unreservedly to God, many
adjustments may have to be made: in family, or business, or church
relationships, or in the matter of our personal views. God will not let
anything of ourselves remain. His finger will touch, point by point, everything
that is not of Him, and He will say: `This must go'. Are you willing? It is
foolish to resist God, and always wise to submit to Him. We admit that many of
us still have controversies with the Lord. He wants something, while we want
something else. Many things we dare not look into, dare not pray about, dare
not even think about, lest we lose our peace. We can evade the issue in that
way, but to do so will bring us out of the will of God. It is always an easy
matter to get out of His will, but it is a blessed thing just to hand ourselves
over to Him and let Him have His way with us.
How good it is to have the consciousness that we
belong to the Lord and are not our own! There is nothing more precious in the
world. It is that which brings the awareness of His continual presence, and the
reason is obvious. I must first have the sense of God's possession of me before
I can have the sense of His presence with me. When once His ownership is
established, then I dare do nothing in my own interests, for I am His exclusive
property. "Know ye not, that to whom ye present yourselves as servants
unto obedience, his servants ye are whom ye obey?" (Romans 6:16). The word
here rendered `servant' really signifies a bondservant, a slave. This word is
used several times in the second half of Romans 6. What is the difference
between a servant and a slave? A servant may serve another, but the ownership
does not pass to that other. If he likes his master he can serve him, but if he
does not like him he can give in his notice and seek another master. Not so is
it with the slave. He is not only the servant of another but he is the
possession of another. How did I become the slave of the Lord? On His part He
bought me, and on my part I presented myself to Him. By right of redemption I
am God's property, but if I would be His slave I must willingly give myself to Him,
for He will never compel me to do so.
The trouble about many Christians today is that
they have an insufficient idea of what God is asking of them. How glibly they
say: `Lord, I am willing for anything.' Do you know that God is asking of you
your very life? There are cherished ideals, strong wills, precious
relationships, much-loved work, that will have to go; so do not give yourself
to God unless you mean it. God will take you seriously, even if you did not
mean it seriously.
When the Galilian boy brought his bread to the
Lord, what did the Lord do with it? He broke it. God will always break what is
offered to Him. He breaks what He takes, but after breaking it He blesses and
uses it to meet the needs of others. After you give yourself to the Lord, He
begins to break what was offered to Him. Everything seems to go wrong, and you
protest and find fault with the ways of God. But to stay there is to be no more
than just a broken vessel -- no good for the world because you have gone too
far for the world to use you, and no good for God either because you have not
gone far enough for Him to use you. You are out of gear with the world, and you
have a controversy with God. This is the tragedy of many a Christian.
My giving of myself to the Lord must be an
initial fundamental act. Then day by day I must go on giving to Him, not
finding fault with His use of me but accepting with praise even what the flesh
revolts against.
I am the Lord's and now no longer reckon myself
to be my own but acknowledge in everything His ownership and authority. That it
the attitude God requires, and to maintain it is true consecration. I do not
consecrate myself to be a missionary or a preacher; I consecrate myself to God
to do His will where I am, be it in school, office or kitchen, counting
whatever He ordains for me to be the very best, for nothing but good can come
to those who are wholly His.
May we always be possessed by the consciousness
that we are not our own.
Chapter 7: The Eternal Purpose
We have spoken of the need of revelation, of
faith and of consecration, if we are to live the normal Christian life. But
unless we see the end God has in view we shall never clearly understand why
these steps are necessary to lead us to that end. Before therefore we consider
further the question of inward experience, let us first look at the great
Divine goal before us.
What is God's purpose in creation and what is His
purpose in redemption? It may be summed up in two phrases, one from each of our
two sections of Romans. It is: "The glory of God" (Romans 3:23), and
"The glory of the children of God" (Romans 8:21).
In Romans 3:23 we read: "All have sinned,
and fall short of the glory of God". God's purpose for man was glory, but
sin thwarted that purpose by causing man to miss God's glory. When we think of
sin we instinctively think of the judgment it brings; we invariably associate
it with condemnation and hell. Man's thought is always of the punishment that
will come to him if he sins, but God's thought is always of the glory man will
miss if he sins. The result of sin is that we forfeit God's glory: the result
of redemption is that we are qualified again for glory. God's purpose in
redemption is glory, glory, glory.
Firstborn Among Many
Brethren
This consideration takes us forward into Romans
chapter 8 where the topic is developed in verses 16 to 18 and again in verses
29 and 30. Paul says: "We are children of God: and if children, then
heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with
him, that we may be also glorified with him. For I reckon that the sufferings
of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall
be revealed to usward" (Romans 8:16-18); and again: "Whom he
foreknew, he also foreordained to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he
might be the firstborn among many brethren: and whom he foreordained, them he
also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified,
them he also glorified" (Romans 8:29,30). What was God's objective? It was
that His Son Jesus Christ might be the firstborn among many brethren, all of
whom should be conformed to His image. How did God realize that objective?
"Whom he justified, them he also glorified." God's purpose, then, in creation
and redemption was to make Christ the firstborn Son among many glorified sons.
That may perhaps at first convey very little to many of us, but let us look
into it more carefully.
In John 1:14 we are told that the Lord Jesus was
God's only begotten Son: "the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us (and
we beheld his glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father)". That
He was God's only begotten Son signifies that God had no other Son but this
one. He was with the Father from all eternity. But, we are told, God was not
satisfied that Christ should remain the only begotten Son; He wanted also to
make Him His first begotten. How could an only begotten Son become a first
begotten? The answer is simple: by the Father having more children. If you have
but one son then his is the only begotten, but if thereafter you have other
children then the only begotten becomes the first begotten.
The Divine purpose in creation and redemption was
that God should have many children. He wanted us, and could not be
satisfied without us. Some time ago I called to see Mr. George Cutting, the
writer of the well-known tract Safety, Certainty and Enjoyment. When I
was ushered into the presence of this old saint of ninety-three years, he took
my hand in his and in a quiet, deliberate way he said: `Brother, do you know, I
cannot do without Him? And do you know, He cannot do without me?' Though I was
with him for over an hour, his great age and physical frailty made any
sustained conversation impossible. But what remains in my memory of that
interview was his frequent repetition of these two questions: `Brother, do you
know, I cannot do without Him? And do you know, He cannot do without me?'
In reading the story of the prodigal son most
people are impressed with all the troubles the prodigal meets; they are
occupied in thinking what a bad time he is having. But that is not the point of
the parable. "My son ... was lost, and is found" -- there is the
heart of the story. It is not a question of what the son suffers but of what
the Father loses. He is the sufferer; He is the loser. A sheep is
lost: whose is the loss? The shepherd's. A coin is lost: whose is the loss? The
woman's. A son is lost: whose is the loss? The Father's. That is the lesson of
Luke chapter 15.
The Lord Jesus was the only begotten Son, and as
the only begotten He had no brothers. But the Father sent the Son in order that
the only begotten might also be the first begotten, and the beloved Son have
many brethren. There you have the whole story of the Incarnation and the Cross;
and there you have at the last the purpose of God fulfilled in His
"bringing many sons unto glory" (Heb. 2:10).
In Romans 8:29 we read of "many
brethren"; in Hebrews :10 of "many sons". From the point of view
of the Lord Jesus it is "brethren"; from the point of view of God the
Father it is "sons". Both words in this context convey the idea of
maturity. God is seeking full-grown sons; but He does not stop even there. For
He does not want His sons to live in a barn or a garage or a field; He wants
them in His home; He wants them to share His glory. That is the explanation of
Romans 8:30: "Whom he justified, them he also glorified." Sonship --
the full expression of His Son -- is God's goal in the many sons. How could He
bring that about? By justifying them and then by glorifying them. In His
dealings with them God will never stop short of that goal. He set Himself to
have sons, and to have those sons, mature and responsible, with Him in glory.
He made provision for the whole of Heaven to be peopled with glorified sons.
That was His purpose in redemption.
The Grain Of Wheat
But how could God's only begotten Son become His
first begotten? The method is explained in John 12:24: "Verily, verily, I
say unto you, Except a grain of wheat fall into the earth and die, it abideth
by itself alone; but if it die, it beareth much fruit." Who was that
grain? It was the Lord Jesus. In the whole universe God had only one `grain of
wheat'; He had no second grain. God put His one grain of wheat into the ground
and it died, and in resurrection the only begotten grain became the first
begotten grain, and from the one grain there have sprung many grains.
In respect of His divinity the Lord Jesus remains
uniquely "the only begotten Son of God". Yet there is a sense in
which, from the resurrection onward through all eternity, He is also the first
begotten, and His life from that time is found in many brethren. For we who are
born of the Spirit are made thereby "partakers of the divine nature"
(2 Peter 1:4), though not, mark you, as of ourselves but only, as we shall see
in a moment, in dependence upon God and by virtue of our being `in Christ'. We
have "received the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father. The
Spirit himself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are children of
God" (
The first and the twentieth chapters of John are
in this respect most precious. In the beginning of his Gospel John tells us
that Jesus was "the only begotten from the Father". At the end of his
Gospel he tells us how, after the Lord Jesus died and rose again, He said to
Mary Magdalene, "Go unto my brethren, and say to them, I ascend unto my
Father and your Father, and my God and your God" (John 20:17). Hitherto in
this Gospel the Lord had spoken often of "the Father" or of "my
Father". Now, in resurrection, He add, "... and your Father". It
is the eldest Son, the first begotten, speaking. By His death and resurrection
many brethren have been brought into God's family, and so, in the same verse He
uses this very name for them: "My brethren". "He is not ashamed
to call them brethren" (Heb. 2:11).
The Choice That
Confronted Adam
God planted a great number of trees in the garden
of Eden, but "in the midst of the garden" -- that is, in a place of special
prominence -- He planted two trees, the tree of life and the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil. Adam was created innocent; he had no knowledge of
good and evil. Think of a grown man, say thirty years old, who has no sense of
right or wrong, no power to differentiate between the two! Would you not say
such a man was undeveloped? Well, that is exactly what Adam was. And God brings
him into the garden and says to him, in effect, `Now the garden is full of
trees, full of fruits, and of the fruit of every tree you may eat freely. But
in the very midst of the garden is one tree called "the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil"; you must not eat of that, for in the day that
you do so you will surely die. But remember, the name of the other tree
close by is Life.' What, then, is the meaning of these two trees? Adam
was, so to speak, created morally neutral -- neither sinful nor holy, but
innocent -- and God put those two trees there so that he might exercise free
choice. He could choose the tree of life, or he could choose the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil.
Now the knowledge of good and evil, though
forbidden to Adam, is not wrong in itself. Without it however Adam is in a
sense limited in that he cannot decide for himself on moral issues.
Judgment of right and wrong resides not in him but in God, and Adam's only
course when faced with any question is to refer it to Jehovah God. Thus you
have a life in the garden which is totally dependent on God. These two trees,
then, typify two deep principles; they represent two planes of life, the Divine
and the human. The "tree of life" is God Himself, for God is life. He
is the highest form of life, and He is also the source and goal of life. And
the fruit: what is that? It is our Lord Jesus Christ. You cannot eat the tree
but you can eat the fruit. No one is able to receive God as God, but we can
receive the Lord Jesus. The fruit is the edible part, the receivable part of
the tree. So -- may I say it reverently? -- the Lord Jesus is really God in a receivable
form. God in Christ we can receive.
If Adam should take of the tree of life, he would
partake of the life of God and thus become a `son' of God, in the sense of
having in him a life that derived from God. There you would have God's life in
union with man: a race of men having the life of God in them and living in
constant dependence upon God for that life. If on the other hand Adam
should turn the other way and take the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of
good and evil, then he would develop his own manhood along natural lines apart
from God. Reaching a peak of attainment as a self-sufficient being, he would
have the power in himself to form independent judgment, but he would have no
life from God.
So this was the alternative that lay before him.
Choosing the way of the Spirit, the way of obedience, he could become a `son'
of God, living in dependence upon God for his life; or, taking the natural
course, he could put the finishing touch to himself, as it were, by becoming a
self-dependent being, judging and acting apart from God. The history of
humanity is the outcome of the choice he made.
Adam's Choice The
Reason For The Cross
Adam chose the tree of the knowledge of good and
evil and thereby took up independent ground. In doing so he became (as man is
now in his own eyes) a `fully developed' man. He could command a knowledge; he
could decide for himself; he could go on or stop. From then on he was
"wise" (Genesis 3:6). But the consequence for his was death rather
than life, because the choice he had made involved complicity with Satan and
brought him therefore under the judgment of God. That is why access to the tree
of life had thereafter to be forbidden to him.
Two planes of life had been set before Adam: that
of Divine life in dependence upon God, and that of human life with its
`independent' resources. Adam's choice of the latter was sin, because thereby
he allied himself with Satan to thwart the eternal purpose of God. He did so by
choosing to develop his manhood -- to become perhaps a very fine man, even by
his standards a `perfect' man -- apart from God. But the end was death, because
he had not in him the Divine life necessary to realize God's purpose in his
being, but had chosen to become instead an `independent' agent of the Enemy.
Thus in Adam we all become sinners, equally dominated by Satan, equally subject
to the law of sin and death, and equally deserving of the wrath of God.
From this we see the Divine reason for the death
and resurrection of the Lord Jesus. We see too the Divine reason for true
consecration -- for reckoning ourselves to be dead unto sin but alive unto God
in Christ Jesus, and for presenting ourselves unto Him as alive from the dead.
We must all go to the Cross, because what is in us by nature is a self-life,
subject to the law of sin. Adam chose a self-life rather than a Divine life; so
God had to gather up all that was in Adam and do away with it. Our `old man'
has been crucified. God has put us all in Christ and crucified Him as the last
Adam, and thus all that is of Adam has passed away.
Then Christ arose in new form; with a body still,
but `in the Spirit', no longer `in the flesh'. "The last Adam became a
life-giving spirit" (1 Cor. 15:45). The Lord Jesus now has a resurrected
body, a spiritual body, a glorious body, and since He is no longer in the flesh
He can now be received by all. "He that eateth me, he also shall live
because of me", said Jesus (John 6:57). The Jews revolted at the thought
of eating His flesh and drinking His blood, but of course they could not
receive Him then because He was still literally in the flesh. Now that He is in
the Spirit every one of us can receive Him, and it is by partaking of His
resurrection life that we are constituted children of God. "As many as received
him, to them gave he the right to become children of God ... which were born
... of God." (John 1:12,13).
God is not out to reform our life. It is not His
thought to bring it to a certain stage of refinement, for it is on a totally
wrong plane. On that plane He cannot now bring man to glory. He must have a new
man; one born anew, born of God. Regeneration and justification go together.
He That Hath The Son
Hath The Life
There are various planes of life. Human life lies
between the life of the lower animals and the life of God. We cannot bridge the
gulf that divides us from the plan above or the plan below, and the distance
that separates us from the life of God is vastly greater than that which
separates us from the life of the lower animals.
In
When I called on Mr. Wong his pet dog was by his
bedside, and after speaking with him of the things of God and of the nature of
His work in us, I pointed to the dog and inquired his name. He told me he was
called Fido. `Is Fido his Christian name or his surname?' I asked (using the
common Chinese terms for `personal name' and `family name'). `Oh, that is just
his name', he said. `Do you mean that is just his Christian name? Can I call
him Fido Wong?' I continued. `Certainly not!' came the emphatic reply. `But he
lives in your family', I protested, `Why don't you call him Fido Wong?' Then,
indicating his two daughters, I asked `Are your daughters not called Miss
Wong?' `Yes!' `Well then, why cannot I call your dog Master Wong?' The Doctor
laughed, and I went on: `Do you see what I am getting at? Your daughters were
born into your family and they bear your name because you have communicated
your life to them. Your dog may be an intelligent dog, a well-behaved dog, and
altogether a most remarkable dog; but the question is not, Is he a good or a
bad dog? It is merely, Is he a dog? He does not need to be bad to be
disqualified from being a member of your family; he only needs to be a dog. The
same principle applies to you in your relationship to God. The question is not
whether you are a bad man or a good man, more or less, but simply, Are you a
man? If your life is on a lower plane than that of God's life, then you cannot
belong to the Divine family. Throughout your life your aim in preaching has
been to turn bad men into good men; but men as such, whether good or
bad, can have no vital relationship with God. Our only hope as men is to
receive the Son of God, and when we do so His life in us will constitute us
sons of God.' The Doctor saw the truth, and that day he became a member of
God's family by receiving the Son of God into his heart.
What we today possess in Christ is more than Adam
lost. Adam was only a developed man. He remained on that plane, and
never possessed the life of God. But we who receive the Son of God not only
receive the forgiveness of sins; we receive also the Divine life which was
represented in the garden by the tree of life. By the new birth we receive
something Adam never had; we possess what he missed.
They Are All Of One
God wants sons who shall be joint-heirs with Christ
in glory. That is His goal; but how can He bring that about? Turn now to
Hebrews 2:10 and 11: "It became him, for whom are all things, and through
whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the author of
their salvation perfect through sufferings. For both he that sanctifieth and
they that are sanctified are all of one: for which cause he is not ashamed to
call them brethren."
There are two parties mentioned here, namely,
"many sons" and "the author of their salvation", or, in
different terms, "he that sanctifieth" and "they that are
sanctified". But these two parties are said to be "all of one".
The Lord Jesus as Man derived His life from God, and (in another sense, but
just as truly) we derive our new life from God. He was "begotten ... of
the Holy Ghost" (Matthew 1:20 mg.), and we were "born of .... the
spirit", "born ... of God" (John 3:5; 1:13). So, God says, we
are all of One. "Of" in the Greek means "out of". The first
begotten Son and the many sons are all (though in different senses) "out
of" the one Source of life. Do you realize that we have the same life
today that God has? The life which He has in Heaven is the life which He has
imparted to us here on the earth. That is the precious "gift of God"
(Rom. 6:23). It is for that reason that we can live a life of holiness, for it
is not our own life that has been changed, but the life of God that has been
imparted to us.
Do you notice that, in this consideration of the
eternal purpose, the whole question of sin ultimately goes out? It no longer
has a place. Sin came in with Adam, and even when it has been dealt with, as it
has to be, we are only brought back to the point where Adam was. But in
relating us again to the Divine purpose -- in, as it were, restoring to us access
to the tree of life -- redemption has given us far more than Adam ever had. It
has made us partakers of the very life of God Himself.
Chapter 8: The Holy Spirit
We have spoken of the eternal purpose of God as
the motive and explanation of all His dealings with us. Now, before we return
to our study of the phases of Christian experience as set forth in Romans, we
must digress yet again in order to consider something which lies at the heart
of all our experience as the vitalizing power of effective life and service. I
refer to the personal presence and ministry of the Holy Spirit of God.
And here, too, let us take as our starting-point
two verses from Romans, one from each of our sections. "The love of God
hath been shed abroad in our hearts through the Holy Ghost which was given unto
us" (Romans 5:5). "If any man hath not the Spirit of Christ, he is
none of us" (Romans 8:9).
God does not give His gifts at random, nor
dispense them in any arbitrary fashion. They are given freely to all, but they
are given on a definite basis. God has truly "blessed us with every
spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ" (Ephesians 1:3), but
if those blessings which are ours in Christ are to become ours in experience,
we must know on what ground we can appropriate them.
In considering the gift of the Holy Spirit it is
helpful to think of this in two aspects, as the Spirit outpoured and the Spirit
indwelling, and our purpose now is to understand on what basis this twofold
gift of the Holy Spirit becomes ours. I have no doubt that we are right in
distinguishing thus between the outward and the inward manifestations of His
working, and that as we go on we shall find the distinction helpful. Moreover,
when we compare them, we cannot but come to the conclusion that the inward
activity of the Holy Spirit is the more precious. But to say this is not for
one moment to imply that His outward activity is not also precious, for God
only gives good gifts to His children. Unfortunately we are apt to esteem our
privileges lightly because of their sheer abundance. The Old Testament saints,
who were not as favoured as we are, could appreciate more readily than we do
the preciousness of this gift of the outpoured Spirit. In their day it was a
gift given only to the select few -- chiefly to priests, judges, kings and
prophets -- whereas now it is the portion of every child of God. Think! we who
are mere nonentities can have the same Spirit resting upon us as rested upon
Moses the friend of God, upon David the beloved king, and upon Elijah the
mighty prophet. By receiving the gift of the outpoured Holy Spirit we join the
ranks of God's chosen servants of the Old Testament dispensation. Once we see
the value of this gift of God, and realize too our deep need of it, we shall
immediately ask, How can I receive the Holy Spirit in this way to equip me with
spiritual gifts and to empower me for service? Upon what basis has the Spirit
been given?
The Spirit Outpoured
Let us turn first to Acts chapter 2 verses 32 to 36:
"(32) This Jesus did God raise up, whereof we all are witnesses. (33)
Being therefore by the right hand of God exalted, and having received of the
Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, he hath poured forth this, which ye see
and hear. (34) For David ascended not into the heavens: but he saith himself,
The Lord said unto my Lord, sit thou on my right hand, (35) Till I make thine
enemies the footstool of thy feet.(36) Let all the house of Israel therefore
know assuredly, that God hath made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom ye
crucified."
Let us for the moment set verses 34 and 35 aside
and consider verses 33 and 36 together. The former are a quotation from the
110th Psalm and are really a parenthesis, so we shall get the force of Peter's
argument better if we ignore them for the time being. In verse 33 Peter states
that the Lord Jesus was exalted "at the right hand of God" (mg.).
What was the result? He "received of the Father the promise of the Holy
Ghost". And what followed? Pentecost! The result of His exaltation was --
"this, which ye see and hear".
What, then, was the basis upon which the Spirit
was first given to the Lord Jesus to be poured out upon His people? It was His
exaltation to Heaven. This passage makes it absolutely clear that the Holy
Spirit was poured out because the Lord Jesus was exalted. The outpouring of the
Spirit has no relation to your merits or mine, but only to the merits of the
Lord Jesus. The question of what we are does not come into consideration
at all here, but only what He is. He is glorified; therefore the Spirit
is poured out.
Because the Lord Jesus died on the Cross, I have
received forgiveness of sins; because the Lord Jesus rose from the dead, I have
received new life; because the Lord Jesus has been exalted to the right hand of
the Father, I have received the outpoured Spirit. All is because of Him;
nothing is because of me. Remission of sins is not based on human merit, but on
the Lord's crucifixion; regeneration is not based on human merit, but on the
Lord's resurrection; and the enduement with the Holy Spirit is not based on
human merit, but on the Lord's exaltation. The Holy Spirit has not been poured
out on you or me to prove how great we are, but to prove the greatness of the
Son of God.
