John 4:5 - 26; Luke 10:38 - 42
It is a great thing to get a right idea of christianity in its true meaning and power, and I am looking at this time at christianity in that sense -- I mean, as the work of God. Of course, we may look at christianity in connection with the faith of man, because christendom has been formed by the faith of man; it is made up of those who profess to believe on Christ. A great many now have been born into it, but still in a general way christendom has been made up by the faith of man. But there is another side to the truth, the work of God; and the true power of christianity lies not in the faith of man -- though not apart from it -- but in the work of God. I do not think anybody would be prepared to gainsay that. That is what I want to dwell upon now, because I think it is of the greatest importance that all of us should understand the nature of God's work. It is presented to us in Scripture that we may know it in its character and effect.
We get remarkable instances presented to us in Scripture of the work of God and of its effect. One instance given to us is that of the woman of Samaria, and I have taken it up to give you, if I could, an idea of the work of God and its effects in the soul.
And let me say this, that what God does He does alone; nobody else interferes; it is God's work from beginning to end, and He produces the result that He intends. A servant may have a certain idea of what he intends to produce, or would produce if he could, but he may fail in it. There are very few servants of the Lord, I think, that do not encounter disappointment in that way; they fail of their object. But God never fails of His object. He sets Himself to accomplish a certain purpose, and He does accomplish it without fail. That is as certain as that God is God.
I read the passage at the end of Luke 10 because it presents to us the attitude of a person who recognises the work of God. That is what we see in Mary. She was not active or bustling or excited, but wanted to get the word of Christ. I think she is an advance, in a certain sense, upon what we have in the preceding incident, the man that fell among thieves. She represents to us what would be the proper attitude of a man to whom Christ had become a neighbour. If I find Christ to be my neighbour, then I want to hear the word of Christ. I feel that Christ has something peculiar to say to me which no one else can say, and I want to hear what He has to teach me. It is a great point for all of us to be attentive to hear what Christ has to say to us. If Christ has healed our wounds, set us on His own beast and taken care of us, that does not close His dealings with us. He has something to say to us, and it is a great thing if our ears are open to what He has to say. We need to hear the word of Christ. And what is that? It is really the expression of Himself.
Now I take up the case of the woman of Samaria because I think she represents in a very remarkable way the work of God. It is a sample or representative case. There are two parts in it. The first is the subduing power from without, that brings her down completely and the second is the source and spring of power within, which springs up into eternal life. I want to bring before you the extraordinary forces which are thus brought into operation in order that grace may effect its work. In the world men comprehend what great forces mean, and they understand how to concentrate natural forces to accomplish a particular object; but I want you to see the forces which are brought into operation that Christ may effect His purpose. This is a typical case. There is first the outward subduing power which brings the woman down to nothing, which breaks down all her
self-confidence, and puts aside all her thoughts and ideas. The effect is very much like the case of Mary at the feet of Jesus. She is subjected or subdued by the word of Christ. But that is only one side. There is an equivalent force within the woman which springs up unto everlasting life. I want just to speak of these two sides of the work of God.
Christianity consists, I think, in two things -- on the one hand man's complete deliverance from all that to which he is in bondage by reason of sin, and on the other hand the formation of new relationships and of the affections which are suited to those relationships. I have no doubt at all that there is many a believer in Christ, as Lord, who knows very little indeed about the true power of christianity. I want to bring before you these two things: first, the emancipation of the man (who is very much in the position naturally of a bond slave, whom grace comes in to set free), and then the formation of new relationships and of the affections suited to them.
If you were to ask me what constitutes a man, the answer I should give would be this: I judge man to be made up of body and mind, relationships and affections. I think if you take that in, you will admit the truth of it. It is true whether we speak of the old man or of the new. God made man thus at the beginning. He made him body and mind, and set him in certain relationships, with affections suited to those relationships. The same is true of the new man. Grace sets us in certain relationships and forms affections which are suited to those relationships. But at the same time there is the complete deliverance of the man from all that to which he is naturally in bondage.
The work of God is a great work. Nothing can be more amazing than God's work with regard to a poor soul, and the wonderful character of the forces which He employs to carry it out. I think if you apprehend
it you would understand the immense value of a single soul in the sight of God. Here in John 4 it is not a preaching of the gospel to masses, but a simple case of the work of grace with regard to one single individual, though this case is no doubt a typical one. The same forces have been brought to bear upon each one of us, and with the same object: emancipation and subjection on the one hand, and the formation of affections suited to new relationships on the other.
There are two great thoughts of which I am going to speak in connection with the passage referred to in John 4first, the way in which Christ presents Himself to the soul, and next, the well of water, the spring which the Lord would communicate to this poor woman or to any believer: "Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst: but the water I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life". May God give me grace to show to you what it is that subdues the soul: the presentation of Christ Himself; and on the other hand, what it is that springs up in the believer; and if you put these two things together, I think each one would be prepared to admit that there is not very much of you and me left. What is of us is subdued, and what springs up is entirely and completely new; it is the effect and fruit of what Christ is.
I speak first of the subduing, and I think it contemplates this, that a soul has really come to Christ. I do not think you would understand it without first seeing that the soul has really come to Christ, having received the gift which Christ gives. And I would ask if this is true of all of us. Have you really come to Christ? You may have believed on the Lord Jesus Christ, you may confess Him as Lord, and yet keep Him at a distance. If I think of Him as Lord, He is very great, He is at the right hand of God, I have not sensibly come very close to Him. But there is another light in which Christ may be apprehended: as the Giver of the
living water; and when you begin to apprehend Him in that light then you get near to Christ, and are conscious of having received from Him the gift of the living water which springs up in you unto eternal life. I judge it is the soul's apprehension of the Lord Jesus Christ as the blessed Son of God. I think we all begin by believing on the Lord Jesus Christ -- because the testimony is of the Lord Jesus Christ -- and the confession of Him as Lord; but there is an advance on this, and that is the apprehension of Him in the soul as the Son of God who gives the living water. "Let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely", Revelation 22:17.
Now let me say a word here about the death and resurrection of Christ. What was effected in the death of Christ? I do not speak at present about righteousness, or in regard to the sacrifice, but of the death of Christ as the revelation of God. When Christ died, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom -- God was revealed. The resurrection of Christ, on the other hand, is not exactly the revelation of God, but the setting forth of God's pleasure in regard to man. I want you to apprehend this thought and to meditate upon it. The death of Christ is the revelation of God. It is there that we learn God's love: "God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us", Romans 5:8. And the rending of the veil was the significant witness on the part of God, that God was fully revealed in love to man. "God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life". That was brought to light when the Son of man was lifted up. The Lord Jesus could say, "It is finished", and He bowed His head and gave up the ghost. What was finished? Well, I have no doubt the will of God was completed, but at the same time there was a full revelation of God in His love to man. He never
came out fully till the death of Christ, not even in the presence of Christ in life on the earth. Consequently all that system which the veil represented came to an end, for God was no longer hidden, but was in the light of the full revelation of Himself
But in the resurrection of Christ we have, as I have already said, not so much the revelation of God as the setting forth of God's pleasure in regard to man. So we read that Christ was delivered for our offences and raised again for our justification (Romans 4:25). This was God's pleasure in regard to man, that man should be justified. And we are justified by faith "on him that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead". There was the setting forth of God's pleasure, not only in regard to Christ but in regard to man. I think if you take in the two thoughts I have mentioned, you will be convinced that the death and resurrection of Christ are great subjects for the contemplation of the believer, and if one contemplate nothing else there is a vast deal to be learnt there.
It is on the ground of the death of Christ that the living water is communicated. "If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink; thou wouldest have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water". That is to say, the intimation made here by the Lord to this woman is that He is the Giver of the gift of God. That is what marks Christ. Therefore you can understand that it necessarily follows that He is the Son of God. Certainly no man, however exalted, could give the gift of God. No one could give the gift of God except One who is Himself God. The One who on the cross glorified God, and in whom God was perfectly revealed, is the Giver of the gift of God. It was the One of whom Jesus had spoken to Nicodemus in the previous chapter (verses 16), and He comes out in this chapter, not as the Son of man lifted up, but as the Giver of the gift of God.
The gift of God I take to be the living water, but Christ is the One who gives it and I think that many persons have received the gift of the Holy Spirit before they are conscious of having received the gift from Christ. It is only perhaps when one apprehends Christ as the blessed exponent of the love of God that the soul is conscious of having received the gift which Christ gives. If I apprehend the Son of God, and the gift which He gives, there can only be one effect, I am subdued in the presence of the love of God. It is such a wonderful thing that the Son of God should have come forth from God to be the Giver of the gift of God, that the soul of man is completely subdued before Himself. Do you think that any soul naturally believes that God "gives"? No, I think the natural thought is that God "expects". It is a new light entirely in which to apprehend God, that He gives, and that the Son of God has come forth to make Him known and to communicate the gift of God.
It is perfectly blessed to see the way in which God has been pleased to express Himself, so as to make Himself known to man. The One who came here to make God known, and who went to the cross that God might be fully set forth, as He never could have been in any other way, is the One who gives the gift of God. And I desire for every reader, that your soul might be in the presence of the Son of God. I want you to apprehend the moral greatness of the Son of God. There, and there only, I think you will learn your own exceeding littleness. But I pass on to another point in connection with the passage.
If you look at verses 15 - 26 you get another light in which to regard the Son of God, the Giver of the gift. He is now the prophet. And how? Because He is the mouthpiece of God. And in connection with Him as prophet we have a most important truth, that His word searches the conscience of man. The woman felt herself brought by the word of Christ into the
presence of God; she became conscious that she was in the presence of One whose word searched her conscience. Now I think we have all to enter into the same thing. There is fulness of grace in the Lord Jesus, but at the same time if you have come into the presence of the Son of God you have become alive to the fact that His word searches your conscience. It is in the presence of Christ that we learn our own contrariety. He makes known to us what is of God, and it is in the light of that that a man learns himself. It is in the presence of love that you learn what the will and life and heart of man are. Never till a man is brought into the light, to learn what God is, does he really learn what he himself is. The darkest picture of man in the whole compass of Scripture is found perhaps in the epistle to the Ephesians. The Ephesians had come into the light of God and so the darkness of man's heart was fully manifested.
A christian may go on for many a long day before he really finds out what the springs within him are, but a day comes when he gets a revelation of what is there. And how? The light of Christ searches his conscience and makes him aware of the dreadful contrariety and perversity of the human heart. Look at the best of men in regard to God, and what is he? His heart is contrary and perverse; its very springs are diametrically opposed to the springs in the heart of God. Do you know the difference between love and lust? Lust gratifies itself: if a man loves drink, for instance, he will sacrifice everything, his friends, his family, his health, for the gratification of his lust. Love on the contrary seeks not its own gratification, but the gratification, the happiness, of its object. God seeks the good, the blessing of the objects of His love. I quite admit it is for His own ultimate joy and satisfaction, but that is found in the object of His love being completely blessed and satisfied.
Now I would dwell a little on this truth: that the Son of God who communicates the gift of God is the Prophet whose word searches the conscience and makes a man know what is in himself. It is a very great moment when a man learns what he is in the sight of God. He comes to this: "I know that in me, (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing". How does a man find that out? By the light of God. The light makes my contrariety manifest, and I learn this more and more every day as I go on. I come to the conclusion that in me good does not dwell.
But now another point of view comes out from which to regard Christ. He knows all the will of God. The woman begins to talk about worship, and raises the question whether Jerusalem or mount Gerizim is the true place; but she is immediately stopped by Christ, who tells her that it is now neither the one nor the other; and He reveals to her God's will in regard to worship. He is the Prophet who searches the heart of man, but He is at the same time the One who knows all the will of God, even in regard to worship. The woman now comes to this point, "I know that Messias cometh, ... when he is come, he will tell us all things", and the Lord immediately answers, "I that speak unto thee am he". And He has told her as to worship: "The hour cometh, ... when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth". He could tell her what the Father was seeking, and also what was suitable morally to God. "God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth".
I want you to put these things together. I am sure I have presented them poorly, but my object is to press that it is in the presence of Christ that we are completely subdued. You are never completely subdued till you come to close quarters with Christ; and christians are often not subdued because they are content with believing on Christ as Lord, and never
come to close quarters with Him. If they did they would have no more spirit left in them, they would have a subduing sense of His greatness, and would know Him as the Giver of the living water, as the One whose word searches the heart and makes known everything there; and at the same time He makes known perfectly what the mind and will of the Father is, and what is suitable to God. I was only recently reading a psalm which is no doubt familiar to all of us: "Lord, thou hast searched me, and known me". That is just what the word of Christ does.
Now I am going to speak a few words on the other side, but I desire first that every one should have a true apprehension of Christ, that you may be brought to close quarters with Him so as to be completely subdued in His presence. Nothing will really subdue a man but the apprehension of what Christ is as giver, and of what He knows on your side and on God's side. When the queen of Sheba saw the grandeur of Solomon, of his house, his servants, the magnificence of all his appointments, there was no more spirit left in her; and it is as we see the moral grandeur of Christ, the Son of God, who gives the living water, whose word searches the conscience, and who knows and reveals all the will of God, that there is no more spirit left in us. I would that my own and every other soul were really in the presence of His greatness, and completely subjected by it. I daresay you remember a verse in Philippians 3, which speaks of our looking for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ from heaven, "who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body". But now mark the rest of the passage: "according to the working whereby he is able to subdue all things unto himself". Angels and principalities and powers are made subject to Him, but there is at the same time a spiritual subduing, which is going on now in souls, and which will take effect even in regard to the body,
when it will be fashioned like unto Christ's body of glory.
But I want to come back for a moment to the well of water which Christ gives. I have been speaking of the force which acts upon us from without, that is what is presented to us as objective, what Christ is, His greatness as the Son of God. Now I want to speak of the other side: the water which He gives. It is a well of water springing up into everlasting life. What are you and I between the power of Christ on the one hand, and the well of water springing up on the other? We are not of very much account, except in the eye of God. There is not much of us left standing. All a man's self-confidence and self-importance is completely subdued and broken down by the greatness of Christ. A man does not think very much of himself when he apprehends the Son of God. He may have had a certain standing and importance previously in the world, but all this is broken to pieces in the presence of the greatness of the Son of God, and the revelation of God's love, and the gift of the living water.
Christianity, in the true power of it, as I said before, consists in relationships and affections. The grace of God has set us in the place of children before Him, the Father. We have that truth in the first chapter of this gospel: "As many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name". But there is not only the fact of our being put in the place of children, but also the formation, the springing up, of affections which are suited to the relationship in which we are placed. Take any house in the world, the greatest and grandest you like, what is it without the affections which are suited to the relationships which exist there? I am afraid there are houses where those affections are lacking. If a person comes to my house I do not want his attention to be occupied with the surroundings,
the furniture and the like, I want him to see me at home; and the true adornments of my house are the affections which are proper to the relationships which subsist there. You have been in houses perhaps where the appointments are all that could be desired, but where there is a great lack of the affections which are suited to the relationships subsisting in the house. I should not like to have a fine house and gardens and all the surroundings perfectly in keeping, and everything inside the house in moral disorder. The true adornment of a man's house, as I have said, is the affections proper to the relationships which exist there; and a man is not fit to be an overseer in the house of God if he has not got his own house in order. I say again, and I think every one here will agree in it, that the real adornment and attraction in every well-ordered house are the affections suited to the relationships subsisting there.
Now the same thing is true in God's family. We are put into the place of children, but besides that we are formed in the affections which are suited to children, and that is the work of the Spirit which you have received from Christ, the Son of God. The Spirit we have received is the Spirit of God's Son, and therefore you could never have received that Spirit except from Him. And the Spirit of the Son of God in the believer cries Abba, Father, the first indication and expression of affection. "The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost, which is given unto us" (Romans 5), and your first response to that love is in crying Abba, Father. But that is the beginning only. It is one thing for the Spirit in me to cry Abba, Father, it is another thing for the well of water to spring up in me into everlasting life. The Spirit of God does all the work Himself. The effect of the springing of the well of water in the believer is so to control him as that affections may spring up in him. Affections of which
God is the source spring up in the believer, and they reach to eternal life. It refers to the whole system and framework of affections formed in the believer by the power of the Holy Spirit. It would be useless to talk about relationships unless there were affections suited to those relationships. Then also you have your loins girt about with truth, all your affections regulated by the light of God, the revelation of God, and of His blessed will, brought home to the heart in the power of the Holy Spirit.
Man, as I said before, consists of body and mind, relationships and affections; and God has been pleased to place us in relationship to Himself as children, in relationship to Christ as brethren, and in relationship to the saints. We are the objects of the Father's love, Christ loves us, and we love one another. Where do these affections spring from, whose affections are they? They are your affections. The Spirit of God forms them, and in a sense He keeps Himself in the background. In the epistle to the Romans, where everything is fundamental, you get a great deal about the Spirit of God; in Colossians, which carries you a little further, into the great reality of the christian circle, the Spirit is scarcely mentioned. You get the saint formed in divine affections and sensibilities, and the Spirit of God is behind it all. The well of water has sprung up into everlasting life.
If Christ is the object of our hearts there will be the subduing on the one hand, and on the other there will be the well of water in the believer which springs up into eternal life. The question of eternal life has been very much talked about and debated recently, and I have observed that the people who have been most ready to talk about it, and have insisted most on it, knew little about it except in terms. It is easy enough to know these things in terms, but that is not christianity. I repeat that the power of christianity consists in the relationships in which it has pleased
God to set us, and the affections which are proper to those relationships. And in the beginning of things, where everything is fundamental, where you have the foundations presented, the Spirit of God is prominent; but there is a certain process goes on, and when the work of the Spirit is effectual in the saints and suitable affections are formed in them, the Spirit of God, so to speak, holds Himself in the background.
Let us go back for a moment to the mighty forces which have been brought to bear upon poor things like you and me. There is the mighty subduing power of the Son of God without, and the energy of the Holy Spirit within. The great point for us is to submit, and not to set our puny silly wills against the Son of God. You may suffer the deprivation of some things that you would like down here, but accept the subduing, and do not set up your will against the greatness of the Son of God, and you will then get the blessed power of the Spirit of God in you springing up into eternal life.
I will tell you the secret of happiness. Happiness is what people of all sorts pursue according to their various ideas, without knowing the secret of it. Happiness is in the full exercise of holy affections in perfect rest of spirit. That will be your eternal portion in heaven. You will have part in divine affections and in divine rest. God will rest in His love. And what a work God works in us to bring us into a scene of perfect rest, and at the same time of the fullest and freest exercise of spiritual affections. We love God, we love the Father, we love Christ, and we love the saints.
That is the result that the Lord put before this woman. The Lord brings her between those mighty forces, and what becomes of her? She is nothing. Nicodemus might have been put between those mighty forces, and Nicodemus would have been nothing. Nathanael, or you and I, become nothing between the
subduing power of the Son of God on the one hand, and the mighty power of the Holy Spirit within us on the other. But at the same time you get the springing up of those blessed affections which reach to eternal life in a scene where there remains nothing for the heart to desire -- a scene of perfect rest.
May God give us to know something of His work. I feel for many christians, especially for the young -- if my heart goes out to anybody in this world it is to young christians -- in that they suffer the loss of some things to which they might think themselves entitled. I have seen it in my own children. They go out in desire after certain things in the world that they think themselves entitled to. I would be sorry to deprive any one of anything to which he might think himself entitled in this world, but you can get full compensation in the knowledge of the love of Christ, in the blessed relationships into which He brings you, and in the spiritual affections which are the proper accompaniments of those relationships. You may well be content to be deprived for a moment down here of things which you naturally like, for the sake of the compensation. Nothing is more painful to me than to see a person who has apparently made a great surrender for the sake of the truth and has failed to get compensation. I cannot think that anyone could make any sacrifice for the truth's sake to whom Christ would not give the most ample compensation.
May God give us to feel and know that if we suffer a little deprivation, yet we have manifold more in this present time and in the world to come eternal life!
I want to say a little at this time of the character of God's house. This comes before us in Luke 14 and 15 in the way of parables: the parables represent the truth of it. You could not understand the parables of Scripture if the Holy Spirit were not here to expound them; but when you get the exposition, you see in how very striking a manner the truth is presented in the parables.
It is noticeable that you get the idea of the house in both these chapters: first in connection with the Supper, "Compel them to come in, that my house may be filled"; then at the close of chapter 15, "he came and drew nigh to the house". You must divest your mind of the idea that heaven is presented in these scriptures: it is God's house that is seen, connected with what transpires here upon earth. It has been pointed out that you would not get the elder brother in heaven; hence, from the introduction of the elder brother, it is evident that the house refers to what takes place upon earth.
I think the point of this chapter is that everything is for God: it is not a question in it of what man gets the rejoicing is on the part of God. In the first parable, the man rejoices; in the second, the woman rejoices; and there is fellowship in the rejoicing, others are led to rejoice with them; in the third parable, the Father justifies the rejoicing: "it was meet that we should make merry".
If you take the three parts of the parable together, the idea is evidently rejoicing on the part of God. It is not a question of what the sheep, or the piece of silver, or the prodigal gained, but of what God gained, and the effect of it: all that transpires affords satisfaction to God; God has His own satisfaction in His own
house. What comes out of that is that in chapter 15 man is everything for God: he becomes the occasion of rejoicing to God; in chapter 14, man is nothing. When man is anything in his own eyes, or thinks anything of himself, he does not come in to the Supper; it is only when he comes to the sense that he is nothing that he comes in to the Supper: he is compelled to come in. It has been said that in chapter 14 you get God's house, and in chapter 15 the guest; but to my mind the point in chapter 14 is that man is nothing, it is his side; and in chapter 15 God is everything, and man is for God. Whilst man is brought into God's house, all the rejoicing of God is connected with man: man becomes the subject of the rejoicing of heaven.
