THE NATURAL SUPERSEDED BY WHAT IS SPIRITUAL
Romans 16: 3-5 (1st clause)
These scriptures are often referred to on occasions such as this, but I trust the Lord will give a fresh touch in relation to them. It is striking how little we have in Scripture about marriages, although the thought of marriage is, of course, a prime thought with God, introduced early when He says, “It is not good that Man should be alone; I will make him a help-mate, his like” (Gen 2: 18), but we have very little in scripture as to actual celebrations of marriages, I suppose because all is waiting for the marriage of the Lamb, and we can afford thus to wait for that day before anything in the nature of any great occasion is held.
The marriage of Isaac and Rebecca is remarkable for its simplicity. It says in that case that “... Isaac led her into his mother Sarah’s tent; and he took Rebecca, and she became his wife, and he loved her”, Gen 24: 67. Nothing could exceed the simplicity and the blessedness of that inspired account of the marriage of Isaac and Rebecca. I would commend it to our brother and sister because Isaac is not simply to be regarded as a type of Christ, but he represents also a heavenly man in testimony here, and Rebecca had already decided that she would not be held by what was natural; she had answered the test, yielding to the servant, and became one in thought and outlook with the heavenly man, not for the moment viewing him as a type of Christ, but as a type of our position here at the present moment. We are heavenly, as of the heavenly One, we are united to Christ, our portion is heavenly. We are just here for the moment, in the ways of God, in testimony, to maintain what is heavenly in character in the presence of opposition, in the power of the Holy Spirit.
It would be well that our dear brother and sister should embrace that from the very start of their life together, and I do not doubt they will. Our portion is in heaven, we are bound up with Christ; our being here is incidental but important in the ways of God. We are to be here in testimony to what is heavenly, in the only power that is effective, the power of the Spirit. Those who have such an outlook will be very simple in their life here. Isaac and Rebecca were outstanding in their simplicity. In the full light of our heavenly calling we can afford to be very simple in our life here, and wholly given to that for which God has taken us up.
This passage in John 2 gives us marriage in its most favourable light. A marriage to which Jesus was invited and to which He went—and His disciples were present too—was no doubt in every way the best example of marriage taken up in the light of what is natural. The Lord identified Himself with it, yet at the very start the wine was deficient. There is deficiency with nature at its best, not that one would cast a cloud upon the present occasion, far from it, but the best of what is natural, viewed in the light of what God is doing in the introduction of Christ, and having given the Spirit, is bound to be deficient. So the mother of Jesus really calls upon Him to improve the position and He says, “What have I to do with thee, woman? mine hour has not yet come”. She very wisely then says to the servants, “Whatever he may say to you, do”. You could not have a more concise or apt expression than that.
The desire has been expressed in prayer that our young brother and sister may from the very outset give the Lord His place in everything—“Whatever he may say to you, do”. This is the secret of prosperity, the secret of blessing, and as being sustained here in accordance with God’s will, we shall have His blessing, even though we have, as we are bound to, the tests referred to in prayer. Such tests but have in mind bringing out God’s work in us and perfecting us in the knowledge of God.
There were certain water vessels there, “according to the purification of the Jews”, there was in that way a certain acknowledgment that everything was not perfect there, but the Lord says, “Fill the water-vessels with water. And they filled them up to the brim”. There is the unqualified recognition on their part that purification needs to come in, and it is well for us to see that the natural at best is not the final thought with God. What is in His mind is that which is spiritual. We can afford to commit ourselves without reserve to what is spiritual. So they fill the vessels up to the brim, and now they draw out, and the wine drawn out in consequence was, on the confession of the feast-master, the best, better than could be afforded by the best of what is natural. The joy to be derived by giving the Lord His place and fully yielding to the Spirit is the best, so it says, “Jesus … manifested his glory; and his disciples believed on him”. After they had seen this wonderful sign that He could bring in better than the best of what is natural, they would believe on Him, and listen to His words. Peter says, “thou hast words of life eternal”, John 6: 68. The words the Lord Jesus spoke would not direct their thoughts to the best of nature, but to the things God had before Him in relation to which they had been called.
