The Normal Christian Life
Chapter Four
The Path of Progress: Reckoning
We now come to a matter on which there has been some confusion of thought among the Lord's children. It concerns what follows this knowledge. Note again first of all the wording of Romans 6:6: "Knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him". The tense of the verb is most precious for it puts the event right back there in the past. It is final, once-for-all. The thing has been done and cannot be undone. Our old man has been crucified once and for ever, and he can never be un-crucified. This is what we need to know.
Then, when we know this, what follows? Look again at our passage. The next
command is in verse 11: "Even so reckon ye also yourselves to be dead unto
sin". This, clearly, is the natural sequel to verse 6. Read them together: `Knowing
that our old man was crucified, ... reckon ye yourselves to be dead'. That
is the order. When we know that our old man has been crucified with Christ,
then the next step is to reckon it so.
Unfortunately, in presenting the truth of our union with Christ the emphasis
has too often been placed upon this second matter of reckoning ourselves to
be dead, as though that were the starting point, whereas it should rather be
upon knowing ourselves to be dead. God's Word makes it clear that
`knowing' is to precede `reckoning'. "Knowing this ... reckon." The sequence
is most important. Our reckoning must be based on knowledge of divinely
revealed fact, for otherwise faith has no foundation on which to rest. When
we know, then we reckon spontaneously.
So in teaching this matter we should not over-emphasize reckoning. People
are always trying to reckon without knowing. They have not first had a
Spirit-given revelation of the fact; yet they try to reckon and soon they
get into all sorts of difficulties. When temptation comes they begin to
reckon furiously: `I am dead; I am dead; I am dead!' but in the very act of
reckoning they lose their temper. Then they say, `It doesn't work. Romans
6:11 is no good.' And we have to admit that verse 11 is no good
without verse 6. So it comes to this, that unless we know for a fact that we
are dead with Christ, the more we reckon the more intense will the struggle
become, and the issue will be sure defeat.
For years after my conversion I had been taught to reckon. I reckoned from
1920 until 1927. The more I reckoned that I was dead to sin, the more alive
I clearly was. I simply could not believe myself dead and I could not
produce the death. Whenever I sought help from others I was told to read
Romans 6:11, and the more I read Romans 6:11 and tried to reckon, the
further away death was: I could not get at it. I fully appreciated the
teaching that I must reckon, but I could not make out why nothing resulted
from it. I have to confess that for months I was troubled. I said to the
Lord, `If this is not clear, if I cannot be brought to see this which is so
very fundamental, I will cease to do anything. I will not preach any more; I
will not go out to serve Thee any more; I want first of all to get
thoroughly clear here.' For months I was seeking, and at times I fasted, but
nothing came through.
I remember one morning -- that morning was a real morning and one I can
never forget -- I was upstairs sitting at my desk reading the Word and
praying, and I said, `Lord, open my eyes!' And then in a flash I saw it. I
saw my oneness with Christ. I saw that I was in Him, and that when He died I
died. I saw that the question of my death was a matter of the past and not
of the future, and that I was just as truly dead as He was because I was in
Him when He died. The whole thing had dawned upon me. I was carried away
with such joy at this great discovery that I jumped from my chair and cried,
`Praise the Lord, I am dead!' I ran downstairs and met one of the brothers
helping in the kitchen and I laid hold of him. `Brother', I said, `do you
know that I have died?' I must admit he looked puzzled. `What do you mean?'
he said, so I went on: `Do you not know that Christ has died? Do you not
know that I died with Him? Do you not know that my death is no less truly a
fact than His?' Oh it was so real to me! I longed to go through the streets
of Shanghai shouting the news of my discovery. From that day to this I have
never for one moment doubted the finality of that word: "I have been
crucified with Christ".
I do not mean to say that we need not work that out. Yes, there is an
outworking of the death which we are going to see presently, but this, first
of all, is the basis of it. I have been crucified: it has been done.
What, then, is the secret of reckoning? To put it in one word, it is
revelation. We need revelation from God Himself (Matt. 16:17; Eph. 1:17,18).
