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TrustInJesus版 - ZT Christian Classics: Normal Christian Life by 倪柝聲
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l**********t
发帖数: 5754
1
Normal Christian Life by 倪柝聲 (Watchman Nee)
Table of Contents
Chapter 1: The Blood of Christ
Chapter 2: The Cross of Christ
Chapter 3: The Path of Progress: Knowing
Chapter 4: The Path of Progress: Reckoning
Chapter 5: The Divide of the Cross
Chapter 6: The Path of Progress: Presenting Ourselves to God
Chapter 7: The Eternal Purpose
Chapter 8: The Holy Spirit
Chapter 9: The Meaning and Value of Romans Seven
Chapter 10: The Path of Progress: Walking in the Spirit
Chapter 11: One Body in Christ
Chapter 12: The Cross and the Soul Life
Chapter 13: The Path of Progress: Bearing the Cross
Chapter 14: The Goal of the Gospel
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/nee/normal.i.html
l**********t
发帖数: 5754
2
Chapter 1: The Blood of Christ
What is the normal Christian life? We do well at the outset to ponder this
question. The object of these studies is to show that it is something very
different from the life of the average Christian. Indeed a consideration of
the written Word of God—of the Sermon on the Mount for example—should lead
us to ask whether such a life has ever in fact been lived upon the earth,
save only by the Son of God Himself. But in that last saving clause lies
immediately the answer to our question.
The Apostle Paul gives us his own definition of the Christian life in
Galatians 2:20. It is “no longer I, but Christ”. Here he is not stating
something special or peculiar—a high level of Christianity. He is, we
believe, presenting God’s normal for a Christian, which can be summarized
in the words: I live no longer, but Christ lives His life in me.
God makes it quite clear in His Word that He has only one answer to every
human need—His Son, Jesus Christ. In all His dealings with us He works by
taking us out of the way and substituting Christ in our place. The Son of
God died instead of us for our forgiveness: He lives instead of us for our
deliverance. So we can speak of two substitutions—a Substitute on the Cross
who secures our forgiveness and a Substitute within who secures our victory
. It will help us greatly, and save us from much confusion, if we keep
constantly before us this fact, that God will answer all our questions in
one way only, namely, by showing us more of His Son.

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: Normal Christian Life by 倪柝聲 (Watchman Nee)
: Table of Contents
: Chapter 1: The Blood of Christ
: Chapter 2: The Cross of Christ
: Chapter 3: The Path of Progress: Knowing
: Chapter 4: The Path of Progress: Reckoning
: Chapter 5: The Divide of the Cross
: Chapter 6: The Path of Progress: Presenting Ourselves to God
: Chapter 7: The Eternal Purpose
: Chapter 8: The Holy Spirit

l**********t
发帖数: 5754
3
Chapter 1.1 Our Dual Problem: Sins and Sin
We shall take now as a starting-point for our study of the normal Christian
life that great exposition of it which we find in the first eight chapters
of the Epistle to the Romans, and we shall approach our subject from a
practical and experimental point of view. It will be helpful first of all to
point out a natural division of this section of Romans into two, and to
note certain striking differences in the subject-matter of its two parts.
The first eight chapters of Romans form a self-contained unit. The four-and-
a-half chapters from 1:1 to 5:11 form the first half of this unit and the
three-and-a-half chapters from 5:12 to 8:39 the second half. A careful
reading will show us that the subject-matter of the two halves is not the
same. For example, in the argument of the first section we find the plural
word ‘sins’ given prominence. In the second section, however, this changed
, for while the word ‘sins’ hardly occurs once, the singular word ‘sin’
is used again and again and is the subject mainly dealt with. Why is this?
It is because in the first section it is a question of the sins I have
committed before God, which are many and can be enumerated, whereas in the
second it is a question of sin as a principle working in me. No matter how
many sins I commit, it is always the one sin principle that leads to them. I
need forgiveness for my sins, but I need also deliverance from the power of
sin. The former touches my conscience, the latter my life. I may receive
forgiveness for all my sins, but because of my sin I have, even then, no
abiding peace of mind.
When God’s light first shines into my heart my one cry is for forgiveness,
for I realize I have committed sins before Him; but when once I have
received forgiveness of sins I make a new discovery, namely, the discovery
of sin, and I realize not only that I have committed sins before God but
that there is something wrong within. I discover that I have the nature of a
sinner. There is an inward inclination to sin, a power within that draws to
sin. When that power breaks out I commit sins. I may seek and receive
forgiveness, but then I sin once more. So life goes on in a vicious circle
of sinning and being forgiven and then sinning again. I appreciate the
blessed fact of God’s forgiveness, but I want something more than that: I
want deliverance. I need forgiveness for what I have done, but I need also
deliverance from what I am.

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: Chapter 1: The Blood of Christ
: What is the normal Christian life? We do well at the outset to ponder this
: question. The object of these studies is to show that it is something very
: different from the life of the average Christian. Indeed a consideration of
: the written Word of God—of the Sermon on the Mount for example—should lead
: us to ask whether such a life has ever in fact been lived upon the earth,
: save only by the Son of God Himself. But in that last saving clause lies
: immediately the answer to our question.
: The Apostle Paul gives us his own definition of the Christian life in
: Galatians 2:20. It is “no longer I, but Christ”. Here he is not stating

l**********t
发帖数: 5754
4
Chapter 1.2 God’s Dual Remedy: The Blood and the Cross
Thus in the first eight chapters of Romans two aspects of salvation are
presented to us: firstly, the forgiveness of our sins, and secondly, our
deliverance from sin. But now, in keeping with this fact, we must notice a
further difference.
In the first part of Romans 1 to 8, we twice have reference to the Blood of
the Lord Jesus, in chapter 3:25 and in chapter 5:9. In the second, a new
idea is introduced in chapter 6:6, where we are said to have been “
crucified” with Christ. The argument of the first part gathers round that
aspect of the work of the Lord Jesus which is represented by ‘the Blood’
shed for our justification through “the remission of sins”. This
terminology is however not carried on into the second section, where the
argument centers now in the aspect of His work represented by ‘the Cross’,
that is to say, by our union with Christ in His death, burial and
resurrection. This distinction is a valuable one. We shall see that the
Blood deals with what we have done, whereas the Cross deals with what we are
. The Blood disposes of our sins, while the Cross strikes at the root of our
capacity for sin. The latter aspect will be the subject of our
consideration in later chapters.

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: Chapter 1.1 Our Dual Problem: Sins and Sin
: We shall take now as a starting-point for our study of the normal Christian
: life that great exposition of it which we find in the first eight chapters
: of the Epistle to the Romans, and we shall approach our subject from a
: practical and experimental point of view. It will be helpful first of all to
: point out a natural division of this section of Romans into two, and to
: note certain striking differences in the subject-matter of its two parts.
: The first eight chapters of Romans form a self-contained unit. The four-and-
: a-half chapters from 1:1 to 5:11 form the first half of this unit and the
: three-and-a-half chapters from 5:12 to 8:39 the second half. A careful

l**********t
发帖数: 5754
5
Chpater 1.3 The Problem Of Our Sins
We begin, then, with the precious Blood of the Lord Jesus Christ and its
value to us in dealing with our sins and justifying us in the sight of God.
This is set forth for us in the following passages:
“All have sinned” (Romans 3:23). “God commendeth his own love toward us,
in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then,
being now justified by his blood, shall we be saved from the wrath of God
through him” (Romans 5:8, 9). “Being justified freely by his grace through
the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: whom God set forth to be a
propitiation, through faith, by his blood, to shew his righteousness,
because of the passing over of the sins done aforetime, in the forbearance
of God; for the shewing, I say, of his righteousness at this present season:
that he might himself be just, and the justifier of him that hath faith in
Jesus” (Romans 3:24-26).
We shall have reason at a later stage in our study to look closely at the
real nature of the fall and the way of recovery. At this point we will just
remind ourselves that when sin came in it found expression in an act of
disobedience to God (Romans 5:19). Now we must remember that whenever this
occurs the thing that immediately follows is guilt.
Sin enters as disobedience, to create first of all a separation between God
and man whereby man is put away from God. God can no longer have fellowship
with him, for there is something now which hinders, and it is that which is
known throughout Scripture as ‘sin’. Thus it is first of all God who says,
“They are all under sin” (Romans 3:9). Then, secondly, that sin in man,
which henceforth constitutes a barrier to his fellowship with God, gives
rise in him to a sense of guilt—of estrangement from God. Here it is man
himself who, with the help of his awakened conscience, says, “I have sinned
” (Luke 15:18). Nor is this all, for sin also provides Satan with his
ground of accusation before God, while our sense of guilt gives him his
ground of accusation in our hearts; so that, thirdly, it is ‘the accuser of
the brethren’ (Rev. 12:10) who now says, ‘You have sinned’.
To redeem us, therefore, and to bring us back to the purpose of God, the
Lord Jesus had to do something about these three questions of sin and of
guilt and of Satan’s charge against us. Our sins had first to be dealt with
, and this was effected by the precious Blood of Christ. Our guilt has to be
dealt with and our guilty conscience set at rest by showing us the value of
that Blood. And finally the attack of the enemy has to be met and his
accusations answered. In the Scriptures the Blood of Christ is shown to
operate effectually in these three ways, Godward, manward and Satanward.
There is thus an absolute need for us to appropriate these values of the
Blood if we are to go on. This is a first essential. We must have a basic
knowledge of the fact of the death of the Lord Jesus as our Substitute upon
the Cross, and a clear apprehension of the efficacy of His Blood for our
sins, for without this we cannot be said to have started upon our road. Let
us look then at these three matters more closely.

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: Chapter 1.2 God’s Dual Remedy: The Blood and the Cross
: Thus in the first eight chapters of Romans two aspects of salvation are
: presented to us: firstly, the forgiveness of our sins, and secondly, our
: deliverance from sin. But now, in keeping with this fact, we must notice a
: further difference.
: In the first part of Romans 1 to 8, we twice have reference to the Blood of
: the Lord Jesus, in chapter 3:25 and in chapter 5:9. In the second, a new
: idea is introduced in chapter 6:6, where we are said to have been “
: crucified” with Christ. The argument of the first part gathers round that
: aspect of the work of the Lord Jesus which is represented by ‘the Blood’

l**********t
发帖数: 5754
6
Chapter 1.4 The Blood Is Primarily For God
The Blood is for atonement and has to do first with our standing before God.
We need forgiveness for the sins we have committed, lest we come under
judgment; and they are forgiven, not because God overlooks what we have done
but because He sees the Blood. The Blood is therefore not primarily for us
but for God. If I want to understand the value of the Blood I must accept
God’s valuation of it, and if I do not know something of the value set upon
the Blood by God I shall never know what its value is for me. It is only as
the estimate that God puts upon the Blood of Christ is made known to me by
His Holy Spirit that I come into the good of it myself and find how precious
indeed the Blood is to me. But the first aspect of it is Godward.
Throughout the Old and New Testaments the word ‘blood’ is used in
connection with the idea of atonement, I think over a hundred times, and
throughout it is something for God.
In the Old Testament calendar there is one day that has a great bearing on
the matter of our sins and that day is the Day of Atonement. Nothing
explains this question of sins so clearly as the description of that day. In
Leviticus 16 we find that on the Day of Atonement the blood was taken from
the sin offering and brought into the Most Holy Place and there sprinkled
before the Lord seven times. We must be very clear about this. On that day
the sin offering was offered publicly in the court of the tabernacle.
Everything was there in full view and could be seen by all. But the Lord
commanded that no man should enter the tabernacle itself except the high
priest. It was he alone who took the blood and, going into the Most Holy
Place, sprinkled it there to make atonement before the Lord. Why? Because
the high priest was a type of the Lord Jesus in His redemptive work (Hebrews
9:12), and so, in figure, he was the one who did the work. None but he
could even draw near to enter in. Moreover, connected with his going in
there was but one act, namely, the presenting of the blood to God as
something He had accepted, something in which He could find satisfaction. It
was a transaction between the high priest and God in the Sanctuary, away
from the eyes of the men who were to benefit by it. The Lord required that.
The Blood is therefore in the first place for Him.
Earlier even than this there is described in Exodus 12:13 the shedding of
the blood of the passover lamb in Egypt for Israel’s redemption. This is
again, I think, one of the best types in the Old Testament of our redemption
. The blood was put on the lintel and on the door-posts, whereas the meat,
the flesh of the lamb, was eaten inside the house; and God said: “When I
see the blood, I will pass over you”. Here we have another illustration of
the fact that the blood was not meant to be presented to man but to God, for
the blood was put on the lintel and on the door-posts, where those feasting
inside the house would not see it.

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: Chpater 1.3 The Problem Of Our Sins
: We begin, then, with the precious Blood of the Lord Jesus Christ and its
: value to us in dealing with our sins and justifying us in the sight of God.
: This is set forth for us in the following passages:
: “All have sinned” (Romans 3:23). “God commendeth his own love toward us,
: in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then,
: being now justified by his blood, shall we be saved from the wrath of God
: through him” (Romans 5:8, 9). “Being justified freely by his grace through
: the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: whom God set forth to be a
: propitiation, through faith, by his blood, to shew his righteousness,

l**********t
发帖数: 5754
7
Chapter 1.5 God Is Satisfied
It is God’s holiness, God’s righteousness, which demands that a sinless
life should be given for man. There is life in the Blood, and that Blood has
to be poured out for me, for my sins. God is the One who requires it to be
so. God is the One who demands that the Blood be presented, in order to
satisfy His own righteousness, and it is He who says: ‘When I see the blood
’, I will pass over you.’ The Blood of Christ wholly satisfies God.
Now I desire to say a word at this point to my younger brethren in the Lord,
for it is here that we often get into difficulties. As unbelievers we may
have been wholly untroubled by our conscience until the Word of God began to
arouse us. Our conscience was dead, and those with dead consciences are
certainly of no use to God. But later, when we believed, our awakened
conscience may have become acutely sensitive, and this can constitute a real
problem to us. The sense of sin and guilt can become so great, so terrible,
as almost to cripple us by causing us to lose sight of the true
effectiveness of the Blood. It seems to us that our sins are so real, and
some particular sin may trouble us so many times, that we come to the point
where to us our sins loom larger than the Blood of Christ.
Now the whole trouble with us is that we are trying to sense it; we are
trying to feel its value and to estimate subjectively what the Blood is for
us. We cannot do it; it does not work that way. The Blood is first for God
to see. We then have to accept God’s valuation of it. In doing so we shall
find our valuation. If instead we try to come to a valuation by way of our
feelings we get nothing; we remain in darkness. No, it is a matter of faith
in God’s Word. We have to believe that the Blood is precious to God because
He says it is so (1 Peter 1:18, 19). If God can accept the Blood as a
payment for our sins and as the price of our redemption, then we can rest
assured that the debt has been paid. If God is satisfied with the Blood,
then the Blood must be acceptable. Our valuation of it is only according to
His valuation—neither more nor less. It cannot, of course, be more, but it
must not be less. Let us remember that He is holy and He is righteous, and
that a holy and righteous God has the right to say that the Blood is
acceptable in His eyes and has fully satisfied Him.

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: Chapter 1.4 The Blood Is Primarily For God
: The Blood is for atonement and has to do first with our standing before God.
: We need forgiveness for the sins we have committed, lest we come under
: judgment; and they are forgiven, not because God overlooks what we have done
: but because He sees the Blood. The Blood is therefore not primarily for us
: but for God. If I want to understand the value of the Blood I must accept
: God’s valuation of it, and if I do not know something of the value set upon
: the Blood by God I shall never know what its value is for me. It is only as
: the estimate that God puts upon the Blood of Christ is made known to me by
: His Holy Spirit that I come into the good of it myself and find how precious

l**********t
发帖数: 5754
8
Chapter 1.6 The Blood And The Believer’s Access
The Blood has satisfied God; it must satisfy us also. It has therefore a
second value that is manward in the cleansing of our conscience. When we
come to the Epistle to the Hebrews we find that the Blood does this. We are
to have “hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience” (Hebrews 10:22).
This is most important. Look carefully at what it says. The writer does not
tell us that the Blood of the Lord Jesus cleanses our hearts, and then stop
there in his statement. We are wrong to connect the heart with the Blood in
quite that way. It may show a misunderstanding of the sphere in which the
Blood operates to pray, ‘Lord, cleanse my heart from sin by Thy Blood’.
The heart, God says, is “desperately sick” (Jeremiah 17:9), and He must do
something more fundamental than cleanse it: He must give us a new one.
We do not wash and iron clothing that we are going to throw away. As we
shall shortly see, the ‘flesh’ is too bad to be cleansed; it must be
crucified. The work of God within us must be something wholly new. “A new
heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you” (
Ezekiel 36:26).
No, I do not find it stated that the Blood cleanses our hearts. Its work is
not subjective in that way, but wholly objective, before God. True, the
cleansing work of the Blood is seen here in Hebrews 10 to have reference to
the heart, but it is in relation to the conscience. “Having our hearts
sprinkled from an evil conscience”. What then is the meaning of this?
It means that there was something intervening between myself and God, as a
result of which I had an evil conscience whenever I sought to approach Him.
It was constantly reminding me of the barrier that stood between myself and
Him. But now, through the operation of the precious Blood, something new has
been effected before God which has removed that barrier, and God has made
that fact known to me in His Word. When that has been believed in and
accepted, my conscience is at once cleared and my sense of guilt removed,
and I have no more an evil conscience toward God.
Every one of us knows what a precious thing it is to have a conscience void
of offense in our dealings with God. A heart of faith and a conscience clear
of any and every accusation are both equally essential to us, since they
are interdependent. As soon as we find our conscience is uneasy our faith
leaks away and immediately we find we cannot face God. In order therefore to
keep going on with God we must know the up-to-date value of the Blood. God
keeps short accounts, and we are made nigh by the Blood every day, every
hour and every minute. It never loses its efficacy as our ground of access
if we will but lay hold upon it. When we enter the most Holy Place, on what
ground dare we enter but by the Blood?
But I want to ask myself, am I really seeking the way into the Presence of
God by the Blood or by something else? What do I mean when I say, ‘by the
Blood’? I mean simply that I recognize my sins, that I confess that I have
need of cleansing and of atonement, and that I come to God on the basis of
the finished work of the Lord Jesus. I approach God through His merit alone,
and never on the basis of my attainment; never, for example, on the ground
that I have been extra kind or patient today, or that I have done something
for the Lord this morning. I have to come by way of the Blood every time.
The temptation to so many of us when we try to approach God is to think that
because God has been dealing with us—because He has been taking steps to
bring us into something more of Himself and has been teaching us deeper
lessons of the Cross—He has thereby set before us new standards, and that
only by attaining to these can we have a clear conscience before Him. No! A
clear conscience is never based upon our attainment; it can only be based on
the work of the Lord Jesus in the shedding of His Blood.
I may be mistaken, but I feel very strongly that some of us are thinking in
terms such as these: ‘Today I have been a little more careful; today I have
been doing a little better; this morning I have been reading the Word of
God in a warmer way, so today I can pray better!’ Or again, ‘Today I have
had a little difficulty with the family; I began the day feeling very gloomy
and moody; I am not feeling too bright now; it seems that there must be
something wrong; therefore I cannot approach God.’
What, after all, is your basis of approach to God? Do you come to Him on the
uncertain ground of your feeling, the feeling that you may have achieved
something for God today? Or is your approach based on something far more
secure, namely, the fact that the Blood has been shed, and that God looks on
that Blood and is satisfied? Of course, were it conceivably possible for
the Blood to suffer any change, the basis of your approach to God might be
less trustworthy. But the Blood has never changed and never will. Your
approach to God is therefore always in boldness; and that boldness is yours
through the Blood and never through your personal attainment. Whatever be
your measure of attainment today or yesterday or the day before, as soon as
you make a conscious move into the Most Holy Place, immediately you have to
take your stand upon the safe and only ground of the shed Blood. Whether you
have had a good day or a bad day, whether you have consciously sinned or
not, your basis of approach is always the same—the Blood of Christ. That is
the ground upon which you may enter, and there is no other.
As with many other stages of our Christian experience, this matter of access
to God has two phases, an initial and a progressive one. The former is
presented to us in Ephesians 2 and the latter in Hebrews 10. Initially, our
standing with God was secured by the Blood, for we are “made nigh in the
blood of Christ” (Eph. 2:13). But thereafter our ground of continual access
is still by the Blood, for the apostle exhorts us: “Having therefore...
boldness to enter into the holy place by the blood of Jesus... let us draw
near” (Heb. 10:19, 22). To begin with I was made nigh by the Blood, and to
continue in that new relationship I come through the Blood every time. It is
not that I was saved on one basis and that I now maintain my fellowship on
another. You say, ’That is very simple; it is the A.B.C. of the Gospel.’
Yes, but the trouble with many of us is that we have moved away from the A.B
.C. We have thought we had progressed and so could dispense with it, but we
can never do so. No, my initial approach to God is by the Blood, and every
time I come before Him it is the same. Right to the end it will always and
only be on the ground of the Blood.
This does not mean at all that we should live a careless life, for we shall
shortly study another aspect of the death of Christ which shows us that
anything but that is contemplated. But for the present let us be satisfied
with the Blood, that it is there and that it is enough.
We may be weak, but looking at our weakness will never make us strong. No
trying to feel bad and doing penance will help us to be even a little holier
. There is no help there, so let us be bold in our approach because of the
Blood: ‘Lord, I do not know fully what the value of the Blood is, but I
know that the Blood has satisfied Thee; so the Blood is enough for me, and
it is my only plea. I see now that whether I have really progressed, whether
I have really attained to something or not, is not the point. Whenever I
come before Thee, it is always on the ground of the precious Blood. Then our
conscience is really clear before God. No conscience could ever be clear
apart from the Blood. It is the Blood that gives us boldness.
“No more conscience of sins”: these are tremendous words of Hebrews 10:2.
We are cleansed from every sin; and we may truly echo the words of Paul: “
Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not reckon sin” (Romans 4:8).

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: Chapter 1.5 God Is Satisfied
: It is God’s holiness, God’s righteousness, which demands that a sinless
: life should be given for man. There is life in the Blood, and that Blood has
: to be poured out for me, for my sins. God is the One who requires it to be
: so. God is the One who demands that the Blood be presented, in order to
: satisfy His own righteousness, and it is He who says: ‘When I see the blood
: ’, I will pass over you.’ The Blood of Christ wholly satisfies God.
: Now I desire to say a word at this point to my younger brethren in the Lord,
: for it is here that we often get into difficulties. As unbelievers we may
: have been wholly untroubled by our conscience until the Word of God began to

l**********t
发帖数: 5754
9
Chapter 1.7 Overcoming The Accuser
In view of what we have said we can now turn to face the enemy, for there is
a further aspect of the Blood which is Satanward. Satan’s most strategic
activity in this day is as the accuser of the brethren (Rev. 12:10) and it
is as this that our Lord confronts him with His special ministry as High
Priest “through his own blood” (Hebrews 9:12).
How then does the Blood operate against Satan? It does so by putting God on
the side of man against him. The Fall brought something into man which gave
Satan a footing within him, with the result that God was compelled to
withdraw Himself. Man is now outside the garden—beyond reach of the glory
of God (Romans 3:23)—because he is inwardly estranged from God. Because of
what man has done, there is something in him which, until it is removed,
renders God morally unable to defend him. But the Blood removes that barrier
and restores man to God and God to man. Man is in favour now, and because
God is on his side he can face Satan without fear.
You remember that verse in John’s first Epistle—and this is the
translation of it I like best: “The blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from
every sin” 111 John 1:7: Marginal reading of New Translation by J.N. Darby
It is not exactly “all sin” in the general sense, but every sin, every
item. What does it mean? Oh, it is a marvelous thing! God is the light, and
as we walk in the light with Him everything is exposed and open to that
light, so that God can see it all—and yet the Blood is able to cleanse from
every sin. What a cleansing! It is not that I have not a profound knowledge
of myself, nor that God has not a perfect knowledge of me. It is not that I
try to hide something nor that God tries to overlook something. No, it is
that He is in the light and I too am in the light, and that there the
precious Blood cleanses me from every sin. The Blood is enough for that!
Some of us, oppressed by our own weakness, may at times have been tempted to
think that there are sins which are almost unforgivable. Let us remember
the word: “The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanses us from every sin.”
Big sins, small sins, sins which may be very black and sins which appear to
be not so black, sins which I think can be forgiven and sins which seem
unforgivable, yes, all sins, conscious or unconscious, remembered or
forgotten, are included in those words: “every sin”. “The blood of Jesus
his Son cleanses us from every sin”, and it does so because in the first
place it satisfies God.
Since God, seeing all our sins in the light, can forgive them on the basis
of the Blood, what ground of accusation has Satan? Satan may accuse us
before Him, but, “If God is for us, who is against us?” (Romans 8:31). God
points him to the Blood of His dear Son. It is the sufficient answer
against which Satan has no appeal. “Who shall lay anything to the charge of
God’s elect? It is God that justifieth; who is he that shall condemn? It
is Christ Jesus that died, yea rather, that was raised from the dead, who is
at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us” (Romans 8:
33, 34).
So here again our need is to recognize the absolute sufficiency of the
precious Blood. “Christ having come a high priest... through his own blood,
entered in once for all into the holy place, having obtained eternal
redemption” (Hebrews 9:11, 12). He was Redeemer once. He has been High
Priest and Advocate for nearly two thousand years. He stands there in the
presence of God, and “he is the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 2:1, 2)
. Note the words of Hebrews 9:14: “How much more shall the blood of Christ.
..” They underline the sufficiency of His ministry. It is enough for God.
What then of our attitude to Satan? This is important, for he accuses us not
only before God but in our own conscience also. ‘You have sinned, and you
keep on sinning. You are weak, and God can have nothing more to do with you.
’ This is his argument. And our temptation is to look within and in self-
defense to try to find in ourselves, in our feelings or our behavior, some
ground for believing that Satan is wrong. Alternatively we are tempted to
admit our helplessness and, going to the other extreme, to yield to
depression and despair. Thus accusation becomes one of the greatest and most
effective of Satan’s weapons. He points to our sins and seeks to charge us
with them before God, and if we accept his accusations we go down
immediately.
Now the reason why we so readily accept his accusations is that we are still
hoping to have some righteousness of our own. The ground of our expectation
is wrong. Satan has succeeded in making us look in the wrong direction.
Thereby he wins his point, rendering us ineffective. But if we have learned
to put no confidence in the flesh, we shall not wonder if we sin, for the
very nature of the flesh is to sin. Do you understand what I mean? It is
because we have not come to appreciate our true nature and to see how
helpless we are that we still have some expectation in ourselves, with the
result that, when Satan comes along and accuses us, we go down under it.
God is well able to deal with our sins; but He cannot deal with a man under
accusation, because such a man is not trusting in the Blood. The Blood
speaks in his favour, but his is listening instead to Satan. Christ is our
Advocate but we, the accused, side with the accuser. We have not recognized
that we are unworthy of anything but death; that, as we shall shortly see,
we are only fit to be crucified anyway. We have not recognized that it is
God alone that can answer the accuser, and that in the precious Blood He has
already done so.
Our salvation lies in looking away to the Lord Jesus and in seeing that the
Blood of the Lamb has met the whole situation created by our sins and has
answered it. That is the sure foundation on which we stand. Never should we
try to answer Satan with our good conduct but always with the Blood. Yes, we
are sinful, but, praise God! the Blood cleanses us from every sin. God
looks upon the Blood whereby His Son has met the charge, and Satan has no
more ground of attack. Our faith in the precious Blood and our refusal to be
moved from that position can alone silence his charges and put him to
flight (Romans 8:33, 34); and so it will be, right on to the end (Revelation
12:11). Oh, what an emancipation it would be if we saw more of the value of
God’s eyes of the precious Blood of His dear Son!


【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: Chapter 1.6 The Blood And The Believer’s Access
: The Blood has satisfied God; it must satisfy us also. It has therefore a
: second value that is manward in the cleansing of our conscience. When we
: come to the Epistle to the Hebrews we find that the Blood does this. We are
: to have “hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience” (Hebrews 10:22).
: This is most important. Look carefully at what it says. The writer does not
: tell us that the Blood of the Lord Jesus cleanses our hearts, and then stop
: there in his statement. We are wrong to connect the heart with the Blood in
: quite that way. It may show a misunderstanding of the sphere in which the
: Blood operates to pray, ‘Lord, cleanse my heart from sin by Thy Blood’.

l**********t
发帖数: 5754
10
Chapter 2: The Cross of Christ
We have seen that Romans 1 to 8 falls into two sections, in the first of
which we are shown that the Blood deals with what we have done, while in the
second we shall see that the Cross(2) deals with what we are. We need the
Blood for forgiveness; we need also the Cross for deliverance. We have dealt
briefly above with the first of these two and we shall move on now to the
second; but before we do so we will look for a moment at a few more features
of this passage which serve to emphasize the difference in subject matter
and argument between the two halves.
2Note - The author uses ‘the Cross’ here and throughout these studies in a
special sense. Most readers will be familiar with the current use of the
expression ‘the Cross’ to signify, firstly, the entire redemptive work
accomplished historically in the death, burial, resurrection and ascension
of the Lord Jesus Himself (Phil. 2:8, 9), and secondly, in a wider sense,
the union of believers with Him therein through grace (Rom. 6:4; Eph. 2:5, 6
). Clearly in that use of the term the operation of ‘the Blood’ in
relation to forgiveness of sins (as dealt with in Chapter 1 of this book) is
, from God’s viewpoint, included (with all that follows in these studies)
as a part of the work of the Cross. In this and the following chapters,
however, the author is compelled, for lack of an alternative term, to use ‘
the Cross’ in a more particular and limited doctrinal sense in order to
draw a helpful distinction, namely, that between substitution and
identification, as being, from the human angle, two separate aspects of the
doctrine of redemption. Thus the name of the whole is of necessity used for
one of its parts. The reader should bear this in mind in what follows.—Ed.

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: Chapter 1.7 Overcoming The Accuser
: In view of what we have said we can now turn to face the enemy, for there is
: a further aspect of the Blood which is Satanward. Satan’s most strategic
: activity in this day is as the accuser of the brethren (Rev. 12:10) and it
: is as this that our Lord confronts him with His special ministry as High
: Priest “through his own blood” (Hebrews 9:12).
: How then does the Blood operate against Satan? It does so by putting God on
: the side of man against him. The Fall brought something into man which gave
: Satan a footing within him, with the result that God was compelled to
: withdraw Himself. Man is now outside the garden—beyond reach of the glory

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l**********t
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11
Chapter 2.1 Some Further Distinctions
Two aspects of the resurrection are mentioned in the two sections, in
chapters 4 and 6. In Romans 4:25 the resurrection of the Lord Jesus is
mentioned in relation to our justification: “Jesus our Lord... was
delivered up for our trespasses, and was raised for our justification.”
Here the matter in view is that of our standing before God. But in Romans 6:
4 the resurrection is spoken of as imparting to us new life with a view to a
holy walk: “That like as Christ was raised from the dead... so we also
might walk in newness of life.” Here the matter before us is behaviour.
Again, peace is spoken of in both sections, in the fifth and eighth chapters
. Romans 5 tells of peace with God which is the effect of justification by
faith in His Blood: “Being therefore justified by faith, we have peace with
God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” (5:1 mg.) This means that, now that I
have forgiveness of sins, God will no longer be a cause of dread and trouble
to me. I who was an enemy to God have been “reconciled... through the
death of his Son” (5:10). I very soon find, however, that I am going to be
a great cause of trouble to myself. There is still unrest within, for within
me there is something that draws me to sin. There is peace with God, but
there is no peace with myself. There is in fact civil war in my own heart.
This condition is well depicted in Romans 7 where the flesh and the spirit
are seen to be in deadly conflict within me. But from this the argument
leads in chapter 8 to the inward peace of a walk in the Spirit. “The mind
of the flesh is death”, because it “is enmity against God”, “but the
mind of the spirit is life and peace” (Romans 8:6, 7).
Looking further still we find that the first half of the section deals
generally speaking with the question of justification (see, for example,
Romans 3:24-26; 4:5, 25), while the second half has as its main topic the
corresponding question of sanctification (see Rom. 6:19, 22). When we know
the precious truth of justification by faith we still know only half of the
story. We still have only solved the problem of our standing before God. As
we go on, God has something more to offer us, namely, the solution of the
problem of our conduct, and the development of thought in these chapters
serves to emphasize this. In each case the second step follows from the
first, and if we know only the first then we are still leading a sub-normal
Christian life. How then can we live a normal Christian life? How do we
enter in? Well, of course, initially we must have forgiveness of sins, we
must have justification, we must have peace with God: these are our
indispensable foundation. But with that basis truly established through our
first act of faith in Christ, it is yet clear from the above that we must
move on to something more.
So we see that objectively the Blood deals with our sins. The Lord Jesus has
borne them on the Cross for us as our Substitute and has thereby obtained
for us forgiveness, justification and reconciliation. But we must now go a
step further in the plan of God to understand how He deals with the sin
principle in us. The Blood can wash away my sins, but it cannot wash away my
‘old man’. It needs the Cross to crucify me. The Blood deals with the
sins, but the Cross must deal with the sinner.
You will scarcely find the word ‘sinner’ in the first four chapters of
Romans. This is because there the sinner himself is not mainly in view, but
rather the sins he has committed. The word ‘sinner’ first comes into
prominence only in chapter 5, and it is important to notice how the sinner
is there introduced. In that chapter a sinner is said to be a sinner because
he is born a sinner; not because he has committed sins. The distinction is
important. It is true that often when a Gospel worker wants to convince a
man in the street that he is a sinner, he will use the favourite verse
Romans 3:23, where it says that “all have sinned”; but this use of the
verse is not strictly justified by the Scriptures. Those who so use it are
in danger of arguing the wrong way round, for the teaching of Romans is not
that we are sinners because we commit sins, but that we sin because we are
sinners. We are sinners by constitution rather than by action. As Romans 5:
19 expresses it: “Through the one man’s disobedience the many were made (
or ‘constituted’) sinners”.
How were we constituted sinners? By Adam’s disobedience. We do not become
sinners by what we have done but because of what Adam has done and has
become. I speak English, but I am not thereby constituted an Englishman. I
am in fact a Chinese. So chapter 3 draws our attention to what we have done
—“all have sinned”—but it is not because we have done it that we become
sinners.
I once asked a class of children. ‘Who is a sinner?’ and their immediate
reply was, ‘One who sins’. Yes, one who sins is a sinner, but the fact
that he sins is merely the evidence that he is already a sinner; it is not
the cause. One who sins is a sinner, but it is equally true that one who
does not sin, if he is of Adam’s race, is a sinner too, and in need of
redemption. Do you follow me? There are bad sinners and there are good
sinners, there are moral sinners and there are corrupt sinners, but they are
all alike sinners. We sometimes think that if only we had not done certain
things all would be well; but the trouble lies far deeper than in what we do
speak Chinese at all, but he is a Chinese for all that, because he was born
a Chinese. It is birth that counts. So I am a sinner not of my behaviour but
of my heredity, my parentage. I am not a sinner because I sin, but I sin
because I come of the wrong stock. I sin because I am a sinner.
We are apt to think that what we have done is very bad, but that we
ourselves are not so bad. God is taking pains to show us that we ourselves
are wrong, fundamentally wrong. The root trouble is the sinner; he must be
dealt with. Our sins are dealt with by the Blood, but we ourselves are dealt
with by the Cross. The Blood procures our pardon for what we have done; the
Cross procures our deliverance from what we are.
l**********t
发帖数: 5754
12
Chapter 2.2 Man’s State By Nature
We come therefore to Romans 5:12-21. In this great passage, grace is brought
into contrast with sin and the obedience of Christ is set against the
disobedience of Adam. It is placed at the beginning of the second section of
(Romans 5:12 to 8:39) with which we shall now be particularly concerned,
and its argument leads to a conclusion which lies at the foundation of our
further meditations. What is that conclusion? It is found in verse 19
already quoted: “For as through the one man’s disobedience the many were
made sinners, even so through the obedience of the one shall the many be
made righteous.” Here the Spirit of God is seeking to show us first what we
are, and then how we came to be what we are.
At the beginning of our Christian life we are concerned with our doing, not
with our being; we are distressed rather by what we have done than by what
we are. We think that if only we could rectify certain things we should be
good Christians, and we set out therefore to change our actions. But the
result is not what we expected. We discover to our dismay that it is
something more than just a case of trouble on the outside—that there is in
fact more serious trouble on the inside. We try to please the Lord, but find
something within that does not want to please Him. We try to be humble, but
there is something in our very being that refuses to be humble. We try to
be loving, but inside we feel most unloving. We smile and try to look very
gracious, but inwardly we feel decidedly ungracious. The more we try to
rectify matters on the outside the more we realize how deep-seated the
trouble is within. Then we come to the Lord and say, ‘Lord, I see it now!
Not only what I have done is wrong; I am wrong.’
The conclusion of Romans 5:19 is beginning to dawn upon us. We are sinners.
We are members of a race of people who are constitutionally other than what
God intended them to be. By the Fall a fundamental change took place in the
character of Adam whereby he became a sinner, one constitutionally unable to
please God; and the family likeness which we all share is no merely
superficial one but extends to our inward character also. We have been “
constituted sinners”. How did this come about? “By the disobedience of one
”, says Paul. Let me try to illustrate this.
My name is Nee. It is a fairly common Chinese name. How did I come by it? I
did not choose it. I did not go through the list of possible Chinese names
and select this one. That my name is Nee is in fact not my doing at all, and
, moreover, nothing I can do can alter it. I am a Nee because my father was
a Nee, and my father was a Nee because my grandfather was a Nee. If I act
like a Nee I am a Nee, and if I act unlike a Nee I am still a Nee. If I
become President of the Chinese Republic I am a Nee, or if I become a beggar
in the street I am still a Nee. Nothing I do or refrain from doing will
make me other than a Nee.
We are sinners not because of ourselves but because of Adam. It is not
because I individually have sinned that I am a sinner but because I was in
Adam when he sinned. Because by birth I come of Adam, therefore I am a part
of him. What is more, I can do nothing to alter this. I cannot by improving
my behaviour make myself other than a part of Adam and so a sinner.
In China I was once talking in this strain and remarked, ‘We have all
sinned in Adam’. A man said, ‘I don’t understand’, so I sought to
explain it in this way. ‘All Chinese trace their descent from Huang-ti’, I
said. ‘Over four thousand years ago he had a war with Si-iu. His enemy was
very strong, but nevertheless Huang-ti overcame and slew him. After this
Huang-ti founded the Chinese nation. Four thousand years ago therefore our
nation was founded by Huang-ti. Now what would have happened if Huang-ti had
not killed his enemy, but had been himself killed instead? Where would you
be now?’ ‘There would be no me at all’, he answered. ‘Oh, no! Huang-ti
can die his death and you can live your life.’ ‘Impossible!’ he cried, ‘
If he had died, then I could never have lived, for I have derived my life
from him.’
Do you see the oneness of human life? Our life comes from Adam. If your
great-grandfather had died at the age of three, where would you be? You
would have died in him! Your experience is bound up with his. Now in just
the same way the experience of every one of us is bound up with that of Adam
. None can say, ‘I have not been in Eden’ for potentially we all were
there when Adam yielded to the serpent’s words. So we are all involved in
Adam’s sin, and by being born “in Adam” we receive from him all that he
became as a result of his sin—that is to say, the Adam-nature which is the
nature of a sinner. We derive our existence from him, and because his life
became a sinful life, a sinful nature, therefore the nature which we derive
from him is also sinful. So, as we have said, the trouble is in our heredity
, not in our behaviour. Unless we can change our parentage there is no
deliverance for us.
But it is in this very direction that we shall find the solution of our
problem, for that is exactly how God has dealt with the situation.

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: Chapter 2.1 Some Further Distinctions
: Two aspects of the resurrection are mentioned in the two sections, in
: chapters 4 and 6. In Romans 4:25 the resurrection of the Lord Jesus is
: mentioned in relation to our justification: “Jesus our Lord... was
: delivered up for our trespasses, and was raised for our justification.”
: Here the matter in view is that of our standing before God. But in Romans 6:
: 4 the resurrection is spoken of as imparting to us new life with a view to a
: holy walk: “That like as Christ was raised from the dead... so we also
: might walk in newness of life.” Here the matter before us is behaviour.
: Again, peace is spoken of in both sections, in the fifth and eighth chapters

l**********t
发帖数: 5754
13
Chapter 2.3 As In Adam So In Christ
In Romans 5:12 to 21 we are not only told something about Adam; we are told
also something about the Lord Jesus. “As through the one man’s
disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of
the one shall the many be made righteous.” In Adam we receive everything
that is of Adam; in Christ we receive everything that is of Christ.
The terms ‘in Adam’ and ‘in Christ’ are too little understood by
Christians, and, at the risk of repetition, I wish again to emphasize by
means of an illustration the hereditary and racial significance of the term
‘in Christ’. This illustration is to be found in the letter to the Hebrews
. Do you remember that in the earlier part of the letter the writer is
trying to show that Melchizedek is greater than Levi? You recall that the
point to be proved is that the priesthood of Christ is greater than the
priesthood of Aaron who was of the tribe of Levi. Now in order to prove that
, he has first to prove that the priesthood of Melchizedek is greater than
the priesthood of Levi, for the simple reason that the priesthood of Christ
is “after the order of Melchizedek” (Heb. 7:14-17), while that of Aaron is
, of course, after the order of Levi. If the writer can demonstrate to us
that Melchizedek is greater than Levi, then he has made his point. That is
the issue, and he proves it in a remarkable way.
He tells us in Hebrews chapter 7 that one day Abraham, returning from the
battle of the kings (Genesis 14), offered a tithe of his spoils to
Melchizedek and received from him a blessing. Inasmuch as Abraham did so,
Levi is therefore of less account than Melchizedek. Why? Because the fact
that Abraham offered tithes to Melchizedek. But if that is true, then Jacob
also ‘in Abraham’ offered to Melchizedek, which in turn means that Levi ‘
in Abraham’ offered to Melchizedek. It is evident that the lesser offers to
the greater (Hebrews 7:7). So Levi is less in standing than Melchizedek,
and therefore the priesthood of Aaron is inferior to that of the Lord Jesus.
Levi at the time of the battle of the kings was not yet even thought of.
Yet he was “in the loins of his father” Abraham, and, “so to say, through
Abraham”, he offered (Hebrews 7:9, 10).
Now this is the exact meaning of ‘in Christ’. Abraham, as the head of the
family of faith, includes the whole family in himself. When he offered to
Melchizedek, the whole family offered in him to Melchizedek. They did not
offer separately as individuals, but they were in him, and therefore in
making his offering he included with himself all his seed.
So we are presented with a new possibility. In Adam all was lost. Through
the disobedience of one man we were all constituted sinners. By him sin
entered and death through sin, and throughout the race sin has reigned unto
death from that day on. But now a ray of light is cast upon the scene.
Through the obedience of Another we may be constituted righteous. Where sin
abounded grace did much more abound, and as sin reigned unto death, even so
may grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our
Lord (Romans 5:19-21). Our despair is in Adam; our hope is in Christ.

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: Chapter 2.2 Man’s State By Nature
: We come therefore to Romans 5:12-21. In this great passage, grace is brought
: into contrast with sin and the obedience of Christ is set against the
: disobedience of Adam. It is placed at the beginning of the second section of
: (Romans 5:12 to 8:39) with which we shall now be particularly concerned,
: and its argument leads to a conclusion which lies at the foundation of our
: further meditations. What is that conclusion? It is found in verse 19
: already quoted: “For as through the one man’s disobedience the many were
: made sinners, even so through the obedience of the one shall the many be
: made righteous.” Here the Spirit of God is seeking to show us first what we

l**********t
发帖数: 5754
14
Chapter 2.4 The Divine Way of Deliverance
God clearly intends that this consideration should lead to our practical
deliverance from sin. Paul makes this quite plain when he opens chapter 6 of
his letter with the question: “Shall we continue in sin?” His whole being
recoils at the very suggestion. “God forbid!”, he exclaims. How could a
holy God be satisfied to have unholy, sin-fettered children? And so “how
shall we any longer live therein?” (Romans 6:1, 2). God has surely
therefore made adequate provision that we should be set free from sin’s
dominion.
But here is our problem. We were born sinners; how then can we cut off our
sinful heredity? Seeing that we were born in Adam, how can we get out of
Adam? Let me say at once, the Blood cannot take us out of Adam. There is
only one way. Since we came in by birth we must go out by death. To do away
with our sinfulness we must do away with our life. Bondage to sin came by
birth; deliverance from sin comes by death—and it is just this way of
escape that God has provided. Death is the secret of emancipation. “We...
died to sin” (Romans 6:2).
But how can we die? Some of us have tried very hard to get rid of this
sinful life, but we have found it most tenacious. What is the way out? It is
not by trying to kill ourselves, but by recognizing that God has dealt with
us in Christ. This is summed up in the apostle’s next statement: “All we
who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death” (Romans 6
:3).
But if God has dealt with us ‘in Christ Jesus’ then we have got to be in
Him for this to become effective, and that now seems just as big a problem.
How are we to ‘get into’ Christ? Here again God comes to our help. We have
in fact no way of getting in, but, what is more important, we need not try
to get in, for we are in. What we could not do for ourselves God has done
for us. He has put us into Christ. Let me remind you of I Corinthians 1:30.
I think that is one of the best verses of the whole New Testament: ‘Ye are
in Christ’. How? “Of him (that is, ‘of God’) are ye in Christ.” Praise
God! it is not left to us either to devise a way of entry or to work it out.
We need not plan how to get in. God has planned it; and He has not only
planned it but He has also performed it. ‘Of him are ye in Christ Jesus’.
We are in; therefore we need not try to get in. It is a Divine act, and it
is accomplished.
Now if this is true, certain things follow. In the illustration from Hebrews
7 which we considered above we saw that ‘in Abraham’ all Israel—and
therefore Levi who was not yet born—offered tithes to Melchizedek. They did
not offer separately and individually, but they were in Abraham when he
offered, and his offering included all his seed. This, then, is a true
figure of ourselves as ‘in Christ’. When the Lord Jesus was on the Cross
all of us died—not individually, for we had not yet been born—but, being
in Him, we died in Him. “One died for all, therefore all died” (2 Cor. 5:
14). When He was crucified all of us were crucified.
Many a time when preaching in the villages of China one has to use very
simple illustrations for deep Divine truth. I remember once I took up a
small book and put a piece of paper into it, and I said to those very simple
ones, ‘Now look carefully. I take a piece of paper. It has an identity of
its own, quite separate from this book. Having no special purpose for it at
the moment I put it into the book. Now I do something with the book. I post
it to Shanghai. I do not post the paper, but the paper has been put into the
book. Then where is the paper? Can the book go to Shanghai and the paper
remain here? Can the paper have a separate destiny from the book? No! Where
the book goes the paper goes. If I drop the book in the river the paper goes
too, and if I quickly take it out again I recover the paper also. Whatever
experience the book goes through the paper goes through with it, for it is
in the book.’
“Of him are ye in Christ Jesus.” The Lord God Himself has put us in Christ
, and in His dealing with Christ God has dealt with the whole race. Our
destiny is bound up with His. What He has gone through we have gone through,
for to be ‘in Christ’ is to have been identified with Him in both His
death and resurrection. He was crucified: then what about us? Must we ask
God to crucify us? Never! When Christ was crucified we were crucified; and
His crucifixion is past, therefore ours cannot be future. I challenge you to
find one text in the New Testament telling us that our crucifixion is in
the future. All the references to it are in the Greek aorist, which is the
‘once-for-all’ tense, the ‘eternally past’ tense. (See: Romans 6:6;
Galatians 2:20; 5:24; 6:14). And just as no man could ever commit suicide by
crucifixion, for it were a physical impossibility to do so, so also, in
spiritual terms, God does not require us to crucify ourselves. We were
crucified when He was crucified, for God put us there in Him. That we have
died in Christ is not merely a doctrinal position, it is an eternal fact.

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: Chapter 2.3 As In Adam So In Christ
: In Romans 5:12 to 21 we are not only told something about Adam; we are told
: also something about the Lord Jesus. “As through the one man’s
: disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of
: the one shall the many be made righteous.” In Adam we receive everything
: that is of Adam; in Christ we receive everything that is of Christ.
: The terms ‘in Adam’ and ‘in Christ’ are too little understood by
: Christians, and, at the risk of repetition, I wish again to emphasize by
: means of an illustration the hereditary and racial significance of the term
: ‘in Christ’. This illustration is to be found in the letter to the Hebrews

l**********t
发帖数: 5754
15
Chapter 2.5 His Death and Resurrection Representative and Inclusive
The Lord Jesus, when He died on the Cross, shed His Blood, thus giving His
sinless life to atone for our sin and to satisfy the righteousness and
holiness of God. To do so was the prerogative of the Son of God alone. No
man could have a share in that. The Scripture has never told us that we shed
our blood with Christ. In His atoning work before God He acted alone; no
other could have a part. But the Lord did not die only to shed His Blood: He
died that we might die. He died as our Representative. In His death He
included you and me.
We often use the terms ‘substitution’ and ‘identification’ to describe
these two aspects of the death of Christ. Now many a time the use of the
word ‘identification’ is good. But identification would suggest that the
thing begins from our side: that I try to identify myself with the Lord. I
agree that the word is true, but it should be used later on. It is better to
begin with the fact that the Lord included me in His death. It is the ‘
inclusive’ death of the Lord which puts me in a position to identify myself
, not that I identify myself in order to be included. It is God’s inclusion
of me in Christ that matters. It is something God has done. For that reason
those two New Testament words “in Christ” are always very dear to my
heart.
The death of the Lord Jesus is inclusive. The resurrection of the Lord Jesus
is alike inclusive. We have looked at the first chapter of I Corinthians to
establish the fact that we are “in Christ Jesus”. Now we will go to the
end of the same letter to see something more of what this means. In I
Corinthians 15:45, 47 two remarkable names or titles are used of the Lord
Jesus. He is spoken of there as “the last Adam” and He is spoken of too as
“the second man”. Scripture does not refer to Him as the second Adam but
as “the last Adam”; nor does it refer to Him as the last Man, but as “the
second man”. The distinction is to be noted, for it enshrines a truth of
great value.
As the last Adam, Christ is the sum total of humanity; as the second Man He
is the Head of a new race. So we have here two unions, the one relating to
His death and the other to His resurrection. In the first place His union
with the race as “the last Adam” began historically at Bethlehem and ended
at the cross and the tomb. In it He gathered up into Himself all that was
in Adam and took it to judgment and death. In the second place our union
with Him as “the second man” begins in resurrection and ends in eternity—
which is to say, it never ends—for, having in His death done away with the
first man in whom God’s purpose was frustrated, He rose again as Head of a
new race of men, in whom that purpose shall be fully realized.
When therefore the Lord Jesus was crucified on the cross, He was crucified
as the last Adam. All that was in the first Adam was gathered up and done
away in Him. We were included there. As the last Adam He wiped out the old
race; as the second Man He brings in the new race. It is in His resurrection
that He stands forth as the second Man, and there too we are included. “
For if we have become united with him by the likeness of his death, we shall
be also by the likeness of his resurrection” (Romans 6:5). We died in Him
as the last Adam; we live in Him as the second Man. The Cross is thus the
power of God which translates us from Adam to Christ.


【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: Chapter 2.4 The Divine Way of Deliverance
: God clearly intends that this consideration should lead to our practical
: deliverance from sin. Paul makes this quite plain when he opens chapter 6 of
: his letter with the question: “Shall we continue in sin?” His whole being
: recoils at the very suggestion. “God forbid!”, he exclaims. How could a
: holy God be satisfied to have unholy, sin-fettered children? And so “how
: shall we any longer live therein?” (Romans 6:1, 2). God has surely
: therefore made adequate provision that we should be set free from sin’s
: dominion.
: But here is our problem. We were born sinners; how then can we cut off our

p****g
发帖数: 171
16
zan

brought
of
we

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: Chapter 2.5 His Death and Resurrection Representative and Inclusive
: The Lord Jesus, when He died on the Cross, shed His Blood, thus giving His
: sinless life to atone for our sin and to satisfy the righteousness and
: holiness of God. To do so was the prerogative of the Son of God alone. No
: man could have a share in that. The Scripture has never told us that we shed
: our blood with Christ. In His atoning work before God He acted alone; no
: other could have a part. But the Lord did not die only to shed His Blood: He
: died that we might die. He died as our Representative. In His death He
: included you and me.
: We often use the terms ‘substitution’ and ‘identification’ to describe

l**********t
发帖数: 5754
17
Chapter 3: The Path of Progress: Knowing
Our old history ends with the Cross; our new history begins with the
resurrection. “If any man is in Christ, he is a new creature: the old
things are passed away; behold they are become new” (2 Cor. 5:17). The
Cross terminates the first creation, and out of death there is brought a new
creation in Christ, the second Man. If we are ‘in Adam’ all that is in
Adam necessarily devolves upon us; it becomes ours involuntarily, for we
have to do nothing to get it. There is no need to make up our minds to lose
our temper or to commit some other sin; it comes to us freely and despite
ourselves. In a similar way, if we are ‘in Christ’ all that is in Christ
comes to us by free grace, without effort on our part but on the ground of
simple faith.
But to say that all we need comes to us in Christ by free grace, though true
enough, may seem unpractical. How does it work out in practice? How does it
become real in our experience?
As we study chapters 6, 7 and 8 of Romans we shall discover that the
conditions of living the normal Christian life are fourfold. They are: (a)
Knowing, (b) Reckoning, (c) Presenting ourselves to God, and (d) Walking in
the Spirit, and they are set forth in that order. If we would live that life
we shall have to take all four of these steps; not one nor two nor three,
but all four. As we study each of them we shall trust the Lord by His Holy
Spirit to illumine our understanding; and we shall seek His help now to take
the first big step forward.