First let me say a word in connection with the Supper in chapter 14. I understand the Supper to be the celebration of grace. The Spirit has come down to bring us into the celebration of grace; therefore you find that wonderful things take place in the power of the Holy Spirit. The early disciples were full of joy and gladness, for the Holy Spirit was bringing the mind of man into concert with heaven. I understand the kingdom to be God's celebration of righteousness; righteousness was accomplished in the death of Christ. The resurrection of Christ was God's testimony of righteousness; no one is justified short of faith in the resurrection of Christ, because that is God's testimony; no one is approved of God who does not believe in the resurrection of Christ. But you must go a point further. The disciples saw Jesus go up: a cloud received Him out of their sight, He was received up to heaven and went to the right hand of God, angels and principalities and powers being made subject to Him (1 Peter 3:22). In verse 18 of that chapter Christ has suffered to bring us to God; righteousness was accomplished; in verse 21 you get the testimony, and the answer of a good conscience
towards God by the resurrection of Christ: a man gets a good conscience in having accepted the testimony of resurrection. Then in verse 22 you get the celebration: the Holy Spirit has come down to report the glory of Christ, to bring man's mind into the light of and into accord with what has been accomplished in heaven. It is the presence of the Holy Spirit which brings about the great Supper; and souls are compelled to come in, that God's house may be filled. I think there are limits to a house: a house conveys the impression of limits, like the three measures of meal; but at the same time they are compelled to come in that God's house may be filled.
It is of all importance, when souls have accepted the testimony of God, that they should be brought into christian fellowship, into the place where the rejoicing is. There must be a great lack on the part of people who, when they have accepted the testimony, fail to come consciously into the place where the Holy Spirit is, that is, fail to recognise God's house. They do not get into joy, into sympathy with heaven, and I think it is because they fail to recognise God's joy and the presence of the Holy Spirit here. If that were recognised, all misgivings would disappear, and believers would be brought by the Spirit into the mind of heaven. God's testimony is the ground for faith; but the Holy Spirit has come down to witness to the delight which heaven has in that which has been accomplished for man here upon earth. Hence there is joy in the Holy Spirit. When people are converted they are generally carried into some sect or system -- very often to sacramentalism, and come under the influence of clergy. That is not the idea of God's house: if they were brought into the sense of God's house and the presence of the Spirit, it is my conviction that they would very soon be in accord with the mind of heaven. You cannot ignore or disregard the Holy Spirit with impunity. Many christians are not
bright because they practically ignore the presence of the Spirit. Souls can only thrive in God's house, where God's Spirit resides, and only in that way can they be brought into communion with heaven. The effect of it will be that they are filled with joy in the Holy Spirit. At the beginning christians did not mind suffering, they were filled with joy.
First, then, you have the accomplishment of righteousness, secondly the testimony of righteousness, and lastly the celebration of righteousness. Now if you enter the house of God, you have to be nothing. If a man is to be exalted, he has to take the lowest room: if he accepts the presence of the Spirit and the truth of God's house, he has to come down from all high thoughts. In the latter part of chapter 14 another point comes out: if a man is going to be a disciple of Christ, he must forsake all that he has. We come into the house and get part in the joy of heaven; but having come in, we want to be disciples of Christ, that we may learn that to which Christ leads, and for this a man must forsake all that he has: his soul must be free from the control of everything down here, because Christ is going to teach him lessons which none but He can teach. It is the true position of a christian on earth; he has been compelled to come into God's house and at the same time is a disciple of Christ, that he may learn of Christ; like Mary at the close of Luke 10, she came under the teaching of Christ.
But I pass on to the next chapter, because I want to speak a little of what is for God. I think the parables in chapter 15 present to us three persons. The first parable presents to us Christ Himself; in the second we have, it may be, the Spirit, and in the third the Father. The first parable represents the labour and service of Christ Himself in regard to the Jew. It presents the way in which the Lord vindicates Himself as to the charge brought against Him of eating with sinners; He makes manifest that He was
in accord with the mind of heaven, rejoicing in the salvation of the lost sheep. In the second parable the thought is wider: the Spirit has lit up a light to search in the house for the lost piece of silver. The reason why God allows the light to be in the world is to bring to light the elect of God. The light in a sense shines upon everybody -- the truth of the gospel is for all; but the object of the light is, that the elect of God may be brought to light. I do not doubt they are brought to light in those who love God: they are the called according to His purpose, and they have been brought out by the light which the Holy Spirit sheds down here. There is no doubt that God has been pleased to reveal Himself in connection with His purpose. The apostle Paul says, "I endure all things for the elect's sakes, that they may also obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory". Now there is another point connected with the parable: there is the word "Rejoice with me". The Holy Spirit looks for fellowship in the rejoicing, because He would bring souls into accord with the mind of heaven. It is really heaven rejoicing, and looking for fellowship in that rejoicing.
In the previous chapter man is nothing; he is subdued under the grace of God; and in this chapter God is everything, and man gets his place here in connection with God.
Now when you come to the third part of the parable, it is not the man nor the woman calling for fellowship in the rejoicing, but the Father justifying the rejoicing. He says, It was meet; the rejoicing is justified. The house represents the place where reconciliation has been brought to pass; you get the great idea of reconciliation in connection with God's house. God's house is the place where God dwells, and where christian fellowship is enjoyed; and there it is that the good of reconciliation is known. The first great principle in the house of God is that you come under
the teaching of Christ; He teaches you the mind of God toward you; then reconciliation comes in, and the principle of that is, that where there was distance, now there is complacency, and you could not get a more suitable illustration of it than in the prodigal. The house of God is the scene of complacency. You may have also the thought of the great house: that is what christianity has become in the hands of man, but we have to get back to the moral idea, the original thought: the house is the place where God has complacency. It is a point of great moment to connect the thought of reconciliation with God's house. The prodigal had come under the instruction of Christ, that he might know the Father's disposition towards him. Now he was entirely suitable to the eye of the Father.
I want to show you what the secret of that is. There was one link between the prodigal in the far country and the prodigal in the father's house; that link was conscience. There was in him the most complete change of individuality; but while there was change of individuality, there was identity of conscience. I believe identity is maintained in conscience. The prodigal, in that sense, had the conscience of what he had been; identity was maintained, but individuality was entirely changed. The prodigal in the far country was morally a different man from the man who sat at the Father's table. Reconciliation had come to pass; the distance connected with him and the far country had gone. When be comes into the Father's house he has neither the clothing nor anything that appertained to the prodigal and the far country; he has on him the best robe, the ring, the shoes -- all that described another individuality, which is stamped upon us by the teaching of Christ. The believer has become a disciple of Christ: he is a man of a different order. Hence it is that he is suitable to the eye of the Father. I have no doubt the prodigal
had been known in the far country as an individuality -- among wicked people you will often find someone surpassingly wicked who has the peculiar individuality of being the most abandoned of the company -- and I daresay the prodigal had been that, because he had means. It has often happened when a rich young man has got into the worst of company, that he goes further than the rest, because he has more money. In the case of the prodigal all was gone: there remained nothing but conscience; but he had come under the teaching of Christ. He had learned the love of God, which had stamped upon him another individuality, and that was summed up in one word -- Christ. He was attired in that which was entirely grateful and acceptable to the eye of the Father, so that the Father could say, "It was meet that we should make merry and be glad". The fatted calf was that which was reserved for great occasions, and it was a great occasion in the eye of God. In the reality of things, distance has been removed in the removal of man; for in resurrection there remains nothing but Christ Himself. The moment Christ came to earth, there was that in man which was acceptable to the eye of God. In the cross, all that was offensive was removed, and in resurrection there remains nothing but what is grateful to God. Hence we are said to have put on Christ. The prodigal was gone: he was under the eye of the Father in that which had been provided for him. In reconciliation heaven has its rejoicing: it is that which expresses the wisdom of God, how God has removed all that was offensive to Him, so that in its place there should be before Him all that in which He could be perfectly complacent. We are clothed in that which God Himself has provided. There is nothing for God but Christ; but Christ is there for God. Man has been removed; the carcase of the sin offering has been burnt without the camp; what remains is Christ, and that has to be carried out
practically in us, in order that in us, where distance was, there complacency may be.
The teaching of the chapter is that God is and must be everything. God has found an occasion of rejoicing for Himself, and all the rejoicing which God has provided for Himself is connected with the scheme of reconciliation, which is of God's own devising, and which He has taken in hand to effect in Christ.
I do not think you can exaggerate the importance of christian fellowship. If people do not come into the reality of it they are not much taught. It is in coming into the place where God dwells that a man gets a good conscience. I have no doubt that vast numbers of christians in the present day have not the first principle -- a good conscience, by the resurrection of Christ; if they are looking only at the death of Christ, they never get a good conscience.
Having a good conscience, you come under the teaching of Christ; you become a disciple of Christ, in order that you may be instructed, as He alone can instruct you, in God's mind and thought in regard to you. Christ teaches you the great lesson of the love of God, and then you are led on to see that your individuality is changed; that whilst you were a prodigal, you are now another individuality in Christ, in which you are perfectly acceptable and agreeable to the eye of the Father.
Psalm 8; 1 Corinthians 15:27, 28; Ephesians 1:20 - 23; Hebrews 2:8 - 12
What I want to present to you tonight is a few thoughts about the Son of man; that is the prominent thought in Psalm 8. In Psalm 2 we saw that the two great thoughts there were that Christ is the anointed, and that He is the Son of God. The decree is declared, "Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee". As the anointed He is the One in whom God sets forth all His good pleasure to man. The Spirit of the Lord was upon Him down here for that purpose. Now, on account of His rejection, He is called to sit at God's right hand, and in Him there God fully sets forth His pleasure in regard of man; we can only know that good pleasure, and His thoughts and purposes, as we learn it all in Him who will give effect to the will of God. God has set Him there in spite of all the opposition of men.
The designation Son of man in Psalm 8 is perhaps a little more difficult to understand than the others, but it is one of great interest. The Lord often applied it to Himself, indeed I think He applied no other, and it was a title by which He was known down here. You will remember that the Jews, although they understood something about the Christ, yet they said, "Who is this Son of man?". They did not understand it. There are two important points in connection with the Son of man: first, His sufferings; secondly, His exaltation. You get His humiliation in Psalm 8, but in Hebrews 2 the further thought of His sufferings. Let me say also that "man" and "Son of man" are two distinct ideas. In Psalm 8:5 the Son of man is referred to. Adam was not crowned with glory and honour, neither was he the son of man. In Hebrews 2
we get that which interprets Psalm 8; we get the reason of His humiliation, and there also we get that He is crowned with glory and honour as Son of man. Most of us are, I think, acquainted with the fact that in the first three gospels there is a point where the Lord closes up the testimony to Himself as the Christ, and from that time onward He speaks of Himself as the Son of man, and began to teach His disciples that the Son of man must suffer. "By the grace of God he should taste death for everything". Hence He will take the kingdom on the ground of redemption, and Hebrews 2 shows us that the world to come is not put under angels, but under the Son of man. God's great display in the world to come will not be by means of angels, no angel could have accomplished redemption; all will be in the hands of the Son of man, and grace will be operative in power and righteousness. It is very wonderful, the account that God takes of the Son of man. He was of the seed of Abraham, and legally the son of Joseph, but as soon as He is born into the world, He is claimed by God as His Son, but also He is Son of man, the One who was to suffer, take the kingdom, and have universal authority. It is very interesting to notice that in the gospels when the Lord speaks of Himself He speaks according to that which He is under the eye of God, and as I said there is a point in the first three gospels where the Lord no longer allows Himself to be spoken of as the Christ but as the Son of man, because it was in that character that He would suffer and reign. In Psalm 2 God's King is set on His holy hill of Zion, with authority to execute judgment on the nations. It is hardly the thought of reigning but of subduing the nations. You get the same thing in Revelation 19, where He is seen as the Word of God vested with power to put down all that is contrary to God, but when we look at Psalm 8 in the light of Hebrews 2, we find that He by the grace of God tastes death for everything, and takes the
kingdom on the ground of redemption; He is put in possession of the world to come. The Son of man came to relieve man of the pressure of death by tasting it, and brings in universal blessing as the result. You could not think of blessing here unless death were annulled, because death is God's judgment on man, and man is under it. I do not think that we realise sufficiently that all were under death, and so Christ died for all, in order that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto Him who died for them and rose again. In Isaiah 25, and again in 1 Corinthians 15, we find passages which speak of death being swallowed up in victory. How could that be if He had not first tasted it? The ground of rejoicing in the kingdom will be not only that God makes a feast, but that man is relieved of death as the judgment of God, and all this is brought about in the very scene where the enemy brought in the ruin. The victory will take place where Satan has triumphed, and so in 1 Corinthians 15 the passage goes on to say, "Thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ". The point of the passage is that the victory is celebrated here on earth, death is no longer a terror to the believer, but becomes his servant to introduce him into the enjoyment of his blessing, "absent from the body and present with the Lord". If we think of ourselves as a company of saints I do not say that we shall not fall asleep, but we are no longer under death as the judgment of God. The proof of it is that we have the Spirit. We have passed out of death into life, and the Holy Spirit is given as the well of water which springs up to everlasting life.
For the moment the rights and title of the Son of man are in abeyance. He has tasted death but He has not yet taken the kingdom, and in the interval He is called to sit at God's right hand until His foes are made His footstool; therefore this psalm has not had its
complete fulfilment. The psalms are most instructive, because in the earlier ones we get the purposes of God set forth, while the later ones speak of their being brought to pass.
I pass on now to 1 Corinthians 15:24 - 28. There the apostle by the Spirit takes up everything in connection with the last Adam, who will put down all rule and authority and power, and finally, at the close of the millennium, give up the kingdom to God. Here you get two important points: (1) That all enemies are to be put under His feet, the last enemy to be destroyed being death; (2) That all things are under His feet. You must make a distinction between enemies and things. Every enemy is put under His feet to be crushed, and death is to be destroyed. Why? Because death is the existing evidence of sin, but it will not be destroyed till everybody is taken out of it. It will be swallowed up in victory at the beginning of the millennium, but it will be destroyed as the last enemy after it has delivered up every one in its grasp, even those who have to stand before the great white throne, then death will be destroyed in the lake of fire, and all the thoughts and purposes of God will be accomplished.
What marks the nations at the present moment is that they are in opposition to God, and it is a comfort to know that what is in opposition will be broken to pieces as a potter's vessel, and that death will be annulled by Him who tasted death for everything. You will remember that all the promises to Abraham were confirmed to Isaac, because in Isaac we get a type of resurrection, and the Lord will take the kingdom in the same way, and all things will be under His feet for blessing. In Hebrews 2 the apostle says, "We see not yet all things put under him", that is, the rights of the Son of man are in abeyance, but what we do see in the interval is Himself, crowned with glory and honour, and all on the ground that He
tasted death, so that there is no longer any hindrance to the accomplishment of God's purpose, because the power of death and judgment has been annulled. The world to come is not yet displayed, but the One to whom it all belongs is in complete accord with God, and God by Him is bringing many sons to glory. God has declared His purpose, and the One by whom He will effect it is in complete accord with His mind, and thus He is suitable to be the Captain of salvation and the Leader of many sons to glory. That is the place He has taken now while He waits for the kingdom. He has trodden the path which the saints are now treading, He has passed through death, and is at the right hand of God. We cannot really apprehend God's thought of salvation unless we apprehend it in the Captain who is now at the right hand of God, because He is completely identified with those who are saved. Both the Sanctifier and the sanctified are all of one. It is His delight to be identified with the objects of God's purpose, because they are the objects of God's love and they are unspeakably precious to Christ. On that account He is not ashamed to call them brethren. We are predestinated to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the Firstborn among many brethren. The bonds which bind Him to the saints are bonds of affection, and the saints are led to Him in their affections by the Spirit. The Sanctifier and the sanctified are all of one, it is complete identification with His people, He loves them because they are the objects of the love of God, and the gift of His Father to Him during His rejection, before He receives the kingdom. Have you affection for Him? Are you glad to be in His company? Are you pleased to be in the assembly where He meets His saints? If you are dull in the assembly, you have not in the affection of your heart got to Him, and we only have affection for Him in the measure in which we are under the influence of His love. The assembly begins
with the Lord's supper which sets forth that which was the expression of His love, and thus we are led into it by the Spirit. If we really understood the privileges of the assembly, where He is pleased to be, I do not think we could bear the thought of being absent. If we knew more of the love of Christ we should be more ready to respond to it, and our love would go out to those who are the objects of His love. It is impossible to love Him and not to love the saints.
I now pass on to Ephesians 1:19 - 23. The thought here is not so much what the saints are to God, but what they are, so to speak, from God. Christ is seen at the height, above all, and all things under His feet. All is looked at as accomplished, and so everything is seen under His feet, and then we find another great truth, that Christ is Head of the church. Psalm 8 does not speak of this, but here it is brought in. The great idea of the church is that it came from Him, like Eve was taken out of Adam; she was taken from him as his body, and then she was united to him as his bride. He was also head to her and she partook of his nature and character. When the church is complete and in full display, as seen here, there will be nothing seen but Christ. We shall be the same persons, but morally there will be no trace of anything but Christ. The body is derived from Him, and therefore He is given to be the Head of it. It comes out in chapter 5, "the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church"; it was taken from Him in order that He might be adequately displayed in it, it is the fulness of Him that filleth all in all, and fulness, as I understand it here, is that which is needful for the complete display before the vast universe of bliss of all that which once came out in one solitary Man down here, but who is now in glory up there; it will then be displayed in millions of saints, it will be the fulness, the adequate
display. He is given to be Head over all things to the church which is His body, and the church will be morally suitable for the full display. All this is connected with the Son of man.
Just think of the psalmist as he looked up into the heavens, and considered the work of God's fingers while he watched his sheep, exclaiming, What is man? He could not understand it, but we see the wonderful truth that the Son of God has become a man, and as Son of man has tasted death for everything. He will take the kingdom on the ground of redemption, give effect to the will of God, and at the close of the millennium will deliver up the kingdom to the Father, and the Son Himself will be subject as Man, that God may be all in all. May God in His grace give us divine light as to His counsels and purposes, so that we may be completely separated from the course of things here, that we may know that present place which the Lord takes in regard to those who are the objects of God's love and purpose, and be led into the enjoyment of our place before the Father, and of the place where He finds His delight in the company of the saints. May we also see the greatness of the Person who effects every purpose of God.
The first chapter as far as verse 17 gives an introduction to that which follows. Then in the following verses of chapter 1 and as far as verse 19 of chapter 3 we get the character of the man who has been tested under every conceivable condition. The apostle then brings out what is connected with the Man that is. He develops the character of the man that was, in order to make room for God's righteousness and for the Man that is. Righteousness and power are the prominent attributes of God which form the subject of His gospel, besides that He Himself is made known in love. The gospel is concerning His Son, but the first great point is making God known, of course by Christ, for in this epistle everything is referred to God. God is made known in His righteousness, power, and love.
As to the man that was. We may so speak of him, because God recognised man up to a certain point; he was under probation; he had a place which he has not now. We have in these early chapters a survey of man up to the cross. He has been completely tested, and proved to be unmendable; no good can come out of Him for God. This was always known to God, but had to be demonstrated so that man might know it. It was not fully demonstrated until God produced His Man; and these chapters show the state into which man had fallen. Christ came out, apart from the man that was. He came out in the order of the new man in resurrection. You do not properly get the new man in Romans, but Christ inaugurated that order.
The early part of Romans treats of individual sins and guilt, but as a demonstration of man's state. We have the moral history of the man that sinned, his
degradation is traced in chapter 3, "His throat is an open sepulchre". What comes of an open sepulchre must be offensive; and there are besides, his lips, mouth, feet, etc.; but the point here in chapter 1 is that God begins with another Man. God's gospel is concerning His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.
Christ is spoken of as of the seed of David because He came as One entitled to a throne on earth. It shows that God was not unmindful of His promises in the past, and He will yet have a throne on earth according to the sure mercies of David; but the great point in Romans is the introduction of another Man.
Verse 2 shows that God had spoken before, and you must have the link maintained with the past. In Abraham we have promise, and God's determined purpose to bless is made known. Then in connection with David we see that God will have His throne here, and, according to His right to dispose of the earth as He sees fit, He will have David's seed upon that throne. Christ takes that up, but the point here is the introduction of another Man; then to chapter 3: 19 the state of the first man. At the end of chapter 3 we have God's righteousness established in Christ's blood; in chapter 4 God's power in raising the One who was delivered for our offences; then the offences are gone. In chapter 5 all is "through him"; that brings in the thought of administration. God's benefits are administered to us through our Lord Jesus Christ. All is in connection with another Man; and people find it difficult to get into that. Then in chapter 6 we have the new Head, we reckon ourselves alive in Him, and now it is "in him" and not "through him"; we are in His line, descended from Him. In chapter 7 there is change of law, we are released from the old husband, but are [married] to another, even to Him that is raised from the dead. In chapter 8 we are not in the flesh but in the Spirit. We have there an entirely new thing, our relation to the Spirit.
In chapter 5 the thought is more of the last Adam than the second Man, because there everything is "through him", and that involves administration. "Through him" implies instrumentality. It is when we come to "in him" that we get the thought of the second Man, the Head, involving descent and derivation. This does not go so far as new creation, but it involves it. Romans 6 does not really go beyond reckoning, you reckon yourself to be dead to sin, and alive to God in Christ Jesus. We do not get the positive doctrine of "in Christ" developed in this epistle.
The statement of chapter 1, verse 4, "declared to be Son of God with power according to the Spirit of holiness by resurrection of the dead" -- is abstract; and hence indicates the order of those in that line. Christ came after a completely new order according to the Spirit of holiness, everything now follows in that line. The link with Christ is after the Spirit of holiness. It is the divine state by the Holy Spirit, and is worked out as to us in chapter 8. It is true in Christ, and works down to the saints. Christ could not have made atonement if He had not come as man, the seed of David according to the flesh; but none can know Him according to the flesh now. If any man be in Christ there is new creation, but outwardly the believer is not new creation. A christian is much greater inwardly than he is outwardly. What is involved in the Spirit carries you far beyond what you are outwardly. You cannot get beyond a justified man outwardly, and outwardly you are not new creation. Outwardly we cannot now go beyond the appropriation of Christ as Lord, receiving all through Him; but in the Spirit's power we enter into heavenly privilege; when Christ comes all will be made manifest.