We need to have our eyes opened to the fact of our union with Christ, and
that is something more than knowing it as a doctrine. Such revelation is no
vague, indefinite thing. Most of us can remember the day when we saw clearly
that Christ died for us, and we ought to be equally clear as to the time
when we saw that we died with Christ. It should be nothing hazy, but very
definite, for it is with this as basis that we shall go on. It is not that I
reckon myself to be dead, and therefore I will be dead. It is that, because
I am dead -- because I see now what God has done with me in Christ --
therefore I reckon myself to be dead. That is the right kind of
reckoning. It is not reckoning toward death but from death.
The Second Step: "Even So Reckon..."
What does reckoning mean? `Reckoning' in Greek means doing accounts
book-keeping. Accounting is the only thing in the world we human beings can
do correctly. An artist paints a landscape. Can he do it with perfect
accuracy? Can the historian vouch for the absolute accuracy of any record,
or the map-maker for the perfect correctness of any map? They can make, at
best, fair approximations. Even in everyday speech, when we try to tell some
incident with the best intention to be honest and truthful, we cannot speak
with complete accuracy. It is mostly a case of exaggeration or
understatement, of one word too much or too little. What then can a man do
that is utterly reliable? Arithmetic! There is no scope for error there. One
chair plus one chair equals two chairs. That is true in London and it is
true in Cape Town. If you travel west to New York or east to Singapore it is
still the same. All the world over and for all time, one plus one equals
two. One plus one is two in heaven and earth and hell.
Why does God say we are to reckon ourselves dead? Because we are
dead. Let us keep to the analogy of accounting. Suppose I have fifteen
shillings in my pocket, what do I enter in my account-book? Can I enter
fourteen shillings and sixpence or fifteen shillings and sixpence? No, I
must enter in my account-book that which is in fact in my pocket. Accounting
is the reckoning of facts, not fancies. Even so, it is because I am really
dead that God tells me to account it so. God could not ask me to put down in
my account-book what was not true. He could not ask me to reckon that I am
dead if I am still alive. For such mental gymnastics the word `reckoning'
would be inappropriate; we might rather speak of `mis-reckoning'!
Reckoning is not a form of make-believe. It does not mean that, having found that I have only twelve shillings in my pocket, I hope that by entering fifteen shillings incorrectly in my account-book such `reckoning' will somehow remedy the deficiency. It won't. If I have only twelve shillings, yet try to reckon to myself: `I have fifteen shillings; I have fifteen shillings; I have fifteen shillings', do you think that the mental effort involved will in any way affect the sum that is in my pocket? Not a bit of it! Reckoning will not make twelve shillings into fifteen shillings, nor will it make what is untrue true. But if, on the other hand, it is a fact that I have fifteen shillings in my pocket, then with great ease and assurance I can enter fifteen shillings in my account-book. God tells us to reckon ourselves dead, not that by the process of reckoning we may become dead, but because we are dead. He never told us to reckon what was not a fact.
Having said, then, that revelation leads spontaneously to reckoning, we must
not lose sight of the fact that we are presented with a command: "Reckon ye
...." There is a definite attitude to be taken. God asks us to do the
account; to put down `I have died' and then to abide by it. Why? Because it
is a fact. When the Lord Jesus was on the cross, I was there in Him.
Therefore I reckon it to be true. I reckon and declare that I have died in
Him. Paul said, "Reckon ye also yourselves to be dead unto sin, but alive
unto God." How is this possible? "In Christ Jesus." Never forget that it is
always and only true in Christ. If you look at yourself you will
think death is not there, but it is a question of faith not in yourself but
in Him. You look to the Lord, and know what He has done. `Lord, I believe
in Thee. I reckon upon the fact in Thee.' Stand there all the
day.
The Reckoning Of Faith
The first four-and-a-half chapters of Romans speak of faith and faith and
faith. We are justified by faith in Him (Rom. 3:28; 5:1). Righteousness, the
forgiveness of our sins, and peace with God are all ours by faith, and
without faith in the finished work of Jesus Christ none can possess them.
But in the second section of Romans we do not find the same repeated mention
of faith, and it might at first appear that the emphasis is therefore
different. It is not really so, however, for where the words `faith' and
`believe' drop out the work `reckon' takes their place. Reckoning and faith
are here practically the same thing.