【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: Chapter 2.5 His Death and Resurrection Representative and Inclusive
: The Lord Jesus, when He died on the Cross, shed His Blood, thus giving His
: sinless life to atone for our sin and to satisfy the righteousness and
: holiness of God. To do so was the prerogative of the Son of God alone. No
: man could have a share in that. The Scripture has never told us that we shed
: our blood with Christ. In His atoning work before God He acted alone; no
: other could have a part. But the Lord did not die only to shed His Blood: He
: died that we might die. He died as our Representative. In His death He
: included you and me.
: We often use the terms ‘substitution’ and ‘identification’ to describe

l**********t
发帖数: 5754
18
Chapter 3.1 Our Death With Christ A Historic Fact
Romans 6:1-11 is the passage before us now. In these verses it is made clear
that the death of the Lord Jesus is representative and inclusive. In His
death we all died. None of us can progress spiritually without seeing this.
Just as we cannot have justification if we have not seen Him bearing our
sins on the Cross, so we cannot have sanctification if we have not seen Him
bearing us on the Cross. Not only have our sins been laid on Him but we
ourselves have been put into Him.
How did you receive forgiveness? You realized that the Lord Jesus died as
your Substitute and bore your sins upon Himself, and that His Blood was shed
to cleanse away your defilement. When you saw your sins all taken away on
the Cross what did you do? Did you say, ‘Lord Jesus, please come and die
for my sins’? No, you did not pray at all; you only thanked the Lord You
did not beseech Him to come and die for you, for you realized that He had
already done it.
But what is true of your forgiveness is also true of your deliverance. The
work is done. There is no need to pray but only to praise. God has put us
all in Christ, so that when Christ was crucified we were crucified also.
Thus there is no need to pray: ‘I am a very wicked person; Lord, please
crucify me’. That is all wrong. You did not pray about your sins; why pray
now about yourself? Your sins were dealt with by His Blood, and you were
dealt with by His Cross. It is an accomplished fact. All that is left for
you to do is to praise the Lord that when Christ died you died also; you
died in Him. Praise Him for it and live in the light of it. “Then believed
they his words: they sang his praise” (Psalm 106:12).
Do you believe in the death of Christ? Of course you do. Well, the same
Scripture that says He died for us says also that we died with Him. Look at
it again: “Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). That is the first statement,
and that is clear enough; but is this any less clear? “Our old man was
crucified with him” (Romans 6:6). “We died with Christ” (Romans 6:8).
When are we crucified with Him? What is the date of our old man’s
crucifixion? Is it tomorrow? Yesterday? Today? In order to answer this it
may help us if for a moment I turn Paul’s statement round and say, ‘Christ
was crucified with (i.e. at the same time as) our old man’. Some of you
came here in twos. You traveled to this place together. You might say, My
friend came here with me’, but you might just as truly say, ‘I came here
with my friend’. Had one of you come three days ago and the other only
today you could not possibly say that; but having come together you can make
either statement with equal truth, because both are statements of fact. So
also in historic fact we can say, reverently but with equal accuracy, ‘I
was crucified when Christ was crucified’ or ‘Christ was crucified when I
was crucified’, for they are not two historical events, but one. My
crucifixion was “with him”. 33The expression “with him” in Romans 6:6
carries of course a doctrinal as well as historical, or temporal sense. It
is only in the historical sense that the statement is reversible. W.N. Has
Christ been crucified? Then can I be otherwise? And if He was crucified
nearly two thousand years ago, and I with Him, can my crucifixion be said to
take place tomorrow? Can His be past and mine be present or future? Praise
the Lord, when He died in my stead, but He bore me with Him to the Cross, so
that when He died I died. And if I believe in the death of the Lord Jesus,
then I can believe in my own death just as surely as I believe in His.
Why do you believe that the Lord Jesus died? What is your ground for that
belief? Is it that you feel He has died? No, you have never felt it. You
believe it because the Word of God tells you so. When the Lord was crucified
, two thieves were crucified at the same time. You do not doubt that they
were crucified with Him, either, because the Scripture says so quite plainly.
You believe in the death of the Lord Jesus and you believe in the death of
the thieves with Him. Now what about your own death? Your crucifixion is
more intimate than theirs. They were crucified at the same time as the Lord
but on different crosses, whereas you were crucified on the self same cross
as He, for you were in Him when He died. How can you know? You can know for
the one sufficient reason that God has said so. It does not depend on your
feelings. If you feel that Christ has died, He has died; and if you do not
feel that he died, He has died. If you feel that you have died, you have
died; and if you do not feel that you have died, you have nevertheless just
as surely died. These are Divine facts. That Christ has died is a fact, that
the two thieves have died is a fact, and that you have died is a fact also.
Let me tell you, You have died! You are done with! You are ruled out! The
self you loathe is on the Cross in Christ. And “he that is dead is freed
from sin” (Romans 6:7, A.V.). This is the Gospel for Christians.
Our crucifixion can never be made effective by will or by effort, but only
by accepting what the Lord Jesus did on the Cross. Our eyes must be opened
to see the finished work of Calvary. Some of you, prior to your salvation,
may have tried to save yourselves. You read the Bible, prayed, went to
Church, gave alms. Then one day your eyes were opened and you saw that a
full salvation had already been provided for you on the Cross. You just
accepted that and thanked God, and peace and joy flowed into your heart. Now
salvation and sanctification are on exactly the same basis. You receive
deliverance from sin in the same way as you receive forgiveness of sins.
For God’s way of deliverance is altogether different from man’s way. Man’
s way is to try to suppress sin by seeking to overcome it; God’s way is to
remove the sinner. Many Christians mourn over their weakness, thinking that
if only they were stronger all would be well. The idea that, because failure
to lead a holy life is due to our impotence, something more is therefore
demanded of us, leads naturally to this false conception of the way of
deliverance. If we are preoccupied with the power of sin and with our
inability to meet it, then we naturally conclude that to gain the victory
over sin we must have more power. ‘If only I were stronger’, we say, ‘I
could overcome my violent outbursts of temper’, and so we plead with the
Lord to strengthen us that we may exercise more self-control.
But this is altogether wrong; this is not Christianity. God’s means of
delivering us from sin is not by making us stronger and stronger, but by
making us weaker and weaker. That is surely rather a peculiar way of victory
, you say; but it is the Divine way. God sets us free from the dominion of
sin, not by strengthening our old man but by crucifying him; not by helping
him to do anything but by removing him from the scene of action.
For years, maybe, you have tried fruitlessly to exercise control over
yourself, and perhaps this is still your experience; but when once you see
the truth you will recognize that you are indeed powerless to do anything,
but that in setting you aside altogether God has done it all. Such a
revelation brings human self-effort to an end.

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: Chapter 3: The Path of Progress: Knowing
: Our old history ends with the Cross; our new history begins with the
: resurrection. “If any man is in Christ, he is a new creature: the old
: things are passed away; behold they are become new” (2 Cor. 5:17). The
: Cross terminates the first creation, and out of death there is brought a new
: creation in Christ, the second Man. If we are ‘in Adam’ all that is in
: Adam necessarily devolves upon us; it becomes ours involuntarily, for we
: have to do nothing to get it. There is no need to make up our minds to lose
: our temper or to commit some other sin; it comes to us freely and despite
: ourselves. In a similar way, if we are ‘in Christ’ all that is in Christ

l**********t
发帖数: 5754
19
Chapter 3.2 The First Step: “Knowing This...”
The normal Christian life must begin with a very definite ‘knowing’, which
is not just knowing something about the truth nor understanding some
important doctrine. It is not intellectual knowledge at all, but an opening
of the eyes of the heart to see what we have in Christ.
How do you know your sins are forgiven? Is it because your pastor told you
so? No, you just know it. If I ask you how you know, you simply answer, ‘I
know it!’ Such knowledge comes by Divine revelation. It comes from the Lord
Himself. Of course the fact of forgiveness of sins is in the Bible, but for
the written Word of God to become a living Word from God to you He had to
give you “a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him” (Eph.
1:17). What you needed was to know Christ in that way, and it is always so.
So there comes a time, in regard to any new apprehension of Christ, when
you know it in your own heart, you ‘see’ it in your spirit. A light has
shined into your inner being and you are wholly persuaded of the fact. What
is true of the forgiveness of your sins is no less true of your deliverance
from sin. When once the light of God dawns upon your heart you see yourself
in Christ. It is not now because someone has told you, and not merely
because Romans 6 says so. It is something more even than that. You know it
because God has revealed it to you by His Spirit. You may not feel it; you
may not understand it; but you know it, for you have seen it. Once you have
seen yourself in Christ, nothing can shake your assurance of that blessed
fact.
If you ask a number of believers who have entered upon the normal Christian
life how they came by their experience, some will say in this way and some
will say in that. Each stresses his own particular way of entering in and
produces Scripture to support his experience; and unhappily many Christians
are using their special experiences and their special scriptures to fight
other Christians. The fact of the matter is that, while Christians may enter
into the deeper life by different ways, we need not regard the experiences
or doctrines they stress as mutually exclusive, but rather complementary.
One thing is certain, that any true experience of value in the sight of God
must have been reached by way of a new discovery of the meaning of the
Person and work of the Lord Jesus. That is a crucial test and a safe one.
And here in our passage Paul makes everything depend upon such a discovery.
“Knowing this, that our old man was crucified with him, that the body of
sin might be done away, that so we should no longer be in bondage to sin” (
Romans 6:6).

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: Chapter 3.1 Our Death With Christ A Historic Fact
: Romans 6:1-11 is the passage before us now. In these verses it is made clear
: that the death of the Lord Jesus is representative and inclusive. In His
: death we all died. None of us can progress spiritually without seeing this.
: Just as we cannot have justification if we have not seen Him bearing our
: sins on the Cross, so we cannot have sanctification if we have not seen Him
: bearing us on the Cross. Not only have our sins been laid on Him but we
: ourselves have been put into Him.
: How did you receive forgiveness? You realized that the Lord Jesus died as
: your Substitute and bore your sins upon Himself, and that His Blood was shed

l**********t
发帖数: 5754
20
Chapter 3.3 Divine Revelation Essential To Knowledge
So our first step is to seek from God a knowledge that comes by revelation—
a revelation, that is to say, not of ourselves but of the finished work of
the Lord Jesus Christ on the Cross. When Hudson Taylor, the founder of the
China Inland Mission, entered into the normal Christian life it was thus
that he did so. You remember how he tells of his long-standing problem of
how to live ‘in Christ’, how to draw the sap out of the Vine into himself.
For he knew that he must have the life of Christ flowing out through him
and yet felt that he had not got it, and he saw clearly enough that his need
was to be found in Christ. ‘I knew’, he said, writing to his sister from
Chinkiang in 1869, ‘that if only I could abide in Christ, all would be well
, but I could not.’
The more he tried to get in the more he found himself slipping out, so to
speak, until one day light dawned, revelation came and he saw. ‘Here, I
feel, is the secret: not asking how I am to get sap out of the Vine into
myself, but remembering that Jesus is the Vine—the root, stem, branches,
twigs, leaves, flowers, fruit, all indeed.’
Then, in words of a friend that had helped him: ‘I have not got to make
myself a branch. The Lord Jesus tells me I am a branch. I am part of Him and
I have just to believe it and act upon it. I have seen it long enough in
the Bible, but I believe it now as a living reality.’
It was as though something which had indeed been true all the time had now
suddenly become true in a new way to him personally, and he writes to his
sister again: ‘I do not know how far I may be able to make myself
intelligible about it, for there is nothing new or strange or wonderful—and
yet, all is new! In a word, “whereas once I was blind, now I see”... I am
dead and buried with Christ—aye, and risen too and ascended... God reckons
me so, and tells me to reckon myself so. He knows best... Oh, the joy of
seeing this truth—I do pray that the eyes of your understanding may be
enlightened, that you may know and enjoy the riches freely given us in
Christ.’ 4
Oh, it is a great thing to see that we are in Christ! Think of the
bewilderment of trying to get into a room in which you already are! Think of
the absurdity of asking to be put in! If we recognize the fact that we are
in, we make no effort to enter. If we had more revelation we should have
fewer prayers and more praises. Much of our praying for ourselves is just
because we are blind to what God has done.
I remember one day in Shanghai I was talking with a brother who was very
exercised concerning his spiritual state. He said, ‘So many are living
beautiful, saintly lives. I am ashamed of myself. I call myself a Christian
and yet when I compare myself with others I feel I am not one at all. I want
to know this crucified life, this resurrection life, but I do not know it
and see no way of getting there.’ Another brother was with us, and the two
of us had been talking for two hours or so, trying to get the man to see
that he could not have anything apart from Christ, but without success. Said
our friend, ‘the best thing a man can do is to pray.’ ‘But if God has
already given you everything, what do you need to pray for?’ we asked. ‘He
hasn’t’, the man replied, ‘for I am still losing my temper, still
failing constantly; so I must pray more.’ ‘Well’, we said, ‘do you get
what you pray for?’ ‘I am sorry to say that I do not get anything’, he
replied. We tried to point out that, just as he had done nothing for his
justification, so he need do nothing for his sanctification.
Just then a third brother, much used of the Lord, came in and joined us.
There was a thermos flask on the table, and this brother picked it up and
said, ‘What is this?’ ‘A thermos flask.’ ‘Well, you just imagine for a
moment that this thermos flask can pray, and that it starts praying
something like this: “Lord, I want very much to be a thermos flask. Wilt
Thou make me to be a thermos flask? Lord, give me grace to become a thermos
flask. Do please make me one!” What will you say?’ ‘I do not think even a
thermos flask would be so silly,’ our friend replied. ‘It would be
nonsense to pray like that; it is a thermos flask!’ Then my brother said,
‘You are doing the same thing. God in times past has already included you
in Christ. When He died, you died; when He lived, you lived. Now today you
cannot say, “I want to die; I want to be crucified; I want to have
resurrection life.” The Lord simply looks at you and says, “You are dead!
You have new life!” All your praying is just as absurd as that of the
thermos flask. You do not need to pray to the Lord for anything; you merely
need your eyes opened to see that He has done it all.’
That is the point. We need not work to die, we need not wait to die, we are
dead. We only need to recognize what the Lord has already done and to praise
Him for it. Light dawned for that man. With tears in his eyes he said, ‘
Lord, I praise Thee that Thou hast already included me in Christ. All that
is His is mine!’ Revelation had come and faith had something to lay hold of
; and if you could have met that brother later on, what a change you would
have found!
4The quotations are from Hudson Taylor and the China Inland Mission by Dr.
and Mrs. Howard Taylor, Chapter 12, ‘The Exchanged Life’. The whole
passage should be read.—Ed.

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: Chapter 3.2 The First Step: “Knowing This...”
: The normal Christian life must begin with a very definite ‘knowing’, which
: is not just knowing something about the truth nor understanding some
: important doctrine. It is not intellectual knowledge at all, but an opening
: of the eyes of the heart to see what we have in Christ.
: How do you know your sins are forgiven? Is it because your pastor told you
: so? No, you just know it. If I ask you how you know, you simply answer, ‘I
: know it!’ Such knowledge comes by Divine revelation. It comes from the Lord
: Himself. Of course the fact of forgiveness of sins is in the Bible, but for
: the written Word of God to become a living Word from God to you He had to

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l**********t
发帖数: 5754
21
chapter 3.4 The Cross Goes To The Root Of Our Problem
Let me remind you again of the fundamental nature of that which the Lord has
done on the Cross. I feel I cannot press this point too much for we must
see it. Suppose, for the sake of illustration, that the government of your
country should wish to deal drastically with the question of strong drink
and should decide that the whole country was to go ‘dry’, how could the
decision be carried into effect? How could we help? If we were to search
every shop and house throughout the land and smash all the bottles of wine
or beer or brandy we came across, would that meet the case? Surely not. We
might thereby rid the land of every drop of alcoholic liquor it contains,
but behind those bottles of strong drink are the factories that produce them
, and if we only deal with the bottles and leave the factories untouched,
production will still continue and there is no permanent solution of the
problem. The drink-producing factories, the breweries and distilleries
throughout the land, must be closed down if the drink question is to be
permanently settled.
We are the factory; our actions are the products. The Blood of the Lord
Jesus dealt with the question of the products, namely, our sins. So the
question of what we have done is settled, but would God have stopped there?
What about the question of what we are? Our sins were produced by us. They
have been dealt with, but how are we going to be dealt with? Do you believe
the Lord would cleanse away all our sins and then leave us to get rid of the
sin-producing factory? Do you believe He would put away the goods produced
but leave us to deal with the source of production?
To ask this question is but to answer it. Of course He has not done half the
work and left the other half undone. No, He has done away with the goods
and also made a clean sweep of the factory that produces the goods.
The finished work of Christ really has gone to the root of our problem and
dealt with it. There are no half measures with God. “Knowing this,” says
Paul, “That our old man was crucified with him, that the body of sin might
be done away, that so we should no longer be in bondage to sin” (Rom. 6:6).
“Knowing this”! Yes, but do you know it? “Or are ye ignorant?” (Rom. 6:
3). May the Lord graciously open our eyes.


【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: Chapter 3.3 Divine Revelation Essential To Knowledge
: So our first step is to seek from God a knowledge that comes by revelation—
: a revelation, that is to say, not of ourselves but of the finished work of
: the Lord Jesus Christ on the Cross. When Hudson Taylor, the founder of the
: China Inland Mission, entered into the normal Christian life it was thus
: that he did so. You remember how he tells of his long-standing problem of
: how to live ‘in Christ’, how to draw the sap out of the Vine into himself.
: For he knew that he must have the life of Christ flowing out through him
: and yet felt that he had not got it, and he saw clearly enough that his need
: was to be found in Christ. ‘I knew’, he said, writing to his sister from

l**********t
发帖数: 5754
22
Chapter 4: 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.

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: chapter 3.4 The Cross Goes To The Root Of Our Problem
: Let me remind you again of the fundamental nature of that which the Lord has
: done on the Cross. I feel I cannot press this point too much for we must
: see it. Suppose, for the sake of illustration, that the government of your
: country should wish to deal drastically with the question of strong drink
: and should decide that the whole country was to go ‘dry’, how could the
: decision be carried into effect? How could we help? If we were to search
: every shop and house throughout the land and smash all the bottles of wine
: or beer or brandy we came across, would that meet the case? Surely not. We
: might thereby rid the land of every drop of alcoholic liquor it contains,

l**********t
发帖数: 5754
23
chapter 4.1 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.

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: Chapter 4: 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

D******r
发帖数: 637
24
zan

accuracy?
map
fair
of

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: chapter 4.1 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

l**********t
发帖数: 5754
25
chapter 4.2 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.

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: chapter 4.1 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

l**********t
发帖数: 5754
26
chapter 4.3 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's 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 them; 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 by 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.
__________________________________________________________________
[5] The verb katargeo translated destroyed' in Romans 6:6 (A.V.) does
not mean annihilated', but put out of operation', made ineffective'. It
is from the Creek root argos, inactive', not working', unprofitable',
which is the word translated idle' in Matthew 20:3, 6 of the unemployed
laborers in the market place.--Ed.
__________________________________________________________________

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: chapter 4.2 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.

l**********t
发帖数: 5754
27
chapter 4.4 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).


【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: chapter 4.3 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

l**********t
发帖数: 5754
28
Chapter 5: The Divide of the Cross
The kingdom of this world is not this kingdom of God. God had in His heart a
world-system - a universe of His creating—which should be headed up in
Christ His Son (Col. 1:16, 17). But Satan, working through man’s flesh, has
set up instead a rival system known in Scripture as “this world”—a
system in which we are involved and which he himself dominates. He has in
fact become “the prince of this world” (John 12:31).



【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: chapter 4.4 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

l**********t
发帖数: 5754
29
Chapter 5.1 Two Creations
Thus, in Satan’s hands, the first creation has become the old creation, and
God’s primary concern is now no longer with that but with a second and new
creation. He is bringing in a new creation, a new kingdom and a new world,
and nothing of the old creation, the old kingdom or the old world can be
transferred to the new. It is a question now of these two rival realms, and
of which realm we belong to.
The apostle Paul, of course, leaves us in no doubt as to which of these two
realms is now in fact ours. He tells us that God, in redemption, “delivered
us out of the power of darkness, and translated us into the kingdom of the
Son of his love” (Col. 1:12, 13).
But in order to bring us into His new kingdom, God must do something new in
us. He must make of us new creatures. Unless we are created anew we can
never fit into the new realm. “That which is born of the flesh is flesh”;
and, “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither doth
corruption inherit incorruption” (John 3:6; 1 Cor. 15:50). However educated
, however cultured, however improved it be, flesh is still flesh. Our
fitness for the new kingdom is determined by the creation to which we belong
. Do we belong to the old creation or the new? Are we born of the flesh or
of the Spirit? Our ultimate suitability for the new realm hinges on the
question of origin. The question is not ‘good’ or bad?’ but ‘flesh or
Spirit?’ “That which is born of the flesh is flesh”, and it will never be
anything else. That which is of the old creation can never pass over into
the new.
Once we really understand what God is seeking, namely, something altogether
new for Himself, then we shall see clearly that we can never bring any
contribution from the old realm into that new thing. God wanted to have us
for Himself, but He could not bring us as we were into that which He had
purposed; so He first did away with us by the Cross of Christ, and then by
resurrection provided a new life for us. “If any man is in Christ, he is a
new creature (mg. ‘there is a new creation’): the old things are passed
away; behold, they are become new” (2 Cor. 5:17). Being now new creatures
with a new nature and a new set of faculties, we can enter the new kingdom
and the new world.
The Cross was the means God used to bring to an end ‘the old things’ by
setting aside altogether our ‘old man’, and the resurrection was the means
He employed to impart to us all that was necessary for our life in that new
world. “We were buried therefore with him through baptism into death: that
like as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so
we also might walk in newness of life” (Rom. 6:4).
The greatest negative in the universe is the Cross, for with it God wiped
out everything that was not of Himself: the greatest positive in the
universe is the resurrection, for through it God brought into being all He
will have in the new sphere. So the resurrection stands at the threshold of
the new creation. It is a blessed thing to see that the Cross ends all that
belongs to the first regime, and that the resurrection introduces all that
pertains to the second. Everything that had its beginning before
resurrection must be wiped out. Resurrection is God’s new starting-point.
We have now two worlds before us, the old and the new. In the old, Satan has
absolute dominion. You may be a good man in the old creation, but as long
as you belong to the old you are under sentence of death, because nothing of
the old can go over to the new. The Cross is God’s declaration that all
that is of the old creation must die. Nothing of the first Adam can pass
beyond the Cross; it all ends there. The sooner we see that, the better, for
it is by the Cross that God has made a way of escape for us from that old
creation. God gathered up in the Person of His Son all that was of Adam and
crucified Him; so in Him all that was of Adam was done away. Then God made,
as it were, a proclamation throughout the universe saying: ‘Through the
Cross I have set aside all that is not of Me; you who belong to the old
creation are all included in that; you too have been crucified with Christ!
’ None of us can escape that verdict.
This brings us to the subject of baptism. “Are ye ignorant that all we who
were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried
therefore with him through baptism into death” (Rom. 6:3, 4). What is the
significance of these words?
Baptism in Scripture is associated with salvation. “He that believeth and
is baptized shall be saved” (Mark 16:16). We cannot speak scripturally of
‘baptismal regeneration’ but we may speak of ‘baptismal salvation’. What
is salvation? It relates not to our sins nor to the power of sin, but to
the cosmos or world-system. We are involved in Satan’s world-system. To be
saved is to make our exit from his world-system into God’s
In the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, says Paul, “the world hath been
crucified unto me, and I unto the world” (Gal. 6:14). This is the figure
developed by Peter when he writes of the eight souls who were “saved
through water” (1 Peter 3:20). Entering into the ark, Noah and those with
him stepped by faith out of that old corrupt world into a new one. It was
not so much that they were personally not drowned, but that they were out of
that corrupt system. That is salvation.
Then Peter goes on: “Which also after a true likeness (mg. ‘in the
antitype’) doth now save you, even baptism” (verse 21). In other words, by
that aspect of the Cross which is figured in baptism you are delivered from
this present evil world, and, by your baptism in water, you confirm this.
It is baptism “into his death”, ending one creation; but it is also
baptism “into Christ Jesus”, having in view a new one (Rom. 6:3). You go
down into the water and your world, in figure, goes down with you. you come
up in Christ, but your world is drowned.
“Believe on the Lord Jesus, and thou shalt be saved”, said Paul at
Philippi, and “spake the word of the Lord” to the jailer and his household
. And he “was baptized, he and all his, immediately” (Acts 16:31-34). In
doing so, he and those with him testified before God, His people and the
spiritual powers that they were indeed saved from a world under judgment. As
a result, we read, they rejoiced greatly, “having believed in God”.
Thus it is clear that baptism is no mere question of a cup of water, nor of
a baptistry of water. It is a tremendous thing, relating as it does both to
the death and to the resurrection of our Lord; and having in view two worlds
. Anyone who has worked in a pagan country knows what tremendous issues are
raised by baptism.

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: Chapter 5: The Divide of the Cross
: The kingdom of this world is not this kingdom of God. God had in His heart a
: world-system - a universe of His creating—which should be headed up in
: Christ His Son (Col. 1:16, 17). But Satan, working through man’s flesh, has
: set up instead a rival system known in Scripture as “this world”—a
: system in which we are involved and which he himself dominates. He has in
: fact become “the prince of this world” (John 12:31).
:
:

D******r
发帖数: 637
30
too long in every post
no time to read that much

and
new
,
and
two
delivered
the

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: Chapter 5.1 Two Creations
: Thus, in Satan’s hands, the first creation has become the old creation, and
: God’s primary concern is now no longer with that but with a second and new
: creation. He is bringing in a new creation, a new kingdom and a new world,
: and nothing of the old creation, the old kingdom or the old world can be
: transferred to the new. It is a question now of these two rival realms, and
: of which realm we belong to.
: The apostle Paul, of course, leaves us in no doubt as to which of these two
: realms is now in fact ours. He tells us that God, in redemption, “delivered
: us out of the power of darkness, and translated us into the kingdom of the

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l**********t
发帖数: 5754
31
Chapter 5.2 Burial Means An End
Peter goes on now to describe baptism in the passage just quoted as “the
answer of a good conscience toward God” (1 Peter 3:21 A.V.). Now we cannot
answer without being spoken to . If God had said nothing we should have no
need to answer. But He has spoken; He has spoken to us by the Cross. By it
He has told of His judgment of us, of the world, of the old creation and of
the old kingdom. The Cross is not only Christ’s personally—an ‘individual
’ Cross. It is an all inclusive Cross, a ‘corporate’ Cross, a Cross that
includes you and me. God has put us all into His Son, and crucified us in
Him. In the last Adam He has wiped out all that was of the first Adam.
Now what is my answer to God’s verdict on the old creation? I answer by
asking for baptism. Why? In Romans 6:4 Paul explains that baptism means
burial: “We were buried therefore with him through baptism”. Baptism is of
course connected with both death and resurrection, though in itself it is
neither death nor resurrection: it is burial. But who qualifies for burial?
Only the dead! So if I ask for baptism I proclaim myself dead and fit only
for the grave.
Alas, some have been taught to look on burial as a means to death; they try
to die by getting themselves buried! Let me say emphatically that, unless
our eyes have been opened by God to see that we have died in Christ and been
buried with Him, we have no right to be baptized. The reason we step down
into the water is that we have recognized that in God’s sight we have
already died. It is to that that we testify. God’s question is clear and
simple. ‘Christ has died, and I have included you there. Now, what are you
going to say to that?’ What is my answer? ‘Lord, I believe You have done
the crucifying. I say Yes to the death and to the burial to which You have
committed me.’ He has consigned me to death and the grave; by my request
for baptism I give public assent to that fact.
In China a woman lost her husband, but, becoming deranged by her loss, she
flatly refused to have him buried. Day after day for a fortnight he lay in
the house. ‘No’, she said, ‘he is not dead; I talk with him every night.
’ She was unwilling to have him buried because, poor woman, she did not
believe him to be dead. When are we willing to bury our dear ones? Only when
we are absolutely sure that they have passed away. While there is the
tiniest hope that they are alive we will never bury them. So when will I ask
for baptism? When I see that God’s way is perfect and that I deserved to
die, and when I truly believe that God has already crucified me. Once I am
fully persuaded that, before God, I am quite dead, then I apply for baptism.
I say, ‘Praise God, I am dead! Lord, You have slain me; now get me buried!’
In China we have two emergency Services, a ‘Red Cross’ and a ‘Blue Cross
’ The first deals with those who are wounded in battle but are still alive,
to bring them succour and healing; the second deals with those who are
already dead in famine, flood or war, to give them burial. God’s dealings
with us in the Cross of Christ are more drastic than those of the ‘Red
Cross’. He does not set out to patch up the old creation. By Him even the
still living are condemned to death and to burial, that they may be raised
again to new life. God has done the work of crucifixion so that now we are
counted among the dead; but we must accept this and submit to the work of
the ‘Blue Cross’, by sealing that death with ‘burial’.
There is an old world and a new world, and between the two there is a tomb.
God has already crucified me, but I must consent to be consigned to the tomb
. My baptism confirms God’s sentence, passed upon me in the Cross of His
Son. It affirms that I am cut off from the old world and belong now to the
new. So baptism is no small thing. It means for me a definite conscious
break with the old way of life. This is the meaning of Romans 6:2: “We who
died to sin, how shall we any longer live therein?” Paul says, in effect,
‘If you would continue in the old world, why be baptized? You should never
have been baptized if you meant to live on in the old realm’. When once we
see this, we clear the ground for the new creation by our assent to the
burial of the old.
In Romans 6:5, still writing to those who “were baptized” (verse 3), Paul
speaks of our being “united with him by the likeness of his death”. For by
baptism we acknowledge in a figure that God has wrought an intimate union
between ourselves and Christ in this matter of death and resurrection. One
day I was seeking to emphasize this truth to a Christian brother. We
happened to be drinking tea together, so I took a lump of sugar and stirred
it into my tea. A couple of minutes later I asked, ‘Can you tell me where
the sugar is now, and where the tea?’ ‘No’, he said, ‘you have put them
together and the one has become lost in the other; they cannot now be
separated.’ It was a simple illustration, but it helped him to see the
intimacy and the finality of our union with Christ in death. It is God that
has put us there, and God’s acts cannot be reversed.
What, in fact does this union imply? The real meaning behind baptism is that
in the Cross we were ‘baptized’ into the historic death of Christ, so
that His death became ours. Our death and His became then so closely
identified that it is impossible to divide between them. It is to this
historic ‘baptism’—this God-wrought union with Him—that we assent when
we go down into the water. Our public testimony in baptism today is our
admission that the death of Christ two thousand years ago was a mighty all-
inclusive death, mighty enough and all-inclusive enough to carry away in it
and bring to an end everything in us that is not of God.

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: Chapter 5.1 Two Creations
: Thus, in Satan’s hands, the first creation has become the old creation, and
: God’s primary concern is now no longer with that but with a second and new
: creation. He is bringing in a new creation, a new kingdom and a new world,
: and nothing of the old creation, the old kingdom or the old world can be
: transferred to the new. It is a question now of these two rival realms, and
: of which realm we belong to.
: The apostle Paul, of course, leaves us in no doubt as to which of these two
: realms is now in fact ours. He tells us that God, in redemption, “delivered
: us out of the power of darkness, and translated us into the kingdom of the

l**********t
发帖数: 5754
32
chapter 5.3 Resurrection Unto Newness Of Life
"If we have become united with him by the likeness of his death, we
shall be also be the likeness of his resurrection (Rom. 6:5).
Now with resurrection the figure is different because something new is
introduced. I am "baptized into his death", but I do not enter in quite
the same way into His resurrection, for, Praise the Lord! His
resurrection enters into me, imparting to me a new life. In the death
of the Lord the emphasis is solely upon I in Christ'. With the
resurrection, while the same thing is true, there is now a new emphasis
upon Christ in me'. How is it possible for Christ to communicate His
resurrection life to me? How do I receive this new life? Paul suggests,
I think, a very good illustration with these very same words: "united
with him". For the word united' (A.V. planted together') may carry in
the Greek the sense of grafted' [6] and it gives us a very beautiful
picture of the life of Christ which is imparted to us through
resurrection.
In Fukien I once visited a man who owned an orchard of long-ien [7]
trees. He had three or four acres of land and about three hundred fruit
trees. I inquired if his trees had been grafted or if they were of the
original native stock. Do you think', he replied, that I would waste my
land growing ungrafted trees? What value could I ever expect from the
old stock?
So I asked him to explain the process of grafting, which he gladly did.
When a tree has grown to a certain height', he said, I lop off the top
and graft on to it.' Pointing to a special tree he asked, Do you see
that tree? I call it the father tree, because all the grafts for the
other trees are taken from that one. If the other trees were just left
to follow the course of nature, their fruit would be only about the
size of a raspberry, and would consist mainly of thick skin and seeds.
This tree, from which the grafts for all the others are taken, bears a
luscious fruit the size of a plum, with very thin skin and a tiny seed;
and of course all the grafted trees bear fruit like it.' How does it
happen?' I asked. I simply take a little of the nature of the one tree
and transfer it to the other', he explained. I make a cleavage in the
poor tree and insert a slip from the good one. Then I bind it up and
leave it to grow.' But how can it grow?' I asked. I don't know', he
said, but it does grow.'
Then he showed me a tree bearing miserably poor fruit from the old
stock below the graft, and rich juicy fruit from the new stock above
the graft. I have left the old shoots with their useless fruit on them
to show the difference', he said. From it you can understand the value
of grafting. You can appreciate, can you not, why I grow only grafted
trees?'
How can one tree bear the fruit of another? How can a poor tree bear
good fruit? Only by grafting. Only by our implanting into it the life
of a good tree. But if a man can graft a branch of one tree into
another, cannot God take of the life of His Son and, so to speak, graft
it into us?
A Chinese woman burned her arm badly and was taken to hospital. In
order to prevent serious contracture due to scarring it was found
necessary to graft some new skin over the injured area, but the doctor
attempted in vain to graft a piece of the woman's own skin onto the
arm. Owing to her age and ill-nourishment the skin graft was too poor
and would not take'. Then a foreign nurse offered a piece of skin and
the operation was carried out successfully. The new skin knit with the
old, and the woman left the hospital with her arm perfectly healed; but
there remained a patch of white foreign skin on her yellow arm to tell
the tale of the past. You ask how the skin of another grew on that
woman's arm? I do not know how it grew, but I know that it did grow.
If an earthly surgeon can take a piece of skin from one human body and
graft it on another, [8] cannot the Divine Surgeon implant the life of
His Son into me? I do not know how it is done. "The wind bloweth where
it listeth, and thou hearest the voice thereof, but knowest not whence
it cometh, and whither it goeth; so is every one that is born of the
Spirit" (John 3:8). We cannot tell how God has done His work in us, but
it is done. We can do nothing and need do nothing to bring it about,
for by the resurrection God has already done it.
God has done everything. There is only one fruitful life in the world
and that has been grafted into millions of other lives. We call this
the new birth'. New birth is the reception of a life which I did not
possess before. It is not that my natural life has been changed at all;
it is that another life, a life altogether new, altogether Divine, has
become my life.
God has cut off the old creation by the Cross of His Son in order to
bring in a new creation in Christ by resurrection. He has shut the door
to that old kingdom of darkness and translated me into the kingdom of
His dear Son. My glorying is in the fact that it has been done--that,
through the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ , that old world has " been
crucified unto me, and I unto the world" (Galatians 6:14). My baptism
is my public testimony to that fact. By it, as by my oral witness, my
"confession is made unto salvation" (Romans 10:10).
__________________________________________________________________
[6] Greek sumphtuos planted or grown along with', united with'. The
word is used in the sense of grafted' in Classical Greek. in the
delightful illustration which follows, the analogy of grafting should
perhaps not be pressed too closely, for it is not quite safe to imply,
without some qualification, that Christ is grafted into the old stock.
But what parable can adequately describe the miracle of the new
creation?-- Ed.
[7] long-ien (Euphoria longana) is a tree native to China. Its fruit
resembles an apricot in size and has a round central stone, a dry,
light brown, papery skin and a delicious white, grape-like pulp. It is
eaten either fresh or dried, and is prized by the Chinese both for its
flavour and for its food value.--Ed.
[8] Whatever question medical men may raise as to the account of this
unusual incident, the statement which follows is not open to
challenge.--Ed.


【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: Chapter 5.2 Burial Means An End
: Peter goes on now to describe baptism in the passage just quoted as “the
: answer of a good conscience toward God” (1 Peter 3:21 A.V.). Now we cannot
: answer without being spoken to . If God had said nothing we should have no
: need to answer. But He has spoken; He has spoken to us by the Cross. By it
: He has told of His judgment of us, of the world, of the old creation and of
: the old kingdom. The Cross is not only Christ’s personally—an ‘individual
: ’ Cross. It is an all inclusive Cross, a ‘corporate’ Cross, a Cross that
: includes you and me. God has put us all into His Son, and crucified us in
: Him. In the last Adam He has wiped out all that was of the first Adam.

l**********t
发帖数: 5754
33

sorry sishu I missed your posts earlier.
I post each section as I read thru them. It seems each section takes about 7
to 10 min to read, and one chapter (3 to 5 sections) would be 30 min to 1
hr, one day's reading assignment.
breaking into smaller pieces would may break the structure of the the book
and make it harder to follow the author's thread of thoughts.

【在 D******r 的大作中提到】
: too long in every post
: no time to read that much
:
: and
: new
: ,
: and
: two
: delivered
: the

l**********t
发帖数: 5754
34
Chapter 6: The Path of Progress: Presenting Ourselves to God
Our study has now brought us to the point where we are able to consider
the true nature of consecration. We have before us the second half of
Romans 6 from verse 12 to the end. In Romans 6:12, 13 we read: "Let not
sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey the lusts
thereof: neither present your members unto sin as instruments of
unrighteousness; but present yourselves unto God, as alive from the
dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God." The
operative word here is "present" and this occurs five times, in verses
13, 16 and 19. [9]
Many have taken this word "present" to imply consecration without
looking carefully into its content. Of course that is what it does
mean, but not in the sense in which we so often understand it. It is
not the consecration of our old man' with his instincts and
resources--our natural wisdom, strength and other gifts--to the Lord
for Him to use.
This will be at once clear from verse 13. Note there the clause "as
alive from the dead". Paul says: "Present yourselves unto God, as alive
from the dead". This defines for us the point at which consecration
begins. For what is here referred to is not the consecration of
anything belonging to the old creation, but only of that which has
passed through death to resurrection. The presenting' spoken of is the
outcome of my knowing my old man to be crucified. Knowing, reckoning,
presenting to God: that is the Divine order.
When I really know I am crucified with Him, then spontaneously I reckon
myself dead (verses 6 and 11); and when I know that I am raised with
Him from the dead, then likewise I reckon myself "alive unto God in
Christ Jesus" (verses 9 and 11), for both the death and the
resurrection side of the Cross are to be accepted by faith. When this
point is reached, giving myself to Him follows. In resurrection He is
the source of my life--indeed He is my life; so I cannot but present
everything to Him, for all is His, not mine. But without passing
through death I have nothing to consecrate, nor is there anything God
can accept, for He has condemned all that is of the old creation to the
Cross. Death has cut off all that cannot be consecrated to Him, and
resurrection alone has made consecration possible. Presenting myself to
God means that henceforth I consider my whole life as now belonging to
the Lord.



【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: chapter 5.3 Resurrection Unto Newness Of Life
: "If we have become united with him by the likeness of his death, we
: shall be also be the likeness of his resurrection (Rom. 6:5).
: Now with resurrection the figure is different because something new is
: introduced. I am "baptized into his death", but I do not enter in quite
: the same way into His resurrection, for, Praise the Lord! His
: resurrection enters into me, imparting to me a new life. In the death
: of the Lord the emphasis is solely upon I in Christ'. With the
: resurrection, while the same thing is true, there is now a new emphasis
: upon Christ in me'. How is it possible for Christ to communicate His

l**********t
发帖数: 5754
35
Chapter 6.1 The Third Step: “Present Yourselves...”
Let us observe that this ‘presenting’ relates to the members of my body—
that body which, as we said earlier, is now unemployed in respect to sin. “
Present yourselves... and your members”, says Paul, and again: “Present
your members” (Romans 6:13, 19). God requires of me that I now regard all
my members, all my faculties, as belonging wholly to Him.
It is a great thing when I discover I am no longer my own but His. If the
ten shillings in my pocket belong to me, then I have full authority over
them. But if they belong to another who has committed them to me in trust,
then I cannot buy what I please with them, and I dare not lose them. Real
Christian life begins with knowing this. How many of us know that, because
Christ is risen, we are therefore alive “unto God” and not unto ourselves?
How many of us dare not use our time or money or talents as we would,
because we realize they are the Lord’s not ours? How many of us have such a
strong sense that we belong to Another that we dare not squander a shilling
of our money, or an hour of our time, or any of our mental or physical
powers?
On one occasion a Chinese brother was traveling by train and found himself
in a carriage together with three non-Christians who wished to play cards in
order to while away the time. Lacking a fourth to complete the game, they
invited this brother to join them. ‘I am sorry to disappoint you’, he said
, ‘but I cannot join your game for I have not brought my hands with me.’
‘Whatever do you mean?’ they asked in blank astonishment. ‘This pair of
hands does not belong to me’, he said, and then there followed the
explanation of the transfer of ownership that had taken place in his life.
That brother regarded the members of his body as belonging entirely to the
Lord. That is true holiness.
Paul says, “Present your members as servants to righteousness unto
sanctification (A.V. ‘holiness’)” (Romans 6:19). Make it a definite act.
“Present yourselves to God.”

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: Chapter 6: The Path of Progress: Presenting Ourselves to God
: Our study has now brought us to the point where we are able to consider
: the true nature of consecration. We have before us the second half of
: Romans 6 from verse 12 to the end. In Romans 6:12, 13 we read: "Let not
: sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey the lusts
: thereof: neither present your members unto sin as instruments of
: unrighteousness; but present yourselves unto God, as alive from the
: dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God." The
: operative word here is "present" and this occurs five times, in verses
: 13, 16 and 19. [9]

l**********t
发帖数: 5754
36
Chapter 6.2 Separated Unto The Lord
What is holiness? Many people think we become holy by the eradication of
something evil within. No, we become holy by being separated unto God. In
Old Testament times, it was when a man was chosen by God to be altogether
His that he was publicly anointed with oil and was then said to be ‘
sanctified’. Thereafter he was regarded as set apart to God. In the same
manner even animals or material things—a lamb, or the gold of the temple—
could be sanctified, not by the eradication of anything evil in them, but by
being thus reserved exclusively to the Lord. “Holiness’ in the Hebrew
sense meant something thus set apart, and all true holiness is holiness “to
the Lord” (Exodus 28:36). I give myself over wholly to Christ: that is
holiness.
Presenting myself to God implies a recognition that I am altogether His.
This giving of myself is a definite thing, just as definite as reckoning.
There must be a day in my life when I pass out of my own hands into His, and
from that day forward I belong to Him and no longer to myself. That does
not mean that I consecrate myself to be a preacher or a missionary. Alas,
many people are missionaries not because they have truly consecrated
themselves to God but because, in the sense of which we are speaking, they
have not consecrated themselves to Him. They have ‘consecrated’ (as they
would put it) something altogether different, namely, their own uncrucified
natural faculties to the doing of His work; but that is not true
consecration. Then to what are we to be consecrated? Not to Christian work,
but to the will of God to be and do whatever He wants.
David had many mighty men. Some were generals and others were gatekeepers,
according as the king assigned them their task. We must be willing to be
either generals or gatekeepers, allotted to our parts just as God wills and
not as we choose. If you are a Christian, then God has marked out a pathway
for you—a ‘course’ as Paul calls it in 2 Timothy 4:7. Not only Paul’s
path but the path of every Christian has been clearly marked out by God, and
it is of supreme importance that each one should know and walk in the God-
appointed course. ‘Lord, I give myself to Thee with this desire alone, to
know and walk in the path Thou hast ordained.’ That is true giving. If at
the close of a life we can say with Paul: “I have finished my course”,
then we are blessed indeed. There is nothing more tragic than to come to the
end of life and know we have been on the wrong course. We have only one
life to live down here and we are free to do as we please with it, but if we
seek our own pleasure our life will never glorify God. A devoted Christian
once said in my hearing, ‘I want nothing for myself; I want everything for
God.’ Do you want anything apart from God, or does all your desire center
in His will? Can you truly say that the will of God is “good and acceptable
and perfect” to you? (Romans 12:2)
For it is our wills that are in question here. That strong self-assertive
will of mine must go to the Cross, and I must give myself over wholly to the
Lord. We cannot expect a tailor to make us a coat if we do not give him any
cloth, nor a builder to build us a house if we let him have no building
material; and in just the same way we cannot expect the Lord to live out His
life in us if we do not give Him our lives in which to live. Without
reservations, without controversy, we must give ourselves to Him to do as He
pleases with us. “Present yourselves unto God” (Romans 6:13).

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: Chapter 6.1 The Third Step: “Present Yourselves...”
: Let us observe that this ‘presenting’ relates to the members of my body—
: that body which, as we said earlier, is now unemployed in respect to sin. “
: Present yourselves... and your members”, says Paul, and again: “Present
: your members” (Romans 6:13, 19). God requires of me that I now regard all
: my members, all my faculties, as belonging wholly to Him.
: It is a great thing when I discover I am no longer my own but His. If the
: ten shillings in my pocket belong to me, then I have full authority over
: them. But if they belong to another who has committed them to me in trust,
: then I cannot buy what I please with them, and I dare not lose them. Real

l**********t
发帖数: 5754
37
chapter 6.3 Servant Or Slave?
If we give ourselves unreservedly to God, many adjustments may have to be
made: in family, or business, or church relationships, or in the matter of
our personal views. God will not let anything of ourselves remain. His
finger will touch, point by point, everything that is not of Him, and He
will say: ‘This must go’. Are you willing? It is foolish to resist God,
and always wise to submit to Him. We admit that many of us still have
controversies with the Lord. He wants something, while we want something
else. Many things we dare not look into, dare not pray about, dare not even
think about, lest we lose our peace. We can evade the issue in that way, but
to do so will bring us out of the will of God. It is always an easy matter
to get out of His will, but it is a blessed thing just to hand ourselves
over to Him and let Him have His way with us.
How good it is to have the consciousness that we belong to the Lord and are
not our own! There is nothing more precious in the world. It is that which
brings the awareness of His continual presence, and the reason is obvious. I
must first have the sense of God’s possession of me before I can have the
sense of His presence with me. When once His ownership is established, then
I dare do nothing in my own interests, for I am His exclusive property. “
Know ye not, that to whom ye present yourselves as servants unto obedience,
his servants ye are whom ye obey?” (Romans 6:16). The word here rendered ‘
servant’ really signifies a bondservant, a slave. This word is used several
times in the second half of Romans 6. What is the difference between a
servant and a slave? A servant may serve another, but the ownership does not
pass to that other. If he likes his master he can serve him, but if he does
not like him he can give in his notice and seek another master. Not so is
it with the slave. He is not only the servant of another but he is the
possession of another. How did I become the slave of the Lord? On His part
He bought me, and on my part I presented myself to Him. By right of
redemption I am God’s property, but if I would be His slave I must
willingly give myself to Him, for He will never compel me to do so.
The trouble with many Christians today is that they have an insufficient
idea of what God is asking of them. How glibly they say: ‘Lord, I am
willing for anything.’ Do you know that God is asking of you your very life
? There are cherished ideals, strong wills, precious relationships, much-
loved work, that will have to go; so do not give yourself to God unless you
mean it. God will take you seriously, even if you did not mean it seriously.
When the Galilian boy brought his bread to the Lord, what did the Lord do
with it? He broke it. God will always break what is offered to Him. He
breaks what He takes, but after breaking it He blesses and uses it to meet
the needs of others. After you give yourself to the Lord, He begins to break
what was offered to Him. Everything seems to go wrong, and you protest and
find fault with the ways of God. But to stay there is to be no more than
just a broken vessel—no good for the world because you have gone too far
for the world to use you, and no good for God either because you have not
gone far enough for Him to use you. You are out of gear with the world, and
you have a controversy with God. This is the tragedy of many a Christian.
My giving of myself to the Lord must be an initial fundamental act. Then day
by day I must go on giving to Him, not finding fault with His use of me but
accepting with praise even what the flesh revolts against.
I am the Lord’s and now no longer reckon myself to be my own but
acknowledge in everything His ownership and authority. That is the attitude
God requires, and to maintain it is true consecration. I do not consecrate
myself to be a missionary or a preacher; I consecrate myself to God to do
His will where I am, be it in school, office or kitchen, counting whatever
He ordains for me to be the very best, for nothing but good can come to
those who are wholly His.
May we always be possessed by the consciousness that we are not our own.


【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: Chapter 6.2 Separated Unto The Lord
: What is holiness? Many people think we become holy by the eradication of
: something evil within. No, we become holy by being separated unto God. In
: Old Testament times, it was when a man was chosen by God to be altogether
: His that he was publicly anointed with oil and was then said to be ‘
: sanctified’. Thereafter he was regarded as set apart to God. In the same
: manner even animals or material things—a lamb, or the gold of the temple—
: could be sanctified, not by the eradication of anything evil in them, but by
: being thus reserved exclusively to the Lord. “Holiness’ in the Hebrew
: sense meant something thus set apart, and all true holiness is holiness “to

l**********t
发帖数: 5754
38
Chapter 7: The Eternal Purpose
We have spoken of the need of revelation, of faith and of consecration, if
we are to live the normal Christian life. But unless we see the end God has
in view we shall never clearly understand why these steps are necessary to
lead us to that end. Before therefore we consider further the question of
inward experience, let us first look at the great Divine goal before us.
What is God’s purpose in creation and what is His purpose in redemption? It
may be summed up in two phrases, one from each of our two sections of
Romans. It is: “The glory of God” (Romans 3:23), and “The glory of the
children of God” (Romans 8:21).
In Romans 3:23 we read: “All have sinned, and fall short of the glory of
God”. God’s purpose for man was glory, but sin thwarted that purpose by
causing man to miss God’s glory. When we think of sin we instinctively
think of the judgment it brings; we invariably associate it with
condemnation and hell. Man’s thought is always of the punishment that will
come to him if he sins, but God’s thought is always of the glory man will
miss if he sins. The result of sin is that we forfeit God’s glory: the
result of redemption is that we are qualified again for glory. God’s
purpose in redemption is glory, glory, glory.



【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: chapter 6.3 Servant Or Slave?
: If we give ourselves unreservedly to God, many adjustments may have to be
: made: in family, or business, or church relationships, or in the matter of
: our personal views. God will not let anything of ourselves remain. His
: finger will touch, point by point, everything that is not of Him, and He
: will say: ‘This must go’. Are you willing? It is foolish to resist God,
: and always wise to submit to Him. We admit that many of us still have
: controversies with the Lord. He wants something, while we want something
: else. Many things we dare not look into, dare not pray about, dare not even
: think about, lest we lose our peace. We can evade the issue in that way, but

l**********t
发帖数: 5754
39
chapter 7.1 Firstborn Among Many Brethren
This consideration takes us forward into Romans chapter 8 where the topic is
developed in verses 16 to 18 and again in verses 29 and 30. Paul says: “We
are 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 with him. For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time
are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed to us”
(Romans 8:16-18); and again: “Whom he foreknew, he also foreordained to be
conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among
many brethren: and whom he foreordained, them he also called: and whom he
called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also
glorified” (Romans 8:29, 30). What was God’s objective? It was that His
Son Jesus Christ might be the firstborn among many brethren, all of whom
should be conformed to His image. How did God realize that objective? “Whom
he justified, them he also glorified.” God’s purpose, then, in creation
and redemption was to make Christ the firstborn Son among many glorified
sons. That may perhaps at first convey very little to many of us, but let us
look into it more carefully.
In John 1:14 we are told that the Lord Jesus was God’s only begotten Son:
“the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us (and we beheld his glory, glory
as of the only begotten from the Father)”. That He was God’s only begotten
Son signifies that God had no other Son but this one. He was with the
Father from all eternity. But, we are told, God was not satisfied that
Christ should remain the only begotten Son; He wanted also to make Him His
first begotten. How could an only begotten Son become a first begotten? The
answer is simple: by the Father having more children. If you have but one
son then his is the only begotten, but if thereafter you have other children
then the only begotten becomes the first begotten.
The Divine purpose in creation and redemption was that God should have many
children. He wanted us, and could not be satisfied without us. Some time ago
I called to see Mr. George Cutting, the writer of the well-known tract
Safety, Certainty and Enjoyment. When I was ushered into the presence of
this old saint of ninety-three years, he took my hand in his and in a quiet,
deliberate way he said: ‘Brother, do you know, I cannot do without Him?
And do you know, He cannot do without me?’ Though I was with him for over
an hour, his great age and physical frailty made any sustained conversation
impossible. But what remains in my memory of that interview was his frequent
repetition of these two questions: ‘Brother, do you know, I cannot do
without Him? And do you know, He cannot do without me?’
In reading the story of the prodigal son most people are impressed with all
the troubles the prodigal meets; they are occupied in thinking what a bad
time he is having. But that is not the point of the parable. “My son... was
lost, and is found”—there is the heart of the story. It is not a question
of what the son suffers but of what the Father loses. He is the sufferer;
He is the loser. A sheep is lost: whose is the loss? The shepherd’s. A coin
is lost: whose is the loss? The woman’s. A son is lost: whose is the loss?
The Father’s. That is the lesson of Luke chapter 15.
The Lord Jesus was the only begotten Son, and as the only begotten He had no
brothers. But the Father sent the Son in order that the only begotten might
also be the first begotten, and the beloved Son have many brethren. There
you have the whole story of the Incarnation and the Cross; and there you
have at the last the purpose of God fulfilled in His “bringing many sons
unto glory” (Heb. 2:10).
In Romans 8:29 we read of “many brethren”; in Hebrews 2:10 of “many sons
”. From the point of view of the Lord Jesus it is “brethren”; from the
point of view of God the Father it is “sons”. Both words in this context
convey the idea of maturity. God is seeking full-grown sons; but He does not
stop even there. For He does not want His sons to live in a barn or a
garage or a field; He wants them in His home; He wants them to share His
glory. That is the explanation of Romans 8:30: “Whom he justified, them he
also glorified.” Sonship—the full expression of His Son—is God’s goal in
the many sons. How could He bring that about? By justifying them and then
by glorifying them. In His dealings with them God will never stop short of
that goal. He set Himself to have sons, and to have those sons, mature and
responsible, with Him in glory. He made provision for the whole of Heaven to
be peopled with glorified sons. That was His purpose in redemption.

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: Chapter 7: The Eternal Purpose
: We have spoken of the need of revelation, of faith and of consecration, if
: we are to live the normal Christian life. But unless we see the end God has
: in view we shall never clearly understand why these steps are necessary to
: lead us to that end. Before therefore we consider further the question of
: inward experience, let us first look at the great Divine goal before us.
: What is God’s purpose in creation and what is His purpose in redemption? It
: may be summed up in two phrases, one from each of our two sections of
: Romans. It is: “The glory of God” (Romans 3:23), and “The glory of the
: children of God” (Romans 8:21).

l**********t
发帖数: 5754
40
chapter 7.2 The Grain Of Wheat
But how could God’s only begotten Son become His first begotten? The method
is explained in John 12:24: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a
grain of wheat fall into the earth and die, it abideth by itself alone; but
if it die, it beareth much fruit.” Who was that grain? It was the Lord
Jesus. In the whole universe God had only one ‘grain of wheat’; He had no
second grain. God put His one grain of wheat into the ground and it died,
and in resurrection the only begotten grain became the first begotten grain,
and from the one grain there have sprung many grains.
In respect of His divinity the Lord Jesus remains uniquely “the only
begotten Son of God”. Yet there is a sense in which, from the resurrection
onward through all eternity, He is also the first begotten, and His life
from that time is found in many brethren. For we who are born of the Spirit
are made thereby “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4), though
not, mark you, as of ourselves but only, as we shall see in a moment, in
dependence upon God and by virtue of our being ‘in Christ’. We have “
received the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father. The Spirit
himself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are children of God” (Rom.
8:5, 16). It was by way of the Incarnation and the Cross that the Lord
Jesus made this possible. Therein was the Father-heart of God satisfied, for
in the Son’s obedience unto death the Father has secured His many sons.
The first and the twentieth chapters of John are in this respect most
precious. In the beginning of his Gospel John tells us that Jesus was “the
only begotten from the Father”. At the end of his Gospel he tells us how,
after the Lord Jesus died and rose again, He said to Mary Magdalene, “Go
unto my brethren, and say to them, I ascend unto my Father and your Father,
and my God and your God” (John 20:17). Hitherto in this Gospel the Lord had
spoken often of “the Father” or of “my Father”. Now, in resurrection,
He add, ”...and your Father”. It is the eldest Son, the first begotten,
speaking. By His death and resurrection many brethren have been brought into
God’s family, and so, in the same verse He uses this very name for them:
“My brethren”. “He is not ashamed to call them brethren” (Heb. 2:11).

