DELIVERANCE FROM THE FLESH
[p. 337] DELIVERANCE FROM THE FLESH
We have had before us, on two former occasions, the subject of deliverance; and I can understand the question being asked, What is the great importance to the Christian of deliverance? I am not now speaking of conversion, and I do not want any one here to confound deliverance with conversion. The fact is, we are converted before we know much about deliverance. Deliverance is entered into by a Christian after he is converted, not before. I quite admit that there is a great change brought about in conversion as the effect of the light of God having entered the soul. It is totally impossible that the light of God should shine into a man’s soul without producing a great effect, and that effect is conversion. But that is not the same thing as deliverance. It is when there has been the turning to God in conversion, that a person begins to prove the great reality of bondage and need of deliverance, and not, I think, until then. You may take it for granted that deliverance is not experienced until the need of it is realised. It is when the light of the gospel has really entered in and the Spirit of God has been received, that the need of deliverance is felt, and the way of it is found. But what is the end of deliverance? What is the gain of it? I will tell you; it is essential in order that you may enter into the thought and purpose of God concerning you. It is entirely out of the question that any one could enter into this apart from deliverance. If I were asked what my impression is as to the need which exists among Christians in the present day, I should say it is the need of deliverance.
[p. 338] The subject of deliverance has been before us on previous occasions, as I may say, partially. First I spoke of deliverance from sin and the world, the two being very intimately connected. Last time we had another aspect of deliverance, and that was, from the law. Our subject now is one which goes to the bottom of the matter, and that is deliverance from the flesh. That is what I want to bring forward at this time, if the Lord enable me. Deliverance from the flesh is the point that is reached in the passage I read in Romans 8; and it is in order that the Christian may enter into life, for in Romans 8 you come to this, that you are passed out of death into life. As far as I understand the structure of the epistle, I do not think the Christian reaches life as regards himself until he comes to chapter 8. In chapter 6 I see life in Christ; but I do not see life spoken of as in the Christian until chapter 8. The question of life is and must be mixed up with the question of deliverance; and until deliverance is realised, I do not think any Christian knows or can know very much about life; for he has to pass “out of death into life”. I refer to verse 13 of chapter 8, where the apostle says, “If ye live after the flesh, ye shall die; but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live”. That is the point where you come to life as to the believer, and then immediately consequent upon that, the Spirit of sonship is brought in. Now you get to the idea of correspondence to Christ. “As many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God”. It is the first time you get any such thought in the epistle as that you are “sons of God”. It adds, “ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father”. You are come now to the answer in the believer to chapter 5. In chapter 5, “the love of God is shed [p. 339] abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us”; and now in chapter 8 we cry, “Abba, Father”; and the idea of crying, “Abba, Father” is, that you respond to the love that has been made known to you. Depend upon it there is a good deal passes between those two points, between the thought of God’s love shed abroad in the heart and the time that the Christian really understands what it is to cry, “Abba, Father”. Then it is that it says, “The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God: and if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint heirs of Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together”. And that is the furthest point to which doctrinally the epistle brings the Christian — the object of the epistle is gained, that is, the Christian is brought into the truth of life.
Allow me to say one word about life before I pass on. You cannot rightly talk about life apart from position; you must have a divinely ordered position in which to live. You get the position unfolded here, namely, that of sons or children of God, consequently you can now talk about life. It is curious that Paul constantly takes the opposite order to John. For instance, in John 20, the position is first given, and then the life is brought in: the Lord says, Go tell my brethren, “I ascend to my Father, and to your Father”, and afterwards He breathes on them and says, “Receive ye the Holy Ghost”. Here in Romans 8 it is the opposite order, you are in the Spirit and the Spirit is life, and by the Spirit you mortify the deeds of the body, and then you come to the truth of sonship. Life for the Christian really means correspondence to Christ, and until you have got to the point of correspondence to Christ you have not got the true idea of life.