What is faith? Faith is my acceptance of God's fact. It
always has its foundations in the past. What relates to the future is hope
rather than faith, although faith often has its object or goal in the
future, as in Hebrews 11. Perhaps for this reason the word chosen here is
`reckon'. It is a word that relates only to the past -- to what we
look back to as settled, and not forward to as yet to be. This is the kind
of faith described in Mark 11:24: "All things whatsoever ye pray and ask
for, believe that ye have received them, and ye shall have them." The
statement there is that, if you believe that you already have received
your requests (that is, of course, in Christ), then `you shall have
them'. To believe that you may get something, or that you can
get it, or even that you will get it, is not faith in the sense meant
here. This is faith -- to believe that you have already got it. Only that
which relates to the past is faith in this sense. Those who say `God can' or
`God may' or `God must' or `God will' do not necessarily believe at all.
Faith always says, `God has done it'.
When, therefore, do I have faith in regard to my
crucifixion? Not when I say God can, or will, or must crucify me, but when
with joy I say, `Praise God, in Christ I am crucified!'
In Romans 3 we see the Lord Jesus bearing our sins and
dying as our Substitute that we might be forgiven. In Romans 6 we see
ourselves included in the death whereby He secured our deliverance. When the
first fact was revealed to us we believed on Him for our justification. God
tells us to reckon upon the second fact for our deliverance. So that, for
practical purposes, `reckoning' in the second section of Romans takes the
place of `faith' in the first section. The emphasis is not different. The
normal Christian life is lived progressively, as it is entered initially, by
faith in Divine fact: in Christ and His Cross.
Temptation And Failure, The Challenge To Faith
For us, then, the two greatest facts in history are these: that all our sins
are dealt with by the Blood, and that we ourselves are dealt with by the
Cross. But what now of the matter of temptation? What is to be our attitude
when, after we have seen and believed these facts, we discover the old
desires rising up again? Worse still, what if we fall once more into known
sin? What if we lose our temper, or worse? Is the whole position set forth
above proved thereby to be false?
Now remember, one of the Devil's main objects is always to
make us doubt the Divine facts. (Compare Gen. 3:4) After we have seen, by
revelation of the Spirit of God, that we are indeed dead with Christ, and
have reckoned it so, he will come and say: `There is something moving
inside. What about it? Can you call this death?' When that happens, what
will be our answer? The crucial test is just here. Are you going to believe
the tangible facts of the natural realm which are clearly before your eyes,
or the intangible facts of the spiritual realm which are neither seen nor
scientifically proved?
Now we must be careful. It is important for us to recall
again what are facts stated in God' Word for faith to lay hold of and what
are not. How does God state that deliverance is effected? Well, in the first
place, we are not told that sin as a principle in us is rooted out or
removed. To reckon on that will be to miscalculate altogether and find
ourselves in the false position of the man we considered earlier, who tried
to put down the twelve shillings in his pocket as fifteen shillings in his
account-book. No, sin is not eradicated. It is very much there, and, given
the opportunity, will overpower us and cause us to commit sins again,
whether consciously or unconsciously. That is why we shall always need to
know the operation of the precious Blood.
But whereas we know that, in dealing with sins committed,
God's method is direct, to blot them out of remembrance by means of the
Blood, when we come to the principle of sin and the matter of deliverance
from its power, we find instead that God deals with this indirectly. He does
not remove the sin but the sinner. Our old man was crucified with Him, and
because of this the body, which before had been a vehicle of sin, is
unemployed (Romans 6:6).[5] Sin, the old master, is still about, but the
slave who served him has been put to death and so is out of reach and his
members are unemployed. The gambler's hand is unemployed, the swearer's
tongue is unemployed, and these members are now available to be used instead
"as instruments of righteousness unto God" (Romans 6:13).
Thus we can say that `deliverance from sin' is a more
scriptural idea than `victory over sin'. The expressions "freed from sin"
and "dead unto sin" in Romans 6:7 and 11 imply deliverance from a power that
is still very present and very real -- not from something that no longer
exists. Sin is still there, but we are knowing deliverance from its power in
increasing measure day by day.
