The Normal Christian Life
by Watchman Nee
"It is no longer I . . . but Christ"
Copyright Angus Kinnear 1961. Used by permission of Kingsway Publications,
Eastbourne, England.
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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 wiht
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
Bangalore, India
1957
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PREFACE TO THE BRITISH EDITION
A new edition has made possible further revision and occasional slight
expansion of the text with the aid of fresh source material. An index
is now provided.
The reader is again reminded that the author's message in this
collected form had its origin as spoken ministry. It is therefore not
wholly systematic. On none of the subjects dealt with is it to be
regarded as exhaustive. It should be approached prayerfully--not as a
treatise, but as a living message to the heart.
Angus I. Kinnear
1958
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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
Scripture quotations are from the Revised Version unless otherwise
indicated.
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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 fact
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
Galatians 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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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 Most Holy Place and
there sprinkled before the Lord seven times. We must be very clear
about this. On that day the sin offering was offered publicly in the
court of the tabernacle. Everything was there in full view and could be
seen by all. But the Lord commanded that no man should enter the
tabernacle itself except the high priest. It was he alone who took the
blood and, going into the Most Holy Place, sprinkled it there to make
atonement before the Lord. Why? Because the high priest was a type of
the Lord Jesus in His redemptive work (Hebrews 9:12), and so, in
figure, he was the one who did the work. None but he could even draw
near to enter in. Moreover, connected with his going in there was but
one act, namely, the presenting of the blood to God as something He had
accepted, something in which He could find satisfaction. It was a
transaction between the high priest and God in the Sanctuary, away from
the eyes of the men who were to benefit by it. The Lord required that.
The Blood is therefore in the first place for Him.
Earlier even than this there is described in Exodus 12:13 the shedding
of the blood of the passover lamb in Egypt for Israel's redemption.
This is again, I think, one of the best types in the Old Testament of
our redemption. The blood was put on the lintel and on the door-posts,
whereas the meat, the flesh of the lamb, was eaten inside the house;
and God said: "When I see the blood, I will pass over you". Here we
have another illustration of the fact that the blood was not meant to
be presented to man but to God, for the blood was put on the lintel and
on the door-posts, where those feasting inside the house would not see
it.
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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.
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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, and
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 Hebrews 10 to
have reference to the heart, but it is in relation to the conscience.
"Having our hearts sprinkled from an 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 Most Holy Place, immediately you have to take
your stand upon the safe and only ground of the shed Blood. Whether you
have had a good day or a bad day, whether you have consciously sinned
or not, your basis of approach is always the same--the Blood of Christ.
That is the ground upon which you may enter, and there is no other.
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).
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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 that 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!
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[1] 1 John 1:7: Marginal reading of New Translation by J.N. Darby
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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.
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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." (5:1 mg.)
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 America and be unable to speak Chinese at all, but
he is a Chinese for all that, because he was born a Chinese. It is
birth that counts. So I am a sinner not of my behaviour but of my
heredity, my parentage. I am not a sinner because I sin, but I sin
because I come of the wrong stock. I sin because I am a sinner.
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.
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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 Chinese
Republic I am a Nee, or if I become a beggar in the street I am still a
Nee. Nothing I do or refrain from doing will make me other than a Nee.
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 China I was once talking in this strain and remarked, `We have all
sinned in Adam'. A man said, `I don't understand', so I sought to
explain it in this way. `All Chinese trace their descent from
Huang-ti', I said. `Over four thousand years ago he had a war with
Si-iu. His enemy was very strong, but nevertheless Huang-ti overcame
and slew him. After this Huang-ti founded the Chinese nation. Four
thousand years ago therefore our nation was founded by Huang-ti. Now
what would have happened if Huang-ti had not killed his enemy, but had
been himself killed instead? Where would you be now?' `There would be
no me at all', he answered. `Oh, no! Huang-ti can die his death and you
can live your life.' `Impossible!' he cried, `If he had died, then I
could never have lived, for I have derived my life from him.'
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 Eden' for potentially
we all were there when Adam yielded to the serpent's words. So we are
all involved in Adam's sin, and by being born "in Adam" we receive from
him all that he became as a result of his sin--that is to say, the
Adam-nature which is the nature of a sinner. We derive our existence
from him, and because his life became a sinful life, a sinful nature,
therefore the nature which we derive from him is also sinful. So, as we
have said, the trouble is in our heredity, not in our behaviour. Unless
we can change our parentage there is no deliverance for us.
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 of Deliverance
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
Israel--and therefore Levi who was not yet born--offered tithes to
Melchizedek. They did not offer separately and individually, but they
were in Abraham when he offered, and his offering included all his
seed. This, then, is a true figure of ourselves as `in Christ'. When
the Lord Jesus was on the Cross all of us died--not individually, for
we had not yet been born--but, being in Him, we died in Him. "One died
for all, therefore all died" (2 Cor. 5:14). When He was crucified all
of us were crucified.
Many a time when preaching in the villages of China one has to use very
simple illustrations for deep Divine truth. I remember once I took up a
small book and put a piece of paper into it, and I said to those very
simple ones, `Now look carefully. I take a piece of paper. It has an
identity of its own, quite separate from this book. Having no special
purpose for it at the moment I put it into the book. Now I do something
with the book. I post it to Shanghai. I do not post the paper, but the
paper has been put into the book. Then where is the paper? Can the book
go to Shanghai and the paper remain here? Can the paper have a separate
destiny from the book? No! Where the book goes the paper goes. If I
drop the book in the river the paper goes too, and if I quickly take it
out again I recover the paper also. Whatever experience the book goes
through the paper goes through with it, for it is in the book.'
"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; Galatians 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.
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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
Bethlehem and ended at the cross and the tomb. In it He gathered up
into Himself all that was in Adam and took it to judgment and death. In
the second place our union with Him as "the second man" begins in
resurrection and ends in eternity--which is to say, it never ends--for,
having in His death done away with the first man in whom God's purpose
was frustrated, He rose again as Head of a new race of men, in whom
that purpose shall be fully realized.
