NEWNESS
[p. 46] NEWNESS
Romans 6:4; Romans 7:6; Romans 12:2
What I have in mind dear brethren is to speak about ‘newness’ as it appears in these three scriptures: newness of life, newness of spirit, and newness of mind by the renewing of our mind. The thought appearing in this threefold way in this epistle shows that it is a fundamental one, and correspondingly involves what is different in a religious sense from anything that has preceded it. The prevalence of the word ‘new’ in the book of Revelation shows unmistakably that it is to mark the assembly at the end of the dispensation. We have it written in the term “new Jerusalem” to the overcomer in the assembly at Philadelphia, as if to remind us that the overcomer would know that the word ‘new’ fits at the end as it did at the beginning.
Religion has become prevalent not in the heathen or Jewish sense but in the Christian sense, using common phraseology. When Romans was written religion was either Pagan or Jewish. Now we have the Pagan continuing, and the Jewish only in a little way. We have Mahometanism and we have about a quarter of the world’s population nominally Christian, so that the idea of religion is extensive and varied, Christendom being subdivided as we know, alas, into many sects. But whilst there are many and whilst there is variety, yet there is nothing in the accepted Christianity of the day that is properly new, nothing new in the sense in which this verse speaks of newness. I should say a fourth of the world’s population has become Christianised. The Lord had directed the apostles to make disciples of all the nations, and what has happened is Christianisation of them which really means no change of heart in the [p. 47] nations, characteristically, and there being no change of heart, however good their teaching may be in creeds or the like, there is nothing new in any sense in which these scriptures speak of newness. There are real Christians, of course, among them for God. There are myriads unknown to us not enjoying their privileges. Thus, of course, one makes allowances for them. I am speaking of the general profession. Hence in the last days the idea of newness in divine things is as imperative to be understood as it was at the beginning.
Christianity really is new, meaning that there was nothing like it before. There was nothing current like it before, neither when it was inaugurated, nor shall there be anything like it. And whilst public history shows that it returned to the ordinary, it took on the ordinary religious garb, the Lord has not lost sight of newness, and has wrought in our times to bring it to light. I mean newness in the sense in which it is spoken of in these verses.
The first is newness of life which includes in its application, being elementary, every young Christian here as well as every old Christian. That is what the scripture requires of every believer baptised according to this chapter; and what is in view is not only life but newness of life. God had the thought of life in mind in coming in to order things as we have in the creation. He reached the thought on the third day. But the idea was not newness. It was simply the question of vegetable life, but there is remarkable correspondence in the passages in the record of the third day in Genesis 1 and Romans 6, that is the third day brought out the emerging of the dry ground from the envelopment of waters that had hitherto covered the earth. There is remarkable correspondence, for the believer in Romans 6 has come out similarly. He has been under the waters of baptism and it is not only that there is baptism to Christ but [p. 48] unto His death, and His death meant being engulfed. He went to the bottom of the mountains. Deep called unto deep as He was in death. The earth and the bars were round about Him, He says Jonah 2:6, Jonah being a figure, so that baptism is intended to be a real symbol for the Christian, that is, that he has been not only baptised unto Christ. Sprinkling might do for that in a way, but being baptised unto Christ’s death requires more than sprinkling as a symbol. It requires immersion. That is to say that the believer in principle accepts that Christ’s death was really intended to be his. Christ was immune from death. Death had no power over Him. He was the Author of life. He entered into death vicariously, and hence we understand that being baptised unto His death, that death was ours. It was a vicarious death but it was ours and it should be accepted in all its significance as Christ realised it. It was reality to Him. He tasted it. He tasted it in all its reality and it is for the believer to accept it in that sense, so that he comes out of it as the earth emerged by the commandment of God out of the envelopment of the waters, and it was required to bring forth grass and herbs and trees bearing fruit. The believer now has emerged intelligently out of the waters of death and it is that he should walk in newness of life. Romans contemplates us as the same individuals that went into death. It contemplates us here where we were, where we sinned, where we dishonoured God, and dishonoured man, dishonoured ourselves, dishonoured creation. In that very environment, in that very spot, there is to be something new.
