The flesh is linked with Adam, the spirit
with Christ.
Leaving aside now a settled question of whether
we are in Adam or in Christ, we
must ask ourselves, am I living in the
flesh or in the spirit?
To live in the flesh is to do
something out from myself as in Adam.
It is to derive strength from the old
natural source of life that I inherited from
him, so that I enjoy and experience all
Adam's very complete provision for sinning, which all
of us have found so effective.
Now the same is true of what is
in Christ.
To enjoy and experience what is true of
me as in him, I must learn what
it is to walk in the spirit.
It is a historic fact that in Christ
my old man was crucified, and it is
a present fact that I am blessed with
every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in
Christ.
But if I do not live in the
spirit, then my life may be quite a
contradiction of the fact that I am in
Christ.
For what is true of me in him
is not expressed in me.
I may recognise that I am in Christ,
but I may also have to face the
fact that my old temper is very much
in evidence.
What is the trouble?
It is that I am holding the truth
merely objectively, whereas what is true objectively must
be made true subjectively.
And that is brought about as I live
in the spirit.
Am I in Christ?
But Christ is in me.
And just as physically a man cannot live
and work in water, but only in air,
so spiritually Christ dwells and manifests himself not
in flesh, but in spirit.
Therefore, if I live after the flesh, I
find that what is mine in Christ is,
so to say, held in suspense in me.
Though in fact I am in Christ, yet
if I live in the flesh, that is
in my own strength and under my own
direction, then in experience I find to my
dismay that it is what is in Adam
that manifests itself in me.
If I would know in experience all that
is in Christ, then I must learn to
live in the spirit.
Living in the spirit means that I trust
the Holy Spirit to do in me what
I cannot do myself.
This life is completely different from the life
that I would naturally live of myself.
Each time I am faced with a new
demand from the Lord, I look to him
to do in me what he requires of
me.
It is not a case of trying, but
of trusting, not of struggling, but of resting
in him.
If I have a hasty temper, impure thoughts,
a quick tongue, or a critical spirit, I
shall not set out with a determined effort
to change myself.
But, reckoning myself dead in Christ to these
things, I shall look to the Spirit of
God to produce in me the needed purity
or humility or meekness.
This is what it means to stand still
and see the salvation of the Lord which
he will work for you.
The divine way of victory does not permit
of our doing anything at all, anything that
is to say outside of Christ.
This is because as soon as we move
we run into danger, but our natural inclinations
take us in the wrong direction.
Where then are we to look for help?
Turn now to Matthew 5 verse 17.
The flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the
Spirit against the flesh.
In other words, the flesh does not fight
against us, but against the Holy Spirit, for
these are contrary one to the other.
And it is he, not we, who meets
and deals with the flesh.
What is the result?
That he may not do the things that
he would.
I think we have often understood that last
clause of this verse in a wrong sense.
Let us consider what it means.
What would we do naturally?
We would move off on some course of
action dictated by our own instincts, and apart
from the will of God.
The effect then of our refusal to act
out from ourselves is that the Holy Spirit
is free to meet and deal with the
flesh in us.
Would the result that we shall not do
what we naturally would do, that is, we
shall not act according to our natural inclinations,
we shall not go off on a course
and plan of our own, but shall find
instead our satisfaction in his perfect plan.
Hence we have the principle, walk by the
Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust
of the flesh.
If we live in the Spirit, if we
walk by faith in the risen Christ, we
can truly stand aside while the Spirit gains
new victories over the flesh every day.
He has been given to us to take
charge of this business.
Our victory lies in hiding in Christ, and
in counting in simple trust upon his Holy
Spirit to overcome in us our freshly lusts
with his own new desires.
The cross has been given to procure salvation
for us.
The Spirit has been given to produce salvation
in us.
Christ risen and ascended is the basis of
our salvation.
Christ in our hearts by the Spirit is
its power.
I thank God through Jesus Christ.