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: chapter 7.1 Firstborn Among Many Brethren
: This consideration takes us forward into Romans chapter 8 where the topic is
: developed in verses 16 to 18 and again in verses 29 and 30. Paul says: “We
: are 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 with him. For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time
: are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed to us”
: (Romans 8:16-18); and again: “Whom he foreknew, he also foreordained to be
: conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among
: many brethren: and whom he foreordained, them he also called: and whom he

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l**********t
发帖数: 5754
41
chapter 7.3 The Choice That Confronted Adam
God planted a great number of trees in the garden of Eden, but “in the
midst of the garden”—that is, in a place of special prominence—He planted
two trees, the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Adam was created innocent; he had no knowledge of good and evil. Think of a
grown man, say thirty years old, who has no sense of right or wrong, no
power to differentiate between the two! Would you not say such a man was
undeveloped? Well, that is exactly what Adam was. And God brings him into
the garden and says to him, in effect, ‘Now the garden is full of trees,
full of fruits, and of the fruit of every tree you may eat freely. But in
the very midst of the garden is one tree called “the tree of the knowledge
of good and evil”; you must not eat of that, for in the day that you do so
you will surely die. But remember, the name of the other tree close by is
Life.’ What, then, is the meaning of these two trees? Adam was, so to speak
, created morally neutral—neither sinful nor holy, but innocent—and God
put those two trees there so that he might exercise free choice. He could
choose the tree of life, or he could choose the tree of the knowledge of
good and evil.
Now the knowledge of good and evil, though forbidden to Adam, is not wrong
in itself. Without it however Adam is in a sense limited in that he cannot
decide for himself on moral issues. Judgment of right and wrong resides not
in him but in God, and Adam’s only course when faced with any question is
to refer it to Jehovah God. Thus you have a life in the garden which is
totally dependent on God. These two trees, then, typify two deep principles;
they represent two planes of life, the Divine and the human. The “tree of
life” is God Himself, for God is life. He is the highest form of life, and
He is also the source and goal of life. And the fruit: what is that? It is
our Lord Jesus Christ. You cannot eat the tree but you can eat the fruit. No
one is able to receive God as God, but we can receive the Lord Jesus. The
fruit is the edible part, the receivable part of the tree. So—may I say it
reverently?—the Lord Jesus is really God in a receivable form. God in
Christ we can receive.
If Adam should take of the tree of life, he would partake of the life of God
and thus become a ‘son’ of God, in the sense of having in him a life that
derived from God. There you would have God’s life in union with man: a
race of men having the life of God in them and living in constant dependence
upon God for that life. If on the other hand Adam should turn the other way
and take the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, then he
would develop his own manhood along natural lines apart from God. Reaching a
peak of attainment as a self-sufficient being, he would have the power in
himself to form independent judgment, but he would have no life from God.
So this was the alternative that lay before him. Choosing the way of the
Spirit, the way of obedience, he could become a ‘son’ of God, living in
dependence upon God for his life; or, taking the natural course, he could
put the finishing touch to himself, as it were, by becoming a self-dependent
being, judging and acting apart from God. The history of humanity is the
outcome of the choice he made.

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: chapter 7.2 The Grain Of Wheat
: But how could God’s only begotten Son become His first begotten? The method
: is explained in John 12:24: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a
: grain of wheat fall into the earth and die, it abideth by itself alone; but
: if it die, it beareth much fruit.” Who was that grain? It was the Lord
: Jesus. In the whole universe God had only one ‘grain of wheat’; He had no
: second grain. God put His one grain of wheat into the ground and it died,
: and in resurrection the only begotten grain became the first begotten grain,
: and from the one grain there have sprung many grains.
: In respect of His divinity the Lord Jesus remains uniquely “the only

l**********t
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chapter 7.4 Adam’s Choice The Reason For The Cross
Adam chose the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and thereby took up
independent ground. In doing so he became (as man is now in his own eyes) a
‘fully developed’ man. He could command a knowledge; he could decide for
himself; he could go on or stop. From then on he was “wise” (Genesis 3:6).
But the consequence for his was death rather than life, because the choice
he had made involved complicity with Satan and brought him therefore under
the judgment of God. That is why access to the tree of life had thereafter
to be forbidden to him.
Two planes of life had been set before Adam: that of Divine life in
dependence upon God, and that of human life with its ‘independent’
resources. Adam’s choice of the latter was sin, because thereby he allied
himself with Satan to thwart the eternal purpose of God. He did so by
choosing to develop his manhood—to become perhaps a very fine man, even by
his standards a ‘perfect’ man—apart from God. But the end was death,
because he had not in him the Divine life necessary to realize God’s
purpose in his being, but had chosen to become instead an ‘independent’
agent of the Enemy. Thus in Adam we all become sinners, equally dominated by
Satan, equally subject to the law of sin and death, and equally deserving
of the wrath of God.
From this we see the Divine reason for the death and resurrection of the
Lord Jesus. We see too the Divine reason for true consecration—for
reckoning ourselves to be dead unto sin but alive unto God in Christ Jesus,
and for presenting ourselves unto Him as alive from the dead. We must all go
to the Cross, because what is in us by nature is a self-life, subject to
the law of sin. Adam chose a self-life rather than a Divine life; so God had
to gather up all that was in Adam and do away with it. Our ‘old man’ has
been crucified. God has put us all in Christ and crucified Him as the last
Adam, and thus all that is of Adam has passed away.
Then Christ arose in new form; with a body still, but ‘in the Spirit’, no
longer ‘in the flesh’. “The last Adam became a life-giving spirit” (1
Cor. 15:45). The Lord Jesus now has a resurrected body, a spiritual body, a
glorious body, and since He is no longer in the flesh He can now be received
by all. “He that eateth me, he also shall live because of me”, said Jesus
(John 6:57). The Jews revolted at the thought of eating His flesh and
drinking His blood, but of course they could not receive Him then because He
was still literally in the flesh. Now that He is in the Spirit every one of
us can receive Him, and it is by partaking of His resurrection life that we
are constituted children of God. “As many as received him, to them gave he
the right to become children of God... which were born... of God.” (John 1
:12, 13).
God is not out to reform our life. It is not His thought to bring it to a
certain stage of refinement, for it is on a totally wrong plane. On that
plane He cannot now bring man to glory. He must have a new man; one born
anew, born of God. Regeneration and justification go together.

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: chapter 7.3 The Choice That Confronted Adam
: God planted a great number of trees in the garden of Eden, but “in the
: midst of the garden”—that is, in a place of special prominence—He planted
: two trees, the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
: Adam was created innocent; he had no knowledge of good and evil. Think of a
: grown man, say thirty years old, who has no sense of right or wrong, no
: power to differentiate between the two! Would you not say such a man was
: undeveloped? Well, that is exactly what Adam was. And God brings him into
: the garden and says to him, in effect, ‘Now the garden is full of trees,
: full of fruits, and of the fruit of every tree you may eat freely. But in

l**********t
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43
chapter 7.5 He That Hath The Son Hath The Life
There are various planes of life. Human life lies between the life of the
lower animals and the life of God. We cannot bridge the gulf that divides us
from the plane above or the plane below, and the distance that separates us
from the life of God is vastly greater than that which separates us from
the life of the lower animals.
In China one day I called on a Christian leader who was sick in bed, and
whom, for the sake of this story, I shall call ‘Mr. Wong’ (though that was
not his real name). He was a very learned man, a Doctor of Philosophy, and
one esteemed throughout the whole of China for his high moral principles,
and he had long been engaged in Christian work. But he did not believe in
the need for regeneration; he only proclaimed a social gospel.
When I called on Mr. Wong his pet dog was by his bedside, and after speaking
with him of the things of God and of the nature of His work in us, I
pointed to the dog and inquired his name. He told me he was called Fido. ‘
Is Fido his Christian name or his surname?’ I asked (using the common
Chinese terms for ‘personal name’ and ‘family name’). ‘Oh, that is just
his name’, he said. ‘Do you mean that is just his Christian name? Can I
call him Fido Wong?’ I continued. ‘Certainly not!’ came the emphatic
reply. ‘But he lives in your family’, I protested, ‘Why don’t you call
him Fido Wong?’ Then, indicating his two daughters, I asked ‘Are your
daughters not called Miss Wong?’ ‘Yes!’ ‘Well then, why cannot I call
your dog Master Wong?’ The Doctor laughed, and I went on: ‘Do you see what
I am getting at? Your daughters were born into your family and they bear
your name because you have communicated your life to them. Your dog may be
an intelligent dog, a well-behaved dog, and altogether a most remarkable dog
; but the question is not, Is he a good or a bad dog? It is merely, Is he a
dog? He does not need to be bad to be disqualified from being a member of
your family; he only needs to be a dog. The same principle applies to you in
your relationship to God. The question is not whether you are a bad man or
a good man, more or less, but simply, Are you a man? If your life is on a
lower plane than that of God’s life, then you cannot belong to the Divine
family. Throughout your life your aim in preaching has been to turn bad men
into good men; but men as such, whether good or bad, can have no vital
relationship with God. Our only hope as men is to receive the Son of God,
and when we do so His life in us will constitute us sons of God.’ The
Doctor saw the truth, and that day he became a member of God’s family by
receiving the Son of God into his heart.
What we today possess in Christ is more than Adam lost. Adam was only a
developed man. He remained on that plane, and never possessed the life of
God. But we who receive the Son of God not only receive the forgiveness of
sins; we receive also the Divine life which was represented in the garden by
the tree of life. By the new birth we receive something Adam never had; we
possess what he missed

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: chapter 7.4 Adam’s Choice The Reason For The Cross
: Adam chose the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and thereby took up
: independent ground. In doing so he became (as man is now in his own eyes) a
: ‘fully developed’ man. He could command a knowledge; he could decide for
: himself; he could go on or stop. From then on he was “wise” (Genesis 3:6).
: But the consequence for his was death rather than life, because the choice
: he had made involved complicity with Satan and brought him therefore under
: the judgment of God. That is why access to the tree of life had thereafter
: to be forbidden to him.
: Two planes of life had been set before Adam: that of Divine life in

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44
chapter 7.6 They Are All Of One
God wants sons who shall be joint-heirs with Christ in glory. That is His
goal; but how can He bring that about? Turn now to Hebrews 2:10 and 11: “It
became him, for whom are all things, and through whom are all things, in
bringing many sons unto glory, to make the author of their salvation perfect
through sufferings. For both he that sanctifieth and they that are
sanctified are all of one: for which cause he is not ashamed to call them
brethren.”
There are two parties mentioned here, namely, “many sons” and “the author
of their salvation”, or, in different terms, “he that sanctifieth” and
“they that are sanctified”. But these two parties are said to be “all of
one”. The Lord Jesus as Man derived His life from God, and (in another
sense, but just as truly) we derive our new life from God. He was “begotten
... of the Holy Ghost” (Matthew 1:20 mg.), and we were “born of... the
spirit”, “born... of God” (John 3:5; 1:13). So, God says, we are all of
One. “Of” in the Greek means “out of”. The first begotten Son and the
many sons are all (though in different senses) “out of” the one Source of
life. Do you realize that we have the same life today that God has? The life
which He has in Heaven is the life which He has imparted to us here on the
earth. That is the precious “gift of God” (Rom. 6:23). It is for that
reason that we can live a life of holiness, for it is not our own life that
has been changed, but the life of God that has been imparted to us.
Do you notice that, in this consideration of the eternal purpose, the whole
question of sin ultimately goes out? It no longer has a place. Sin came in
with Adam, and even when it has been dealt with, as it has to be, we are
only brought back to the point where Adam was. But in relating us again to
the Divine purpose—in, as it were, restoring to us access to the tree of
life—redemption has given us far more than Adam ever had. It has made us
partakers of the very life of God Himself.


【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: chapter 7.5 He That Hath The Son Hath The Life
: There are various planes of life. Human life lies between the life of the
: lower animals and the life of God. We cannot bridge the gulf that divides us
: from the plane above or the plane below, and the distance that separates us
: from the life of God is vastly greater than that which separates us from
: the life of the lower animals.
: In China one day I called on a Christian leader who was sick in bed, and
: whom, for the sake of this story, I shall call ‘Mr. Wong’ (though that was
: not his real name). He was a very learned man, a Doctor of Philosophy, and
: one esteemed throughout the whole of China for his high moral principles,

l**********t
发帖数: 5754
45
Chapter 8: The Holy Spirit
We have spoken of the eternal purpose of God as the motive and explanation
of all His dealings with us. Now, before we return to our study of the
phases of Christian experience as set forth in Romans, we must digress yet
again in order to consider something which lies at the heart of all our
experience as the vitalizing power of effective life and service. I refer to
the personal presence and ministry of the Holy Spirit of God.
And here, too, let us take as our starting-point two verses from Romans, one
from each of our sections. “The love of God hath been shed abroad in our
hearts through the Holy Ghost which was given unto us” (Romans 5:5). “If
any man hath not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his” (Romans 8:9).
God does not give His gifts at random, nor dispense them in any arbitrary
fashion. They are given freely to all, but they are given on a definite
basis. God has truly “blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the
heavenly places in Christ” (Ephesians 1:3), but if those blessings which
are ours in Christ are to become ours in experience, we must know on what
ground we can appropriate them.
In considering the gift of the Holy Spirit it is helpful to think of this in
two aspects, as the Spirit outpoured and the Spirit indwelling, and our
purpose now is to understand on what basis this twofold gift of the Holy
Spirit becomes ours. I have no doubt that we are right in distinguishing
thus between the outward and the inward manifestations of His working, and
that as we go on we shall find the distinction helpful. Moreover, when we
compare them, we cannot but come to the conclusion that the inward activity
of the Holy Spirit is the more precious. But to say this is not for one
moment to imply that His outward activity is not also precious, for God only
gives good gifts to His children. Unfortunately we are apt to esteem our
privileges lightly because of their sheer abundance. The Old Testament
saints, who were not as favoured as we are, could appreciate more readily
than we do the preciousness of this gift of the outpoured Spirit. In their
day it was a gift given only to the select few—chiefly to priests, judges,
kings and prophets—whereas now it is the portion of every child of God.
Think! we who are mere nonentities can have the same Spirit resting upon us
as rested upon Moses the friend of God, upon David the beloved king, and
upon Elijah the mighty prophet. By receiving the gift of the outpoured Holy
Spirit we join the ranks of God’s chosen servants of the Old Testament
dispensation. Once we see the value of this gift of God, and realize too our
deep need of it, we shall immediately ask, How can I receive the Holy
Spirit in this way to equip me with spiritual gifts and to empower me for
service? Upon what basis has the Spirit been given?

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: chapter 7.6 They Are All Of One
: God wants sons who shall be joint-heirs with Christ in glory. That is His
: goal; but how can He bring that about? Turn now to Hebrews 2:10 and 11: “It
: became him, for whom are all things, and through whom are all things, in
: bringing many sons unto glory, to make the author of their salvation perfect
: through sufferings. For both he that sanctifieth and they that are
: sanctified are all of one: for which cause he is not ashamed to call them
: brethren.”
: There are two parties mentioned here, namely, “many sons” and “the author
: of their salvation”, or, in different terms, “he that sanctifieth” and

l**********t
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46
Chapter 8.1 The Spirit Outpoured
Let us turn first to Acts chapter 2 verses 32 to 36: ”(32) This Jesus did
God raise up, whereof we all are witnesses. (33) Being therefore by the
right hand of God exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of
the Holy Ghost, he hath poured forth this, which ye see and hear. (34) For
David ascended not into the heavens: but he saith himself, The Lord said
unto my Lord, sit thou on my right hand, (35) Till I make thine enemies the
footstool of thy feet.(36) Let all the house of Israel therefore know
assuredly, that God hath made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom ye
crucified.”
Let us for the moment set verses 34 and 35 aside and consider verses 33 and
36 together. The former are a quotation from the 110th Psalm and are really
a parenthesis, so we shall get the force of Peter’s argument better if we
ignore them for the time being. In verse 33 Peter states that the Lord Jesus
was exalted “at the right hand of God” (mg.). What was the result? He “
received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost”. And what followed?
Pentecost! The result of His exaltation was—“this, which ye see and hear”.
What, then, was the basis upon which the Spirit was first given to the Lord
Jesus to be poured out upon His people? It was His exaltation to Heaven.
This passage makes it absolutely clear that the Holy Spirit was poured out
because the Lord Jesus was exalted. The outpouring of the Spirit has no
relation to your merits or mine, but only to the merits of the Lord Jesus.
The question of what we are does not come into consideration at all here,
but only what He is. He is glorified; therefore the Spirit is poured out.
Because the Lord Jesus died on the Cross, I have received forgiveness of
sins; because the Lord Jesus rose from the dead, I have received new life;
because the Lord Jesus has been exalted to the right hand of the Father, I
have received the outpoured Spirit. All is because of Him; nothing is
because of me. Remission of sins is not based on human merit, but on the
Lord’s crucifixion; regeneration is not based on human merit, but on the
Lord’s resurrection; and the enduement with the Holy Spirit is not based on
human merit, but on the Lord’s exaltation. The Holy Spirit has not been
poured out on you or me to prove how great we are, but to prove the
greatness of the Son of God.
Now look at verse 36. There is a word here which demands our careful
attention: the word ‘therefore’. How is this word generally used? Not to
introduce a statement, but to follow a statement that has already been made.
Its use always implies that something has been mentioned before. Now what
has preceded this particular ‘therefore’? With what is it connected? It
cannot reasonably be connected with either verse 34 or verse 35, but it
quite obviously relates back to verse 33. Peter has just referred to the
outpouring of the Spirit upon the disciples “which ye see and hear”, and
he says: “Let all the house of Israel therefore know assuredly, that God
hath made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom ye crucified”. Peter
says, in effect, to his audience: ‘This outpouring of the Spirit, which you
have witnessed with your own eyes and ears, proves that Jesus of Nazareth
whom ye crucified is now both Lord and Christ’. The Holy Spirit was poured
out on earth to prove what had taken place in Heaven—the exaltation of
Jesus of Nazareth to the right hand of God. The purpose of Pentecost is to
prove the Lordship of Jesus Christ.
There was a young man named Joseph, who was dearly loved of his father. One
day news reached the father of the death of his son, and for years Jacob
lamented Joseph’s loss. But Joseph was not in the grave; he was in a place
of glory and power. After Jacob had been mourning the death of his son for
years, it was suddenly reported to him that Joseph was alive and in a high
position in Egypt. At first Jacob could not take it in. It was too good to
be true. But ultimately he was persuaded that the story of Joseph’s
exaltation was really a fact. How did he come to believe in it? He went out,
and saw the chariots that Joseph had sent from Egypt.
What do the chariots represent here? They surely typify here the Holy Spirit
, sent both to be the evidence that God’s Son is in glory and to convey us
there. How do we know that Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified by wicked
men nearly two thousand years ago, did not just die a martyr’s death but is
at the Father’s right hand in glory? How can we know for a surety that He
is Lord of lords and King of kings? We can know it beyond dispute because He
has poured out His Spirit upon us. Hallelujah! Jesus is Lord! Jesus is
Christ! Jesus of Nazareth is both Lord and Christ!
The exaltation of the Lord Jesus is the basis on which the Spirit has been
given. Is it possible then that the Lord has been glorified and you have not
received the Spirit? On what basis did you receive forgiveness of sins? Was
it because you prayed so earnestly, or because you read your Bible from
cover to cover, or because of your regular attendance at Church? Was it
because of your merits at all? No! A thousand times, No! On what ground then
were your sins forgiven? “Apart from shedding of blood there is no
remission” (Hebrews 9:22). The sole ground of forgiveness is the shedding
of blood; and since the precious Blood has been shed, your sins have been
forgiven.
Now the principle on which we receive the enduement of the Holy Spirit is
the very same as that on which we receive forgiveness of sins. The Lord has
been crucified, therefore our sins have been forgiven; the Lord has been
glorified, therefore the Spirit has been poured out upon us. Is it possible
that the Son of God shed His Blood and that your sins, dear child of God,
have not been forgiven? Never! Then is it possible that the Son of God has
been glorified and you have not received the Spirit? Never!
Some of you may say: I agree with all this, but I have no experience of it.
Am I to sit down smugly and say I have everything, when I know perfectly
well I have nothing? No, we must never rest content with objective facts
alone. We need subjective experience also; but that experience will only
come as we rest upon Divine facts. God’s facts are the basis of our
experience.
Let us go back again to the question of justification. How were you
justified? Not by doing anything at all, but by accepting the fact that the
Lord had done everything. Enduement with the Holy Spirit becomes yours in
exactly the same way as justification, not by your doing anything yourself,
but by your putting your faith in what the Lord has already done.
If we lack the experience, we must ask God for a revelation of the eternal
fact of the baptism of the Holy Spirit as the gift of the exalted Lord to
His Church. Once we see that, effort will cease, and prayer will give place
to praise. It was a revelation of what the Lord had done for the world that
brought to an end our efforts to secure forgiveness of sins, and it is a
revelation of what the Lord has done for His Church that will bring to an
end our efforts to secure the baptism of the Holy Spirit. We work because we
have not seen the work of Christ. But when once we have seen that, faith
will spring up in our hearts, and as we believe, experience will follow.
Some time ago a young man, who had only been a Christian for five weeks and
who had formerly been violently opposed to the gospel, attended a series of
meetings which I was addressing in Shanghai. At the close of one in which I
was speaking along the above lines, he went home and began to pray earnestly
, ‘Lord, I do want the power of the Holy Spirit. Seeing Thou hast now been
glorified, wilt Thou not now pour out Thy Spirit upon me?’ Then he
corrected himself: ‘Oh no, Lord, that’s all wrong!’ and began to pray
again: ‘Lord Jesus, we are in a life-partnership, Thou and I, and the
Father has promised us two things—glory for Thee, and the Spirit for me.
Thou, Lord, hast received the glory; therefore it is unthinkable that I have
not received the Spirit. Lord, I praise Thee! Thou hast already received
the glory, and I have already received the Spirit.’ From that day the power
of the Spirit was consciously upon him.

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: Chapter 8: The Holy Spirit
: We have spoken of the eternal purpose of God as the motive and explanation
: of all His dealings with us. Now, before we return to our study of the
: phases of Christian experience as set forth in Romans, we must digress yet
: again in order to consider something which lies at the heart of all our
: experience as the vitalizing power of effective life and service. I refer to
: the personal presence and ministry of the Holy Spirit of God.
: And here, too, let us take as our starting-point two verses from Romans, one
: from each of our sections. “The love of God hath been shed abroad in our
: hearts through the Holy Ghost which was given unto us” (Romans 5:5). “If

l**********t
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47
chapter 8.2 Faith Is Again The Key
As for forgiveness, so equally for the coming upon us of the Holy Spirit,
the whole question is one of faith. As soon as we see the Lord Jesus on the
Cross, we know our sins are forgiven; and as soon as we see the Lord Jesus
on the Throne, we know the Holy Spirit has been poured out upon us. The
basis upon which we receive the enduement of the Holy Spirit is not our
praying and fasting and waiting, but the exaltation of Christ. Those who
emphasize tarrying and hold ‘tarrying meetings’ only mislead us, for the
gift is not for the ‘favoured few’ but for all, because it is not given on
the ground of what we are at all, but of what Christ is. The Spirit has
been poured out to prove His goodness and greatness, not ours. Christ has
been crucified, therefore we have been forgiven: Christ has been glorified,
therefore we have been endued with power from on high. It is all because of
Him.
Suppose an unbeliever expresses the desire to be saved, and you explain to
him the way of salvation and pray with him. Suppose then he prays after this
fashion: ‘Lord Jesus, I believe Thou hast died for me, and that Thou canst
blot out all my sins. I truly believe Thou wilt forgive me.’ Have you any
confidence that that man is saved? When will you rest assured that he has
really been born again? Not when he prays: ‘Lord, I believe Thou wilt
forgive my sins’, but when he says: ‘Lord, I praise Thee that Thou hast
forgiven my sins. Thou hast died for me; therefore my sins are blotted out’
You believe a person is saved when prayer turns to praise—when he ceases
to ask the Lord to forgive him, but praises Him that He has already done so
because the Blood of the Lamb has already been shed.
In the same way, you can pray and wait for years and never experience the
Spirit’s power; but when you cease to plead with the Lord to pour out His
Spirit upon you, and when instead you trustfully praise Him that the Spirit
has been poured out because the Lord Jesus has been glorified, you will find
that your problem is solved. Praise God! no single child of His need
agonize, nor even wait, for the Spirit to be given. Jesus is not going to be
made Lord; He is Lord. Therefore I am not going to receive the Spirit; I
have received the Spirit. It is all a question of the faith which comes by
revelation. When our eyes are opened to see that the Spirit has already been
poured out because Jesus has already been glorified, then prayer turns to
praise in our hearts.
All spiritual blessings are given on a definite basis. God’s gifts are
freely given, but there are conditions which must be fulfilled on our part
before the reception of them is possible. There is a passage in God’s Word
which makes the conditions of the outpoured Spirit perfectly clear: “Repent
ye, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ unto the
remission of your sins; and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. For
to you is the promise, and to your children, and to all that are afar off,
even as many as the Lord our God shall call unto him” (Acts 2:38, 39).
Four things are mentioned in this passage: Repentance, Baptism, Forgiveness,
and the Holy Spirit. The first two are conditions, the second two are gifts
. What are the conditions to be fulfilled if we are to have forgiveness of
sins? According to the Word they are two: repentance and baptism.
The first condition is repentance, which means a change of mind. Formerly I
thought sin a pleasant thing, but now I have changed my mind about it;
formerly I thought the world an attractive place, but now I know better;
formerly I regarded it a miserable business to be a Christian, but now I
think differently. Once I thought certain things delightful, now I think
them vile; once I thought other things utterly worthless, now I think them
most precious. That is a change of mind, and that is repentance. No life can
be truly changed apart from such a change of mind.
The second condition is baptism. Baptism is an outward expression of an
inward faith. When in my heart I truly believe that I have died with Christ,
have been buried and have risen with Him, then I ask for baptism. I thereby
declare publicly what I believe privately. Baptism is faith in action.
Here then are two divinely appointed conditions of forgiveness—repentance,
and faith publicly expressed. Have you repented? Have you testified publicly
to your union with your Lord? Then have you received remission of sins and
the gift of the Holy Ghost? You say you have only received the first gift,
not the second. But, my friend, God offered you two things if you fulfilled
two conditions! Why have you only taken one? What are you doing about the
second?
Suppose I went into a book-shop, selected a two-volume book, priced at ten
shillings, and, having put down a ten-shilling note, walked out of the shop,
carelessly leaving one volume on the counter. When I reached home and
discovered the oversight, what do you think I should do? I should go
straight back to the shop to get the forgotten book, but I should not dream
of paying anything for it. I should simply explain to the shopkeeper that
both volumes were duly paid for, and ask him if he would therefore kindly
let me have the second one; and without any further payment I should march
happily out of the shop with my possession under my arm. Would you not do
the same under the same circumstances?
But you are under the same circumstances. If you have fulfilled the
conditions you are entitled to two gifts, not just one. You have already
taken the one; why not just come and take the other now? Say to the Lord, ‘
Lord, I have complied with the conditions for receiving remission of sins
and the gift of the Holy Ghost, but I have foolishly only taken the former.
Now I have come back to take the gift of the Holy Ghost, and I praise Thee
for it.’

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: Chapter 8.1 The Spirit Outpoured
: Let us turn first to Acts chapter 2 verses 32 to 36: ”(32) This Jesus did
: God raise up, whereof we all are witnesses. (33) Being therefore by the
: right hand of God exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of
: the Holy Ghost, he hath poured forth this, which ye see and hear. (34) For
: David ascended not into the heavens: but he saith himself, The Lord said
: unto my Lord, sit thou on my right hand, (35) Till I make thine enemies the
: footstool of thy feet.(36) Let all the house of Israel therefore know
: assuredly, that God hath made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom ye
: crucified.”

l**********t
发帖数: 5754
48
chapter 8.3 The Diversity Of The Experience
But you ask: How shall I know that the Holy Spirit is come upon me?' I
cannot tell how you will know, but you will know. No description has
been given us of the personal sensations and emotions of the disciples
at Pentecost. We do not know exactly how they felt, but we do know that
their feelings and behaviour were somewhat abnormal, because people
seeing them said they were intoxicated. When the Holy Spirit falls upon
God's people there will be some things which the world cannot account
for. There will be supernatural accompaniments of some kind, though it
be no more than an overwhelming sense of the Divine Presence. We cannot
and we must not stipulate what particular form such outward expressions
will take in any given case, but one thing is sure, that each one upon
whom the Spirit of God falls will know it.
When the Holy Spirit came upon the disciples at Pentecost there was
something quite extraordinary about their behaviour, and Peter offered
an explanation from God's Word to all who witnessed it. This, in
substance, is what he said: When the Holy Spirit falls upon believers,
some will prophesy, some will dream dreams, and others will see
visions. This is what God has stated through the prophet Joel.' But did
Peter prophesy? Well, hardly in the sense in which Joel meant it. Did
the hundred and twenty prophesy or see visions? We are not told that
they did. Did they dream dreams? How could they, for were they not all
wide awake? Well then, what did Peter mean by using a quotation that
seems scarcely to fit the case at all? In the passage quoted (Joel
2:28, 29), prophesy, dreams and visions are said to accompany the
outpouring of the Spirit, yet these evidences were apparently lacking
at Pentecost.
On the other hand, Joel's prophecy said not a word about "a sound as of
the rushing of a mighty wind", nor about "tongues parting asunder like
as of fire" as accompaniments of the Spirit's outpouring; yet these
were manifest in that upper room. And where in Joel do we find mention
of speaking in other tongues? And yet the disciples at Pentecost did
so.
What did Peter mean? Imagine him quoting God's Word to show that the
experience of Pentecost was the outpouring of the Spirit spoken of by
Joel, without a single one of the evidences mentioned by Joel being
found at Pentecost. What the Book mentioned the disciples lacked, and
what the disciples had the Book did not mention! It looks as though
Peter's quotation of the Book disproves his point rather than proving
it. What is the explanation of this mystery?
Let us recall that Peter was himself speaking under the control of the
Holy Spirit. The Book of the Acts was written by the Spirit's
inspiration, and not one word was spoken at random. There is no misfit,
but a perfect harmony. Note carefully that Peter did not say: What you
see and hear fulfills what was spoken by the prophet Joel'. What he
said was: "This is that which hath been spoken by the prophet Joel"
(Acts 2:16). It was not a case of fulfillment, but of an experience of
the same order. "This is that" means that this which you see and hear
is of the same order as that which is foretold'. When it is a case of
fulfillment, each experience is reduplicated and prophecy is prophecy,
dreams are dreams, and visions are visions; but when Peter says "This
is that", it is not a question of the one being a replica of the other,
but of the one belonging to the same category as the other. "This"
amounts to the same thing as "that"; "this" is the equivalent of
"that"; "this is that". What is being emphasized by the Holy Spirit
through Peter is the diversity of the experience. The outward evidences
may be many and varied, and we have to admit that occasionally they are
strange; but the Spirit is one, and He is Lord. (See Corinthians
12:4-6).
What happened to R.A. Torrey when the Holy Spirit came upon him after
he had been a minister for years? Let him tell it in his own words: I
recall the exact spot where I was kneeling in prayer in my study... It
was very quiet moment, one of the most quiet moments I ever knew...
Then God simply said to me, not in any audible voice, but in my heart.
"It's yours. Now go and preach." He had already said it to me in His
Word in 1 John 5:14, 15; but I did not then know my Bible as I know it
now, and God had pity on my ignorance and said it directly to my
soul... I went and preached, and I have been a new minister from that
day to this... Some time after this experience (I do not recall just
how long after), while sitting in my room one day... suddenly... I
found myself shouting (I was not brought up to shout and I am not of a
shouting temperament, but I shouted like the loudest shouting
Methodist), "Glory to God, glory to God, glory to God", and I could not
stop. ... But that was not when I was baptized with the Holy Spirit. I
was baptized with the Holy Spirit when I took Him by simple faith in
The Word of God.' [10]
The outward manifestations in Torrey's case were not the same as those
described by Joel or by Peter, but "this is that". It is not a
facsimile, yet it is the same thing.
And how did D.L. Moody feel and act when the Spirit came upon him?
I was crying all the time that God would fill me with His Spirit. Well,
one day, in the city of New York--oh, what a day!--I cannot describe
it, I seldom refer to it; it is almost too sacred an experience to
name. Paul had an experience of which he never spoke for fourteen
years. I can only say that God revealed Himself to me, and I had such
an experience of His love that I had to ask Him to stay His hand. I
went preaching again. The sermons were not different; I did not present
any new truths; and yet hundreds were converted. I would not now be
placed back where I was before that blessed experience if you should
give me all the world - it would be as the small dust of the balance.'
[11]
The outward manifestation that accompanied Moody's experience did not
tally exactly with Joel's description, or Peter's, or Torrey's, but who
could doubt that "this" which Moody experienced was "that" experienced
by the disciples at Pentecost? It was not the same in manifestation,
but it was the very same in essence.
And what was the experience of the great Charles Finney when the power
of the Holy Ghost came upon him?
I received a mighty baptism of the Holy Ghost without any expectation
of it, without ever having the thought in my mind that there was any
such thing for me, without any recollection that I had ever heard the
thing mentioned by any person in the world, the Holy Spirit descended
upon me in a manner that seemed to go through me body and soul. No
words can express the wonderful love that was shed abroad in my heart.
I wept aloud with joy and love.' [12]
Finney's experience was not a duplicate of Pentecost, nor of Torrey's
experience, nor of Moody's; but "this" certainly was "that".
When the Holy Spirit is poured out upon God's people their experiences
will differ widely. Some will receive new vision, others will know a
new liberty in soul-winning, others will proclaim the Word of God with
power, and yet others will be filled with heavenly joy or overflowing
praise. "This... and this... and this... is that!" Let us praise the
Lord for every new experience that relates to the exaltation of Christ
and of which it can truly be said that "this" is an evidence of "that".
There is nothing stereotyped about God's dealings with His children.
Therefore we must not by our prejudices and preconceptions make a
water-tight compartment for the working of His Spirit, either in our
own lives or in the lives of others. This applies equally to those who
require some particular manifestation (such as speaking with tongues')
as evidence that the spirit has come upon them and to those who deny
that any manifestation is given at all. We must leave God free to work
as He wills, and to give what evidence He pleases of the work He does.
He is Lord, and it is not for us to legislate for Him.
Let us rejoice that Jesus is on the throne, and let us praise Him that,
since He has been glorified, the Spirit has been poured out upon us
all. As we accept the Divine fact in all the simplicity of faith, we
shall know it with such assurance in our own experience that we shall
dare to proclaim with confidence--"This is that!"
__________________________________________________________________
[10] The Holy Spirit, who He is and what He does, by R.A. Torrey, D.D.,
pp. 198-9.
[11] The Life of Dwight L. Moody, by his son, W.R. Moody, p. 149.
[12] Autobiography of Charles E. Finney, chapter 2.
__________________________________________________________________

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: chapter 8.2 Faith Is Again The Key
: As for forgiveness, so equally for the coming upon us of the Holy Spirit,
: the whole question is one of faith. As soon as we see the Lord Jesus on the
: Cross, we know our sins are forgiven; and as soon as we see the Lord Jesus
: on the Throne, we know the Holy Spirit has been poured out upon us. The
: basis upon which we receive the enduement of the Holy Spirit is not our
: praying and fasting and waiting, but the exaltation of Christ. Those who
: emphasize tarrying and hold ‘tarrying meetings’ only mislead us, for the
: gift is not for the ‘favoured few’ but for all, because it is not given on
: the ground of what we are at all, but of what Christ is. The Spirit has

l**********t
发帖数: 5754
49
chapter 8.4 The Spirit Indwelling
We move on now to the second aspect of the gift of the Holy Spirit, which,
as we shall see in our next chapter, is more particularly the subject of
Romans 8. It is that which we have spoken of as the Spirit indwelling. “If
so be that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you...” (Romans 8:9). As with the
Spirit outpoured, so with the Spirit indwelling, if we are to know in
experience that which is ours in fact, our first need is of Divine
revelation. When we see Christ as Lord objectively—that is, as exalted to
the throne in Heaven—then we shall experience the power of the Spirit upon
us. When we see Christ as Lord subjectively—that is, as effective Ruler
within our lives—then we shall know the power of the Spirit within us.
A revelation of the indwelling Spirit was the remedy Paul offered the
Corinthian Christians for their unspirituality. It is important to note that
the Christians in Corinth had become preoccupied with the visible signs of
the Holy Spirit’s outpouring and were making much of ‘tongues’ and
miracles, while at the same time their lives were full of contradictions and
were a reproach to the Lord’s Name. They had quite evidently received the
Holy Spirit and yet they remained spiritually immature; and the remedy God
offered them for this is the remedy He offers His Church today for the same
complaint.
In his letter to them Paul wrote: “Know ye not that ye are a temple of God,
and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?” (1 Corinthians 3:16). For
others he prayed for enlightenment of heart, “...that ye may know” (
Ephesians 1:18). A knowledge of Divine facts was the need of the Christians
then, and it is no less the need of Christians today. We need the ‘opening
of the eyes of our understanding’ that we may know that God Himself through
the Holy Spirit has taken up His abode in our hearts. God is present in the
person of the Spirit, and Christ is present in the person of the Spirit too
. Thus if the Holy Spirit dwells in our hearts we have the Father and the
Son dwelling within. That is no mere theory or doctrine, but a blessed
reality. We may perhaps have realized that the Spirit is actually within our
hearts, but have we realized that He is a Person? Have we understood that
to have the Spirit within us it to have the living God within?
To many Christians the Holy Spirit is quite unreal. They regard Him as a
mere influence—and influence for good, no doubt, but just an influence for
all that. In their thinking, conscience and the Spirit are more or less
identified as some ‘thing’ within them that brings them to book when they
are bad and tries to show them how to be good. The trouble with the
Corinthian Christians was not that they lacked the indwelling Spirit but
that they lacked the knowledge of His presence. They failed to realize the
greatness of the One who had come to make His abode in their hearts; so Paul
wrote to them: “Know ye not that ye are a temple of God, and that the
Spirit of God dwelleth in you?” Yes, that was the remedy for their
unspirituality—just to know who He really was who dwelt within.

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: chapter 8.3 The Diversity Of The Experience
: But you ask: How shall I know that the Holy Spirit is come upon me?' I
: cannot tell how you will know, but you will know. No description has
: been given us of the personal sensations and emotions of the disciples
: at Pentecost. We do not know exactly how they felt, but we do know that
: their feelings and behaviour were somewhat abnormal, because people
: seeing them said they were intoxicated. When the Holy Spirit falls upon
: God's people there will be some things which the world cannot account
: for. There will be supernatural accompaniments of some kind, though it
: be no more than an overwhelming sense of the Divine Presence. We cannot

l**********t
发帖数: 5754
50
chapter 8.5 The Treasure In The Vessel
Do you know, my friends, that the Spirit within you is very God? Oh that our
eyes were opened to see the greatness of God’s gift! Oh that we might
realize the vastness of the resources secreted in our own hearts! I could
shout with joy as I think, ‘The Spirit who dwells within me is no mere
influence, but a living Person; He is very God. The infinite God is within
my heart!’ I am at a loss to convey to you the blessedness of this
discovery, that the Holy Spirit dwelling within my heart is a Person. I can
only repeat: ‘He is a Person!’ and repeat it again: ‘He is a Person!’
and repeat it yet again: ‘He is a Person!’ Oh, my friends, I would fain
repeat it to you a hundred times—The Spirit of God within me is a Person! I
am only an earthen vessel, but in that earthen vessel I carry a treasure of
unspeakable worth, even the Lord of glory.
All the worry and fret of God’s children would end if their eyes were
opened to see the greatness of the treasure hid in their hearts. Do you know
, there are resources enough in your own heart to meet the demand of every
circumstance in which you will ever find yourself? Do you know there is
power enough there to move the city in which you live? Do you know there is
power enough to shake the universe? Let me tell you once more—I say it with
the utmost reverence: You who have been born again of the Spirit of God—
you carry God in your heart!
All the flippancy of the children of God would cease too if they realized
the greatness of the treasure deposited within them. If you have only ten
shillings in your pocket you can march gaily along the street, talking
lightly as you go, and swinging your stick in the air. It matters little if
you lose your money, for there is not much at stake. But if you carry a
thousand pounds in your pocket, the position is vastly different, and your
whole demeanour will be different too. There will be great gladness in your
heart, but no careless jaunting along the road; and once in a while you will
slacken your pace and, slipping your hand into your pocket, you will
quietly finger your treasure again, and then with joyful solemnity continue
on your way.
In Old Testament times there were hundreds of tents in the camp of Israel,
but there was one tent quite different from all the rest. In the common
tents you could do just as you pleased—eat or fast, work or rest, be joyful
or sober, noisy or silent. But that other tent was a tent that commanded
reverence and awe. You might move in and out of the common tents talking
noisily and laughing gaily, but as soon as you neared that special tent you
instinctively walked more quietly, and when you stood right before it you
bowed your head in solemn silence. No one could touch it with impunity. If
man or beast dared to do so, death was the sure penalty. What was so very
special about it? It was the temple of the living God. There was little
unusual about the tent itself, for it was outwardly of very ordinary
material, but the great God had chosen to make it His abode.
Do you realize what happened at your conversion? God came into your heart
and made it His temple. In Old Testament days God dwelt in a temple made of
stone; today He dwells in a temple composed of living believers. When we
really see that God has made our hearts His dwelling place, what a deep
reverence will come over our lives! All lightness, all frivolity will end,
and all self-pleasing too, when we know that we are the temple of God and
that the Spirit of God dwells within us. Has it really come to you that
wherever you go you carry with you the Holy Spirit of God? You do not just
carry your Bible with you, or even much good teaching about God, but God
Himself.
The reason why many Christians do not experience the power of the Spirit,
though He actually dwells in their hearts, is that they lack reverence. And
they lack reverence because they have not had their eyes opened to the fact
of His presence. The fact is there, but they have not seen it. Why is it
that some Christians are living victorious lives while others live in a
state of constant defeat? The difference is not accounted for by the
presence or absence of the Spirit (for He dwells in the heart of every child
of God) but by this, that some recognize His indwelling and others do not.
True revelation of the fact of the Spirit’s indwelling will revolutionize
the life of any Christian.

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: chapter 8.4 The Spirit Indwelling
: We move on now to the second aspect of the gift of the Holy Spirit, which,
: as we shall see in our next chapter, is more particularly the subject of
: Romans 8. It is that which we have spoken of as the Spirit indwelling. “If
: so be that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you...” (Romans 8:9). As with the
: Spirit outpoured, so with the Spirit indwelling, if we are to know in
: experience that which is ours in fact, our first need is of Divine
: revelation. When we see Christ as Lord objectively—that is, as exalted to
: the throne in Heaven—then we shall experience the power of the Spirit upon
: us. When we see Christ as Lord subjectively—that is, as effective Ruler

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chapter 8.6 The Absolute Lordship Of Christ
“Know ye not that your body is a temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you,
which ye have from God? and ye are not your own; for ye were bought with a
price: glorify God therefore in your body” (1 Cor. 6:19, 20).
This verse now takes us a stage further, for, when once we have made the
discovery of the fact that we are the dwelling place of God, then a full
surrender of ourselves to God must follow. When we see that we are the
temple of God we shall immediately recognize that we are not our own.
Consecration will follow revelation. The difference between victorious
Christians and defeated ones is not that some have the Spirit while others
have not, but that some know His indwelling and others do not, and that
consequently some recognize the Divine ownership of their lives while others
are still their own masters.
Revelation is the first step to holiness, and consecration is the second. A
day must come in our lives, as definite as the day of our conversion, when
we give up all right to ourselves and submit to the absolute Lordship of
Jesus Christ. There may be a practical issue raised by God to test the
reality of our consecration, but whether that be so or not, there must be a
day when, without reservation, we surrender everything to Him—ourselves,
our families, our possessions, our business and our time. All we are and
have becomes His, to be held henceforth entirely at His disposal. From that
day we are no longer our own masters, but only stewards. Not until the
Lordship of Jesus Christ is a settled thing in our hearts can the Spirit
really operate effectively in us. He cannot direct our lives effectually
until all control of them is committed to Him. If we do not give Him
absolute authority in our lives, He can be present, but He cannot be
powerful. The power of the Spirit is stayed.
Are you living for the Lord or for yourself? Perhaps that is too general a
question, so let me be more specific. Is there anything God is asking of you
that you are withholding from Him? Is there any point of contention between
you and Him? Not till every controversy is settled and the Holy Spirit is
given full sway can He reproduce the life of Christ in the heart of any
believer.
An American friend, now with the Lord, whose name we will call Paul,
cherished the hope from his early youth that one day he would be called ‘Dr
. Paul’. When he was quite a little chap he began to dream of the day when
he would enter the university, and he imagined himself first studying for
his M.A. degree and then for his Ph.D. Then at length the glad day would
arrive when all would greet him as ‘Dr. Paul’.
The Lord saved him and called him to preach, and before long he became
pastor of a large congregation. By that time he had his degree and was
studying for his doctorate, but, despite splendid progress in his studies
and a good measure of success as a pastor, he was a very dissatisfied man.
He was a Christian, but his life was not Christ-like; he had the Spirit of
God within him, but he did not enjoy the Spirit’s presence or experience
His power. He thought to himself, ‘I am a preacher of the Gospel and the
pastor of a church. I tell my people they should love the Word of God, but I
do not really love it myself. I exhort them to pray, but I myself have
little inclination to pray. I tell them to live a holy life, but my own life
is not holy. I warn them not to love the world, and, though outwardly I
shun it, yet in my heart I myself still love it dearly.’ In his distress he
cried to the Lord to cause him to know the power of the indwelling Spirit,
but though he prayed and prayed for months, no answer came. Then he fasted
and besought the Lord to show him any hindrance there might be in his life.
That answer was not long in coming, and it was this: ‘I long that you
should know the power of My Spirit, but your heart is set on something that
I do not wish you to have. You have yielded to me all but one thing, and
that one thing you are holding to yourself—your Ph.D.’ Well, to you or me
it might be of little consequence whether we were addressed as plain ‘Mr.
Paul’ or as ‘Dr. Paul’, but to him it was his very life. He had dreamed
of it from childhood and labored for it all through his youth, and now the
thing he prized above all was almost within his grasp. In two short months
it would be his.
So he reasoned with the Lord in this wise: ‘Is there any harm for me to be
a Doctor of Philosophy? Will it not bring much more glory to Thy Name to
have a Dr. Paul preaching the Gospel than a plain Mr. Paul?’ But God does
not change His mind, and all Mr. Paul’s sound reasoning did not alter the
Lord’s word to him. Every time he prayed about the matter he got the same
answer. Then, reasoning having failed, he resorted to bargaining with the
Lord. He promised to go here or there, to do this or that, if only the Lord
would allow him to have his doctor’s degree; but still the Lord did not
change His mind. And all the while Mr. Paul was becoming more and more
hungry to know the fullness of the Spirit. This state of affairs continued
to within two days of his final examination.
It was Saturday, and Mr. Paul settled down to prepare his sermon for the
following day, but, study as he would, he could get no message. The ambition
of a lifetime was just within reach of realization, but God made it clear
that he must choose between the power he could sway through a doctor’s
degree and the power of God’s Spirit swaying his life. That evening he
yielded. ‘Lord’, he said, ‘I am willing to be plain Mr. Paul all my days,
but I want to know the power of the Holy Ghost in my life.’
He rose from his knees and wrote a letter to his examiners, asking to be
excused from the examination on the Monday, and giving his reason. Then he
retired, very happy, but not conscious of any unusual experience. Next
morning he told his congregation that for the first time in six years he had
no sermon to preach, and explained how it came about. The Lord blessed that
testimony more abundantly than any of his well-prepared sermons, and from
that time God blessed and owned him in an altogether new way. From that day
he knew separation from the world, no longer as an outward thing but as a
deep inward reality, and in daily experience he knew the blessedness of the
Spirit’s presence and power.
God is waiting for a settlement of all our controversies with Him. With Mr.
Paul it was a question of his doctor’s degree, but with us it may be
something quite different. Our absolute surrender of ourselves to the Lord
generally hinges upon some one particular thing, and God is after that one
thing. He must have it, for He must have our all. I was greatly impressed by
something a great national leader wrote in his autobiography: ‘I want
nothing for myself; I want everything for my country.’ If a man can be
willing that his country should have everything and he himself nothing,
cannot we say to our God: ‘Lord, I want nothing for myself; I want all for
Thee. I will what Thou willest, and I want to have nothing outside Thy will.
’ Not until we take the place of a servant can He take His place as Lord.
He is not calling us to devote ourselves to His cause: He is asking us to
yield ourselves to His will. Are you willing for anything He wills?
Another friend of mine, like my friend Mr. Paul, had a controversy with the
Lord. before his conversion he fell in love, and as soon as he was saved he
sought to win the one he loved to the Lord, but she would have nothing to do
with spiritual things. the Lord made it clear to him that his relations
with that girl must be broken off, but he was deeply devoted to her, so he
evaded the issue and continued to serve the Lord and to win souls for Him.
But he became conscious of his need for holiness, and that consciousness
marked the beginning of dark days for him. He asked for the Spirit’s
fullness that he might have power to live a holy life, but the Lord seemed
continually to ignore his request.
One morning he had to preach in another city and he spoke from Psalm 73:25:
“Whom have I in heaven but thee? And there is none upon earth that I desire
beside thee.” On his return home he went to a prayer meeting, and there a
sister read out the very same verse from which, unknown to her, he had just
preached, and followed it with the question: ‘Can we truly say: “There is
none upon earth that I desire beside thee”?’ There was power in that word.
It struck right home to his heart and he had to admit to himself that he
could not truthfully say that he desired no one in Heaven or earth apart
from his Lord. He saw, there and then, that for him everything hinged upon
his willingness to give up the girl he loved.
For some it might not have involved much, but for him it was everything. So
he began to reason with the Lord: ‘Lord I will go to Tibet and work for
Thee there if I may marry that girl’. But the Lord seemed to care a great
deal more about his relationship with that girl than about his going to
Tibet, and no amount of reasoning on his part availed to effect any change
of emphasis on the part of the Lord. The controversy went on for several
months, and when again the young man pleaded for the fullness of the Spirit,
the Lord still pointed to the same thing. But that day the Lord triumphed,
and that young man looked up to Him and said: ‘Lord, I can truly say now,
“Whom have I in heaven but thee? And there is none upon earth that I desire
beside thee”.’ And that was the beginning of a new life for him.
A forgiven sinner is quite different from an ordinary sinner, and a
consecrated Christian is quite different from an ordinary Christian. May the
Lord bring us to a definite issue regarding the question of His Lordship.
If we do yield wholly to Him and claim the power of the indwelling Spirit,
we need wait for no special feelings or supernatural manifestations, but can
simply look up and praise Him that something has already happened. We can
confidently thank Him that the glory of God has already filled His temple.
“Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God
dwelleth in you?” “Know ye not that your body is a temple of the Holy
Ghost which is in you, which ye have from God?”


【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: chapter 8.5 The Treasure In The Vessel
: Do you know, my friends, that the Spirit within you is very God? Oh that our
: eyes were opened to see the greatness of God’s gift! Oh that we might
: realize the vastness of the resources secreted in our own hearts! I could
: shout with joy as I think, ‘The Spirit who dwells within me is no mere
: influence, but a living Person; He is very God. The infinite God is within
: my heart!’ I am at a loss to convey to you the blessedness of this
: discovery, that the Holy Spirit dwelling within my heart is a Person. I can
: only repeat: ‘He is a Person!’ and repeat it again: ‘He is a Person!’
: and repeat it yet again: ‘He is a Person!’ Oh, my friends, I would fain

R*o
发帖数: 3781
52
thanks for posting this good article

,

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: chapter 8.6 The Absolute Lordship Of Christ
: “Know ye not that your body is a temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you,
: which ye have from God? and ye are not your own; for ye were bought with a
: price: glorify God therefore in your body” (1 Cor. 6:19, 20).
: This verse now takes us a stage further, for, when once we have made the
: discovery of the fact that we are the dwelling place of God, then a full
: surrender of ourselves to God must follow. When we see that we are the
: temple of God we shall immediately recognize that we are not our own.
: Consecration will follow revelation. The difference between victorious
: Christians and defeated ones is not that some have the Spirit while others

l**********t
发帖数: 5754
53
Chapter 9: The Meaning and Value of Romans Seven
We must return now to our study of Romans. We broke off at the end of
chapter 6 in order to consider two related subjects, namely, God’s eternal
purpose, which is the motive and goal of our walk with Him, and the Holy
Spirit, who supplies the power and resource to bring us to that goal. We
come now to Romans 7, a chapter which many have felt to be almost
superfluous. Perhaps indeed it would be so if Christians really saw that the
old creation has been ruled out by the Cross of Christ, and an entirely new
creation brought in by His resurrection. If we have come to the point where
we really ‘know’ that, and ‘reckon’ on that, and ‘present ourselves’
on the basis of that, then perhaps we have no need of Romans 7.
Others have felt that the chapter is in the wrong place. They would have put
it between the fifth and sixth chapters. After chapter 6 all is so perfect,
so straightforward; and then comes breakdown and the cry, “O wretched man
that I am!” Could anything be more of an anticlimax? And so some have
argued that Paul is speaking here of his unregenerate experience. Well, we
must admit that some of what he describes here is not a Christian experience
, but none the less many Christians do experience it. What then is the
teaching of this chapter?
Romans 6 deals with freedom from sin. Romans 7 deals with freedom from the
Law. In chapter 6 Paul has told us how we could be delivered from sin, and
we concluded that this was all that was required. Chapter 7 now teaches that
deliverance from sin is not enough, but that we also need to know
deliverance from the Law. If we are not fully emancipated from the Law we
can never know full emancipation from sin. But what is the difference
between deliverance from sin and deliverance from the Law? We all see the
value of the former, but where is the need for the latter? Well, to
appreciate this we must first understand what the Law is and what it does.

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: chapter 8.6 The Absolute Lordship Of Christ
: “Know ye not that your body is a temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you,
: which ye have from God? and ye are not your own; for ye were bought with a
: price: glorify God therefore in your body” (1 Cor. 6:19, 20).
: This verse now takes us a stage further, for, when once we have made the
: discovery of the fact that we are the dwelling place of God, then a full
: surrender of ourselves to God must follow. When we see that we are the
: temple of God we shall immediately recognize that we are not our own.
: Consecration will follow revelation. The difference between victorious
: Christians and defeated ones is not that some have the Spirit while others

l**********t
发帖数: 5754
54
chapter 9.1 The Flesh And Man’s Breakdown
Romans 7 has a new lesson to teach us. It is found in the discovery that I
am “in the flesh” (Rom. 7:5), that “I am carnal” (7:18). This goes
beyond the question of sin, for it relates also the matter of pleasing God.
We are dealing here not with sin in its forms but with man in his carnal
state. The latter includes the former but it takes us a stage further, for
it leads to the discovery that in this realm too we are totally impotent,
and that “they that are in the flesh cannot please God” (Rom. 8:8). How
then is this discovery made? It is made with the help of the Law.
Now let us retrace our steps for a minute and attempt to describe what is
probably the experience of many. Many a Christian is truly saved and yet
bound by sin. It is not that he is necessarily living under the power of sin
all the time, but that there are certain particular sins hampering him
continually so that he hears the full Gospel message, that the Lord Jesus
not only died to cleanse away our sins, but that when He died He included us
sinners in His death; so that not only were our sins dealt with, but we
ourselves were dealt with too. The man’s eyes are opened and he knows he
has been crucified with Christ. Two things follow that revelation. In the
first place he reckons that he has died and risen with the Lord, and in the
second place, recognizing the Lord’s claim upon him, he presents himself to
God as alive from the dead. He sees that he has no more right over himself.
This is the commencement of a beautiful Christian life, full of praise to
the Lord.
But then he begins to reason as follows: ‘I have died with Christ and am
raised with Him, and I have given myself over to Him for ever; now I must do
something for Him, since He has done so much for me. I want to please Him
and do His will.’ So, after the step of consecration, he seeks to discover
the will of God, and sets out to obey Him. Then he makes a strange discovery
. He thought he could do the will of God and he thought he loved it, but
gradually he finds he does not always like it. At times he even finds a
distinct reluctance to do it, and often when he tries to do it he finds he
cannot. Then he begins to question his experience. He asks himself: ‘Did I
really know? Yes! Did I really reckon? Yes! Did I really give myself to Him?
Yes! Have I taken back my consecration? No! Then whatever is the matter now
?’ The more this man tries to do the will of God the more he fails.
Ultimately he comes to the conclusion that he never really loved God’s will
at all, so he prays for the desire and the power to do it. He confesses his
disobedience and promises never to disobey again. But he has barely got up
from his knees before he has fallen once more; before he reaches the point
of victory he is conscious of defeat. Then he says to himself: ‘Perhaps my
last decision was not definite enough. This time I will be absolutely
definite.’ So he brings all his will-power to bear on the situation, only
to find greater defeat than ever awaiting him the next time a choice has to
be made. Then at last he echoes the words of Paul: “For I know that in me,
that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me
, but to do that which is good is not. For the good which I would I do not:
but the evil which I would not, that I practice” (Rom. 7:18, 19).