This deliverance is so real that John can boldly write:
"Whosoever is begotten of God doeth no sin ... he cannot sin" (1 John 3:9),
which is, however, a statement that, wrongly understood, may easily mislead
us. By it John is not telling us that sin is now no longer in our history
and that we shall not again commit sin. He is saying that to sin is not in
the nature of that which is born of God. The life of Christ has been planted
in us by new birth and its nature is not to commit sin. But there is a great
difference between the nature and the history of a thing, and there is a
great difference between the nature of the life within us and our
history. To illustrate this (though the illustration is an inadequate one)
we might say that wood `cannot' sink, for it is not its nature to do so; but
of course in history it will do so if a hand hold it under water. The
history is a fact, just as sins in our history are historic facts; but the
nature is a fact also, and so is the new nature that we have received in
Christ. What is `in Christ' cannot sin; what is in Adam can sin and will do
so whenever Satan is given a chance to exert his power.
So it is a question of our choice of which facts we will
count upon and live by: the tangible facts of daily experience or the
mightier fact that we are now `in Christ'. The power of His resurrection is
on our side, and the whole might of God is at work in our salvation (Rom.
1:16), but the matter still rests upon our making real in history what is
true in Divine fact.
"Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the
proving of things not seen" (Heb. 11:1), and "the things which are not seen
are eternal" (2 Cor. 4:18). I think we all know that Hebrews 11:1 is the
only definition of faith in the New Testament, or indeed in the Scriptures.
It is important that we should really understand that definition. You are
familiar with the common English translation of these words, describing
faith as "the substance of things hoped for" (A.V.). However, the word in
the Greek has in it the sense of an action and not just of some thing, a
`substance', and I confess I have personally spent a number of years trying
to find a correct word to translate this. But the New Translation of J.N.
Darby is especially good in regard to this word: "Faith is the
substantiating of things hoped for". That is much better. It implies the
making of them real in experience.
How do we `substantiate' something? We are doing so every
day. We cannot live in the world without doing so. Do you know the
difference between substance and `substantiating'? A substance is an object,
something before me. `Substantiating' means that I have a certain power or
faculty that makes that substance to be real to me. Let us take a simple
illustration. By means of our senses we can take things of the world of
nature and transfer them into our consciousness so that we can appreciate
them. Sight and hearing, for example, are two of my faculties which
substantiate to me the world of light and sound. We have colours: red,
yellow, green, blue, violet; and these colours are real things. But if I
shut my eyes, then to me the colour is no longer real; it is simply nothing
-- to me. It is not only that the colour is there, but I have the
power to `substantiate' it. I have the power to make that colour true to me
and to give it reality in my consciousness. That is the meaning of
`substantiating'.
If I am blind I cannot distinguish colour, or if I lack
the faculty of hearing I cannot enjoy music. Yet music and colour are in
fact real things, and their reality is unaffected by whether or not I
am able to appreciate them. Now we are considering here the things which,
though they are not seen, are eternal and therefore real. Of course we
cannot substantiate Divine things with any of our natural senses; but there
is one faculty which can substantiate the "things hoped for", the things of
Christ, and that is faith. Faith makes the real things to become real
in my experience. Faith `substantiates' to me the things of
Christ. Hundreds of thousands of people are reading Romans 6:6: "Our old man
was crucified with him". To faith it is true; to doubt, or to mere mental
assent apart from spiritual illumination, it is not true.
Let us remember again that we are dealing here not with
promises but with facts. The promises of God are revealed to us by His
Spirit that we may lay hold of then; but facts are facts and they remain
facts whether we believe them or not. If we do not believe the facts of the
Cross they still remain as real as ever, but they are valueless to us. It
does not need faith to make these things real in themselves, but faith can
`substantiate' them and make them real in our experience.