Christ is marked out Son of God with power according to the Spirit of holiness, that is where we get our line; the sixth, seventh, and eighth chapters
give us the subjective side. What comes out in sons is the spirit of holiness. Christ was absolutely, even when down here, after that order. The privilege of being children of God does not give us dignity before men, it is a secret between the soul and God. As Son of God, Christ brings you into all the light of God. As Lord, He controls you, and you confess Him as such that it may be known whose you are. As Lord, He administers all that He has secured, and faith appropriates it. It is important that evangelists should present Christ as Lord, in whom all power is centred, and shows that God has placed Him within the reach of faith. In people's thoughts the greatness of the world and of man eclipses that of the Lord. Christ administers peace and reconciliation. As responsible men outwardly on earth, we have nothing save that we are justified and have received the Holy Spirit. The proof of justification is that we have received the Holy Spirit. Justification refers not so much to state as to responsibility, and God's judgment. The word of God inwardly, that is by the Spirit, carries you beyond that, it carries you on to divine purpose. We are justified by faith, and the gift of the Spirit is the proof of how completely we are justified.
The "man in Christ" did not need a thorn in the flesh, but the man down here did. Paul knew a man in Christ, but whether in the body or absent from it he knew not, such an one had great revelations. But when we come to the man down here, he needed a thorn in the flesh to keep him from elation. Paul fully recognises the responsibility of the man down here. There are certain things which are administered to us by the Lord down here, and there are things which are between the soul and God. To be a son of God is a dignity before God which the soul cherishes as something enjoyed between the soul and God. It is like election -- there are blessings good to you, but you do not proclaim them world wide. You do
preach justification. You proclaim Jesus as Lord -- all power in His hands and blessing through Him. God's Son is our Lord. There is the light of God which faith appropriates, and full administration in man. The One through whom the light comes is the One through whom the blessings of God come to men. If you get to the Lord you get to the light, and you are light in the Lord. He has secured all and administers all, and in that One we get the full light of God. God has placed Him within the reach of faith, and if we appropriate Him we get the gain of all that He has secured.
"Obedience of faith" is obedience to Him who is in this position of Lord. There is nothing to equal the goodness of God. Christ administers peace, reconciliation, and eternal life. He died and rose again that He might be Lord of all -- dead and living. If there is one Man out of death, it shows that the power of death is broken. It shows that He is superior to it, and He brings every saint out of death. Death and the judgment of God are gone, and we who were sometime darkness are now light in the Lord. To faith the Lord is in victory and holds the field, not man, though he may appear to do so. He has been rejected here, and man is holding the things of God sentimentally, which is a perversion of the truth, and often holding the truth in unrighteousness.
The power spoken of in verse 16 is God's power. In verse 4, in the expression "declared to be the Son of God with power"; we had that which is characteristic of the last Adam. It means the Son of God with life-giving power. This is displayed in resurrection, and is characteristic of that Person. It is different in Ephesians 1; there it is God's power in raising Christ. Here resurrection is witness to the life-giving power of the Son of God. It is an abstract statement, "resurrection of dead" involving not only His resurrection but resurrection generally. It is a great thing
to see that resurrection is the power that will set aside everything which exists. In John the power is seen to be in the Lord Himself; it was witnessed in figure in the beginning of that gospel in turning the water into wine. The christian is risen with Christ, and is thus superior to everything here. In Christ risen God has set forth all that is in His purpose with regard to man. Even Israel will be brought into blessing in the power and on the principle of resurrection. In the vision of the prophet (Ezekiel 37) the dry bones live. In verse 16 the power mentioned is that which is inherent and is set forth in the gospel; the gospel is the power of God to salvation. It is like the word, quick and powerful, it effectuates salvation. We have this also in 1 Corinthians 1; the preaching is foolishness to the Greek, and a stumbling-block to the Jews; but to us who are saved it is the power of God. The gospel is this power of God, it brings a man's soul into the light of God, and thus links his soul with God. The glad tidings have to be announced to men, they would not be the power of God to salvation apart from the preaching. There is a great deal of preaching which is not gospel; the subject of the gospel is the setting forth of God Himself in love and in the declaration of His attributes of righteousness and power, and in the very nature of things this is salvation to man; it is the power for bringing man to Himself.
"I am not ashamed of the gospel" -- the apostle puts it in this negative way, because the gospel had put him into the place of shame, and he was writing to those who were in the great gentile metropolis, he was ready to preach the gospel to those at Rome also. But the gospel is what a man might well be proud of when we consider its greatness. It should not be here "the gospel of Christ", but simply "the gospel". Although the gospel is concerning God's Son, yet it is a revelation of God, it brings God before you. It is
really God's glad tidings, and is the revelation of God in His moral attributes made known in the Son. It is God as God, though everything came out by Christ. God's righteousness is declared in Christ's blood, it is made known by the gospel, and came out to man that man might be justified and dwell in the light of His righteousness. It is by the sacrifice of Christ that God makes His righteousness known, and instead of repelling, it now conforms. God brings you to Himself, and according as you are in His presence, you are conformed to His righteousness, you become a servant of righteousness and are brought into moral conformity to Him.
Righteousness declared in the blood is involved in verse 17. Only by sacrifice could God make it known. Sin must be removed from under His eye. It no longer stands in the way of the accomplishment of God's purposes, it has been removed, and death annulled. The first great consequence of the removal of sin is the gift of the Holy Spirit. The same One who takes away sin also baptises with the Holy Spirit. Sin is removed because Christ was made sin; it is not yet removed from the world, but from the eye of God; the work has been done upon the ground of which it will be put out of the world. God could not set to work to accomplish His purpose, nor give the Holy Spirit, until everything had been removed on His side. In the removal of sin is manifested the truth that God is love. Christ went into death to annul death. Consequently we have in chapter 5 peace, reconciliation, and eternal life established through our Lord Jesus Christ; they could not exist if sin were not removed and death annulled. God condemned sin in the flesh, and death ends man's state. The first five chapters in Romans show that all is clear on God's side, the next three show the way out of all difficulties on our side. It is a great thing that all should be clear on our side; but there is no gospel
if all is not clear on God's side. He will weaken everything here in death and set it aside, and establish everything of His purpose in the power of resurrection. All will be on that ground, the church and Israel also. In chapter 3 the blood declares God's righteousness; power came out in resurrection. Resurrection is the mighty power which will revolutionise everything. In Ephesians 1 the resurrection of Christ is according to the power of God to usward who believe.
The resurrection of Christ was a necessity, we read that it was not possible that He should be holden of death. In Psalm 16 we see such moral perfection in a man, that that man must go to the right hand of God. It is equally true that He was made sin, but in Psalm 16 we see the moral perfection of a man. In John 10 the Lord will not acknowledge the hand of man in His death. He says that He had authority to lay down His life and to take it again. He had received this commandment from the Father, no man took it from Him. His death was a necessity for the sheep. It is a very beautiful chapter.
The wrath of God from heaven is revealed at the same time as His righteousness. It is in contrast with governmental wrath in Old Testament times; it forms a dark background to the gospel. It will come into this scene, but will not stop here, but pass on into what is eternal. In the seven vials there is the direct pouring out of wrath from heaven. Wrath is universal and will lie upon all who obey not the gospel; it is the extreme of God's displeasure. The one who is not subject to the Son has God's wrath abiding on him; he will be obnoxious to God for ever. Eternal life is the extreme of God's pleasure. Righteousness and wrath both came out in the cross.
"When they knew God" (verses 21). There was universal testimony to God. Man started with the knowledge of God, that is, of His eternal power and Godhead, then we get the downward steps. First, they
changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, birds, beasts and creeping things. Second, they changed the truth of God into a lie. Third, they did not like to retain God in their knowledge. They gave God up and God gave them up. We see further the moral depravity of man, in that even where man has light he is not affected by it. Men knew the righteous judgment of God, but that did not affect their practice. The first form of idolatry was bad enough, but the second was worse when they worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator. In idolatry God is not absolutely denied, but His glory is given to the creature. Then God gave man up to vile affections. There is great importance in these chapters as showing that there is nothing to be looked for from the man that is. Men have had light from God, they have had His law, know what the righteous judgment of God is, but they are not affected by it a bit. Nothing is to be expected from either Jew, philosopher, or gentile. The condition of the first man is irremediable. These two chapters pave the way for another Man, everything for God comes in in Him. The light and glory of God are there, and everything for man is established in Him and administered by Him. He is God's Son. It is no use giving man, as man, more light; no use carrying the gospel to the heathen with the thought of reinstating man, though individuals may be blessed; for as to man, as man, the more light he has, the worse his state is; there are probably darker things connected with christendom than there ever were even with the heathen. Man is hopelessly lost. He first degraded God in his thoughts, and then he degraded himself and his fellow-man. They thought God was like themselves; this is what men do now, they bring God down to their level, but God rebukes such a thought, He says, "Thou thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thyself: but I will reprove
thee", Psalm 50:21. There is a fearful amount of moral depravity in christendom even though light is there.
The first word in our chapter had better be read -- "Wherefore"; it is intimately connected with what follows, but it is all one subject running on from the end of chapter 1. In the last verse of that chapter we have those who, knowing the righteous judgment of God against such as do the things there named, not only do them but take pleasure in those that do them. Then this second chapter continues the thought of the philosopher sitting in judgment. It is a kind of appeal to any man who took the ground of judging his fellow. For such there was no excuse, nor would they who judged others, and did the same things, escape the judgment of God. Man judging another is a sign of man fallen. He needs to judge himself. A censorious spirit is a bad spirit and a sign of the fall, coming in as the result of knowing good and evil, but without the power of good. This chapter deals with people who professed to have more light than the mass. Men like Socrates and Plato are possibly in view here. To judge right and wrong in others is right when exercised by a superior power as God, but there is in man a sort of pride in judging. When a man judges he exposes himself more than he exposes another, and here we see God's thoughts of such a man. There is nothing for God in man, be he Jew, gentile, or philosopher -- all are on equality, there is no difference, for all have sinned. If a man had any right sense he would never judge another, for he would know himself capable of the same things. A man exposes himself in judging. A christian judges himself and disapproves in others what he judges in himself. There was terrible darkness in these philosophers, they even
attributed evil to God, and yet they assumed to have light. The line of things in these chapters exposes the state of man, it is all very general and impersonal and shows that God was righteous in rejecting that man. Man may judge God and find fault with Him, but God will judge man, and in these chapters God exposes him.
Justification refers primarily to what a man has done, what he is responsible for, he is justified in respect of his responsibility; we are justified by another Man having come in to bear our judgment. God will not save one bit of the first man. All come in for the exposure, gentile, philosopher, or Jew. The professing christian today takes the ground of the Jew. The Jew was on the ground of privilege with more light than others, and hundreds today take the place of the Jew in light and privilege. The judgment of God takes account of what man has produced, but then God takes account of the heart also. He searches the heart -- to give to every man according to his doings. As to the saint, when God comes in to judge, He finds that which His grace has produced. To those who seek glory, honour, and incorruptibility He renders eternal life. Seeking glory, honour and incorruptibility proves that there has been a revelation. The gospel brought with it the revelation as to judgment also (verse 16, "according to my gospel"). Man never approaches God until he learns that God has approached man. The fact that man approaches God is a proof of God having revealed Himself to man. Incorruptibility involves resurrection; Christ brought in the light as to this. Job had no definite idea of the future life though he looked for resurrection. This scripture shows that God will deal with man according to his works. Eternal life is not so future in this epistle as it is sometimes taken to be, but has its application now in a certain way; it is there for us in Christ. This chapter gives us the immutable principles
of God's ways and dealings with men. The judgment of God upon man's work is according to the light he has. In the book of Revelation the severest judgments fall upon the third part of the earth, that is, on the Roman earth, because the greatest light has been there. We have the responsibility side of things in this epistle, even as to eternal life -- in this chapter it is viewed as the end or reward of a course of well doing.
Repentance in man means recovery for God. A man approaches God, he faces the right way, but he approaches in self-judgment, he has God's thoughts about himself. Confession is the fruit of repentance; in Luke 15 the prodigal says, "I have sinned". In John 4 the Lord did not say much to the woman about her life, but He reached her as to her state; she went away and testified, "Come, see a man, which told me all things that ever I did". Her life was known to the One who spoke to her, and the springs of it were exposed. He was indeed a prophet, and as such was to her conscience the mouthpiece of God.
The object in this chapter is to take man out of every refuge; it gives God's judgment of him under every condition. There are different measures -- those who have sinned without law, and those who have sinned under law (verses 12, 13). There is no escape, judgment will be according to light; these principles always abide true. The goodness of God leading man to repentance is a general idea. There was goodness in God approaching man, but there was the goodness of God as Creator. "He did good, and gave us rain from heaven and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness". "God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself" -- this was goodness. He could have cut off man in his sins, and left him without remedy, but He forbore and approached man. There is no goodness in man, nothing in himself to lead him to repentance; there was no approach to God on man's part, nor could there be until all
was clear on the divine side. But man despises God's goodness and forbearance and long-suffering, he hardens himself in self-will and does not perceive that all is intended to lead him to repentance. Forbearance is the expression of God's goodness.
The prodigal repented when he came to himself in the far country and felt his need, and thought of the plenty there was in the Father's house. Though self-judgment gets deeper as we go on, yet there is a certain moment when the soul first repents. If we come to God in a right way repentance must take the form of self-judgment, and one could not go on with God unless there were self-judgment. The unconverted man settles things in his own mind for himself, he considers it perfectly lawful to seek his own gratification, but he is not consistent, for the moment anything goes wrong he blames God. When repentance comes in all this is judged. In a man under law repentance would naturally take a legal form. Paul speaks of himself as alive without law once, but when the law reached his conscience in its spirituality -- that is, as dealing with the heart of man -- when the commandment came, "thou shalt not covet", sin revived and he died. In sin man makes himself a centre, and therein is the principle of sin, lawlessness, and self-will, but that is really a condition of debasement; instead of God and His will, it is many men and many wills.
In verse 16 we get three elements in man -- heart, conscience and mind; the work of the law is written in the heart, the conscience is a witness-bearer, and the thoughts accuse or else excuse. Conscience is connected with the work of the law written in the heart, it bears witness; it must have a standard to go by, and that is the knowledge of good and evil. Men have naturally the work of the law written in their hearts; they know that it is wrong to murder and steal, and their conscience bears witness. When the law was given there was increased light, there was
more obligation. The law did not make the things forbidden by it wrong, they were wrong before. Man acquired the knowledge of good and evil through the fall. Conscience is not light, it is neither a standard nor a guide; that is more connected with the work of the law written in the heart, the things which the law when it came condemned and forbade. These things were sins before, but the law made them transgressions. The more light a man has the more sensitive conscience is, and it judges according to the light a man has. The light condemns him; there is nothing to touch him until light comes in. Conscience bears witness according to the light. Conscience is an immense mercy of God; if you do violence to it, it will cease to witness. There is a standard and there is a witness bearer. The moment evil came in, conscience came in. Nobody can define it.
In the former chapters we have had the darkness of man, now we get the light of God coming in, that is, we have God making Himself known, and the first thing is His righteousness. The essence of the gospel is the revelation of God, and as it is God acting in regard to sin, the first thing it reveals must be His righteousness. Man having broken down, the first impression in restoration that he must get of God is that He is righteous, nor could God be known in love apart from that. No one understands the love of God until he has the Holy Spirit. As to the order of revelation, that "God is love" is the last thing learnt; we do not find the expression until John's epistle. God had acted in love, and Christ was the expression of that love; but the teaching that "God is love" does not come out until the epistle of John.
In this chapter the apostle first brings in the testimony of Scripture to confirm all that has been said in regard to the state of man. It is a great thing for us as sinful beings to know that God is not like us, and that, entirely independent of us, He takes His own way and reveals His righteousness. All works through the conscience, and the great point is how God is to be known by us. We must know Him in the way in which He presents Himself. The revelation of God is light, and the first element in that light is righteousness. Righteousness is in contrast with sin. The revelation of God's righteousness proves that man has none. The testimony of Scripture takes up every part of man -- throat, tongue, lips, mouth, feet; everything is corrupt; an "open sepulchre" would let out a good deal of corruption; the corruption is within; but the throat being open, the corruption comes out.
The force of the argument (verses 3 - 8) is that the unbelief of man does not affect what God has given to be believed; if men have had the oracles of God, their unbelief does not diminish the value of them. The "faith of God" is that which is to be believed; it is much the same as in Jude -- "the faith which was once delivered unto the saints". In christendom today, with Bibles plentiful, the unbelief of the professing christian does not make the faith of God without effect; whatever people may say, they are responsible as having the oracles of God.
The definition here of righteousness is that it is God's righteousness; it is in contrast with sin, and comes out in the gospel because the revelation of God is in regard to sinful beings; hence the first element must be righteousness; if righteousness were not manifested in the gospel, it would be manifested in judgment.
The holiness of God is seen more in nature; righteousness more in bearing and conduct. God is
holy and abhors sin, but when He acts it is in righteousness. Our unrighteousness commending the righteousness of God had special reference to those under law. God's righteousness went out much wider in consequence of the proved unrighteousness of the Jew. It is now for all, but it never went out world-wide until the unrighteousness of those under law had been fully proved. In these verses the apostle exposes the refuges behind which a Jew might get. "Our" speaks of the privileged people, the Jew. It is deeply interesting to note that in this chapter it is entirely a question of God. There is no reference to Abraham or David or to the new sphere, neither have we our justification or righteousness in this chapter. It is the light of God coming in, and His righteousness -- that is the burden of the latter part. It is greater than the fourth chapter, for there it is Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness, and so it is with every believer; but here it is the declaration of God's righteousness. Believing comes in, because, it being a question of revelation, God could only make Himself known in righteousness to those who believe. In chapter 4 we get the resurrection of the Saviour and our righteousness, and consequently the acceptance of man in the light of that. In chapter 3 God makes Himself known in righteousness in a way of His own, and entirely independent of man. He has set forth Jesus to be a mercy-seat through faith in His blood for the declaration of His righteousness. Chapter 3 is perhaps more than the blood-stained lintel; still, if we could conceive a person come as far as chapter 3, that person is sheltered by the blood; but it is difficult to conceive such a state, he would not have any light as to the fruits of victory. Victory comes out at the end of chapter 4, and chapter 5 brings out the fruits of victory. What is here is morally greater, it is what God is, and people need to be rooted there. It is in the blood that God's
righteousness is declared; faith is for us the way of it, but the mercy-seat is in the blood of Jesus. God thus vindicates Himself in respect of His past dealings, and it is the declaration of His righteousness now. When God is vindicated -- justified in the eye of man -- in our eye, then we are conscious of being justified: but the first point is, God is justified; the blood witnesses the righteousness of God. God could not overlook sin, but He vindicates His action in respect to man in the past, as in sparing David, for instance; and now fuller light comes out; He is righteous and the justifier of him that believes.
The law bore witness of the righteousness of God, in that if a man came near to God it must be by blood; he could not approach without blood. The prophets gave the strongest possible testimony to the righteousness of God in contrast with the sin of the people. They bore witness to His character, and showed that the sin of the people was intolerable to God, at the same time indicating the way of its removal. God was always righteous, no alteration has taken place in His character. He took care to bear witness to His righteousness before it came plainly out in revelation. No one could tell how it was coming out, but nothing could be such a declaration of God's righteousness, as that God's Son, the righteous One, should be made sin; the character of God has been vindicated in the cross, the blood is the proof of righteousness.
The resurrection is the expression of power and victory, but the foundation of God's actings is in the blood; God's power in resurrection comes in on that basis. "Now is the Son of man glorified, and God is glorified in him". Propitiation is the great basis, sin dealt with according to the righteousness of God. Thus His righteousness has been declared, sin having been completely removed from before Him. John 16:10 is the Spirit's conviction as to the world in
regard of righteousness, not the declaration of God's righteousness.
Verse 22 is the bearing of this righteousness; it is not limited. All have sinned, so it is unto all, but its application is to all them that believe. The question of righteousness was all settled for God before the resurrection took place, it is not affected by resurrection. We have here God's righteousness in favour of man when that righteousness had been fully proved. God has taken His own way of declaring it, when He might have made it known in judgment on sinners. Righteousness is now ministered from the glory, but that is not Romans 3. Here it is declared in the blood of Jesus. God raised Him and gave Him glory. He went to heaven, so to speak, naturally. He came forth to do a work, and when He had finished it, He went back to the place He came from. All the activity of God is based on righteousness perfectly established in the blood. The resurrection is the great triumph of God, not simply a question of righteousness. God has triumphed over sin and death. When the saints are displayed they will be set forth as the righteousness of God. Our justification and peace are the fruits of victory, but we could not have the fruits until the victory is there, and that we have in the end of chapter 4; but in this chapter we have the glorifying of God. When Christ died, God was fully glorified, and there could be no improvement on it for God. Nothing could surpass what was effected for God when Christ died, it was God's fullest declaration of His righteousness, He was fully vindicated, but the resurrection was the testimony as to the Lord Himself. In a certain sense the value and glory of His Person are declared in His resurrection, and in His ascension.
The blood is the vindication of God in respect of the apparent tolerance of sin in the past, and also in respect of His present dealings with men. God never intended to set the first man up again. The state of
accomplished, subsisting righteousness before God, in which justification places us, is inseparable from Him who is risen from the dead; but in the cross all was effected; the mercy-seat was established in the blood. The rending of the veil shows the same thing. It was rent when Christ died, not when He rose. God had been vindicated in the death of Christ, and we should all admit that resurrection is the consequence of that. It is not only that God has been met, but He comes out to declare His righteousness. It is what God is, He is righteous while He justifies. In the future a King will reign in righteousness; and at the present moment there is a ministration of righteousness, but it is all the effect of God having been vindicated in the cross; there could not be a ministration of it from Christ in glory otherwise.
Faith establishes law, because law has done its proper work, that which God intended it to do; it has borne witness to the state of man; and faith sees that consequently God has in Christ manifested His righteousness. It is of the greatest moment in the history of a man when God is justified in his eyes. Abel came with the acknowledgment that death was upon man, and that he could not approach God apart from death. Propitiation -- the mercy-seat, is the great thought in this chapter. "In his blood" is connected with the mercy-seat. Faith apprehends that propitiation is "in his blood".
