Chapter 3: The Path Of Progress: Knowing
Our old history ends with the Cross; our new
history begins with the resurrection. "If any man is in Christ, he is a new
creature: the old things are passed away; behold they are become new" (2 Cor
5:17). The Cross terminates the first creation, and out of death there is
brought a new creation in Christ, the second Man. If we are `in Adam' all that
is in Adam necessarily devolves upon us; it becomes ours involuntarily, for we
have to do nothing to get it. There is no need to make up our minds to lose
our temper or to commit some other sin; it comes to us freely and despite
ourselves. In a similar way, if we are `in Christ' all that is in Christ comes
to us by free grace, without effort on our part but on the ground of simple
faith.
But to say that all we need comes to us in Christ
by free grace, though true enough, may seem unpractical. How does it work out
in practice? How does it become real in our experience?
As we study chapters 6, 7 and 8 of Romans we
shall discover that the conditions of living the normal Christian life are
fourfold. They are: (a) Knowing, (b) Reckoning, (c) Presenting ourselves to
God, and (d) Walking in the Spirit, and they are set forth in that order. If
we would live that life we shall have to take all four of these steps; not one
nor two nor three, but all four. As we study each of them we shall trust the
Lord by His Holy Spirit to illumine our understanding; and we shall seek His
help now to take the first big step forward.
Our Death With Christ A Historic Fact
Romans 6:1-11 is the passage before us now.
In these verses it is made clear that the death of the Lord Jesus is
representative and inclusive. In His death we all died. None of us can
progress spiritually without seeing this. Just as we cannot have justification
if we have not seen Him bearing our sins on the Cross, so we cannot have
sanctification if we have not seen Him bearing us on the Cross. Not
only have our sins been laid on Him but we ourselves have been put into Him.
How did you receive forgiveness? You realized
that the Lord Jesus died as your Substitute and bore your sins upon Himself,
and that His Blood was shed to cleanse away your defilement. When you saw your
sins all taken away on the Cross what did you do? Did you say, `Lord Jesus,
please come and die for my sins'? No, you did not pray at all; you only
thanked the Lord You did not beseech Him to come and die for you, for you
realized that He had already done it.
But what is true of your forgiveness is also true
of your deliverance. The work is done. There is no need to pray but only to
praise. God has put us all in Christ, so that when Christ was crucified we
were crucified also. Thus there is no need to pray: `I am a very wicked
person; Lord, please crucify me'. That is all wrong. You did not pray about
your sins; why pray now about yourself? Your sins were dealt with by His
Blood, and you were dealt with by His Cross. It is an accomplished fact. All
that is left for you to do is to praise the Lord that when Christ died you died
also; you died in Him. Praise Him for it and live in the light of it. "Then
believed they his words: they sang his praise" (Psalm 106:12).
Do you believe in the death of Christ? Of course
you do. Well, the same Scripture that says He died for us says also that we
died with Him. Look at it again: "Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8). That is
the first statement, and that is clear enough; but is this any less clear?
"Our old man was crucified with him" (Romans 6:6). "We died with Christ"
(Romans 6:8).
When are we crucified with Him? What is the date
of our old man's crucifixion? Is it tomorrow? Yesterday? Today? In order to
answer this it may help us if for a moment I turn Paul's statement round and
say, `Christ was crucified with (i.e. at the same time as) our old man'.
Some of you came here in twos. You traveled to this place together. You might
say, My friend came here with me', but you might just as truly say, `I came
here with my friend'. Had one of you come three days ago and the other only
today you could not possibly say that; but having come together you can make
either statement with equal truth, because both are statements of fact. So
also in historic fact we can say, reverently but with equal accuracy, `I was
crucified when Christ was crucified' or `Christ was crucified when I was
crucified', for they are not two historical events, but one. My crucifixion
was "with him".[3] Has Christ been crucified? Then can I be otherwise? And
if He was crucified nearly two thousand years ago, and I with Him, can my
crucifixion be said to take place tomorrow? Can His be past and mine be
present or future? Praise the Lord, when He died in my stead, but He bore me
with Him to the Cross, so that when He died I died. And if I believe in the
death of the Lord Jesus, then I can believe in my own death just as surely as I
believe in His.