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: Chapter 9: The Meaning and Value of Romans Seven
: We must return now to our study of Romans. We broke off at the end of
: chapter 6 in order to consider two related subjects, namely, God’s eternal
: purpose, which is the motive and goal of our walk with Him, and the Holy
: Spirit, who supplies the power and resource to bring us to that goal. We
: come now to Romans 7, a chapter which many have felt to be almost
: superfluous. Perhaps indeed it would be so if Christians really saw that the
: old creation has been ruled out by the Cross of Christ, and an entirely new
: creation brought in by His resurrection. If we have come to the point where
: we really ‘know’ that, and ‘reckon’ on that, and ‘present ourselves’

q********g
发帖数: 10694
55
很赞,这本书是我的信仰启蒙之一。
l**********t
发帖数: 5754
56
chapter 9.2 What The Law Teaches
Many Christians are suddenly launched into the experience of Romans 7 and
they do not know why. They fancy Romans 6 is quite enough. Having grasped
that, they think there can be no more question of failure, and then to their
utmost surprise they suddenly find themselves in Romans 7. What is the
explanation?
First let us be quite clear that the death with Christ described in Romans 6
is fully adequate to cover all our need. It is the explanation of that
death, with all that follows from it, that is incomplete in chapter 6. We
are as yet still in ignorance of the truth set forth in chapter 7. Romans 7
is given to us to explain and make real the statement in Romans 6:14, that:
“Sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not under law, but under
grace.” The trouble is that we do not yet know deliverance from law. What,
then, is the meaning of law?
Grace means that God does something for me; law means that I do something
for God. God has certain holy and righteous demands which He places upon me:
that is law. Now if law means that God requires something of me for their
fulfillment, then deliverance from law means that He no longer requires that
from me, but Himself provides it. Law implies that God requires me to do
something for Him; deliverance from law implies that He exempts me from
doing it, and that in grace He does it Himself. I (where ‘I’ is the ‘
carnal’ man of ch. 7:14) need do nothing for God: that is deliverance from
law. The trouble in Romans 7 is that man in the flesh tried to do something
for God. As soon as you try to please God in that way, then you place
yourself under law, and the experience of Romans 7 begins to be yours.
As we seek to understand this, let it be settled at the outset that the
fault does not lie with the Law. Paul says, “the law is holy, and the
commandment holy, and righteous, and good” (Rom. 7:12). No, there is
nothing wrong with the Law, but there is something decidedly wrong with me.
The demands of the Law are righteous, but the person upon whom the demands
are made is unrighteous. The trouble is not that the Law’s demands are
unjust, but that I am unable to meet them. It may be all right for the
Government to require payment of 100 shillings but it will be all wrong if I
have only ten shillings with which to meet the demand!
I am a man “sold under sin” (Rom. 7:14). Sin has dominion over me. As long
as you leave me alone I seem to be rather a fine type of man. It is when
you ask me to do something that my sinfulness comes to light.
If you have a very clumsy servant and he just sits still and does nothing,
then his clumsiness does not appear. If he does nothing all day he will be
of little use to you, it is true, but at least he will do no damage that way
. But if you say to him: ‘Now come along, don’t idle away your time; get
up and do something’, then immediately the trouble begins. He knocks the
chair over as he gets up, stumbles over a footstool a few paces further on,
then smashes some precious dish as soon as he handles it. If you make no
demands upon him his clumsiness is never noticed, but as soon as you ask him
to do anything his awkwardness is seen at once. The demands were all right,
but the man was all wrong. He was as clumsy a man when he was sitting still
as when he was working, but it was your demands that made manifest the
clumsiness that was all the time in his make-up, whether he was active or
inactive.
We are all sinners by nature. If God asks nothing of us, all seems to go
well, but as soon as He demands something of us the occasion is provided for
a grand display of our sinfulness. The Law makes our weakness manifest.
While you let me sit still I appear to be all right, but when you ask me to
do anything I am sure to spoil that thing, and if you trust me with a second
thing I will as surely spoil it too. When a holy law is applied to a sinful
man, then his sinfulness comes out in full display.
God knows who I am; He knows that from head to foot I am full of sin; He
knows that I am weakness incarnate; that I can do nothing. The trouble is
that I do not know it. I admit that all men are sinners and that therefore I
am a sinner; but I imagine that I am not such a hopeless sinner as some.
God must bring us all to the place where we see that we are utterly weak and
helpless. While we say so, we do not wholly believe it, and God has to do
something to convince us of the fact. Had it not been for the Law we should
never have known how weak we are. Paul had reached that point. He makes this
clear when he says in Romans 7:7: “I had not known sin, except through the
law: for I had not known coveting, except the law had said, Thou shalt not
covet”. Whatever might be his experience with the rest of the Law, it was
the tenth commandment, which literally translated is: “Thou shalt not
desire...” that found him out. There his total failure and incapacity
stared him in the face!
The more we try to keep the Law the more our weakness is manifest and the
deeper we get into Romans 7, until it is clearly demonstrated to us that we
are hopelessly weak. God knew it all along but we did not, and so God had to
bring us through painful experiences to a recognition of the fact. We need
to have our weakness proved to ourselves beyond dispute. That is why God
gave us the Law.
So we can say, reverently, that God never gave us the Law to keep; He gave
us the Law to break! He well knew that we could not keep it. We are so bad
that He asks no favour and makes no demands. Never has any man succeeded in
making himself acceptable to God by means of the Law. Nowhere in the New
Testament are men of faith told that they are to keep the Law; but it does
say that the Law was given so that there should be transgression. “The law
came in... that the trespass might abound” (Rom. 5:20). The Law was given
to make us law-breakers! No doubt I am a sinner in Adam; “Howbeit, I had
not know sin, except through the law: ...for apart from the law sin is dead.
.. but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died” (Rom. 7:7-9).
The Law is that which exposes our true nature. Alas, we are so conceited,
and think ourselves so strong, that God has to give us something to test us
and prove how weak we are. At last we see it and confess: ‘I am a sinner
through and through, and I can of myself do nothing whatever to please God.’
No, the Law was not given in the expectation that we would keep it. It was
given in the full knowledge that we would break it; and when we have broken
it so completely that we are convinced of our utter need, then the Law has
served its purpose. It has been our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ, that
He Himself may fulfill it in us (Gal. 3:24).

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: chapter 9.1 The Flesh And Man’s Breakdown
: Romans 7 has a new lesson to teach us. It is found in the discovery that I
: am “in the flesh” (Rom. 7:5), that “I am carnal” (7:18). This goes
: beyond the question of sin, for it relates also the matter of pleasing God.
: We are dealing here not with sin in its forms but with man in his carnal
: state. The latter includes the former but it takes us a stage further, for
: it leads to the discovery that in this realm too we are totally impotent,
: and that “they that are in the flesh cannot please God” (Rom. 8:8). How
: then is this discovery made? It is made with the help of the Law.
: Now let us retrace our steps for a minute and attempt to describe what is

l**********t
发帖数: 5754
57
chapter 9.3 Christ The End Of The Law
In Romans 6 we saw how God delivered us from sin; in Romans 7 we see how He
delivers us from the Law. In chapter 6 we were shown the way of deliverance
from sin in the picture of a master and his slave; in chapter 7 we are shown
the way of deliverance from the Law in the picture of two husbands and a
wife. The relation between sin and the sinner is that of master to slave;
the relation between the Law and the sinner is that of husband to wife.
Notice first that in the picture in Romans 7:1-4 by which Paul illustrates
our deliverance from the Law there is only one woman, while there are two
husbands. The woman is in a very difficult position, for she can only be
wife of one of the two, and unfortunately she is married to the less
desirable one. Let us make no mistake, the man to whom she is married is a
good man; but the trouble lies here, that the husband and wife are totally
unsuited to one another. He is a most particular man, accurate to a degree;
she on the other hand is decidedly easy-going. With him all is definite and
precise; with her all is vague and haphazard. He wants everything just so,
while she accepts things as they come. How could there be happiness in such
a home?
And then that husband is so exacting! He is always making demands on his
wife. And yet one cannot find fault with him, for as a husband he has a
right to expect something of her; and besides, all his demands are perfectly
legitimate. There is nothing wrong with the man and nothing wrong with his
demands; the trouble is that he has the wrong kind of wife to carry them out
. The two cannot get on at all; theirs are utterly incompatible natures.
Thus the poor woman is in great distress. She is fully aware that she often
makes mistakes, but living with such a husband it seems as though everything
she says and does is wrong! What hope is there for her? If only she were
married to that other Man all would be well. He is no less exacting than her
husband, but He also helps much. She would fain marry Him, but her husband
is still alive. What can she do? She is “bound by law to the husband” and
unless he dies she cannot legitimately marry that other Man.
This picture is not drawn by me but by the apostle Paul. The first husband
is the Law; the second husband is Christ; and you are the woman. The Law
requires much, but offers no help in the carrying out of its requirements.
The Lord Jesus requires just as much, yea more (Matt. 5:21-48) but what He
requires from us He Himself carries out in us. The Law makes demands and
leaves us helpless to fulfill them; Christ makes demands, but He Himself
fulfills in us the very demands He makes. Little wonder that the woman
desires to be freed from the first husband that she may marry that other Man
! But her only hope of release is through the death of her first husband,
and he holds on to life most tenaciously. Indeed there is not the least
prospect of his passing away. “Till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or
one tittle shall in no wise pass away from the law, till all things be
accomplished (Matt. 5:18).
The Law is going to continue for all eternity. If the Law will never pass
away, then how can I ever be united to Christ? How can I marry a second
husband if my first husband simply refuses to die? There is one way out. If
he will not die, I can die, and if I die the marriage relationship is
dissolved. And that is exactly God’s way of deliverance from the Law. The
most important point to note in this section of Romans 7 is the transition
from verse 3 to verse 4. Verses 1 to 3 show that the husband should die, but
in verse 4 we see that in fact it is the woman who dies. The Law does not
pass away. God’s righteous demands remain for ever, and if I live I must
meet those demands; but if I die the Law has lost its claim upon me. It
cannot follow me beyond the grave.
Exactly the same principle operates in our deliverance from the Law as in
our deliverance from sin. When I have died my old master, Sin, still
continues to live, but his power over his slave extends as far as the grave
and no further. He could ask me to do a hundred and one things when I was
alive, but when I am dead he calls on me in vain. I am for ever freed from
his tyranny. So it is with regard to the Law. While the woman lives she is
bound to her husband, but with her death the marriage bond is dissolved and
she is “discharged from the law of her husband”. The Law may still make
demands, but for me its power to enforce them is ended.
Now the vital question arises: ‘How do I die?’ And the preciousness of our
Lord’s work comes in just here: “Ye also were made dead to the law
through the body of Christ” (Rom. 7:4). When Christ died His body was
broken, and since God placed me in Him (1 Cor. 1:30), I have been broken too
. When He was crucified, I was crucified with Him.
An Old Testament illustration may help to make this clear. It was the veil
of testimony that separated the Holy Place from the Most Holy Place, and
upon it were embroidered cherubim (Exod. 26:31; 2 Chron. 3:14) whose faces,
by analogy from Ezekiel 1:10 and 10:14, included that of a man as
representing the human head of the whole natural creation (Psalm 8:4-8). In
Old Testament days God dwelt within the veil and man without. Man could look
upon the veil, but not within it. That veil symbolized our Lord’s flesh,
His body (Heb. 10:20). So in the Gospels men could only look upon the
outward form of our Lord; they could not, save by Divine revelation (Matt.
16:16, 17), see the God who dwelt within. But when the Lord Jesus died, the
veil of the temple was rent from top to bottom (Matt. 27:51) as by the hand
of God, so that man could gaze right into the Most Holy Place. Since the
death of the Lord Jesus, God is no longer veiled but seeks to reveal Himself
(1 Cor. 2:7-10).
But when the veil was rent asunder, what happened to the cherubim? God rent
only the veil, it is true, but the cherubim were there in the veil and were
one with it, for they were embroidered upon it. It was impossible to rend
the veil and preserve them whole. When the veil was rent the cherubim were
rent with it. And, in the sight of God, when the Lord Jesus died the whole
living creation died too.
“Wherefore, my brethren, ye also were made dead to the law through the body
of Christ.” That woman’s husband may be very well and strong, but if she
dies he may make as many demands upon her as he likes; it will not affect
her in the slightest. Death has set her free from all her husband’s claims.
We were in the Lord Jesus when He died, and that inclusive death of His has
for ever freed us from the Law. But our Lord did not remain in the grave.
On the third day He rose again; and since we are still in Him we are risen
too. The body of the Lord Jesus speaks not only of His death but of His
resurrection, for His resurrection was a bodily resurrection. Thus “through
the body of Christ” we are not only “dead to the law’ but alive unto God.
God’s purpose in uniting us to Christ was not merely negative; it was
gloriously positive—“that ye should be joined to another” (Rom. 7:4).
Death has dissolved the old marriage relationship, so that the woman, driven
to despair by the constant demands of her former husband, who never lifted
a little finger to help her carry them out, is now set free to marry the
other Man, who with every demand He makes becomes in her the power for its
fulfillment.
And what is the issue of this new union? “That we might bring forth fruit
unto God” (Rom. 7:4). By the body of Christ that foolish, sinful woman has
died, but being united to Him in death she is united to Him in resurrection
also, and in the power of resurrection life she brings forth fruit unto God.
The risen life of the Lord in her empowers her for all the demands God’s
holiness makes upon her. The Law of God is not annulled; it is perfectly
fulfilled, for the risen Lord now lives out His life in her, and His life is
always well-pleasing to the Father.
What happens when a woman marries? She no longer bears her own name but that
of her husband; and she shares not his name only but his possessions too.
So it is when we are joined to Christ. When we belong to Him, all that is
His becomes ours, and with His infinite resources at our disposal we are
well able to meet all His demands.

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: chapter 9.2 What The Law Teaches
: Many Christians are suddenly launched into the experience of Romans 7 and
: they do not know why. They fancy Romans 6 is quite enough. Having grasped
: that, they think there can be no more question of failure, and then to their
: utmost surprise they suddenly find themselves in Romans 7. What is the
: explanation?
: First let us be quite clear that the death with Christ described in Romans 6
: is fully adequate to cover all our need. It is the explanation of that
: death, with all that follows from it, that is incomplete in chapter 6. We
: are as yet still in ignorance of the truth set forth in chapter 7. Romans 7

l**********t
发帖数: 5754
58
chapter 9.4 Our End Is God’s Beginning
Now that we have settled the doctrinal side of the question we must come
down to practical issues, staying a little longer with the negative aspect
and keeping the positive for our next chapter. What does it mean in everyday
life to be delivered from the Law? At the risk of a little overstatement, I
reply, “It means that from henceforth I am going to do nothing whatever
for God: I am never again going to try to please Him.” ‘What a doctrine!’
you exclaim. ‘What awful heresy! You cannot possibly mean that!’
But remember, if I try to please God ‘in the flesh’, then immediately I
place myself under the Law. I broke the Law; the Law pronounced the death
sentence; the sentence was executed, and now by death I—the carnal ‘I’ (
Rom. 7:14)—have been set free from all its claims. There is still a Law of
God, and now there is in fact a “new commandment” that is infinitely more
exacting than the old, but, Praise God! its demands are being met, for it is
Christ who now fulfills them; it is Christ who works in me what is well-
pleasing to God. “I came... to fulfill {the law}” were His words (Matt. 5:
17). Thus Paul, from the ground of resurrection, can say: “Work out your
own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God which worketh in you
both to will and to work, for his good pleasure” (Phil. 2:12, 13).
It is God that worketh in you. Deliverance from law does not mean that we
are free from doing the will of God. It certainly does not mean that we are
going to be lawless. Very much the reverse! What it does mean however is
that we are free from doing that will as of ourselves. Being fully persuaded
that we cannot do it, we cease trying to please God from the ground of the
old man. Having at last reached the point of utter despair in ourselves so
that we cease even to try, we put our trust in the Lord to manifest His
resurrection life in us.
Let me illustrate by what I have seen in my own country. In China some
bearers can carry a load of salt weighing 120 kilos, some even 250 kilos.
Now along comes a man who can carry only 120 kilos, and here is a load of
250 kilos. He knows perfectly well he cannot carry it, and if he is wise he
will say: ‘I won’t touch it!’ But the temptation to try is ingrained in
human nature, so although he cannot possibly carry it he still tries. As a
youngster I used to amuse myself watching ten or twenty of these fellows
come along and try, though every one of them knew he could not possibly
manage it. In the end he must give up and make way for the man who could.
The sooner we too give up trying the better, for if we monopolize the task,
then there is no room for the Holy Spirit. But if we say: ‘I’ll not do it;
I’ll trust Thee to do it for me’, then we shall find that a Power
stronger than ourselves is carrying us through.
In 1923 I met a famous Canadian evangelist. I had said in an address
something along the above lines, and as we walked back to his home
afterwards he remarked: ‘The note of Romans 7 is seldom sounded nowadays;
it is good to hear it again. The day I was delivered from the Law was a day
of Heaven on earth. After being a Christian for years I was still trying my
best to please God, but the more I tried the more I failed. I regarded God
as the greatest Demander in the universe, but I found myself impotent to
fulfill the least of His demands. Suddenly one day, as I read Romans 7,
light dawned and I saw that I had not only been delivered from sin but from
the Law as well. In my amazement I jumped up and said: “Lord, are you
really making no demands on me? Then I need do nothing more for You!”
God’s requirements have not altered, but we are not the ones to meet them.
Praise God, He is the Lawgiver on the Throne, and He is the Lawkeeper in my
heart. He who gave the Law, Himself keeps it. He makes the demands, but He
also meets them. My friend could well jump up and shout when he found he had
nothing to do, and all who make a like discovery can do the same. As long
as we are trying to do anything, He can do nothing. It is because of our
trying that we fail and fail and fail. God wants to demonstrate to us that
we can do nothing at all, and until that is fully recognized our
disappointments and disillusionments will never cease.
A brother who was trying to struggle into victory remarked to me, ‘I do not
know why I am so weak.’ ‘The trouble with you’, I said, ‘is that you
are weak enough not to do the will of God, but you are not weak enough to
keep out of things altogether. You are still not weak enough. When you are
reduced to utter weakness and are persuaded that you can do nothing whatever
, then God will do everything.’ We all need to come to the point where we
say: ‘Lord, I am unable to do anything for Thee, but I trust Thee to do
everything in me.’
I was once staying in a place in China with some twenty other brothers.
There was inadequate provision for bathing in the home where we stayed, so
we went for a daily plunge in the river. On one occasion a brother had cramp
in one leg, and I suddenly saw he was sinking fast, so I motioned to
another brother, who was an expert swimmer, to hasten to his rescue. But to
my astonishment he made no move. So I grew desperate and called out: ‘Don’
t you see the man is drowning?’ and the other brothers, about as agitated
as I was, shouted vigorously too. But our good swimmer still did not move.
Calm and collected, he remained just where he was, apparently postponing the
unwelcome task. Meantime the voice of the poor drowning brother grew
fainter and his efforts feebler. In my heart I said: ‘I hate that man!
Think of his letting a brother drown before his very eyes and not going to
the rescue!’
But when the man was actually sinking, with a few swift strokes the swimmer
was at his side, and both were safely ashore. When I got an opportunity I
aired my views. ‘I have never seen any Christian who loved his life quite
as much as you do’, I said. ‘Think of the distress you would have saved
that brother if you had considered yourself a little less and him a little
more.’ But the swimmer knew his business better than I did. ‘Had I gone
earlier’, he said, ‘he would have clutched me so fast that both of us
would have gone under. A drowning man cannot be saved until he is utterly
exhausted and ceases to make the slightest effort to save himself.’
Do you see it? When we give up the case, then God will take it up. He is
waiting until we are at an end of our resources and can do nothing more for
ourselves. God has condemned all that is of the old creation and consigned
it to the Cross. The flesh profiteth nothing! If we try to do anything in
the flesh we are virtually repudiating the Cross of Christ. God has declared
us to be fit only for death. When we truly believe that, then we confirm
God’s verdict by giving up all our fleshly efforts to please Him. Our every
effort to do His will is a denial of His declaration in the Cross of our
utter worthlessness. Our continued efforts are a misunderstanding on the one
hand of God’s demands and on the other hand of the source of supply.
We see the Law and we think that we must meet its demands, but we need to
remember that, though the Law in itself is all right, it will be all wrong
if it is applied to the wrong person. The “wretched man” of Romans 7 tried
to meet the demands of God’s law himself, and that was the cause of his
trouble. The repeated use of the little word ‘I’ in this chapter gives the
clue to the failure. “The good which I would I do not: but the evil which
I would not, that I practice” (Rom. 7:19). There was a fundamental
misconception in this man’s mind. He thought God was asking him to keep the
Law, so of course he was trying to keep it. But God was requiring no such
thing of him. What was the result? Far from doing what pleased God, he found
himself doing what displeased Him. In his very efforts to do the will of
God he did exactly the opposite of what he knew to be His will.

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: chapter 9.3 Christ The End Of The Law
: In Romans 6 we saw how God delivered us from sin; in Romans 7 we see how He
: delivers us from the Law. In chapter 6 we were shown the way of deliverance
: from sin in the picture of a master and his slave; in chapter 7 we are shown
: the way of deliverance from the Law in the picture of two husbands and a
: wife. The relation between sin and the sinner is that of master to slave;
: the relation between the Law and the sinner is that of husband to wife.
: Notice first that in the picture in Romans 7:1-4 by which Paul illustrates
: our deliverance from the Law there is only one woman, while there are two
: husbands. The woman is in a very difficult position, for she can only be

l**********t
发帖数: 5754
59
chapter 9.5 I Thank God!
Romans 6 deals with “the body of sin”, Romans 7 with “the body of this
death” (6:6; 7:24). In chapter 6 the whole question before us is sin; in
chapter 7 the whole question before us is death. What is the difference
between the body of sin and the body of death? In regard to sin (that is, to
whatever displeases God) I have a body of sin—a body, that is to say,
which is actively engaged in sin. But in regard to the Law of God (that is,
to that which expresses the will of God) I have a body of death. My activity
in regard to sin makes my body a body of sin; my failure in regard to all
that is wicked, worldly and Satanic I am, in my nature, wholly positive; but
in regard to all that pertains to holiness and Heaven and God I am wholly
negative.
Have you discovered the truth of that in your life? It is no good merely to
discover it in Romans 6 and 7. Have you discovered that you carry the
encumbrance of a lifeless body in regard to God’s will? You have no
difficulty in speaking about wordly matters, but when you try to speak for
the Lord you are tongue-tied; when you try to pray you feel sleepy; when you
try to do something for the Lord you feel unwell. You can do anything but
that which is related to God’s will. There is something in this body that
does not harmonize with the will of God.
What does death mean? We may illustrate from a well-known verse in the first
letter to the Corinthians: “For this cause many among you are weak and
sickly, and not a few sleep” (1 Corinthians 11:30). Death is weakness
produced to its extremity - weakness, sickness, death. Death means utter
weakness; it means you are weak to such a point that you can become no
weaker. That I have a body of death in relation to God’s will means that I
am so weak in regard to serving God, so utterly weak, that I am reduced to a
point of dire helplessness. “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver
me out of the body of this death?” cried Paul, and it is good when anyone
cries out as he did. There is nothing more musical in the ears of the Lord.
This cry is the most spiritual and the most scriptural cry a man can utter.
He only utters it when he knows he can do nothing, and gives up making any
further resolutions. Up to this point, every time he failed he made a new
resolution and doubled and redoubled his will-power. At last he discovers
there is no use in his making up his mind any more, and he cries out in
desperation: “O wretched man that I am !” Like a man who suddenly awakes
to find himself in a burning building, his cry is now for help, for he has
come to the point where he despairs of himself.
Have you despaired of yourself, or do you hope that if you read and pray
more you will be a better Christian? Bible-reading and prayer are not wrong,
and God forbid that we should suggest that they are, but it is wrong to
trust even in them for victory. Our help is in Him who is the object of that
reading and prayer. Our trust must be in Christ alone. Happily the “
wretched man” does not merely deplore his wretchedness; he asks a fine
question, namely: “Who shall deliver me?” “Who?” Hitherto he has looked
for some thing; now his hope is in a Person. Hitherto he has looked within
for a solution to his problem; now he looks beyond himself for a Savior. He
no longer puts forth self-effort; all his expectation is now in Another.
How did we obtain forgiveness of sins? Was it by reading, praying,
almsgiving, and so on? No, we looked to the Cross, believing in what the
Lord Jesus had done; and deliverance from sin becomes ours on exactly the
same principle, nor is it otherwise with the question of pleasing God. In
the matter of forgiveness we look to Him on the Cross; in the matter of
deliverance from sin and of doing the will of God we look to Him in our
hearts. For the one we depend on what He has done; for the other we depend
on what He will do in us; but in regard to both, our dependence is on Him
alone. He is the One who does it all.
At the time when the Epistle to the Romans was written a murderer was
punished in a peculiar and terrible manner. The dead body of the one
murdered was tied to the living body of the murderer, head to head, hand to
hand, foot to foot, and the living one was bound to the dead one till death.
The murderer could go where he pleased, but wherever he went he had to
carry the corpse of that murdered man with him. Could punishment be more
appalling? Yet this is the illustration Paul now uses. It is as though he
were bound to a dead body and unable to get free. Wherever he goes he is
hampered by this terrible burden. At last he can bear it no longer and cries
flash of illumination, his cry of despair changes to a song of praise. He
has found the answer to his question. “I thank God through Jesus Christ our
Lord” (Rom. 7:25).
We know that justification is ours through the Lord Jesus and requires no
work on our part, but we think sanctification is dependent on our own
efforts. We know we can receive forgiveness only by entire reliance on the
Lord; yet we believe we can obtain deliverance by doing something ourselves.
We fear that if we do nothing, nothing will happen. After salvation the old
habit of ‘doing’ reasserts itself and we begin our old self-efforts again
. Then God’s word comes afresh to us: “It is finished” (John 19:30). He
has done everything on the Cross for our forgiveness and He will do
everything in us for our deliverance. In both cases He is the doer. “It is
God that worketh in you.”
The first words of the delivered man are very precious—“I thank God”. If
someone gives you a cup of water you thank the person who gave it, not
someone else. Why did Paul say “Thank God”? Because God was the One who
did everything. Had it been Paul who did it, he would have said, “Thank
Paul”. But he saw that Paul was a “wretched man” and that God alone could
meet his need; so he said, “Thank God”. God wants to do all, for He must
have all the glory. If we do some of the work, then we will get some of the
glory; but God must have it all Himself, so He does all the work from
beginning to end.
What we have said in this chapter might seem negative and unpractical if we
were to stop at this point, as though the Christian life were a matter of
sitting still and waiting for something to happen. Of course it is very far
from being so. All who truly live it know it to be a matter of very positive
and active faith in Christ and in an altogether new principle of life—the
law of the Spirit of life. We are now going to look at the effects in us of
this new life principle.
R*o
发帖数: 3781
60
zan

to
,
activity
but

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: chapter 9.5 I Thank God!
: Romans 6 deals with “the body of sin”, Romans 7 with “the body of this
: death” (6:6; 7:24). In chapter 6 the whole question before us is sin; in
: chapter 7 the whole question before us is death. What is the difference
: between the body of sin and the body of death? In regard to sin (that is, to
: whatever displeases God) I have a body of sin—a body, that is to say,
: which is actively engaged in sin. But in regard to the Law of God (that is,
: to that which expresses the will of God) I have a body of death. My activity
: in regard to sin makes my body a body of sin; my failure in regard to all
: that is wicked, worldly and Satanic I am, in my nature, wholly positive; but

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l**********t
发帖数: 5754
61
Chapter 10: The Path of Progress: Walking In The Spirit
Coming now to Romans 8 we may first summarize the argument of our second
section of the letter from chapter 5:12 to chapter 8:39 in two phrases, each
containing a contrast and each marking an aspect of Christian experience.
The are: Romans 5:12 to 6:23: ‘In Adam’ and ‘in Christ’. Romans 7:1 to 8
:39: ‘In the flesh’ and ‘in the Spirit’.
We need to understand the relationship of these four things. The former two
are ‘objective’ and set forth our position, firstly as we were by nature
and secondly as we now are by faith in the redemptive work of Christ. The
latter two are ‘subjective’ and relate to our walk as a matter of
practical experience. Scripture makes it clear that the first two give us
only a part of the picture and that the second two are required to complete
it. We think it enough to be “in Christ”, but we learn now that we must
also walk “in the Spirit” (Rom. 8:9). The frequent occurrence of “the
Spirit” in the early part of Romans 8 serves to emphasize this further
important lesson of the Christian life.

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: chapter 9.5 I Thank God!
: Romans 6 deals with “the body of sin”, Romans 7 with “the body of this
: death” (6:6; 7:24). In chapter 6 the whole question before us is sin; in
: chapter 7 the whole question before us is death. What is the difference
: between the body of sin and the body of death? In regard to sin (that is, to
: whatever displeases God) I have a body of sin—a body, that is to say,
: which is actively engaged in sin. But in regard to the Law of God (that is,
: to that which expresses the will of God) I have a body of death. My activity
: in regard to sin makes my body a body of sin; my failure in regard to all
: that is wicked, worldly and Satanic I am, in my nature, wholly positive; but

l**********t
发帖数: 5754
62
Chapter 10.1 The Flesh And The Spirit
The flesh is linked with Adam; the Spirit with Christ. Leaving aside
now as settled the question of whether we are in Adam or in Christ, we
must ask ourselves: Am I living in the flesh or in the Spirit?
To live in the flesh is to do something out from' [13] myself as in
Adam. It is to derive strength from the old natural source of life that
I inherited from him, so that I enjoy in experience all Adam's very
complete provision for sinning which all of us have found so effective.
Now the same is true of what is in Christ. To enjoy in experience what
is true of me as in Him, I must learn what it is to walk in the Spirit.
It is a historic fact that in Christ my old man was crucified, and it
is a present fact that I am blessed "with every spiritual blessing in
the heavenly places in Christ" (Eph. 1:3); but if I do not live in the
Spirit, then my life may be quite a contradiction of the fact that I am
in Christ, for what is true of me in Him is not expressed in me. I may
recognize that I am in Christ, but I may also have to face the fact
that my old temper is very much in evidence.
What is the trouble? It is that I am holding the truth merely
objectively, whereas what is true objectively must be made true
subjectively; and that is brought about as I live in the Spirit.
Not only am I in Christ, but Christ is in me. And just as physically a
man cannot live and work in water but only in air, so spiritually
Christ dwells and manifests Himself not in flesh' but in spirit'.
Therefore if I live "after the flesh" I find that what is mine in
Christ is, so to say, held in suspense in me. Though in fact I am in
Christ, yet if I live in the flesh--that is, in my own strength and
under my own direction--then in experience I find to my dismay that it
is what is in Adam that manifests itself in me. If I would know in
experience all that is in Christ, then I must learn to live in the
Spirit.
Living in the Spirit means that I trust the Holy Spirit to do in me
what I cannot do myself. This life is completely different from the
life I would naturally live of myself. Each time I am faced with a new
demand from the Lord, I look to Him to do in me what He requires of me.
It is not a case of trying but of trusting; not of struggling but of
resting in Him. If I have a hasty temper, impure thoughts, a quick
tongue or a critical spirit, I shall not set out with a determined
effort to change myself, but, reckoning myself dead in Christ to these
things, I shall look to the Spirit of God to produce in me the needed
purity or humility or meekness. This is what it means to "stand still,
and see the salvation of the Lord, which he will work for you" (Exod.
14:13).
Some of you have no doubt had an experience something like the
following. You have been asked to go and see a friend, and you knew the
friend was not very friendly, but you trusted the Lord to see you
through. You told Him before you set out that in yourself you could not
but fail, and you asked Him for all that was needed. Then, to your
surprise, you did not feel at all irritated, though your friend was far
from gracious. On your return you thought over the experience and
marveled that you kept so calm, and you wondered if you would be just
as calm next time. You were amazed at yourself and sought an
explanation. This is the explanation: the Holy Spirit carried you
through.
Unfortunately we only have this kind of experience once in while, but
it should be a constant experience. When the Holy Spirit takes things
in hand there is no need for strain on our part. It is not a case of
clenching our teeth and thinking that thus we have controlled ourselves
beautifully and have had a glorious victory. No, where there is a real
victory there is no fleshly effort. We are gloriously carried through
by the Lord.
The object of temptation is always to get us to do something. During
the first three months of the Japanese war in China we lost a great
many tanks and so were unable to deal with the Japanese tanks, until
the following scheme was devised. A single shot would be fired at a
Japanese tank by one of our snipers in ambush. After a considerable
lapse of time the first shot would be followed by a second; then, after
a further silence, by another shot; until the tank driver, eager to
locate the source of the disturbance, would pop his head out to look
around. The next shot, carefully aimed, would put an end to him.
As long as he remained under cover he was perfectly safe. The whole
scheme was devised to bring him out into the open. In the same way,
Satan's temptations are not primarily to make us do something
particularly sinful, but merely to cause us to act in our own energy;
and as soon as we step out of our hiding-place to do something on that
basis, he has gained the victory over us. If we do not move, if we do
not come out of the cover of Christ into the realm of the flesh, then
he cannot get us.
The Divine way of victory does not permit of our doing anything at
all--anything, that is to say, outside of Christ. This is because as
soon as we move we run into danger, for our natural inclinations take
us in the wrong direction. Where, then, are we to look for help? Turn
now to Galatians 5:17: "The flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the
Spirit against the flesh". In other words, the flesh does not fight
against us but against the Holy Spirit, "for these are contrary the one
to the other", and it is He, not we, who meets and deals with the
flesh. What is the result? "That ye may not do the things that ye
would."
I think we have often understood that last clause of this verse in a
wrong sense. Let us consider what it means. What would we do'
naturally? We would move off on some course of action dictated by our
own instincts and apart from the will of God. The effect then of our
refusal to act out from ourselves is that the Holy Spirit is free to
meet and deal with the flesh in us, with the result that we shall not
do what we naturally would do; that is, we shall not act according to
our natural inclinations; we shall not go off on a course and plan of
our own: but shall find instead our satisfaction in His perfect plan.
Hence we have the principle: "Walk by the Spirit, and ye shall not
fulfill the lust of the flesh" (Gal. 5:16). If we live in the Spirit,
if we walk by faith in the risen Christ, we can truly stand aside'
while the Spirit gains new victories over the flesh every day. He has
been given to us to take charge of this business. Our victory lies in
hiding in Christ, and in counting in simple trust upon His Holy Spirit
to overcome in us our fleshly lusts with His own new desires. The Cross
has been given to procure salvation for us; the Spirit has been given
to produce salvation in us. Christ risen and ascended is the basis of
our salvation; Christ in our hearts by the Spirit is its power.
__________________________________________________________________
[13] The author has in mind the Greek preposition ek, the sense of
which is not easily conveyed by any single English word.--Ed.
________________________________________________________________

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: Chapter 10: The Path of Progress: Walking In The Spirit
: Coming now to Romans 8 we may first summarize the argument of our second
: section of the letter from chapter 5:12 to chapter 8:39 in two phrases, each
: containing a contrast and each marking an aspect of Christian experience.
: The are: Romans 5:12 to 6:23: ‘In Adam’ and ‘in Christ’. Romans 7:1 to 8
: :39: ‘In the flesh’ and ‘in the Spirit’.
: We need to understand the relationship of these four things. The former two
: are ‘objective’ and set forth our position, firstly as we were by nature
: and secondly as we now are by faith in the redemptive work of Christ. The
: latter two are ‘subjective’ and relate to our walk as a matter of

l**********t
发帖数: 5754
63
chapter 10.2 Christ Our Life
“I thank God through Jesus Christ”! That exclamation of Paul’s is
fundamentally the same as his other words in Galatians 2:20 which we have
taken as the key to our study: “I live; and yet no longer I, but Christ“.
We saw how prominent is the word ‘I’ throughout his argument in Romans 7,
culminating in the agonized cry: “O wretched man that I am!” Then follows
the shout of deliverance: “Thank God... Jesus Christ”! and it is clear
that the discovery Paul has made is this, that the life we live is the life
of Christ alone. We think of the Christian life as a ‘changed life’, a ‘
substituted life’, and Christ is our Substitute within. “I live; and yet
no longer I, but Christ liveth in me.” This life is not something which we
ourselves have to produce. It is Christ’s own life reproduced in us.
How many Christians believe in ‘reproduction’ in this sense, as something
more than regeneration? Regeneration means that the life of Christ is
planted in us by the Holy Spirit at our new birth. ‘Reproduction’ goes
further: it means that new life grows and becomes manifest progressively in
us, until the very likeness of Christ begins to be reproduced in our lives.
That is what Paul means when he speaks of his travail for the Galatians “
until Christ be formed in you” (Gal. 4:19).
Let me illustrate with another story. I once arrived in America in the home
of a saved couple who requested me to pray for them. I inquired the case of
their trouble. ‘Oh, Mr. Nee, we have been in a bad way lately’, they
confessed. ‘We are so easily irritated by the children, and during the past
few weeks we have both lost our tempers several times a day. We are really
dishonoring the Lord. Will you ask Him to give us patience?’ ‘That is the
one thing I cannot do’, I said. ‘What do you mean?’ they asked. ‘I mean
that one thing is certain’, I answered, ‘and that is that God is not going
to answer your prayer.’ At that they said in amazement, ‘Do you mean to
tell us we have gone so far that God is not willing to hear us when we ask
Him to make us patient?’ ‘No, I do not mean quite that, but I would like
to ask you if you have ever prayed in this respect. You have. But did God
answer? No! Do you know why? Because you have no need of patience.’ Then
the eyes of the wife blazed up. She said, ‘What do you mean? We do not need
patience, and yet we get irritated the whole day long! What do you mean?’
‘It is not patience you have need of’, I answered, ‘it is Christ.’
God will not give me humility or patience or holiness or love as separate
gifts of His grace. He is not a retailer dispensing grace to us in doses,
measuring out some patience to the impatient, some love to the unloving,
some meekness to the proud, in quantities that we take and work on as kind
of capital. He has given only one gift to meet all our need—His Son Christ
Jesus, and as I look to Him to live out His life in me, He will be humble
and patient and loving and everything else I need—in my stead. Remember the
word in the first Epistle of John: “God gave unto us eternal life, and
this life is in his Son. He that hath the Son hath the life; and he that
hath not the Son of God hath not the life” (1 John 5:11, 12). The life of
God is not given us as a separate item; the life of God is given us in the
Son. It is “eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 6:23). Our
relationship to the Son is our relationship to the life.
It is a blessed thing to discover the difference between Christian graces
and Christ: to know the difference between meekness and Christ, between
patience and Christ, between love and Christ. Remember again what is said in
1 Corinthians 1:30: “Christ Jesus... was made unto us wisdom from God, and
righteousness and sanctification, and redemption.” The common conception
of sanctification is that every item of the life should be holy; but that is
not holiness, it is the fruit of holiness. Holiness is Christ. It is the
Lord Jesus being made over to us to be that. So you can put in anything
there: love, humility, power, self-control. Today there is a call for
patience: He is our patience! Tomorrow the call may be for purity: He is our
purity! He is the answer to every need. That is why Paul speaks of “the
fruit of the Spirit” as one (Gal. 5:22) and not of ‘fruits’ as separate
items. God has given us His Holy Spirit, and when love is needed the fruit
of the Spirit is love; when joy is needed the fruit of the Spirit is joy. It
is always true. It does not matter what your personal deficiency, or
whether it is a hundred and one different things, God has one sufficient
answer—His Son Jesus Christ, and He is the answer to every human need.
How can we know more of Christ in this way? Only by way of an increasing
awareness of need. Some are afraid to discover deficiency in themselves and
so they never grow. Growth in grace is the only sense in which we can grow,
and grace, we have said, is God doing something for us. We all have the same
Christ dwelling within, but revelation of some new need will lead us
spontaneously to trust Him to live out His life in us in that particular.
Greater capacity means greater enjoyment of God’s supply. Another letting
go, a fresh trusting in Christ, and another stretch of land is conquered. ‘
Christ my life’ is the secret of enlargement.
We have spoken of trying and trusting, and the difference between the two.
Believe me, it is the difference between Heaven and hell. It is not
something just to be talked over as a good thought; it is stark reality. ‘
Lord, I cannot do it, therefore I will no longer try to do it.’ This is the
point where most of us fail. ‘Lord, I cannot; therefore I will take my
hands off; from now on I trust Thee for that.’ I refuse to act; I depend on
Him to act and then I enter fully and joyfully into the action He initiates
. It is not passivity; it is a most active life, trusting the Lord like that
; drawing life from Him, taking Him to be my very life, letting Him out His
life in me.

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: Chapter 10.1 The Flesh And The Spirit
: The flesh is linked with Adam; the Spirit with Christ. Leaving aside
: now as settled the question of whether we are in Adam or in Christ, we
: must ask ourselves: Am I living in the flesh or in the Spirit?
: To live in the flesh is to do something out from' [13] myself as in
: Adam. It is to derive strength from the old natural source of life that
: I inherited from him, so that I enjoy in experience all Adam's very
: complete provision for sinning which all of us have found so effective.
: Now the same is true of what is in Christ. To enjoy in experience what
: is true of me as in Him, I must learn what it is to walk in the Spirit.

l**********t
发帖数: 5754
64
chapter 10.3 The Law Of This Spirit Of Life
“There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus,
who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. For the law of the
Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made free from the law of sin and death
” (Rom. 8:1, 2, A.V.).
It is in chapter 8 that Paul presents to us in detail the positive side of
life in the Spirit. “There is therefore now no condemnation”, he begins,
and this statement may at first seem out of place here. Surely condemnation
was met by the Blood through which we found peace with God and salvation
from wrath (Rom. 5:1, 9). But there are two kinds of condemnation, namely,
that before God and that before myself (just as earlier we saw there are two
kinds of peace) and the second may at times seem to us even more awful than
the first. When I see that the Blood of Christ has satisfied God, then I
know my sins are forgiven, and there is for me no more condemnation before
God. Yet I may still be knowing defeat, and the sense of inward condemnation
on this account may be very real, as Romans 7 shows. But if I have learned
to live by Christ as my life, then I have learned the secret of victory, and
, praise God! “there is therefore now no condemnation”. “The mind of the
spirit is life and peace” (Rom. 8:6), and this becomes my experience as I
learn to walk in the Spirit. With peace in my heart I have no time to feel
condemned, but only to praise Him who leads me on from victory to victory.
But what lay behind my sense of condemnation? Was it not the experience of
defeat and the sense of helplessness to do anything about it? Before I saw
that Christ is my life, I labored under a constant sense of handicap;
limitation dogged my steps; I felt disabled at every turn. I was always
crying out: ‘I cannot do this! I cannot do that!’ Try as I would, I found
that I “cannot please God” (Rom. 8:8). But there is no ‘I cannot’ in
Christ. Now it is: “I can do all things in him that strengtheneth me” (
Phil. 4:13).
How can Paul be so daring? On what ground does he declare that he is now
free from limitation and “can do all things”? Here is his answer: “For
the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus made me free from the law of
sin and of death” (Rom. 8:2). Why is there no more condemnation? “For ...
”: there is a reason for it; there is something definite to account for it.
The reason is that there is a law called “the law of the Spirit of life”
and it has proved stronger than another law called ‘the law of sin and
death”. What are these laws? How do they operate? And what is the
difference between sin and the law of sin, and between death and the law of
death?
First let us ask ourselves, What is a law? Well, strictly speaking, a law is
a generalization examined until it is proved that there is no exception. We
might define it more simply as something which happens over and over again.
Each time the thing happens it happens in the same way. We can illustrate
this both from statutory and from natural law. For example, in this land, if
I drive a car on the right hand side of the road the traffic police will
stop me. Why? Because it is against the law of the land. If you do it you
will be stopped too. Why? For the same reason that I would be stopped: it is
against the law and the law makes no exceptions. It is something which
happens repeatedly and unfailingly. Or again, we all know what is meant by
gravity. If I drop my handkerchief in London it falls to the ground. That is
the effect of gravity. But the same is true if I drop it in New York or
Hong Kong. No matter where I let it go, gravity operates, and it always
produces the same results. Whenever the same conditions prevail the same
effects are seen. There is thus a ‘law’ of gravity.
Now what of the law of sin and death? If someone passes an unkind remark
about me, at once something goes wrong inside me. That is not law; that is
sin. But if, when different people pass unkind remarks, the same ‘something
’ goes wrong inside, then I discern a law within—a law of sin. Like the
law of gravity, it is something constant. It always works the same way. And
so too with the law of death. Death, we have said, is weakness produced to
its limit. Weakness is ‘I cannot’. Now if when I try to please God in this
particular matter I find I cannot, and if when I try to please Him in that
other thing I again find I cannot, then I discern a law at work. There is
not only sin in me but a law of sin; there is not only death in me but a law
of death.
Then again, not only is gravity a law in the sense that it is constant,
admitting of no exception, but, unlike the rule of the road, it is a ‘
natural’ law and not the subject of discussion and decision but of
discovery. The law is there, and the handkerchief ‘naturally’ drops by
itself without any help from me. And the “law” discovered by the man in
Romans 7:23 is just like that. It is a law of sin and of death, opposed to
that which is good, and crippling the man’s will to do good. He ‘naturally
’ sins according to the “law of sin” in his members. He wills to be
different, but that law in him is relentless and no human will can resist it
. So this brings me to the question, How can I be set free from the law of
sin an death? I need deliverance from sin, and still more do I need
deliverance from death, but most of all I need deliverance from the law of
sin and of death. How can I be delivered from the constant repetition of
weakness and failure? In order to answer this question let us follow out our
two illustrations further.
One of our great burdens in China used to be the likin tax, a law which none
could escape, originating in the Ch’in Dynasty and operating right down to
our own day. It was an inland tax on the transit of goods, applied
throughout the empire and having numerous barriers for collection, and
officers enjoying very large powers. The result was that the charge on goods
passing through several provinces might become very heavy indeed. But a few
years ago a second law came into operation which set aside the likin law.
Can you imagine the feelings of relief in those who had suffered under the
old law? Now there was no need to think or hope or pray; the new law was
already there and had delivered us from the old law. No longer was there
need to think beforehand what one would say if one met a likin officer
tomorrow!
And as with the law of the land, so it is with natural law. How can the law
of gravity be annulled? With regard to my handkerchief that law is at work
clearly enough, pulling it down, but I have only to place my hand under the
handkerchief and it does not drop. Why? The law is still there. I do not
deal with the law of gravity; in fact I cannot deal with the law of gravity.
Then why does my handkerchief not fall to the ground? Because there is a
power keeping it from doing so. The law is there, but another law superior
to it is in operation to overcome it, namely the law of life. Gravity can do
its utmost but the handkerchief will not drop, because another law is
working against the law of gravity to maintain it there. We have all seen
the tree which was once a small seed fallen between the slabs of a paving,
and which has grown until heavy stone blocks have been lifted by the power
of the life within it. That is what we mean by the triumph of one law over
another.
In just such a manner God delivers us from one law by introducing another
law. The law of sin and death is there all the time, but God has put another
law into operation - the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus, and
that law is strong enough to deliver us from the law of sin and death. You
see, it is a law of life in Christ Jesus—the resurrection life that in Him
has met death in all its forms and triumphed over it (Eph. 1:19, 20). The
Lord Jesus dwells in our hearts in the person of His Holy Spirit, and if we
let Him have a clear way and commit ourselves to Him we shall find that He
will keep us from the old law. We shall learn what it is to be kept, not by
our own power, but “by the power of God” (1 Peter 1:5).

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: chapter 10.2 Christ Our Life
: “I thank God through Jesus Christ”! That exclamation of Paul’s is
: fundamentally the same as his other words in Galatians 2:20 which we have
: taken as the key to our study: “I live; and yet no longer I, but Christ“.
: We saw how prominent is the word ‘I’ throughout his argument in Romans 7,
: culminating in the agonized cry: “O wretched man that I am!” Then follows
: the shout of deliverance: “Thank God... Jesus Christ”! and it is clear
: that the discovery Paul has made is this, that the life we live is the life
: of Christ alone. We think of the Christian life as a ‘changed life’, a ‘
: substituted life’, and Christ is our Substitute within. “I live; and yet

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chapter 10.4 The Manifestation Of The Law Of Life
Let us seek to make this practical. We touched earlier on the matter of our
will in relation to the things of God. Even older Christians do not realize
how great a part will-power plays in their lives. That was part of Paul’s
trouble in Romans 7. His will was good, but all his actions contradicted it,
and however much he made up his mind and set himself to please God, it led
him only into worse darkness. ‘I would do good’, but “I am carnal, sold
under sin”. That is the point. Like a car without petrol, that has to be
pushed and that stops as soon as it is left alone, many Christians endeavour
to drive themselves by will-power, and then think the Christian life a most
exhausting and bitter one. Some even force themselves to say ‘Hallelujah!
’ because others do it, while admitting there is no meaning in it to them.
They force themselves to be what they are not, and it is worse than trying
to make water run up-hill. For after all, the very highest point the will
can reach is that of willingness (Matt. 26:41).
If we have to exert so much effort in our Christian living, it simply says
that we are not really like that at all. We don’t need to force ourselves
to speak our native language. In fact we only have to exert will-power in
order to do things we do not do naturally. We may do them for a time, but
the law of sin and death wins in the end. We may be able to say: ‘To will
is present with me, and I perform that which is good for two weeks’, but
eventually we shall have to confess: ‘How to perform it I know not’. No,
what I already am I do not long to be. If I “would” it is because I am not.
You ask, Why do men use will-power to try to please God? There may be two
reasons. They may of course never have experienced the new birth, in which
case they have no new life to draw upon; or they may have been born again
and the life be there, but they have not learned to trust in that life. It
is this lack of understanding that results in habitual failure and sinning,
bringing them to the place where they almost cease to believe in the
possibility of anything better.
But because we have not believed fully, that does not mean that the feeble
life we intermittently experience is all God has given us. Romans 6:23
states that “the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord
”, and now in Romans 8:2 we read that “the law of the Spirit of life in
Christ Jesus” has come to our aid. So Romans 8:2 speaks not of a new gift
but of the life already referred to in Romans 6:23. In other words, it is a
new revelation of what we already have. I feel I cannot emphasize this too
much. It is not something fresh from God’s hand, but a new unveiling of
what He has already given. It is a new discovery of a work already done in
Christ, for the words “made me free” are in the past tense. If I really
see this and put my faith in Him, there is no absolute necessity for Romans
7 to be repeated in me—either the experience or the conduct, and certainly
not the tremendous display of will-power.
If we will let go our own wills and trust Him, we shall not fall to the
ground and break, but we shall fall into a different law, the law of the
Spirit of life. For He has given us not only life but a law of life. And
just as the law of gravity is a natural law and not the result of human
legislation, so the law of life is a ‘natural’ law, similar in principle
to the law that keeps our heart beating or that controls the movement of our
eyelids. There is no need for us to think about our eyes, or to decide that
we must blink every so often to keep them cleansed; and still less do we
bring our will to bear upon our heart. Indeed to do so might rather harm
than help it. No, so long as it has life it works spontaneously. Our wills
only interfere with the law of life. I discovered that fact once in the
following way.
I used to suffer from sleeplessness. Once after several sleepless nights,
when I had prayed much about it and exhausted all my resources, I confessed
at length to God that the fault must lie with me and asked to be shown where
. I said to God: ‘I demand an explanation’. He answer was: ‘Believe in
nature’s laws’. Sleep is as much a law as hunger is, and I realized that
though I had never thought of worrying whether I would get hungry or not, I
had been worrying about sleeping. I had been trying to help nature, and that
is the chief trouble with most sufferers from sleeplessness. But now I
trusted not only God but God’s law of nature, and slept well.
Should we not read the Bible? Of course we should or our spiritual life will
suffer. But that should not mean forcing ourselves to read. There is a new
law in us which gives us a hunger for it. Then half an hour can be more
profitable than five hours of forced reading. And it is the same with giving
, with preaching, with testimony. Forced preaching is apt to result in
preaching a warm gospel with a cold heart, and we all know what men mean by
‘cold charity’.
If we will let ourselves live in the new law we shall be less conscious of
the old law. It is still there, but it is no longer governing and we are no
longer in its grip. That is why the Lord says in Matthew 6: “Behold the
birds... Consider the lilies”. If we could ask the birds whether they were
not afraid of the law of gravity, how would they reply? They would say: ‘We
never heard the name of Newton. We know nothing about his law. We fly
because it is the law of our life to fly.’ Not only is there in them a life
with the power of flight, but that life has a law which enables these
living creatures quite spontaneously and consistently to overcome the law of
gravity. Yet gravity remains. If you get up early one morning when the cold
is intense and the snow thick on the ground, and there is a dead sparrow in
the courtyard, you are reminded at once of the persistence of that law. But
while birds live they overcome it, and the life within them is what
dominates their consciousness.
God has been truly gracious to us. He has given us this new law of the
Spirit, and for us to ‘fly’ is no longer a question of our will but of His
life. Have you noticed what a trial it is to make an impatient Christian
patient? To require patience of him is enough to make him ill with
depression. But God has never told us to force ourselves to be what we are
not naturally: to try by taking thought to add to our spiritual stature.
Worrying may possibly decrease a man’s height, but it certainly never added
anything to it. “Be not anxious”, are His words. “Consider the lilies, .
.. they grow.” He is directing our attention to the new law of life in us.
Oh, for a new appreciation of the life that is ours!
What a precious discovery this is! It can make altogether new men of us, for
it operates in the smallest things as well as in the bigger ones. It checks
us when, for example, we put out a hand to look at a book in someone else’
s room, reminding us that we have not asked permission and have no right to
do so. We cannot, the Holy Spirit tells us, encroach thus upon the rights of
others.
Once I was talking to a Christian friend and he turned to me and said: ‘Do
you know, I believe that if anyone is willing to live by the law of the
Spirit of life, such a man will become truly refined.’ ‘What do you mean?
’ I asked. He replied: ‘That law has the power to make a man a perfect
gentleman. Some scornfully say: “you can’t blame those people for the way
they act; they are just country folk and have no educational advantages”.
But the real question is, Have they the life of the Lord within? For I tell
you, that life can say to them: “Your voice is too loud”, or, “That
laughter was not right”, or, “Your motive in passing that remark was wrong
.” In a thousand details the Spirit of life can tell them how to act, so
producing in them a true refinement. There is no such inherent power in
education.’ And yet my friend was himself an educationalist!
But it is true. Take the example of talkativeness. Are you a person of too
many words? When you stay with people, do you say to yourself: ‘What shall
I do? I am a Christian; but if I am to glorify the name of the Lord, I
simple must not talk so much. So today let me be extra careful to hold
myself in check.’? And for an hour or two you succeed—until on some
pretext you loose control and, before you know where you are, find yourself
once again in difficulty with your garrulous tongue. Yes, let us be fully
assured that the will is useless here. For me to exhort you to exercise your
will in this matter would be but to offer you the vain religion of the
world, not the life in Christ Jesus. For consider again: a talkative person
remains just that, though he keep silent all day, for there is a ‘natural’
law of talkativeness governing him (or her!), just as a peach tree is a
peach tree whether or not it bears peaches. But as Christians we discover a
new law in us, the law of the spirit of life, which transcends all else and
which has already delivered us from the ‘law’ of our talkativeness. If,
believing the Lord’s Word, we yield ourselves to that new law, it will tell
us when we should stop talking—or not start!—and it will empower us to do
so. On that basis you can go to your friend’s house for two or three hours
, or stay for two or three days, and experience no difficulty. On your
return you will just thank God for His new law of life.
It is this spontaneous life that is the Christian life. It manifests itself
in love for the unlovely—for the brother whom on natural grounds we would
not like and certainly could not love. It works on the basis of what the
Lord sees of possibility in that brother. ‘Lord, You see he is lovable and
You love him. Love him, now, through me!’ And it manifests itself in
reality of life—in a true genuineness of moral character. There is too much
hypocrisy in the lives of Christians, too much play-acting. Nothing takes
away from the effectiveness of Christian witness as does a pretense of
something that is not really there, for the man in the street unfailingly
penetrates such a disguise in the end and finds us out for what we are. Yes,
pretense gives way to reality when we trust the law of life.

