All our blessing-all that God has to give, and all that we can receive-flows to us through association with the Christ of God, in His earth-rejected but heaven-honored position.
1.-On Association with Christ Jesus in His Death.
The word together does not here refer to us merely (as though it were said, " we, all together, were planted," etc., or, " we all were planted together "); but it refers to us together with Christ (as though it were said, we- believers-have been planted together with Christ, in the likeness of His death, etc.). It might be rendered, word for word, thus-
For if we have (or are) become co-planted (with Him) in the likeness of His death, we shall also be (in that) of His resurrection.
Adam (the first) transgressed in Eden; there was moral death in Paradise; as to the body, death was first seen outside of the garden; with transgression, man became exposed to wrath, to a wrath the full force of which is not seen until the second death.
Now, herein was the mercy of God shown; that when man, as such (all men), were lying under the just judgment against the sin of their forefather Adam-when each man had received from that head of the family the law of sin and death in his members—when each one was in himself a sinner, also in action, and many, also, were transgressors of the known will of God loving self, and hating God and one another—God gave His Son, in love, that whosoever believeth in Him might not perish, but might have everlasting life. That Son of God went, as Son of man, to the cross, and there tasted—and oh! how fully—of the bitter wages of sin in His death upon the cross. Personally guiltless, not only innocent but incorruptibly pure, no penalty resting upon Him, He was treated as if He were the only one that had penalty resting upon Him—as if He were guilty. The cup was given into His hand to drink,—the cup of wrath, due to us alone,—and He drank it in our stead. And now the way is open for God to act toward those who are personally guilty tinder penalty, as though they were guiltless under no penalty. This way He proposes to sinners. His love, and mercy, and compassion, in having provided such a way, and the perfectness of the work, is found in the gospel.
In a field into which sin had entered, and death by sin—where the sentence of death lay upon all, for that all have sinned—where all are dead through the offense of their common source—all under a judgment of condemnation, death reigning over them, for that they are sinners and transgressors -none 'able to turn aside the penalty, none competent to bear it—into that field the doctrine of grace, through the Lord Jesus Christ, has been introduced. "The free gift"; "the grace of God, and the gift by grace"; "the free gift is of many offenses unto justification"; "they which receive abundance of grace, and of the gift of righteousness, shall reign in life by one, Christ Jesus"; "by the righteousness of one (the free gift was) toward all men unto justification of life"; "by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous"; "where sin abounded, grace did much more abound: that as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign, through righteousness, unto eternal life, by Jesus Christ our Lord":-Such are the expressions in which the blessed subject is presented to us in the fifth chapter of the epistle to the Romans.
To turn now to our portion of scripture in Rom. 6.
In all religion which is based and built upon what a man, as a creature, can do, certain things are, for the time, taken for granted; a certain power is supposed to be in him,—a certain goodness of will, at least, is admitted possibly to exist, otherwise, why and how should he trade on his own account with God? If he believed himself hopelessly ruined, to have no strength and no will for God, he would hardly attempt to utilize his time so as to prepare for death and for judgment. For it is appointed unto man once to die, and after that the judgment, is a truth which characterizes not only the reality of man's position as a creature, but also all his thoughts of religion as a creature. As a fallen creature, he has to meet death and to stand in judgment. Contrasted with this is the religion of grace; in it death and the judgment are behind us, and not before us.
This changes everything; for it clearly connects the believer with a system in which a mere human creature, as such, has no place. As a creature, I go not beyond the range of creature thoughts and the ruin I am in; I think, to use my life that I may meet death and stand in judgment. But, as a believer, I have to do with the resurrection-power which raised Christ from the grave; and death and judgment are behind me, that I may be able to live in grace. To stand on both grounds at once, or to stand with a foot upon each, is impossible.
I, creature-life-death and judgment to come-stand in contrast with Christ, once dead but now alive again for evermore, resurrection-power' heaven and glory.
I do not think Christians have marked the contrast enough, or that they are adequately alive to the impossibility of one and the same person being at any given time upon the two grounds. The religion of nature supposes that I am alive; the religion of Christ that I am dead and buried. The religion of fallen human nature supposes I have more power now that I am fallen than man unfallen had; i.e., that I can undo the fall from which my forefather kept not himself; the religion of grace settles that power is all in God and Christ. The former supposes I can stand before God in my sins to adjust my matters with Him; the latter declares that the Christ of God has adjusted everything before God, when He was forsaken on the cross, because He bore my burden, and paid the penalty due by me.
