DELIVERANCE FROM SIN
DELIVERANCE FROM SIN
The gospel is the revelation of God in righteousness. God has come out in this way, in the light, and I cannot believe that this light of God can come home to a man’s soul without producing an immediate moral effect. It is the light of grace bringing salvation, and having a teaching inherent in it. (See Titus 2.) I think this light surely brings into the soul a certain emancipation from sin, though not complete; but the incompatibility of righteousness and sin must be seen. The next thing is that a soul accepts the truth of baptism — apprehends that death was upon it, drinks the bitter waters of Marah, but apprehends that in baptism it has been buried in Christ’s death — has accepted or been placed in that position — apprehending also the love that brought Him into that place. It obeys from the heart the form of doctrine to which it has been delivered, reckons itself dead to sin in Christ’s death, and alive to God in [p. 502] Christ Jesus. This brings in deliverance from sin, and is of course in the power of the Spirit, but it is the necessary moral consequence in the soul of the light of God. If God reveals Himself, every quality in which He reveals Himself must have a moral effect on those who are in the light of the revelation, and if once I accept the place of death, there is nothing for me but His power to raise me up.
If christians go on in sin and worldly ways it proves to me, not only that they have not accepted death, but are defective in the knowledge of God; they are not consciously in the light of the gospel. People want the truth of the gospel much more than we are aware of. I very much doubt if people are profoundly affected by doctrine, or position, or anything short of the knowledge of God. I think that another powerful motive also comes in and that is the love of Christ (2 Corinthians 5: 14). The light of God makes it impossible to continue in sin, and the love of Christ constrains us to live to Him.
As regards nature, it is evident that the one practising righteousness is of God, and is put in contrast in 1 John 3 to the one practising sin. The two thoughts are not connected with one and the same person, and practising righteousness would go with the being dead to sin, and having become the servant of righteousness in Romans 6 and this really results, as I judge, from the effect of the light of God in the soul. Hence the light of God to us really results in nature in us, and that is the only nature of which God takes account; and if it be not there, there is no proof of our being children of God. I think we need to be much more concerned that souls should be really in the light, and thus under the influence of what God is, than as to the position they take, or the doctrine they accept.