"But
now being made free from sin, and become servants to God,
ye have your fruit unto sanctification, and the end
eternal life. For the wages of sin is death; but the free
gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our
Lord." (Romans 6:22-23. R.V.)
Our
particular passage in these meditations, namely, Romans
8:2, follows immediately upon these verses we have read,
because that which comes in between these two passages is
a parenthesis.
"The
law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus."
We have
come to the fifth expression of the sevenfold law of
life. The law of life is one; that is, life is a law, but
that life and that law work out in seven different ways.
The whole life requires all these seven. All these seven
go to make up the one life, and what we find is this,
that when that life is received and is given its own
course in us, finding us compliant with it, then by its
own law it works out in these seven ways. These seven
things are inevitable outworkings of that life because it
is a law. We have said, and we know quite well, that if a
law is established and accepted and recognized, then it
works out in a certain way. That outworking is perfectly
spontaneous, perfectly natural: we might say it is
automatic. So life just works out in certain ways when it
is established and obeyed; and we shall find that this
Divine life, if allowed to govern us, will spontaneously
and quite naturally result in seven things, for these are
all components of life, they are the sevenfold expression
of life. You see, the Christian life is resolved into a
very simple proposition, after all. You have not got to
understand all this to be a Christian. But once a person
becomes a Christian, certain things begin to happen, and
then it is of very great value to understand what it is
that is happening, because that is to understand what God
is doing, what God is after. But the things happen, if
the Spirit of life in us is unchecked, unhindered, if we
go on with the Lord.
Sonship as the Fruit of Faith
We have
dealt with four of these spontaneous expressions of life,
and we come now to the fifth, namely, Isaac. I am going
to ask you just to look at one or two other New Testament
scriptures. Turning back to Romans 8 let us link together
verses 2 and 14.
"The
law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus."
"For
as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the
sons of God. For ye have not received the spirit of
bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of
adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father. The Spirit
himself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the
children of God: and if children, then heirs: heirs of
God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer
with him, that we may be also glorified together."
(Romans 8:14-17.)
You see
the link all the way along is the Spirit: the Spirit of
life: led by the Spirit: the Spirit of adoption: the
Spirit bearing witness with our spirit; but all in
relation to a special thing. We will see that presently.
Let us
turn straightway to the letter to the Galatians, chapter
4:5-7.
"That
he might redeem them that were under the law, that we
might receive the adoption of sons. And because ye are
sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your
hearts, crying, Abba, Father. Wherefore thou art no more
a servant, but a son; and if a son then an heir of God
through Christ."
That is
almost a precise repetition of the passage in Romans 8:
"the Spirit of adoption" - "that we might
receive the adoption of sons".
"And
ye have forgotten the exhortation which speaketh unto you
as unto children, My Son, despise not thou the chastening
of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of him; for
whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every
son whom he receiveth. If ye endure chastening, God
dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is he whom
the father chasteneth not? ... Furthermore we have had
fathers of our flesh which corrected us, and we gave them
reverence: shall we not much rather be in subjection unto
the Father of spirits, and live?" (Hebrews
12:5-7,9.)
It is
not difficult to get our connection with life, the
outworking of life. Here we find that life works out
along the line of sonship. In all these passages sonship
is brought into view in connection with life, and the
Spirit as the Spirit of life. We are led to that by the
Old Testament type and illustration, Isaac, the fifth of
these personal types.
A great
statement about Isaac is found in Gen. 17:19.
"And
God said, Sarah thy wife shall bear thee a son indeed;
and thou shalt call his name Isaac: and I will establish
my covenant with him for an everlasting covenant, and
with his seed after him."
God
there positively and for ever settles the question of
what Isaac stands for in the Divine economy. In our
previous meditation, in speaking of the fourth expression
of life as represented by Abraham, we were seeing life
working out through faith, faith as an aspect of the law
of life.
Now,
when we come to Isaac, we have sonship as the fruit of
faith. Faith is not an end in itself, faith works out to
sonship; for Abraham's faith at its supreme point secured
Isaac beyond the reach of death, beyond the range of
loss, of time, on resurrection ground. Now, we come to
take up that sonship, to look into it, to investigate its
nature, its character, for here life is brought to us in
terms of sonship.
