Introduction
It is not uncommon for a new believer, after the
initial euphoria of conversion, to become distressed at the
relentless tendency to evil he finds within himself. He soon
discovers that the blood of Christ does not cleanse his nature, and
that the Holy Spirit does not sanctify it. Resolutions to become
different result only in disappointment, and all his efforts to be
holy end with repeated failure. He reads about something called
“freedom from sin” (Rom. 6: 18, 22), but knows he experiences quite
the opposite. Sadly, this turmoil of soul is not restricted to new
converts, for many conceal their struggles for years after first
believing in Christ, embarrassed to admit their inability to lead a
‘victorious’ life.
Much of the blame
for this miserable situation can be traced back to a faulty Gospel
presentation in which man’s total depravity was
unmentioned. In many preachings it is taken for granted that man has
a natural inclination and ability to come to God about his sins, and
it is no surprise that the new converts assume that there is also
something in them naturally that can be worked on in order to bear
spiritual fruit. They are like the inexperienced gardener who once
trained a rose tree over a porch. The leaves of the plant were lush,
the growth was strong, but not a flower was to be seen. ‘Why is
this?’ inquired the owner of the property to an expert gardener.
Taking out his secateurs, the expert levelled the rampant growth to
the ground. ‘What have you done?’ cried the owner. ‘Don't you see,
sir’ was the reply, ‘your gardener has been cultivating the wrong
shoot’ and, at the same time, the expert pointed out the grafted
rose, which had barely struggled above the ground, and which the
wild shoot had completely overwhelmed. Not all the cultivation or
training in the world could have made that wrong shoot become a
beautiful and flowering tree, and neither will the efforts of a
whole life succeed in making our natural self like Christ.
In Christ Jesus
Every believer knows that “Christ has died for us”
(Rom. 5: 8) and that “where sin abounded grace has overabounded”
(v20). Sadly, some with a knowledge of the terms of the Gospel would
abuse this overabounding nature of the blessing to excuse a life of
sin, and the apostle Paul addresses this attitude in Romans 6: “What
then shall we say? Should we continue in sin that grace may abound?
Far be the thought. We who have died to
sin, how shall we still live in it?” (vs. 1, 2, my emphasis). Now
most genuine Christians are content to say that they ought to be
dead to sin, but wince as they look at the record of their own
experience. However, the apostle’s argument against continuing in
sin supposes that Christians as a class be dead to sin
(rather than just some of special attainment) for if we are dead to
sin then it is clearly not possible to live in it. Thus, the apostle
is not speaking of our having died to sin as an experience but
rather as a position which being “in Christ Jesus”
(v11, 23; Rom. 8: 1, 2) sets us. All believers accept that Christ
has died, but if we are in Him, then we have died as
well. Removing any doubt as to this, Paul states the fact
explicitly: “Now if we have died with Christ, we
believe that we shall also live with him" (Rom. 6: 8, my emphasis).
When did Christ die? Two thousand years ago, proving that our death
with Him cannot be a matter of experience.
Baptism is a
witness of our death with Christ (“identified with [him] in the
likeness of his death—Rom. 6: 5), hence, “We have been buried
therefore with him by baptism unto death, in order that, even as
Christ has been raised up from among [the] dead by the glory of the
Father, so we also should walk in newness of life” (v4). Note
the language, for it is “unto Christ Jesus”, “unto his death” (v3)
and “unto death” (v4)—that is, in being baptised I acknowledge that
the penalty of death that Christ came under as bearing my judgment
was rightly my penalty for “the wages of sin [is] death” (v23). Now
a person might die in many ways, but Christ was crucified.