Why do you believe that the Lord Jesus died?
What is your ground for that belief? Is it that you feel He has died?
No, you have never felt it. You believe it because the Word of God tells you
so. When the Lord was crucified, two thieves were crucified at the same time.
You do not doubt that they were crucified with Him, either, because the
Scripture says so quite plainly.
You believe in the death of the Lord Jesus and
you believe in the death of the thieves with Him. Now what about your own
death? Your crucifixion is more intimate than theirs. They were crucified at
the same time as the Lord but on different crosses, whereas you were crucified
on the self same cross as He, for you were in Him when He died. How can you
know? You can know for the one sufficient reason that God has said so. It
does not depend on your feelings. If you feel that Christ has died, He has
died; and if you do not feel that he died, He has died. If you feel that you
have died, you have died; and if you do not feel that you have died, you have
nevertheless just as surely died. These are Divine facts. That Christ has
died is a fact, that the two thieves have died is a fact, and that you have
died is a fact also. Let me tell you, You have died! You are done
with! You are ruled out! The self you loathe is on the Cross in Christ. And
"he that is dead is freed from sin" (Romans 6:7, A.V.). This is the Gospel for
Christians.
Our crucifixion can never be made effective by
will or by effort, but only be accepting what the Lord Jesus did on the Cross.
Our eyes must be opened to see the finished work of Calvary. Some of you,
prior to your salvation, may have tried to save yourselves. You read the
Bible, prayed, went to Church, gave alms. Then one day your eyes were opened
and you saw that a full salvation had already been provided for you on the
Cross. You just accepted that and thanked God, and peace and joy flowed into
your heart. Now salvation and sanctification are on exactly the same basis.
You receive deliverance from sin in the same way as you receive forgiveness of
sins.
For God's way of deliverance is altogether
different from man's way. Man's way is to try to suppress sin by seeking to
overcome it; God's way is to remove the sinner. Many Christians mourn over
their weakness, thinking that if only they were stronger all would be well.
The idea that, because failure to lead a holy life is due to our impotence,
something more is therefore demanded of us, leads naturally to this false
conception of the way of deliverance. If we are preoccupied with the power of
sin and with our inability to meet it, then we naturally conclude that to gain
the victory over sin we must have more power. `If only I were stronger', we
say, `I could overcome my violent outbursts of temper', and so we plead with
the Lord to strengthen us that we may exercise more self-control.
But this is altogether wrong; this is not
Christianity. God's means of delivering us from sin is not by making us
stronger and stronger, but by making us weaker and weaker. That is surely
rather a peculiar way of victory, you say; but it is the Divine way. God sets
us free from the dominion of sin, not by strengthening our old man but by
crucifying him; not by helping him to do anything but by removing him from the
scene of action.
For years, maybe, you have tried fruitlessly to
exercise control over yourself, and perhaps this is still your experience; but
when once you see the truth you will recognize that you are indeed powerless to
do anything, but that in setting you aside altogether God has done it all.
Such a revelation brings human self-effort to an end.
The First Step: "Knowing This..."
The normal Christian life must begin with a
very definite `knowing', which is not just knowing something about the truth
nor understanding some important doctrine. It is not intellectual knowledge at
all, but an opening of the eyes of the heart to see what we have in Christ.
