⬇ EPUB

DELIVERANCE

N.C.McK. We might enquire together, dear brethren, about the matter of deliverance. It is a very foundational matter in our Christian history. The believer is, by deliverance, to get through to liberty and the enjoyment of relationships with divine Persons. We get the teaching of deliverance throughout Scripture, and Paul gives it very clearly in Romans. For the sake of the young brethren, up until verse 11 of Romans 5, we get teaching about what the Lord Jesus has done for us, in saving us from our sins. Then from verse 12 of chapter 5, we get teaching, not about what involves our sins, the sinful things that we have done, but about the sinful state which is within us, and which we need to get clear of in a practical way. We can be dismayed at what we find in ourselves after we are converted, but I trust that we can get help in this reading to see that divine Persons have no intention of leaving us in bondage, but intend to bring us into full liberty.

So Paul writes about moral experience in chapter 7. At the end of the chapter, he recognises the love of God and the love of Christ which lay behind his deliverance. Then the knowledge of God, and our experience which we have with divine Persons, cause us in chapter 12 to commit ourselves fully to God. Practical devotion to the things of God and to the will of God should lead to a genuine practical unity among the saints because we are all to be committed to the same thing. Believers have everything in common because we should all be committed to the same thing, to the will of God. So this matter of deliverance has a great object in view; which is the glory of divine Persons and our liberty.

W.B. We all have the same Spirit and the Spirit directs us to one Person; that is the Person who can free us. The Spirit is willing, and delights to help us in it.

N.C.McK. Very good. What you have said is the key to this chapter; the Lord is the Deliverer, and the Spirit connects us with the Lord to help us in being delivered. In Romans chapter 5, we see that there are two kinds of men in scripture, there is Adam and there is Christ. When we get through to chapter 7, we see that we have to give up the Adam that is in us, and commit ourselves to Christ. But it is a difficult and practical test for us all.

W.B. It is something for every one of us personally. It is not exactly a collective thing, but do you think that these exercises would help us to go on together, because we have one Object?

N.C.McK. I think deliverance is vital, so that we can be in Christianity restfully and at peace with God. So many Christians spend their lives anxious that God is not favourable towards them because of the sin that is in them, but the truth is that God in His love would deliver us from that.

U.P. So do you think these are exercises that we go through in one sense all our lives?

N.C.McK. Yes. It is presented here as if it was something that Paul had done, that he had got the gain of, but we know that we never finish with moral exercises during the course of our lives. We should walk according to His Spirit, and that is a constant matter.

U.P. So the great thing is to come to that blessed Person.

N.C.McK. Part of my exercise is, how much do I know the Lord Jesus as the Deliverer? I know Him as my Lord and my Saviour, but it is a great matter to know Him as the One who has completely met the whole matter of my sinful state. At the beginning of chapter 7, there is another Husband; it is not the law but the Lord is presented as another Husband who supports us, helps us and provides for us so that we are stimulated by love.

Pa.v.d.B. In John it says “If therefore the Son shall set you free, ye shall be really free”, John 8:36. The application of the law, even divine law, can never justify us. I think it will help us in our links with the Lord to see that it is He Himself who gives us this ability. If we are close to Him, we are free indeed.

N.C.McK. That is most helpful because, while we may not realise it, we may in a certain measure live under the law. There was conflict in the testimony many years ago regarding what is said here that “the righteous requirement of the law should be fulfilled”. Those who were not clear said that if they failed in one matter, then they had not fulfilled the law, but it was pointed out that they were putting themselves under the law rather than being under grace. So we are in a system where, by the love of the Lord Jesus, we are given grace to meet divine requirements.

Pa.v.d.B. The greatest opposition to the Lord on earth was not from the authorities or from unbelievers, but from the Pharisees. We know that they represent the improvement and the achievements of religious flesh.

N.C.McK. Paul had been a Pharisee and he wrote in chapter 7 that he had considered himself perfect in every regard, apart from when he looked inside himself. The law said “Thou shalt not lust” (Rom.13:9), but he could not truthfully say that sin in the flesh was not there in him.

D.McL. Is that why Paul wrote “who shall deliver me”? He did not ask ‘How shall I be delivered?’. Do you think he had come to it that, because of what he had been through, there was no way that he himself could do anything, so he wrote “who”? He knew that he needed Someone entirely outside of himself.

N.C.McK. I think that is often the root of the problem with us. We try to be better persons but we have to recognise that “in me, that is, in my flesh, good does not dwell” (Rom.7.18); so by the Spirit we look outside of ourselves to the Deliverer.

D.McL. As soon as we say “Who shall deliver me?” we give room for the Spirit to do that.

J.A.B. What would you say about “those in Christ Jesus”? The key to all of this is the Person who is the Deliverer, but what does it mean to be in Him?