Now look at verse 36. There is a word here which
demands our careful attention: the word `therefore'. How is this word generally
used? Not to introduce a statement, but to follow a statement that has already
been made. Its use always implies that something has been mentioned before. Now
what has preceded this particular `therefore'? With what is it connected? It
cannot reasonably be connected with either verse 34 or verse 35, but it quite
obviously relates back to verse 33. Peter has just referred to the outpouring
of the Spirit upon the disciples "which ye see and hear", and he
says: "Let all the house of
There was a young man named Joseph, who was
dearly loved of his father. One day news reached the father of the death of his
son, and for years Jacob lamented Joseph's loss. But Joseph was not in the
grave; he was in a place of glory and power. After Jacob had been mourning the
death of his son for years, it was suddenly reported to him that Joseph was
alive and in a high position in
What do the chariots represent here? They surely
typify here the Holy Spirit, sent both to be the evidence that God's Son is in
glory and to convey us there. How do we know that Jesus of Nazareth, who was
crucified by wicked men nearly two thousand years ago, did not just die a
martyr's death but is at the Father's right hand in glory? How can we know for
a surety that He is Lord of lords and King of kings? We can know it beyond
dispute because He has poured out His Spirit upon us. Hallelujah! Jesus is
Lord! Jesus is Christ! Jesus of Nazareth is both Lord and Christ!
The exaltation of the Lord Jesus is the basis on
which the Spirit has been given. Is it possible then that the Lord has
been glorified and you have not received the Spirit? On what basis did
you receive forgiveness of sins? Was it because you prayed so earnestly, or
because you read your Bible from cover to cover, or because of your regular
attendance at Church? Was it because of your merits at all? No! A thousand
times, No! On what ground then were your sins forgiven? "Apart from
shedding of blood there is no remission" (Hebrews 9:22). The sole ground
of forgiveness is the shedding of blood; and since the precious Blood has been
shed, your sins have been forgiven.
Now the principle on which we receive the
enduement of the Holy Spirit is the very same as that on which we receive
forgiveness of sins. The Lord has been crucified, therefore our sins have been
forgiven; the Lord has been glorified, therefore the Spirit has been poured out
upon us. Is it possible that the Son of God shed His Blood and that your sins,
dear child of God, have not been forgiven? Never! Then is it possible that the
Son of God has been glorified and you have not received the Spirit? Never!
Some of you may say: I agree with all this, but I
have no experience of it. Am I to sit down smugly and say I have everything,
when I know perfectly well I have nothing? No, we must never rest content with
objective facts alone. We need subjective experience also; but that experience
will only come as we rest upon Divine facts. God's facts are the basis of our
experience.
Let us go back again to the question of
justification. How were you justified? Not by doing anything at all, but by
accepting the fact that the Lord had done everything. Enduement with the Holy
Spirit becomes yours in exactly the same way as justification, not by your
doing anything yourself, but by your putting your faith in what the Lord has
already done.
If we lack the experience, we must ask God for a
revelation of the eternal fact of the baptism of the Holy Spirit as the gift of
the exalted Lord to His Church. Once we see that, effort will cease, and prayer
will give place to praise. It was a revelation of what the Lord had done for
the world that brought to an end our efforts to secure forgiveness of sins, and
it is a revelation of what the Lord has done for His Church that will bring to
an end our efforts to secure the baptism of the Holy Spirit. We work because we
have not seen the work of Christ. But when once we have seen that, faith will
spring up in our hearts, and as we believe, experience will follow.
Some time ago a young man, who had only been a
Christian for five weeks and who had formerly been violently opposed to the
gospel, attended a series of meetings which I was addressing in
Faith Is Again The Key
As for forgiveness, so equally for the coming
upon us of the Holy Spirit, the whole question is one of faith. As soon as we
see the Lord Jesus on the Cross, we know our sins are forgiven; and as soon as
we see the Lord Jesus on the Throne, we know the Holy Spirit has been poured
out upon us. The basis upon which we receive the enduement of the Holy Spirit
is not our praying and fasting and waiting, but the exaltation of Christ. Those
who emphasize tarrying and hold `tarrying meetings' only mislead us, for the
gift is not for the `favoured few' but for all, because it is not given on the
ground of what we are at all, but of what Christ is. The Spirit has been poured
out to prove His goodness and greatness, not ours. Christ has been
crucified, therefore we have been forgiven: Christ has been glorified,
therefore we have been endued with power from on high. It is all because of
Him.
Suppose an unbeliever expresses the desire to be
saved, and you explain to him the way of salvation and pray with him. Suppose
then he prays after this fashion: `Lord Jesus, I believe Thou hast died for me,
and that Thou canst blot out all my sins. I truly believe Thou wilt forgive
me.' Have you any confidence that that man is saved? When will you rest assured
that he has really been born again? Not when he prays: `Lord, I believe Thou wilt
forgive my sins', but when he says: `Lord, I praise Thee that Thou hast
forgiven my sins. Thou hast died for me; therefore my sins are
blotted out' You believe a person is saved when prayer turns to praise -- when
he ceases to ask the Lord to forgive him, but praises Him that He has already
done so because the Blood of the Lamb has already been shed.
In the same way, you can pray and wait for years
and never experience the Spirit's power; but when you cease to plead with the
Lord to pour out His Spirit upon you, and when instead you trustfully praise
Him that the Spirit has been poured out because the Lord Jesus has
been glorified, you will find that your problem is solved. Praise God! no
single child of His need agonize, nor even wait, for the Spirit to be given.
Jesus is not going to be made Lord; He is Lord. Therefore I am
not going to receive the Spirit; I have received the Spirit. It
is all a question of the faith which comes by revelation. When our eyes are
opened to see that the Spirit has already been poured out because Jesus has
already been glorified, then prayer turns to praise in our hearts.
All spiritual blessings are given on a definite
basis. God's gifts are freely given, but there are conditions which must be
fulfilled on our part before the reception of them is possible. There is a
passage in God's Word which makes the conditions of the outpoured Spirit
perfectly clear: "Repent ye, and be baptized every one of you in the name
of Jesus Christ unto the remission of your sins; and ye shall receive the gift
of the Holy Ghost. For to you is the promise, and to your children, and to all
that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call unto him"
(Acts 2:38,39).
Four things are mentioned in this passage:
Repentance, Baptism, Forgiveness, and the Holy Spirit. The first two are
conditions, the second two are gifts. What are the conditions to be fulfilled
if we are to have forgiveness of sins? According to the Word they are two:
repentance and baptism.
The first condition is repentance, which means a
change of mind. Formerly I thought sin a pleasant thing, but now I have changed
my mind about it; formerly I thought the world an attractive place, but now I
know better; formerly I regarded it a miserable business to be a Christian, but
now I think differently. Once I thought certain things delightful, now I think
them vile; once I thought other things utterly worthless, now I think them most
precious. That is a change of mind, and that is repentance. No life can be
truly changed apart from such a change of mind.
The second condition is baptism. Baptism is an
outward expression of an inward faith. When in my heart I truly believe that I
have died with Christ, have been buried and have risen with Him, then I ask for
baptism. I thereby declare publicly what I believe privately. Baptism is faith
in action.
Here then are two divinely appointed conditions of
forgiveness -- repentance, and faith publicly expressed. Have you repented?
Have you testified publicly to your union with your Lord? Then have you
received remission of sins and the gift of the Holy Ghost? You say you have
only received the first gift, not the second. But, my friend, God offered you
two things if you fulfilled two conditions! Why have you only taken one? What
are you doing about the second?
Suppose I went into a book-shop, selected a
two-volume book, priced at ten shillings, and, having put down a ten-shilling
note, walked out of the shop, carelessly leaving one volume on the counter.
When I reached home and discovered the oversight, what do you think I should
do? I should go straight back to the shop to get the forgotten book, but I
should not dream of paying anything for it. I should simply explain to the
shopkeeper that both volumes were duly paid for, and ask him if he would
therefore kindly let me have the second one; and without any further payment I
should march happily out of the shop with my possession under my arm. Would you
not do the same under the same circumstances?
But you are under the same circumstances.
If you have fulfilled the conditions you are entitled to two gifts, not just
one. You have already taken the one; why not just come and take the other now?
Say to the Lord, `Lord, I have complied with the conditions for receiving
remission of sins and the gift of the Holy Ghost, but I have foolishly only
taken the former. Now I have come back to take the gift of the Holy Ghost, and
I praise Thee for it.'
The Diversity Of The
Experience
But you ask: `How shall I know that the Holy
Spirit is come upon me?' I cannot tell how you will know, but you will
know. No description has been given us of the personal sensations and emotions
of the disciples at Pentecost. We do not know exactly how they felt, but we do
know that their feelings and behaviour were somewhat abnormal, because people
seeing them said they were intoxicated. When the Holy Spirit falls upon God's people
there will be some things which the world cannot account for. There will be
supernatural accompaniments of some kind, though it be no more than an
overwhelming sense of the Divine Presence. We cannot and we must not stipulate
what particular form such outward expressions will take in any given case, but
one thing is sure, that each one upon whom the Spirit of God falls will know
it.
When the Holy Spirit came upon the disciples at
Pentecost there was something quite extraordinary about their behaviour, and
Peter offered an explanation from God's Word to all who witnessed it. This, in
substance, is what he said: `When the Holy Spirit falls upon believers, some
will prophesy, some will dream dreams, and others will see visions. This is
what God has stated through the prophet Joel.' But did Peter prophesy? Well,
hardly in the sense in which Joel meant it. Did the hundred and twenty prophesy
or see visions? We are not told that they did. Did they dream dreams? How could
they, for were they not all wide awake? Well then, what did Peter mean by using
a quotation that seems scarcely to fit the case at all? In the passage quoted
(Joel 2:28,29), prophesy, dreams and visions are said to accompany the
outpouring of the Spirit, yet these evidences were apparently lacking at
Pentecost.
On the other hand, Joel's prophecy said not a
word about "a sound as of the rushing of a mighty wind", nor about
"tongues parting asunder like as of fire" as accompaniments of the
Spirit's outpouring; yet these were manifest in that upper room. And where in
Joel do we find mention of speaking in other tongues? And yet the disciples at
Pentecost did so.
What did Peter mean? Imagine him quoting God's
Word to show that the experience of Pentecost was the outpouring of the Spirit
spoken of by Joel, without a single one of the evidences mentioned by Joel
being found at Pentecost. What the Book mentioned the disciples lacked, and
what the disciples had the Book did not mention! It looks as though Peter's
quotation of the Book disproves his point rather than proving it. What is the
explanation of this mystery?
Let us recall that Peter was himself speaking
under the control of the Holy Spirit. The Book of the Acts was written by the
Spirit's inspiration, and not one word was spoken at random. There is no
misfit, but a perfect harmony. Note carefully that Peter did not say: `What you
see and hear fulfills what was spoken by the prophet Joel'. What he said was:
"This is that which hath been spoken by the prophet Joel" (Acts
2:16). It was not a case of fulfillment, but of an experience of the same
order. "This is that" means that `this which you see and hear is
of the same order as that which is foretold'. When it is a case of fulfillment,
each experience is reduplicated and prophecy is prophecy, dreams are dreams,
and visions are visions; but when Peter says "This is that", it is
not a question of the one being a replica of the other, but of the one
belonging to the same category as the other. "This" amounts to the
same thing as "that"; "this" is the equivalent of
"that"; "this is that". What is being emphasized by
the Holy Spirit through Peter is the diversity of the experience. The outward
evidences may be many and varied, and we have to admit that occasionally they
are strange; but the Spirit is one, and He is Lord. (See Corinthians 12:4-6).
What happened to R.A. Torrey when the Holy Spirit
came upon him after he had been a minister for years? Let him tell it in his
own words:
`I recall the exact spot where I was kneeling in prayer in my study ... It was
very quiet moment, one of the most quiet moments I ever knew ... Then God
simply said to me, not in any audible voice, but in my heart. "It's yours.
Now go and preach." He had already said it to me in His Word in 1 John
5:14,15; but I did not then know my Bible as I know it now, and God had pity on
my ignorance and said it directly to my soul... I went and preached, and I have
been a new minister from that day to this... Some time after this experience (I
do not recall just how long after), while sitting in my room one day ...
suddenly ... I found myself shouting (I was not brought up to shout and I am
not of a shouting temperament, but I shouted like the loudest shouting
Methodist), "Glory to God, glory to God, glory to God", and I could
not stop. ... But that was not when I was baptized with the Holy Spirit. I was
baptized with the Holy Spirit when I took Him by simple faith in The Word of
God.'[10]
The outward manifestations in Torrey's case were
not the same as those described by Joel or by Peter, but "this is
that". It is not a facsimile, yet it is the same thing.
And how did D.L. Moody feel and act when the
Spirit came upon him?
`I was crying all the time that God would fill me with His Spirit. Well, one
day, in the city of
The outward manifestation that accompanied
Moody's experience did not tally exactly with Joel's description, or Peter's,
or Torrey's, but who could doubt that "this" which Moody experienced
was "that" experienced by the disciples at Pentecost? It was not the
same in manifestation, but it was the very same in essence.
And what was the experience of the great Charles
Finney when the power of the Holy Ghost came upon him?
`I received a mighty baptism of the Holy Ghost without any expectation of it,
without ever having the thought in my mind that there was any such thing for
me, without any recollection that I had ever heard the thing mentioned by any
person in the world, the Holy Spirit descended upon me in a manner that seemed
to go through me body and soul. No words can express the wonderful love that
was shed abroad in my heart. I wept aloud with joy and love.'[12]
Finney's experience was not a duplicate of
Pentecost, nor of Torrey's experience, nor of Moody's; but "this"
certainly was "that".
When the Holy Spirit is poured out upon God's
people their experiences will differ widely. Some will receive new vision,
others will know a new liberty in soul-winning, others will proclaim the Word
of God with power, and yet others will be filled with heavenly joy or
overflowing praise. "This ... and this ... and this ... is that!" Let
us praise the Lord for every new experience that relates to the exaltation of
Christ and of which it can truly be said that "this" is an evidence
of "that". There is nothing stereotyped about God's dealings with His
children. Therefore we must not by our prejudices and preconceptions make a water-tight
compartment for the working of His Spirit, either in our own lives or in the
lives of others. This applies equally to those who require some particular
manifestation (such as `speaking with tongues') as evidence that the spirit has
come upon them and to those who deny that any manifestation is given at all. We
must leave God free to work as He wills, and to give what evidence He pleases
of the work He does. He is Lord, and it is not for us to legislate for Him.
Let us rejoice that Jesus is on the throne, and
let us praise Him that, since He has been glorified, the Spirit has been poured
out upon us all. As we accept the Divine fact in all the simplicity of faith,
we shall know it with such assurance in our own experience that we shall dare
to proclaim with confidence -- "This is that!"
The Spirit Indwelling
We move on now to the second aspect of the gift
of the Holy Spirit, which, as we shall see in our next chapter, is more
particularly the subject of Romans 8. It is that which we have spoken of as the
Spirit indwelling. "If so be that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you
..." (Romans 8:9). "If the Spirit outpoured, so with the Spirit
indwelling, if we are to know in experienced that which is ours in fact, our
first need is of Divine revelation. When we see Christ as Lord objectively --
that is, as exalted to the throne in Heaven -- then we shall experience the
power of the Spirit upon us. When we see Christ as Lord subjectively -- that
is, as effective Ruler within our lives -- then we shall know the power of the
Spirit within us.
A revelation of the indwelling Spirit was the
remedy Paul offered the Corinthian Christians for their unspirituality. It is
important to note that the Christians in
In his letter to them Paul wrote: "Know
ye not that ye are a
To many Christians the Holy Spirit is quite
unreal. They regard Him as a mere influence -- and influence for good, no
doubt, but just an influence for all that. In their thinking, conscience and
the Spirit are more or less identified as some `thing' within them that brings
them to book when they are bad and tries to show them how to be good. The
trouble with the Corinthian Christians was not that they lacked the indwelling
Spirit but that they lacked the knowledge of His presence. They failed to
realize the greatness of the One who had come to make His abode in their
hearts; so Paul wrote to them: "Know ye not that ye are a temple of God,
and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?" Yes, that was the remedy for
their unspirituality -- just to know who He really was who dwelt within.
The Treasure In The
Vessel
Do you know, my friends, that the Spirit within
you is very God? Oh that our eyes were opened to see the greatness of God's
gift! Oh that we might realize the vastness of the resources secreted in our
own hearts! I could shout with joy as I think, `The Spirit who dwells within me
is no mere influence, but a living Person; He is very God. The infinite God is
within my heart!' I am at a loss to convey to you the blessedness of this
discovery, that the Holy Spirit dwelling within my heart is a Person. I can
only repeat: `He is a Person!' and repeat it again: `He is a Person!' and
repeat it yet again: `He is a Person!' Oh, my friends, I would fain repeat it
to you a hundred times -- The Spirit of God within me is a Person! I am
only an earthen vessel, but in that earthen vessel I carry a treasure of
unspeakable worth, even the Lord of glory.
All the worry and fret of God's children would
end if their eyes were opened to see the greatness of the treasure hid in their
hearts. Do you know, there are resources enough in your own heart to meet the
demand of every circumstance in which you will ever find yourself? Do you know
there is power enough there to move the city in which you live? Do you know
there is power enough to shake the universe? Let me tell you once more -- I say
it with the utmost reverence: You who have been born again of the Spirit of God
-- you carry God in your heart!
All the flippancy of the children of God would
cease too if they realized the greatness of the treasure deposited within them.
If you have only ten shillings in your pocket you can march gaily along the
street, talking lightly as you go, and swinging your stick in the air. It
matters little if you lose your money, for there is not much at stake. But if
you carry a thousand pounds in your pocket, the position is vastly different,
and your whole demeanour will be different too. There will be great gladness in
your heart, but no careless jaunting along the road; and once in a while you
will slacken your pace and, slipping your hand into your pocket, you will
quietly finger your treasure again, and then with joyful solemnity continue on
your way.
In Old Testament times there were hundreds of
tents in the camp of
Do you realize what happened at your conversion?
God came into your heart and made it His temple. In Old Testament days God
dwelt in a temple made of stone; today He dwells in a temple composed of living
believers. When we really see that God has made our hearts His dwelling place,
what a deep reverence will come over our lives! All lightness, all frivolity
will end, and all self-pleasing too, when we know that we are the
The reason why many Christians do not experience
the power of the Spirit, though He actually dwells in their hearts, is that
they lack reverence. And they lack reverence because they have not had their
eyes opened to the fact of His presence. The fact is there, but they have not
seen it. Why is it that some Christians are living victorious lives while
others live in a state of constant defeat? The difference is not accounted for
by the presence or absence of the Spirit (for He dwells in the heart of every
child of God) but by this, that some recognize His indwelling and others do
not. True revelation of the fact of the Spirit's indwelling will revolutionize
the life of any Christian.
The Absolute Lordship
Of Christ
"Know ye not that your body is a temple of
the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have from God? and ye are not your
own; for ye were bought with a price: glorify God therefore in your body"
(1 Cor. 6:19,20).
This verse now takes us a stage further, for,
when once we have made the discovery of the fact that we are the dwelling place
of God, then a full surrender of ourselves to God must follow. When we see that
we are the
Revelation is the first step to holiness, and
consecration is the second. A day must come in our lives, as definite as the
day of our conversion, when we give up all right to ourselves and submit to the
absolute Lordship of Jesus Christ. There may be a practical issue raised by God
to test the reality of our consecration, but whether that be so or not, there
must be a day when, without reservation, we surrender everything to Him --
ourselves, our families, our possessions, our business and our time. All we are
and have becomes His, to be held henceforth entirely at His disposal. >From
that day we are no longer our own masters, but only stewards. Not until the
Lordship of Jesus Christ is a settled thing in our hearts can the Spirit really
operate effectively in us. He cannot direct our lives effectually until all
control of them is committed to Him. If we do not give Him absolute authority
in our lives, He can be present, but He cannot be powerful. The power of the
Spirit is stayed.
Are you living for the Lord or for yourself?
Perhaps that is too general a question, so let me be more specific. Is there
anything God is asking of you that you are withholding from Him? Is there any
point of contention between you and Him? Not till every controversy is settled
and the Holy Spirit is given full sway can He reproduce the life of Christ in
the heart of any believer.
An American friend, now with the Lord, whose name
we will call Paul, cherished the hope from his early youth that one day he
would be called `Dr. Paul'. When he was quite a little chap he began to dream
of the day when he would enter the university, and he imagined himself first
studying for his M.A. degree and then for his Ph.D. Then at length the glad day
would arrive when all would greet him as `Dr. Paul'.
The Lord saved him and called him to preach, and
before long he became pastor of a large congregation. By that time he had his
degree and was studying for his doctorate, but, despite splendid progress in
his studies and a good measure of success as a pastor, he was a very
dissatisfied man. He was a Christian, but his life was not Christ-like; he had
the Spirit of God within him, but he did not enjoy the Spirit's presence or
experience His power. He thought to himself, `I am a preacher of the Gospel and
the pastor of a church. I tell my people they should love the Word of God, but
I do not really love it myself. I exhort them to pray, but I myself have little
inclination to pray. I tell them to live a holy life, but my own life is not
holy. I warn them not to love the world, and, though outwardly I shun it, yet
in my heart I myself still love it dearly.' In his distress he cried to the
Lord to cause him to know the power of the indwelling Spirit, but though he
prayed and prayed for months, no answer came. Then he fasted and besought the
Lord to show him any hindrance there might be in his life. That answer was not
long in coming, and it was this: `I long that you should know the power of My
Spirit, but your heart is set on something that I do not wish you to have. You
have yielded to me all but one thing, and that one thing you are holding to
yourself -- your Ph.D.' Well, to you or me it might be of little consequence
whether we were addressed as plain `Mr. Paul' or as `Dr. Paul', but to him it
was his very life. He had dreamed of it from childhood and labored for it all
through his youth, and now the thing he prized above all was almost within his
grasp. In two short months it would be his.
So he reasoned with the Lord in this wise: `Is
there any harm for me to be a Doctor of Philosophy? Will it not bring much more
glory to Thy Name to have a Dr. Paul preaching the Gospel than a plain Mr.
Paul?' But God does not change His mind, and all Mr. Paul's sound reasoning did
not alter the Lord's word to him. Every time he prayed about the matter he got
the same answer. Then, reasoning having failed, he resorted to bargaining with
the Lord. He promised to go here or there, to do this or that, if only the Lord
would allow him to have his doctor's degree; but still the Lord did not change
His mind. And all the while Mr. Paul was becoming more and more hungry to know
the fullness of the Spirit. This state of affairs continued to within two days
of his final examination.