His was therefore no ordinary death, but a judicial act (criminals
were crucified), and that judicial act not only had consequences for
the Lord Himself but also for those that believe on Him. We
understand this very well in relation to sins, but Christ was also
“made sin for us” (2 Cor. 5: 21), when “God, having sent his own
Son, in likeness of flesh of sin, and for sin …
condemned sin in the flesh” (Rom. 8: 3). Judgment fell on the
Lord, not only because of what we had done, but because of what we
are—not only because of sins, but of sin. The apostle can therefore
say that “our old man”—the man whose sinful ways characterises the
whole of our fallen race—“has been crucified with [him], that the
body of sin might be annulled, that we should no longer serve sin”
(Rom. 6: 6). Crucifixion is condemnation without hope of reprieve.
Thus, the cross was God’s judgment upon fallen man, with whom each
one of us had his place as being of Adam’s race (see Rom. 5: 12-20)
and by which “the many have been constituted sinners” (v19).
Man’s nature,
ruined and alienated from God, is incapable of pleasing Him, and,
because it is nature, cannot be altered for “that which is born of
the flesh is flesh” (John 3: 6). When Christ died, our sinful
nature—that production line of sins—was also judicially associated
with Him. God forgives sins, but He condemns sin. The death of
Christ is God’s judgment of sin, and, in His sight, its judicial end
(that is, it still exists, but God has judged it). This then is what
God says about the death of Christ and what we are by nature, and
the path of faith is to believe what God has said, and to view
ourselves from His standpoint. He views us as in the dead and risen
Christ, and therefore, we are to “reckon” ourselves “dead to sin and
alive to God in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 6: 11). On what basis is the
reckoning to be made? That Christ “has died to sin once for all, but
in that he lives, he lives to God” (v10). Did He die to sin? Yes, at
Calvary. Then we are dead to sin, and so we reckon it. Does He now
live to God? Yes, as risen, and glorified. Then we now live to God,
and so we reckon it. Does this mean that there is no sin or flesh in
us, or that the old man has been taken out of us? Not at all, for if
our fallen nature were gone, then we should not have to reckon
ourselves as dead to sin. However, our reckoning is not mere
make-believe. It is not that we try to reckon ourselves to be what
we are not, for ‘In Christ Jesus’ we are dead to sin,
and alive to God, and faith lays hold of those unchanging facts.
“Knowing” (v6—ginwskw,
objective knowledge) our old man crucified is not a feeling or a
consciousness of death, but a fact objectively known to faith. Just
as I know my sins are gone, not on the basis of feeling, but because
God says so, so I know that God views me in the dead and risen Man,
because He says so.
Many have been
misled by the faulty translation which says, “that our old man is
crucified with him, that the body of sin might be
destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin” (Rom. 6:
6, AV—my emphasis in bold), as if the
old nature is completely eradicated. The better word is
annulled, meaning although the law (or unvarying principle)
of sin is still present in the members of our mortal body, it has
been rendered inoperative as a controlling power by the death of
Christ. An unbeliever is a slave of sin, but that tyrant’s power is
at an end when the subject over which he domineers is dead. As the
apostle says, “For he that has died is justified from sin” (v7)—you
may as well charge a corpse as charge the Christian as being under
sin. The Greek shows that there is no going back on this, for “he
that has died” (apoqanwn—the
completed act) “is justified (dedikaiwtai—the
subsisting effect of the past action) “from sin” (v7). As a result,
instead of yielding our “members instruments of unrighteousness to
sin” as bondmen of sin, we are now to “yield yourselves to God
as alive from among [the] dead, and your members
instruments of righteousness to God” (v 13, my emphasis). The tenses
are important here: “neither yield your members instruments of
unrighteousness to sin” means it is at no time to be done,
while “yield yourselves to God” (v13) and “yield your members” (v19)
are what we are to have done, as a once accomplished act.
Thus, there is to be a distinct point in our lives when faith lays
hold of what God has said about our new position in Christ, and we
act accordingly. As believers, we “were bondmen to sin” (v17), but “now,
having got” our “freedom from sin” (its dominion being broken by
death), and having “become bondmen to God”, we have “fruit unto
holiness, and the end eternal life” (v22). The idea that grace leads
to laxity about sin is false: grace puts us in a new position and
under a new master, and as “alive to God in Christ Jesus” (v11), we
“have become bondmen to righteousness” (v18).
