“TO BE TO ANOTHER”
E. M. Walkinshaw
Romans 7: 4; 8: 1–4, 12–15; 12: 1, 2; 14: 16–18
Reference was made in the reading to the value of the glad tidings which have reached us.
The need for each of us is to be kept in the appreciation of these glad tidings, which is to know this theme—the Son of God. I thought the Lord would help us and deepen our appreciation of the good news that has reached us about God’s Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.
We must admit that we often look for a turn of the tide in the world, perhaps anticipating that we might find some good news or some turn in world affairs, something which might suggest improvement. I think we must accept from the Scriptures that while materially in God’s ways we may prove mercy, and do, at the same time there is moral decline and deterioration. So the good news from God stands out more in all its distinctiveness and glory. Naturally, of course, we look for improved conditions. Where men seek for better wages and improved conditions, we have a certain sympathy with them. When you read in the encyclopaedia that in the days of Mr. Darby children were working in the mines for fifteen hours a day and little boys were being forced to clean chimneys for nine, ten, or more hours a day, you can thank God for certain improved conditions for men; but morally, whatever the conditions of man, whether he is in difficulty, or whether his circumstances have improved, without any question he has proved himself to be a fallen creature.
God’s glad tidings reach us in these circumstances. The good news is centred in a Man who is raised from among the dead. Death rests on everything here. There is no question about that.
None of us could possibly dispute it. Whether a person is an atheist or an agnostic, or whether he belongs to one of the multitudinous groups of christendom, no one can deny that death rests on everything here.
Now the good news presents to us the Man who has broken the power of death. You have heard that many times, have you not? How many times have you heard that? God’s good news is about a Man who is marked out Son of God by resurrection of the dead. He actually raised dead people into life. He Himself was raised from among the dead by the glory of the Father. I wish that we could have our affections more centred upon the Person of Jesus, the Son of God.
I think one of the objects of the glad tidings is to detach us from things here in our affections and attach us to another Man in another world, so that our hope and affections are vitally centred upon a Man who is risen and glorified, and not on any earthly hope. That does not mean to say that you are unnatural, that you do not sorrow over the loss of loved ones; but we sorrow not as those that have no hope because we have a certain hope of the coming of the Lord who has broken the power of death. I think what has often been said is true—that if Jesus raised one person from among the dead, then He could raise millions. He is going to.
They are going to be raised and changed. I would like, dear brethren, that it might lay hold on us. I would like Mr. Taylor’s prayer to be answered, perhaps it will be with some of us, that not only should we lay hold of the truth, but that the truth should lay hold of us. That was one of his prayers,
and that is very much needed, I think, with all of us, that the truth might lay hold of us. There is a Man who has been raised from among the dead and He is seated at the right hand of God.
Do you believe that? Does everyone here believe that? One has often said (I would not apologise for repeating it) that when that lays hold of a man or a woman, it will revolutionise his life, or her life. Material things will have a lesser hold upon them and spiritual things a greater hold. I think the gospel is intended, as I have said, to detach us from things here and attach us to another Man in another world.
So the good news cannot break down. It cannot change into bad news. There is no political change here; there is no change in government. It has been said that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. That is true, except in the case of one Man. God has placed in the hands of one Man all power in heaven and upon earth. So we need not fear; we can go forward in God’s testimony and in the simple path of His will day by day. So that while power corrupts man, there is one Man who is beyond any suggestion of corruption, and in that Man’s hands God has placed everything. I think this should affect us, dear brethren.
I read these passages just to make a few simple suggestions for your consideration. If one man of God said, ‘I am just throwing out a few suggestions for you to think about’, what can I say? I will just throw out three suggestions for you to think about.
In the first passage read we get a reference to being “to another”. And that Other is He “who has been raised up from among the dead”. I think what is in mind is that that Person should be before us as an object, not ourselves any longer. We are not governed by the law, but Christ should be before us as an object. “To another”—Another is before us; this is the objective to which the writer of the epistle refers. We go through a very anxious process, maybe, in reaching it, but Christ is the object. Now I would like the younger men and women here, and the boys and girls, to think about that. It is presented as being the intention that “ye also have been made dead to the law … to be to another, who has been raised up from among the dead”. That is what God has in His mind for you. So, as in the Psalms, you find that at the beginning of Romans 7 Paul tells you the end that is to be reached when you have gone through the process. When you find in yourself that just the very things you do not want to do, you do, and the very things that you want to do, you do not do. God is passing you through a process so that you should reach a point in your soul when Christ is everything to you.