[p. 340] Now I come back to my present subject, the very important question of deliverance from the flesh. It will lead me to bring before you, first what is meant by the expression “flesh” in Scripture, and then what is the way of deliverance. This is found in principle in a single expression, “You are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you”. Now, I think, that a believer receives the Spirit some considerable time, in a general way, before he learns that he is in the Spirit; for it is evident from chapter 5 that when we believe in God who raised up Christ from the dead, then the Spirit is given and the love of God is shed abroad by the Spirit in our hearts. But the believer may not have come to the sense that he is “in the Spirit”; though it be true of him as having received the Spirit. Let me go back a little over the epistle, because the point is so important. You get conversion fully at the close of chapter 4, when there is the apprehension that Christ “was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification”; that is, the believer is not only cleared as to the question of offences, but as to the question of death, and it is when he comes to that point that he learns the attitude in which God is toward believers, through our Lord Jesus Christ; that is, by the apprehension of what prevails in the Lord Jesus Christ, the last Adam, the believer learns what the attitude of God is toward him. And not only that, but the Holy Ghost is given to him; that is, he stands in the presence of the grace of God, and in the light as God is in the light; God is fully revealed to him, and he knows the grace of God, which is established through the Lord Jesus Christ, the last Adam.
Now remember, that so far it is the grace of God toward the believer; and you are entitled to that from the very beginning, and the learning of what [p. 341] you are for God will not improve that. I quite admit it may enable you to enjoy it more; but no amount of apprehension of what you are for God will ever improve what God is towards you, because that is established and assured eternally in the Lord Jesus Christ, and therefore it cannot alter. It is not a question of what the grace of God is toward each individual believer, but of what is established in the last Adam, the Lord Jesus Christ; and that describes what the grace of God is toward the believer and toward every believer. Therefore you never can improve upon the grace of God. And then, as I said before, the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost given to us; but in that the Holy Ghost is not acting on our side but on God’s side, shedding abroad God’s love; He is not making us love God, but He is teaching the love of God towards us; it is God’s love, not ours. I am loth to leave the point, because I feel we cannot really enter very much into the great question of what we are before God if we are not well established in the truth of what God is towards us, for that is where the grace of God is known. And the measure and description of what God is towards us is what is established in the last Adam, the Lord Jesus Christ; that as we got sin and death by the first Adam, so we get the grace of God, divine favour and everything else by the last Adam. “As through one offence towards all men to condemnation, so through one righteousness towards all men unto justification of life”; and it goes on to say, that “as sin has reigned by death, so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life, by Jesus Christ our Lord”. It is all established in the Lord Jesus Christ, the last Adam, the Head of all; and the Head describes the attitude in which God is toward all.
Then comes the great question of what we are [p. 342] for God. And that brings in a most important truth, the truth of another Man. If I might use the expression, speaking reverently, God has changed the man. The practical difficulty for us is to change the man; and we could not do this if we did not first understand how God has changed the man. For four thousand years God was dealing with one man; but now God’s ways are all displayed in another Man, and that is the great truth that chapter 6 brings in.
A person newly converted of necessity begins to be troubled by finding that he still has that in him which tends to connect him with the whole course and order of things down here, that is, sin. I do not think there ever was a converted person who was not troubled more or less by that. He did not trouble about it before, because, though it is very possible he knew something about sins, he did not know much about sin. Many a person when first converted thinks that the whole course is cleared, that it will be all plain sailing. But it is not quite such plain sailing, for the reason I have spoken of, that he finds he has got this terrible principle in him, which always tends to connect his soul with the course of things down here. Also he has to find out another painful truth, and that is, that he is weak; he might have been strong in sin, but when it comes to be a question of what pleases God, and of the expression of God’s will, which the law is, then one finds he is powerless for good. Those two lessons I believe every converted person has to learn.
Now the first thing the Spirit of God brings to your attention is this, that God is not expecting improvement or strength in you, but He presents before your soul the great truth of another Man, who having been proved and tested, has entered in to His entire satisfaction. He is on that ground, He is not on the ground of an innocent man, but “[p. 343] In that he died, he [p. 344] died unto sin once; in that he liveth, he liveth unto God”. Then the Spirit of God says further, “You likewise reckon yourselves to be dead unto sin, but alive unto God in Christ Jesus”; you reckon yourselves in correspondence to that Man. If I might use the expression which I did a fortnight since, that is the leverage in the soul; for so long as I have any idea that God is looking for improvement or victory in me, I shall do no good at all; nor until I apprehend the great truth that there is another Man, who has been raised from the dead by the glory of the Father. That is the second Man, and that is what made me use the expression a short time since that God has changed the man. It is no longer testing or proving or anything of the kind; that went on for four thousand years; now there is another Man before God, and all starts from Him, and the Christian is going to be in His likeness, “If we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection”. It is simply a question of being conformed to Him.