That explanation of Paul's is fundamentally the same
as his other words in Galatians 2.20,
which were taken as the key to our
study.
I live, and yet no longer I, but
Christ.
We saw how prominent is the word I
throughout his argument in Romans 7, culminating in
the agonized cry, O wretched man that I
am.
Then follows the shout of deliverance, Thank God,
Jesus Christ.
It is clear that the discovery Paul has
made is this, that the life we live
is the life of Christ alone.
We think of the Christian life as a
changed life, but it is not that.
God offers us an exchanged life, a substituted
life, and Christ is our substitute within.
I live, and yet no longer I, but
Christ liveth in me.
This life is not something which we ourselves
have to produce, it is Christ's own life
reproduced in us.
How many Christians believe in reproduction in this
sense, as something more than regeneration?
Regeneration means that the life of Christ is
planted in us by the Holy Spirit at
our new birth.
Reproduction goes further.
It means that that new life grows and
becomes manifest progressively in us until the very
likeness of Christ begins to be reproduced in
our lives.
That is what Paul means when he speaks
of his travail for the Galatians, until Christ
be formed in you.
God will not give me humility or patience
or holiness or love as separate gifts of
his grace.
He is not a retailer, dispensing grace to
us in doses, measuring out some patience to
the impatient, some love to the unloving, some
meekness to the proud, in quantities that we
take and work on as a kind of
capital.
He has given only one gift to meet
all our need, his son Christ Jesus.
And as I look to him to live
out his life in me, he will be
humble and patient and loving and everything else
I need in my stead.
Remember the word in the first epistle of
John, God gave unto us eternal life and
this life is in his son.
He that hath the son hath the life
and he that hath not the son of
God hath not the life.
The life of God is not given us
as a separate item.
The life of God is given us in
the son.
It is eternal life in Christ Jesus our
Lord.
Our relationship to the son is our relationship
to the life.
It is a blessed thing to discover the
difference between Christian graces and Christ.
To know the difference between meekness and Christ,
between patience and Christ, between love and Christ.
Remember again what he said in 1 Corinthians
1.30. Christ Jesus was made unto us
wisdom from God and righteousness and sanctification and
redemption.
The common conception of sanctification is that every
item of the life should be holy, but
that is not holiness.
It is the fruit of holiness.
Holiness is Christ.
It is the Lord Jesus being made over
to us to be that.
So we can put in anything there, love,
humility, power, self-control.
Today there is a call for patience.
He is our patience.
Tomorrow the call may be for purity.
He is our purity.
He is the answer to every need.
That is why Paul speaks of the fruit
of the spirit as one and not of
fruits as separate items.
God has given us his Holy Spirit and
when love is needed the fruit of the
spirit is love.
When joy is needed the fruit of the
spirit is joy.
It is always true.
Doesn't matter what your personal deficiency, whether it
is 101 different things, God has one sufficient
answer.
His Son Jesus Christ.
And he is the answer to every human
need.
How can we know more of Christ in
this way?
Only by way of an increasing awareness of
need.
Some are afraid to discover deficiency in themselves
and so they never grow.
Growth in grace is the only sense in
which we can grow.
And grace, we have said, is God doing
something for us.
We all have the same Christ dwelling within.
But revelation of some new need will lead
us spontaneously to trust him to live out
his life in us, in that particular.
Greater capacity means greater enjoyment of God's supply.
Another letting go, a fresh trusting in Christ.
And another stretch of land is conquered.
Christ my life is the secret of enlargement.
We have spoken of trying and trusting and
the difference between the two.
Believe me, it is the difference between heaven
and hell.
It is not something just to be talked
over as a good thought.
It is stark reality.
Lord, I cannot do it, therefore I will
no longer try to do it.
This is the point where most of us
fail.
Lord, I cannot, therefore I will take my
hands off.
From now I trust thee for that.
I refuse to act.
I depend on him to act.
And then I enter fully and joyfully into
the action he initiates.
It is not passivity.