So, as I say, the intention is set out first, but then the experiences necessary to reach it are in the rest of chapter 7. And the man who is writing says at the end of this process, “There is then now no condemnation to those in Christ Jesus”. “No condemnation”—how wonderful that is! We have often been reminded that it does not say that you are not condemned. It says that to those in Christ Jesus there is no condemnation. That is, the thing just does not exist for them, and never will, because of what Christ has done. The condemnation was in Him; He took it. So Paul says, “There is then now no condemnation to those in Christ Jesus”, that is, as I have apprehended it, an objective statement; but it is intended to affect us; that is to say, it is a statement of truth, and I have no doubt that it refers to every believer in the Lord Jesus.
Now whether every believer in the Lord Jesus has reached it is quite another question, but it is true that to those in Christ Jesus—that is how God regards those who have faith in Christ—such a thing as condemnation does not exist. What a wonderful thing to be reached in your soul!
The vital secret of deliverance is occupation with another Man, that is with Jesus, and Jesus raised from among the dead. How is it brought to pass? It says, “The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set me free from the law of sin and of death”. The same Holy Spirit that is in that Man in heaven is in me. Now I would like you to think about that for a moment, and not pass it over lightly. He is in glorified conditions, that is, Jesus is in glorified conditions, and the same Holy Spirit that is in Him as Man in glorified conditions is in me. What an immense privilege! Do you value it? I think as that Man is my object, despite my weakness, and the Holy Spirit is active in me, I come into the enjoyment of liberty. You say, ‘I find I fail’. That is no doubt true! And then what do you do? Brood over it? Wish you were better?
Try to improve yourself? That is not God’s way. I think, if I fail, the Spirit immediately turns me to another Man in whom there is no failure, so that He occupies me in my exercises all the time, not with myself as a failure, but with another Man. If I fail, He turns me away to that Man, and my mind and soul in the process become absorbed with Him.
Now one man of God said, ‘I cannot give you this, because God intends you to go this way experimentally and learn it for yourself’. Again, I might show you the way. If I give you a map and say, ‘There is Glasgow’, that will not get you to Glasgow, will it? You will have to take the journey to get there. So the Lord Jesus will support you and help you in the depth of your exercises so that you might come into the enjoyment of deliverance and know what it is to walk according to the Spirit and not according to the flesh.
Now I would encourage our younger people to take this up with the Lord. It has often been said (I know I am repeating perhaps what is well known to some, but not to all) that it is more difficult to get people into Romans 7 than to get them out of it.. In these days when people are getting higher education I think there is less likelihood of their learning what they are in the flesh.
Then the same man of God also said that the reason people do not get peace is because they do not really believe they are as bad as God knows them to be. We need to look into these things, dear brethren, and then enter into them and get hold of them. So Paul says about sin in the flesh, “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”. It will never be improved. What I am naturally and morally, as man of Adam’s order, will never be improved; God has condemned it entirely. There is presented to us another Man, that is Christ, and another power altogether, that is the Holy Spirit, and thus we are to be brought into liberty. If we are not brought into liberty, I doubt if we can rightly have our part in the service of God, because for that we must be set free.
The writer proceeds down the passage (I will not go into all the details) until he comes to the point where he says, “For ye have not received a spirit of bondage again for fear”, that is slavish fear, “but ye have received a spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father”. It is not crying, “Abba, Father”, because we think we ought to, but because we have received a spirit of adoption. Now I would like to ask each of us here if we have received the Spirit. Chapter 5 tells us that the Spirit has been given (Romans 5: 5); He sheds abroad the love of God in our hearts. There it is the Spirit given, but here, “Ye have not received a spirit of bondage again for fear, but ye have received a spirit of adoption (or sonship) whereby we cry, Abba, Father”. Now this is very vital, especially for you younger people. Only this morning we were speaking about a man who was brought up amongst the brethren and took an active, leading part; then he went right away and evidently comparatively recently said, ‘I have just been converted’; before that it was all head knowledge. Now that could be true of any one of us. So I would submit to the younger people especially that you take this matter up with the Lord Jesus, so that you might receive the Holy Spirit and understand that, as receiving the Holy Spirit, you have received a spirit of adoption, or sonship, that we might cry, “Abba, Father”. What a wonderful relationship we are brought into! Are we all crying, “Abba, Father”? We have our ups and downs in life—of course we do—maybe alternating moods of exuberance and depression; perhaps one day we are singing and the next sighing. And yet we “have received a spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father”. It is not simply in the meeting that we are crying, and, I believe, do cry, “Abba, Father”, but it is to characterise us.
Therefore I would like to exercise every one of us, and particularly those who are young, about the reception of the gift of the Holy Spirit. .If you have not received the gift of the Holy Spirit, whatever you may know, you are outside the life of christianity. You might know all its terms, you might know the glad tidings and even be able to preach it, but if you have not received the Holy Spirit you are outside the vitality of christianity. Now does this suggest that God is reluctant to give? In chapter 5 it says He has given us the Holy Spirit. The question is that as we received the Lord Jesus as Saviour have we received the Holy Spirit from Him as a glorified Man? Have I received Him? Have you received Him? I can say, thank God, I have received God’s Holy Spirit and He is an indissoluble bond between myself and the Man in heaven. Mind you, I wish I enjoyed it more! I acknowledge that; but, at any rate, I am conscious that I have received the Holy Spirit. Now, are you?
