After justification in Rom. 5 we have in chapter 6 life. In chapter 7 having life, what is to be done with the law? This is the whole subject of the chapter. No man knows himself or the law, if he thinks for a moment of putting himself under it. The first thing, very strong, is nature fancying it can keep the law, thanking God for what it is itself, instead of for what God is. Nature looks to keeping the law as a way of getting a standing before God. Any supposition that being under grace and not under law is setting aside morality really implies that morality can do it. No one who speaks of law and being under it has ever known the wickedness of his own heart. No one can see God without having a nature suited to God. The law and Christ cannot go together. If under law, we cannot have Christ; and if we have Christ, we cannot be under law. I may use the name of Christ, and make a law of Him. Has the flesh a single motion in Christ? I do not want a fresh life if I have got the old one. Law deals with a man, whatever nature he may have; it says, Are you what I require? Do you lust? It is no matter my saying, “I do, but I hate lust.” The law says, “I will not have you: you must give entire obedience—do continually all things written to do them, if not you must be cursed, for cursed is every one,” &c. There is no sense in putting oneself under law, and allowing it to be broken. If I talk of mercy acting with law, I am counting myself to be not what the law requires, and am letting myself off. At the close of the chapter we get the case of a person under law, who knows its spirituality, “I would do good, but I cannot.” Could such a person be happy? No, always a miserable and wretched man. Did God give His Son to make men be always saying, Oh wretched man that I am? No. I am quite sure the Son of God was not given to save our souls, nor the Holy Ghost sent down to dwell in us, to have that result. The law says, Here I come with my claim upon you; you say, “I have such a bad nature—the law is spiritual, but I am carnal.” Such a person has not to do with Christ or the Holy Ghost, but himself. The law, besides condemning the sinner, provokes the sin; resisting the will only makes it stronger (not the fault of the law). Another thing I have found out, sin is in me; the natural man knows nothing about sin, but I find out I am a bad tree, I have lusts, &c., and another thing, I have no force to get out of it. (This is much harder to learn.) I want to get my conscience quieted by holiness, but this will not do. It is not Christ. We have not got to learn what ungodliness is, we know that already; but what we have to learn is what we are. None has ever done that quite. Have any in this room that knowledge of self which looks at the springs in self and finds no good at all in it! The tree is condemned—nothing will do till the thing that produces all bad fruit is judged. Christ declared, and was, what God required. My being born again cannot meet the case, because righteousness must come in. I am not righteous; but am I hoping to be by going back to the old husband, and giving up the Second, Christ? In all cases it is thinking of self instead of Christ. Am I to be thinking only of self? Many Christians are; in this chapter it is all “I,” it does not hint at Christ. When talking of sin, it is I that have come out. What we love is what we are. I say, “Oh, wretched man that I am I how shall I be holy?” but when I say, “Who shall deliver me?” it changes the whole thing. Another comes in that can deliver; then instead he exclaims, “I thank God through Jesus Christ.” This finishes the whole thing; nothing more is wanted. Deliverance has come in through Jesus Christ. You say, “Shall I then not find the power of sin in me?” To be sure you will, but it will not have dominion over you; you are delivered from it by another. When I was in the flesh is a past thing, not the flesh in me, but I in the flesh. Now I am moved out of it altogether; I am not in the flesh at all. Suppose I say I was in France, I am not there now. I am dead. Where are lusts in a dead man? The law has killed me. I am dead out and out.
You say, “Have you not got any lusts now?” I am not talking of that, nor of the old thing at all, but of the new. I am in Christ. Christ was down here as a sinless man—takes my place—is made sin for me on the cross. I am dead with Him: he that is dead is freed from sin. What can the law do against a man that is put in prison and dies there? Christ was killed. I am dead to the law by the body of sin having been destroyed; it has no power over me. Many Christians make an idol of their experiences, making a pride of what ought to lay them in the dust.
I remember a Christian once saying, “Do you know anything of the killing power of the law?” Yes, I replied, I do know it so well that I am dead. Utterly ruined and condemned, I look for a Deliverer from both—that is, from the flesh, and from condemnation. I have got deliverance by going through death that delivers. Is there no conflict? To be sure there is, but it does not mix itself up with my condition before God at all. If not standing in the flesh, conflict I must have against it—and failure too. How much have I been wanting in love all this day! If in the flesh, I should be totally lost.