How do you know your sins are forgiven? Is it
because your pastor told you so? No, you just know it. If I ask you
how you know, you simply answer, `I know it!' Such knowledge comes by Divine
revelation. It comes from the Lord Himself. Of course the fact of forgiveness
of sins is in the Bible, but for the written Word of God to become a living
Word from God to you He had to give you "a spirit of wisdom and revelation in
the knowledge of him" (Eph. 1:17). What you needed was to know Christ
in that way, and it is always so. So there comes a time, in regard to any new
apprehension of Christ, when you know it in your own heart, you `see' it in
your spirit. A light has shined into your inner being and you are wholly
persuaded of the fact. What is true of the forgiveness of your sins is no less
true of your deliverance from sin. When once the light of God dawns upon your
heart you see yourself in Christ. It is not now because someone has
told you, and not merely because Romans 6 says so. It is something more even
than that. You know it because God has revealed it to you by His Spirit. You
may not feel it; you may not understand it; but you know it, for you have seen
it. Once you have seen yourself in Christ, nothing can shake your assurance of
that blessed fact.
If you ask a number of believers who have entered
upon the normal Christian life how they came by their experience, some will say
in this way and some will say in that. Each stresses his own particular way of
entering in and produces Scripture to support his experience; and unhappily
many Christians are using their special experiences and their special
scriptures to fight other Christians. The fact of the matter is that, while
Christians may enter into the deeper life by different ways, we need not regard
the experiences or doctrines they stress as mutually exclusive, but rather
complementary. One thing is certain, that any true experience of value in the
sight of God must have been reached by way of a new discovery of the meaning of
the Person and work of the Lord Jesus. That is a crucial test and a safe
one.
And here in our passage Paul makes everything
depend upon such a discovery. "Knowing this, that our old man was crucified
with him, that the body of sin might be done away, that so we should no longer
be in bondage to sin" (Romans 6:6).
Divine Revelation Essential To Knowledge
So our first step is to seek from God a
knowledge that comes by revelation -- a revelation, that is to say, not of
ourselves but of the finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ on the Cross. When
Hudson Taylor, the founder of the China Inland Mission, entered into the normal
Christian life it was thus that he did so. You remember how he tells of his
long-standing problem of how to live `in Christ', how to draw the sap out of
the Vine into himself. For he knew that he must have the life of Christ
flowing out through him and yet felt that he had not got it, and he saw clearly
enough that his need was to be found in Christ. `I knew', he said, writing to
his sister from Chinkiang in 1869, `that if only I could abide in Christ, all
would be well, but I could not.'
The more he tried to get in the more he found
himself slipping out, so to speak, until one day light dawned, revelation came
and he saw.
`Here, I feel, is the secret: not asking how I am to get sap out of the
Vine into myself, but remembering that Jesus is the Vine -- the
root, stem, branches, twigs, leaves, flowers, fruit, all indeed.'
Then, in words of a friend that had helped
him:
`I have not got to make myself a branch. The Lord Jesus tells me I
am a branch. I am part of Him and I have just to believe it and
act upon it. I have seen it long enough in the Bible, but I believe it
now as a living reality.'
It was as though something which had indeed
been true all the time had now suddenly become true in a new way to him
personally, and he writes to his sister again:
`I do not know how far I may be able to make myself intelligible about it, for
there is nothing new or strange or wonderful -- and yet, all is new! In a
word, "whereas once I was blind, now I see"....I am dead and buried with Christ
-- aye, and risen too and ascended....God reckons me so, and tells me to reckon
myself so. He knows best....Oh, the joy of seeing this truth -- I do pray that
the eyes of your understanding may be enlightened, that you may know and enjoy
the riches freely given us in Christ.'[4]
Oh, it is a great thing to see that we are in
Christ! Think of the bewilderment of trying to get into a room in which you
already are! Think of the absurdity of asking to be put in! If we recognize
the fact that we are in, we make no effort to enter. If we had more
revelation we should have fewer prayers and more praises. Much of our praying
for ourselves is just because we are blind to what God has done.
