It has often been pointed out that the
death of Christ had, and has, a twofold aspect. Firstly,
there is the substitutionary, which is unique, isolated,
and conclusive. Nothing can be added to that, nor can it
be shared in its vicarious and redeeming efficacy. We
receive the benefit of it as a gift by faith and are
justified.
But there is a second aspect, namely, the
representative. In this, we ourselves in the nature of
Adam, in his fallen state, are included. Our sin is dealt
with in the substitutionary aspect, ourselves are dealt
with in the representative. While both of these are
vitally and fundamentally related to our salvation, the
latter will find the Divine emphasis mainly when we come to
living the Christ-life and fulfilling the Christ-purpose.
The Old Testament is full of this latter
emphasis in type and teaching. Abraham must needs be
separated from "country" (the world),
"kindred" (natural relationships), and
"father's house" (the "old man"). As
one writer has pointed out, his whole life was a constant
application of the death-principle to the many phases of
the natural man. He made an initial move when he came out
of the land of the Chaldeans, but his progress was
arrested at Haran until his father was dead. The
"old man" cannot be taken beyond the Jordan
(the Cross). The old life cannot come into the borders of
the "heavenly places." The writer quoted points
out the meaning of the many relationships and incidents
in Abraham's life in their carnal nature, and of the
trouble, arrest, and tragedy which they brought; and
further, how they had to be cut off and abandoned. Some
of these were:-
1. Egypt
- the realm of the senses; the attempt to find spiritual
strength and enablement through the tangible, apparent,
and present.
2. Lot -
"the upright-natural mind." "The spiritual
and natural mind seem at first so united that it is
difficult to distinguish between them. The difference
between the spiritual and the upright-natural mind is
seen in the whole course and conduct of Abraham and
Lot." It was only after Lot was separated from him
that the Lord said to Abraham "Lift up now thine
eyes."
3. The
Canaanites - false religion; spiritual, but satanic;
outward rites with accompanying signs and wonders, but
demoniacal.
4. Hagar
and Ishmael - expediency; trying to obtain spiritual ends
in a natural way; trying to be fruitful, and that through
self-effort, fleshly means, on natural grounds.
The
principle can be followed in other details of his life,
but we are content to point it out and leave it.
Abraham,
in order to come within the terms and fruitfulness of an
eternal covenant, must be a man of the Spirit, a
spiritual man, and this on a basis of faith.
In like
manner Moses had to be disciplined and prepared. One of
the most remarkable and - to many - most
perplexing statements in Scripture is that in Exod. 4:24:
"The Lord met him, and sought to kill him"; and
this, after the vision and the commission.
We know
that it was in relation to the covenant-sign of
circumcision, but we must remember that circumcision was
the symbol of the cutting off of the whole body of the
flesh, and this is related to our identification with
Christ in death (Col. 2:11,12). Forty years earlier,
Moses, with a conception of Divine service, had attempted
it with carnal means and in his own natural life. This
had brought the inevitable failure and arrest. For a
further forty years the principle of death had to be
applied, until the only honest expression in relation to
spiritual service was "I cannot." The Lord had
deliberately taken pains to bring him to nothing. The
basic truth, however, must take some literal form of
recognized testimony, there must be a definite expression
of a spiritual fact - if you like, an ordinance; but the
ordinance is nothing in itself, only as a confession of
the acceptance of the spiritual reality. Circumcision was
this in Israel, the encircling of blood, separating
between the natural man and the spiritual, the old and
the new; hence the incident mentioned. The progress of
Moses was suddenly arrested, and with a shock he was
brought up against the need to make in an act a definite
and concrete declaration of the law of encompassment of
the end of the flesh. We may take it that if we essay to
carry the uncircumcised flesh, or the natural man, into
the realm of spiritual life or service we shall be
smitten down - that natural man will be met with the
challenge of the judgment of Calvary.
Thus we
see how the truth of incorporation into the
representative death of Christ lies at the root of Old
Testament experience, and this can be traced right
through the Scriptures. The history of Israel is one long
commentary upon it. The Red Sea is the substitutionary
death, the wilderness the revelation of the need for the
Jordan as the representative death, or identification in
the death.
Having come to the blessings of the
substitutionary work of Christ, and the enjoyment of
justification by faith, we shall - if our spiritual life
is a pure and progressive one - begin to learn how very
wide is the gap between the old creation and the new,
between the natural man and the spiritual. This will come
to us only progressively and line upon line, but with God
it is already a settled conclusion. With Him there is no
overlapping of the two, they are poles asunder. The
bringing of these two together is to Him in the nature of
spiritual fornication and the fruits in life and service
are unlawful.
