But when I speak of Christ my life and Christ being in me, the body dead because of sin, (its only fruit if alive in its own life,) I do not speak of a work done wholly outside me, finished, and accepted of God, so that sin can be more imputed; but of one which, though really and effectually done for me on one side, (or it would be legal efforts, and the spirit of bondage again to fear, as it is in so many,) is at the same time realized in me, so as to be experimental. “If Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin.” I reckon myself dead. In a word, experience comes in. Hence, while chapters vi. and viii. give me the ground of faith in what Christ has done, teaching me to reckon myself dead, and alive to God in Christ, because Christ has died, and has been raised from the dead, between this, so far as developed in chapter vi., and the enjoyed effect in chapter viii., we find introduced [in chap. vii.] the painful experience of that from which we have to be delivered.
The delivering work was done on the cross, so that our state, by faith in Christ, is, dead to sin and morally, (as to the life this side the cross, in which He, sinless, had to be made sin,) wholly closed, and alive now wholly beyond it all, with nothing but God to live to; and this, not by our efforts, but by faith through grace; yet, as conviction of guilt goes before known forgiveness, so the experimental knowledge of self before deliverance. No effort clears the guilt; no effort effects the deliverance; but there is the knowledge of self, and that we cannot get free by improvement or victory, as there is the knowledge of the guilt which is pardoned; only here it is self-knowledge and present experience.
Of this the law is ever the instrument; we have learned forgiveness already, the form is modified, takes the shape of hoping we have not deceived ourselves, and the like; but it is always a comparison of our state, and what God requires, (and that is law)—very useful for the discovery of our state, but bondage. I repeat, as itis important, wherever we reason from our state to what God's acceptance of us may be, that is in principle law, just as the prodigal son between his conversion and meeting his father. It calls itself holiness, will insist that without holiness no man shall see the Lord, which is necessarily and eternally true, but mixes it with God's acceptance of us, connecting this and our state, so that it is really righteousness, not holiness, that the mind is occupied with; for in holiness we hate evil because it is unholy, not because we are out of divine favor by it; but, whatever shape it takes, it is always really law, a question of evil that makes us unacceptable to God.
Now the doctrine is that we have died in Christ. The law supposes living responsible men, as of course as children of Adam we are. The law has power over a man as long as he lives; if dead, it cannot deal with him as a present responsible person. I cannot accuse a dead man, as a present thing, of evil lusts and self-will. The apostle puts the case of the marriage relationship: death dissolves it, and leaves the person free. We have died under law, but so are dead to law, and now are married to another, a risen Christ, who is as man put in a wholly new place after the question of sin is settled; and then is given the experience of the soul under the first husband, the law, not now as to guilt but as to the power of sin dwelling in us. Here I learn that in me (it is not what I have done) dwells no good thing, the flesh is simply and always bad. Secondly; it is not myself, being born of God, for I hate it; it is not therefore I. This is often a great relief, though it be not deliverance. But, thirdly, though it be not I, it is too strong for me—I am captive to it. All my efforts only prove this to me. As effort and conflict, I give it up as hopeless, and look for Another to come in and deliver me. I have learned that I have no strength (not that I am guilty), and that is what I had to learn, the lesson God was teaching me; and when brought there, I find it is all done. I am not in the flesh at all: the condemnation of the flesh which tormented me was accomplished on the cross; and I am in Him who is risen and is on high after all was done; and, founded on this, I have life, and power, and liberty by the Holy Ghost, by which I am in Him who is risen and I know it. The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death, and the sin in my flesh has been condemned in the cross, on which I died with Christ. I am not in the flesh (that, be it what it may, is not my standing before God) but in the Spirit, accepted in and as Christ is. We have boldness for the day of judgment, because as He is, so are we in this world.
The effects of this are of all importance in many ways. First the soul is happy, and has the Spirit of adoption, liberty in love before God. Secondly, the staff and strength of self is broken. There may be the truest purpose of heart, and yet unsuspected and unbroken self, as when Moses killed the Egyptian. And an experienced Christian will soon see the difference. Many do mischief in the church through this. With self we have ever to contend, ever to judge it; but self-confidence is another thing: there is not then the waiting upon God which characterizes the exercised soul which knows itself. Only I would add, we may find self-judgment, when not delivered, and only on the way to it, but then confidence in God will be wanting.
Further, the whole character of worship is affected where mete forgiveness is known. The ground of it is only deliverance from guilt and ruin—true, but a witness that our conversation is not in heaven, what we were as guilty sinners, rests still on the spirit. Now I believe that the wonders of the grace that redeemed us, and of the value of Christ's precious blood, will be more felt in heaven than here; but we shall enjoy what is actually there, without thinking habitually of where we were. But our conversation is in heaven now, our living relationships for the new man; we belong to it—are in Christ; our affections are to be set upon things above, developed in connection with what is there: the Holy Ghost gives us to know the things freely given to us of God.
And this will affect every part of the Christian's inward life, and his more outward life and service. Hundreds will be found who have found peace in forgiveness, but not deliverance as taught in the word. I add, as it is sometimes a difficulty, that the two parts of Romans must be read not as in necessary sequence as to their contents. The first, chapters i.-v. 11, treats of personal guilt, and grace that meets it; the second, chapters v. 12-viii. 39, of our state through Adam's sin, and the remedy for that.
I would add, as a further help, that if there is heart-indifference, or even sloth, it is not surprising that we do not find deliverance, or if there is a walk contrary to the mind of the Spirit, or what a Christian should seek, deliverance by the power of the Spirit is hardly to be looked for. But, further, if a person who has found deliverance is so walking, though the soul may not get back into uncertainty as to its standing, or return into a seventh-of-Romans state, yet the Spirit, which is the power of that state, being ever grieved, and so communion with the Father and the Son lost, though not the knowledge of the relationship, the affections not being filled with what belongs to this new position,—all is confusion and obscurity in the soul. One is a child, but where is my father? I belong to heaven, but where for me is the heaven I belong to? What I know of both serves but to make sensible to me my actual loss of them. Hence, though it is not subjectively a question whether I am a son, it is objectively the failure of what a son enjoys, so that darkness is on the spirit; I hardly know whether I can call myself so, though I do not doubt it. For this the only remedy is humiliation, and drawing near to the Lord, and giving up the hindering idol.
In dealing with the souls of others the first point is to discern whether the soul is really delivered, or if it be negligence when it has understood its position in Christ before God. This is a matter of spiritual discernment. Where there is a legal and self-judging temperament, it is not always so easy. And we must remember that there are many true souls who do cry, Abba, Father, with God, but through bad teaching are afraid to take their place in acceptance; these we must seek to make clear by the word.
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