The kingdom of this world is not the kingdom of God. God had in His heart a world-system - a universe of His creating -- which should be headed up in Christ His Son (Col. 1:16,17). But Satan, working through man's flesh, has set up instead a rival system known in Scripture as "this world" -- a system in which we are involved and which he himself dominates. He has in fact become "the prince of this world" (John 12:31).
Thus, in Satan's hands, the
first creation has become the old creation, and God's primary
concern is now no longer with that but with a second and new
creation. He is bringing in a new creation, a new kingdom and a
new world, and nothing of the old creation, the old kingdom or
the old world can be transferred to the new. It is a question now
of these two rival realms, and of which realm we belong to.
The apostle Paul, of course, leaves
us in no doubt as to which of these two realms is now in fact
ours. He tells us that God, in redemption, "delivered us out
of the power of darkness, and translated us into the kingdom of
the Son of his love" (Col. 1:12,13).
But in order to bring us into His
new kingdom, God must do something new in us. He must make us new
creatures. Unless we are created anew we can never fit into the
new realm. "That which is born of the flesh is flesh";
and, "flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God;
neither doth corruption inherit incorruption" (John 3:16; 1
Cor. 15:50). However educated, however cultured, however improved
it may be, flesh is still flesh. Our fitness for the new kingdom
is determined by the creation to which we belong. Do we belong to
the old creation or the new? Are we born of the flesh or of the
Spirit? Our ultimate suitability for the new realm hinges on the
question of origin. It is not a question of 'good' or bad', but
of 'flesh or Spirit'. "That which is born of the flesh is
flesh," and it will never be anything else. That which is of
the old creation can never pass over into the new.
Once we really understand what God
is seeking, namely, something altogether new for Himself, then we
shall see clearly that we can never bring any contribution from
the old realm into that new thing. God wanted to have us for
Himself, but He could not bring us as we were into that
which He had purposed; so He first did away with us by the Cross
of Christ, and then by resurrection provided a new life for us.
"If any man is in Christ, he is a new creature (mg. 'there
is a new creation'): the old things are passed away; behold, they
are become new" (2 Cor. 5:17). Being now new creatures with
a new nature and a new set of faculties, we can enter the new
kingdom and the new world.
The Cross was the means God used to
bring to an end 'the old things' by setting aside altogether our
'old man', and the resurrection was the means He employed to
impart to us all that was necessary for our life in that new
world. "We were buried therefore with him through baptism
into death: that like as Christ was raised from the dead through
the glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness of
life" (Rom. 6:4).
The greatest negative in the
universe is the Cross, for with it God wiped out everything that
was not of Himself. The greatest positive in the universe is the
resurrection, for through it God brought into being all He will
have in the new sphere. So the resurrection stands at the
threshold of the new creation. It is a blessed thing to see that
the Cross ends all that belongs to the first regime, and that the
resurrection introduces all that pertains to the second.
Everything that had its beginning before resurrection must be
wiped out. Resurrection is God's new starting-point.
We have now two worlds before us,
the old and the new. In the old, Satan has absolute dominion. You
may be a good man in the old creation, but as long as you belong
to the old you are under a sentence of death, because nothing of
the old can go over to the new. The Cross is God's declaration
that all is of the old creation must die. Nothing of the first
Adam can pass beyond the Cross; it all ends there. The sooner we
see that, the better, for it is by the Cross that God has made a
way of escape for us from that old creation. God gathered up in
the Person of His Son all that was of Adam and crucified Him; so
in Him all that was of Adam was done away. Then God made, as it
were, a proclamation throughout the universe saying: 'Through the
Cross I have set aside all that is not of Me; you who belong to
the old creation are all included in that; you too have been
crucified with Christ!' None of us can escape that judgment.
This brings us to the subject of
baptism. "Are ye ignorant that all we who were baptized into
Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried
therefore with him through baptism into death" (Rom. 6:3,4).
What is the significance of these words?
Baptism in Scripture is associated
with salvation. "He that believeth and is baptized shall be
saved" (Mark 16:16). We cannot speak scripturally of
'baptismal regeneration' but we may speak of 'baptismal
salvation'. What is salvation? It relates not to our sins nor to
the power of sin, but to the cosmos or world-system. We
are involved in Satan's world-system. To be saved is to make our
exit from his world-system into God's.
In the Cross of our Lord Jesus
Christ, says Paul, "the world hath been crucified unto me,
and I unto the world" (Gal. 6:14). This is the figure
developed by Peter when he writes of the eight souls who were
"saved through water" (1 Peter 3:20). Entering into the
ark, Noah and those with him stepped by faith out of that old
corrupt world into a new one. It was not so much that they were
personally not drowned, but that they were out of that
corrupt system. That is salvation.
Then Peter goes on: "Which
also after a true likeness (mg. 'in the antitype') doth now save
you, even baptism" (verse 21). In other words, by that
aspect of the Cross which is figured in baptism you are delivered
from this present evil world, and, by your baptism in water, you
confirm this. It is baptism "into his death", ending
one creation ; but it is also baptism "into Christ
Jesus", having in view a new one (Rom. 6:3). You go down
into the water and your world, in figure, goes down with you. you
come up in Christ, but your world is drowned.