The distinction between chapters 3 and 4 is plain: in chapter 3 we have God's righteousness; and our righteousness, that is, as being accounted righteous, in chapter 4. The declaration of God's righteousness must come first. We can only know God (accepting the truth of the fall), as He has been pleased to reveal Himself. The first thing impressed upon the conscience of a sinner is that He is righteous, nothing can be rightly apprehended on God's side until this gets its place in the soul. His righteousness is declared, so
that He is just and the Justifier of him that believeth. Thus we have God's grace prominent in the third chapter, and our faith in the fourth, and thus are set forth God's side and our side. The woman in the Pharisee's house got the Lord's forgiveness, that was His side; then His word to her was, "Thy faith hath saved thee; go in peace", that was her side. What link should we have with God's side but by faith. Faith links those who believe with God and the world to come, for a man is not justified in relation to this world, he is accounted righteous in view of God, and of the world to come. The establishment of God's righteousness has in view ultimately new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness will dwell. The problem then is, how can man be righteous with God? The answer is, in the sacrifice of Christ. The real point of the third chapter is, that the life of the man who was under judgment has gone in judgment in the righteous One; and the righteousness of God has thus been vindicated. We read, God has set forth Jesus "a mercy seat through faith in his blood". Blood is the witness of death. God must look at man as under death, and the blood upon and before the mercy-seat was the witness of death accomplished to God's glory. Man is fallen and the sentence of death is upon him, and the life that was under death must go in death. Who is the man that is justified? The believer; he is justified really because in Christ the life is gone. You must begin from God, and get the moral foundation of righteousness well laid in the soul; the foundation which God has laid is, that He has carried out His judgment, and the life that was under judgment has disappeared in judgment. The subject of righteousness is limited in chapter 3, God must necessarily be righteous also in His government, as in all His acts and ways; but the point in chapter 3 is the righteousness of God which is revealed in the gospel. The witness of the righteousness of God in
respect of sin is in the blood. God is just and the Justifier of him that believeth; that is the attitude in which He is, He has not disregarded His own judgment, but it has been effected in the righteous One. He can now clear the believer, because the man that was under judgment is gone in the death of Jesus from before Him.
All that God does He does in righteousness; but Scripture does not in regard of redemption connect the thought of the righteousness of God with the resurrection of Christ; the One who died for God's will was the Son of God, and it was impossible that He could be holden of death. Psalm 16 shows us the perfect Man, who had His delight and confidence in God, and He must go to the right hand of God. In Ephesians 1 resurrection is presented as the exceeding greatness of the power of God usward. If righteousness is connected with the resurrection of Christ in regard to redemption, it is looking at Him too exclusively as man. He could say, even in regard to the wickedness of man: "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it again". The whole Godhead had their part in redemption, and the Son had His part. It is quite true that He has taken the place of man, and we see Him as such in Psalm 16; but His resurrection is not presented in that psalm in connection with redemption. For His work, we must go to Psalm 40; there we have a divine Person come out to accomplish God's will. In Isaiah 50, where it says, "he is near that justifieth me", God vindicates Christ in answer to the act of Satan and man. Man crucified Him, and God raised Him; but the point in our chapter is the declaration of the righteousness of God in the gospel, not God's answer to men's acting. In this chapter the righteousness of God is declared in the fact that the man under judgment is gone in judgment; in the fourth chapter we have the power and victory of God in Christ's resurrection, and in connection
with it our righteousness. In 2 Corinthians 5:21 "that we might become the righteousness of God in him", sets forth, that, in the place we have in Christ in new creation, we are the declaration of God's righteousness in having cleared us. The answer to Christ having been made sin is given in us. When we are there, we are witnesses of how completely we have been cleared, and so have become God's righteousness in Him. Christ took by resurrection a place in glory according to divine counsels, but that could not be until redemption was complete, then He took the new place, and we come into connection with Him there; the application of righteousness is to us, not to Him, in 2 Corinthians 5.
The great point in chapter 3 is this, that God has not abandoned one single iota of His judgment, for it has actually fallen upon man, but on the righteous One who took man's place; and now God has come out fully, and can bless man according to His counsels. All is clear before Him. Man's status was that of a sinner, so the apostle says, we have before proved that they are all under sin; the man that sinned and came short of God's glory has gone in the judgment of the cross. God maintains His righteousness in the cross in respect of man, and of his state as a sinner, all is gone in death. You could have nothing according to divine counsel unless the whole state of man as a sinner had been met in righteousness. Our new state is according to counsel before sin came in. We are God's righteousness because Christ has been made sin. God has been so completely vindicated in respect of sin and His judgment on man, that He can now set those who believe in Christ in glory, and He will do so according to His purpose. Romans 3 is the one chapter in Scripture which speaks of the declaration of God's righteousness; God declares it "in his blood". Redemption is sometimes used for deliverance, as in the case of Israel, but in this chapter it is
evidently connected with the blood, so in Ephesians we have, "Redemption through his blood". It is brought in there to show that God's counsel is revealed consistently with His righteousness, He could not carry it out so as to compromise Himself.
The real force of the passage (Romans 3:25, 26) is that God has set Jesus forth a mercy-seat in the power or virtue of His blood, to declare His righteousness. Morally God is on the mercy-seat in Christ, the blood having met the whole question of sin and man's state. Thus has God vindicated Himself in His dealings with men, both as to the past and as to the present time. Man's universal state has passed in review; he has been proved a sinner, whether Jew, heathen, or philosopher; then comes the revelation of God's righteousness, and now God is free to carry out the purpose of His will. All were under sin and exposed to judgment; justification could not be established for us in resurrection if judgment upon man had not first been executed in the cross.
Eternal purpose gives us our place with God; if God's righteousness is brought in as giving a place, it proves too much, for all would have the same place; but God puts every family in the place which He has purposed for them. (See Ephesians 3:11.) God's righteousness was completely declared when Christ died. Then Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father. He is declared Son of God with power by resurrection; in that verse the thought of His raising Himself may be hidden, as we read in John 10, "Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I might take it again". This last passage is a very important one; it shows that the relation of divine Persons is of love rather than of righteousness. Who would speak of righteousness simply as between the Father and the Son? It is the Son who says "my Father". Righteousness might be a question as between God and man in reference to
Christ, but in redemption the divine Persons in the Godhead all acted in perfect accord; and each divine Person was involved in the work. "The glory of the Father" conveys a different thought from "the righteousness of God".
Righteousness is in contrast with sin. In chapter 3 the man is gone from before God, but not from before us. It is often a long time before we see that the man who is gone for God is gone for us. There are three figures in Israel's history of the death of Christ: (1) the blood on the lintel; (2) the Red Sea; (3) the brazen serpent. In Egypt it was a question of the righteousness of God, that is, of the blood. At the Red Sea the enemy's power is annulled; and in the brazen serpent man's state is dealt with; but all three types were included in the one death of Christ. As to the full value and efficacy of the blood, we should have to go beyond the scope of this scripture (Romans 3), it would take in the whole scene of glory; but in these three types we have the completeness of Christ's work. It paves the way for what comes afterwards, the introduction of everything for men in another Man. God's victory and the fruits of His victory are set forth in the last Adam. God makes known His victory in another Man, and we are given to enjoy the fruits of that victory.
It has been said sometimes that blood meets guilt, and death meets state. There is truth in this, but blood is the witness of death, and the terms are often interchangeable. Man could not approach God apart from death; the blood looks at God's side. It was the meeting of guilt in the death of the offender, the man is gone, and the blood is witness of it. On the cross every moral question was settled for God in Christ, and death came in and closed up all.
This chapter gives us instruction in advance of chapter 3, for in it we have additional light in regard to God and His actings. The divine purpose in this epistle is first to enlighten man in regard to God. God has come out to reveal Himself fully in the gospel. Then we see how we are affected by the light brought to us. It is evident that the great point of chapter 3 is the righteousness of God; this chapter brings in the glory of God. Another important point is that the glory of God is the real test of faith, it tests a man's heart. The resurrection of the Lord does not refer to or form part of the course of this world, but of the world to come -- the scene and sphere of God's glory. Faith always had to do with the world to come, as we see in Hebrews 11, while it determined a man's course in this world. We see in this chapter the perfect consistency of the ways of God with man. The faith of Abraham and David referred really to the world to come; God, who calls things that are not as though they were, must always have had the world to come in view; the effect was that the light separated those who had faith from this world. It is not difficult to see what the effect was upon Abraham; he became a stranger and a pilgrim. The God of glory appeared to him, and when God said to him, "Look now toward heaven, and tell the stars" -- He spoke of his seed in view of the world to come. Abraham was the point of departure in God's ways; the world was not given up until Abraham's call, he was called out of it. Abraham is brought in to establish the principle of righteousness -- David to describe the blessedness of the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin; but in either case it was faith. The principle of justification without works was established in Abraham, his faith being counted to him as righteousness; he was undoubtedly justified in view of the world to come, for
he was called out of this world before he was justified; and, indeed, Melchisedec, the priest of the Most High God, possessor of heaven and earth, blesses him who was a stranger in this world. Nothing shows more distinctly that God had the world to come in view, than that He called Abraham out from this world just after the earth had been providentially settled and divided among the nations. The world to come is the scene and sphere of God's administration in grace; righteousness is maintained, but grace is dominant; it is put under the Son of man, and is established on the ground of redemption, that is, on the ground of grace, not of law, though righteousness is fully maintained. It is grace reigning through righteousness.
Justification has a double bearing; one side is that we are clear of every reproach in regard of this world, and the other, that we are approved for the world to come. God accounted Abraham righteous, but Abraham did not get much benefit from it in this world, but he will have his place in the world to come; it is obvious that the promise that he should be "the heir of the world" does not refer to the world that is. It is a great lack with us that our souls are not sufficiently in the light of the world to come, we are too well pleased to be justified for God and for this world. People may profess a certain faith in redemption, but the real test of faith is the glory of God; we are brought into the light of it morally. If God presents Himself to us in the Lord Jesus Christ in resurrection, and in the gift of the Spirit consequent on His exaltation, are we not brought into the light of the world to come, into the light of His glory? People are tested in this way, and it finds out what they are after -- the things of this world or of the world to come. Works, as a principle of justification, is the point of contrast, if a man could be justified by works, it would be for this world, while if justified by faith it is in view of the world to come. There will be the time of display,
when heavens and earth are united in the blessing of redemption, but we get the light of this before the display on the principle of the hymn:-
Cannot a christian realise the possibility of being in a scene morally outside of this world? The exercise of faith is in availing oneself of the light one has got, then the truth of it has clearly come home to the soul.
The elements taken up in this chapter are just as good to us as they were to Abraham, though they may not apply exactly in the same way; but still the principles are available for us. Christ has been raised up from the dead to give us a place in the system of the world to come. He is the beginning, the first-born from the dead; He takes up a place in resurrection to give us an entrance into that order of things. He takes up a place too for Israel as well as for us. "He was delivered for our offences, and raised again for our justification". Tasting the powers of the world to come refers to what the Hebrews had experienced in the power of the Holy Spirit. It is the power which will relieve man of every pressure that sin has brought into this world.
Genesis 15 opens up the light of another day. Abraham had to look up toward heaven and see the stars. God tells him his seed shall be as numerous. He then gives him the pledge of the inheritance. The type refers to the death of Christ as the confirmation of the covenant -- there is the burning lamp and the smoking furnace that passed between the pieces. The question had been raised "Whereby shall I know that I shall inherit it?". But the promise was through the righteousness of faith. The great point of this chapter is the glory of God, and when we survey it, a great expanse is opened up; for the glory of God is all that in which He is displayed.
When Christ died His work was before God in its entirety. There are three marked types of it, the blood on the lintel, the Red Sea, and the brazen serpent, but all was before God in its completeness on the cross. It is of the last moment to see that in chapter 3 the old man has gone for God in judgment. Chapter 6 recognises that it is gone for us, "knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him". The scapegoat (Leviticus 16) is hardly a figure of resurrection, but of the administrative putting away of sins for Israel in the future.
David is brought in here to describe the blessedness of a man that is justified -- it is the blessedness of the man to whom the Lord imputes righteousness without works. The principle had been enunciated in Abraham, that blessing must be on the ground of faith. If the blessing of God refers to another scene, it involves another principle in man, and that is faith. This is in accordance with what is revealed in the gospel, "the righteousness of God ... upon all that believe", irrespective of Jew or gentile. Abraham was accounted righteous in uncircumcision, when he was neither Jew nor gentile. What have we apart from faith? The Spirit is received through the hearing of faith. David could describe pathetically the blessing of sins being covered. He could speak of it in a different way from Abraham. Abraham represents man at his best, and David in his sin, man at his worst. Abraham was called out when there was nothing overt against him. They were each depositaries of promise, and all was assured to them through resurrection. In the ways of God we depend upon Abraham for the principle of blessing, and on David for the throne where all is administered in grace. The principle of grace comes out remarkably in David; all proves the unity and strength of divine ways. Although God gave Israel the law, another principle was in His mind; Abraham lived before the law was given, and David after, and
yet the same principle is seen in both. In David the principle was applied to a man under law; there was no remedy for David under law, he was wholly debtor to the grace of God. Further on in this chapter we get the opening up of the purpose of God, not through law but through the righteousness of faith.
What we have here is a question of light, the light which God has given by the gospel. He not only shows us His righteousness, but He opens up the world to come. We have the power of God in raising up Jesus our Lord from the dead. When Paul said to the Philippian, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ", that meant a great deal, it meant bringing the soul of the jailor into the light of the world to come. We do not get the inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, but we get the Spirit as the earnest of everything that is headed up in Christ. We do not sufficiently connect the gospel with the world to come, we are more concerned that people should appreciate that they are justified as men down here, than we are to bring them into the light of the God of resurrection, and of the Lord Jesus Christ. All that is light in regard to the world to come. The Lordship of Christ has reference to that world which is the sphere of His administration.
God was over the sin of David so that he should express the feelings of the remnant in the future, they will appreciate the blessedness of sins covered. Psalm 32 refers to Israel, but it says, "Blessed is the man", so it is good for the gentile. David was a pattern man of grace, just as Paul was a pattern of the whole longsuffering. There is one point which has been a little overlooked by us in connection with the righteousness of God, namely, that it is in the righteous One that the man under judgment has been removed, so that in the removal God should be glorified -- Christ suffered, the just (righteous) for the unjust; so, too, in 1 John He is spoken of as "the righteous". He has fulfilled
every requirement of God in Himself, and we come into sweet savour in connection with Him as the righteous One who has maintained God's glory. We stand in all the savour of His work. This hardly goes so far as Ephesians 1, "Accepted in the Beloved". Israel will stand in the sweet savour of the burnt-offering. The blood of the burnt-offering was never carried into the holiest, it established a ground of acceptance upon earth in the place of sin.
Life is not brought out doctrinally in this chapter; in the next chapter we have the love of God shed abroad in the heart by the Holy Spirit. The unfolding is progressive. First we have light as to God's righteousness, then as to His glory as the God of resurrection, and so a new scene opened up, and then we learn that the source of all was love, as witnessed in Christ's death. The purpose of all this is to bring us into the full light of God as revealed in the gospel, and that is of love; these things are given to us in detail for our apprehension. This chapter brings in resurrection, and that opens out the scene and sphere of God's glory in which Jesus is Lord. The resurrection sphere is where God works. In the world man works, constructs enormous armaments, builds up vast systems, makes instruments of destruction -- that is the power of man working; but there is a sphere in which God works for His own glory, and that is the resurrection sphere; there the Lord is Administrator and the Spirit works. People would be greatly confirmed if they were consciously in the sphere of this power. We see the proofs of God's goodness in the world, but one must be in the scene in which He operates to see the proofs of His power.
"Raised for our justification" gives us a status for God and for the world to come; Christ is our righteousness for that. We need not be troubled about our weakness if Christ is our justification in the presence of God, our approval for the world to come. "He
was delivered for our offences", that clears us from any charges connected with this world, then in Christ's resurrection we are approved for the world to come. The same will hold good for Israel. Death has come in for the removal of the transgressions under the first covenant, and they will say, "The Lord our righteousness". In chapter 5 we get all the blessed effects to us of the Lord's administration.
The early part of this chapter sets forth our experience in the light and blessing of what God has established, that is the new sphere which He has brought to pass. Peace, favour with God, and the hope of glory are the elements of blessing which belong to us as brought by faith into this sphere. Peace is consequent on the destruction of the enemy. It is as with the children of Israel when they had passed through the Red Sea and had come into the wilderness. In figure it was a new sphere into which they entered, where God was known to them in a new light. They had Moses for king, and God loved His people. We have come into the sphere of God's administration where Christ is Lord, and the Holy Spirit is to us the witness of God's love, as in Deuteronomy 33:3, "Yea, he loved the people". We have had before us two types, the blood on the lintel and the Red Sea; in the one (Romans 3) the judgment of God was met, in the other (Romans 4) the power of the enemy was overthrown. Death was the power of the enemy, and in death it was destroyed, and God comes in as the God of resurrection. It is His glory. We get, in passing through Christ's death, into the enjoyment of what God has done, and we enter by faith into the new sphere of God's power, where the enemy has no place. It is an immense thing to realise that there is a sphere where the enemy
has no power. This is true to faith, not to sight. Here all is set forth as from God manward; to the end of chapter 5 Christ is mediator. Then comes in the experimental side; the succeeding chapters are taken up chiefly with deliverance, in order that we may enjoy the light revealed in the earlier chapters. The point is, that God should be known, for the light in which a man knows God is practically the life of his soul. "The life was the light of men" is the other side, but the light becomes our life practically. What is the life of the soul? It is the knowledge of God. Sins are gone in order that the light of God might be in our souls. It helps immensely to see that the great purpose of these chapters is that God may be made known. The real blessing of man does not consist in knowing that he is forgiven, but in knowing God. That is the divine thought in the gospel. The gospel is in itself a proclamation, and the apostles were the heralds. Behind the proclamation and the facts was the purpose which God had in view -- so to make Himself known as that He might gain the heart of man.
God is the God of resurrection, the Lord Jesus Christ is the Administrator, and the Holy Spirit is given to us. This constitutes the new sphere, in the light of which it is the believer's privilege to be, and in which the devil has no power; his power was broken by Christ going into death. His going into it was the smiting of death, like Moses stretching out his hand over the Red Sea. Death is robbed of all its terrors, and beyond death is the new sphere into which Christ has entered, and where God is known according to His pleasure as the God of deliverance; we enter that sphere by faith.
The force of the "Lord Jesus Christ" is that He is the Administrator of all the blessings which He has secured -- He is the Mediator. The children of Israel were baptised to Moses, he was king in Jeshurun.
We are baptised to Christ -- to His death, we enter by death the sphere where Christ is known as Lord. You could not really enjoy what is presented in chapters 4 and 5 unless you had chapters 6, 7 and 8. You might get the light of it, but not the enjoyment. A person gets the light of things before he gets the real enjoyment of them; he sees that the things exist; and one sees many things in Scripture, of which, if honest, we should say that we had not much enjoyment. Deliverance from sin, from legalism, and from the flesh is necessary to the enjoyment of these things, and it is a good deal to say that you are free from those three; and the effect of deliverance is in unhindered enjoyment of the wonderful way in which it has pleased God to reveal Himself to us. He has done this according to His pleasure, though consistently with righteousness. The revelation of Himself as the God of deliverance, the enemy's power being destroyed, the introduction of the Administrator, and the gift of the Holy Spirit are all according to His pleasure. Deliverance is in the transference of the soul from the ground of the one man to the ground of the other -- the last Adam instead of the first. In chapter 5 Christ administers for God, in chapter 6 He is for us -- and we are to account ourselves alive to God in Him. Deliverance has been accomplished that we may know the Deliverer. If it were not accomplished we could not enter into it. If sin had not been put away from before God, the law annulled by the body of Christ, and the flesh condemned, we could not be set free from these things. God has wrought deliverance but, of course, we must enter into it, or it would be only the holding of doctrine, and that is not power. We begin with doctrine; but, as regards faith, it is of moment to see that we are not called on to believe anything about ourselves, but what God has done. Deliverance is practical, it is the soul taking possession of the blessed ground which
God has prepared. If we could conceive of the children of Israel continuing in what they began with when across the sea, when they saw the Egyptians dead, and they sang the song -- it would have been a bright experience, but they did not keep up to it, they had many dark moments afterwards.
The fact was, that it was the will of God to test a people after the flesh; and figuratively Israel did not come to the end of the flesh until the brazen serpent; after that you get the springing well. Deliverance is known in a sense when a person believes the gospel, but the deliverance effected by the gospel has to be afterwards maintained in the soul. There is a difference between the light in which God was known when Israel were past the Red Sea, and that in which He had been known as sparing them from judgment in the land of Egypt; evidently Israel then knew Him in a new way. When God is thus known, that knowledge becomes the life of the soul; further on, not only is God known in delivering power but His love is shed abroad in the heart. God loves His people.
You cannot follow out the type of Israel in the wilderness too strictly, for we do not come to mount Sinai, but to mount Zion. The latter part of Romans 7 is Sinai ground, but properly that is before the gospel is known. The mind of God is that no one should come to mount Sinai now. You cannot make the gospel follow the type of Israel so as to bring christians to the burning mount, it would be traversing Scripture, "Ye are come to mount Zion". Israel was brought to Sinai on purpose to test a people according to the flesh; they got the brazen serpent afterwards. We start with every type of Christ's death fulfilled. We start in the value of all. There is an idea that christians receive the gospel and afterwards get into Romans 7. If so, this arises from the fact that the gospel is so little known. The mass of christians know little or
nothing about the brazen serpent. They have read John 3, but they have not apprehended the moral force of it. As a matter of fact, nine out of ten persons in christendom do not believe in an indwelling Spirit; they believe in certain influences of the Spirit, but they do not know the well of water springing up in the believer and the consequent practical setting aside of the flesh. In Romans 7 the soul reaches on its side -- the side of experience -- what God has set forth on His side. "The strength of sin is the law, but thanks be to God which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ". At the end of Romans 7 the victory is realised; it is never realised until a person learns what the flesh in himself is, and that God is wholly acting on other ground. Though not dispensationally under law, yet one may go through it, after conversion; you might really say after faith; it is anomalous, but so it is.
