Romans 6
Grace always sets us in liberty. Even in holiness, liberty is the character of its separation. It is liberty from the bondage of sin. It is willing, joyous, consecration to God.
This chapter is most practical, yet deep, very deep, as everything is that comes from God. For everything that comes from God returns to God. Man is his own end by nature, and all his thoughts and actions begin and end with self. But Christ could not come down here and walk in righteousness without doing everything to God. So the incense of " the meat-offering" went all up to God. No doubt the priests smelt the sweet savor, but as offered, it went all up to God. So this new life, of which the chapter treats, as it comes from God, so it goes to God. It brings forth fruit, of course, but that is not its end. Its end is presented in Eph. 5:1-21Be ye therefore followers of God, as dear children; 2And walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweetsmelling savor. (Ephesians 5:1‑2), " Be ye followers of God as dear children, and walk in love." This is Christian morality; but then it is God's nature, God's life, expressed in men: life that flows from God and must go to God. But it is added, " as Christ also bath loved us and given himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet smelling savor." The life God gives goes to God. And when that is wanting, all is wanting. Beloved, that is everything-because a man is not what he does, but what his motive in doing it is. Two men may do the very same thing from the most opposite reasons: one, for example, may labor for his family, another, to spend what he earns on sinful pleasures. How different the act, though they do the same thing, and equally well, for their employer! Everything in the new nature goes back to God. Hence we have to judge ourselves. For even the Christian, when walking blamelessly before men, may suffer other things than simply pleasing God to come in and spoil the sweet odor. Oh, how dreadful, when self comes in and spoils the odor—it may be not to others, but to ourselves!
In the 3rd chapter of this epistle we get the way in which the blood of Christ met actual sins, whether of Jew or Gentile. In the 4th, we have the full character of christian faith,—reposing in God, who had come in power, and had raised one who was under death to His own right hand. Looking at Jesus as a man under death we see divine power coming in and raising Him up. In the 5th chapter, this principle is applied to justification; and we have the joy which is shed abroad by the Holy Ghost. Then the law, which is contrasted with grace, and was brought in by-the-bye, after man had become a sinner, itself righteous, and thus demonstrating the sin of man.
There are two ways in which man might stand before God; he could be righteous, or he can be saved. There is no other way. He could be, indeed, innocent, I mean, as Adam was; but by the entrance of sin that is lost forever. So now he can only stand on the ground of sovereign grace. The law is a good law; and if lived in, it would make any man happy-it would make angels happy. For to love God with all one's heart, and one's neighbor as one's self, is practiced in heaven. But it could not, in the form in which it was given at Sinai, be given to an innocent Adam. For the law always supposes sin to be there, and it comes in to bring out its real character. Having shown us that as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous-thus showing us that God traces the family of sinners up to Adam, and the family of righteous up to Christ he takes up, in this 6th 'chapter, the objection, that this seems to make it indifferent how we walk. Thus, if by one man's obedience men are made righteous, and we are looked at in the head to which we belong, our actions are no matter, not being the ground of our acceptance. The flesh would say this. For the flesh will turn everything to evil. It will take the law itself, which was given to convict of sin, to make out righteousness by it; and grace, which is the power and way of' holiness and communion with God, it will turn into an occasion for sin. Adam and Christ however are brought before us as the two heads of the two families of men. But Adam becomes a sinful man—sin has been accomplished in his condition ere he becomes a head. Christ, too accomplished righteousness ere He becomes the head of His family. And as we come into the state which was accomplished in Adam, so do we into that which was accomplished in Christ. And as there was a life in us which liked the state in which we found ourselves by Adam, even so, when we find our-selves justified in Christ Jesus, there is a life in us which likes this state.
The apostle's answer, then, to the use the flesh would make of the truth of our being made righteous by another's obedience, is drawn from the very truth which gave rise to the objection. The Christ, in whom we are, as our Head, has died and risen again. " How shall we that are dead to sin live any longer therein?" In Christ we have died to sin. It is never said that we ought to die to sin, but that we have died to it. We are set in Christ. Where is my place as a believer? In Christ, dead and risen again. If I have this justification, it is in Him in whom I have possession of this life. If I have not the one, I have not the other. The apostle is not now talking of motives. He is laying down what must be from the nature of our union with Christ. If I believe that I am saved by the blood of Jesus, then, I find in the blood, put on my ear, my hand, and my foot, a motive to walk in consistency with its claims. But here, he is not talking of motives, but of resurrection. How have you got this justification? By death and resurrection. I am treating you as dead, for Christ is dead, and you are in Him. If I am dead, I cannot live in that to which I am dead. That is the doctrine. We are to mortify our members, but we are not commanded to die.
