“TO”, “BY” and “IN”
There is one aspect of the gospel that shows us how we can be in heaven at the end, and another that teaches us how to live here. Because we do not go to heaven the moment we believe, we need these chapters to teach us how we can be here for God. There are two sides to the gospel. After you are converted you may live here for twenty, thirty, or forty years, and you want the aspect of the gospel which bears upon that. You cannot live on the happiness of going to heaven. If we went to heaven directly we believe, we should not need that side of the gospel which is set forth in Romans 6, 7, and 8. This teaches us how to live, and if we do not pay attention to it we shall not be happy. The reason people are not happy is because they do not know the gospel that teaches them how to live here. The road to present happiness is to live to God. If you do not live to God you will not be happy.
If you want to see this coming out in practice, you will find it in the second chapter of Philippians. You are to work out your own salvation because it is God that works in you, both to will and to do of His good pleasure. It is the willing and the doing of His good pleasure that is your happiness.
I think we may connect three prepositions with these three chapters (Rom. 6, 7, and 8): chapter 6 is “To”, “to God”; chapter 7 is “By”, “by Christ”; chapter 8 is “In”, “in the Spirit”.
After you believe you receive the Spirit, then you are in the Spirit. The power lies in the Spirit, but you must have all three; if you live to God, it is by the Spirit's power, but then you must have the support of Christ. “From me is thy fruit found” Hos 14: 8. You are not occupied with the Spirit.
The first six verses of chapter 7 give us the “by”. In chapter 8 you have the Spirit; you are so identified with the Spirit that you are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit. This is your power to live.
Cornelius and his friends listened and believed, and received the remission of sins and the gift of the Spirit. It is a great thing to be established in the gospel. It is God who speaks in the gospel. Have you believed on Him, that is, God, who raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead? There is then not a single charge; you are as clear of every charge of sin as Christ is. Then you come to this: you have the Spirit. On what ground could the Spirit dwell in me, when there is in me a principle as opposite to the Spirit as hell is to heaven? Only on the ground of the death of Christ - which is the answer to everything in yourself that is evil. The Spirit dwelling in me does not depend upon my conduct, but on the work of Christ. If it depended on me, I should lose it many times a day.
Having the Spirit, you know how bad you are. He does not occupy you with it, but He gives you the sense that it is of such a character that you cannot trust it; but you are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit. There is complete identification with the Spirit; there ought to be practical identification: that will come out of it.
I am endeavouring to show you the consequence of having the Spirit. The Spirit is never put before me as an object7. The Spirit is in me, and I am in the Spirit. I know how it is with some of you; you begin to think of your practice how much you realise it, and so on. But you must know your income before you can spend it. See that you have it first. Let your eye rest on verse 3 of chapter 8 of Romans; that is the gospel for you; it is the condemnation of sin in the flesh - God sending His own Son. You get that twice in Romans. The law addresses itself to man in the flesh; it sought to produce fruit to God, but no fruit ever came. What will God do? Condemn sin in the flesh. With what result? That the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. The Spirit dwells in me to make that good in me practically. The only way of being happy now is to live to God.
What I see is, people like to know that when they die they will go to heaven, but they want to do their own will in the meantime. To do your own will is to be wretched. There is no difference then, practically, between you and an unconverted man. If you are doing your own will, you are not walking in the Spirit. You come to the Lord's supper. And you make the Lord’s supper a gospel-meeting to assure you that all will be right when you die. You use it to assure yourself that you have a precious Saviour who died for you, and that on that ground you will go to heaven when you die. The Lord's supper is not for that.
We have been working on the preposition “in”. That is the subjective side. Now let us come to the “by”. This teaches us where our support is. You are freed from the law that you might be to Another in order to bring forth fruit to God. This is the objective side. You must put all three chapters together to know how to live. It is in the Spirit, but it is by Christ. A young man said the other day, ‘In my conflicts I am always getting floored’. He was learning his weakness. I will tell you what has been a comfort to me; you may think it a curious scripture: “Gad, a troop shall overcome him; but he shall overcome at the last”, Gen 49: 19. Hold on; do not give up. “He shall overcome at the last”. The reason you are floored is because you cannot do without the support of Christ. You cannot bring forth fruit unto God unless you are dependent upon Him. It is “by Christ”. You are supported by another in the measure in which you are dependent on Him, and you are only in dependence on Him as you distrust yourself.
If you are occupied with yourself, it shows you have not learnt your own weakness fully. You are not looking to Christ.