In the gospel God commends His love to us (verses 8). Judgment is not glad tidings, but the presentation of the gospel brings in the thought of judgment; that is, if men will not have the gospel they will come under judgment; it forms a background. If men will not have the righteousness of God as presented in the gospel, witnessed in the blood of Christ, they must know it in judgment upon themselves; know it they must, either as light in the gospel or in judgment.
Another beautiful thing comes out here, namely, reconciliation; that is, the sense of distance gone, for the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts. Sin brought in the distance, but if the love of God is shed abroad in the heart, then evidently the distance is gone. It is a wonderful thing to go through the world in the light of the God of resurrection, and of the administration of the Lord Jesus Christ; and the Holy Spirit shedding abroad in the heart the love of God; the christian ought to be able to sing.
"Saved in the power of his life" (verses 10). This is
the power of His life in contrast with His death. The wrath of God is revealed, but the day of wrath has not come: we are in the scene on which it will come, and that makes the position of a christian peculiar; for, as to his soul, he is in the new sphere, that is, in the resurrection sphere where God has been manifested, where Christ is Lord, and the Holy Spirit bears witness to the love of God. This will be all good for the kingdom, but it is not heaven. The promises that God made to Abraham will all be fulfilled in the power of resurrection. Christ is Lord for that day, and the power of the Spirit will be here. God has destined us for glory, but in the meantime we get here the blessings connected with the world to come, though, as to the body, we are in the sphere of the power and malice of Satan, and of infirmities, in the scene on which wrath will come. We boast in tribulation because as to the body we are where Satan can stir up affliction; it is a peculiar position.
In the latter part of the chapter we have a kind of summary showing the superiority of grace to judgment. Judgment acted on the ground of the one offence of the first Adam, grace on the ground of the righteousness of the last. A wonderful thing has come to pass -- the conciliation of the two trees of Eden. The question of good and evil has been solved for God's glory, and the One in whom it has been solved is the Tree of Life for man. Adam chose to take of the tree of knowledge of good and evil and died; but now that question has been taken up in Christ, God's judgment borne, and Christ is the Tree of Life. We see the superiority of grace to judgment; "much more", it says -- the last Adam instead of the first.
Verse 17, "Shall reign in life", is in contrast with death reigning. It is the "excess", as another has said. It could not be put quite abstractly "Life shall reign", though it says in an abstract way "death reigned", but "they shall reign in life". Judgment
dealt with one offence, grace deals with many unto justification. This latter part of the chapter brings in the perfection of Christ as the One who having solved the whole question of good and evil, is the revelation of God to us. There were two things to be dealt with, sin and death, and the Lord Jesus has dealt with both; but before that came to pass, the power of evil, whether of man or of Satan, had been met by perfect good. Evil was completely met and overcome of good, but behind all that lay the judgment of death. The two trees in the garden of Eden were symbolical, they represented what was within the reach of man; but man was forbidden to touch the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and he never touched the tree of life, for after the fall God prevented him from so doing. But the question of good and evil, once raised, had to be gone through -- with the judgment of death behind it, through one righteousness (towards all men for justification of life) it has been solved, the judgment of God borne, and Christ has become the light of God to us. In this passage we get things traced back to their first cause. Sin brings in death, grace brings in life, because it brings the light of God into the soul, and so we get eternal life here, God having been revealed. Eternal life is practically the light of God in the soul. Eternal life is to know Him. The light of God could never be in the soul if God had not begun to work there and the Holy Spirit had not been given, for God cannot be known in His nature save by the Spirit (1 John 4:7).
The brazen serpent is taken up in John 3. The great point in connection with the Son of man lifted up is that the way might be cleared for God to communicate the Spirit to man. So long as man was in the flesh it could not be, but when God had condemned sin in the flesh the way was open for the Spirit to become the spring of life in man; John 4 is the antitype of the springing well in Numbers 21.
Appropriation is in John 6; there is no "eating and drinking" (see verse 56) until then. Believing and appropriation are not quite the same thought, though you could not appropriate without faith; you must believe God first to see what there is to be appropriated. Appropriation is in the power of the Spirit.
In going rapidly over these chapters we must not miss the great light of God that is brought to us in them, that is, from chapter 3 to the end of chapter 5. What is characteristic of this moment is that grace reigns. In chapter 6 we are on different ground. The end of chapter 5 shows, as we have seen, the contrast between grace and judgment in connection with two men. As to justification of life -- if you are in life you are conscious of being clear of every reproach that attached to you in your responsibility. The christian is clear of all reproach, and Christ is his righteousness in the presence of God, in a scene agreeable to God. It is only in life that you are consciously clear. "One righteousness" is righteousness viewed as a whole, not simply the solution of good and evil by Him who is "the Righteous One" -- "Jesus Christ the righteous" -- but the judgment of God borne in righteousness. What troubled the Lord in Gethsemane was that the judgment of God lay behind the question of meeting the power of evil. The wonderful thing is that Christ has gone into death. Had Satan only known what His going into death meant he must have said, 'there is an end of me and of my power', for if He goes into death it is certain that He must come out of it.
To the end of chapter 5 we have had the objective side, that which is presented for faith; in this and the two following chapters we get the subjective side, that which is effectual in believers in the power of the
Spirit. In the one case the truth is from God man-ward, and in the other we see what is from man Godward. It is not the old or first man which enjoys the light that has come out in the earlier chapters. God has presented Himself, and the revelation is complete; but you must have a man that can enjoy the light of the revelation. In chapter 3 the first man is completely dealt with in God's righteousness, but in so dealing with man in the Person of Christ, God has revealed Himself -- His righteousness is declared. In chapter 4 we have the glory of His power, and in chapter 5 His administration through Jesus Christ our Lord; thus the light of God has come out. Then the next question is, how man can live to God, how are we going to enjoy the light of this revelation? There are two things manifestly, two principles, in Scripture, one is revelation, the other is approach; but they are not equivalent. Revelation stands good for every family, but every family is not granted the same ability and privilege of approach.
God has now come out in a way in which He was never known before; Adam as God created him never knew God in this light. To enjoy God in this light there must be a man of a new order; these three chapters (6, 7, 8) solve this point exactly, and two things come out in the three chapters concurrently; one is the elements of what is formative in the believer, and concurrent with that, deliverance. The first thing we have to recognise is that there is only one man before God, for there is only one man out of death, all else are under death, therefore to be alive it must be in that one man, for He only is out of death. The first element then is to count yourself alive to God in Him. The second is that Man is law to you, and not the ten commandments; and the third is, that the Spirit of that Man dwells in you. Those are the three formative elements. Concurrent with that you get deliverance -- from sin, from law, and from the power
of the flesh. Deliverance and the formative work of the Spirit go hand in hand. You realise deliverance in proportion as you are built up. Risen together with Christ in Colossians really means full deliverance, and quickened together with Him means that you are formed in the divine nature, these go concurrently. So here, you count yourself dead to sin, but concurrent with that alive to God in Christ Jesus. So you have put off the old man and put on the new. All this illustrates the principle, that formative work and deliverance go hand in hand. Deliverance is realised by each in proportion to the work of the Spirit in us. It can be mentally known, only according to the work of the Spirit in a man. Deliverance is deliverance, or it is not worth much -- only a term; and it has to be maintained.
Verse 6 states what has been effected for God in order that a certain result might be obtained. "Our old man has been crucified with Christ, in order that the body of sin might be annulled"; the old man has been dealt with in order that God might communicate the Spirit. It is true that there is no mention of the Spirit in the verse, but the annulling of the body of sin is the outcome of the Spirit being there. The old man has come under condemnation with the sin that attached to it, in order that the Spirit might be communicated to the believer; that the body of sin might be annulled, that we should no longer be in bondage to sin. What belongs to the Spirit of God is liberty. Verse 6 gives what is accomplished for God -- God condemned sin in the flesh. This is the fulfilment of the type of the brazen serpent. In the death of Christ every type was accomplished. When Christ died, death, in all that death meant, was before God. And so in the type of the passover, all was under the eye of God in the blood. The blood witnessed to judgment having been already executed, therefore the destroying angel could not touch the Israelite. So in
chapter 3 everything is accomplished for God, but all is to be administered through Christ. It made room for the introduction of the glory of God in resurrection, and administration is committed to the One who is risen. It laid the ground for the reign of grace. The brazen serpent was for entering into life; God could not bring it in, in the case of Israel, until after the close of the thirty-eight years of testing; but when brought in, it coalesces with the Red Sea and the blood in Egypt. There is no exact type in the Old Testament of God dealing with sin in the abstract. The New Testament is greater in its scope than the Old.
The "we" of verse 2 are those who have died to sin. It is in that sense hypothetical -- such of us who have. Such of us who have died to sin, how shall we live any longer in it? It really sets forth proper christian position in respect of sin. It shows the impossibility, it is more than inconsistency, of those who have died to sin living any longer in it. The statement in this verse is hypothetical, not absolute. We may call it "experimental", and if not so it means nothing. When we come to verse 6 you count yourself dead, and alive in Christ Jesus, you cannot take up one side without the other. If you do not count yourself alive to God in Christ Jesus, you will not count yourself dead to sin. Few of us realise the state of things as regards this world -- that there is but one Man out of death. People would think very differently about the world and the course of things down here if they realised that there is one Man out of death, and all else are dead. And that Man is the only point of life, for "if one died for all, then were all dead". They were dead before, and the death of Christ proved them to be so; but there is one Man out of death, and we can reckon ourselves alive to God in Him. This is all the effect and power of the Spirit. This chapter answers to the type of the bitter waters of
Marah. They have to be drunk, but the tree has been cast into the waters; that is, Christ has come into death, and has thus made known God's love, and the bitter waters have become sweet. Christ has died to sin literally and lives to God. He has taken that ground, not that He needed to take it for Himself, but He has taken it so as to furnish a ground for us. Through the Spirit's power the christian lives in a life that is outside of flesh, but it is a serious thing to live in a scene where all are found to be dead, and only One is actually out of death -- that is Christ.
We have the elements in these chapters. This sixth chapter simply introduces us to what is initial. The point we reach here is, that you count yourself alive to God in Christ Jesus.
The force of the words in verse 3, "unto his death", is that in baptism you are identified with His death, not only so, but buried with Him, put out of sight. No man is prepared to accept death until he sees that Christ came into death; His having come there changes the whole aspect of it. How could any man think to accept death until Christ came into it? it would be ruin to him. We see how Hezekiah and saints in the Old Testament clung to life here in this world. But when Christ came into death, Satan must have seen that it was all up with his power, because if Christ went into death He must surely come out of it. He could not be holden of death. It is important to see that when God takes up man down here, He takes him up where he is. Death is upon man. That is the position of man. How is he going to have to say to God, or how is God to have to say to him, but through death? You are still alive actually, but you are buried with Christ by baptism unto death, so that no more of you shall be seen. There is an end of us as to what we were in this world.
The glory of the Father is the new platform, the starting-point of everything; the glory of the Father
claimed Christ when He had gone into death. It is the ground of our walk. "That like as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we also should walk in newness of life". The great point in the resurrection is, not simply that the believer may be conscious that he is justified, but that in the extremity of his weakness he may know the power of God. We have limited ideas of God's purpose in the gospel, the great point with God is that man should be delivered from the bondage of sin; and it is the righteousness of God which really sets a man free not only from the guilt of sin but from the bondage of sin; this comes out in the latter part of this chapter. The first part of the chapter shows how you are going to be maintained in the position, but the latter part of the chapter shows how you have been set free at the outset, that is by the righteousness of God. "Being made free from sin" is a positive statement, and you have become the servants of righteousness. A man gets the sense of it when he submits to the righteousness of God. In preaching the righteousness of God, if you got the true idea of it, you would see that the presentation of God's righteousness is not merely that a man may be justified, though that is the beginning, but that he may be set free from the bondage of sin. The object of God in the gospel is to establish links between the soul and Himself, and in order to establish such links He must break the bondage. He sees man held in bondage, and His thought is to set man free in order to form links between that man and Himself. The first is by righteousness, and the second by resurrection, for if a man apprehends the power of God coming in to take a Man out of death and to give Him glory, he says, I can hope in God. While I realise my own weakness I can hope in God who raises the dead. In that way the link of hope is formed between the soul of man and God. Thus God is not only free to carry out His own
purposes, but He has brought man to the point where he can receive everything He has to give him. We arrive so little at the true thought of God; our great idea is that man shall have forgiveness of sins, and perhaps the gift of the Spirit; but God's thought is that man should be delivered from the bondage in which he is, and that a link may be formed between his soul and Himself. So with Israel, not only "I am come down to deliver them", but God will bring them to Himself.
Verse 7 is a statement that any man who is dead is justified from sin. You could not talk of the activities of sin in a man who is dead. Suppose a man executed for murder, it is all over with him, he is out of the scene of sin's activity, he is justified from sin. J.N.D. used to say you could not charge a sinful will and evil lusts on a dead man.
It is a very great point to apprehend where you begin anew, "alive to God in Christ Jesus". It is our beginning that we have in this chapter. Our beginning is undoubtedly very small, a reckoning is not a very great beginning, but that is all that you have in this chapter. Man, naturally, is on the line of Adam, but the christian counts himself alive to God in Christ Jesus. The reckoning is doubtless made by the power of the Holy Spirit, for the preceding chapter supposes the presence of the Spirit in the believer, the love of God is shed abroad in the heart. We do not get the Spirit mentioned in this chapter, for it presents contrasts; so too in the next chapter, the contrast is that you have become dead to law, but Christ has become law to you. Then in chapter 8 the Spirit is in contrast to the flesh. In this chapter the contrast is between sin and God. Faith is not prominent here, because the truth refers to the state of the believer. We are not usually called on to believe anything about ourselves. In the objective part of the epistle we have faith, "access by faith", etc., but
on the subjective side it is knowing and reckoning. The wonderful thing is that in reckoning yourself alive to God in Christ Jesus, you can take account of God in His righteousness. You can dare to be before God in the presence of His righteousness. In Christ man lives to God according to the righteousness of God, and so the christian can reckon. This subjective side in chapter 6 is based upon the objective truth of chapter 3, for if you reckon yourself alive to God, it is according to His righteousness. To get the complete thought of deliverance you must take the three chapters together. The subject is divided into chapters, but it is really all continuous. In this chapter you are attached to God, in the next you are attached to Christ -- married to another -- and in the succeeding chapter it is not that you are attached to the Spirit, that could not be, but you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, and the Spirit is life. Chapter 7 is that that Man is law to us, and in chapter 8 His Spirit is life in us.
We have to a large extent avoided, I think, drinking the waters of Marah. It has been pointed out many a time that they were the brackish waters of the Red Sea. Not the waters of Jordan, but of the Red Sea. They set forth the death that is upon man here: wherever you look, in every direction you see that death is upon man, but man cannot, dare not, drink the waters of Marah, because apart from Christ he has nothing beyond; but the tree having been cast into the waters they have become sweet, because Christ's death is the way out of death into life. It is Christ coming into death which has opened the way into life. When we see that, there is no difficulty in accepting death, for it becomes deliverance to us, it is our servant, and on the other side we reckon ourselves alive to God in Christ Jesus. The soul can now take account of God in His righteousness, and, as set free from the bondage of sin, we are the fruit of His
righteousness according to the purpose of His love. It is a point of vital moment that we can reckon ourselves alive to God in the presence of His righteousness. The point of declaring His righteousness was not merely that the believer might be justified, but that be might be delivered from the bondage of sin. Bearing about in the body the dying of Jesus is the outcome of drinking the waters of Marah; that is undoubtedly the working out of it.
Jordan does not come into Romans. We get it in Colossians. It involves change of place, and so brings in resurrection. We get death in view of resurrection. Israel came up out of Jordan with the ark of the covenant -- the type of risen with Christ. The ark of the covenant went into Jordan first, but the people followed it out of Jordan as risen together with Christ. It is transplanting you on to heavenly ground, not, as in the Red Sea, to bring you into the wilderness, but you leave the wilderness and take heavenly ground in association with the ark of the covenant. In the epistle to the Romans we are looked at as in individuality, not in the place of association with Christ. Romans does not really conduct us beyond the plains of Moab. In the first part of chapter 8 you have the brazen serpent (verses 3), and in the latter what corresponds to Balaam's effort to curse met by the God that justifies His elect. When we come to chapter 8 we shall see that the teaching is not of what is wrought in you, but that you have everything in the Spirit, you are not a debtor to the flesh. These chapters do not give us exactly the formative work of the Spirit, but the elements of it. It is elementary in that sense; for instance, in this chapter you get the thought of the second Man -- that is an element, and you reckon yourself alive in Him. Then in chapter 7 Christ is law to us -- that is another element, but then it is only stated as an element, it has to be made good in the soul. The great point in chapter 8 is that you are not
a debtor to the flesh, but that you have everything in the Spirit. The beauty of these chapters is in that they give you what is true of every christian, for every christian has the elements, but every christian has not the formative work of the Spirit. We see this in the Galatians, they had all the elements, but after all Christ was not formed in them. All was theirs, but it was not wrought out in their souls by the Holy Spirit. They had come to Christ Jesus, they had begun with that Man. The Son of God had been brought before them by the apostle as One who loved them and gave Himself for them, and they had the Spirit, so that they certainly had all the elements.
Verse 8, "If we be dead with Christ we believe that we shall also live with him". If you have died with Christ, it is the proof that you have faith, you would not accept death if you had not faith that you would live with Him.
Verses 12 - 14. It is a great comfort that we have a statement of that kind, "sin shall not have dominion over you". It is a very encouraging statement, because grace is grace. Grace comes in to prevent a man from being brought again into bondage to sin. We are not left to our own resources, but should come boldly to the throne of grace to obtain mercy and find grace for seasonable help. The service of the priest and the throne of grace is that you should not sin. It is well to remember what we have had before, that it is of the last moment to see that the great object which God has in the gospel is the forming of links between the soul and Himself. In order to do this He delivers man from bondage, and then links the soul with Himself that man's hope may be in God. Man must be a pardoned sinner, but the end of God is that he might be set free, and the soul, in all the sense of its weakness, be linked with the power of God. And it is a wonderful thing to be able to dwell in the presence of the righteousness of God, and not
to be appalled by it, for He has made it known that He might deliver us from the bondage of sin, but not for our own will, but to be in bondage to God, and that is the most blessed thing that a man can be brought to.
We have to look these two great elements in the face -- one is bondage, and the other weakness, both the effect of sin. It is a great thing to take them into account, and to see how God has ordered everything: in regard to the one -- to deliver, and in regard to the other -- to give hope.
Chapters 6, 7 and 8 show the way of deliverance. Apart from what we get in these chapters there could not be a way of deliverance. This chapter really applies to all, Jew or gentile; for though the gentile is not formally under the system called law, yet as knowing it, he is under it practically as a principle of subjection to God. We are not, as christians, under the first covenant, but we are duly subject to Christ. Christ is law to us, so the apostle speaks: "Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ". We are not off the ground of individual responsibility in this epistle. New creation is involved in chapter 8: 1, but the idea in these chapters is hardly that of new creation, but that you are brought to walk in moral superiority to the whole scene of death here, as the Lord did. It is like Peter leaving the boat to walk on the water to Jesus. These chapters depict what the christian is to be here. The law from which we are delivered is the bond which existed, at all events for the Jew, under the first covenant; but when we come to the new bond, the gentile is just as much in it as the Jew. It is "the law of liberty", and in the new bond, the righteous requirements of the old bond are carried out in the power of the Spirit.
There are three steps in deliverance. The first is (to use the figure of Peter leaving the boat) that you leave the ship (earthly religious order) to walk on the water. The second is, that you experience the sympathy of Christ, and the third is, that He stretches forth His hand to rescue you in your weakness. Romans 6 is that you leave the ship, that is, you leave that which recognises the man that was for another Man, namely, Christ in resurrection, and you take up a position of death to sin. Then what you experience is, that you have the sympathy of Christ -- that is chapter 7; you have His sympathy the moment you take up a position apart from sin down here. But that is not all; in chapters 7 and 8 you have His outstretched hand, that is, His Spirit, and His hand draws you to Himself. What we see in Peter was not exactly failure, but infirmity. This comes out in the end of chapter 7, the sense of utter weakness. What in this chapter shows that you have the sympathy of Christ is the idea that you are married to another (verses 4); a woman naturally has the sympathy and support of her husband. You go to Christ in chapter 6, the reason being that you are going to be in the likeness of His resurrection; there is another Man in view, and you go to Him; the effect is that it completely changes your attitude down here, you are apart from sin; you do not continue in sin; you become servants of righteousness; but that results from leaving the boat to go to Christ. While on the road to Christ you are walking on a sea of moral death. Then His sympathy comes in and His hand.
Going to Christ is the way of deliverance from sin; you take the ground that you are going to be in the likeness of His resurrection, and in the meantime you count yourself alive to God in Him; you do not acquiesce in the course of things here, but there is a complete change of attitude with regard to it; dead to sin, you are servants of righteousness, It is a
serious position to take up, for you had been servants of sin, accustomed to acquiesce in it; but in taking up this serious position you have the sense of the sympathy of Christ, that is the first thing; then you make the discovery that there is no inherent strength in you, and that brings home to you the necessity of His hand; you can do nothing but by His power. The sense of what He is to you comes out in "I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord", but in the next chapter we have "The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set me free from the law of sin and of death". The answer to the sense that you have no inherent strength is the Spirit.
Strictly speaking, in the experience detailed in the latter part of this chapter, the apostle goes back to the time "when we were in the flesh". Not many learn the lesson of weakness in that way now; nine out of ten have to learn it after they have believed the gospel, but the lesson has to be learnt in order that it may get its answer in chapter 8 -- that it may be felt how absolutely necessary the power of Christ is. It may seem a little obscure, but in reality the point we are considering runs side by side with the change of priest in Hebrews. Aaron was the first priest, and law and priest are inseparably connected. Israel received the law under the Aaronic priesthood. If there is a change of law there is a change of priest, and if there is a change of priest there is a change of law, the law is identified with the priesthood. The priest has gone and the law with him, and a new priest has come in. It is no longer the time of "the law going before", there is a "disannulling" of this, and "the bringing in of a better hope by which we draw nigh to God". The priest sympathises with our infirmity. It is not conflict in chapter 7, but rather the discovery that there is no moral strength in you, that "in me, that is in my flesh, dwells no good thing". Galatians 5:17 shows that the Sprit and flesh are antagonistic,
that the one will not tolerate the other. Those who have believed the gospel pass through the experience of chapter 7 in a modified way; strictly speaking it refers to a man who has not got the Spirit -- "when we were in the flesh". The chapter comes in the history of most people where it is placed; you learn that it is hopeless to look for anything in yourself, but there are two things you get in chapter 8 -- the Spirit is the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus, and the Spirit of sonship. Thus Christ by His Spirit draws us to Himself, but it is as a Man of another order.
