ROMANS 6 (NOTES OF A READING)
[p. 519] ROMANS 6 (NOTES OF A READING)
CAC I suppose we have all noticed that from this point in the epistle believers are viewed as capable of taking charge of themselves. It is important to the understanding of this section of the epistle, really beginning at verse 12. It is surely consequent upon the reckoning, and upon all the previous instruction of the epistle, but the point is reached when the believer is viewed as taking charge of himself, of his mortal body and of his members.
Rem I feel I have not reached it!
CAC Well, you had better go back to chapter 3. You cannot begin the christian life at all unless you are competent to take charge of yourself.
Ques What is the power for it?
CAC The whole economy of grace is the power; it is the presentation of the whole economy of grace in the previous chapters which ensures liberty to all who come into it, and they become competent. We have seen a large ship tugged out into the main stream, and the cables are thrown off and she goes off under her own steam. The tugs have been at work here; the ministry of the glad tidings with justification, reconciliation and all the wealth of the new Head; it is like being tugged out into the main stream. Now you must go on under your own steam. The Spirit is there no doubt, but He is in the background, it is not consistent that He should be prominent here. The whole economy of grace is in view and the whole effect on those who come under it. You are no longer under law, but under grace.
Rem I still have some difficulty on the competency, what our resource is.
CAC Well, we have not read the three previous chapters; there we are brought to all the blessedness of God [p. 520] in Christ. What is the good of being a Christian if not set up in divine resources? We get it in chapters 3 - 5. The Lord is very pleased when He can trust us with our bodies and our members. No man had more honour from the Lord than the man out of whom He cast the legion of demons. When he asked to be with Him, He told him to go to his own house and show how great things God had done to him. He looked at him as perfectly competent to go single-handed into that district of ten cities. The Lord loves to trust us so that we can take charge of our bodies. So that our members are to be instruments of righteousness. We are never to use them to do anything in which they are not instruments of righteousness. It is quite certain that no one could come under the reign of grace and be incompetent.
Rem Of Christ it says He died to sin once for all, and of us that “sin shall not have dominion over you”. It is a new sphere, where you are under grace and not law.
CAC As we have been seeing, Christ is the pattern in this chapter. It is like the second Man, and the Christian is identified with Him. And there is no other way to have blessing at all but by identification with Christ and His death. What would you think of a man who said he was a Christian, and could not hold his body for God; what would you think of him? Not much! The key, as we were saying last week, to all the teaching here is, “Ye ... have obeyed from the heart the form of teaching into which ye were instructed”. The man is secured in his inward being, his affections are secured for it.
Ques Is the difficulty our slowness to take in the “in Christ” position?
CAC It lies at the back of much of our weakness. You must have your own secret with Him. All about being dead with Christ — it is your secret, it is inside, nobody knows about it. And living with Him — it is your secret. All that it is in its moral import is faith’s secret.
[p. 521] But when you come to holding your mortal body it is not secret, it is a public thing. “Your mortal body”, he says, to make us sure that he has spoken of present conditions. The secret of it is that it is “to God”; that is, it is God’s part in the matter.
Ques That allows the thought of practical experience?
CAC Christians mix divine instruction with experience, and it does not enter into divine teaching. Instruction is what is true of God, what is brought to us through Christ, and what is true of the new Head. We are able to produce in these mortal bodies what is pleasurable to God — a most wonderful thing. We are here set up in the wealth of grace and placed under the influence of the divinely appointed Head so that there should be a result for God in our members: our eyes, our ears, our hands, etc.
Rem “How ye ought to walk and please God ... that ye would abound still more” (1 Thessalonians 4: 1).
CAC It is a kind of thing in which there is a possibility of increase, but it is a primary thing that the mortal body should not come under the reign of sin. And that is my business, it is not God’s business. We often expect God to do things that He expects us to do for Him. That hangs us up, for He is waiting for us to make a move. My body and my members are to be recovered for God; if it does not begin there, it does not begin at all. It is a question as to how far we are alive. Am I alive? is the point for each one of us to face, so that God can take account of me as a living person. We are to present ourselves to God alive from among the dead. There is a mass of death in this world and out of that comes up a living person. It was a great delight to the father when he said, “Was dead and has come to life again”.
Ques In baptism are there the two thoughts — death and leadership?
CAC That is very blessed. It is important to note that when he says, “Yield yourselves to God as alive [an important word] from among the dead”, it is not a continuous process at all. The note in the Darby Translation to verse 3 says, ‘Let it have been done as a once accomplished act’.
Ques Is that particularly where our weakness lies — the lack of definiteness on our part?
CAC Arising from not understanding what a pleasure it is to God that we should be here for His pleasure.
Ques Is there a definite point when we come to it?
CAC Yes, there is a point when this yielding takes place. It is something the soul does; it is what we have to do; and do do if we understand the grace of the two previous chapters. It is a very beautiful thought, this thought of yielding. As Mr. Darby said long ago, God sets you absolutely free; now, what are you going to do?