Now as to Prisca and Aquila, they are often referred to as having one neck, that is they are thoroughly one, and thoroughly one as fully committed to Paul. That is really what Isaac stands for, one who is fully committed to Paul’s ministry, who understands we are bound up with Christ, and is wholly committed, in the power of the Spirit, to what is heavenly. It says, “Salute Prisca and Aquila, my fellow-workmen in Christ Jesus, who for my life staked their own neck”. Nothing could be more glorious in the sight of God than to see a husband and wife, or a wife and husband as it says here, wholly committed to what is the truth for the moment, and that is that we are heavenly, bound up with Christ. We are only here in testimony to what is heavenly. They were wholly committed to it, they were prepared to risk their lives, though in what way we are not told. They are spoken of in this honourable way, “my fellow-workmen in Christ Jesus”.
A similar honour, a similar dignity is open to our dear brother and sister. They are commencing their life together, let it be commenced on this line, taking as an example, the very simple way referred to in Isaac and Rebecca. Isaac goes right through as the heavenly man here, supported in the position by his wife.
BURGESS HILL
1st February 1958
Word given at a marriage meeting
From ‘The Way Everlasting’
Compiled by Robert Stott and available from Kingston Bible Trust
THE POWER OF THE GOSPEL
I desire grace from the Lord, dear brethren, to speak about the power of the gospel. This epistle, as we know, is the setting out of the teaching of God’s glad tidings; and we all, as saints of God, need instruction in the glad tidings. We are told in chapter 1 that Paul was not ashamed of the glad tidings, because, he says, “it is God’s power to salvation, to every one that believes”. It is not simply the means by which we are justified and receive forgiveness, but the power of God to salvation, meaning that there is power in the gospel to make us completely superior to everything by means of which the enemy would gain power or influence over us. That is a most important matter, because the epistle to the Romans, although individual in its character, has the assembly in mind. Paul always has the assembly in mind in all his ministry. The Lord has said in regard of His assembly that “hades’ gates shall not prevail against it”, and yet, alas! sometimes he does prevail against us individually. If he gains a victory over any one of us, to that extent he is prevailing against the assembly. The Lord says, “hades’ gates shall not prevail against it”, and thank God that is true. It will go through and go through in victory. The great thing is for every one of us to be concerned, and let us start with the concern when we are young, that we should be in victory and not be overcome, either by the world or by the flesh or by anything else, by means of which the enemy would rob God of His portion in His people. You remember how the Lord at the end of His pathway says, “be of good courage: I have overcome the world”. You might say appearances belied it. You might say that appearances seemed to show that the enemy was gaining the victory, for the Lord was being cast out and crucified. But He says, “I have overcome the world”. “The ruler of the world comes”, He says, “and in me he has nothing”. There was nothing in the Lord that would answer in the slightest degree to any suggestion of the wicked one, nor was there anything in the Lord that could become intimidated by the violence of the enemy. He stood as a rock maintaining the truth, and as a result He could say, “I have overcome the world”. Paul is the same. He says at the end of his course, “I have combated the good combat”. He is not saying, ‘I have fought a good fight’. He is not saying that he has fought well. What he is saying is that the fight that he has been engaged in is the good fight. “I have combated the good combat”. The only fight worth having part in is combat for the truth. That is a dignified combat, a combat that has God with it. Paul says, “I have combated the good combat, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith”.
I have referred to what was seen in the Lord and in Paul in order to show what I believe is important for us now, that the intention of God is that we should finish in victory. It is not a defeated people that the Lord is going to take to Himself; it is a victorious people. If we are to be victorious, we must be built up in the truth of the epistle to the Romans. The epistle to the Romans, especially the first part of it culminating in chapter 8, has in mind that we should be made completely victorious over the power of the flesh, the power of the world, and then at the end of the chapter that we should be victorious over circumstances as well; so that we should finish our course here as in some sense in keeping with what has been seen in perfection in Christ, and seen in such glorious measure also in the apostle Paul.
