EXTRACTS

The moral is that one as a Christian has learned Romans, has arrived at his individuality, in saying, “So then I myself with the mind serve God’s law”.

You are secured for God, that is the principle, you are no longer in flesh. The apostle sees that his flesh is amenable to the work of the devil. We are no longer in that, and therefore we come to what is needed in the service of God, in the government of the assembly. Here is a man who stands on his own feet and says, I am determined that with my mind I will serve God’s law. I will not listen in the care meeting to personal feelings, I will rule them out, I will stop my ears and rebuke those who bring them in. I will stand by the law of God. It is not simply the ten commandments; in Romans 7 it is God’s law, whatever it be of God that governs this case I stand by that and repudiate all else. I am no longer in flesh, in that which can be influenced by personal feeling. Personal feeling is most damaging and the root of all divisions amongst us. It is not simply that I am contending for the right, I am contending against a brother. That is all. There is so much of that, dear brethren. If I arrive at Romans 7, I am in principle beyond that. “I myself with the mind serve God’s law”; whatever it be I will stand by that.

J. Taylor (N.S. Vol. 86, pp.305, 306)

Everything centres in Christ and our appreciation of Him. You can see how the apostle had this in mind in telling us in chapter 1 (of Philippians) what Christ was to him. He says, “For for me to live is Christ”. Now he is going to bring in Christ in the wonderful down-stooping of His love as the great Exemplar of lowliness and humiliation. The true way of the settlement of every difficulty is that one may die to reach the solution of it.

J. Taylor (N.S. Vol. 40, p.225)

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