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: chapter 10.3 The Law Of This Spirit Of Life
: “There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus,
: who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. For the law of the
: Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made free from the law of sin and death
: ” (Rom. 8:1, 2, A.V.).
: It is in chapter 8 that Paul presents to us in detail the positive side of
: life in the Spirit. “There is therefore now no condemnation”, he begins,
: and this statement may at first seem out of place here. Surely condemnation
: was met by the Blood through which we found peace with God and salvation
: from wrath (Rom. 5:1, 9). But there are two kinds of condemnation, namely,

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chapter 10.5 The Fourth Step: “Walk... After The Spirit”
“For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh,
God,
sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering
for
sin, condemned sin in the flesh: that the ordinance of the law might be
fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit”
(Rom.
8:3).
Every careful reader of these two verses will see that there are two
things
presented here. They are, firstly, what the Lord Jesus has done for us,
and
secondly, what the Holy Spirit will do in us. “The flesh” is “weak”;
consequently the ordinance of the law cannot be fulfilled in us “after
the
flesh”. (Remember, it is again here a question not of salvation but of
pleasing God.) Now, because of our inability God took two steps. In the
first place, He intervened to deal with the heart of our problem. He
sent
His Son in the flesh, who died for sin and in doing so “condemned sin in
the flesh”. That is to say, He took to death representatively all that
belonged to the old creation in us, whether we speak of it as ‘our old
man
’, ‘the flesh’, or the carnal ‘I’. Thus God struck at the very root of
our trouble by removing the fundamental ground of our weakness. This was
the
first step.
But still “the ordinance of the law” remained to be fulfilled “in us”.
How could this be done? It required God’s further provision of the
indwelling Holy Spirit. It is He who is sent to take care of the inward
side
of this thing, and He is able to do so, we are told, as we “walk...
after
the Spirit”.
What does it mean to walk after the Spirit? It means two things.
Firstly, it
is not a work; it is a walk. Praise God, the burdensome and fruitless
effort I involved myself in when I sought ‘in the flesh’ to please God
gives place to a blessed and restful dependence on “his working, which
worketh in me mightily” (Col. 1:29). That is why Paul contrasts the
“works
” of the flesh with the “fruit” of the Spirit (Gal. 5:19, 22).
Then secondly, to “walk after” implies subjection. Walking after the
flesh
means that I yield to the dictates of the flesh, and the following
verses
in Romans 8:5-8 make clear where that leads me. It only brings me into
conflict with God. To walk after the Spirit is to be subject to the
Spirit.
There is one thing that the man who walks after the Spirit cannot do,
and
that is be independent of Him. I must be subject to the Holy Spirit. The
initiative of my life must be with Him. Only as I yield myself to obey
Him
shall I find the “law of the Spirit of life” in full operation and the “
ordinance of the law” (all that I have been trying to do to please God)
being fulfilled—no longer by me but in me. “As many as are led by the
Spirit of God, these are sons of God” (Rom. 8:14).
We are all familiar with the words of the benediction in 2 Corinthians
13:14
communion of the Holy Ghost, be with you all”. The love of God is the
source of all spiritual blessing; the grace of the Lord Jesus has made
it
possible for that spiritual wealth to become ours; and the communion of
the
Holy Ghost is the means whereby it is imparted to us. Love is something
hidden in the heart of God; grace is that love expressed and made
available
in the Son; communion is the importation of that grace by the Spirit.
What
the Father has devised concerning us the Son has accomplished for us,
and
now the Holy Spirit communicates it to us. When therefore we discover
something fresh that the Lord Jesus has procured for us in His Cross,
let us
, for its realization, look in the direction that God has indicated,
and, by
our steadfast attitude of subjection and obedience to the Holy Spirit,
keep
wide open the way for Him to impart it to us. That is His ministry. He
has
come for that very purpose—that He may make real in us all that is ours
in
Christ.
We have learned in China that, when leading a soul to Christ, we must be
very thorough, for there is no certainty when he will again have the
help of
other Christians. We always seek to make it clear to a new believer
that,
when he has asked the Lord to forgive his sins and to come into his
life,
his heart has become the residence of a living Person. The Holy Spirit
of
God is now within him, to open to him the Scriptures that he may find
Christ
there, to direct his prayer, to govern his life, and to reproduce in
him
the character of his Lord.
I went, late one summer, for a prolonged period of rest to a hill-resort
where accommodation was difficult to obtain, and while there it was
necessary for me to sleep in one house and take my meals in another, the
latter being the home of a mechanic and his wife. For the first two
weeks of
my visit, apart from asking a blessing at each meal, I said nothing to
my
hosts about the Gospel; and then one day my opportunity came to tell
them
about the Lord Jesus. They were ready to listen and to come to Him in
simple
faith for the forgiveness of their sins. They were born again, and a
new
light and joy came into their lives, for theirs was a real conversion. I
took care to make clear to them what had happened, and then, as the
weather
turned colder, the time came for me to leave them and return to
Shanghai.
During the cold winter months the man was in the habit of drinking wine
with
his meals, and he was apt to do so to excess. After my departure, with
the
return of the cold weather, the wine appeared on the table again, and
that
day, as he had become accustomed to do, the husband bowed his head to
return
thanks for the meal—but no words would come. After one or two vain
attempts he turned to his wife. ‘What is wrong?’ he asked. ‘Why cannot
we
pray today? Fetch the Bible and see what it has to say about wine
drinking.
’ I had left a copy of the Scriptures with them, but though the wife
could
read she was ignorant of the Word, and she turned the pages in vain
seeking
for light on the subject. They did not know how to consult God’s Book
and
it was impossible to consult God’s messenger, for I was many miles away
and
it might be months before they could see me. ‘Just drink your wine’,
said
his wife. ‘We’ll refer the matter to brother Nee at the first
opportunity
.’ But still the man found he just could not return thanks to the Lord
for
that wine. ‘Take it away!’ he said at length; and when she had done so,
together they asked a blessing on their meal.
When eventually the man was able to visit Shanghai he told me the story.
Using an expression familiar in Chinese: ‘Brother Nee’, he said, ‘
Resident Boss ' wouldn’t let me have that drink!’ ‘Very good, brother’,
I said. ‘You always listen to Resident Boss!’
Many of us know that Christ is our life. We believe that the Spirit of
God
is resident in us, but this fact has little effect upon our behaviour.
The
question is, do we know Him as a living Person, and do we know Him as
‘Boss
’?
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Chapter 11: One Body in Christ
Before we pass on to our last important subject we will review some of the
ground we have covered and summarize the steps taken. We have sought to make
things simple, and to explain clearly some of the experiences which
Christians commonly pass through. But it is clear that the new discoveries
that we make as we walk with the Lord are many, and we must be careful to
avoid the temptation to over-simplify the work of God. To do so may lead us
into serious confusion.
There are children of God who believe that all our salvation, in which they
would include the matter of leading a holy life, lies in an appreciation of
the value of the precious Blood. They rightly emphasize the importance of
keeping short accounts with God over known specific sins, and the continual
efficacy of the Blood to deal with sins committed, but they think of the
Blood as doing everything. They believe in a holiness which in fact means
only separation of the man from his past; that, through the up-to-date
blotting out of what he has done on the ground of the shed Blood, God
separates a man out of the world to be His, and that is holiness; and they
stop there. Thus they stop short of God’s basic demands, and so of the full
provision He has made. I think we have by now seen clearly the inadequacy
of this.
Then there are those who go further and see that God has included them in
the death of His Son on the Cross, in order to deliver them from sin and the
Law by dealing with the old man. These are they who really exercise faith
in the Lord, for they glory in Christ Jesus and have ceased to put
confidence in the flesh (Phil. 3:3). In them God has a clear foundation on
which to build. And from this as starting-point, many have gone further
still and recognized that consecration (using that word in the right sense)
means giving themselves without reserve into His hands and following Him.
All these are first steps, and starting from them we have already touched
upon other phases of experience set before us by God and enjoyed by many. It
is always essential for us to remember that, while each of them is a
precious fragment of truth, no single one of them is by itself the whole of
truth. All come to us as the fruit of the work of Christ on the Cross, and
we cannot afford to ignore any.



【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: chapter 10.5 The Fourth Step: “Walk... After The Spirit”
: “For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh,
: God,
: sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering
: for
: sin, condemned sin in the flesh: that the ordinance of the law might be
: fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit”
: (Rom.
: 8:3).
: Every careful reader of these two verses will see that there are two

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chapter 11.1 A Gate And A Path
Recognizing a number of such phases in the life and experience of a believer
, we note now a further fact, namely that, though these phases do not
necessarily occur always in a fixed and precise order, they seem to be
marked by certain recurring steps or features. What are these steps? First
there is revelation. As we have seen, this always precedes faith and
experience. Through His Word God opens our eyes to the truth of some fact
concerning His Son, and then only, as in Faith we accept that fact for
ourselves, does it become actual as experience in our lives. Thus we have:
Revelation (Objective).
Experience (Subjective).
Then further, we note that such experience usually takes the two-fold form
of a crisis leading to a continuous process. It is most helpful to think of
this in terms of John Bunyan’s ‘wicket gate’ through which Christian
entered upon a ‘narrow path’. Our Lord Jesus spoke of such a gate and a
path leading unto life (Matt. 7:14), and experience accords with this. So
now we have:
Revelation.
Experience:
A Wicket gate (Crisis)
A narrow path (Process)
Now let us take some of the subjects we have been dealing with and see how
this helps us to understand them. We will take first our justification and
new birth. This begins with a revelation of the Lord Jesus in His atoning
work for our sins on the Cross; there follows the crisis of repentance and
faith (the wicket gate), whereby we are initially “made nigh” to God (Eph.
2:13); and this leads us into a walk of maintained fellowship with Him (the
narrow path), for which the ground of our day-to-day access is still the
precious Blood (Heb. 10:29, 22). When we come to deliverance from sin, we
again have three steps: the Holy Spirit’s work of revelation, or ‘knowing
’ (Rom. 6:6); the crisis of faith, or ‘reckoning’ (Rom. 6:11); and the
continuing process of consecration, or ‘presenting ourselves’ to God (Rom.
6:13) on the basis of a walk in newness of life. Consider next the gift of
the Holy Spirit. This too begins with a new ‘seeing’ of the Lord Jesus as
exalted to the throne, which issues in the dual experience of the Spirit
outpoured and the Spirit indwelling. Going a stage further, to the matter of
pleasing God, we find again the need for spiritual illumination, that we
may see the values of the Cross in regard to ‘the flesh’—the entire self-
life of man. Our acceptance of this by faith leads at once to a ‘wicket
gate’ experience (Rom. 7:25), in which we initially cease from ‘doing’
and accept by faith the mighty working of the life of Christ to satisfy God
’s practical demands in us. This in turn leads us into the ‘narrow path’
of a walk in obedience to the Spirit (Rom. 8:4).
The picture is not identical in each case, and we must beware of forcing any
rigid pattern upon the Holy Spirit’s working; but perhaps any new
experience will come to us more or less on these lines. There will certainly
always be first an opening of our eyes to some new aspect of Christ and His
finished work, and then faith will open a gate into a pathway. Remember,
too, that our division of Christian experience into various subjects:
justification, new birth, the gift of the spirit, deliverance,
sanctification, etc., is for our clearer understanding only. It does not
mean that these stages must or will always follow one another in a certain
prescribed order. In fact, if a full presentation of Christ and His Cross is
made to us at the very outset, we may well step into a great deal of
experience from the first day of our Christian life, even though the full
explanation of much of it may follow later. Would that all Gospel preaching
were of such a kind!
One thing is certain, that revelation will always precede faith. When we see
something that God has done in Christ our natural response is: ‘Thank you,
Lord !’ and faith follows spontaneously. Revelation is always the work of
the Holy Spirit, who is given to come along-side and, by opening the
Scriptures to us, to guide us into all the truth (John 16:13). Count upon
Him, for He is here for that very thing; and when such difficulties as lack
of understanding or lack of faith confront you, address those difficulties
directly to the Lord: ‘Lord, open my eyes. Lord, make this new thing clear
to me. Lord, help Thou my unbelief!’ He will not fail you.

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: Chapter 11: One Body in Christ
: Before we pass on to our last important subject we will review some of the
: ground we have covered and summarize the steps taken. We have sought to make
: things simple, and to explain clearly some of the experiences which
: Christians commonly pass through. But it is clear that the new discoveries
: that we make as we walk with the Lord are many, and we must be careful to
: avoid the temptation to over-simplify the work of God. To do so may lead us
: into serious confusion.
: There are children of God who believe that all our salvation, in which they
: would include the matter of leading a holy life, lies in an appreciation of

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chapter 11.2 The Fourfold Work Of Christ In His Cross
We are now in a position to go a step further still and to consider how
great a range is compassed by the Cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. In the
light of Christian experience and for the purpose of analysis, it may help
us if we recognize four aspects of God’s redemptive work. But in doing so
it is essential to keep in mind that the Cross of Christ is one Divine work
—not many. Once in Judaea two thousand years ago the Lord Jesus died and
rose again, and He is now “by the right hand of God exalted” (Acts 2:33).
The work is finished and need never be repeated, nor can it be added to.
Of the four aspects of the Cross which we shall now mention, we have already
dealt with three in some detail. The last will be considered in the two
succeeding chapters of our study. They may be briefly summarized as follows:
The Blood of Christ to deal with sins and guilt.
The Cross of Christ to deal with sin, the flesh and the natural man.
The Life of Christ made available to indwell, re-create and empower man.
The Working of Death in the natural man that that indwelling Life may be
progressively manifest.
The first two of these aspects are remedial. They relate to the undoing of
the work of the Devil and the undoing of the sin of man. The last two are
not remedial but positive, and relate more directly to the securing of the
purpose of God. The first two are concerned with recovering what Adam lost
by the Fall; the last two are concerned with bringing us into, and bringing
into us, something that Adam never had. Thus we see that the achievement of
the Lord Jesus in His death and resurrection comprises both a work which
provided for the redemption of man and a work which made possible the
realization of the purpose of God.
We have dealt at some length in earlier chapters with the two aspects of His
death represented by the Blood for sins and guilt and the Cross for sin and
the flesh. In our discussion of the eternal purpose we have also looked
briefly at the third aspect—that represented by Christ as the grain of
wheat—and in our last chapter, in our consideration of Christ as our life,
we have seen something of its practical outworking. Before, however, we pass
on to the fourth aspect, which I shall call ‘bearing the cross’, we must
say a little more about this third side, namely, the release of the life of
Christ in resurrection for man’s indwelling and empowering for service.
We have spoken already of the purpose of God in creation and have said that
it embraced far more than Adam ever came to enjoy. What was that purpose?
God wanted to have a race of men whose members were gifted with a spirit
whereby communion would be possible with Himself, who is Spirit. That race,
possessing God’s own life, was to co-operate in securing His purposed end
by defeating every possible uprising of the enemy and undoing his evil works
. That was the great plan. How will it now be effected? The answer is again
to be found in the death of the Lord Jesus. It is a mighty death. It is
something positive and purposive, going far beyond the recovery of a lost
position; for by it, not only are sin and the old man dealt with and their
effects annulled, but something more, something infinitely greater is
introduced.

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: chapter 11.1 A Gate And A Path
: Recognizing a number of such phases in the life and experience of a believer
: , we note now a further fact, namely that, though these phases do not
: necessarily occur always in a fixed and precise order, they seem to be
: marked by certain recurring steps or features. What are these steps? First
: there is revelation. As we have seen, this always precedes faith and
: experience. Through His Word God opens our eyes to the truth of some fact
: concerning His Son, and then only, as in Faith we accept that fact for
: ourselves, does it become actual as experience in our lives. Thus we have:
: Revelation (Objective).

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chapter 11.3 The Love Of Christ
Now we must have before us two passages of the Word, one from Genesis 2 and
one from Ephesians 5, which are of great importance in this connection.
“And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept;
and he took one of his ribs, which the Lord God had taken from the man, made
he a woman, and brought her unto the man. And the man said, This is now
bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman (Heb.
ishshah), because she was taken out of Man (Heb. ish)” (Gen. 2:21-23).
“Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave
himself up for it; that he might sanctify it, having cleansed it by the
washing of water with the word, that he might present the church to himself
a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that it
should be holy and without blemish” (Eph. 5:25-27).
In Ephesians 5 we have the only chapter in the Bible which explains the
passage in Genesis 2. What we have presented to us in Ephesians is indeed
very remarkable, if we reflect upon it. I refer to what is contained in
those words: “Christ... loved the church”. There is something most
precious here.
We have been taught to think of ourselves as sinners needing redemption. For
generations that has been instilled into us, and we praise the Lord for
that as our beginning; but it is not what God has in view as His end. God
speaks here rather of “a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any
such thing; but... holy and without blemish”. All too often we have
thought of the Church as being merely so many ‘saved sinners’. It is that;
but we have made the terms almost equal to one another, as though it were
only that, which is not the case. Saved sinners—with that thought you have
the whole background of sin and the Fall; but in God’s sight the Church is
a Divine creation in His Son. The one is largely individual, the other
corporate. With the one the view is negative, belonging to the past; with
the other it is positive, looking forward. The “eternal purpose” is
something in the mind of God from eternity concerning His Son, and it has as
its objective that the Son should have a Body to express His life. Viewed
from that standpoint—from the standpoint of the heart of God—the Church is
something which is beyond sin and has never been touched by sin.
So we have an aspect of the death of the Lord Jesus in Ephesians which we do
not have so clearly in other places. In Romans things are viewed from the
standpoint of fallen man, and beginning with ‘Christ died for sinners,
enemies, the ungodly’ (Rom. 5) we are led progressively to “the love of
Christ” (Rom. 8:35). In Ephesians, on the other hand, the standpoint is
that of God “before the foundation of the world” (Eph. 1:4), and the heart
of the gospel is: “Christ... loved the church, and gave himself up for it
” (Eph. 5:25). Thus, in Romans it is “we sinned”, and the message is of
God’s love for sinners (Rom. 5:8); whereas in Ephesians it is “Christ
loved”, and the love here is the love of husband for wife. That kind of
love has fundamentally nothing to do with sin as such. What is in view in
this passage is not atonement for sin but the creation of the Church, for
which end it is said that He “gave himself”.
There is thus an aspect of the death of the Lord Jesus which is altogether
positive and a matter particularly of love to His Church, where the question
of sin and sinners does not directly appear. To bring this fact home Paul
takes that incident in Genesis 2 as illustration. Now this is one of the
marvelous things in the Word, and if our eyes have been opened to see it we
will certainly worship.
From Genesis 3 onwards, from the ‘coats of skins’ to Abel’s sacrifice,
and on from there through the whole Old Testament, there are numerous types
which set forth the death of the Lord Jesus as an atonement for sin; yet the
apostle does not appeal here to any of those types of His death, but to
this one in Genesis 2. Note that; and then recall that it was not until
Genesis 3 that sin came in. There is one type of the death of Christ in the
Old Testament which has nothing to do with sin, for it is not subsequent to
the Fall but prior to it, and that type is here in Genesis 2. Let us look at
it for a moment.
Could we say that Adam was put to sleep because Eve had committed a serious
sin? Is that what we have here? Certainly not, for Eve was not yet even
created. There were as yet no moral issues involved and no problems at all.
No, Adam was put to sleep for the express purpose that something might be
taken out of him to be made into someone else. His sleep was not for her sin
but for her existence. That is what is taught in these verses. This
experience of Adam had as its object the creation of Eve, as something
determined in the Divine counsels. God wanted an ishshah. He put the man (
ish) to sleep, took a rib from his side and made it into ishshah, a woman,
and brought her to the man. That is the picture which God is giving us. It
foreshadows an aspect of the death of the Lord Jesus that is not primarily
for atonement, but answerable to the sleep of Adam in this chapter.
God forbid that I should suggest that the Lord Jesus did not die for
purposes of atonement. Praise God, He did. We must remember that today we
are in fact in Ephesians 5 and not in Genesis 2. Ephesians was written after
the Fall, to men who had suffered from its effects, and in it we have not
only the purpose in Creation but also the scars of the Fall —or there would
need to be no mention of “spot or wrinkle”. Because we are still on the
earth and the Fall is a historic fact, ‘cleansing’ is needed.
But we must always view redemption as an interruption, an ‘emergence’
measure, made necessary by a catastrophic break in the straight line of the
purpose of God. Redemption is big enough, wonderful enough, to occupy a very
large place in our vision, but God is saying that we should not make
redemption to be everything, as though man were created to be redeemed. The
Fall is indeed a tragic dip downwards in that line of purpose, and the
atonement a blessed recovery whereby our sins are blotted out and we are
restored; but when it is accomplished there yet remains a work to be done to
bring us into possession of that which Adam never possessed, and to give
God that which His heart desires. For God has never forsaken the purpose
which is represented by that straight line. Adam was never in possession of
the life of God as presented in the tree of life. But because of the one
work of the Lord Jesus in His death and resurrection (and we must emphasize
again that it is all one work) His life was released to become ours by faith
, and we have received more than Adam ever possessed. The very purpose of
God is brought within reach of fulfillment by our receiving Christ as our
life.
Adam was put to sleep. We remember that it is said of believers that they
fall asleep, rather than that they die. Why? Because whenever death is
mentioned sin is there in the background. In Genesis 3 sin entered into the
world and death through sin, but Adam’s sleep preceded that. So the type of
the Lord Jesus here is not like other types on the Old Testament. In
relation to sin and atonement there is a lamb or a bullock slain; but here
Adam was not slain, but only put to sleep to awake again. Thus he prefigures
a death that is not on account of sin, but that has in view increase in
resurrection. Then too we must note that Eve was not created as a separate
entity by a separate creation, parallel to that of Adam. Adam slept, and Eve
was created out of Adam. That is God’s method with the Church. God’s ‘
second Man’ has awakened from His ‘sleep’ and His Church is created in
Him and of Him, to draw her life from Him and to display that resurrection
life.
God has a Son who is known to be the only begotten, and God is seeking that
the only begotten Son should have brethren. From the position of only
begotten He will become the first begotten, and instead of the Son alone God
will have many sons. One grain of wheat has died and many grains will
spring up. The first grain was once the only grain; now it is changed to be
the first grain of many. The Lord Jesus laid down His life, and that life
emerged in many lives. These are the Biblical figures we have used hitherto
in our study to express this truth. Now, in the figure just considered, the
singular takes the place of the plural. The outcome of the Cross is a single
person: a Bride for the Son. Christ loved the Church and gave Himself up
for it.

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: chapter 11.2 The Fourfold Work Of Christ In His Cross
: We are now in a position to go a step further still and to consider how
: great a range is compassed by the Cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. In the
: light of Christian experience and for the purpose of analysis, it may help
: us if we recognize four aspects of God’s redemptive work. But in doing so
: it is essential to keep in mind that the Cross of Christ is one Divine work
: —not many. Once in Judaea two thousand years ago the Lord Jesus died and
: rose again, and He is now “by the right hand of God exalted” (Acts 2:33).
: The work is finished and need never be repeated, nor can it be added to.
: Of the four aspects of the Cross which we shall now mention, we have already

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chapter 11.4 One Living Sacrifice
We have said that there is an aspect of the death of Christ presented to us
in Ephesians 5 which is to some extent different from that which we have
been studying in Romans. Yet in fact this aspect is the very end to which
our study of Romans has been moving, and it is into this that the letter is
leading us as we shall now see, for redemption leads us back into God’s
original line of purpose.
In chapter 8 Paul speaks to us of Christ as the firstborn Son among many
Spirit-led “sons of God” (Rom. 8:14). “For whom he foreknew, he also
foreordained to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the
firstborn among many brethren: and whom he foreordained, them he also called
also glorified” (Rom. 8:29, 30). Here justification is seen to lead on to
glory, a glory that is expressed not in one or more individuals but in a
plurality: in many who manifest the image of One. And this object of our
redemption is further set forth, as we have seen, in “the love of Christ”
for His own, which is the subject of the last verses of the chapter (8:35-39
). But what is implicit here in chapter 8 becomes explicit as we move over
into chapter 12, the subject of which is the Body of Christ.
After the first eight chapters of Romans, which we have been studying, there
follows a parenthesis in which God’s sovereign dealings with Israel are
taken up and dealt with, before the theme of the first chapters is resumed.
Thus, for our present purpose, the argument of chapter 12 follows that of
chapter 8 and not of chapter 11. We might very simply summarize these
chapters thus: Our sins are forgiven (ch. 5), we are dead with Christ (ch. 6
), we are by nature utterly helpless (ch. 7), therefore we rely upon the
indwelling Spirit (ch. 8). After this, and as a consequence of it: “We...
are one body in Christ” (ch. 12). It is as though this were the logical
outcome of all that has gone before, and the thing to which it has all been
leading.
Romans 12 and the following chapter contain some very practical instructions
for our life and walk. These are introduced with an emphasis once again on
consecration. In chapter 6:13 Paul has said: “Present yourselves unto God,
as alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness
unto God”. But now in chapter 12:1 the emphasis is a little different: “I
beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your
bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable
service”. This new appeal for consecration is made to us as “brethren”,
linking us in thought to the “many brethren” of chapter 8:29. It is a call
to us for a united step of faith, the presenting of our bodies as one “
living sacrifice” unto God.
This is something that goes beyond the merely individual, for it implies
contribution to a whole. The ‘presenting’ is personal but the sacrifice is
corporate; it is one sacrifice. Intelligent service to God is one service.
We need never feel our contribution is not needed, for if it contributes to
the service, God is satisfied. And it is through this kind of service that
we prove “what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God” (ch. 12
Paul’s appeal “to every man that is among you” (12:3) is in the light of
this new Divine fact, that “we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and
severally members one of another” (12:5), and it is on this basis that the
practical instructions follow.
The vessel through which the Lord Jesus can reveal Himself in this
generation is not the individual but the Body. “God hath dealt to each man
a measure of faith” (12:3), but alone in isolation man can never fulfill
God’s purpose. It requires a complete Body to attain to the stature of
Christ and to display His glory. Oh that we might really see this!
So Romans 12:3-6 draws from the figure of the human body the lesson of our
inter-dependence. Individual Christians are not the Body but are members of
the Body, and in a human body “all the members have not the same office”.
The ear must not imagine itself to be an eye. No amount of prayer will give
sight to the ear—but the whole body can see through the eye. So (speaking
figuratively) I may have only the gift of hearing, but I can see through
others who have the gift of sight; or, perhaps I can walk but cannot work,
so I receive help from the hands. An all-too-common attitude to the things
of the Lord is that, ‘What I know, I know; and what I don’t know, I don’t
know, and can do quite well without.’ But in Christ, the things we do not
know others do, and we may know them and enter into the enjoyment of them
through others.
Let me stress that this is not just a comfortable thought. It is a vital
factor in the life of God’s people. We cannot get along without one another
. That is why fellowship in prayer is so important. Prayer together brings
in the help of the Body, as must be clear from Matthew 18:19, 20. Trusting
the Lord by myself may not be enough. I must trust Him with others. I must
learn to pray ”Our Father...” on the basis of oneness with the Body, for
without the help of the Body I cannot get through. In the sphere of service
this is even more apparent. Alone I cannot serve the Lord effectively, and
He will spare no pains to teach me this. He will bring things to an end,
allowing doors to close and leaving me ineffectively knocking my head
against a blank wall until I realize that I need the help of the Body as
well as of the Lord. For the life of Christ is the life of the Body, and His
gifts are given to us for work that builds up the Body.
The Body is not an illustration but a fact. The Bible does not just say that
the Church is like a body, but that it is the Body of Christ. “We, who are
many, are one body in Christ, and severally members one of another.” All
the members together are one Body, for all share His life—as though He were
Himself distributed among His members. I was once with a group of Chinese
believers who found it very hard to understand how the Body could be one
when they were all separate individual men and women who made it up. One
Sunday I was about to break the bread at the Lord’s table and I asked them
to look very carefully at the loaf before I broke it. Then, after it had
been distributed and eaten, I pointed out that though it was inside all of
them it was still one loaf—not many. The loaf was divided, but Christ is
not divided even in the sense in which that loaf was. He is still one Spirit
in us, and we are all one in Him.
This is the very opposite of man’s condition by nature. In Adam I have the
life of Adam, but that is essentially individual. There is no union, no
fellowship in sin, but only self-interest and distrust of others. As I go on
with the Lord I soon discover, not only that the problem of sin and of my
natural strength has to be dealt with, but that there is also a further
problem created by my ‘individual’ life, the life that is sufficient in
itself and does not recognize its need for and union in the Body. I may have
got over the problems of sin and the flesh, and yet still be a confirmed
individualist. I want holiness and victory and fruitfulness for myself
personally and apart, albeit from the purest motives. but such an attitude
ignores the Body, and so cannot provide God with satisfaction. he must deal
with me therefore in this matter also, or I shall remain in conflict with
His ends. God does not blame me for being an individual, but for my
individualism. His greatest problem is not the outward divisions and
denominations that divide His Church but our own individualistic hearts.
Yes, the Cross must do its work here, reminding me that in Christ I have
died to that old life of independence which I inherited from Adam, and that
in resurrection I have become not just an individual believer in Christ but
a member of His Body. There is a vast difference between the two. When I see
this, I shall at once have done with independence and shall seek fellowship
. The life of Christ in me will gravitate to the life of Christ in others. I
can no longer take an individual line. Jealousy will go. Competition will
go. Private work will go. My interests, my ambitions, my preferences, all
will go. It will no longer matter which of us does the work. All that will
matter will be that the Body grows.
I said: ‘When I see this...’ That is the great need: to see the Body of
Christ as another great Divine fact; to have it break in upon our spirits by
heavenly revelation that “we, who are many, are one body in Christ”. Only
the Holy Spirit can bring this home to us in all its meaning, but when He
does it will revolutionize our life and work.
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chapter 11.5 More Than Conquerors Through Him
We only see history back to the Fall. God sees it from the beginning. There
was something in God’s mind before the Fall, and in the ages to come that
thing is to be fully realized. God knew all about sin and redemption; yet in
His great purpose for the Church set forth in Genesis 2 there is no view of
sin. It is as though (to speak in finite terms) He leaps in thought right
over the whole story of redemption and sees the Church in future eternity,
having a ministry and a (future) history which is altogether apart from sin
and wholly of God. It is the Body of Christ in glory, expressing nothing of
fallen man but only that which is the image of the glorified Son of man.
This is the Church that has satisfied God’s heart and has attained dominion.
In Ephesians 5 we stand within the history of redemption, and yet through
grace we still have this eternal purpose of God in view as expressed in the
statement that He will ‘present unto himself a glorious Church’. But now
we note that the water of life and the cleansing Word are needed to prepare
the Church (now marred by the Fall) for presentation to Christ in glory. For
now there are defects to be remedied and wounds to be healed. And yet how
precious is the promise and how gracious are the words used of her: “not
having spot”—the scars of sin, whose very history is now forgotten; “or
wrinkle”—the marks of age and of time lost, for all is now made up and all
is new; and “without blemish”—so that Satan or demons or men can find no
ground for blame in her.
This is where we are now. The age is closing, and Satan’s power is greater
than ever. Our warfare is with angels and principalities and powers (Rom. 8:
38; Eph. 6:12) who are set to withstand and destroy the work of God in us by
laying many things to the charge of God’s elect. Alone we could never be
their match, but what we alone cannot do the Church can. Sin, self-reliance
and individualism were Satan’s master-strokes at the heart of God’s
purpose in man, and in the Cross God has undone them. As we put our faith in
what He has done—in “God that justifieth” and in “Christ Jesus that
died” (Rom. 8:33, 34)—we present a front against which the very gates of
Hades shall not prevail. We, His Church, are “more than conquerors through
him that loved us” (Rom. 8:37).


【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: chapter 11.4 One Living Sacrifice
: We have said that there is an aspect of the death of Christ presented to us
: in Ephesians 5 which is to some extent different from that which we have
: been studying in Romans. Yet in fact this aspect is the very end to which
: our study of Romans has been moving, and it is into this that the letter is
: leading us as we shall now see, for redemption leads us back into God’s
: original line of purpose.
: In chapter 8 Paul speaks to us of Christ as the firstborn Son among many
: Spirit-led “sons of God” (Rom. 8:14). “For whom he foreknew, he also
: foreordained to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the

l**********t
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73
Chapter 12: The Cross and the Soul Life
God has made full provision for our redemption in the Cross of Christ, but
He has not stopped there. In that Cross He has also made secure beyond
possibility of failure that eternal plan which Paul speaks of as having been
from all the ages “hid in God who created all things”. That plan He has
now proclaimed “to the intent that now unto the principalities and the
powers in the heavenly places might be made known through the church the
manifold wisdom of God, according to the eternal purpose which he purposed
in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Eph. 3:9-11).
We have said that the work of the Cross has two consequences which bear
directly upon the realizing of that purpose in us. On the one hand it has
issued in the release of His life that it may find expression in us through
the indwelling Spirit. On the other hand it has made possible what we speak
of as ‘bearing the cross’; that is, our co-operation in the daily
inworking of His death whereby way is made in us for the manifestation of
that new life, through the bringing of the ‘natural man’ progressively
into his right place of subjection to the Holy Spirit. Clearly these are the
positive and the negative sides of one thing. Equally clearly we are now
touching more particularly on the matter of progress in a life lived for God
. Hitherto in dealing with the Christian life we have placed our main
emphasis upon the crisis by which it is entered. Now our concern is more
definitely with the walk of the disciple, having especially in view his
training as a servant of God. It is of him that the Lord Jesus said: “
Whosoever doth not bear his own cross, and come after me, cannot be my
disciple” (Luke 14:27).
So we come to a consideration of the natural man and the ‘bearing of the
cross’. To understand this we must, at the risk of being tedious, go back
once more to Genesis and consider what it was that God sought to have in man
at the beginning and how His purpose was frustrated. In this way we shall
be able to grasp the principles by which we can come again to live in line
with that purpose.

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: chapter 11.5 More Than Conquerors Through Him
: We only see history back to the Fall. God sees it from the beginning. There
: was something in God’s mind before the Fall, and in the ages to come that
: thing is to be fully realized. God knew all about sin and redemption; yet in
: His great purpose for the Church set forth in Genesis 2 there is no view of
: sin. It is as though (to speak in finite terms) He leaps in thought right
: over the whole story of redemption and sees the Church in future eternity,
: having a ministry and a (future) history which is altogether apart from sin
: and wholly of God. It is the Body of Christ in glory, expressing nothing of
: fallen man but only that which is the image of the glorified Son of man.

l**********t
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74
Chapter 12.1 The True Nature Of The Fall
If we have even a little revelation of the plan of God we shall always think
much of the word ‘man’. We shall say with the Psalmist, “What is man,
that thou art mindful of him?” The Bible makes it clear that what God
desires above all things is a man—a man who will be after His own heart.
So God created a man. In Genesis 2:7 we learn that Adam was created a living
soul, with a spirit inside to commune with God and with a body outside to
have contact with the material world. (Such New Testament verses as 1
Thessalonians 5:23 and Hebrews 4:12 confirm this threefold character of man
’s being.) With his spirit Adam was in touch with the spiritual world of
God; with his body he was in touch with the physical world of material
things. He gathered up these two sides of God’s creative act into himself
to become a personality, an entity living in the world, moving by itself and
having powers of free choice. Viewed thus as a whole, he was found to be a
self-conscious and self-expressing being, “a living soul”.
We saw earlier that Adam was created perfect—by which we mean that he was
without imperfections because created by God—but that he was not yet
perfected. He needed a finishing touch somewhere. God had not yet done all
that He intended to do in Adam. There was more in view, but it was as yet in
abeyance. God was moving towards the fulfillment of His purpose in creating
man, a purpose which went beyond man himself, for it had in view the
securing to God of all His rights in the universe through man’s
instrumentality. But how could man be instrumental in this? Only by a co-
operation that sprang from living union with God. God was seeking to have
not merely a race of men of one blood upon the earth, but a race which had,
in addition, His life resident within its members. Such a race will
eventually compass the downfall of Satan and bring to fulfillment all that
God has set His heart upon. It is that that was in view with the creation of
man.
Then again, we saw that Adam was created neutral. He had a spirit which
enabled him to hold communion with God; but as man he was not yet, so to
speak, finally orientated; he had powers of choice and he could, if he liked
, turn the opposite way. God’s goal in man was ‘sonship’, or, in other
words, the expression of His life in human beings. That Divine life was
represented in the garden by the tree of life, bearing a fruit that could be
accepted, received, taken in. If Adam, created neutral, were voluntarily to
turn that way and, choosing dependence upon God, were to receive of the
tree of life (representing God’s own life), God would then have that life
in union with men; He would have realized ‘sonship’. But if instead Adam
should turn to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, he would as a
result be ‘free’ to develop himself on his own lines apart from God.
Because, however, this latter choice involved complicity with Satan, Adam
would thereby put beyond his reach the attaining of his God-appointed goal.

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: Chapter 12: The Cross and the Soul Life
: God has made full provision for our redemption in the Cross of Christ, but
: He has not stopped there. In that Cross He has also made secure beyond
: possibility of failure that eternal plan which Paul speaks of as having been
: from all the ages “hid in God who created all things”. That plan He has
: now proclaimed “to the intent that now unto the principalities and the
: powers in the heavenly places might be made known through the church the
: manifold wisdom of God, according to the eternal purpose which he purposed
: in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Eph. 3:9-11).
: We have said that the work of the Cross has two consequences which bear

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chapter 12.2
The Root Question: The Human Soul
Now we know the course that Adam chose. Standing between the two trees, he
yielded to Satan and took of the fruit of the tree of knowledge. This
determined the lines of his development. From then on he could command a
knowledge; he ‘knew’. But—and here we come to the point—the fruit of the
tree of knowledge made the first man over-developed in his soul. The
emotion was touched, because the fruit was pleasant to the eyes, making him
‘desire’; the mind with its reasoning power was developed, for he was ‘
made wise’; and the will was strengthened, so that in future he could
always decide which way he would go. The whole fruit ministered to the
expansion and full development of the soul, so that not only was the man a
living soul, but from henceforth man will live by the soul. It is not merely
that man has a soul, but that from that day on the soul, with its
independent powers of free choice, takes the place of the spirit as the
animating power of man.
We have to distinguish here between two things, for the difference is most
important. God does not mind—in fact He intends—that we should have a soul
such as He gave to Adam. But what God has set Himself to do is to reverse
something. There is something in man today which is not just the fact of
having a soul, but which constitutes a living by the soul. It was this that
Satan brought about in the Fall. He trapped man into taking a course by
which he could develop his soul so as to derive his very life from it.
We must however be careful. To remedy this does not mean that we are going
to cross out the soul altogether. You cannot do that. When today the Cross
is really working in us, we do not become inert, insensate, characterless.
No, we still possess a soul, and whenever we receive something from God the
soul will still be used in relation to it, as an instrument, a faculty, in a
true subjection to Him. But the point is, Are we keeping within God’s
appointed limit—within the bounds set by Him in the Garden at the beginning
—with regard to the soul, or are we getting outside those bounds?
What God is now doing is the pruning work of the vinedresser. In our souls
there is an uncontrolled development, an untimely growth, that has to be
checked and dealt with. God must cut that off. So now there are two things
before us to which our eyes must be opened. On the one hand God is seeking
to bring us to the place where we live by the life of His Son. On the other
hand He is doing a direct work in our hearts to undo that other natural
resource that is the result of the fruit of knowledge. Every day we are
learning these two lessons: a rising up of the life of this One, and a
checking and a handing over to death of that other soul-life. These two
processes go on all the time, for God is seeking the fully developed life of
His Son in us in order to manifest Himself, and to that end He is bringing
us back, as to our soul, to Adam’s starting-point. So Paul says: “We which
live are always delivered unto death for Jesus’ sake, that the life also
of Jesus may be manifested in our mortal flesh” (2 Cor. 4:11).
What does this mean? It simply means that I will not take any action without
relying on God. I will find no sufficiency in myself. I will not take any
step just because I have the power to do so. Even though I have that
inherited power within me, I will not use it; I will put no reliance in
myself. By taking the fruit, Adam became possessed of an inherent power to
act, but a power which played right into Satan’s hands. You lose that power
to act when you come to know the Lord. The Lord cuts it off and you find
you can no longer act on your own initiative. You have to live by the life
of Another; you have to draw everything from Him.
Oh, friends, I think we all know ourselves in measure, but many a time we do
not truly tremble at ourselves. We may, in a manner of courtesy to God, say
subconscious thought is that really we can do it quite well ourselves, even
if God does not ask us to do it nor empower us for it. Too often we have
been caused to act, to think, to decide, to have power, apart from Him. Many
of us Christians today are men with over-developed souls. We have grown too
big in ourselves. We have become ‘big-souled’. When we are in that
condition, the life of the Son of God in us is confined and almost crowded
out of action.
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chapter 12.3
Natural Energy In The Work Of God
The power, the energy of the soul is present with us all. Those who have
been taught by the Lord repudiate that principle as a life principle; they
refuse to live by it; they will not let it reign, nor allow it to be the
power-spring of the work of God. But those who have not been taught of God
rely upon it; they utilize it; they think it is the power.
Let us take first an obvious illustration of this. Far too many of us in the
past have reasoned as follows. Here is a delightfully good-natured man,
with a clear brain, splendid managing powers and sound judgment. In our
hearts we say, ‘If that man could be a Christian, what an asset he would be
to the Church! If only he were the Lord’s, what a lot it would mean to His
cause!’
But think for a moment. Where did that man’s good nature come from? Whence
are those splendid managing powers and that good judgment? Not form new
birth, for he is not yet born again. We know we have all been born of the
flesh; therefore we need a new birth. But the Lord Jesus had something to
say about this in John 3:6: “That which is born of the flesh is flesh”.
Everything which comes not by new birth but by natural birth is flesh and
will only bring glory to man, not God. That statement is not very palatable,
but it is true.
We have spoken of soul-power or natural energy. What is this natural energy?
It is simply what I can do, what I am of myself, what I have inherited of
natural gifts and resources. We are none of us without the power of the soul
, and our first need is to recognize it for what it is.
Take for example the human mind. I may have by nature a keen mind. Before my
new birth I had it naturally, as something developed from my natural birth.
But the trouble arises here. I become converted, I am born anew, a deep
work is effected in my spirit, and essential union with God that has been
set up in my spirit, but at the same time I carry over with me something
which I derive from my natural birth. Now what am I going to do about it?
The natural tendency is this. Formerly I used to use my mind to pore over
history, over business, over chemistry, over questions of the world, or
literature, or poetry. I used my keen mind to get the best out of those
studies. But now my desire has been changed, so henceforth I employ the same
mind in the things of God. I have therefore changed my subject of interest,
but I have not changed my method of working. That is the whole point. My
interests have been utterly changed (praise God for that!), but now I
utilize the same power to study Corinthians and Ephesians that I used before
to pursue history and geography. But that power is not of God; and God will
not allow that. The trouble with so many of us is that we have changed the
channel into which our energies are directed, but we have not changed the
source of those energies.
You will find there are many such things which we carry over into the
service of God. Consider the matter of eloquence. There are some men who are
born orators; they can present a case very convincingly indeed. Then they
become converted, and, without asking ourselves where they really stand in
relation to spiritual things, we put them on the platform and make preachers
of them. We encourage them to use their natural powers for preaching, and
again it is a change of subject but the same power. We forget that, in the
matter of our resource for handling the things of God, it is a question not
of comparative value but of origin—of where the resource springs from. It
is not so much a matter of what we are doing, but of what powers we are
employing to do it. We think too little of the source of our energy and too
much of the end to which it is directed, forgetting that with God the end
never justifies the means.
The following hypothetical case will help us to test the truth of our
argument. Mr. A. is a very good speaker: he can talk fluently and most
convincingly on any subject, but in practical things he is a very bad
manager. Mr. B., on the other hand, is a poor speaker: he cannot express
himself clearly but wanders all round his subject, never coming to a point;
yet on the other hand he is a splendid manager, most competent in all
matters of business. Both these men get converted, and both become earnest
Christians. Let us suppose now that I call on them both and ask them to
speak at a convention, and that both accept.
Now what will happen? I have asked the self-same thing of both men, but who
do you think will pray the harder? Certainly Mr. B. Why? Because he is no
speaker. In the matter of eloquence he has no resources of his own to depend
upon. He will pray: ‘Lord, if you do not give me power for this, I cannot
do it’. Of course Mr. A. will pray too, but maybe not in the same way as Mr
. B. because he has something of natural resource upon which to rely.
Now let us suppose that, instead of asking them to speak, I ask them both to
take charge of the practical side of affairs at the convention. What will
happen? The position will be exactly reversed. Now it will be Mr. A.‘s turn
to pray hard, for he knows full well that he has no organizing ability. Mr.
B. of course will pray too, but perhaps without quite the same urgency, for
though he knows his need of the Lord he is not nearly so conscious of his
need in business matters as is Mr. A.
Do you see the difference between natural and spiritual gifts? Anything we
can do without prayer and without an utter dependence upon God must come
from that spring of natural life, and is suspect. We must see this clearly.
Of course it is not true that those only are suited for a particular work
who lack the natural gift for it. The point is that, whether naturally
gifted or not, they must know the touch of the Cross in death upon all that
is of nature, and their complete dependence upon the God of resurrection.
All too readily do we envy our neighbor who has some outstanding natural
gift, and fail to realize that our own possession of it, apart from such a
working of the Cross, may easily prove a barrier to the very thing that God
is seeking to manifest in us.
Shortly after my conversion I went out preaching in the villages. I had had
a good education and was well versed in the Scriptures, so I considered
myself thoroughly capable of instructing the village folk, among whom were
quite a number of illiterate women. But after several visits I discovered
that, despite their illiteracy, those women hand an intimate knowledge of
the Lord. I knew the Book they haltingly read; they knew the One of whom the
Book spoke. I had much in the flesh; they had much in the Spirit. How many
Christian teachers today are teaching others as I was then, very largely in
the strength of their carnal equipment!
Once I met a young brother—young, that is to say, in years, but who had
learned a good deal of the Lord. The Lord had brought him through much
tribulation to gain that knowledge of Himself. As I was talking to him I
said, ‘Brother, what has the Lord really been teaching you these days?’ He
said, ‘Only one thing: that I can do nothing apart from him.’ ‘Do you
really mean’, I said, ‘that you can do nothing?’ ‘Well, no’, he replied
. ‘I can do many things! In fact that has been just my trouble. Oh, you
know, I have always been so confident in myself. I know I am well able to do
lots of things.’ So I asked, ‘What then do you mean when you say you can
do nothing apart from Him?’ He answered, ‘The Lord has shown me that I can
do anything, but that He has said, “Apart from me ye can do nothing”. So
it comes to this, that everything I have done and can do apart from Him is
nothing!’
We have to come to that valuation. I do not mean to say we cannot do a lot
of things, for we can. We can take meetings, and build churches, we can go
to the ends of the earth and found missions, and we can seem to bear fruit;
but remember that the Lord’s word is: “Every plant which my heavenly
Father planted not, shall be rooted up” (Matt. 15:13). God is the only
legitimate Originator in the universe (Gen. 1:1). Anything that you plan and
set on foot has its origin in the flesh, and it will never reach the realm
of the Spirit however earnestly you seek God’s blessing on it. It may last
for years, and then you may think you will adjust here and improve there and
maybe bring it on a better plane, but it cannot be done.
Origin determines destination, and what was “of the flesh” originally will
never be made spiritual by any amount of ‘improvement’. That which is
born of the flesh is flesh, and it will never be otherwise. Anything for
which we are sufficient in ourselves is ‘nothing’ in God’s estimate, and
we have to accept His estimate and write it down as nothing. “The flesh
profiteth nothing.” It is only what comes from above that will abide.
We cannot see this simply by being told it. God must teach us what is meant,
by putting His finger on something which He sees and saying: ‘This is
natural; this has its source in the old creation; this cannot abide.’ Until
He does so, we may agree in principle but we can never really see it. We
may assent to, and even enjoy, the teaching, but we shall never truly loathe
ourselves.
But there will come a day when God opens our eyes. Facing a particular issue
we shall have to say, as by revelation: ‘It is unclean, it is impure; Lord
, I see it!’ The word ‘purity’ is a blessed word. I always associate it
with the Spirit. Purity means something altogether of the Spirit. Impurity
means mixture. When God opens our eyes to see that the natural life is
something He can never use in His work, then we find we do not enjoy the
doctrine any longer. Rather we loathe ourselves for the impurity that is in
us; but when that point is reached, God begins His work of deliverance. We
are going on shortly to look at the provision He has made for that
deliverance, but we must stay for a little longer with this matter of
revelation.

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: chapter 12.2
: The Root Question: The Human Soul
: Now we know the course that Adam chose. Standing between the two trees, he
: yielded to Satan and took of the fruit of the tree of knowledge. This
: determined the lines of his development. From then on he could command a
: knowledge; he ‘knew’. But—and here we come to the point—the fruit of the
: tree of knowledge made the first man over-developed in his soul. The
: emotion was touched, because the fruit was pleasant to the eyes, making him
: ‘desire’; the mind with its reasoning power was developed, for he was ‘
: made wise’; and the will was strengthened, so that in future he could

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77
chapter 12.4 The Light Of God And Knowledge
Of course, if one does not set out to serve the Lord whole-heartedly,
one does not feel the necessity for light. It is only when one has been
apprehended by God, and seeks to go forward with Him, that one finds
how necessary light is. There is a fundamental need of light in order
for us to know the mind of God; to know what is of the spirit and what
is of the soul; to know what is Divine and what is merely of man; to
discern what is truly heavenly and what is only earthly; to understand
the difference between things which are spiritual and things which are
carnal; to know whether God is really leading us or whether we are
walking by our feelings, senses or imaginations. It is when we have
reached a position where we would like to follow God fully that we find
light to be the most necessary thing in the Christian life.
In my conversations with younger brothers and sisters one question
comes up again and again. It is: How can I know that I am walking in
the Spirit? How do I distinguish which prompting within me is from the
Holy Spirit and which is from myself? It seems that all are alike in
this; but some have gone further. They are trying to look within, to
differentiate, to discriminate to analyze, and in doing so are bringing
themselves into deeper bondage. Now this is a situation which is really
dangerous to Christian life, for inward knowledge will never be reached
along the barren path of self-analysis.
We are never told in the Word of God to examine our inward condition.
[15] That way ends only to uncertainty, vacillation and despair. Of
course we have to have self-knowledge. We have to know what is going on
within. We do not want to live in a fool's paradise; to have gone
altogether wrong and yet not know we have gone wrong; to have a spartan
will and yet think we are pursuing the will of God. But such
self-knowledge does not come by our turning within; by our analyzing
our feelings and motives and everything that is going on inside, and
then trying to pronounce whether we are walking in the flesh or in the
Spirit.
There are several passages in the Psalms which illumine this subject.
The first is in Psalm 36:9: "In thy light shall we see light". I think
that is one of the best verses in the old Testament. There are two
lights there. There is "thy light", and then, when we have come into
that light, we shall "see light".
Now those two lights are different. We might say that the first is
objective and the second subjective. The first light is the light which
belongs to God but is shed upon us; the second is the knowledge
imparted by that light. "In thy light shall we see light": we shall
know something; we shall be clear about something; we shall see. No
turning within, no introspective self-examination will ever bring us to
that clear place. No, it is when there is light coming from God that we
see.
I think it is so simple. If we want to satisfy ourselves that our face
is clean, what do we do? Do we feel it carefully all over with our
hands? No, of course not. We find a mirror and we bring it to the
light. In that light everything becomes clear. No sight ever came by
feeling or analyzing. Sight only comes by the light of God coming in;
and when once it has come, there is no longer need to ask if a thing is
right or wrong. We know.
You remember again how in Psalm 139:23 the writer says: "Search me, O
God, and know my heart". You realize, do you not, what it means to say
Search me'? It certainly does not mean that I search myself. Search me'
means You search me!' That is the way of illumination. It is for God to
come in and search; it is not for me to search. Of course that will
never mean that I may go blindly on, careless of my true condition.
That is not the point. The point is that however much my
self-examination may reveal in me that needs putting right, such
searching never really gets below the surface. My true knowledge of
self comes not from my searching myself but from God searching me.
But, you ask, what does it mean in practice for us to come into the
light? How does it work? How do we see light in His light? Here again
the Psalmist comes to our help. "The entrance of Thy words giveth
light; it giveth understanding unto the simple" (Psalm 119:130 A.V.).
In spiritual things we are all simple'. We are dependent upon God to
give us understanding, and especially is this so in the matter of our
own true nature. And it is here that the Word of God operates. In the
New Testament the passage which states this most clearly is in the
Epistle to the Hebrews: "The word of God is living, and active, and
sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing even to the dividing of
soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and quick to discern the
thoughts and intents of the heart. And there is no creature that is not
manifest in his sight: but all things are naked and laid open before
the eyes of him with whom we have to do" (Heb. 4:12, 13). Yes, it is
the Word of God, the penetrating Scripture of Truth, that settles our
questions. It is that which discerns our motives and defines for us
their true source in soul or spirit.
With this I think we can pass on from the doctrinal to the practical
side of things. Many of us, I am sure, are living quite honestly before
God. We have been making progress, and we do not know of anything much
wrong with us. Then one day, as we go on, we meet with a fulfillment of
that word: "The entrance of Thy words giveth light". Some servant of
God has been used by Him to confront us with His living Word, and that
Word has made an entrance into us. Or perhaps we ourselves have been
waiting before God and, whether from our memory of Scripture or from
the page itself, His Word has come to us in power. Then it is we see
something which we have never seen before. We are convicted. We know
where we are wrong, and we look up and confess: Lord, I see it. There
is impurity there. There is mixture. How blind I was! Just fancy that
for so many years I have been wrong there and have never known it!'
Light comes in and we see light. The light of God brings us to see the
light concerning ourselves, and it is an abiding principle that every
knowledge of self comes to us in that way.
It may not always be the Scriptures. Some of us have known saints who
really knew the Lord, and through praying with them or talking with
them, in the light of God radiating from them, we have seen something
which we never saw before. I have met one such, who is now with the
Lord, and I always think of her as a lighted' Christian. If I did but
walk into her room, I was brought immediately to a sense of God. In
those days I was very young and had been converted about two years, and
I had lots of plans, lots of beautiful thoughts, lots of schemes for
the Lord to sanction, a hundred and one things which I thought would be
marvelous if they were all brought to fruition. With all these things I
came to her to try to persuade her; to tell her that this or that was
the thing to do.
Before I could open my mouth she would just say a few words in quite an
ordinary way. Light dawned! It simply put me to shame. My doing' was
all so natural, so full of man. Something happened. I was brought to a
place where I could say: Lord, my mind is set only in creaturely
activities, but here is someone who is not out for them at all'. She
had but one motive, one desire, and that was for God. Written in the
front of her Bible were these words: Lord, I want nothing for myself',
Yes, she lived for God alone, and where that is the case you will find
that such a one is bathed in light, and that that light illuminates
others. That is real witness. [16] Light has one law: it shines
wherever it is admitted. That is the only requirement. We may shut it
out of ourselves; it fears nothing else. If we throw ourselves open to
God, He will reveal. The trouble comes when we have closed areas,
locked and barred places in our hearts, where we think with pride that
we are right. Our defeat lies then not only in our being wrong but in
our not knowing that we are wrong. Wrong may be a question of natural
strength; ignorance of it is a question of light. You can see the
natural strength in some but they cannot see it themselves. Oh, we need
to be sincere and humble, and to open ourselves before God! Those who
are open can see. God is light, and we cannot live in His light and be
without understanding. Let us say again with the Psalmist: "O send out
Thy light and Thy truth: let them lead me" (Psalm 43:3).
We praise God that sin is being brought to the notice of Christians
today more than hitherto. In many places the eyes of Christians have
been opened to see that victory over sins, as items, is important in
Christian life, and in consequence many are walking closer to the Lord
in seeking deliverance and victory over them. Praise the Lord for any
movement toward Himself, any movement back to real holiness unto God!
But that is not enough. There is one thing that must be touched, and
that is the very life of the man, not merely his sins. The question of
the personality of the man, of his soul-power, is the heart of the
matter. To make the question of sins to be everything is still to be on
the surface. Holiness, if you only regard sins, is still something on
the outside, still superficial. You have not yet got to the root of the
evil.
Adam did not let sin into the world by committing murder. That came
later. Adam let in sin by choosing to have his soul developed to a
place where he cold go on by himself apart from God. When, therefore,
God secures a race of men who will be to His glory, and who will be His
instrument to accomplish His purpose in the universe, they will be a
people whose life--yea, whose very breath--is dependent upon Him. He
will be the "tree of life" to them.
What I feel more and more the need of in myself, and what I feel that
we all as the Lord's children need to seek from God, is a real
revelation of ourselves. I repeat that I do not mean we should be for
ever looking in on ourselves and asking: Now, is this soul or is it
spirit?' That will never get us anywhere; it is darkness. No, Scripture
shows us how the saints were brought to self-knowledge. It was always
by light from God, and that light is God Himself. Isaiah, Ezekiel,
Daniel, Peter, Paul, John, all came to a knowledge of themselves
because the Lord flashed Himself upon them, and that flash brought
revelation and conviction. (Isa. 6:5; Ezek. 1:28; Dan. 10:8; Luke
22:61, 62; Acts 9:3-5; Rev. 1:17).
We can never know the hatefulness of sin and the hatefulness of
ourselves unless there is that flash of God upon us. I speak not of a
sensation but of an inward revelation of the Lord Himself through His
Word. It does for us what doctrine alone can never do.
Christ is our light. He is the living Word, and when we read the
Scriptures that life in Him brings revelation. "The life was the light
of men" (John 1:4). Such illumination may not come to us all at once,
but gradually; but it will be more and more clear and searching, until
we see ourselves in the light of God and all our self-confidence is
gone. For light is the purest thing in the world. It cleanses. It
sterilizes. It kills what should not be there. In its radiance the
dividing asunder of joints and marrow' becomes to us a fact and no mere
teaching. We know fear and trembling as we recognize the corruption of
man's nature, the hatefulness of our own selves, and the real threat to
the work of God of our unrestrained soul-life and energy. As never
before, we know how much of us needs God's drastic dealing if He is to
use us, and we know that, apart from Him, as servants of God we are
finished.
But here the Cross, in its widest meaning, will come to our help again,
and we shall seek now to examine an aspect of its work which meets and
deals with our problem of the human soul. For only a thorough
understanding of the Cross can bring us to that place of dependence
which the Lord Jesus Himself voluntarily took when He said: "I can of
myself do nothing: as I hear, I judge: and my judgment is righteous;
because I seek not mine own will, but the will of him that sent me"
(John 5:30).
__________________________________________________________________
[15] The two apparent exceptions to this are found in 1 Corinthians
11:28, 31 and 2 Corinthians 13:5. But the former passage calls upon us
to discern ourselves as to whether we recognize the Lord's body or not,
and this is in particular connection with the Lord's table. It is not
concerned with self-knowledge as such. The strong command of Paul in
the latter passage is to examine ourselves as to whether or not we are
"in the faith". It is a question of the existence or otherwise in us of
a fundamental faith; of whether, in fact, we are Christians. This is in
no way related to our daily walk in the Spirit, or to
self-knowledge.--W.N.
[16] This is one of several references by the author to the late Miss
Maragaret E. Barber of Pagoda Anchorage, Foochow. See also pp. 95-6,
239, 256-7, 266-7.--Ed.
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: chapter 12.3
: Natural Energy In The Work Of God
: The power, the energy of the soul is present with us all. Those who have
: been taught by the Lord repudiate that principle as a life principle; they
: refuse to live by it; they will not let it reign, nor allow it to be the
: power-spring of the work of God. But those who have not been taught of God
: rely upon it; they utilize it; they think it is the power.
: Let us take first an obvious illustration of this. Far too many of us in the
: past have reasoned as follows. Here is a delightfully good-natured man,
: with a clear brain, splendid managing powers and sound judgment. In our

l**********t
发帖数: 5754
78
Normal Christian Life by 倪柝聲 (Watchman Nee)
Table of Contents
Chapter 1: The Blood of Christ
Chapter 2: The Cross of Christ
Chapter 3: The Path of Progress: Knowing
Chapter 4: The Path of Progress: Reckoning
Chapter 5: The Divide of the Cross
Chapter 6: The Path of Progress: Presenting Ourselves to God
Chapter 7: The Eternal Purpose
Chapter 8: The Holy Spirit
Chapter 9: The Meaning and Value of Romans Seven
Chapter 10: The Path of Progress: Walking in the Spirit
Chapter 11: One Body in Christ
Chapter 12: The Cross and the Soul Life
Chapter 13: The Path of Progress: Bearing the Cross
Chapter 14: The Goal of the Gospel
English Version:
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/nee/normal.i.html
Chinese Version:
http://www.lsmchinese.org/big5/03perfect/books/chapread.asp?boo
l**********t
发帖数: 5754
79
Chapter 1: The Blood of Christ
What is the normal Christian life? We do well at the outset to ponder this
question. The object of these studies is to show that it is something very
different from the life of the average Christian. Indeed a consideration of
the written Word of God—of the Sermon on the Mount for example—should lead
us to ask whether such a life has ever in fact been lived upon the earth,
save only by the Son of God Himself. But in that last saving clause lies
immediately the answer to our question.
The Apostle Paul gives us his own definition of the Christian life in
Galatians 2:20. It is “no longer I, but Christ”. Here he is not stating
something special or peculiar—a high level of Christianity. He is, we
believe, presenting God’s normal for a Christian, which can be summarized
in the words: I live no longer, but Christ lives His life in me.
God makes it quite clear in His Word that He has only one answer to every
human need—His Son, Jesus Christ. In all His dealings with us He works by
taking us out of the way and substituting Christ in our place. The Son of
God died instead of us for our forgiveness: He lives instead of us for our
deliverance. So we can speak of two substitutions—a Substitute on the Cross
who secures our forgiveness and a Substitute within who secures our victory
. It will help us greatly, and save us from much confusion, if we keep
constantly before us this fact, that God will answer all our questions in
one way only, namely, by showing us more of His Son.

