Deliverance:
What is it?
F.W.Grant
The Need of Deliverance:
Everyone who, with
his spiritual eyes opened, observes the condition of things among the people of
God in the present day, will be conscious that in spite of great and widespread
blessing through the gospel; in spite of much Scripture light and knowledge,
and a revival of truths which for ages had been lost sight of; in spite, too,
of a very extensive awakening and preaching of the Lord's coming, yet, in
general, the state of Christians by no means answers to what such things would
seem to imply. Feebleness is everywhere apparent. I do not speak of the
concurrent growth of ritualism and infidelity, which is evident, but is the
product, in different ways, of the denial of the divine Word. Nor do I speak
even of the worldliness which is undeniably evident among so-called evangelical
denominations. I confine myself now to the narrower sphere of those who
professedly have peace with God in the knowledge that they are justified by
faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, and standing in grace, rejoice in hope of the
glory of God. Among such, at least, it is not too much to expect devotedness,
and that, as they grow continually in the knowledge of the truth, they should
be in proportion sanctified by it.
Before peace is known, a true walk
with God is impracticable, however sincerely it may be desired and sought for.
The moral character of practical Christianity is found in this: "That they
which live should henceforth no more live unto themselves, but unto Him which
died for them and rose again" (2 Cor. 5:15). But is it possible for one to whom
his ultimate salvation is yet unassured to be thus regardless of what must be
to him of the greatest moment to have secured? Can he live thus devoted to
another who has such abundant reason for anxiety about himself? And if there is
"no fear in love," as the apostle assures us, and love is the principle of all
right obedience, and that by which faith works, how is it possible to be
divested of fear - "fear" which "hath torment" - if there be a real possibility
of at last being cast away as utterly reprobate?
It is this that is the
misery of all half-gospels. Men are left toiling in worse than Egyptian bondage
to work out for themselves a deliverance which no human power could ever
accomplish - Christ's work, and God's love in Him, in their sweet and
sanctifying reality, unknown. No doubt in this condition there may be much
ignorant zeal for holiness, while they take up to accomplish it a law which is
"the strength of sin," and refuse the grace of which it is affirmed, in
contrast, "sin shall not have dominion over you, because ye are not under law,
but under grace."
But we are to trace out the subtler workings of this
principle in those who have already "peace with God through our Lord Jesus
Christ." In such, there surely should be found fruit unto holiness. The
instincts of every quickened soul are after it. Why is it, then, that such as
profess (and we may say, truly profess) to be at peace with God are found so
often, in practice, little beyond those who profess nothing of the kind? - nay,
not unfrequently, as it would seem, doing their best to confirm the disparaging
thoughts of those who identify the precious gospel of God's grace with what
they entitle "antinomianism"? Why is it, further, that those who really, with
the knowledge of peace, desire earnestly to know what it is to walk with God,
manifest and confess such constant and utter want of power for it? And why do
so many who have begun well and happily, fall back often under the power of
things they had forsaken, and go on in a course of conduct at variance with
their Christian profession, even if they do not give it up?
We do not
at all suppose that one answer will be sufficient to account for all such
cases; but we do believe that one of the most frequent causes is to be found in
this, that such souls, though they may have known peace, have not known
deliverance - a deliverance such as the eighth of Romans, in the commencement
of it, sets forth; a thing which must be apprehended, not merely doctrinally,
but experimentally, before the Christian life in its true character can be
known and manifested.
The state of need which calls for deliverance is
described in the seventh chapter, and it is important to get fully hold of this
before we look at what meets it in the eighth. It is on this account that souls
have to go through it experimentally, as they have, because deliverance can be
reached in no other way; although bad teaching may unduly protract this
experience, and even add to it features that are not contemplated in the
inspired picture.
Thus it should be seen that the whole question here
is of serving and of fruit - "Wherefore, my brethren, ye also are become dead
to the law by the body of Christ, that ye should be married to another, even to
Him who is raised from the dead, that ye should bring forth fruit unto God"
(7:4); and again, "But now we are delivered from the law, being dead to that
wherein we were held, that we should serve in newness of spirit, not in the
oldness of the letter" (verse 6, margin). So the state is of one "carnal, sold
under [in slavery to] sin," doing, under this tyranny of sin "that dwelleth in
him," in compulsion to a "law of sin and death," the thing he hates. The
deliverance enjoyed finally corresponds to this: it is that "the law of the
spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath set me free from the law of sin and death."
It is therefore no question of justification or of peace; that has all
been gone through in previous chapters. That, being justified by faith, we have
peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, is a conclusion fully arrived at
in chapter 5:1, and the inability of the law to justify had been fully insisted
on previously to that. Throughout our present section there is no repetition of
this; it is a different and a further question. While justification is "not of
works, lest any man should boast," and "to him that worketh not, . . . his
faith is counted for righteousness," here, on the other hand, it is "that the
righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh
but after the Spirit."
It is plain, then, that ability to walk is a
matter which needs to be learned by a man already justified. It is such an one,
already delivered from wrath and condemnation, who needs yet another
deliverance from a law of sin and death - a present power of evil in him -
without which he is still left helpless, doing the evil he would not, and not
accomplishing the good he delights in.
This in itself is important to
realize, and at first a thing very difficult to realize. In the vivid
apprehension of sins forgiven, of the terror of the wrath of God gone forever,
of the wondrous love which has visited us and turned the shadow of death into
morning, it is easy to conclude that the warfare with sin is well-nigh over,
when, in truth, it has not fairly yet begun. Who could sin for whom the cross
of Christ has blotted out the past, the grace of God furnishes the present, and
whose future prospect is the glory of God? But experience soon sorrowfully
disappoints this expectation, and we learn to cry out despairingly for a new
deliverance - "Oh, wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body
of this death?"
