Up to this point I had been as a quickened soul in the position of a child of Adam, and practically under the law, laboring to have done with the old man, with sin in the flesh, but without success. Now I have died with Christ, and so do not belong to the old position of a child of Adam. Death clearly closes all relationship and bond with it. I cannot speak of a man who is lying dead as having evil lasts and a perverse will. The law might show me the evil, but could not remedy it. But I have died with Christ, and am delivered from the law; the condemnation is passed, being accomplished on the cross; but that was in death, so that I reckon myself dead, and no condemnation there. Up to that it was effort to overcome what remained untouched there in its vital strength. But God has dealt for us with this in Christ, Himself sinless. And we have not overcome but been delivered, having died un that wherein we were held, for Christ has for us. Hence, in Col. 3, God pronounces on our position, “Ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.” With God the question is settled. I am not in the flesh, not in the standing of a child of Adam. I have died in that when Christ died. This judgment of God, declared in Col. 3, is deliverance; for that which I was hopelessly struggling under is dead and gone—the old “I” of my corrupt and sinful nature; not only that I have received divine life in power in Christ (Rom. 8:2), but that the sin of the old man has been condemned in the cross, and I, as such, died there. My standing is in Christ, not in Adam or flesh at all. It is not that the flesh is not in me, but it is not my standing and place before God. I am in Christ, or in the Spirit: in Christ, consequent on His having died and risen, and gone up beyond sin and death and judgment; or in the Spirit, which is the power of it down here.
Faith, in Rom. 6, takes up the judgment of God in Col. 3, and I reckon myself dead to sin, and alive to God; not in Adam, but in Jesus Christ our Lord. Hence, while” where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty,” this liberty has a double aspect: conscious liberty in the light before God as in Christ, and a son; and liberty from the law of sin in the flesh. I have got into the new place in Christ, in that I have died to the old thing—Adam—and am alive in Christ. Had I to die, or to get free, by my own victory, I should not succeed; but I have found the need of a Deliverer, as unable myself to set aside flesh, and have by grace found one in, by faith, having died and risen with Christ. I have not to die, I reckon myself dead, because by the Holy Ghost Christ who died is in me as my life. The Holy Ghost gives me adoption, and the consciousness of being in Christ a son. It does give me faith as to having died in Christ; but it cannot give me the consciousness that the flesh is not there, but that I am not a debtor to it, nor that I am living after the Spirit when I am not. I know the conflict exists, that the flesh lusts against the Spirit, but that, the Spirit being there, I am not under the law. There I was captive to the law of sin. In the Spirit I am not; on the contrary, Christ's grace is sufficient for me, His strength made perfect in weakness. I am at liberty, because the sin I have discovered in my flesh has been condemned in the cross of Chris, tend that was in death; so that for faith I am crucified with Him, and got into the new place of man before God, after the cross, and in resurrection, past sin, Satan's power, death and judgment. That place is liberty—liberty before God and from the law of sin. I am dead to it, having died with Christ. Romans does not go farther than death in this doctrine, and Christ being our life. In Colossians resurrection with Him is introduced, and we are dead also to the world.
As to our life, the old things are passed, and Christ is our life, we having with Him died to sin, and now alive to God with Him, my whole spiritual condition in connection with sin in the flesh having closed by death; and this is so perfect, that we could, if God's time were come go, and be, as the thief, Christ's companion in paradise. But generally we are left here, and have to do with the old man—the flesh—free, redeemed out of the state and standing I was in, but having to do with the existence of flesh in me, with Satan and the world around. It is with the first I have now to do. Now in this state of things, that is, in a believer sealed with the Spirit, the conscious relationship with God as sons, and true liberty is there. But there is more; when we have learned what it is to have died with Christ, the soul is set “free from the law of sin and death.” He that is dead is justified from sin—not sins. You cannot accuse a dead man of a perverse will or evil lusts. But the flesh is in me. Now, captive to the law of sin in my members is not the place of conflict nor of victory, any more than Israel had to fight in Egypt. There may be carelessness as regards our communion with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord; but this is only deadness of soul, and the power of present things, the want of spiritual feeling. But if we do not mortify the deeds of the body, there is a positive evil power at work, positive evil rises up; if there be conscience, the sense of a bad state is there, and a worse one if there be not—the spiritual judgment is deteriorated. The flesh has a power which does not answer to deliverance, and we see persons who have not lost the sense of their standing with God, and are in that sense at liberty, in whom the flesh works as if spiritual power in Christ were not there.
