DELIVERANCE FROM LAW
[p. 322] DELIVERANCE FROM LAW
What I desire to dwell upon at this time, by the Lord’s help, is the truth of deliverance from the law. Last time our subject was deliverance from sin and from the world. Deliverance from law is equally important; and I take up this passage as showing the way by which a Christian reaches this deliverance. For it is a point to be reached, as the apostle says, “I through the law have died to the law, that I might live unto God; I am crucified with Christ”. It will entail going over a certain amount of ground; and in the course of it I shall hope to show you what was the intent of the law on the part of God. It is true that the law was the ministration of death and condemnation; but I hope you will see presently that such was not the divine end in the giving of the law. The law in the letter had that effect; but that was not the spirit of the law, and the point for the Christian is to see the spirit of the law: that is where we practically get deliverance from the letter. We find out that we are joined to the One who is the spirit of the law, that we should no longer serve in the oldness of the letter, but in newness of Spirit. That is the way in which deliverance is brought about, as we shall, I trust, see.
I was noticing last week that there is an essential difference between sin and the world, and the law; for you could not speak of sin and the world in the sense in which law is spoken of as a husband in Romans 7. The idea of a husband involves a legal bond; and without the dissolution of the bond that exists you could not form a new bond. That is what is true in regard to the law; and where the law differs from sin and the world is in that the bond has been dissolved in order that a new bond might be formed. You are “become dead to the law by the [p. 323] body of Christ, that you should be married to another”, that is, that a new bond might be formed on the part of the Christian. The meaning of it is, that so long as men were under the letter of the law they could not be joined to the One who is the spirit of the law; and therefore they must be freed from the first bond, the letter of the law, in order that they might be joined to the One who is the spirit of the law, and that is the way by which we “bring forth fruit unto God”. That is what God has brought about. If the bond had not been dissolved you could not be free of the bond, and another bond could not be formed; for if you formed a second bond while the first existed, you would put yourself in the position of an adulteress — that is the argument of Romans 7. This makes an essential difference between sin and the world, and law; the former are no bond, but they are elements in which man lives naturally, they belong to Egypt — Egypt is the type of the world of sin, but the law is another matter. In fact, the children of Israel while they were in Egypt, though under bondage to the power of the world, had no law; it was in the wilderness they came to law.
The first remark I make is this, that the way in which a Christian is righteous in the sight of God is the way by which he must live. You cannot be righteous on one principle and live on another, that will not do for God. If such a thing were possible as that a man could be righteous before God on the principle of law, then he must live on the principle of law. If, on the other hand, it is totally impossible for a person to be righteous before God by law, which is the principle of works, then I say he cannot live on the principle of works. But if it be true that the Christian is justified in Christ, then Christ becomes the principle of life to the Christian. The two things are bound to go together. The Galatians, like a great many Christians in the present day,
[p. 324] sought to be justified in Christ but to live by law, it is impossible, the principle of your righteousness must be the principle on which you live. When God created man, the question of righteousness did not arise, because man was simply what God had made him, innocent. He had not the knowledge of good and evil, so that there was no question of righteousness. But the introduction of sin raised at once the question of righteousness — it must be so, because righteousness is the necessary opposite of sin. Then comes the question, how is man going to be righteous? what is to be the principle of his righteousness? The first thing tried was the principle of works; God gave man law, but did not tell man what His thought and end in the law was, what was the spirit of the law; but He gave the law to man, and the principle of works was the principle on which under law righteousness depended. What follows is this, that if man could have been righteous on the principle of works, or of law, he would have lived on the principle of works. But the law came at a day too late for this, because man was already under the sentence of death, and law could not relieve him of that sentence. I think the contrast of law and grace is illustrated in the parable of the Good Samaritan. The man was half dead, the priest and the Levite, the representatives of [p. 331] the law, could not relieve him of the pressure, and therefore they passed by on the other side. The Good Samaritan came where the man was, and relieved him of the pressure under which he lay. And so Christ has come in to relieve man of the pressure of death which was upon him, by glorifying God in death, and as raised from the dead is now righteousness for the Christian. To put it in the words of the apostle in the epistle to the Romans, “Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth”. By end I understand to be meant the [p. 325] purpose, the object, of the law; and thus having Christ for righteousness before God we must of necessity live by Christ.