What the apostle has elsewhere (6:6) called the "body
of sin," he here calls the "body of death;" and the oppressive power of this
body of sin and death is what produces a "law of sin and death in his members."
It is the resistance of the still-existing old nature he is experiencing, or
what is termed the "flesh," for into mere flesh, as if destitute of the
spiritual principle God had communicated to him, was the natural man sunk down,
and, as our Lord says "that which is born of the flesh is flesh," from one to
another this fallen nature is transmitted.
In the flesh sin dwells (I
am only quoting from the chapters before us) and good does not dwell. Its mind
(8:7, Gk.) is "enmity against God, for it is not subject to the law of God,
neither indeed can be;" so that it is not possible to change its evil into
good. It remains, and remains still the same, even in the child of God in whom
the Spirit of God dwells; for of such it is written, that "the flesh lusteth
against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary
the one to the other" (Gal. 5:17).
So in the seventh of Romans, the man
who is experiencing the power of evil in him, though converted, is conscious
also of something within him opposite, in tendency, to sin and flesh. Nay, he
identifies himself rather with that opposite tendency - "Now, if I do that I
would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me" (ver. 20).
Twice over he asserts this, although unable to deny either that the flesh too
is himself (ver. 18).
But all through he maintains that his will is on
the side of God and good; he delights in the law of God after the inward man;
with his mind he himself serves it; but he sees another law in his members,
warring against the law of his mind, and bringing him into captivity to the law
of sin in his members. He is not indifferent to the state in which he finds
himself, as is evident by his anguished cry, "Oh, wretched man that I am! who
shall deliver me?" The state thus described is sufficiently distinguished from
that which the apostle speaks of in the sixth chapter. In answer to the
question there, "What then? shall we sin, because we are not under the law, but
under grace?" he replies, "God forbid! know ye not that to whomsoever ye yield
yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey, whether of
sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness?" Here, the case is that of
a free man (or one taking that ground) yielding himself voluntarily up to sin;
in the seventh chapter, on the other hand, of a man compelled to serve
involuntarily. These states are wholly different. If the man's free choice is
to serve sin - well, he will get its wages; but the other, though "carnal," is
not choosing to serve it, though he does. The will is right, but the power is
wanting.
A terrible thing it is for the soul professing to have peace
with God then, and yet unexercised about the evil in him or the evil he may be
in. Let such ponder the solemn warning of the apostle - "To whomsoever ye yield
yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey;" and let us
also remember that sin in God's sight is not measured by the mere natural
conscience, which may be dulled and seared to any extent, or by the customs of
society, even professedly Christian, but by the precepts of the Word alone. It
is God's account of things that is alone trustworthy; and it is amply so,
however little our dullness may apprehend the evil of what He calls such, or
the manners of our neighbours endorse His estimate.
But yielding one's
self to sin is not the question of the seventh of Romans. The soul is not
unexercised, but consenting to and delighting in the good it cannot accomplish.
For such, however impossible it may seem in their eyes, deliverance is
possible; and the way is pointed out in the chapter before us. How is it
possible, indeed, that He who gave His Son to redeem us from wrath and
condemnation should leave us helpless to the dominion of sin? How should the
grace which avails to bring a man to heaven, not avail to keep him by the way
from what to him is misery and to God dishonour? Let anyone take heed who
imagines that God can acquiesce in the triumph of evil over His good. It cannot
be. It would be but to repeat the cry of old, "We are delivered to do these
abominations." Scripture, at least, is in no wise responsible for such a
thought; and this we shall go on to consider, at the same time that we inquire
into the meaning of such a state as we are speaking of exhibiting itself in a
converted and justified man.
The Meaning of the Need:
A "law of sin in the members" is not what is proper to the Christian, as we
have seen. If on the one hand the apostle's language is, that "if we say we
have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us," on the other
hand he says, "These things write I unto you that ye sin not; and if any one
sin" - he supposes this possible, but not normal. Again - "Whosoever is born of
God doth not commit [or better, practice] sin; for His seed remaineth in him,
and he cannot sin [or, be sinning], because he is born of God" (1 John 3:9).
The force of these words is, not that a believer cannot commit a sin (a thing
contradicted by Scripture and experience alike), but he cannot practice it, or
be sinning; as he once was; and over and over again this is asserted:
"Whosoever abideth in Him sinneth not: whosoever sinneth hath not seen Him,
neither known Him. Little children, let no man deceive you; he that doeth
righteousness is righteous, even as He is righteous. He that practiceth sin is
of the devil" (ver. 6-8).
This language has been strained so as to
make it contradictory of the supposition that the experience of the seventh of
Romans is that of a child of God at all, and to lead people into the manifest
error that a mere child of nature may "with the mind serve the law of God," as
"delighting in it." But this is in the teeth of the apostle's own assurance
that "the mind of the flesh is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the
law of God, neither indeed can be; so, then, they that are in the flesh cannot
please God" (Rom. 8:7,8). Here, the mind is subject to the law of God, as the
mind of the flesh, or of one in the flesh, cannot be. Thus the man passing
through this experience, with a right will, and perfect powerlessness to
accomplish it, is clearly converted and a child of God. And that deliverance
described in the beginning of the eighth chapter, by which freedom from the law
of sin is attained, and the righteousness of the law (of God) is fulfilled in
him who walketh not after the flesh but after the Spirit, is looked at as
already the happy portion of those whom the apostle John in his epistle is
addressing as believers.