So we find in chapter 6 that the apostle is seeking to instruct us in the truth by raising questions. It is a way that the apostle has, especially in Romans and in the epistles to the Corinthians, to raise questions. Instead of exactly stating the truth positively, he rather raises questions in order that we may be set thinking and that we may furnish the answer. So he says, “Are you ignorant that we, as many as have been baptised unto Christ Jesus, have been baptised unto his death?” Every one of us, I suppose, has been baptised. The great majority of us, possibly, were baptised as infants. But there comes a time when that which was done for us in the faith of our parents has to be taken up by us in intelligence and exercise. So in the beginning of chapter 6 of Romans, the apostle raises the question as to whether we have taken time to consider the import of our baptism. He says you have been baptised unto Christ Jesus; that is, you have taken Christian ground, or your parents took Christian ground for you in the faith that you would, in due course, take it up. You have been baptised unto Christ Jesus, but the form that the baptism took was a committal to death. Everyone who is baptised goes under the water. That is to say, we are to understand that as committed to Christ Jesus, we have been committed to His death. What is the import of that? These things are not empty things having no meaning. They are not just religious rites or ceremonies; they have meaning. Every one of us is committed to Christ’s death. It is on the basis of His death indeed that all blessing has come to us, but we have to understand that we are committed to His death. If the Lord Jesus has been into death, it was for us, I need not say. Death had no right or power over Him. There was a time when it appeared to have power over Him, but it says, “Christ having been raised up from among the dead dies no more: death has dominion over him no more”. There was a moment when it had dominion over Him in the sense that He really died, but He died in view of rising again. All that has come to pass in Christ has come to pass for you and me. God has set out in Christ, in the way that he has gone into death and burial and then into resurrection, what He has in mind for you and me. So we are to understand that we have been committed to death, Christ’s death. I would ask the youngest brother and sister to take account of this and to begin to ask yourself whether you have any understanding of the import of your baptism, and of the fact that Christ has died for you, to relieve you of your sins indeed and the judgment attaching to them, but further that in the appreciation of the way He has taken, you should in your own mind take the same way.
When God brought His people out of Egypt, He intended to bring them out completely, never to go back to it. Now Egypt is a type of the world, as characterised by independence of God. It is not the world in its grossest and basest features—that is Sodom. It is not the world in its religious features—that is Babylon. It is the world as characterised by independence of God, living to itself, finding its resources in itself. Now God is so jealous of the affections of His creatures that He resents anything of that sort having power over us, and He has intervened in redemption in the death of Christ that we might be completely delivered—not only from the world as a system, but from all its principles and elements. That is to say, He wants to deliver us completely from living to ourselves and from being independent of Himself. It is the jealousy of love that is behind that, and it is because God is as blessed as He is, that He wants to become the satisfying portion of every one of His creatures. So God has in mind to deliver us completely from the world, not as coming out of it reluctantly; that is not the thought of God at all. The people of old were to come out of it in haste; they were to come out of it with their loins girded, their shoes on their feet, and so on. Psalm 105 tells us that He brought them forth with silver and gold, and that there was not one feeble among them. That is to say, they came out in real victory. What a magnificent thing it is if you find even one saint on earth who is completely delivered from the features of the world around him and from the power of the flesh within him, and is able to live to God. That is what God has in mind. This is not unattainable, dear brethren; it is attainable. It is because we have received life in Christ Jesus by the Spirit that these things are attainable. God intends that every one of us should be brought into the good of it.
So he says, in chapter 6, that we are to understand this, “that our old man has been crucified with him”. The Lord has been crucified actually. He was not crucified for Himself. On the one hand it is what man did to Him; on the other hand it is what God did to man in flesh. God had taken account of what man in flesh is—“our old man”, it says. God has adjudged that the only thing that that man deserves is that he should be crucified—put to death in a way that expresses God’s holy contempt of that man as characteristically sinful. “Our old man has been crucified with him”, it says, “that the body of sin might be annulled, that we should no longer serve sin”. The world is characterised by sin. Sin is lawlessness, doing one’s own will, but sin has no power over a dead man. That is the great point to bear in mind—that the way of escape from the power of the world is to accept that in Christ’s death we have died. Let our minds be in that direction. The first thing is to have our minds in the right direction. If so, the Spirit of God will support us in moving in consistency with that. So He says, “Our old man has been crucified with him, that the body of sin might be annulled”. That is the whole totality of the power of sin, the great principle of doing what we like or doing what the world does, the whole principle of it, is to be annulled in its power over us by the simple way that we accept death. We are entitled to do so, indeed we are obligated to do so, because Christ has gone that way for us. It was not for Himself; it was for us. It is a question of being obligated, dear brethren. These things are not optional. God has established absolute rights over us in redemption in order that He might have us wholly for Himself. We are going to be for Himself eternally. He wants us to be for Himself in an absolute way at this present time. In redemption, at the cost of the precious blood of Christ, God has established incontestable rights over every one of us, and the intention is that we should be completely delivered from the power of sin. God’s way of effecting deliverance is by ending the man, ending him in death, because as I have said, sin can have no power over a dead man. If we are holding in our minds that we have died with Christ, then there is nothing to which the appeal of the world can apply. It has no power, no right, over a dead person. So it says, “if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him, knowing that Christ having been raised up from among the dead dies no more: death has dominion over him no more. For in that he has died, he has died to sin once for all”. He died out of this world, a world of sin; so it says, “in that he has died, he has died to sin once for all, but in that he lives, he lives to God”. It is a great thing to keep Christ before us as He is and where He is. He is living absolutely to God, a man that is considering for God in every way, and we are to reckon ourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Not yet in heaven, we are not there yet; we are here on earth. But the thought is that we should be alive to God in Christ Jesus while we are still here. That is a great matter, dear brethren.