I remember one day in Shanghai I was talking with
a brother who was very exercised concerning his spiritual state. He said, `So
many are living beautiful, saintly lives. I am ashamed of myself. I call
myself a Christian and yet when I compare myself with others I feel I am not
one at all. I want to know this crucified life, this resurrection life, but I
do not know it and see no way of getting there.' Another brother was with us,
and the two of us had been talking for two hours or so, trying to get the man
to see that he could not have anything apart from Christ, but without success.
Said our friend, `the best thing a man can do is to pray.' `But if God has
already given you everything, what do you need to pray for?' we asked. `He
hasn't', the man replied, `for I am still losing my temper, still failing
constantly; so I must pray more.' `Well', we said, `do you get what you pray
for?' `I am sorry to say that I do not get anything', he replied. We tried to
point out that, just as he had done nothing for his justification, so he need
do nothing for his sanctification.
Just then a third brother, much used of the Lord,
came in and joined us. There was a thermos flask on the table, and this
brother picked it up and said, `What is this?' `A thermos flask.' `Well, you
just imagine for a moment that this thermos flask can pray, and that it starts
praying something like this: "Lord, I want very much to be a thermos flask.
Wilt Thou make me to be a thermos flask? Lord, give me grace to become a
thermos flask. Do please make me one!" What will you say?' `I do not think
even a thermos flask would be so silly,' our friend replied. `It would be
nonsense to pray like that; it is a thermos flask!' Then my brother
said, `You are doing the same thing. God in times past has already included
you in Christ. When He died, you died; when He lived, you lived. Now today
you cannot say, "I want to die; I want to be crucified; I want to have
resurrection life." The Lord simply looks at you and says, "You are
dead! You have new life!" All your praying is just as absurd as that
of the thermos flask. You do not need to pray to the Lord for anything; you
merely need your eyes opened to see that He has done it all.'
That is the point. We need not work to die, we
need not wait to die, we are dead. We only need to recognize what the
Lord has already done and to praise Him for it. Light dawned for that man.
With tears in his eyes he said, `Lord, I praise Thee that Thou hast already
included me in Christ. All that is His is mine!' Revelation had come and
faith had something to lay hold of; and if you could have met that brother
later on, what a change you would have found!
The Cross Goes To The Root Of Our Problem
Let me remind you again of the fundamental
nature of that which the Lord has done on the Cross. I feel I cannot press
this point too much for we must see it. Suppose, for the sake of
illustration, that the government of your country should wish to deal
drastically with the question of strong drink and should decide that the whole
country was to go `dry', how could the decision be carried into effect? How
could we help? If we were to search every shop and house throughout the land
and smash all the bottles of wine or beer or brandy we came across, would that
meet the case? Surely not. We might thereby rid the land of every drop of
alcoholic liquor it contains, but behind those bottles of strong drink are the
factories that produce them, and if we only deal with the bottles and leave the
factories untouched, production will still continue and there is no permanent
solution of the problem. The drink-producing factories, the breweries and
distilleries throughout the land, must be closed down if the drink question is
to be permanently settled.
We are the factory; our actions are the products.
The Blood of the Lord Jesus dealt with the question of the products, namely,
our sins. So the question of what we have done is settled, but would God have
stopped there? What about the question of what we are? Our sins were produced
by us. They have been dealt with, but how are we going to be dealt
with? Do you believe the Lord would cleanse away all our sins and then leave
us to get rid of the sin-producing factory? Do you believe He would put away
the goods produced but leave us to deal with the source of production?
To ask this question is but to answer it. Of
course He has not done half the work and left the other half undone. No, He
has done away with the goods and also made a clean sweep of the factory that
produces the goods.
The finished work of Christ really has gone to
the root of our problem and dealt with it. There are no half measures with
God. "Knowing this," says Paul, "That our old man was crucified with him, that
the body of sin might be done away, that so we should no longer be in bondage
to sin" (Rom. 6:6). "Knowing this"! Yes, but do you know it?
"Or are ye ignorant?" (Rom. 6:3). May the Lord graciously open our eyes.