What is the normal Christian
life? We do well at the outset to ponder this question. The
object of these studies is to show that it is something very
different from the life of the average Christian. Indeed a
consideration of the written Word of God -- of the Sermon on the
Mount for example -- should lead us to ask whether such a life
has ever in act been lived upon the earth, except by the Son
of God Himself. But in that last saving clause lies
immediately the answer to our question.
The Apostle Paul gives us his own
definition of the Christian life in Galations 2:20. It is
"no longer I, but Christ." Here he is not stating
something special or peculiar -- a high level of Christianity. He
is, we believe, presenting God's normal for a Christian, which
can be summarized in the words: I live no longer, but Christ
lives His life in me.
God makes it quite clear in His
Word that He has only one answer to every human need -- His Son,
Jesus Christ. In all His dealings with us He works by taking us
out of the way and substituting Christ in our place. The Son of
God died instead of us for our forgiveness: He lives instead of
us for our deliverance. So we can speak of two substitutions -- a
Substitute on the Cross who secures our forgiveness and a
Substitute within who secures our victory. It will help us
greatly, and save us from much confusion, if we keep constantly
before us this fact, that God will answer all our questions in
one way only, namely, by showing us more of His Son.
We shall take now as a
starting-point for our study of the normal Christian life that
great exposition of it which we find in the first eight chapters
of the Epistle to the Romans, and we shall approach our subject
from a practical and experiential point of view. It will be
helpful first of all to point out a natural division of this
section of Romans into two, and to note certain striking
differences in the subject-matter of its two parts.
The first eight chapters of Romans
form a self-contained unit. The four-and-a-half chapters from 1:1
to 5:11 form the first half of this unit and the three-and-a-half
chapters from 5:12 to 8:39 the second half. A careful reading
will show us that the subject-matter of the two halves is not the
same. For example, in the discourse in the first section we find
the plural word 'sins' given prominence. In the second section,
however, this changed, for while the word 'sins' hardly occurs,
the singular word 'sin' is used again and again and is the
subject mainly dealt with. Why is this?
It is because in the first section
it is a question of the sins I have committed before God, which
are many and can be listed and counted, whereas in the second it
is a question of sin as an active principle working in me. No
matter how many different sins I commit, it is always the same
sin-principle that leads to them. I need forgiveness for my sins,
but I also need deliverance from the power of sin. The former
touches my conscience, the latter my life. I may receive
forgiveness for all my sins, but because of my sin, I still have
no abiding peace of mind.
When God's light first shines into
my heart my one cry is for forgiveness, for I realize I have
committed sins before Him; but once I have received forgiveness
of sins I make a new discovery, namely, the discovery of sin, and
I realize not only that I have committed sins before God but that
there is something wrong within. I discover that I have the
nature of a sinner. There is an inward inclination to sin, a
power within that draws to sin. When that power breaks out I
commit sins. I may seek and receive forgiveness, but then I sin
once more. So life goes on in a vicious circle of sinning and
being forgiven and then sinning again. I appreciate the blessed
fact of God's forgiveness, but I want something more than that: I
want deliverance. I need forgiveness for what I have done, but I
also need deliverance from what I am.
Thus, in the first eight
chapters of Romans, two aspects of salvation are presented to us:
firstly, the forgiveness of our sins, and secondly, our
deliverance from sin. But now, in keeping with this fact, we must
notice a further difference.
In the first part of Romans 1 to 8,
we twice have reference to the Blood of the Lord Jesus, in
chapter 3:25 and in chapter 5:9. In the second, a new idea is
introduced in chapter 6:6, where we are said to have been
'crucified' with Christ. The discourse in the first section
centers around that aspect of the work of the Lord Jesus which is
represented by 'the Blood' shed for our justification through
'the remission of sins.' This terminology, however, is not
carried on into the second section, where the argument centers
now in the aspect of His work represented by 'the Cross,' that is
to say, by our union with Christ in His death, burial and
resurrection. This distinction is a valuable one. We shall see
that the Blood deals with what we have done, whereas the Cross
deals with what we are. The Blood disposes of our sins, while the
Cross strikes at the root of our capacity for sin. The latter
aspect will be the subject of our consideration in later
chapters.
We begin, then, with the precious Blood of the Lord Jesus Christ and its value to us in dealing with our sins and justifying us in the sight of God. This is set forth for us in the following passages:
"All have sinned" (Romans 3:23).
"God commendeth his own love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, being now justified by his blood, shall we be saved from the wrath of God through him" (Romans 5:8-9).
"Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: whom God set forth to be a propitiation, through faith, by his blood, to show his righteousness, because of the passing over of the sins one aforetime, in the forbearance of God; for the showing, I say, of his righteousness at this present season: that he might himself be just, and the justifier of him that hath faith in Jesus" (Romans 3:24-26).
We shall have reason at a later
stage in our study to look closely at the real nature of the fall
and the way of recovery. At this point we will just remind
ourselves that when sin came in it found expression in an act of
disobedience to God (Romans 5:19). Now we must remember that
whenever this occurs the thing that immediately follows is guilt.
Sin enters as disobedience, to
create first of all a separation between God and man whereby man
is put away from God. God can no longer have fellowship with him,
for there is something now which hinders, and it is that which is
known throughout Scripture as 'sin.' Thus it is first of all God
who says, "They are all under sin" (Romans 3:9). Then,
secondly, that sin in man, which henceforth constitutes a barrier
to his fellowship with God, gives rise in him to a sense of guilt
-- of estrangement from God. Here it is man himself who, with the
help of his awakened conscience, says, "I have sinned"
(Luke 15:18). Nor is this all, for sin also provides Satan with
his ground of accusation before God, while our sense of guilt
gives him his ground of accusation in our hearts; so that,
thirdly, it is "the accuser of the brethren" (Rev.
12:10) who now says, 'You have sinned.'
To redeem us, therefore, and to
bring us back to the purpose of God, the Lord Jesus had to do
something about these three questions of sin and of guilt and of
Satan's charge against us. Our sins had first to be dealt with,
and this was effected by the precious Blood of Christ. Our guilt
has to be dealt with and our guilty conscience set at rest by
showing us the value of that Blood. And finally the attack of the
enemy has to be met and his accusations answered. In the
Scriptures the Blood of Christ is shown to operate effectually in
these three ways: toward God, toward man and, toward Satan.
There is thus an absolute need for
us to obtain these values of the Blood if we are to go on. This
is a first essential. We must have a basic knowledge of the fact
of the death of the Lord Jesus as our Substitute upon the Cross,
and a clear apprehension of the efficacy of His Blood for our
sins, for without this we cannot be said to have started upon our
road. Let us look then at these three matters more closely.
The Blood is for atonement and
has to do first with our standing before God. We need forgiveness
for the sins we have committed, lest we come under judgment; and
they are forgiven, not because God overlooks what we have done
but because He sees the Blood. The Blood is therefore not
primarily for us but for God. If I want to understand the value
of the Blood I must accept God's valuation of it, and if I do not
know something of the value set upon the Blood by God I shall
never know what its value is for me. It is only as God's
valuation of the Blood of Christ is made known to me by His Holy
Spirit that I come into the benefit of it myself and find how
precious indeed the Blood is to me. But the first aspect of it is
toward God. Throughout the Old and New Testaments the word
'blood' is used in connection with the idea of atonement, I think
over a hundred times, and throughout it is something for God.
In the Old Testament calendar there
is one day that has a great bearing on the matter of our sins and
that day is the Day of Atonement. Nothing explains this question
of sins so clearly as the description of that day. In Leviticus
16 we find that on the Day of Atonement the blood was taken from
the sin offering and brought into the Most Holy Place and
sprinkled there before the Lord seven times. We must be very
clear about this. On that day the sin offering was offered
publicly in the court of the tabernacle. Everything was there in
full view and could be seen by all. But the Lord commanded that
no man should enter the tabernacle itself except the high priest.
It was he alone who took the blood and, going into the Most Holy
Place, sprinkled it there to make atonement before the Lord. Why?
Because the high priest was a type of the Lord Jesus in His
redemptive work (Hebrews 9:12,12), and so, in figure, he was the
one who did the work. None but he could even draw near to enter
in. Moreover, connected with his going in there was but one act,
namely, the presenting of the blood to God as something He had
accepted, something in which He could find satisfaction. It was a
transaction between the high priest and God in the Sanctuary,
away from the eyes of the men who were to benefit by it. The Lord
required that. The Blood is therefore in the first place for Him.
Earlier even than this there is
described in Exodus 12:13 the shedding of the blood of the
passover lamb in Egypt for Israel's redemption. This is again, I
think, one of the best types in the Old Testament of our
redemption. The blood was put on the lintel and on the
door-posts, whereas the meat, the flesh of the lamb, was eaten
inside the house; and God said: "When I see the blood, I
will pass over you". Here we have another illustration of
the fact that the blood was not meant to be presented to man but
to God, for the blood was put on the lintel and on the
door-posts, where those feasting inside the house would not see
it.