I want to say a little more in regard to justification, because I feel that our thoughts of justification are often too limited. Many a Christian who is clear enough as to forgiveness of offences does not see justification in its fulness as the Christian’s relief from the judgment of God that lies now upon man. Many a Christian would say, I am justified from my sins, I am saved in that sense, and I shall never come into judgment. But then justification goes farther than that, because Christ is risen, and the thought of grace is to relieve man from the pressure of death that is on him; and justification is not complete unless a man is relieved from that pressure. I mean this, that for the Christian it is not only a question of faith in the blood, but faith in the One that is risen, as it says, Christ “was delivered for our offences and raised again for our justification”. And being the statement of Scripture, it is clear that nobody comes to justification in its completeness until he reaches by faith Christ risen. And it is an immense point to apprehend Christ risen, to see the truth that He “was raised again for our justification”, that the Christian might be as free before God from the judgment of death as Christ is. The evidence that the Christian is justified not only from offences, but from the sentence of death which was upon him as the result of sin, is that his body becomes the temple of the Holy Ghost, and he passes out of death into life. He is not yet raised, but he is justified in Christ; if he were raised he would be justified in that sense in himself; but he is not yet justified in his own person, but in Christ, and the proof and result of justification is, that the Holy Ghost is given, “The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us”.
[p. 326] You will bear with my dwelling upon this, because of the importance to every Christian to get a thorough ground-work in his soul in the knowledge of justification, and then to apprehend what is unfolded to us in Romans 5, namely, what the attitude of God is toward the believer consequent upon being justified. A very common illustration that has been used of the gospel, namely, that of a substitute, of one who suffers a penalty in the place of another in order that the latter may go free, does not seem to me to be right in principle or application, for in the gospel the first to go free is the substitute. Christ, who suffered for us, was the first to be raised from the dead, He “was raised again for our justification”. No living soul of man was justified until Christ was raised from the dead. Then the believer is justified. And as I said before, he is not only justified from his offences, but he is justified from sentence of death that lay upon him, so that he can be raised up in the power of the Holy Ghost. I do not say his body is yet raised up, but the person is raised up, as we see in the case of the man at the pool of Bethesda, in John 5.
Now I pass on to the question of deliverance from law. We saw last week that deliverance from sin and from the world is effectuated only as a glimpse is gained of another Man, the second Man, and of the Christian circle. A person is not content to take the place of death to sin except as the soul has the apprehension of another Man, of a Man that having been raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, now lives to God, as having died to sin. One is thus strengthened and encouraged to part company with sin, because he goes in faith to join the Man that is to the perfect satisfaction of God. His thought now is, I am entitled by grace to join that Man; and to join Him I must of necessity part company with the man that is here, and with the principle that [p. 327] dominates him, which is sin. For sin is looked at in Romans 6 as the dominating principle of the man that is here. And again, as to deliverance from the world, it is as I am attracted by the character of the Christian circle, the circle where Christ is all and in all, that I am led to accept the place of death to the world; I feel the incongruity of the two spheres. The Christian circle is where the affections and sensibilities of Christ are seen in exercise. The world I understand to be the sphere and scene in which the flesh lives.
This question of law is a very great hindrance to many of us, and I think it takes us a long time to get free of law. I will tell you how it works; people go to the Scriptures to find exhortations and rules; they want chapter and verse, as they say commonly, for their doctrine, and they want precepts for their conduct. That is all legality, it is the letter, and I think people are uncommonly fond of the letter; they go to Scripture in that sense to a large extent.
Now the apostle says in the passage I read, “If I build again the things which I destroyed, I make myself a transgressor”, which means that if a person after seeking to be justified in Christ, and seeing that justification is alone in Christ, then goes back to law as a rule of life, that person builds again the things which once he destroyed, and he “makes himself a transgressor” his transgression is in having left the law, for if he goes back to it he condemns himself for having left it. The passage involves the truth of which I spoke a few moments ago, that the Christian has to live on the principle on which he is righteous; you cannot divorce the two things, righteousness and life; if Christ is the righteousness of the Christian before God, then Christ is the life of the Christian. Law cannot be, Christ must be, the life of the Christian.