If we take the analogy of the history of Israel, chapter 3 corresponds to the blood in Egypt; chapter 4 (the resurrection of Christ) to the Red Sea; chapter 6 to the bitter waters of Marah. Chapter 7 is the priesthood, only it is a contrast to what went before, hence it carries us beyond Israel's history, for there being a change of priest there is a consequent change of law. Chapter 8: 3 is the antitype of the brazen serpent, and we have the spirit of Balaam at the close, "Who is he that condemneth?". But it is difficult to attempt to carry out these types strictly, for you cannot bring the christian to mount Sinai. Israel received the law at mount Sinai as the revelation of God's will under the Aaronic priesthood, while we are come to mount Zion. But the point now before us is that having come to another system you come to another priest. Aaron could compassionate the people, but he could not sympathise or succour. Christ sympathises and succours.
Aaron could not sympathise because he was encompassed with infirmity, he was not himself out of the circumstances. Christ has been into them, but He is now out of them, and consequently He can sympathise. This chapter shows that we are married to Him, and so get His support to bring forth fruit unto God.
The early part of the chapter applies to the Jew primarily as knowing the law, and in a secondary
sense to us, on the principle of the epistle to the Hebrews; that epistle was written to people who had been under law, but it brings in the light of christianity and so applies to us. Going back to the type, Aaron passed away before the brazen serpent. No doubt this paved the way for the change. We have another Priest and another law. Christ is law to us.
In order really to sympathise, one must be oneself out of the condition in which sympathy is needed. Aaron was in the same condition as the people. Christ has been in the conflict with sin, but now is out of it, and He can sympathise with us who are in it. God can compassionate, but does not sympathise. Christ took the place of weakness down here, that He might be able to sympathise -- the very thought that He can sympathise is support. If a person conscious in himself of infirmity realised the sympathy of Christ, he would feel support, but it must be as not acquiescing in the course of things down here, but as a servant of righteousness, then you get the sympathy and the succour, for He draws you to Himself.
There is power in chapter 8, for all is of the Spirit, and you are drawn to Christ in the place of power where He is, and in the Spirit you get life and sonship. Christ is in glory, and the effect of that is to draw you into the light of Himself where He is. In the end of chapter 7 the man under law has made the discovery that there is nothing good in him, nothing to be improved, that all is hopeless; and in his infirmity he realises the sympathy and succour of Christ. You do not get sympathy of Christ with will, but it is yours in the sense of infirmity. The moment you take up that position you have Him on your side. He Himself walked on the water, but another thing, He encouraged Peter to walk on the water. Infirmity came in with Peter, not sin. He was afraid when he saw the wind boisterous, but that is not sin. We have in our minds too much limited the idea of priesthood. Priesthood
really covers all that Christ is on our side. There is a contrast between Christ as Mediator and as Priest; the Mediator represents what He is on God's side, but the Priest all that He is on our side.
In verse 20, you come to the point of discerning between good and evil. It is a complete analysis of the state, that with my mind I serve God's law, but with the flesh, sin's law. The light is breaking in; my mind approved something better, "I consent unto the law that it is good". Still there is death in us, utter moral weakness, you give up all hope in yourself, man is no good. This lesson has to be learnt, and when it is learnt, you would not find those who have learnt it standing out for proprieties and that sort of thing. What would mark them would be the desire to get out of sight, only rejoicing in the portion they have in Christ, not seeking to present a fair appearance here. It is no good to attempt to reinstate yourself down here, the only thing now is to get to Christ's side, and the effect of that is to make you small -- nothing, but it makes you superior to anything here. There is another thing that we have to take account of, that the Spirit is a formative power in us. He draws to Christ, and thus you are built up in Him in divine affections. A great hindrance is in not being content to be nothing; if you are in conflict with sin, you do not want to be great. One sees the Lord walking on the waters, how He went through the world divinely superior to everything, but what are we in the conflict of good and evil? Absolutely no good at all, and the best thing is to get out of sight here, but in doing so to get to the Lord. If we have the sense of being nothing, but are conscious that we have everything in Christ, we shall not be satisfied till we reach Him.
Job learnt the lesson of his nothingness when he said, "Behold I am vile", or as J.N.D. translates it, "I am nothing". He came to the point, "I abhor myself". He had not the Spirit; but, owing to the
state of things in which we are, most of us learn this after we have believed the gospel and received the Spirit, for it must be learnt. There are two things with regard to man, death is upon him, and death is in him; and it is more painful to know that death is in you than even that death is upon you. In the former case you are absolutely worth nothing at all. "Sin, that it might appear sin, working death in me". "I know that in me, that is in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing", that is death. It is what the apostle meant when he said the law had killed him. "I through law have died to law". It brought home to him the sense of moral weakness -- of total inability for good. The fact is each one has to say I am nothing; for whatever we may be externally, or whatever appearance we may keep up, we are nothing. Marah was the brackish water of the Red Sea, and the Israelites had to drink it, and down here we have to accept death. A great many thank God for the death of the Lord who have not apprehended it in connection with the waters of Marah. Verse 25 is really a step forward. Everything is perfect on God's side. Up to the Red Sea and the going over, all was on that side, but after that the other side had to be learnt, and it is not fully learnt until you are over Jordan. In chapters 6, 7 and 8 you are past the Red Sea, and the point is that you should be free to enjoy the grace which the Lord has made known, and in which He has come out. You must have the subjective side. Without it there would be a great defect -- incomplete knowledge of Christ, for you would not know what He is on our side. Peter saw the Lord walking on the water, and he wanted to go to Him. The Lord encouraged Him to leave the ship. Peter volunteered, and then became afraid when he saw the wind boisterous; the wind is the influence of Satan agitating the waters, but it is then that the Lord stretches forth His hand and succours him.
Referring to verse 25, the mind is the apprehension of the man; there is an inner man which serves the law of God, that is, there is the work of God through which one consents to the law that it is good. We want a more distinct sense of the attitude the christian has taken up according to God, and at the same time more sense of Christ with us in the conflict, that Christ feels with us -- that we are married to another, and get His sympathy and support, that we have come under the power of His affection. If we have but little sense of weakness we have a feeble sense of the sympathy of Christ. Saints have but a poor sense of what it is to leave the boat. They are hindered by many things, education, providence, etc., hence they do not leave the boat to walk on the water to go to Christ.
The end of the chapter shows that the law works no deliverance, the only hope is in being married to another. You must bring Christ in, for there is nothing else for you but to accept the hand of Christ, that is, His Spirit, and the power of His Spirit is to draw you to Himself. There was a great difference between Abraham and Lot. A lady was once telling J.N.D. that he did not know what it was to enter into the fearful conflict with evil down here, and he called her attention to the fact that while Lot was sitting in the gate of Sodom, Abraham was on the mount interceding with God, If you take up the conflict in a worldly way, you will get under the power of sin. If you keep up a certain status, and go into society with the idea of bearing testimony, you will fall under the power of the world, you will not be free of it. Others are in danger of being cut off by the Amalekites, who fell upon the weak and the stragglers. Your only chance is to be clear altogether.
It is evident that chapter 6 is the real starting point of the christian's experimental history; the introduction of baptism shows that. The moral force of that chapter is that the believer is for Christ, and in chapter 7 Christ is for him; in this chapter he is in the hand of Christ. In chapter 6 he declares for Christ, he has accepted the end of the first man, and he counts himself alive in Christ. As the prophet Hosea says, "Thou shalt not be for another man, so will I also be for thee"; you declare for Christ and then find that Christ is for you -- that is chapter 7; but not only so, you find that Christ has got you in His hand in order to draw you to Himself. Chapter 8 draws you to the light of purpose. But you must have everything clear on the righteousness side, before you can touch purpose. Here we only get to the edge of it, and then the chapter closes with the thought of the love of God in Christ. The expression, "In Christ" is taken up from the sixth chapter. You have got as far there as reckoning yourself alive to God in Christ Jesus. Here the apostle just brings you to purpose, but does not open it up so as to carry us on to what is corporate. If you get Christ's power, as in this chapter, it is to bring you into the light of God's purpose which is revealed in Himself. Ephesians begins from that side with the light of purpose. "In Christ" is in contrast with "in Adam"; it is so put elsewhere, "As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive". There is a strong contrast between the end of chapter 7 and the beginning of chapter 8, "Who shall deliver me out of this body of death?". He cries to be delivered out of that condition in which He was, he thanks God that he has reached the Deliverer. He it is who takes you out of the old. Then in chapter 8 you get "In Christ", though the thought is not developed. It does not carry you quite as far as new
creation. What you are brought to is virtually to say, "Adam will not do, death is on all that is of Adam", and the only ground to take is that of life in Christ Jesus. The great mass of us have really known very little of the waters of Marah, we look upon life here as agreeable, and there lies the weakness of our apprehension. Death is man's proper portion as the fruit of sin, but Christ has come into man's portion and place; that is, the tree has been cast into the bitter waters of death, and the waters have become sweet, but that does not at all alter the position of things down here; the aspect and bearing of things to the christian is that he accepts death, reckons himself dead, and sees that there is life only in Christ. Christ has come into death to show us the way out of the whole state of things which is dominated by sin. The question had been raised, "Shall we continue in sin?", not exactly 'continue sinning'. It is where you live, and so positional. It is a great thing in a person's history when he comes to the apprehension that death is upon man, and upon everything here, and while realising that, he declares for Christ, that he is for Him. The Ethiopian eunuch is an illustration. He saw the situation, that if Christ's life was taken from the earth, then there is no life here upon earth -- not for God or else Christ would not have died. His death proved that all were dead. The eunuch's affections are led to that point. There is more in baptism than people sometimes think. It means leaving the course of things down here and going forth to the Lord. When a man comes under the influence of divine love, he is constrained, he is conscious of obligation to Christ. He goes forth to Him, and because of His death you have no obligation to the world. You preach the gospel not as a question of obligation to man, but as constrained by the love of Christ. You are absolutely for Christ. This means walking in moral superiority to everything here, not
trying to stem the tide of evil, but being for Him. His love constrains you, so that whatever He may appoint is your work. If it is a question of love for souls -- whose love for souls is it? -- the love of Christ -- the love of God? Christ is the motive, and the obligation is to Him, and not to man. If you find a christian who is worldly, that man feels instinctively that he is under an obligation to the world, because the world tolerates him. We ought to be prepared to be discountenanced by the world. When this is so then we find Christ is for us. "No condemnation" is not exactly condemnation on the part of God, but the sense of condemnation in one's own soul. The law was a ministry of condemnation. If the soul has not taken its place as in Christ, it must be under the sense of condemnation, because it thinks that God regards it according to its own state. When you come to experience, deliverance is a very serious thing. Chapter 8: 1 is the contrast to the law; the law was the ministry of condemnation. Then what gives force to the statement that there is no condemnation follows, "For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death". The law brought sin home to a man, but now you are on another line, the old line is closed, you are in Christ, and there is no condemnation on that line. What you get afterwards is that the old state has been condemned already. "God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh". You have got into practical deliverance, that is, deliverance in power from the state to which condemnation applied. As long as anybody, as to their sense of things, is married to the first husband, and you may get christians in that state, there is plenty of condemnation; they need to see that that bond is done away through the body of Christ. Christ's hand draws us into the light of purpose, and it is impossible that there should be any condemnation in
the line of God's purpose. The whole question of sin and righteousness, of good and evil, has been resolved; sin has been put away, and righteousness vindicated and established, and now God has come out to establish His purpose, and there can be no condemnation on that line.
In chapter 8 we have the third aspect of the death of Christ, in order that God might form us in a new state; we do not get the new state in chapter 6, it is only reckoning there; but chapter 8 introduces the new state. The brazen serpent aspect of the death of Christ presents the question of man's state, in order that the believer may be set up in a new state. Life is in the new state, and sonship, and the latter part of the chapter brings in the purpose of God. "Whom he did predestinate, them he also called, and whom he called, them he also justified, and whom he justified, them he also glorified". These three chapters -- 6, 7 and 8, must be taken together; the truth is given in detail, but the detail has to be put together in a person's soul; you cannot analyse them in your soul, though you can regard them separately in your mind. Christ is for the believer, but that is not all the truth, the believer is in His power, and His power draws you into the light of the purpose of which He is the expression.
The character of death is now entirely changed, instead of being the expression of God's judgment, it is now, through Christ having been into it, the expression of His love, and He has thus made a way through it to Himself The power of the enemy lay in death being the judgment of God, but the power of the enemy is completely broken, and the death of Christ has become the way to God. "Dead to sin" in chapter 6 does not bring in the brazen serpent, but the bitter waters of Marah. The sixth chapter hangs on baptism. It is the acceptance of death, whether for yourselves or for your children; if your children
are baptised, you have no right to bring them up for sin or for the world. You have not the type of the brazen serpent brought in until the question of law had been brought in. The brazen serpent is the answer to mount Sinai, so you must have chapter 7 first, and chapter 8: 3 is the answer to it. Of course the death of Christ was before God from the outset in all its fulness, but experimentally the law must come before the brazen serpent. As long as any one has an idea that God is dealing with him on the ground of state, he will be legal; the only way to be free is to see that God has condemned the old state in order to form you in a new state. The new state is of the Spirit. It is wonderful what you get in this chapter. First, Christ in you, then the Spirit bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, then eventually we have the redemption of the body. After that is the light of God's purpose, and it ends with "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?".
The love of God is seen in that He sent His own Son; so in chapter 5 the death of Christ is the expression of God's love; but here the point is that He sent Him in the likeness of sinful flesh; hence the state has been condemned with the sin that dominated it. It hardly goes so far as John 3, for there we have the opening up of the whole range of divine love; here the truth is more limited, because it is the question of our state; the second verse is connected with the truth of John 4, the well of water springing up in the believer. In principle that was fulfilled in John 20. The Lord breathed on the disciples and said, "Receive ye the Holy Spirit". But there is something further than this in John 4. Many have received the Holy Spirit in whom He is hardly a well of water springing up to everlasting life. The Spirit springing up brings you into the light of God's purpose. So here if Christ is in you the body is dead, but the well is springing up, "the Spirit is
life". Then lower down the Spirit bears witness with our spirit that we are God's children. It is wonderful to be in the hand of Christ, and so drawn into the light of God's purpose, of which He is the expression; "Predestinated to be conformed to the image of his Son".
In the end of chapter 5 you get the consciousness that grace is reigning, and anyone can understand that the first thing that comes to a man is the light of divine grace. He is enlightened by the light of God, but when you consider what we are down here, does not a man need to be put on a new line? If we take into account what we are and have been, we must feel the necessity of it. These chapters put you on a new line, and then you come into the full enjoyment of the light, both of the grace of God and of His purpose. It is a great thing to be put into a line, a line on which we can get the full enjoyment of these things, and we are put into that line in an exceedingly blessed way. It is the line of Luke 15. The best robe was put on the prodigal that he might be in the enjoyment of his father's thought about him. It made no change in the father's thought about him, which was as great at the beginning as at the end, but it changed the prodigal's thought. It will actually be realised in our being conformed to the image of God's Son, but we are morally conformed now.
This epistle does not take us off the ground of responsibility. Verse 4 is that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit; but what we see in this chapter is that the Spirit can carry us a great deal farther than any question of responsibility. Outwardly we do not get beyond it while here, but the Spirit witnesses with our spirit that we are the children of God; that is not outward, but with our spirit; so that while fulfilling outwardly the righteous requirement of the law, the soul has a secret which is a great
deal beyond that. People may see one walking on the water, but they do not see the hand and power that upholds him. The soul has a secret, but no one can explain it, and it supports us in suffering with Him. "If so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together".
There are two things that we each need to know; first, what it is to be in the light of divine grace, and secondly, to be in the sense of our own proper relationship with Christ. Both these things will have to be taught to Israel; they are abiding now without king or prince, without a sacrifice, without an image or ephod or teraphim, without false gods or true; but they will learn the grace of God, and their relationship to God, and we have to learn the same two things. It is interesting to see in the history of the children of Israel that the priesthood changes before the brazen serpent is introduced. Aaron is stripped and Eleazar is clothed. Living affections are brought in, so that the heart may have the sense of grace. The power of life comes in and the sense of Christ's grace.
Strictly speaking, chapter 7 refers to the law, that is the first husband; you are freed from the law to be to Another. He has brought the first bond to an end, that He may be a bond to you. We are under law to Christ, but it is that we may be supported by Him, a thing the law could not do, it gave no help. Priesthood is on the line of support. The law ministered condemnation, but what we get in the priest is support, it is involved in our being married to Another. We get His support, and then we learn His power, and that His power is the servant of His love. He makes you conscious of His interest in you, and then makes known to you that His power is at the disposal of His love.
We get three spheres presented in the course of the epistle to the Romans; there is the revelation sphere,
the dispensational sphere, and eventually the governmental sphere. In chapters 3 to 8 the full light of God comes out, with the consequence resulting from it; in chapters 9 to 11 we have the course of dispensations on earth; and in chapter 13 the sphere of government in man's hands. From chapters 3 to 5 the full light of God's revelation in grace is brought in; and chapters 6 to 8 give us the necessary consequences of it in us. The first thought is that God has come out, and the second that man goes in; the one is the necessary consequence of the other. The dispensational part (chapters 9 to 11) begins with Abraham and ends with the ultimate restoration of Israel. Then there is the government of God in the world, and christians have to be subject to the powers that be. The kingdom of God in Romans is looked at in a moral rather than in a dispensational way; it is righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.
In chapter 8 we come to purpose; the reason of that is that, considering what God is in His love, there must be the sovereignty of purpose. If God reveals Himself in love, there is the purpose of His love, because of what God is. All is for the satisfaction of His own heart, and there could not be response in us if it were not made known. Purpose is connected with what is revealed in Christ, "Whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the first-born among many brethren". The expression, as well as the revelation, of God's purpose is in Christ. The cry of Abba, Father, is really the response to the love that has come out in the revelation of purpose. You cannot have greater light as to God than comes out in chapter 5, but the point in chapter 8 is that you are conducted to Christ, in whom is the expression of divine purpose; you thus find yourself in the full light of divine love in Him who is the full expression of God's purpose, and then one can say, nothing
"shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord".
The Spirit first of all, up to the end of verse 13, sets you free; then you are brought into the proper domain of the Spirit. There are two things about the flesh which commonly hinder us, as shown in the case of Israel in the book of Numbers; there are the reminiscences of Egypt, and indisposition for the land; all that has to be overcome in the power of the Spirit. You must get this freedom first, not but that a person may see the purpose of love, but entering into it is another thing. It is painful to think of our indisposition to be conducted into the purpose of God; no one who knows anything about himself will deny that. How is it? Flesh is flesh; the two great hindrances of Israel were, they remembered the leeks of Egypt, and they did not believe the report of the spies concerning the land; the fact is, it is much more difficult for man to believe in goodness than in evil. He naturally knows the latter, but not the former. In Numbers we have the people tested under the law, that is, they were under that system; they were put under it after the breakdown in Exodus, but with the name of the Lord given to them, as gracious and merciful, but who would by no means clear the guilty; this serves the more to bring out the flesh, and its provocation of the Lord acting towards them in longsuffering mercy. When we come to the serpent of brass, the flesh had been proved, and under the system of law it had not one bit altered; the wilderness was the day of provocation. Flesh never serves God's law; the conclusion come to at the close of chapter 7 is an important point. "With the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin"; that is always the case, an unvarying principle that with the flesh man serves sin's law; but the great thing is that the mind is set free from the flesh, and it is with the mind that we
serve God's law. If the flesh moves at all it is sin, and the flesh is your natural self; what is free from yourself is your mind, and with your mind you serve God's law, not with the flesh; it is with the renewed mind. As to oneself in chapter 7 the conclusion come to is that it is no longer "I" the individual dissociates himself from the sin that dwells in him; and that is one of the most important points for a man to come to; the work of God is apprehended; there is the "inward man"; and in the next verse we have "the law of the mind", the mind is evidently connected with the inward man. The crucial point is the mind, there it is that the christian is free; the mind is free and connects itself with the new man. The spiritual mind in chapter 8 is another word, rather the purpose of the Spirit.
Chapter 8 is an unfolding of what the christian has in the Spirit rather than of what is wrought by the Spirit in the christian; the Spirit is looked at through the chapter as the power of Christ in the christian which draws him to Christ. The work of the Spirit is to fill you with Christ, all has to be wrought in the soul in order that it may be good in yourself. If you take the case of the Corinthians, they had the Spirit, but there was but little wrought in them. The apostle had laid a good foundation, and others had built on it "wood, hay and stubble". They had the Spirit, so too had the Galatians; and theirs is a still stronger case, for of them the apostle said, "I travail again in birth until Christ be formed in you". It was wonderful that the Spirit should have come down upon Christ, that there might be set forth, in the power of the Spirit, all that was morally beautiful in a man, so that we might see it; we do not see it in ourselves but in Him.
"If any man have not the Spirit of Christ" refers to the Spirit as a Person; so the Spirit is life "because of righteousness" must refer to the Spirit as a Person, and it results in practical righteousness. There are
three characters given here of the Spirit -- the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Christ, and the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead. The Spirit comes in thus in connection with the whole history of a christian. If the Spirit of God is in you, you are not in the flesh; the Spirit of Christ is more characteristic, life comes out in the christian and is of the Spirit, the christian is not a mere attempted imitator of Christ, but what is produced in him is of the Spirit; then the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead assures to you the climax, the quickening of the mortal body. The great thought in view is conformity to Christ. It is a most interesting point to see how the christian is connected with Christ, Christ will surely bring you to Himself. We find at the close of the chapter -- "Nothing shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord" -- this shows very clearly that Christ has so laid hold of you to draw you to Himself, that nothing can take you out of the region of His love. That is the only way in which you can be above the influence of things here. Otherwise you do not know the road at all, for supposing that a person enters into all the light of the earlier chapters -- the question arises, is God going to leave him down here in the midst of the darkness with all this light? What is the road going to be? Christ answers it, I am going to draw you to Myself.