It is God's holiness, God's
righteousness, which demands that a sinless life should be given
for man. There is life in the Blood, and that Blood has to be
poured out for me, for my sins. God is the One who requires it to
be so. God is the One who demands that the Blood be presented, in
order to satisfy His own righteousness, and it is He who says: 'When
I see the blood, I will pass over you.' The Blood of Christ
wholly satisfies God.
Now I desire to say a word at this
point to my younger brethren in the Lord, for it is here that we
often get into difficulties. As unbelievers we may have been
wholly untroubled by our conscience until the Word of God began
to arouse us. Our conscience was dead, and those with dead
consciences are certainly of no use to God. But later, when we
believed, our awakened conscience may have become acutely
sensitive, and this can constitute a real problem to us. The
sense of sin and guilt can become so great, so terrible, as
almost to cripple us by causing us to lose sight of the true
effectiveness of the Blood. It seems to us that our sins are so
real, and some particular sin may trouble us so many times, that
we come to the point where to us our sins loom larger than the
Blood of Christ.
Now the whole trouble with us is
that we are trying to sense it; we are trying to feel its value
and to estimate subjectively what the Blood is for us. We cannot
do it; it does not work that way. The Blood is first for God to
see. We then have to accept God's valuation of it. In doing so we
shall find its valuation to us. If instead we try to come to a
valuation by way of our feelings we get nothing; we remain in
darkness. No, it is a matter of faith in God's Word. We have to
believe that the Blood is precious to God because He says it
is so (1 Peter 1:18,19). If God can accept the Blood as a
payment for our sins and as the price of our redemption, then we
can rest assured that the debt has been paid. If God is satisfied
with the Blood, then the Blood must be acceptable. Our valuation
of it is only according to His valuation -- neither more nor
less. It cannot, of course, be more, but it must not be less. Let
us remember that He is holy and He is righteous, and that a holy
and righteous God has the right to say that the Blood is
acceptable in His eyes and has fully satisfied Him.
The Blood has satisfied God; it
must satisfy us also. It has therefore a second value that is
manward in the cleansing of our conscience. When we come to the
Epistle to the Hebrews we find that the Blood does this. We are
to have "hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience"
(Hebrews 10:22).
This is most important. Look
carefully at what it says. The writer does not tell us that the
Blood of the Lord Jesus cleanses our hearts, an then stop there
in his statement. We are wrong to connect the heart with the
Blood in quite that way. It may show a misunderstanding of the
sphere in which the Blood operates to pray, 'Lord, cleanse my
heart from sin by Your Blood'. The heart, God says, is
"desperately sick" (Jeremiah 17:9), and He must do
something more fundamental than cleanse it: He must give us a new
one.
We do not wash and iron clothing
that we are going to throw away. As we shall shortly see, the
'flesh' is too bad to be cleansed; it must be crucified. The work
of God within us must be something wholly new. "A new heart
also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within
you" (Ezekiel 36:26).
No, I do not find it stated that
the Blood cleanses our hearts. Its work is not subjective in that
way, but wholly objective, before God. True, the cleansing work
of the Blood is seen here in Hebrew 10 to have reference to the
heart, but it is in relation to the conscience. "Having our
hearts sprinkled from a evil conscience". What then is the
meaning of this?
It means that there was something
intervening between myself and God, as a result of which I had an
evil conscience whenever I sought to approach Him. It was
constantly reminding me of the barrier that stood between myself
and Him. But now, through the operation of the precious Blood,
something new has been effected before God which has removed that
barrier, and God has made that fact known to me in His Word. When
that has been believed in and accepted, my conscience is at once
cleared and my sense of guilt removed, and I no longer have an
evil conscience toward God.
Every one of us knows what a
precious thing it is to have a conscience void of offense in our
dealings with God. A heart of faith and a conscience clear of any
and every accusation are both equally essential to us, since they
are interdependent. As soon as we find our conscience is uneasy,
our faith leaks away and immediately we find we cannot face God.
In order therefore to keep going on with God we must know the
up-to-date value of the Blood. God keeps short accounts, and we
are brought near by the Blood every day, every hour and every
minute. It never loses its efficacy as our ground of access if we
will just lay hold upon it. When we enter the most Holy Place, on
what ground dare we enter but by the Blood?