A man cannot be in Christ and out of Christ at the same time. If in Him, all is settled; if apart from Him, he is lost.
But as to the believer in Christ: " Shall we continue in sin?" says Paul. Away with the thought. If dead to it, how shall we live in it. We have become identified with Jesus Christ in His death, baptized into Jesus Christ-baptized into His death.
I—under sentence for Adam's transgression, morally dead myself-a transgressor, also, and a sinner-had, in myself, nothing to expect but the penalty, the penal consequences of this state of sin. Christ endured the penalty; took, in the bitter cup, the penal consequences, the punishment due to me. Grace has identified me with Him,-buried me, by baptism, into His death. The penalty paid, I am clear. I have been planted together in the likeness of His death. So identified with Him who died, that, as certainly as He was personally guiltless who was reckoned as guilty upon the cross, so all the I, that was most grievously guilty, is reckoned guiltless. Christ was the beloved Son in whom God was alway well pleased. There was nothing in Him, or that He did, that could challenge anything but favor from God. His going to the cross, even, was obedience—" obedient unto death, the death of the cross"; " the cup which my Father path given, shall I not drink it " Lo, I come to do Thy will, O my God!" There was nothing that exposed Him to wrath, no penalty was due to Him; but He, the Just One, took up the penalty due to us. He would stand in our stead in the judgment. It is I, myself, not my actions done, or my thoughts and intentions even, which is in question. What a man is, the state of his being is infinitely worse than his actions. I was guilty, exposed to the wrath of God on account of what I was; but, through the death of the guiltless One, I am guiltless in God's sight.
In that He died, He died unto sin once (6:10). There is but one sense in which it can be said of Christ that He died unto sin, and that one sense is penally, as bearing its penalty. We were morally dead and under sentence; He bore the sentence, and to those that believe there is an end of the whole matter. Adam's judgment is passed and executed; the sentence against all our transgressions, sins, omissions, and commissions—and that, too, against the very root of all these, sin in our nature—is executed and past, and never can revive. What to man was impossible- what seemed, in the nature of things, absurd- God has made true to faith. "I have to live so as to be able, if possible, to meet death, and then to stand before God in the judgment," says thoughtful man outside of Eden. " God has put death and the judgment forever behind me," says faith; "they are passed and not future to me, through the death of the Lord Jesus."
Faith lets God be true, though every man be a liar; and, therefore, faith accredits God's testimony. He that has faith is " dead to sin;-he has been baptized into the death of Jesus Christ;—buried with Him by baptism into death;—planted together in the likeness of His death;—the old man crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be destroyed;—he that is dead is freed from sin," etc. Yes, everything that man in nature—man in fallen nature—had to reckon with God about, thought that he had to settle with God, but which he never could have settled, has all been settled and reckoned for between God and Christ. in nature, death to a man is the doorway out of life- this life-into the world unseen; and the second death is the realizing fully what in God's presence is the anguish prepared for the devil and his angels, whose • slave man has been. In grace Christ's death is, to faith, the answer, put into time that is passed, of all that was or that seemed to be against us; it is the doorway into life,- doorway where all our guilt is left, for the judgment against us is there passed,—doorway into -eternal life, where all is life, and love, and favor.