The great question is, how can we get rid of sin in our nature? We must kill it. We must put ourselves to death. How can I do that in that nature itself? I must get another life before I can kill the one I have,—a new life, before I can begin to crucify the old. Otherwise, I put to death the only life I have. But I get this new life, and so I can mortify what is of the old. It is my members, too, that I mortify-not me. I, the old I, has died in Christ's death, as it is written, " I am crucified with Christ," but, it is added, " nevertheless I live;" the new life is me now. I live. I have a new life, though the old one was put to death, and I can now afford to exterminate all that belongs to the old.
Liberty is thus connected by the apostle with death and resurrection,—" knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin." "If we be planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection."
What Christ have you a part of? A dead, or a risen, Christ? Is Christ divided? We do not get a half Christ. If we die with Him we also rise-" that like as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we also should walk in newness of life." There is our walk. And see the standard of that walk-the measure that is set before us-" the glory of the Father."
I stop here to examine this wonderful expression; for whatever shows us the excellency of Christ gives us power. What I see is this, that there is not a single thing that makes the Father glorious that was not concerned in the raising of Christ from the dead. Take divine power,-it is God that raiseth the dead. Take death as the ruin of man,-out of it God raises Him. Take the love of the Father, it is in special exercise. Does ever the love of the Father appear so drawn out as because of the death of Christ? Never. "Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I might take it again." A new motive is added, as it were, for the Father to love His Son. But, besides, it was the Father's Son who thus lay under the power of death, and, therefore, He cannot be left there. For His glory's sake, the Father would not suffer Its Holy One to see corruption. Take righteousness,-the Father's righteousness was magnified. " I have glorified thee on the earth, and now, 0 Father, glorify thou me with thine own self." The Father, having been indebted, so to speak, to the Son for having been glorified on the earth, had to see to it that He should now obtain His reward. Thus, everything that constitutes the Father's glory was at work in raising up Jests to His own right hand. There would have been a gap in heaven, a fearful gap, if Christ had not been raised.—But it was not possible that He should lie under the power of death.
"Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God, through Jesus Christ our Lord." He does not say realize, though that be all right in its place; but, reckon yourselves to be dead, since Christ is so,-in the power of this risen life. It is here I get this life-even in Christ risen. I get my soul elevated into the apprehension of the Father's glory, and character, and relationship to Christ, in seeing every divine perfection displayed in the raising of Christ, and being made partaker in Him of the life in the power of which He is raised.
How does this associate me with it? Why was He there in death? He was there for my sins, and this connects this risen life with my every day affections. It is not mental power or penetration that enters into it. It is the soul in the power of the Holy Ghost entering into the excellency of the person of Jesus-seeing that He was such a sort of person as could not be holden of death, and the glory of the Father engaged in His resurrection. Oh, when we know the person of Christ, then we know that He could not be holden of death. It was to the knowledge of this that the Lord led the woman of Samaria. He first deals with her conscience, "Go, call thy husband;" and then, after telling her " all that ever she did," He leads her on till He can say, " I that speak unto thee am he." So that the person of the Lord Jesus fills her heart and soul. It is when God has made the soul to apprehend, through the power of the Spirit, that it is a dead Christ who is raised that we get the power of life. I enter into union with Himself as risen, but as once dead for my sins, and come, by grace, into the condition I was in; raised up out of it by the glory of the Father. How near it brings the Lord to us. How could you or I rise up to heaven to see the Father's glory? But here I see the Father's glory enter into the place where Christ was dead for my sins. He has been concerned for me-exercised for me. And do not suppose, for a moment, that it is mental wisdom that gets to this. It is knowing that you are such a sort of sinner as that Christ was in the grave for your sins. First, conscience is reached by the power of the Spirit of God, then, the whole issue of its conflicts is seen in what takes place in His person wholly under the burden of our sins.
We see that all the power and glory of the Father was concerned in raising Him up, and the heart follows Him up there.