As to the difference between "Sons" and "children" -- sonship is not developed in this chapter, we have the Spirit of sonship, and the expectation of sonship in the redemption of the body. Sonship is conformity to Christ in glory, the Spirit of sonship never came until Christ was in glory. The Spirit is the Spirit of God's Son; you could hardly apply the term 'child' to Christ, nor could you quite connect the Spirit of God's Son with the thought of "children", but the Spirit bears witness with our spirit that we are
God's children. When you speak of sons, you identify them with Christ as the Firstborn among many brethren, but you can hardly bring Christ in with us as children. The idea of children is apparently confined to what we are while here, sonship is in connection with the glory; when we are completely in the likeness of Christ, sonship comes out according to the divine counsel. We are not yet in heaven, but down here in the place of children, and as children we share Christ's rejection; but the Spirit is the Spirit of sonship in the believer now. So in Galatians we read, "Because ye are sons God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts". In the previous chapter Paul had said, "Ye are all the sons of God, by faith, in Christ Jesus"; that is, they were in the light of God's pleasure. The glory of the children of God is sonship -- that is conformity to Christ in glory. It is a wonderful place to be in before God, in the scene from which Christ has been rejected; and accepting the rejection the compensation you get is the affection of the Father; the Father's love rests upon saints here because they love Christ and are in the place of Christ's rejection. Sonship is in that we are associated with Christ by divine counsel where He is, there is no rejection there; we are now in the full light of divine purpose. "Children" is more in the enjoyment of the Father's love down here. "Sonship" is connected with -- "Them that love God". Abba, Father, is a cry of real love. But in 1 John 3 we have, "Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed upon us that we should be called the children of God". As has been often said, John brings God to you here, Paul carries you up to God according to His will. "Therefore the world knoweth us not"; the idea of rejection comes in at once, as here in verse 17, "If we suffer with him". It is a blessed thing to carry with you the secret of the Father's love in the world from which Christ has been rejected. People do not
much enjoy the love unless they accept the rejection. Sonship is what you are to God according to His purpose; and it is in the assembly that we really touch it. There you have the consciousness of association with Christ in the Father's presence. The reason that things are flat in our meetings is that this is but little realised -- the priests are starved. Our relation to the sanctuary is that of priests, it is only in that character that we can have to do with the sanctuary. Now the priest has nothing of his own -- no inheritance -- he is contributed to by the common people and the levites, and if they do not contribute, he is necessarily starved. The believer is all three, he is priest, levite, and common person; and it is important to see whether we get in our individual experience such an appreciation of Christ and of His sacrifice as will contribute to the priest, for it is only as priests that we are identified with the sanctuary; the common people were not to draw nigh. Sonship is clearly identified with priesthood in the epistle to the Hebrews. If you would exercise priestly functions you must take care that the priest is fed, or there will be no worship. The levite also has to contribute to the priest. His work as levite is in service. But if a servant has a good time in service, he has to take care that the priest gets his tithe of it. Numbers 18 is most interesting as bringing out the truth as to the christian, whether looked at in the light of a common person, or of a levite, or of a priest. But all are contributory to the priest; every believer is a priest; the priesthood, though it belongs to the sanctuary, is not confined to those who take part in the meetings. It would be well if every brother so realised his priesthood that he did draw nigh; on the other hand it is vain for people to think that they are going to have good meetings, when in their individual path and life they are not with the Lord and seeking to serve Him.
"The earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God". The Spirit as dwelling down here gives you a sense of the true state of things in this scene. "The creature" is all that which is under the bondage of corruption. We cannot say from Scripture that the brute creation came under death through man's sin, but it is quite certain that the whole creation suffers in consequence of the state of man; the fall of all was involved in the fall of man; creation suffered with its head. But you cannot put the rest of creation quite on the same footing with man. Creation has been subjected to vanity in hope. That can hardly refer to Adam's doing because it has been subjected in hope. At first sight "on account of him that has subjected it" might seem to refer to Adam, but it is hardly the occasion of the being subjected to vanity that is in view, but the actual subjection by One who has subjected it in hope. Creation will be brought into the liberty of the glory of the children of God. A very different order of things will obtain in the millennium from that which we see around us, even for the brute creation. We have very little idea of what will be when everything on earth is administered from heaven, when all the blessing of heaven's beneficence is known on earth. He opens His hand and satisfies the desire of every living thing (Psalm 145:16), and that is what is natural to God. There are many terrible things that occur in this world, and God allows them, but these are not what is natural to God. All is out of course here.
It is a great study for any christian to find out what he has in the Spirit. Undoubtedly the Spirit has His own way of working, and His object is to draw you to Christ -- not to Christ simply as Saviour, but as the blessed expression of divine purpose, that is, the purpose of God's love. Then the man is in the Spirit's own domain. The Spirit is not now occupied
with setting the believer free, because he is free; and he is in the place where the Spirit can unfold all that is of Christ.
This chapter begins the dispensational section of the epistle, which commences with Abraham, and the promises made to him, and closes in chapter 11 with the ultimate salvation of Israel, so that the course of God's dispensational dealings is brought out. We are here on a lower platform, so to speak, than in the previous part of the epistle. God's dispensational dealings do not bring Himself to light in the way that has been before us in the earlier part. The effect of the dispensational dealings is the restoration of God's people upon earth; the effect of the light, that is, of the revelation of God, is that God gives us a place of association with Christ in heaven. In these chapters (9 - 11) the course of God's ways is traced, Israel in general is broken off from the tree of promise and the gentiles grafted in, then again prophetically the gentile branches are broken off and the natural branches restored. The gentile branches are still in the olive tree, the Jews having been for the time cast off, and the casting away of them has been the riches of the world; but the gentiles have their place on the ground of continuing in the goodness of God, if they do not, they, too, will be broken off.
It was important that this subject should be brought in, in order that the ways of God might, in our apprehension, be reconciled with the great scheme that has been unfolded in connection with the righteousness of God; these ways are not inconsistent with what has been taught in the earlier part of the epistle, which in reality has reference to the church in principle, though you do not get direct teaching as to this. Not only is grace to the gentile consistent
with the promises made to the Jew, but Jew and gentile are brought together in the same mercy, that they might be together one body in Christ. The Old Testament scriptures only gave the gentiles a place on earth, but the result of the early part of the epistle is to put the saints, Jew or gentile, in association with Christ. "Whom he did foreknow he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son". This involves the position of the church in the heavenly places.
Salvation takes its form from the ways of God at any particular time. In Acts 2 the remnant of Israel were added to the church; salvation took that form then; but "all Israel will be saved" does not mean that they will be brought into the church, but that they will be saved by the Deliverer coming out to Zion, who will turn away ungodliness from Jacob. The reconciliation of the doctrine which sets man aside, so that there is only one Man before God either as Mediator or Priest, with these outward dealings with man, is in the fact that there was one thread running from beginning to end of God's ways, and that is God's sovereignty. God really never owned flesh. Outwardly He was dealing with man in the flesh, but beneath it there was the maintenance of His sovereignty at every step. He would not own flesh or its claims -- the children of the promise are counted for the seed, not the children of the flesh. So Isaac is the child of promise, and Ishmael is rejected. Then again Jacob is chosen, he is loved, and Esau hated. Again when it comes to a question of Israel in Egypt and Pharaoh, God has mercy on Israel and destroys Pharaoh.
Though the setting aside of man, root and branch, did not come out fully until the cross, yet God was carrying out His purpose from Abraham's time. Abraham was the root of promise. In a kind of way the rejection of fleshly claim still goes on here; further
on in this section we get the idea of the gentiles not continuing in God's goodness, and being cut off. If you go to nine christians out of ten, they know little or nothing about this thread of purpose, not of the truth that there is only one Man before God. One Man as Mediator on God's side, and one Man as Priest on man's side. God's purpose is not frustrated, while He deals outwardly with things down here. Chapter 11 proves that the gentiles are being owned outwardly, they have their opportunity now; but while that is so, God takes care that His purpose is carried out. He always did. The gospel comes in in two aspects, as light and as life. Light in the gospel refers to every man, but, as life-giving, the gospel accomplishes God's purposes. When God makes known His righteousness, it is "towards all", it has its bearing on every man; that is light coming in. But God is working out His purpose by life. A man must be born again, and God's work be carried on in his soul, Christ becoming his life. On the other hand there is a testimony down here which presents the light of God so as to exercise the conscience of every man; but no man believes unto life apart from being born again; that truth largely comes out in John's gospel. Light from God is now being presented to the gentiles in the gospel, there is in that way the reconciliation of the world; the gentiles have their opportunity as brought within the range and reach of the testimony of God; and the light of God is such that it is capable of exposing and exercising every man. Felix trembled when the light of the word of God was brought to bear upon him. The light shines upon every one, but the light shining in is a distinct thing.
You get the gospel in connection with the thought of life taken up continually in Scripture. It is that which John presents. You get that side of the gospel in John 3, the point there is life, and necessarily
therefore it is connected with the purpose of God. "God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life", is a statement of divine purpose, the purpose of God's love, not as to persons, but as to blessing, while in the previous part of the chapter the truth is brought out that a man must be born again. "Believing" is the characterising condition of the one that has eternal life, be it Jew or gentile. It is true that no one could have life if he had not the truth of God, had not faith, for faith is light in a man's soul; that is, a man's light really is measured by his faith. But for this there must be a work of God in the man, though you could hardly speak of this work in its outset as life. It is a necessity, for how can fallen man touch spiritual things, unless he is born of the Spirit? It is impossible in the nature of things. God may use the preaching of the gospel to that end, but it is the work of the Spirit, "the wind bloweth where it listeth". The apostle was sent to open the eyes of the gentiles, but we must not confound that with the sovereign work of the Spirit of God by which a man is born again.
What is important in connection with these chapters is that there is a testimony from God in the world which is light, and is capable of exercising the conscience of every man. Light has come into the world, and men come to it or hate it. In preaching to a company of sinners, you address the company and seek to exercise the consciences of all, because the light of God is capable of exercising the heart and conscience of every one in the company; therefore you may preach to them with the greatest confidence; but then there is also the use which God makes of the testimony to bring a man into His own purpose. The great thing with anxious souls is to seek to give them light from God. It is the work of God to make them anxious so that they want the light, then it is
the business of the evangelist to give them light. What more wonderful thing can there be for us than to follow in the line of God's work, and to enlighten the soul of man in regard to God? Light is not the knowledge of my own condition; though the light, it is true, exposes my condition; but there is not much comfort in exposure; but the light being the revelation of God, the proper effect of it is that, coming into a man's heart, it cheers him, as the light of grace. Light is most cheering, it will expose all that is contrary to it, but the proper effect of light is exhilarating and cheering. So is it with the light of God to man when it enters the soul, it is the revelation of God in grace. God is righteous and holy, but every attribute has been met and glorified in the cross, and God presents the light of that glory in the face of Christ. He has no demand to make, but He presents the light that we might be conformed to what He is. It is most wonderful that God should make Himself known in the very attributes which were so terrible to man, in order to conform us to the glory revealed in Christ. The light of God cheered when the Lord was down here, for though the work by which God was glorified in His attributes had not been accomplished, yet the truth of the gospel came out in principle in Christ when here; there was nothing really new in principle afterwards. Trouble in a man's soul may result from natural conscience, or it may be the result of the work of God; the revelation of God is capable of reaching and exercising the conscience, that it should be so proves that God is God and speaks in His word.
In John 8 we get the very two things of which we have been speaking; the effect of the light upon the Pharisees was complete exposure; the woman did not want exposure, she was taken in the very act of sin, she was already exposed; but exposure was needed in regard to the Pharisees, the people that did not expect to be exposed; there was no comfort to the Pharisees,
but there was to the woman, and she must have felt it to be so; in this we see the beautiful character of light, it exposes, but does not condemn, it cheers.
All that we have been considering comes in with regard to the outward dealings of God with man, beneath which is the sovereignty in which He carries out His purpose. What had come to pass was this, that God had let the gentile in on common ground with the Jew. There was no difference. The Spirit of God had been communicated alike to both Jew and gentile who believed. The Jew in his exclusiveness might complain, but the apostle's answer is that God had only vindicated His sovereignty, and none would have had at any time any blessing at all but for that. He compels them as to their own hereditary history and national blessings to admit the principle, as seen in God's rejection of Ishmael and Esau, and in the destruction of Pharaoh, also in their having been spared when they had made the golden calf -- God retreated into His own sovereignty, and then takes occasion to assert that He will be gracious to whom He wills to be gracious, and that principle eventually let in the gentiles. At every point God took care to vindicate His sovereignty, so that Israel should not think that God acknowledged flesh. Take the points presented one after the other. Ishmael represented the flesh, Esau represented the flesh, the Egyptians represented the flesh, and Israel in the wilderness represented the flesh; so that the key to these chapters is the sovereignty of God which lay underneath all His outward dealings. He accomplishes His purpose, and at the same time refuses to recognise the flesh. Thus the whole chapter is unanswerable by a Jew, for their whole status rested upon the sovereignty of God. When they made the golden calf they might have been cut off to a man, in fact God proposed to Moses to cut them off. It was through the intercession of Moses that they were spared, but on the principle of
God's sovereignty. Now the gentiles are being tested at the present time, and the result will be that they will be cut off because they have not continued in the goodness of God. What are they doing? Almost every pulpit in the country is being used to discredit and set aside the word of God.
There is another great principle which comes out at the close of the chapter, it is this: no dealing of God ought to have taken Israel by surprise. Whatever God did, He first made it known by the prophets. In setting aside the people Lo-ammi was no surprise, it had been foretold. So as to receiving them again God had spoken of it prophetically, "I will call them my people which were not my people, and her beloved which was not beloved". The fact that there must be a sovereign work of God in man is maintained, in that, when vessels of mercy are spoken of, it is said whom "He had afore prepared unto glory", while as to vessels of wrath fitted for destruction God allows the perverseness of man to come out. Pharaoh is an example, he was perverse, and God allowed him to go on to the point of open defiance, and then God acted in open judgment. God withdrew restraints, and he rushed on to his own destruction. Man is lost at the outset. If God withdraws restraints, man's perversity only develops, until it comes out in the shape of open rebellion.
We have to consider "the lump" with which the potter deals, the lump is man as he is. God does not act in creation to make a vessel to dishonour. What God made was very good, but God deals with man as man is. The potter is only a figure, the application of the figure is in verses 22 and 23. You could not conceive of God creating anything that was not perfectly good. When dealing with man as he is, then it is that God claims His right to make of the same lump one vessel unto honour and another unto dishonour; but as to creation it would be evil to conceive of God
making anything that was not perfectly good. Apart from the outward dealings of God and the testing of Israel under law, there were the secret things which belonged to God. These things now come out in the church.
The test that God proposed after that sin had come into the world was the world to come. Certainly it was so from the time of Abram, and in reality from the time of Abel. Israel's mistake was in putting themselves on the ground of works in order to reach something in this world, instead of pursuing things in connection with another world. Abraham, their father, had looked for a city that had foundations, and for a better country, and his faith, by which he was reckoned righteous, had reference to God's power for that other world. If men looked on to another world, it was only by faith they could do so; if they sought, as Israel did, something in this world, they sought it on the principle of works. The fatal mistake Israel made was in failing to see that death was upon man. Although the law came in and spoke of life, yet death was already on man; the law did not come in to ignore that great fact, indeed it made matters worse, for it brought in the curse, but death was there already. The law came in in the wisdom of God, that the whole state of things might be demonstrated. It had to do with man as he is, in connection with this present world; faith has to do with another man and another world.
Christ came to bring in the light of another world, and hence he was a stumbling-block to Israel, for they were pursuing everything in connection with this world. The gentiles had no promises, nor were they pursuing righteousness; but when the light of Christ came to them, to a certain extent they accepted it, but it was a stumbling-block to the Jew. God had warned Israel that Christ would come as a stone of stumbling, and it is indeed an unvarying principle in His ways
that He never brings in anything without giving warning first. Christ introduced the light of another world, though He met everything that was here for the glory of God; but God had thoughts and purposes which were not connected with this world. Christ became a test to men while going on to accomplish the will of God. When He went to Jerusalem for the last time He propounded two parables, that of the man who planted a vineyard seeking fruit from the husbandmen, and eventually sending his Son; secondly, after stating the refusal of the Son, the Lord showed in the other parable the existence of another purpose altogether in the marriage made for the king's son. Whatever else took place incidentally, the real object of the coming of Christ into the world was to bring into effect the will of God. "Lo I come to do thy will" -- Thy pleasure, and that had in view another world. According to Psalm 8 Christ was to be made a little lower than the angels -- but the point to be reached was the being crowned with glory and honour, and all things put under His feet, the introduction of the world to come.
It is very important to observe in these two parts of Romans the concord of grace and purpose, in that they bring about the same result. In the first part of the epistle God approaches man by the testimony of the blood, all is of grace. God's righteousness is unto all and upon all them that believe. But there is another line of truth -- the purpose of God, which He has been working out from the time of Abraham down, and in this connection Christ became the object of faith to the gentiles. The law worked positive blindness with the Jew, for by it he connected God's purpose of blessing with this present world. Abraham
had no law, and what God presented to him, the world of which he was to be heir, was not this world but that to come. Hence with him righteousness was the righteousness of faith. The Jews in not submitting themselves to the righteousness of God showed that they did not recognise that the judgment of death was upon man. They might have learnt it from the sacrificial system. They had, further, in the tabernacle, the witness of the world to come, setting forth the ground and means by which God would place Himself in connection with the whole creation. The mercy-seat is that from which God addresses Himself to man. The mercy-seat is founded upon the ark, that is, on Christ, in whom God has been glorified in regard of the law; there was the holy place, and the most holy, and the court without, these together figured the universe. We are taught this in Hebrews 3, "He who built all things is God". The tabernacle presented the way in which God would come out to man; and while the sacrificial system showed the way by which man could go in, it made evident how extremely laborious it was for man to get to God. Man indeed could not go in because God had not come out, but the tabernacle foreshadowed that a way was coming by which man could go in. Faith now gets the benefit of what has been accomplished in Christ, but God has not come out in a public way yet. When the Lord comes we shall be received into the Father's house, there will be no going in then.
The righteousness of God here in chapter 10 connects itself both with chapter 3 and chapter 4. There is not only the declaration of God's righteousness, but the resurrection of Christ connects itself with our righteousness, hence faith is in the Lord Jesus raised from the dead. "With the heart man believeth unto righteousness". Christ is righteousness for every one that believes; that settles every question for the believer; there may be many things inconsistent
about him, and the enemy might use them to trouble him if he is not conscious that Christ is his righteousness; he is not only clear of every reproach, but resurrection carries him a point further, he is approved for the presence of God and for the world to come. You do not get a positive status nor a new place apart from resurrection. Christ is in the presence of God, and He is our righteousness.
It is remarkable that we get the germs of the gospel in the early books of the Bible. We have a quotation here from Deuteronomy, and what is quoted is in connection with the restoration of Israel in the future; but the principle cannot be different for them from what it is for us. Divine principles always remain true. The thought is prohibited to them, "Who shall ascend into the heavens?", and it is prohibited to us. The literal application is to Israel in their trouble in the future. "Say not in thy heart" shows that God will have the people silent in the consciousness of failure and ruin. Man has to be silent in the sense of having deserved death, and God will bring about what He sees fit. He quickens out of death. Israel in the future will have to accept where they are under the hand of God, buried in the dust of the earth. Those that believe will not make haste, all their hope will then be in Christ's coming again. God will work in them, but there will be no hope apart from Christ's coming. "Who shall descend into the deep" really belongs to Israel's future, when they will be conscious of the position into which sin has brought them. All this is connected with the "secret things" of which Moses speaks, and with the divine wisdom which will work out God's purpose, though faith gets the light of it now. Israel will have to wait for the glory of God, as we read in the passage, "After the glory thou wilt receive me", Psalm 73:24. The testimony of the glory has come in and the Jew has been stumbled, but the testimony is that by which the gentile is saved.
The glory is in the face of Jesus Christ (2 Corinthians 4:6). The God of glory appeared to Abram, and it is noticeable that we begin where Abraham left off. We begin with resurrection, and Abraham's history in a sense closed when he had reached that -- when he offered up his son and received him again. There is no difference in principle between Abraham's faith and ours; to believe that God can, and to believe that He has, are alike in principle; in either case resurrection is beyond man's experience. One can understand man commemorating the death of the Lord, but to commemorate His resurrection and ascension, by the setting apart of days, is folly, for they belong to another world; the testimony of God does not connect itself with the things of this world. Commemoration of days belongs to a clerical system, and brings everything down to a human level. The clergy assume priesthood, not seeing that all believers are priests and that priesthood is on the ground of resurrection. It is as you are risen with Christ that you are a priest. A separate class who, because they are ministers, claim to be priests, is the rebellion of Korah and his company.
Salvation in Romans 10 must be regarded as present from the christian point of view, whatever may be the literal bearing of the quotation. Peter takes the ground of the latter in Acts 2, "Whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved", but he evidently had a strong idea of a present salvation. He says, "the like figure whereunto, baptism, doth now save us". Peter's idea was that they had been brought into the church where the Holy Spirit was, and so to a present salvation. "With the mouth confession is made unto salvation"; we must give that a present application; it means that you have left the order of things in which you are naturally -- Egypt -- where the god of this world has sway, and have come out into the wilderness where you are with God, and have Jesus as
Lord, and the Holy Spirit given. By faith you enter that sphere, and it is a sphere of salvation. In verse 10 the former part is faith, and the latter the consequence of having the Holy Spirit. Man never confesses "Lord Jesus" except by the Holy Spirit. Salvation is consequent upon righteousness, nobody can really come into salvation until the Holy Spirit is received. The salvation now is in the power of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit leads to the confession by the mouth, as Lord, of the One who has been rejected by the world but has been accepted above. It is the habit of the soul to confess Jesus, Lord. There is a history with souls, as in the case of the woman who touched the hem of Christ's garment, and afterwards came and fell down before Him, and told Him before all for what cause she had touched Him; there is a lack in a soul until it takes that place; you cannot have any living sense of Christ as Lord save by the Holy Spirit come down from heaven. The gospel itself was a proclamation, the apostles were heralds. People had to accept the proclamation, but the soul confessing Jesus as Lord is by the Holy Spirit. Righteousness is reached by faith, but salvation by confessing Jesus, Lord; the moment Christ is confessed as Lord you are morally out of this world, it is characteristic of true christianity so to confess Him.
