We now come to a matter on which
there has been some confusion of thought among the Lord's
children. It concerns what follows this knowledge. Note again
first of all the wording of Romans 6:6: "Knowing this, that
our old man was crucified with Him". The tense of the verb
is most precious for it puts the event right back there in the
past. It is final, once-for-all. The thing has been done and
cannot be undone. Our old man has been crucified once and for
ever, and he can never be un-crucified. This is what we need to
know.
Then, when we know this, what
follows? Look again at our passage. The next command is in verse
11: "Even so reckon ye also yourselves to be dead unto
sin". This, clearly, is the natural follow up to verse 6.
Read them together: 'Knowing that our old man was
crucified, ... reckon ye yourselves to be dead'. That is the
order. When we know that our old man has been crucified with
Christ, then the next step is to reckon it so.
Unfortunately, in presenting the
truth of our oneness with Christ, the emphasis has too often been
placed upon this second matter of reckoning ourselves to be dead,
as though that were the starting point, whereas it should rather
be upon knowing ourselves to be dead. God's Word makes it
clear that 'knowing' is to precede 'reckoning'. 'Knowing this ...
reckon.' The sequence is most important. Our reckoning must be
based on knowledge of divinely revealed fact, for otherwise faith
has no foundation on which to rest. When we know, then we reckon
spontaneously.
So, in teaching this matter we
should not over-emphasize reckoning. People are always trying to
reckon without knowing. They have not first had a Spirit-given
revelation of the fact; yet they try to reckon and soon they get
into all sorts of difficulties. When temptation comes they begin
to reckon furiously: 'I am dead; I am dead; I am dead!' but in
the very act of reckoning they lose their temper. Then they say,
'It doesn't work. Romans 6:11 is no good.' And we have to admit
that verse 11 is no good without verse 6. So it comes to
this: unless we know for a fact that we are dead with Christ, the
more we reckon, the more intense will the struggle become, and
the result will be certain defeat.
For years after my conversion I had
been taught to reckon. I reckoned from 1920 until 1927. The more
I reckoned that I was dead to sin, the more alive I clearly was.
I simply could not believe myself dead and I could not produce
the death. Whenever I sought help from others I was told to read
Romans 6:11, and the more I read Romans 6:11 and tried to reckon,
the further away death was: I could not get at it. I fully
appreciated the teaching that I must reckon, but I could not make
out why nothing resulted from it. I have to confess that for
months I was troubled. I said to the Lord, 'If this is not clear,
if I cannot be brought to see this which is so very fundamental,
I will cease to do anything. I will not preach any more; I will
not go out to serve You any more; I want first of all to get
thoroughly clear here.' For months I was seeking, and at times I
fasted, but nothing came through.
I remember one morning -- that
morning was a real morning and one I can never forget -- I was
upstairs sitting at my desk reading the Word and praying, and I
said, 'Lord, open my eyes!' And then in a flash I saw it. I saw
my oneness with Christ. I saw that I was in Him, and that when He
died I died. I saw that the question of my death was a matter of
the past and not of the future, and that I was just as truly dead
as He was because I was in Him when He died. The whole thing had
dawned upon me. I was carried away with such joy at this great
discovery that I jumped from my chair and cried, 'Praise the
Lord, I am dead!' I ran downstairs and met one of the brothers
helping in the kitchen and I laid hold of him. 'Brother', I said,
'do you know that I have died?' I must admit he looked puzzled.
'What do you mean?' he said, so I went on: 'Do you not know that
Christ has died? Do you not know that I died with Him? Do you not
know that my death is no less truly a fact than His?' Oh it was
so real to me! I longed to go through the streets of Shanghai
shouting the news of my discovery. From that day to this I have
never for one moment doubted the finality of that word: "I
have been crucified with Christ".
I do not mean to say that we need
not work that out. Yes, there is an outworking of the death which
we are going to see presently, but this, first of all, is the
basis of it. I have been crucified: it has been done.