And their portion it is - a thing which thus
lies at the beginning of a true Christian course; for how can one unable to do
the things he would - carnal, and the slave of sin - be qualified to walk with
God or to glorify Him? And yet, alas! with many a true child, for a long course
of years the truth is not known which sets free for this. For the truth it is
that sets free (John 8:32), and the truth alone; but that also, truth
apprehended by a soul conscious of its need - conscious of bondage, and longing
for deliverance. It is only when the cry is wrung from the soul, "Oh, wretched
man that I am! who shall deliver me?" that the answer is supplied, "I thank
God, through Jesus Christ our Lord." It is an experience of evil from which we
are delivered; and for that we must, in one way or another, pass through the
experience.
But this is not yet the explanation of the need; for why
should not the knowledge of peace with God and the practical deliverance from
the power of sin go together? In the epistle to the Romans, it is evident they
are treated as separate questions, of which the one receives its answer after
the other. The ordinary experience of believers confirms this, if it does not
add, often, "long after." I am persuaded that, in fact, the want of deliverance
is the great want of by far the larger part of those even at peace with God.
Their lives, if they would own it to themselves, are made up of empty purposes
and broken resolutions, if they have not got into the more perilous condition,
rather, of half-contentment with the evil, from which there seems no escape.
Why, then, the need of such an experience at all as this in such as I am
speaking of?
Now, in the practical attainment of peace with God, we
may find (if we have attained it) what may help us greatly in the inquiry.
Here, too, what a length, oftentimes, of so-called "conflict" before that which
is already made for us and so fully proclaimed to us and to which we are made
so heartily welcome is attained! What means this struggle? Its character is
evident enough - at least to those who have passed through it. It is the
struggle to maintain, or to produce - by God's help, too, no doubt - some
righteousness of our own, for peace or for justification. Instead of bowing
before God's righteousness, according to which "our righteousnesses" - "all our
righteousnesses are as filthy rags" - we seek to rescue something from this
absolute condemnation, and be received at least as not wholly and in the full
sense "lost." We try (and are often taught) to find firm footing for faith in
the assurance of our saintship, and not of our sinnership; as if as sinners we
were not entitled to the fullest possible confidence in Him whose special title
is, The Saviour of sinners.
And thus we miss what we are anxiously
striving after. The "God, I thank Thee I am not as other men," - the
self-satisfied assurance of the Pharisee - is what God can never own or
accredit. Peace through our own evidences - peace through our own work or
effort or self- complacency - cannot be identified with "peace with God through
our Lord Jesus Christ."
Now, in the matter of holiness and
fruit-bearing, a similar lesson has to be learned. The holiness which God does
indeed seek from His people is confounded with a self-consciousness which is
the destruction of holiness. To one of whom God testified, "Thou sealest up the
sum, full of wisdom, and perfect in beauty," He had to say, "Thine heart was
lifted up because of thy beauty, thou hast corrupted thy wisdom because of thy
brightness" (Ezek. 28:12,17). Into no such dangerous path as that does the Lord
lead the feet of His own. He cannot trust us to such perilous
self-contemplation. He has made Christ to be our sanctification as much as our
righteousness (1 Cor. 1:30), and the way of it is, occupation with Christ, and
with Christ alone. Only as "we all with unveiled face" are "looking on the
glory of the Lord," do we become "transformed according to the same image from
glory to glory, even as by the Lord the Spirit" (2 Cor. 3:18 N.T.).
How we are enabled for this we shall have to consider more at large directly.
The fact itself is what 1 would press here. Justification is no more on the
principle of faith than sanctification is: holiness is no more acquired by
self-cultivation than righteousness is. It is faith that purifies the heart; it
is faith that worketh by love; it is faith that does all this, because it is
Christ does it, and faith it is that lays hold of Christ for whatever purpose.
Self is never its object, but Christ only. The soul taken up with the beauty of
Christ is the soul that at one and the same time is learning effectually to be
holy and what is its own nothingness and unlikeness to Him.
The need
of the experience of self in the seventh of Romans is the need of learning
practically to abide in Christ at all times, to accept Him for practical life
as well as for position. And here we may have to find, what is a thing strange
enough in the discovery, that a pious and right-willing self may stand in the
way of this, and need to be set aside, that Christ may have the place that He
must needs have with all His own. "I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me,"
says the apostle (Gal. 2:20). That is another thing from saying "Christ is my
life," to say "Christ lives in me." It is a practical substitution (for faith)
of Christ for the saint on earth, as real as His substitution for the sinner on
the cross. In death, He was the sinner's substitute; in life, He is the
saint's. This may be still an enigma to the reader. I trust it will be cleared
up as we proceed.
"We are the circumcision," says the apostle, again,
"who worship God in the Spirit, and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no
confidence in the flesh" (Phil. 3:3). This does not seem so sweeping. Of
course, we think, the flesh is not to be trusted in; but if we are born again,
there is more than flesh in us, surely. Does the new nature go for nothing, is
all as much corruption in the child of God as in the child of the devil? There
are good desires in me, I am sure: is there not to be good fruit? does not God
enjoin it, ought not I to be producing it?
Surely God does enjoin it:
surely we are to produce it. But the fruit is for the Master's eye and taste,
not ours; our light is to shine for others, not ourselves; and that new nature,
which we have as children of God, its principle is faith, its knowledge,
"Christ is all" (Col. 3:11). Faith, love, hope - our whole Christian character
- are tendrils which attach God's vine-branches elsewhere, and which if they
clasp about themselves, the whole trails in the dust, a ruin.