God's Sons are Wholly the Fruit of a
Divine Begetting
The
first thing that we find when we approach a consideration
of Isaac is this - and it is made so very definite and
clear: it seems that the Holy Spirit has really made it
His very serious business to keep this fact ever in view;
it is made clear in the Old Testament story, and it is
brought out in the New Testament more than once and made
very emphatic - that Isaac was an impossibility on any
natural ground. Oh how God applied Himself to see that
was established! The announcement of Isaac itself came at
a time when nature could offer nothing toward the
realization of the promise. But then, even after the
announcement and the promise, God went away and left the
matter in abeyance, as it were, for a considerable time,
and every moment and every day of that time was putting
the whole matter more and more beyond human hope. So
that, when at last Isaac was born, he was something which
could not be accounted for in all the realm of natural
fruitfulness. He was, in very truth, something wholly and
utterly of God: he was not the fruit of nature. That is
the point to begin with. Now, put it how you will, call
it what you will; call it becoming a Christian, becoming
a child of God, being saved, call it what you will, the
reality that answers to that is altogether beyond the
power of nature; you cannot by any resource outside of
God Himself become a child of God. I know how elementary
that is, and yet perhaps it needs to be said. There is no
work that we can do, no fruit that we can provide,
nothing possible to all our effort and energy which can
bring this about; no struggle, no striving, no wrestling,
no crying; nothing of nature can bring it about. That
which is born of the flesh is flesh, and the meaning of
that in the Bible is not that it is that which is born of
the body is flesh. It is something more than that: flesh
here means natural ability. Therefore you can never
reason, or argue, or talk, or persuade, or cajole, or
coerce a soul into being a child of God. When you have
settled your last argument, when you have broken down
every bit of intellectual contradiction, when all the
walls of reserve and coldness have been overthrown, and
when the human will has been overthrown either by
argument or by appeal and under that persuasion, that
emotion, that impact, a person has taken a step and
decided to become a Christian, such a one may be no
nearer to being a Christian than he was before, when all
those walls were up. That is not the way. This thing is
out from God, and nothing can produce sonship but a
begetting by the Holy Ghost. Multitudes of people are in
a false position because that fact has not been
recognized. They bear the title of Christian because of
an assent to certain propositions, because of an emotion,
because of a decision which they themselves have made
under persuasion or influence.
This is
but the following out of what we have been saying about
Cain, the worshipper who murdered, whose soul-life went
out to God with its own best works, best fruit, best
everything, believing that it could get through. It never
did. Multitudes of people like that are working on that
basis, and thinking they are accepted and children of
God. Oh for a mighty undeceiving: and yet what a terrible
thing it would be! If all those assumed conversions
should be disclosed to be only assumed and not real! We
have really to get at the meaning and nature of sonship.
We have to know what it is, and you begin by this
negative affirmation that sonship is not the fruit of
nature. God has put it beyond the power of nature to
produce it, as He put Isaac beyond the power of nature
altogether. That is where you begin: altogether of God,
and only of God.
Well,
what is sonship. The human spirit becomes the vessel of a
Divine seed, the vessel in which something that is of God
Himself is begotten, and the presence of that something
constitutes the one in whom the deposit is a different
kind of being from all other beings in God's universe.
You are, because of some secret, hidden mystery about
you, something right at the very center of your being;
because of the presence of that, you are something other
than all other species of creation. God has begotten His
Son in the human spirit. There is that within the child
of God upon which the eye of God rests as something
belonging to Himself, which has come out from Him and is
part of Him, and His eye is upon that as upon a cherished
child.
The Law of the Spirit of Life a
Directive Law
Now,
that is deep truth about everyone who is a child of God,
and that makes everything possible for God and for us.