"Believe on the Lord Jesus,
and thou shalt be saved", said Paul at Philippi, and
"spake the word of the Lord" to the jailer and his
household. And he "was baptized, he and all his,
immediately" (Acts 16:31-34). In doing so, he and those with
him testified before God, His people and the spiritual powers
that they were indeed saved from a world under judgment. As a
result, we read, they rejoiced greatly, "having believed in
God".
Thus it is clear that baptism is no
mere question of a cup of water, nor of a baptistry of water. It
is a tremendous thing, relating as it does both to the death and
to the resurrection of our Lord; and having in view two worlds.
Anyone who has worked in a pagan country knows what tremendous
issues are raised by baptism.
Peter goes on now to describe
baptism in the passage just quoted as "the answer of a good
conscience toward God" (1 Peter 3:21 A.V.). Now we cannot
answer without being spoken to. If God had said nothing we should
have no need to answer. But He has spoken; He has spoken to us by
the Cross. By it He has told of His judgment of us, of the world,
of the old creation and of the old kingdom. The Cross is not only
Christ's personally -- an individual' Cross. It is an all
inclusive Cross, a 'corporate' Cross, a Cross that includes you
and me. God has put us all into His Son, and crucified us in Him.
In the last Adam He has wiped out all that was of the first Adam.
Now what is my answer to God's
judgment on the old creation? I answer by asking for baptism.
Why? In Romans 6:4 Paul explains that baptism means burial:
"We were buried therefore with him through baptism".
Baptism is of course connected with both death and resurrection,
though in itself it is neither death nor resurrection: it is
burial. But who qualifies for burial? Only the dead! So if I ask
for baptism I proclaim myself dead and fit only for the grave.
Alas, some have been taught to look
on burial as a means to death; they try to die by getting
themselves buried! Let me say emphatically that, unless our eyes
have been opened by God to see that we have died in Christ and
been buried with Him, we have no right to be baptized. The reason
we step down into the water is that we have recognized that in
God's sight we have already died. It is to that that we
testify. God's question is clear and simple. 'Christ has died,
and I have included you there. Now, what are you going to say to
that?' What is my answer? 'Lord, I believe You have done the
crucifying. I say Yes to the death and to the burial to which You
have committed me.' He has consigned me to death and the grave;
by my request for baptism I give public assent to that fact.
In China a woman lost her husband,
but, becoming deranged by her loss, she flatly refused to have
him buried. Day after day for a fortnight he lay in the house.
'No', she said, 'he is not dead; I talk with him every night.'
She was unwilling to have him buried because, poor woman, she did
not believe him to be dead. When are we willing to bury our dear
ones? Only when we are absolutely sure that they have passed
away. While there is the tiniest hope that they are alive we will
never bury them. So when will I ask for baptism? When I see that
God's way is perfect and that I deserved to die, and when I truly
believe that God has already crucified me. Once I am fully
persuaded that, before God, I am quite dead, then I apply for
baptism. I say, 'Praise God, I am dead! Lord, You have slain me;
now get me buried!'
In China we have two emergency
Services, a 'Red Cross' and a 'Blue Cross' The first deals with
those who are wounded in battle but are still alive, to bring
them succour and healing; the second deals with those who are
already dead in famine, flood or war, to give them burial. God's
dealings with us in the Cross of Christ are more drastic than
those of the 'Red Cross'. He does not set out to patch up the old
creation. By Him even the still living are condemned to death and
to burial, that they may be raised again to new life. God has
done the work of crucifixion so that now we are counted among the
dead; but we must accept this and submit to the work of the 'Blue
Cross', by sealing that death with 'burial'.
There is an old world and a new
world, and between the two there is a tomb. God has already
crucified me, but I must consent to be consigned to the tomb. My
baptism confirms God's sentence, passed upon me in the Cross of
His Son. It affirms that I am cut off from the old world and
belong now to the new. So baptism is no small thing. It means for
me a definite conscious break with the old way of life. This is
the meaning of Romans 6:2: "We who died to sin, how shall we
any longer live therein?" Paul says, in effect, 'If you
would continue in the old world, why be baptized? You should
never have been baptized if you meant to live on in the old
realm'. When once we see this, we clear the ground for the new
creation by our assent to the burial of the old.
In Romans 6:5, still writing to
those who "were baptized" (verse 3), Paul speaks of our
being "united with him by the likeness of his death".
By baptism we acknowledge in figure that God has wrought an
intimate union between ourselves and Christ in this matter of
death and resurrection. One day I was seeking to emphasize this
truth to a Christian brother. We happened to be drinking tea
together, so I took a lump of sugar and stirred it into my tea. A
couple of minutes later I asked, 'Can you tell me where the sugar
is now, and where the tea?' 'No', he said, 'you have put them
together and the one has become lost in the other; they cannot
now be separated.' It was a simple illustration, but it helped
him to see the intimacy and the finality of our union with Christ
in death. It is God that has put us there, and God's acts cannot
be reversed.