It was Saturday, and Mr. Paul settled down to
prepare his sermon for the following day, but, study as he would, he could get
no message. The ambition of a lifetime was just within reach of realization,
but God made it clear that he must choose between the power he could sway
through a doctor's degree and the power of God's Spirit swaying his life. That
evening he yielded. `Lord', he said, `I am willing to be plain Mr. Paul all my
days, but I want to know the power of the Holy Ghost in my life.'
He rose from his knees and wrote a letter to his
examiners, asking to be excused from the examination on the Monday, and giving
his reason. Then he retired, very happy, but not conscious of any unusual
experience. Next morning he told his congregation that for the first time in
six years he had no sermon to preach, and explained how it came about. The Lord
blessed that testimony more abundantly than any of his well-prepared sermons,
and from that time God blessed and owned him in an altogether new way. From
that day he knew separation from the world, no longer as an outward thing but
as a deep inward reality, and in daily experience he knew the blessedness of
the Spirit's presence and power.
God is waiting for a settlement of all our
controversies with Him. With Mr. Paul it was a question of his doctor's degree,
but with us it may be something quite different. Our absolute surrender of
ourselves to the Lord generally hinges upon some one particular thing, and God
is after that one thing. He must have it, for He must have our all. I was
greatly impressed by something a great national leader wrote in his
autobiography: `I want nothing for myself; I want everything for my country.'
If a man can be willing that his country should have everything and he himself
nothing, cannot we say to our God: `Lord, I want nothing for myself; I want all
for Thee. I will what Thou willest, and I want to have nothing
outside Thy will.' Not until we take the place of a servant can He take His
place as Lord. He is not calling us to devote ourselves to His cause: He is
asking us to yield ourselves to His will. Are you willing for anything He
wills?
Another friend of mine, like my friend Mr. Paul,
had a controversy with the Lord. before his conversion he fell in love, and as
soon as he was saved he sought to win the one he loved to the Lord, but she
would have nothing to do with spiritual things. the Lord made it clear to him
that his relations with that girl must be broken of, but he was deeply devoted
to her, so he evaded the issue and continued to serve the Lord and to win souls
for Him. But he became conscious of his need for holiness, and that
consciousness marked the beginning of dark days for him. He asked for the
Spirit's fullness that he might have power to live a holy life, but the Lord
seemed continually to ignore his request.
One morning he had to preach in another city and
he spoke from Psalm 73:25: "Whom have I in heaven but thee? And there is
none upon earth that I desire beside thee." On his return home he went to
a prayer meeting, and there a sister read out the very same verse from which,
unknown to her, he had just preached, and followed it with the question: `Can
we truly say: "There is none upon earth that I desire beside thee"?'
There was power in that word. It struck right home to his heart and he had to
admit to himself that he could not truthfully say that he desired no one in
Heaven or earth apart from his Lord. He saw, there and then, that for him
everything hinged upon his willingness to give up the girl he loved.
For some it might not have involved much, but for
him it was everything. So he began to reason with the Lord: `Lord I will go to
A forgiven sinner is quite different from an
ordinary sinner, and a consecrated Christian is quite different from an
ordinary Christian. May the Lord bring us to a definite issue regarding the
question of His Lordship. If we do yield wholly to Him and claim the power of
the indwelling Spirit, we need wait for no special feelings or supernatural
manifestations, but can simply look up and praise Him that something has
already happened. We can confidently thank Him that the glory of God has
already filled His temple. "Know ye not that ye are the
Chapter 9: The Meaning and Value of Romans Seven
We must return now to our study of Romans. We
broke off at the end of chapter 6 in order to consider two related subjects,
namely, God's eternal purpose, which is the motive and goal of our walk with Him,
and the Holy Spirit, who supplies the power and resource to bring us to that
goal. We come now to Romans 7, a chapter which many have felt to be almost
superfluous. Perhaps indeed it would be so if Christians really saw that the
old creation has been ruled out by the Cross of Christ, and an entirely new
creation brought in by His resurrection. If we have come to the point where we
really `know' that, and `reckon' on that, and `present ourselves' on the basis
of that, then perhaps we have no need of Romans 7.
Others have felt that the chapter is in the wrong
place. They would have put it between the fifth and sixth chapters. After
chapter 6 all is so perfect, so straightforward; and then comes breakdown and
the cry, "O wretched man that I am!" Could anything be more of an
anticlimax? And so some have argued that Paul is speaking here of his
unregenerate experience. Well, we must admit that some of what he describes
here is not a Christian experience, but none the less many Christians do
experience it. What then is the teaching of this chapter?
Romans 6 deals with freedom from sin. Romans 7
deals with freedom from the Law. In chapter 6 Paul has told us how we could be
delivered from sin, and we concluded that this was all that was required.
Chapter 7 now teaches that deliverance from sin is not enough, but that we also
need to know deliverance from the Law. If we are not fully emancipated from the
Law we can never know full emancipation from sin. But what is the difference
between deliverance from sin and deliverance from the Law? We all see the value
of the former, but where is the need for the latter? Well, to appreciate this
we must first understand what the Law is and what it does.
The Flesh And Man's
Breakdown
Romans 7 has a new lesson to teach us. It is
found in the discovery that I am "in the flesh" (Rom. 7:5), that
"I am carnal" (7:18). This goes beyond the question of sin, for it
relates also the matter of pleasing God. We are dealing here not with sin in
its forms but with man in his carnal state. The latter includes the former but
it takes us a stage further, for it leads to the discovery that in this realm
too we are totally impotent, and that "they that are in the flesh cannot
please God" (Rom. 8:8). How then is this discovery made? It is made with
the help of the Law.
Now let us retrace our steps for a minute and
attempt to describe what is probably the experience of many. Many a Christian
is truly saved and yet bound by sin. It is not that he is necessarily living
under the power of sin all the time, but that there are certain particular sins
hampering him continually so that he hears the full Gospel message, that the
Lord Jesus not only died to cleanse away our sins, but that when He died He
included us sinners in His death; so that not only were our sins dealt with,
but we ourselves were dealt with too. The man's eyes are opened and he knows
he has been crucified with Christ. Two things follow that revelation. In the
first place he reckons that he has died and risen with the Lord, and in
the second place, recognizing the Lord's claim upon him, he present himself
to God as alive from the dead. He sees that he has no more right over himself.
This is the commencement of a beautiful Christian life, full of praise to the
Lord.
But then he begins to reason as follows: `I have
died with Christ and am raised with Him, and I have given myself over to Him
for ever; now I must do something for Him, since He has done so much for me. I
want to please Him and do His will.' So, after the step of consecration, he
seeks to discover the will of God, and sets out to obey Him. Then he makes a
strange discovery. He thought he could do the will of God and he thought he
loved it, but gradually he finds he does not always like it. At times he even
finds a distinct reluctance to do it, and often when he tries to do it he finds
he cannot. Then he begins to question his experience. He asks himself: `Did I
really know? Yes! Did I really reckon? Yes! Did I really give myself to Him?
Yes! Have I taken back my consecration? No! Then whatever is the matter now?'
The more this man tries to do the will of God the more he fails. Ultimately he
comes to the conclusion that he never really loved God's will at all, so he
prays for the desire and the power to do it. He confesses his disobedience and
promises never to disobey again. But he has barely got up from his knees before
he has fallen once more; before he reaches the point of victory he is conscious
of defeat. Then he says to himself: `Perhaps my last decision was not definite
enough. This time I will be absolutely definite.' So he brings all his
will-power to bear on the situation, only to find greater defeat than ever
awaiting him the next time a choice has to be made. Then at last he echoes the words
of Paul: "For I know that in me, that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no good
thing: for to will is present with me, but to do that which is good is not. For
the good which I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I
practice" (Rom. 7:18,19).
What The Law Teaches
Many Christians are suddenly launched into the
experience of Romans 7 and they do not know why. They fancy Romans 6 is quite
enough. Having grasped that, they think there can be no more question of
failure, and then to their utmost surprise they suddenly find themselves in
Romans 7. What is the explanation?
First let us be quite clear that the death with
Christ described in Romans 6 is fully adequate to cover all our need. It is the
explanation of that death, with all that follows from it, that is incomplete in
chapter 6. We are as yet still in ignorance of the truth set forth in chapter
7. Romans 7 is given to us to explain and make real the statement in Romans
6:14, that: "Sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not under
law, but under grace." The trouble is that we do not yet know deliverance
from law. What, then, is the meaning of law?
Grace means that God does something for me; law
means that I do something for God. God has certain holy and righteous demands
which He places upon me: that is law. Now if law means that God requires
something of me for their fulfillment, then deliverance from law means that He
no longer requires that from me, but Himself provides it. Law implies that God
requires me to do something for Him; deliverance from law implies that He
exempts me from doing it, and that in grace He does it Himself. I (where
`I' is the `carnal' man of ch. 7:14) need do nothing for God: that is
deliverance from law. The trouble in Romans 7 is that man in the flesh tried to
do something for God. As soon as you try to please God in that way, then you
place yourself under law, and the experience of Romans 7 begins to be yours.
As we seek to understand this, let it be settled
at the outset that the fault does not lie with the Law. Paul says, "the
law is holy, and the commandment holy, and righteous, and good" (Rom.
7:12). No, there is nothing wrong with the Law, but there is something
decidedly wrong with me. The demands of the Law are righteous, but the person
upon whom the demands are made is unrighteous. The trouble is not that the
Law's demands are unjust, but that I am unable to meet them. It may be all
right for the Government to require payment of 100 shillings but it will be all
wrong if I have only ten shillings with which to meet the demand!
I am a man "sold under sin" (Rom.
7:14). Sin has dominion over me. As long as you leave me alone I seem to be
rather a fine type of man. It is when you ask me to do something that my
sinfulness comes to light.
If you have a very clumsy servant and he just
sits still and does nothing, then his clumsiness does not appear. If he does
nothing all day he will be of little use to you, it is true, but at least he
will do no damage that way. But if you say to him: `Now come along, don't idle
away your time; get up and do something', then immediately the trouble begins.
He knocks the chair over as he gets up, stumbles over a footstool a few paces
further on, then smashes some precious dish as soon as he handles it. If you
make no demands upon him his clumsiness is never noticed, but as soon as you
ask him to do anything his awkwardness is seen at once. The demands were all
right, but the man was all wrong. He was as clumsy a man when he was sitting
still as when he was working, but it was your demands that made manifest the
clumsiness that was all the time in his make-up, whether he was active or
inactive.
We are all sinners by nature. If God asks nothing
of us, all seems to go well, but as soon as He demands something of us the
occasion is provided for a grand display of our sinfulness. The Law makes our
weakness manifest. While you let me sit still I appear to be all right, but
when you ask me to do anything I am sure to spoil that thing, and if you trust
me with a second thing I will as surely spoil it too. When a holy law is
applied to a sinful man, then his sinfulness comes out in full display.
God knows who I am; He knows that from head to
foot I am full of sin; He knows that I am weakness incarnate; that I can do
nothing. The trouble is that I do not know it. I admit that all men are
sinners and that therefore I am a sinner; but I imagine that I am not such a
hopeless sinner as some. God must bring us all to the place where we see that
we are utterly weak and helpless. While we say so, we do not wholly believe it,
and God has to do something to convince us of the fact. Had it not been for the
Law we should never have known how weak we are. Paul had reached that point. He
makes this clear when he says in Romans 7:7: "I had not known sin, except
through the law: for I had not known coveting, except the law had said, Thou
shalt not covet". Whatever might be his experience with the rest of the
Law, it was the tenth commandment, which literally translated is: "Thou
shalt not desire ..." that found him out. There his total failure and
incapacity stared him in the face!
The more we try to keep the Law the more our
weakness is manifest and the deeper we get into Romans 7, until it is clearly
demonstrated to us that we are hopelessly weak. God knew it all along but we
did not, and so God had to bring us through painful experiences to a
recognition of the fact. We need to have our weakness proved to ourselves
beyond dispute. That is why God gave us the Law.
So we can say, reverently, that God never gave us
the Law to keep; He gave us the Law to break! He well knew that we could not
keep it. We are so bad that He asks no favour and makes no demands. Never has
any man succeeded in making himself acceptable to God by means of the Law.
Nowhere in the New Testament are men of faith told that they are to keep the
Law; but it does say that the Law was given so that there should be
transgression. "The law came in ... that the trespass might abound"
(Rom. 5:20). The Law was given to make us law-breakers! No doubt I am a
sinner in Adam; "Howbeit, I had not know sin, except through the law:
...for apart from the law sin is dead ... but when the commandment came, sin
revived, and I died" (
No, the Law was not given in the expectation that
we would keep it. It was given in the full knowledge that we would break it;
and when we have broken it so completely that we are convinced of our utter
need, then the Law has served its purpose. It has been our schoolmaster to
bring us to Christ, that He Himself may fulfill it in us (Gal. 3:24).
Christ The End Of The
Law
In Romans 6 we saw how God delivered us from sin;
in Romans 7 we see how He delivers us from the Law. In chapter 6 we were shown
the way of deliverance from sin in the picture of a master and his slave; in
chapter 7 we are shown the way of deliverance from the Law in the picture of
two husbands and a wife. The relation between sin and the sinner is that of
master to slave; the relation between the Law and the sinner is that of husband
to wife.
Notice first that in the picture in Romans 7:1-4
by which Paul illustrates our deliverance from the Law there is only one woman,
while there are two husbands. The woman is in a very difficult position, for
she can only be wife of one of the two, and unfortunately she is married to the
less desirable one. Let us make no mistake, the man to whom she is married is a
good man; but the trouble lies here, that the husband and wife are totally
unsuited to one another. He is a most particular man, accurate to a degree; she
on the other hand is decidedly easy-going. With him all is definite and
precise; with her all is vague and haphazard. He wants everything just so, while
she accepts things as they come. How could there be happiness in such a home?
And then that husband is so exacting! He is
always making demands on his wife. And yet one cannot find fault with him, for
as a husband he has a right to expect something of her; and besides, all his
demands are perfectly legitimate. There is nothing wrong with the man and
nothing wrong with his demands; the trouble is that he has the wrong kind of
wife to carry them out. The two cannot get on at all; theirs are utterly incompatible
natures. Thus the poor woman is in great distress. She is fully aware that she
often makes mistakes, but living with such a husband it seems as though everything
she says and does is wrong! What hope is there for her? If only she were
married to that other Man all would be well. He is no less exacting than her
husband, but He also helps much. She would fain marry Him, but her husband is
still alive. What can she do? She is "bound by law to the husband"
and unless he dies she cannot legitimately marry that other
This picture is not drawn by me but by the
apostle Paul. The first husband is the Law; the second husband is Christ; and
you are the woman. The Law requires much, but offers no help in the carrying
out of its requirements. The Lord Jesus requires just as much, yea more (Matt.
5:21-48) but what He requires from us He Himself carries out in us. The Law
makes demands and leaves us helpless to fulfill them; Christ makes demands, but
He Himself fulfills in us the very demands He makes. Little wonder that the
woman desires to be freed from the first husband that she may marry that other
Man! But her only hope of release is through the death of her first husband,
and he holds on to life most tenaciously. Indeed there is not the least prospect
of his passing away. "Till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one
tittle shall in no wise pass away from the law, till all things be accomplished
(Matt. 5:18).
The Law is going to continue for all eternity. If
the Law will never pass away, then how can I ever be united to Christ? How can
I marry a second husband if my first husband simply refuses to die? There is
one way out. If he will not die, I can die, and if I die the
marriage relationship is dissolved. And that is exactly God's way of deliverance
from the Law. The most important point to note in this section of Romans 7 is
the transition from verse 3 to verse 4. Verses 1 to 3 show that the husband
should die, but in verse 4 we see that in fact it is the woman who dies. The
Law does not pass away. God's righteous demands remain for ever, and if
I live I must meet those demands; but if I die the Law has lost its claim upon
me. It cannot follow me beyond the grave.
Exactly the same principle operates in our
deliverance from the Law as in our deliverance from sin. When I have died my
old master, Sin, still continues to live, but his power over his slave extends
as far as the grave and no further. He could ask me to do a hundred and one
things when I was alive, but when I am dead he calls on me in vain. I am for
ever freed from his tyranny. So it is with regard to the Law. While the woman
lives she is bound to her husband, but with her death the marriage bond is
dissolved and she is "discharged from the law of her husband". The
Law may still make demands, but for me its power to enforce them is ended.
Now the vital question arises: `How do I die?'
And the preciousness of our Lord's work comes in just here: "Ye also were
made dead to the law through the body of Christ" (Rom. 7:4). When Christ
died His body was broken, and since God placed me in Him (1 Cor. 1:30), I have
been broken too. When He was crucified, I was crucified with Him.
An Old Testament illustration may help to make
this clear. It was the veil of testimony that separated the Holy Place from the
Most Holy Place, and upon it were embroidered cherubim (Exod. 26:31; 2 Chron.
:14) whose faces, by analogy from Ezekiel 1:10 and 10:14, included that of a
man as representing the human head of the whole natural creation (Psalm 8:4-8).
In Old Testament days God dwelt within the veil and man without. Man could look
upon the veil, but not within it. That veil symbolized our Lord's flesh, His
body (Heb. 10:20). So in the Gospels men could only look upon the outward form
of our Lord; they could not, save by Divine revelation (Matt. 16:16,17), see
the God who dwelt within. But when the Lord Jesus died, the veil of the temple
was rent from top to bottom (Matt. 27:51) as by the hand of God, so that man
could gaze right into the
But when the veil was rent asunder, what happened
to the cherubim? God rent only the veil, it is true, but the cherubim were
there in the veil and were one with it, for they were embroidered upon it. It
was impossible to rend the veil and preserve them whole. When the veil was rent
the cherubim were rent with it. And, in the sight of God, when the Lord Jesus
died the whole living creation died too.
"Wherefore, my brethren, ye also were made
dead to the law through the body of Christ." That woman's husband may be
very well and strong, but if she dies he may make as many demands upon her as
he likes; it will not affect her in the slightest. Death has set her free from
all her husband's claims. We were in the Lord Jesus when He died, and that
inclusive death of His has for ever freed us from the Law. But our Lord did not
remain in the grave. On the third day He rose again; and since we are still in
Him we are risen too. The body of the Lord Jesus speaks not only of His death
but of His resurrection, for His resurrection was a bodily resurrection. Thus
"through the body of Christ" we are not only "dead to the law'
but alive unto God.
God's purpose in uniting us to Christ was not
merely negative; it was gloriously positive -- "that ye should be joined
to another" (Rom. 7:4). Death has dissolved the old marriage relationship,
so that the woman, driven to despair by the constant demands of her former
husband, who never lifted a little finger to help her carry them out, is now
set free to marry the other Man, who with every demand He makes becomes in her
the power for its fulfillment.
And what is the issue of this new union?
"That we might bring forth fruit unto God" (
What happens when a woman marries? She no longer
bears her own name but that of her husband; and she shares not his name only
but his possessions too. "So it is when we are joined to Christ. When we
belong to Him, all that is His becomes ours, and with His infinite resources at
our disposal we are well able to meet all His demands.
Our End Is God's
Beginning
Now that we have settled the doctrinal side of
the question we must come down to practical issues, staying a little longer
with the negative aspect and keeping the positive for our next chapter. What
does it mean in everyday life to be delivered from the Law? It means that from
henceforth I am going to do nothing whatever for God; I am never going to try
to please Him. `What a doctrine!' you exclaim. `What awful heresy! You cannot
possibly mean that!'
But remember, if I try to please God `in the
flesh', then immediately I place myself under the Law. I broke the Law; the Law
pronounced the death sentence; the sentence was executed, and now by death I --
the carnal `I' (Rom. 7:14) -- have been set free from all its claims. There is
still a Law of God, and now there is in fact a "new commandment" that
is infinitely more exacting than the old, but, Praise God! its demands are
being met, for it is Christ who now fulfills them; it is Christ who works in me
what is well-pleasing to God. "I came ... to fulfill {the law}" were
His words (Matt. 5:17). Thus Paul, from the ground of resurrection, can say:
"Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God which
worketh in you both to will and to work, for his good pleasure" (Phil
2:12,13).
It is God that worketh in you. Deliverance
from law does not mean that we are free from doing the will of God. It
certainly does not mean that we are going to be lawless. Very much the reverse!
What it does mean however is that we are free from doing that will as of
ourselves. Being fully persuaded that we cannot do it, we cease trying to
please God from the ground of the old man. Having at last reached the
point of utter despair in ourselves so that we cease even to try, we put our
trust in the Lord to manifest His resurrection life in us.
Let me illustrate by what I have seen in my own
country. In
The sooner we too give up trying the better, for
I we monopolize the task, then there is no room for the Holy Spirit. But if we
say: `I'll not do it; I'll trust Thee to do it for me', then we shall find that
a Power stronger than ourselves is carrying us through.
In 1923 I met a famous Canadian evangelist. I had
said in an address something along the above lines, and as we walked back to
his home afterwards he remarked: `The note of Romans 7 is seldom sounded
nowadays; it is good to hear it again. The day I was delivered from the Law was
a day of Heaven on earth. After being a Christian for years I was still trying
my best to please God, but the more I tried the more I failed. I regarded God
as the greatest Demander in the universe, but I found myself impotent to
fulfill the least of His demands. Suddenly one day, as I read Romans 7, light
dawned and I saw that I had not only been delivered from sin but from the Law
as well. In my amazement I jumped up and said: "Lord, are you really
making no demands on me? Then I need do nothing more for You!"
God's requirements have not altered, but we are
not the ones to meet them. Praise God, He is the Lawgiver on the Throne, and He
is the Lawkeeper in my heart. He who gave the Law, Himself keeps it. He makes
the demands, but He also meets them. My friend could well jump up and shout
when he found he had nothing to do, and all who make a like discovery can do
the same. As long as we are trying to do anything, He can do nothing. It is
because of our trying that we fail and fail and fail. God wants to demonstrate
to us that we can do nothing at all, and until that is fully recognized our
disappointments and disillusionments will never cease.
A brother who was trying to struggle into victory
remarked to me, `I do not know why I am so weak.' `The trouble with you', I
said, `is that you are weak enough not to do the will of God, but you are not
weak enough to keep out of things altogether. You are still not weak enough.
When you are reduced to utter weakness and are persuaded that you can do
nothing whatever, then God will do everything.' We all need to come to the
point where we say: `Lord, I am unable to do anything for Thee, but I trust
Thee to do everything in me.'
