CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 5
The early part of this chapter sets forth our experience in the light and blessing of what God has established, that is the new sphere which He has brought to pass. Peace, favour with God, and the hope of glory are the elements of blessing which belong to us as brought by faith into this sphere. Peace is consequent on the destruction of the enemy. It is as with the children of Israel when they had passed through the Red Sea and had come into the wilderness. In figure it was a new sphere into which they entered, where God was known to them in a new light. They had Moses for king, and God loved His people. We have come into the sphere of God’s administration where Christ is Lord, and the Holy Spirit is to us the witness of God’s love, as in Deuteronomy 33: 3, “Yea, he loved the people”. We have had before us two types, the blood on the lintel and the Red Sea; in the one (Romans 3) the judgment of God was met, in the other (Romans 4) the power of the enemy was overthrown. Death was the power of the enemy, and in death it was destroyed, and God comes in as the God of resurrection. It is His glory. We get, in passing through Christ’s death, into the enjoyment of what God has done, and we enter by faith into the new sphere of God’s power, where the enemy has no place. It is an immense thing to realise that there is a sphere where the enemy [p. 62] has no power. This is true to faith, not to sight. Here all is set forth as from God manward; to the end of chapter 5 Christ is mediator. Then comes in the experimental side; the succeeding chapters are taken up chiefly with deliverance, in order that we may enjoy the light revealed in the earlier chapters. The point is, that God should be known, for the light in which a man knows God is practically the life of his soul. “The life was the light of men” is the other side, but the light becomes our life practically. What is the life of the soul? It is the knowledge of God. Sins are gone in order that the light of God might be in our souls. It helps immensely to see that the great purpose of these chapters is that God may be made known. The real blessing of man does not consist in knowing that he is forgiven, but in knowing God. That is the divine thought in the gospel. The gospel is in itself a proclamation, and the apostles were the heralds. Behind the proclamation and the facts was the purpose which God had in view — so to make Himself known as that He might gain the heart of man.
God is the God of resurrection, the Lord Jesus Christ is the Administrator, and the Holy Spirit is given to us. This constitutes the new sphere, in the light of which it is the believer’s privilege to be, and in which the devil has no power; his power was broken by Christ going into death. His going into it was the smiting of death, like Moses stretching out his hand over the Red Sea. Death is robbed of all its terrors, and beyond death is the new sphere into which Christ has entered, and where God is known according to His pleasure as the God of deliverance; we enter that sphere by faith.
The force of the “Lord Jesus Christ” is that He is the Administrator of all the blessings which He has secured — He is the Mediator. The children of Israel were baptised to Moses, he was king in Jeshurun.
[p. 63] We are baptised to Christ — to His death, we enter by death the sphere where Christ is known as Lord. You could not really enjoy what is presented in chapters 4 and 5 unless you had chapters 6, 7 and 8. You might get the light of it, but not the enjoyment. A person gets the light of things before he gets the real enjoyment of them; he sees that the things exist; and one sees many things in Scripture, of which, if honest, we should say that we had not much enjoyment. Deliverance from sin, from legalism, and from the flesh is necessary to the enjoyment of these things, and it is a good deal to say that you are free from those three; and the effect of deliverance is in unhindered enjoyment of the wonderful way in which it has pleased God to reveal Himself to us. He has done this according to His pleasure, though consistently with righteousness. The revelation of Himself as the God of deliverance, the enemy’s power being destroyed, the introduction of the Administrator, and the gift of the Holy Spirit are all according to His pleasure. Deliverance is in the transference of the soul from the ground of the one man to the ground of the other — the last Adam instead of the first. In chapter 5 Christ administers for God, in chapter 6 He is for us — and we are to account ourselves alive to God in Him. Deliverance has been accomplished that we may know the Deliverer. If it were not accomplished we could not enter into it. If sin had not been put away from before God, the law annulled by the body of Christ, and the flesh condemned, we could not be set free from these things. God has wrought deliverance but, of course, we must enter into it, or it would be only the holding of doctrine, and that is not power. We begin with doctrine; but, as regards faith, it is of moment to see that we are not called on to believe anything about ourselves, but what God has done. Deliverance is practical, it is the soul taking possession of the blessed ground which [p. 64] God has prepared. If we could conceive of the children of Israel continuing in what they began with when across the sea, when they saw the Egyptians dead, and they sang the song — it would have been a bright experience, but they did not keep up to it, they had many dark moments afterwards.
The fact was, that it was the will of God to test a people after the flesh; and figuratively Israel did not come to the end of the flesh until the brazen serpent; after that you get the springing well. Deliverance is known in a sense when a person believes the gospel, but the deliverance effected by the gospel has to be afterwards maintained in the soul. There is a difference between the light in which God was known when Israel were past the Red Sea, and that in which He had been known as sparing them from judgment in the land of Egypt; evidently Israel then knew Him in a new way. When God is thus known, that knowledge becomes the life of the soul; further on, not only is God known in delivering power but His love is shed abroad in the heart. God loves His people.
You cannot follow out the type of Israel in the wilderness too strictly, for we do not come to mount Sinai, but to mount Zion. The latter part of Romans 7 is Sinai ground, but properly that is before the gospel is known. The mind of God is that no one should come to mount Sinai now. You cannot make the gospel follow the type of Israel so as to bring christians to the burning mount, it would be traversing Scripture, “Ye are come to mount Zion”. Israel was brought to Sinai on purpose to test a people according to the flesh; they got the brazen serpent afterwards. We start with every type of Christ’s death fulfilled. We start in the value of all. There is an idea that christians receive the gospel and afterwards get into Romans 7. If so, this arises from the fact that the gospel is so little known. The mass of christians know little or [p. 65] nothing about the brazen serpent. They have read John 3, but they have not apprehended the moral force of it. As a matter of fact, nine out of ten persons in christendom do not believe in an indwelling Spirit; they believe in certain influences of the Spirit, but they do not know the well of water springing up in the believer and the consequent practical setting aside of the flesh. In Romans 7 the soul reaches on its side — the side of experience — what God has set forth on His side. “The strength of sin is the law, but thanks be to God which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ”. At the end of Romans 7 the victory is realised; it is never realised until a person learns what the flesh in himself is, and that God is wholly acting on other ground. Though not dispensationally under law, yet one may go through it, after conversion; you might really say after faith; it is anomalous, but so it is.
