Much is made in our day of the need of healing souls that have been wounded by sin. It is sad to contemplate the effects that sin have brought to this poor world and its resultant confusion. The sinless Son of God, our blessed Lord Jesus, often groaned as He contemplated it when He passed through this world (John 11:33). Surely we should be sensitive as to it all as well.
But if we desire to be instruments for the Lord’s use in helping souls, it is imperative for us to understand that what is necessary for souls is deliverance. Healing is occupied with all that has been so severely marred by sin what man is by nature. But what we find so clearly taught in the Word of God in Romans 7 is that when the person is struggling doing the evil that he does not wish, but seemingly powerless to do the good that he does desire (vss. 16, 19) what he needs is deliverance. Finally, he cries in desperation, “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” In other words, he finally realizes that the answer is not in himself, so he cries for another to help him. The answer comes immediately: “I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
The reason we struggle so long and hard is that we are not willing to be done with ourselves as in the flesh. It is a subtle form of pride that, perhaps unconsciously, wants to believe that we can handle this problem, or we cannot be as bad as what we are seeing. But we cannot know deliverance if we do not come to accept the sentence of God against our flesh that Paul states in verse 18: “I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing.” Paul would probably be diagnosed with low self-esteem, but how can we have any esteem for what we are as men in the flesh? At that point, when he was willing to turn from what he was in the flesh, he could find deliverance and glory in all that he was as a new man in Christ.
God does not repair or heal the old sin in the flesh is forever condemned by the death of God’s beloved Son. But when we are in Christ, there is a new creation. We find deliverance by being occupied now, not with what we are, but with what our Lord Jesus is for us. What blessedness that we are entitled to look up into the heavens at the right hand of God and contemplate our Lord Jesus in all His glory, all His beauty and all His perfection and say that He is my life (Col. 3:3-4).
True Christian position is that we are dead with Christ to sin (Rom. 6:2,8), buried with Him (Rom. 6:4; Col. 2:12), risen with Christ (Col. 2:12; 3:1), and seated together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus (Eph. 2:6).
Dead
“Christ died for our sins” (1 Cor. 15:3). “He that is dead is freed from sin” (Rom. 6:7). We are dead with Christ, and so we are to reckon ourselves as dead to sin. This is not a matter of feeling, for often we do not feel that we are dead to sin with Him at all. It is rather a matter of faith accepting and thinking God’s thoughts. If we do not think His thoughts, how can we act according to His ways?
Buried
“He was buried” (1 Cor. 15:4) and “we are buried with Him” (Rom. 6:4). Notice here that it is not our sins that are buried, but rather we are buried. What we are in the flesh does not figure before God any longer. We are now “not in the flesh, but in the Spirit” (Rom. 8:9). Something dead and buried is best left right where it is. The more we return to be occupied with it, the more putrid and rotten we are going to find it to be. God grant that we may simply leave it all where God has declared it to be. It is not for us to do, but rather it was done once for all by God Himself in Christ’s death and burial. It is for us simply to accept it and think that way. “Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin” (Rom. 6:11).
Risen
“He rose again the third day” (1 Cor. 15:4) and “ye are risen with Him through the faith of the operation of God, who hath raised Him from the dead” (Col. 2:12). The life we now possess as believers in the Lord Jesus is not only eternal life, but it is life in resurrection. It is life beyond death, and so, since “Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more,” the life that we possess in Him in resurrection is a life that cannot die it is beyond the domain of death. Physical death may touch our bodies, but it can never touch the life we possess in Christ.
Seated Together in Heavenly Places in Christ
In Christ we now occupy a new place before God. Just as we were “buried” with Christ, so now are we “seated together” in Him. We are found together in the risen and ascended Christ, sitting together in Him before God. So we can say even here and now that my place is “made [to] sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus” (Eph. 2:6). What tremendous thoughts God has for us! May God grant that our thoughts may be renewed according to His thoughts of us.
One more observation: God has given us a perfect object for our hearts Christ in glory. If we are walking properly, the Spirit of God occupies us with Him. Only when we allow sin is the Spirit grieved and occupies us with ourselves so that we might judge ourselves. Otherwise we have no business in thinking of ourselves. We live in a self-centered world and we need to be delivered from self-centeredness. Scripture definitely teaches us what we ought to be thinking about. “Set your affection [or, mind (margin)] on things above, not on things on the earth” (Col. 3:2). “Be renewed in the spirit of your mind” (Eph. 4:23). “Be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind” (Rom. 12:2). “Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things” (Phil. 4:8). Where better can we find such beauties to occupy our minds and hearts than in that glorious Man at God’s right hand—our Lord Jesus Christ.
R. Thonney