There is no question about conflict with God. Why? Because Christ has gone through it, and is set down at the right hand of God; the new nature in Christ is the true “I.” The flesh is the same as ever, but I am not in it. Turn to Gal. 5:16-18, and see where conflict is spoken of. We do not find a word about the Spirit in Rom. 7. There we get life under law here in conflict against the flesh, but not under law. If really in communion with God, and I indulge a single idle thought, It is gone: restored it will be of course. If led by the Spirit, you are not under law; what you want is the rule of the Spirit in your heart. When you are wrong, what do you want? You want power to get back again. Are you going to get it in the law? I shall not find power out of the path God has put me in. “If thou wilt, I will.” I do not question you may be kept from sin. Peter got into a dreadfully slippery place, yet afterward the Lord could trust all to him.
We must have a risen Christ to bring forth fruit. When the prodigal son was in the Father's presence, he did not want help; he found perfect love, he got the best robe. I want to be brought into the Father's presence to know that all is over with me. Then comes the experience of Christian life.
The last part of this chapter (8.) gives us God's security; we are kept, not by the Holy Ghost in us, but by God for us. This last point is seen in a double way: God for us, and then Christ (joined together), God in the power and majesty of a divine Being; then Christ as man entering into all we have to pass through; so that in every circumstance, and in all that seems against me, I reckon on His love, from which nothing can separate me. We have the Holy Spirit showing us all glory—then in us, comforting and leading, and now the apostle adds in conclusion, “What shall we say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us?” We have got God Himself to reckon on, not reckoning what we are before God, but that He is for us. And that is not all. Not only I am justified before God, but God Himself has justified me, and is for me. This truth is before everything, and reaches over everything. “If God be for us, who can be against us?”
We find it brought out in Zech. 3 Joshua clothed in filthy garments, and Satan at his right hand. What could Joshua say? Nothing but Jehovah answered for him, and Satan was foiled. He tried to accuse God's work, and could not. If God was for Joshua, that settled the whole thing. If God, having plucked me as a brand from the fire clothes my soul, He clothes me as He would have it. If He washes it, it is washed, as according to His mind, it needed.
When the thought of appearing before God is vividly realized by death being brought near, there is often fear. I do not speak physically; many may dread death as far as the body is concerned; but I speak of fear in the sense of peace being disturbed; I mean as to confidence before God, on one side the dense of sin, on the other the affections being exercised. There is a wonderful mingling of heart and conscience. A quantity of things may be going on before the mind that have never been before God at all—things that go on in the heart unsuspected from day to day—certain motives, &c., that have never been before God. At the hour of death, all will come up with the sense of sin, and get from the heart into the conscience before the Lord. Most certainly all will come up, and might have great power to disturb my peace, but that in the presence of it all I know God is for me, and nothing can be laid to my charge. At the same time I bow down my soul and own how I have failed, half my time occupied by nothings and not God, who yet in spite of it all, is for me, before I begin to judge myself. If I begin with self, I shall begin under law; but if I begin with God, I begin under grace. I join with God against the evil of my own heart; I not only learn that the blood of Christ cleanses from all sin, but how I came to have that blood: God is for me. God will thoroughly empty and cleanse the heart, but everything depends on His being for me.
The starting-point is, God is for me. I am to count upon God, and reason from Him downward, not from myself upward. If I am speculating upon what I am, I can never have settled peace. When I know God to be for me, I reckon on Him as the spring and source of peace and joy, if I by Christ believe in God's actings towards me. If He did not spare His own Son but gave Him for a poor wretched sinner like me, shall He not freely give all else? The Holy Ghost's reasonings and man's reasoning are totally different. The Holy Ghost reckons from God working in His own grace; man, from what he is or hopes to be.
At the well of Samaria the Lord says, “If thou knewest the gift of God, and Who it is that saith to thee,” &c.; that is, if you knew God was giving His own Son, and that this gift of God had come from the Father's bosom down to this world so lowly—depending for a drink of water on a poor woman like you—you would have understood the whole secret, and asked of Him instead. “If God be for us, who can be against us?”