In the latter part of Rom. 5 Paul had shown the two headships that of Adam, and that of Christ, and the contrast between the positions and portions of those to whom each was severally in headship before God. In chap. 6 he shows what is the passage from off the. ground of Adam, on which all men are by birth, on to the ground of Christ, which pertains to those only who have faith, and receive the grace which God presents to faith. Faith and confession unto salvation (says the word) identifies us with Christ; and with Christ, not only as one who has merits, and against whom, personally, no charge could stand, but with Christ, who has met and borne, in His own person, all the consequences justly due to all that we—looked at as part of a fallen race, as having the law of sin in us, as having done sin, and as having to meet death and judgment—were exposed to. Not one point or item which stood against us but what has been met; and more than this, for " I "the fallen creature I -is got rid of. Faith puts us on the other side of death and of judgment; that is no part of our portion, or inheritance, or lot, from Adam; but faith sets us in eternal life, and gives us heaven and glory. To nature and to common sense, as derived from Adam, the thing is impossible, unreasonable, absurd; and to nature it supposes a confusion of times past and to come. What! I, who am here, with death and the judgment before me, am to consider that death and the judgment are behind me! so might nature exclaim; and it might add, More easily might the sun stand still upon Gibeon, and the moon in Ajalon (Josh. 10:1212Then spake Joshua to the Lord in the day when the Lord delivered up the Amorites before the children of Israel, and he said in the sight of Israel, Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon; and thou, Moon, in the valley of Ajalon. (Joshua 10:12))—more readily should the shadow go backward ten degrees by which it had gone down (2 Kings 20:1111And Isaiah the prophet cried unto the Lord: and he brought the shadow ten degrees backward, by which it had gone down in the dial of Ahaz. (2 Kings 20:11), Isa. 28:88For all tables are full of vomit and filthiness, so that there is no place clean. (Isaiah 28:8)), than that thing be! But to faith it is not ONLY so. By faith, I can say I am not only dead and have passed the judgment, so that there can be naught against me, for who shall punish a dead man, who has been fully judged already; -the justice of God, justice due to Christ who died for me, is my safety;—but I am alive again for evermore, in a life which death cannot touch, which knows no grave, and is beyond judgment—yea, in which judgment is turned to victory.
This is reckoned, counted so of God, and therefore sure. Yes; but while that is true, and makes all sure to the faith which accredits God's written word, there is more than the mere reckoning and counting to be thought of. For "the why" of this is revealed. God has given to us the Spirit of Him who—being holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, Himself the Just One died for us, the unjust. That Spirit has communicated to us the divine nature, we are born of an incorruptible seed. And though the bodies in which we dwell are still unrenewed, they yet are redeemed; and the power that will change and renew them is in Him who sits at the right hand of God. The grace that made me one with Christ-the grace which gave Christ to be Head of His Body, the Church—the grace which sought to make its exceeding riches known in us, through the love of God, are the why and because of this reckoning, this counting.
I may remark, too, a difference, and to a conscience in God's presence, and to a renewed man, it is a most important one the difference between, on the one hand, I, in nature, having to die when God's providence brings the hour, and then to stand in judgment before the great white throne after the thousand years are ended: and, on the other, the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ in securing a race for Him, having made good death and present acceptance to me, within the veil where Christ, earth-rejected, sits at His own right hand; and the means of this-the death upon the cross, under judgment, of the Son of Man, who was divinely perfect, yet took (proof of His perfection) my place and bore my judgment. Himself, the Judge of quick and dead, will never forget His judgment as borne by Himself for me.
The difference is immense; because it is between things being settled according to the claims of God as Creator over a creature, and the same thing being settled according to the right of God as Redeemer to make Himself a name in displaying the riches of His grace in saving rebels.
Faith knows that it is finished! Not only Christ's death upon the cross, but ours also to guilt, and all penalty through Him. It is finished: the penalty is paid, the guilt is passed: we were guilty and under penalty, but we are so no longer, for the penalty is paid it is finished I With most Christians, the truth I speak of has not hold of their minds, and their—minds have no hold of it.
When thinking of what they were by nature, they know, perhaps, that the mercy and compassion of God has found an answer to it all in Christ. But the thought of most minds is rather as if they were one with Christ a-dying on the cross, than one with Christ who has died and is alive again for evermore. To their minds the sentence is not, as yet, seen as having been fully executed—and they never have settled peace. They want their old man, their original selves, to be still alive before God, though perhaps a-dying. Some think of this old man, this original self, as yet to be crucified, that then they may find acceptance; but of course they find not how to accomplish this; others, again, talk of it as being "a crucifying," but that it will only die when body and soul are separated;—of course peace is the put off till death. Some, again, pray that we "may die" in Christ; so misapplying, to the question of their personal acceptance with God, verses which, in Scripture, apply to the walk of a person who is personally accepted. For instance, " I protest by your rejoicing, I die daily," is often so applied: the verse means nothing of the sort, but quite another thing; even this, that Paul was heedless about guarding the life of his body in its present state, because its resurrection was assured; and, moreover, to him to live was Christ, and to die was gain. Then, again, two other verses are often thus most sadly misused, viz., Rom. 8:1313For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live. (Romans 8:13), and Col. 3:55Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry: (Colossians 3:5). In both of them, Paul speaks of the walk and work of accepted persons, and not of the work by which acceptance is gained.