"No
confidence in the flesh" means thus "no self-confidence" at all; and the
despairing cry, "Oh wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me?" is just the
break-up of this self-confidence when in a Christian - the absolute necessity
for a Christian walk. The bearing of the law upon all this is now to be
considered before we can rightly understand the deliverance itself.
Deliverance Needful from the Law:
In the doctrinal statement at
the beginning of the seventh chapter is declared the need and the fact of our
deliverance from the law. Even in the sixth, it is already said, "sin shall not
have dominion over you, because ye are not under law, but under grace." In the
beginning of the seventh, it is more strongly stated - "Ye are become dead to
the law by the body of Christ . . . that ye should bring forth fruit unto God;"
and again - "But now we are delivered from the law, being dead to that wherein
we were held, that we should serve in newness of spirit, not in the oldness of
the letter" (ver. 4,6).
Strange as this may sound, strange as, the
apostle admits, this doctrine must sound, where the law so spoken of is the law
of God, "holy and just and good" - it is yet in full consistency with the
language of Scripture elsewhere - "The strength of sin is the law." "Wherefore,
then, serveth the law? It was added for the sake of transgressions" (Gal. 3:19,
Gk.) - that is, not to avoid, but to have them. In the chapter before us, the
apostle shows us this worked out in experience - "For I was alive without the
law once; but when the commandment came" - what then? - "sin revived, and I
died; and the commandment which was unto life" - "ordained" is not in the
original, and is too strong; "was proposed," one may rather say" - I found to
be unto death." Let us now inquire into this so dark a problem for many even to
the present day.
The "due time" for Christ to die was "when we were
yet without strength," as well as "ungodly" (Rom. 5:6). Man's need, before it
could be met, had to be exposed. That was his need - "ungodly," and impotent
for good; and "yet" (after long years of trial) he was only that.
The
law was one of God's appointed means to bring this out. Evidently probationary
in character, the result of the trial, long and patient as it was, was to
establish the sentence, "There is none righteous, no, not one;" "there is none
that doeth good, no, not one." And this was its foreseen and designed effect:
"We know that whatsoever the law saith, it saith to them that are under the
law; that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty
before God."
For this end, of course, nothing must be wanting in the
law itself to make it a fair and a full trial. In effect, nothing was wanting.
While God's necessary claim for righteousness was exhibited by the law itself,
this was accompanied with every incitement to obedience that could be given,
and every possible discouragement to disobedience. Delivered from cruel
bondage, in a way which manifested the power and goodness of their Deliverer,
the awful judgments accompanying it, though upon their enemies, were warnings,
on the other side, not to trifle with His goodness. The visible ensigns of
Deity were before their eyes, the audible utterances of Jehovah in their ears.
Did they obey, earth should be practically paradise renewed; while disobedience
would mar all their happiness for time as well as for eternity. Heart and
conscience, eye and ear - the whole of man, and in all his circumstances and
relationships, was addressed in the fullest way. Nor was the encouraging voice
of mercy wanting: still, in the ears of even the wicked man it proclaimed that
did he turn from his wickedness, and do that which was lawful and right, he
should "save his soul alive."
All failed, and failed utterly; failed,
as being "weak through the flesh," the corrupt nature of man, which could
neither be won by its goodness nor controlled by its holiness; while that
holiness could not relax its requirement, nor forego the penalty attached to
disobedience. Good as the law was, the motions of sins "were by the law."
"Sin," says the apostle, "taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and
by it slew me." And this was the foreknown and designed effect: "Sin, that it
might appear sin, working death in me by that which is good, that sin by the
commandment might become exceeding sinful."
To expose sin, then, to
detect it in its innermost working, to manifest its utter sinfulness, provoked
and aroused by the very presence of good - this was the aim and object of the
law.
How it aroused it the apostle likewise shows - "I had not known
sin, but by the law; for I had not known lust, except the law had said, 'Thou
shaft not covet [or lust]; but sin, taking occasion by the commandment, wrought
in me all manner of concupiscence [or lust]." There the very point is touched
that reveals man's departure from God. To "lust" is to manifest a heart not in
subjection to God. The "corruption which is in the world" is "through lust" (2
Pet. 1:4). Had we not dropped away from the sense of God's wisdom and His love
- did we believe in absolute goodness on a despotic throne, the Lord of heaven
and earth our Father - whatever the circumstances, how could one's heart crave
more, how should it do other than rest absolutely?
The law, then,
must, of necessity, forbid "lust," as the very characteristic feature of man's
condition, as the _expression of unbelief and enmity which is the "mind of the
flesh." It must forbid - but what then? Lust is there, and no prohibition will
get it out - no law will better it. The flesh remains even in the child of God,
and, as ever, opposed to God. "The flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the
Spirit against the flesh, and these are contrary the one to the other" (Gal.
5:17).
But more. The law is not merely powerless to change the flesh;
its prohibitions but irritate and arouse the enmity against God which is its
"mind," and which surely rebels against them. The motions of sin are thus by
it, although the sin which is now roused into activity was there before. The
law detects it only, and brings it out as "transgression" of the divine command
- sin by the commandment becomes exceeding sinful. But thus also it is the
strength of sin, and not of holiness. Its very perfection for the purpose for
which God gave it necessitates this.
The law thus reveals me as evil
to the very heart's core. It makes me learn this experimentally, by putting me
under responsibility not to be the thing I am. It occupies me with myself and
with the evil - very profitably, surely, until I have learned the extent of it.
I am taught practically to "know that in me, that is in my flesh, dwelleth no
good thing." In the face of a right will, I cannot accomplish my desire. I may
argue that it is not I that do the evil, it is "sin that dwelleth in me," still
that is not deliverance. It only makes me cry the more, "Oh, wretched man!"