Everything is bound up with the residence of that in our
human spirit. Sonship has commenced, been introduced into
the centre of our being, and where that is true, where
that is an actuality, "the Spirit himself bears
witness with our spirit that we are children of
God," that there is that which is the sonship of God
in us. That is the natural expression of life, and that
becomes a living reality. I expect most of you can bear
that out. I mean, you can bear it out, not as a single
fact or witness, but by many evidences; the evidences of
life and of death in your procedure, the evidences of
life and death in your conversation, in the things you
say, in your thoughts, your judgments, the evidences of
life or death in your doings, your ways. It is a
regulating law, this law of life, working out in sonship.
What
does it mean? How simple, after all, the Christian life
is when once you grasp this key. It means, beloved, that
Jesus, the Son of God, is living over again His life in
us. Watch Him on earth and you will see what He says and
what He does not say, what He does and what He does not
do; for what He does not say and do is as significant as
what He says and does. You will see where He goes and
where He does not go. You will see when He goes to a
certain place and when He refrains from going to a
certain place. You will see a Divinely governed life, in
word, in movement, in act, marvelously governed; and He
is living that over again in us. We are not by far a
perfect expression of it, because we, for one thing, may
not be sensitive enough nor quick enough to understand
what the Spirit says in our hearts. We have not got an
ear that is trained and attuned, simply because we listen
to so much else. We are not quick enough in response and
obedience, and therefore there is not a perfect
expression of Christ; but nevertheless the basic fact is
there, and we know it. It is an educative thing, a
directive thing. We all know it. Oh, what a history we
have of this checking up! Moreover this experience is
progressive, for as we go on, we find more and more is
checked up. That which for a time seemed to be untouched
- not because God agreed with it, but because He was
bringing us on and could not deal with everything at once
- now comes under His eye, and we can no longer do what
we once were able to do.
May I
illustrate? I remember quite well how, in early days of
preaching, I used to cite a great deal of secular
literature to illustrate my point. I would bring out the
poets and many other secular writers - oh, wonderful
illustrations of my point to get it home! Well, the Lord
let that go on for a time, but I do know there came a
time in my spiritual life when I tried to give a bit of
Browning in a sermon, and the whole thing went flat.
My sermon was gone, and it was as though I had to start
preaching over again; but I could not. I learned a
lesson. All right, no more of that! Sometimes there was
the inclination to drop back, but I registered the same
awful sinking sense inside and knew that I had touched
death. I remember how true that was in relation to the
late war. Some of us were in the thick of things in that
war, and we saw a great deal. We had to deal with
conditions right on the spot. Well, afterwards when I
came home, I would sometimes take something out of the
war to carry home a point in a sermon. But I discovered
that God was not in it, and whenever I touched that war
in relation to the things of God, spiritual things, I
registered that same terrible sense of death within, and
I came definitely to the conclusion, that God did not
want me to mix that war up with heavenly things, but that
I was to leave it alone. Well, I had to let go. It was
the working of the law of life. No one ever said to me,
You must not do it; it is best not to refer to such
matters. No, the Spirit of life in me witnessed against
that, and told me, in effect, 'That is death. If you want
life, if you want your message to go on in life, if you
want to get through to God's end, leave all such matter
out. That was never born out from God, and only that
which is born from God accomplishes God's purpose and
gets back to God. Therefore rule out all the other.' I
say this law of the Spirit of life is a directive law.
If only
we have life and that life is allowed to have its way, we
are going to reach God's full end. It is not an abstract
thing, it is a Divine Person resident within; Christ, who
is the life, governing from within by the Holy Spirit,
the Spirit of life. Thus we see that, in the very
outworking, in the very process, in the very exercise of
this life how altogether other it is. It will not cohabit
with other things.
Isaac and Ishmael
Now to
come to Isaac. You remember Abraham tried to help the
Lord to realize His intentions. He recognized how
impossible this purpose of God was on any natural basis,
and then his faith failed and we know the painful story
of Ishmael - Abraham trying to help God out, trying to
realize Divine ends along natural lines. Ishmael came in.
What is he? The fruit of nature. Isaac came in, the fruit
of God. These two are found in the one house. Two things
result, but I leave the one for a moment and go on to the
other.
