"THE END OF ALL FLESH IS COME BEFORE ME"

“THE END OF ALL FLESH IS COME BEFORE ME”

The first and chief thing for my soul is to be assured that my sin, as it is in God’s estimate, has been put away according to His mind. It is of all importance that I think of it and seek to enter into what it is in the mind of ^[p. 303] God. No man but one, the Lord Jesus Christ, has ever, or could ever measure or apprehend what sin is in the sight of God; and He alone therefore knew what was to be removed. So that, even if I were competent to remove it, I should be unable to do so, simply because I do not know the measure of the offence man has done against God. The moment I see and regard my sin as it is in God’s sight, I am convinced that - as I cannot estimate it as He does - if it is to be removed, and I am to be placed in the sense of complete freedom from every charge and claim as a responsible being, I cannot by any means attempt it. If I am cleared perfectly according to His mind and holiness, He must have done it for me, thus establishing to my heart His perfect love, and that grace reigns through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord. The great delay or hindrance to quickened souls in reaching peace or deliverance is that they are occupied with sin as it is in their own judgment and feeling, but not as it is in God’s; and this leads to perfectionism in one form or another.

It is often not easy to distinguish whether one regards sin as it is before God, or as it is in one’s own mind. The latter I call sensibility and the former conscience. When conscience is at work the sin is felt and thought of as it is before God. “Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight”. When it is merely sensibility, I consider some sins worse than others, according to the measure of moral refinement I may have reached. It would be interesting - though it would disclose how we deceive ourselves - to observe how we speak and feel about sins, not as they are before God, but as they affect us socially; for instance, drunkenness is considered much worse than covetousness. Thus when man’s sensibility becomes the arbiter of good and evil, there is ever an effort, according as one has a desire after holiness, to correct or modify every manner or way offending against this movable standard. I say movable because it is evident that as my sense of right or wrong ^[p. 304] alters and improves, so my standard must be changed and advanced. There is an attempt to reach a standard which seems possible to a man in the flesh, and the law, as of God, is adopted as that which could be kept and obeyed in the eye of man. It is of immense support to the religionist that what he seeks should be approved of God, especially if there be life in his soul. The young man in the gospel had kept, from his youth up, every law relating to man which the Lord named to him; but the Lord questioned him only with regard to five commandments, all relating to man, and which a thoroughly amiable man might have kept; but he was not examined on the four relating to God, and the tenth, “Thou shalt not covert”, which would have touched the inner springs if he were quickened of God. When one is born again, if there is a work of the conscience, there must be a sense of inner depravity, a law in my members warring against the law of my mind and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. The sense of this does not arise until there is a divine principle working and living in my heart, and when I delight in the law of God after the inner man.

It is clear that the conscience is truly awakened as to what is due to God, because of the sentiments of the new nature in me, that begin to find that “in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing”; and I long, as seeing what would suit me, to be delivered from the body of this death - not now to improve it, but to be delivered from it. It is then that I in conscience rise in delight of heart to the full work of the cross. Nothing can afford me perfect freedom from the old Adam state but the knowledge that God has removed it entirely from His own eye in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. As soon, then, as I feel sin as it is in God’s sight, and thus find that I can hardly attain in any degree to the knowledge of the measure of my offence before Him, I begin to apprehend the greatness and fulness of His grace in removing it all from His own eye according as He regards it. And when ^[p. 305] this is made known to me, I see that in Christ I am not only free from everything, according to the mind of God, but that as He has removed all according to its measure and extent in His sight, I am completely released in the measure and extent in which I see it myself. If the offence I have done against God can be measured only by Him, it is evident that no one could bear judgment of it in order to free me but One - His own Son, who knew the measure of it. He became a man, though the Son of God; and of Himself making Himself a sacrifice for sin, He removed it from the eye of God according to the measure it was in His mind. He was made sin and suffered for it fully, because He knew fully what it was in God’s sight. Now as He has removed it according to God’s estimate, it is evident that it must be gone according to mine, however much my sense of it may increase. And therefore it is of immense moment that I should believe that God has removed in the cross everything in me that could offend Him; that it is now judicially true for the believer that the end of all flesh is come before God. For then I am not only clear of it before Him through faith in Christ, but as the old man is crucified with Christ, I have nothing to work on or improve. I have only to keep it crucified, where God has placed it.