That is going to have an effect. It will have an effect in the mind, and if in the mind, in the whole being. So that the glad tidings intends that you should be secured in your whole spirit and soul and body for God, the whole of you for God! It does not alter your normal daily life.
It is often said that a person’s circumstances are not changed when he receives the gospel; it is the man or woman who is changed. What is in mind is that you should be secured, not partially, but wholly for God, so that God is before you in our Lord Jesus Christ.
So I read the passage in Romans 12 because Paul says there, “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the compassions of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice”. “Your bodies”—now it has frequently been said that is the last thing that you want to give up.
Forgiveness of sins, well, that is very good—
‘My sins—O the bliss of this glorious thought—
My sins—not in part, but the whole—
Were borne on the cross, and are gone evermore.
Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul!’(Hymn 238) But when it comes to presenting my body a living sacrifice, I hesitate. Do you not? Reference was made earlier to a young man who admitted sadly that sometimes he had gone through the service of God quite unmoved. It was remarked that at any rate he was honest. We need to be honest, and I would be honest in saying that I have learned from experience that what another has said is true—that the last thing I will give up to the will of another is my body. Why is that? Because it is in my body that I indulge myself, it is in my body that I go where I please and do what I please. You do not go to a football match in your spirit—you might, of course, in a sense do that—but really you go to a football match, or you go to the pictures or the theatre, wherever it is you go, in your body. It is in our body that you and I enjoy doing our own will, and that is why my body is the last thing that I am prepared to give up, the last thing that I am prepared to present to God. Yet the apostle beseeches them to do it.
“And be not conformed to this world”—you can see how your body enters into that, can you not? Conformation to this world, following its practices, its pleasures, its dress, its fashions, whatever it may be. “Be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind”. Now the mind is the controlling faculty—it says, “be transformed by the renewing of your mind”, so that you are no longer pursuing your own will, but God’s will in your body. So Paul ends, “That ye may prove what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God”. That is the will that Jesus did. He did it perfectly Himself—“Lo, I come to do, O God, thy will”, Hebrews 10: 7.
Now God is, through the glad tidings, securing a company of persons here who are like Jesus, doing His will in their bodies. You notice, “Present your bodies a living sacrifice”. While ‘bodies’ is in the plural, ‘sacrifice’ is in the singular. I think that is why he leads on to the truth as to the one body in Christ; but that is not quite the thought I am seeking to press, but rather the presenting of our bodies, the readiness to be secured by the glad tidings entirely for God in our whole spirit and soul and body. Think of what it cost Jesus in doing the will of God. It says, “By which will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all”, Hebrews 10: 10. It is because He did the will of God; that involved our sanctification. Where do you stand in the light of this? Where do I stand?
I think the Lord would speak to us encouragingly; He never speaks discouragingly, and if He raises the question with us as to whether we have received the Spirit, He is not condemning us because we have not, but encouraging us that we might. The Lord always speaks encouragingly, showing what is available in the glad tidings and what is available from Himself. I would urge that each of us, in exercise with the Lord, takes up these matters so that the glad tidings might have its effect, and as we are brought into the joy of it so we enter more livingly, with more spring, into the praise of God.
Now just a brief word as to the last passage which we read—“Let not then your good be evil spoken of; for the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit. For he that in this serves the Christ is acceptable to God and approved of men”. “For the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking”—men make an awful lot of eating and drinking, in the western world in particular. You find it enters into almost every social and political function. When they arrange a seminar or a meeting one of the first things on the programme is ‘10 a.m. coffee’.
Eating and drinking—how much they enter into our lives; how much they enter into the life of men generally.
Paul says the kingdom of God is not that. Of course he is referring to eating and drinking as between persons who may disagree on what should, or should not, be eaten, but at the same time he introduces the truth of the kingdom of God as being nothing to do with that. He says it “is not eating and drinking, but righteousness ...”—that is, doing what is right. Now if God has reckoned me to be righteous on the principle of faith, surely He would expect me to be practically righteous. “Righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit” are the consequences that are seen in persons who are in the good of the kingdom. “Righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit”, how wonderful that is! Think of being brought to that!
As another has said, you are brought under the moral sway of God. May the Lord help us, all of us, to be brought more under the moral sway of God, to get an impression of the greatness of the Person who is the theme of the glad tidings, the Son of God, Him who was raised up from among the dead by the glory of the Father, and as we are affected by the greatness of His Person to be increasingly attracted by Him and secured by Him in our whole spirit and soul and body for the glory of His God and Father. May it be so for His name’s sake.
Address at Bristol
12 March 1978