It is a most active life, trusting the
Lord like that, drawing life from him, taking
him to be my very life, letting him
live out his life in me.
There is therefore now no condemnation to them
that are in Christ Jesus, who work not
after the flesh, but after the spirit.
For the law of the spirit of life
in Christ Jesus hath made free from the
law of sin and death.
It is in chapter 8 that Paul presents
to us in detail the positive side of
life in the spirit.
There is therefore now no condemnation, he begins.
And this statement may at first seem out
of place here.
Surely condemnation was met by the blood, through
which we found peace with God and salvation
from wrath.
But there are two kinds of condemnation, namely
that before God and that before myself.
And the second may at times seem to
us even more awful than the first.
When I see that the blood of Christ
has satisfied God, then I know my sins
are forgiven, and there is for me no
more condemnation before God.
Yet I may still be knowing defeat.
And the sense of inward condemnation on this
account may be very real, as Romans 7
shows.
But if I have learned to live by
Christ as my life, then I have learned
the secret of victory, and praise God, there
is therefore now no condemnation.
The mind of the spirit is life and
peace.
And this becomes my experience as I learn
to walk in spirit.
With peace in my heart I have no
time to feel condemned, but only to praise
him who leads me on from victory to
victory.
But what lay behind my sense of condemnation?
Was it not the experience of defeat, and
the sense of helplessness to do anything about
it?
Before I saw that Christ is my life,
I labored under a constant sense of handicap.
Limitation drogged my steps, I felt disabled at
every turn.
I was always crying out, I cannot do
this, I cannot do that.
Try as I would, I found that I
cannot please God.
But there is no I cannot in Christ.
Now it is, I can do all things
in him that strengtheneth me.
How can Paul be so daring?
On what ground does he declare that he
is now free from limitation, and can do
all things?
Here is his answer.
For the law of the spirit of life
in Christ Jesus made me free from the
law of sin and death, Romans 8.2.
Why is there now no more condemnation?
For there is a reason for it.
There is something definite to account for it.
The reason is that there is a law
called the law of the spirit of life,
and it has proved stronger than another law
called the law of sin and death.
God delivers us from one law by introducing
another law.
The law of sin and death is there
all the time, but God has put another
law into operation.
The law of the spirit of life in
Christ Jesus, and that law is strong enough
to deliver us from the law of sin
and death.
You see, it is the law of life
in Christ Jesus, the resurrection life, that in
him has met death in all its forms,
and triumphed over it.
The law of Jesus dwells in our hearts,
in the person of his Holy Spirit, and
if we let him have a clear way,
and commit ourselves to him, we shall find
that he will keep us from the old
law.
We shall learn what it is to be
kept, not by our own power, but by
the power of God.
So Romans 8.2 speaks not of a
new gift, but of the life already referred
to in Romans 6.23. It is a
new revelation of what we already have.
I feel I cannot emphasise this too much.
It is not something fresh from God's hand,
but a new unveiling of what is already
given.
It is a new discovery of a work
already done in Christ, for the words made
me free are in the past tense.
If I really see this, and put my
faith in him, there is no absolute necessity
for Romans 7 to be repeated in me,
either the experience or the conduct, and certainly
not the tremendous display of willpower.
If we will let go our own wills,
and trust him, we shall not fall to
the ground and break, but we shall fall
into a different law, the law of the
spirit of life.
For God has given us not only life,
but a law of life.
And just as the law of gravity is
a natural law, and not the result of
human legislation, so the law of life is
a natural law, similar in principle to the
law that keeps our hearts beating, or that
controls the movement of our eyelids.
I used to suffer from sleeplessness.
Once, after several sleepless nights, when I had
prayed much about it and exhausted all my
resources, I confessed at length to God that
the fault must lie with me, and asked
to be shown where.
I said to God that I demand an
explanation.
His answer was, believe in nature's laws.
Sleep is as much a law as hunger
is, and I realised that though I had
never thought of worrying whether I would get
hungry or not, I had been worrying about
sleeping.