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: Normal Christian Life by 倪柝聲 (Watchman Nee)
: Table of Contents
: Chapter 1: The Blood of Christ
: Chapter 2: The Cross of Christ
: Chapter 3: The Path of Progress: Knowing
: Chapter 4: The Path of Progress: Reckoning
: Chapter 5: The Divide of the Cross
: Chapter 6: The Path of Progress: Presenting Ourselves to God
: Chapter 7: The Eternal Purpose
: Chapter 8: The Holy Spirit

l**********t
发帖数: 5754
80
Chapter 1.1 Our Dual Problem: Sins and Sin
We shall take now as a starting-point for our study of the normal Christian
life that great exposition of it which we find in the first eight chapters
of the Epistle to the Romans, and we shall approach our subject from a
practical and experimental point of view. It will be helpful first of all to
point out a natural division of this section of Romans into two, and to
note certain striking differences in the subject-matter of its two parts.
The first eight chapters of Romans form a self-contained unit. The four-and-
a-half chapters from 1:1 to 5:11 form the first half of this unit and the
three-and-a-half chapters from 5:12 to 8:39 the second half. A careful
reading will show us that the subject-matter of the two halves is not the
same. For example, in the argument of the first section we find the plural
word ‘sins’ given prominence. In the second section, however, this changed
, for while the word ‘sins’ hardly occurs once, the singular word ‘sin’
is used again and again and is the subject mainly dealt with. Why is this?
It is because in the first section it is a question of the sins I have
committed before God, which are many and can be enumerated, whereas in the
second it is a question of sin as a principle working in me. No matter how
many sins I commit, it is always the one sin principle that leads to them. I
need forgiveness for my sins, but I need also deliverance from the power of
sin. The former touches my conscience, the latter my life. I may receive
forgiveness for all my sins, but because of my sin I have, even then, no
abiding peace of mind.
When God’s light first shines into my heart my one cry is for forgiveness,
for I realize I have committed sins before Him; but when once I have
received forgiveness of sins I make a new discovery, namely, the discovery
of sin, and I realize not only that I have committed sins before God but
that there is something wrong within. I discover that I have the nature of a
sinner. There is an inward inclination to sin, a power within that draws to
sin. When that power breaks out I commit sins. I may seek and receive
forgiveness, but then I sin once more. So life goes on in a vicious circle
of sinning and being forgiven and then sinning again. I appreciate the
blessed fact of God’s forgiveness, but I want something more than that: I
want deliverance. I need forgiveness for what I have done, but I need also
deliverance from what I am.

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: Chapter 1: The Blood of Christ
: What is the normal Christian life? We do well at the outset to ponder this
: question. The object of these studies is to show that it is something very
: different from the life of the average Christian. Indeed a consideration of
: the written Word of God—of the Sermon on the Mount for example—should lead
: us to ask whether such a life has ever in fact been lived upon the earth,
: save only by the Son of God Himself. But in that last saving clause lies
: immediately the answer to our question.
: The Apostle Paul gives us his own definition of the Christian life in
: Galatians 2:20. It is “no longer I, but Christ”. Here he is not stating

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l**********t
发帖数: 5754
81
Chapter 1.2 God’s Dual Remedy: The Blood and the Cross
Thus in the first eight chapters of Romans two aspects of salvation are
presented to us: firstly, the forgiveness of our sins, and secondly, our
deliverance from sin. But now, in keeping with this fact, we must notice a
further difference.
In the first part of Romans 1 to 8, we twice have reference to the Blood of
the Lord Jesus, in chapter 3:25 and in chapter 5:9. In the second, a new
idea is introduced in chapter 6:6, where we are said to have been “
crucified” with Christ. The argument of the first part gathers round that
aspect of the work of the Lord Jesus which is represented by ‘the Blood’
shed for our justification through “the remission of sins”. This
terminology is however not carried on into the second section, where the
argument centers now in the aspect of His work represented by ‘the Cross’,
that is to say, by our union with Christ in His death, burial and
resurrection. This distinction is a valuable one. We shall see that the
Blood deals with what we have done, whereas the Cross deals with what we are
. The Blood disposes of our sins, while the Cross strikes at the root of our
capacity for sin. The latter aspect will be the subject of our
consideration in later chapters.

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: Chapter 1.1 Our Dual Problem: Sins and Sin
: We shall take now as a starting-point for our study of the normal Christian
: life that great exposition of it which we find in the first eight chapters
: of the Epistle to the Romans, and we shall approach our subject from a
: practical and experimental point of view. It will be helpful first of all to
: point out a natural division of this section of Romans into two, and to
: note certain striking differences in the subject-matter of its two parts.
: The first eight chapters of Romans form a self-contained unit. The four-and-
: a-half chapters from 1:1 to 5:11 form the first half of this unit and the
: three-and-a-half chapters from 5:12 to 8:39 the second half. A careful

l**********t
发帖数: 5754
82
Chpater 1.3 The Problem Of Our Sins
We begin, then, with the precious Blood of the Lord Jesus Christ and its
value to us in dealing with our sins and justifying us in the sight of God.
This is set forth for us in the following passages:
“All have sinned” (Romans 3:23). “God commendeth his own love toward us,
in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then,
being now justified by his blood, shall we be saved from the wrath of God
through him” (Romans 5:8, 9). “Being justified freely by his grace through
the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: whom God set forth to be a
propitiation, through faith, by his blood, to shew his righteousness,
because of the passing over of the sins done aforetime, in the forbearance
of God; for the shewing, I say, of his righteousness at this present season:
that he might himself be just, and the justifier of him that hath faith in
Jesus” (Romans 3:24-26).
We shall have reason at a later stage in our study to look closely at the
real nature of the fall and the way of recovery. At this point we will just
remind ourselves that when sin came in it found expression in an act of
disobedience to God (Romans 5:19). Now we must remember that whenever this
occurs the thing that immediately follows is guilt.
Sin enters as disobedience, to create first of all a separation between God
and man whereby man is put away from God. God can no longer have fellowship
with him, for there is something now which hinders, and it is that which is
known throughout Scripture as ‘sin’. Thus it is first of all God who says,
“They are all under sin” (Romans 3:9). Then, secondly, that sin in man,
which henceforth constitutes a barrier to his fellowship with God, gives
rise in him to a sense of guilt—of estrangement from God. Here it is man
himself who, with the help of his awakened conscience, says, “I have sinned
” (Luke 15:18). Nor is this all, for sin also provides Satan with his
ground of accusation before God, while our sense of guilt gives him his
ground of accusation in our hearts; so that, thirdly, it is ‘the accuser of
the brethren’ (Rev. 12:10) who now says, ‘You have sinned’.
To redeem us, therefore, and to bring us back to the purpose of God, the
Lord Jesus had to do something about these three questions of sin and of
guilt and of Satan’s charge against us. Our sins had first to be dealt with
, and this was effected by the precious Blood of Christ. Our guilt has to be
dealt with and our guilty conscience set at rest by showing us the value of
that Blood. And finally the attack of the enemy has to be met and his
accusations answered. In the Scriptures the Blood of Christ is shown to
operate effectually in these three ways, Godward, manward and Satanward.
There is thus an absolute need for us to appropriate these values of the
Blood if we are to go on. This is a first essential. We must have a basic
knowledge of the fact of the death of the Lord Jesus as our Substitute upon
the Cross, and a clear apprehension of the efficacy of His Blood for our
sins, for without this we cannot be said to have started upon our road. Let
us look then at these three matters more closely.

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: Chapter 1.2 God’s Dual Remedy: The Blood and the Cross
: Thus in the first eight chapters of Romans two aspects of salvation are
: presented to us: firstly, the forgiveness of our sins, and secondly, our
: deliverance from sin. But now, in keeping with this fact, we must notice a
: further difference.
: In the first part of Romans 1 to 8, we twice have reference to the Blood of
: the Lord Jesus, in chapter 3:25 and in chapter 5:9. In the second, a new
: idea is introduced in chapter 6:6, where we are said to have been “
: crucified” with Christ. The argument of the first part gathers round that
: aspect of the work of the Lord Jesus which is represented by ‘the Blood’

l**********t
发帖数: 5754
83
Chapter 1.4 The Blood Is Primarily For God
The Blood is for atonement and has to do first with our standing before God.
We need forgiveness for the sins we have committed, lest we come under
judgment; and they are forgiven, not because God overlooks what we have done
but because He sees the Blood. The Blood is therefore not primarily for us
but for God. If I want to understand the value of the Blood I must accept
God’s valuation of it, and if I do not know something of the value set upon
the Blood by God I shall never know what its value is for me. It is only as
the estimate that God puts upon the Blood of Christ is made known to me by
His Holy Spirit that I come into the good of it myself and find how precious
indeed the Blood is to me. But the first aspect of it is Godward.
Throughout the Old and New Testaments the word ‘blood’ is used in
connection with the idea of atonement, I think over a hundred times, and
throughout it is something for God.
In the Old Testament calendar there is one day that has a great bearing on
the matter of our sins and that day is the Day of Atonement. Nothing
explains this question of sins so clearly as the description of that day. In
Leviticus 16 we find that on the Day of Atonement the blood was taken from
the sin offering and brought into the Most Holy Place and there sprinkled
before the Lord seven times. We must be very clear about this. On that day
the sin offering was offered publicly in the court of the tabernacle.
Everything was there in full view and could be seen by all. But the Lord
commanded that no man should enter the tabernacle itself except the high
priest. It was he alone who took the blood and, going into the Most Holy
Place, sprinkled it there to make atonement before the Lord. Why? Because
the high priest was a type of the Lord Jesus in His redemptive work (Hebrews
9:12), and so, in figure, he was the one who did the work. None but he
could even draw near to enter in. Moreover, connected with his going in
there was but one act, namely, the presenting of the blood to God as
something He had accepted, something in which He could find satisfaction. It
was a transaction between the high priest and God in the Sanctuary, away
from the eyes of the men who were to benefit by it. The Lord required that.
The Blood is therefore in the first place for Him.
Earlier even than this there is described in Exodus 12:13 the shedding of
the blood of the passover lamb in Egypt for Israel’s redemption. This is
again, I think, one of the best types in the Old Testament of our redemption
. The blood was put on the lintel and on the door-posts, whereas the meat,
the flesh of the lamb, was eaten inside the house; and God said: “When I
see the blood, I will pass over you”. Here we have another illustration of
the fact that the blood was not meant to be presented to man but to God, for
the blood was put on the lintel and on the door-posts, where those feasting
inside the house would not see it.

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: Chpater 1.3 The Problem Of Our Sins
: We begin, then, with the precious Blood of the Lord Jesus Christ and its
: value to us in dealing with our sins and justifying us in the sight of God.
: This is set forth for us in the following passages:
: “All have sinned” (Romans 3:23). “God commendeth his own love toward us,
: in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then,
: being now justified by his blood, shall we be saved from the wrath of God
: through him” (Romans 5:8, 9). “Being justified freely by his grace through
: the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: whom God set forth to be a
: propitiation, through faith, by his blood, to shew his righteousness,

l**********t
发帖数: 5754
84
Chapter 1.5 God Is Satisfied
It is God’s holiness, God’s righteousness, which demands that a sinless
life should be given for man. There is life in the Blood, and that Blood has
to be poured out for me, for my sins. God is the One who requires it to be
so. God is the One who demands that the Blood be presented, in order to
satisfy His own righteousness, and it is He who says: ‘When I see the blood
’, I will pass over you.’ The Blood of Christ wholly satisfies God.
Now I desire to say a word at this point to my younger brethren in the Lord,
for it is here that we often get into difficulties. As unbelievers we may
have been wholly untroubled by our conscience until the Word of God began to
arouse us. Our conscience was dead, and those with dead consciences are
certainly of no use to God. But later, when we believed, our awakened
conscience may have become acutely sensitive, and this can constitute a real
problem to us. The sense of sin and guilt can become so great, so terrible,
as almost to cripple us by causing us to lose sight of the true
effectiveness of the Blood. It seems to us that our sins are so real, and
some particular sin may trouble us so many times, that we come to the point
where to us our sins loom larger than the Blood of Christ.
Now the whole trouble with us is that we are trying to sense it; we are
trying to feel its value and to estimate subjectively what the Blood is for
us. We cannot do it; it does not work that way. The Blood is first for God
to see. We then have to accept God’s valuation of it. In doing so we shall
find our valuation. If instead we try to come to a valuation by way of our
feelings we get nothing; we remain in darkness. No, it is a matter of faith
in God’s Word. We have to believe that the Blood is precious to God because
He says it is so (1 Peter 1:18, 19). If God can accept the Blood as a
payment for our sins and as the price of our redemption, then we can rest
assured that the debt has been paid. If God is satisfied with the Blood,
then the Blood must be acceptable. Our valuation of it is only according to
His valuation—neither more nor less. It cannot, of course, be more, but it
must not be less. Let us remember that He is holy and He is righteous, and
that a holy and righteous God has the right to say that the Blood is
acceptable in His eyes and has fully satisfied Him.

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: Chapter 1.4 The Blood Is Primarily For God
: The Blood is for atonement and has to do first with our standing before God.
: We need forgiveness for the sins we have committed, lest we come under
: judgment; and they are forgiven, not because God overlooks what we have done
: but because He sees the Blood. The Blood is therefore not primarily for us
: but for God. If I want to understand the value of the Blood I must accept
: God’s valuation of it, and if I do not know something of the value set upon
: the Blood by God I shall never know what its value is for me. It is only as
: the estimate that God puts upon the Blood of Christ is made known to me by
: His Holy Spirit that I come into the good of it myself and find how precious

l**********t
发帖数: 5754
85
Chapter 1.6 The Blood And The Believer’s Access
The Blood has satisfied God; it must satisfy us also. It has therefore a
second value that is manward in the cleansing of our conscience. When we
come to the Epistle to the Hebrews we find that the Blood does this. We are
to have “hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience” (Hebrews 10:22).
This is most important. Look carefully at what it says. The writer does not
tell us that the Blood of the Lord Jesus cleanses our hearts, and then stop
there in his statement. We are wrong to connect the heart with the Blood in
quite that way. It may show a misunderstanding of the sphere in which the
Blood operates to pray, ‘Lord, cleanse my heart from sin by Thy Blood’.
The heart, God says, is “desperately sick” (Jeremiah 17:9), and He must do
something more fundamental than cleanse it: He must give us a new one.
We do not wash and iron clothing that we are going to throw away. As we
shall shortly see, the ‘flesh’ is too bad to be cleansed; it must be
crucified. The work of God within us must be something wholly new. “A new
heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you” (
Ezekiel 36:26).
No, I do not find it stated that the Blood cleanses our hearts. Its work is
not subjective in that way, but wholly objective, before God. True, the
cleansing work of the Blood is seen here in Hebrews 10 to have reference to
the heart, but it is in relation to the conscience. “Having our hearts
sprinkled from an evil conscience”. What then is the meaning of this?
It means that there was something intervening between myself and God, as a
result of which I had an evil conscience whenever I sought to approach Him.
It was constantly reminding me of the barrier that stood between myself and
Him. But now, through the operation of the precious Blood, something new has
been effected before God which has removed that barrier, and God has made
that fact known to me in His Word. When that has been believed in and
accepted, my conscience is at once cleared and my sense of guilt removed,
and I have no more an evil conscience toward God.
Every one of us knows what a precious thing it is to have a conscience void
of offense in our dealings with God. A heart of faith and a conscience clear
of any and every accusation are both equally essential to us, since they
are interdependent. As soon as we find our conscience is uneasy our faith
leaks away and immediately we find we cannot face God. In order therefore to
keep going on with God we must know the up-to-date value of the Blood. God
keeps short accounts, and we are made nigh by the Blood every day, every
hour and every minute. It never loses its efficacy as our ground of access
if we will but lay hold upon it. When we enter the most Holy Place, on what
ground dare we enter but by the Blood?
But I want to ask myself, am I really seeking the way into the Presence of
God by the Blood or by something else? What do I mean when I say, ‘by the
Blood’? I mean simply that I recognize my sins, that I confess that I have
need of cleansing and of atonement, and that I come to God on the basis of
the finished work of the Lord Jesus. I approach God through His merit alone,
and never on the basis of my attainment; never, for example, on the ground
that I have been extra kind or patient today, or that I have done something
for the Lord this morning. I have to come by way of the Blood every time.
The temptation to so many of us when we try to approach God is to think that
because God has been dealing with us—because He has been taking steps to
bring us into something more of Himself and has been teaching us deeper
lessons of the Cross—He has thereby set before us new standards, and that
only by attaining to these can we have a clear conscience before Him. No! A
clear conscience is never based upon our attainment; it can only be based on
the work of the Lord Jesus in the shedding of His Blood.
I may be mistaken, but I feel very strongly that some of us are thinking in
terms such as these: ‘Today I have been a little more careful; today I have
been doing a little better; this morning I have been reading the Word of
God in a warmer way, so today I can pray better!’ Or again, ‘Today I have
had a little difficulty with the family; I began the day feeling very gloomy
and moody; I am not feeling too bright now; it seems that there must be
something wrong; therefore I cannot approach God.’
What, after all, is your basis of approach to God? Do you come to Him on the
uncertain ground of your feeling, the feeling that you may have achieved
something for God today? Or is your approach based on something far more
secure, namely, the fact that the Blood has been shed, and that God looks on
that Blood and is satisfied? Of course, were it conceivably possible for
the Blood to suffer any change, the basis of your approach to God might be
less trustworthy. But the Blood has never changed and never will. Your
approach to God is therefore always in boldness; and that boldness is yours
through the Blood and never through your personal attainment. Whatever be
your measure of attainment today or yesterday or the day before, as soon as
you make a conscious move into the Most Holy Place, immediately you have to
take your stand upon the safe and only ground of the shed Blood. Whether you
have had a good day or a bad day, whether you have consciously sinned or
not, your basis of approach is always the same—the Blood of Christ. That is
the ground upon which you may enter, and there is no other.
As with many other stages of our Christian experience, this matter of access
to God has two phases, an initial and a progressive one. The former is
presented to us in Ephesians 2 and the latter in Hebrews 10. Initially, our
standing with God was secured by the Blood, for we are “made nigh in the
blood of Christ” (Eph. 2:13). But thereafter our ground of continual access
is still by the Blood, for the apostle exhorts us: “Having therefore...
boldness to enter into the holy place by the blood of Jesus... let us draw
near” (Heb. 10:19, 22). To begin with I was made nigh by the Blood, and to
continue in that new relationship I come through the Blood every time. It is
not that I was saved on one basis and that I now maintain my fellowship on
another. You say, ’That is very simple; it is the A.B.C. of the Gospel.’
Yes, but the trouble with many of us is that we have moved away from the A.B
.C. We have thought we had progressed and so could dispense with it, but we
can never do so. No, my initial approach to God is by the Blood, and every
time I come before Him it is the same. Right to the end it will always and
only be on the ground of the Blood.
This does not mean at all that we should live a careless life, for we shall
shortly study another aspect of the death of Christ which shows us that
anything but that is contemplated. But for the present let us be satisfied
with the Blood, that it is there and that it is enough.
We may be weak, but looking at our weakness will never make us strong. No
trying to feel bad and doing penance will help us to be even a little holier
. There is no help there, so let us be bold in our approach because of the
Blood: ‘Lord, I do not know fully what the value of the Blood is, but I
know that the Blood has satisfied Thee; so the Blood is enough for me, and
it is my only plea. I see now that whether I have really progressed, whether
I have really attained to something or not, is not the point. Whenever I
come before Thee, it is always on the ground of the precious Blood. Then our
conscience is really clear before God. No conscience could ever be clear
apart from the Blood. It is the Blood that gives us boldness.
“No more conscience of sins”: these are tremendous words of Hebrews 10:2.
We are cleansed from every sin; and we may truly echo the words of Paul: “
Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not reckon sin” (Romans 4:8).

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: Chapter 1.5 God Is Satisfied
: It is God’s holiness, God’s righteousness, which demands that a sinless
: life should be given for man. There is life in the Blood, and that Blood has
: to be poured out for me, for my sins. God is the One who requires it to be
: so. God is the One who demands that the Blood be presented, in order to
: satisfy His own righteousness, and it is He who says: ‘When I see the blood
: ’, I will pass over you.’ The Blood of Christ wholly satisfies God.
: Now I desire to say a word at this point to my younger brethren in the Lord,
: for it is here that we often get into difficulties. As unbelievers we may
: have been wholly untroubled by our conscience until the Word of God began to

l**********t
发帖数: 5754
86
Chapter 1.7 Overcoming The Accuser
In view of what we have said we can now turn to face the enemy, for there is
a further aspect of the Blood which is Satanward. Satan’s most strategic
activity in this day is as the accuser of the brethren (Rev. 12:10) and it
is as this that our Lord confronts him with His special ministry as High
Priest “through his own blood” (Hebrews 9:12).
How then does the Blood operate against Satan? It does so by putting God on
the side of man against him. The Fall brought something into man which gave
Satan a footing within him, with the result that God was compelled to
withdraw Himself. Man is now outside the garden—beyond reach of the glory
of God (Romans 3:23)—because he is inwardly estranged from God. Because of
what man has done, there is something in him which, until it is removed,
renders God morally unable to defend him. But the Blood removes that barrier
and restores man to God and God to man. Man is in favour now, and because
God is on his side he can face Satan without fear.
You remember that verse in John’s first Epistle—and this is the
translation of it I like best: “The blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from
every sin” 111 John 1:7: Marginal reading of New Translation by J.N. Darby
It is not exactly “all sin” in the general sense, but every sin, every
item. What does it mean? Oh, it is a marvelous thing! God is the light, and
as we walk in the light with Him everything is exposed and open to that
light, so that God can see it all—and yet the Blood is able to cleanse from
every sin. What a cleansing! It is not that I have not a profound knowledge
of myself, nor that God has not a perfect knowledge of me. It is not that I
try to hide something nor that God tries to overlook something. No, it is
that He is in the light and I too am in the light, and that there the
precious Blood cleanses me from every sin. The Blood is enough for that!
Some of us, oppressed by our own weakness, may at times have been tempted to
think that there are sins which are almost unforgivable. Let us remember
the word: “The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanses us from every sin.”
Big sins, small sins, sins which may be very black and sins which appear to
be not so black, sins which I think can be forgiven and sins which seem
unforgivable, yes, all sins, conscious or unconscious, remembered or
forgotten, are included in those words: “every sin”. “The blood of Jesus
his Son cleanses us from every sin”, and it does so because in the first
place it satisfies God.
Since God, seeing all our sins in the light, can forgive them on the basis
of the Blood, what ground of accusation has Satan? Satan may accuse us
before Him, but, “If God is for us, who is against us?” (Romans 8:31). God
points him to the Blood of His dear Son. It is the sufficient answer
against which Satan has no appeal. “Who shall lay anything to the charge of
God’s elect? It is God that justifieth; who is he that shall condemn? It
is Christ Jesus that died, yea rather, that was raised from the dead, who is
at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us” (Romans 8:
33, 34).
So here again our need is to recognize the absolute sufficiency of the
precious Blood. “Christ having come a high priest... through his own blood,
entered in once for all into the holy place, having obtained eternal
redemption” (Hebrews 9:11, 12). He was Redeemer once. He has been High
Priest and Advocate for nearly two thousand years. He stands there in the
presence of God, and “he is the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 2:1, 2)
. Note the words of Hebrews 9:14: “How much more shall the blood of Christ.
..” They underline the sufficiency of His ministry. It is enough for God.
What then of our attitude to Satan? This is important, for he accuses us not
only before God but in our own conscience also. ‘You have sinned, and you
keep on sinning. You are weak, and God can have nothing more to do with you.
’ This is his argument. And our temptation is to look within and in self-
defense to try to find in ourselves, in our feelings or our behavior, some
ground for believing that Satan is wrong. Alternatively we are tempted to
admit our helplessness and, going to the other extreme, to yield to
depression and despair. Thus accusation becomes one of the greatest and most
effective of Satan’s weapons. He points to our sins and seeks to charge us
with them before God, and if we accept his accusations we go down
immediately.
Now the reason why we so readily accept his accusations is that we are still
hoping to have some righteousness of our own. The ground of our expectation
is wrong. Satan has succeeded in making us look in the wrong direction.
Thereby he wins his point, rendering us ineffective. But if we have learned
to put no confidence in the flesh, we shall not wonder if we sin, for the
very nature of the flesh is to sin. Do you understand what I mean? It is
because we have not come to appreciate our true nature and to see how
helpless we are that we still have some expectation in ourselves, with the
result that, when Satan comes along and accuses us, we go down under it.
God is well able to deal with our sins; but He cannot deal with a man under
accusation, because such a man is not trusting in the Blood. The Blood
speaks in his favour, but his is listening instead to Satan. Christ is our
Advocate but we, the accused, side with the accuser. We have not recognized
that we are unworthy of anything but death; that, as we shall shortly see,
we are only fit to be crucified anyway. We have not recognized that it is
God alone that can answer the accuser, and that in the precious Blood He has
already done so.
Our salvation lies in looking away to the Lord Jesus and in seeing that the
Blood of the Lamb has met the whole situation created by our sins and has
answered it. That is the sure foundation on which we stand. Never should we
try to answer Satan with our good conduct but always with the Blood. Yes, we
are sinful, but, praise God! the Blood cleanses us from every sin. God
looks upon the Blood whereby His Son has met the charge, and Satan has no
more ground of attack. Our faith in the precious Blood and our refusal to be
moved from that position can alone silence his charges and put him to
flight (Romans 8:33, 34); and so it will be, right on to the end (Revelation
12:11). Oh, what an emancipation it would be if we saw more of the value of
God’s eyes of the precious Blood of His dear Son!


【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: Chapter 1.6 The Blood And The Believer’s Access
: The Blood has satisfied God; it must satisfy us also. It has therefore a
: second value that is manward in the cleansing of our conscience. When we
: come to the Epistle to the Hebrews we find that the Blood does this. We are
: to have “hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience” (Hebrews 10:22).
: This is most important. Look carefully at what it says. The writer does not
: tell us that the Blood of the Lord Jesus cleanses our hearts, and then stop
: there in his statement. We are wrong to connect the heart with the Blood in
: quite that way. It may show a misunderstanding of the sphere in which the
: Blood operates to pray, ‘Lord, cleanse my heart from sin by Thy Blood’.

l**********t
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87
Chapter 2: The Cross of Christ
We have seen that Romans 1 to 8 falls into two sections, in the first of
which we are shown that the Blood deals with what we have done, while in the
second we shall see that the Cross(2) deals with what we are. We need the
Blood for forgiveness; we need also the Cross for deliverance. We have dealt
briefly above with the first of these two and we shall move on now to the
second; but before we do so we will look for a moment at a few more features
of this passage which serve to emphasize the difference in subject matter
and argument between the two halves.
2Note - The author uses ‘the Cross’ here and throughout these studies in a
special sense. Most readers will be familiar with the current use of the
expression ‘the Cross’ to signify, firstly, the entire redemptive work
accomplished historically in the death, burial, resurrection and ascension
of the Lord Jesus Himself (Phil. 2:8, 9), and secondly, in a wider sense,
the union of believers with Him therein through grace (Rom. 6:4; Eph. 2:5, 6
). Clearly in that use of the term the operation of ‘the Blood’ in
relation to forgiveness of sins (as dealt with in Chapter 1 of this book) is
, from God’s viewpoint, included (with all that follows in these studies)
as a part of the work of the Cross. In this and the following chapters,
however, the author is compelled, for lack of an alternative term, to use ‘
the Cross’ in a more particular and limited doctrinal sense in order to
draw a helpful distinction, namely, that between substitution and
identification, as being, from the human angle, two separate aspects of the
doctrine of redemption. Thus the name of the whole is of necessity used for
one of its parts. The reader should bear this in mind in what follows.—Ed.

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: Chapter 1.7 Overcoming The Accuser
: In view of what we have said we can now turn to face the enemy, for there is
: a further aspect of the Blood which is Satanward. Satan’s most strategic
: activity in this day is as the accuser of the brethren (Rev. 12:10) and it
: is as this that our Lord confronts him with His special ministry as High
: Priest “through his own blood” (Hebrews 9:12).
: How then does the Blood operate against Satan? It does so by putting God on
: the side of man against him. The Fall brought something into man which gave
: Satan a footing within him, with the result that God was compelled to
: withdraw Himself. Man is now outside the garden—beyond reach of the glory

l**********t
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88
Chapter 2.1 Some Further Distinctions
Two aspects of the resurrection are mentioned in the two sections, in
chapters 4 and 6. In Romans 4:25 the resurrection of the Lord Jesus is
mentioned in relation to our justification: “Jesus our Lord... was
delivered up for our trespasses, and was raised for our justification.”
Here the matter in view is that of our standing before God. But in Romans 6:
4 the resurrection is spoken of as imparting to us new life with a view to a
holy walk: “That like as Christ was raised from the dead... so we also
might walk in newness of life.” Here the matter before us is behaviour.
Again, peace is spoken of in both sections, in the fifth and eighth chapters
. Romans 5 tells of peace with God which is the effect of justification by
faith in His Blood: “Being therefore justified by faith, we have peace with
God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” (5:1 mg.) This means that, now that I
have forgiveness of sins, God will no longer be a cause of dread and trouble
to me. I who was an enemy to God have been “reconciled... through the
death of his Son” (5:10). I very soon find, however, that I am going to be
a great cause of trouble to myself. There is still unrest within, for within
me there is something that draws me to sin. There is peace with God, but
there is no peace with myself. There is in fact civil war in my own heart.
This condition is well depicted in Romans 7 where the flesh and the spirit
are seen to be in deadly conflict within me. But from this the argument
leads in chapter 8 to the inward peace of a walk in the Spirit. “The mind
of the flesh is death”, because it “is enmity against God”, “but the
mind of the spirit is life and peace” (Romans 8:6, 7).
Looking further still we find that the first half of the section deals
generally speaking with the question of justification (see, for example,
Romans 3:24-26; 4:5, 25), while the second half has as its main topic the
corresponding question of sanctification (see Rom. 6:19, 22). When we know
the precious truth of justification by faith we still know only half of the
story. We still have only solved the problem of our standing before God. As
we go on, God has something more to offer us, namely, the solution of the
problem of our conduct, and the development of thought in these chapters
serves to emphasize this. In each case the second step follows from the
first, and if we know only the first then we are still leading a sub-normal
Christian life. How then can we live a normal Christian life? How do we
enter in? Well, of course, initially we must have forgiveness of sins, we
must have justification, we must have peace with God: these are our
indispensable foundation. But with that basis truly established through our
first act of faith in Christ, it is yet clear from the above that we must
move on to something more.
So we see that objectively the Blood deals with our sins. The Lord Jesus has
borne them on the Cross for us as our Substitute and has thereby obtained
for us forgiveness, justification and reconciliation. But we must now go a
step further in the plan of God to understand how He deals with the sin
principle in us. The Blood can wash away my sins, but it cannot wash away my
‘old man’. It needs the Cross to crucify me. The Blood deals with the
sins, but the Cross must deal with the sinner.
You will scarcely find the word ‘sinner’ in the first four chapters of
Romans. This is because there the sinner himself is not mainly in view, but
rather the sins he has committed. The word ‘sinner’ first comes into
prominence only in chapter 5, and it is important to notice how the sinner
is there introduced. In that chapter a sinner is said to be a sinner because
he is born a sinner; not because he has committed sins. The distinction is
important. It is true that often when a Gospel worker wants to convince a
man in the street that he is a sinner, he will use the favourite verse
Romans 3:23, where it says that “all have sinned”; but this use of the
verse is not strictly justified by the Scriptures. Those who so use it are
in danger of arguing the wrong way round, for the teaching of Romans is not
that we are sinners because we commit sins, but that we sin because we are
sinners. We are sinners by constitution rather than by action. As Romans 5:
19 expresses it: “Through the one man’s disobedience the many were made (
or ‘constituted’) sinners”.
How were we constituted sinners? By Adam’s disobedience. We do not become
sinners by what we have done but because of what Adam has done and has
become. I speak English, but I am not thereby constituted an Englishman. I
am in fact a Chinese. So chapter 3 draws our attention to what we have done
—“all have sinned”—but it is not because we have done it that we become
sinners.
I once asked a class of children. ‘Who is a sinner?’ and their immediate
reply was, ‘One who sins’. Yes, one who sins is a sinner, but the fact
that he sins is merely the evidence that he is already a sinner; it is not
the cause. One who sins is a sinner, but it is equally true that one who
does not sin, if he is of Adam’s race, is a sinner too, and in need of
redemption. Do you follow me? There are bad sinners and there are good
sinners, there are moral sinners and there are corrupt sinners, but they are
all alike sinners. We sometimes think that if only we had not done certain
things all would be well; but the trouble lies far deeper than in what we do
speak Chinese at all, but he is a Chinese for all that, because he was born
a Chinese. It is birth that counts. So I am a sinner not of my behaviour but
of my heredity, my parentage. I am not a sinner because I sin, but I sin
because I come of the wrong stock. I sin because I am a sinner.
We are apt to think that what we have done is very bad, but that we
ourselves are not so bad. God is taking pains to show us that we ourselves
are wrong, fundamentally wrong. The root trouble is the sinner; he must be
dealt with. Our sins are dealt with by the Blood, but we ourselves are dealt
with by the Cross. The Blood procures our pardon for what we have done; the
Cross procures our deliverance from what we are.
l**********t
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89
Chapter 2.2 Man’s State By Nature
We come therefore to Romans 5:12-21. In this great passage, grace is brought
into contrast with sin and the obedience of Christ is set against the
disobedience of Adam. It is placed at the beginning of the second section of
(Romans 5:12 to 8:39) with which we shall now be particularly concerned,
and its argument leads to a conclusion which lies at the foundation of our
further meditations. What is that conclusion? It is found in verse 19
already quoted: “For as through the one man’s disobedience the many were
made sinners, even so through the obedience of the one shall the many be
made righteous.” Here the Spirit of God is seeking to show us first what we
are, and then how we came to be what we are.
At the beginning of our Christian life we are concerned with our doing, not
with our being; we are distressed rather by what we have done than by what
we are. We think that if only we could rectify certain things we should be
good Christians, and we set out therefore to change our actions. But the
result is not what we expected. We discover to our dismay that it is
something more than just a case of trouble on the outside—that there is in
fact more serious trouble on the inside. We try to please the Lord, but find
something within that does not want to please Him. We try to be humble, but
there is something in our very being that refuses to be humble. We try to
be loving, but inside we feel most unloving. We smile and try to look very
gracious, but inwardly we feel decidedly ungracious. The more we try to
rectify matters on the outside the more we realize how deep-seated the
trouble is within. Then we come to the Lord and say, ‘Lord, I see it now!
Not only what I have done is wrong; I am wrong.’
The conclusion of Romans 5:19 is beginning to dawn upon us. We are sinners.
We are members of a race of people who are constitutionally other than what
God intended them to be. By the Fall a fundamental change took place in the
character of Adam whereby he became a sinner, one constitutionally unable to
please God; and the family likeness which we all share is no merely
superficial one but extends to our inward character also. We have been “
constituted sinners”. How did this come about? “By the disobedience of one
”, says Paul. Let me try to illustrate this.
My name is Nee. It is a fairly common Chinese name. How did I come by it? I
did not choose it. I did not go through the list of possible Chinese names
and select this one. That my name is Nee is in fact not my doing at all, and
, moreover, nothing I can do can alter it. I am a Nee because my father was
a Nee, and my father was a Nee because my grandfather was a Nee. If I act
like a Nee I am a Nee, and if I act unlike a Nee I am still a Nee. If I
become President of the Chinese Republic I am a Nee, or if I become a beggar
in the street I am still a Nee. Nothing I do or refrain from doing will
make me other than a Nee.
We are sinners not because of ourselves but because of Adam. It is not
because I individually have sinned that I am a sinner but because I was in
Adam when he sinned. Because by birth I come of Adam, therefore I am a part
of him. What is more, I can do nothing to alter this. I cannot by improving
my behaviour make myself other than a part of Adam and so a sinner.
In China I was once talking in this strain and remarked, ‘We have all
sinned in Adam’. A man said, ‘I don’t understand’, so I sought to
explain it in this way. ‘All Chinese trace their descent from Huang-ti’, I
said. ‘Over four thousand years ago he had a war with Si-iu. His enemy was
very strong, but nevertheless Huang-ti overcame and slew him. After this
Huang-ti founded the Chinese nation. Four thousand years ago therefore our
nation was founded by Huang-ti. Now what would have happened if Huang-ti had
not killed his enemy, but had been himself killed instead? Where would you
be now?’ ‘There would be no me at all’, he answered. ‘Oh, no! Huang-ti
can die his death and you can live your life.’ ‘Impossible!’ he cried, ‘
If he had died, then I could never have lived, for I have derived my life
from him.’
Do you see the oneness of human life? Our life comes from Adam. If your
great-grandfather had died at the age of three, where would you be? You
would have died in him! Your experience is bound up with his. Now in just
the same way the experience of every one of us is bound up with that of Adam
. None can say, ‘I have not been in Eden’ for potentially we all were
there when Adam yielded to the serpent’s words. So we are all involved in
Adam’s sin, and by being born “in Adam” we receive from him all that he
became as a result of his sin—that is to say, the Adam-nature which is the
nature of a sinner. We derive our existence from him, and because his life
became a sinful life, a sinful nature, therefore the nature which we derive
from him is also sinful. So, as we have said, the trouble is in our heredity
, not in our behaviour. Unless we can change our parentage there is no
deliverance for us.
But it is in this very direction that we shall find the solution of our
problem, for that is exactly how God has dealt with the situation.

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: Chapter 2.1 Some Further Distinctions
: Two aspects of the resurrection are mentioned in the two sections, in
: chapters 4 and 6. In Romans 4:25 the resurrection of the Lord Jesus is
: mentioned in relation to our justification: “Jesus our Lord... was
: delivered up for our trespasses, and was raised for our justification.”
: Here the matter in view is that of our standing before God. But in Romans 6:
: 4 the resurrection is spoken of as imparting to us new life with a view to a
: holy walk: “That like as Christ was raised from the dead... so we also
: might walk in newness of life.” Here the matter before us is behaviour.
: Again, peace is spoken of in both sections, in the fifth and eighth chapters

l**********t
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90
Chapter 2.3 As In Adam So In Christ
In Romans 5:12 to 21 we are not only told something about Adam; we are told
also something about the Lord Jesus. “As through the one man’s
disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of
the one shall the many be made righteous.” In Adam we receive everything
that is of Adam; in Christ we receive everything that is of Christ.
The terms ‘in Adam’ and ‘in Christ’ are too little understood by
Christians, and, at the risk of repetition, I wish again to emphasize by
means of an illustration the hereditary and racial significance of the term
‘in Christ’. This illustration is to be found in the letter to the Hebrews
. Do you remember that in the earlier part of the letter the writer is
trying to show that Melchizedek is greater than Levi? You recall that the
point to be proved is that the priesthood of Christ is greater than the
priesthood of Aaron who was of the tribe of Levi. Now in order to prove that
, he has first to prove that the priesthood of Melchizedek is greater than
the priesthood of Levi, for the simple reason that the priesthood of Christ
is “after the order of Melchizedek” (Heb. 7:14-17), while that of Aaron is
, of course, after the order of Levi. If the writer can demonstrate to us
that Melchizedek is greater than Levi, then he has made his point. That is
the issue, and he proves it in a remarkable way.
He tells us in Hebrews chapter 7 that one day Abraham, returning from the
battle of the kings (Genesis 14), offered a tithe of his spoils to
Melchizedek and received from him a blessing. Inasmuch as Abraham did so,
Levi is therefore of less account than Melchizedek. Why? Because the fact
that Abraham offered tithes to Melchizedek. But if that is true, then Jacob
also ‘in Abraham’ offered to Melchizedek, which in turn means that Levi ‘
in Abraham’ offered to Melchizedek. It is evident that the lesser offers to
the greater (Hebrews 7:7). So Levi is less in standing than Melchizedek,
and therefore the priesthood of Aaron is inferior to that of the Lord Jesus.
Levi at the time of the battle of the kings was not yet even thought of.
Yet he was “in the loins of his father” Abraham, and, “so to say, through
Abraham”, he offered (Hebrews 7:9, 10).
Now this is the exact meaning of ‘in Christ’. Abraham, as the head of the
family of faith, includes the whole family in himself. When he offered to
Melchizedek, the whole family offered in him to Melchizedek. They did not
offer separately as individuals, but they were in him, and therefore in
making his offering he included with himself all his seed.
So we are presented with a new possibility. In Adam all was lost. Through
the disobedience of one man we were all constituted sinners. By him sin
entered and death through sin, and throughout the race sin has reigned unto
death from that day on. But now a ray of light is cast upon the scene.
Through the obedience of Another we may be constituted righteous. Where sin
abounded grace did much more abound, and as sin reigned unto death, even so
may grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our
Lord (Romans 5:19-21). Our despair is in Adam; our hope is in Christ.

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: Chapter 2.2 Man’s State By Nature
: We come therefore to Romans 5:12-21. In this great passage, grace is brought
: into contrast with sin and the obedience of Christ is set against the
: disobedience of Adam. It is placed at the beginning of the second section of
: (Romans 5:12 to 8:39) with which we shall now be particularly concerned,
: and its argument leads to a conclusion which lies at the foundation of our
: further meditations. What is that conclusion? It is found in verse 19
: already quoted: “For as through the one man’s disobedience the many were
: made sinners, even so through the obedience of the one shall the many be
: made righteous.” Here the Spirit of God is seeking to show us first what we

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l**********t
发帖数: 5754
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Chapter 2.4 The Divine Way of Deliverance
God clearly intends that this consideration should lead to our practical
deliverance from sin. Paul makes this quite plain when he opens chapter 6 of
his letter with the question: “Shall we continue in sin?” His whole being
recoils at the very suggestion. “God forbid!”, he exclaims. How could a
holy God be satisfied to have unholy, sin-fettered children? And so “how
shall we any longer live therein?” (Romans 6:1, 2). God has surely
therefore made adequate provision that we should be set free from sin’s
dominion.
But here is our problem. We were born sinners; how then can we cut off our
sinful heredity? Seeing that we were born in Adam, how can we get out of
Adam? Let me say at once, the Blood cannot take us out of Adam. There is
only one way. Since we came in by birth we must go out by death. To do away
with our sinfulness we must do away with our life. Bondage to sin came by
birth; deliverance from sin comes by death—and it is just this way of
escape that God has provided. Death is the secret of emancipation. “We...
died to sin” (Romans 6:2).
But how can we die? Some of us have tried very hard to get rid of this
sinful life, but we have found it most tenacious. What is the way out? It is
not by trying to kill ourselves, but by recognizing that God has dealt with
us in Christ. This is summed up in the apostle’s next statement: “All we
who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death” (Romans 6
:3).
But if God has dealt with us ‘in Christ Jesus’ then we have got to be in
Him for this to become effective, and that now seems just as big a problem.
How are we to ‘get into’ Christ? Here again God comes to our help. We have
in fact no way of getting in, but, what is more important, we need not try
to get in, for we are in. What we could not do for ourselves God has done
for us. He has put us into Christ. Let me remind you of I Corinthians 1:30.
I think that is one of the best verses of the whole New Testament: ‘Ye are
in Christ’. How? “Of him (that is, ‘of God’) are ye in Christ.” Praise
God! it is not left to us either to devise a way of entry or to work it out.
We need not plan how to get in. God has planned it; and He has not only
planned it but He has also performed it. ‘Of him are ye in Christ Jesus’.
We are in; therefore we need not try to get in. It is a Divine act, and it
is accomplished.
Now if this is true, certain things follow. In the illustration from Hebrews
7 which we considered above we saw that ‘in Abraham’ all Israel—and
therefore Levi who was not yet born—offered tithes to Melchizedek. They did
not offer separately and individually, but they were in Abraham when he
offered, and his offering included all his seed. This, then, is a true
figure of ourselves as ‘in Christ’. When the Lord Jesus was on the Cross
all of us died—not individually, for we had not yet been born—but, being
in Him, we died in Him. “One died for all, therefore all died” (2 Cor. 5:
14). When He was crucified all of us were crucified.
Many a time when preaching in the villages of China one has to use very
simple illustrations for deep Divine truth. I remember once I took up a
small book and put a piece of paper into it, and I said to those very simple
ones, ‘Now look carefully. I take a piece of paper. It has an identity of
its own, quite separate from this book. Having no special purpose for it at
the moment I put it into the book. Now I do something with the book. I post
it to Shanghai. I do not post the paper, but the paper has been put into the
book. Then where is the paper? Can the book go to Shanghai and the paper
remain here? Can the paper have a separate destiny from the book? No! Where
the book goes the paper goes. If I drop the book in the river the paper goes
too, and if I quickly take it out again I recover the paper also. Whatever
experience the book goes through the paper goes through with it, for it is
in the book.’
“Of him are ye in Christ Jesus.” The Lord God Himself has put us in Christ
, and in His dealing with Christ God has dealt with the whole race. Our
destiny is bound up with His. What He has gone through we have gone through,
for to be ‘in Christ’ is to have been identified with Him in both His
death and resurrection. He was crucified: then what about us? Must we ask
God to crucify us? Never! When Christ was crucified we were crucified; and
His crucifixion is past, therefore ours cannot be future. I challenge you to
find one text in the New Testament telling us that our crucifixion is in
the future. All the references to it are in the Greek aorist, which is the
‘once-for-all’ tense, the ‘eternally past’ tense. (See: Romans 6:6;
Galatians 2:20; 5:24; 6:14). And just as no man could ever commit suicide by
crucifixion, for it were a physical impossibility to do so, so also, in
spiritual terms, God does not require us to crucify ourselves. We were
crucified when He was crucified, for God put us there in Him. That we have
died in Christ is not merely a doctrinal position, it is an eternal fact.

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: Chapter 2.3 As In Adam So In Christ
: In Romans 5:12 to 21 we are not only told something about Adam; we are told
: also something about the Lord Jesus. “As through the one man’s
: disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of
: the one shall the many be made righteous.” In Adam we receive everything
: that is of Adam; in Christ we receive everything that is of Christ.
: The terms ‘in Adam’ and ‘in Christ’ are too little understood by
: Christians, and, at the risk of repetition, I wish again to emphasize by
: means of an illustration the hereditary and racial significance of the term
: ‘in Christ’. This illustration is to be found in the letter to the Hebrews

l**********t
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Chapter 2.5 His Death and Resurrection Representative and Inclusive
The Lord Jesus, when He died on the Cross, shed His Blood, thus giving His
sinless life to atone for our sin and to satisfy the righteousness and
holiness of God. To do so was the prerogative of the Son of God alone. No
man could have a share in that. The Scripture has never told us that we shed
our blood with Christ. In His atoning work before God He acted alone; no
other could have a part. But the Lord did not die only to shed His Blood: He
died that we might die. He died as our Representative. In His death He
included you and me.
We often use the terms ‘substitution’ and ‘identification’ to describe
these two aspects of the death of Christ. Now many a time the use of the
word ‘identification’ is good. But identification would suggest that the
thing begins from our side: that I try to identify myself with the Lord. I
agree that the word is true, but it should be used later on. It is better to
begin with the fact that the Lord included me in His death. It is the ‘
inclusive’ death of the Lord which puts me in a position to identify myself
, not that I identify myself in order to be included. It is God’s inclusion
of me in Christ that matters. It is something God has done. For that reason
those two New Testament words “in Christ” are always very dear to my
heart.
The death of the Lord Jesus is inclusive. The resurrection of the Lord Jesus
is alike inclusive. We have looked at the first chapter of I Corinthians to
establish the fact that we are “in Christ Jesus”. Now we will go to the
end of the same letter to see something more of what this means. In I
Corinthians 15:45, 47 two remarkable names or titles are used of the Lord
Jesus. He is spoken of there as “the last Adam” and He is spoken of too as
“the second man”. Scripture does not refer to Him as the second Adam but
as “the last Adam”; nor does it refer to Him as the last Man, but as “the
second man”. The distinction is to be noted, for it enshrines a truth of
great value.
As the last Adam, Christ is the sum total of humanity; as the second Man He
is the Head of a new race. So we have here two unions, the one relating to
His death and the other to His resurrection. In the first place His union
with the race as “the last Adam” began historically at Bethlehem and ended
at the cross and the tomb. In it He gathered up into Himself all that was
in Adam and took it to judgment and death. In the second place our union
with Him as “the second man” begins in resurrection and ends in eternity—
which is to say, it never ends—for, having in His death done away with the
first man in whom God’s purpose was frustrated, He rose again as Head of a
new race of men, in whom that purpose shall be fully realized.
When therefore the Lord Jesus was crucified on the cross, He was crucified
as the last Adam. All that was in the first Adam was gathered up and done
away in Him. We were included there. As the last Adam He wiped out the old
race; as the second Man He brings in the new race. It is in His resurrection
that He stands forth as the second Man, and there too we are included. “
For if we have become united with him by the likeness of his death, we shall
be also by the likeness of his resurrection” (Romans 6:5). We died in Him
as the last Adam; we live in Him as the second Man. The Cross is thus the
power of God which translates us from Adam to Christ.