Whatever contradicts the truth of God's Word we are to
regard as the Devil's lie, not because it may not be in itself a very real
fact to our senses but because God has stated a greater fact before which
the other must eventually yield. I once had an experience which (though not
applicable in detail to the present matter) illustrates this principle. Some
years ago I was ill. For six nights I had high fever and could find no
sleep. Then at length God gave me from the Scripture a personal word of
healing, and because of this I expected all symptoms of sickness to vanish
at once. Instead of that, not a wink of sleep could I get, and I was not
only sleepless but more restless than ever. My temperature rose higher, my
pulse beat faster and my head ached more severely than before. The enemy
asked, `Where is God's promise? Where is your faith? What about all your
prayers?' So I was tempted to thrash the whole matter out in prayer again,
but was rebuked, and this Scripture came to mind: "Thy word is truth" (John
17:17). If God' Word is truth, I thought, then what are these symptoms? They
must all be lies! So I declared to the enemy, `This sleeplessness is a lie,
this headache is a lie, this fever is a lie, this high pulse is a lie. In
view of what God has said to me, all these symptoms of sickness are just
your lies, and God's Word to me is truth.' In five minutes I was asleep, and
I awoke the following morning perfectly well.
Now of course in a particular personal matter such as the
above it might be quite possible for me to deceive myself as to what God had
said, but of the fact of the Cross there can never be any such question. We
must believe God, no matter how convincing Satan's arguments appear.
A skillful liar lies not only in word but in gesture and deed; he can as easily pass a bad coin as tell an untruth. The Devil is a skillful liar, and we cannot expect him to stop at words in his lying. He will resort to lying signs and feelings and experiences in his attempts to shake us from our faith in God's Word. Let me make it clear that I do not deny the reality of the `flesh'. Indeed we shall have a good deal more to say about this further on in our study. But I am speaking here of our being moved from a revealed position in Christ. As soon as we have accepted our death with Christ as a fact, Satan will do his best to demonstrate convincingly by the evidence of our day-to-day experience that we are not dead at all but very much alive. So we must choose. Will we believe Satan's lie or God's truth? Are we going to be governed by appearances or by what God says?
I am Mr. Nee. I know that I am Mr. Nee. It is a fact upon which I can
confidently count. It is of course possible that I might lose my memory and
forget that I am Mr. Nee, or I might dream that I am some other person. But
whether I feel like it or not, when I am sleeping I am Mr. Nee and when I am
awake I am Mr. Nee; when I remember it I am Mr. Nee and when I forget it I
am still Mr. Nee.
Now of course, were I to pretend to be someone else, things would be much more difficult. If I were to try and pose as Miss K. I should have to keep saying to myself all the time, `You are Miss K.; now be sure to remember that you are Miss K.,' and despite much reckoning the likelihood would be that when I was off my guard and someone called, `Mr. Nee!' I should be caught out and should answer to my own name. Fact would triumph over fiction, and all my reckoning would break down at that crucial moment. But I am Mr. Nee and therefore I have no difficulty whatever in reckoning myself to be Mr. Nee. It is a fact which nothing I experience or fail to experience can alter.
So also, whether I feel it or not, I am dead with Christ. How can I be sure?
Because Christ has died; and since "one died for all, therefore all died" (2
Cor. 5:14). Whether my experience proves it or seems to disprove it, the
fact remains unchanged. While I stand upon that fact Satan cannot prevail
against me. Remember that his attack is always upon our assurance. If he can
get us to doubt God's Word, then his object is secured and he has us in his
power; but if we rest unshaken in the assurance of God's stated fact,
assured that He cannot do injustice to His work or His Word, then it does
not matter what tactics Satan adopts, we can well afford to laugh at him. If
anyone should try to persuade me that I am not Mr. Nee, I could well afford
to do the same.
"We walk by faith, not be appearance" (2 Cor. 5:7), mg).
You probably know the illustration of Fact, Faith and Experience walking
along the top of a wall. Fact walked steadily on, turning neither to right
nor left and never looking behind. Faith followed and all went well so long
as he kept his eyes focused upon Fact; but as soon as he became concerned
about Experience and turned to see how he was getting on, he lost his
balance and tumbled off the wall, and poor old Experience fell down after
him.
All temptation is primarily to look within; to take our
eyes off the Lord and to take account of appearances. Faith is always
meeting a mountain, a mountain of evidence that seems to contradict God's
Word, a mountain of apparent contradiction in the realm of tangible fact --
of failures in deed, as well as in the realm of feeling and suggestion --
and either faith or the mountain has to go. They cannot both stand. but the
trouble is that many a time the mountain stays and faith goes. That must not
be. If we resort to our senses to discover the truth, we shall find Satan's
lies are often enough true to our experience; but if we refuse to accept as
binding anything that contradicts God's Word and maintain an attitude of
faith in Him alone, we shall find instead that Satan's lies begin to
dissolve and that our experience is coming progressively to tally with
that Word.
