Leaves From the
Book
THE TWO
NATURES,
THE TWO NATURES, AND WHAT THEY IMPLY. (Jno. iii. 6; Gal.
v. 17.)
WHEN we speak of there being two natures in the believer, as these
passages, with others, plainly teach, it is needful, in the first place, to
explain the words that we are using. The more so, as the word "nature" is not
of frequent use in Scripture, and such expressions as "the old nature" and "the
new nature "- in frequent use among ourselves - do not occur. I am not on this
account condemning the expressions. They may be useful enough, and accurate
enough, without being taken literally from Scripture; and he who would exclaim
against them on this account would show only narrowness and unintelligence
really.
But what such persons have a right to insist upon, and what we
should all be as jealous for as they, is that these expressions should really
represent to us things that are in Scripture, - not fancies of our own, but
truths of the Word of God. Our business, therefore, must be to explain the
terms we use, and justify them by the appeal to Scripture, by showing that the
things themselves are there for which we use these expressions as convenient
terms. There is no word for "nature" in the Old Testament at all. In the New,
the word translated so is, in every case but one, the word phusis, "growth." In
the exceptional case, it is genesis, a word familiar to us as the title of the
first book of Scripture, so called from its describing the origin or "birth" of
the world. The two words in this application come nearly to the same meaning;
they express the result of what we have by our origin - the qualities that are
developed in us by growth.
Now, for us as Christians, there are two
births, and two growths, and thus we can rightly speak of two natures, - two
sets of moral qualities that belong to us: the one as born of Adam, the other
as born of God. Each is dependent upon the life received, and from which it
springs. We are one thing as children of men merely; we are another as children
of God. Let us look at these separately now; and first at that which is first
in order of time. Men we are, of course, all through. Here, again, we must
learn to distinguish between what we are as men by Gods creation and what
we are as men fallen from the uprightness in which God created us at the
beginning. We must distinguish between our nature as men and our nature as
fallen men. Men we are, and are ever to be; whatever change we pass through in
new birth as to spirit and soul, whatever change awaits the body at the time
when the Lord shall call us to be with Himself, we shall never lose our
essential identity with what God created us to be at the first. We are the same
persons all through, - the same individuals. No question of life or nature,
such as we are about to consider; affects the reality of our possession of what
we commonly call human nature all the way through. The youth differs much from
the infant; the man from the youth; yet the same human being, the same person,
passes through these different stages. The caterpillar is the same being that
is at first in the egg and that finally is the butterfly; so changed as to
conditions that if we had not traced its continuity through these different
forms, we should regard it as three or four different creatures; and yet we
have the most absolute persuasion of its identity throughout. We might
distinguish between the "nature" of the egg, the caterpillar, the chrysalis,
and the butterfly, and yet again affirm its insect- nature to be unchanged
throughout, and its individuality to be maintained too all through. It would be
even its "nature" as an insect to go through these several changes. So we must
distinguish between such terms as "our human nature," "our fallen nature," "our
new nature." The fall did not unmake us as men; our new birth does not unmake
us on the other side. What is essential to manhood we never lose, and our
individuality too is never changed.
These distinctions are not useless,
but on the contrary, most important. Did we keep them in mind, there could be
no misunderstanding (such as there often is) as to the Lord assuming our
nature, for instance. The words of the hymn, "He wears our nature on the
throne," are objected to by some, because they do not make such simple
distinctions; and on the other hand, some would press that taking of our nature
into consequences as to our blessed Lord, such as every true soul would
indignantly repudiate. He did take our human nature: He was in all respects
true man; the consequences and conditions of the fall are as little essential
to manhood as the fracture of an image is essential to the image. Let us
consider, then, briefly and simply, what is essential to man as man, in order
to separate from it as far as possible what is due to the fall; human nature
from fallen nature, or what Scripture calls "the flesh." We shall find
mysteries, no doubt. Mysteries surround us, into which all our researches will
enable us to penetrate but a very little way. Our knowledge is very partial;
our ignorance is great. And nowhere among created things do we find more
mystery than when we attempt to penetrate the secrets of our own being. But in
keeping closely to the Word, we shall find a sure and unfailing guide here as
elsewhere, and a means of testing whatever may be gathered from other
sources.
