What is it to be dead with Christ, dead to sin and to the rudiments of the world? Upon the answer to this question hangs the truth or error of the perfectionist system.
In commencing our inquiry I would remind the reader of what we have already looked at (in chapter 2) as to the distinction between standing and state. Standing has reference to what I am as viewed by God through the work of His Son. State is my actual condition of soul. “That I also may be of good comfort,” says Paul, “when I know your state.” He speaks elsewhere of “this grace wherein ye stand.” The two things are very different.
Death with Christ has to do with my standing. “Reckon yourself dead” refers to my state. It should readily be apprehended that no one but the thieves on the cross ever died with Christ actually, and one of them was lost. Thomas on one occasion said, “Let us also go, that we may die with Him.” He referred to a literal death with Lazarus and with Christ, for whom to go into Judaea seemed to the disciples to be imperiling His life.
But Christ is now living in glory; and it is nineteen hundred years too late for anyone to die with Him, so far as experience is concerned. Supposing the “death” of Romans 6 were state or experience, therefore, it could not be properly described as dying with Christ, but as Christ, or for Christ. To many it may seem needless to dwell upon this; but no one would think so who is familiar with the misuse of the expression in the holiness preaching and perfectionist literature of the day.
In these death is made to be experience. Believers are exhorted to die. They try to feel dead; and if in measure insensible to insult, deprivation, and praise or blame, they consider they have died with Christ; never realizing the illogical use of the language in question. When did Christ have to die to these things? When was He ever annoyed by blame or uplifted by praise? How then could stoical resignation be likened to death with Him?
One verse of tremendous import puts the scriptural use of the term beyond all cavil: “In that He died, He died unto sin once” (Rom. 6:1010For in that he died, he died unto sin once: but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God. (Romans 6:10)). If it be said that I have “died with Him,” it must be in His death, and to the same things to which He died. What then are we to learn from so solemn a statement?
Notice one thing very carefully. It does not — could not — say, “In that He died, His death was the end of inbred sin”! Yet this is what it should have said if my death with Him is the death of my inbred sin. But this could never be; for He was ever the Holy One in whom was no sin.
Yet He died unto sin. In what sense? Manifestly as taking my place. As my Substitute, He died unto sin in the fullest possible sense — sin in its totality, the tree and the fruit — but all mine, not His! He “loved me, and gave Himself for me;” and in so doing He died unto sin, bearing the judgment of God due to me, the guilty one. God “hath made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Cor. 5:21). And having been made sin in my room and stead, and died for it, He has done with it forever — He has died unto it once for all, and in His death I see my death, for I died with Him!
When and where did I die with Him? There on His cross, nineteen centuries ago, when He died, “the Just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God.” There I, and every other child of God, died unto sin with Him, henceforth to live unto God, even as it is written, “And He died for all, that they who live should no longer live to themselves, but to Him who died for them and has been raised” (2 Cor. 5:14-15, N. T.).
Who, that desires to be taught of God and to learn alone from Scripture, need stumble here? Christ’s substitutionary death is accounted by God as my death, and the death of all who believe in Him; and through that death we are introduced into our new standing as risen from the dead, and seen in Christ before His Father’s face. “He hath made us accepted in the Beloved” (Eph. 1:66To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved. (Ephesians 1:6)). This is my new and glorious position because I have died with Christ. I need not try to die, or pray to die, or seek to feel dead (absurdity beyond expression!); but Scripture says, “Ye have died, and your life is hid with Christ in God” (Col. 3:33For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. (Colossians 3:3)).
The practical results of this are many. Learning that I have died with Christ, I see at once the incongruity of denying this in my practical walk, or in any way owning the right of sin, which indwells me still, to exercise control over me. It was once my master, but Christ has died to sin — root, branch, and fruit; and His death was mine. Therefore I must in faith reckon myself to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ my Lord. Notice, I do not reckon the sin to be dead, or uprooted, or anything of the kind. I know it is there, but I am dead to it. Faith reckons with God, and says, “In Christ’s death I died out of the sphere where sin reigns. I will not obey it therefore any longer.” And while walking by faith, “sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not under the law, but under grace” (Rom. 6:1414For sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not under the law, but under grace. (Romans 6:14)). What folly to speak of sin not having dominion if it be dead! The very pith and marrow of the Apostle’s teaching is that though it remains in my mortal body, I am not to let it reign there (Rom. 6:1212Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof. (Romans 6:12)).
While I live in this world I shall never be actually free from sin’s presence; but I can and should be delivered from its power. God hath “condemned sin in the flesh,” not rooted sin out of the flesh; and as I condemn it too, and refuse all allegiance to it, walking in the Spirit with Christ as my soul’s object, I am delivered from its control.
I reckon myself dead unto sin because in Christ I died to it; but it is only as I keep the distinction between the two phases of death clear in my mind that I am freed from confusion of thought.
Hoping I have been enabled of God to make this plain to any troubled one, I pass on to consider a question often asked at this point: “If what has been taught is the truth, how can I be perfect in love with sin still dwelling in me?” For answer to this we must turn to 1 John 4:15-1915The woman saith unto him, Sir, give me this water, that I thirst not, neither come hither to draw. 16Jesus saith unto her, Go, call thy husband, and come hither. 17The woman answered and said, I have no husband. Jesus said unto her, Thou hast well said, I have no husband: 18For thou hast had five husbands; and he whom thou now hast is not thy husband: in that saidst thou truly. 19The woman saith unto him, Sir, I perceive that thou art a prophet. (John 4:15‑19). To avoid one-sidedness, we shall quote the entire passage; and may I ask the reader to weigh every word, observing too that I am using a literal translation in closer accord with the original Greek text than our much-prized Authorized Version gives in this particular instance. “Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. And we have known and have believed the love which God has to us. God is love; and he that abides in love abides in God, and God in him. Herein has love been perfected with us, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment, that even as He is, we also are in this world. There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear: for fear has torment; and he that fears has not been made perfect in love. We love Him, because He has first loved us.”
Now, with the passage before us, allow me to ask the reader four questions:
1st. Whose love is it which we have believed? See the answer in the first part of verse 16.
2d. Whose love is it in which we are called to abide? Read the latter part of the same verse.
3d. Where do we find perfect love manifested — in me, or in the cross of Christ? Note carefully verses 17 and 18.
4th. What is the result in me of coming into the knowledge of love like this? The 15th verse supplies the answer.
Now let me attempt a paraphrase of the passage, in place of an exposition, which for so simple a scripture seems needless. “Every one confessing the truth as to Jesus is at one mind with God, having received a new divine life, and thus is enabled to enjoy fellowship with God, whose mighty love we know and believe, having, indeed, rested our souls upon the greatness of that love toward us. God Himself has been revealed as love; and in that love we dwell. Knowing its perfection as manifested in the cross of Christ, we do not dread the day of judgment, because we know that love has already given Jesus to bear our sins. His death was ours; and now God sees us in Him, and we are, in God’s sight, as free from all charge of guilt as His Son. Therefore we have no fear, for it is impossible that there should be fear in love: yea, this perfect love of God has banished every fear which could only torment us if this love had not been apprehended. If any still are in fear, as they think of meeting God, it is because they have not fully seen what His love has done. Their apprehension of His love is still very imperfect. But where His love is known and rested in, we love in return, for perfect love like His cannot but induce love in its object, when truly enjoyed.”
Need words be multiplied? Is it not plain that there is no hint of that perfect love being developed in me, and thus my reaching a state of perfection in the flesh? On the contrary, perfect love is seen objectively in the cross of Christ, and enjoyed subjectively in the soul of the believer.