Rom. 7; 8 (Continued)
Faith produces many effects in our hearts always suitable to the object at which it looks. If for instance faith looks at the law, it sees its spirituality far more clearly than nature can; and then, seeing the flesh too in its real vileness, if it looks no farther, but judges of itself according to this spirituality of the law, the effect must be to bring us under condemnation of it (I mean of course as to our feeling)—under the consciousness of guilt and weakness. We shall hate and seek to separate from evil, but this will be all; it will leave us crying out, “O wretched man that I am!” With increased light there will only be increased misery.
But if faith looks at God as He revealed Himself in grace, it judges accordingly. It never then reasons upon the fruit produced; it rests in the revelation God has given of Himself in grace. The fruits of grace are to be looked for of course; for if there be life in us, the “fruit of the Spirit” will be manifested. The saint, for instance, knows that “peace” has been “made through the blood of the cross.” The effect is, that love flows forth. He feels that he is called unto blessing, and therefore has his feet “shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace.” Drinking into his own soul the love of God, he becomes as a river of water flowing forth to others (John 7:3838He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. (John 7:38)). But though these fruits are produced, faith never reasons on its own fruits; it can alone rest in the revelation God has given of Himself as “the God of all grace.” This is its own and only proper sphere.
The natural heart ever reasons about itself, and in a Christian it is always judging by fruits. This must necessarily bring disquiet, instead of peace. In itself it can see nothing but sin; and as to any fruit one has even been enabled to bear, this is so mixed with imperfection that it can only be a subject for judgment (though it be the Father's judgment); it cannot give one peace. This can only be found in what Jesus has wrought, in “the grace that is in Christ Jesus.”
What then is the position in Rom. 7? First of all the apostle establishes the great principle that the believer is “made dead to the law.” Then he describes the workings of a quickened soul, which, knowing that the “law is spiritual,” still feels “under the law,” and is therefore compelled to exclaim, “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me out of this body of death?”
Whom is he thinking of in all this? Himself. Now let me plainly ask you, “Am I, or is my state the object of faith?” No, surely not! Faith never makes what is in my heart its object, but God's revelation of Himself in grace. If we stop half way, and see nothing but the law, it will just discover to us our condemnation, and prove us to be “without strength.” If God allows us to know enough of the law and of the experience described in this chapter to show us what is our true state, this is just where grace meets us to set us free.
It is not that the conflict here spoken of will not continue: grace could not be known at all where conflict is not known. The unconverted only are without it. But that which will not continue when grace is fully known is the bitterness of spirit in which, while the conflict is going on, the person judges himself, seeing the law to be “spiritual,” but himself “carnal, sold under sin.” The love of God is not realized as his own, and therefore this causes him to cry out, “O wretched man that I am”
It is quite clear that, while there is this experience felt, there is not simple faith in God's grace; there is not a clear view of what God is towards me in Christ. For when the soul apprehends this, when the faculties of the new man are exercised on their proper object, there is perfect rest. And though there is still conflict, yet the soul is at peace: “the battle is not ours, but the Lord's.”
But how am I to know what is God's mind toward me? Is it by judging of it from what I find in myself? Surely not! Supposing that I even found good in myself, if I expected God to look at me on that account, would it be grace? There may be a measure of truth in this kind of reasoning. For, if there be life in my soul, fruit will be apparent; but this is not to give me peace any more than the evil that is in me is to hinder my having peace. That too is true reasoning where the apostle says, “The law is spiritual, but I am carnal.” “O wretched man that I am!” But there is nothing of grace in it.
But does the certainty of grace take us out of all trouble? No; I am not at all denying the fact that there is, and, while we are in a sinful body, that there ever must be, conflict going on between the flesh and the Spirit. But then to have this conflict going on in the conscious certainty that God is for me, because I am “under grace,” is a very different thing from having it in the fear that II e is against me, because I am “under law.”