What, then, is the secret of
reckoning? To put it in one word, it is revelation. We need
revelation from God Himself (Matt. 16:17; Eph. 1:17,18). We need
to have our eyes opened to the fact of our oneness with Christ,
and that is something more than knowing it as a doctrine. Such
revelation is no vague, indefinite thing. Most of us can remember
the day when we saw clearly that Christ died for us, and we ought
to be equally clear as to the time when we saw that we died with
Christ. It should be nothing hazy, but very definite, for it is
with this as the basis that we shall go on. It is not that I
reckon myself to be dead, and therefore I will be dead. It is
that, because I am dead -- because I see now what God has
done with me in Christ -- therefore I reckon myself to be
dead. That is the right kind of reckoning. It is not reckoning toward
death but from death.
What does reckoning mean?
'Reckoning' in Greek means doing accounts book-keeping.
Accounting is the only thing in the world we human beings can do
correctly. An artist paints a landscape. Can he do it with
perfect accuracy? Can the historian vouch for the absolute
accuracy of any record, or the map-maker for the perfect
correctness of any map? They can make, at best, fair
approximations. Even in everyday speech, when we try to tell some
incident with the best intention to be honest and truthful, we
cannot speak with complete accuracy. It is mostly a case of
exaggeration or understatement, of one word too much or too
little. What then can a man do that is utterly reliable?
Arithmetic! There is no scope for error there. One chair plus one
chair equals two chairs. That is true in London and it is true in
Cape Town. If you travel west to New York or east to Singapore it
is still the same. All the world over and for all time, one plus
one equals two. One plus one is two in heaven and earth and
Hades.
Why does God say we are to reckon
ourselves dead? Because we are dead. Let us keep to the
analogy of accounting. Suppose I have fifteen shillings in my
pocket, what do I enter in my account-book? Can I enter fourteen
shillings and sixpence or fifteen shillings and sixpence? No, I
must enter in my account-book that which is in fact in my pocket.
Accounting is the reckoning of facts, not fancies. Even so, it is
because I am really dead that God tells me to account it so. God
could not ask me to put down in my account-book what was not
true. He could not ask me to reckon that I am dead if I am still
alive. For such mental gymnastics the word 'reckoning' would be
inappropriate; we might rather speak of 'mis-reckoning!'
Reckoning is not a form of
make-believe. It does not mean that, having found that I have
only twelve shillings in my pocket, I hope that by entering
fifteen shillings incorrectly in my account-book such 'reckoning'
will somehow remedy the deficiency. It won't. If I have only
twelve shillings, yet try to reckon to myself: 'I have fifteen
shillings; I have fifteen shillings; I have fifteen shillings',
do you think that the mental effort involved will in any way
affect the sum that is in my pocket? Not a bit! Reckoning will
not make twelve shillings into fifteen shillings, nor will it
make what is untrue true. But if, on the other hand, it is a fact
that I have fifteen shillings in my pocket, then with great ease
and assurance I can enter fifteen shillings in my account-book.
God tells us to reckon ourselves dead, not that by the process of
reckoning we may become dead, but because we are dead. He never
told us to reckon what was not a fact.
Having said, then, that revelation
leads spontaneously to reckoning, we must not lose sight of the
fact that we are presented with a command: "Reckon ye
...." There is a definite attitude to be taken. God asks us
to do the account; to put down 'I have died' and then to abide by
it. Why? Because it is a fact. When the Lord Jesus was on the
cross, I was there in Him. Therefore I reckon it to be true. I
reckon and declare that I have died in Him. Paul said,
"Reckon ye also yourselves to be dead unto sin, but alive
unto God." How is this possible? "In Christ
Jesus." Never forget that it is always and only true in
Christ. If you look at yourself you will think death is not
there, but it is a question of faith not in yourself but in Him.
You look to the Lord, and know what He has done. 'Lord, I believe
in You. I reckon upon the fact in You.' Stand there
all the day.
The first four-and-a-half
chapters of Romans speak of faith and faith and faith. We are
justified by faith in Him (Rom. 3:28; 5:1). Righteousness, the
forgiveness of our sins, and peace with God are all ours by
faith, and without faith in the finished work of Jesus Christ
none can possess them. But in the second section of Romans we do
not find the same repeated mention of faith, and it might at
first appear that the emphasis is therefore different. It is not
really so, however, for where the words 'faith' and 'believe'
drop out the work 'reckon' takes their place. Reckoning and faith
are here practically the same thing.