Man is constituted of spirit, soul, and body. He has lost none of
these by the fall; he has only these when born again and a child of God. Mind,
judgment, and therefore conscience, are properties of his spirit. The
affections and emotions are faculties of his soul, which is also that wherein
is found the link between the spirit and the body, and by which the former,
while highest of all in its nature, and (rightly) controlling all, apprehends
the things of sense.
Man is thus by constitution a conscious, intelligent,
and moral being, but dependent, in his present state, upon his senses for the
furniture even of his mind - a "living soul," as Scripture terms him, and not a
pure "spirit," as the angels are. Yet, with other spirits, he is in relation to
God as his God, and his Father too; only that in this last respect he has sold,
like Esau, his birthright for a mess of pottage.
The fall has affected man
in all his constituent parts. It has subjected the spirit to the soul, and the
soul to the body. The scene in Eden, which Scripture represents to us at once
so simply and so graphically, is recalled to our minds as we ponder the
inspired descriptions of what man now is. The link of affection, reverence, and
dependence which held him to God being broken, he is like a building in which
the roof has fallen in upon the base. Named from his lowest part, into which
spirit and soul have sunk, he is "flesh." Thus "flesh" is the scriptural
designation of his old or fallen nature.
"And when the woman saw that the
tree was good for food," - there the body, and in its lowest cravings, is
first; - "and that it was pleasant to the eyes," - meeting the emotional
desires of the soul; - " and a tree to be desired to make one wise," - there
the spirit is, - last, but aspiring to independence of God. "Ye shall be as
gods" had been the temptation. Yielding to it, the mental and moral structure
had collapsed. A thing of sense rather than God man had chosen for his
dependence: the things of sense became his necessity and his masters; his
wisdom, henceforth not from above, was "earthly, sensual," and so,
"devilish."
And this word "sensual," which, while it may well have that
meaning here, is in fact the adjective of the word "soul," is the same word as
that translated "natural" where we read, "The natural man receiveth not the
things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness unto him; neither can he
know them, because they are spiritually discerned" (i Cor. ii. i).
The spirit here has given up the reins to the soul; the soul is swayed by the
allurernents of sense; the body itself, unbalanced and perverted in its natural
instincts and appetites, becomes in turn the tempter of the soul. - The man is
"sensual :" his nature is "flesh."
We must not expect to find this use of
the word "flesh," however, in the Old Testament, for a reason which will easily
suggest itself to one who knows the peculiar character of the Old Testament.
The law being the trial of man in nature, as long as the trial was going on,
the character of man could not be fully brought out. Nor is it even in those
first three gospels in which Christs presentation to man is Gods
last experiment with him. "Having yet, therefore, one son, his well-beloved,"
as the Lord Himself puts it in the parable, "he sent him last unto them,
saying, They will reverence my son (Mark xii. i). But in
Johns gospel, it is seen that this trial too has failed: "He was in the
world, and the world was made by Him, and the world knew Him not; He came unto
His own, and His own received Him not." That is the very opening chapter; and
thereupon He immediately goes on to speak of "the flesh," and of new birth:
"But to as many as received Him, to them gave He [not "power," but] authority
to become the sons of God, even to those who believed in His name." And who
were these? "Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the FLESH, nor
of the will of man, but of God."
One passage there is in the Old Testament
in which man is characterized as "flesh," in a manner which seems to approach
the style of the New. And this passage is found in almost the beginning of
Genesis. Before the flood, the Lord says, "My Spirit shall not always strive
with man, for that he also is flesh, but his days shall be a hundred and twenty
years." Yet even here the declaration seems more to point to the frailty of a
creature with whom it would be unseemly for God to be always striving. And the
limitation of his days seems to coincide with this interpretation. It is like
the appeal to Job, - " What is man, that thou shouldst magnify him? and that
Thou shouldst set Thine heart upon him? and that Thou shouldst visit him every
morning, and try him every moment?" Or, like that hundred and forty-fourth
psalm, so striking a contrast with the eighth, "Lord, what is man, that Thou
takest knowledge of him? or the son of man, that Thou makest account of him?