I was once staying in a place in
But when the man was actually sinking, with a few
swift strokes the swimmer was at his side, and both were safely ashore. When I got
an opportunity I aired my views. `I have never seen any Christian who loved his
life quite as much as you do', I said. `Think of the distress you would have
saved that brother if you had considered yourself a little less and him a
little more.' But the swimmer knew his business better than I did. `Had I gone
earlier', he said, `he would have clutched me so fast that both of us would
have gone under. A drowning man cannot be saved until he is utterly exhausted
and ceases to make the slightest effort to save himself.'
Do you see it? When we give up the case,
then God will take it up. He is waiting until we are at an end of our
resources and can do nothing more for ourselves. God has condemned all that is
of the old creation and consigned it to the Cross. The flesh profiteth nothing!
If we try to do anything in the flesh we are virtually repudiating the Cross of
Christ. God has declared us to be fit only for death. When we truly believe
that, then we confirm God's verdict by giving up all our fleshly efforts to
please Him. Our every effort to do His will is a denial of His declaration in
the Cross of our utter worthlessness. Our continued efforts are a
misunderstanding on the one hand of God's demands and on the other hand of the
source of supply.
We see the Law and we think that we must meet its
demands, but we need to remember that, though the Law in itself is all right,
it will be all wrong if it is applied to the wrong person. The "wretched
man" of Romans 7 tried to meet the demands of God's law himself,
and that was the cause of his trouble. The repeated use of the little word `I'
in this chapter gives the clue to the failure. "The good which I would I
do not: but the evil which I would not, that I practice" (Rom. 7:19).
There was a fundamental misconception in this man's mind. He thought God was
asking him to keep the Law, so of course he was trying to keep it. But
God was requiring no such thing of him. What was the result? Far from doing
what pleased God, he found himself doing what displeased Him. In his very
efforts to do the will of God he did exactly the opposite of what he knew to be
His will.
I Thank God!
Romans 6 deals with "the body of sin",
Romans 7 with "the body of this death" (6:6; 7:24). In chapter 6 the
whole question before us is sin; in chapter 7 the whole question before us is
death. What is the difference between the body of sin and the body of death? In
regard to sin (that is, to whatever displeases God) I have a body of sin -- a
body, that is to say, which is actively engaged in sin. But in regard to the
Law of God (that is, to that which expresses the will of God) I have a body of
death. My activity in regard to sin makes my body a body of sin; my failure in
regard to all that is wicked, worldly and Satanic I am, in my nature, wholly
positive; but in regard to all that pertains to holiness and Heaven and God I
am wholly negative.
Have you discovered the truth of that in your
life? It is no good merely to discover it in Romans 6 and 7. Have you
discovered that you carry the encumbrance of a lifeless body in regard to God's
will? You have no difficulty in speaking about wordly matters, but when you try
to speak for the Lord you are tongue-tied; when you try to pray you feel
sleepy; when you try to do something for the Lord you feel unwell. You can do
anything but that which is related to God's will. There is something in this
body that does not harmonize with the will of God.
What does death mean? We may illustrate from a
well-known verse in the first letter to the Corinthians: "For this cause
many among you are weak and sickly, and not a few sleep" (1 Corinthians
11:30). Death is weakness produced to its extremity - weakness, sickness,
death. Death means utter weakness; it means you are weak to such a point that
you can become no weaker. That I have a body of death in relation to God's will
means that I am so weak in regard to serving God, so utterly weak, that I am
reduced to a point of dire helplessness. "O wretched man that I am! who
shall deliver me out of the body of this death?" cried Paul, and it is
good when anyone cries out as he did. There is nothing more musical in the ears
of the Lord. This cry is the most spiritual and the most scriptural cry a man
can utter. He only utters it when he knows he can do nothing, and gives up
making any further resolutions. Up to this point, every time he failed he made
a new resolution and doubled and redoubled his will-power. At last he discovers
there is no use in his making up his mind any more, and he cries out in desperation:
"O wretched man that I am !" Like a man who suddenly awakes to find
himself in a burning building, his cry is now for help, for he has come to the
point where he despairs of himself.
Have you despaired of yourself, or do you hope
that if you read and pray more you will be a better Christian? Bible-reading
and prayer are not wrong, and God forbid that we should suggest that they are,
but it is wrong to trust even in them for victory. Our help is in Him
who is the object of that reading and prayer. Our trust must be in Christ
alone. Happily the "wretched man" does not merely deplore his
wretchedness; he asks a fine question, namely: "Who shall deliver
me?" "Who?" Hitherto he has looked for some thing; now
his hope is in a Person. Hitherto he has looked within for a solution to his
problem; now he looks beyond himself for a Savior. He no longer puts forth
self-effort; all his expectation is now in Another.
How did we obtain forgiveness of sins? Was it by
reading, praying, almsgiving, and so on? No, we looked to the Cross, believing
in what the Lord Jesus had done; and deliverance from sin becomes ours on
exactly the same principle, nor is it otherwise with the question of pleasing
God. In the matter of forgiveness we look to Him on the Cross; in the matter of
deliverance from sin and of doing the will of God we look to Him in our hearts.
For the one we depend on what He has done; for the other we depend on what He
will do in us; but in regard to both, our dependence is on Him along. He is the
One who does it all.
At the time when the Epistle to the Romans was
written a murderer was punished in a peculiar and terrible manner. The dead
body of the one murdered was tied to the living body of the murderer, head to
head, hand to hand, foot to foot, and the living one was bound to the dead one
till death. The murderer could go where he pleased, but wherever he went he had
to carry the corpse of that murdered man with him. Could punishment be more
appalling? Yet this is the illustration Paul now uses. It is as though he were
bound to a dead body and unable to get free. Wherever he goes he is hampered by
this terrible burden. At last he can bear it no longer and cries: "O
wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me ...?" And then, in a flash of
illumination, his cry of despair changes to a song of praise. He has found the
answer to his question. "I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord"
(Rom. 7:25).
We know that justification is ours through the
Lord Jesus and requires no work on our part, but we think sanctification is
dependent on our own efforts. We know we can receive forgiveness only by entire
reliance on the Lord; yet we believe we can obtain deliverance by doing
something ourselves. We fear that if we do nothing, nothing will happen. After salvation
the old habit of `doing' reasserts itself and we begin our old self-efforts
again. Then God's word comes afresh to us: "It is finished" (John
19:30). He has done everything on the Cross for our forgiveness and He will do
everything in us for our deliverance. In both cases He is the doer.
"It is God that worketh in you."
The first words of the delivered man are very
precious -- "I thank God". If someone gives you a cup of water you
thank the person who gave it, not someone else. Why did Paul say "Thank
God"? Because God was the One who did everything. Had it been Paul who did
it, he would have said, "Thank Paul". But he saw that Paul was a
"wretched man" and that God alone could meet his need; so he said,
"Thank God". God wants to do all, for He must have all the glory. If
we do some of the work, then we will get some of the glory; but God must have
it all Himself, so He does all the work from beginning to end.
What we have said in this chapter might seem
negative and unpractical if we were to stop at this point, as though the
Christian life were a matter of sitting still and waiting for something to
happen. Of course it is very far from being so. All who truly live it know it
to be a matter of very positive and active faith in Christ and in an altogether
new principle of life -- the law of the Spirit of life. We are now going to
look at the effects in us of this new life principle.
Chapter 10: The Path of Progress: Walking In The Spirit
Coming now to Romans 8 we may first summarize the
argument of our second section of the letter from chapter 5:12 to chapter 8:39
in two phrases, each containing a contrast and each marking an aspect of
Christian experience. The are:
Romans 5:12 to 6:23: `In Adam' and `in Christ'.
Romans 7:1 to 8:39: `In the
flesh' and `in the Spirit'.
We need to understand the relationship of these
four things. The former two are `objective' and set forth our position,
firstly as we were by nature and secondly as we now are by faith in the
redemptive work of Christ. The latter two are `subjective' and relate to our walk
as a matter of practical experience. Scripture makes it clear that the first
two give us only a part of the picture and that the second two are required to
complete it. We think it enough to be "in Christ", but we learn now
that we must also walk "in the Spirit" (Rom. 8:9). The frequent
occurrence of "the Spirit" in the early part of Romans 8 serves to
emphasize this further important lesson of the Christian life.
The Flesh And The
Spirit
The flesh is linked with Adam; the Spirit with
Christ. Leaving aside now as settled the question of whether we are in Adam or
in Christ, we must ask ourselves: Am I living in the flesh or in the Spirit?
To live in the flesh is to do something `out
from'[13] myself as in Adam. It is to derive strength from the old natural
source of life that I inherited from him, so that I enjoy in experience all
Adam's very complete provision for sinning which all of us have found so
effective. Now the same is true of what is in Christ. To enjoy in experience
what is true of me as in Him, I must learn what it is to walk in the Spirit. It
is a historic fact that in Christ my old man was crucified, and it is a present
fact that I am blessed "with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly
places in Christ" (Eph. 1:3); but if I do not live in the Spirit, then my
life may be quite a contradiction of the fact that I am in Christ, for what is
true of me in Him is not expressed in me. I may recognize that I am in Christ,
but I may also have to face the fact that my old temper is very much in
evidence.
What is the trouble? It is that I am holding the
truth merely objectively, whereas what is true objectively must be made true
subjectively; and that is brought about as I live in the Spirit.
Not only am I in Christ, but Christ is in me. And
just as physically a man cannot live and work in water but only in air, so
spiritually Christ dwells and manifests Himself not in `flesh' but in `spirit'.
Therefore if I live "after the flesh" I find that what is mine in
Christ is, so to say, held in suspense in me. Though in fact I am in
Christ, yet if I live in the flesh -- that is, in my own strength and under my
own direction -- then in experience I find to my dismay that it is what
is in Adam that manifests itself in me. If I would know in experience all that
is in Christ, then I must learn to live in the Spirit.
Living in the Spirit means that I trust the Holy
Spirit to do in me what I cannot do myself. This life is completely different
from the life I would naturally live of myself. Each time I am faced with a new
demand from the Lord, I look to Him to do in me what He requires of me. It is
not a case of trying but of trusting; not of struggling but of resting in Him.
If I have a hasty temper, impure thoughts, a quick tongue or a critical spirit,
I shall not set out with a determined effort to change myself, but, reckoning
myself dead in Christ to these things, I shall look to the Spirit of God to
produce in me the needed purity or humility or meekness. This is what it means
to "stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord, which he will work for
you" (Exod. 14:13).
Some of you have no doubt had an experience
something like the following. You have been asked to go and see a friend, and
you knew the friend was not very friendly, but you trusted the Lord to see you
through. You told Him before you set out that in yourself you could not but
fail, and you asked Him for all that was needed. Then, to your surprise, you
did not feel at all irritated, though your friend was far from gracious. On
your return you thought over the experience and marveled that you kept so calm,
and you wondered if you would be just as calm next time. You were amazed at
yourself and sought an explanation. This is the explanation: the Holy Spirit
carried you through.
Unfortunately we only have this kind of
experience once in while, but it should be a constant experience. When the Holy
Spirit takes things in hand there is no need for strain on our part. It is not
a case of clenching our teeth and thinking that thus we have controlled
ourselves beautifully and have had a glorious victory. No, where there is a
real victory there is no fleshly effort. We are gloriously carried through by
the Lord.
The object of temptation is always to get us to
do something. During the first three months of the Japanese war in
As long as he remained under cover he was
perfectly safe. The whole scheme was devised to bring him out into the open. In
the same way, Satan's temptations are not primarily to make us do something
particularly sinful, but merely to cause us to act in our own energy; and as
soon as we step out of our hiding-place to do something on that basis, he has
gained the victory over us. If we do not move, if we do not come out of the
cover of Christ into the realm of the flesh, then he cannot get us.
The Divine way of victory does not permit of our
doing anything at all -- anything, that is to say, outside of Christ. This is
because as soon as we move we run into danger, for our natural inclinations
take us in the wrong direction. Where, then, are we to look for help? Turn now
to Galations 5:17: "The flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit
against the flesh". In other words, the flesh does not fight against us
but against the Holy Spirit, "for these are contrary the one to the
other", and it is He, not we, who meets and deals with the flesh. What is
the result? "That ye may not do the things that ye would."
I think we have often understood that last clause
of this verse in a wrong sense. Let us consider what it means. What `would we
do' naturally? We would move off on some course of action dictated by our own
instincts and apart from the will of God. The effect then of our refusal to act
out from ourselves is that the Holy Spirit is free to meet and deal with the
flesh in us, with the result that we shall not do what we naturally would do;
that is, we shall not act according to our natural inclinations; we shall not
go off on a course and plan of our own: but shall find instead our satisfaction
in His perfect plan. Hence we have the principle: "Walk by the
Spirit, and ye shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh" (Gal. 5:16). If we
live in the Spirit, if we walk by faith in the risen Christ, we can truly `stand
aside' while the Spirit gains new victories over the flesh every day. He has
been given to us to take charge of this business. Our victory lies in hiding in
Christ, and in counting in simple trust upon His Holy Spirit to overcome in us
our fleshly lusts with His own new desires. The Cross has been given to procure
salvation for us; the Spirit has been given to produce salvation in us. Christ
risen and ascended is the basis of our salvation; Christ in our hearts by the
Spirit is its power.
Christ Our Life
"I thank God through Jesus Christ"!
That exclamation of Paul's is fundamentally the same as his other words in
Galations 2:20 which we have taken as the key to our study: "I live; and
yet no longer I, but Christ". We saw how prominent is the word `I'
throughout his argument in Romans 7, culminating in the agonized cry: "O
wretched man that I am!" Then follows the shout of deliverance:
"Thank God ... Jesus Christ"! and it is clear that the
discovery Paul has made is this, that the life we live is the life of Christ
alone. We think of the Christian life as a `changed life', a `substituted
life', and Christ is our Substitute within. "I live; and yet no longer I,
but Christ liveth in me." This life is not something which we ourselves
have to produce. It is Christ's own life reproduced in us.
How many Christians believe in `reproduction' in
this sense, as something more than regeneration? Regeneration means that the
life of Christ is planted in us by the Holy Spirit at our new birth.
`Reproduction' goes further: it means that new life grows and becomes manifest
progressively in us, until the very likeness of Christ begins to be reproduced
in our lives. That is what Paul means when he speaks of his travail for the
Galations "until Christ be formed in you" (Gal. 4:19).
Let me illustrate with another story. I once
arrived in
God will not give me humility or patience or
holiness or love as separate gifts of His grace. He is not a retailer
dispensing grace to us in doses, measuring out some patience to the impatient,
some love to the unloving, some meekness to the proud, in quantities that we
take and work on as kind of capital. He has given only one gift to meet all our
need -- His Son Christ Jesus, and as I look to Him to live out His life in me,
He will be humble and patient and loving and everything else I need -- in my
stead. Remember the word in the first Epistle of John: "God gave unto us
eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He that hath the Son hath the life;
Chapter 11: One Body In Christ
Before we pass on to our last important subject
we will review some of the ground we have covered and summarize the steps
taken. We have sought to make things simple, and to explain clearly some of the
experiences which Christians commonly pass through. But it is clear that the
new discoveries that we make as we walk with the Lord are many, and we must be
careful to avoid the temptation to over-simplify the work of God. To do so may
lead us into serious confusion.
There are children of God who believe that all
our salvation, in which they would include the matter of leading a holy life,
lies in an appreciation of the value of the precious Blood. They rightly
emphasize the importance of keeping short accounts with God over known specific
sins, and the continual efficacy of the Blood to deal with sins committed, but
they think of the Blood as doing everything. They believe in a holiness which
in fact means only separation of the man from his past; that, through the
up-to-date blotting out of what he has done on the ground of the shed Blood,
God separates a man out of the world to be His, and that is holiness; and they
stop there. Thus they stop short of God's basic demands, and so of the full
provision He has made. I think we have by now seen clearly the inadequacy of
this.
Then there are those who go further and see that
God has included them in the death of His Son on the Cross, in order to deliver
them from sin and the Law by dealing with the old man. These are they who
really exercise faith in the Lord, for they glory in Christ Jesus and have
ceased to put confidence in the flesh (Phil. 3:3). In them God has a clear
foundation on which to build. And from this as starting-point, many have gone
further still and recognized that consecration (using that word in the right
sense) means giving themselves without reserve into His hands and following
Him. All these are first steps, and starting from them we have already touched
upon other phases of experience set before us by God and enjoyed by many. It is
always essential for us to remember that, while each of them is a precious
fragment of truth, no single one of them is by itself the whole of truth. All
come to us as the fruit of the work of Christ on the Cross, and we cannot
afford to ignore any.
A Gate And A Path
Recognizing a number of such phases in the life
and experience of a believer, we note now a further fact, namely that, though
these phases do not necessarily occur always in a fixed and precise order, they
seem to be marked by certain recurring steps or features. What are these steps?
First there is revelation. As we have seen, this always precedes faith and
experience. Through His Word God opens our eyes to the truth of some fact
concerning His Son, and then only, as in Faith we accept that fact for
ourselves, does it become actual as experience in our lives. Thus we have:
1. Revelation (Objective).
2. Experience (Subjective).
Then further, we note that such experience
usually takes the two-fold form of a crisis leading to a continuous process. It
is most helpful to think of this in terms of John Bunyan's `wicket gate'
through which Christian entered upon a `narrow path'. Our Lord Jesus spoke of
such a gate and a path leading unto life (Matt. 7:14), and experience accords
with this. So now we have:
1. Revelation.
2. Experience: (a) A Wicket gate (Crisis)
(b) A narrow path (Process)
Now let us take some of the subjects we have been
dealing with and see how this helps us to understand them. We will take first
our justification and new birth. This begins with a revelation of
the Lord Jesus in His atoning work for our sins on the Cross; there follows the
crisis of repentance and faith (the wicket gate), whereby we are initially
"made nigh" to God (Eph. 2:13); and this leads us into a walk of
maintained fellowship with Him (the narrow path), for which the ground of our
day-to-day access is still the precious Blood (Heb 10:29,22). When we come to deliverance
from sin, we again have three steps: the Holy Spirit's work of revelation,
or `knowing' (Rom. 6:6); the crisis of faith, or `reckoning' (Rom. 6:11); and
the continuing process of consecration, or `presenting ourselves' to God (Rom.
6:13) on the basis of a walk in newness of life. Consider next the gift of
the Holy Spirit. This too begins with a new `seeing' of the Lord Jesus as
exalted to the throne, which issues in the dual experience of the Spirit
outpoured and the Spirit in dwelling. Going a stage further, to the matter of pleasing
God, we find again the need for spiritual illumination, that we may see the
values of the Cross in regard to `the flesh' -- the entire self-life of man.
Our acceptance of this by faith leads at once to a `wicket gate' experience
(Rom. 7:25), in which we initially cease from `doing' and accept by faith the
mighty working of the life of Christ to satisfy God's practical demands in us.
This in turn leads us into the `narrow path' of a walk in obedience to the
Spirit (
The picture is not identical in each case, and we
must beware of forcing any rigid pattern upon the Holy Spirit's working; but
perhaps any new experience will come to us more or less on these lines. There
will certainly always be first an opening of our eyes to some new aspect of
Christ and His finished work, and then faith will open a gate into a pathway.
Remember, too, that our division of Christian experience into various subjects:
justification, new birth, the gift of the spirit, deliverance, sanctification,
etc., is for our clearer understanding only. It does not mean that these stages
must or will always follow one another in a certain prescribed order. In fact,
if a full presentation of Christ and His Cross is made to us at the very
outset, we may well step into a great deal of experience from the first day of
our Christian life, even though the full explanation of much of it may follow
later. Would that all Gospel preaching were of such a kind!
One thing is certain, that revelation will always
precede faith. When we see something that God has done in Christ our
natural response is: `Thank you, Lord !' and faith follows spontaneously.
Revelation is always the work of the Holy Spirit, who is given to come
along-side and, by opening the Scriptures to us, to guide us into all the truth
(John 16:13). Count upon Him, for He is here for that very thing; and when such
difficulties as lack of understanding or lack of faith confront you, address
those difficulties directly to the Lord: `Lord, open my eyes. Lord, make this
new thing clear to me. Lord, help Thou my unbelief!' He will not fail you.
The Fourfold Work Of
Christ In His Cross
We are now in a position to go a step further still
and to consider how great a range is compassed by the Cross of the Lord Jesus
Christ. In the light of Christian experience and for the purpose of analysis,
it may help us if we recognize four aspects of God's redemptive work. But in
doing so it is essential to keep in mind that the Cross of Christ is one
Divine work -- not many. Once in
Of the four aspects of the Cross which we shall
now mention, we have already dealt with three in some detail. The last will be
considered in the two succeeding chapters of our study. They may be briefly
summarized as follows:
1. The Blood of Christ to deal with sins and guilt.
2. The Cross of Christ to
deal with sin, the flesh and the natural man.
3. The Life of Christ made
available to indwell, re-create and empower man.
4. The Working of Death in
the natural man that that indwelling Life may be progressively manifest.
The first two of these aspects are remedial. They
relate to the undoing of the work of the Devil and the undoing of the sin of
man. The last two are not remedial but positive, and relate more directly to
the securing of the purpose of God. The first two are concerned with recovering
what Adam lost by the Fall; the last two are concerned with bringing us into,
and bringing into us, something that Adam never had. Thus we see that the
achievement of the Lord Jesus in His death and resurrection comprises both a
work which provided for the redemption of man and a work which made possible
the realization of the purpose of God.
We have dealt at some length in earlier chapters
with the two aspects of His death represented by the Blood for sins and guilt
and the Cross for sin and the flesh. In our discussion of the eternal purpose
we have also looked briefly at the third aspect -- that represented by Christ
as the grain of wheat -- and in our last chapter, in our consideration of
Christ as our life, we have seen something of its practical outworking. Before,
however, we pass on to the fourth aspect, which I shall call `bearing the
cross', we must say a little more about this third side, namely, the release of
the life of Christ in resurrection for man's indwelling and empowering for
service.
We have spoken already of the purpose of God in
creation and have said that it embraced far more than Adam ever came to enjoy.
What was that purpose? God wanted to have a race of men whose members were
gifted with a spirit whereby communion would be possible with Himself, who is
Spirit. That race, possessing God's own life, was to co-operate in securing His
purposed end by defeating every possible uprising of the enemy and undoing his
evil works. That was the great plan. How will it now be effected? The answer is
again to be found in the death of the Lord Jesus. It is a mighty death. It is
something positive and purposive, going far beyond the recovery of a lost position;
for by it, not only are sin and the old man dealt with and their effects
annulled, but something more, something infinitely greater is introduced.