And in connection with this, another truth which I have also touched upon on a previous occasion comes out in chapter 7 — the believer is “married” to Him who is raised from the dead. The first bond, that is, law, has been dissolved by the death of Christ; and it is now another husband to whom the Christian is united, and is consequently subject, and at the same time deriving character from Him. So it is not improvement at all, but another Man.
I very much wish you to bear in mind, if the Lord enable you, what I have tried to bring before you, this great truth of another Man, because it is there you get the thought of life brought in; not subjectively in you, but life in another, life in Christ Jesus. What does it mean? I will tell you — there is one Man living actually, “In that he died, he died unto sin once; in that he liveth, he liveth unto God”; and living unto God is now all on the principle of resurrection. Even in regard to the saints in the millennium that will live on earth, I believe they will live on the ground of resurrection; I do not say in resurrection, but on the ground of resurrection; because it is the presence of Christ risen which will relieve them of death. Now the Christian properly lives on the ground of resurrection. The only possible ground on which a man could live for God is that of resurrection, for death is on man, and so it says, “Since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection from the dead” — that is the ground of life, “As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive”. Thus you have come to this point, the apprehension of life; I do not say life in the Christian, we have not come to that yet, but life in one Man, as it says in verse 2 of this chapter, “The law of the Spirit of life”, not “in me”, but “in Christ Jesus”, the One who is spoken of in chapter 6, as having died unto sin once, but living unto God. If you do not apprehend life in that way, objectively, in Christ, you do not get the idea of life at all, because the great thing that Scripture brings before you is life in another Man, and on a totally different footing; He is raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, that is the ground of life now. Christ is as Man in the Father’s presence, to the Father’s delight; He is everything that the heart of the Father could desire; He lives to the entire satisfaction of God. That is where life is now, in Christ Jesus, and you have to learn it as there. Many a person who has wanted to understand something about life has begun by looking at himself, and has made a fatal mistake, because he has not begun from Christ. You must learn from Christ, you must first see what has come to pass in Christ before you [p. 345] can learn what is true in yourself, for the grace of God puts you in correspondence to Christ; and if you do not learn what is true in Christ you cannot learn what is true in yourself.
Now when I come to the point of life in the believer, it necessarily involves the question of flesh and the Spirit. I think anybody will understand that the flesh is a very different thought from sin. I will show you that it is so in an instant. Scripture speaks of sin as having “entered into the world”, but you could not talk about the flesh having entered in. I have said before, that sin did not originate with man; it came in by man, but it existed before, “By one man sin entered into the world”. As far as I have any insight into it, I think the flesh is man’s natural condition, it is man’s nature, the seat of what I might call his moral being; thought, feeling, will and purpose all lie in the flesh. Now you can see that that is a very different thing from sin; it has become “flesh of sin”, but I do not talk about sin exactly as being man’s nature. I think the nature of an unconverted man is flesh, that is often the idea of the expression in Scripture. You find a great deal in this chapter about the “mind of the flesh”, that is, the thought and purpose of the flesh.