It is our occupation with Christ that has this result, for
it means that He becomes progressively real to us on concrete issues. In a
given situation we see Him as real holiness, real resurrection
life -- for us. What we see in Him objectively now operates in us
subjectively -- but really -- to manifest Him in us in that
situation. That is the mark of maturity. That is what Paul means by his
words to the Galatians: "I am again in travail until Christ be formed in
you" (4:19). Faith is `substantiating' God's facts; and faith is always the
`substantiating' of eternal fact -- of something eternally true.
Abiding In Him
Now although we have already spent long on this matter, there is a further
thing that may help to make it clearer to us. the Scriptures declare that we
are "dead indeed", but nowhere do they say that we are dead in ourselves.
We shall look in vain to find death within; that is just the place where it
is not to be found. We are dead not in ourselves but in Christ. We
were crucified with Him because we were in Him.
We are familiar with the words of the Lord Jesus, "Abide
in me, and I in you" (John 15:4). Let us consider them for a moment. First
they remind us once again that we have never to struggle to get into Christ.
We are not told to get there, for we are told to stay there where we
have been placed. It was God's own act that put us in Christ, and we are to
abide in Him.
But further, this verse lays down for us a Divine
principle, which is that God has done the work in Christ and not in us as
individuals. The all-inclusive death and the all-inclusive resurrection of
God's Son were accomplished fully and finally apart from us in the first
place. It is the history of Christ which is to become the experience
apart from Him. The Scriptures tell us that we were crucified "with Him",
that we were quickened, raised, and set by God in the heavenlies "in Him",
and that we are complete "in Him" (Rom. 6:6; Eph. 2:5,6; Col. 2:10). It is
not just something that is still to be effected in us (though it is
that, of course). It is something that has already been effected, in
association with Him.
In the Scriptures we find that no Christian experience
exists as such. What God has done in His gracious purpose is to
include us in Christ. In dealing with Christ God has dealt with the
Christian; in dealing with the Head He has dealt with all the members. It is
altogether wrong for us to think that we can experience anything of the
spiritual life in ourselves merely, and apart from Him. God does not intend
that we should acquire something exclusively personal in our experience, and
He is not willing to effect anything like that for you and me. All the
spiritual experience of the Christian is already true in Christ. It
has already been experienced by Christ. What we call `our' experience is
only our entering into His history and His experience.
It would be odd if one branch of a vine tried to bear
grapes with a reddish skin, and another branch tried to bear grapes with a
green skin, and yet another branch grapes with a very dark purple skin, each
branch trying to produce something of its own without reference to the vine.
It is impossible, unthinkable. The character of the branches is determined
by the vine. Yet certain Christians are seeking experiences as
experiences. They think of crucifixion as something, of resurrections as
something, of ascension as something, and they never stop to think that the
whole is related to a Person. No, only as the Lord opens our eyes to see the
Person do we have any true experience. Every true spiritual experience means
that we have discovered a certain fact in Christ and have entered into that;
anything that is not from Him in this way is an experience that is going to
evaporate very soon. `I have discovered that in Christ; then, Praise
the Lord, it is mine! I possess it, Lord, because it is in Thee.' Oh it is a
great thing to know the facts of Christ as the foundation for our
experience.
So God's basic principle in leading us on experimentally
is not to give us something. It is not to bring us through something, and as
a result to put something into us which we can call `our experience'.
It is not that God effects something within us so that we can say, `I
died with Christ last March' or `I was raised from the dead on January 1st,
1937,' or even, `Last Wednesday I asked for a definite experience and I have
got it'. No, that is not the way. I do not seek experiences in themselves
as in this present year of grace. Time must not be allowed to dominate my
thinking here.
