We have seen that Romans 1 to 8 falls into two sections, in the first of which we are shown that the Blood deals with what we have done, while in the second we shall see that the Cross[2] deals with what we are. We need the Blood for forgiveness; we need also the Cross for deliverance. We have dealt briefly above with the first of these two and we shall move on now to the second; but before we do so we will look for a moment at a few more features of this passage which serve to emphasize the difference in subject matter and argument between the two halves.
Two aspects of the resurrection
are mentioned in the two sections, in chapters 4 and 6. In Romans
4:25 the resurrection of the Lord Jesus is mentioned in relation
to our justification: "Jesus our Lord...was delivered up for
our trespasses, and was raised for our justification." Here
the matter in view is that of our standing before God. But in
Romans 6:4 the resurrection is spoken of as imparting to us new
life with a view to a holy walk: "That like as Christ was
raised from the dead...so we also might walk in newness of
life." Here the matter before us is behaviour.
Again, peace is spoken of in both
sections, in the fifth and eighth chapters. Romans 5 tells of
peace with God which is the effect of justification by faith in
His Blood: "Being therefore justified by faith, we have
peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ." (5:1 mg.)
This means that, now that I have forgiveness of sins, God will no
longer be a cause of dread and trouble to me. I who was an enemy
to God have been "reconciled...through the death of his
Son" (5:10). I very soon find, however, that I am going to
be a great cause of trouble to myself. There is still unrest
within, for within me there is something that draws me to sin.
There is peace with God, but there is no peace with myself. There
is in fact civil war in my own heart. This condition is well
depicted in Romans 7 where the flesh and the spirit are seen to
be in deadly conflict within me. But from this the argument leads
in chapter 8 to the inward peace of a walk in the Spirit.
"The mind of the flesh is death", because it "is
enmity against God", "but the mind of the spirit is
life and peace" (Romans 8:6,7).
Looking further still we find that
the first half of the section deals generally speaking with the
question of justification (see, for example, Romans 3:24-26;
4:5,25), while the second half has as its main topic the
corresponding question of sanctification (see Rom. 6:19,22). When
we know the precious truth of justification by faith we still
know only half of the story. We still have only solved the
problem of our standing before God. As we go on, God has
something more to offer us, namely, the solution of the problem
of our conduct, and the development of thought in these chapters
serves to emphasize this. In each case the second step follows
from the first, and if we know only the first then we are still
leading a sub-normal Christian life. How then can we live a
normal Christian life? How do we enter in? Well, of course,
initially we must have forgiveness of sins, we must have
justification, we must have peace with God: these are our
indispensable foundation. But with that basis truly established
through our first act of faith in Christ, it is yet clear from
the above that we must move on to something more.
So we see that objectively the
Blood deals with our sins. The Lord Jesus has borne them
on the Cross for us as our Substitute and has thereby obtained
for us forgiveness, justification and reconciliation. But we must
now go a step further in the plan of God to understand how He
deals with the sin principle in us. The Blood can wash
away my sins, but it cannot wash away my 'old man.' It needs the
Cross to crucify me. The Blood deals with the sins, but
the Cross must deal with the sinner.
You will scarcely find the word
'sinner' in the first four chapters of Romans. This is because
there the sinner himself is not mainly in view, but rather the
sins he has committed. The word 'sinner' first comes into
prominence only in chapter 5, and it is important to notice how
the sinner is there introduced. In that chapter a sinner is said
to be a sinner because he is born a sinner; not because he has
committed sins. The distinction is important. It is true that
often when a Gospel worker wants to convince a man in the street
that he is a sinner, he will use the favourite verse Romans 3:23,
where it says that "all have sinned"; but this use of
the verse is not strictly justified by the Scriptures. Those who
so use it are in danger of arguing backwards, for the teaching of
Romans is not that we are sinners because we commit sins, but
that we sin because we are sinners. We are sinners by
constitution rather than by action. As Romans 5:19 expresses it:
"Through the one man's disobedience the many were made (or
'constituted') sinners".