In the first of these verses, remark, mortification of the deeds of the body, flows out of life in Christ, and is the pathway into life lit; in glory. To say that mortification of the deeds of the body gains life, is Romanism and legalism of the very coarsest kind. Again, as to Col. 3:55Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry: (Colossians 3:5), the very perusal of the verse is enough: " Ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with Him in glory. Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness which is idolatry " (vers. 3-5).
And observe WHAT the members spoken of are, fornication, uncleanness, etc. And (ver. 6) they are the things which draw down vengeance on the children of disobedience-the things which used to mark those to whom Paul wrote (ver. 7), but now were to mark them no longer. Again; do not many Christians really ignore the force of Christ's death in judgment as their substitute, by a system which, while it recognizes Him alive to intercede for them, supposes their old guilty selves to be alive and recognized too as alive and guilty in God's presence. While they are in holy intercourse with God and the Lamb, they have a blessed, present taste of guilt put away, or, rather, they forget all about it, and taste acceptance and security; but, when going through the routine of ordinary life, they are verily, in their own thoughts, guilty. The effect is, that instead of having been once for all cleared from all that belongs to Adam the first,' and set free to walk in the power of a new life in Christ, habitual failure and sinning, and fresh application for pardon and peace and acceptance mark their state and course. The habit of sinning and failing thus gets justified. Adam is honored and nourished and reckoned to be alive, is carefully kept, and must be allowed to breathe and act while alive, according to his nature -that is, sin; and they think that this it is which constitutes a Christian life, even the constantly washing out, by fresh applications to the throne of mercy and the blood there, the soil that flows forth from ourselves. This is a practical denial of being dead with Christ, and leads to a sanction of sinning, and to a denial of the perfectness of the one offering once offered, the one purgation of sin once made. I never saw it exist where a clear view of the new life in Christ was seen; indeed it could not be in such case; nay, more, a clear view of new life in Christ cannot be sustained, unless our being dead as to all that we were according to Adam, has been seen: dead as to its penalty and lordship over us.
Believing in Christ, I am one with Him. One with Him who [not being unjust, but the alone Just One] died for me [who was unjust]; as before God I am to recognize that I am so indissolubly one with Christ in His death, through grace and divine power, that I am cleared from the Adam-standing, that God has nothing against me. I am clear upon the counts: 1. Of my being a descendant from the rebel Adam. 2. Of my having a nature prone to sin through the law of sin and death in the flesh. 3. Of the issues of this nature in me being not according to God, but contrary to Him. To each of these counts in the charge, I can say I was guilty, but am clear, as one that was guilty but has been cleared. I personally am accepted—I have for the acceptance of myself no pardon to ask—all that needed pardon in that sense is through Christ dead and buried. I do not in that sense need washing afresh, or that Christ should either die again or shed more blood, or offer His blood again, or apply His blood again; His hands, and feet, and side, and forehead, as well as His sitting at the right hand of God, tell me that all that is finished. I am free, therefore, to walk in a new life, even in the unmixed life which I have in Christ, who is in God. In Him surely there is no mixture of the old life of Adam, the rebel, and the new life of the Christ of God. Yes! it will be said, but as to practical failings Have you done with Adam? Have you not a law of sin and death in your members? What do you do with that?
My answer to such a question would be this—I can look at things, 1st, according to God, and according to God's presence; or, 2ndly, according to man and man's presence; or, 3rdly, according to what will be when God brings His own people home to His own presence.
1st. Of things according to God and God's presence; I can know nothing whatsoever save from the Scripture. " It is written," is the alone explanation of God's thoughts, to those that have faith and are led by the Spirit. Now according to that word, I find that what Christ has done as to those that are united to Him, who once died though now He liveth for evermore, has cleared them personally and individually of all culpability. Who shall condemn—who shall lay anything to the charge of those whom God has justified by the death and resurrection of Christ. All that I, as from and of and in Adam, was, Christ took upon Himself, and what it was, was told out fully and once for all upon His cross; and the judgment thereon, borne by Him: all that He was and is, is mine in the power of the new life in which I am associated with Him. And more than this, for my security of being with Him and like Him, hereafter, is in Himself who is hidden in God; and the answer to all my wilderness-walk as a Christian here below, is found in Him as alive from the dead, an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.