The Love Of Christ
Now we must have before us two passages of the
Word, one from Genesis 2 and one from Ephesians 5, which are of great
importance in this connection.
"And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to
fall upon the man, and he slept; and he took one of his ribs, which the Lord
God had taken from the man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man. And
the man said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be
called Woman (Heb. ishshah), because she was taken out of Man (Heb. ish)"
(Gen. 2:21-23).
"Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ
also loved the church, and gave himself up for it; that he might sanctify it,
having cleansed it by the washing of water with the word, that he might present
the church to himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such
thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish" (Eph. 5:25-27).
In Ephesians 5 we have the only chapter in the
Bible which explains the passage in Genesis 2. What we have presented to us in
Ephesians is indeed very remarkable, if we reflect upon it. I refer to what is
contained in those words: "Christ ... loved the church". There is
something most precious here.
We have been taught to think of ourselves as
sinners needing redemption. For generations that has been instilled into us,
and we praise the Lord for that as our beginning; but it is not what God has in
view as His end. God speaks here rather of "a glorious church, not
having spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but .. holy and without
blemish". All too often we have thought of the Church as being merely so
many `saved sinners'. It is that; but we have made the terms almost
equal to one another, as though it were only that, which is not the
case. Saved sinners -- with that thought you have the whole background of sin
and the Fall; but in God's sight the Church is a Diving creation in His Son.
The one is largely individual, the other corporate. With the one the view is
negative, belonging to the past; with the other it is positive, looking
forward. The "eternal purpose" is something in the mind of God from
eternity concerning His Son, and it has as its objective that the Son should
have a Body to express His life. Viewed from that standpoint -- from the
standpoint of the heart of God -- the Church is something which is beyond sin
and has never been touched by sin.
So we have an aspect of the death of the Lord
Jesus in Ephesians which we do not have so clearly in other places. In Romans
things are viewed from the standpoint of fallen man, and beginning with `Christ
died for sinners, enemies, the ungodly' (Rom. 5) we are led progressively to
"the love of Christ" (Rom. 8:35). In Ephesians, on the other hand,
the standpoint is that of God "before the foundation of the world"
(Eph. 1:4), and the heart of the gospel is: "Christ ... loved the church,
and gave himself up for it" (Eph. 5:25). Thus, in Romans it is "we
sinned", and the message is of God's love for sinners (
There is thus an aspect of the death of the Lord
Jesus which is altogether positive and a matter particularly of love to His
Church, where the question of sin and sinners does not directly appear. To
bring this fact home Paul takes that incident in Genesis 2 as illustration. Now
this is one of the marvelous things in the Word, and if our eyes have been opened
to see it we will certainly worship.
From Genesis 3 onwards, from the `coats of skins'
to Abel's sacrifice, and on from there through the whole Old Testament, there
are numerous types which set forth the death of the Lord Jesus as an atonement
for sin; yet the apostle does not appeal here to any of those types of His
death, but to this one in Genesis 2. Note that; and then recall that it was not
until Genesis 3 that sin came in. There is one type of the death of Christ in
the Old Testament which has nothing to do with sin, for it is not subsequent to
the Fall but prior to it, and that type is here in Genesis 2. Let us look at it
for a moment.
Could we say that Adam was put to sleep because
Eve had committed a serious sin? Is that what we have here? Certainly not, for
Eve was not yet even created. There were as yet no moral issues involved and no
problems at all. No, Adam was put to sleep for the express purpose that
something might be taken out of him to be made into someone else. His sleep was
not for her sin but for her existence. That is what is taught in these
verses. This experience of Adam had as its object the creation of Eve, as
something determined in the Divine counsels. God wanted an ishshah. He
put the man (ish) to sleep, took a rib from his side and made it into ishshah,
a woman, and brought her to the man. That is the picture which God is giving
us. It foreshadows an aspect of the death of the Lord Jesus that is not
primarily for atonement, but answerable to the sleep of Adam in this chapter.
God forbid that I should suggest that the Lord
Jesus did not die for purposes of atonement. Praise God, He did. We must
remember that today we are in fact in Ephesians 5 and not in Genesis 2.
Ephesians was written after the Fall, to men who had suffered from its
effects, and in it we have not only the purpose in Creation but also the scars
of the Fall -- or there would need to be no mention of "spot or
wrinkle". Because we are still on the earth and the Fall is a historic
fact, `cleansing' is needed.
But we must always view redemption as an
interruption, an `emergence' measure, made necessary by a catastrophic break in
the straight line of the purpose of God. Redemption is big enough, wonderful
enough, to occupy a very large place in our vision, but God is saying that we
should not make redemption to be everything, as though man were created to
be redeemed. The Fall is indeed a tragic dip downwards in that line of
purpose, and the atonement a blessed recovery whereby our sins are blotted out
and we are restored; but when it is accomplished there yet remains a work to be
done to bring us into possession of that which Adam never possessed, and to
give God that which His heart desires. For God has never forsaken the purpose
which is represented by that straight line. Adam was never in possession of the
life of God as presented in the tree of life. But because of the one work of
the Lord Jesus in His death and resurrection (and we must emphasize again that
it is all one work) His life was released to become ours by faith, and we have
received more than Adam ever possessed. The very purpose of God is brought
within reach of fulfillment by our receiving Christ as our life.
Adam was put to sleep. We remember that it is
said of believers that they fall asleep, rather than that they die. Why?
Because whenever death is mentioned sin is there in the background. In Genesis
3 sin entered into the world and death through sin, but Adam's sleep preceded
that. So the type of the Lord Jesus here is not like other types on the Old
Testament. In relation to sin and atonement there is a lamb or a bullock slain;
but here Adam was not slain, but only put to sleep to awake again.
Thus he prefigures a death that is not on account of sin, but that has in view
increase in resurrection. Then too we must note that Eve was not created as a
separate entity by a separate creation, parallel to that of Adam. Adam slept,
and Eve was created out of Adam. That is God's method with the Church. God's
second Man' has awakened from His `sleep' and His Church is created in Him and
of Him, to draw her life from Him and to display that resurrection life.
God has a Son who is known to be the only
begotten, and God is seeking that the only begotten Son should have brethren.
From the position of only begotten He will become the first begotten, and
instead of the Son alone God will have many sons. One grain of wheat has died
and many grains will spring up. The first grain was once the only grain; now it
is changed to be the first grain of many. The Lord Jesus laid down His life,
and that life emerged in many lives. These are the Biblical figures we have
used hitherto in our study to express this truth. Now, in the figure just
considered, the singular takes the place of the plural. The outcome of the
Cross is a single person: a Bride for the Son. Christ loved the Church and gave
Himself up for it.
One Living Sacrifice
We have said that there is an aspect of the death
of Christ presented to us in Ephesians 5 which is to some extent different from
that which we have been studying in Romans. Yet in fact this aspect is the very
end to which our study of Romans has been moving, and it is into this that the
letter is leading us as we shall now see, for redemption leads us back into
God's original line of purpose.
In chapter 8 Paul speaks to us of Christ as the
firstborn Son among many Spirit-led "sons of God" (Rom. 8:14).
"For whom he foreknew, he also foreordained to be conformed to the image
of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren: and whom he
foreordained, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified:
and whom he justified, them he also glorified" (Rom. 8:29,30). Here
justification is seen to lead on to glory, a glory that is expressed not in one
or more individuals but in a plurality: in many who manifest the image of One.
And this object of our redemption is further set forth, as we have seen, in
"the love of Christ" for His own, which is the subject of the last
verses of the chapter (8:35-39). But what is implicit here in chapter 8 becomes
explicit as we move over into chapter 12, the subject of which is the Body of
Christ.
After the first eight chapters of Romans, which
we have been studying, there follows a parenthesis in which God's sovereign
dealings with
Romans 12 and the following chapter contain some
very practical instructions for our life and walk. These are introduced with an
emphasis once again on consecration. In chapter 6:13 Paul has said:
"Present yourselves unto God, as alive from the dead, and your members as
instruments of righteousness unto God". But now in chapter 12:1 the
emphasis is a little different: "I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the
mercies of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to
God, which is your reasonable service". This new appeal for consecration
is made to us as "brethren", linking us in thought to the "many
brethren" of chapter 8:29. It is a call to us for a united step of faith,
the presenting of our bodies as one "living sacrifice" unto God.
This is something that goes beyond the merely
individual, for it implies contribution to a whole. The `presenting' is personal
but the sacrifice is corporate; it is one sacrifice. Intelligent service to God
is one service. We need never feel our contribution is not needed, for if it
contributes to the service, God is satisfied. And it is through this
kind of service that we prove "what is the good and acceptable and perfect
will of God" (ch. 12:2), or, in other words, realize God's eternal purpose
in Christ Jesus. So Paul's appeal "to every man that is among you"
(12:3) is in the light of this new Divine fact, that "we, who are many,
are one body in Christ, and severally members one of another" (12:5), and
it is on this basis that the practical instructions follow.
The vessel through which the Lord Jesus can
reveal Himself in this generation is not the individual but the Body. "God
hath dealt to each man a measure of faith" (12:3), but alone in isolation
man can never fulfill God's purpose. It requires a complete Body to attain to
the stature of Christ and to display His glory. Oh that we might really see
this!
So Romans 12:3-6 draws from the figure of the
human body the lesson of our inter-dependence. Individual Christians are not
the Body but are members of the Body, and in a human body "all the members
have not the same office". The ear must not imagine itself to be an eye.
No amount of prayer will give sight to the ear -- but the whole body can see
through the eye. So (speaking figuratively) I may have only the gift of
hearing, but I can see through others who have the gift of sight; or, perhaps I
can walk but cannot work, so I receive help from the hands. An all-too-common
attitude to the things of the Lord is that, `What I know, I know; and what I
don't know, I don't know, and can do quite well without.' But in Christ, the
things we do not know others do, and we may know them and enter into the
enjoyment of them through others.
Let me stress that this is not just a comfortable
thought. It is a vital factor in the life of God's people. We cannot get along
without one another. That is why fellowship in prayer is so important. Prayer
together brings in the help of the Body, as must be clear from Matthew
18:19,20. Trusting the Lord by myself may not be enough. I must trust Him with
others. I must learn to pray "Our Father ..." on the basis of
oneness with the Body, for without the help of the Body I cannot get through.
In the sphere of service this is even more apparent. Alone I cannot serve the
Lord effectively, and He will spare no pains to teach me this. He will bring
things to an end, allowing doors to close and leaving me ineffectively knocking
my head against a blank wall until I realize that I need the help of the Body
as well as of the Lord. For the life of Christ is the life of the Body, and His
gifts are given to us for work that builds up the Body.
The Body is not an illustration but a fact. The
Bible does not just say that the Church is like a body, but that it is
the Body of Christ. "We, who are many, are one body in Christ, and
severally members one of another." All the members together are one
Body, for all share His life -- as though He were Himself distributed among His
members. I was once with a group of Chinese believers who found it very hard to
understand how the Body could be one when they were all separate individual men
and women who made it up. One Sunday I was about to break the bread at the
Lord's table and I asked them to look very carefully at the loaf before I broke
it. Then, after it had been distributed and eaten, I pointed out that though it
was inside all of them it was still one loaf -- not many. The loaf was divided,
but Christ is not divided even in the sense in which that loaf was. He is still
one Spirit in us, and we are all one in Him.
This is the very opposite of man's condition by
nature. In Adam I have the life of Adam, but that is essentially individual.
There is no union, no fellowship in sin, but only self-interest and distrust of
others. As I go on with the Lord I soon discover, not only that the problem of
sin and of my natural strength has to be dealt with, but that there is also a
further problem created by my `individual' life, the life that is sufficient in
itself and does not recognize its need for and union in the Body. I may have
got over the problems of sin and the flesh, and yet still be a confirmed individualist.
I want holiness and victory and fruitfulness for myself personally and apart,
albeit from the purest motives. but such an attitude ignores the Body, and so
cannot provide God with satisfaction. he must deal with me therefore in this
matter also, or I shall remain in conflict with His ends. God does not blame me
for being an individual, but for my individualism. His greatest problem
is not the outward divisions and denominations that divide His Church but our
own individualistic hearts.
Yes, the Cross must do its work here, reminding
me that in Christ I have died to that old life of independence which I
inherited from Adam, and that in resurrection I have become not just an
individual believer in Christ but a member of His Body. There is a vast difference
between the two. When I see this, I shall at once have done with independence
and shall seek fellowship. The life of Christ in me will gravitate to the life
of Christ in others. I can no longer take an individual line. Jealousy will go.
Competition will go. Private work will go. My interests, my ambitions, my
preferences, all will go. It will no longer matter which of us does the work.
All that will matter will be that the Body grows.
I said: `When I see this ...' That is the
great need: to see the Body of Christ as another great Divine fact; to
have it break in upon our spirits by heavenly revelation that "we, who are
many, are one body in Christ". Only the Holy Spirit can bring this
home to us in all its meaning, but when He does it will revolutionize our life
and work.
More Than Conquerors
Through Him
We only see history back to the Fall. God sees it
from the beginning. There was something in God's mind before the Fall,
and in the ages to come that thing is to be fully realized. God knew all about
sin and redemption; yet in His great purpose for the Church set forth in
Genesis 2 there is no view of sin. It is as though (to speak in finite terms)
He leaps in thought right over the whole story of redemption and sees the
Church in future eternity, having a ministry and a (future) history which is
altogether apart from sin and wholly of God. It is the Body of Christ in glory,
expressing nothing of fallen man but only that which is the image of the
glorified Son of man. This is the Church that has satisfied God's heart
and has attained dominion.
In Ephesians 5 we stand within the history of
redemption, and yet through grace we still have this eternal purpose of God in
view as expressed in the statement that He will `present unto himself a
glorious Church'. But now we note that the water of life and the cleansing Word
are needed to prepare the Church (now marred by the Fall) for presentation to
Christ in glory. For now there are defects to be remedied and wounds to be healed.
And yet how precious is the promise and how gracious are the words used of her:
"not having spot" -- the scars of sin, whose very history is now
forgotten; "or wrinkle" -- the marks of age and of time lost, for all
is now made up and all is new; and "without blemish" -- so that Satan
or demons or men can find no ground for blame in her.
This is where we are now. The age is closing, and
Satan's power is greater than ever. Our warfare is with angels and
principalities and powers (Rom. 8:38); Eph. 6:12) who are set to withstand and
destroy the work of God in us by laying many things to the charge of God's
elect. Alone we could never be their match, but what we alone cannot do the
Church can. Sin, self-reliance and individualism were Satan's master-strokes at
the heart of God's purpose in man, and in the Cross God has undone them. As we
put our faith in what He has done -- in "God that justifieth" and in
"Christ Jesus that died" (Rom. 8:33,34) -- we present a front against
which the very gates of Hades shall not prevail. We, His Church, are "more
than conquerors through him that loved us" (Rom. 8:37).
Chapter 12: The Cross and the Soul Life
God has made full provision for our redemption in
the Cross of Christ, but He has not stopped there. In that Cross He has also
made secure beyond possibility of failure that eternal plan which Paul speaks
of as having been from all the ages "hid in God who created all
things". That plan He has now proclaimed "to the intent that now unto
the principalities and the powers in the heavenly places might be made known
through the church the manifold wisdom of God, according to the eternal purpose
which he purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Eph. 3:9-11).
We have said that the work of the Cross has two
consequences which bear directly upon the realizing of that purpose in us. On
the one hand it has issued in the release of His life that it may find
expression in us through the indwelling Spirit. On the other hand it has made
possible what we speak of as `bearing the cross'; that is, our co-operation in
the daily inworking of His death whereby way is made in us for the
manifestation of that new life, through the bringing of the `natural man'
progressively into his right place of subjection to the Holy Spirit. Clearly these
are the positive and the negative sides of one thing. Equally clearly we are
now touching more particularly on the matter of progress in a life lived for
God. Hitherto in dealing with the Christian life we have placed our main
emphasis upon the crisis by which it is entered. Now our concern is more
definitely with the walk of the disciple, having especially in view his
training as a servant of God. It is of him that the Lord Jesus said:
"Whosoever doth not bear his own cross, and come after me, cannot be my
disciple" (Luke 14:27).
So we come to a consideration of the natural man
and the `bearing of the cross'. To understand this we must, at the risk of
being tedious, go back once more to Genesis and consider what it was that God
sought to have in man at the beginning and how His purpose was frustrated. In
this way we shall be able to grasp the principles by which we can come again to
live in line with that purpose.
The True Nature Of The
Fall
If we have even a little revelation of the plan
of God we shall always think much of the word `man'. We shall say with the
Psalmist, "What is man, that thou art mindful of him?" The Bible
makes it clear that what God desires above all things is a man -- a man who
will be after His own heart.
So God created a man. In Genesis 2:7 we learn
that Adam was created a living soul, with a spirit inside to
commune with God and with a body outside to have contact with the
material world. (Such New Testament verses as 1 Thessalonians 5:23 and Hebrews
4:12 confirm this threefold character of man's being.) With his spirit Adam was
in touch with the spiritual world of God; with his body he was in touch with
the physical world of material things. He gathered up these two sides of God's
creative act into himself to become a personality, an entity living in the
world, moving by itself and having powers of free choice. Viewed thus as
a whole, he was found to be a self-conscious and self-expressing being, "a
living soul".
We saw earlier that Adam was created perfect --
by which we mean that he was without imperfections because by God -- but that
he was not yet perfected. He needed a finishing touch somewhere. God had not
yet done all that He intended to do in Adam. There was more in view, but it was
as yet in abeyance. God was moving towards the fulfillment of His purpose in
creating man, a purpose which went beyond man himself, for it had in view the
securing to God of all His rights in the universe through man's instrumental in
this? Only by a co-operation that sprang from living union with God. God was
seeking to have not merely a race of men of one blood upon the earth, but a
race which had, in addition, His life resident within its members. Such a race
will eventually compass the downfall of Satan and bring to fulfillment all that
God has set His heart upon. It is that that was in view with the creation of
man.
Then again, we saw that Adam was created neutral.
He had a spirit which enabled him to hold communion with God; but as man he was
not yet, so to speak, finally orientated; he had powers of choice and he could,
if he liked, turn the opposite way. God's goal in man was `sonship', or, in
other words, the expression of His life in human beings. That Divine life was
represented in the garden by the tree of life, bearing a fruit that could be
accepted, received, taken in. If Adam, created neutral, were voluntarily to
turn that way and, choosing dependence upon God, were to receive of the tree of
life (representing God's own life), God would then have that life in union with
men; He would have realized `sonship'. But if instead Adam should turn to the
tree of the knowledge of good and evil, he would as a result be `free' to
develop himself on his own lines apart from God. Because, however, this latter
choice involved complicity with Satan, Adam would thereby put beyond his reach
the attaining of his God-appointed goal.
The Root Question: The
Human Soul
Now we know the course that Adam chose. Standing
between the two trees, he yielded to Satan and took of the fruit of the tree of
knowledge. This determined the lines of his development. From then on he could
command a knowledge; he `knew'. But -- and here we come to the point -- the
fruit of the tree of knowledge made the first man over-developed in his soul.
The emotion was touched, because the fruit was pleasant to the eyes, making him
`desire'; the mind with its reasoning power was developed, for he was `made
wise'; and the will was strengthened, so that in future he could always decide
which way he would go. The whole fruit ministered to the expansion and full
development of the soul, so that not only was the man a living soul, but from
henceforth man will live by the soul. It is not merely that man has a
soul, but that from that day on the soul, with its independent powers of free
choice, takes the place of the spirit as the animating power of man.
We have to distinguish here between two things,
for the difference is most important. God does not mind -- in fact He intends
-- that we should have a soul such as He gave to Adam. But what God has set
Himself to do is to reverse something. There is something in man today which is
not just the fact of having a soul, but which constitutes a living by the soul.
It was this that Satan brought about in the Fall. He trapped man into taking a
course by which he could develop his soul so as to derive his very life from
it.
We must however be careful. To remedy this does
not mean that we are going to cross out the soul altogether. You cannot do
that. When today the Cross is really working in us, we do not become inert,
insensate, characterless. No, we still possess a soul, and whenever we receive
something from God the soul will still be used in relation to it, as an
instrument, a faculty, in a true subjection to Him. But the point is, Are we
keeping within God's appointed limit -- within the bounds set by Him in the
Garden at the beginning -- with regard to the soul, or are we getting outside
those bounds?
What God is now doing is the pruning work of the
vinedresser. In our souls there is an uncontrolled development, an untimely
growth, that has to be checked and dealt with. God must cut that off. So now
there are two things before us to which our eyes must be opened. On the one
hand God is seeking to bring us to the place where we live by the life of His
Son. On the other hand He is doing a direct work in our hearts to undo that
other natural resource that is the result of the fruit of knowledge. Every day
we are learning these two lessons: a rising up of the life of this One, and a
checking and a handing over to death of that other soul-life. These two
processes go on all the time, for God is seeking the fully developed life of
His Son in us in order to manifest Himself, and to that end He is bringing us
back, as to our soul, to Adam's starting-point. So Paul says: "We which
live are always delivered unto death for Jesus' sake, that the life also of
Jesus may be manifested in our mortal flesh" (2 Cor. 4:11).
What does this mean? It simply means that I will
not take any action without relying on God. I will find no sufficiency in
myself. I will not take any step just because I have the power to do so. Even
though I have that inherited power within me, I will not use it; I will put no
reliance in myself. By taking the fruit, Adam became possessed of an inherent
power to act, but a power which played right into Satan's hands. You lose that
power to act when you come to know the Lord. The Lord cuts it off and you find
you can no longer act on your own initiative. You have to live by the life of
Another; you have to draw everything from Him.
Oh, friends, I think we all know ourselves in
measure, but many a time we do not truly tremble at ourselves. We may, in a
manner of courtesy to God, say: `If the Lord does not want it, I cannot do it',
but in reality our subconscious thought is that really we can do it quite well
ourselves, even if God does not ask us to do it nor empower us for it. Too
often we have been caused to act, to think, to decide, to have power, apart
from Him. Many of us Christians today are men with over-developed souls. We
have grown too big in ourselves. We have become `big-souled'. When we are in
that condition, the life of the Son of God in us is confined and almost crowded
out of action.
Natural Energy In The
Work Of God
The power, the energy of the soul is present with
us all. Those who have been taught by the Lord repudiate that principle as a
life principle; they refuse to live by it; they will not let it reign, nor
allow it to be the power-spring of the work of God. But those who have not been
taught of God rely upon it; they utilize it; they think it is the power.