You are overcome to teach you where your strength lies; but do not be discouraged. “He shall overcome at the last”. “I have written unto you, young men, because ye are strong”, 1 John 2: 14. That is, the young men are in the good of deliverance. Why does he say, “Ye are strong”? Because they know where strength is - that is, in Christ. “And the word of God abideth in you”. That is, God's will rules you instead of your own. You have the word of God abiding in you, and you know where strength is; you are dependent. The wicked one cannot touch you. I know in days past I would have given my right hand for any one to help me as to that. By being overcome you fear to trust yourself, and a very good thing too.
Now look at chapter 7: 4. There is your support. Chapter 7 is a remarkable chapter, because its structure is very much like the structure of the Psalms. The first two or three verses give you the conclusion arrived at, and the remainder shows you what led to the conclusion. Take Psalm 73 for example: “Truly God is good to Israel … But as for me, my feet were almost gone”; and then the Psalmist records the experience he went through to reach “Truly God is good to Israel”. So in Romans 7, from the seventh verse to the end is the journey the soul takes to reach what is in the first six verses. “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me?” “I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord”. Do you see the journey the soul takes to reach that point? A troop shall overcome him; but “he shall overcome at the last”. He says, I love the good, but I cannot do it; what shall I do? He is learning there what we all must learn: that there is no good thing in the flesh. And he learns to disown himself, to treat the flesh as a foreign thing, and what to do with it he does not know. Christ alone can deliver you. What characterised the law was demand. But the law produced no fruit for God. It was weak through the flesh. Every bit of fruit from you for God comes by Christ. “From me is thy fruit found”. So if I see a bit of fruit in you, I say it came from Christ; I do not credit you with it, and the sooner you learn that the better. “Ye also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ”. The Spirit of God identifies you with His dying in order that you may be identified with Him in His living. But we want to see how this works out practically. I know something of it doctrinally, but I want to know the practical power of it, otherwise I have nothing.
I have endeavoured to show you that “in” is the Spirit and “by” is Christ. The Spirit shows you what you are in Christ before you are exhorted to do anything. I must know what I am in order to be it. I am “alive to God in Christ Jesus”. You must not, in one sense you cannot, divorce yourself from Christ. The Lord says: “Without me ye can do nothing”, John 15: 5.
A sailor, if he is a good steersman, will always seek some object outside the ship by which to steer her, when once he has got her head right by the compass. The compass is generally sluggish, and the ship moves somewhat from her proper course before it is affected, and the result of seeking to steer exclusively by it is that you make a zig-zag path.
When I was a sailor, I met with men sometimes who tried to steer in this way, and I would say to them, ‘What is the matter? You are not steering straight’. ‘It is the compass, sir’, would be the reply, and I would tell them it was no use trying to steer straight in that way, by the compass only. They must watch some object outside the ship, a star, for instance, if by night, and by that means detect the smallest movement of the ship long before the compass was affected. So with us: it is Christ before us that makes us sensitive. I have to go on through this world, and for this I must have my eye on an object outside myself. One evidence is that you know you are corrupt is that you do not talk about yourself. But we do not fully know our badness. The nearer we are to God the better we understand that self is a corrupt thing.
I knew a very interesting person who said: ‘I believe every bit of sin will be extracted from me, and I will not rest until it is’. I replied, ‘You will get into dreadful error on that line’. And so she did. I shall not need to watch and pray in heaven, I shall not have sin in the flesh there. Would you not like Christ to triumph now in you and by you? What is His present triumph? That you, in the power of the Spirit, keep in the silence of death that which He died to. You hold yourself to have died to sin and to be alive to God. That is by Christ. It is His present triumph; His future triumph will be to take us clean out of it.
You have Christ before you now instead of yourself; you are realising life, and in the realisation of life the body is held as dead. Life is in Christ; you must first know you are in Him before you can live by Him. This is the way of happiness. “He shall overcome at the last”.
People are often disappointed and distressed at the little progress they make, but we are not to be occupied with fruit, but with the Person by whom it is produced. We are too much occupied with ourselves - we want to be nice Christians, and so on. That is self; we want to be pleased with ourselves. What you need is to enjoy Christ, and then you will be a nice Christian; but you will not be thinking about that. When we are so occupied it is in order that we may have the credit of it; there is no fruit to God. If we are looking to Christ, enjoying Him, dependent upon Him, the fruit will come. Love is the spring of holiness. You will not be conscious of the fruit, but of that link of affection between you and Christ.
Read the second of Philippians and see how this comes out in practice. You see deliverance in Paul, Timothy, and Epaphroditus; they have lost sight of themselves and are thinking of Christ and of His interests. Chapter 2 is greater than chapter 3, because it is the life of Jesus lived out here. It begins with the Lord: “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus” (v 5); He was here for the will of God. Then the apostle says: “God ... worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure” (v 13), and it is really wonderful how the Spirit of God can produce in men of like passions with ourselves what was seen perfectly in Christ. It is the result of deliverance. If you want to be happy, it must be in this way.
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