But I want to ask myself, am I
really seeking the way into the Presence of God by the Blood or
by something else? What do I mean when I say, 'by the Blood?' I
mean simply that I recognize my sins, that I confess that I have
need of cleansing and of atonement, and that I come to God on the
basis of the finished work of the Lord Jesus. I approach God
through His merit alone, and never on the basis of my attainment;
never, for example, on the ground that I have been extra kind or
patient today, or that I have done something for the Lord this
morning. I have to come by way of the Blood every time. The
temptation to so many of us when we try to approach God is to
think that because God has been dealing with us -- because He has
been taking steps to bring us into something more of Himself and
has been teaching us deeper lessons of the Cross -- He has
thereby set before us new standards, and that only by attaining
to these can we have a clear conscience before Him. No! A clear
conscience is never based upon our attainment; it can only
be based on the work of the Lord Jesus in the shedding of His
Blood.
I may be mistaken, but I feel very
strongly that some of us are thinking in terms such as these:
'Today I have been a little more careful; today I have been doing
a little better; this morning I have been reading the Word of God
in a warmer way, so today I can pray better!' Or again, 'Today I
have had a little difficulty with the family; I began the day
feeling very gloomy and moody; I am not feeling too bright now;
it seems that there must be something wrong; therefore I cannot
approach God.'
What, after all, is your basis of
approach to God? Do you come to Him on the uncertain ground of
your feeling, the feeling that you may have achieved something
for God today? Or is your approach based on something far more
secure, namely, the fact that the Blood has been shed, and that
God looks on that Blood and is satisfied? Of course, were it
conceivably possible for the Blood to suffer any change, the
basis of your approach to God might be less trustworthy. But the
Blood has never changed and never will. Your approach to God is
therefore always in boldness; and that boldness is yours through
the Blood and never through your personal attainment. Whatever
your measure of attainment today or yesterday or the day before,
as soon as you make a conscious move into the Most Holy Place,
you immediately have to take your stand upon the safe and only
ground of the shed Blood. Whether you have had a good day or a
bad day, whether you have consciously sinned or not, your basis
of approach is always the same -- the Blood of Christ. That is
the ground upon which you may enter, and there is no other.
As with many other things in our
Christian experience, this matter of access to God has two
phases, an initial and a progressive one. The former is presented
to us in Ephesians 2 and the latter in Hebrews 10. Initially, our
standing with God was secured by the Blood, for we are "made
nigh in the blood of Christ" (Eph. 2:13). But thereafter our
ground of continual access is still by the Blood, for the apostle
exhorts us: "Having therefore...boldness to enter into the
holy place by the blood of Jesus...let us draw near" (Heb.
10:19,22). To begin with I was made nigh by the Blood, and to
continue in that new relationship I come through the Blood every
time. It is not that I was saved on one basis and that I now
maintain my fellowship on another. You say, 'That is very simple;
it is the A-B-Cs of the Gospel.' Yes, but the trouble with many
of us is that we have moved away from the A-B-Cs. We have thought
we had progressed and so could dispense with it, but we can never
do so. No, my initial approach to God is by the Blood, and every
time I come before Him it is the same. Right to the end it will
always and only be on the ground of the Blood.
This does not mean at all that we
can live a careless life, for we shall shortly study another
aspect of the death of Christ which shows us that is certainly
not the case. But for now let us be satisfied with the Blood,
that it is there and that it is enough.
We may be weak, but looking at our
weakness will never make us strong. No amount of trying to feel
bad and doing penance will help us to be even a little holier.
There is no help there, so let us be bold in our approach because
of the Blood: 'Lord, I do not know fully what the value of the
Blood is, but I know that the Blood has satisfied You; so the
Blood is enough for me, and it is my only plea. I see now that
whether I have really progressed, whether I have really attained
to something or not, is not the point. Whenever I come before
You, it is always on the ground of the precious Blood. Then our
conscience is really clear before God. No conscience could ever
be clear apart from the Blood. It is the Blood that gives us
boldness.
"No more conscience of
sins:" these are the tremendous words of Hebrews 10:2. We
are cleansed from every sin; and we may truly echo the words of
Paul: "Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not reckon
sin" (Romans 4:8).
In view of what we have said we
can now turn to face the enemy, for there is a further aspect of
the Blood which is toward Satan. Satan's most strategic activity
in this day is as the accuser of the brethren (Rev. 12:10) and it
is as such an accuser that our Lord confronts him with His
special ministry as High Priest "through his own blood"
(Hebrews 9:12).
How then does the Blood operate
against Satan? It does so by putting God on the side of man
against him. The Fall brought something into man which gave Satan
a footing within him, with the result that God was compelled to
withdraw Himself. Man is now outside the garden -- beyond reach
of the glory of God (Romans 3:23) -- because he is inwardly
estranged from God. Because of what man has done, there is
something in him which, until it is removed, renders God morally
unable to defend him. But the Blood removes that barrier and
restores man to God and God to man. Man is in favour now, and
because God is on his side he can face Satan without fear.