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 Man. The Cross is thus the power of God which
translates us from Adam to Christ.
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[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.
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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 Man. If we are `in Adam' all that
is in Adam necessarily devolves upon us; it becomes ours involuntarily,
for we have to do nothing to get it. There is no need to make up our
minds to lose our temper or to commit some other sin; it comes to us
freely and despite ourselves. In a similar way, if we are `in Christ'
all that is in Christ comes to us by free grace, without effort on our
part but on the ground of simple faith.
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.
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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 Calvary. Some of you, prior to
your salvation, may have tried to save yourselves. You read the Bible,
prayed, went to Church, gave alms. Then one day your eyes were opened
and you saw that a full salvation had already been provided for you on
the Cross. You just accepted that and thanked God, and peace and joy
flowed into your heart. Now salvation and sanctification are on exactly
the same basis. You receive deliverance from sin in the same way as you
receive forgiveness of sins.
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.
__________________________________________________________________
[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.
__________________________________________________________________
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).
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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 Chinkiang in
1869, `that if only I could abide in Christ, all would be well, but I
could not.'
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 Shanghai I was talking with a brother who was
very exercised concerning his spiritual state. He said, `So many are
living beautiful, saintly lives. I am ashamed of myself. I call myself
a Christian and yet when I compare myself with others I feel I am not
one at all. I want to know this crucified life, this resurrection life,
but I do not know it and see no way of getting there.' Another brother
was with us, and the two of us had been talking for two hours or so,
trying to get the man to see that he could not have anything apart from
Christ, but without success. Said our friend, `the best thing a man can
do is to pray.' `But if God has already given you everything, what do
you need to pray for?' we asked. `He hasn't', the man replied, `for I
am still losing my temper, still failing constantly; so I must pray
more.' `Well', we said, `do you get what you pray for?' `I am sorry to
say that I do not get anything', he replied. We tried to point out
that, just as he had done nothing for his justification, so he need do
nothing for his sanctification.
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!
__________________________________________________________________
[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.
__________________________________________________________________
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
Shanghai shouting the news of my discovery. From that day to this I
have never for one moment doubted the finality of that word: "I have
been crucified with Christ".
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 London and it is true in Cape Town. If you
travel west to New York or east to Singapore it is still the same. All
the world over and for all time, one plus one equals two. One plus one
is two in heaven and earth and hell.
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 them; 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 by 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.
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[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.
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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).
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Chapter 5: The Divide of the Cross
The kingdom of this world is not this kingdom of God. God had in His
heart a world-system - a universe of His creating--which should be
headed up in Christ His Son (Col. 1:16, 17). But Satan, working through
man's flesh, has set up instead a rival system known in Scripture as
"this world"--a system in which we are involved and which he himself
dominates. He has in fact become "the prince of this world" (John
12:31).
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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 kingdom of God;
neither doth corruption inherit incorruption" (John 3:6; 1 Cor. 15:50).
However educated, however cultured, however improved it be, flesh is
still flesh. Our fitness for the new kingdom is determined by the
creation to which we belong. Do we belong to the old creation or the
new? Are we born of the flesh or of the Spirit? Our ultimate
suitability for the new realm hinges on the question of origin. The
question is not `good' or bad?' but `flesh or Spirit?' "That which is
born of the flesh is flesh", and it will never be anything else. That
which is of the old creation can never pass over into the new.
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 that 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
Philippi, and "spake the word of the Lord" to the jailer and his
household. And he "was baptized, he and all his, immediately" (Acts
16:31-34). In doing so, he and those with him testified before God, His
people and the spiritual powers that they were indeed saved from a
world under judgment. As a result, we read, they rejoiced greatly,
"having believed in God".
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.
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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 China a woman lost her husband, but, becoming deranged by her loss,
she flatly refused to have him buried. Day after day for a fortnight he
lay in the house. `No', she said, `he is not dead; I talk with him
every night.' She was unwilling to have him buried because, poor woman,
she did not believe him to be dead. When are we willing to bury our
dear ones? Only when we are absolutely sure that they have passed away.
While there is the tiniest hope that they are alive we will never bury
them. So when will I ask for baptism? When I see that God's way is
perfect and that I deserved to die, and when I truly believe that God
has already crucified me. Once I am fully persuaded that, before God, I
am quite dead, then I apply for baptism. I say, `Praise God, I am dead!
Lord, You have slain me; now get me buried!'
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.
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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 (Rom. 6:5).
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 Fukien I once visited a man who owned an orchard of long-ien [7]
trees. He had three or four acres of land and about three hundred fruit
trees. I inquired if his trees had been grafted or if they were of the
original native stock. `Do you think', he replied, `that I would waste
my land growing ungrafted trees? What value could I ever expect from
the old stock?
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" (Galatians 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).
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[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.
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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.
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The Third Step: "Present Yourselves..."
Let us observe that this `presenting' relates to the members of my
body--that body which, as we said 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."
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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).
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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 with 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.
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[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.
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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.
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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 us" (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 2:10 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.
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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" (Rom. 8:5, 16). It was by way
of the Incarnation and the Cross that the Lord Jesus made this
possible. Therein was the Father-heart of God satisfied, for in the
Son's obedience unto death the Father has secured His many sons.
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).
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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.
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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.
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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 plane above or the plane 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 China one day I called on a Christian leader who was sick in bed,
and whom, for the sake of this story, I shall call `Mr. Wong' (though
that was not his real name). He was a very learned man, a Doctor of
Philosophy, and one esteemed throughout the whole of China for his high
moral principles, and he had long been engaged in Christian work. But
he did not believe in the need for regeneration; he only proclaimed a
social gospel.
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?