Next as to the manner. " If we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection." I do not get a half Christ. If He has died, and our sins are put away, then also He is risen, and our place is in Him as so risen. (For justification is not in this part of the epistle. Justification is not presented as His having put away sin, but that He in His person is the accepted one; (raised again for our justification;) and we in Him.) " Our old man is crucified with Him, that henceforth we should not serve sin." Serve sin! He is talking in the language of a country where they employ slaves; talking after the manner of men. You are servants now of righteousness-and yet not servants, for indeed it is liberty. The idea is that of one person who is at the will of another. He was the slave of sin. It is the same thing to be under the law and to be under sin. (See John 8) " The servant abideth not in the house forever." If you are under law you cannot abide forever you are only servants-you may be turned out, or (as told of slaves) killed if you do not serve well. But if you are a son you are a part of the household, you are free and you abide forever.
Now you cannot charge a dead man with anything. His master cannot bring a dead man under guilt. You cannot mortify till you have somebody to mortify. The life to which guilt could be charged has gone out of existence. We are dead. How can I talk so? Christ is dead, and we are dead in Him. "Now he that is dead is freed from sin." Ah! but you say, it is not done with. Are you wiser than God? He says that it is done with in Christ. It was all attached to Christ, laid on Christ, for us by grace, and He has died, and there is an utter end of it. For all that I see in myself, evil principles, and an evil nature, that is what He died for. It is done with in Christ. And now I am to mortify all that savors of it. Therefore " reckon ye yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin"-reckon-that is the word-and there is liberty-liberty from sin, and not to sin.
I make two remarks. While fruits are surely produced in me, the grand doctrine of Christianity is, that I am saved by a mediator. If I am to be saved by myself- all is gone; all is lost. If you ever enter into judgment you are lost. Therefore, the whole doctrine of salvation is this-there is a days-man. As to myself, as Job says, " If I wash myself with snow water, and make my hands never so clean, yet shalt thou plunge me in the ditch, and mine own clothes shall abhor me." But there is a days-man. One who can lay His hand upon both. And this days-man is Christ. He is my life, and of course I bring forth fruit; but I am made the righteousness of God in Him.
Still you say I find sin alive, nevertheless. But let me ask you, Is Christ all this for the sins that you have, or for the sins that you have not? Of course for those you have-those you find out. Those are the sins for which Christ died. The jealousy is all good, but with the jealousy remember the grace which has put them all away.
If we are dead we also live. I am brought, through connection with Christ, into a new state of existence, in which nothing can come against me—sin, Satan, or death. There is not a thing which could reach me as a sinner into which Christ has not gone for me, and He has got out of it all. We are set in quite a new place, like Israel the other side of the Red Sea. He died unto sin once. If He had shrunk from going through all that weighed down upon me as a sinner, I should not have escaped-I should have no liberty. "But he learned obedience by the things which he suffered." He was put under obedience to the uttermost. He was put through everything to see if unwillingness to obey could be found, (and that is sin,) and it could not. Therefore, in this death, there is not only expiation, but the moral perfection of the Redeemer. Christ never asked any other cup to be put away; but that cup He could not wish to drink. It was suffering for sin-the hiding of God's face. So in the garden, He chose rather to have God's face hidden than fail to obey. Now He lives beyond it all. Now mark, what is your position? You are dead-are you not? "Dead, indeed," but yet alive. There we get the proper christian position. It is not, "if you are not this you will not get the value of the blood," but you must be this because Christ is. I do not exhort one who is not my child to live like my child, No, in truth I do not. "Likewise, reckon ye yourselves," &c. I get the position and the consequence, I am to reckon that I am dead. This is faith. It does not say "experience," but reckon, and the consequence will come. By grace I have the title to reckon myself in like manner to be risen, then I live to God. I now get the justified position of living for God before the world, as before I got the condemned position of the sinful life of Adam. He does not say, yield your-selves to morality, but yield yourselves unto God. Whatever comes from God goes to God. (I hate myself when. I find myself doing a good thing, if it is not done to God. Alas! I find it. And in speaking of the best thing there may be the worst sin.) Now I yield myself to God. One of the first things I saw in the Gospels was, that Jesus never did anything for Himself. He had not time to sleep. Prayer occupied His night, or He rested in peace in the tossed ship. He is there in obedience, not merely in the things commanded, but because they were commanded. Oh what liberty! If you are a Christian you know what it is to be a slayer of sin and self-and that is the most blessed thing you can know. I have a right to have done with myself.