But now let me go back a moment. From the outset, from the time that a man through grace believes in Christ as raised again from the dead, that man receives the Holy Ghost, and the love of God is shed abroad in his heart; and he further learns another great lesson, that the first man is superseded, and that there is another Man raised from the dead in the presence of God, and that he is united to that other Man, married to Him, to use the figure of Scripture. Now what about the flesh? He has come to this point, that the flesh is radically bad, the character of the flesh is [p. 346] discovered, and there is no hope of amendment in it; he has learnt in chapters 6 and 7 that there is a principle in him, sin, which always connects him with this scene; and he has learnt another thing too, that when it is a question of the will of God he is perfectly weak, there is no hope in the flesh at all. Mark how it is put here; it says in verse 5 of chapter 8, “They that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh, but they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit. For the mind of the flesh is death, but the mind of the Spirit is life and peace. Because the mind of the flesh is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God”. Now that is the second great lesson in the chapter; the first is that there is life in Christ Jesus; the second that there is no good in the flesh, that the flesh is radically bad and God has condemned it, “God sending his own Son in the likeness of flesh of sin, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh”. And you cannot mix up the flesh with the Spirit. Many people like religious stories. Religious literature all appeals to religious flesh. You may depend upon it people would never coin religious stories if they did not believe in acting on religious flesh.
The practical lesson taught us in the early part of this chapter is this, that you cannot mix up flesh and Spirit, they are totally antagonistic, and there is no help in the flesh, that it is radically bad, so bad that God had to condemn it; and we have to learn the lesson, that nothing whatever is to be hoped for from the flesh. But then comes the great point for the Christian, “You are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you”. If I look to the flesh for anything, I am looking to what God has condemned, to what cannot yield anything at all for God, I am on a totally [p. 347] wrong tack, I have forgotten that I am “not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in” me. That is, the Spirit of God has taken up His abode in the Christian, not simply to shed abroad the love of God in his heart, but for another purpose now, to be to him all that the flesh was as the source and spring of thought and purpose. I have sometimes said that Scripture does not recognise two natures in the Christian; the flesh is the nature in an undelivered man; when he receives the Spirit he is “not in the flesh, but in the Spirit”, and the Spirit is not a nature but a person. And when he gets more light, it can be said of him that he has “put off the old man and put on the new”; and then the nature of the new man is the Christian’s nature — the new man is “created after God in righteousness and holiness of truth”, that is the Christian’s nature. If he should fail, and allow the flesh to come in, that does not prove to me that the flesh is his nature; it is like a foreign substance in him, it has no business to be seen, and has to be judged; but nature is what is characteristic. An unconverted man is characterised by the flesh, and there is nothing else to characterise him. With the Christian there is a new spring, and that is the Spirit. The Spirit of God has come to take the control, so that it can be said now not only that you have the Spirit, but that you are in it. Then it goes on to say, “If Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin”, but what then? “The Spirit is life”, the flesh is entirely disowned, “the Spirit is life because of righteousness”, that is, in view of righteousness; you can get no righteousness from the flesh, but righteousness has to be maintained, and so “the Spirit is life in view of righteousness”.
Then we come to another point, the ultimate raising of the body; for if the Spirit of God dwells in you it is witness that you have nothing to expect [p. 348] from the flesh, but you have everything to expect from the Spirit, righteousness, and the eventual raising up of your mortal body. Therefore you are not a debtor to the flesh, you will not get righteousness from the flesh — “He that soweth to the flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption”, that is what you will get from the flesh: “but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap eternal life”, if you want eternal life you must reap it of the Spirit — that is how Scripture puts it. It is virtually what the Lord says in John 4, “He that drinketh of this water”, that is, the water that springs from beneath, “shall thirst again, but he that drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up unto eternal life”. It is a great thing when we have really settled it in our souls that we have nothing to expect from the flesh, but everything from the Spirit that dwells in us.
Now we have come to the statement, “If you live after the flesh you shall die”; the apostle puts it in a very strong way; any person that lives after the flesh will die, all tends to that end, of the flesh he will reap corruption; “but if by the Spirit you mortify the deeds of the body, you shall live”. When I mortify the deeds of the body, then it is I am delivered from the flesh; the flesh is there, but I am no longer under the control of it; I have “put off the body of the flesh”, when I come to this point that by the Spirit I “mortify the deeds of the body”. The flesh can only work in the members, and when we mortify the deeds of the body, that is, the deeds to which the body is prone, then the apostle says, we shall live; you come on to other ground, it is, so to say, the condition on which you live. I venture to say this, that no Christian has any experience of life at all if he does not “mortify the deeds of the body”.