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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 Israel therefore
know assuredly, that God hath made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus
whom ye crucified". Peter says, in effect, to his audience: `This
outpouring of the Spirit, which you have witnessed with your own eyes
and ears, proves that Jesus of Nazareth whom ye crucified is now both
Lord and Christ'. The Holy Spirit was poured out on earth to prove what
had taken place in Heaven--the exaltation of Jesus of Nazareth to the
right hand of God. The purpose of Pentecost is to prove the Lordship of
Jesus Christ.
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 Egypt. At first Jacob could not take it
in. It was too good to be true. But ultimately he was persuaded that
the story of Joseph's exaltation was really a fact. How did he come to
believe in it? He went out, and saw the chariots that Joseph had sent
from Egypt.
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 Shanghai. At the close of
one in which I was speaking along the above lines, he went home and
began to pray earnestly, `Lord, I do want the power of the Holy Spirit.
Seeing Thou hast now been glorified, wilt Thou not now pour out Thy
Spirit upon me?' Then he corrected himself: `Oh no, Lord, that's all
wrong!' and began to pray again: `Lord Jesus, we are in a
life-partnership, Thou and I, and the Father has promised us two
things--glory for Thee, and the Spirit for me. Thou, Lord, hast
received the glory; therefore it is unthinkable that I have not
received the Spirit. Lord, I praise Thee! Thou hast already received
the glory, and I have already received the Spirit.' From that day the
power of the Spirit was consciously upon him.
__________________________________________________________________
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 New York--oh, what a day!--I cannot
describe it, I seldom refer to it; it is almost too sacred an
experience to name. Paul had an experience of which he never spoke for
fourteen years. I can only say that God revealed Himself to me, and I
had such an experience of His love that I had to ask Him to stay His
hand. I went preaching again. The sermons were not different; I did not
present any new truths; and yet hundreds were converted. I would not
now be placed back where I was before that blessed experience if you
should give me all the world - it would be as the small dust of the
balance.' [11]
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!"
__________________________________________________________________
[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.
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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 experience 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 Corinth had become preoccupied with the visible
signs of the Holy Spirit's outpouring and were making much of `tongues'
and miracles, while at the same time their lives were full of
contradictions and were a reproach to the Lord's Name. They had quite
evidently received the Holy Spirit and yet they remained spiritually
immature; and the remedy God offered them for this is the remedy He
offers His Church today for the same complaint.
In his letter to them Paul wrote: "Know ye not that ye are a temple of
God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?" (1 Corinthians 3:16).
For others he prayed for enlightenment of heart, "...that ye may know"
(Ephesians 1:18). A knowledge of Divine facts was the need of the
Christians then, and it is no less the need of Christians today. We
need the `opening of the eyes of our understanding' that we may know
that God Himself through the Holy Spirit has taken up His abode in our
hearts. God is present in the person of the Spirit, and Christ is
present in the person of the Spirit too. Thus if the Holy Spirit dwells
in our hearts we have the Father and the Son dwelling within. That is
no mere theory or doctrine, but a blessed reality. We may perhaps have
realized that the Spirit is actually within our hearts, but have we
realized that He is a Person? Have we understood that to have the
Spirit within us it to have the living God within?
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.
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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
Israel, but there was one tent quite different from all the rest. In
the common tents you could do just as you pleased--eat or fast, work or
rest, be joyful or sober, noisy or silent. But that other tent was a
tent that commanded reverence and awe. You might move in and out of the
common tents talking noisily and laughing gaily, but as soon as you
neared that special tent you instinctively walked more quietly, and
when you stood right before it you bowed your head in solemn silence.
No one could touch it with impunity. If man or beast dared to do so,
death was the sure penalty. What was so very special about it? It was
the temple of the living God. There was little unusual about the tent
itself, for it was outwardly of very ordinary material, but the great
God had chosen to make it His abode.
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 temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells within us. Has
it really come to you that wherever you go you carry with you the Holy
Spirit of God? You do not just carry your Bible with you, or even much
good teaching about God, but God Himself.
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 temple of God we shall immediately recognize that we are not our
own. Consecration will follow revelation. The difference between
victorious Christians and defeated ones is not that some have the
Spirit while others have not, but that some know His indwelling and
others do not, and that consequently some recognize the Divine
ownership of their lives while others are still their own masters.
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
Tibet and work for Thee there if I may marry that girl'. But the Lord
seemed to care a great deal more about his relationship with that girl
than about his going to Tibet, and no amount of reasoning on his part
availed to effect any change of emphasis on the part of the Lord. The
controversy went on for several months, and when again the young man
pleaded for the fullness of the Spirit, the Lord still pointed to the
same thing. But that day the Lord triumphed, and that young man looked
up to Him and said: `Lord, I can truly say now, "Whom have I in heaven
but thee? And there is none upon earth that I desire beside thee".' And
that was the beginning of a new life for him.
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 temple
of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?" "Know ye not that
your body is a temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have
from God?"
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
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.
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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 presents 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).
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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" (Rom. 7:7-9). The Law is
that which exposes our true nature. Alas, we are so conceited, and
think ourselves so strong, that God has to give us something to test us
and prove how weak we are. At last we see it and confess: `I am a
sinner through and through, and I can of myself do nothing whatever to
please God.'
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).
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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 Man.
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.
3:14) 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 Most Holy Place. Since the death of the
Lord Jesus, God is no longer veiled but seeks to reveal Himself (1 Cor.
2:7-10).
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" (Rom. 7:4). By the body of Christ that foolish, sinful
woman has died, but being united to Him in death she is united to Him
in resurrection also, and in the power of resurrection life she brings
forth fruit unto God. The risen life of the Lord in her empowers her
for all the demands God's holiness makes upon her. The Law of God is
not annulled; it is perfectly fulfilled, for the risen Lord now lives
out His life in her, and His life is always well-pleasing to the
Father.
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.