What is faith? Faith is my
acceptance of God's fact. It always has its foundations in the
past. What relates to the future is hope rather than faith,
although faith often has its object or goal in the future, as in
Hebrews 11. Perhaps for this reason the word chosen here is
'reckon.' It is a word that relates only to the past -- to
what we look back to as settled, and not forward to as yet to be.
This is the kind of faith described in Mark 11:24: "All
things whatsoever ye pray and ask for, believe that ye have
received them, and ye shall have them." The statement there
is that, if you believe that you already have received your
requests (that is, of course, in Christ), then 'you shall have
them'. To believe that you may get something, or that you can
get it, or even that you will get it, is not faith in the
sense meant here. This is faith -- to believe that you have
already got it. Only that which relates to the past is faith in
this sense. Those who say 'God can' or 'God may' or 'God must' or
'God will' do not necessarily believe at all. Faith always says,
'God has done it.'
When, therefore, do I have faith in
regard to my crucifixion? Not when I say God can, or will, or
must crucify me, but when with joy I say, 'Praise God, in Christ I
am crucified!'
In Romans 3 we see the Lord Jesus
bearing our sins and dying as our Substitute that we might be
forgiven. In Romans 6 we see ourselves included in the death
whereby He secured our deliverance. When the first fact was
revealed to us we believed on Him for our justification. God
tells us to reckon upon the second fact for our deliverance. So
that, for practical purposes, 'reckoning' in the second section
of Romans takes the place of 'faith' in the first section. The
emphasis is not different. The normal Christian life is lived
progressively, as it is entered initially, by faith in Divine
fact: in Christ and His Cross.
For us, then, the two greatest
facts in history are these: that all our sins are dealt with by
the Blood, and that we ourselves are dealt with by the Cross. But
what now of the matter of temptation? What is to be our attitude
when, after we have seen and believed these facts, we discover
the old desires rising up again? Worse still, what if we fall
once more into known sin? What if we lose our temper, or worse?
Is the whole position set forth above proved thereby to be false?
Now remember, one of the Devil's
main objects is always to make us doubt the Divine facts.
(Compare Gen. 3:4) After we have seen, by revelation of the
Spirit of God, that we are indeed dead with Christ, and have
reckoned it so, he will come and say: 'There is something moving
inside. What about it? Can you call this death?' When that
happens, what will be our answer? The crucial test is exactly
here. Are you going to believe the tangible facts of the natural
realm which are clearly before your eyes, or the intangible facts
of the spiritual realm which are neither seen nor scientifically
proved?
Now we must be careful. It is
important for us to recall again what are facts stated in God'
Word for faith to lay hold of and what are not. How does God
state that deliverance is effected? Well, in the first place, we
are not told that sin as a principle in us is rooted out or
removed. To reckon on that will be to miscalculate altogether and
find ourselves in the false position of the man we considered
earlier, who tried to put down the twelve shillings in his pocket
as fifteen shillings in his account-book. No, sin is not
eradicated. It is very much there, and, given the opportunity,
will overpower us and cause us to commit sins again, whether
consciously or unconsciously. That is why we shall always need to
know the operation of the precious Blood.
But whereas we know that, in
dealing with sins committed, God's method is direct, to blot them
out of remembrance by means of the Blood, when we come to the
principle of sin and the matter of deliverance from its power, we
find instead that God deals with this indirectly. He does not
remove the sin but the sinner. Our old man was crucified with
Him, and because of this the body, which before had been a
vehicle of sin, is unemployed (Romans 6:6).[5] Sin, the old master, is still
about, but the slave who served him has been put to death and so
is out of reach and his members are unemployed. The gambler's
hand is unemployed, the swearer's tongue is unemployed, and these
members are now available to be used instead "as instruments
of righteousness unto God" (Romans 6:13).
Thus we can say that 'deliverance
from sin' is a more scriptural idea than 'victory over sin.' The
expressions "freed from sin" and "dead unto
sin" in Romans 6:7 and 11 imply deliverance from a power
that is still very present and very real -- not from something
that no longer exists. Sin is still there, but we are knowing
deliverance from its power in increasing measure day by day.