2ndly. According to man and man's presence. My being personally without culpability before God, does not take the law of sin and death out of my members. Then I must sin still and be always failing, you will say.
Nay. It is left in me because of the good pleasure of. God, who, as the living God, has been pleased to undertake Himself to conduct His people through the wilderness. He wills that we should find grace to make choice of Him and His ways, in preference to ourselves and to our own ways; and He leaves us the full leisure to show whether we will identify ourselves with Him who first identified Himself with us; whether we will appropriate Him and His path, who has appropriated us to Himself. This, however, is in the government of God in time; of God governing the ways, and forming for eternity the characters of the people whom He has eternally saved. As according to man and in man's presence, I desire to justify myself in my having hailed Jesus Christ as the alone Savior, and preferred righteousness which is of faith to that which is of works; I desire to prove that the works of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus, are better than the works of the flesh under law; I desire (according to a new nature), to justify God, and Christ, and the Spirit of grace, against the world, Satan, and the flesh. To me to live is Christ and to die is gain, for." in all things more than conquerors through Him that loved us," is not effaced from our banner. I do not, for a moment, suppose sin to be taken out of my body; it ought not to be; I, as a Christian, do not even wish it to be so while I am in the wilderness. God forbid. No: but being occupied with Christ on high, and Christ in the coming glory, I, yet not 1, but Christ that dwelleth in me, can keep it under. Keeping under his body and bringing it into subjection, Paul could do what Saul could not-appropriate his body and all its members unto the glory of God, and give himself to the service of Christ, in spite of Satan who, through lust and the course of the world, had once been his absolute master. Paul himself was, through grace, the master when walking near the Lord, and realized the sweetness of victory, not only over him who had been his master, and over circumstances, but over himself.
The power of this our life and walk here below, is not the death of Christ, though that puts us free. from the life of man and of earth, to live the life of Christ and of heaven upon earth; save for His death there would be no such freedom: but the power of our life and walk down here is in the living grace of a living Christ, Head over all things to His Church, which is His body; and Himself the great High Priest- Captain of salvation. It is as alive from the dead that He guards us, and that if we do fail He restores, and that He washes all His people from the defilement of the wilderness as they pass through it. Instead of this, the wretched system I advert to practically denies this present grace of the living God, and in denying our death through Him that died, leaves us to go on sinning, and in uncertainty laboring for forgiveness; and it practically denies, too, the existence of a church militant upon earth, and the grace of God which., while it secured the salvation of Lot as well as of Abram, left it to each when saved, to show out his own walk and the experience consequent thereon in the wilderness.
3rdly. As to what will be when God brings home His own people to His own presence. If God has already identified us that believe with His Christ, who is in Himself-if he permits us, down here, each in a little world of His own, to put down the evil and to take up the good in detail—a time is coining when we, whom He has redeemed, will meet Him in His own circumstances and glory. Faith desires that Christ's personal presence should be the honored place of full fruition, and it alone—to be with Him, to see Him, to be like Him-waits; and faith would have it wait, until He has His full joy, and until He can receive His church and present her to Himself, a glorious church without spot or wrinkle, or any such thing. I would not have it otherwise. In the wilderness, let me have the wilderness portion Christ has given and marked for me; let me suffer with Him; let me fill up that which remains of those sufferings of the Christ: if absent from the body and present with Himself in spirit patience and bliss will go together; as now patience and suffering go together;—but, only when He has His full joy, would I have mine, even at the second coming. But then He shall change this vile body, and fashion it like unto His own glorious body, by the mighty power whereby He is able to subdue all things unto Himself.