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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? At the risk
of a little overstatement, I reply, "It means that from henceforth I am
going to do nothing whatever for God: I am never again 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 China some
bearers can carry a load of salt weighing 120 kilos, some even 250
kilos. Now along comes a man who can carry only 120 kilos, and here is
a load of 250 kilos. He knows perfectly well he cannot carry it, and if
he is wise he will say: `I won't touch it!' But the temptation to try
is ingrained in human nature, so although he cannot possibly carry it
he still tries. As a youngster I used to amuse myself watching ten or
twenty of these fellows come along and try, though every one of them
knew he could not possibly manage it. In the end he must give up and
make way for the man who could.
The sooner we too give up trying the better, for if 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 China with some twenty other brothers.
There was inadequate provision for bathing in the home where we stayed,
so we went for a daily plunge in the river. On one occasion a brother
had cramp in one leg, and I suddenly saw he was sinking fast, so I
motioned to another brother, who was an expert swimmer, to hasten to
his rescue. But to my astonishment he made no move. So I grew desperate
and called out: `Don't you see the man is drowning?' and the other
brothers, about as agitated as I was, shouted vigorously too. But our
good swimmer still did not move. Calm and collected, he remained just
where he was, apparently postponing the unwelcome task. Meantime the
voice of the poor drowning brother grew fainter and his efforts
feebler. In my heart I said: `I hate that man! Think of his letting a
brother drown before his very eyes and not going to the rescue!'
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 alone. 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.
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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 China we lost a great
many tanks and so were unable to deal with the Japanese tanks, until
the following scheme was devised. A single shot would be fired at a
Japanese tank by one of our snipers in ambush. After a considerable
lapse of time the first shot would be followed by a second; then, after
a further silence, by another shot; until the tank driver, eager to
locate the source of the disturbance, would pop his head out to look
around. The next shot, carefully aimed, would put an end to him.
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 Galatians 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.
__________________________________________________________________
[13] The author has in mind the Greek preposition ek, the sense of
which is not easily conveyed by any single English word.--Ed.
__________________________________________________________________
Christ Our Life
"I thank God through Jesus Christ"! That exclamation of Paul's is
fundamentally the same as his other words in Galatians 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 Galatians "until Christ be formed in you" (Gal.
4:19).
Let me illustrate with another story. I once arrived in America in the
home of a saved couple who requested me to pray for them. I inquired
the case of their trouble. `Oh, Mr. Nee, we have been in a bad way
lately', they confessed. `We are so easily irritated by the children,
and during the past few weeks we have both lost our tempers several
times a day. We are really dishonoring the Lord. Will you ask Him to
give us patience?' `That is the one thing I cannot do', I said. `What
do you mean?' they asked. `I mean that one thing is certain', I
answered, `and that is that God is not going to answer your prayer.' At
that they said in amazement, `Do you mean to tell us we have gone so
far that God is not willing to hear us when we ask Him to make us
patient?' `No, I do not mean quite that, but I would like to ask you if
you have ever prayed in this respect. You have. But did God answer? No!
Do you know why? Because you have no need of patience.' Then the eyes
of the wife blazed up. She said, `What do you mean? We do not need
patience, and yet we get irritated the whole day long! What do you
mean?' `It is not patience you have need of', I answered, `it is
Christ.'
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; and he that hath not the Son of God
hath not the life" (1 John 5:11, 12). The life of God is not given us
as a separate item; the life of God is given us in the Son. It is
"eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Rom. 6:23). Our relationship
to the Son is our relationship to the life.
It is a blessed thing to discover the difference between Christian
graces and Christ: to know the difference between meekness and Christ,
between patience and Christ, between love and Christ. Remember again
what is said in 1 Corinthians 1:30: "Christ Jesus... was made unto us
wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption."
The common conception of sanctification is that every item of the life
should be holy; but that is not holiness, it is the fruit of holiness.
Holiness is Christ. It is the Lord Jesus being made over to us to be
that. So you can put in anything there: love, humility, power,
self-control. Today there is a call for patience: He is our patience!
Tomorrow the call may be for purity: He is our purity! He is the answer
to every need. That is why Paul speaks of "the fruit of the Spirit" as
one (Gal. 5:22) and not of `fruits' as separate items. God has given us
His Holy Spirit, and when love is needed the fruit of the Spirit is
love; when joy is needed the fruit of the Spirit is joy. It is always
true. It does not matter what your personal deficiency, or whether it
is a hundred and one different things, God has one sufficient
answer--His Son Jesus Christ, and He is the answer to every human need.
How can we know more of Christ in this way? Only by way of an
increasing awareness of need. Some are afraid to discover deficiency in
themselves and so they never grow. Growth in grace is the only sense in
which we can grow, and grace, we have said, is God doing something for
us. We all have the same Christ dwelling within, but revelation of some
new need will lead us spontaneously to trust Him to live out His life
in us in that particular. Greater capacity means greater enjoyment of
God's supply. Another letting go, a fresh trusting in Christ, and
another stretch of land is conquered. `Christ my life' is the secret of
enlargement.
We have spoken of trying and trusting, and the difference between the
two. Believe me, it is the difference between Heaven and hell. It is
not something just to be talked over as a good thought; it is stark
reality. `Lord, I cannot do it, therefore I will no longer try to do
it.' This is the point where most of us fail. `Lord, I cannot;
therefore I will take my hands off; from now on I trust Thee for that.'
I refuse to act; I depend on Him to act and then I enter fully and
joyfully into the action He initiates. It is not passivity; it is a
most active life, trusting the Lord like that; drawing life from Him,
taking Him to be my very life, letting Him out His life in me.
__________________________________________________________________
The Law Of This Spirit Of Life
"There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ
Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. For the law
of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made free from the law of
sin and death" (Rom. 8:1, 2, A.V.).