In the epistle to the Romans, Christ is first “set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood”. This relieves the soul of the fear of judgment, for now God can be just and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus. This answers to Exodus 12; there is an escape from judgment, but there is no change of place. As the Israelite was still in the land of Egypt, so is the believer, who is not beyond Exodus 12, still in the place of judgment, and his relief does not go beyond an assurance that God will not judge him. There is no sense of relationship, nor any sense of joy in God. There is a sense, and a very blessed one, that there is a full escape from judgment through the blood of Christ in the very ^[p. 306] place of judgment. The most a soul in this state can do is to dwell on the great fact of how Christ by His blood has sheltered and rescued us; there can never be any apprehension of a child’s place or joy in God in this state. There must be a continual and exclusive occupation, for sensible relief or refreshment, with the sufferings and work of Christ, to effect and assure us of this state; and this is seen in the hymns and prayers which are its offspring. A believer can be quite true and genuine, though he has not yet learned more of the grace of God than that the blood of Christ has availed to shelter him from the judgment of God. But then he cannot turn his eyes to anything outside of Egypt; he is necessarily occupied with safety, because he is still in the place of danger, like a rescued mariner in a life-boat. The foaming sea, the scene of judgment, engrosses the attention, or at best, the One by whom the safety is secured. It is easy for anyone to discern and determine whether he has really got a knowledge of grace beyond this place and experience.

Now when a soul advances by faith to the resurrection of Christ, there is not only the assured forgiveness of sins - for He was delivered for our offences - but there is, consequent on this, the non-imputing of sin and the necessity of righteousness. This experience discloses to the soul an entirely new region. The Red Sea is passed. The death of Christ, triumphing over every adverse power, is known to the soul, and there is faith in God who raised Him from the dead. Now the soul is directly and distinctly turned to another side. It is no longer Egypt and its terrors which is before it; it is God, and our being before Him without a single disturbing element. Three great themes engage our hearts when we have come to this, namely, peace, the favour in which we stand, and rejoicing in hope of the glory of God. It is bright above in the assurance that we are in righteousness, so that we joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have received the reconciliation.

^[p. 307] But though, as I have shown, there is righteousness and peace when I have believed in God who raised Christ from the dead, and now my heart can dwell on the advantages secured to me in the presence of God - God the source of joy to me - yet I am not consciously in Christ until I see that the old man has been judicially removed from the eye of God. While the old man remains, however intelligently and blessedly I am through grace set free from what was due to him, yet if he still continues, there must be distress as to the principle of evil working in him. The more highly favoured I am through God’s grace, the more distressed I must be that “when I would do good, evil is present with me”. Therefore, when I find that, for one believing in Christ, the end of all flesh is come before God in the cross, it is not now merely the safety that occupies me, nor the advantages on God’s side, though these are now uninterruptedly assured to me; but I, in Christ, now know that His Father is my Father, and His God my God, and the scenes of the glory, not merely the hope of it, now open out and delight my heart. The mystery of God, in which are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, becomes the natural domain of my heart. If there be a true conscience, one cannot ever rise beyond his place with God. The highest and greatest object before it necessarily characterises and colours all his thoughts and expressions. The relation of God to him must ever determine his practical and enjoyable state. The utterance of the soul of one true to his relation is more striking and effective than that of one who assumes a higher state which he has not reached, however entitled to it he be.

To sum up. The first great and continual sense before the soul should be the way and measure in which everything is regarded by God. When I have this sense ever before me, I not only see how sin must be to Him, but I also see how He in His love has perfectly removed from His own eye, righteously, in the cross of His Son, everything in the believer, in act and state, which could ^[p. 308] again cause a distance on His side or an interruption of His love. It is only when the believer enters into the fulness of His grace that he finds, not only that he is accepted in the Beloved in the relationship of a son, but that he cannot take into account, for treatment in any form, the old man in himself, seeing that it has been removed in the sight of God. And surely if it has been set aside in the cross of Christ, in His sight, according to His measure, it must be according to man’s in any and every degree.

Again, as everything of the old man has been cleared away in the cross, I am no more in the Adam state before God; “ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his”. I am consequently in Christ and not in Adam, and here not only is a new state opened out to me, as I find in Romans 8, but I am in quite a new position as being in Christ, which is opened out in Colossians. So the position in Colossians cannot be apprehended until the state in Romans has been entered into, and the state in Romans cannot be reached until we know peace fully in the efficacy of the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. I must know that through grace I am in Christ before I can survey and apprehend the dignities of this great position; and as I do so, I begin to connect myself with the heavenly places, the place where He is, as well as with His glory. I cannot understand His glory until I have known His grace, and as I am enjoying His glory, I am in the place where it is. Thus the highest blessing is contingent on the apprehension of the fulness of grace.