"THE END OF ALL FLESH IS COME BEFORE ME"

“THE END OF ALL FLESH IS COME BEFORE ME”

It is matter of the deepest interest, the way in which the blessed God has effected the decree, that the end of all flesh had come before Him, a decree which He declared just previous to the deluge. It is of the utmost importance to accept His decree absolutely; nay, more, the enlightened soul can rejoice that there is a complete end to a state in him which cannot please God. “They that are in the flesh cannot please God”. There are then two things at the very start of our inquiry, which impart to it the greatest value: one, that it is God’s own decree; the other, that it is the greatest relief to the renewed soul. This great and comprehensive decree was typically fulfilled at the deluge. There was a moment ^[p. 196] when there was nothing of the flesh to be seen anywhere in the whole universe. It was either covered in the ark, or drowned in the waters; as now man is either saved through Christ’s death, or lost in judgment. If I know that my flesh is repugnant to God, I must surely desire to see it removed, in order that I may meet His mind, as well as to be free myself from that state which so distances me from Him.

God made a trial of the first man in Eden, and man failed. He then left him to himself till the flood. Corruption and violence filled the earth. Then, after the flood, man was given another trial. Again there was a still more grievous departure, manifested in the building of Babel, and in the worshipping of idols. Then God called out Abraham — He would have a chosen people. They went down into Egypt, but He brought them out, and dwelt among them. Eventually He had to retire from them, and they were carried into captivity, so that His name was blasphemed among the gentiles. When He restored them to their land, and sent His Son, they said, “This is the heir; come, let us kill him, and the inheritance shall be ours”. Under every trial man has failed, and the result has been, the Lord would not commit Himself unto man, even when he believed on Him, “for he knew what was in man”. (John 2: 25).

Every believer owns that his sins could not be remitted but through the blood of Christ. “Without shedding of blood there is no remission”; but there is a want of clearness in almost every one as to the way in which the flesh — its will, the actual principle that works it — is set aside. Every conscientious person admits that not an atom of the offensive thing can go into the Father’s house; and strange and numerous are the expedients adopted to get rid of, or eliminate this troubler. From purgatory up to devotional efforts, there is the avowed desire to get clear of the man of sin. The conscientious must desire, as I have already said, for a twofold reason (though he might not be able to say so), to get rid of the ^[p. 197] rule of the flesh. Every believer owns that he has committed, and does commit, sins; that “the thought of foolishness is sin”; but while he seeks to have an untroubled conscience with regard to himself, he has not real freedom before God; because he does not see how the sin that is in him in the root has been removed righteously from the eye of God. Hence, as I have observed, he must, according to his light, resort to some method by which this grievous thing in him may be extinguished. A Romanist thinks he can reach that by penance here, and purgatory hereafter, and this is in itself an admission that there is no use in being forgiven the fruit of the flesh, unless the root of it be reached. I only refer to the Romanist, because there is with him such an imitation, or counterfeit, of the real thing; for the truly conscientious is not merely satisfied that there is forgiveness of his actual sins, but he requires that there should be judgment on the parent flesh itself; and this is where repentance comes in. I am not only forgiven, but I see the enormity of my transgression in the ashes — the token of the accomplished judgment which Christ bore on the cross. The remembrance of this judgment is brought to me by the Spirit of God.

Another looks for perfection in the flesh, so that with him forgiveness is not enough; but he expects, through the work of the Spirit, to be improved, which really means to convert the bad into good; and this is called sanctification. But with this doctrine, as a necessity, it is held that if the flesh break out again, there is no conversion at all; and that the one who was regarded as a child of God today, is, when he sins, no longer so, but a child of the devil. The ritualist proposes to propagate, through the elements of Christ’s death, an altered nature in himself. Holiness by faith is another form in which some believers seek to escape from the flesh in its principle, after they have received forgiveness of sins. The doctrine of surrender of the will is an offshoot of this; while another form, very specious, but more ^[p. 198] disguised and pernicious, in proportion to its secrecy, is the sentimental delight which leads one to think that the less earthly he is, the more spiritual he is.