Now in looking at law for a moment as law, that [p. 328] is, law in the letter, I must repeat that the letter did not express the end of God in the law; the mind of God in the law lay underneath, and those to whom the letter of the law was given never knew the mind of God in it; Moses “put a veil upon his face”, we are told, and they were not allowed to see “the end of that which is annulled”. The end does not mean, I judge, its termination, but the object and purport of God in it. The consequence was, that Israel took up all the law in detail, sacrifices and everything else; and as Peter expressed it, it was a burden which neither they nor their fathers were able to bear. The people that were under law never kept the law, it was too burdensome by far for man to keep.
Now, I think, the first thing in regard to being free from law is, that one must learn in some way or other what is the effect of law, “the letter kills”. A person has to be killed by law, has to die in that sense; the apostle does not say simply that he is dead to the law, but he says, “I through law have died to law, to live to God”. I suppose it works in this way, that law brings home to a man the truth of his own utter powerlessness. That is the lesson to be learnt; I do not care how it is learnt, in all probability by law, but it has to be learnt. If I look abroad, there are very few men in the world who think themselves powerless. I have seen men of great determination and strong will, and have thought them strong. I do not think that now. I quite admit that there are people of a certain force of character, people who seem to carry things before them; but their strength of will and determination is not morally in opposition to the course and current of things here. And then again, I have a strong suspicion that men of great determination and will, who are running in the current of the world, are helped by a power that is greater than themselves.
[p. 329] I am not sure to what extent men come under spiritual influence; but I have a strong impression that there is such a thing in the world as spiritual influence, not only for good but for evil, and that a man of will and determination may be carried on by spiritual influence stronger than himself. And as a matter of fact, I feel doubtful if there is such a thing really as free will with man, because where a man is dominated by the principle of sin, he is not free as to will. People talk about free will, but it is simply rubbish, because if a man is a slave to sin, which he is by nature, there is no question of free will, he is controlled by a principle which is beyond himself. For sin is not limited to man. The apostle John says, “the devil sins from the outset”. Sin came into the world by man, but it did not originate with man. And if it is true that a man is by nature under the power of sin, then it is not a question of his will, but of sin that he is controlled by, a principle which he does not circumscribe. Again I say that there are spiritual influences at work, and so long as men are running in the current of sin and of the world, they are often carried by those influences a long way beyond what they intended to go. I think we should find plenty of instances of that. I believe it accounts for many dreadful things which take place in the world; dreadful ends very often had small beginnings. But people going in a certain current, have found that they were helped while they were going down the stream. Now, I believe the test of the power of will is when you attempt to go against the stream. Let a man be for God here, and then find what amount of power he has got. Let his mind recognise the rights of God, like a man waking up to the spirituality of the law, that he is to love God with all his heart and his neighbour as himself, let him begin to recognise the goodness of the law and the right and authority of God, and then [p. 330] see how much power he has got. Every one of us knows very well, as the apostle says in Romans 7, that “when the law came, sin revived and I died”; that is, when I saw and allowed that God had a will and right over me, I found I was totally powerless. And why? Because I wanted to go against the stream, against the current of sin, and then I found out that I had not an atom of power. That is the way in which the law worked, and in which it killed man, for the law killed a man in his own experience. The apostle says, “I was alive without the law once, but when the commandment came, sin revived and I died”. When he was alive was the time when he thought he had power to effectuate his will. And man thinks he has still. I believe it is a mistake, for when a man is thinking he effectuates his own will, he is under the power of sin; it is sin he is effectuating, not his own will. When a man sees what is right, as we find in Romans 7, “When I would do good”, that is, when a man would recognise the rights of God, and would love God with all his heart, and his neighbour has himself, then he finds out he is totally powerless; that is, he is killed, he has no power at all in that which he knows to be right. And therefore it is a hopeless kind of thing for a man to be under law, because he cannot comply with the requirements of the law; it is impossible he could please God or be righteous before God on that ground.
But by the gospel he is brought to another great truth; he finds out that Christ is his righteousness. “Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth”: he is completely justified by Christ: “By this man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins, and by him all that believe are justified from all things, from which ye could not be justified by the law of Moses”. What the law could not do, Christ has done for him; that is,
the law could not relieve him of the sentence of death, it only pressed it home upon him; but he finds that in Christ he is completely relieved of the sentence of death that lay upon him: Christ is the ministration of life, just as the law was the ministration of death.