N.C.McK. We spoke about the two kinds of men in Scripture, Adam and Christ. When we believe in the Lord Jesus and we are saved, God views and places us in Christ. It means that the Lord Jesus has taken away my sins and He now sits in glory at the right hand of God with all the favour of God upon Him. God views me in Christ, He views me in all the favour of my Representative there in glory. The great thing is to see that God no longer views us in Adam but He views us in Christ, in all the favour of that blessed Man. So we should view ourselves in that way, should we not?

J.A.B. Yes. I think it is essential to be able to identify that for ourselves. That does not mean to say that we have ourselves before us; it is the opposite. The fact is that God has done this. The blessedness of the first sentence of Romans 8 is something that we must experience, otherwise we keep on going round and round in Romans 7. It is really a question of communion with this One who is the Deliverer.

N.C.McK. What an older brother said helped me, that God sees us sometimes acting in the flesh, but He never views us in the flesh; He always views us in Christ.

R.M.B. The first part of verse 9 in chapter 8 says, “But ye are not in flesh but in Spirit”. God does not view the believer as in flesh, so would the beginning of our deliverance be to see ourselves as God views us?

N.C.McK. Yes. You get other scriptures which speak of deliverance from the divine side, but I wondered if Romans gives it to us from our side. The believer has a new nature, a new character. Not only do we have a new position in Christ, but we have a new nature that is not like the old fleshly nature, and it is called “in spirit” because it is characterised by the operation of the Holy Spirit in us.

W.B. We mentioned the beginning of chapter 8; it says there “There is then now no condemnation”. I wondered if this is a special experience in the life of a believer when he can say ‘now’. It is a certain moment arrived at when we hold on to this new Husband.

N.C.McK. That is very fine, because this first verse looks back over the previous chapter. The knowledge that we are not condemned before God and that God does not view us in that way must be a release to us. God is not against us; at the end of the chapter we see that God is entirely for us and He has only love for us.

W.B. The Lord did not come in order to improve man but to supercede the first man and remove the old man.

N.C.McK. That is very good. The first preaching was in Luke’s gospel chapter 4, when Jesus spoke about coming to preach to captives deliverance. Following what He said to the Jews there, they thought to throw Him over a cliff, so the flesh does not like to be removed. It has also been said very helpfully that we will never find deliverance until we really want it, and until we have the experience of what it is to be disgusted by ourselves.

J.A.B. Is that the point of verse 24 of chapter 7 I have to come to it that I am a wretched man and I cannot do anything to help myself; I need Jesus as the Deliverer. We come to salvation because we realise we need Him as our Saviour, and we come to deliverance because we realise that we need Him as our Deliverer.

N.C.McK. So from the simplest believer to the most spiritual believer, this great man Paul, we cannot do this by ourselves.

J.A.B. Then we find out that we cannot be sustained in the good of deliverance without the Spirit. I thought of the importance of the verse that you read in chapter 12; “be transformed by the renewing of your mind”. That is something with which the Spirit helps us.

N.C.McK. Yes. We must have the Spirit operative in us to enjoy chapter 12. The renewing of our minds is a constant application, so that by the Spirit we think in a spiritual way, and cease to think in a worldly way.

J.A.B. But we begin by the experience that our brother has spoken about, when we realise it is ‘now’; we come to something definite.

N.M.cK. And there is another power, “the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set me free from the law of sin and of death”. So as believers, we look to the Spirit as the power to maintain us in our links with Christ.

P.v.d.B. jr What do you say as to grace in relation to these things?

N.C.McK. I was hoping that we would get help on the latter part of chapter 8. What Paul arrived at through this exercise was that nothing would separate him from the love of Christ and in the last verse, nothing should be able “to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord”. We feel that these are very difficult and sore exercises but in getting through them, we see that it was the love of divine Persons which drew us and helped us in them.

P.v.d.B.jr It is a great miracle to realise what God has brought us into, although we did not deserve it. All these exercises would not have got me anywhere if it had not been for the grace that chose me. That grace makes me realise that so much has been forgiven me that I could not pay it back even with my life, and it would also help me to see that whatever my brethren may owe, it is nothing compared with what I owe.

N.C.McK. Yes. Mr Darby said that true humility was not to think little of yourself, but to think nothing of yourself. I think these exercises must increase our valuation of the grace of God which would not leave us only with our sins forgiven but bring us right through. As you say, if we view ourselves as “in Christ”, we must view our fellow believers in that way too.

M.C. A brother helped me in that; he said that when we meet our brethren we should look for Christ in them, and if I cannot see much of Christ, then I should see them in Christ, and there would not be any problems. I found that very helpful.