Let us take first an obvious illustration of
this. Far too many of us in the past have reasoned as follows. Here is a delightfully
good-natured man, with a clear brain, splendid managing powers and sound
judgment. In our hearts we say, `If that man could be a Christian, what an
asset he would be to the Church! If only he were the Lord's, what a lot it
would mean to His cause!'
But think for a moment. Where did that man's good
nature come from? Whence are those splendid managing powers and that good
judgment? Not form new birth, for he is not yet born again. We know we have all
been born of the flesh; therefore we need a new birth. But the Lord Jesus had
something to say about this in John 3:6: "That which is born of the flesh
is flesh". Everything which comes not by new birth but my natural birth is
flesh and will only bring glory to man, not God. That statement is not very
palatable, but it is true.
We have spoken of soul-power or natural energy.
What is this natural energy? It is simply what I can do, what I am
of myself, what I have inherited of natural gifts and resources. We are
none of us without the power of the soul, and our first need is to recognize it
for what it is.
Take for example the human mind. I may have by
nature a keen mind. Before my new birth I had it naturally, as something
developed from my natural birth. But the trouble arises here. I become
converted, I am born anew, a deep work is effected in my spirit, and essential
union with God that has been set up in my spirit, but at the same time I carry
over with me something which I derive from my natural birth. Now what am I
going to do about it?
The natural tendency is this. Formerly I used to
use my mind to pore over history, over business, over chemistry, over questions
of the world, or literature, or poetry. I used my keen mind to get the best out
of those studies. But now my desire has been changed, so henceforth I employ
the same mind in the things of God. I have therefore changed my subject of
interest, but I have not changed my method of working. That is the whole
point. My interests have been utterly changed (praise God for that!), but now I
utilize the same power to study Corinthians and Ephesians that I used before to
pursue history and geography. But that power is not of God; and God will not
allow that. The trouble with so many of us is that we have changed the channel
into which our energies are directed, but we have not changed the source of
those energies.
You will find there are many such things which we
carry over into the service of God. Consider the matter of eloquence. There are
some men who are born orators; they can present a case very convincingly
indeed. Then they become converted, and, without asking ourselves where they
really stand in relation to spiritual things, we put them on the platform and
make preachers of them. We encourage them to use their natural powers for
preaching, and again it is a change of subject but the same power. We forget
that, in the matter of our resource for handling the things of God, it is a
question not of comparative value but of origin -- of where the resource
springs from. It is not so much a matter of what we are doing, but of what
powers we are employing to do it. We think too little of the source of our
energy and too much of the end to which it is directed, forgetting that with
God the end never justifies the means.
The following hypothetical case will help us to
test the truth of our argument. Mr. A. is a very good speaker: he can talk
fluently and most convincingly on any subject, but in practical things he is a
very bad manager. Mr. B., on the other hand, is a poor speaker: he cannot
express himself clearly but wanders all round his subject, never coming to a
point; yet on the other hand he is a splendid manager, most competent in all
matters of business. Both these men get converted, and both become earnest
Christians. Let us suppose now that I call on them both and ask them to speak
at a convention, and that both accept.
Now what will happen? I have asked the self-same
thing of both men, but who do you think will pray the harder? Certainly Mr. B.
Why? Because he is no speaker. In the matter of eloquence he has no resources
of his own to depend upon. He will pray: `Lord, if you do not give me power for
this, I cannot do it'. Of course Mr. A. will pray too, but maybe not in the
same way as Mr. B. because he has something of natural resource upon which to
rely.
Now let us suppose that, instead of asking them
to speak, I ask them both to take charge of the practical side of affairs at
the convention. What will happen? The position will be exactly reversed. Now it
will be Mr. A.'s turn to pray hard, for he knows full well that he has no
organizing ability. Br. B. of course will pray too, but perhaps without quite
the same urgency, for though he knows his need of the Lord he is not nearly so
conscious of his need in business matters as is Mr. A.
Do you see the difference between natural and
spiritual gifts? Anything we can do without prayer and without an utter
dependence upon God must come from that spring of natural life, and is
suspect. We must see this clearly. Of course it is not true that those only are
suited for a particular work who lack the natural gift for it. The point is
that, whether naturally gifted or not, they must know the touch of the Cross in
death upon all that is of nature, and their complete dependence upon the God of
resurrection. All too readily do we envy our neighbor who has some outstanding
natural gift, and fail to realize that our own possession of it, apart from
such a working of the Cross, may easily prove a barrier to the very thing that
God is seeking to manifest in us.
Shortly after my conversion I went out preaching
in the villages. I had had a good education and was well versed in the
Scriptures, so I considered myself thoroughly capable of instructing the
village folk, among whom were quite a number of illiterate women. But after
several visits I discovered that, despite their illiteracy, those women hand an
intimate knowledge of the Lord. I knew the Book they haltingly read; they knew
the One of whom the Book spoke. I had much in the flesh; they had much in the
Spirit. How many Christian teachers today are teaching others as I was then,
very largely in the strength of their carnal equipment!
Once I met a young brother -- young, that is to
say, in years, but who had learned a good deal of the Lord. The Lord had
brought him through much tribulation to gain that knowledge of Himself. As I
was talking to him I said, `Brother, what has the Lord really been teaching you
these days?' He said, `Only one thing: that I can do nothing apart from him.'
`Do you really mean', I said, `that you can do nothing?' `Well, no', he
replied. `I can do many things! In fact that has been just my trouble.
Oh, you know, I have always been so confident in myself. I know I am well able
to do lots of things.' So I asked, `What then do you mean when you say you can
do nothing apart from Him?' He answered, `The Lord has shown me that I can
do anything, but that He has said, "Apart from me ye can do
nothing". So it comes to this, that everything I have done and can do
apart from Him is nothing!'
We have to come to that valuation. I do not mean
to say we cannot do a lot of things, for we can. We can take meetings, and
build churches, we can go to the ends of the earth and found missions, and we
can seem to bear fruit; but remember that the Lord's word is: "Every plant
which my heavenly Father planted not, shall be rooted up" (Matt. 15:13).
God is the only legitimate Originator in the universe (Gen. 1:1). Anything that
you plan and set on foot has its origin in the flesh, and it will never
reach the realm of the Spirit however earnestly you seek God's blessing on it.
It may last for years, and then you may think you will adjust here and improve
there and maybe bring it on a better plane, but it cannot be done.
Origin determines destination, and what was
"of the flesh" originally will never be made spiritual by any amount
of `improvement'. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and it will never
be otherwise. Anything for which we are sufficient in ourselves is `nothing' in
God's estimate, and we have to accept His estimate and write it down as
nothing. "The flesh profiteth nothing." It is only what comes from
above that will abide.
We cannot see this simply by being told it. God
must teach us what is meant, by putting His finger on something which He sees
and saying: `This is natural; this has its source in the old creation; this
cannot abide.' Until He does so, we may agree in principle but we can never
really see it. We may assent to, and even enjoy, the teaching, but we
shall never truly loathe ourselves.
But there will come a day when God opens our
eyes. Facing a particular issue we shall have to say, as by revelation: `It is
unclean, it is impure; Lord, I see it!' The word `purity' is a blessed word. I
always associate it with the Spirit. Purity means something altogether of the
Spirit. Impurity means mixture. When God opens our eyes to see that the natural
life is something He can never use in His work, then we find we do not enjoy
the doctrine any longer. Rather we loathe ourselves for the impurity that is in
us; but when that point is reached, God begins His work of deliverance. We are
going on shortly to look at the provision He has made for that deliverance, but
we must stay for a little longer with this matter of revelation.
The Light Of God And
Knowledge
Of course, if one does not set out to serve the
Lord whole-heartedly, one does not feel the necessity for light. It is only
when one has been apprehended by God, and seeks to go forward with Him, that
one finds how necessary light is. There is a fundamental need of light in order
for us to know the mind of God; to know what is of the spirit and what is of
the soul; to know what is Divine and what is merely of man; to discern what is
truly heavenly and what is only earthly; to understand the difference between
things which are spiritual and things which are carnal; to know whether God is
really leading us or whether we are walking by our feelings, senses or
imaginations. It is when we have reached a position where we would like to
follow God fully that we find light to be the most necessary thing in the
Christian life.
In my conversations with younger brothers and
sisters one question comes up again and again. It is: How can I know that I am
walking in the Spirit? How do I distinguish which prompting within me is from
the Holy Spirit and which is from myself? It seems that all are alike in this;
but some have gone further. They are trying to look within, to differentiate,
to discriminate to analyze, and in doing so are bringing themselves into deeper
bondage. Now this is a situation which is really dangerous to Christian life,
for inward knowledge will never be reached along the barren path of
self-analysis.
We are never told in the Word of God to examine
our inward condition.[15] That way ends only to uncertainty, vacillation and
despair. Of course we have to have self-knowledge. We have to know what is
going on within. We do not want to live in a fool's paradise; to have gone
altogether wrong and yet not know we have gone wrong; to have a spartan will
and yet think we are pursuing the will of God. But such self-knowledge does not
come by our turning within; by our analyzing our feelings and motives and
everything that is going on inside, and then trying to pronounce whether we are
walking in the flesh or in the Spirit.
There are several passages in the Psalms which
illumine this subject. The first is in Psalm 36:9: "In thy light shall we
see light". I think that is one of the best verses in the old Testament.
There are two lights there. There is "thy light", and then , when we
have come into that light, we shall "see light".
Now those two lights are different. We might say
that the first is objective and the second subjective. The first light is the
light which belongs to God but is shed upon us; the second is the knowledge
imparted by that light. "In thy light shall we see light": we shall
know something; we shall be clear about something; we shall see. No
turning within, no introspective self-examination will ever bring us to that
clear place. No, it is when there is light coming from God that we see.
I think it is so simple. If we want to satisfy
ourselves that our face is clean, what do we do? Do we feel it carefully all
over with our hands? No, of course not. We find a mirror and we bring it to the
light. In that light everything becomes clear. No sight ever came by feeling or
analyzing. Sight only comes by the light of God coming in; and when once it has
come, there is no loner need to ask if a thing is right or wrong. We know.
You remember again how in Psalm 139:23 the writer
says: "Search me, O God, and know my heart". You realize, do you not,
what it means to say `Search me'? It certainly does not mean that I search
myself. `Search me' means `You search me!' That is the way of
illumination. It is for God to come in and search; it is not for me to search.
Of course that will never mean that I may go blindly on, careless of my true
condition. That is not the point. The point is that however much my
self-examination may reveal in me that needs putting right, such searching
never really gets below the surface. My true knowledge of self comes not from
my searching myself but from God searching me.
But, you ask, what does it mean in practice for
us to come into the light? How does it work? How do we see light in His
light? Here again the Psalmist comes to our help. "The entrance of Thy
words giveth light; it giveth understanding unto the simple" (psalm 119:130
A.V.). In spiritual things we are all `simple'. We are dependent upon God to
give us understanding, and especially is this so in the matter of our own true
nature. And it is here that the Word of God operates. In the New Testament the
passage which states this most clearly is in the Epistle to the Hebrews:
"The word of God is living, and active, and sharper than any two-edged
sword, and piercing even to the dividing of soul and spirit, of both joints and
marrow, and quick to discern the thoughts and intents of the heart. And there
is no creature that is not manifest in his sight: but all things are naked and
laid open before the eyes of him with whom we have to do" (Heb. 4:12,13).
Yes, it is the Word of God, the penetrating Scripture of Truth, that settles
our questions. It is that which discerns our motives and defines for us their
true source in soul or spirit.
With this I think we can pass on from the
doctrinal to the practical side of things. Many of us, I am sure, are living
quite honestly before God. We have been making progress, and we do not know of
anything much wrong with us. Then one day, as we go on, we meet with a
fulfillment of that word: "The entrance of Thy words giveth light".
Some servant of God has been used by Him to confront us with His living Word,
and that Word has made an entrance into us. Or perhaps we ourselves have been
waiting before God and, whether from our memory of Scripture or from the page
itself, His Word has come to us in power. Then it is we see something which we
have never seen before. We are convicted. We know where we are wrong, and we
look up and confess: `Lord, I see it. There is impurity there. There is
mixture. How blind I was ! Just fancy that for so many years I have been wrong
there and have never known it!' Light comes in and we see light. The light of
God brings us to see the light concerning ourselves, and it is an abiding
principle that every knowledge of self comes to us in that way.
It may not always be the Scriptures. Some of us
have known saints who really knew the Lord, and through praying with them or
talking with them, in the light of God radiating from them, we have seen
something which we never say before. I have met one such, who is now with the
Lord, and I always think of her as a `lighted' Christian. If I did but walk
into her room, I was brought immediately to a sense of God. In those days I was
very young and had been converted about two years, and I had lots of plans,
lots of beautiful thoughts, lots of schemes for the Lord to sanction, a hundred
and lone things which I thought would be marvelous if they were all brought to
fruition. With all these things I came to her to try to persuade her; to tell
her that this or that was the thing to do.
Before I could open my mouth she would just say a
few words in quite an ordinary way. Light dawned! It simply put me to shame. My
`doing' was all so natural, so full of man. Something happened. I was brought
to a place where I could say: `Lord, my mind is set only in creaturely
activities, but here is someone who is not out for them at all'. She had but
one motive, one desire, and that was for God. Written in the front of her Bible
were these words: `Lord, I want nothing for myself', Yes, she lived for God
alone, and where that is the case you will find that such a one is bathed in
light, and that that light illuminates others. That is real witness.[16]
Light has one law: it shines wherever it is
admitted. That is the only requirement. We may shut it out of ourselves;
it fears nothing else. If we throw ourselves open to God, He will reveal. The
trouble comes when we have closed areas, locked and barred places in our
hearts, where we think with pride that we are right. Our defeat lies
then not only in our being wrong but in our not knowing that we are wrong.
Wrong may be a question of natural strength; ignorance of it is a question of
light. You can see the natural strength in some but they cannot see it
themselves. Oh, we need to be sincere and humble, and to open ourselves before
God! Those who are open can see. God is light, and we cannot live in His
light and be without understanding. Let us say again with the Psalmist: "O
send out Thy light and Thy truth: let them lead me" (Psalm 43:3).
We praise God that sin is being brought to the notice
of Christians today more than hitherto. In many places the eyes of Christians
have been opened to see that victory over sins, as items, is important in
Christian life, and in consequence many are walking closer to the Lord in
seeking deliverance and victory over them. Praise the Lord for any movement
toward Himself, any movement back to real holiness unto God! But that is not
enough. There is one thing that must be touched, and that is the very life of
the man, not merely his sins. The question of the personality of the man, of
his soul-power, is the heart of the matter. To make the question of sins to be
everything is still to be on the surface. Holiness, if you only regard sins, is
still something on the outside, still superficial. You have not yet got to the
root of the evil.
Adam did not let sin into the world by committing
murder. That came later. Adam let in sin by choosing to have his soul developed
to a place where he cold go on by himself apart from God. When, therefore, God
secures a race of men who will be to His glory, and who will be His instrument
to accomplish His purpose in the universe, they will be a people whose life --
yea, whose very breath -- is dependent upon Him. He will be the "tree of
life" to them.
What I feel more and more the need of in myself,
and what I feel that we all as the Lord's children need to seek from God, is a
real revelation of ourselves. I repeat that I do not mean we should be for ever
looking in on ourselves and asking: `Now, is this soul or is it spirit?' That
will never get us anywhere; it is darkness. No, Scripture shows us how the
saints were brought to self-knowledge. It was always by light from God, and
that light is God Himself. Isaiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Peter, Paul, John,
all came to a knowledge of themselves because the Lord flashed Himself
upon them, and that flash brought revelation and conviction. (Isa. 6:5; Ezek.
1:28; Dan. 10:8; Luke 22:61, 62; Acts 9:3-5; Rev. 1:17).
We can never know the hatefulness of sin and the
hatefulness of ourselves unless there is that flash of God upon us. I speak not
of a sensation but of an inward revelation of the Lord Himself through His
Word. It does for us what doctrine alone can never do.
Christ is our light. He is the living Word, and
when we read the Scriptures that life in Him brings revelation. "The life
was the light of men" (John 1:4). Such illumination may not come to us all
at once, but gradually; but it will be more and more clear and searching, until
we see ourselves in the light of god and all our self-confidence is gone. For
light is the purest thing in the world. It cleanses. It sterilizes. It kills
what should not be there. In its radiance the `dividing asunder of joints and
marrow' becomes to us a fact and no mere teaching. We know fear and trembling
as we recognize the corruption of man's nature, the hatefulness of our own
selves, and the real threat to the work of God of our unrestrained soul-life
and energy. As never before, we wee now how much of us needs God's drastic
dealing if He is to use us, and we know that, apart from Him, as servants of
God we are finished.
But here the Cross, in its widest meaning, will
come to our help again, and we shall seek now to examine an aspect of its work
which meets and deals with our problem of the human soul. For only a thorough
understanding of the Cross can bring us to that place of dependence which the
Lord Jesus Himself voluntarily took when He said: "I can of myself do
nothing: as I hear, I judge: and my judgment is righteous; because I seek not
mine own will, but the will of him that sent me" (John 5:30).
Chapter 13: The Path of Progress: Bearing the Cross
In our previous chapter we have touched several
times upon the matter of service for the Lord. As we come now to look at the provision
that God has made to meet the problem created by the soul-life of man, it will
be helpful if we approach that problem by considering first the principles
which govern our work for Him and from which no one who tries to serve Him may
deviate. The basis of our salvation, as we well know, is the fact of our Lord's
death and resurrection; but the conditions of our service are no less definite.
Just as the fact of the death and resurrection of the Lord is the ground of our
acceptance with God, so the principle of death and resurrection is the
basis of our life and service for Him.
The Basis Of All True
Ministry
No one can be a true servant of God without
knowing the principle of death and the principle of resurrection. Even the Lord
Jesus Himself served on that basis. You will find in Matthew 3 that, before His
public ministry ever began, our Lord was baptized. He was baptized not because
He had any sin, or anything which needed cleansing. No, we know the meaning of
baptism: it is a figure of death and resurrection. The ministry of the Lord did
not begin until He was on that ground. After He had been baptized and had
voluntarily taken the ground of death and resurrection, the Holy Spirit came
upon Him, and then He ministered.
What does this teach us? Our Lord was a sinless
You remember that immediately after the Lord's
baptism, and before His public ministry began, Satan came and tempted Him. He
tempted Him to satisfy His essential needs by turning stones to bread; to
secure immediate respect for His ministry by appearing miraculously in the
temple court; to assume without delay the world dominion destined for Him; and
you are inclined to wonder why he tempted Him to do such strange things. He
might rather, you feel, have tempted Him to sin in a more thoroughgoing way.
But he did not; he knew better. He only said: "If thou art the Son of
God, command that these stones become bread". What did it mean? The
implication was this: `If You are the Son of God You must do something to prove
it. Here is a challenge. Some will certainly raise a question as to whether
Your claim is real or not. Why do You not settle the matter finally now by
coming out and proving it?'
The whole subtle object of Satan was to get the
Lord to act for Himself -- that is, from the soul -- and, by the stand He took,
the Lord Jesus absolutely repudiated such action. In Adam, man had acted from
himself apart from God; that was the whole tragedy of the garden. Now in a similar
situation the Son of man takes another ground. Later He defines it as His basic
life-principle -- and I like the word in the Greek: "The Son can do
nothing out from himself" (John 5:19). That total denial of the
soul-life was to govern all His ministry.
So we can safely say that all the work which the
Lord Jesus did on earth, prior to His actual death on the cross, was done with
the principle of death on the cross, and resurrection as basis, even though as
an actual event Calvary still lay in the future. Everything He did was on that
ground. But if this is so -- if the Son of man has to go through death and
resurrection (in figure and in principle) in order to work, can we do
otherwise? Surely no servant of the Lord can serve Him without himself knowing
the working of that principle in his life. It is of course out of the question.
The Lord made this very clear to His disciples when He left them. He had died
and He was risen, and He told them to wait in
If we turn to the Old Testament we find the same
thing is there. I would refer you to a familiar passage in the seventeenth
chapter of Numbers. The matter of Aaron's ministry has been contested. There is
a question among the people as to whether Aaron is truly the chosen of God.
They have entertained a suspicion, and have said in effect: `Whether that man is
ordained of God or not, we do not know!' and so God sets out to prove who is
His servant and who is not. How does He do so? Twelve dead rods are put before
the Lord in the sanctuary over against the testimony, and they are there for a
night. Then, in the morning, the Lord indicates His chosen minister by the rod
which buds, blossoms and bears fruit.
We all know the meaning of that. The budding rod
speaks of resurrection. It is death and resurrection that marks God-recognized
ministry. Without that you have nothing. The budding of Aaron's rod proved him
to be on a true basis, and God will only recognize as His ministers those who
have come through death to resurrection ground.
We have seen that the death of the Lord works in
different ways and has different aspects. We know how His death has worked in
regard to the forgiveness of our sins. We all know that our forgiveness is
based upon the shed Blood, and that without the shedding of Blood there is no
remission. Then we have come further and in Romans 6 have seen how death works
to meet the power of sin. We have learned that our old man has been crucified
in order that henceforth we should not serve sin, and we have praised the Lord
that here too His death has worked for our deliverance. Further on still the
question of human self-will arises, and the need for consecration is apparent;
and we find death working that way to bring about in us a willingness to let go
our own wills and obey the Lord. That indeed constitutes a starting point for
our ministry, but still it does not touch the core of the question. There may
still be the lack of knowledge of what is meant by the soul.
Then another phase is presented to us in Romans 7
where the question of holiness of life is in view -- a living, personal holiness.
There you find a true man of God trying to please God in righteousness, and he
comes under the law and the law finds him out. He is trying to please God by
using his own carnal power, and the Cross has to bring him to the place where
he says, `I cannot do it. I cannot satisfy God with my powers; I can
only trust the Holy Spirit to do that in me.' I believe some of us have passed
through deep waters to learn this, and to discover the value of the death of
the Lord working in this way.
Now mark you, there is still a great difference
between "the flesh", as spoken of in Romans 7 in relation to holiness
of life, and the working of the natural energies of the soul-life in the
service of the Lord. With all the above being known -- and known in experience
-- there still remains this one sphere more which the death of the Lord must
enter before we are actually of use to Him in service. Even with all these
experiences we are still unsafe for Him to use until this further thing is
effected in us. How many of God's servants are used by Him, as we say in China,
to build twelve feet of wall, only, when they have done so, to undo it all by
themselves pulling down fifteen feet! We are used in a sense, but at the same
time we destroy our own work, and sometimes that of others also, because of
there being somewhere something undealt with by the Cross.