It is in chapter 8 that Paul presents to us in detail the positive side
of life in the Spirit. "There is therefore now no condemnation", he
begins, and this statement may at first seem out of place here. Surely
condemnation was met by the Blood through which we found peace with God
and salvation from wrath (Rom. 5:1, 9). But there are two kinds of
condemnation, namely, that before God and that before myself (just as
earlier we saw there are two kinds of peace) and the second may at
times seem to us even more awful than the first. When I see that the
Blood of Christ has satisfied God, then I know my sins are forgiven,
and there is for me no more condemnation before God. Yet I may still be
knowing defeat, and the sense of inward condemnation on this account
may be very real, as Romans 7 shows. But if I have learned to live by
Christ as my life, then I have learned the secret of victory, and,
praise God! "there is therefore now no condemnation". "The mind of the
spirit is life and peace" (Rom. 8:6), and this becomes my experience as
I learn to walk in the Spirit. With peace in my heart I have no time to
feel condemned, but only to praise Him who leads me on from victory to
victory.
But what lay behind my sense of condemnation? Was it not the experience
of defeat and the sense of helplessness to do anything about it? Before
I saw that Christ is my life, I labored under a constant sense of
handicap; limitation dogged my steps; I felt disabled at every turn. I
was always crying out: `I cannot do this! I cannot do that!' Try as I
would, I found that I "cannot please God" (Rom. 8:8). But there is no
`I cannot' in Christ. Now it is: "I can do all things in him that
strengtheneth me" (Phil. 4:13).
How can Paul be so daring? On what ground does he declare that he is
now free from limitation and "can do all things"? Here is his answer:
"For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus made me free from
the law of sin and of death" (Rom. 8:2). Why is there no more
condemnation? "For ...": there is a reason for it; there is something
definite to account for it. The reason is that there is a law called
"the law of the Spirit of life" and it has proved stronger than another
law called `the law of sin and death". What are these laws? How do they
operate? And what is the difference between sin and the law of sin, and
between death and the law of death?
First let us ask ourselves, What is a law? Well, strictly speaking, a
law is a generalization examined until it is proved that there is no
exception. We might define it more simply as something which happens
over and over again. Each time the thing happens it happens in the same
way. We can illustrate this both from statutory and from natural law.
For example, in this land, if I drive a car on the right hand side of
the road the traffic police will stop me. Why? Because it is against
the law of the land. If you do it you will be stopped too. Why? For the
same reason that I would be stopped: it is against the law and the law
makes no exceptions. It is something which happens repeatedly and
unfailingly. Or again, we all know what is meant by gravity. If I drop
my handkerchief in London it falls to the ground. That is the effect of
gravity. But the same is true if I drop it in New York or Hong Kong. No
matter where I let it go, gravity operates, and it always produces the
same results. Whenever the same conditions prevail the same effects are
seen. There is thus a `law' of gravity.
Now what of the law of sin and death? If someone passes an unkind
remark about me, at once something goes wrong inside me. That is not
law; that is sin. But it, when different people pass unkind remarks,
the same `something' goes wrong inside, then I discern a law within--a
law of sin. Like the law of gravity, it is something constant. It
always works the same way. And so too with the law of death. Death, we
have said, is weakness produced to its limit. Weakness is `I cannot'.
Now if when I try to please God in this particular matter I find I
cannot, and if when I try to please Him in that other thing I again
find I cannot, then I discern a law at work. There is not only sin in
me but a law of sin; there is not only death in me but a law of death.
Then again, not only is gravity a law in the sense that it is constant,
admitting of no exception, but, unlike the rule of the road, it is a
`natural' law and not the subject of discussion and decision but of
discovery. The law is there, and the handkerchief `naturally' drops by
itself without any help from me. And the "law" discovered by the man in
Romans 7:23 is just like that. It is a law of sin and of death, opposed
to that which is good, and crippling the man's will to do good. He
`naturally' sins according to the "law of sin" in his members. He wills
to be different, but that law in him is relentless and no human will
can resist it. So this brings me to the question, How can I be set free
from the law of sin an death? I need deliverance from sin, and still
more do I need deliverance from death, but most of all I need
deliverance from the law of sin and of death. How can I be delivered
from the constant repetition of weakness and failure? In order to
answer this question let us follow out our two illustration further.
One of our great burdens in China used to be the likin tax, a law which
none could escape, originating in the Ch'in Dynasty and operating right
down to our own day. It was an inland tax on the transit of goods,
applied throughout the empire and having numerous barriers for
collection, and officers enjoying very large powers. The result was
that the charge on goods passing through several provinces might become
very heavy indeed. But a few years ago a second law came into operation
which set aside the likin law. Can you imagine the feelings of relief
in those who had suffered under the old law? Now there was no need to
think or hope or pray; the new law was already there and had delivered
us from the old law. No longer was there need to think beforehand what
one would say if one met a likin officer tomorrow!
And as with the law of the land, so it is with natural law. How can the
law of gravity be annulled? With regard to my handkerchief that law is
at work clearly enough, pulling it down, but I have only to place my
hand under the handkerchief and it does not drop. Why? The law is still
there. I do not deal with the law of gravity; in fact I cannot deal
with the law of gravity. Then why does my handkerchief not fall to the
ground? Because there is a power keeping it from doing so. The law is
there, but another law superior to it is operation to overcome it,
namely the law of life. Gravity can do its utmost but the handkerchief
will not drop, because another law is working against the law of
gravity to maintain it there. We have all seen the tree which was once
a small seed fallen between the slabs of a paving, and which has grown
until heavy stone blocks have been lifted by the power of the life
within it. That is what we mean by the triumph of one law over another.
In just such a manner God delivers us from one law by introducing
another law. The law of sin and death is there all the time, but God
has put another law into operation - the law of the Spirit of life in
Christ Jesus, and that law is strong enough to deliver us from the law
of sin and death. You see, it is a law of life in Christ Jesus--the
resurrection life that in Him has met death in all its forms and
triumphed over it (Eph. 1:19, 20). The Lord Jesus dwells in our hearts
in the person of His Holy Spirit, and if we let Him have a clear way
and commit ourselves to Him we shall find that He will keep us from the
old law. We shall learn what it is to be kept, not by our own power,
but "by the power of God" (1 Peter 1:5).
