THE NEW MAN
[p. 221] THE NEW MAN
Christ is always the new man morally: in the death of Christ we see the old man put off, we get a picture as it were of the thing. It is not that you could speak of Christ putting off the old man exactly, but He was done with that order of things. God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh — He was done with that order of things. Everything is set forth in Christ, hence it is as the truth is in Jesus. He bore all that man deserved, so that the old man might be set aside and the new man be brought in, and He is the new man morally. It is hardly to be limited to christianity, for in measure it will be true of Israel. The new man is for earth. In the case of the Galatians they had formally adopted Christ in baptism. Baptism is a form of doctrine to which you have been delivered, and we cannot go beyond our baptism, but we are to be consistent with it. Note that the new man is created after God; it is morally according to God, so that we are told to be imitators of God and walk in love and as children of light. Light and love really express the divine nature. You may get the worst kind of lawlessness now, as in the expression, “the mystery of lawlessness already works”, and yet the highest practice is set before us — imitators of God. Love — walk in love — is really in contrast to self-gratification or lust; the new man is really a witness of God. A man may be most moral and yet be lawless; he is out of gear, and that is intolerable to God. A man that is merely moral is not in proper relation to God and to Christ, he is lawless because the crucial question is Christ. He is head of every man, and the beginning of the creation of God. You must know your proper place before God, and then you can rightly come out for Him down here. What you are to God is a secret for you, and then you express Him publicly in walk. The apostles were morally according to God, and thus they would properly present Him to [p. 222] people.
Individual practice is so important for us, because the collective testimony is so obscured, and there is no hope of recovery. The Spirit is formative and not simply the power, He does not act in us as if we were mere machines. His is a formative work: He sheds the love of God abroad in our hearts and then we cry, “Abba Father”. The Spirit brings you under the influence of divine love, and then you respond to it and cry, “Abba Father”.
A christian ought to have the utmost dread of lawlessness. Adam was lawless and then you find hatred and murder in Cain, but Adam’s was the worst sin really, the hatred and murder were only the result of Adam’s sin. The flesh is not subject to the rule of Christ; it is out of gear. In Ephesians you get “according to God”, in Romans you get “according to Spirit” and in Colossians you get “according to Christ”. The new man is myself, I delight in the law of God after the inward man. The inner man is in contrast with the outer man; the new man is in contrast with the old man. Directly a man is born again you can speak of the inward man, there is that in him which answers to God. The new man is the work of God, a new creation entirely. A person might be very busy, but there is no real good done in this world except by the appreciation of Christ.
When a christian is filled with the Spirit then he sings; he may be despised by the natural man as David was despised by Michal, but filled with the Spirit is a very large and high thing, because the flesh is excluded. We must be careful what we pray for, because the question comes, ‘Are we prepared for nothing being made of the flesh?’ If you pray to be filled with the Spirit it involves that.
“Christ shall shine upon thee”, (chapter 5: 14) you want to get into the light of the sun. Without sunshine you do not get fertility or rain. Ministry is dependent on sunshine, rain is dependent on sunshine. You need to be awakened out of the moral darkness around; you awake and get into sunshine, you get the rain, ministry will then [p. 223] do you good.
Christians may get into a bad state; the apostle evidently contemplated this when he wrote, “All seek their own”.
If you get into the sunshine you get fruit. Too much rain brings the leaf without fruit to perfection, for fruit the sun is needed.