【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: Chapter 2.4 The Divine Way of Deliverance
: God clearly intends that this consideration should lead to our practical
: deliverance from sin. Paul makes this quite plain when he opens chapter 6 of
: his letter with the question: “Shall we continue in sin?” His whole being
: recoils at the very suggestion. “God forbid!”, he exclaims. How could a
: holy God be satisfied to have unholy, sin-fettered children? And so “how
: shall we any longer live therein?” (Romans 6:1, 2). God has surely
: therefore made adequate provision that we should be set free from sin’s
: dominion.
: But here is our problem. We were born sinners; how then can we cut off our

p****g
发帖数: 171
93
zan

brought
of
we

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: Chapter 2.5 His Death and Resurrection Representative and Inclusive
: The Lord Jesus, when He died on the Cross, shed His Blood, thus giving His
: sinless life to atone for our sin and to satisfy the righteousness and
: holiness of God. To do so was the prerogative of the Son of God alone. No
: man could have a share in that. The Scripture has never told us that we shed
: our blood with Christ. In His atoning work before God He acted alone; no
: other could have a part. But the Lord did not die only to shed His Blood: He
: died that we might die. He died as our Representative. In His death He
: included you and me.
: We often use the terms ‘substitution’ and ‘identification’ to describe

l**********t
发帖数: 5754
94
Chapter 3: The Path of Progress: Knowing
Our old history ends with the Cross; our new history begins with the
resurrection. “If any man is in Christ, he is a new creature: the old
things are passed away; behold they are become new” (2 Cor. 5:17). The
Cross terminates the first creation, and out of death there is brought a new
creation in Christ, the second Man. If we are ‘in Adam’ all that is in
Adam necessarily devolves upon us; it becomes ours involuntarily, for we
have to do nothing to get it. There is no need to make up our minds to lose
our temper or to commit some other sin; it comes to us freely and despite
ourselves. In a similar way, if we are ‘in Christ’ all that is in Christ
comes to us by free grace, without effort on our part but on the ground of
simple faith.
But to say that all we need comes to us in Christ by free grace, though true
enough, may seem unpractical. How does it work out in practice? How does it
become real in our experience?
As we study chapters 6, 7 and 8 of Romans we shall discover that the
conditions of living the normal Christian life are fourfold. They are: (a)
Knowing, (b) Reckoning, (c) Presenting ourselves to God, and (d) Walking in
the Spirit, and they are set forth in that order. If we would live that life
we shall have to take all four of these steps; not one nor two nor three,
but all four. As we study each of them we shall trust the Lord by His Holy
Spirit to illumine our understanding; and we shall seek His help now to take
the first big step forward.



【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: Chapter 2.5 His Death and Resurrection Representative and Inclusive
: The Lord Jesus, when He died on the Cross, shed His Blood, thus giving His
: sinless life to atone for our sin and to satisfy the righteousness and
: holiness of God. To do so was the prerogative of the Son of God alone. No
: man could have a share in that. The Scripture has never told us that we shed
: our blood with Christ. In His atoning work before God He acted alone; no
: other could have a part. But the Lord did not die only to shed His Blood: He
: died that we might die. He died as our Representative. In His death He
: included you and me.
: We often use the terms ‘substitution’ and ‘identification’ to describe

l**********t
发帖数: 5754
95
Chapter 3.1 Our Death With Christ A Historic Fact
Romans 6:1-11 is the passage before us now. In these verses it is made clear
that the death of the Lord Jesus is representative and inclusive. In His
death we all died. None of us can progress spiritually without seeing this.
Just as we cannot have justification if we have not seen Him bearing our
sins on the Cross, so we cannot have sanctification if we have not seen Him
bearing us on the Cross. Not only have our sins been laid on Him but we
ourselves have been put into Him.
How did you receive forgiveness? You realized that the Lord Jesus died as
your Substitute and bore your sins upon Himself, and that His Blood was shed
to cleanse away your defilement. When you saw your sins all taken away on
the Cross what did you do? Did you say, ‘Lord Jesus, please come and die
for my sins’? No, you did not pray at all; you only thanked the Lord You
did not beseech Him to come and die for you, for you realized that He had
already done it.
But what is true of your forgiveness is also true of your deliverance. The
work is done. There is no need to pray but only to praise. God has put us
all in Christ, so that when Christ was crucified we were crucified also.
Thus there is no need to pray: ‘I am a very wicked person; Lord, please
crucify me’. That is all wrong. You did not pray about your sins; why pray
now about yourself? Your sins were dealt with by His Blood, and you were
dealt with by His Cross. It is an accomplished fact. All that is left for
you to do is to praise the Lord that when Christ died you died also; you
died in Him. Praise Him for it and live in the light of it. “Then believed
they his words: they sang his praise” (Psalm 106:12).
Do you believe in the death of Christ? Of course you do. Well, the same
Scripture that says He died for us says also that we died with Him. Look at
it again: “Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). That is the first statement,
and that is clear enough; but is this any less clear? “Our old man was
crucified with him” (Romans 6:6). “We died with Christ” (Romans 6:8).
When are we crucified with Him? What is the date of our old man’s
crucifixion? Is it tomorrow? Yesterday? Today? In order to answer this it
may help us if for a moment I turn Paul’s statement round and say, ‘Christ
was crucified with (i.e. at the same time as) our old man’. Some of you
came here in twos. You traveled to this place together. You might say, My
friend came here with me’, but you might just as truly say, ‘I came here
with my friend’. Had one of you come three days ago and the other only
today you could not possibly say that; but having come together you can make
either statement with equal truth, because both are statements of fact. So
also in historic fact we can say, reverently but with equal accuracy, ‘I
was crucified when Christ was crucified’ or ‘Christ was crucified when I
was crucified’, for they are not two historical events, but one. My
crucifixion was “with him”. 33The expression “with him” in Romans 6:6
carries of course a doctrinal as well as historical, or temporal sense. It
is only in the historical sense that the statement is reversible. W.N. Has
Christ been crucified? Then can I be otherwise? And if He was crucified
nearly two thousand years ago, and I with Him, can my crucifixion be said to
take place tomorrow? Can His be past and mine be present or future? Praise
the Lord, when He died in my stead, but He bore me with Him to the Cross, so
that when He died I died. And if I believe in the death of the Lord Jesus,
then I can believe in my own death just as surely as I believe in His.
Why do you believe that the Lord Jesus died? What is your ground for that
belief? Is it that you feel He has died? No, you have never felt it. You
believe it because the Word of God tells you so. When the Lord was crucified
, two thieves were crucified at the same time. You do not doubt that they
were crucified with Him, either, because the Scripture says so quite plainly.
You believe in the death of the Lord Jesus and you believe in the death of
the thieves with Him. Now what about your own death? Your crucifixion is
more intimate than theirs. They were crucified at the same time as the Lord
but on different crosses, whereas you were crucified on the self same cross
as He, for you were in Him when He died. How can you know? You can know for
the one sufficient reason that God has said so. It does not depend on your
feelings. If you feel that Christ has died, He has died; and if you do not
feel that he died, He has died. If you feel that you have died, you have
died; and if you do not feel that you have died, you have nevertheless just
as surely died. These are Divine facts. That Christ has died is a fact, that
the two thieves have died is a fact, and that you have died is a fact also.
Let me tell you, You have died! You are done with! You are ruled out! The
self you loathe is on the Cross in Christ. And “he that is dead is freed
from sin” (Romans 6:7, A.V.). This is the Gospel for Christians.
Our crucifixion can never be made effective by will or by effort, but only
by accepting what the Lord Jesus did on the Cross. Our eyes must be opened
to see the finished work of Calvary. Some of you, prior to your salvation,
may have tried to save yourselves. You read the Bible, prayed, went to
Church, gave alms. Then one day your eyes were opened and you saw that a
full salvation had already been provided for you on the Cross. You just
accepted that and thanked God, and peace and joy flowed into your heart. Now
salvation and sanctification are on exactly the same basis. You receive
deliverance from sin in the same way as you receive forgiveness of sins.
For God’s way of deliverance is altogether different from man’s way. Man’
s way is to try to suppress sin by seeking to overcome it; God’s way is to
remove the sinner. Many Christians mourn over their weakness, thinking that
if only they were stronger all would be well. The idea that, because failure
to lead a holy life is due to our impotence, something more is therefore
demanded of us, leads naturally to this false conception of the way of
deliverance. If we are preoccupied with the power of sin and with our
inability to meet it, then we naturally conclude that to gain the victory
over sin we must have more power. ‘If only I were stronger’, we say, ‘I
could overcome my violent outbursts of temper’, and so we plead with the
Lord to strengthen us that we may exercise more self-control.
But this is altogether wrong; this is not Christianity. God’s means of
delivering us from sin is not by making us stronger and stronger, but by
making us weaker and weaker. That is surely rather a peculiar way of victory
, you say; but it is the Divine way. God sets us free from the dominion of
sin, not by strengthening our old man but by crucifying him; not by helping
him to do anything but by removing him from the scene of action.
For years, maybe, you have tried fruitlessly to exercise control over
yourself, and perhaps this is still your experience; but when once you see
the truth you will recognize that you are indeed powerless to do anything,
but that in setting you aside altogether God has done it all. Such a
revelation brings human self-effort to an end.

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: Chapter 3: The Path of Progress: Knowing
: Our old history ends with the Cross; our new history begins with the
: resurrection. “If any man is in Christ, he is a new creature: the old
: things are passed away; behold they are become new” (2 Cor. 5:17). The
: Cross terminates the first creation, and out of death there is brought a new
: creation in Christ, the second Man. If we are ‘in Adam’ all that is in
: Adam necessarily devolves upon us; it becomes ours involuntarily, for we
: have to do nothing to get it. There is no need to make up our minds to lose
: our temper or to commit some other sin; it comes to us freely and despite
: ourselves. In a similar way, if we are ‘in Christ’ all that is in Christ

l**********t
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96
Chapter 3.2 The First Step: “Knowing This...”
The normal Christian life must begin with a very definite ‘knowing’, which
is not just knowing something about the truth nor understanding some
important doctrine. It is not intellectual knowledge at all, but an opening
of the eyes of the heart to see what we have in Christ.
How do you know your sins are forgiven? Is it because your pastor told you
so? No, you just know it. If I ask you how you know, you simply answer, ‘I
know it!’ Such knowledge comes by Divine revelation. It comes from the Lord
Himself. Of course the fact of forgiveness of sins is in the Bible, but for
the written Word of God to become a living Word from God to you He had to
give you “a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him” (Eph.
1:17). What you needed was to know Christ in that way, and it is always so.
So there comes a time, in regard to any new apprehension of Christ, when
you know it in your own heart, you ‘see’ it in your spirit. A light has
shined into your inner being and you are wholly persuaded of the fact. What
is true of the forgiveness of your sins is no less true of your deliverance
from sin. When once the light of God dawns upon your heart you see yourself
in Christ. It is not now because someone has told you, and not merely
because Romans 6 says so. It is something more even than that. You know it
because God has revealed it to you by His Spirit. You may not feel it; you
may not understand it; but you know it, for you have seen it. Once you have
seen yourself in Christ, nothing can shake your assurance of that blessed
fact.
If you ask a number of believers who have entered upon the normal Christian
life how they came by their experience, some will say in this way and some
will say in that. Each stresses his own particular way of entering in and
produces Scripture to support his experience; and unhappily many Christians
are using their special experiences and their special scriptures to fight
other Christians. The fact of the matter is that, while Christians may enter
into the deeper life by different ways, we need not regard the experiences
or doctrines they stress as mutually exclusive, but rather complementary.
One thing is certain, that any true experience of value in the sight of God
must have been reached by way of a new discovery of the meaning of the
Person and work of the Lord Jesus. That is a crucial test and a safe one.
And here in our passage Paul makes everything depend upon such a discovery.
“Knowing this, that our old man was crucified with him, that the body of
sin might be done away, that so we should no longer be in bondage to sin” (
Romans 6:6).

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: Chapter 3.1 Our Death With Christ A Historic Fact
: Romans 6:1-11 is the passage before us now. In these verses it is made clear
: that the death of the Lord Jesus is representative and inclusive. In His
: death we all died. None of us can progress spiritually without seeing this.
: Just as we cannot have justification if we have not seen Him bearing our
: sins on the Cross, so we cannot have sanctification if we have not seen Him
: bearing us on the Cross. Not only have our sins been laid on Him but we
: ourselves have been put into Him.
: How did you receive forgiveness? You realized that the Lord Jesus died as
: your Substitute and bore your sins upon Himself, and that His Blood was shed

l**********t
发帖数: 5754
97
Chapter 3.3 Divine Revelation Essential To Knowledge
So our first step is to seek from God a knowledge that comes by revelation—
a revelation, that is to say, not of ourselves but of the finished work of
the Lord Jesus Christ on the Cross. When Hudson Taylor, the founder of the
China Inland Mission, entered into the normal Christian life it was thus
that he did so. You remember how he tells of his long-standing problem of
how to live ‘in Christ’, how to draw the sap out of the Vine into himself.
For he knew that he must have the life of Christ flowing out through him
and yet felt that he had not got it, and he saw clearly enough that his need
was to be found in Christ. ‘I knew’, he said, writing to his sister from
Chinkiang in 1869, ‘that if only I could abide in Christ, all would be well
, but I could not.’
The more he tried to get in the more he found himself slipping out, so to
speak, until one day light dawned, revelation came and he saw. ‘Here, I
feel, is the secret: not asking how I am to get sap out of the Vine into
myself, but remembering that Jesus is the Vine—the root, stem, branches,
twigs, leaves, flowers, fruit, all indeed.’
Then, in words of a friend that had helped him: ‘I have not got to make
myself a branch. The Lord Jesus tells me I am a branch. I am part of Him and
I have just to believe it and act upon it. I have seen it long enough in
the Bible, but I believe it now as a living reality.’
It was as though something which had indeed been true all the time had now
suddenly become true in a new way to him personally, and he writes to his
sister again: ‘I do not know how far I may be able to make myself
intelligible about it, for there is nothing new or strange or wonderful—and
yet, all is new! In a word, “whereas once I was blind, now I see”... I am
dead and buried with Christ—aye, and risen too and ascended... God reckons
me so, and tells me to reckon myself so. He knows best... Oh, the joy of
seeing this truth—I do pray that the eyes of your understanding may be
enlightened, that you may know and enjoy the riches freely given us in
Christ.’ 4
Oh, it is a great thing to see that we are in Christ! Think of the
bewilderment of trying to get into a room in which you already are! Think of
the absurdity of asking to be put in! If we recognize the fact that we are
in, we make no effort to enter. If we had more revelation we should have
fewer prayers and more praises. Much of our praying for ourselves is just
because we are blind to what God has done.
I remember one day in Shanghai I was talking with a brother who was very
exercised concerning his spiritual state. He said, ‘So many are living
beautiful, saintly lives. I am ashamed of myself. I call myself a Christian
and yet when I compare myself with others I feel I am not one at all. I want
to know this crucified life, this resurrection life, but I do not know it
and see no way of getting there.’ Another brother was with us, and the two
of us had been talking for two hours or so, trying to get the man to see
that he could not have anything apart from Christ, but without success. Said
our friend, ‘the best thing a man can do is to pray.’ ‘But if God has
already given you everything, what do you need to pray for?’ we asked. ‘He
hasn’t’, the man replied, ‘for I am still losing my temper, still
failing constantly; so I must pray more.’ ‘Well’, we said, ‘do you get
what you pray for?’ ‘I am sorry to say that I do not get anything’, he
replied. We tried to point out that, just as he had done nothing for his
justification, so he need do nothing for his sanctification.
Just then a third brother, much used of the Lord, came in and joined us.
There was a thermos flask on the table, and this brother picked it up and
said, ‘What is this?’ ‘A thermos flask.’ ‘Well, you just imagine for a
moment that this thermos flask can pray, and that it starts praying
something like this: “Lord, I want very much to be a thermos flask. Wilt
Thou make me to be a thermos flask? Lord, give me grace to become a thermos
flask. Do please make me one!” What will you say?’ ‘I do not think even a
thermos flask would be so silly,’ our friend replied. ‘It would be
nonsense to pray like that; it is a thermos flask!’ Then my brother said,
‘You are doing the same thing. God in times past has already included you
in Christ. When He died, you died; when He lived, you lived. Now today you
cannot say, “I want to die; I want to be crucified; I want to have
resurrection life.” The Lord simply looks at you and says, “You are dead!
You have new life!” All your praying is just as absurd as that of the
thermos flask. You do not need to pray to the Lord for anything; you merely
need your eyes opened to see that He has done it all.’
That is the point. We need not work to die, we need not wait to die, we are
dead. We only need to recognize what the Lord has already done and to praise
Him for it. Light dawned for that man. With tears in his eyes he said, ‘
Lord, I praise Thee that Thou hast already included me in Christ. All that
is His is mine!’ Revelation had come and faith had something to lay hold of
; and if you could have met that brother later on, what a change you would
have found!
4The quotations are from Hudson Taylor and the China Inland Mission by Dr.
and Mrs. Howard Taylor, Chapter 12, ‘The Exchanged Life’. The whole
passage should be read.—Ed.

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: Chapter 3.2 The First Step: “Knowing This...”
: The normal Christian life must begin with a very definite ‘knowing’, which
: is not just knowing something about the truth nor understanding some
: important doctrine. It is not intellectual knowledge at all, but an opening
: of the eyes of the heart to see what we have in Christ.
: How do you know your sins are forgiven? Is it because your pastor told you
: so? No, you just know it. If I ask you how you know, you simply answer, ‘I
: know it!’ Such knowledge comes by Divine revelation. It comes from the Lord
: Himself. Of course the fact of forgiveness of sins is in the Bible, but for
: the written Word of God to become a living Word from God to you He had to

l**********t
发帖数: 5754
98
chapter 3.4 The Cross Goes To The Root Of Our Problem
Let me remind you again of the fundamental nature of that which the Lord has
done on the Cross. I feel I cannot press this point too much for we must
see it. Suppose, for the sake of illustration, that the government of your
country should wish to deal drastically with the question of strong drink
and should decide that the whole country was to go ‘dry’, how could the
decision be carried into effect? How could we help? If we were to search
every shop and house throughout the land and smash all the bottles of wine
or beer or brandy we came across, would that meet the case? Surely not. We
might thereby rid the land of every drop of alcoholic liquor it contains,
but behind those bottles of strong drink are the factories that produce them
, and if we only deal with the bottles and leave the factories untouched,
production will still continue and there is no permanent solution of the
problem. The drink-producing factories, the breweries and distilleries
throughout the land, must be closed down if the drink question is to be
permanently settled.
We are the factory; our actions are the products. The Blood of the Lord
Jesus dealt with the question of the products, namely, our sins. So the
question of what we have done is settled, but would God have stopped there?
What about the question of what we are? Our sins were produced by us. They
have been dealt with, but how are we going to be dealt with? Do you believe
the Lord would cleanse away all our sins and then leave us to get rid of the
sin-producing factory? Do you believe He would put away the goods produced
but leave us to deal with the source of production?
To ask this question is but to answer it. Of course He has not done half the
work and left the other half undone. No, He has done away with the goods
and also made a clean sweep of the factory that produces the goods.
The finished work of Christ really has gone to the root of our problem and
dealt with it. There are no half measures with God. “Knowing this,” says
Paul, “That our old man was crucified with him, that the body of sin might
be done away, that so we should no longer be in bondage to sin” (Rom. 6:6).
“Knowing this”! Yes, but do you know it? “Or are ye ignorant?” (Rom. 6:
3). May the Lord graciously open our eyes.


【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: Chapter 3.3 Divine Revelation Essential To Knowledge
: So our first step is to seek from God a knowledge that comes by revelation—
: a revelation, that is to say, not of ourselves but of the finished work of
: the Lord Jesus Christ on the Cross. When Hudson Taylor, the founder of the
: China Inland Mission, entered into the normal Christian life it was thus
: that he did so. You remember how he tells of his long-standing problem of
: how to live ‘in Christ’, how to draw the sap out of the Vine into himself.
: For he knew that he must have the life of Christ flowing out through him
: and yet felt that he had not got it, and he saw clearly enough that his need
: was to be found in Christ. ‘I knew’, he said, writing to his sister from

l**********t
发帖数: 5754
99
Chapter 4: 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.

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: chapter 3.4 The Cross Goes To The Root Of Our Problem
: Let me remind you again of the fundamental nature of that which the Lord has
: done on the Cross. I feel I cannot press this point too much for we must
: see it. Suppose, for the sake of illustration, that the government of your
: country should wish to deal drastically with the question of strong drink
: and should decide that the whole country was to go ‘dry’, how could the
: decision be carried into effect? How could we help? If we were to search
: every shop and house throughout the land and smash all the bottles of wine
: or beer or brandy we came across, would that meet the case? Surely not. We
: might thereby rid the land of every drop of alcoholic liquor it contains,

l**********t
发帖数: 5754
100
chapter 4.1 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.

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: Chapter 4: 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

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zan

accuracy?
map
fair
of

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: chapter 4.1 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

l**********t
发帖数: 5754
102
chapter 4.2 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.

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: chapter 4.1 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

l**********t
发帖数: 5754
103
chapter 4.3 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's 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 them; 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 by 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.
__________________________________________________________________
[5] The verb katargeo translated destroyed' in Romans 6:6 (A.V.) does
not mean annihilated', but put out of operation', made ineffective'. It
is from the Creek root argos, inactive', not working', unprofitable',
which is the word translated idle' in Matthew 20:3, 6 of the unemployed
laborers in the market place.--Ed.
__________________________________________________________________

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: chapter 4.2 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.

l**********t
发帖数: 5754
104
chapter 4.4 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).


【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: chapter 4.3 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

l**********t
发帖数: 5754
105
Chapter 5: The Divide of the Cross
The kingdom of this world is not this kingdom of God. God had in His heart a
world-system - a universe of His creating—which should be headed up in
Christ His Son (Col. 1:16, 17). But Satan, working through man’s flesh, has
set up instead a rival system known in Scripture as “this world”—a
system in which we are involved and which he himself dominates. He has in
fact become “the prince of this world” (John 12:31).



【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: chapter 4.4 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

l**********t
发帖数: 5754
106
Chapter 5.1 Two Creations
Thus, in Satan’s hands, the first creation has become the old creation, and
God’s primary concern is now no longer with that but with a second and new
creation. He is bringing in a new creation, a new kingdom and a new world,
and nothing of the old creation, the old kingdom or the old world can be
transferred to the new. It is a question now of these two rival realms, and
of which realm we belong to.
The apostle Paul, of course, leaves us in no doubt as to which of these two
realms is now in fact ours. He tells us that God, in redemption, “delivered
us out of the power of darkness, and translated us into the kingdom of the
Son of his love” (Col. 1:12, 13).
But in order to bring us into His new kingdom, God must do something new in
us. He must make of us new creatures. Unless we are created anew we can
never fit into the new realm. “That which is born of the flesh is flesh”;
and, “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither doth
corruption inherit incorruption” (John 3:6; 1 Cor. 15:50). However educated
, however cultured, however improved it be, flesh is still flesh. Our
fitness for the new kingdom is determined by the creation to which we belong
. Do we belong to the old creation or the new? Are we born of the flesh or
of the Spirit? Our ultimate suitability for the new realm hinges on the
question of origin. The question is not ‘good’ or bad?’ but ‘flesh or
Spirit?’ “That which is born of the flesh is flesh”, and it will never be
anything else. That which is of the old creation can never pass over into
the new.
Once we really understand what God is seeking, namely, something altogether
new for Himself, then we shall see clearly that we can never bring any
contribution from the old realm into that new thing. God wanted to have us
for Himself, but He could not bring us as we were into that which He had
purposed; so He first did away with us by the Cross of Christ, and then by
resurrection provided a new life for us. “If any man is in Christ, he is a
new creature (mg. ‘there is a new creation’): the old things are passed
away; behold, they are become new” (2 Cor. 5:17). Being now new creatures
with a new nature and a new set of faculties, we can enter the new kingdom
and the new world.
The Cross was the means God used to bring to an end ‘the old things’ by
setting aside altogether our ‘old man’, and the resurrection was the means
He employed to impart to us all that was necessary for our life in that new
world. “We were buried therefore with him through baptism into death: that
like as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so
we also might walk in newness of life” (Rom. 6:4).
The greatest negative in the universe is the Cross, for with it God wiped
out everything that was not of Himself: the greatest positive in the
universe is the resurrection, for through it God brought into being all He
will have in the new sphere. So the resurrection stands at the threshold of
the new creation. It is a blessed thing to see that the Cross ends all that
belongs to the first regime, and that the resurrection introduces all that
pertains to the second. Everything that had its beginning before
resurrection must be wiped out. Resurrection is God’s new starting-point.
We have now two worlds before us, the old and the new. In the old, Satan has
absolute dominion. You may be a good man in the old creation, but as long
as you belong to the old you are under sentence of death, because nothing of
the old can go over to the new. The Cross is God’s declaration that all
that is of the old creation must die. Nothing of the first Adam can pass
beyond the Cross; it all ends there. The sooner we see that, the better, for
it is by the Cross that God has made a way of escape for us from that old
creation. God gathered up in the Person of His Son all that was of Adam and
crucified Him; so in Him all that was of Adam was done away. Then God made,
as it were, a proclamation throughout the universe saying: ‘Through the
Cross I have set aside all that is not of Me; you who belong to the old
creation are all included in that; you too have been crucified with Christ!
’ None of us can escape that verdict.
This brings us to the subject of baptism. “Are ye ignorant that all we who
were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried
therefore with him through baptism into death” (Rom. 6:3, 4). What is the
significance of these words?
Baptism in Scripture is associated with salvation. “He that believeth and
is baptized shall be saved” (Mark 16:16). We cannot speak scripturally of
‘baptismal regeneration’ but we may speak of ‘baptismal salvation’. What
is salvation? It relates not to our sins nor to the power of sin, but to
the cosmos or world-system. We are involved in Satan’s world-system. To be
saved is to make our exit from his world-system into God’s
In the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, says Paul, “the world hath been
crucified unto me, and I unto the world” (Gal. 6:14). This is the figure
developed by Peter when he writes of the eight souls who were “saved
through water” (1 Peter 3:20). Entering into the ark, Noah and those with
him stepped by faith out of that old corrupt world into a new one. It was
not so much that they were personally not drowned, but that they were out of
that corrupt system. That is salvation.
Then Peter goes on: “Which also after a true likeness (mg. ‘in the
antitype’) doth now save you, even baptism” (verse 21). In other words, by
that aspect of the Cross which is figured in baptism you are delivered from
this present evil world, and, by your baptism in water, you confirm this.
It is baptism “into his death”, ending one creation; but it is also
baptism “into Christ Jesus”, having in view a new one (Rom. 6:3). You go
down into the water and your world, in figure, goes down with you. you come
up in Christ, but your world is drowned.
“Believe on the Lord Jesus, and thou shalt be saved”, said Paul at
Philippi, and “spake the word of the Lord” to the jailer and his household
. And he “was baptized, he and all his, immediately” (Acts 16:31-34). In
doing so, he and those with him testified before God, His people and the
spiritual powers that they were indeed saved from a world under judgment. As
a result, we read, they rejoiced greatly, “having believed in God”.
Thus it is clear that baptism is no mere question of a cup of water, nor of
a baptistry of water. It is a tremendous thing, relating as it does both to
the death and to the resurrection of our Lord; and having in view two worlds
. Anyone who has worked in a pagan country knows what tremendous issues are
raised by baptism.

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: Chapter 5: The Divide of the Cross
: The kingdom of this world is not this kingdom of God. God had in His heart a
: world-system - a universe of His creating—which should be headed up in
: Christ His Son (Col. 1:16, 17). But Satan, working through man’s flesh, has
: set up instead a rival system known in Scripture as “this world”—a
: system in which we are involved and which he himself dominates. He has in
: fact become “the prince of this world” (John 12:31).
:
:

D******r
发帖数: 637
107
too long in every post
no time to read that much

and
new
,
and
two
delivered
the

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: Chapter 5.1 Two Creations
: Thus, in Satan’s hands, the first creation has become the old creation, and
: God’s primary concern is now no longer with that but with a second and new
: creation. He is bringing in a new creation, a new kingdom and a new world,
: and nothing of the old creation, the old kingdom or the old world can be
: transferred to the new. It is a question now of these two rival realms, and
: of which realm we belong to.
: The apostle Paul, of course, leaves us in no doubt as to which of these two
: realms is now in fact ours. He tells us that God, in redemption, “delivered
: us out of the power of darkness, and translated us into the kingdom of the

l**********t
发帖数: 5754
108
Chapter 5.2 Burial Means An End
Peter goes on now to describe baptism in the passage just quoted as “the
answer of a good conscience toward God” (1 Peter 3:21 A.V.). Now we cannot
answer without being spoken to . If God had said nothing we should have no
need to answer. But He has spoken; He has spoken to us by the Cross. By it
He has told of His judgment of us, of the world, of the old creation and of
the old kingdom. The Cross is not only Christ’s personally—an ‘individual
’ Cross. It is an all inclusive Cross, a ‘corporate’ Cross, a Cross that
includes you and me. God has put us all into His Son, and crucified us in
Him. In the last Adam He has wiped out all that was of the first Adam.
Now what is my answer to God’s verdict on the old creation? I answer by
asking for baptism. Why? In Romans 6:4 Paul explains that baptism means
burial: “We were buried therefore with him through baptism”. Baptism is of
course connected with both death and resurrection, though in itself it is
neither death nor resurrection: it is burial. But who qualifies for burial?
Only the dead! So if I ask for baptism I proclaim myself dead and fit only
for the grave.
Alas, some have been taught to look on burial as a means to death; they try
to die by getting themselves buried! Let me say emphatically that, unless
our eyes have been opened by God to see that we have died in Christ and been
buried with Him, we have no right to be baptized. The reason we step down
into the water is that we have recognized that in God’s sight we have
already died. It is to that that we testify. God’s question is clear and
simple. ‘Christ has died, and I have included you there. Now, what are you
going to say to that?’ What is my answer? ‘Lord, I believe You have done
the crucifying. I say Yes to the death and to the burial to which You have
committed me.’ He has consigned me to death and the grave; by my request
for baptism I give public assent to that fact.
In China a woman lost her husband, but, becoming deranged by her loss, she
flatly refused to have him buried. Day after day for a fortnight he lay in
the house. ‘No’, she said, ‘he is not dead; I talk with him every night.
’ She was unwilling to have him buried because, poor woman, she did not
believe him to be dead. When are we willing to bury our dear ones? Only when
we are absolutely sure that they have passed away. While there is the
tiniest hope that they are alive we will never bury them. So when will I ask
for baptism? When I see that God’s way is perfect and that I deserved to
die, and when I truly believe that God has already crucified me. Once I am
fully persuaded that, before God, I am quite dead, then I apply for baptism.
I say, ‘Praise God, I am dead! Lord, You have slain me; now get me buried!’
In China we have two emergency Services, a ‘Red Cross’ and a ‘Blue Cross
’ The first deals with those who are wounded in battle but are still alive,
to bring them succour and healing; the second deals with those who are
already dead in famine, flood or war, to give them burial. God’s dealings
with us in the Cross of Christ are more drastic than those of the ‘Red
Cross’. He does not set out to patch up the old creation. By Him even the
still living are condemned to death and to burial, that they may be raised
again to new life. God has done the work of crucifixion so that now we are
counted among the dead; but we must accept this and submit to the work of
the ‘Blue Cross’, by sealing that death with ‘burial’.
There is an old world and a new world, and between the two there is a tomb.
God has already crucified me, but I must consent to be consigned to the tomb
. My baptism confirms God’s sentence, passed upon me in the Cross of His
Son. It affirms that I am cut off from the old world and belong now to the
new. So baptism is no small thing. It means for me a definite conscious
break with the old way of life. This is the meaning of Romans 6:2: “We who
died to sin, how shall we any longer live therein?” Paul says, in effect,
‘If you would continue in the old world, why be baptized? You should never
have been baptized if you meant to live on in the old realm’. When once we
see this, we clear the ground for the new creation by our assent to the
burial of the old.
In Romans 6:5, still writing to those who “were baptized” (verse 3), Paul
speaks of our being “united with him by the likeness of his death”. For by
baptism we acknowledge in a figure that God has wrought an intimate union
between ourselves and Christ in this matter of death and resurrection. One
day I was seeking to emphasize this truth to a Christian brother. We
happened to be drinking tea together, so I took a lump of sugar and stirred
it into my tea. A couple of minutes later I asked, ‘Can you tell me where
the sugar is now, and where the tea?’ ‘No’, he said, ‘you have put them
together and the one has become lost in the other; they cannot now be
separated.’ It was a simple illustration, but it helped him to see the
intimacy and the finality of our union with Christ in death. It is God that
has put us there, and God’s acts cannot be reversed.
What, in fact does this union imply? The real meaning behind baptism is that
in the Cross we were ‘baptized’ into the historic death of Christ, so
that His death became ours. Our death and His became then so closely
identified that it is impossible to divide between them. It is to this
historic ‘baptism’—this God-wrought union with Him—that we assent when
we go down into the water. Our public testimony in baptism today is our
admission that the death of Christ two thousand years ago was a mighty all-
inclusive death, mighty enough and all-inclusive enough to carry away in it
and bring to an end everything in us that is not of God.

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: Chapter 5.1 Two Creations
: Thus, in Satan’s hands, the first creation has become the old creation, and
: God’s primary concern is now no longer with that but with a second and new
: creation. He is bringing in a new creation, a new kingdom and a new world,
: and nothing of the old creation, the old kingdom or the old world can be
: transferred to the new. It is a question now of these two rival realms, and
: of which realm we belong to.
: The apostle Paul, of course, leaves us in no doubt as to which of these two
: realms is now in fact ours. He tells us that God, in redemption, “delivered
: us out of the power of darkness, and translated us into the kingdom of the

l**********t
发帖数: 5754
109
chapter 5.3 Resurrection Unto Newness Of Life
"If we have become united with him by the likeness of his death, we
shall be also be the likeness of his resurrection (Rom. 6:5).
Now with resurrection the figure is different because something new is
introduced. I am "baptized into his death", but I do not enter in quite
the same way into His resurrection, for, Praise the Lord! His
resurrection enters into me, imparting to me a new life. In the death
of the Lord the emphasis is solely upon I in Christ'. With the
resurrection, while the same thing is true, there is now a new emphasis
upon Christ in me'. How is it possible for Christ to communicate His
resurrection life to me? How do I receive this new life? Paul suggests,
I think, a very good illustration with these very same words: "united
with him". For the word united' (A.V. planted together') may carry in
the Greek the sense of grafted' [6] and it gives us a very beautiful
picture of the life of Christ which is imparted to us through
resurrection.
In Fukien I once visited a man who owned an orchard of long-ien [7]
trees. He had three or four acres of land and about three hundred fruit
trees. I inquired if his trees had been grafted or if they were of the
original native stock. Do you think', he replied, that I would waste my
land growing ungrafted trees? What value could I ever expect from the
old stock?
So I asked him to explain the process of grafting, which he gladly did.
When a tree has grown to a certain height', he said, I lop off the top
and graft on to it.' Pointing to a special tree he asked, Do you see
that tree? I call it the father tree, because all the grafts for the
other trees are taken from that one. If the other trees were just left
to follow the course of nature, their fruit would be only about the
size of a raspberry, and would consist mainly of thick skin and seeds.
This tree, from which the grafts for all the others are taken, bears a
luscious fruit the size of a plum, with very thin skin and a tiny seed;
and of course all the grafted trees bear fruit like it.' How does it
happen?' I asked. I simply take a little of the nature of the one tree
and transfer it to the other', he explained. I make a cleavage in the
poor tree and insert a slip from the good one. Then I bind it up and
leave it to grow.' But how can it grow?' I asked. I don't know', he
said, but it does grow.'
Then he showed me a tree bearing miserably poor fruit from the old
stock below the graft, and rich juicy fruit from the new stock above
the graft. I have left the old shoots with their useless fruit on them
to show the difference', he said. From it you can understand the value
of grafting. You can appreciate, can you not, why I grow only grafted
trees?'
How can one tree bear the fruit of another? How can a poor tree bear
good fruit? Only by grafting. Only by our implanting into it the life
of a good tree. But if a man can graft a branch of one tree into
another, cannot God take of the life of His Son and, so to speak, graft
it into us?
A Chinese woman burned her arm badly and was taken to hospital. In
order to prevent serious contracture due to scarring it was found
necessary to graft some new skin over the injured area, but the doctor
attempted in vain to graft a piece of the woman's own skin onto the
arm. Owing to her age and ill-nourishment the skin graft was too poor
and would not take'. Then a foreign nurse offered a piece of skin and
the operation was carried out successfully. The new skin knit with the
old, and the woman left the hospital with her arm perfectly healed; but
there remained a patch of white foreign skin on her yellow arm to tell
the tale of the past. You ask how the skin of another grew on that
woman's arm? I do not know how it grew, but I know that it did grow.
If an earthly surgeon can take a piece of skin from one human body and
graft it on another, [8] cannot the Divine Surgeon implant the life of
His Son into me? I do not know how it is done. "The wind bloweth where
it listeth, and thou hearest the voice thereof, but knowest not whence
it cometh, and whither it goeth; so is every one that is born of the
Spirit" (John 3:8). We cannot tell how God has done His work in us, but
it is done. We can do nothing and need do nothing to bring it about,
for by the resurrection God has already done it.
God has done everything. There is only one fruitful life in the world
and that has been grafted into millions of other lives. We call this
the new birth'. New birth is the reception of a life which I did not
possess before. It is not that my natural life has been changed at all;
it is that another life, a life altogether new, altogether Divine, has
become my life.
God has cut off the old creation by the Cross of His Son in order to
bring in a new creation in Christ by resurrection. He has shut the door
to that old kingdom of darkness and translated me into the kingdom of
His dear Son. My glorying is in the fact that it has been done--that,
through the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ , that old world has " been
crucified unto me, and I unto the world" (Galatians 6:14). My baptism
is my public testimony to that fact. By it, as by my oral witness, my
"confession is made unto salvation" (Romans 10:10).
__________________________________________________________________
[6] Greek sumphtuos planted or grown along with', united with'. The
word is used in the sense of grafted' in Classical Greek. in the
delightful illustration which follows, the analogy of grafting should
perhaps not be pressed too closely, for it is not quite safe to imply,
without some qualification, that Christ is grafted into the old stock.
But what parable can adequately describe the miracle of the new
creation?-- Ed.
[7] long-ien (Euphoria longana) is a tree native to China. Its fruit
resembles an apricot in size and has a round central stone, a dry,
light brown, papery skin and a delicious white, grape-like pulp. It is
eaten either fresh or dried, and is prized by the Chinese both for its
flavour and for its food value.--Ed.
[8] Whatever question medical men may raise as to the account of this
unusual incident, the statement which follows is not open to
challenge.--Ed.


【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: Chapter 5.2 Burial Means An End
: Peter goes on now to describe baptism in the passage just quoted as “the
: answer of a good conscience toward God” (1 Peter 3:21 A.V.). Now we cannot
: answer without being spoken to . If God had said nothing we should have no
: need to answer. But He has spoken; He has spoken to us by the Cross. By it
: He has told of His judgment of us, of the world, of the old creation and of
: the old kingdom. The Cross is not only Christ’s personally—an ‘individual
: ’ Cross. It is an all inclusive Cross, a ‘corporate’ Cross, a Cross that
: includes you and me. God has put us all into His Son, and crucified us in
: Him. In the last Adam He has wiped out all that was of the first Adam.

l**********t
发帖数: 5754
110

sorry sishu I missed your posts earlier.
I post each section as I read thru them. It seems each section takes about 7
to 10 min to read, and one chapter (3 to 5 sections) would be 30 min to 1
hr, one day's reading assignment.
breaking into smaller pieces would may break the structure of the the book
and make it harder to follow the author's thread of thoughts.

【在 D******r 的大作中提到】
: too long in every post
: no time to read that much
:
: and
: new
: ,
: and
: two
: delivered
: the

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l**********t
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111
Chapter 6: The Path of Progress: Presenting Ourselves to God
Our study has now brought us to the point where we are able to consider
the true nature of consecration. We have before us the second half of
Romans 6 from verse 12 to the end. In Romans 6:12, 13 we read: "Let not
sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey the lusts
thereof: neither present your members unto sin as instruments of
unrighteousness; but present yourselves unto God, as alive from the
dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God." The
operative word here is "present" and this occurs five times, in verses
13, 16 and 19. [9]
Many have taken this word "present" to imply consecration without
looking carefully into its content. Of course that is what it does
mean, but not in the sense in which we so often understand it. It is
not the consecration of our old man' with his instincts and
resources--our natural wisdom, strength and other gifts--to the Lord
for Him to use.
This will be at once clear from verse 13. Note there the clause "as
alive from the dead". Paul says: "Present yourselves unto God, as alive
from the dead". This defines for us the point at which consecration
begins. For what is here referred to is not the consecration of
anything belonging to the old creation, but only of that which has
passed through death to resurrection. The presenting' spoken of is the
outcome of my knowing my old man to be crucified. Knowing, reckoning,
presenting to God: that is the Divine order.
When I really know I am crucified with Him, then spontaneously I reckon
myself dead (verses 6 and 11); and when I know that I am raised with
Him from the dead, then likewise I reckon myself "alive unto God in
Christ Jesus" (verses 9 and 11), for both the death and the
resurrection side of the Cross are to be accepted by faith. When this
point is reached, giving myself to Him follows. In resurrection He is
the source of my life--indeed He is my life; so I cannot but present
everything to Him, for all is His, not mine. But without passing
through death I have nothing to consecrate, nor is there anything God
can accept, for He has condemned all that is of the old creation to the
Cross. Death has cut off all that cannot be consecrated to Him, and
resurrection alone has made consecration possible. Presenting myself to
God means that henceforth I consider my whole life as now belonging to
the Lord.



【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: chapter 5.3 Resurrection Unto Newness Of Life
: "If we have become united with him by the likeness of his death, we
: shall be also be the likeness of his resurrection (Rom. 6:5).
: Now with resurrection the figure is different because something new is
: introduced. I am "baptized into his death", but I do not enter in quite
: the same way into His resurrection, for, Praise the Lord! His
: resurrection enters into me, imparting to me a new life. In the death
: of the Lord the emphasis is solely upon I in Christ'. With the
: resurrection, while the same thing is true, there is now a new emphasis
: upon Christ in me'. How is it possible for Christ to communicate His

l**********t
发帖数: 5754
112
Chapter 6.1 The Third Step: “Present Yourselves...”
Let us observe that this ‘presenting’ relates to the members of my body—
that body which, as we said earlier, is now unemployed in respect to sin. “
Present yourselves... and your members”, says Paul, and again: “Present
your members” (Romans 6:13, 19). God requires of me that I now regard all
my members, all my faculties, as belonging wholly to Him.
It is a great thing when I discover I am no longer my own but His. If the
ten shillings in my pocket belong to me, then I have full authority over
them. But if they belong to another who has committed them to me in trust,
then I cannot buy what I please with them, and I dare not lose them. Real
Christian life begins with knowing this. How many of us know that, because
Christ is risen, we are therefore alive “unto God” and not unto ourselves?
How many of us dare not use our time or money or talents as we would,
because we realize they are the Lord’s not ours? How many of us have such a
strong sense that we belong to Another that we dare not squander a shilling
of our money, or an hour of our time, or any of our mental or physical
powers?
On one occasion a Chinese brother was traveling by train and found himself
in a carriage together with three non-Christians who wished to play cards in
order to while away the time. Lacking a fourth to complete the game, they
invited this brother to join them. ‘I am sorry to disappoint you’, he said
, ‘but I cannot join your game for I have not brought my hands with me.’
‘Whatever do you mean?’ they asked in blank astonishment. ‘This pair of
hands does not belong to me’, he said, and then there followed the
explanation of the transfer of ownership that had taken place in his life.
That brother regarded the members of his body as belonging entirely to the
Lord. That is true holiness.
Paul says, “Present your members as servants to righteousness unto
sanctification (A.V. ‘holiness’)” (Romans 6:19). Make it a definite act.
“Present yourselves to God.”

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: Chapter 6: The Path of Progress: Presenting Ourselves to God
: Our study has now brought us to the point where we are able to consider
: the true nature of consecration. We have before us the second half of
: Romans 6 from verse 12 to the end. In Romans 6:12, 13 we read: "Let not
: sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey the lusts
: thereof: neither present your members unto sin as instruments of
: unrighteousness; but present yourselves unto God, as alive from the
: dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God." The
: operative word here is "present" and this occurs five times, in verses
: 13, 16 and 19. [9]

l**********t
发帖数: 5754
113
Chapter 6.2 Separated Unto The Lord
What is holiness? Many people think we become holy by the eradication of
something evil within. No, we become holy by being separated unto God. In
Old Testament times, it was when a man was chosen by God to be altogether
His that he was publicly anointed with oil and was then said to be ‘
sanctified’. Thereafter he was regarded as set apart to God. In the same
manner even animals or material things—a lamb, or the gold of the temple—
could be sanctified, not by the eradication of anything evil in them, but by
being thus reserved exclusively to the Lord. “Holiness’ in the Hebrew
sense meant something thus set apart, and all true holiness is holiness “to
the Lord” (Exodus 28:36). I give myself over wholly to Christ: that is
holiness.
Presenting myself to God implies a recognition that I am altogether His.
This giving of myself is a definite thing, just as definite as reckoning.
There must be a day in my life when I pass out of my own hands into His, and
from that day forward I belong to Him and no longer to myself. That does
not mean that I consecrate myself to be a preacher or a missionary. Alas,
many people are missionaries not because they have truly consecrated
themselves to God but because, in the sense of which we are speaking, they
have not consecrated themselves to Him. They have ‘consecrated’ (as they
would put it) something altogether different, namely, their own uncrucified
natural faculties to the doing of His work; but that is not true
consecration. Then to what are we to be consecrated? Not to Christian work,
but to the will of God to be and do whatever He wants.
David had many mighty men. Some were generals and others were gatekeepers,
according as the king assigned them their task. We must be willing to be
either generals or gatekeepers, allotted to our parts just as God wills and
not as we choose. If you are a Christian, then God has marked out a pathway
for you—a ‘course’ as Paul calls it in 2 Timothy 4:7. Not only Paul’s
path but the path of every Christian has been clearly marked out by God, and
it is of supreme importance that each one should know and walk in the God-
appointed course. ‘Lord, I give myself to Thee with this desire alone, to
know and walk in the path Thou hast ordained.’ That is true giving. If at
the close of a life we can say with Paul: “I have finished my course”,
then we are blessed indeed. There is nothing more tragic than to come to the
end of life and know we have been on the wrong course. We have only one
life to live down here and we are free to do as we please with it, but if we
seek our own pleasure our life will never glorify God. A devoted Christian
once said in my hearing, ‘I want nothing for myself; I want everything for
God.’ Do you want anything apart from God, or does all your desire center
in His will? Can you truly say that the will of God is “good and acceptable
and perfect” to you? (Romans 12:2)
For it is our wills that are in question here. That strong self-assertive
will of mine must go to the Cross, and I must give myself over wholly to the
Lord. We cannot expect a tailor to make us a coat if we do not give him any
cloth, nor a builder to build us a house if we let him have no building
material; and in just the same way we cannot expect the Lord to live out His
life in us if we do not give Him our lives in which to live. Without
reservations, without controversy, we must give ourselves to Him to do as He
pleases with us. “Present yourselves unto God” (Romans 6:13).

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: Chapter 6.1 The Third Step: “Present Yourselves...”
: Let us observe that this ‘presenting’ relates to the members of my body—
: that body which, as we said earlier, is now unemployed in respect to sin. “
: Present yourselves... and your members”, says Paul, and again: “Present
: your members” (Romans 6:13, 19). God requires of me that I now regard all
: my members, all my faculties, as belonging wholly to Him.
: It is a great thing when I discover I am no longer my own but His. If the
: ten shillings in my pocket belong to me, then I have full authority over
: them. But if they belong to another who has committed them to me in trust,
: then I cannot buy what I please with them, and I dare not lose them. Real

l**********t
发帖数: 5754
114
chapter 6.3 Servant Or Slave?
If we give ourselves unreservedly to God, many adjustments may have to be
made: in family, or business, or church relationships, or in the matter of
our personal views. God will not let anything of ourselves remain. His
finger will touch, point by point, everything that is not of Him, and He
will say: ‘This must go’. Are you willing? It is foolish to resist God,
and always wise to submit to Him. We admit that many of us still have
controversies with the Lord. He wants something, while we want something
else. Many things we dare not look into, dare not pray about, dare not even
think about, lest we lose our peace. We can evade the issue in that way, but
to do so will bring us out of the will of God. It is always an easy matter
to get out of His will, but it is a blessed thing just to hand ourselves
over to Him and let Him have His way with us.
How good it is to have the consciousness that we belong to the Lord and are
not our own! There is nothing more precious in the world. It is that which
brings the awareness of His continual presence, and the reason is obvious. I
must first have the sense of God’s possession of me before I can have the
sense of His presence with me. When once His ownership is established, then
I dare do nothing in my own interests, for I am His exclusive property. “
Know ye not, that to whom ye present yourselves as servants unto obedience,
his servants ye are whom ye obey?” (Romans 6:16). The word here rendered ‘
servant’ really signifies a bondservant, a slave. This word is used several
times in the second half of Romans 6. What is the difference between a
servant and a slave? A servant may serve another, but the ownership does not
pass to that other. If he likes his master he can serve him, but if he does
not like him he can give in his notice and seek another master. Not so is
it with the slave. He is not only the servant of another but he is the
possession of another. How did I become the slave of the Lord? On His part
He bought me, and on my part I presented myself to Him. By right of
redemption I am God’s property, but if I would be His slave I must
willingly give myself to Him, for He will never compel me to do so.
The trouble with many Christians today is that they have an insufficient
idea of what God is asking of them. How glibly they say: ‘Lord, I am
willing for anything.’ Do you know that God is asking of you your very life
? There are cherished ideals, strong wills, precious relationships, much-
loved work, that will have to go; so do not give yourself to God unless you
mean it. God will take you seriously, even if you did not mean it seriously.
When the Galilian boy brought his bread to the Lord, what did the Lord do
with it? He broke it. God will always break what is offered to Him. He
breaks what He takes, but after breaking it He blesses and uses it to meet
the needs of others. After you give yourself to the Lord, He begins to break
what was offered to Him. Everything seems to go wrong, and you protest and
find fault with the ways of God. But to stay there is to be no more than
just a broken vessel—no good for the world because you have gone too far
for the world to use you, and no good for God either because you have not
gone far enough for Him to use you. You are out of gear with the world, and
you have a controversy with God. This is the tragedy of many a Christian.
My giving of myself to the Lord must be an initial fundamental act. Then day
by day I must go on giving to Him, not finding fault with His use of me but
accepting with praise even what the flesh revolts against.
I am the Lord’s and now no longer reckon myself to be my own but
acknowledge in everything His ownership and authority. That is the attitude
God requires, and to maintain it is true consecration. I do not consecrate
myself to be a missionary or a preacher; I consecrate myself to God to do
His will where I am, be it in school, office or kitchen, counting whatever
He ordains for me to be the very best, for nothing but good can come to
those who are wholly His.
May we always be possessed by the consciousness that we are not our own.


【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: Chapter 6.2 Separated Unto The Lord
: What is holiness? Many people think we become holy by the eradication of
: something evil within. No, we become holy by being separated unto God. In
: Old Testament times, it was when a man was chosen by God to be altogether
: His that he was publicly anointed with oil and was then said to be ‘
: sanctified’. Thereafter he was regarded as set apart to God. In the same
: manner even animals or material things—a lamb, or the gold of the temple—
: could be sanctified, not by the eradication of anything evil in them, but by
: being thus reserved exclusively to the Lord. “Holiness’ in the Hebrew
: sense meant something thus set apart, and all true holiness is holiness “to

l**********t
发帖数: 5754
115
Chapter 7: The Eternal Purpose
We have spoken of the need of revelation, of faith and of consecration, if
we are to live the normal Christian life. But unless we see the end God has
in view we shall never clearly understand why these steps are necessary to
lead us to that end. Before therefore we consider further the question of
inward experience, let us first look at the great Divine goal before us.
What is God’s purpose in creation and what is His purpose in redemption? It
may be summed up in two phrases, one from each of our two sections of
Romans. It is: “The glory of God” (Romans 3:23), and “The glory of the
children of God” (Romans 8:21).
In Romans 3:23 we read: “All have sinned, and fall short of the glory of
God”. God’s purpose for man was glory, but sin thwarted that purpose by
causing man to miss God’s glory. When we think of sin we instinctively
think of the judgment it brings; we invariably associate it with
condemnation and hell. Man’s thought is always of the punishment that will
come to him if he sins, but God’s thought is always of the glory man will
miss if he sins. The result of sin is that we forfeit God’s glory: the
result of redemption is that we are qualified again for glory. God’s
purpose in redemption is glory, glory, glory.



【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: chapter 6.3 Servant Or Slave?
: If we give ourselves unreservedly to God, many adjustments may have to be
: made: in family, or business, or church relationships, or in the matter of
: our personal views. God will not let anything of ourselves remain. His
: finger will touch, point by point, everything that is not of Him, and He
: will say: ‘This must go’. Are you willing? It is foolish to resist God,
: and always wise to submit to Him. We admit that many of us still have
: controversies with the Lord. He wants something, while we want something
: else. Many things we dare not look into, dare not pray about, dare not even
: think about, lest we lose our peace. We can evade the issue in that way, but

l**********t
发帖数: 5754
116
chapter 7.1 Firstborn Among Many Brethren
This consideration takes us forward into Romans chapter 8 where the topic is
developed in verses 16 to 18 and again in verses 29 and 30. Paul says: “We
are 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 with him. For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time
are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed to us”
(Romans 8:16-18); and again: “Whom he foreknew, he also foreordained to be
conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among
many brethren: and whom he foreordained, them he also called: and whom he
called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also
glorified” (Romans 8:29, 30). What was God’s objective? It was that His
Son Jesus Christ might be the firstborn among many brethren, all of whom
should be conformed to His image. How did God realize that objective? “Whom
he justified, them he also glorified.” God’s purpose, then, in creation
and redemption was to make Christ the firstborn Son among many glorified
sons. That may perhaps at first convey very little to many of us, but let us
look into it more carefully.
In John 1:14 we are told that the Lord Jesus was God’s only begotten Son:
“the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us (and we beheld his glory, glory
as of the only begotten from the Father)”. That He was God’s only begotten
Son signifies that God had no other Son but this one. He was with the
Father from all eternity. But, we are told, God was not satisfied that
Christ should remain the only begotten Son; He wanted also to make Him His
first begotten. How could an only begotten Son become a first begotten? The
answer is simple: by the Father having more children. If you have but one
son then his is the only begotten, but if thereafter you have other children
then the only begotten becomes the first begotten.
The Divine purpose in creation and redemption was that God should have many
children. He wanted us, and could not be satisfied without us. Some time ago
I called to see Mr. George Cutting, the writer of the well-known tract
Safety, Certainty and Enjoyment. When I was ushered into the presence of
this old saint of ninety-three years, he took my hand in his and in a quiet,
deliberate way he said: ‘Brother, do you know, I cannot do without Him?
And do you know, He cannot do without me?’ Though I was with him for over
an hour, his great age and physical frailty made any sustained conversation
impossible. But what remains in my memory of that interview was his frequent
repetition of these two questions: ‘Brother, do you know, I cannot do
without Him? And do you know, He cannot do without me?’
In reading the story of the prodigal son most people are impressed with all
the troubles the prodigal meets; they are occupied in thinking what a bad
time he is having. But that is not the point of the parable. “My son... was
lost, and is found”—there is the heart of the story. It is not a question
of what the son suffers but of what the Father loses. He is the sufferer;
He is the loser. A sheep is lost: whose is the loss? The shepherd’s. A coin
is lost: whose is the loss? The woman’s. A son is lost: whose is the loss?
The Father’s. That is the lesson of Luke chapter 15.
The Lord Jesus was the only begotten Son, and as the only begotten He had no
brothers. But the Father sent the Son in order that the only begotten might
also be the first begotten, and the beloved Son have many brethren. There
you have the whole story of the Incarnation and the Cross; and there you
have at the last the purpose of God fulfilled in His “bringing many sons
unto glory” (Heb. 2:10).
In Romans 8:29 we read of “many brethren”; in Hebrews 2:10 of “many sons
”. From the point of view of the Lord Jesus it is “brethren”; from the
point of view of God the Father it is “sons”. Both words in this context
convey the idea of maturity. God is seeking full-grown sons; but He does not
stop even there. For He does not want His sons to live in a barn or a
garage or a field; He wants them in His home; He wants them to share His
glory. That is the explanation of Romans 8:30: “Whom he justified, them he
also glorified.” Sonship—the full expression of His Son—is God’s goal in
the many sons. How could He bring that about? By justifying them and then
by glorifying them. In His dealings with them God will never stop short of
that goal. He set Himself to have sons, and to have those sons, mature and
responsible, with Him in glory. He made provision for the whole of Heaven to
be peopled with glorified sons. That was His purpose in redemption.

