NOTES ON SCRIPTURE 1895 NO. 35
NOTES ON SCRIPTURE 1895 NO. 35
There are two great subjects here, neither of which is correctly apprehended in christendom. The wages of sin is death; that which has sinned must die, there is no other way in which it can be discharged. Now many think, like Cain, that they can do something to commend themselves to God; they run in the way of Cain. They do not see that sin cannot be removed in any way but by death; the man who has sinned can only be cleared by death. Again, many who truly believe that Christ died for our sins look at His sacrifice as the pious Jew looked at the paschal lamb; they assure themselves that they are forgiven their sins, and, like the Jew, they seek to keep the law; in a way they enjoy natural things more than ever because they are forgiven, and when they sin they look for a fresh application of the blood. They do not see that in Christ’s death the man after the flesh was judicially terminated before God, and that our old man was crucified with Christ. They confine or limit Christ’s work to His death. When you believe that God has raised Him from the dead, you have a Man out of death, and then you are justified. He “was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification”; Romans 4: 25. Then the Holy Spirit sheds [p. 80] abroad in your heart the love of God; Romans 5: 5. The first work of the Spirit of God in you is to make known to you the love of God, even that the One whom you had offended has Himself laid help upon One that is mighty, His own arm has brought salvation. To a child suffering in disgrace because he has broken his father’s clock, the gospel I bring him is, Your father has mended the clock himself come to him. The prodigal found when he came to his father that he had removed the distance from his own side; the Spirit of God not only assures your heart, as you believe in Christ risen, of the love of God, but the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus makes you free from the law of sin and death. The Spirit is life because of righteousness; Romans 8. As natural life is in the blood, so is the eternal life in the Spirit, as we read in John 20: 22: “He breathed into them, and says to them, Receive the Holy Spirit”. The last Adam is a quickening Spirit. Eternal life is not merely perpetuity of existence, but “this is life eternal, that they might know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent”. As we read in John 4: 14, you will never thirst; the Spirit will be in you a fountain of water springing up into eternal life.