__________________________________________________________________
The Manifestation Of The Law Of Life
Let us seek to make this practical. We touched earlier on the matter of
our will in relation to the things of God. Even older Christians do not
realize how great a part will-power plays in their lives. That was part
of Paul's trouble in Romans 7. His will was good, but all his actions
contradicted it, and however much he made up his mind and set himself
to please God, it led him only into worse darkness. `I would do good',
but "I am carnal, sold under sin". That is the point. Like a car
without petrol, that has to be pushed and that stops as soon as it is
left alone, many Christians endeavour to drive themselves by
will-power, and then think the Christian life a most exhausting and
bitter one. Some even force themselves to say `Hallelujah!' because
others do it, while admitting there is no meaning in it to them. They
force themselves to be what they are not, and it is worse than trying
to make water run up-hill. For after all, the very highest point the
will can reach is that of willingness (Matt. 26:41).
If we have to exert so much effort in our Christian living, it simply
says that we are not really like that at all. We don't need to force
ourselves to speak our native language. In fact we only have to exert
will-power in order to do things we do not do naturally. We may do them
for a time, but the law of sin and death wins in the end. We may be
able to say: `To will is present with me, and I perform that which is
good for two weeks', but eventually we shall have to confess: `How to
perform it I know not'. No, what I already am I do not long to be. If I
"would" it is because I am not.
You ask, Why do men use will-power to try to please God? There may be
two reasons. They may of course never have experienced the new birth,
in which case they have no new life to draw upon; or they may have been
born again and the life be there, but they have not learned to trust in
that life. It is this lack of understanding that results in habitual
failure and sinning, bringing them to the place where they almost cease
to believe in the possibility of anything better.
But because we have not believed fully, that does not mean that the
feeble life we intermittently experience is all God has given us.
Romans 6:23 states that "the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ
Jesus our Lord", and now in Romans 8:2 we read that "the law of the
Spirit of life in Christ Jesus" has come to our aid. So Romans 8:2
speaks not of a new gift but of the life already referred to in Romans
6:23. In other words, it is a new revelation of what we already have. I
feel I cannot emphasize this too much. It is not something fresh from
God's hand, but a new unveiling of what He has already given. It is a
new discovery of a work already done in Christ, for the words "made me
free" are in the past tense. If I really see this and put my faith in
Him, there is no absolute necessity for Romans 7 to be repeated in
me--either the experience or the conduct, and certainly not the
tremendous display of will-power.
If we will let go our own wills and trust Him, we shall not fall to the
ground and break, but we shall fall into a different law, the law of
the Spirit of life. For He has given us not only life but a law of
life. And just as the law of gravity is a natural law and not the
result of human legislation, so the law of life is a `natural' law,
similar in principle to the law that keeps our heart beating or that
controls the movement of our eyelids. There is no need for us to think
about our eyes, or to decide that we must blink every so often to keep
them cleansed; and still less do we bring our will to bear upon our
heart. Indeed to do so might rather harm than help it. No, so long as
it has life it works spontaneously. Our wills only interfere with the
law of life. I discovered that fact once in the following way.
I used to suffer from sleeplessness. Once after several sleepless
nights, when I had prayed much about it and exhausted all my resources,
I confessed at length to God that the fault must lie with me and asked
to be shown where. I said to God: `I demand an explanation'. He answer
was: `Believe in nature's laws'. Sleep is as much a law as hunger is,
and I realized that though I had never thought of worrying whether I
would get hungry or not, I had been worrying about sleeping. I had been
trying to help nature, and that is the chief trouble with most
sufferers from sleeplessness. But now I trusted not only God but God's
law of nature, and slept well.
Should we not read the Bible? Of course we should or our spiritual life
will suffer. But that should not mean forcing ourselves to read. There
is a new law in us which gives us a hunger for it. Then half an hour
can be more profitable than five hours of forced reading. And it is the
same with giving, with preaching, with testimony. Forced preaching is
apt to result in preaching a warm gospel with a cold heart, and we all
know what men mean by `cold charity'.
If we will let ourselves live in the new law we shall be less conscious
of the old law. It is still there, but it is no longer governing and we
are no longer in its grip. That is why the Lord says in Matthew 6:
"Behold the birds... Consider the lilies". If we could ask the birds
whether they were not afraid of the law of gravity, how would they
reply? They would say: `We never heard the name of Newton. We know
nothing about his law. We fly because it is the law of our life to
fly.' Not only is there in them a life with the power of flight, but
that life has a life has a law which enables these living creatures
quite spontaneously and consistently to overcome the law of gravity.
Yet gravity remains. If you get up early one morning when the cold is
intense and the snow thick on the ground, and there is a dead sparrow
in the courtyard, you are reminded at once of the persistence of that
law. But while birds live they overcome it, and the life within them is
what dominates their consciousness.
God has been truly gracious to us. He has given us this new law of the
Spirit, and for us to `fly' is no longer a question of our will but of
His life. Have you noticed what a trial it is to make an impatient
Christian patient? To require patience of him is enough to make him ill
with depression. But God has never told us to force ourselves to be
what we are not naturally: to try by taking thought to add to our
spiritual stature. Worrying may possibly decrease a man's height, but
it certainly never added anything to it. "Be not anxious", are His
words. "Consider the lilies, ... they grow." He is directing our
attention to the new law of life in us. Oh, for a new appreciation of
the life that is ours!
What a precious discovery this is! It can make altogether new men of
us, for it operates in the smallest things as well as in the bigger
ones. It checks us when, for example, we put out a hand to look at a
book in someone else's room, reminding us that we have not asked
permission and have no right to do so. We cannot, the Holy Spirit tells
us, encroach thus upon the rights of others.