This deliverance is so real that
John can boldly write: "Whosoever is begotten of God doeth
no sin ... he cannot sin" (1 John 3:9), which is, however, a
statement that, wrongly understood, may easily mislead us. By it
John is not telling us that sin is now no longer in our history
and that we shall not again commit sin. He is saying that to sin
is not in the nature of that which is born of God. The life of
Christ has been planted in us by new birth and its nature is not
to commit sin. But there is a great difference between the nature
and the history of a thing, and there is a great difference
between the nature of the life within us and our history.
To illustrate this (though the illustration is an inadequate one)
we might say that wood 'cannot' sink, for it is not its nature to
do so; but of course in history it will do so if a hand hold it
under water. The history is a fact, just as sins in our history
are historic facts; but the nature is a fact also, and so is the
new nature that we have received in Christ. What is 'in Christ'
cannot sin; what is in Adam can sin and will do so whenever Satan
is given a chance to exert his power.
So it is a question of our choice
of which facts we will count upon and live by: the tangible facts
of daily experience or the mightier fact that we are now 'in
Christ.' The power of His resurrection is on our side, and the
whole might of God is at work in our salvation (Rom. 1:16), but
the matter still rests upon our making real in history what is
true in Divine fact.
"Now faith is the assurance of
things hoped for, the proving of things not seen" (Heb.
11:1), and "the things which are not seen are eternal"
(2 Cor. 4:18). I think we all know that Hebrews 11:1 is the only
definition of faith in the New Testament, or indeed in the
Scriptures. It is important that we should really understand that
definition. You are familiar with the common English translation
of these words, describing faith as "the substance of things
hoped for" (A.V.). However, the word in the Greek has in it
the sense of an action and not just of some thing, a 'substance,'
and I confess I have personally spent a number of years trying to
find a correct word to translate this. But the New Translation of
J.N. Darby is especially good in regard to this word: "Faith
is the substantiating of things hoped for". That is
much better. It implies the making of them real in experience.
How do we 'substantiate' something?
We are doing so every day. We cannot live in the world without
doing so. Do you know the difference between substance and
'substantiating?' A substance is an object, something before me.
'Substantiating' means that I have a certain power or faculty
that makes that substance to be real to me. Let us take a simple
illustration. By means of our senses we can take things of the
world of nature and transfer them into our consciousness so that
we can appreciate them. Sight and hearing, for example, are two
of my faculties which substantiate to me the world of light and
sound. We have colours: red, yellow, green, blue, violet; and
these colours are real things. But if I shut my eyes, then to me
the colour is no longer real; it is simply nothing -- to me.
It is not only that the colour is there, but I have the power to
'substantiate' it. I have the power to make that colour real to
me and to give it reality in my consciousness. That is the
meaning of 'substantiating.'
If I am blind I cannot distinguish
colour, or if I lack the faculty of hearing I cannot enjoy music.
Yet music and colour are in fact real things, and their
reality is unaffected by whether or not I am able to appreciate
them. Now we are considering here the things which, though they
are not seen, are eternal and therefore real. Of course we cannot
substantiate Divine things with any of our natural senses; but
there is one faculty which can substantiate the "things
hoped for", the things of Christ, and that is faith. Faith
makes the real things to become real in my experience. Faith
'substantiates' to me the things of Christ. Hundreds of
thousands of people are reading Romans 6:6: "Our old man was
crucified with him". To faith, that is true, but to doubt,
or to mere mental assent apart from spiritual illumination, it is
not true.
Let us remember again that we are
dealing here not with promises but with facts. The promises of
God are revealed to us by His Spirit that we may lay hold of
then; but facts are facts and they remain facts whether we
believe them or not. If we do not believe the facts of the Cross
they still remain as real as ever, but they are valueless to us.
It does not need faith to make these things real in themselves,
but faith can 'substantiate' them and make them real in our
experience.