The hour
and the day came when the word of the Lord to Abraham was
this: "Cast out the bondwoman and her son: for the
son of this bondwoman shall not be heir with the son of
the freewoman." Have you got that? That which is
born of the flesh cannot inherit with that which is born
of the Spirit. That which is born of the Spirit has a
Divine inheritance which the flesh cannot come into.
This, which is of God, is altogether other than that and
cannot share its substance with that. One must go.
Now, you
come back to the other thing. Unless you do as God has
bidden, what will happen? Ishmael will oust Isaac;
because it says that Ishmael laughed at Isaac, mocked
Isaac, sought to make Isaac's life a misery, all with the
object of putting Isaac out and having Isaac's place.
That is the flesh always; it is over against the Spirit.
Give the fruit of nature any place, and it will very soon
oust what is of God. The two cannot cohabit, the two
cannot be co-heirs. It is quite true that this natural
life always laughs at the spiritual, because the
spiritual is always so altogether other. I suppose I had
better follow that right up at once.
Go over
to the Lord Jesus again. There were numerous things that
the Lord Jesus literally could not do. I mean, by reason
of His relationship to, and dependence upon, God, He
could not. He Himself said so. "The Son can do
nothing out from himself." "The words that I
speak, I speak not out from myself." The Lord Jesus
had to draw everything from the Father. "What thing
soever he (the Father) doeth, these the Son also
doeth," but none other things than these. So He had
to wait upon the Father before He could make an
utterance. He had to wait upon the Father before He could
do a work. He had to wait upon the Father before He could
go to any given place. "Go ye up unto the feast: I
go not up yet unto this feast...." That is the
present registration of His being bound. He has not got
the witness that liberates Him and directs Him to go up
to that feast. Yet it says, "But when his brethren
were gone up unto the feast, then went he also up, not
openly, but as it were in secret." Was that a
subterfuge, a trick, to get rid of people whose company
He did not want, not wanting to go with them, wanting to
go alone? We cannot talk like that. We have to find a
holier explanation than that. The explanation is that He
had not yet got through from the Father that the Father
wanted Him to go, and He had to conclude it was not the
Father's will, at any rate at that time; but when they
were gone up it came through, He was released in spirit,
the Spirit of sonship got the witness that it was all
right, the way was clear that He should go up and He
went. The point is that the Lord Jesus is limited
altogether by His relationship to the Father, His
voluntary dependence, the law of life that everything
must come from God and nothing out from self. That is the
law.
You try
and live on that level and see if the natural man does
not laugh and mock. Mark how they question you. What are
you going to do? I do not know! Where are you going? I do
not know! When are you going? I do not know! I shall go
when the Lord tells me I can, when the Lord bears witness
to me, when I am released of the Lord. Put this spiritual
language in any form you like: what does the natural man
say to that? He laughs, he mocks you. Not only is that
true from outside, but you find that inside yourself.
Very often you are inclined to call yourself a fool, and
to question yourself - Why do I not do this? Then you
have to stay - Why do I not do it? Because I cannot. Why
not! Well, it would be doing it myself. The Lord is not
doing that, I am not conscious that the Lord is doing
that. That is the language, the consciousness of sonship.
That is the way of life.
So
Ishmael mocks Isaac, as the natural life laughs at the
spiritual, and tries all the time to get the upper hand
and to oust that which is of God. That is sonship working
out. Of course, if you are not a son, you do not know
anything about this, but if you are a son, you know
something at least of what I am talking about, and you
can tell right away whether you are a son. This language
is not strange to sons; it is perfectly intelligent, at
any rate up to a certain point.
Sonship
is gathered up in fullness in the Person of the Lord
Jesus, and His whole life is an exhibition, an
exposition, of sonship, of what it means spiritually.
Then, when that sonship has been perfected by Him as Man,
in the humanity which He took upon Him, the Spirit of
God's Son comes and takes up residence in the new-born
child of God and begins to live out that perfect sonship
of the Son of God. "God hath sent forth the Spirit
of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father."