Then we find another type in the deluge. The earth again emerged from the waters of death but with the added thought of the means of life, not vegetable life, but animal life and human life appearing in newness. That was the divine thought, dear brethren, that it should not be the same type of man that had caused God grief. “Only evil the whole day” — that was the experience the blessed God had in looking down from heaven before the deluge. He did not intend that to be resumed. He intended newness of life, a new order of things, at least figuratively, and so it was. Genesis 9 is beautifully fresh coming in after Genesis 8, in which we are told that Jehovah smelled a sweet savour, a savour of rest. There was some indication there for it is a question of divine experience. Let us not be afraid of the word ‘experience’ as applied to God, using it in a holy, reverent way. What an experience is depicted in Genesis 6 and now God would build on it so as to bring in another experience for Himself, and as He looks at anyone of us here tonight, what He has in mind is that He should have another experience, and that the believer should have another experience. Think of the life of God. Think of the joy He has found in man. Now Genesis 8 points to that, so beautifully set out on the banks of the Jordan. Jehovah smelled a sweet savour, a sweet savour of rest. God would have us to understand what He has in that incense, what experience He had in that odour of rest from the willing sacrifice, the intelligent sacrifice of Noah. And so He entered into the covenant. Chapter 9 is beautifully fresh in that sense. How God took man up would indicate what delight He was going to have in a new world. I am speaking of what stands out and what is realised now is that Christ has become man. I am not intimating for a moment that God did not know what would happen. But what a time was before God! What did He anticipate? He was going to have a time for Himself. Let us not overlook that. What a delight for God! There was to be a suitable state of things while earth remains, that there should be seed time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night. He was going to have a time for Himself. God’s own affections entered into this [p. 50] from the very outset. What a time He is going to have when the Head of the new system of things comes into power. God has blessed and is not repentant. The blessing stood, and it has come down through Shem, and not for one moment did God forget His line, the delight of His heart. It was only a matter of time. One day is as a thousand years and a thousand years as one day, 2 Peter 3:8. He was anticipating Jesus. There was the idea of a renewed earth and newness of life, and God entered into covenant with man. The power was there and the power remains fully realised in Jesus on the banks of the Jordan, and He entered into death there figuratively, a figure of righteousness pointing to His own death where it was tasted as He only could taste it. He tasted it vicariously for everything as we are told. Infinitude enters into that, that He could take account of everything knowing well the divine mind as to things and every person — the hairs of our heads are even numbered, Matthew 10:30. What infinitude entered into that moment when the Lord Jesus entered into death. How calculated everything was. How perfectly and infinitely balanced were His mind and His affections as He entered into death. God was before Him. He spoke to Him as God on the cross. Man also was before Him, knowing all that was in man and all that he was in his guilt before God. All that and infinitely more was in the mind of our Saviour as He entered into death. How real it all was. The thought in this chapter is to bring us to that. How small in our minds we may be, being in the presence of the infinitude of the death of Jesus, as to all that entered into it, what death really was. The waters of baptism meant that. It is only a figure for us, but the more we clothe it with those thoughts the more we shall understand and profit by baptism.
So the thought is now that He was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father. What a thought [p. 51] that is to be brought in. We have in the previous chapter the glory of God. We rejoice in hope of it. We have been saying together already today, God would cause the glory to enter into our minds, not exactly in our conversion when the light of the gospel comes to us first, but if the gospel is rightly presented, it will bring rays of glory into the souls of the listeners. It involves the gospel of the glory, what God is, and then further, it is the idea of the resurrection of Jesus, that is, what Jesus was to God consequent upon all this that I have been saying. “Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I might take it again”, John 10:17. What He was to His Father as He lay there in death! What experiences did God have during those three days and three nights! Did it ever enter into your mind that God had experience during those three days and three nights? What was it to Him? The object of His affections lay there in death. Was that nothing to Him? He did not lie there because of Himself. No, He died there vicariously. I want to say that the grave is as vicarious as the cross. God was deprived of Him. What experience was that? Think of what it was to God. Let us not think that God is any different to us in that respect. He has feelings and affections. What was it to Him to be deprived of His Beloved, the supreme, infinite Object of His heart during three days and nights? It was new experience for Him, and those pent-up feelings, holy affections waited the moment that was required. We may find it difficult to work out, but God worked it out perfectly during those three days and nights. It meant more to Him than it meant to any other. When the moment came those affections burst forth, the glory of the Father was there, power was there, but glory was there. How God would appeal to us by the idea of glory. He was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father. Think of what those affections were as deprived of [p. 52] their object. Now the time had come when He could secure eternally those affections. The Father reached forth and took Him out of death in that sense. What did He die to secure? Disciples — that there should be some continuation in us of that life that was so delightful to God. That is the idea.
