DELIVERANCE AND ITS RESULTS
DELIVERANCE AND ITS RESULTS
It is essential both for testimony and for our own happiness that deliverance should be possessed. If I am not “free from the law of sin and death”, I cannot be in any practical power. I am free from it when I am sensibly in the life of Christ, free and apart from the rule of the flesh which I loathe and abhor. “The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death”. Until then I am neither happy within, nor to the glory of God in my walk. It is not enough for me that I can look up, and by faith in God that [p. 342] raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead, have the assurance that the morning of everlasting life has broken in on me; but I require to be free from myself, and this I can only be in the life of Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit. Unless I am free, I am hampered, and being hampered, I am necessarily occupied with that which hampers me. So long as I am occupied with my old self, with any hope of correcting it, I am not free from it. In fact, I am not free until I am distinctly in the power of a new life, and that the life of the One with whom I have died, for if I had not died with Him I could not be free. “He that is dead is freed from sin”. By faith I can reckon myself to be dead, for I am really in the life of the One with whom I have died.
The first mark then of deliverance is that as I am free from that wherein I was held, I am not occupied with it, but with sowing to the Spirit, who maintains me in Christ’s life, the life wherein I have my freedom. This is very important, because if we do not walk in the Spirit, we shall wander to the flesh, and there is never liberty when walking in the flesh. This result (we shall find as we proceed) must never be departed from, for if it be, there is then no progress. The Spirit is always for progress, and He preserves me from the intrusion of the flesh, which once did enslave me. A delivered soul is characterised by the paramount place the life of Christ holds in him. Romans 8, from verse 12, describes his state: “we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live after the flesh”. “For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father. The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God”. I need not here recite all the untold blessedness of a son of God on earth in the midst of the most incongruous circumstances, while he himself is weak personally, and opposed; and all because of the Spirit of Christ who dwells in him.
[p. 343] Now the practical result consequent on this is, as we see in chapter 12, that the body is the Lord’s; presented a “living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service”. This can be true only of a delivered soul. If there be not freedom from the old master — the flesh, in the power of the Spirit, there will not be a real true surrender of the body to the Lord. It is easy to see that if I have a new Master, I am, according to my renewed mind, glad to be governed by Him; and no longer to be in the fashion of this world, but totally transformed according to “that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God”. This result can never be reached apart from deliverance.
It is sorrowful the varied attempts which are made to attain to the manner of life proper to one really free. Many who know well that no amount of good works could secure their salvation, find satisfaction for their consciences in what they do, in seeking to walk acceptably to God, according to their idea of His requirement. Now it is the real thing that alone fully exposes the counterfeit. The saint really free, does not seek by his own works to commend himself to God, but in liberty, he walks in the Spirit, and is supported by Him in every step here, whether in trial, weakness, or opposition; and as he does, he is a light in the world for the Lord; he is not trying to be so, as an ascetic, but, set free from himself, he in divine power overcomes evil with good. If there be not deliverance there cannot be its true results. One might know much, and be much endowed, like the Corinthians; and yet not be in deliverance. One who can indulge himself like a Corinthian is not walking in deliverance, even though he may once have experienced it; but if he were walking in the liberty wherewith Christ had made him free, he would shrink from every intrusion of the flesh, whether to indulge it, or to improve it. “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty”. I might surrender property and position for the Lord, and yet not have this liberty; and unless I have it, I cannot progress into what He would lead me to.
[p. 344] Now this liberty, as I have already pointed out, has a twofold effect; one inside — the believer’s inward life; and the other, his outward or practical life. And mark how one progresses when there is this liberty. If I am in it, I look up at the Lord’s glory. “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord”, 2 Corinthians 3: 17, 18. I am at home there and transformed into the same image; and then I can accept that the dying of Jesus shall determine everything in my body. “Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body”, 2 Corinthians 4: 10. It is now, not only that I am free from the law of sin and death, but I approve of practical death to everything in me for which Christ died; and God helps us when this is our fixed purpose. Hence — “we which live are alway delivered unto death for Jesus’ sake”. I am not only set free from the flesh which had dominion over me, but I now deny it when it would arise or intrude. Now unless deliverance be known, one cannot come to this result. How could I be free to look at the Lord’s glory, and be sensibly affected by its power, if I were not in liberty? and, as I behold His glory, my deliverance is more assured; for in it I am transformed, and there is no recognition of the flesh there; I am sensibly in a new and divine order.