Urging anyone to confess Christ as Lord, if this goes beyond where the person is in the faith of his soul, would only hinder. It is better to leave God to do His own work, and for the servant not to go beyond his measure. The real function of the evangelist is to enlighten; he is not sent to enlighten simply the elect, but everybody. The light of God is capable of affecting every man.
The olive tree is symbolical of promise, and the "root" was Abraham. The testimony of God's word of old was limited to Israel, but by the exaltation of Christ to the right hand of God, and the rejection of Israel, the whole world has been brought within the range of God's testimony; hence we have the expression "the riches of the world". Israel had been tested by the glory of the Lord, that comes out in the end of chapter 9 and in chapter 10. The gospel of the glory was presented to them in the exaltation of Christ, so we have in chapter 10, "If thou shalt confess with thy mouth Jesus as Lord". Peter's testimony in Acts 2 was, "God hath made that same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ"; that was the final test as to Israel; the exaltation of Christ characterised Peter's testimony.
It is a great point to see the connection of these chapters with the previous part of the epistle. The second parable in Luke 15 illustrates the first part of Romans down to chapter 8. The light of God has come into the world to bring to light the lost piece of silver. At the close of Romans 8 we have the elect of God brought to light, namely, those who "love God". There is nothing about profession in those chapters. It is the light of God in the world, and the elect of God brought by it into view. In the succeeding chapters, 9, 10 and 11, you get the conciliation of that with God's dispensational dealings on earth; apparently there was a certain contradiction between the light of God going out to all, and God's dispensational dealings, which necessitate a special place for Israel; but these chapters show that in all His dealings God has been consistent; the first part of the epistle is however greater than the second. The gospel has for its object to bring to light the church; but Israel was tested by this gospel of the glory, they stumbled
at the stumbling-stone; and then God turns in His public dealings to the gentiles, but they do not continue in the goodness of God, and they are broken off and the Jews grafted in again. The result of all is that the failure of man accomplishes in every way the purpose of God. Hence the doxology at the close.
In the olive tree there is the thought of the continuity of promise. The inheritance is an essential part of the gospel; the commission given to Paul was "to open their eyes ... that they may receive forgiveness of sins and inheritance". Thus the inheritance is an integral part of the gospel. The gentiles come into the inheritance through the death of Christ, that is, the death of Christ was death to Israel, and the inheritance went back to the hand of God, and is connected now with a risen Christ. The gentiles come into it in connection with a risen Christ, and Israel too, by-and-by, will come into it in a risen Christ. The disposition of the inheritance is in the hands of Christ. The inheritance lapsed when Israel rejected Christ, but it was given again to Christ risen. That is how the gentile comes in and the Jew also; the promises were lost after the flesh, but they are confirmed in a risen Christ, that is, in Abraham's seed. If Israel had not stumbled it would be difficult to see how the gentiles could have been brought in; and if the gentiles continued in the goodness of God it would be difficult to understand how the Jew could be brought in again. The sovereign purposes of God are worked out through the failure of man. The purpose of God is not like the net thrown into the sea gathering both bad and good; there is not in His work a bit of the bad seen, the lost piece of silver is brought to light as the effect of the light coming into the world. No doubt the light addresses itself to everybody, because it is light from God, and therefore puts everybody under responsibility, but the great point is that by it the elect of God are brought to light. It is
beautiful to see the triumph of God over the evil of the people, in spite of their unbelief, and of all they have proved themselves to be. The sense of the sovereignty of God gives a certain dignity to the gospel, though you do not preach sovereignty. God would have all men to be saved, the elect are not known, and therefore you present the light to all. We have not in preaching to reconcile the sovereignty of God with the responsibility of man.
"The times of the gentiles" is a dispensational expression, it covers the period during which power is committed to the gentiles; the close of it will be in the revived form of the Roman empire; the term 'fulness of the gentiles' is the completeness of the gathering out from the gentiles; it is not simply blessing going out to gentiles as gentiles, but a testimony going out to them to gather out from them a people. All depended upon the glad tidings of the glory, for the moment Christ is set at the right hand of God, there must be a world-wide testimony. As long as Christ was here after the flesh the testimony might be confined to Israel, but Christ risen is Lord of all, and the testimony could no longer be limited to the Jew. Peter said to Cornelius, "He is Lord of all", and the gentile comes in on that ground. Psalm 19, which is quoted in chapter 10, shows this. "The heavens declare the glory of God", for Christ is there. This psalm, though referring primarily to the heavens, has a hidden meaning. "In them hath he set a tabernacle for the sun". What is the real sun in heaven? The material sun is truly there, but the real sun is the "sun of righteousness". The moment Christ took His place at the right hand of God there must be a world-wide testimony. It began at Jerusalem, but went out to all the gentiles. "The same Lord over all is rich unto all those that call upon him". It is a remarkable thing that when Israel failed in the wilderness then the Lord said, "As I live, all the earth
shall be filled with the glory of the Lord", Numbers 14. God takes occasion of Israel's failure to show how wide His purpose was. Israel took advantage of Christ in humiliation to reject Him, but Christ is God's Son and is seated at His right hand, so the testimony widens out; but even then it is to the Jew first and then to the gentile.
In verse 16 "the root" is Abraham, and the branches are Israel: the first-fruits is, one would suppose, the ingathering from Israel at Pentecost; that is the pledge that the lump is holy, the lump is seen in looking forward to Israel in the future. It is evident that the branches mean Israel, because it says, "If some of the branches were broken off". The root carries you back to Abraham, and the lump carries you forward to the Israel of God's purpose. There was an ingathering at Pentecost typified by the two wave-loaves; that took place through the power of the Holy Spirit; then the lump will be fulfilled according to the text, "All Israel shall be saved". The first-fruits is a pledge of the lump, and the lump is of the same character as the first-fruits. The only principle on which the gentile comes in (it is not exactly the church here) is as being Christ's; the gentile could not come in on the ground of flesh. If Israel had not failed under the first covenant, how could the gentiles have been brought in, and if the gentiles continued in the goodness of God, how could they be broken off, and the natural branches grafted in again? The truth is that God works out His purpose through the failure of man, and reconciles His purpose thus with His ways. Those ways will result in the restoration of Israel according to His purpose. This should have a special voice to us in these days, because we are probably on the eve of the cutting off of the gentiles.
Verse 33. "How unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!". This answers the
question of Israel in Isaiah 40:27. The judicial dealings of God in these chapters are referred to in the term 'judgments', which eventuate in Israel coming in on the ground of mercy; then God's "ways" are hidden, they are untraceable, but God works out His purpose through the failure of man in His own way, and according to His own will, and to His own praise. In Psalm 108, "O God, my heart is fixed", we see the heart established by the purpose of God. His mercy is great above the heavens and His truth reacheth unto the clouds.
In verse 26 we see the purpose of God, that a Deliverer shall come out of Sion and turn away ungodliness from Jacob. The way in which the apostle puts the case is remarkable; as regards the gospel, Israel are enemies, but, as touching the election, beloved for the fathers' sake, for the gifts and calling of God are without repentance. They are enemies for the gentiles' sake, and yet none the less beloved. This brings in the sovereignty of divine love: why should God love Jacob? There was nothing in him naturally for God, and yet it says, "Jacob have I loved". There are two distinct thoughts in Scripture, the love of God and the purpose of His love. "God so loved the world", that is the love of God towards the world, His nature, so to speak; then there is another thought, "The love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord". There is the purpose of His love, and that brings in the thought of sovereignty; for love is sovereign, as J.N.D. used to say. John 3:16 is the presentation of what God is in His nature, it is a different thought from "Jacob have I loved", that is the love of purpose; so as regards us, "God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us", that is undoubtedly the love of purpose. In His sovereignty God saw fit to set His love upon the fathers, and the nation in the future are loved for the fathers' sakes, and therefore the salvation of Israel
cannot fail. The enmity was in that they set themselves to slight the gentiles, and they are therein found to be diametrically opposed to God. It was on account of the gospel going out to the gentiles that they became enemies. The love of God to the world opens a door to all out of the world. But the gospel is at the same time the means by which God manifests the elect, and they are brought to light by life, the proof of which is that they love God. It is those who love God who are the called according to His purpose, and loving God is the response to the love of God shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit which is given to us. It is beautiful to see that all through Scripture we get the thought of loving God; even in the law it was, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart", and love is the real expression of life. Love to God and also to the brethren, "We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love the brethren". Though we get the idea of life in the wilderness, as in the brazen serpent, yet the proper sphere of life is on the other side of Jordan. The sphere of divine affections does not belong to this side of Jordan, it belongs to where we have put off the old man and put on the new, where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free, but Christ is everything and in all; there is not a rag left of the distinctions of the flesh there, and you have simply the sphere of divine affections; that is what is meant by having passed from death to life.
You hardly get the purpose of God in Romans, that is, the development of His purpose. In Colossians you get quickened together with Christ, making good His purpose to bring us into association with Christ. 'In Him we stand a heavenly band'. The effect of this is that you are found in the christian circle, the scene and sphere of divine affections. The purpose of God is just touched upon in Romans 8, but you do
not get association with Christ and what is connected with that. The Israelites who settled down in the land of Sihon and Og did not exhibit love for their brethren, they went over Jordan with them, but they did not continue with them; they lost, so to speak, the idea of the assembly. It is not until you are clear of the influences and proprieties of the world that you really enter into the christian circle. You cannot wholly break away from the externals of these while you are here, but very few have broken away from them in spirit so as to be able to say that they have come to a sphere where Christ is all and in all.
These chapters are really very wonderful, in the sense that God should take pains to reconcile before man ways apparently differing; first to justify Himself in regard of His righteousness, and then to open up the whole course of His dealings from the time of Abraham to show that He has let nothing go out of His hand. The epistle is full of divine principles, and it is not easy for poor things such as we are to grasp divine principles. Only think what the effect would be if they laid hold of us.
We see today the state of man after nearly two thousand years of christianity, but Scripture foretold that the gentiles would not continue in the goodness of God. You might see placarded in the streets, 'Europe after two thousand years of christianity'; but they forget to say what man has made of christianity; it is rank infidelity which thus seeks to impugn christianity; but the comfort is that, after all, God's purpose is carried out, and the lost piece of silver is found -- the church is brought to light, and all Israel will be saved.
We have seen in the former section, the reconciling of God's outward dispensational ways with His sovereign mercy and election in the gospel. The compassions of God are the ground of the exhortation in chapter 12. We find two principles which have marked God's dealings in the world: on the one hand election, and on the other rejection; the first man is rejected all along the line, and everything is brought to pass in the second Man. If we trace this through Scripture, Isaac is the man of purpose and Ishmael is rejected; then Jacob is chosen and Esau is rejected; Israel finds mercy, "I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion", and Pharaoh is destroyed. Then there is the election from Jew and gentile, and Lo-ammi on Israel; and eventually Israel is brought back and the gentile rejected. These two principles of sovereign mercy and rejection have always lain underneath the dispensational dealings of God: every one who is saved in the present dispensation is saved through sovereign mercy; at the same time the principle of rejection is shown in the Jews, for the time being they are cut off. The rejection of man is not until he has filled up the measure of his perverseness. Pharaoh was allowed to fill up his measure, and so the Jew and the gentile. There is the sovereign grace of God to the vessels of mercy, and the perverseness of man; and there are the sovereign rights of God, and if He rejected Ishmael and Esau He had a right to do so. Rejection is a principle on which God has acted from the outset, and the force of this to the Jew was that their own position was dependent on it; if Ishmael had not been rejected, Isaac would not have had the place he had. Israel is spared on the ground of sovereign mercy. All who are saved come in on that ground, but if there is the sovereignty of mercy, there must be rejection. God would have been
perfectly just in rejecting everybody, but He acts in the sovereignty of mercy, and says, "I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy". If a man does not admit God's right to reject, he has very little idea of being himself an object of sovereign mercy; and if he does not accept mercy, he is rejecting God. If any one is saved, it is of the pure sovereign mercy of God, nor can we understand chapter 12 apart from that; the apostle takes up those at Rome on that ground, the whole epistle goes upon the ground that God hath concluded all under sin and unbelief that He might have mercy upon all. The world has rejected Christ, and the gospel has come in to accomplish God's purpose; and the light having come into the world presents itself to everybody, but he that doeth evil hateth the light, he feels the light.
Saints ought to be conscious that they are the objects of God's sovereign mercy, and, in proportion as we are affected by the compassions of God, we are here for His pleasure, that is, for His will. The christian's body is a sacrifice -- a thing devoted which cannot be recalled, it is for the will of God; hence the christian cannot use his body as he pleases. It would make a great change with us, if we were conscious in the depths of our souls of being saved in the sovereignty of God's mercy. There comes a moment in the soul's history when the obligation to present the body as a living sacrifice is accepted, but then this has to be maintained. If the body is a living sacrifice, there is not a bit of the will of the flesh animating it. It could not be a living sacrifice unless its deeds were mortified, it would only bring forth fruit unto death; but if the body is a living sacrifice it is dead in regard of the lusts and will of the flesh. A point of great practical importance in yielding the body a living sacrifice is, that, in effect, it breaks the link with the course of things here; we are not conformed to this age, but are transformed by
the renewing of our minds, and consequently engaged with the faith sphere. Really the will of God is connected with His purpose for us, and in presenting the body a living sacrifice, we prove practically and experimentally what God has taken us up for. We are connected through the renewing of the mind with an order of things entirely outside of the natural order. First, we see the light of God's glory in the face of Jesus Christ, God's effulgence; then the Lord Jesus Christ as the last Adam in the presence of God in subsisting righteousness; as the first Adam was head in sin, so the last Adam is Head in subsisting righteousness, the witness that sin has been removed. Further, there is the house of God where God dwells by the Spirit; all that is to faith an entirely new order of things. You see the whole order of things in which the will of God is expressed, and have to order your course accordingly; if you do not get an idea of what God's will is, you cannot order your course for His pleasure.
No one can really understand the house of God, who does not see the last Adam appearing in the presence of God in subsisting righteousness; there is not only the perfect purgation of sins, but the last Adam appearing for us in the presence of God, so that all is administered by Him in grace; the first thing resulting from that was the gift of the Holy Spirit which formed the house of God. The house is set up in the sanctification of the Spirit, as separate from the world as the Holy Spirit is separate; we all admit now the existence of the great house, and we have to confront the confusion, but we are not worth much if we do not get hold of the divine idea in the midst of the unreality around. The tabernacle as presented in Hebrews 9 was a pattern of things in the heavens, and everything connected with it had to be purged with blood; but the heavenly things, that is, the things connected with christianity, had to be
purged with better sacrifices than these, for "Christ is not entered", it goes on to say, "into the holy places made with hands which are the figures of the true, but into heaven itself now to appear in the presence of God for us", that is, that He appears in the presence of God in subsisting righteousness, and this is connected with heavenly things, that is, with christianity. There is perfect purgation, but there is also Christ appearing representatively in the presence of God for us in connection with what is down here the antitype of the tabernacle -- the house of God, but then the house of God was set up in the sanctification of the Spirit. In the type, the sacrifices had to be repeated year by year, their value only went for a year, now Christ appears for us in subsisting righteousness. He is our righteousness in the presence of God, therefore it cannot be impugned. The consequence of righteousness being established in the last Adam, is that the house of God is set up here, the last Adam is Son over God's house. What is important is that we should get the apprehension of a system or order of things wholly outside the course of things here. Hence the necessity for the renewing of the mind.
The will of God is developed sufficiently here for our individual conduct, as Peter says, God has given us all things that pertain to life and godliness; the details come in to show us how we can be here for God's pleasure. In the end of the chapter we have a principle of tremendous moment. "Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good". It is a divine principle, and is possible only in what is of God. We find in the first part of the chapter that everything is new, everything is of God, it has come down from heaven, it is the will of God. God has dealt to every man the measure of faith, that is of God; then there are gifts, they come from heaven in consequence of the last Adam being in heaven.
The measure of faith is the sense that a man has of
divine favour; it comes out in connection with his not thinking of himself beyond what he ought to think, for the fact is that if you come down to the measure of faith, you come down to what is very small. Many a man has come into the house of God, and thought he was going to be as important in the house of God as he was in the world; but you have to act on a wholly new principle, that is, according to the measure of the light you have from God, the favour that each is conscious of from God. It is no use a man venturing beyond his faith, he will only expose himself. No doubt to him that hath shall be given, but there is also the sovereignty of God. It is as God has dealt to every man. If we had a little more courage, we should be here for the will of God more distinctly, for it needs courage to act up to your light. It is a serious thing for a man to act up to the light God has given him, because the path will make increased demands upon him; we are often inclined to seek a little easier path. There is not in the passage the idea of imitating one another, nor of studying all day long, even though it be Scripture, so as to become like some of our great leaders. When God takes up a man that man will to a certain extent be marked by originality. It is foolish in anyone to wish to be like another, though it is good to own in another the favour bestowed of God; we could wish as Moses did, that all the Lord's people were prophets, that all had light and spiritual power, it would have an immense effect.
The thought here in connection with gifts is that each gives himself up to his gift, it is his paramount business. If a man exercises his gift as being subordinate to his social life, then a man's life is the first thing, but that is not the divine idea. A man is characterised by his gift; his family, life, business, is subordinate to it; he may become very much more competent by the exercise of his gift; the gift is not
altered, but as be is bent on it he becomes more efficient in its exercise. There is such a thing as stirring up a gift, and thus becoming more characterised by it. Every member of the body is capable, but a gift is more distinct. There is a great deal in what our beloved brother who has just departed has said, that he thought a gift was the impression which a man had received of Christ. The apostle Paul for instance says, "When it pleased God ... to reveal his Son in me"; the revelation of God's Son in him was what peculiarly characterised the apostle in his ministry. Ministry becomes the expression of the impression received. Gift is an immense favour, so, too, faith. It is wonderful to think that God should give a man light down here so that he can walk in the will of God; and it is a further favour to be endowed with a gift, so that one can be efficient in the service of the Lord. We ought to be deeply exercised as to the favour granted to us, and to be those attending on it, so that we should be efficient in regard of the scene and sphere of God's will. The gift is individual, but it would not do to separate it from the idea of the body, or the effect would be to make one independent, and gift is connected with the idea of interdependence. A gift does not make a man independent, for it is bound up with all the interests of Christ, and it must be exercised in the reality of our being members one of another. Paul took pains to vindicate his ministry to the saints at Corinth when it was called in question; they were not a very satisfactory company, and yet he vindicates himself before them. Some of the Lord's servants may have had to go through their forty years of training as Moses did, that is the fitting of the vessel; but that which qualifies them for service is the gift; it is what has come from heaven. It is an extraordinary favour to have a gift from the Lord, even though it be not a conspicuous one. A man may be set on having the best gifts -- those which most
tend to the edification of the saints. Stephen began with the service of a deacon, but he ended with a very distinct gift. The Corinthians were to desire gifts, but chiefly that they might prophesy, and yet without the more excellent way all the gifts were nothing to a man. The more excellent way comes in lower down (verses 9). The point in the exhortation is not only the doing a good thing, but the doing it in the best way. How often a person does a good thing, but in such a way that it loses its value. Distributing alms for the assembly is a gift, but the point is to do it in such a way that it may not be deprived of its value.
A man is not really efficient outside of his own line. One who teaches may preach the gospel, nor could we wish it otherwise, but he does not set up to be an evangelist. In one sense there is little proclamation of the gospel in the present day, the preaching today is almost all in christendom. At the first it was God's proclamation and the apostles were heralds, they went out and proclaimed the gospel. But it is to be remembered that the gospel is the means by which souls are established. The epistle to the Romans was written to establish christians in their souls in the gospel, and there the service of a teacher may come in. You do not see the effects of teaching so clearly as of preaching, but one cannot go about without observing that a certain amount of result is produced, you constantly hear that people are helped. Each one is efficient in the gift he has. The gift makes way for him.
Chapter 12 contemplates the christian's place in relation to the body, chapter 13 looks at him as in man's kingdom, and chapter 14 as in God's kingdom. The exhortations in chapter 12 hang on the fact of
our being one body and members one of another; we are set thus in relation to one another down here, that is how the truth of the body is introduced in this epistle. The mystery underlies the truth of the epistle, but it is not specifically taught. The mystery explains how it is possible for Christ to be here in the scene from which He has been rejected; here it merely states the fact that the saints are one body in Christ; and it follows that there are certain obligations and functions dependent upon us in relation to one another; the truth of the body was carried out before the saints knew much about the Head, they were one body in the power of the Holy Spirit without much intelligence about the Head; the possession of the Spirit necessitates the body. We get an idea of it in what the Lord said to Saul, "Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?". The Lord could hardly have said that, if there had not been a representation of Himself in the saints, but there was by the Holy Spirit, so that He could say it. In chapter 12 there is not direct teaching as to the one body, but the apostle assumes the body as a fact.
In chapter 13 the question is of our conduct and testimony in man's kingdom, and in chapter 14 we have the thought of God's kingdom. "Weak in the faith" is faith in the sense of belief of a system of truth. It is the description of a man whose conscience is not up to his light. A man has to act according to his conscience or he would get a bad conscience. Exercise about things brings the conscience up to the light. A man's light usually goes beyond his conscience. There are two things with each one of us, namely, what we know, and what is written in the fleshy tables of the heart; what we know may be much beyond what is written in us. If a man has the revelation of God in his hand, as a christian in system, that christian is responsible by reason of it, yet after all he can only act according to the grace given him.GOD'S HOUSE
THE SON OF MAN
SUMMARY OF READINGS ON ROMANS
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
'That gives us now as heavenly light,
What soon shall be our part'. (Hymn 64)CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTERS 13, 14