Once I was talking to a Christian friend and he turned to me and said:
`Do you know, I believe that if anyone is willing to live by the law of
the Spirit of life, such a man will become truly refined.' `What do you
mean?' I asked. He replied: `That law has the power to make a man a
perfect gentleman. Some scornfully say: "you can't blame those people
for the way they act; they are just country folk and have no
educational advantages". But the real question is, Have they the life
of the Lord within? For I tell you, that life can say to them: "Your
voice is too loud", or, "That laughter was not right", or, "Your motive
in passing that remark was wrong." In a thousand details the Spirit of
life can tell them how to act, so producing in them a true refinement.
There is no such inherent power in education.' And yet my friend was
himself an educationalist!
But it is true. Take the example of talkativeness. Are you a person of
too many words? When you stay with people, do you say to yourself:
`What shall I do? I am a Christian; but if I am to glorify the name of
the Lord, I simple must not talk so much. So today let me be extra
careful to hold myself in check.'? And for an hour or two you
succeed--until on some pretext you loose control and, before you know
where you are, find yourself once again in difficulty with your
garrulous tongue. Yes, let us be fully assured that the will is useless
here. For me to exhort you to exercise your will in this matter would
be but to offer you the vain religion of the world, not the life in
Christ Jesus. For consider again: a talkative person remains just that,
though he keep silent all day, for there is a `natural' law of
talkativeness governing him (or her!), just as a peach tree is a peach
tree whether or not it bears peaches. But as Christians we discover a
new law in us, the law of the spirit of life, which transcends all else
and which has already delivered us from the `law' of our talkativeness.
If, believing the Lord's Word, we yield ourselves to that new law, it
will tell us when we should stop talking--or not start!--and it will
empower us to do so. On that basis you can go to your friend's house
for two or three hours, or stay for two or three days, and experience
no difficulty. On your return you will just thank God for His new law
of life.
It is this spontaneous life that is the Christian life. It manifests
itself in love for the unlovely--for the brother whom on natural
grounds we would not like and certainly could not love. It works on the
basis of what the Lord sees of possibility in that brother. `Lord, You
see he is lovable and You love him. Love him, now, through me!' And it
manifests itself in reality of life--in a true genuineness of moral
character. There is too much hypocrisy in the lives of Christians, too
much play-acting. Nothing takes away from the effectiveness of
Christian witness as does a pretense of something that is not really
there, for the man in the street unfailingly penetrates such a disguise
in the end and finds us out for what we are. Yes, pretense gives way to
reality when we trust the law of life.
__________________________________________________________________
The Fourth Step: "Walk... After The Spirit"
"For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh,
God, sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an
offering for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: that the ordinance of the
law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after
the Spirit" (Rom. 8:3).
Every careful reader of these two verses will see that there are two
things presented here. They are, firstly, what the Lord Jesus has done
for us, and secondly, what the Holy Spirit will do in us. "The flesh"
is "weak"; consequently the ordinance of the law cannot be fulfilled in
us "after the flesh". (Remember, it is again here a question not of
salvation but of pleasing God.) Now, because of our inability God took
two steps. In the first place, He intervened to deal with the heart of
our problem. He sent His Son in the flesh, who died for sin and in
doing so "condemned sin in the flesh". That is to say, He took to death
representatively all that belonged to the old creation in us, whether
we speak of it as `our old man', `the flesh', or the carnal `I'. Thus
God struck at the very root of our trouble by removing the fundamental
ground of our weakness. This was the first step.
But still "the ordinance of the law" remained to be fulfilled "in us".
How could this be done? It required God's further provision of the
indwelling Holy Spirit. It is He who is sent to take care of the inward
side of this thing, and He is able to do so, we are told, as we
"walk... after the Spirit".
What does it mean to walk after the Spirit? It means two things.
Firstly, it is not a work; it is a walk. Praise God, the burdensome and
fruitless effort I involved myself in when I sought `in the flesh' to
please God gives place to a blessed and restful dependence on "his
working, which worketh in me mightily" (Col. 1:29). That is why Paul
contrasts the "works" of the flesh with the "fruit" of the Spirit (Gal.
5:19, 22).
Then secondly, to "walk after" implies subjection. Walking after the
flesh means that I yield to the dictates of the flesh, and the
following verses in Romans 8:5-8 make clear where that leads me. It
only brings me into conflict with God. To walk after the Spirit is to
be subject to the Spirit. There is one thing that the man who walks
after the Spirit cannot do, and that is be independent of Him. I must
be subject to the Holy Spirit. The initiative of my life must be with
Him. Only as I yield myself to obey Him shall I find the "law of the
Spirit of life" in full operation and the "ordinance of the law" (all
that I have been trying to do to please God) being fulfilled--no longer
by me but in me. "As many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are
sons of God" (Rom. 8:14).
We are all familiar with the words of the benediction in 2 Corinthians
13:14: "The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and
the communion of the Holy Ghost, be with you all". The love of God is
the source of all spiritual blessing; the grace of the Lord Jesus has
made it possible for that spiritual wealth to become ours; and the
communion of the Holy Ghost is the means whereby it is imparted to us.
Love is something hidden in the heart of God; grace is that love
expressed and made available in the Son; communion is the importation
of that grace by the Spirit. What the Father has devised concerning us
the Son has accomplished for us, and now the Holy Spirit communicates
it to us. When therefore we discover something fresh that the Lord
Jesus has procured for us in His Cross, let us, for its realization,
look in the direction that God has indicated, and, by our steadfast
attitude of subjection and obedience to the Holy Spirit, keep wide open
the way for Him to impart it to us. That is His ministry. He has come
for that very purpose--that He may make real in us all that is ours in
Christ.
We have learned in China that, when leading a soul to Christ, we must
be very thorough, for there is no certainty when he will again have the
help of other Christians. We always seek to make it clear to a new
believer that, when he has asked the Lord to forgive his sins and to
come into his life, his heart has become the residence of a living
Person. The Holy Spirit of God is now within him, to open to him the
Scriptures that he may find Christ there, to direct his prayer, to
govern his life, and to reproduce in him the character of his Lord.