Even if something is a very real
fact to our senses, if it contradicts the truth of God's Word, we
must regard it as the Devil's lie, not because it is not a fact
but because God has stated a greater fact before which
the other must ultimately yield. I once had an experience which
(though not applicable in detail to the present matter)
illustrates this principle. Some years ago I was ill. For six
nights I had high fever and could find no sleep. Then at length
God gave me from the Scripture a personal word of healing, and
because of this I expected all symptoms of sickness to vanish at
once. Instead of that, not a wink of sleep could I get, and I was
not only sleepless but more restless than ever. My temperature
rose higher, my pulse beat faster and my head ached more severely
than before. The enemy asked, 'Where is God's promise? Where is
your faith? What about all your prayers?' So I was tempted to
thrash the whole matter out in prayer again, but was rebuked, and
this Scripture came to mind: "Thy word is truth" (John
17:17). If God's Word is truth, I thought, then what are these
symptoms? They must all be lies! So I declared to the enemy,
'This sleeplessness is a lie, this headache is a lie, this fever
is a lie, this high pulse is a lie. In view of what God has said
to me, all these symptoms of sickness are just your lies, and
God's Word to me is truth.' In five minutes I was asleep, and I
awoke the following morning perfectly well.
Now of course in a particular
personal matter such as the above it might be quite possible for
me to deceive myself as to what God had said, but of the fact of
the Cross there can never be any such question. We must
believe God, no matter how convincing Satan's arguments appear.
A skillful liar lies not only in
word but in gesture and deed; he can as easily pass a bad coin as
tell an untruth. The Devil is a skillful liar, and we cannot
expect him to stop at words in his lying. He will resort to lying
signs and feelings and experiences in his attempts to shake us
from our faith in God's Word. Let me make it clear that I do not
deny the reality of the 'flesh.' Indeed we shall have a good deal
more to say about this further on in our study. But I am speaking
here of our being moved from a revealed position in Christ. As
soon as we have accepted our death with Christ as a fact, Satan
will do his best to demonstrate convincingly by the evidence of
our day-to-day experience that we are not dead at all but very
much alive. So we must choose. Will we believe Satan's lie or
God's truth? Are we going to be governed by appearances or by
what God says?
I am Mr. Nee. I know that I am Mr.
Nee. It is a fact upon which I can confidently count. It is of
course possible that I might lose my memory and forget that I am
Mr. Nee, or I might dream that I am some other person. But
whether I feel like it or not, when I am sleeping I am Mr. Nee
and when I am awake I am Mr. Nee; when I remember it I am Mr. Nee
and when I forget it I am still Mr. Nee.
Now of course, were I to pretend to
be someone else, things would be much more difficult. If I were
to try and pose as Miss K. I should have to keep saying to myself
all the time, 'You are Miss K.; now be sure to remember that you
are Miss K.,' and despite much reckoning the likelihood would be
that when I was off my guard and someone called, 'Mr. Nee!' I
should be caught out and should answer to my own name. Fact would
triumph over fiction, and all my reckoning would break down at
that crucial moment. But I am Mr. Nee and therefore I have
no difficulty whatever in reckoning myself to be Mr. Nee. It is a
fact which nothing I experience or fail to experience can alter.
So also, whether I feel it or not,
I am dead with Christ. How can I be sure? Because Christ has
died; and since "one died for all, therefore all died"
(2 Cor. 5:14). Whether my experience proves it or seems to
disprove it, the fact remains unchanged. While I stand upon that
fact Satan cannot prevail against me. Remember that his attack is
always upon our assurance. If he can get us to doubt God's Word,
then his object is secured and he has us in his power; but if we
rest unshaken in the assurance of God's stated fact, assured that
He cannot do injustice to His work or His Word, then it does not
matter what tactics Satan adopts, we can well afford to laugh at
him. If anyone should try to persuade me that I am not Mr. Nee, I
could well afford to do the same.
"We walk by faith, not by
appearance" (2 Cor. 5:7, mg). You probably know the
illustration of Fact, Faith and Experience walking along the top
of a wall. Fact walked steadily on, turning neither to right nor
left and never looking behind. Faith followed and all went well
so long as he kept his eyes focused upon Fact; but as soon as he
became concerned about Experience and turned to see how he
was getting on, he lost his balance and tumbled off the wall, and
poor old Experience fell down after him.
All temptation is primarily to look
within; to take our eyes off the Lord and to take account of
appearances. Faith is always meeting a mountain, a mountain of
evidence that seems to contradict God's Word, a mountain of
apparent contradiction in the realm of tangible fact -- of
failures in deed, as well as in the realm of feeling and
suggestion -- and either faith or the mountain has to go. They
cannot both stand. but the trouble is that many a time the
mountain stays and faith goes. That must not be. If we resort to
our senses to discover the truth, we shall find Satan's lies are
often enough true to our experience; but if we refuse to accept
as binding anything that contradicts God's Word and maintain an
attitude of faith in Him alone, we shall find instead that
Satan's lies begin to dissolve and that our experience is
coming progressively to tally with that Word.