Self-occupation is the necessary effect of being in conscience under
law. The law says, "You," "you," "you," and we respond with "I," "I," "I." Some
thirty-five times in this experience of the seventh of Romans are "I" and "me"
repeated. The only good in it is in the full discovery of the evil, and in the
self-despair in which it ends.
Self-occupation is never holiness. God
never means me to be able, with the Pharisee, to thank Him for the goodness
that I find in myself. Self-conscious humility is spoiled by the consciousness.
If I will be at it, He leaves me to find in this irreparable flesh, which
cannot be mended, what I may break my heart over, but never alter. It is a
quicksand which spoils all my building - a morass impracticable to cultivation;
and God uses this, in His sovereignty over evil, to wean me from
self-confidence and self-complacency, and cast me over helplessly upon Himself.
But then, surely it will begin to be apparent that for real fruit Godward I
must "be delivered from the law." This is the plain teaching of the epistle to
the Romans; and the experience detailed by the apostle, and familiar to so many
souls as there described, is abundant confirmation of it.
But what
then? Have I title to give up this striving? Will not that rather be to lapse
into indifference than the way to overcome the innate evil? Must I acquiesce in
my powerlessness? and how shall that be to me the way of power? Questions such
as these we may ask in vain at the hands of human reason. God has, however,
provided the answer; and here we shall find the apostle's language fully to
apply, that the "gospel is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that
believeth."
The Means of Deliverance
We now take up the
verses which speak of the deliverance itself. But in the first place, there are
two points of criticism to be insisted on, that we may not have to discuss them
where to do so would divert us from the subject before us.
The first
is, that we are at liberty entirely to disregard the division of the chapters,
which, everywhere a mere human work, is here most injurious to the proper
understanding of the question of deliverance. Indeed, if we end where our
present seventh chapter ends, deliverance there is none; for, although the cry,
"Oh, wretched man that I am!" has been followed by "I thank God, through Jesus
Christ our Lord," yet the only explanation that seems to follow is, that with
the mind he is serving God's law, and with the flesh sin's law - just the old
difficulty, and no deliverance, nor way of deliverance, after all. For that, we
must go into the eighth chapter.
The second is, that we must omit
altogether the last clause of the first verse of that chapter. All critics are
now agreed, whatever their individual creed may be, that "who walk not after
the flesh, but after the Spirit" is an unwarrantable interpolation from the
fourth verse, where the words are in perfect place and keeping. As they stand
(and still more certainly in the Greek), they make "no condemnation"
conditional upon a certain walk. But this would effectually set aside the
apostle's argument, as we may surely even already see. It would be poor
consolation to one groaning over his powerlessness to do the thing he would, to
be told that his freedom from condemnation nevertheless depended upon his doing
this! and it would be the emphatic denial of the doctrine already so
emphatically laid down for us in the previous chapters - that we are "justified
by faith, without the deeds of the law." But the consideration of the passage
at length will clear up any remaining difficulty.
The cry, then,
uttered in the anguish of the discovery of his condition, the man himself
directly answers with a burst of praise. Finding he cannot deliver himself, and
God Himself giving him no help in the direction in which he has been looking
for it, his cry is almost a wail of despair" - Oh, wretched man that I am! who
shall deliver me from this body of death?" "Death," he calls it; for death, to
man, is hopeless; but death, also, because separation from the God toward whom
his heart is, is surely that. And how can God be with him while sin has power
over him and he none? It is not a question of justification; people in this
condition may make it such, but not the apostle here. For him, that point is
already settled, nor is he going to unsettle it again. But God may be for us
when He is not able to be with us, and this may well make one in that condition
cry out of a "body of death." The mind of the flesh is death.
But it
is not exactly to God that he cries. Unbelief, alas! is working; but also real
despair of self - the point to which God has all through, unconsciously, as far
as he is concerned, been guiding him. He, a man justified and born again, has
had to come to this, that still power is not in him. A new nature is not power.
The will is right, and the walk most wrong. Ah, never was there such a
heartbreak as to find, when we "delight in the law of God after the inward
man," spite of all, a "law of sin in the members, warring against the law of
the mind, and bringing us into captivity to the law of sin which is in our
members."
But this point being reached, deliverance is at hand - "I
thank God, through Jesus Christ our Lord." The first word of the delivered man
is praise, and brings in a name which we have never heard throughout the
experience preceding. The eye turned in upon self has been turned away from
Christ. The destruction of all hope of self-satisfaction has left it free to
return to its allegiance. Deliverance has come through Him who is now more than
ever "Lord." But how has it come, and in what form? Has there been a sudden
infusion of power from on high, nerving the paralyzed soul to accomplish the
thing impossible hitherto? No; that is contradicted by the words which follow.
It is not that: it is a word which has come home to the soul - a new revelation
which reveals the folly and hopelessness of the past struggle, while it brings
it to an end forever. "So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but
with the flesh the law of sin: now, then, there is no condemnation to them that
are in Christ Jesus. For the Spirit's law, of life in Christ Jesus, has set me
free from the law of sin and death."
There is the explanation of the
deliverance. I have but slightly transposed some words, to give, as I believe,
more vividly their meaning. First, the speaker describes the condition in which
he still is, when the deliverance comes. Then he gives the delivering word
which has come to him, that withal there is no condemnation to those in Christ.
Then he shows that this law of the Spirit, of life in Christ, has in fact set
him free from sin's law.
Let us look at each part of this in detail,
that we may, by God's infinite grace, get full assurance of understanding about
it all; for it is the "truth" by which we are set free, although the Spirit of
God alone can make the truth effectual for this.