I went, late one summer, for a prolonged period of rest to a
hill-resort where accommodation was difficult to obtain, and while
there it was necessary for me to sleep in one house and take my meals
in another, the latter being the home of a mechanic and his wife. For
the first two weeks of my visit, apart from asking a blessing at each
meal, I said nothing to my hosts about the Gospel; and then one day my
opportunity came to tell them about the Lord Jesus. They were ready to
listen and to come to Him in simple faith for the forgiveness of their
sins. They were born again, and a new light and joy came into their
lives, for theirs was a real conversion. I took care to make clear to
them what had happened, and then, as the weather turned colder, the
time came for me to leave them and return to Shanghai.
During the cold winter months the man was in the habit of drinking wine
with his meals, and he was apt to do so to excess. After my departure,
with the return of the cold weather, the wine appeared on the table
again, and that day, as he had become accustomed to do, the husband
bowed his head to return thanks for the meal--but no words would come.
After one or two vain attempts he turned to his wife. `What is wrong?'
he asked. `Why cannot we pray today? Fetch the Bible and see what it
has to say about wine drinking.' I had left a copy of the Scriptures
with them, but though the wife could read she was ignorant of the Word,
and she turned the pages in vain seeking for light on the subject. They
did not know how to consult God's Book and it was impossible to consult
God's messenger, for I was many miles away and it might be months
before they could see me. `Just drink your wine', said his wife. `We'll
refer the matter to brother Nee at the first opportunity.' But still
the man found he just could not return thanks to the Lord for that
wine. `Take it away!' he said at length; and when she had done so,
together they asked a blessing on their meal.
When eventually the man was able to visit Shanghai he told me the
story. Using an expression familiar in Chinese: `Brother Nee', he said,
`Resident Boss [14] wouldn't let me have that drink!' `Very good,
brother', I said. `You always listen to Resident Boss!'
Many of us know that Christ is our life. We believe that the Spirit of
God is resident in us, but this fact has little effect upon our
behaviour. The question is, do we know Him as a living Person, and do
we know Him as `Boss'?
__________________________________________________________________
[14] `Resident Boss'--The author's own rendering of li-mien tang-chia
tih.--Ed.
__________________________________________________________________
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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.
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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:
1. A Wicket gate (Crisis)
2. 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 indwelling. 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 (Rom. 8:4).
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 Judaea two thousand years ago the
Lord Jesus died and rose again, and He is now "by the right hand of God
exalted" (Acts 2:33). The work is finished and need never be repeated,
nor can it be added to.
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 Divine 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 (Rom. 5:8); whereas in
Ephesians it is "Christ loved", and the love here is the love of
husband for wife. That kind of love has fundamentally nothing to do
with sin as such. What is in view in this passage is not atonement for
sin but the creation of the Church, for which end it is said that He
"gave himself".
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
Israel are taken up and dealt with, before the theme of the first
chapters is resumed. Thus, for our present purpose, the argument of
chapter 12 follows that of chapter 8 and not of chapter 11. We might
very simply summarize these chapters thus: Our sins are forgiven (ch.
5), we are dead with Christ (ch. 6), we are by nature utterly helpless
(ch. 7), therefore we rely upon the indwelling Spirit (ch. 8). After
this, and as a consequence of it: "We... are one body in Christ" (ch.
12). It is as though this were the logical outcome of all that has gone
before, and the thing to which it has all been leading.
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).
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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.
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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 created 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 instrumentality. But how could man be 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 by 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. Mr. 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.
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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 saw 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 one 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).
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[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, Foochow. See also pp. 95-6,
239, 256-7, 266-7.--Ed.
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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.
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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 Man. None but He has
trodden this earth and known no sin. Yet as Man He had a separate
personality from His Father. Now we must tread very carefully when we
touch our Lord; but remember His words: "I seek not mine own will, but
the will of him that sent me". What does this mean? It certainly does
not mean that the Lord had no will of His own. He had a will, as His
own words show. As Son of man He had a will, but He did not do it; He
came to do the will of the Father. So this is the point. That thing in
Him which is in distinction from the Father is the human soul, which He
assumed when He was "found in fashion as a man". Being a perfect Man
our Lord had a soul, and of course a body, just as you and I have a
soul and a body, and it was possible for Him to act from the soul--that
is, from Himself.
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 Jerusalem for the Spirit to come upon them. Now what is
this power of the Holy Spirit, this "power from on high" of which He
spoke? It is nothing less than the virtue of His death, resurrection
and ascension. To use another figure, the Holy Spirit is the Vessel in
whom all the values of the death, resurrection and exaltation of the
Lord are deposited, that they may be brought to us. He is the one who
`contains' those values and mediates them to men. That is the reason
why the Spirit could not be given before the Lord had been glorified.
Then only could He rest upon men and women that they might witness; and
without the values of the death and resurrection of Christ no such
witness is possible.
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.
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The Subjective Working Of The Cross
We must keep before us now four passages from the Gospels. They are:
Matthew 10:34-39; Mark 8:32-35; 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 Galatians 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, 5).
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 Sodom" (verses 29, 30). A
little later He speaks of the `rapture' in the twice repeated words:
"One shall be taken, and the other shall be left" (verses 34, 35). But
between His reference to the calling of Lot out of Sodom and this
allusion to the rapture, the Lord says these remarkable words: "In that
day, he which shall be on the housetop, and his goods in the house, let
him not go down to take them away: and let him that is in the field
likewise not return back. Remember Lot's wife" (verses 31, 32).
Remember Lot's wife! Why? because "whosoever shall seek to gain his
soul shall lose it: but whosoever shall lose his soul shall save it
alive" (verse 33, mg.).
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.
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[17] 1938.--Ed.
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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.
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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".
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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.
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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.
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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'.
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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.
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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 in 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.
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[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.