What, in fact does this union
imply? The real meaning behind baptism is that in the Cross we
were 'baptized' into the historic death of Christ, so that
His death became ours. Our death and His became then so closely
identified that it is impossible to divide between them. It is to
this historic 'baptism' -- this God-wrought union with Him --
that we assent when we go down into the water. Our public
testimony in baptism today is our admission that the death of
Christ two thousand years ago was a mighty all-inclusive death,
mighty enough and all-inclusive enough to carry away and bring to
an end everything in us that is not of God.
"If we have become united
with him by the likeness of his death, we shall be also by the
likeness of his resurrection (Rom. 6:5).
Now with resurrection the figure is
different because something new is introduced. I am
"baptized into his death", but I do not enter in quite
the same way into His resurrection, for, Praise the Lord! His
resurrection enters into me, imparting to me a new life. In the
death of the Lord the emphasis is solely upon 'I in Christ'. With
the resurrection, while the same thing is true, there is now a
new emphasis upon 'Christ in me'. How is it possible for Christ
to communicate His resurrection life to me? How do I receive this
new life? Paul suggests, I think, a very good illustration with
these very same words: "united with him". For the word
'united' (A.V. 'planted together') may carry in the Greek the
sense of 'grafted'[6] and it gives
us a very beautiful picture of the life of Christ which is
imparted to us through resurrection.
In Fukien I once visited a man who
owned an orchard of long-ien[7]
trees. He had three or four acres of land and about three hundred
fruit trees. I inquired if his trees had been grafted or if they
were of the original native stock. 'Do you think', he replied,
'that I would waste my land growing ungrafted trees? What value
could I ever expect from the old stock?
So I asked him to explain the
process of grafting, which he gladly did. 'When a tree has grown
to a certain height', he said, 'I lop off the top and graft on to
it.' Pointing to a special tree he asked, 'Do you see that tree?
I call it the father tree, because all the grafts for the other
trees are taken from that one. If the other trees were just left
to follow the course of nature, their fruit would be only about
the size of a raspberry, and would consist mainly of thick skin
and seeds. This tree, from which the grafts for all the others
are taken, bears a luscious fruit the size of a plum, with very
thin skin and a tiny seed; and of course all the grafted trees
bear fruit like it.' 'How does it happen?' I asked. 'I simply
take a little of the nature of the one tree and transfer it to
the other', he explained. 'I make a cleavage in the poor tree and
insert a slip from the good one. Then I bind it up and leave it
to grow.' 'But how can it grow?' I asked. 'I don't know', he
said, 'but it does grow.'
Then he showed me a tree bearing
miserably poor fruit from the old stock below the graft, and rich
juicy fruit from the new stock above the graft. 'I have left the
old shoots with their useless fruit on them to show the
difference', he said. 'From it you can understand the value of
grafting. You can appreciate, can you not, why I grow only
grafted trees?'
How can one tree bear the fruit of
another? How can a poor tree bear good fruit? Only by grafting.
Only by our implanting into it the life of a good tree. But if a
man can graft a branch of one tree into another, cannot God take
of the life of His Son and, so to speak, graft it into us?
A Chinese woman burned her arm
badly and was taken to the hospital. In order to prevent serious
contracture due to scarring it was found necessary to graft some
new skin over the injured area, but the doctor attempted in vain
to graft a piece of the woman's own skin onto the arm. Owing to
her age and ill-nourishment the skin graft was too poor and would
not 'take'. Then a foreign nurse offered a piece of skin and the
operation was carried out successfully. The new skin knit with
the old, and the woman left the hospital with her arm perfectly
healed; but there remained a patch of white foreign skin on her
yellow arm to tell the tale of the past. You ask how the skin of
another grew on that woman's arm? I do not know how it grew, but
I know that it did grow.
If an earthly surgeon can take a
piece of skin from one human body and graft it on another,[8] cannot the Divine Surgeon implant
the life of His Son into me? I do not know how it is done.
"The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the
voice thereof, but knowest not whence it cometh, and whither it
goeth; so is every one that is born of the Spirit" (John
3:8). We cannot tell how God has done His work in us, but it is
done. We can do nothing and need do nothing to bring it about,
for by the resurrection God has already done it.
God has done everything. There is
only one fruitful life in the world and that has been grafted
into millions of other lives. We call this the 'new birth'. New
birth is the reception of a life which I did not possess before.
It is not that my natural life has been changed at all; it is
that another life, a life altogether new, altogether Divine, has
become my life.
God has cut off the old creation by
the Cross of His Son in order to bring in a new creation in
Christ by resurrection. He has shut the door to that old kingdom
of darkness and translated me into the kingdom of His dear Son.
My glorying is in the fact that it has been done -- that, through
the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ , that old world has
" been crucified unto me, and I unto the world"
(Galations 6:14). My baptism is my public testimony to that fact.
By it, as by my oral witness, my "confession is made unto
salvation" (Romans 10:10).
The Normal Christian Life - Chapter 6: The Path of Progress: Presenting Ourselves to God
