READING: 2 Cor. 5:14-18; Romans
6:4.
The sum of everything in the
new creation is in Christ, or, to put that in another way, it is
outside of man himself. It is apart from man, and it always will
be. Although Christ, the sum of the new creation, may be in us,
that new creation will remain in Christ, and we are only in it by
reason of our union with Him. He becomes the fulness of
everything in us, but the practical outworking of
that fulness will ever, and always, be purely and
solely on a basis of faith.
If the thing could be said at
any time to have its origin in us, then faith would be dismissed.
If we had it in ourselves, if it were our constitution, faith
would be dispensed with. That would result in a repetition of us.
Man at the beginning, under the deluding, blinding, misleading
activity of the Devil, sought to have things in himself rather
than as solely in God, to be enjoyed by faith and obedience. He
sought to have it in himself. Since that time unregenerate man
has the idea that he has it in himself, that it is in him to be
and to do.
The very heart of the
deception, as of the Deceiver, is pride. Sometimes we use another
word, which is not a scriptural word itself, but which has a
little keener edge on it than pride. It is the word "conceit,"
which simply means having it in yourself, with the seat of it in
you. That is pride. Satan sought to have it in himself, and then
prompted man to seek to have it in himself. The delusion of man
is that he thinks he has it in himself, and it takes a great deal
of Divine activity to get that idea out of man's mind. The
trouble, not merely with the unregenerate but with the Lord's
people, is the getting rid of that thing which is so deeply
seated and rooted in the being of man, the idea that he can make
a contribution out of himself toward the realisation of his
Divine destiny.
You and I are troubled with
that original sin, the idea that somehow we can provide something
out from ourselves which will contribute toward Divine ends. All
our struggles, all our difficulties, all our discouragements, all
our wretched morbidness, is consequent upon that; that we have
not come fully and finally as a settled thing, beyond any more
question, discussion or hope, to know that we cannot provide one
iota out from ourselves toward God's end. We are all the time -
perhaps not consciously or deliberately - living on that old
basis. What is our wretched introspection? It is eyes turned in
in the endeavour to find something worth while in ourselves,
something that can help God. That is all it is. How many people
are cursed with that thing! And that is only one aspect of the
great trouble.
What we are saying is this,
that in the new creation all things are out from God. To
put that the other way is to say that, nothing is out from
ourselves. All things are stored up and centred in Christ, and
they always will be. You and I will never be able to be
independent of Christ in any way whatsoever. That means that the
thing will never be in us as in ourselves. We have it in Christ,
and its practical outworking is only along the line of faith in
the Lord Jesus. Man in himself, even as a child of God, will
always be totally at a discount in the things of God. That is a
tremendous lesson to learn. Let us repeat that. Man in himself,
even as a child of God, even as one who has known the Lord for a
lifetime, and has come into a very real wealthy knowledge and
experience of the Lord, still in himself will be totally at a
discount in the things of God. That is, he will know the more he
goes on that his dependence is entirely and utterly upon another,
upon a spring, a source, a fountain which is not in himself, not
in his own constitution. Though it may be centred in his spirit
as to location, it is not in his own being as a part of him. He
will always be passing through new experiences in which he
realises how utterly impossible it is for him to face up to the
situation of himself and meet the demand.
That is quite elementary. It
lies right at the beginning of things, though, blessed be God, it
brings us face to face with the other side. That may perhaps
sound discouraging, disappointing, but we ought to be getting to
the place to which Paul came, when he came to rejoice in that
fact. "Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my
infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me" (2
Cor. 12:9). We have all things in Christ, and those "all
things" in Christ become an inward spring for us to draw
upon.
Before we pass from that, let
us notice that this fact reveals to us what the continual
difficulty will be. The difficulty which we shall be meeting all
along the way will be ourselves. We shall find that the main
obstacle, the main enemy to our fulness in Christ, to all that
the new creation means, will be ourselves in some way. It will
either be our self-occupation - which is but a form of trying to
be something fine, something in ourselves which will bring
satisfaction to God - or it will be our self-effort in service.
It will be this natural life of ours cropping up in some
direction or another, and as it crops up it will cut clean in
between us and the "all things" which are of God, and
we shall find that it is ourself which brings us up short, which
creates the arrest. The Lord in effect, and in mighty effect,
will be saying: "I cannot go on with you, you
must get out of the way!"
Is not that the explanation of
so many of our experiences in the Lord's dealings with us? They
are with a view to getting our self-life out of the way. We loom
so much upon our own horizon. We are so big in our own thoughts.