As connected with the Lord's government in the church (1 Cor. 11:27-3427Wherefore whosoever shall eat this bread, and drink this cup of the Lord, unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. 28But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of that bread, and drink of that cup. 29For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord's body. 30For this cause many are weak and sickly among you, and many sleep. 31For if we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged. 32But when we are judged, we are chastened of the Lord, that we should not be condemned with the world. 33Wherefore, my brethren, when ye come together to eat, tarry one for another. 34And if any man hunger, let him eat at home; that ye come not together unto condemnation. And the rest will I set in order when I come. (1 Corinthians 11:27‑34)), and with the Father's regulating of His family (1 John 2:11My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous: (1 John 2:1)), a person who knows himself saved can most clearly, if and when he fails, make confession of failure, and ask not only for pardon as a servant or as a child, but also that the consequences of the failure be removed. But then remark, 1st, that no one but a person who knows himself to be already saved can think of his work as a servant, or of his walk as a child. If an unsaved man were to do so it would be self-righteousness, self-justification. He is not saved, his works are not, to his mind, fruits—of the Spirit and of fellowship with Christ. What must I do to be saved? is really his question; self and not Christ is in question. It is monstrous to think of the works, whether they are good or bad, whether they can be accepted or not, before and in the presence of One who has already condemned the very being himself whose works are in question. And according to John (3:18), man is under condemnation already. Man's thoughts are, that a sinner must work, and a saint, if such can be found, must rest. God's command is, that the sinner do rest from his own works, and that the saint do labor to bring forth fruit unto God. And so entirely distinct before God is the salvation of the soul and works, that the Scripture never refers to the works of an unsaved man, save to show that he is condemned; the tree is condemned, and the fruit proves it. It never speaks of a saved man, without supposing that there will be works, and fruit unto God, for God to examine. The tree was planted 'to bear fruit. He that is one with Christ is fruitful.
And, secondly, let men say what they like about their failing every day, and every hour, and in everything. It may be true, or it may not-it makes no difference to me -I have to follow (not them but) Paul, even as he followed Christ. Now I utterly deny that his life was a life of incessant failure. The even course of it justified his saying " To me, to live is Christ;" and again: " According to my earnest expectation and my hope, that in nothing I shall be ashamed, but that with all boldness, as always, so now also Christ shall be magnified in my body, whether it be by life, or by death " (Phil. 1:2020According to my earnest expectation and my hope, that in nothing I shall be ashamed, but that with all boldness, as always, so now also Christ shall be magnified in my body, whether it be by life, or by death. (Philippians 1:20)). He was in all things more than conqueror through Him that loved him: and may not, ought not we to follow him even as he followed Christ?
I know it is easy to excite the flesh to say, in self-confidence, " To me to live shall be Christ:" but I know also that the first step in the life of obedience, raises the question of how far do we know, practically, this death of which I speak: not dying, not willingness merely to suffer and purpose to deny oneself, but how far we have learned what it is to count ourselves already dead through Christ. So Paul saw and felt to be the case when he wrote to Timothy. It is a faithful saying: " For if we be dead with Him, we shall also live with Him" (2 Tim. 2:1111It is a faithful saying: For if we be dead with him, we shall also live with him: (2 Timothy 2:11)).
Here it was not the value of association with Christ that had died (as in Rom. 6), so as to get judicially clear from all the penalties resting upon man as a creature, and as a descendant of Adam's (in which light all judgment is past and none remains, save for us to judge 'ourselves in our walk); but it is Le value of that association as setting one free from self, that we may suffer for Christ and endure hardness as His good soldiers.
A man must be fully assured, through faith and the Spirit, that in God's presence he is dead judicially, in Christ,- looked upon by God in this sense as dead,- able to reckon himself as dead for him to be able to use that death against Satan, the world, and the flesh: to give, if I may be allowed the expression, by it, the slip to himself and all that self furnishes as a handle to Satan, the world, or lust to lay hold of.
The way that Christ's death is made of little effect by most Christians; the way that they have judaized it, out of its eternal value and the estimate heaven forms of it, and reduced it down to be a part of a human system of their own, borrowed from the law of fallen humanity and the elements of the world (both of which Marked Judaism), is a most solemn sin. The Colossians (who had been dead in their sins and in the uncircumcision of the flesh (2:13), that is morally dead, are thus charged: "Wherefore, if ye be dead with Christ from the rudiments of the world, why, as though living in the world, are ye subject to ordinances?" etc. (2:20). They would sanction worldliness and accredit their own flesh, if they did so. And he adds: "Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God " (3:3). "Dead," says he—most correctly—" seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds" (in. 9). If the foundations be destroyed what can the righteous do?
He has so appropriated all that I was, as to bear the record of it in His own body; my soul knows those hands, those feet, that side, that forehead -but, blessed be God, I know them in Him who was dead but is alive again; I know them in Him who shall reign forever—as the Lamb that was dead, but is, alive again for evermore.
Reader! if God has shown you these things, may He add this grace, even that they act in power upon you, and that you find power to act upon them.