Then, some will say, what about the crises so many of us
have passed through? True, some of us have passed through real crises in our
lives. For instance George Muller could say, bowing himself down to the
ground, `There was a day when George Muller died'. How about that? Well, I
am not questioning the reality of the spiritual experiences we go through
nor the importance of crises to which God brings us in our walk with Him;
indeed, I have already stressed the need for us to be quite as definite
ourselves about such crisis in our own lives. But the point is that God does
not give individuals individual experiences. All that they have is only an
entering into what God has already done. It is the `realizing' in time
of eternal things. The history of Christ becomes our experience and
our spiritual history; we do not have a separate history from His. The
entire work regarding us is not done in us here but in Christ. He does no
separate work in individuals apart from what He has done there. Even eternal
life is not given to us as individuals: the life is in the Son, and "he that
hath the Son hath the life". God has done all in His Son, and He has
included us in Him; we are incorporated into Christ.
Now the point of all this is that there is a very real
practical value in the stand of faith that says, `God has put me in Christ,
and therefore all that is true of Him is true of me. I will abide in Him.'
Satan is always trying to get us out, to keep us out, to convince us that we
are out, and by temptations, failures, suffering, trial, to make us feel
acutely that we are outside of Christ. Our first thought is that, if we were
in Christ, we should not be in this state, and therefore, judging by the
feelings we now have, we must be out of Him; and so we begin to pray, `Lord,
put me into Christ'. No! God's injunction is to "abide" in Christ, and that
is the way of deliverance. But how is it so? Because it opens the way for
God to take a hand in our lives and to work the thing out in us. It makes
room for the operation of His superior power -- the power of resurrection
(Rom. 6:4,9,10) -- so that the facts of Christ do progressively become the
facts of our daily experience, and where before "sin reigned" (Rom. 5:21) we
make now the joyful discovery that we are truly "no longer ... in bondage to
sin" (Rom. 6:6).
As we stand steadfastly on the ground of what Christ is,
we find that all that is true of Him is becoming experimentally true in us.
If instead we come onto the ground of what we are in ourselves we will find
that all that is true of the old nature remains true of us. If we get
there in faith we have everything; if we return back here we find
nothing. So often we go to the wrong place to find the death of self. It is
in Christ. We have only to look within to find we are very much alive to
sin; but when we look over there to the Lord, God sees to it that death
works here but that "newness of life" is ours also. We are "alive unto God"
(Rom. 6:4,11).
"Abide in me, and I in you." This is a double sentence: a
command coupled with a promise. That is to say, there is an objective and a
subjective side to God's working, and the subjective side depends upon the
objective; the "I in you" is the outcome of our abiding in Him. We need to
guard against being over-anxious about the subjective side of things, and so
becoming turned in upon ourselves. We need to dwell upon the objective --
"abide in me" -- and to let God take care of the subjective. And this He has
undertaken to do.
I have illustrated this from the electric light. You are
in a room and it is growing dark. You would like to have the light on in
order to read. There is a reading-lamp on the table beside you. What do you
do? Do you watch it intently to see if the light will come on? Do you take a
cloth and polish the bulb? No, you get up and cross over to the other side
of the room where the switch is on the wall and you turn the current on. You
turn your attention to the source of power and when you have taken the
necessary action there the light comes on here.
So in our walk with the Lord our attention must be fixed
on Christ. "Abide in me, and I in you" is the Divine order. Faith in the
objective facts make those facts true subjectively. As the apostle Paul puts
it, "We all ... beholding ... the glory of the Lord, are transformed into
the same image" (2 Cor. 3:18 mg.). The same principle holds good in the
matter of fruitfulness of life: "He that abideth in me, and I in him, the
same beareth much fruit" (John 15:5). We do not try to produce fruit or
concentrate upon the fruit produced. Our business is to look away to Him. As
we do so He undertakes to fulfill His Word in us.
How do we abide? `Of God are ye in Christ Jesus.' It was
the work of God to put you there and He has done it. Now stay there!
Do not be moved back onto your own ground. Never look at yourself as though
you were not in Christ. Look at Christ and see yourself in Him. Abide in
Him. Rest in the fact that God has put you in His Son, and live in the
expectation that He will complete His work in you. It is for Him to make
good the glorious promise that "sin shall not have dominion over you" (Rom.
6:14).