Not necessarily in that wrong way in which we think a great deal
of ourselves, though it may be that the thinking so badly of
ourselves is another form of thinking of ourselves very largely.
We may be so occupied with our terribly worthless self that
Christ is blotted out altogether. Some people are never at an end
of telling you how bad they are, how worthless they are, drawing
out a tale of their woe about themselves, and that obscures
Christ, and does not honour God. We should have settled that. We
shall ever know it. We shall know it more and more, but there
ought to be running parallel with that an appreciation of what He
is which takes the sting out of that, which takes the power out
of that which would break us, crush us, and make us so that God
cannot be glorified in us.
The new creation is in Christ.
It is not in you, and not in me, and never will be. All that it
will mean in time, and in eternity will be through our spiritual
union with Christ. All God's fulness is in Christ. We shall
receive all that fulness, and enjoy it in a practical
out-working. But this, while we are yet here in time, will ever
be by faith's union. In eternity, where the reception of that
fulness will be unhindered, the work of faith, though not its
fruit, will have passed. But we shall never be absorbed in Christ
in the sense that we become so many Christs. It will still be
Himself as distinct Who is to be glorified. We shall never be
glorifying ourselves, neither shall we be glorified by others as
though we were Christ. Christ is not some great widespread
essence, which is going to become the constitution of a great
multitude, so that that multitude becomes a Christ in essence. It
will ever be true that Christ remains apart in His Person, though
manifested in His glory and in His excellence in the saints, and
we shall still therefore be worshipping Him as objective and
distinct in His own Person from ourselves.
Perhaps that hardly needs
saying. But it is very important that we should recognise that forever
God has bound up everything with His Son, and that nothing
will ever be had or enjoyed apart from Christ, while for this
present life that is only by faith in the Lord Jesus. The object
of this present emphasis is to seek, as the Lord will enable,
that there shall be an emancipation from ourselves; for that
occupation, that consideration, is always taking from
His glory. Let us ask the Lord to cut us really free from
ourselves by an unveiling and presentation of His Son to us, as
the sum total of all that ever God desires and wills.
The Active
Feature of the New Creation - the Spirit of Life
You notice that is where Romans
8 opens up. In that chapter we are now represented as being in
Christ, "they that are in Christ Jesus," and it is said
that in Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life has made free
from the law of sin and death. The active feature, then, of the
new creation is the Spirit of life. Everything is bound up with
that. The final issue of God's purpose in us is that we should be
seated in that Spirit of life in Christ, imparted to us
through faith. As to the nature which is going to be developed in
us, the Christ nature: as to the Testimony which is going to be
manifested through us. Everything is seated in that life, that
Spirit of life. All the power and all the nature of Christ in
glory as the fulness of God is there as the active, energetic
principle of the new creation.
Let us illustrate that in a
familiar way. The first two witnesses in the history of this
present world were Abel and Enoch. There is a wonderful
significance in those two names being brought together at the
beginning of Hebrews 11.
Abel! Abel introduced
the whole Testimony in its principle. Blood was brought into view
through Abel, and the shedding of that blood, as we have come
since to understand by the teaching of God's Word, speaks of a
life which is an incorruptible life, which cannot be corrupted,
which has no seed of corruption in it, and is therefore a life
which is indestructible.
Abel offered a sacrifice
through shedding of blood, and instantly God bore witness to his
offering that he was righteous. How did Abel become aware of
righteousness not his own? By reason of his spiritual faith union
with a Blood in which there was no corruption. It was that Blood
which we know to be the symbol of Divine life as it is in the
Lord Jesus. It was that Blood, that life, which, being
incorruptible, became the basis of his faith, and therefore
through faith in that incorruptible Blood, he had witness borne
that he was righteous.
The second aspect is manifested
in Abel, in that he was therefore deathless through faith in that
Blood. It was that very thing which the Devil discerned, namely,
that here was the raising up in this first man of a testimony to
something which cannot be corrupted, and cannot therefore be
destroyed. Satan came out against Abel to try to contradict that
testimony of the incorruptible and indestructible, and slew Abel;
but the Word says that through his faith "he being dead yet
speaketh." We know that he is gathered up in that large
company of Hebrews 11: "These all died in faith, not having
received the promises... God having provided some better thing
for us, that they without us should not be made perfect
(complete)" (Hebrews 11:13,40). This means, quite clearly -
if logic means anything - that they are coming into our fulness
through their faith.