But there is another point, and that is, he learns that Christ is the spirit of the law, and he is taught it by the Spirit of God. Being justified, he receives the Spirit of God, for a man receives the Spirit before he is set free from law; and then he finds out that there is another aspect in which the law can be regarded, that instead of looking at the requirements and the letter of the law, he can see that Christ is the spirit of the law, that God had quite a different end in the law from what appeared to man, and that the thought and intent of God in the law was not the detail, not the letter, but Christ. That is a wonderful moment, for then I look at Scripture in a totally different way. I am no longer looking at it for precepts and directions in detail as to conduct, but what I read in the law is Christ; I look at it objectively as furnishing instruction, as an expression of the mind of God as to what was to be effectuated in Christ. I begin to discern the spirit instead of the letter, and when a person is brought to that point it opens out entirely a new, prospect to him; Scripture becomes a totally different book; instead of its being a book of dogmas and commandments which I do not find myself able to fulfil, it is a blessed book of instruction, a book of deepest interest, as showing to me what was ever in the purpose and thought of God. It is then that we begin to see the glory of the Lord with unveiled face; we find the truth of Christ not only in the New Testament but in every page of the Old, not only in the prophets but in the law. I dare say you remember what the Lord did, as recorded in the last chapter of Luke’s [p. 332] gospel, after His resurrection — He opened the understanding of His disciples, and “beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them, in all the scriptures, the things concerning himself”; that is, He lighted up the book to them, they got an illumination which they never had before, they began to see all in a totally different light. I think many of us have come to that point. I know it in my own experience. I had no conception when I was first converted of what a wonderful book Scripture was, for I was, in a sense, converted under law, and was accustomed to pray that God would incline our hearts to keep the law, as I suppose many of us have done in the past. It was a wonderful new light to me when I came to find out that the letter was not the great thing before God, but that Christ was “the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth”.
Now, I do not think anybody will get practical deliverance from law until he comes to that point. The first thing is to see how completely the believer is justified in Christ, so that he receives the gift of the Holy Ghost, to dwell in his body which is freed from the judgment of God. Then the truth is learnt, that the believer is not under law, that Scripture is to him not a question of law and commandments and precepts, but of instruction in the mind of God, from beginning to end realised in Christ. I need hardly go into detail about it, it is enough to say that the sacrifices, the feasts, and institutions in the law were typical of Christ, all fulfilled and realised in Him. He is the yea and Amen of all. I am apart from the letter of law, for Christ who is the end of it, is my righteousness; I am justified in Him, and the law is now instruction to me concerning the One in whom I am justified; that is what the law becomes to the Christian. And then, too, Christ becomes the delight of the believer’s [p. 333] soul. I was trying to expound last time, that there is a scene of infinite and divine rest and satisfaction into which a Man has entered to the glory of God, and that the One who has entered there is the end and purpose of God, the mind of God in the law.
There is another lesson to be learnt in connection with it. I have sought to show you how you are freed from the letter by the apprehension of the spirit, because the moment you apprehend the spirit you are free of the letter, and you are never free from the letter until you apprehend the spirit. But when I speak about the spirit, I do not mean the Holy Ghost, I mean the spirit of the law, that is, Christ. In 2 Corinthians 3, we are told that the Lord is that spirit. The apostle speaks of his ministry as “not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life”, and then later down in the chapter he adds, “The Lord is that spirit”, that is, the spirit of the Scriptures. Now when I apprehend Christ to be the spirit of the Scriptures, another truth comes in, that is, that I am joined to Him by the Holy Ghost. And what I understand that to mean is, that the one who is joined to Him is joined to Him in order that he may take character from Him, When a man was under law he took his character from law, he got legality from the letter. Let a man get an apprehension of Christ as the spirit of Scripture, and know that he is joined to Him, and he will soon take his character from Him. Just remember the order of these things. The first point is, the believer is justified in Christ — He was raised again for our justification. Then the next is, that he apprehends Him as the spirit of Scripture. Then, further, that he is joined to Him by the Holy Ghost — “He that is joined to the Lord is one Spirit”; and he now gets his character from Him. I am sure that is the way in which Christ is formed in the Christian. You are bound to [p. 334] get your character from what engrosses you. If law engrosses a man he will get punctilious and particular in trifles. But