Man is like to vanity: his days are as a shadow that passeth away! Bow Thy
heavens, 0 Lord, and come down. . . . Cast forth lightning, and scatter them!"
All through the Old Testament, "flesh" is thus the symbol of weakness and
nothingness: a use of it which is carried on also in the New. Witness a passage
which is often cited in another way, and very falsely applied: it is the tender
apology of the Lord for His disciples sleeping in the garden: "The spirit
indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak." Here, the "weak" flesh is clearly
not at all the old nature. It is bodily infirmity, which prevents it yielding
to the will of the spirit.
In the gospel of John, we find, for the first
time, the "flesh" used in the other signification of an evil nature, - our sad
inheritance by the fall. We hear of a "will of the flesh" from which new birth
does not proceed. And in the third chapter of the gospel, the Lord enforces
upon Nicodemus the absolute necessity of a new birth, from the irreclaimable
character of this, - " That which is born of the flesh," - of man characterized
as this, - " is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit: marvel
not that I said unto you, Ye must be born again." Thus, out of
mans fallen nature proceeds nothing that can be acceptable to God. Like a
field unsown, the heart of man will never produce aught, so to speak, but
thorns and thistles - fruit of the curse. Life of the right sort must be
dropped into it in the living germ of the Word of God, as our Lord teaches in
the parable, and from that alone is there fruit for Hirn.* New life is thus
introduced into the field; and while this does take up and assimilate material
from the soil, and thus there now goes on an active transformation of this
kind, yet how false an account would it be to give of this to make this
transformation the whole thing, and ignore the new life which was effecting it!
Yet in the spiritual change of new birth, people are doing exactly this. They
look at the moral transformation going on, and ignore what Scripture speaks of
in the most decisive way - the introduction of a positive new life from God,
from which the moral change proceeds.
It is no wonder if, in trying to
define this, we soon lose ourselves, and are made aware of mysteries which
crowd upon us at every step. Even natural life is a mystery, which the mind of
man, vainly seeking to penetrate, is trying in an exactly similar manner to
deny. We are told that we may as well talk of a principle of "aquosity" in
water as of a vital principle in a living thing. Yet as a cause of certain
effects otherwise unaccountable, it is as vain to deny it as it may be
impossible to define. So spiritually we may learn lessons from experience which
at least rebuke the folly of not listening to the Word. And Scripture points
these out also, giving us, as needed explanation of what every child of God
finds in experience, a doctrine which alone makes all intelligible, and enables
us to learn and use the experience itself aright. As for natural birth there
must be, not merely certain processes, but the communication of a
life-principle which produces, controls, and harmonizes these processes, so is
there precisely for new birth. The voice that soon will quicken out of death
natural - which all that are in the graves shall hear and shall come forth -
now quickens similarly the spiritually dead, -"Verily, verily, I say unto you,
The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son
of God; and they that hear shall live: for as the Father hath life in Himself,
so hath He given to the Son to have life in Himself" (Jno. v.25, 26). Here
there is a life communicated by One who has it in Himself to communicate, - a
new life for those "dead;" in whom, if there be not this first, no moral change
is possible at all.
This new birth the Spirit and the Word combine to
effect. A man is born of water and of the Spirit, the water here, as the symbol
of purification, taking the place that the seed of the Word does in the parable
elsewhere. As the apostle Peter tells us, we are "born again, not of
corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the Word of God . . . . and this is
the word which by the gospel is preached unto you" (1 Pet. 2. 23, 25). And so
the apostle of the Gentiles explains Christs purification of His Church
to be "with the washing of water by the Word" (Eph. V. 26).
To take up
again the former figure of the seed, used by both the Lord and the apostle, the
seed is the incorruptible Word which gives form and character to the life -
manifestation; but the life itself must be in the germ, or it cannot be
manifested. So the word of the Lord embodies and manifests the new life we
receive, but the energy of the life communicated by the Spirit works by the
Word, and there is "growth"- the development of a new nature, which is
characterized by its blessed and holy attributes.