[p. 349] I do not deny his Christianity, and that he may know something of what the grace of God is towards him; but he has no sense of life, of correspondence to Christ, save as mortifying the deeds of the body. The principle of life in Christianity is this, that you pass out of death into life, “The Spirit is life because of righteousness”; and the practical carrying out of that is, that by the Spirit you “mortify” — you do not allow — “the deeds of the body”. They are called the deeds of the body because if the flesh works, it works in the body. Take a person that gets into a passion, it is the body that is the vehicle; the will, and the lusts of the flesh all work through the body. For my own part, I have felt that my members are my great trial. Something hasty comes to the tongue: what is it offends? The tongue, the member, What has been working there? The flesh. If the conception is there, the thing in the Christian ought to be nipped in the bud; the deeds of the body are to be mortified by the Spirit. Thus you come to this wonderful point, that now that the Spirit of God is there you are practically delivered from the dominion and control of the flesh, and the Spirit is free to do His own proper work. When the Spirit is in conflict with the flesh, He is doing the work which is necessary for the Christian, but not the work in which He delights. I put it to anybody here, if Christ has been “raised from the dead by the glory of the Father”, do you not think the Spirit of God has the most supreme delight in Christ? He has, and what do you think His delight is in the Christian? To lead him in suitability to Christ, in entire correspondence with Christ; that is His proper work, not to be simply in conflict with the flesh. I think it is miserable and degrading to think that there should be that continual conflict between the flesh and Spirit to the end of the chapter. The word as [p. 350] to the flesh lusting against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh, was spoken to Christians who were very low down.
And there is another great truth, that the Christian is now formed by the place in which Christ has set him. As surely as possible, my child is formed by my house; he is formed for good or evil by the system and framework of affections by which he is surrounded. The same thing is true of the Christian — he is set in the presence of the love of God, and is formed by the associations in which the grace of God has set him. The youngest Christian has “the love of God shed abroad in his heart”, he has the power and ability to cry “Abba, Father”; but he does not know much about it till he knows deliverance. But the moment I come to that, I am formed for God by the associations and affections in which the grace of God has set me.
As I said at the beginning, why I insist so strongly on the truth of deliverance (though I am ashamed to speak of it, because I know so little about it) is because I believe it to be of all moment if you want to enter into what the thought of God is about you. It is totally impossible to enter into the divine thought that you are the companions of Christ (for that is what God has called you to), unless you are practically set free as to the state of your soul from everything to which Christ has died, sin and the world, and law and flesh. And as I have said before, the first thing that the Spirit of God sets to work to do when He is received is to bring before your soul the great truth that God has changed His man; that all the stages of probation of the first man are completely over, all has been ended in the cross of Christ; but that another Man has come in, in whom God has been completely glorified, and that the Christian is joined to Him, to take his character from Him. Then the truth of life in [p. 351] Christ Jesus is apprehended, the true character of the flesh is discovered, and now the Christian is “not in the flesh but in the Spirit”, and the purpose of the Spirit is to lead the Christian in correspondence to Christ. That is all on the blessed ground of sonship, and “the Spirit bears witness with our spirit that we are the children of God”. We are a heavenly band.
I pray God in His great grace to make it plain to all here. All these truths we have to enter into experimentally; the mere statement of them, or the mere apprehension of them doctrinally will not suffice, will not bring deliverance to you. All has to be wrought in the soul. The soul has to learn practically and experimentally the truth of another Man, and (what is so essential if you are going to join company with that Man) that you must part company with the man that is here, the man that is dominated by sin. That is of all moment. And in that way the believer learns what the true character of the flesh is, and the righteousness of God’s judgment of it, that God has “condemned sin in the flesh”; thus the whole state has been condemned, that the believer might be “not in the flesh but in the Spirit”, that the Spirit might be life because of righteousness, and also be the Spirit of sonship to lead the believer, according to the grace of God, into what is true in Christ. May God give to us to understand it in His great grace, and to be led by the Spirit of God on that blessed line where we not only know the love of God, but where by the Spirit we respond to that love, that is, we cry, “Abba, Father”, with the blessed consciousness by the Spirit that we are the children of God; and if suffering with Him here, if in that association, that we are “heirs of God and joint heirs of Christ, if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together”.