I do not know if we have a true sense of the glory of life in Christ Jesus, but that is what we have been given. Every one who has received the Holy Spirit of God has received life in Christ Jesus. Christ Jesus is the Man of God’s pleasure, the Man of His choice, the Man indeed of His purpose. As we go on in this epistle, we find that the first man, man in flesh, is hopeless. You can do nothing with him. What God has done with him is to condemn him and to end his history vicariously in the death of Christ. It is a good thing to come to that—that no good whatever can arise from the first man. “The mind of the flesh”, it says, “is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God; for neither indeed can it be”. What a hopeless position it is but for redemption and the gift of the Spirit. But in the gift of the Spirit, God has set us up in the life of another man; and the man in whose life we are set up by the Spirit is the Man Christ Jesus. Think of who He is! One of the Godhead in His Person, who has taken up manhood in order that there might be manhood of a most glorious and morally exalted character brought into being for the pleasure of God, and that the saints as relieved from all that attached to them should be given life in Him. What a wonderful thing it is! Life in Christ Jesus shows itself in the details of the lives of the saints. Just in the manner in which they are held under the influence of Christ and formed by it, so the life that is in Christ Jesus works out in a practical way in expression in them. So it says we are to reckon ourselves “dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus”. It is a great thing to have our minds in the right direction. It is a question of reckoning, and then, as I say, if our mind is in the right direction, the Spirit of God will come in in power to enable us to move in accordance with the truth.
When we come to chapter 8, we find in Paul one man who is actually proving the power of these things of which we are endeavouring to speak. He says, “the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set me free from the law of sin and of death”. If I say to myself that I intend to do what I like, it is quite clear that I am not free from the law of sin, because that is sin. These things are very simple and practical, dear brethren, but I would urge it upon the youngest of the dear brethren here as well as upon all of us that God intends Christianity to be practical. He intends us to be in victory. He intends us to be delivered completely from every form of the working of lawlessness. It is a question of Egypt, and I have been delivered from Egypt in order to serve God—to serve Him at the present time down here, and then to serve Him eternally in heaven. You remember that when God was about to bring His people out of Egypt, He first of all proposed that He would bring them out in order to bring them into a land flowing with milk and honey. That was the ultimate object in view. But then a moment later He said to Moses that when Moses had brought them out of Egypt, they should serve God on that mountain—that mountain where God was speaking to Moses in the wilderness. So that there are two thoughts in our being brought out of Egypt: one is to serve God at this present time in the wilderness, and the other is to be carried right through into all that God in His love has purposed for us. We are to keep those two things in mind: the service of God down here at the present time in the assembly is what is to occupy us for the present moment while we wait for the Lord, and then, of course, there is the entering upon our heavenly portion when the Lord comes. In the meantime, in the power of the earnest, we may have some taste of heavenly things already, as we well know. That is the objective as being delivered from Egypt—it is to serve God in the wilderness on the one hand, and in heavenly places on the other hand. Paul said, “the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set me free from the law of sin and of death”. You may say, ‘What is the idea of the law here?’ It is not the Mosaic law; that is clear. The idea is that it is a regulating principle. Every one of us governs his life according to some principle. As I said a moment ago, I might say to myself, I am free to do what I like. If I say that, I am laying down a principle. It is a wrong principle, but a principle by which I am regulating myself. Now the idea is that each one of us is governed by some principle. God orders the universe on the principle of law; there are the laws of the universe.