Thus Scripture speaks of
"the ingrafted Word" (Jas. i. 21); and the apostle John, similarly connecting
the new nature with the Word, says, "Whosoever is born of God doth not commit
sin; for His seed remaineth in him, and he cannot sin, because he is born of
God" (i Jno. iii. 9). This is Peters "incorruptible seed" of "the Word of
God," but the life communicated by the Spirit, as already said, causes it to
germinate; and, being "evcrlasting life," His seed remains.
The "nature"
of the seed determines the form of life. The new nature, Gods gift, is
not a mixed or partially good thing. It is in itself perfect (though capable of
and needing development), without mixture of evil from the very first. In the
man in whom it is implanted, evil indeed exists, as thorns and thistles in the
field in which wheat is sown: these things being not the imperfection of the
wheat in any wise, though hindrances to the crop they are. The character of the
seed we have just seen, where the apostle says that the child of God "doth not
commit (or rather "practise ") sin; for His seed remaineth in him." The new
life, is obscured by the evil, is untouched by it, and in essential, - nay,
victorious opposition to sin. It will vindicate its character in one born of
God, and manifest him as born of God; and where we do not see this result, we
cannot recognize as a Christian the person in whom it fails, although granting
the possibility of seed being in the ground that has not yet come to the
surface. But "faith "- the first principle of the new nature -"worketh by
love;" and "faith, if it have not works, is dead, being alone:" "as many as are
led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God" (Gal. v. 6; James ii. i7;
Rom. viii. 14). It is needful to insist on this at all times - never more
needful than at the present time. It is no exaltation of faith to maintain it
as justifying and saving, and yet possibly without power to produce fruit in
the world, or to glorify God in a holy life. The apostles faith was the
power of a life devoted as his was - " 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"
(Gal. 2: 20).
Such, then, in its character, and such in its energy, is the
new nature. It will be understood that the gospel has to be received, and
deliverance realized, before this can be properly known; nor do I dwell upon
these now.
But such is the new nature; and being such, it is the means of
effecting that wonderful change in a man which we speak of as "conversion." As
the seed converts the lifeless elements of the soul into the beauty of the
living plant, so the powers and faculties of soul and spirit are brought back
from death to life. The spirit, redeemed from self-idolatry, and having learned
the lesson of dependence upon God which faith implies, is reinstated in Its old
supremacy; the affections of the soul, are taught to trail no longer upon
earth, and set upon God as their only worthy object. The body, yet unredeemed,
and "dead, because of sin," - awaiting its redemption at the time of the
resurrection (Rom. 8:. 10, 11, 23), - can only as yet be "kept under, and
brought into subjection" to the man new-created in Christ Jesus. (Rom. 8. 13; I
Cor. ix. 27.)
But now we must again draw some very important distinctions.
We speak of the old nature, or "flesh," and of the new. We speak also of the
"old man" and of the "new." Is there any difference between these? and if so,
what is the use of the distinction? A nature and a person are in many ways
widely different. Unconverted and converted, the person is of course the same.
It is the one who was dead in sin who is quickened and raised up; it is the
same person who was condemned and a child of wrath who is justified,
sanctified, and redeemed to God. It is the person too - the "man " - to whom
accountability attaches, and not to the nature. Acts belong to the individual,
and not to his nature; and in the case of man, the only rational and
responsible creature of whom we have something that can be called knowledge, we
know that he is responsible to walk contrary to [not indeed his nature as God
first constituted him, but yet] his nature as he actually now possesses it,
fallen from its primitive state.
Only, in fact, by a license of speech do
we speak of nature acting. To say of a person, "nature acts in him," whether
said approvingly or disapprovingly, still implies that the man himself has lost
command of himself, or does not exercise it. Many a Christian thus talks of the
flesh in himself or others, as if its being flesh that was exhibited explained
matters sufficiently. Yet, if he thinks about it, he will realize that he uses
this language to escape responsibility, so little idea has he of responsibility
attaching to a nature. Yet if this excused him, it would excuse every sinner
that ever lived; and how could God judge the world? In point of fact, men do
use everywhere the truth of their sinful nature in order to escape
condemnation; whereas if they would listen to conscience, they would assuredly
find that not a single sin have they ever committed which they could truthfully
say their nature forced them to. It inclined, no doubt, but they should, and
might, have controlled the inclination. The essence of their guilt is, that
they do not.
