THE SCOPE OF CHRIST'S DEATH
THE SCOPE OF CHRIST’S DEATH
I trust that I can show you that ———— is doctrinally correct. You admit that Christ died to sin, that He gave up the life to which sin could attach. Now if Christ gives up the life to which sin and responsibility could attach, then through His death, I (a believer), am free from sin, law, flesh and the world. It is plainly taught in Romans 7 that it is not the law that is dead but that I am dead to the law (the same form of expression as dead to sin) by the body of Christ. If Christ be in me the body is dead because of sin. If a man be dead he is free from the law. Excuse me, but I think you have misconceived the scope of death. You say, ‘Moreover the law is not judicially ended at all’. There you are quite right, but the man under it has died with Christ. The man is gone in death; he is judicially ended in the cross; the law is still in its full integrity; we could not become dead to it, except by the body of Christ.
As to your point, that the saints in the millennium will have the law written in their hearts, you cannot infer from this that Christ did not in His death free man from all that lay upon him; all that he was chargeable with. In a word you must admit — Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us, in death. You have confounded law with the demand of the law; the law remains, and its demand has been met; and again ([p. 136] as you see in the type in Leviticus 16) it is on the ground that the first man has been judicially ended on the cross that God sets up man in the flesh after a new manner in the millennium. Sin is gone in Christ’s death. The law’s demand has been met in Christ’s death; our old man is crucified, judicially terminated, and Paul could say “by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world” (Galatians 6: 14); there is no judicial termination anywhere else. In Christ’s death I am justified from sin. In His death the body of the flesh is destroyed. In His death I am free from the curse of the law; in His death I am crucified to the world and the world to me.
I hope you will ponder all this. The Lord help you and bless you much in apprehending the scope and vastness of Christ’s death.