You remember that verse in John's
first Epistle -- and this is the translation of it I like best:
"The blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from every
sin"[1] It is not exactly
'all sin' in the general sense, but every sin, every item.
What does it mean? Oh, it is a marvelous thing! God is the light,
and as we walk in the light with Him everything is exposed and
open to that light, so that God can see it all -- and yet
the Blood is able to cleanse from every sin. What a cleansing! It
is not that I do not have a profound knowledge of myself, nor
that God does not have a perfect knowledge of me. It is not that
I try to hide something nor that God tries to overlook something.
No, it is that He is in the light and I too am in the light, and
that there the precious Blood cleanses me from every sin.
The Blood is enough for that!
Some of us, oppressed by our own
weakness, may at times have been tempted to think that there are
sins which are almost unforgivable. Let us remember the word:
"The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanses us from every
sin." Big sins, small sins, sins which may be very black and
sins which appear to be not so black, sins which I think can be
forgiven and sins which seem unforgivable, yes, all sins,
conscious or unconscious, remembered or forgotten, are included
in those words: "every sin". "The blood of Jesus
his Son cleanses us from every sin", and it does so because
in the first place it satisfies God.
Since God, seeing all our sins in
the light, can forgive them on the basis of the Blood, what
ground of accusation has Satan? Satan may accuse us before Him,
but, "If God is for us, who is against us?" (Romans
8:31). God points him to the Blood of His dear Son. It is the
sufficient answer against which Satan has no appeal. "Who
shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect? It is God that
justifieth; who is he that shall condemn? It is Christ Jesus that
died, yea rather, that was raised from the dead, who is at the
right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us"
(Romans 8:33,34).
So here again our need is to
recognize the absolute sufficiency of the precious Blood.
"Christ having come a high priest...through his own blood,
entered in once for all into the holy place, having obtained
eternal redemption" (Hebrews 9:11,12). He was Redeemer once.
He has been High Priest and Advocate for nearly two thousand
years. He stands there in the presence of God, and "he is
the propitiation for our sins" (1 John 2:1,2). Note the
words of Hebrews 9:14: "How much more shall the blood
of Christ..." They underline the sufficiency of His
ministry. It is enough for God.
What then of our attitude to Satan?
This is important, for he accuses us not only before God but in
our own conscience also. 'You have sinned, and you keep on
sinning. You are weak, and God can have nothing more to do with
you.' This is his argument. And our temptation is to look within
and in self-defense to try to find in ourselves, in our feelings
or our behavior, some ground for believing that Satan is wrong.
Alternatively we are tempted to admit our helplessness and, going
to the other extreme, to yield to depression and despair. Thus
accusation becomes one of the greatest and most effective of
Satan's weapons. He points to our sins and seeks to charge us
with them before God, and if we accept his accusations we go down
immediately.
Now the reason why we so readily
accept his accusations is that we are still hoping to have some
righteousness of our own.. The ground of our expectation is
wrong. Satan has succeeded in making us look in the wrong
direction. Thereby he wins his point, rendering us ineffective.
But if we have learned to put no confidence in the flesh, we
shall not wonder if we sin, for the very nature of the flesh is
to sin. Do you understand what I mean? It is because we have not
come to appreciate our true nature and to see how helpless we are
that we still have some expectation in ourselves, with the result
that, when Satan comes along and accuses us, we go down under it.
God is well able to deal with our
sins; but He cannot deal with a man under accusation, because
such a man is not trusting in the Blood. The Blood speaks in his
favour, but he is listening instead to Satan. Christ is our
Advocate, but we the accused side with the accuser. We have not
recognized that we are unworthy of anything but death; that, as
we shall shortly see, we are only fit to be crucified anyway. We
have not recognized that it is God alone that can answer the
accuser, and that in the precious Blood He has already done so.
Our salvation lies in looking away
to the Lord Jesus and in seeing that the Blood of the Lamb has
met the whole situation created by our sins and has answered it.
That is the sure foundation on which we stand. Never should we
try to answer Satan with our good conduct but always with the
Blood. Yes, we are sinful, but, praise God! the Blood cleanses us
from every sin. God looks upon the Blood whereby His Son has met
the charge, and Satan has no more ground of attack. Our faith in
the precious Blood and our refusal to be moved from that position
can alone silence his charges and put him to flight (Romans
8:33,34); and so it will be, right on to the end (Revelation
12:11). Oh, what an emancipation it would be if we saw more of
the value in God's eyes of the precious Blood of His dear Son!
The Normal Christian Life - Chapter 2: The Cross of Christ
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