N.C.McK. Yes. I think these exercises that we are speaking of today would help us to commit ourselves so that that first order of man, that kind of man that does not please God, should go, and that Christ should be promoted in every way. It has often been said that a dead man never causes trouble. So in this latter part of Romans 8, Paul did not just experience that God loved him, but he had had the experience through all his exercises of knowing the love of God in these exercises. He had come to know the Lord as the Deliverer, the One who was the new Husband who would supply him with all that he needed, and he needed nothing outside of Christ.

W.B. We look steadfastly on Jesus. If we have been won by grace, then we have a straight road ahead of us. We are not to look to the right or to the left, but to look to the goal. We may pray every day that this goal might become more precious to us. Will that not keep us on the road?

N.C.McK. It certainly would, I very much appreciate that. So many believers, and I know this for myself, look to Christ, but then they would look inside themselves and that would bring them down. We would be preserved from that by the teaching of this chapter, to reject the Adam and walk in the Spirit, to seek the Spirit’s guidance and power to walk here.

R.M.B. Would it be right to say that it would be one thing to receive the Holy Spirit as a gift, but that to know that His power is on our side is a further matter?

N.C.McK. Yes, in our walk and ways.

R.M.B. How do we go from the initial receiving of the Holy Spirit as a gift to the point at which we walk according to the Spirit?

N.C.McK. Numbers 21, the brazen serpent on the pole, is the scripture that Paul was drawing from in this chapter. The children of Israel had complained; they found that things were not to their liking and Jehovah sent fiery serpents. He began to show them that the problem was the bite of the serpent. It was because of the extent of their exercises that God showed them that the problem went all the way back to Satan in the garden of Eden, and it was that which was in them. So in chapter 7, Paul took the Roman believers through a mental process in which they were to realise that they were never going to get through by human endeavour. Does God not have a hand in the matter to make us see these things?

R.M.B. I think that what is coming before us is very important. The incident of the brazen serpent is left until quite late in the wilderness journey of the children of Israel. In principle, they received the Holy Spirit in Exodus 17, but it was not until thirty-eight years later that they typically came into the benefit of that.

N.C.McK. Yes, so the two things go along together. It dawns on us that the flesh will never negate the flesh, but that we have the Holy Spirit, although we may not have allowed Him to operate and to help us in the way in which He can.

J.A.B. Would one way of being helped in what our brother has asked about be for us to speak to the Spirit individually? We can appeal to the Holy Spirit to help us to be kept in the renewing of our minds each day, because this is a new way of thinking. Putting what pleases the Lord Jesus before what pleases me is conquering, but God has in mind that we more than conquer.

N.C.McK. Yes, that was the point that our brother was making, that we must move from having the Spirit to using the Spirit and allowing the Spirit to make that difference in our lives.

J.A.B. It is important for us all as believers to have personal communion with the Holy Spirit, because then we develop links with Him. It is only then that we can know something of this transformation.

Pa.v.d.B. When they repented, God did not remove the serpents but He told the people to look on the brazen serpent. This evil which works in us is not taken away but we are given an Object that will cure us.

N.C.McK. That is very much part of the teaching of what we are speaking about, and it is very helpful because we begin to recognise that there is a work of God in us, and that it will rely not on itself but on an Object, and that is Christ. So we associate ourselves with what is of God and what is of the Spirit, and we rely on the Spirit to promote that work of God and to make sure that He has liberty in our lives.

U.P. It has been mentioned that we should pray more to the Holy Spirit. Do we need to have a greater appreciation of the person of the Holy Spirit? We need to know the Lord Jesus as our Saviour, and know the Father, but then, how much do we know about the Holy Spirit?

N.C.McK. So that at the beginning of the Acts, after Jesus ascended, the first believers were ten days without the Holy Spirit, but when the Spirit came, it was the most momentous matter. Peter speaks in his preaching of how God would send of His own Spirit. It is as if God says, I have my own Spirit and I will give you of Him.

U.P. He is not an influence, He is God Himself.

J.A.B. And so He has all the power of God. The Holy Spirit has taken a relatively lowly place, but He has all the power of God to operate in our hearts. We need the Holy Spirit!

N.C.McK. He has the full authority of God. In Acts 13 it says “the Holy Spirit said, Separate me now Barnabas and Saul” (v.2); He acted with authority. When the Lord was here, all His miracles took place by the Holy Spirit. It is remarkable that in the Lord’s life, He used the power of the Holy Spirit.

J.A.B. So the Spirit has feelings. If we ignore what you are saying and just go on with the flesh, it makes the Spirit sad, but if we seek His help in the renewing of the mind each day, then He is pleased to help us.

N.C.McK. And also, if we do not allow room for the Spirit in us, then we will be made sad. We need to be fully persuaded, as Paul was, that God is towards us, that He loves us, and that we should be absolutely free in His presence.

G.T.M. Would the waters of Marah in Exodus 15 and the springs of Elim have some bearing on this. The children of Israel had journeyed for three days after they were delivered from Egypt and they found the waters of Marah bitter at first. Jehovah did not immediately take them to Elim. They would not have appreciated Elim if they had not tasted the bitter waters of Marah and found them made sweet.