Now while, on the one hand when we are in liberty because of the ministration of righteousness, we can look at the Lord’s glory and partake of its blessed effects, another confirmation of deliverance is, that we can enter the holiest. We have boldness to enter, and we come in, a consecrated priesthood. In the one, the ministration of righteousness, I find the liberty in which I can approach, and that the glory, instead of repelling me, transforms me into the Lord’s image; and in the other, the holiest, I enter into my place with God. One [p. 345] assures me of my full acceptance, the other of nearness to God according to His nature.
The effect of deliverance is very apparent in service. I admit that there may be gift when there is not deliverance. But probably a gifted man not in deliverance will do one of two things; either keep wide of the subjective side of the truth he presents, or present it in a legal way. In the former case he may never have had the sense of needing deliverance; in the latter he has, and his conscience is not at ease. It is always a refuge to the conscience to exact what it does not possess. What is possessed is presented as the outcome of grace, and not as a mere demand. One who feels it right to be heavenly makes an effort to be so; but the one who really enjoys his heavenly portion, knows and presents the great gain of it; one dwells on the obligation, and the other on the gain.
Well now, I trust we have arrived at this, that if there be not deliverance there is no advance. The Spirit is ever for growing up into Christ. There may have been the sense of justification, but the flesh is ever ready to intrude, as at Corinth, or in Galatia, or at Colosse; and if I am not walking in the Spirit there is no progress.
I believe the brazen serpent to Israel in Numbers 21 in type sets forth to us deliverance; that is, freedom from the old man in whom the poison of sin is, who has been condemned in the cross. No one is really subdued until he learns in himself that “in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing”. Nothing but the sense of sin in me, of what my nature really is before God, can produce this; no amount of trial or sorrow; and therefore it is only as I have the sense of this poison of my nature, that I either seek deliverance, or could appreciate it. Thus, in the type, when the people were bitten of the fiery serpents after betraying the incorrigible evil of their hearts, there is the sense of receiving life in that he that looked lived; and there it was that they drank of the water given to them; typically, in the power of the Spirit, they entered on a new path, even onward to Canaan.
[p. 346] And further; as I enjoy freedom, I shall like, not only to be dead to sin, but also to be dead to the world. It is impossible for one to be in the sense of freedom from the flesh, and not to seek to avoid everything which would minister to it, which all of the world does, not its evil only. The delivered one sows to the Spirit, seeking the things that are above. It is remarkable how one finds these two characteristics in every spiritual person, every one truly walking in the Spirit; even that he dreads the flesh with ever increasing intolerance of it, and at the same time he seeks to enter more and more into the things of God; “for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God”.
Now, as in the type, Israel entered on a new journey from BEER, where they sang, “Spring up, O well”, so we, in the power of the Spirit, enter on a new day, and a heavenward journey, when we have learned that we are “dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord”. Then it is that we are in heavenly life and power ready for Jordan, when deliverance is fully known. We can then in spirit part company from all here; we are dead to the world, to God we are beside ourselves. There is no feeling of deprivation, for we are in more enjoyment of the Lord personally. There is no spirit in us while we are entranced with the association with which we are favoured. We are first free from the law of sin and death, and the more we enjoy our freedom, the more we shrink from everything which would bring us into bondage; and then, led of the Spirit, we travel through Jordan. Death to everything here becomes easy to one thus led, for
”... the Spirit’s power
Has ope’d the heav’nly door,
Has brought us to that favoured hour
When toil shall all be o’er” (74:5)
Freedom from the law of sin and death must advance to this, because in this freedom I have reached righteousness in glory (the ministration of righteousness exceeds in [p. 347] glory), and holiness in the presence of God; the one, where everything has been done suited to God, the other where every association is according to God. One who is in this liberty ascends to heaven, crosses the Jordan, realises that liberation from everything in this world is not a loss but a distinct gain; deliverance is then fully entered on and enjoyed; he is, through the power of the Spirit, sensibly detached from all connection with man’s things; he is led into this experience to enjoy his liberty and to become fitted to act more independently of the old master, the flesh, here on earth in every relation of life. Hence Gilgal follows. The old man is now to be rolled off in practical circumcision. It is not now only freedom from the law of sin and death, it is absolute mortification of the passions, and putting off of the old habits, in order that the new man may be expressed in everything, “Christ is everything, and in all”.
The full result follows. As a worshipper inside, I render the tithes, the heavenly tribute here on earth; and as a soldier, I am “strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might”, to stand against the wiles of the devil. So that full deliverance is not only that I am free from the law of sin and death, but I am across the Jordan. I have died with Christ in spiritual experience; and now I am enabled to maintain for Him in heavenly regions, growing up into Him in all things, so that He should be expressed down here where He had been rejected, in His heavenly beauty. When I am walking in full deliverance, a heavenly man, the old man is supplanted, and Satan’s power is overborne; and then, and then only, am I in true testimony, and in real happiness.