There is a passage in the Old Testament, in Isa. 1:7-9, which brings this out in a remarkable mariner, showing the place we get in justification in Christ. In verse 4, He takes His place as man; then in verse 7 “The Lord God will help me,” &c. to verses 8, 9. Paul takes it up and applies it to a believer: “Who shall condemn? It is God that justifieth.” God justifies us just as much as Christ, because of Christ we are justified. “Herein is love with us made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment, because as he is so are we in this world.” If I think of God for me, I have His love in everything. I get it in all tenderness and grace as regards circumstances. God in Christ enters into all our sorrows and difficulties. “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?” I have got One up there who as man passed through all sorrow down here. Do I look at death? Christ died, and is at the right hand of God, thinking about you now, and making intercession for you. Yes! this gracious Man is there for me in all my sorrow. The sting of death has been taken away by Him; death is not death to a believer, it is merely a step nearer to God; death should be no trouble to us, but “to depart and be with Christ which is far better.”
We have a life death cannot touch at all. Through all this life down here I have trial and difficulty, but Christ with me in all. I go to the heights and depths, and Christ has been in it all. Shall tribulation separate? Why that is the very place where I find the love of Christ so precious. He had not where to lay His head—He has gone through everything a saint could suffer. The sufferings of Christ were borne alone; but in ours we find a depth of love and consolation in Christ in them. We never should fear anything if we walked by faith. The nothingness of the world links the soul with Christ's fullness. “The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want” —not on account of the green pastures, but because He is my Shepherd. Though in The valley of the shadow of death, I am not to be afraid, I have His rod and His staff—a table prepared, and I can eat quietly in spite of enemies. “Thou anointest mine head with oil,” &c. (ver. 6) (he did not say that in the green pastures), when all is gone, when all rivers fail me, oh! then I say I never can faint, I have got God for me, not circumstances or blessings.
The Psalmist would say, “Lord, by thy favor thou hast made my mountain to stand strong; thou didst hide thy face, and I was troubled.” (The mountain was gone in a moment.) When we rest on blessings, we shall be broken from them; when we rest in Him, we can never be moved away.
In 1 John 2, the apostle in addressing the different classes—children, young men, and fathers—exhorts the young men not to love the world, nor the things that are in it; but when he comes to the fathers he simply says, I write unto you because ye have known Christ. He as it were enlarges for building up the young men; when he comes to the fathers, the scaffolding drops down, and Christ remains; you know Christ. This is what gives settled quietness and calmness, and a consciousness He is for us in all. There is nothing to be compared with a growth in the knowledge, of Christ; all else will drop off, and Christ remain. If I can speak of God being for me and Christ being mine, what is all the rest? only the creature. Suppose I get into depths (the creature), into heights (the creature again); but the love of God is not a creature at all.
If I look at this world and all the trial and difficulty I may have to go through, why that is not God, but I have got Him for me in it all, and nothing can separate me from His love. It is a certain thing I can reckon on; I may forget it, but nothing can have strength to separate me from it; nothing can ever come in and say, “I have a strength beyond the grace of God.” There may be chastening and trial and breaking down; but the love of God in all to lead us on in dependence on His will, and trusting in His love, when all else fails. And what a proof of that love is not having spared His Son, and Christ having gone through all!
I cannot get at a thing in heaven or earth where I do not find Christ, nor a place where the love of Christ has not left its stamp—love not exhausted in dying, but poured out from the place He is ascended to—the right hand of God—ever living to make intercession. He went through everything we have to pass through; and in all we have to learn what the sympathy of our great High Priest is; all the trials, exercises of the wilderness, a blessed means of learning it. Take a family; do you think that, if any float down the stream without trouble and trial, as much affection will be called out? No! the trouble brings out the genuine affection. When we think what Christ has given us—Himself and all in heaven! and we shall be with Him when we have learned the other story down here; and all flowing from the blessed truth “God for us,” but God for us in our Lord Jesus Christ. The Lord give us to get emptied of ourselves and to rest entirely upon Him. By looking at Christ we shall find that, as He fills the heart and the eye, all else drops off.
Many a Christian has a day and night existence—one day self, the next Christ; self all darkness—Christ all light.