What is the fulness which God
has provided for us in this dispensation? It is the fulness of
Christ in the power of His resurrection as seated at God's right
hand, and their faith brought them into that. Abel came in on the
ground of the Blood, incorruptible, indestructible, and that is
the basis of all Christ's fulness. It is the ground of the new
creation in Christ Jesus.
Enoch! Immediately
after that the writer of the letter to the Hebrews brings in
Enoch. "Enoch was translated that he should not see
death" (verse 5). There is that leap, that one bound from
the beginning to the end of the Testimony. The Apostle Jude says:
"...Enoch... the seventh from Adam." If you count up
you will find that literally he was not the seventh from Adam.
There may be one explanation of that way of putting things,
inasmuch as the Hebrews counted inclusively, and not as we do.
But there is a typical significance about that. "Seven"
is the number of spiritual perfection, and undoubtedly Enoch is a
type in the Old Testament, perhaps the type of perfect
humanity. What happens to perfect humanity? It never goes to
destruction and corruption! It goes to glory! It breaks the
ordinary course of corrupted humanity by way of death and the
grave, and so Enoch was translated that he should not see death.
From the beginning of the Testimony, which is in the power of an
incorruptible and indestructible life, you immediately leap to
the end of that thing in Enoch, and see what the ultimate result
of that incorruptible and indestructible life will be. It will be
a complete and final triumph over death in all its forms in a
rapture.
Alive Only
Unto God
Everything is centred in that
Spirit of life, that new creation life. If we look within
ourselves to find more good, we are going to look in vain. We
shall never find anything in ourselves but corruption. Is that
really settled with us? On both sides, the people who have some
opinion of themselves had better settle it once and for all that
there is nothing in them but corruption, and also those who have
settled it, and yet are so occupied with their old man as though
it were something really worth being occupied with. Put it where
the Lord Jesus has put it, in the grave, and do not walk round
it, turning it over, if peradventure you might find something
worth while. Fix and fasten your faith in God's Son, and leave
yourself alone for ever. Only so will you find your emancipation.
If Christ is in us, whatever we may be in ourselves, there is
that which is incorruptible. Christ is incorruptible, and Christ
is in us.
Now see God looking clean
through us as in ourselves as though He never saw us, and seeing
that deposit, His Son, and keeping His eye upon that. When we
come to talk to Him about ourselves He says, I am not interested
in that; I am interested in this! I am not concerned with that;
this is what I am after! Come with Me, and let your eye be on
this, and let us be occupied with this and its increase, and when
you are brought into the fires remember always, it is not that I
am against you, but in order that I may bring this out more
fully, and that I may make more of My Son in you! When you get
into difficulties, and are conscious of the fact of your own
helplessness, it is only to make you know how much He can be to
you! When again you are feeling utterly empty, and there is a big
demand which you are quite unable to meet, then remember that
faith takes hold of Him in His fulness, and you will be able to
meet the demand! It is all Christ in every way. That is
glorifying Him. God is set upon glorifying His Son in us. We must
become centred in Christ, wholly and utterly.
Do not try to crucify the old
man piecemeal. It cannot be done. Taking him a bit at a time, and
trying thus to get rid of the flesh is not the way. The Lord has
taken the old man in his entirety, and dealt with him as a whole.
We focus upon some special weakness, some special fault in
ourselves, and are wanting that dealt with, and are going
round that, to be saved from that. We are going the
wrong way to work. The Lord says, The whole of that old
creation at once, and Christ will be to us according to
the measure in which we have accepted that injunction. The
fulness of Christ will depend upon our acceptance of the fulness
of His death to the old creation.
The incorruptible life, the
Spirit of life in Christ, is the secret, the law, the foundation
of all sanctification, of all holiness, of all conformity to the
image of Christ. That is why it says that we should walk in
newness of life; that is an active going on in this new life,
this Spirit of life. And as we go on, not in ourselves, not on
ourselves, but on this life, we become conformed to the image of
Christ, which is there in that Spirit of life.
Then there is a wonderful
expression, a growing expression of how incorruptible that life
is, because that life gains ascendency over corruption. Now we
are touching something very precious. If only the Lord would just
lay this in our hearts, that we might see it anew! We have said
that what is incorruptible is indestructible. In other words,
that in which there is no corruption can never know death, but
must conquer death, must bring death into subjection.
Life for
Spirit, Mind and Body
In every part of our being,
spirit, mind and body, that incorruptible life can be energetic.