How were we constituted sinners? By
Adam's disobedience. We do not become sinners by what we have
done but because of what Adam has done and has become. I speak
English, but I am not thereby constituted on Englishman. I am in
fact a Chinese. So chapter 3 draws our attention to what we have
done -- "all have sinned" -- but it is not because we
have done it that we become sinners.
I once asked a class of children.
'Who is a sinner?' and their immediate reply was, 'One who sins.'
Yes, one who sins is a sinner, but the fact that he sins is
merely the evidence that he is already a sinner; it is not the
cause. One who sins is a sinner, but it is equally true that one
who does not sin, if he is of Adam's race, is a sinner too, and
in need of redemption. Do you follow me? There are bad sinners
and there are good sinners, there are moral sinners and there are
corrupt sinners, but they are all alike sinners. We sometimes
think that if only we had not done certain things all would be
well; but the trouble lies far deeper than in what we do: it lies
in what we are. A Chinese may be born America and be unable to
speak Chinese at all, but he is a Chinese for all that, because
he was born a Chinese. It is birth that counts. So I am a sinner
not of my behaviour but of my heredity, my parentage. I am not a
sinner because I sin, but I sin because I come of the wrong
stock. I sin because I am a sinner.
We are apt to think that what we
have done is very bad, but that we ourselves are not so bad. God
is taking pains to show us that we ourselves are wrong,
fundamentally wrong. The root trouble is the sinner; he must be
dealt with. Our sins are dealt with by the Blood, but we
ourselves are dealt with by the Cross. The Blood procures our
pardon for what we have done; the Cross procures our deliverance
from what we are.
We come therefore to Romans
5:12-21. In this great passage, grace is brought into contrast
with sin and the obedience of Christ is set against the
disobedience of Adam. It is placed at the beginning of the second
section of Romans (5:12 to 8:39) with which we shall now be
particularly concerned, and its argument leads to a conclusion
which lies at the foundation of our further meditations. What is
that conclusion? It is found in verse 19 already quoted:
"For as through the one man's disobedience the many were
made sinners, even so through the obedience of the one shall the
many be made righteous." Here the Spirit of God is seeking
to show us first what we are, and then how we came to be what we
are.
At the beginning of our Christian
life we are concerned with our doing, not with our being; we are
distressed rather by what we have done than by what we are. We
think that if only we could rectify certain things we should be
good Christians, and we set out therefore to change our actions.
But the result is not what we expected. We discover to our dismay
that it is something more than just a case of trouble on the
outside -- that there is in fact more serious trouble on the
inside. We try to please the Lord, but find something within that
does not want to please Him. We try to be humble, but there is
something in our very being that refuses to be humble. We try to
be loving, but inside we feel most unloving. We smile and try to
look very gracious, but inwardly we feel decidedly ungracious.
The more we try to rectify matters on the outside the more we
realize how deep-seated the trouble is within. Then we come to
the Lord and say, 'Lord, I see it now! Not only what I have done
is wrong; I am wrong.'
The conclusion of Romans 5:19 is
beginning to dawn upon us. We are sinners. We are members of a
race of people who are constitutionally other than what God
intended them to be. By the Fall a fundamental change took place
in the character of Adam whereby he became a sinner, one
constitutionally unable to please God; and the family likeness
which we all share is no merely superficial one but extends to
our inward character also. We have been "constituted
sinners". How did this come about? "By the disobedience
of one", says Paul. Let me try to illustrate this.
My name is Nee. It is a fairly
common Chinese name. How did I come by it? I did not choose it. I
did not go through the list of possible Chinese names and select
this one. That my name is Nee is in fact not my doing at all,
and, moreover, nothing I can do can alter it. I am a Nee because
my father was a Nee, and my father was a Nee because my
grandfather was a Nee. If I act like a Nee I am a Nee, and if I
act unlike a Nee I am still a Nee. If I become President of the
Chinese Republic I am a Nee, or if I become a beggar in the
street I am still a Nee. Nothing I do or refrain from doing will
make me other than a Nee.