In the day of judgment, therefore, the award will be given,
not according to the nature, (in which they are alike,) but to their works, in
which they are not alike. God "will render to every man acccording to his
deeds" (Rom. ii. 6). And this, and this alone, will be the exact measure of
guilt and responsibility.
It may be objected to all this, "How, then, can
the man in the seventh of Romans, who is converted, and has a will for good,
find, on the other hand, the flesh in such opposition, that what he desires, he
is quite unable to perform? How can there be still no ability, when the will is
right?"
But the answer is plain, that the good he desires would not be good
really, if done in other than the sense of dependence upon God, which is the
only right condition of the creature. The power of sin from which he has to be
delivered lies in the self-complacent self-seeking which assumes the shape of
holiness to a converted man. For a holiness that makes him something, he has to
accept a Christ who shall draw him out of himself. The "good" (in one sense
that,) which he is seeking, is really a phantom shape which God has to destroy,
to give him instead the true and only good. Thus only crippled Jacob can become
Israel.
"Power belongeth only unto God." True - ever true: but were we
right with Him, could it be lacking to us? Assuredly it could not. Still, then,
it remains true that no one is shut up powerlessly in bondage to evil. The key
of his prison-house is in his own hand.
It is the man, then, who sins, and
is the sinner; it is the man who has to be forgiven and justified; it is the
man who is responsible to walk, not in the flesh, but in the Spirit. It is the
same person - the same individual all through.
Yet, in another way, we may
surely say as to the Christian, that the man that was and the man that is are
total opposites. I was a sinner in my sins, freely following the evil that I
loved: I am a child of God, with a new nature,, new affections, and a new
object. Between these two persons there is a wide interval indeed. The first is
what Scripture calls "the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful
lusts" (Eph. iv. 22); the second is styled "the new man, which after God is -
created in righteousness and true holiness" (v. 24), and "renewed in knowledge,
after the image of Him who created him, where Christ is all and in all" (Col.
iii. io, ii). The first it speaks of as being "crucified with Christ," as it
does of our "having put off the old man with his deeds" (Rom. ii. 6; Col. iii.
9.) The second, similarly, it speaks of our "having put on." What we were we
are not, and never can be again. But while this is happily true of us, it is
also true that the "flesh" - the old nature - we have in us still, and shall
have, till the body of humiliation is either dropped, or changed into the
glorified likeness of the Lords own body. The old man is gone forever,
but the flesh abides: in those who are possessors of the Spirit, still "the
flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh;" and the
exhortation is, not to destroy the flesh, as if that were possible, but "walk
in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfill the lusts of the flesh" (Gal. v. i6,
ii). A poor conclusion this, to many in our day! but to those who know
themselves, how great a relief to find thus an explanation of what experience
testifies to! It may be, and is, a mystery how we can have at the same time in
us two natures, total opposites of each other, - how Christ can dwell in us,
and yet sin dwell too; but Scripture affirms it, and experience also. If it is
Gods mind to allow us to know thus for a while what evil is, not by
yielding to it surely, but as realizing its opposition, can He not make this
experience even both to serve us and glorify Him?