N.C.McK. That is a helpful suggestion. They had been through the Red Sea, but then when the people of Israel tasted the bitterness of what was there at Marah, Moses showed them that the answer to that was in the wood, typically in Christ. That is a very early exercise in believers’ histories, to find that things here are not to our taste or to our liking, but that Christ has met matters for us.

G.T.M. Do we get an appreciation of the Spirit at Elim?

N.C.McK. Yes, in the springs of water. They speak of the way in which we can enjoy these things and be refreshed together. What we are speaking of are kingdom truths. We prove these things in an individual way which then helps us, as we get in chapter 12, to come into the company in a right way and to enjoy the company, because we have all been exercised the same way.

D.McL. Is there a sense in which being conformed to this world is allowing the serpent’s bite to work, whereas being transformed by the renewing of our minds is really allowing the Spirit to work as the antidote. The serpent has bitten us, we cannot undo that, but what God brings in is the antidote, the cure for the serpent’s bite. Would that be the transformation?

N.C.McK. So if we walk according to the flesh, we will be conformed to the world, but if we walk according to the Spirit, our minds will be transformed. We will begin to think about things in a totally different way. The Spirit leads in Romans 8; we live by the Spirit, then He leads us to God. There is a direction in which the Spirit is going, and if we are in communion with Him, He will lead us in a right path.

D.McL. Transformation is a complete change. It is a natural illustration, but when a caterpillar changes into a butterfly, it is something completely different. That is really the Spirit’s work.

Pa. v.d. B. So we get more than an antidote for the serpent’s bite. It is not that the old is made better. It is new creation.

N.C.McK. Especially when we are younger, we tend to take up things in a legal way, but there is no other influence that can do this work other than the love of divine Persons through the Holy Spirit. So Paul used that lever, “by the compassions of God”. It would be good to let that sink in, that the love of God is entirely towards us to enable us to get help in this.

W.B. The first thing that Paul did after his conversion was that he prayed. We can pray at any time.

N.C.McK. That is very fine. In those ten days when the Lord was absent and had gone into glory, the disciples did not have the Holy Spirit, but they had faith and they had prayer. They had a link with God, but the Spirit makes that so much more vital and real, do you think?

W.B. They were all together.

N.C.McK. Yes, the one hundred and twenty were all together in the upper room. The names are given and added to them, “and Mary the mother of Jesus”, Acts 1:14. She had known Him since His birth, she had known things about the Lord Jesus that others did not know, and she could contribute to that company. This would involve that everyone in the company contributes to the company, do you think?

R.M.B. Why is it our bodies that we are to present?

N.C.McK. We often say that it is what the believer has available, but I wonder if, in regard to chapter 8 and what comes in earlier too, it involves the full working out of deliverance in its fulness. Chapter 6 refers to the members of our body, our hands and our feet and our minds, but here it is a complete body, as if the whole believer is completely delivered to be for God.

R.M.B. When we were in bondage to the power of sin, our bodies were the vehicles for doing our own wills. Would that be why we need deliverance, and it makes it very personal. The believer is to take possession of his own body and present it to God as a living sacrifice.

N.C.McK. That is a very fine way of putting it. There is no victory for God unless that is the case.

J.A.B. This can be very simple – what do we do with ourselves? Would we rather come to a meeting, or do something else? I find this very testing, because the urge is still there to please myself.

N.C.McK. So our responsible lives are mainly a question of the decisions we make. When it comes to a question like that, do we pray to the Spirit and ask Him to judge what is right and wrong, and to have a desire to do what is right.

J.A.B. You have been bringing before us the teaching of deliverance, and it is a practical matter. Do we really think that God’s will is perfect? As we allow the Spirit to work, we begin to want to do what God desires, and not just because we know that we should.

N.C.McK. I think so. To get into the divine presence, to maintain communion, is a great stimulation and help to do what pleases God. In our experience, it can be a very sore and difficult matter, and sometimes protracted. However, the love of God lies behind it and it is important to finish with a sense of how divine love would have us not in bondage, but in liberty. God will not have us in bondage; He wants us to be in liberty.

Reading at Bad Endbach, Germany

1 November 2014

KEY TO INITIALS

W.B. Willi Becker Bad Endbach

Pa.v.d.B. Paul van den Berg The Hague

P.v.d.B.jnr Pieter van den Berg jnr Pulheim

J.A.B. John Brown Grangemouth

R.M.B. Richard Brown East Finchley

M.C. Michael Cowan Bad Blankenberg

D.McL. David McLaren Dundee

G.T.M. Grant Melville Grangemouth

U.P. Ulrich Pfeiffer Bad Endbach

← Previous 3 of 7 Next →