It is our occupation with Christ
that has this result, for it means that He becomes progressively
real to us on concrete issues. In a given situation we see Him as
real holiness, real resurrection life -- for us.
What we see in Him objectively now operates in us subjectively --
but really -- to manifest Him in us in that situation.
That is the mark of maturity. That is what Paul means by his
words to the Galatians: "I am again in travail until Christ
be formed in you" (4:19). Faith is 'substantiating' God's
facts; and faith is always the 'substantiating' of eternal fact
-- of something eternally true.
Now although we have already
spent long on this matter, there is a further thing that may help
to make it clearer to us. the Scriptures declare that we are
"dead indeed", but nowhere do they say that we are dead
in ourselves. We shall look in vain to find death within;
that is exactly the place where it will not be found. We
are dead not in ourselves but in Christ. We were crucified
with Him because we were in Him.
We are familiar with the words of
the Lord Jesus, "Abide in me, and I in you" (John
15:4). Let us consider them for a moment. First they remind us
once again that we have never to struggle to get into Christ. We
are not told to get there, for we are there; but we are told to stay
there where we have been placed. It was God's own act that put us
in Christ, and we are to abide in Him.
But further, this verse lays down
for us a Divine principle, which is that God has done the work in
Christ and not in us as individuals. The all-inclusive death and
the all-inclusive resurrection of God's Son were accomplished
fully and finally apart from us in the first place. It is the
history of Christ which is to become the experience of the
Christian, and we have no spiritual experience apart from Him.
The Scriptures tell us that we were crucified "with
Him," that we were quickened, raised, and set by God in the
heavenlies "in Him," and that we are complete "in
Him" (Rom. 6:6; Eph. 2:5,6; Col. 2:10). It is not just
something that is still to be effected in us (though it is
that, of course). It is something that has already been effected,
in association with Him.
In the Scriptures we find that no
Christian experience exists as such. What God has done in
His gracious purpose is to include us in Christ. In dealing with
Christ God has dealt with the Christian; in dealing with the Head
He has dealt with all the members. It is altogether wrong for us
to think that we can experience anything of the spiritual life
merely in ourselves, and apart from Him. God does not intend that
we should acquire something exclusively personal in our
experience, and He is not willing to effect anything like that
for you and me. All the spiritual experience of the Christian is
already true in Christ. It has already been experienced by
Christ. What we call 'our' experience is only our entering into His
history and His experience.
It would be odd if one branch of a
vine tried to bear grapes with a reddish skin, and another branch
tried to bear grapes with a green skin, and yet another branch
grapes with a very dark purple skin, each branch trying to
produce something of its own without reference to the vine. It is
impossible, unthinkable. The character of the branches is
determined by the vine. Yet certain Christians are seeking
experiences as experiences. They think of crucifixion as
something, of resurrection as something, of ascension as
something, and they never stop to think that the whole is related
to a Person. No, only as the Lord opens our eyes to see the
Person do we have any true experience. Every true spiritual
experience means that we have discovered a certain fact in Christ
and have entered into that; anything that is not from Him in this
way is an experience that is going to evaporate very soon. 'I
have discovered that in Christ; then, Praise the Lord, it
is mine! I possess it, Lord, because it is in You.' Oh, it is a
great thing to know the facts of Christ as the foundation for our
experience!
So God's basic principle in leading
us on experientially is not to give us something. It is not to
bring us through something, and as a result to put something into
us which we can call 'our experience.' It is not that God
effects something within us so that we can say, 'I died
with Christ last March' or 'I was raised from the dead on January
1st, 1937,' or even, 'Last Wednesday I asked for a definite
experience and I have got it'. No, that is not the way. I do not
seek experiences in themselves as in this present year of
grace. Time must not be allowed to dominate our thinking
concerning spiritual matters.