First, the words with
which the seventh chapter closes - "So then with the mind I myself serve the
law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin" - are not a description of the
state which follows deliverance, but of the state to which deliverance applies
and in which it finds the speaker. This is shown by both clauses of the
sentence; equally by the fact that he is yet serving the law of God, and by the
fact that he is yet serving the law of sin.
For serving the law of God
is not being "delivered from" it, or "dead to" it, and we must be that, as the
apostle has told us, in order to bring forth fruit to God. And again, to serve
the law of sin shows that sin is still to us a law, and we are not delivered.
No doubt this is emphasized, that it is "I myself" who am upon the side of God
and good, but that only shows fully the condition to be one of bondage in
which, spite of "myself," I am serving the law of sin.
The old
question may come up again, "Is the law sin, that you confound them so
together" but the apostle has already put the question and replied to it. It is
not sin, but "holy, just, and good." But although it is not sin, it is the
"strength of" it (1 Cor. 15:56), and we have been considering how it is, and
that it must necessarily be so. The truth of deliverance cannot be understood
unless we are fully convinced of and grounded in this fundamental fact.
The delivering word comes right upon this - "Now, then, there is no
condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus." Do not let us assume that we
know this, hastily, because we know justification, although justification it
is, but in a peculiar power and with a special application, which make it in
some sort a new thing for the soul. We must look at it in this way, and at its
application to the case in hand.
"In Christ Jesus" - what is that? It
is evidently a definition of all Christians; and it defines them as a people
identified with One who as a man has entered into the presence of God for men,
their Representative. The full acknowledgment of that wonderful fact, too
little apprehended by those who have title to all the blessedness it would let
in upon their souls, that Christ is as really a man in the glory of God as when
on earth He hungered and thirsted and wept and bled and died, is absolutely
needed in order to apprehend this place of ours in Him. If He had not taken
true manhood up to God, we could not be "in Him," as our Representative, nor be
in God's sight "as He is," if He were only the divine Son, forever in the
Father's bosom. It is Man who has suffered for man, died for him, has been
quickened out of death, raised up, and is ascended. It is as man that He has
earned for us the glory into which we enter, preparing for us a place in the
Father's house by presenting to God that precious and efficacious blood with
which He has passed through the heavens.
"In Christ" is in this way
the language of complete identification. Representing us upon the cross, His
resurrection was the divine declaration of the acceptance of the Representative
in His place and work. Henceforth the eye of God sees us ever in Him alone. We
are reckoned, and are to reckon ourselves, as with Him dead, buried, quickened,
risen, and in Him seated in the heavenly places before God. God's delight in us
is His unchangeable delight in Him; therefore the Lord says to us, "Because I
live, ye shall live also."
How could there be a doubt about the
believer's perfect security if this were realized? It would be impossible. Can
He change? or will God say to Him, I cannot any longer accept You as standing
for this people? Or, once again, if standing for them, is He on probation yet?
is His work completely done, or still to do?
It is done, blessed be
God: He sits in the glory of God. His heart is at rest, and ours may be. Had He
not entitled our hearts to rest, His own heart would not allow Him to be seated
there.
And "now, then, there is no condemnation to those that are in
Christ Jesus." How would it be possible, for those whose acceptance is in the
Beloved? Only we must remember that the question before us is not of wrath - of
condemnation in that sense, but of a body of death, from which the speaker
groans to be delivered. Personally accepted, and delivered from the fear of
wrath to come, he is still for practical holiness, a man in the flesh. He is a
person with a mixed character of good and evil, who has to master or eradicate
the evil and develop the good. And that is the only view that naturally we
could take of it. The practical experiment, however, is the reverse of
encouraging, as we have seen. The body of death is perfectly impracticable to
this kind of self-culture. In self-despair as to producing the good state he
longs for, his eye is turned upon his blessed Representative in heaven; and
there, it flashes upon him, is his remedy. In the matter of holiness he must as
frankly accept Christ as what He is - His true self - as for righteousness he
had to accept Him before. To him, serving the law of God with his mind, but
with his flesh practically the law of sin, the delivering word is, "There is
now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus." "In Christ" - can God's
own eye find fault with Him? "In Christ" - is there any flesh - any body of
death, anything to mend or improve or alter? and in Christ he is. There his
chains drop off. Much more, but still that. He is delivered: he is free!
Let us understand well. This is not walk yet; it is the principle -
the key, and, when applied by the Spirit of God, the power for it. We are to
"walk as Christ walked;" we are to walk "in Christ;" and "the law of the Spirit
of life in Christ Jesus" sets us "free from the law of sin and death." Thus the
responsibility of a right walk is still and ever ours. It is not that Christ's
walk is substituted for ours, or Christ's holiness imputed to us, or any thing
of that kind. It is not yet the question of how to walk, but of what I am; but
a question which, when settled in God's way, stops necessarily the effort to be
what no effort of mine can make me, and what, thank God, His infinite grace has
already made me.
"As Christ is, so are we in this world," and this for
"boldness in the day of judgment" (1 John 4:17). Could effort of ours make us
"as Christ is"? It would be clearly impossible; and yet nothing but this would
reach up to the standard God has given to us. Nothing short of this would be
perfection, and nothing short of perfection could we rightly rest in. So far,
the so-called "perfectionist" is right enough. He is wrong in this, that he
seeks his perfection in the flesh - in himself as a man in the world; and so he
misses it; while to persuade himself that he has not missed it, he has to lower
the standard of perfection, to accommodate it to the actual fact of his
imperfection. So true is it, that "if we say that we have no sin, we deceive
ourselves." The deception would be impossible if Christ were the measure and
test of what is perfect. Dare any one assert himself to be (other than as in
Christ,) what Christ is? Dare he assert even that for one day of his life on
earth he has walked as Christ walked? Then away with the folly of perfection in
the flesh; for Christ is God's standard for the Christian, and He will not
lower it.