Now we have to see how the Lord has set out to
deal with the soul, and then more particularly how this touches the question of
our service for Him.
The Subjective Working
Of The Cross
We must keep before us now four passages from the
Gospels They are: Matthew 10:34-39; Mark 8:32-25; Luke 17:32-34; and John
12:24-26. These four passages have something in common. In each you have the
Lord Himself speaking to us concerning the soul-activity of man, and in each a
different aspect or manifestation of the soul-life is touched upon. In these
verses He makes it very plain that the soul of man can be dealt with in one way
and in one way only, and that is by our bearing the cross daily and following
Him.
As we have just seen, the soul-life or natural
life that is here in view is something further than what we have in those
passages which are concerned with the old man or the flesh. We have sought to
make quite clear that, in respect of our old man, God emphasizes the thing He
has done once for all in crucifying us with Christ on the Cross. We have
seen that three times in the Epistle to the Galations the `crucifying' aspect of
the Cross is referred to as a thing accomplished; and in Romans 6:6 we have the
clear statement that "our old man was crucified", which, if the tense
of the word means anything, we might well paraphrase: `Our old man has been
finally and for ever crucified'. It is something done, to be apprehended by
Divine revelation and then appropriated by faith.
But there is a further aspect of the Cross,
namely that implied in the expression `bearing his cross daily', which is
before us now. The Cross has borne me; now I must bear it; and this bearing of
the Cross is an inward thing. It is this that we mean when we speak of `the
subjective working of the Cross'. Moreover it is a daily process; it is a step
by step following after Him. It is this which is now brought before us in
relation to the soul, and let us note that the emphasis here is not quite the
same as with the old man. We do not have here the `crucifixion' of the soul
itself, in the sense that our natural gifts and faculties, our personality and
our individuality, are to be put away altogether. Were it so it could hardly be
said of us, as it is in Hebrews 10:39, that we are to "have faith unto the
saving of the soul". (Compare 1 Peter 1:9; Luke 21:19.) No, we do not lose
our souls in this sense, for to do so would be to lose our individual existence
completely. The soul is still there with its natural endowments, but the Cross
is brought to bear upon it to bring those natural endowments into death -- to
put the mark of His death upon them -- and thereafter, as God may please, to
give them back to us in resurrection.
It is in this sense that Paul, writing to the
Philippians, expresses the desire "that I may know him, and the power of
his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, becoming conformed unto
his death" (Phil. 3:10). The mark of death is upon the soul all the time
to bring it to the place where it is always subordinate to the Spirit and never
independently asserts itself. Only the Cross, working in such a way, could make
a man of the calibre of Paul, and with the natural resources hinted at in
Philippians 3, so distrust his own natural strength that he could write to the
Corinthians: "I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus
Christ, and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness, and in fear, and in
much trembling. And my speech and my preaching were not in persuasive words of
wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power: that your faith should
not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God" (1 Cor. 2:2,3).
The soul is the seat of the affections, and what
a great part of our decisions and actions is influenced by these! There is
nothing deliberately sinful about them, mind you, but it is simply that there
is something in us which can go out in natural affection to another person and
which as a result can influence wrongly our whole course of action. So in the
first of the four passages before us the Lord has to say: "He that loveth
father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and he that loveth son or
daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And he that doth not take his cross
and follow after me, is not worthy of me" (Matt. 10:37,38). You note that
to follow the Lord in the way of the Cross is set before us as His normal, His
only way for us. What immediately follows? "He that findeth his soul shall
lose it; and he that loseth his soul for my sake shall find it" (Matt.
10:39, mg.).
The secret danger lies in that subtle working of
the affections to turn us away from the pathway of God; and the key to the
matter is the soul. The Cross has to deal with that. I have to "lose"
my soul in the sense in which the Lord meant those words, and which we are
seeking here to explain.
Some of us know well what it means to lose our
soul. We can no longer fulfill its desire; we cannot give in to it; we cannot
gratify it: that is the `loss' of the soul. We are going through a painful
process to discourage what the soul is asking for. And many a time we have to
confess that it is not any definite sin that is keeping us from following the
Lord to the end. We are held up because of some secret love somewhere, some
perfectly natural affection diverting our course. Yes, affection plays a great
part in our lives, and the Cross has to come in there and do its work.
Then we pass to the reference in Mark chapter 8.
I think that is a most important passage. Our Lord had just taught His
disciples at Caesarea Philippi that He was going to suffer death at the hands
of the elders of the Jews, and then Peter, with all his love for his Master,
came up and rebuked Him and said to Him: `Lord, do not do it; pity Thyself:
this shall never come to Thee!' Out of his love for the Lord he appealed to Him
to spare Himself; and the Lord rebuked Peter, as He would rebuke Satan, for
caring for the things of men and not the things of God. And then to all present
the word was spoken once more: "If any man would come after me, let him
deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For whosoever will save his
soul shall lose it; and whosoever shall lose his soul for my sake and the
gospel's shall save it" (Mark 8:34,35, mg.).
The whole question at issue is again that of the
soul, and here it is particularly of the soul's desire for self-preservation.
There is that subtle working of the soul which says, `If I could be allowed to
live I would do anything, be willing for anything; but I must be kept alive!'
There you have the soul almost crying out for help. `Going to the Cross, being
crucified -- oh that is really too much! Have mercy on yourself; pity yourself!
Do you mean to say you are going against yourself and going with God?'
Some of us know well that in order to go on with God we have many a time to go
against the voice of the soul- our own or other people's -- and to let the
Cross come in to silence that appeal for self-preservation.
Am I afraid of the will of God? The dear saint
whom I have already mentioned as having had such an influence upon the course
of my life, many times asked me the question: `Do you like the will of God?' It
is a tremendous question. She did not ask, `Do you do the will of God?'
she always asked, `Do you like the will of God?' That question cuts
deeper than anything else. I remember once she was having a controversy with
the Lord over a certain matter. She knew what the Lord wanted, and in her heart
she wanted it too. But is was difficult, and I heard her pray like this: `Lord,
I confess I don't like it, but please do not give in to me. Just wait, Lord --
and I will give in to Thee.' She did not want the Lord to yield to her
and to reduce His demands upon her. She wanted nothing but to please Him.
Many a time we have to come to the place where we
are willing to let go things we think to be good and precious -- yes, and even,
it may be, the very things of God themselves -- that His will may be done.
Peter's concern was for his Lord and was dictated by his natural love for Him.
We might feel that Peter had a marvelous love for his Lord, sufficient even for
him to dare to rebuke Him. Only a strong love could bring one to attempt that!
Yes, but when there is purity of spirit without that mixture of soul, you will
not be led into Peter's mistake. You will recognize the will of God and you
will find that that is what your heart delights in alone. You will no
longer even shed a tear in sympathy with the flesh. Yes, the Cross cuts deeply,
and we see here once more how utterly it has to deal with the soul.
Once again the Lord Jesus deals with the matter
of the soul in Luke chapter 17, and now it is in relation to His return.
Speaking of "the day that the Son of man is revealed", He draws a
parallel between that day and "the day that Lot went out from
If I mistake not, this is the one passage in the
New Testament that tells of our reaction to the rapture call. We may have
thought that when the Son of man comes we shall be taken up automatically, as
it were, because of what we read in 1 Corinthians 15:51, 52: "We shall all
be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump
..." Well, however we reconcile the two passages, this one in Luke's
Gospel should at least make us pause and reflect; for the emphasis is here very
strongly upon one being taken and the other left. It is a matter of our
reaction to the call to go, and on the basis of this a most urgent appeal is
made to us to be ready (compare Matt. 24:42).
There is surely a reason for this. Clearly that
call is not going to produce a miraculous last-minute change in us out of all
relation to our previous walk with the Lord. No, in that moment we shall
discover our heart's real treasure. If it is the Lord Himself, then there will
be no backward look. A backward glance decides everything. It is so easy to
become more attached to the gifts of God than to the Giver -- and even, I
should add, to the work of God than to God Himself.
Let me illustrate. At the present time[17] I am
writing a book. I have finished eight chapters and I have another nine to
write, about which I am very seriously exercised before the Lord. But if the
call to `come up hither' should come and my reaction were to be `What about my
book?' the answer might well be, `All right, stay down and finish it!' That
precious thing which we are doing downstairs `in the house' can be enough to
pin us down, a peg that holds us to earth.
It is all a question of our living by the soul or
by the spirit. Here in this passage in Luke, we have depicted the soul-life in
its engagement with the things of the earth -- and mark you, not sinful things
either. The Lord only mentioned marrying, planting, eating, selling -- all
perfectly legitimate activities with which there is nothing essentially wrong.
But it is occupation with them, so that your heart goes out to them, that is
enough to pin you down. The way out of that danger is by the losing of the
soul. This is beautifully illustrated in the action of Peter when he recognized
the risen Lord Jesus by the lake-side. Though with the others he had returned
to his former employment, there was now no thought of the ship, nor even of the
net full of fishes so miraculously provided. When he heard John's cry of recognition:
"it is the Lord", we read that "he cast himself into the
sea".
That is true detachment. The question at issue is
always, Where is my heart? The cross has to work in us a true spiritual
detachment from anything and anyone outside of the Lord Himself.
But, even here, we are as yet only dealing with
the more outward aspects of the soul's activity. The soul giving rein to its
affections, the soul asserting itself and trying to manipulate things, the soul
becoming preoccupied with things, the soul becoming preoccupied with things on
the earth: these are still small things, and do not yet touch the real heart of
the matter. There is something which is deeper yet, and which I will try now to
explain.
The Cross And
Fruitfulness
Let us read again John 12:24,25. "Verily,
verily, I say unto you, Except a grain of wheat fall into the earth and die, it
abideth by itself alone; but if it die, it beareth much fruit. He that loveth
his life (Greek `soul', as in the above passages) loseth it; and he that hateth
his life (`soul') in this world shall keep it unto life eternal."
Here we have the inward working of the Cross of
which we have been speaking -- the losing of the soul -- linked with and
likened to that aspect of the death of the Lord Jesus Himself which we have
already seen depicted in the grain of wheat, namely, His death with a view to
increase. The end in view is fruitfulness. There is a grain of wheat with life
in it, but "it abideth alone". It has the power to impart its life to
others; but to do so it must go down into death.
Now we know the way the Lord Jesus took. He
passed into death, and, as we saw earlier, His life emerged in many lives. The
Son died, and came forth as the first of "many sons". He let go His
life that we might receive it. It is in this aspect of His death that we are
called to die. It is here that He makes clear the value of conformity to His
death, which is that we lose our own natural life, our soul, in order that we
may become life-imparters, sharing thereafter with others the new life of God
which is in us. This is the secret of ministry, the path of real fruitfulness
to God. As Paul says: "We which live are always delivered unto death for
Jesus' sake, that the life also of Jesus may be manifested in our mortal flesh.
So then death worketh in us, but life in you" (2 Cor. 4:11,12).
We are coming to our point. There is new life in
us, if we have received Christ. We all have that precious possession, the
treasure in the vessel. Praise the Lord for the reality of His life within us!
But why is there so little expression of that life? Why is there an `abiding
alone'? Why is it not overflowing and imparting life to others? Why is it
scarcely making itself apparent even in our own lives? The reason why there is so
little sign of life where life is present is that the soul in us is enveloping
and confining that life (as the husk envelopes the grain of wheat) so that it
cannot find outlet. We are living in the soul; we are working and serving in
our own natural strength; we are not drawing from God. It is the soul
that stands in the way of the springing up of life. Lose it; for that way lies
fullness.
A Dark Night -- A
Resurrection Morn
So we come back to the almond rod, which was
brought into the sanctuary for a night -- a dark night in which there was
nothing to be seen -- and then in the morning it budded. There you have set
forth the death and resurrection, the life yielded up and the life fained, and
there you have the ministry attested. But how does this work out in practice?
How do I recognize that God is dealing with me in this way?
First we must be clear about one thing: the soul
with its fund of natural energy and resource will continue with us until our
death. Till then there will be an unending day-by-day need for the Cross to
operate in us, dredging deeply that well-spring of nature. This is the
life-long condition of service that is laid down in the words: "Let him
deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me" (Mark 8:34). We never
get past that. He who evades it "is not worthy of me" (Matt. 10:38);
he "cannot be my disciple" (Luke 14:27). Death and resurrection must
remain an abiding principle of our lives for the losing of the soul and the
uprising of the Spirit.
Yet here too there may be a crisis that, once
reached and passed, can transform our whole life and service for God. It is a
wicket gate by which we may enter upon an entirely new pathway. Such a crisis
occurred in the life of Jacob at Peniel. It was the `natural man' in Jacob that
was seeking to serve God and to attain His end. Jacob knew well that God had
said: "The elder shall serve the younger", but he was trying to
compass that end through his own ingenuity and resource. God had to cripple
that strength of nature in Jacob, and that He did when He touched the sinew of
Jacob's thigh. Jacob continued to walk thereafter, but he continued to be lame.
He was a different Jacob, as his change of name implies. He had his feet and he
could use them, but the strength had been touched, and he limped from an injury
from which he would never quite recover.
God must bring us to a point -- I cannot tell you
how it will be, but He will do it -- where, through a deep and dark experience,
our natural power is touched and fundamentally weakened, so that we no longer
dare trust ourselves. He has had to deal with some of us very harshly, and take
us through difficult and painful ways, in order to get us there. At length
there comes a time when we no longer `like' to do Christian work -- indeed we
almost dread to do things in the Lord's Name. But then at last it is that He
can begin to use us.
I can tell you this, that for a year after I was
converted I had a lust to preach. It was impossible to stay silent. It was as
though there was something moving within me that drove me forward, and I had to
keep going. Preaching had become my very life. The Lord may graciously allow
you to go on a long while like that -- and not only so but with a fair measure
of blessing -- until one day that natural force impelling you is touched, and
from then on you no longer do it because you want to do it but because the Lord
wants it. Before that experience you preached for the sake of satisfaction you
got from serving God in that way; and yet sometimes the Lord could not move you
to do one thing that He wanted done. You were living by the natural
life, and that life varies a good deal. It is the slave of your temperament.
When emotionally you are set on His way you go ahead at full speed, but when
your emotions are directed the other way you are reluctant to move at all, even
when duty calls. You are not pliable in the Lord's hands. He has therefore to
weaken that strength of preference, of like and dislike, in you, until you will
do a thing because He wants it and not because you like it. You may enjoy it or
you may not, but you will do it just the same. It is not that you can derive a
certain satisfaction from preaching or from doing this or that work for God,
and therefore you do it. No, you do it now because it is the will of God, and
regardless of whether or not it gives you conscious joy. The true joy you know
in doing His will lies deeper than your variable emotions.
God is bringing you to the place where He has but
to express a wish and you respond instantly. That is the spirit of the Servant
(Psalm 40:7,8), but such a spirit does not come naturally to any of us.
It comes only when our soul, the seat of our natural energy and will and
affections, has known the touch of the Cross. Yet such a servant-spirit is what
He seeks and will have in us all. The way to it may be a painful,
long-drawn-out process with some of us, or it may be just one stroke; but God
has His ways and we must have regard to them.
Every true servant of God must know at some time that
disabling from which he can never recover; he can never be quite the same
again. There must be that established in you which means that from henceforth
you will really fear yourself. You will fear to do anything `out from'
yourself, for, like Jacob, you know what kind of sovereign dealing you will
incur if you do it; you know what a bad time you will have in your own heart
before the Lord if you move out on the impulse of your soul. You have known
something of the chastening hand of a loving God upon you, a God who
"dealeth with you as with sons" (Heb. 12:7). The Spirit Himself bears
witness in your spirit to that relationship, and to the inheritance and glory
that are ours "if so be that we suffer with him" (Rom. 8:16,17); and
your response to the `Father of our spirits' is: "Abba, Father".
But when this is really established in you, you
have come to a new place which we speak of as `resurrection ground'. Death in
principle may have had to be wrought out to a crisis in your natural life, but
when it has, then you find God releases you into resurrection. You discover
that what you have lost is coming back -- though not as before. The principle
of life is at work in you now -- something that empowers and strengthens you,
something that animates you, giving you life. From henceforth what you have
lost will be brought back - but now under discipline, under control.
Let me make this quite clear again. If we want to
be spiritual people, there is no need for us to amputate our hands or feet; we
can still have our body. In the same way we can have our soul, with the full
use of its faculties; and yet the soul is not now our life-spring. We are no
longer living in it, we are no longer drawing from it and living by it; we use
it. When the body becomes our life we live like beasts. When the soul becomes
our life we live as rebels and fugitives from God -- gifted, cultured,
educated, no doubt, but alienated from the life of God. But when we come to
live our life in the Spirit and by the Spirit, though we still use our soul
faculties just as we do our physical faculties, they are now the servants of
the Spirit; and when we have reached that point God can really use us.
But the difficulty with many of us is that dark
night. The Lord graciously laid me aside once in my life for a number of months
and put me, spiritually, into utter darkness. It was almost as though He had
forsaken me -- almost as though nothing was going on and I had really come to
the end of everything. And then by degrees He brought things back again. The
temptation is always to try to help God by taking things back ourselves; but
remember, there must be a full night in the sanctuary -- a full night in
darkness. It cannot be hurried; He knows what He is doing.
We would like to have death and resurrection put
together within one hour of each other. We cannot face the thought that God
will keep us aside for so long a time; we cannot bear to wait. And I cannot
tell you how long He will take, but in principle I think it is quite safe to say
this, that there will be a definite period when He will keep you there. It will
seem as though nothing is happening; everything you valued is slipping from
your grasp. There confronts you a blank wall with no door in it. Seemingly
everyone else is being blessed and used, while you yourself have been passed by
and are losing out. Lie quiet. All is in darkness, but it is only for a night.
It must indeed be a full night, but that is all. Afterwards you will find that
everything is given back to you in glorious resurrection; and nothing can
measure the difference between what was before and what now is!
I was sitting one day at supper with a young
brother to whom the Lord had been speaking on this very question of our natural
energy. He said to me, `It is a blessed thing when you know the Lord has met
you and touched you in that fundamental way, and that disabling touch has been
received.' There was a plate of biscuits between us on the table, and I picked
one up and broke it in half as though to eat it. Then, fitting the two pieces
together again carefully, I said, `It looks all right, but it is never quite
the same again, is it? When once your back is broken, you will yield ever after
to the slightest touch from God.'
That is it. The Lord knows what He is doing with
His own, and He has left no aspect of our need unmet in His Cross, that the
glory of the Son may be manifested in the sons. Disciples who have gone this
way can, I believe, truly echo the words of the apostle Paul, who could claim
to serve God "in my spirit in the gospel of his Son" (Rom. 1:9). They
have learned, as he had, the secret of such a ministry: "We ... worship by
the Spirit of God, and glory in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the
flesh" (Phil. 3:3).
Few can have led a more active life than Paul's.
To the Romans he puts it on record that he has preached the Gospel from
Jerusalem to Illyricum (Rom. 15:19) and that he is ready now to go on to Rome
(1:10) and thence, if possible, to Spain (15:24,28). Yet in all this service,
embracing as it does the whole Mediterranean world, his heart is set on one
object only -- the uplifting of the One who has made it all possible. "I
have therefore my glorying in Christ Jesus in things pertaining to God. For I
will not dare to speak of any things save those which Christ wrought through
me, for the obedience of the Gentiles, by word and deed" (Rom. 15:17,18).
That is spiritual service.
May God make each one of us, as truly as he was,
"a bondservant of Jesus Christ".
Chapter 14: The Goal of the Gospel
For our final chapter we will take as our
starting-point an incident in the Gospels that occurs under the very shadow of
the Cross -- an incident that, in its details, is at once historic and
prophetic.
"And while he was in Bethany in the house of
Simon the leper, as he sat at meat, there came a woman having an alabaster
cruse of ointment of spikenard very costly; and she brake the cruse, and poured
it over his head ... Jesus said ... Verily I say unto you, Wheresoever the gospel
shall be preached throughout the whole world, that also which this woman hath
done shall be spoken of for a memorial of her" (Mark 14:3,6,9).
Thus the Lord ordained that the story of Mary
anointing Him with that costly ointment should always accompany the story of
the Gospel; that what Mary has done should always be coupled with what the Lord
has done. That is His own statement. What does He intend that we should
understand by it?
I think we all know the story of Mary's action
well. From the details given in John chapter 12, where the incident follows not
long after her brother's restoration to life, we may gather that the family was
not a specially wealthy one. The sisters had to work in the house themselves,
for we are told that at this feast "Martha also served" (John 12:2
and compare Luke 10:40).[18] No doubt every penny mattered to them. Yet one of
those sisters, Mary, having among her treasures an alabaster cruse containing
three hundred pence' worth of ointment, expended the whole thing on the Lord.
Human reasoning said this was really too much; it was giving the Lord more than
His due. That is why Judas took the lead, and the other disciples supported
him, in voicing a general complaint that Mary's action was a wasteful one.
Waste
"But there were some that had indignation
among themselves, saying, To what purpose hath this waste of the ointment been
made? For this ointment might have been sold for above three hundred pence and
given to the poor. And they murmured against her" (Mark 14:4,5). These
words bring us to what I believe the Lord would have us consider finally
together, namely, that which is signified by the little word "waste".
What is waste? Waste means, among other things,
giving more than is necessary. If a shilling will do and you give a point, it
is a waste. If two ounces will do and you give a kilogram, it is a waste. If
three days will suffice to finish a task well enough and you lavish five days
or a week on it, it is a waste. Waste means that you give something too much
for something too little. If someone is receiving more than he is considered to
be worth, then that is waste.
But remember, we are dealing here with something
which the Lord said had to go out with the Gospel, wherever that Gospel should
be carried. Why? Because He intends that the preaching of the Gospel should
issue in something along the very lines of the action of Mary here, namely,
that people should come to Him and waste themselves on Him. This is the result
that He is seeking.
We must look at this question of wasting on the
Lord from two angles: that of Judas (John 12:4-6) and that of the other
disciples (Matt. 26:8,9); and for our present purpose we will run together the
parallel accounts.
All the twelve thought is a waste. To Judas of
course, who had never called Jesus `Lord", everything that was poured out
upon Him was waste. Not only was ointment waste; even water would have been
waste. Here Judas stands for the world. In the world's estimation the service
of the Lord, and our giving ourselves to Him for such service, is sheer waste.
He has never been loved, never had a place in the hearts of the world, so any
giving to Him is a waste. Many say: `Such -and-such a man could make good in
the world if only he were not a Christian!' Because a man has some natural
talent or other asset in the world's eyes, they count such people are really
too good for the Lord. `What waste of a useful life!' they say.
