SUFFERING IN THE FLESH, AND LIVING IN THE SPIRIT

There are two points in connection with this passage (1 Pet 3: 18) which I wish to bring forward.

1. What Christ had to pass through to bring us to God.

2. What we must accept if we would enjoy the blessing into which we are brought.

Christ came here to reveal God; God has been pleased to reveal Himself in Christ, in His life, death, and resurrection, so that by Him we might believe in God as thus revealed. But then in order that He might bring us to God, Christ had to suffer. It was not only that He had to die, to give up His life in flesh, but He suffered for our sins. Death for Him was not simply expiring, or delivering up His spirit, though it necessarily went on to this. But He suffered during those three hours of darkness on the cross, suffered all the wrath of Grod against sin. This was suffering beyond all human conception, what none can ever fathom. He tasted death in all its power and bitterness, and when this was completed, He delivered up His spirit. All this was necessary to bring us to God, into the light and blessing of all that He had revealed of God, so that we might be before Him in holy liberty. How the thought of this should awaken and deepen our affections toward Him, and how it should make us feel increasingly the terrible character of sin, and abhor it. He suffered for our sins. How it subdues us when we consider that in that terrible hour He had us in His thoughts, each one of us who now by Him have been brought to God that we may enjoy life in the knowledge of Him and in the enjoyment of His love. Our sins had shut us out from God, and our portion would have been the wrath of God for eternity, but He took our place substitutionally, the just for the unjust, and we are delivered from the judgment we deserved, and brought into the unchanging favour and love of God for eternity.

There is in this passage another important point which we must consider. He was “put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit”, 1 Pet 3: 18. He could not become the last Adam except in resurrection. He could not communicate life to us while He was in the condition of flesh. It scarcely need be said that in that condition He was perfect Himself, but alone in His perfection. As alive in flesh He must needs die to communicate life. “Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit”, John 12: 24. In resurrection He took up life in a new condition, characterised, not by what was natural to man, flesh and blood, but by the power of the Spirit. That is the condition in which He communicates life to us, so that for us life is in the Spirit. “The Spirit of life”, Rom 8: 2-10. “We live in the Spirit”, Gal 5: 25; see also John 20: 23. Whatever may be God’s purpose for us, or His gift to us in Christ, we cannot touch life except in the Spirit. The Spirit is given to us that we may enjoy life. “The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death”, Rom 8: 2. The Spirit is in us a well of water springing up unto eternal life. Hence it follows that we can only know the liberty and blessedness of life as we walk in the Spirit. Now the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh, so that it is impossible to go on with both. Christ having suffered in the flesh, we have to arm ourselves with the same mind. Suffering in the flesh is the opposite to gratifying its lusts and fulfilling its will. “He that has suffered in the flesh has done with sin, no longer to live the rest of his time in the flesh to men’s lusts, but to God’s will”, 1 Pet 4: 1, 2. Flesh is the condition which is natural to man, but in us that state is characterised by the presence of sin, so that if we live according to what is natural to man, we sin. If we gratify our natural desires, we are led into evil; lust when it is conceived bringeth forth sin, James 1: 15. Our flesh is sinful flesh, hence all its desires are dominated by the principle of sin. Now the refusal to gratify those desires involves suffering, we suffer in the flesh, but we live in the Spirit. It corresponds very much with what the Lord speaks of in Mark 8: 34, namely, denying ourselves. See also John 17: 25. “He that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal”, John 12: 25. We have to do violence to our natural life in refusing what ministers to it. We cannot apply ourselves to the enjoyment of the life that is natural to man, and at the same time expect to enjoy the life that is of God. We cannot go on with the flesh and the Spirit at the same time. But if we have to suffer in the flesh, our reward will be the enjoyment of life in the Spirit, and this will far more than compensate us for anything that we may lose according to the flesh. We deceive ourselves if we think we can be happy in gratifying the desires of the flesh; our experience will be that of those who have tried it before us, and proved that it is vanity of vanities, all is vanity. On the other hand, one who, instead of living his time here to the lusts of men, is living to the will of God, will enjoy true happiness, though he may be bereft of everything which ministers to the natural life of man. Paul in the prison at Rome was the happiest man on earth, and could write to others and say, “Rejoice in the Lord always”, Phil 4: 4. Christ to him was a source of constant satisfaction and joy. We have no conception of what we might be if we would walk in the Spirit. What joy, what power might be ours, what wonderful men we should be. The Spirit has been given to be in us a well of water springing up into eternal life, so that we should never thirst. His ministry is to reveal divine Persons, the Father and the Son, and the things which are eternal; to keep alive in our hearts the love of the Father and the Son, and this would keep us happy whatever might be our circumstances here. God has no pleasure in mopish saints, He delights in seeing His children truly happy, and has made every provision for it. The path of God’s will is the path of happiness. If we are prepared to suffer in the flesh we shall know more and more of the liberty and blessedness of life in the Spirit.

If I myself deny, when I might gratify,

I suffer bitterly; but sweet is liberty.

“Be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess, but be filled with the Spirit”, Eph 5: 18.

From Food for the Faithful vol 7 (1904)