But if imperfection God cannot accept, and perfection I
cannot bring Him, what then? Then I must accept a perfection of God's
providing, and find in Christ a self that needs no mending and cannot be
improved, where no body of death disturbs or oppresses, and occupation with
which is not legalism, nor Pharisaism. "There is no condemnation to those that
are in Christ Jesus." God's eye can find no blemish, nor defect; but His favor,
better than life, rests like the fruitful sunshine upon the soul that, drinking
it in, reflects it back to Him, a wealth of satisfaction and joy in Him.
I have to walk now as what I am. I have not to walk to be what I am
not. I am to "walk in Christ;" and to "abide in Him," that I may walk in Him.
How else can I walk in Him than as being consciously "in Him"? To be there is
to be delivered, for no body of sin or death is there - "the law of the Spirit
of life in Christ Jesus has set me free from the law of sin and death. 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 for sin, condemned sin in the
flesh, that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not
after the flesh, but after the Spirit."
I am privileged to turn away
from what I find in myself as a man down here, then, because in the death of
the cross, the death wherein I died with Him, "sin in the flesh" has been fully
dealt with. The condemnation of it by God, which I have been looking at as
necessarily to be expressed in His dissociation from me - a loss of fellowship
and separation - has already found its full expression, where, for sin, but for
me, the Son of God died. For faith, not for experience, I too am dead, and that
"to sin," because "He died unto sin once." I reckon myself (not feel or find
myself) to be dead indeed unto sin, and alive unto God in Christ Jesus (chap.
6:11).
As far as what I am, then, is concerned, all effort, all
necessity for effort, is at an end. I have no self to take up and make
something of religiously. In the "man in Christ," as such, flesh and sin do not
even exist. But more. In a true sense, "I" do not exist - "I am crucified with
Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me" (Gal. 2:20);
or better, "I live, no longer I." This "I, no longer I" is the mystery and the
power of practical Christianity.
"I live" - because, of course, the
person - the individual remains still the same. It is no Platonic mysticism, no
pantheistic absorption into the ocean of being. The joy that fills my heart,
the brightness poured over my life, are mine - fully and entirely mine. Nay, I
live henceforth a life true and eternal, worthy to be called such. I have for
the first time, as the apostle terms it, "what is really life" (1 Tim. 6:19
N.T.).
But "I live, no longer I," because the blessed fact of Christ's
death for me upon the cross, of Christ's life for me in heaven, I have by faith
laid hold of. I have come into the infinite blessedness of God's thoughts and
actings concerning me. Him whom God has accepted for me and as me I have
learned to accept in the same way for and as myself. As the life which He has
given me is His very own life, and has in Him its source and spring, a "life
hid with Christ in God," so "in me Christ lives" down here. I have by faith
realized identification with Him, as His - part of Himself.
His peace,
His joy, are mine; His life and Spirit are mine; His pursuit, objects,
interests, are mine; the love of His Father is mine; His present rejection and
future glory are mine also; and all this in the power of a love wherewith He
has, at His own personal cost, set me completely free from all that alone I but
now had title to, or which had title to me.
What a deliverance is
this! I am drawn out of the whole scene to which I belonged, and in which my
interests, my rights, my cares, my sorrows and temptations inhered; and being
drawn out and to Himself, the hold of all this loosened and cast off forever, I
am sent into it for one blessed purpose, as His, to represent Him in it - "As
Thou hast sent Me into the world, so have I sent them into the world" (John
17:18). And so, as the works He did were "in the Father's Name" (John 10:25),
the works we do are to be in His Name: "whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do
all in the Name of the Lord Jesus" (Col. 3:17).
But we must look at this
still further, and at its practical results.
Power:
I
have now rest for my heart. I am no more at the impracticable work of trying to
be what I am not; I am all I desire to be. Only, sense and experience do not
present to me my true self at all. My life is in Christ Jesus. I am in Him; and
this only faith recognizes, which recognizes also the cross of Christ as that
wherein my old self was judged and set aside for God. My "old man" was
crucified with Christ; the "new man" is the man in Christ alone.
Here
the perpetual sunshine settles down upon my soul. God is for me - with me - and
must ever be. No cloud is there of His putting; no hiding ever of the Father's
face. I may turn away - true, I may forget, but I have only to turn to Him
again, to find undimmed His glorious face shining upon me in His own Beloved,
and in His presence I am welcome and at home.
And observe, these two
things I find in the One who, having filled the lowest place on earth, fills
the highest place in heaven. In Him, I find what I am for God, and am brought
to God; in Him, also, I find the "image of God" and the "glory of God." He is
Man for God, blessed Lord, I know; and He is also just as fully and manifestly
God for man. In His own wondrous person do these glories meet. He who is God
with God is Man with man. And therefore, also, is He Man with God and God with
man.
Think of the fast embrace with which I find myself held, right to
the heart of God Himself, when I discern my place in Him who is alike Son of
Man and Son of God, alike first-begotten and only begotten.
Grace, and
only grace, has set me in this place; despotic, absolutely sovereign grace,
willing to manifest itself as such - to show its exceeding riches unto the ages
to come. What could effort of mine have done in the matter? what can failure of
mine undo? yet, blessed be God, this is His power for me that I may not fail:
"Sin shall not have dominion over you, because ye are not under law, but under
grace."