In our spirit it can be the
mighty energy of God which lifts our spirits completely above all
death conditions around. Would to God that His people believed
that more, and took up their position upon that more definitely!
Death is all around, and is a mighty working force in this
universe. We may meet it at any moment. It may come to us, assail
us, through numerous channels, by numerous means, and we know
what it is to feel our spiritual life, our inner life with God,
come under the hand of death, under the pall, the cloud, the
damping suffocation of spiritual death.
Now this Spirit of life in
Christ, Who is in us is there in order to lift us into a place
above that working of death in our spirit, so that, while the
death is not immediately destroyed in the sense that it is
blotted out, it is destroyed in the New Testament meaning of the
word, rendered ineffective, made void, so far as its domination
is concerned. There is an ascendency over it, and it is made
subject.
What is true in the matter of
our spirit can be true also in the matter of our minds. The
quickening power of His Spirit of life can renew our minds. The
New Testament says so: "...the renewing of the mind..."
The mind is something deeper than the brain, so that often when
the brain may be at a discount, there can be such a quickening of
intelligent apprehension of the Lord, that we are lifted above
that death in the realm of the mind, and it is as
though again the heavens were opened above us, and our minds have
become energised anew in relation to the things of God. This
operates wonderfully in times of weariness when the mind is
heavy, and there is the consciousness of there being no mind at
all. (I do not mean that we are out of our minds in the common
acceptance of that word, but we have no mind for things.) The
Spirit of life, laid hold of by faith, will lift us in a
wonderful way above that which would require in the natural
realm, and along natural lines perhaps, a prolonged rest; and
then there will not be the same result even after that. Perhaps
you need a renewed mind to go on, to keep on. Well, Christ as the
new creation life in you can quicken your mind, renew your mind,
so that there may be a newness of the mind, a testimony to this
triumph of the incorruptible life over all that which is working
of corruption and death in the mind.
Blessed be God, this also
applies to the body. Paul has quite a lot to say on this matter,
as you know. It is true that the Spirit of life in Christ can,
and does, subject the corruption, even of our mortal bodies, to
Himself. We do not mean that He gets rid of the mortality, that
here and now the change takes place from the mortal to
immortality, or from the corruptible to the incorruptible order.
We mean with all our heart that the life, which is Christ's life
in us, can lift us above the death working in our bodies. Would
to God that we laid hold of that more! The Lord would be more
glorified along that line. "That the life whereby Jesus
conquered death should be manifested in this dying body."
There is no question that the body is dying. It is corruptible,
and therefore it is destructible. But there is something here
deposited within this mortal temple which is Christ,
incorruptible and indestructible, to take ascendency even over
the death working in the mortal body. It is the new creation at
work triumphantly over the old. This is our heritage in Christ.
Living
by Faith
You see that everything is
governed by faith appropriating the values of the new creation.
It is not a doctrine, not a theory. It is a Divine energy, a
life, a power, which is Christ by the Holy Spirit ministered to
us, and the proper course of the new creation in your case and in
mine is, that rather than that there should be an increase of
death, a breaking down, and a failing, as we get older, there
ought to be an increase of life and ascendency. We are all
conscious that we are getting older. We are all conscious that in
the natural realm the human forces and abilities are abating, but
we are not going to accept that as the governing law of our life.
There should be an increase of this incorruptible nature of
Christ as we get older, and therefore there ought to be a
beautifying and sweetening of our lives the older we get. Though
it be true that our natural powers of endurance are weakening,
and the nervous system is being called upon to carry a weight too
much for it, and we are ageing; yet if Christ is having His way
in us, there ought to be in the midst of these very conditions a
testimony to the new creation, which does not break down, and
does not wane, but is ever fresh right on to the end.
Freshness, newness of life!
That life never gets tired. That life never runs low. No marks
or signs of exhaustion are in that life. There are no fading
lives where that life is. There is no falling fruit there. That
life is in you and in me in Christ. Then what should the
testimony be? It should be a testimony to freshness, continual
freshness, a testimony to newness, that the things which are the
most well known, most familiar, are still livingly precious with
us, and never lose their freshness, beauty and glory. God forbid
that we should spiritually grow old, and contradict the real
nature of the new creation. God forbid that natural conditions in
body, and in mind, and in the world, should ever become the
dominant things in us, but that to us the uppermost thing should
ever be that there is a Spirit of life regnant, triumphant, ever
fresh.
The Lord bury this word in
our hearts very deeply, and keep us living on this ground.