We are sinners not because of
ourselves but because of Adam. It is not because I individually
have sinned that I am a sinner but because I was in Adam when he
sinned. Because by birth I come of Adam, therefore I am a part of
him. What is more, I can do nothing to alter this. I cannot by
improving my behaviour make myself other than a part of Adam and
therefor a sinner.
In China I was once talking in this
strain and remarked, 'We have all sinned in Adam.' A man said, 'I
don't understand,' so I sought to explain it in this way. 'All
Chinese trace their descent from Huang-ti,' I said. 'Over four
thousand years ago he had a war with Si-iu. His enemy was very
strong, but nevertheless Huang-ti overcame and slew him. After
this Huang-ti founded the Chinese nation. Four thousand years ago
therefore our nation was founded by Huang-ti. Now what would have
happened if Huang-ti had not killed his enemy, but had been
himself killed instead? Where would you be now?' 'There would be
no me at all,' he answered. 'Oh, no! Huang-ti can die his death
and you can live your life.' 'Impossible!' he cried, 'If he had
died, then I could never have lived, for I have derived my life
from him.'
Do you see the oneness of human
life? Our life comes from Adam. If your great-grandfather had
died at the age of three, where would you be? You would have died
in him! Your experience is bound up with his. In just the same
way the experience of every one of us is bound up with that of
Adam. None can say, 'I have not been in Eden' for potentially we
all were there when Adam yielded to the serpent's words. So we
are all involved in Adam's sin, and by being born "in
Adam" we receive from him all that he became as a result of
his sin -- that is to say, the Adam-nature which is the nature of
a sinner. We derive our existence from him, and because his life
became a sinful life, a sinful nature, therefore the nature which
we derive from him is also sinful. So, as we have said, the
trouble is in our heredity, not in our behaviour. Unless we can
change our parentage there is no deliverance for us.
But it is in this very direction
that we shall find the solution of our problem, for that is
exactly how God has dealt with the situation.
In Romans 5:12 to 21 we are not
only told something about Adam; we are told also something about
the Lord Jesus. "As through the one man's disobedience the
many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the one
shall the many be made righteous." In Adam we receive
everything that is of Adam; in Christ we receive everything that
is of Christ.
The terms 'in Adam' and 'in Christ'
are too little understood by Christians, and, at the risk of
repetition, I wish again to emphasize by means of an illustration
the hereditary and familial significance of the term 'in Christ'.
This illustration is to be found in the letter to the Hebrews. Do
you remember that in the earlier part of the letter the writer is
trying to show that Melchizedek is greater than Levi? You recall
that the point to be proved is that the priesthood of Christ is
greater than the priesthood of Aaron who was of the tribe of
Levi. Now in order to prove that, he has first to prove that the
priesthood of Melchizedek is greater than the priesthood of Levi,
for the simple reason that the priesthood of Christ is
"after the order of Melchizedek" (Heb. 7:14-17), while
that of Aaron is, of course, after the order of Levi. If the
writer can demonstrate to us that Melchizedek is greater than
Levi, then he has made his point. That is the issue, and he
proves it in a remarkable way.
He tells us in Hebrews chapter 7
that one day Abraham, returning from the battle of the kings
(Genesis 14), offered a tithe of his spoils to Melchizedek and
received from him a blessing. Since Abraham did this, the order
of Levi is therefore somewhat lower than the order of
Melchizedek. Why? Because the fact that Abraham offered tithes to
Melchizedek means that Isaac 'in Abraham' offered tithes to
Melchizedek. But if that is true, then Jacob also 'in Abraham'
offered to Melchizedek, which in turn means that Levi 'in
Abraham' offered to Melchizedek. It is evident that the lesser
offers to the greater (Hebrews 7:7). So Levi is less in standing
than Melchizedek, and therefore the priesthood of Aaron is
inferior to that of the Lord Jesus. Levi at the time of the
battle of the kings was not yet even thought of. Yet he was
"in the loins of his father" Abraham, and, "so to
say, through Abraham", he offered the tithes (Hebrews
7:9,10).