What the Law Cannot Do
Now there is a difference between title to be
free, and the ability to make good the title practically. Every
Christian is ‘in Christ’—the dead and
risen Christ—and is thus no longer under sin’s bondage. An
individual may not, however, realise that he has been
set free. And if he does not realise he is free, then he will not be
able to make good his title to freedom. Instead, he will seek
through his own efforts to bring himself into conformity to the will
of God. This unhappy situation is described for us in Rom. 7: 7-25,
where the tormented individual seeks by law to regulate himself,
until finally he cries out in despair “O wretched man that I [am]!
who shall deliver me out of this body of death?” (v24).
There are two
extremes to be avoided in interpreting Romans 7. The first is that
it is a description of a spiritual man in as blessed a condition as
he ever can be on earth, thereby equating spiritual turmoil with
spiritual advancement. Since the apostle says ‘I’ repeatedly, it is
inferred that he means himself personally in his current spiritual
state. This is not only unwarranted but impossible, for he goes on
to say in the same continuous argument that “the law of the Spirit
of life in Christ Jesus has set me free
from the law of sin and of death” (Rom. 8: 2). The speaker could not
be spiritually both a slave “sold under sin” (Rom. 7: 14) and made
free at the same time.
The second error is
to consider the soul in distress as unconverted because in the
progress of its exercises it says, “I am fleshly” (Rom. 7: 14),
supposing that “fleshly” means one dead in trespasses and sins. This
is to confuse “fleshly” with “natural” (1 Cor. 2: 14)—which is
clearly wrong, since the Corinthians were “fleshly” (1 Cor. 3: 1)
but also genuine believers. No believer is ‘natural’ but not every
believer is a spiritual person. In Galatians 6: 1, for example, Paul
instructs those “who are spiritual” to restore those overtaken by
faults—plainly intimating that certain believers were more fitted
than others for the delicate work of restoration.
It is not that the
man in Romans 7 is without exercise of soul (quite the contrary),
but he has not yet learned to abandon himself and rest in Christ,
and so he is fleshly. As already noted, vs. 7-25 describe how he is
fixated with self, for “I”, and “me” continually reoccur. The reason
for this self-occupation is evident: the man is desperately trying,
through his own efforts, to control the sinful nature he finds
within in a vain attempt to produce that spiritually fruitful life
he knows that God expects. Practically, he is under law—trying
through regulation to channel himself into conformity to Christ. He
does not yet understand that not only are believers justified by
faith, but that the daily life of the Christian must be that of
faith as well, for “The just shall live on the
principle of faith” (Gal. 3: 11, my emphasis). Faith, of course,
lays hold on something outside of myself.
The man in Romans 7
is pursuing a wrong course of action, for the Christian does not
live by law, for just as death frees a woman from the law of her
husband, so Christians have been made “dead to the law by the body
of Christ … in order that we might bear fruit to God” (Rom. 7: 4).
As with being “dead to sin” (Rom. 6: 11), this is not a matter of
experience, for the believer is dead to law whether he knows it or
not, and the fact is true of all Christians. The
believer is “clear from the law” (Rom. 7: 6) because death (as
evidenced by “the body of the Christ”—v4) has taken place, and he is
identified with Christ in that death. If death overtakes a person,
the law’s dominion over him necessarily terminates, seeing he is no
longer living in the sphere in which it held sway. The law is not
itself dead, but the believer has been made dead to it.
How futile then to seek to bear fruit for God by law-keeping!
Here then is a man
who has made himself miserable by the thing he thought would bring
him success. Did the law make him better? No, quite the contrary.
Law makes men feel worse than ever, for “I had not known sin, unless
by law” (Rom. 7: 7). It does not cure self at all and was never
intended by God that it should. “[Is] the law sin” (v7) then? No,
for the law is “spiritual” (v14). The point is that we
are sin. The tool is good, but the wood is rotten. Thus “without law
[sin] was dead. But I was alive without law once” (vs. 8, 9).