I had been trying to help nature, but
that is the chief trouble with most sufferers
from sleeplessness.
But now I trusted not only God, but
God's law of nature, and slept well.
If we will let ourselves live in a
new law, we shall be less conscious of
the old law.
It is still there, but it is no
longer governing, and we are no longer in
its grip.
That is why the Lord says in Matthew
6, Behold the birds, consider them lilies.
If we could ask the birds whether they
were afraid of the law of gravity, how
would they reply?
They would say, we never heard the name
of Newton, we know nothing about his law.
We fly because it is the law of
our life to fly.
Not only is there in them a life
with the power of flight, but that life
has a law which enables these living creatures
quite spontaneously and consistently to overcome the law
of gravity, yet gravity remains.
If you get up early one morning when
the cold is intense, and the snow is
thick on the ground, and there is a
dead sparrow in the courtyard, you are reminded
at once of the persistence of that law.
But while birds live, they overcome it, and
the life within them is what dominates their
consciousness.
God has been truly gracious to us.
He has given us this new law of
the spirit, and for us to fly is
no longer a question of our will, but
of his life.
Do not be anxious, are his words, consider
the lilies, they grow.
He is directing our attention to the new
law of life in us.
Oh for a new appreciation of the life
that is ours.
It is this spontaneous life that is the
Christian life.
It manifests itself in love for the unlovely,
for the brother whom on natural ground we
would not like, and certainly could not love.
It works on the basis of what the
Lord sees, of the possibility in that brother.
Lord, you see he is lovable, and you
love him.
Love him now, through me.
And it manifests itself in reality of life,
in a true genuineness of moral character.
There is too much hypocrisy in the life
of Christians, too much play-acting.
Nothing takes away from the effectiveness of Christian
witness as but a pretense of something that
isn't really there.
For the man in the street unfailingly penetrates
such a disguise in the end, and finds
us out for what we are.
Yes, pretense gives way to reality, when we
trust the law of life.
What does it mean to walk after the
spirit?
It means two things.
Firstly, it is not a work, it is
a walk.
Praise God, the burdensome and fruitless effort I
involve myself in when I sought in the
flesh to please God, gives place to a
blessed and restful dependence on his working, which
worketh in me mightily.
That is why Paul contrasts the works of
the flesh with the fruit of the spirit.
Then, secondly, to walk after implies subjection.
Walking after the flesh means that I yield
to the dictates of the flesh.
And the following verses in Romans 8, 5
-8, make clear where that leads me.
It only brings me into conflict with God.
To walk after the spirit is to be
subject to the spirit.
There is one thing that the man who
walks after the spirit cannot do, and that
is be independent of him.
I must be subject to the Holy Spirit.
The initiative of my life must be with
him.
Only as I yield myself to obey him,
shall I find the law of the spirit
of life in full operation, and the ordinance
of the law, all that I have been
trying to do to please God being fulfilled,
no longer by me, but in me.
As many as are led by the spirit
of God, these are sons of God.
You are all familiar with the words of
the benediction in 2 Corinthians 13, 14.
The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and
the love of God and the communion of
the Holy Ghost be with you all.
The love of God is the source of
all spiritual blessing.
The grace of the Lord Jesus has made
it possible for that spiritual wealth to become
ours, and the communion of the Holy Ghost
is the means whereby it is imparted to
us.
Love is something hidden in the heart of
God.
Grace is that love expressed and made available
in the Son.
Communion is the impartation of that grace by
the Spirit.
What the Father has devised concerning us, the
Son has accomplished for us, and now the
Holy Spirit communicates it to us.
When therefore we discover something fresh that the
Lord Jesus has procured for us in his
cross, let us for its realisation look in
the direction that God has indicated, and by
our steadfast attitude of subjection and obedience to
the Holy Spirit, keep wide open the way
for him to impart it to us.
That is his ministry.
He has come for that very purpose, that
he may make real in us all that
is ours in Christ.