Now this is the exact meaning of
'in Christ'. Abraham, as the head of the family of faith,
includes the whole family in himself. When he offered to
Melchizedek, the whole family offered in him to Melchizedek. They
did not offer separately as individuals, but they were in him,
and therefore in making his offering he included with himself all
his seed.
So we are presented with a new
possibility. In Adam all was lost. Through the disobedience of
one man we were all constituted sinners. By him sin entered and
death through sin, and throughout the race sin has reigned unto
death from that day on. But now a ray of light is cast upon the
scene. Through the obedience of Another we may be constituted
righteous. Where sin abounded grace did much more abound, and as
sin reigned unto death, even so may grace reign through
righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord (Romans
5:19-21). Our despair is in Adam; our hope is in Christ.
God clearly intends that this
consideration should lead to our practical deliverance from sin.
Paul makes this quite plain when he opens chapter 6 of his letter
with the question: "Shall we continue in sin?" His
whole being recoils at the very suggestion. "God
forbid!", he exclaims. How could a holy God be satisfied to
have unholy, sin-fettered children? And so "how shall we any
longer live therein?" (Romans 6:1,2). God has surely
therefore made adequate provision that we should be set free from
sin's dominion.
But here is our problem. We were
born sinners; how then can we cut off our sinful heredity? Seeing
that we were born in Adam, how can we get out of Adam? Let me say
at once, the Blood cannot take us out of Adam. There is only one
way. Since we came in by birth we must go out by death. To do
away with our sinfulness we must do away with our life. Bondage
to sin came by birth; deliverance from sin comes by death -- and
it is just this way of escape that God has provided. Death is the
secret of emancipation. "We...died to sin" (Romans
6:2).
But how can we die? Some of us have
tried very hard to get rid of this sinful life, but we have found
it most tenacious. What is the way out? It is not by trying to
kill ourselves, but by recognizing that God has dealt with us
in Christ. This is summed up in the apostle's next statement:
"All we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized
into his death" (Romans 6:3).
But if God has dealt with us 'in
Christ Jesus' then we have got to be in Him for this to
become effective, and that now seems just as big a problem. How
are we to 'get into' Christ? Here again God comes to our help. We
have in fact no way of getting in, but, what is more important,
we need not try to get in, for we are in. What we could
not do for ourselves God has done for us. He has put us into
Christ. Let me remind you of 1 Corinthians 1:30. I think that
is one of the best verses of the whole New Testament: "Ye
are in Christ." How? "Of him (that is, 'of God') are ye
in Christ." Praise God! It is not left to us either to
devise a way of entry or to work it out. We need not plan how to
get in. God has planned it; and He has not only planned it but He
has also performed it. "Of him are ye in Christ
Jesus." We are in; therefore we need not try to get in. It
is a Divine act, and it is accomplished.
Now if this is true, certain things
follow. In the illustration from Hebrews 7 which we considered
above we saw that 'in Abraham' all Israel -- and therefore Levi
who was not yet born -- offered tithes to Melchizedek. They did
not offer separately and individually, but they were in Abraham
when he offered, and his offering included all his seed. This,
then, is a true figure of ourselves as 'in Christ'. When the Lord
Jesus was on the Cross all of us died -- not individually, for we
had not yet been born -- but, being in Him, we died in Him.
"One died for all, therefore all died" (2 Cor. 5:14).
When He was crucified, all of us were crucified with Him.
Many a time when preaching in the
villages of China one has to use very simple illustrations for
deep Divine truth. I remember once I took up a small book and put
a piece of paper into it, and I said to those very simple ones,
'Now look carefully. I take a piece of paper. It has an identity
of its own, quite separate from this book. Having no special
purpose for it at the moment I put it into the book. Now I do
something with the book. I mail it to Shanghai. I do not mail the
paper, but the paper has been put into the book. Then where is
the paper? Can the book go to Shanghai and the paper remain here?
