The foundation truth of Christianity is that God has done with mere dealing with the flesh. He has another man, even a new Man, Christ risen from the dead; and the Christian has received Hint. This is practically what God has to make good in the heart of the Christian. "Walk ye in Him." A young Christian may be cast down after receiving Christ, through the sense of evil he finds in himself. He wonders how this can be. He knows how Christ deserves to be served, and is conscious how little he serves Him as he ought; he is filled with grief and sorrow about himself, and perhaps begins to doubt whether he is a Christian at all. He has not yet learned his lesson. He has not mastered even what his baptism set forth, the value of having a Savior who is dead and risen. He is occupied still with something of the old man; he looks at it and expects to get better, hoping that his heart will not have so many bad thoughts, etc., as he used to have; whereas the only strength of the Christian is being filled with Christ, with all that is lovely in Him before God.
The saint, in proportion as he enjoys Christ, lives above himself. There is the exercise of that by virtue of which the Christian is said to be dead and risen-the new life which the Holy Ghost communicates to all who believe. Only the believer feels what is unlike Christ; but he rests in what Christ is to God, and this makes him happy. When he becomes engrossed with what takes place within him, he is cast down. It is not that he should not judge himself for what is contrary to Christ, but that he should treat it as vile and bad, as that which flows from man and not from Christ; and then, having confessed it to God, he should turn away resolutely from it to the Savior. The believer has acquired the title in Christ not to be cast down because of what he finds within him-not to be disheartened because there dwells no good thing in his flesh. Is not this what the revealed Word of God tells him so constantly? And yet how many go on months and years, expecting some good thing to come out! I do not, of course, mean that they are not born of God; but they are so under the effect of old thoughts and notions, acquired by catechisms, books of divinity, and sermons, that they do not enter into the full liberty wherewith Christ makes free.
Nothing can be plainer than the Holy Ghost's decision in the matter. He shows that the very smallest insisting on the law, in any shape, brings you in a debtor to do the whole of it; and if so, where are you before God? You are lost and hopeless, if you have a-conscience. The question of the law generally comes up now as connected with sanctification. In the case of the Galatians (chap. 5), it came out strongly in the matter of justification. But the Christian has no more to do with it in one form than another. In verses 1-4 it is connected with justification. In the latter part of the chapter its link is with sanctification, which is the connection, and the only connection, in Rom. 6, where justification is not touched upon, but only the believer's walk. As to this, he is not under law, but under grace. What a blessed thing it is to stand in this true grace of God!
If I look at my salvation, it is all His grace; and if I think what is to give strength to my walk and service, it is just the same. Grace is the spring all through. God does not alter, now that He has revealed, the fullness of grace in Christ. Launched into that ocean, He will riot go back into what had to do with exposing and scourging the old man, needful as the task was. Is He not rejoiced to have done with that which never wrought anything else, as far as man was concerned, but the mere crushing of those that had a conscience, and an opportunity to make out a self-righteousness for those that had none; those that were conscientious, groaning and miserable; and those that were not, full of themselves and of their fancied goodness? God justifies sinners. What a glory of God! "To him that worketh not, but believeth on Him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted to him for righteousness."
How is it, then, one may ask, that any ungodly are not justified? Because they do not believe that God is as good as He is; because the gift of Christ is too great for them; because their confidence is in themselves, or at least they have no confidence in God. And the reason why they have none is, from not believing what Christ is for the sinner. When I know His glory and His cross-that He has turned it all now into the scale of the poor soul who goes to Him because of his sins -then I see that it is impossible that God could not save him who stands in the same scale with Christ; and this is what the soul does that believes in Christ. He may be as light as a feather, but it is not his own weight that he depends on, but on what Christ is and what Christ has done. God has confidence in the work of His Son, and he has; that is faith. A man is a believer who no longer trusts in his own works, nor in his own feelings, but in God's estimate of the cross of His Son, God being not only gracious but righteous in that very thing.
I want to know that I have got through Christ that whereby God is glorified in thus blessing me. And therefore He is what He is-righteous in justifying my soul. If I have Christ, God is equally righteous in justifying me, as He would be in condemning me if I had Him not. The righteousness of God that would condemn the sinner is the very thing that in Christ justifies the sinner; but, then, it also secures holiness. It is not merely a robe over him, but there is a new life as well; and I receive that new life in receiving Christ; in a word, we have justification of life in Him. And of what character is this life? Not the same as Adam's. That would not do, because Adam fell after he had life. But Christ laid down His life, that He might take it again in resurrection; and hence we never lose the life that He has given us-a life stamped with His victory over the grave; in fact, our life is Christ risen from the dead. No wonder, then, that it is everlasting, and that we can never perish. It is the life of One risen, over whom death has no more dominion. And such, consequently, is the position of the believer. Of course there may be the physical act of passing through death, but we are speaking about the life God communicated to the soul; and that life is the everlasting life of Christ, after He had put away our sins on the cross.