let him apprehend Christ as the spirit of Scripture, and then see what enlargement he will get. To me Christ as man is a perfectly blessed study. When I think of what He has been for the glory of God, resolving every question of good and evil, ever refusing the evil and choosing the good, glorifying God in the place of man’s ruin, and then raised again from the dead by the Father’s glory, when I ponder over Christ in that way, it is a delight to me to think that there is such an one entered in for the eternal satisfaction of God — God has gained His end. That is a most blessed thought to every Christian. And another point is this, that the infinite love of God rests in Christ as man. It is not simply revealed in Christ, but it rests there, and we are called into His company, we are joined to Him to take our character from Him when we have learnt that we are joined to Him. That is individual, I am not talking about the church. If you are thrown intimately into contact with people in the world superior to yourself, you will very likely in a large measure derive a certain character from them. It is certain that a wife to a large extent is what her husband makes her. The Spirit of God presents to us in Scripture one object, the second Man, the One who has been raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, who has entered in to the perfect and eternal satisfaction of God; and we are joined to Him by the Spirit in order that we may take character from Him. The law killed us, the spirit quickens, that is the difference between the two. “I”, says the apostle, “through the law have died to law, that I might live to God. I am crucified with Christ”. That is the way in which the bond that bound him to law had been dissolved. Christ had borne the judgment of death that rested [p. 335] upon him, and now he is crucified with Christ; and then he says, “nevertheless, I live” — the same person, “and yet not I”, not the same morally, “but Christ liveth in me”; that is what he has come to because Christ is in him. It is by the Spirit of life that Christ is in the Christian.
Paul had apprehended what I have said, that he was justified in Christ; he had delight in Christ, and then he found that he was joined to Christ. Now he has come to this point, “Yet not I, but Christ liveth in me”. And then he goes on to say, “in that I live in the flesh”, — because he recognised that he had to fill up the remains of responsible life down here — “In that I live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me”; that is, that the Son of God was the proper object of his faith, the light of his soul, and consequently law did not regulate his conduct, but the Son of God, who loved him and gave Himself for him. If a person has to do with the law in the letter he will assuredly be legal. On the other hand, if he lives by the faith of the Son of God, who loved him and gave Himself for him, assuredly he will take a character from the love. But I doubt if this will be so until he has apprehended that Christ is the spirit of the law, that is, the spirit of the Scriptures. What can be more wonderful than that we have in the Scriptures a book the writing of which extended over a period of 1,500 or 2,000 years, maintaining all through one great personality in Jehovah, and pervaded by one great end and purpose, and that is Christ. All this testifies to one Author, and the one Author of Scripture is the Holy Ghost. “Holy men of old spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost”. As I said before, it is as souls get an apprehension of this that they are delivered from the letter; they do not go to Scripture to look for precepts and commandments, because [p. 336] they are not under law, they go to all the Scriptures, to the law and to the prophets, to the Old as well as to the New Testament, to get their souls fed and ministered to of Christ; they want to see and learn what God has ever had before Him from the beginning. The Man of God’s purpose was ever there, in God’s thought even before the responsible man. God put forward the responsible man first; but He had as His resource the Man of His purpose, and the Man of His purpose is the spirit of Scripture, the second Man, not the first man. And that is why infidels blunder so over Scripture, because they have got nothing before them but the first man, the man down here, and they have not an idea of what is the spirit of Scripture. It is a wonderful thing to have a book of which God is really the Author, which presents to us throughout the whole of it one living God, and one living object, the Son of God, in whom God was to be glorified, who was the true ark of the covenant and the mercy seat, the One that was to enter into the holiest to the eternal satisfaction of God as Man. All that has now come to pass, and I say that that Man is the proper delight and object of the Christian.
I think, beloved friends, that is the way in which practically we are taught. Most of us, I think, could testify that we learn things, not with regularity but often in a very irregular way. But I think there is a regularity in the teaching of the Spirit of God, and I have tried to show this to you.
May God give to us to see the greatness of the Scriptures, the wonderful scope and character of that blessed word of God, which does not supply precepts and commandments for the first man, but the subject of which, from beginning to end, is the second Man. That is the Man to whom the Christian is joined, he is joined to the Lord, and “he that is joined to the Lord is one Spirit”.