Can the paper have a separate destiny from the book? No! Where
the book goes the paper goes. If I drop the book in the river the
paper goes too, and if I quickly take it out again I recover the
paper also. Whatever experience the book goes through the paper
goes through with it, for it is in the book.'
"Of him are ye in Christ
Jesus." The Lord God Himself has put us in Christ, and in
His dealing with Christ God has dealt with the whole family. Our
destiny is bound up with His. What He has gone through we have
gone through, for to be 'in Christ' is to have been identified
with Him in both His death and resurrection. He was crucified:
then what about us? Must we ask God to crucify us? Never! When
Christ was crucified we were crucified; and His crucifixion is
past, therefore ours cannot be future. I challenge you to find
one text in the New Testament telling us that our crucifixion is
in the future. All the references to it are in the Greek aorist,
which is the 'once-for-all' tense, the 'eternally past' tense.
(See: Romans 6:6; Galations 2:20; 5:24; 6:14). And just as no man
could ever commit suicide by crucifixion, for it were a physical
impossibility to do so, so also, in spiritual terms, God does not
require us to crucify ourselves. We were crucified when He was
crucified, for God put us there in Him. That we have died in
Christ is not merely a doctrinal position, it is a definite
eternal fact.
The Lord Jesus, when He died on
the Cross, shed His Blood, thus giving His sinless life to atone
for our sin and to satisfy the righteousness and holiness of God.
To do so was the prerogative of the Son of God alone. No man
could have a share in that. The Scripture has never told us that
we shed our blood with Christ. In His atoning work before God He
acted alone; no other could have a part. But the Lord did not die
only to shed His Blood: He died that we might die. He died
as our Representative. In His death He included you and
me.
We often use the terms
'substitution' and 'identification' to describe these two aspects
of the death of Christ. Now many times the use of the word
'identification' is good, but identification would suggest that
the thing begins from our side: that I try to identify myself
with the Lord. I agree that the word is true, but it should be
used later on. It is better to begin with the fact that the Lord
included me in His death. It is the 'inclusive' death of the Lord
which puts me in a position to identify myself, not that I
identify myself in order to be included. It is God's inclusion of
me in Christ that matters. It is something God has done. For that
reason those two New Testament words "in Christ" are
always very dear to my heart.
The death of the Lord Jesus is
inclusive. The resurrection of the Lord Jesus is also inclusive.
We have looked at the first chapter of 1 Corinthians to establish
the fact that we are "in Christ Jesus". Now we will go
to the end of the same letter to see something more of what this
means. In 1 Corinthians 15:45,47 two remarkable names or titles
are used of the Lord Jesus. He is spoken of there as "the
last Adam" and He is spoken of too as "the second
man". Scripture does not refer to Him as the second Adam but
as "the last Adam"; nor does it refer to Him as the
last Man, but as "the second man". The distinction is
to be noted, for it enshrines a truth of great value.
As the last Adam, Christ is the sum
total of humanity; as the second Man He is the Head of a new
race. So we have here two unions, the one relating to His death
and the other to His resurrection. In the first place His union
with the human race as "the last Adam" began
historically at Bethlehem and ended at the cross and the tomb. In
it He gathered up into Himself all that was in Adam and took it
to judgment and death. In the second place our union with Him as
"the second man" begins in resurrection and ends in
eternity -- which is to say, it never ends -- for, having in His
death done away with the first man in whom God's purpose was
frustrated, He rose again as Head of a new race of men, in whom
that purpose will eventually be fully realized.
When therefore the Lord Jesus was
crucified on the cross, He was crucified as the last Adam. All
that was in the first Adam was gathered up and done away with in
Him. We were included there. As the last Adam He wiped out the
old race; as the second Man He brings in the new race. It is in
His resurrection that He stands forth as the second Man, and
there too we are included. "For if we have become united
with him by the likeness of his death, we shall be also by the
likeness of his resurrection" (Romans 6:5). We died in Him
as the last Adam; we live in Him as the second Man. The Cross is
thus the power of God which translates us out of Adam and into
Christ.
The Normal Christian Life - Chapter 3: The Path Of Progress: Knowing