"The joy of the Lord is your strength." A soul happy in
Christ, how little can temptation avail with it! How little can it be shaken! A
soul with its joy overshadowed, how accessible to the influences, of a thousand
kinds, which are not of God! Therefore the apostle will say, and say again, to
his beloved Philippians, "Rejoice in the Lord."
This, then, is the
first element of power for me. Happiness in this sense, if real, is, in effect,
holiness; joy in Christ is devotedness; occupation with Christ is what is, of
course, implied in joy; and the brightness thus diffused within my heart
diffuses itself naturally - necessarily - in my life also. "For we all, looking
on the glory of the Lord, with unveiled face, are transformed according to the
same image from glory to glory, even as by the Lord the Spirit" (2 Cor. 3:18
N.T.). "For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined
in our hearts, to give out the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in
the face of Jesus Christ" (chap. 4:6, Gk.).
Occupied with this
glorious object, we are transformed by it; we receive the light and give it
out. Hence, another characteristic of a life of power is that it is a life of
dependence - only as we receive, and what we receive, we give out. And this
surely, also, "abiding in Christ" implies. "As the branch cannot bear fruit of
itself, except it abide in the vine, no more can ye," says the Lord, "except ye
abide in Me. I am the vine, ye are the branches. He that abideth in Me, and I
in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit; for without Me ye can do nothing"
(John 15:5). The connection between branch and stock must be maintained, or the
sap cannot circulate; so only as we abide in Him does He, as fertilizing sap,
abide in us; or, as the Lord again put it at the feast of tabernacles, "If any
man thirst, let him come unto Me and drink. He that believeth on Me, as the
Scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water" (John
7:37,38).
This flowing forth - this reflection - this fruitfulness, is
not the result of effort. We must abide in Him, and He will certainly abide in
us; we must be in the sun to reflect it; we must come and drink at the
inexhaustible stream, that the living water may flow forth. The flowing forth
is a necessity, if the vessel be in connection with a reservoir of supply more
capacious than itself, but a necessity, mark, after the vessel is itself full.
Alas! the effort to live and to walk aright is so commonly a failure, because
it is the effort to pump out of a vessel that has but little in it - an effort
which (if successful) only exhausts the vessel itself, while God's way is, that
only the overflow should pour out, and the vessel be always full. But thus the
overflow is itself no scanty measure, but (when once the vessel is full) the
whole power of the spring itself, as the Lord says, "rivers of living water."
For this, then, there must be dependence - a dependence of which we are
made, and intended to be, continually conscious; for thus, as Christ is alone
continually power to us, the constant ministration of it is the constant
witness of an omnipotent love, which carries us and all our burdens. And thus
we have not to measure our strength for the evil day, for our strength it is
not. He has guaranteed that "as thy days, so shall thy strength be" (Deut.
33:25). This is the promise to Asher - the happy one, and happy indeed is he
who realizes it. Thus, as the apostle says, what indeed we want to know in
ourselves is weakness, for "when I am weak, then am I strong." "His strength is
perfected in weakness." And then it is not merely that I receive sufficiency,
but it is "His grace" that is "sufficient for me." As with Israel in the
wilderness, every day is a new realization of a love which is as fresh and true
one day as another, and as full of power in the greatest as in the smallest
emergencies.
Thus it is beautiful to see how in this eighth chapter of
Romans, instead of, as before, an unavailing struggle of self with self, "the
law of the Spirit" it is that sets me "free from the law of sin and death." And
so, from this point, everywhere now through the chapter, what is set against
the flesh, or the "sin that dwelleth in" it, is not the good, pious,
right-willing "I," but the "Spirit," the blessed Spirit of God, who has come to
take up His abode within me. The power that worketh in us is divine power,
therefore not myself, although with me and in me - power upon which I can
confidently lean, and without self-sufficiency or self-complacency.
He
who has come to take of the things of Christ and show them to my soul comes not
to fill me with my own brightness, or gladden me with my own beauty, or set up
another object before me outside of the Christ in whom I live. All that would
be mere distraction - all "gain to me" in this sense merely loss. So much less
would He be to me than the "all" He must be.
It is true that the
Spirit of God may have, alas, to take also of things that have been in my walk
and ways to show me where I have not walked as what I am - not walked as Christ
walked. But even so, not to occupy me with myself, but to show me the fruit of
having forgotten to "reckon myself dead unto sin, and alive unto God in Jesus
Christ." Having learned and owned what has come of my eye being off Christ, my
resource is His grace, who brings the basin and the towel to cleanse me from
the defilement I have contracted. "If I wash thee not," He says, "thou hast no
part with Me." For that, even I must be His debtor, and for that again, in
company with Him.
And that is the secret of a walk of faith ever; for
He, and He alone, is faith's object; it knows no other. Ought I to have faith
in myself? ought I to have an object there? The cross of Christ, then, is the
death of self, His grave its burial, that, burying my dead out of my sight, I
may be free to be occupied with Him who is not dead, but living, and in whom I
live.
This is deliverance. But if it be, how many of us, Christian
reader, know it? Alas! unbroken will, persistent, self-indulgence, worldliness,
attest, on every side, how little it is known. Everywhere the terrible lack of
power is manifest. Over how many children of God sin has dominion! And the only
reason why many are unconscious of it is because "sin" is measured by a mere
worldly standard and not by Scripture. What title have we to measure the true
Christian life by less than the words of the apostle, "I am crucified with
Christ; nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me, and the life
which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved
me and gave Himself for me." Beloved reader, they are the words of the same
apostle. "Whatsoever is not of faith is SIN."
Poor indeed are all our
words; but God give His own Word, at least, power.
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