However, the moment law was applied, the man becomes sensible to his
true condition: “but the commandment having come, sin revived, but
I died” (v9). It stirred up the evil of his heart. Not that
it made his heart worse, but it made him feel his badness. Thus, if
the law tells me not to covet, then immediately I am overcome by
longing. Sin exists, the nature is there, but the desires of sin are
brought into action by the law bidding them to be silent.
How painful are the
symptoms of the sinful condition that law discovers: “For that which
I do, I do not own: for not what I will, this I do; but what I hate,
this I practise” (Rom. 7: 15). And yet, at the same time, the agony
has not been in vain, because the man can see that there is a
difference between “I” and “the sin that dwells in me” (v17),
and has rightly concluded from his experience (oida—conscious
knowledge) that “in me, that is, in my flesh, good does not dwell:
for to will is there with me, but to do right [I find] not” (v18).
He has the will but no power, “for I do not practise the good that I
will; but the evil I do not will, that I do” (v19). From this, he
puts together his earlier findings in a more concrete form, deducing
that “if what I do not will, this I practise, [it is] no
longer I [that] do it, but the sin that dwells in me” (v20).
Verses 21-23 further show how the misery is brought to a crisis, and
the growing sense of differentiation between his true self and the
evil within. This knowledge, of itself, provides no relief, however,
and it is only when the man turns away from looking at self and
exclaims “O wretched man that I [am]! who shall
deliver me out of this body of death?” (v24, my emphasis) that he
finds a deliverer. He cannot deliver himself, but discovers, at his
lowest ebb, that Christ is there as the deliverer: “I thank God,
through Jesus Christ our Lord” (v25). But exactly how
is the man delivered?—for to say that Christ is the deliverer does
not explain the deliverance. It is a mistake to think that the
latter part of v25 describes the delivered state, for the man
distinguishes himself from what he does, but is still in bondage:
“So then I myself with the mind serve God’s law; but with the
flesh sin’s law”. That statement is merely a description of the
situation to which the deliverance is applied, in which there are
two laws “warring in opposition” (v23)—the word law here
simply meaning a principle acting in a uniform way, the law of a
renewed mind seeking good, and the law of sin seeking evil. To
understand how the man is delivered, we must go on to the
introduction of “the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus”
(Rom. 8: 2).
Deliverance
Deliverance comes in identification with Christ,
for it is evident that when a soul is able to identify himself in a
full, practical way with the Christ who is before God for Him, then
he is out of the condition which made him cry out in despair. Christ
is not in bondage, there is in Him no body of sin—indeed, no sin at
all, much less a law of it. This is what gives such force to the
apostle’s proclamation that “[There is] then now no condemnation to
those in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 8: 1, my emphasis). If
you add a qualifying clause here (as in the AV—“who walk not after
the flesh, but after the Spirit”) then all is plunged into
uncertainty and made to depend on how I walk.
There is no such qualifying clause in the verse. Place in
Christ and walk in the Spirit are two distinct things. Certainly,
there is a walk fitting for those placed in the new position, but
the first thing I need to know is that I am placed by the grace of
God where no condemnation can reach me. I am in a new
position (in Christ Jesus) where condemnation is not. What is the
ground of it? “The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set
me free from the law of sin and of death” (v2). Mark the precision
of the language—it the law of the Spirit of life,
meaning a principle that is fixed. Again, it is the
law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus, for we
reckon ourselves “dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus”
(Rom. 6: 11) in accord with the place where He now is. Let others
boast in the law of Moses, the apostle says, but this is the law for
me as a Christian! “For what the law could not do, in that it was
weak through the flesh, God, having sent his own Son, in likeness of
flesh of sin, and for sin, has condemned sin in the flesh” (v3). As
identified with a dead and risen Christ I am set free from the law
of sin and of death forever.