If I see evil in myself (and this I always shall see whilst here, in the root, even if it be not manifested in its fruits), and if I think that God will be against me because of it, I shall have no strength for conflict but be utterly cast down, groaning as to my acceptance. But if certain that God is for me, the consciousness of this will give me courage and victory—nay, even enable me to say “Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me, and know my thoughts, and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.” In the confidence of the love and grace of God I can ask Him to search out all my evil—what I otherwise dare not do, lest it should overwhelm me with despair. God is my Friend—for me against my own evil.
The apostle speaks (chap. 8) of the “carnal mind” being “enmity against God"; but then God in the gift of Jesus has brought out this blessed truth, that when man was at enmity against God, God was love towards man: our enmity was met by His love. The triumph of grace is seen in this, that when man's enmity had cast out Jesus from the earth, God's love brought in salvation by that very act—came in to atone for the sin of those who had rejected Him. In the view of the fullest development of man's sin faith beholds the fullest manifestation of God's grace. Where does faith see the greatest depth of man's sin and hatred of God? In the cross; and at the same glance it sees the greatest extent of God's triumphant love and mercy to man. The spear of the centurion which pierced the side of Jesus only brought out that which spoke of over-abounding grace.
The apostle then goes on to show that those once at enmity with God are now become His heirs; and that the knowledge of this Is founded on the knowledge of grace: “Ye have not received the spirit of bondage again,” &c. Grace first makes us children of God, then gives us the knowledge of it, and tells us that we are heirs of God also.
But what is the extent of this grace towards us? It has given us the same portion that the Lord Jesus has. “We are heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ.” It is not only certain that grace has visited us, and found us when we were “in our sins,” but it is also certain that it has set us where Christ is; that we are identified with the Lord Jesus in all but His essential glory as God. The soul is placed thus in the consciousness of God's perfect love, and therefore, as it is said in chapter 5, “we joy or boast in God.”
I have got away from grace if I have the slightest doubt or hesitation about God's love. I shall then be saying, “I am unhappy, because I am not what I should like to be.” But this is assuredly not the question: the real question is, whether God is what we should like Him to be, whether Jesus is all we could wish. If the consciousness of what we are, of what we find in ourselves, has any other effect than, while it humbles us, to increase our adoration of what God is, we are off the ground of pure grace. The immediate effect of such consciousness should be to make our hearts reach out to God and to His grace abounding over it all.
But while grace thus gives us perfect peace in our souls, it does not save us from suffering. Even as the Lord Jesus so perfectly entered into the sorrow and groaning around Him when here, and was therefore a “man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief;” so in his measure ought the saint to take up the sense of the weight of evil that is in the world, and thus become a man of sorrows also. Just as we abide in grace, shall we have in proportion a sense of the weight of evil that is all around, and groan in sympathy with a groaning and travailing creation. And not only so, but being ourselves in the body, we shall “groan” likewise “within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of the body.”
But is there any uncertainty as to our salvation in this “groaning?” No, quite the contrary; it is the very certainty that “all things are ours” which makes us “groan.” Having the certainty and foretaste of glory everything here is made the more painful by contrast. That which the saint is entitled to is so very different from all that is actually around him, that the more he knows of the joy of dwelling in the presence of God, the larger understanding he has of God's love and grace; the more he realizes the blessedness of his portion in that glory to which he is predestinated, the more will he “groan!”
How different this from the groaning of an uneasy conscience! Let us not mistake things as they are; let us not confound the two. The “groaning” of one perfectly free from the sense of condemnation described in chapter 8; and the groaning of Conscience, the “O wretched man that I am” of chapter 7.
Carelessness of walk, and through it losing the sense of grace, may indeed expose him who has once consciously stood in the power of redemption to the fiery darts of the wicked one. But this is not, as before remarked, true “Christian experience.” When the heart is made full with the rich blessings of Christ, it will not turn back to gnaw upon itself.