I have touched on these varied shades, arising from the same imperfect vision, or apprehension of how the end of the first man has come. In the fulness of time God sent His Son, born of a woman, born under the law. John’s announcement of Him was, “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world”. Mark here, it is the sin, not merely the sins; and hence, in another place, it is said “to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself”. Now the epistle to the Romans details the whole work for the sinner believing in Christ. In chapter 3 we find, “whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood ... for the remission of sins ... that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus”. Hence follow Romans 4: 7, 8: “Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin”. Not only are the evil deeds forgiven, but the sin is not imputed; and this is assured, because righteousness is imputed, consequent on the resurrection of Christ from the dead. Thus the sinner is brought to God in perfect peace — all Christ’s work — and he is set in a new region, the other side of death, on the new ground, through the resurrection of Christ, where righteousness reigns, and consequently peace.

But now arises the question of sin in us. If grace abounds where sin abounded, does not that encourage one to sin? Surely it would, if sin in its root were allowed to be still uncondemned. Hence, in Romans 6, comes out the truth, that the old man is crucified with Christ. It has been righteously set aside in the cross, because Christ has endured the judgment on it. The judgment was death, and He bore it on the cross. There it has been righteously put away. “In that he died, he died unto sin once: but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God”. The judgment on the first man has been borne by the second Man; we are dead to that wherein we were held, and now we are free to be for another, even Christ; so that “the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh”. It is now the expulsive power of a new Person — “not I, but Christ liveth in me”.

“In me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing”. This is an immense advance on admitting that sin is in me. Thus the flesh, the principle of sin — its will — is no longer to be owned by the believer as alive. It has been met, not by pardon, but by death. Sin is condemned in the flesh. True, he often feels that it is alive; but he is to reckon himself dead to it, and has no right to return to it, because it has been set aside in the cross for God, and He — God — never reverts to it again with regard to any one in Christ, for every one in Christ is a new creation. The old man is dead in Christ, or rather through Him. In Christ I am free from it; hence, “if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live”. God, in His grace, has placed the believer in Christ, and it is his privilege now to say, “The life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me”. The old man having been removed righteously in judgment, the blessed God has translated us from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of the Son of His love; and now, in His life and nature, we have put on the new man, which after God is renewed in knowledge after the image of Him who has created him. We are now not debtors to the flesh to live after the flesh. I am crucified with Christ; that is, the old man is. If I return to the flesh now in any measure, I return to that which has been judicially terminated in the death of Christ. It has ^[p. 200] been removed from the eye of God, and if I return to it, I return not only to a thing that cannot please God, but to that for which Christ bore judgment. Hence, though the blessed God never sees me again in the flesh (for I am not in it before Him, I am in Christ), yet He sees me returning to it, and that it is in me, and if I do not judge it, and repudiate, and consign it to the same moral distance from myself as He has put it from Himself, He will judge it in me; that is to say, He will discipline me for returning to it. “Our God is a consuming fire”.

There is an end to the old man for the believer absolutely. When he crosses the Jordan in spirit, none of the old order remains. The will of the flesh ruled me as a natural man; the Spirit of Christ now rules this body, uses my mind and strength for Christ; for it is my reasonable service, that this body, freed from its old master, the flesh, should now be absolutely under the rule of Him who bought it, and was its Creator. That sin in its root is in the flesh, I entirely admit; but my position now is, that I have the Spirit dwelling in me, to rule me for Christ; and He refuses the leadings of the flesh, seeing that it cannot have any rightful place, any more than could Ishmael be suffered to remain in the house with Isaac. Once the true seed is acknowledged, nothing less than casting out the son of the bondwoman is real liberty. We find that Christ, according to the will of God, has brought to an end, judicially, in His own death, the old man, and hence he does not exist for the believer in Christ before God; and thus the believer is not in the flesh, but in the Spirit: and Christ is the delight and object of his heart, now governed by the Spirit of God, and not by the will of the flesh. The believer is in liberty when he enters by faith into entire removal of the old man in the cross, and he can say, “God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world”.