So this is the idea of a regulating principle by which our life is ordered. The apostle says that the regulating principle by which his life was ordered was “the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus”. That is, he has another Man before his heart, and he is held under the influence of that Man and is governed by the impulses that come from that Man. It is a very simple thing and a very blessed thing. You remember what it says about Jesus in the last verse of the gospel of John. The apostle says that if all the things that Jesus did were written one by one, “I suppose that not even the world itself would contain the books written”. But then those things are all preserved in the saints. The saints as moving under the influence of Christ, knowing something of the reality of life in Christ Jesus, and taking character from Jesus. The things that Jesus did begin to be worked out in detail in the lives of the saints. They are all gathered up and they will come to light in the coming day in the holy city. That is where the things that Jesus did will be found to be preserved, and so to speak written, but now is the time when they are being worked out in the lives of the saints as regulated by this law; “the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus”, which, the apostle says, “has set me free from the law of sin and of death”. It is a good thing for us to be concerned that we should know something of this—the power of real liberty, the power of real salvation, “God’s power to salvation, to every one that believes”. How are we to fit into a vessel that is invulnerable? As the Lord says, “my assembly, and hades’ gates shall not prevail against it”. How are we to fit into that if we do not know something of what it is to be made completely superior to the influences of sin, and the flesh, and the world. It is a question of being built up in that which is invulnerable, and the secret of it is “the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus”.
So he goes on to speak of the Spirit; the Spirit is the great secret of power because, as I said, Christianity is intended to be a practical matter. It is not a matter of what we have learned of the doctrine and may be able to speak about. It is a question of power and of life. Paul was in the good of it; others were in the good of it. It is a great thing that we should be in the good of it, but the secret of everything is the Spirit. The way that the Spirit of God speaks in this eighth chapter of Romans is most affecting and most drastic. He speaks about the mind of the flesh, as we have already said, which is enmity against God, not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be, so that they that are in the flesh cannot please God. How sweeping it all is! How essential then redemption is! God has redeemed us and set us up in life in Christ Jesus by the Spirit in order that in this very scene, where we have had our own will, we should be here for the will and pleasure of God. That can only be in the measure in which the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus is known and is characterising our path here.
So the apostle goes on to say, “But ye are not in flesh but in Spirit, if indeed God’s Spirit dwell in you”. It is an interesting study how the Spirit of God is spoken of in this chapter: first of all, the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus; now God’s Spirit, showing His divine power—no less than God’s Spirit: “ye are not in flesh but in Spirit, if indeed God’s Spirit dwell in you”. What a thing it is that God Himself has entered into the matter in the Spirit to set the believer completely free from the impossibility of the flesh. The flesh cannot produce fruit for the pleasure of God. But God’s Spirit has entered into the matter—God Himself in the Spirit in order that we might no longer be characterised by flesh but by the Spirit: “ye are not in flesh but in Spirit, if indeed God’s Spirit dwell in you; but if any one has not the Spirit of Christ”, and that is character, “he is not of him”. What a challenge it is! The Spirit will take that character—the Spirit of Christ. He is God’s Spirit. Now He will take the character of the Spirit of Christ in order that the character of manhood pleasing to God, seen perfectly in Jesus, should be reproduced in power in the spirits and lives of His people here. How great these matters are, dear brethren, and yet how essential they are if we are to fit into the idea of Christ’s assembly—something here that the Lord can identify as His own and commit Himself to, and say, “hades’ gates shall not prevail against it”. Think of the assembly here and hades’ gates all the time directed against it! How watchful it would make us if we realized that—Satan all the time plotting to see how he can get in to interfere with that which the Lord has here which He calls, “my assembly”. If he gets in through one of us, the thing may spread. You remember how David expressed himself in Psalm 51 when he was brought to judge himself in regard of his terrible sin in the matter of the wife of Urijah the Hittite. He came to it that God would have truth in the inward parts. Before that he had been keeping up appearances for a considerable time. He committed a dreadful sin and he managed to keep it secret for a time and kept up appearances, going on as though everything was all right. That is the kind of thing flesh is capable of, even in a believer. But then he comes to it in the presence of God; he says, “Thou wilt have truth in the inward parts”, and