If the Spirit of sonship is ruling in our hearts, we
shall know what we may do and what we may not do, how we
may talk and how we may not talk. Believe me, beloved, if
the Spirit of sonship is ruling in our hearts, there will
never be the slightest contradiction between our conduct,
or our course of things, and what is written in God's
Word. We shall find that what is in God's Word
spontaneously becomes expressed in our lives. We do not,
in the first place, take God's Word and try, by outward
application, to conform to it. By the indwelling Spirit
we are conformed to the image of God's Son, and that
simply means conformed to the revelation God has given,
whether it be in the Person or in the Word, for there is
no contradiction. Sonship demands that. If, between our
conduct, our course, our way, and anything in the Word of
God, there is contradiction, something has happened to
injure the life, to check the Spirit of sonship:
somewhere we have got out of the way and ours is not a
way through, is not a living way. It may seem to us to be
right, but "there is a way that seemeth right unto a
man and the end thereof are the ways of death." Oh,
the Spirit of sonship is an illuminating and enlightening
thing to keep us in the way of life.
Yieldedness the Mark of Sonship - the
Spirit of the Lamb
We will
close with one reference to that outstanding episode in
Isaac's life when his father, Abraham, by the command of
God, took him on that journey to Mount Moriah to offer
him as an offering unto the Lord. I think this is one of
the most beautiful unveilings of what Isaac stands for.
"My father... Behold the fire and the wood: but
where is the lamb for the burnt offering?" "My
son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt
offering." God has His eye on Isaac: Isaac is chosen
of God; Isaac is to satisfy God in this matter. What is
in view is something that is for God, for God's pleasure,
for God's satisfaction. Isaac is in that line. The moment
comes when Isaac is apprised of the fact that he is the
offering. Suddenly perhaps, or on the way, nearing the
altar, Abraham apprises him: My son, the Lord has made
you the offering. Then the moment comes when Isaac is
bound. Let no one think that Isaac was a little, helpless
child at this time. He was a grown youth. His father was
a very old man, and had Isaac chosen to rebel, naturally
speaking, Abraham would not have stood a chance. Isaac
could easily have set his father at defiance. But you
have no sign or suggestion of anything like that. This
young man, in the strength of youth, lets himself be
bound and laid upon that altar, and allows that knife to
be raised and virtually plunged into him, allows himself
to be slain; for, so far as his will was concerned, it
was accepted. In spirit it was an accomplished end; there
was no resistance. So we have to say that in Isaac we
find expressed the offering up of himself in a perfect
yieldedness to the pleasure of God. That is sonship.
Here,
beloved, a wonderful subjection of soul or self-life is
manifested, a wonderful subjection of soul-life,
self-life, to the pleasure of God. Listen to One who
said, "No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down
of myself"; and the One who so spake turned to His
disciples and said, "He that saveth his soul-life
shall lose it; he that loseth his soul-life for my sake
shall find it." That is Isaac. That is sonship. Oh,
sonship, what a yielding thing it is, what a submissive
thing it is, what a lamb-like thing it is! "God
shall provide Himself a lamb."
Would
you know whether sonship is increasing in your case,
whether there is a development of the Son of God in you?
Your yieldedness, your decreasing resentment, resistance,
self-will, decreasing bitterness under trial, will afford
you proof of it. The lessening of the uprising of self in
assertiveness, in self-interest, self-preservation,
self-justification, self-pity, every form of self, the
decrease of all this is the evidence of sonship;
subjection under the hand of God, even though the trials
may come through His own children, through an Abraham.
Your slaying may come at the hands of one who is no enemy
of God. Under adversity, under trial, under slaying,
under cutting, under the knife, for there to be no
repining, no kicking, no reasoning, but yieldedness to
the hand of God, this is sonship. "My son, despise
not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou
art rebuked of him" (Heb. 12:5). "God dealeth
with you as with sons." "Shall we not be in
subjection to the Father of our spirits" - and die?
No, never! that is not God's end: "and live"!
Oh, under the chastening hand of God, we never expect to
survive. Surely it is the end! No! - "and
live"! God will see to that. It is the way of
sonship. It is the way of life. I am content to leave it
there for the time being. Life will spontaneously work
out along the line of sonship and sonship is that.