Ques Is Lydia an illustration?
CAC Yes, there was a yielding of her house to God for His service. How soon the Philippian jailor learnt to take charge of his own body — he did it right away, and used it in the service of God. He washed the apostles’ stripes and laid a table for them. You cannot add to the immensity of the grace unfolded in chapters 3 - 5. You cannot add to any of it, you cannot possibly add to the wealth that has come to us through the new Head. It is bound to produce some practical result in the way we hold our bodies.
Ques Why is the word “bondmen” used (verses 18, 19)?
CAC The apostle shrinks from saying bondage. He says practically, I only say this because you are so dull. In one sense there is no getting out of it — out of the obligation. He talks of the new sort of bondage — you cannot get out of it.
Rem It is the bondage of love.
CAC It is what is due to God — not entirely voluntary. Yielding is out of voluntary affection, it is due to God, and the sense of obligation under grace is very important. I think it is preparatory to chapter 12. These chapters 6 - 8 are the unfolding of what it is to reign in life. The believer is set up [p. 523] in the very place of sin and death in the supremacy of life, and the first evidence of it is that he yields his body to God and his members as instruments of righteousness to God. “Instruments” is an active idea; he does not say “vessels”, which is rather a passive idea.
Rem It is what Paul speaks of in 1 Corinthians 9.
CAC Paul was not gratifying or pampering his body, but bringing it under. It is as if he would say, ‘If I was living like you I should expect to go to hell’; that is the truth of it. All that came in in chapter 3 is the result of all that came in in the first man; the effect of being connected with Christ comes out here. The gospel is the great power by which God secures it, because he tells us he preached it for the obedience of faith. There is no such thing as having faith without obedience, and if obedience is there, a man is recovered for God and the features of Christ have begun in him.
Rem It is a triumph for God to have it in testimony now.
CAC He notes every feature. He took particular notice of a man praying for the first time — there was a bit of Christ there. Ananias might safely go to such a man as that. And so it is with the first movement of what is right; every little bit of surrender under the influence of grace is very pleasing to God — a person turning away from some gratification he pursued. There is nothing right apart from the principle of obedience, that is, coming under the influence of the obedience of the One; and those who do are constituted righteous. Those connected with Adam were constituted sinners, and it is just as real in the one case as it was in the other.
Ques Why does it say, “unto holiness”?
CAC It is a very attractive little touch, to assure us that as we move on the line of righteousness we shall make progress towards holiness. There is nothing more attractive. It is very attractive to the inward man. Holiness means that one should have the same kind of intuitive abhorrence of evil that God has. One act of lawlessness leads to another act of [p. 524] lawlessness, but righteousness leads to holiness and the end eternal life. Holiness is very attractive to saints. Satan knows this and so he works on that intuitive desire, that is in all those born anew, and would direct them from the real thing to something that is only the imitation.
In Hebrews 12 we are said to be not only holy, but “partaking of his holiness”. We could not think of God having sons who were not partakers of that feature; holiness is an essential feature of sonship.
As we lay hold of the promises (2 Peter 1: 4) they bring us into the practical knowledge of God, and that results in our being partakers of the divine nature. Holiness is a deeper thing than righteousness. There is one righteousness, and in that one righteousness everything has been judged that is contrary to God. Holiness is more connected with God’s nature, righteousness is connected with His attributes.
Ques Why does he raise these questions so frequently in these sections; is it a challenge to us?
CAC Yes, he has come to our side now, and the question has to be raised. God’s side is all absolutely perfect, but then we have to take things up, and God has confidence that we shall take them up. It goes on in this chapter to all God has before Him relative to the scene of sin and death; He has before Him to bring in eternal life.
Ques Would you say a word on “freedom from sin” (verses 18, 22)? Is it the ground we are entitled to occupy? It is not the idea of sinlessness some people talk of?
CAC It does not mean that there is not sin in us. “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves” (1 John 1: 8). But then no saint in the good of the gospel is under the power of sin. It is freedom from it in the sense that it has no longer any claim on us. There is absolute moral severance from that principle brought in by the first man. The death of Christ is our title to take that ground.
Rem Hence I reckon.
CAC [p. 525] Yes, He died to sin once for all, and we are to reckon ourselves “dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus”. There is no other kind of christianity that I know of.
Rem So the Lord takes up a new position in resurrection, and so we do in a moral way and are pleasing to God.
CAC So that newness of life is linked on with His being raised by the glory of the Father.
Ques. Why “the end”?
CAC It does not mean that the end — eternal life — is to go to heaven. It is the spiritual end of this course; we shall become qualified to enjoy eternal life. It is something to be enjoyed now, but in that moral connection, following righteousness unto holiness. When the saints are together, we touch an order of things entirely outside the sphere of sin and death, in the knowledge of God and of Christ and of how He has set us together in Christ. Perhaps we might enjoy it more.
It is all there in Himself; that is, it is in no way connected with the first man, it is connected with the second Man.