NOT IN THE FLESH BUT IN THE SPIRIT
[p. 142] NOT IN THE FLESH BUT IN THE SPIRIT
It is good that our hearts should be established in the grace of God that has come to us through our Lord Jesus Christ. The death of Christ has so glorified God about sin that there is now no barrier to hinder the grace of God from flowing out in fulness of blessing to every needy sinner under heaven. The greatness of grace can only be measured by what God is, and by the Person in whom it has been set forth — our Lord Jesus Christ. He “was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification. Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ: by whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand”, Romans 4: 25; 5: 1,2.
Jesus our Lord is at God’s right hand, and He is there as our righteousness. By Him, too, we have access into God’s favour. It is not only that grace meets us in our need and distance, but it brings us near to God as those who have access into His favour. To understand this grace we need to have very distinctly before our souls the One Man by whom it has come to us. We can never learn the grace of God by thinking of those lo whom it comes; we must think of the One by whom it comes.
It is a risen and glorified Man, who is at the right hand of God in all the triumph of an accomplished redemption, who has become Head for man, and He is a life-giving Spirit. Grace reigns “through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord”, Romans 5: 21. Adam brought in sin and death, but Christ has brought in righteousness and life. And, according to grace, we have been transferred from Adam to Christ.
It is before me to call your attention especially to Romans 8: 9: “Ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you”. Our state as children of Adam is described in Romans 3:10-18. It is a terrible picture, without one redeeming feature in it. It is clear that such a state could only be condemned by God; He could not possibly take it into His favour. Hence the death of Christ was absolutely necessary to remove our whole state from before God in holy judgment. You will notice that I am not speaking now of our sins, but of our whole state as in the flesh. If the death of Christ had not made an end of it before God we could not [p. 143] have come into any blessing with God. The death of Christ is the great act of righteousness in which God has been glorified about sin, and in which our whole state as in the flesh has been condemned. It is impossible to over-estimate the importance of apprehending this great and blessed fact.
Our baptism is a figure of this. We were baptised unto Christ’s death. It was the recognition in figure that our whole state as Adam’s children must go — it must be buried out of sight. It is not in baptism that it goes from before God, but in that of which baptism is a figure — the death of Christ. We have become identified with Christ in death. This is the only way of blessing. Our flesh could not be improved or christianised; its history must be closed in death. One can be thankful for such qualities in human nature as natural affection, amiability, and so on, but they do not alter the terrible fact that “the mind of the flesh is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God; for neither indeed can it be: and they that are in flesh cannot please God”, Romans 8: 7, 8. The flesh must be condemned, and it has been condemned in the death of Christ. I entreat every young believer to ponder this well. “Our old man has been crucified with him”.
It is on this ground that we have been “made free from sin”. Sin has no longer any right to claim us. Christ has died to sin, and lives to God, and it is our privilege to take account of ourselves as having died to sin, and become alive to God in Christ Jesus.
In Romans 7 we see the exercises of one who is finding out that he is sold under sin; he is under a tyrant from which he cannot escape. Then he learns that the sin which holds him captive is in him. And, finally, he discovers that in him, that is, in his flesh, good does not dwell. I remember a young man saying to me, ‘I always knew there was plenty of bad in me, but I never knew until now that there is no good’.
In all this exercise the soul is being brought down to death. “Sin revived, and I died”. “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me out of this body of death?” Death is that state out of which nothing comes for God. When this is realised as being true of us we see the deep necessity for another Man, and for the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of life in that Man.
[p. 144] Christ Jesus is the Man of God’s pleasure, and we have every grace and blessing in Him. All is perfection there, and glorious suitability to divine love. If you have gone down into the depths of what you are, and have found that there is nothing there for God’s pleasure, what a joy it is to look up to the Man Christ Jesus and to find in Him everything that is pleasurable to God! Through God’s blessed grace on the ground of redemption you are in Christ Jesus, and the Holy Spirit given to you is “the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus”.
The Spirit of God dwelling in us is the evidence that we are no longer “in the flesh”. The Spirit of God could not identify Himself with the flesh; He could not come in as an addition to the flesh. The fact that He dwells in us proves that, according to God, we are in a wholly new state. We are “not in the flesh, but in the Spirit”.
The practical outcome of this is that “we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live after the flesh. For 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”. The Spirit dwells in us that we may be enabled to “mortify the deeds of the body”. And as we do so He is free to lead us into our privilege and portion as sons of God. “As many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God”. The Spirit brings us consciously into the circle of divine love as those who are in Christ Jesus the objects of that love. We have received the Spirit of adoption whereby we cry, Abba, Father. That is liberty. We are brought out of all that attached to us in our state as in the flesh, and we are brought into that which divine love has prepared for us in Christ Jesus.
If we are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, it forbids that we should any longer live after the flesh. And in the practical renunciation of the flesh lies the secret of liberty and growth; in short, of spiritual prosperity.