that is the thing to watch, dear brethren—to have truth in the inward parts, to see that the truth of God is allowed to search our inward parts. So that nothing inwardly that is inconsistent with the truth is allowed with us. When David had come to that at the end of that psalm, you find he prays to God and says, “Build the walls of Jerusalem”. Why should he bring that into a personal psalm—a psalm that was connected with his own personal failure and all the exercises he went through in connection with it? He says, “Build the walls of Jerusalem”. I think he came to it that by his sin he had let the enemy get in. The wall was broken down to that extent. By his own failure, the wall, by means of which all that was due to God in Jerusalem ought to have been preserved, was broken down, and he was the one responsible for it, and others would take character from it. Joab no doubt would know all about it, and he would be influenced wrongly by David’s sin. So he is marked by true contrition. He says to God, “Build the walls of Jerusalem”. That is something for us to bear in mind, dear brethren. We belong to Christ’s assembly here, and hades’ gates are all the time plotting against it to see where and by whom he can get in and introduce something that will overthrow the walls. It is for each of us to see that the power of the gospel, our real appreciation of all that the Spirit is ready to be to us, is availed of by us, so that we do not open our doors to the enemy in any way or give him any inlet by means of which the walls of Jerusalem could be broken down. So he says, “If any one has not the Spirit of Christ he is not of him: but if Christ be in you, the body is dead on account of sin”. The body has to be held in that way. Death has to be accepted. The body is a vehicle. Satan would make it a vehicle of sin; the Spirit would make it a vehicle for the will and pleasure of God. Which is better! Which is more dignified? Which is more attractive to the believer—to have his body as a vessel in which he does his own will, or to have his body as a vessel in which he does God’s will and lives for the pleasure of God? That is what is in mind. I say again if we are not governed by these things, dear brethren, we are allowing conditions by means of which the enemy can get in and gain a victory over the assembly.
So he goes on to say, “If Christ be in you, the body is dead on account of sin, but the Spirit life on account of righteousness”. Now the Spirit is presented in another way: “the Spirit of him that has raised up Jesus from among the dead”. God raised up Jesus from among the dead. It was a selective resurrection. What millions were lying in death when Jesus lay in death. Great men who had figured in the history of this world were there; Julius Caesar was there; Alexander the Great was there; many great philosophers among men were there; millions were there including great ones in this world’s history. Then God came in and raised up from among the dead Jesus, and left all the rest of them in death. What is that intended to convey to us! It is intended to convey to us that Jesus is the Man whom God delights in, that He has no regard at all for what man in the world regards as great or as important or as clever or anything of that sort. The one Man in whom He has delight and has marked out for the highest position in the universe is Jesus, whom He raised up from among the dead. Now the Spirit of Him that did that dwells in us. That is to say He would bring us into accord with that. “If the Spirit of him that has raised up Jesus from among the dead dwell in you, he that has raised up Christ from among the dead shall quicken your mortal bodies also on account of his Spirit which dwells in you”. The Spirit of God is dwelling in us right through to the end, the Spirit of the One who makes everything of Jesus and makes nothing of any other man—He is dwelling in us right through to the end. He would bring about in us correspondence with God’s own thoughts as to Christ. As He does so, there is that in us which calls for resurrection. What was in Jesus as a man here called for resurrection, and God so to speak answered it and raised Him from among the dead. Now if the Spirit of Him that has raised up Jesus from among the dead dwells in us, He who raised up Christ from among the dead shall also quicken our mortal bodies on account of His Spirit who dwells in us. This is not a question of resurrection; it is a question of the quickening of the saints who are alive when the Lord comes—quickening our mortal bodies, not our dead bodies, but our mortal bodies. How touching it is that the Spirit remains with us right through to the end! None of us knows what our condition may become as regards our bodies before the Lord takes us. We may become frail; we may even lose our faculties; we do not know what condition we may come to. It is a humiliating thing to face, but that is the position, but one thing we do know—that the Spirit remains with us right through to the end. It is a most touching thing that the Spirit of God is content with just the conditions that the saints in their frailty provide; every believer having the Spirit, however frail his mortal condition, is temple of the Holy Spirit. These things are magnificent when you begin to look at them, dear brethren. You begin to get a feeling that Christianity is a victorious system, a system that is characterised by victory, but we are only in the gain of it in the measure in which we are in the gain of the Spirit’s presence and service to us.