Once the believer’s place
as ‘in Christ Jesus’ is a settled fact, then the apostle can address
the believer’s walk, and how that “the righteous requirement of the
law should be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to flesh
but according to Spirit” (Rom. 8: 4). Not by law-keeping note but
walking according to Spirit. “According to Spirit” is technically a
state rather than the Spirit personally, but clearly it is dependent
on God’s Spirit dwelling in us. As Christians, we are in a new
condition for “ye are not in flesh but in Spirit, if indeed
God’s Spirit dwell in you” (v9), in contrast to the time “when we
were in the flesh” (Rom. 7: 5, my emphasis). The Holy
Spirit in us is the divine acknowledgment of our being ‘in Christ
Jesus’, and if we have the “Spirit of Christ” (Rom. 8:
9, my emphasis), then the result will be that not only are we ‘in
Christ Jesus’ but “Christ” will “be in you” (v10), and we shall walk
here as he walked.
The essence of this
truth worked out practically is found in the words of the apostle
Paul in Galatians 2: 20: “I am crucified with Christ, and no longer
live, I, but Christ lives in me; but [in] that I now live in
flesh, I live by faith, the [faith] of the Son of God, who has loved
me and given himself for me”. Now it is our nature to do certain
things—we commit sin because our nature is sinful, and anyone who
has tried to be holy and has learned how impossible it is to keep
evil out of his heart, will know something of the meaning of ‘I’. He
will understand what self is by the experience of himself. But there
is another way of learning ‘I’ and that is by looking to Christ upon
the cross, suffering there in my place. Many accept in a general way
the truth of Christ being their substitute without being clear that
they were really in God’s sight with Christ in the
place that He took. Paul could say, not only that Christ was
crucified on his behalf, but that he was “crucified with
Christ” (Gal. 2: 20, my emphasis). God has not only taken our sins
and laid them upon the sin-bearer, but he has crucified our old man
with Christ and therefore in His sight the ‘I’ of the believer is
judged and dead.
Nor is that all,
for the apostle also goes on to speak of a new life: “but Christ
lives in me; but [in] that I now live in flesh, I live by faith, the
[faith] of the Son of God” (Gal. 2: 20). Thus, God presents us with
self definitely dead in His sight, and Christ living in us. But what
is it that lives within the believer? Does the new life enter into
our old, fallen nature and Christianise it? Does ‘I’ reappear with
Christ helping it? Not at all, for ‘I’ no longer lives—the ‘I’ of my
fallen nature, my own self—for ‘I’ is crucified with Christ. What
does live in me is Christ—"but Christ lives in me” (v20)—and all the
holy desires, the risings Godward, the peace and gladness in the
divine presence are the expression of Christ in me not ‘I’.
Paul was not living
by experiences, or by feelings, or by keeping the law, but on
another principle together: “but [in] that I now live in flesh, I
live by faith” (v20, my emphasis). Where was that
faith placed? In Christ, for it was “the [faith] of the Son of God,
who has loved me and given himself for me” (v20). Paul’s faith
connected his soul with Christ, and this affected every detail of
his life below. With the Son of God as an object for the soul, not
only in all His glory, but as the One suffered for me, then self is
put out of sight, and the walk expresses the absent Christ in this
present evil world. That is why the apostle can later say “Walk in
[the] Spirit, and ye shall no way fulfil flesh’s lust”
(Gal. 5: 16, my emphasis). What does walk in the Spirit mean? Simply
that the eye is fixed on Christ. It is occupation with Him by the
Spirit.
Conclusion
After receiving the forgiveness of sins, so many
try to make themselves holy and righteous in their walk, and thus
labour to improve the unimprovable. Freedom from the power of sin is
the objective, but occupation with self is the result and despair
the outcome. Is this Christianity? Not at all. The Gospel is far,
far better than that, for not only has “Christ … died for us” (Rom.
5: 8), but “we have died with Christ” (Rom. 6: 8), and as identified
with the dead and risen Christ are beyond all condemnation. We are
“in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 8: 1), and putting ourselves where God has
put us, is the only path to a life that is pleasing to God in this
world.