In the 5th chapter we have one, ungodly in himself, under the judgment of unrighteousness; here, one under the dominion of sin-like Israel of old, making bricks without straw. They did not like it, but they could not help it. Well, but you say, it has dominion; I am afraid I am not right. Where are you? You are putting yourself not under grace. You must be under grace, and then go to God and get power against sin. Therefore chapter 5 is before chapter 6. You must get under grace. Grace is not to a holy being-that is love. Grace is to one unworthy of it. "Sin shall not have dominion over you, for ye are not under the law, but under grace,"-you have God on your side against it.
Men will say that if you give man perfect peace he will forget God. Alas! it is in our wretched nature to do so at all times, and to abuse the relief of our conscience to do so. But the power of resurrection in Christ in which we have this relief sets us free from sin. How can he that is free be a slave? " If we are led of the Spirit we are not under the law." The Holy Spirit will never lead us into sin. " Being then. made free from sin, ye became the servants of righteousness." When I speak of your being servants, I speak after the manner of men; for after all it is real liberty to serve God. Now mark there is fruit in righteousness. What fruit had we in sin? Its end was death; but, righteousness, serving the will of God, bears blessed fruits. Not merely is there righteous fruit, but there is fruit in righteousness. " We have our fruit unto holiness."
W hat is holiness? Separation unto God. Adam was not holy-he was innocent. God is holy. He knows good and evil, loves the good and hates the evil. So it is with Jesus, and so with us. We love good and hate evil. I, as a creature, cannot estimate the difference between good and evil. So I must have God as an object to make out the full measure of good, and thus judge and be separate from the evil. The affections drawn to Christ are the channel and power of it. In this latter sense Christ could not have an object, though ever regarding the Father; and as man looking to the joy that was set before Him. But He had no need to have His affections drawn to an object to sanctify Him. He had them in perfect communion and truth. And indeed, as taking this resurrection place, He sanctified Himself, set Himself apart as the resurrection man through the revelation of whom we should be sanctified through the truth. He Himself was the object of God's delight on earth. (Matt. 3:16; 1716And Jesus, when he was baptized, went up straightway out of the water: and, lo, the heavens were opened unto him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and lighting upon him: (Matthew 3:16).) Elsewhere He is ours in heaven. (Acts 7:5656And said, Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing on the right hand of God. (Acts 7:56).)
There is no fruit from sin. It is the perishing down into death of that which is degraded by having lost the image of God. Now I must walk in righteousness. What is the consequence P I get withdrawn from the spirit and ways of the world; I get away from the influence of the things which govern it, my heart is more abundantly occupied in the practical liberty of the new nature, with that which is of God; confidence in Him is increased, prayer has a larger sphere, the heart is drawn nearer to Him, and living in intercourse with Him, He Himself is more fully known. It is not merely that there are fruits, for besides this practical walk in righteousness, there is connected with it the consecration of the heart to God, and the having knowledge of Him. If we live to God there will be the knowledge of what good and evil is in the eye of God-not simply that you live to Christ as to outward devotedness, but you will get your heart withdrawn from the influence of the things which drew it formerly away.
Therefore, in plain common life, oh let God be everything! Be not like one slipping and getting on, and slipping and getting on, as Christians often are, but be advancing quietly and steadily, increasing in separation to acid; then you will have fruit unto holiness, you yourselves being servants, it is not said unto holiness, but) unto God. There is the spring and glorious excellency and liberty of service. You may be a servant unto righteousness to satisfy your conscience and worry yourself to death. But what I get here, through grace, is, liberty through righteousness, and then Christ's will the motive of all I am to do. O blessed thing! It is liberty indeed. There must indeed be the practical every-day fruit; but besides this, there is the joy of serving God, positive joy of serving God. And it is sweet after all -after showing us this practical way of getting righteousness and true holiness, even the image of God-to learn, that eternal life is altogether of grace, the free gift of God. I had rather have eternal life as the gift of God than earn ten lives; for having it so, it is the proof of His love, and that is bliss.
The Lord give us, in every day common life, to live in the secret life of the heart, and hence in the outward life of our daily service to Him, founded, as it is, on reckoning ourselves to be dead and alive again, yielding ourselves unto God as those that are alive from the dead.