Now, in such cases, the remedy is not to deny the deliverance; “where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty,” “the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free.” Entangling the soul again in the yoke of bondage is not what gives power. Slaves are not combatants, the yoke has to be broken. Where there is liberty and spiritual power, there is conflict. “The flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh.” Hence it is so beautifully put in the end of Rom. 6, Now you are free, dead to sin, and alive in Christ to God, to whom are you going to give yourselves? to sin, or to righteousness and God, with fruit to holiness and the end everlasting life? Such is God's way, by freeing us from the law of sin, and putting us in the liberty of adoption with Himself, to set us in the conflict, to realize fruit unto holiness here. Our standing is perfect, our state in no way; meet in Christ to be with Him, but exercised in daily spiritual life, if left here, how far we live up to the life which is ours in Christ through Christ in us. God's view of our position, as noticed, is in Col. 2; 3 Faith takes this up (Rom. 6), and the believer reckons himself dead to sin, and alive to God in Christ. In 2 Cor. 4:10 we have the practical carrying it out, and God's dealing with us in view of it: “Always bearing about in the body the dying (not the death) of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus may be manifested in our bodies.”
Theoretically there ought to be no movement of the flesh in us, it being suppressed by this application of the dying of Jesus. This supposes the activity of the new man to keep our thoughts and ways up to the level of the blessing into which we have been introduced, practically the life of Jesus manifested in us. It supposes a lusting flesh, but always absolutely kept down. “If Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin” (if it lives of its own life and will, it will produce only that), “and the Spirit is life because of righteousness.” But, alas! this normal condition is not always maintained, as we know, if we know ourselves; and God disciplines us. “We are delivered to death"; well for us if it be “for Jesus' sake.” If we fail, we have an Advocate with the Father, or we may have a thorn in the flesh, that we may not fail. Our normal condition is to be beholding with open face the glory of the Lord, and being changed into the same image, and feeding by faith on Him in His humiliation as the bread come down from heaven, and so living by Him, abiding in Him, and growing up unto Him, who is the Head, in all things. When walking thus, the flesh has no power; it is there, but the heart in elsewhere. Still, down here, we are passing through temptations and snares, and watching and praying constantly is needed not to enter into them, because the disposition of nature, if not will, is there. Power is there in Christ for us. We are not under the law of sin, but spiritually free, and there is no excuse for failure, but we do all fail. Where there is not diligence in watching and praying, we do not lose the sense of our position, but we act inconsistently with it. A son may never for a moment have such a question rise in his mind, but he may be a naughty rebellious son. So sin has power over the unwatchful unpraying believer, who yet never doubts of his place in Christ hen he has been set free. He is not a slave, but a son, but more faulty than if he were a slave. He is not under the law of sin, but he is practically governed by it in his ways, because he is not profiting by the grace and power of Christ, his conscience and heart keeping far away from Him. The standard of his Christianity becomes frightfully lowered, and he sees “no harm” in things from which, in times past, he would have shrunk—not because they were prohibited, but because the life and Spirit of Christ in him found no food or attraction in them, but the contrary. Yet he may not have lost the sense of his place before God; in that sense he has deliverance, as a child goes on in the sense that he is a child, though heedless of his father's will and of his father's pleasure. But this is a sad state. The remedy is not making him doubt of his adoption, but pressing with the claim of Christ's love his walking worthy of the calling wherewith he is called. But it is of all moment to see that deliverance, in the sense of known relationship with God, our place in Christ, not in Adam or in flesh, is a distinct thing from deliverance in the sense of the realization of death and resurrection with Christ. This is the basis of that, known by the presence and power of the Holy Ghost. But one is the place we are in, the other the experimental power of walking according to that place, and, as the flesh is in us, requiring diligence of heart in seeking grace and strength (for without Christ we can do nothing), seeking Him, and the things which are above, where He is seated, and bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus. But it is of all moment that we recognize deliverance from the law of sin as the Christian state. Here only is power, the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus, the power of the Spirit of God working in the life of Christ. There is true liberty, and that based on Christ's dying to sin once, and for sin. (Rom. 6; 8) There is, for such, a grace sufficient for us, and strength made perfect in weakness; so that there is no excuse for the commission of sin, though the flesh be in us. And here spiritual exercises have their place, to the acquisition of heavenly things in spirit, and a heavenly character down here. It is evident that the grace and strength of Christ only can enable us to walk in the path in which He walked, but that grace is sufficient for us. But His strength—it is its nature and character—is made perfect in weakness, and there must be known weakness in us to find this strength. Hence those exercises of heart before deliverance in which we learn our weakness, that we cannot get the victory even when we desire it, which lead to the felt need of deliverance. This we find in the death of Christ, and are thus free— “free from the law of sin and death.” Consequent on this there is victory, and if kept in the sense that we have no strength in ourselves, the peaceful though watchful consciousness that He is with us, as well as that without Him we can do nothing. Deliverance is His dying to sin once, and we in Him, and, while thus free, having the strength in Him which is made perfect in weakness in us. Till we have learned that we cannot free ourselves, we do not get freedom. Freedom is the portion of every Christian so taught of God; strength, of him who abides in the sense that he has none, and looks to Christ: only these are the Lord's gracious dealings with us to keep us in this position.