In the gospel God commends His love to us (verses 8). Judgment is not glad tidings, but the presentation of the gospel brings in the thought of judgment; that is, if men will not have the gospel they will come under judgment; it forms a background. If men will not have the righteousness of God as presented in the gospel, witnessed in the blood of Christ, they must know it in judgment upon themselves; know it they must, either as light in the gospel or in judgment.
Another beautiful thing comes out here, namely, reconciliation; that is, the sense of distance gone, for the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts. Sin brought in the distance, but if the love of God is shed abroad in the heart, then evidently the distance is gone. It is a wonderful thing to go through the world in the light of the God of resurrection, and of the administration of the Lord Jesus Christ; and the Holy Spirit shedding abroad in the heart the love of God; the christian ought to be able to sing.
“Saved in the power of his life” (verses 10). This is [p. 66] the power of His life in contrast with His death. The wrath of God is revealed, but the day of wrath has not come: we are in the scene on which it will come, and that makes the position of a christian peculiar; for, as to his soul, he is in the new sphere, that is, in the resurrection sphere where God has been manifested, where Christ is Lord, and the Holy Spirit bears witness to the love of God. This will be all good for the kingdom, but it is not heaven. The promises that God made to Abraham will all be fulfilled in the power of resurrection. Christ is Lord for that day, and the power of the Spirit will be here. God has destined us for glory, but in the meantime we get here the blessings connected with the world to come, though, as to the body, we are in the sphere of the power and malice of Satan, and of infirmities, in the scene on which wrath will come. We boast in tribulation because as to the body we are where Satan can stir up affliction; it is a peculiar position.
In the latter part of the chapter we have a kind of summary showing the superiority of grace to judgment. Judgment acted on the ground of the one offence of the first Adam, grace on the ground of the righteousness of the last. A wonderful thing has come to pass — the conciliation of the two trees of Eden. The question of good and evil has been solved for God’s glory, and the One in whom it has been solved is the Tree of Life for man. Adam chose to take of the tree of knowledge of good and evil and died; but now that question has been taken up in Christ, God’s judgment borne, and Christ is the Tree of Life. We see the superiority of grace to judgment; “much more”, it says — the last Adam instead of the first.
Verse 17, “Shall reign in life”, is in contrast with death reigning. It is the “excess”, as another has said. It could not be put quite abstractly “Life shall reign”, though it says in an abstract way “death reigned”, but “they shall reign in life”. Judgment [p. 67] dealt with one offence, grace deals with many unto justification. This latter part of the chapter brings in the perfection of Christ as the One who having solved the whole question of good and evil, is the revelation of God to us. There were two things to be dealt with, sin and death, and the Lord Jesus has dealt with both; but before that came to pass, the power of evil, whether of man or of Satan, had been met by perfect good. Evil was completely met and overcome of good, but behind all that lay the judgment of death. The two trees in the garden of Eden were symbolical, they represented what was within the reach of man; but man was forbidden to touch the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and he never touched the tree of life, for after the fall God prevented him from so doing. But the question of good and evil, once raised, had to be gone through — with the judgment of death behind it, through one righteousness (towards all men for justification of life) it has been solved, the judgment of God borne, and Christ has become the light of God to us. In this passage we get things traced back to their first cause. Sin brings in death, grace brings in life, because it brings the light of God into the soul, and so we get eternal life here, God having been revealed. Eternal life is practically the light of God in the soul. Eternal life is to know Him. The light of God could never be in the soul if God had not begun to work there and the Holy Spirit had not been given, for God cannot be known in His nature save by the Spirit (1 John 4: 7).
The brazen serpent is taken up in John 3. The great point in connection with the Son of man lifted up is that the way might be cleared for God to communicate the Spirit to man. So long as man was in the flesh it could not be, but when God had condemned sin in the flesh the way was open for the Spirit to become the spring of life in man; John 4 is the antitype of the springing well in Numbers 21.
[p. 68] Appropriation is in John 6; there is no “eating and drinking” (see verse 56) until then. Believing and appropriation are not quite the same thought, though you could not appropriate without faith; you must believe God first to see what there is to be appropriated. Appropriation is in the power of the Spirit.
In going rapidly over these chapters we must not miss the great light of God that is brought to us in them, that is, from chapter 3 to the end of chapter 5. What is characteristic of this moment is that grace reigns. In chapter 6 we are on different ground. The end of chapter 5 shows, as we have seen, the contrast between grace and judgment in connection with two men. As to justification of life — if you are in life you are conscious of being clear of every reproach that attached to you in your responsibility. The christian is clear of all reproach, and Christ is his righteousness in the presence of God, in a scene agreeable to God. It is only in life that you are consciously clear. “One righteousness” is righteousness viewed as a whole, not simply the solution of good and evil by Him who is “the Righteous One” — “Jesus Christ the righteous” — but the judgment of God borne in righteousness. What troubled the Lord in Gethsemane was that the judgment of God lay behind the question of meeting the power of evil. The wonderful thing is that Christ has gone into death. Had Satan only known what His going into death meant he must have said, ‘there is an end of me and of my power’, for if He goes into death it is certain that He must come out of it.