Then, some will say, what about the
crises so many of us have passed through? True, some of us have
passed through real crises in our lives. For instance George
Muller could say, bowing himself down to the ground, 'There was a
day when George Muller died'. How about that? Well, I am not
questioning the reality of the spiritual experiences we go
through nor the importance of crises to which God brings us in
our walk with Him; indeed, I have already stressed the need for
us to be just as definite ourselves about such crises in our own
lives. But the point is that God does not give individuals
individual experiences. All that they have is only an entering
into what God has already done. It is the 'realizing' in time
of eternal things. The history of Christ becomes our
experience and our spiritual history; we do not have a separate
history from His. The entire work regarding us is not done in us
here but in Christ. He does no separate work in individuals apart
from what He has done there. Even eternal life is not given to us
as individuals: the life is in the Son, and "he that hath
the Son hath the life". God has done all in His Son, and He
has included us in Him; we are incorporated into Christ.
Now the point of all this is that
there is a very real practical value in the stand of faith that
says, 'God has put me in Christ, and therefore all that is true
of Him is true of me. I will abide in Him.' Satan is always
trying to get us out, to keep us out, to convince us that we are
out, and by temptations, failures, suffering, trial, to make us
feel acutely that we are outside of Christ. Our first thought is
that, if we were in Christ, we should not be in this state, and
therefore, judging by the feelings we now have, we must be out of
Him; and so we begin to pray, 'Lord, put me into Christ'. No!
God's injunction is to "abide" in Christ, and that is
the way of deliverance. But how is it so? Because it opens the
way for God to take a hand in our lives and to work the thing out
in us. It makes room for the operation of His superior power --
the power of resurrection (Rom. 6:4,9,10) -- so that the facts of
Christ do progressively become the facts of our daily experience,
and where before "sin reigned" (Rom. 5:21) we make now
the joyful discovery that we are truly "no longer ... in
bondage to sin" (Rom. 6:6).
As we stand steadfastly on the
ground of what Christ is, we find that all that is true of Him is
becoming experimentally true in us. If instead we come onto the
ground of what we are in ourselves we will find that all that is
true of the old nature remains true of us. If we get there
in faith we have everything; if we return back here we
find nothing. So often we go to the wrong place to find the death
of self. It is in Christ. We have only to look within to find we
are very much alive to sin; but when we look over there to the
Lord, God sees to it that death works here but that "newness
of life" is ours also. We are "alive unto God"
(Rom. 6:4,11).
"Abide in me, and I in
you." This is a double sentence: a command coupled with a
promise. That is to say, there is an objective and a subjective
side to God's working, and the subjective side depends upon the
objective; the "I in you" is the outcome of our abiding
in Him. We need to guard against being over-anxious about the
subjective side of things, and so becoming turned in upon
ourselves. We need to dwell upon the objective -- "abide in
me" -- and to let God take care of the subjective. And this
He has undertaken to do.
I have illustrated this from the
electric light. You are in a room and it is growing dark. You
would like to have the light on in order to read. There is a
reading-lamp on the table beside you. What do you do? Do you
watch it intently to see if the light will come on? Do you take a
cloth and polish the bulb? No, you get up and cross over to the
other side of the room where the switch is on the wall and you
turn the current on. You turn your attention to the source of
power and when you have taken the necessary action there the
light comes on here.
So in our walk with the Lord our
attention must be fixed on Christ. "Abide in me, and I in
you" is the Divine order. Faith in the objective facts make
those facts true subjectively. As the apostle Paul puts it,
"We all ... beholding ... the glory of the Lord, are
transformed into the same image" (2 Cor. 3:18 mg.). The same
principle holds good in the matter of fruitfulness of life:
"He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same beareth much
fruit" (John 15:5). We do not try to produce fruit or
concentrate upon the fruit produced. Our business is to look away
to Him. As we do so He undertakes to fulfill His Word in us.
How do we abide? 'Of God are ye in
Christ Jesus.' It was the work of God to put you there and He has
done it. Now stay there! Do not be moved back onto your
own ground. Never look at yourself as though you were not in
Christ. Look at Christ and see yourself in Him. Abide in Him.
Rest in the fact that God has put you in His Son, and live in the
expectation that He will complete His work in you. It is for Him
to make good the glorious promise that "sin shall not have
dominion over you" (Rom. 6:14).
The Normal Christian Life - Chapter 5: The Divide Of The Cross