It is His purpose to make this
increasingly clear to us, and while to us there may seem
to be much mixture and intertwining, He will show us with
ever increasing clearness that He has driven the
dimensions of the eternal Cross between the two. We have
given much Scripture in previous chapters which shows the
fundamental differences between these two, the natural
and the spiritual.
To be a Christian is not just to change
the direction of our interests - to turn all our
faculties, abilities, energies, resources, emotions,
acumen, enthusiasms, etc., over from self or the world to
the account of Christianity, religion, the gospel or the
kingdom of God.
In the realm of the life and things of God
there are two words uttered over the natural man by God,
"Nothing" and "Cannot." To fail to
recognise the significance of these two words is to come
into the hopeless, heart-breaking, barren realm of Rom.
7. Fruitless struggle will result if there be any genuine
spiritual aspiration; and whether there be such or not
(the notion in the latter event being merely that of the
natural man directed toward Christian enterprise) the
service will be ineffective in all true spiritual
attainment. No flesh shall glory in His presence, and the
religious flesh is no more acceptable than the
irreligious. How many there are who are seeking either to
attain unto a standard of spiritual satisfaction, or to
do God's service, with their own resources of intellect,
will, emotion - reason, energy, passion. Hence all the
unapostolic organisation, machinery, advertisement.
No! For acceptance and service there must
be a new man, and this new man has a new life, a new
mind, a new spirit, a new way, a new capacity, a new
consciousness, in fact "all things are become
new." The one concerned comes more and more to
realise how differently God does things from the way men
do them; yes, and what different things God does. The
aims of God, the methods of God, the means used by God,
the times of God, are an education and often a discipline
to this man in Christ. Until the "old man" is
well crucified, God's ways and means and times and aims
are a sore trial to him and he will either revolt and
break away in himself or he will go down into the depths;
but he will come anyway to see that in the intention of
God, he - the natural man - must go to the Cross, where
God put him conclusively in the representative man Jesus,
the Christ. The touch of the natural man upon the things
of the Spirit is death and desolation; hence the Lord is
always taking precautions against this natural life in
His own children and passing them through that which
brings them very low and puts them, on their natural
side, out of action. He drove a stake through Paul's
flesh as a precaution against the uprising of his soulish
life into exaltation; in order, further, that there might
be no arrest, but rather an increase of spiritual
usefulness. We have a very limited knowledge of our own
natural springs - the motives, the nature of our desires,
even for spiritual blessing; the personal interests in
the kingdom of God; the craving to possess, to be
satisfied, to have influence, recognition, freedom; and a
multitude of other constitutional elements. The Lord
knows how all our sources of life and expression are
poisoned and tainted. He would not have us introspective
and self-analyzing, but He would tell us His own verdict
upon the "natural man," and ask us to accept
the Divine requirements that he should be crucified.
When, by faith in His judgment and word, we thus accept
the Cross, He proceeds to work out the death in us, and
we have a growing realisation of the need for such. Then
we refuse to move other than in the Spirit on the ground
of God's fact in Christ - "I have been crucified
with Christ... it is no longer I" (Gal. 2:20). As
the holy anointing oil was not to come upon man's flesh
in the typical anointing in the Old Testament, so the
Holy Spirit, typified there, will never be allowed to
come upon uncrucified flesh in this age of the Spirit.
Calvary precedes Pentecost in history and in experience.
A true revelation of the worthlessness of the natural man
in God's sight has always been a necessary prelude to
anointing for service. The "I cannot" of Moses,
the "Woe is me" of Isaiah, the "I am but a
child" of Jeremiah, the "I am a sinful
man" of Peter, the "In me... dwelleth no good
thing" of Paul, are typical of all who have been the
called of God, and these expressions are the result of
the application of the true meaning of the Cross. And yet
they were religious enthusiasts, and devoted to God in
the realm of their soulish nature. It is ever the love of
God which leads by the way of Calvary, though bitter may
be the cup when the soul (not the spirit) is poured out
unto death, for only so can there be that life of
emancipation from the limitations of the natural into the
universal dimensions of the spiritual.
Let us look into the Word again and keep
this thought before us, and as we see that His death is
our death let us say "Amen: Lord, work it out";
and then we shall be ready to "know him, and the
power of his resurrection... becoming conformed unto his
death."