So you can understand that when Phoebe from Cenchrea arrived at Rome with this letter they would read it. The whole assembly would come together in one place to read this letter from Paul. Many of them had not seen him. They were going to have a time, you may be sure. They would come together reverently and attentively and these pages would be read over, and they would say. What did this word ‘newness’ mean. Could Phoebe tell them? No doubt the letter was written in Greek, and would probably be translated into Latin as read in Rome, but you may be sure it was a matter of inquiry as to the meaning of this word ‘newness’. And the sisters in the meeting would ask Phoebe about it too. You may be sure that Phoebe would tell them what she knew about the word ‘newness’ from her acquaintance with the great servant. She had a letter of commendation from the apostle. You may be sure that the brethren would enquire from her, too, and they would say, Well, it is certainly not the kind of life that is led here in Rome. There were some of them in the Palace, at least in later years, and doubtless there were then. The palace life was known and what a life! The senatorial life was known. The military, too, was known, and what a life! There was nothing new about these features of life. There were no features of Christ about them — nothing new in them, nothing new at all. There were those who attended the shows, a word which has acquired great significance in modern days referring to theatres and cinemas and the like. These had a great place in the ordinary conversation of the Romans, and Christians would say, ‘It cannot mean that’. There is nothing new in these things, nothing new at all. Christians there in Rome would have to come to the conclusion, as doubtless they did, that newness of life meant the kind of life that shone in Jesus as here upon earth — that kind of life! There is another wonderful type of this chapter, that is Exodus 15, Exodus 16, Exodus 17, when the Israelites came out of Egypt where their tastes had been very much like the Egyptians’ tastes. In the wilderness they thought of them. They relished the garlic and onions and flesh and fish and cucumbers. They did not lose their relish for those strong savouries. But we are told that the waters they found after they crossed the Red Sea were brackish. They were unpalatable. The young Christian finds that although he has found a little relief in the gospel there are things brethren are going on with that are not just to his liking, not just palatable. You would rather be somewhere else, maybe, than here. Things are not just palatable, and what happened was that Moses himself could not meet the situation. He had had to do with Egypt, too, in his early days for forty years. He had had to do with the fleshpots of Egypt. No doubt he drank deeply into the pleasures of Egypt, pleasures of sin, but he chose other things besides. He chose “rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season”, Hebrews 11:25. It was a choice according to God, but in the wilderness he did not know how to meet this matter. There was the brackish water and he did not know how to meet it, and God had to show him. There is this principle of being shown and if you young Christians keep with the brethren you will be shown. Moses was shown. The Lord showed him the wood. Some say it was the cross. Though it does mean the cross, it means Christ. It was a new kind of thing. It means that He was in death Himself. It means that He tasted death, and the believer says, ‘if He tasted it, He has done everything for me’. The fact that He has been into death has changed it. In the next chapter you get the manna. What is it? The people did not know what it was. It was new. Nobody could understand the meaning. All the learning of Rome and of Greece could not instruct them as to the meaning of the manna, as to what it means spiritually — the life of Jesus here upon the earth — what that was, and that is the idea for you young believers to get hold of, that the thing is entirely new. A small round thing like a coriander seed came down at a certain time in the morning and there it lay on the desert. What is it? The Holy Spirit will tell you. Nobody gets on in Christianity who does not question. You will get answers as soon as you question. The Spirit of God is here to answer every spiritual question that rises in believers’ hearts, so that you will get to understand what this new thing is, what the life of Jesus is. He has been into every circumstance that any one of us can be in, sin apart, and we have to understand what that means, how we can live outside those things I have been speaking of in the city of Rome, court life, senatorial life, the sports that were current, and the thousands of other things that people go in for. How will you get on without them? Let every young person ask himself before God. You will find you will get on without them. What are these Christians living on? There is no music, nothing to attract people, not a thing. Nothing to attract the flesh. That is the idea. What is it? Have you not found it? Nearly everybody here has found it. What is this new thing? It is Christ. He is the hidden manna. But nevertheless the same Christ that was here and could be seen at any time in Palestine in those years of His wonderful ministry, for it is said that he not only took a bondman’s form but took His place in the likeness of men, Philippians 2:7. You would [p. 55] see a wonderful Man. Others would see nothing but a carpenter. The spiritual eye could see the manna. What was there? Something new that had never been before. That is the idea in the wilderness, that we might walk, not merely attend the meetings. We do breathe life and enjoy it together, of course, but walking is a bond that we might walk in newness of life. God sees that His people are sustained by other things than what are current in this world. Much more might be said about them.