So he goes on to trace things right to their end. He says, “So then, brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to flesh”. Let us look at things as God looks at them. Why should we acknowledge any obligation to the flesh? Let us have our minds in the right direction. He says, “We are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to flesh; for if ye live according to flesh ye are about to die”. Why should I go in for that which is going to bring in moral death, making me unprofitable to God, unprofitable to the saints, and miserable as regards my own experience? Why should I? We are under no obligation to the flesh to serve the flesh: “if by the Spirit, ye put to death the deeds of the body, ye shall live: for as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God”. Now we are coming into liberty and dignity. As led by the Spirit of God, you are conscious of sonship. You are conscious of liberty, liberty with God, liberty among the brethren. You are conscious of dignity. No one I suppose is so dignified as a man who is in the power of the Spirit of God. See Jacob at the end of his career. He is introduced into the presence of Pharaoh, the greatest potentate of his day; and Jacob a lonely pilgrim, you might say, is brought into his presence, and Jacob blesses Pharaoh. We know from Scripture that the less is blessed of the greater, and there is Jacob, typically in the gain of the anointing, greater than the greatest man of his day. He blesses Pharaoh. Pharaoh asks him how old he is; he answers humbly, and then he blesses Pharaoh again and goes out of his presence. That is real dignity. “As many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God”.
So it goes on to say, “For ye have not received a spirit of bondage again for fear, but ye have received a spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father”. It is a most precious thing that the very same feeling expression used by the Lord Jesus in His relations with His Father should now find a place on the lips of the saints in the power of the Spirit. It is what God can produce, that those who were once characterised by serving lusts of sin and flesh, can now give expression in liberty and in genuineness to the same feelings—affectionate feelings toward God—which found expression in the heart of the Lord Jesus Himself. Then it goes still further. It says, “The Spirit itself bears witness with our spirit, that we are children of God”. Not only are we sons, but we are children. “And if children, heirs also: heirs of God, and Christ’s joint heirs”. What glory is opening up to us, you see, dear brethren, as the Spirit has His place. It is sonship actually entered into, not in the term, but known in its power and reality. Then children of God, the Spirit Himself witnessing with our spirit that we are children of God, born of God, the objects of His care down here in testimony. We are children of God: “if children, heirs”. Think of being heirs of God! Christ is God’s appointed heir of all things, and we are joint heirs with Christ. All that Christ is coming into as a Man, we are to share with Him. Such is divine grace, and the Spirit of God witnesses these things to us. You can understand how anyone in any little sense of being an heir of God and a joint heir with Christ would not be wanting to get anything in this world. He would not be wanting to get rich; he would not be wanting a position amongst men. He would be here for the will of God, content just to fill out his day according to God’s will, accepting His mercies as that which is needful for this life. But his life is taken up as one who is redeemed. It is to be filled out in the liberty and dignity of sonship and in the consciousness that we are children of God, and joint heirs with Christ. Then the Spirit says significantly, “if indeed we suffer with him, that we may also be glorified with him”. That is, suffering is to be the order of the day—not an easy time, but suffering. It is part of God’s ways. The world has its day and there are those that seem to prosper in the world. Asaph in Psalm 73 tells us that he had got his mind occupied for the time being with the way that the wicked seemed to prosper and did not seem to have any sorrow. When he got into the sanctuaries, then he saw things differently. But it is part of God’s ways that those who are to be glorified in the coming day, having part with Christ in His glory, should suffer here. So he says, “if indeed we suffer with him, that we may also be glorified with him”. Well, I do not know that one can say more, dear brethren. What one is concerned about is that we should know the reality of salvation. God intends that we should be victorious. It is not a defeated people that the Lord is going to rapture; it is a victorious people. The eighth chapter of Romans shows that what is in mind is that we should be victorious over sin in the flesh, and that we should be victorious over circumstances. The power for victory over sin in the flesh lies in the Spirit, and the power for victory over circumstances lies in our knowledge of the love of Christ and the love of God. These three things put together—what the Spirit is to us on the one hand, what the love of Christ and the love of God are to us on the other hand—constitute the believer a completely victorious person. And it is essential that we should know something of this, because the Lord’s intention in regard of His assembly is that hades’ gates should not prevail against it. The gospel of God is intended to build up that which is victorious in each of us; the oldest of us, for we all need these things, and the youngest of us also. Let the young ones start early in following up the truth and seeing that God’s intention for them, as for us all, is that they should be here in victory, to minister to the pleasure of God, and to have part in His testimony.
May the Lord bless the word.
PLAINFIELD
27th November 1958
From Notes of Readings in New York 1960, vol 29
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