The flesh remains, and
remains unchanged: "I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) dwelleth no good
thing" must always be said by one who identifies himself with the flesh. "The
mind of the flesh is death; . . . because the mind of the flesh is enmity
against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be"
(Rom. vii. 18; viii. 6, 7). Thus the Word speaks of the incurable evil of the
old nature, which, attaching itself, as we have seen it does, to the things of
time and sense amid which we are, Gods remedy for it is Christ as an
object for our hearts in heaven, and His cross as that by which we are
crucified to a world which the flesh lusts after, and which in its moral
elements consists of "the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride
of life." We are not in the flesh; we are in Christ before God; our life is hid
with Christ in God. The knowledge of our portion in Him, as given us by the
Spirit, divorces our hearts, and turns our eyes away from that which ministers
to the evil in us. "As strangers and pilgrims," journeying on to a point which
faith, not sight, beholds, we learn to abstain from fleshly lusts, which war
against the soul"(i Pet. ii. ii), and, as a consequence, to "mortify the deeds
of the body" (Rom. viii. 13). Our true power is in absent-mindedness, - a heart
set upon that which stirs no lust, for it is our own forever, and we are
invited to enjoy it.
This satisfies, and this alone. By "the exceeding
great and precious promises" we "become partakers of (or rather, "in communion
with,") the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world
through lust" (2 Pet. i. 4). The new life within us is strengthened and
developed, and this alone can divine things work upon. Christ seen and enjoyed
by faith, we grow up unto Him in all things, from the babe to the young man and
to the father, when we have but to sit down, as it were, and endlessly enjoy
our infinite blessing.
Before closing this brief sketch of an important
subject, let us look closer at this question of growth, as the apostle puts it
before us here. Growth (mental, not physical,) the growth of a babe into a man,
is a matter of education; not merely what professes to be such, but the
influence upon it of surrounding circumstances which call forth the hidden
energies of the mind and heart, and of examples which stimulate and encourage
to imitation. God has thus, on the one hand, for us His discipline of trial; on
the other, His perfect example of what He would have us grow up to. In general,
men reach about the level of what is thus before them. God puts before us
Christ, that we may grow up into Christ. Our occupation will tell upon us. What
we give ourselves to will make its necessary mark upon us. The exhortation to
us is, "Set your mind on things above, where Christ sitteth at the right hand
of God."
The admonition, therefore, of the apostle to the babes and young
men - to the fathers he has none - is to let nothing take away their eyes from
Christ, The babes he warns as to Antichrist, not that he may perfect them in
prophetical knowledge, but because in their little acquaintance as yet with the
truth of what Christ is, they might be led away into some deceit of the enemy.
Satans first snare for souls is some distorting error, which shall in
fact deform to us the face in which alone all the glory of God shines, or
substitute for His face some witchery for the natural eye, in which the heart
may be unawares entangled, supposing it to be the true and divine object before
it. This is Antichrist, - not yet the full denial of the Father and the Son, of
course, - and antichrists there are many.
Oh that Christians did more
realize the immense value of truth ! - the terrible and disastrous effect of
error! What presents to me, when seen aright, the blessed face of God Himse!f,
may through Satans artifice darken, obscure, distort this, or present to
me a treacherous and destructive lure instead.
The apostle therefore warns
the babes as to false Christs doctrinally. The young men are not in the same
danger as to this. They are strong, and the word of God abides in them, and
they have overcome the wicked one. Their danger now lies from the allurements
of a world into which their very energy is carrying them. The word to these is,
"Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world." For the eye
affects the heart; and it is one thing to have seen by the Word that the world
is under judgment, and another thing to have gone through it in detail, looking
it in the face, and counting it all loss for Christ. This the fathers have,
however, done: therefore he says to them (and it is all he needs to say), "Ye
have known Him that is from the beginning." It is all we gain by looking
through the world; yet it is a great gain to be able to say of it all through,
"How unlike Christ it is!" And what when we have reached this? Has the "father"
nothing more to learn? Oh, yes, he is but at the beginning. He has but now his
lesson-book before him, for undistracted learning. But he needs not caution in
the same way not to mix anything with Christ, and not to take anything else for
Christ. How much toil to reach, how slow we are in reaching, so simple a
conclusion! But then the joy of eternity begins. Oh, to have Him ever before
us, unfolding His glories, as He does to one whose eyes and whose heart are all
for Him! The knowledge of the new man is, "Christ is all!" To the martyr, in
the fire which consumed him, this knowledge broke out in the words which told
of a joy beyond the torment - " NONE BUT CHRIST!"
Deliverance - What Is It?
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