It would be impossible in words to express sufficiently the momentous and solemn nature of the subject, conveyed by the above words of scripture. As the Lord may help, I would set before my readers a little of what they bring before the heart, as to the great fact announced in them, as well as the corresponding effect intended to be produced in practice; it were an evil day when doctrine and practice are divorced; and there are not wanting at the present moment signs of deep- seated danger in that very direction. How solemn a triumph of the enemy in this would be! How easily he will succeed if the truth be received only in terms, heard only in the utterance of the loftiest and highest expressions, without any corresponding effect in manner of life. Let us not forget that the characteristic mark of the last days is the having a form of piety, but denying the power of it. See 2 Tim. 3:5, 65Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away. 6For of this sort are they which creep into houses, and lead captive silly women laden with sins, led away with divers lusts, (2 Timothy 3:5‑6). It is our wisdom to watch jealously all the inroads of the enemy in this direction. First, then, let us seek to enter into the meaning of the words, “dead with Christ.” What do they imply? Surely there is a far deeper thought in them than that which occupies the first part of Romans, namely, the bearing our sins. Have we not in the words “dead with Christ” such an association with Christ in His death, as closes forever before God our previous history and condition, as that of fallen, sinful Adam? I could not better express the truth which by God’s grace my soul has bowed to, than in the following beautiful words of another: “When He died, He, who knew no sin, came out of that condition of life in flesh and blood, to which in us sin attached, in which we were sinners, and in which He, the sinless One, in the likeness of sinful flesh and a sacrifice for sin, was made sin for us” . . . “Christ, the sinless One, came and stood for us and God’s glory substitutively; that is, as a sacrifice in that place, He was made sin, underwent the forsaking of God, and, glorifying God, died in and to the place, to the whole condition of being, in which we were, and in which, as made sin. He stood for us before God.” “Christ took human life in grace and sinless; and as alive in this life, He took sin upon Him. Sin belongs, so to speak, to this life in which Christ knew no sin, but was made sin for us. But He dies—He quits this life. He is dead to sin; He has done with sin in having done with the life to which sin belonged, not in him indeed but in us, and alive in which He was made sin for us. Raised up again by the power of God, He lives in a new condition, into which sin cannot enter, being left behind with the life that He left. Faith brings us into it by grace.”
This I believe with all my heart to be the truth, of deepest moment just now, and shortness as to it, not only leaves us outside the mind of God as thus set forth, but correspondingly leaves us in our soul’s apprehension, in the condition of being in which we were as in Adam fallen, and out of which Christ’s precious death alone could extricate us. It is thus there can be no recognition whatever of man in the flesh, either as to allowance or acceptance of it.
There is also another point now to which I desire to call special attention. I will do so by italicizing the word association, when I use the expression “with Christ in death,” I mean by it, the association of the believer with Him in His death. I do this to distinguish it from union. Union with Christ was impossible until He had risen out of death and ascended into glory. Union with Christ in incarnation is a solemn denial of His own words (see John 12:2424Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit. (John 12:24)), and is the root of popery and its adjuncts. Association or identification are not the same as union. A Christian is indeed united to Christ by the Holy Ghost, but it is to Christ who has died, is risen again, and gone into glory.
Nothing can be more important in its place than a distinct and definite apprehension of this great reality. Not only has Christ died for us, but we have died with Him, believers can say. Oh that we might see, that the saints of God might see, how this cuts at the root of everything. What can a dead man seek down here in this world? This question is suggested by the great fact that I am seeking to press; everything that man in the flesh had to reckon with God about, but which he never could have settled, has all been disposed of between God and Christ. To nature and to common sense, the thing is impossible, unreasonable, absurd. But to faith, not only is it most blessedly true, but the believer can also say that he has died with Christ, is past the judgment, and out of the condition on which in relation to us judgment rested, so that there is naught against him, but he is alive for evermore in a life which death cannot touch, which knows no grave, is beyond judgment and the judgment land, yea, even in which judgment is turned into victory.
Further, as regards this life, nothing can be more blessed than to see how it has objects and motives entirely its own. This is what may be called the Positive side of the question, and on which I do not now dwell. But I do press Christ’s death in the special aspect of it already before us, and the association of the believer with Him, in death, and the value of that association, not only to get judicially clear from the penalties resting upon man as a fallen creature, a descendant of Adam, though without all question, in that light, all judgment is past and that for ever: but that which is beyond all doubt most blessed, is, the value of that association as setting the believer free from self and the world, so that he can brightly and happily say, “God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me and I unto the world.” This it is that a man must be fully assured of through faith and by the Holy Ghost, even that in the sight of God, he has died with Christ, that he is regarded by God in that sense, as dead, and that he so regards himself; this it is that enables him, as is well said, “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.” How true it is that “Christ’s death is made of little effect by most Christians; 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, and that this is a most solemn sin. The Colossians who had been dead in their sins, and in the uncircumcision of the flesh, 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?” 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.” 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 for ever as the Lamb who was dead, but is alive again for evermore.”
Beloved reader, has God in His infinite grace brought these things before our hearts? If indeed it be so, may this further grace be given us, that they act in power upon us, and that we may find grace and power to act on them.