Let me give a personal instance. In 1929 I
returned from Shanghai to my home town of Foochow. One day I was walking along
the street with a stick, very weak and in broken health, and I met one of my
old college professors. He took me into a teashop where we sat down. He looked
at me from head to foot and from foot to head, and then he said: `Now look
here; during your college days we thought a good deal of you and we had hopes
that you would achieve something great. Do you mean to tell me that this is
what you are?' Looking at me with penetrating eyes, he asked that very
pointed question. I must confess that, on hearing it, my first desire was to
break down and weep. My career, my health, everything had gone, and here was my
old professor who taught me law in the school, asking me: `Are you still in
this condition, with no success, no progress, nothing to show?'
But the very next moment -- and I have to admit
that in all my life it was the first time -- I really knew what it meant to
have the "spirit of glory" resting upon me. The thought of being able
to pour our my life for my Lord flooded my soul with glory. Nothing short of
the Spirit of glory was on me then. I could look up and without a reservation
say: `Lord, I praise Thee! This is the best thing possible; it is the right
course that I have chosen!' To my professor it seemed a total waste to serve
the Lord; but that is what the Gospel is for -- to bring us to a true estimate
of His worth.
Judas felt it a waste. `We could manage better
with the money by using it in some other way. There are plenty of poor people.
Why not rather give it for charity, do some social service for their uplift,
help the poor in some practical way? Why pour it out at the feet of Jesus?'
(See John 12:4-6.) That is always the way the world reasons. `Can you not do
something better with yourself than this? It is going a bit too far to give
yourself altogether to the Lord!'
But if the Lord is worthy, then how can it be a
waste? He is worthy to be so served. He is worthy for me to be His prisoner. He
is worthy for me just to live for Him. He is worthy! What the world says
about this does not matter. The Lord says: `Do not trouble her'. So let us not
be troubled. Men may say what they like, but we can stand on this ground, that
the Lord said: `It is a good work. Every true work is not done on the poor;
every true work is done to Me'. When once our eyes have been opened to the real
worth of our Lord Jesus, nothing is too good for Him.
But I do not want to dwell too much on Judas. Let
us go on to see what was the attitude of the other disciples, because their
reaction affects us even more than does his. We do not greatly mind what the
world is saying; we can stand that, but we do very much mind what other
Christians are saying who ought to understand. And yet we find that they said
the same thing as Judas; and they not only said it but they were very upset,
very indignant about it. "When the disciples saw it, they had indignation,
saying, To what purpose is this waste? For this ointment might have been sold
for much, and given to the poor" (Matt. 26:8,9).
Of course we know that the attitude of mind is
all too common among Christians which says, `Get all you can for as little as
possible'. That however is not what is in view here, but something deeper. Let
me illustrate. Has someone been telling you that you are wasting your life be
sitting still and not doing much? They say, `Here are people who ought to get
out into this or that kind of work. They could be used to help this or that
group of people. Why are they not more active?' -- and in saying so, their
whole idea is use. Everything ought to be used to the full in ways they
understand.
There are those who have been very concerned with
some dear servants of the Lord on this very ground, that they are apparently
not doing enough. They could do so much more, they think, if they could
secure an entry somewhere and enjoy a greater acceptance and prominence in
certain circles. They could then be used in a far greater way. I have spoken
already of a sister whom I knew for a long time and who, I think, is the one by
whom I have been helped most. She was used of the Lord in a very real way
during those years when I was associated with her, though to some of us at the
time this was not so apparent. The one concern in my heart was this: `She is
not used!' Constantly I said to myself, `Why does she not get out and take some
meetings, go somewhere, do something? It is a waste for her to be living in
that small village with nothing happening!' Sometimes, when I went to see her,
I almost shouted at her. I said, `No one knows the Lord as you do. You know the
Book in a most living way. Do you not see the need around? Why don't you do
something? It is a waste of time, a waste of energy, a waste of money, a waste
of everything, just sitting here and doing nothing!'
But no, brethren, that is not the first thing
with the Lord. He wants you and me to be used, certainly. God forbid that I
should preach inactivity or seek to justify a complacent attitude to the
world's need. As Jesus Himself says here, "the gospel shall be preached
throughout the whole world". But the question is one of emphasis. Looking
back today, I realize how greatly the Lord was in fact using that dear sister
to speak to a number of us who, as young men, were at that time in His training
school for this very work of the Gospel. I cannot thank God enough for her.
What, then, is the secret? Clearly it is this,
that in approving Mary's action at Bethany, the Lord Jesus was laying down one
thing as a basis of all service: that you pour out all you have, your very
self, unto Him; and if that should be all He allows you to do, that is
enough. It is not first of all a question of whether `the poor' have been
helped or not. The first question is: Has the Lord been satisfied?
There is many a meeting we might address, many a
convention at which we might minister, many a Gospel campaign in which we might
have a share. It is not that we are unable to do it. We could labor and be used
to the full; but the Lord is not so concerned about our ceaseless occupation in
work for Him. That is not His first object. The service of the Lord is not to
be measured by tangible results. No, my friends, the Lord's first concern is
with our position at His feet and our anointing of His head. Whatever we have
as an `alabaster box': the most precious thing, the thing dearest in the world
to us -- yes, let me say it, the outflow from us of a life that is produced
by the very Cross itself -- we give that all up to the Lord. To
some, even of those who should understand, it seems a waste; but that is what
He seeks above all. Often enough the giving to Him will be in tireless service,
but He reserves to Himself the right to suspend the service for a time in order
to discover to us whether it is that or Himself that holds us.
Ministering To His
Pleasure
"Wheresoever the gospel shall be preached
... that also which this woman hath done shall be spoken of" (Mark 14:9).
Why did the Lord say this? Because the Gospel is
meant to produce this. It is what the Gospel is for. The Gospel is not just to
satisfy sinners. Praise the Lord, sinners will be satisfied! but their
satisfaction is, we may say, a blessed by-product of the Gospel and not its
primary aim. The Gospel is preached in the first place so that the Lord
may be satisfied.
I am afraid we lay too much emphasis on the good
of sinners and we have not sufficiently appreciated what the Lord has in view
as His goal. We have been thinking how the sinner will fare if there is no
Gospel, but that is not the main consideration. Yes, Praise God! the sinner has
his part. God meets his need and showers him with blessings; but that is not
the most important thing. The first thing is this, that everything should be to
the satisfaction of the Son of God. It is only when He is satisfied that we
shall be satisfied and the sinner will be satisfied. I have never met a soul
who has set out to satisfy the Lord and has not been satisfied himself. It is
impossible. Our satisfaction comes unfailingly when we satisfy Him first.
But we have to remember this, that He will never
be satisfied without our `wasting' ourselves upon Him. Have you ever given too
much to the Lord? May I tell you something? One lesson some of us have come to
learn is this, that in Divine service the principle of waste is the principle
of power. The principle which determines usefulness is the very principle of
scattering. Real usefulness in the hand of God is measured in terms of `waste'.
The more you think you can do, and the more you employ your gifts up to
the very limit (and some even go over the limit!) in order to do it, the more
you find that you are applying the principle of the world and not of the Lord.
God's ways with us are all designed to establish in us this other principle,
namely, that our work for Him springs out of our ministering to
Him. I do not mean that we are going to do nothing; but the first thing for us
must be the Lord Himself, not His work.
But we must come down to very practical issues.
You say: `I have given up a position; I have given up a ministry; I have
foregone certain attractive possibilities of a bright future, in order to go on
with the Lord in this way. Now I try to serve Him. Sometimes it seems that the
Lord hears me, and sometimes He keeps me waiting for a definite answer.
Sometimes He uses me, but sometimes it seems that He passes my by. Then, when
this is so, I compare myself with that other fellow who is in a certain big
system. He too had a bright future, but he has never given it up. He continues
on and he serves the Lord. He sees souls saved and the Lord blesses his
ministry. He is successful -- I do not mean materially, but spiritually -- and
I sometimes think he looks more like a Christian than I do, so happy, so
satisfied. After all, what do I get out of this? He has a good time; I have all
the bad time. He has never gone this way, and yet he has much that Christians
today regard as spiritual prosperity, while I have all sorts of complications
coming to me. What is the meaning of it all? Am I wasting my life? Have I
really given too much?'
So there is your problem. You feel that were you
to follow in that other brother's steps -- were you, shall we say, to
consecrate yourself enough for the blessing but not enough for the trouble,
enough for the Lord to use you but not enough for Him to shut you up -- all
would be perfectly all right. But would it? You know perfectly well that it
would not.
Takes your eyes off that other man! Look at your
Lord, and ask yourself again what it is that He values most highly. The
principle of waste is the principle that He would have govern us. `She is doing
this for Me.' Real satisfaction is brought to the heart of the Son of
God only when we are really, as people would think, `wasting' ourselves upon
Him. It seems as though we are giving too much and getting nothing -- and that
is the secret of pleasing God.
Oh, friends, what are we after? Are we after
`use' as those disciples were? They wanted to make every penny of those three
hundred pence go to its full length. The whole question was one of obvious
`usefulness' to God in terms that could be measured and put on record. The Lord
waits to hear us say: `Lord, I do not mind about that. If I can only please
Thee, it is enough'.
Anointing Him
Beforehand
"Let her alone; why trouble ye her? She hath
wrought a good work on me. For ye have the poor always with you, and whensoever
ye will ye can do them good: but me ye have not always. She hath done what she
could: she hath anointed my body aforehand for the burying" (Mark 14:6-8).
In these verses the Lord Jesus introduces a
time-factor with the word `beforehand', and this is something of which we can
have a new application today, for it is as important to us now as it was to her
then. We all know that in the age to come we shall be called to a greater work
-- not to inactivity. "Well done, good and faithful servant: thou hast
been faithful over a few things, I will set thee over many things: enter thou
into the joy of thy Lord" (Matthew 25:21; and compare Matthew 24:47 and
Luke 19:17). Yes, there will be a greater work; for the work of God's house
will go on, just as in the story the care of the poor went on. The poor would
always be with them, but they could not always have Him. There was something,
represented by this pouring out of the ointment, which Mary had to do beforehand
or she would have no later opportunity. I believe that in that day we shall all
love Him as we have never done now, but yet that it will be most blessed for
those who have poured out their all upon the Lord today. When we see Him face
to face I trust that we shall all break and pour out everything for Him. But today
-- what are we doing today?
Several days after Mary broke the alabaster box
and poured the ointment on Jesus' head, there were some women who went early in
the morning to anoint the body of the Lord. Did they do it? Did they succeed in
their purpose on that first day of the week? No, there was only one soul who
succeeded in anointing the Lord, and it was Mary, who anointed Him before hand.
The others never did it, for He had risen. Now I suggest that in just such a
way the matter of time may be important to us also, and that the whole question
for us is : What am I doing to the Lord today?
Have our eyes been opened to see the preciousness
of the One whom we are serving? Have we come to see that nothing less than the
dearest, the costliest, the most precious, is fit for Him? Have we come to see
that working for the poor, working for the benefit of the world, working for
the souls of men and for the eternal good of the sinner -- all these so
necessary and valuable things -- are right only if they are in their place? In
themselves, as things apart, they are as nothing compared with work that is
done to the Lord.
The Lord has to open our eyes to His worth. If
there is in the world some precious art treasure, and I pay the high price
asked for it, be it one thousand, ten thousand, or even a million pounds, dare
anyone say it is a waste? The idea of waste only comes into our Christianity
when we underestimate the worth of our Lord. The whole question is: How
precious is He to us now? If we do not think much of Him, then of course to
give Him anything at all, however small, will seem to us a wicked waste. But
when He is really precious to our soul, nothing will be too good, nothing too
costly for Him; everything we have, our dearest, our most priceless treasure,
we shall pour out upon Him, and we shall not count it a shame to have done so.
Of Mary the Lord said: "She hath done what she
could". What does that mean? It means that she had given up her all. She
had kept nothing in reserve for a future day. She had lavished on Him all she
had; and yet on the resurrection morning she had no reason to regret her
extravagance. And the Lord will not be satisfied with anything less from us
than that we too should have done `what we could'. By this, remember, I do not
mean the expenditure of our effort and energy in trying to do something for
Him, for that is not the point here. What the Lord Jesus looks for in us is a
life laid at His feet -- and that in view of His death and burial and of a
future day. His burial was already in view that day in the home in Bethany.
Today it is His crowning that is in view -- when He shall be acclaimed in glory
as the Anointed One, the Christ of God. Yes, then we shall pour out our all
upon Him! But it is a precious thing -- indeed it is a far more precious thing
to Him -- that we should anoint Him now, not with any material oil but with
something costly, something from our hearts.
That which is merely external and superficial has
no place here. It has already been dealt with by the Cross, and we have given
our consent to God's judgment upon it and learnt to know in experience its
cutting off. What God is demanding of us now is represented by that flask of
alabaster: something mined from the depths, something turned and chased and
wrought upon, something that, because it is so truly of the Lord, we cherish as
Mary cherished that flask -- and we would not, we dare not break it. It comes
now from the heart, from the very depth of our being; and we come to the Lord
with that, and we break it and pour it out and say: `Lord, here it is. It is
all Yours, because You are worthy!' -- and the Lord has got what He desired.
May He receive such an anointing from us today.
Fragrance
"And the house was filled with the odor of
the ointment" (John 12:3). By the breaking of that flask and the anointing
of the Lord Jesus, the house was pervaded with the sweetest fragrance. Everyone
could smell it and none could be unaware of it. What is the significance of
this?
Whenever you meet someone who has really suffered
-- someone who has gone through experiences with the Lord that have brought
limitation, and who, instead of trying to break free in order to be `used', has
been willing to be imprisoned by Him and has thus learned to find satisfaction
in the Lord and nowhere else -- then immediately you become aware of something.
Immediately your spiritual senses detect a sweet savour of Christ. Something
has been crushed, something has been broken in that life, and so you smell the
odor. The odor that filled the house that day in Bethany still fills the Church
today; Mary's fragrance never passes. It needed but one stroke to break the
flask for the Lord, but that breaking and the fragrance of that anointing
abides.
We are speaking here of what we are; not of what
we do or what we preach. Perhaps you may have been asking the Lord for a long
time that He will be pleased to use you in such a way as to impart impressions
of Himself to others. That prayer is not exactly for the gift of preaching or
teaching. It is rather that you might be able, in your touch with others, to
impart God, the presence of God, the sense of God. Dear friends, you cannot
produce such impressions of God upon others without the breaking of everything,
even your most precious possessions, at the feet of the Lord Jesus.
But if once that point is reached, you may or may
not seem to be much used in an outward way, but God will begin to use you to
create a hunger in others. People will scent Christ in you. The least saint in
the Body will detect that. He will sense that here is one who has gone with the
Lord, one who has suffered, one who has not moved freely, independently, but
who has known what it is to let go everything to Him. That kind of life creates
impressions, and impressions create hunger, and hunger provokes men to go on
seeking until they are brought by Divine revelation into fullness of life in Christ.
God does not set us here first of all to preach
or to do work for Him. The first thing for which He sets us here is to create
in others a hunger for Himself. That is, after all, what prepares the soil for
the preaching.
If you set a delicious cake in front of two men
who have just had a heavy meal, what will be their reaction? They will talk
about it, admire its appearance, discuss the recipe, argue about the cost -- do
everything n fact but eat it! But if they are truly hungry it will not be very
long before that cake is gone. And so it is with the things of the Spirit. No
true work will ever begin in a life without first of all a sense of need being
created. But how can this be done? We cannot inject spiritual appetite by force
into others; we cannot compel people to be hungry. Hunger has to be created,
and it can be created in others only by those who carry with them the
impressions of God.
I always like to think of the words of that
"great woman" of Shunem. Speaking of the prophet, whom she had
observed but whom she did not know well, she said: "Behold now, I perceive
that this is an holy man of God, which passeth by us continually" (2 Kings
4:9). It was not what Elisha said or did that conveyed that impression, but
what he was. By his merely passing by she could detect something; she could see.
What are people sensing about us? We may leave many kinds of impressions: we
may leave the impression that we are clever, that we are gifted, that we
are this or that or the other. But no: the impression left by Elisha was an
impression of God Himself.
This matter of our impact upon others turns upon
one thing, and that is the working of the Cross in us with regard to the
pleasure of the heart of God. It demands that I seek His pleasure, that I seek
to satisfy Him only, and that I do not mind how much it costs me to do so. The
sister of whom I have spoken came once into a situation that was very difficult
for her: I mean, it was costing her everything. I was with her at the time, and
together we knelt down and prayed with wet eyes. Looking up she said: Lord, I
am willing to break my heart in order that I may satisfy Thy heart!' To talk
thus of heart-break might with many of us be merely romantic sentiment, but in
the particular situation in which she was, it meant to her just that.
There must be something -- a willingness to
yield, a breaking and a pouring out of everything to Him -- which gives release
to that fragrance of Christ and produces in other lives an awareness of need,
drawing them out and on to know the Lord. This is what I feel to be the heart
of everything. The Gospel has as its one object the producing in us sinners of
a condition that will satisfy the heart of our God. In order that He may have
that, we come to Him with all we have, all we are -- yes, even the most
cherished things in our spiritual experience -- and we make known to Him:
`Lord, I am willing to let go all of this for You: not just for Your work, not
for Your children, not for anything else, but for Yourself!'
Oh, to be wasted! It is a blessed thing to be
wasted for the Lord. So many who have been prominent in the Christian world
know nothing of this. Many of us have been used to the full -- have been used,
I would say, too much -- but we do not know what it means to be wasted on God.
We like to be always `on the go': the Lord would sometimes prefer to have us in
prison. We think in terms of apostolic journeys: God dares to put his greatest
ambassadors in chains.
"But thanks be unto God, which always
leadeth us in triumph in Christ, and maketh manifest through us the savour of
his knowledge in every place" (2 Cor. 2:14).
"And the house was filled with the odor of
the ointment (John 12:3).
The Lord grant us grace that we may learn how to
please Him. When, like Paul, we make this our supreme aim (2 Cor. 5:9), the
Gospel will have achieved its end.
Endnotes
[1]1 John 1:7: Marginal reading
of New Translation by J.N. Darby
[2]Note - The author uses `the
Cross' here and throughout these studies in a special sense. Most readers will
be familiar with the current use of the expression `the Cross' to signify,
firstly, the entire redemptive work accomplished historically in the death,
burial, resurrection and ascension of the Lord Jesus Himself (Phil. 2:8,9), and
secondly, in a wider sense, the union of believers with Him therein through
grace (Rom. 6:4; Eph. 2:5,6). Clearly in that use of the term the operation of
`the Blood' in relation to forgiveness of sins (as dealt with in Chapter 1 of
this book) is, from God's viewpoint, included (with all that follows in these
studies) as a part of the work of the Cross. In this and the following
chapters, however, the author is compelled, for lack of an alternative term, to
use `the Cross' in a more particular and limited doctrinal sense in order to
draw a helpful distinction, namely, that between substitution and
identification, as being, from the human angle, two separate aspects of the
doctrine of redemption. Thus the name of the whole is of necessity used for one
of its parts. The reader should bear this in mind in what follows. -- Ed.
[3]The expression "with
him" in Romans 6:6 carries of course a doctrinal as well as historical, or
temporal sense. It is only in the historical sense that the statement is
reversible. W.N.
[4]The quotations are from Hudson
Taylor and the China Inland Mission by Dr. and Mrs. Howard Taylor, Chapter
12, `The Exchanged Life'. The whole passage should be read. -- Ed.
[5]The verb katargeo
translated `destroyed' in Romans 6:6 (A.V.) does not mean `annihilated', but
`put out of operation', `made ineffective'. It is from the Creek root argos,
`inactive', `not working', `unprofitable', which is the word translated `idle'
in Matthew 20:3,6 of the unemployed laborers in the market place. -- Ed.
[6]Greek sumphtuos
`planted or grown along with', `united with'. The word is used in the sense of
`grafted' in Classical Greek. in the delightful illustration which follows, the
analogy of grafting should perhaps not be pressed too closely, for it is not
quite safe to imply, without some qualification, that Christ is grafted into
the old stock. But what parable can adequately describe the miracle of the new
creation? -- Ed.
[7]long-ien (Euphoria longana)
is a tree native to China. Its fruit resembles an apricot in size and has a
round central stone, a dry, light brown, papery skin and a delicious white,
grape-like pulp. It is eaten either fresh or dried, and is prized by the
Chinese both for its flavour and for its food value. -- Ed.
[8]Whatever question medical men
may raise as to the account of this unusual incident, the statement which
follows is not open to challenge.-- Ed.
[9]Note.--Two Greek verbs paristano
and paristemi are translated in these verses by `present' in the
R.V. where the A.V. has `yield'. Paristemi occurs frequently with this
meaning, e.g. in Rom. 12:1; 2 Cor. 11:2; Col. 1:22,28, and in Luke 2:22 where
it is used of the presenting of the infant Jesus to God in the Temple. Both
words have an active sense for which the R.V. translation `present' is greatly
to be preferred. `Yield' contains a passive idea of `surrender' that has
coloured much evangelical thought, but which is not in keeping with the context
here in Romans. -- Ed.
[10]The Holy Spirit, who He is
and what He does, by R.A. Torrey, D.D., pp. 198-9.
[11]The Life of Dwight L.
Moody, by his son, W.R. Moody, p. 149.
[12]Autobiography of Charles
E. Finney, chapter 2.
[13]The author has in mind the
Greek preposition ek, the sense of which is not easily conveyed by any
single English word. -- Ed.
[14]`Resident Boss' -- The
author's own rendering of li-mien tang-chia tih. -- Ed.
[15]The two apparent exceptions
to this are found in 1 Corinthians 11:28,31 and 2 Corinthians 13:5. But the
former passage calls upon us to discern ourselves as to whether we recognize
the Lord's body or not, and this is in particular connection with the Lord's
table. It is not concerned with self-knowledge as such. The strong command of
Paul in the latter passage is to examine ourselves as to whether or not we are
"in the faith". It is a question of the existence or otherwise in us
of a fundamental faith; of whether, in fact, we are Christians. This is in no
way related to our daily walk in the Spirit, or to self-knowledge. -- W.N.
[16]This is one of several
references by the author to the late Miss Maragaret E. Barber of Pagoda
Anchorage,
[17]1938. -- Ed.
[18]The author here takes the
fairly common view that the "house of Simon the leper" was the home
of Mary, Martha and Lazarus, Simon presumably also being a relative of the two
sisters. -- Ed.
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