Now I come to the thought of newness of service, that we might serve in newness of spirit. That becomes very practical, dear brethren, and the Lord puts great stress on the idea of the service of God at the present time, and there is always a tendency to drop to the level of what is current in service. Young people always enquire at the outset when light begins to dawn on them, ‘Why have we not got this and that?’ What you need is this seventh chapter of Romans. Newness of life is more general. The whole public life, the ordinary life of the Christian is new in principle and the heart of God is delighted with it. Would that we could take that in — the experience with God, not only our experience with Him but His experience with us. The chapter is a struggle. It is a struggle till the day dawns and the believer says, “I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God”, Romans 7:25. That is the idea of newness of service — serving in newness of spirit here. It works out in our assembly meetings, that we do not drop down into the letter, and it is very common, you know. We slip into it very readily without discerning it, sitting down just in a religious way, leaving our houses in a religious way to attend the meetings and sitting down in a religious way. It is all the letter or very largely so. That is what this chapter would check, so that we should keep in mind that those who serve should do [p. 56] so in lowliness, in entire freedom from legality, in a reverential way in the presence of God — serving in newness of spirit, what God has before Him — not in the oldness of the letter. Under this heading it is to be understood that the hymn book is not a prayer book. It is not what a prayer is in current religion. It is something that is to be used in the spirit. It is a question of the spirit, what the spirit of worship is to be. So we do not make beaten tracks in the hymn book. What I mean is that the hymn book that God has provided, as we believe He has, is to be used in the spirit. “I will sing with the spirit and with the understanding”, meaning that I have a spirit, I have something that is in agreement with God, something by which I am in touch with God, and that is brought into gain governed by my understanding, so that in assembly I am in relation to God consciously, not seeking to serve in the letter but in the spirit. All that is done is done as controlled by the renewed mind. That is the next ‘new’. The mind is brought in at the end of the chapter. There it is the dominant thought, “I myself with the mind”. I am now coming on in the epistle to the idea of serving God, and the mind is dominant. It is a great thing to get into a scriptural way of thinking and the place it gives this great faculty that God has given to us in His service so that we should be set in the assembly, that we should be able to sit steadily controlled by the mind. We know what to do so that we are not carried about by our feelings. We know what governs us and what to do.
“I myself with the mind serve the law of God”. Then it leads on. Chapter 8 is full of the Holy Spirit. The thought is that the soul becomes bathed in the Holy Spirit in Romans 8. Chapters 6 and 7 really set us up on mount Sinai in type, where we serve God. They were to serve God on that mount. It is the same thing only in newness of spirit, not in oldness [p. 57] of letter, and then the mind is dominant. The wonderful faculty God has provided for man has not changed, as it were, and chapter 12 shows that it is renewed. It is a new kind of mind. That enters into the holy position in the wilderness. I have taken up an attitude of serving God in His mountain and I am to do it in newness of spirit and I am to be controlled by the mind.
Now I come to the idea of sacrifice. There is no real service of God apart from sacrifice. There is the great sacrifice of Christ and in those who serve that great thought is to be reproduced. Chapter 12 brings in the idea of sacrifice so that it is to present our bodies “a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your intelligent service”, Romans 12:1. We are not to be conformed to this world. We have to be transformed. It is a real change by the renewing of the mind. That is another thing. The renewing of the mind is a process that is effected by the Spirit. It is going on all the time. Let us subject our minds, dear brethren, to the Spirit. The Spirit takes charge of the mind. It is dominant in Romans 7 but the Holy Spirit takes charge of the situation in chapter 8. The believer is a sort of institution and the Holy Spirit is in charge of each one. What a chapter it is. Chapters 9, 10 and 11 are prophetical. Chapter 8 properly links up with chapter 12. The believer bathed in the thought of the Spirit of God is brought to this that he is to be transformed by another instrumentality. That is the renewing of the mind. This is to be understood. The texture of one’s mind is changed and it is a totally new mind. The greatest minds, the greatest individuals are not able to understand for a moment that renewed mind. They simply cannot. It is beyond them. Let there be no attempt at all to get down to the level of man’s intellect. It is something altogether new. It is to enter into the service of God in the sense of sacrifice. It sees at once that sacrifice [p. 58] is essential to the service of God so that the body which every believer has is a means of sacrifice and is far more important in God’s eye than millions of money. God needs Christians endued by the Spirit of God and indwelt by the Spirit and in this sense there is a new state of things in us. The body is available and presented living. One might say that in chapter 8 it says it is dead. So it is, but only in a moral sense. The body is dead because of sin. It becomes a corpse in the mind of the believer, no longer to be a vehicle for the expression of the mind of the flesh. In chapter 12 it begins with what is living — every member vitalised by the blessed presence of the Spirit of God and so presented to God. Think of one’s body being capable of being presented to God, not what it has been, but what it is through the redemptive work of Christ, that it can be presented to God, a living sacrifice, and it is by this principle of the renewal of the mind that we prove what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God. I am perfectly clear of the wilderness, no longer complaining, but restful and satisfied. I see that every item of the will of God is good, proving it. It is a wonderful thing to find it is in the Scriptures — another thing to prove it, to prove what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God; and now this is the great thought of newness. It is something entirely new and different from what is current in every religion. It is what God is looking for, as I said before of the book of Revelation, what God is looking for in these last days.
May God bless His word.