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: Chapter 7: The Eternal Purpose
: We have spoken of the need of revelation, of faith and of consecration, if
: we are to live the normal Christian life. But unless we see the end God has
: in view we shall never clearly understand why these steps are necessary to
: lead us to that end. Before therefore we consider further the question of
: inward experience, let us first look at the great Divine goal before us.
: What is God’s purpose in creation and what is His purpose in redemption? It
: may be summed up in two phrases, one from each of our two sections of
: Romans. It is: “The glory of God” (Romans 3:23), and “The glory of the
: children of God” (Romans 8:21).

l**********t
发帖数: 5754
117
chapter 7.2 The Grain Of Wheat
But how could God’s only begotten Son become His first begotten? The method
is explained in John 12:24: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a
grain of wheat fall into the earth and die, it abideth by itself alone; but
if it die, it beareth much fruit.” Who was that grain? It was the Lord
Jesus. In the whole universe God had only one ‘grain of wheat’; He had no
second grain. God put His one grain of wheat into the ground and it died,
and in resurrection the only begotten grain became the first begotten grain,
and from the one grain there have sprung many grains.
In respect of His divinity the Lord Jesus remains uniquely “the only
begotten Son of God”. Yet there is a sense in which, from the resurrection
onward through all eternity, He is also the first begotten, and His life
from that time is found in many brethren. For we who are born of the Spirit
are made thereby “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4), though
not, mark you, as of ourselves but only, as we shall see in a moment, in
dependence upon God and by virtue of our being ‘in Christ’. We have “
received the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father. The Spirit
himself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are children of God” (Rom.
8:5, 16). It was by way of the Incarnation and the Cross that the Lord
Jesus made this possible. Therein was the Father-heart of God satisfied, for
in the Son’s obedience unto death the Father has secured His many sons.
The first and the twentieth chapters of John are in this respect most
precious. In the beginning of his Gospel John tells us that Jesus was “the
only begotten from the Father”. At the end of his Gospel he tells us how,
after the Lord Jesus died and rose again, He said to Mary Magdalene, “Go
unto my brethren, and say to them, I ascend unto my Father and your Father,
and my God and your God” (John 20:17). Hitherto in this Gospel the Lord had
spoken often of “the Father” or of “my Father”. Now, in resurrection,
He add, ”...and your Father”. It is the eldest Son, the first begotten,
speaking. By His death and resurrection many brethren have been brought into
God’s family, and so, in the same verse He uses this very name for them:
“My brethren”. “He is not ashamed to call them brethren” (Heb. 2:11).

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: chapter 7.1 Firstborn Among Many Brethren
: This consideration takes us forward into Romans chapter 8 where the topic is
: developed in verses 16 to 18 and again in verses 29 and 30. Paul says: “We
: are 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 with him. For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time
: are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed to us”
: (Romans 8:16-18); and again: “Whom he foreknew, he also foreordained to be
: conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among
: many brethren: and whom he foreordained, them he also called: and whom he

l**********t
发帖数: 5754
118
chapter 7.3 The Choice That Confronted Adam
God planted a great number of trees in the garden of Eden, but “in the
midst of the garden”—that is, in a place of special prominence—He planted
two trees, the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Adam was created innocent; he had no knowledge of good and evil. Think of a
grown man, say thirty years old, who has no sense of right or wrong, no
power to differentiate between the two! Would you not say such a man was
undeveloped? Well, that is exactly what Adam was. And God brings him into
the garden and says to him, in effect, ‘Now the garden is full of trees,
full of fruits, and of the fruit of every tree you may eat freely. But in
the very midst of the garden is one tree called “the tree of the knowledge
of good and evil”; you must not eat of that, for in the day that you do so
you will surely die. But remember, the name of the other tree close by is
Life.’ What, then, is the meaning of these two trees? Adam was, so to speak
, created morally neutral—neither sinful nor holy, but innocent—and God
put those two trees there so that he might exercise free choice. He could
choose the tree of life, or he could choose the tree of the knowledge of
good and evil.
Now the knowledge of good and evil, though forbidden to Adam, is not wrong
in itself. Without it however Adam is in a sense limited in that he cannot
decide for himself on moral issues. Judgment of right and wrong resides not
in him but in God, and Adam’s only course when faced with any question is
to refer it to Jehovah God. Thus you have a life in the garden which is
totally dependent on God. These two trees, then, typify two deep principles;
they represent two planes of life, the Divine and the human. The “tree of
life” is God Himself, for God is life. He is the highest form of life, and
He is also the source and goal of life. And the fruit: what is that? It is
our Lord Jesus Christ. You cannot eat the tree but you can eat the fruit. No
one is able to receive God as God, but we can receive the Lord Jesus. The
fruit is the edible part, the receivable part of the tree. So—may I say it
reverently?—the Lord Jesus is really God in a receivable form. God in
Christ we can receive.
If Adam should take of the tree of life, he would partake of the life of God
and thus become a ‘son’ of God, in the sense of having in him a life that
derived from God. There you would have God’s life in union with man: a
race of men having the life of God in them and living in constant dependence
upon God for that life. If on the other hand Adam should turn the other way
and take the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, then he
would develop his own manhood along natural lines apart from God. Reaching a
peak of attainment as a self-sufficient being, he would have the power in
himself to form independent judgment, but he would have no life from God.
So this was the alternative that lay before him. Choosing the way of the
Spirit, the way of obedience, he could become a ‘son’ of God, living in
dependence upon God for his life; or, taking the natural course, he could
put the finishing touch to himself, as it were, by becoming a self-dependent
being, judging and acting apart from God. The history of humanity is the
outcome of the choice he made.

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: chapter 7.2 The Grain Of Wheat
: But how could God’s only begotten Son become His first begotten? The method
: is explained in John 12:24: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a
: grain of wheat fall into the earth and die, it abideth by itself alone; but
: if it die, it beareth much fruit.” Who was that grain? It was the Lord
: Jesus. In the whole universe God had only one ‘grain of wheat’; He had no
: second grain. God put His one grain of wheat into the ground and it died,
: and in resurrection the only begotten grain became the first begotten grain,
: and from the one grain there have sprung many grains.
: In respect of His divinity the Lord Jesus remains uniquely “the only

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chapter 7.4 Adam’s Choice The Reason For The Cross
Adam chose the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and thereby took up
independent ground. In doing so he became (as man is now in his own eyes) a
‘fully developed’ man. He could command a knowledge; he could decide for
himself; he could go on or stop. From then on he was “wise” (Genesis 3:6).
But the consequence for his was death rather than life, because the choice
he had made involved complicity with Satan and brought him therefore under
the judgment of God. That is why access to the tree of life had thereafter
to be forbidden to him.
Two planes of life had been set before Adam: that of Divine life in
dependence upon God, and that of human life with its ‘independent’
resources. Adam’s choice of the latter was sin, because thereby he allied
himself with Satan to thwart the eternal purpose of God. He did so by
choosing to develop his manhood—to become perhaps a very fine man, even by
his standards a ‘perfect’ man—apart from God. But the end was death,
because he had not in him the Divine life necessary to realize God’s
purpose in his being, but had chosen to become instead an ‘independent’
agent of the Enemy. Thus in Adam we all become sinners, equally dominated by
Satan, equally subject to the law of sin and death, and equally deserving
of the wrath of God.
From this we see the Divine reason for the death and resurrection of the
Lord Jesus. We see too the Divine reason for true consecration—for
reckoning ourselves to be dead unto sin but alive unto God in Christ Jesus,
and for presenting ourselves unto Him as alive from the dead. We must all go
to the Cross, because what is in us by nature is a self-life, subject to
the law of sin. Adam chose a self-life rather than a Divine life; so God had
to gather up all that was in Adam and do away with it. Our ‘old man’ has
been crucified. God has put us all in Christ and crucified Him as the last
Adam, and thus all that is of Adam has passed away.
Then Christ arose in new form; with a body still, but ‘in the Spirit’, no
longer ‘in the flesh’. “The last Adam became a life-giving spirit” (1
Cor. 15:45). The Lord Jesus now has a resurrected body, a spiritual body, a
glorious body, and since He is no longer in the flesh He can now be received
by all. “He that eateth me, he also shall live because of me”, said Jesus
(John 6:57). The Jews revolted at the thought of eating His flesh and
drinking His blood, but of course they could not receive Him then because He
was still literally in the flesh. Now that He is in the Spirit every one of
us can receive Him, and it is by partaking of His resurrection life that we
are constituted children of God. “As many as received him, to them gave he
the right to become children of God... which were born... of God.” (John 1
:12, 13).
God is not out to reform our life. It is not His thought to bring it to a
certain stage of refinement, for it is on a totally wrong plane. On that
plane He cannot now bring man to glory. He must have a new man; one born
anew, born of God. Regeneration and justification go together.

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: chapter 7.3 The Choice That Confronted Adam
: God planted a great number of trees in the garden of Eden, but “in the
: midst of the garden”—that is, in a place of special prominence—He planted
: two trees, the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
: Adam was created innocent; he had no knowledge of good and evil. Think of a
: grown man, say thirty years old, who has no sense of right or wrong, no
: power to differentiate between the two! Would you not say such a man was
: undeveloped? Well, that is exactly what Adam was. And God brings him into
: the garden and says to him, in effect, ‘Now the garden is full of trees,
: full of fruits, and of the fruit of every tree you may eat freely. But in

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chapter 7.5 He That Hath The Son Hath The Life
There are various planes of life. Human life lies between the life of the
lower animals and the life of God. We cannot bridge the gulf that divides us
from the plane above or the plane below, and the distance that separates us
from the life of God is vastly greater than that which separates us from
the life of the lower animals.
In China one day I called on a Christian leader who was sick in bed, and
whom, for the sake of this story, I shall call ‘Mr. Wong’ (though that was
not his real name). He was a very learned man, a Doctor of Philosophy, and
one esteemed throughout the whole of China for his high moral principles,
and he had long been engaged in Christian work. But he did not believe in
the need for regeneration; he only proclaimed a social gospel.
When I called on Mr. Wong his pet dog was by his bedside, and after speaking
with him of the things of God and of the nature of His work in us, I
pointed to the dog and inquired his name. He told me he was called Fido. ‘
Is Fido his Christian name or his surname?’ I asked (using the common
Chinese terms for ‘personal name’ and ‘family name’). ‘Oh, that is just
his name’, he said. ‘Do you mean that is just his Christian name? Can I
call him Fido Wong?’ I continued. ‘Certainly not!’ came the emphatic
reply. ‘But he lives in your family’, I protested, ‘Why don’t you call
him Fido Wong?’ Then, indicating his two daughters, I asked ‘Are your
daughters not called Miss Wong?’ ‘Yes!’ ‘Well then, why cannot I call
your dog Master Wong?’ The Doctor laughed, and I went on: ‘Do you see what
I am getting at? Your daughters were born into your family and they bear
your name because you have communicated your life to them. Your dog may be
an intelligent dog, a well-behaved dog, and altogether a most remarkable dog
; but the question is not, Is he a good or a bad dog? It is merely, Is he a
dog? He does not need to be bad to be disqualified from being a member of
your family; he only needs to be a dog. The same principle applies to you in
your relationship to God. The question is not whether you are a bad man or
a good man, more or less, but simply, Are you a man? If your life is on a
lower plane than that of God’s life, then you cannot belong to the Divine
family. Throughout your life your aim in preaching has been to turn bad men
into good men; but men as such, whether good or bad, can have no vital
relationship with God. Our only hope as men is to receive the Son of God,
and when we do so His life in us will constitute us sons of God.’ The
Doctor saw the truth, and that day he became a member of God’s family by
receiving the Son of God into his heart.
What we today possess in Christ is more than Adam lost. Adam was only a
developed man. He remained on that plane, and never possessed the life of
God. But we who receive the Son of God not only receive the forgiveness of
sins; we receive also the Divine life which was represented in the garden by
the tree of life. By the new birth we receive something Adam never had; we
possess what he missed

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: chapter 7.4 Adam’s Choice The Reason For The Cross
: Adam chose the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and thereby took up
: independent ground. In doing so he became (as man is now in his own eyes) a
: ‘fully developed’ man. He could command a knowledge; he could decide for
: himself; he could go on or stop. From then on he was “wise” (Genesis 3:6).
: But the consequence for his was death rather than life, because the choice
: he had made involved complicity with Satan and brought him therefore under
: the judgment of God. That is why access to the tree of life had thereafter
: to be forbidden to him.
: Two planes of life had been set before Adam: that of Divine life in

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chapter 7.6 They Are All Of One
God wants sons who shall be joint-heirs with Christ in glory. That is His
goal; but how can He bring that about? Turn now to Hebrews 2:10 and 11: “It
became him, for whom are all things, and through whom are all things, in
bringing many sons unto glory, to make the author of their salvation perfect
through sufferings. For both he that sanctifieth and they that are
sanctified are all of one: for which cause he is not ashamed to call them
brethren.”
There are two parties mentioned here, namely, “many sons” and “the author
of their salvation”, or, in different terms, “he that sanctifieth” and
“they that are sanctified”. But these two parties are said to be “all of
one”. The Lord Jesus as Man derived His life from God, and (in another
sense, but just as truly) we derive our new life from God. He was “begotten
... of the Holy Ghost” (Matthew 1:20 mg.), and we were “born of... the
spirit”, “born... of God” (John 3:5; 1:13). So, God says, we are all of
One. “Of” in the Greek means “out of”. The first begotten Son and the
many sons are all (though in different senses) “out of” the one Source of
life. Do you realize that we have the same life today that God has? The life
which He has in Heaven is the life which He has imparted to us here on the
earth. That is the precious “gift of God” (Rom. 6:23). It is for that
reason that we can live a life of holiness, for it is not our own life that
has been changed, but the life of God that has been imparted to us.
Do you notice that, in this consideration of the eternal purpose, the whole
question of sin ultimately goes out? It no longer has a place. Sin came in
with Adam, and even when it has been dealt with, as it has to be, we are
only brought back to the point where Adam was. But in relating us again to
the Divine purpose—in, as it were, restoring to us access to the tree of
life—redemption has given us far more than Adam ever had. It has made us
partakers of the very life of God Himself.


【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: chapter 7.5 He That Hath The Son Hath The Life
: There are various planes of life. Human life lies between the life of the
: lower animals and the life of God. We cannot bridge the gulf that divides us
: from the plane above or the plane below, and the distance that separates us
: from the life of God is vastly greater than that which separates us from
: the life of the lower animals.
: In China one day I called on a Christian leader who was sick in bed, and
: whom, for the sake of this story, I shall call ‘Mr. Wong’ (though that was
: not his real name). He was a very learned man, a Doctor of Philosophy, and
: one esteemed throughout the whole of China for his high moral principles,

l**********t
发帖数: 5754
122
Chapter 8: The Holy Spirit
We have spoken of the eternal purpose of God as the motive and explanation
of all His dealings with us. Now, before we return to our study of the
phases of Christian experience as set forth in Romans, we must digress yet
again in order to consider something which lies at the heart of all our
experience as the vitalizing power of effective life and service. I refer to
the personal presence and ministry of the Holy Spirit of God.
And here, too, let us take as our starting-point two verses from Romans, one
from each of our sections. “The love of God hath been shed abroad in our
hearts through the Holy Ghost which was given unto us” (Romans 5:5). “If
any man hath not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his” (Romans 8:9).
God does not give His gifts at random, nor dispense them in any arbitrary
fashion. They are given freely to all, but they are given on a definite
basis. God has truly “blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the
heavenly places in Christ” (Ephesians 1:3), but if those blessings which
are ours in Christ are to become ours in experience, we must know on what
ground we can appropriate them.
In considering the gift of the Holy Spirit it is helpful to think of this in
two aspects, as the Spirit outpoured and the Spirit indwelling, and our
purpose now is to understand on what basis this twofold gift of the Holy
Spirit becomes ours. I have no doubt that we are right in distinguishing
thus between the outward and the inward manifestations of His working, and
that as we go on we shall find the distinction helpful. Moreover, when we
compare them, we cannot but come to the conclusion that the inward activity
of the Holy Spirit is the more precious. But to say this is not for one
moment to imply that His outward activity is not also precious, for God only
gives good gifts to His children. Unfortunately we are apt to esteem our
privileges lightly because of their sheer abundance. The Old Testament
saints, who were not as favoured as we are, could appreciate more readily
than we do the preciousness of this gift of the outpoured Spirit. In their
day it was a gift given only to the select few—chiefly to priests, judges,
kings and prophets—whereas now it is the portion of every child of God.
Think! we who are mere nonentities can have the same Spirit resting upon us
as rested upon Moses the friend of God, upon David the beloved king, and
upon Elijah the mighty prophet. By receiving the gift of the outpoured Holy
Spirit we join the ranks of God’s chosen servants of the Old Testament
dispensation. Once we see the value of this gift of God, and realize too our
deep need of it, we shall immediately ask, How can I receive the Holy
Spirit in this way to equip me with spiritual gifts and to empower me for
service? Upon what basis has the Spirit been given?

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: chapter 7.6 They Are All Of One
: God wants sons who shall be joint-heirs with Christ in glory. That is His
: goal; but how can He bring that about? Turn now to Hebrews 2:10 and 11: “It
: became him, for whom are all things, and through whom are all things, in
: bringing many sons unto glory, to make the author of their salvation perfect
: through sufferings. For both he that sanctifieth and they that are
: sanctified are all of one: for which cause he is not ashamed to call them
: brethren.”
: There are two parties mentioned here, namely, “many sons” and “the author
: of their salvation”, or, in different terms, “he that sanctifieth” and

l**********t
发帖数: 5754
123
Chapter 8.1 The Spirit Outpoured
Let us turn first to Acts chapter 2 verses 32 to 36: ”(32) This Jesus did
God raise up, whereof we all are witnesses. (33) Being therefore by the
right hand of God exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of
the Holy Ghost, he hath poured forth this, which ye see and hear. (34) For
David ascended not into the heavens: but he saith himself, The Lord said
unto my Lord, sit thou on my right hand, (35) Till I make thine enemies the
footstool of thy feet.(36) Let all the house of Israel therefore know
assuredly, that God hath made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom ye
crucified.”
Let us for the moment set verses 34 and 35 aside and consider verses 33 and
36 together. The former are a quotation from the 110th Psalm and are really
a parenthesis, so we shall get the force of Peter’s argument better if we
ignore them for the time being. In verse 33 Peter states that the Lord Jesus
was exalted “at the right hand of God” (mg.). What was the result? He “
received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost”. And what followed?
Pentecost! The result of His exaltation was—“this, which ye see and hear”.
What, then, was the basis upon which the Spirit was first given to the Lord
Jesus to be poured out upon His people? It was His exaltation to Heaven.
This passage makes it absolutely clear that the Holy Spirit was poured out
because the Lord Jesus was exalted. The outpouring of the Spirit has no
relation to your merits or mine, but only to the merits of the Lord Jesus.
The question of what we are does not come into consideration at all here,
but only what He is. He is glorified; therefore the Spirit is poured out.
Because the Lord Jesus died on the Cross, I have received forgiveness of
sins; because the Lord Jesus rose from the dead, I have received new life;
because the Lord Jesus has been exalted to the right hand of the Father, I
have received the outpoured Spirit. All is because of Him; nothing is
because of me. Remission of sins is not based on human merit, but on the
Lord’s crucifixion; regeneration is not based on human merit, but on the
Lord’s resurrection; and the enduement with the Holy Spirit is not based on
human merit, but on the Lord’s exaltation. The Holy Spirit has not been
poured out on you or me to prove how great we are, but to prove the
greatness of the Son of God.
Now look at verse 36. There is a word here which demands our careful
attention: the word ‘therefore’. How is this word generally used? Not to
introduce a statement, but to follow a statement that has already been made.
Its use always implies that something has been mentioned before. Now what
has preceded this particular ‘therefore’? With what is it connected? It
cannot reasonably be connected with either verse 34 or verse 35, but it
quite obviously relates back to verse 33. Peter has just referred to the
outpouring of the Spirit upon the disciples “which ye see and hear”, and
he says: “Let all the house of Israel therefore know assuredly, that God
hath made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom ye crucified”. Peter
says, in effect, to his audience: ‘This outpouring of the Spirit, which you
have witnessed with your own eyes and ears, proves that Jesus of Nazareth
whom ye crucified is now both Lord and Christ’. The Holy Spirit was poured
out on earth to prove what had taken place in Heaven—the exaltation of
Jesus of Nazareth to the right hand of God. The purpose of Pentecost is to
prove the Lordship of Jesus Christ.
There was a young man named Joseph, who was dearly loved of his father. One
day news reached the father of the death of his son, and for years Jacob
lamented Joseph’s loss. But Joseph was not in the grave; he was in a place
of glory and power. After Jacob had been mourning the death of his son for
years, it was suddenly reported to him that Joseph was alive and in a high
position in Egypt. At first Jacob could not take it in. It was too good to
be true. But ultimately he was persuaded that the story of Joseph’s
exaltation was really a fact. How did he come to believe in it? He went out,
and saw the chariots that Joseph had sent from Egypt.
What do the chariots represent here? They surely typify here the Holy Spirit
, sent both to be the evidence that God’s Son is in glory and to convey us
there. How do we know that Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified by wicked
men nearly two thousand years ago, did not just die a martyr’s death but is
at the Father’s right hand in glory? How can we know for a surety that He
is Lord of lords and King of kings? We can know it beyond dispute because He
has poured out His Spirit upon us. Hallelujah! Jesus is Lord! Jesus is
Christ! Jesus of Nazareth is both Lord and Christ!
The exaltation of the Lord Jesus is the basis on which the Spirit has been
given. Is it possible then that the Lord has been glorified and you have not
received the Spirit? On what basis did you receive forgiveness of sins? Was
it because you prayed so earnestly, or because you read your Bible from
cover to cover, or because of your regular attendance at Church? Was it
because of your merits at all? No! A thousand times, No! On what ground then
were your sins forgiven? “Apart from shedding of blood there is no
remission” (Hebrews 9:22). The sole ground of forgiveness is the shedding
of blood; and since the precious Blood has been shed, your sins have been
forgiven.
Now the principle on which we receive the enduement of the Holy Spirit is
the very same as that on which we receive forgiveness of sins. The Lord has
been crucified, therefore our sins have been forgiven; the Lord has been
glorified, therefore the Spirit has been poured out upon us. Is it possible
that the Son of God shed His Blood and that your sins, dear child of God,
have not been forgiven? Never! Then is it possible that the Son of God has
been glorified and you have not received the Spirit? Never!
Some of you may say: I agree with all this, but I have no experience of it.
Am I to sit down smugly and say I have everything, when I know perfectly
well I have nothing? No, we must never rest content with objective facts
alone. We need subjective experience also; but that experience will only
come as we rest upon Divine facts. God’s facts are the basis of our
experience.
Let us go back again to the question of justification. How were you
justified? Not by doing anything at all, but by accepting the fact that the
Lord had done everything. Enduement with the Holy Spirit becomes yours in
exactly the same way as justification, not by your doing anything yourself,
but by your putting your faith in what the Lord has already done.
If we lack the experience, we must ask God for a revelation of the eternal
fact of the baptism of the Holy Spirit as the gift of the exalted Lord to
His Church. Once we see that, effort will cease, and prayer will give place
to praise. It was a revelation of what the Lord had done for the world that
brought to an end our efforts to secure forgiveness of sins, and it is a
revelation of what the Lord has done for His Church that will bring to an
end our efforts to secure the baptism of the Holy Spirit. We work because we
have not seen the work of Christ. But when once we have seen that, faith
will spring up in our hearts, and as we believe, experience will follow.
Some time ago a young man, who had only been a Christian for five weeks and
who had formerly been violently opposed to the gospel, attended a series of
meetings which I was addressing in Shanghai. At the close of one in which I
was speaking along the above lines, he went home and began to pray earnestly
, ‘Lord, I do want the power of the Holy Spirit. Seeing Thou hast now been
glorified, wilt Thou not now pour out Thy Spirit upon me?’ Then he
corrected himself: ‘Oh no, Lord, that’s all wrong!’ and began to pray
again: ‘Lord Jesus, we are in a life-partnership, Thou and I, and the
Father has promised us two things—glory for Thee, and the Spirit for me.
Thou, Lord, hast received the glory; therefore it is unthinkable that I have
not received the Spirit. Lord, I praise Thee! Thou hast already received
the glory, and I have already received the Spirit.’ From that day the power
of the Spirit was consciously upon him.

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: Chapter 8: The Holy Spirit
: We have spoken of the eternal purpose of God as the motive and explanation
: of all His dealings with us. Now, before we return to our study of the
: phases of Christian experience as set forth in Romans, we must digress yet
: again in order to consider something which lies at the heart of all our
: experience as the vitalizing power of effective life and service. I refer to
: the personal presence and ministry of the Holy Spirit of God.
: And here, too, let us take as our starting-point two verses from Romans, one
: from each of our sections. “The love of God hath been shed abroad in our
: hearts through the Holy Ghost which was given unto us” (Romans 5:5). “If

l**********t
发帖数: 5754
124
chapter 8.2 Faith Is Again The Key
As for forgiveness, so equally for the coming upon us of the Holy Spirit,
the whole question is one of faith. As soon as we see the Lord Jesus on the
Cross, we know our sins are forgiven; and as soon as we see the Lord Jesus
on the Throne, we know the Holy Spirit has been poured out upon us. The
basis upon which we receive the enduement of the Holy Spirit is not our
praying and fasting and waiting, but the exaltation of Christ. Those who
emphasize tarrying and hold ‘tarrying meetings’ only mislead us, for the
gift is not for the ‘favoured few’ but for all, because it is not given on
the ground of what we are at all, but of what Christ is. The Spirit has
been poured out to prove His goodness and greatness, not ours. Christ has
been crucified, therefore we have been forgiven: Christ has been glorified,
therefore we have been endued with power from on high. It is all because of
Him.
Suppose an unbeliever expresses the desire to be saved, and you explain to
him the way of salvation and pray with him. Suppose then he prays after this
fashion: ‘Lord Jesus, I believe Thou hast died for me, and that Thou canst
blot out all my sins. I truly believe Thou wilt forgive me.’ Have you any
confidence that that man is saved? When will you rest assured that he has
really been born again? Not when he prays: ‘Lord, I believe Thou wilt
forgive my sins’, but when he says: ‘Lord, I praise Thee that Thou hast
forgiven my sins. Thou hast died for me; therefore my sins are blotted out’
You believe a person is saved when prayer turns to praise—when he ceases
to ask the Lord to forgive him, but praises Him that He has already done so
because the Blood of the Lamb has already been shed.
In the same way, you can pray and wait for years and never experience the
Spirit’s power; but when you cease to plead with the Lord to pour out His
Spirit upon you, and when instead you trustfully praise Him that the Spirit
has been poured out because the Lord Jesus has been glorified, you will find
that your problem is solved. Praise God! no single child of His need
agonize, nor even wait, for the Spirit to be given. Jesus is not going to be
made Lord; He is Lord. Therefore I am not going to receive the Spirit; I
have received the Spirit. It is all a question of the faith which comes by
revelation. When our eyes are opened to see that the Spirit has already been
poured out because Jesus has already been glorified, then prayer turns to
praise in our hearts.
All spiritual blessings are given on a definite basis. God’s gifts are
freely given, but there are conditions which must be fulfilled on our part
before the reception of them is possible. There is a passage in God’s Word
which makes the conditions of the outpoured Spirit perfectly clear: “Repent
ye, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ unto the
remission of your sins; and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. For
to you is the promise, and to your children, and to all that are afar off,
even as many as the Lord our God shall call unto him” (Acts 2:38, 39).
Four things are mentioned in this passage: Repentance, Baptism, Forgiveness,
and the Holy Spirit. The first two are conditions, the second two are gifts
. What are the conditions to be fulfilled if we are to have forgiveness of
sins? According to the Word they are two: repentance and baptism.
The first condition is repentance, which means a change of mind. Formerly I
thought sin a pleasant thing, but now I have changed my mind about it;
formerly I thought the world an attractive place, but now I know better;
formerly I regarded it a miserable business to be a Christian, but now I
think differently. Once I thought certain things delightful, now I think
them vile; once I thought other things utterly worthless, now I think them
most precious. That is a change of mind, and that is repentance. No life can
be truly changed apart from such a change of mind.
The second condition is baptism. Baptism is an outward expression of an
inward faith. When in my heart I truly believe that I have died with Christ,
have been buried and have risen with Him, then I ask for baptism. I thereby
declare publicly what I believe privately. Baptism is faith in action.
Here then are two divinely appointed conditions of forgiveness—repentance,
and faith publicly expressed. Have you repented? Have you testified publicly
to your union with your Lord? Then have you received remission of sins and
the gift of the Holy Ghost? You say you have only received the first gift,
not the second. But, my friend, God offered you two things if you fulfilled
two conditions! Why have you only taken one? What are you doing about the
second?
Suppose I went into a book-shop, selected a two-volume book, priced at ten
shillings, and, having put down a ten-shilling note, walked out of the shop,
carelessly leaving one volume on the counter. When I reached home and
discovered the oversight, what do you think I should do? I should go
straight back to the shop to get the forgotten book, but I should not dream
of paying anything for it. I should simply explain to the shopkeeper that
both volumes were duly paid for, and ask him if he would therefore kindly
let me have the second one; and without any further payment I should march
happily out of the shop with my possession under my arm. Would you not do
the same under the same circumstances?
But you are under the same circumstances. If you have fulfilled the
conditions you are entitled to two gifts, not just one. You have already
taken the one; why not just come and take the other now? Say to the Lord, ‘
Lord, I have complied with the conditions for receiving remission of sins
and the gift of the Holy Ghost, but I have foolishly only taken the former.
Now I have come back to take the gift of the Holy Ghost, and I praise Thee
for it.’

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: Chapter 8.1 The Spirit Outpoured
: Let us turn first to Acts chapter 2 verses 32 to 36: ”(32) This Jesus did
: God raise up, whereof we all are witnesses. (33) Being therefore by the
: right hand of God exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of
: the Holy Ghost, he hath poured forth this, which ye see and hear. (34) For
: David ascended not into the heavens: but he saith himself, The Lord said
: unto my Lord, sit thou on my right hand, (35) Till I make thine enemies the
: footstool of thy feet.(36) Let all the house of Israel therefore know
: assuredly, that God hath made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom ye
: crucified.”

l**********t
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125
chapter 8.3 The Diversity Of The Experience
But you ask: How shall I know that the Holy Spirit is come upon me?' I
cannot tell how you will know, but you will know. No description has
been given us of the personal sensations and emotions of the disciples
at Pentecost. We do not know exactly how they felt, but we do know that
their feelings and behaviour were somewhat abnormal, because people
seeing them said they were intoxicated. When the Holy Spirit falls upon
God's people there will be some things which the world cannot account
for. There will be supernatural accompaniments of some kind, though it
be no more than an overwhelming sense of the Divine Presence. We cannot
and we must not stipulate what particular form such outward expressions
will take in any given case, but one thing is sure, that each one upon
whom the Spirit of God falls will know it.
When the Holy Spirit came upon the disciples at Pentecost there was
something quite extraordinary about their behaviour, and Peter offered
an explanation from God's Word to all who witnessed it. This, in
substance, is what he said: When the Holy Spirit falls upon believers,
some will prophesy, some will dream dreams, and others will see
visions. This is what God has stated through the prophet Joel.' But did
Peter prophesy? Well, hardly in the sense in which Joel meant it. Did
the hundred and twenty prophesy or see visions? We are not told that
they did. Did they dream dreams? How could they, for were they not all
wide awake? Well then, what did Peter mean by using a quotation that
seems scarcely to fit the case at all? In the passage quoted (Joel
2:28, 29), prophesy, dreams and visions are said to accompany the
outpouring of the Spirit, yet these evidences were apparently lacking
at Pentecost.
On the other hand, Joel's prophecy said not a word about "a sound as of
the rushing of a mighty wind", nor about "tongues parting asunder like
as of fire" as accompaniments of the Spirit's outpouring; yet these
were manifest in that upper room. And where in Joel do we find mention
of speaking in other tongues? And yet the disciples at Pentecost did
so.
What did Peter mean? Imagine him quoting God's Word to show that the
experience of Pentecost was the outpouring of the Spirit spoken of by
Joel, without a single one of the evidences mentioned by Joel being
found at Pentecost. What the Book mentioned the disciples lacked, and
what the disciples had the Book did not mention! It looks as though
Peter's quotation of the Book disproves his point rather than proving
it. What is the explanation of this mystery?
Let us recall that Peter was himself speaking under the control of the
Holy Spirit. The Book of the Acts was written by the Spirit's
inspiration, and not one word was spoken at random. There is no misfit,
but a perfect harmony. Note carefully that Peter did not say: What you
see and hear fulfills what was spoken by the prophet Joel'. What he
said was: "This is that which hath been spoken by the prophet Joel"
(Acts 2:16). It was not a case of fulfillment, but of an experience of
the same order. "This is that" means that this which you see and hear
is of the same order as that which is foretold'. When it is a case of
fulfillment, each experience is reduplicated and prophecy is prophecy,
dreams are dreams, and visions are visions; but when Peter says "This
is that", it is not a question of the one being a replica of the other,
but of the one belonging to the same category as the other. "This"
amounts to the same thing as "that"; "this" is the equivalent of
"that"; "this is that". What is being emphasized by the Holy Spirit
through Peter is the diversity of the experience. The outward evidences
may be many and varied, and we have to admit that occasionally they are
strange; but the Spirit is one, and He is Lord. (See Corinthians
12:4-6).
What happened to R.A. Torrey when the Holy Spirit came upon him after
he had been a minister for years? Let him tell it in his own words: I
recall the exact spot where I was kneeling in prayer in my study... It
was very quiet moment, one of the most quiet moments I ever knew...
Then God simply said to me, not in any audible voice, but in my heart.
"It's yours. Now go and preach." He had already said it to me in His
Word in 1 John 5:14, 15; but I did not then know my Bible as I know it
now, and God had pity on my ignorance and said it directly to my
soul... I went and preached, and I have been a new minister from that
day to this... Some time after this experience (I do not recall just
how long after), while sitting in my room one day... suddenly... I
found myself shouting (I was not brought up to shout and I am not of a
shouting temperament, but I shouted like the loudest shouting
Methodist), "Glory to God, glory to God, glory to God", and I could not
stop. ... But that was not when I was baptized with the Holy Spirit. I
was baptized with the Holy Spirit when I took Him by simple faith in
The Word of God.' [10]
The outward manifestations in Torrey's case were not the same as those
described by Joel or by Peter, but "this is that". It is not a
facsimile, yet it is the same thing.
And how did D.L. Moody feel and act when the Spirit came upon him?
I was crying all the time that God would fill me with His Spirit. Well,
one day, in the city of New York--oh, what a day!--I cannot describe
it, I seldom refer to it; it is almost too sacred an experience to
name. Paul had an experience of which he never spoke for fourteen
years. I can only say that God revealed Himself to me, and I had such
an experience of His love that I had to ask Him to stay His hand. I
went preaching again. The sermons were not different; I did not present
any new truths; and yet hundreds were converted. I would not now be
placed back where I was before that blessed experience if you should
give me all the world - it would be as the small dust of the balance.'
[11]
The outward manifestation that accompanied Moody's experience did not
tally exactly with Joel's description, or Peter's, or Torrey's, but who
could doubt that "this" which Moody experienced was "that" experienced
by the disciples at Pentecost? It was not the same in manifestation,
but it was the very same in essence.
And what was the experience of the great Charles Finney when the power
of the Holy Ghost came upon him?
I received a mighty baptism of the Holy Ghost without any expectation
of it, without ever having the thought in my mind that there was any
such thing for me, without any recollection that I had ever heard the
thing mentioned by any person in the world, the Holy Spirit descended
upon me in a manner that seemed to go through me body and soul. No
words can express the wonderful love that was shed abroad in my heart.
I wept aloud with joy and love.' [12]
Finney's experience was not a duplicate of Pentecost, nor of Torrey's
experience, nor of Moody's; but "this" certainly was "that".
When the Holy Spirit is poured out upon God's people their experiences
will differ widely. Some will receive new vision, others will know a
new liberty in soul-winning, others will proclaim the Word of God with
power, and yet others will be filled with heavenly joy or overflowing
praise. "This... and this... and this... is that!" Let us praise the
Lord for every new experience that relates to the exaltation of Christ
and of which it can truly be said that "this" is an evidence of "that".
There is nothing stereotyped about God's dealings with His children.
Therefore we must not by our prejudices and preconceptions make a
water-tight compartment for the working of His Spirit, either in our
own lives or in the lives of others. This applies equally to those who
require some particular manifestation (such as speaking with tongues')
as evidence that the spirit has come upon them and to those who deny
that any manifestation is given at all. We must leave God free to work
as He wills, and to give what evidence He pleases of the work He does.
He is Lord, and it is not for us to legislate for Him.
Let us rejoice that Jesus is on the throne, and let us praise Him that,
since He has been glorified, the Spirit has been poured out upon us
all. As we accept the Divine fact in all the simplicity of faith, we
shall know it with such assurance in our own experience that we shall
dare to proclaim with confidence--"This is that!"
__________________________________________________________________
[10] The Holy Spirit, who He is and what He does, by R.A. Torrey, D.D.,
pp. 198-9.
[11] The Life of Dwight L. Moody, by his son, W.R. Moody, p. 149.
[12] Autobiography of Charles E. Finney, chapter 2.
__________________________________________________________________

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: chapter 8.2 Faith Is Again The Key
: As for forgiveness, so equally for the coming upon us of the Holy Spirit,
: the whole question is one of faith. As soon as we see the Lord Jesus on the
: Cross, we know our sins are forgiven; and as soon as we see the Lord Jesus
: on the Throne, we know the Holy Spirit has been poured out upon us. The
: basis upon which we receive the enduement of the Holy Spirit is not our
: praying and fasting and waiting, but the exaltation of Christ. Those who
: emphasize tarrying and hold ‘tarrying meetings’ only mislead us, for the
: gift is not for the ‘favoured few’ but for all, because it is not given on
: the ground of what we are at all, but of what Christ is. The Spirit has

l**********t
发帖数: 5754
126
chapter 8.4 The Spirit Indwelling
We move on now to the second aspect of the gift of the Holy Spirit, which,
as we shall see in our next chapter, is more particularly the subject of
Romans 8. It is that which we have spoken of as the Spirit indwelling. “If
so be that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you...” (Romans 8:9). As with the
Spirit outpoured, so with the Spirit indwelling, if we are to know in
experience that which is ours in fact, our first need is of Divine
revelation. When we see Christ as Lord objectively—that is, as exalted to
the throne in Heaven—then we shall experience the power of the Spirit upon
us. When we see Christ as Lord subjectively—that is, as effective Ruler
within our lives—then we shall know the power of the Spirit within us.
A revelation of the indwelling Spirit was the remedy Paul offered the
Corinthian Christians for their unspirituality. It is important to note that
the Christians in Corinth had become preoccupied with the visible signs of
the Holy Spirit’s outpouring and were making much of ‘tongues’ and
miracles, while at the same time their lives were full of contradictions and
were a reproach to the Lord’s Name. They had quite evidently received the
Holy Spirit and yet they remained spiritually immature; and the remedy God
offered them for this is the remedy He offers His Church today for the same
complaint.
In his letter to them Paul wrote: “Know ye not that ye are a temple of God,
and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?” (1 Corinthians 3:16). For
others he prayed for enlightenment of heart, “...that ye may know” (
Ephesians 1:18). A knowledge of Divine facts was the need of the Christians
then, and it is no less the need of Christians today. We need the ‘opening
of the eyes of our understanding’ that we may know that God Himself through
the Holy Spirit has taken up His abode in our hearts. God is present in the
person of the Spirit, and Christ is present in the person of the Spirit too
. Thus if the Holy Spirit dwells in our hearts we have the Father and the
Son dwelling within. That is no mere theory or doctrine, but a blessed
reality. We may perhaps have realized that the Spirit is actually within our
hearts, but have we realized that He is a Person? Have we understood that
to have the Spirit within us it to have the living God within?
To many Christians the Holy Spirit is quite unreal. They regard Him as a
mere influence—and influence for good, no doubt, but just an influence for
all that. In their thinking, conscience and the Spirit are more or less
identified as some ‘thing’ within them that brings them to book when they
are bad and tries to show them how to be good. The trouble with the
Corinthian Christians was not that they lacked the indwelling Spirit but
that they lacked the knowledge of His presence. They failed to realize the
greatness of the One who had come to make His abode in their hearts; so Paul
wrote to them: “Know ye not that ye are a temple of God, and that the
Spirit of God dwelleth in you?” Yes, that was the remedy for their
unspirituality—just to know who He really was who dwelt within.

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: chapter 8.3 The Diversity Of The Experience
: But you ask: How shall I know that the Holy Spirit is come upon me?' I
: cannot tell how you will know, but you will know. No description has
: been given us of the personal sensations and emotions of the disciples
: at Pentecost. We do not know exactly how they felt, but we do know that
: their feelings and behaviour were somewhat abnormal, because people
: seeing them said they were intoxicated. When the Holy Spirit falls upon
: God's people there will be some things which the world cannot account
: for. There will be supernatural accompaniments of some kind, though it
: be no more than an overwhelming sense of the Divine Presence. We cannot

l**********t
发帖数: 5754
127
chapter 8.5 The Treasure In The Vessel
Do you know, my friends, that the Spirit within you is very God? Oh that our
eyes were opened to see the greatness of God’s gift! Oh that we might
realize the vastness of the resources secreted in our own hearts! I could
shout with joy as I think, ‘The Spirit who dwells within me is no mere
influence, but a living Person; He is very God. The infinite God is within
my heart!’ I am at a loss to convey to you the blessedness of this
discovery, that the Holy Spirit dwelling within my heart is a Person. I can
only repeat: ‘He is a Person!’ and repeat it again: ‘He is a Person!’
and repeat it yet again: ‘He is a Person!’ Oh, my friends, I would fain
repeat it to you a hundred times—The Spirit of God within me is a Person! I
am only an earthen vessel, but in that earthen vessel I carry a treasure of
unspeakable worth, even the Lord of glory.
All the worry and fret of God’s children would end if their eyes were
opened to see the greatness of the treasure hid in their hearts. Do you know
, there are resources enough in your own heart to meet the demand of every
circumstance in which you will ever find yourself? Do you know there is
power enough there to move the city in which you live? Do you know there is
power enough to shake the universe? Let me tell you once more—I say it with
the utmost reverence: You who have been born again of the Spirit of God—
you carry God in your heart!
All the flippancy of the children of God would cease too if they realized
the greatness of the treasure deposited within them. If you have only ten
shillings in your pocket you can march gaily along the street, talking
lightly as you go, and swinging your stick in the air. It matters little if
you lose your money, for there is not much at stake. But if you carry a
thousand pounds in your pocket, the position is vastly different, and your
whole demeanour will be different too. There will be great gladness in your
heart, but no careless jaunting along the road; and once in a while you will
slacken your pace and, slipping your hand into your pocket, you will
quietly finger your treasure again, and then with joyful solemnity continue
on your way.
In Old Testament times there were hundreds of tents in the camp of Israel,
but there was one tent quite different from all the rest. In the common
tents you could do just as you pleased—eat or fast, work or rest, be joyful
or sober, noisy or silent. But that other tent was a tent that commanded
reverence and awe. You might move in and out of the common tents talking
noisily and laughing gaily, but as soon as you neared that special tent you
instinctively walked more quietly, and when you stood right before it you
bowed your head in solemn silence. No one could touch it with impunity. If
man or beast dared to do so, death was the sure penalty. What was so very
special about it? It was the temple of the living God. There was little
unusual about the tent itself, for it was outwardly of very ordinary
material, but the great God had chosen to make it His abode.
Do you realize what happened at your conversion? God came into your heart
and made it His temple. In Old Testament days God dwelt in a temple made of
stone; today He dwells in a temple composed of living believers. When we
really see that God has made our hearts His dwelling place, what a deep
reverence will come over our lives! All lightness, all frivolity will end,
and all self-pleasing too, when we know that we are the temple of God and
that the Spirit of God dwells within us. Has it really come to you that
wherever you go you carry with you the Holy Spirit of God? You do not just
carry your Bible with you, or even much good teaching about God, but God
Himself.
The reason why many Christians do not experience the power of the Spirit,
though He actually dwells in their hearts, is that they lack reverence. And
they lack reverence because they have not had their eyes opened to the fact
of His presence. The fact is there, but they have not seen it. Why is it
that some Christians are living victorious lives while others live in a
state of constant defeat? The difference is not accounted for by the
presence or absence of the Spirit (for He dwells in the heart of every child
of God) but by this, that some recognize His indwelling and others do not.
True revelation of the fact of the Spirit’s indwelling will revolutionize
the life of any Christian.

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: chapter 8.4 The Spirit Indwelling
: We move on now to the second aspect of the gift of the Holy Spirit, which,
: as we shall see in our next chapter, is more particularly the subject of
: Romans 8. It is that which we have spoken of as the Spirit indwelling. “If
: so be that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you...” (Romans 8:9). As with the
: Spirit outpoured, so with the Spirit indwelling, if we are to know in
: experience that which is ours in fact, our first need is of Divine
: revelation. When we see Christ as Lord objectively—that is, as exalted to
: the throne in Heaven—then we shall experience the power of the Spirit upon
: us. When we see Christ as Lord subjectively—that is, as effective Ruler

l**********t
发帖数: 5754
128
chapter 8.6 The Absolute Lordship Of Christ
“Know ye not that your body is a temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you,
which ye have from God? and ye are not your own; for ye were bought with a
price: glorify God therefore in your body” (1 Cor. 6:19, 20).
This verse now takes us a stage further, for, when once we have made the
discovery of the fact that we are the dwelling place of God, then a full
surrender of ourselves to God must follow. When we see that we are the
temple of God we shall immediately recognize that we are not our own.
Consecration will follow revelation. The difference between victorious
Christians and defeated ones is not that some have the Spirit while others
have not, but that some know His indwelling and others do not, and that
consequently some recognize the Divine ownership of their lives while others
are still their own masters.
Revelation is the first step to holiness, and consecration is the second. A
day must come in our lives, as definite as the day of our conversion, when
we give up all right to ourselves and submit to the absolute Lordship of
Jesus Christ. There may be a practical issue raised by God to test the
reality of our consecration, but whether that be so or not, there must be a
day when, without reservation, we surrender everything to Him—ourselves,
our families, our possessions, our business and our time. All we are and
have becomes His, to be held henceforth entirely at His disposal. From that
day we are no longer our own masters, but only stewards. Not until the
Lordship of Jesus Christ is a settled thing in our hearts can the Spirit
really operate effectively in us. He cannot direct our lives effectually
until all control of them is committed to Him. If we do not give Him
absolute authority in our lives, He can be present, but He cannot be
powerful. The power of the Spirit is stayed.
Are you living for the Lord or for yourself? Perhaps that is too general a
question, so let me be more specific. Is there anything God is asking of you
that you are withholding from Him? Is there any point of contention between
you and Him? Not till every controversy is settled and the Holy Spirit is
given full sway can He reproduce the life of Christ in the heart of any
believer.
An American friend, now with the Lord, whose name we will call Paul,
cherished the hope from his early youth that one day he would be called ‘Dr
. Paul’. When he was quite a little chap he began to dream of the day when
he would enter the university, and he imagined himself first studying for
his M.A. degree and then for his Ph.D. Then at length the glad day would
arrive when all would greet him as ‘Dr. Paul’.
The Lord saved him and called him to preach, and before long he became
pastor of a large congregation. By that time he had his degree and was
studying for his doctorate, but, despite splendid progress in his studies
and a good measure of success as a pastor, he was a very dissatisfied man.
He was a Christian, but his life was not Christ-like; he had the Spirit of
God within him, but he did not enjoy the Spirit’s presence or experience
His power. He thought to himself, ‘I am a preacher of the Gospel and the
pastor of a church. I tell my people they should love the Word of God, but I
do not really love it myself. I exhort them to pray, but I myself have
little inclination to pray. I tell them to live a holy life, but my own life
is not holy. I warn them not to love the world, and, though outwardly I
shun it, yet in my heart I myself still love it dearly.’ In his distress he
cried to the Lord to cause him to know the power of the indwelling Spirit,
but though he prayed and prayed for months, no answer came. Then he fasted
and besought the Lord to show him any hindrance there might be in his life.
That answer was not long in coming, and it was this: ‘I long that you
should know the power of My Spirit, but your heart is set on something that
I do not wish you to have. You have yielded to me all but one thing, and
that one thing you are holding to yourself—your Ph.D.’ Well, to you or me
it might be of little consequence whether we were addressed as plain ‘Mr.
Paul’ or as ‘Dr. Paul’, but to him it was his very life. He had dreamed
of it from childhood and labored for it all through his youth, and now the
thing he prized above all was almost within his grasp. In two short months
it would be his.
So he reasoned with the Lord in this wise: ‘Is there any harm for me to be
a Doctor of Philosophy? Will it not bring much more glory to Thy Name to
have a Dr. Paul preaching the Gospel than a plain Mr. Paul?’ But God does
not change His mind, and all Mr. Paul’s sound reasoning did not alter the
Lord’s word to him. Every time he prayed about the matter he got the same
answer. Then, reasoning having failed, he resorted to bargaining with the
Lord. He promised to go here or there, to do this or that, if only the Lord
would allow him to have his doctor’s degree; but still the Lord did not
change His mind. And all the while Mr. Paul was becoming more and more
hungry to know the fullness of the Spirit. This state of affairs continued
to within two days of his final examination.
It was Saturday, and Mr. Paul settled down to prepare his sermon for the
following day, but, study as he would, he could get no message. The ambition
of a lifetime was just within reach of realization, but God made it clear
that he must choose between the power he could sway through a doctor’s
degree and the power of God’s Spirit swaying his life. That evening he
yielded. ‘Lord’, he said, ‘I am willing to be plain Mr. Paul all my days,
but I want to know the power of the Holy Ghost in my life.’
He rose from his knees and wrote a letter to his examiners, asking to be
excused from the examination on the Monday, and giving his reason. Then he
retired, very happy, but not conscious of any unusual experience. Next
morning he told his congregation that for the first time in six years he had
no sermon to preach, and explained how it came about. The Lord blessed that
testimony more abundantly than any of his well-prepared sermons, and from
that time God blessed and owned him in an altogether new way. From that day
he knew separation from the world, no longer as an outward thing but as a
deep inward reality, and in daily experience he knew the blessedness of the
Spirit’s presence and power.
God is waiting for a settlement of all our controversies with Him. With Mr.
Paul it was a question of his doctor’s degree, but with us it may be
something quite different. Our absolute surrender of ourselves to the Lord
generally hinges upon some one particular thing, and God is after that one
thing. He must have it, for He must have our all. I was greatly impressed by
something a great national leader wrote in his autobiography: ‘I want
nothing for myself; I want everything for my country.’ If a man can be
willing that his country should have everything and he himself nothing,
cannot we say to our God: ‘Lord, I want nothing for myself; I want all for
Thee. I will what Thou willest, and I want to have nothing outside Thy will.
’ Not until we take the place of a servant can He take His place as Lord.
He is not calling us to devote ourselves to His cause: He is asking us to
yield ourselves to His will. Are you willing for anything He wills?
Another friend of mine, like my friend Mr. Paul, had a controversy with the
Lord. before his conversion he fell in love, and as soon as he was saved he
sought to win the one he loved to the Lord, but she would have nothing to do
with spiritual things. the Lord made it clear to him that his relations
with that girl must be broken off, but he was deeply devoted to her, so he
evaded the issue and continued to serve the Lord and to win souls for Him.
But he became conscious of his need for holiness, and that consciousness
marked the beginning of dark days for him. He asked for the Spirit’s
fullness that he might have power to live a holy life, but the Lord seemed
continually to ignore his request.
One morning he had to preach in another city and he spoke from Psalm 73:25:
“Whom have I in heaven but thee? And there is none upon earth that I desire
beside thee.” On his return home he went to a prayer meeting, and there a
sister read out the very same verse from which, unknown to her, he had just
preached, and followed it with the question: ‘Can we truly say: “There is
none upon earth that I desire beside thee”?’ There was power in that word.
It struck right home to his heart and he had to admit to himself that he
could not truthfully say that he desired no one in Heaven or earth apart
from his Lord. He saw, there and then, that for him everything hinged upon
his willingness to give up the girl he loved.
For some it might not have involved much, but for him it was everything. So
he began to reason with the Lord: ‘Lord I will go to Tibet and work for
Thee there if I may marry that girl’. But the Lord seemed to care a great
deal more about his relationship with that girl than about his going to
Tibet, and no amount of reasoning on his part availed to effect any change
of emphasis on the part of the Lord. The controversy went on for several
months, and when again the young man pleaded for the fullness of the Spirit,
the Lord still pointed to the same thing. But that day the Lord triumphed,
and that young man looked up to Him and said: ‘Lord, I can truly say now,
“Whom have I in heaven but thee? And there is none upon earth that I desire
beside thee”.’ And that was the beginning of a new life for him.
A forgiven sinner is quite different from an ordinary sinner, and a
consecrated Christian is quite different from an ordinary Christian. May the
Lord bring us to a definite issue regarding the question of His Lordship.
If we do yield wholly to Him and claim the power of the indwelling Spirit,
we need wait for no special feelings or supernatural manifestations, but can
simply look up and praise Him that something has already happened. We can
confidently thank Him that the glory of God has already filled His temple.
“Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God
dwelleth in you?” “Know ye not that your body is a temple of the Holy
Ghost which is in you, which ye have from God?”


【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: chapter 8.5 The Treasure In The Vessel
: Do you know, my friends, that the Spirit within you is very God? Oh that our
: eyes were opened to see the greatness of God’s gift! Oh that we might
: realize the vastness of the resources secreted in our own hearts! I could
: shout with joy as I think, ‘The Spirit who dwells within me is no mere
: influence, but a living Person; He is very God. The infinite God is within
: my heart!’ I am at a loss to convey to you the blessedness of this
: discovery, that the Holy Spirit dwelling within my heart is a Person. I can
: only repeat: ‘He is a Person!’ and repeat it again: ‘He is a Person!’
: and repeat it yet again: ‘He is a Person!’ Oh, my friends, I would fain

R*o
发帖数: 3781
129
thanks for posting this good article

,

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: chapter 8.6 The Absolute Lordship Of Christ
: “Know ye not that your body is a temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you,
: which ye have from God? and ye are not your own; for ye were bought with a
: price: glorify God therefore in your body” (1 Cor. 6:19, 20).
: This verse now takes us a stage further, for, when once we have made the
: discovery of the fact that we are the dwelling place of God, then a full
: surrender of ourselves to God must follow. When we see that we are the
: temple of God we shall immediately recognize that we are not our own.
: Consecration will follow revelation. The difference between victorious
: Christians and defeated ones is not that some have the Spirit while others

l**********t
发帖数: 5754
130
Chapter 9: The Meaning and Value of Romans Seven
We must return now to our study of Romans. We broke off at the end of
chapter 6 in order to consider two related subjects, namely, God’s eternal
purpose, which is the motive and goal of our walk with Him, and the Holy
Spirit, who supplies the power and resource to bring us to that goal. We
come now to Romans 7, a chapter which many have felt to be almost
superfluous. Perhaps indeed it would be so if Christians really saw that the
old creation has been ruled out by the Cross of Christ, and an entirely new
creation brought in by His resurrection. If we have come to the point where
we really ‘know’ that, and ‘reckon’ on that, and ‘present ourselves’
on the basis of that, then perhaps we have no need of Romans 7.
Others have felt that the chapter is in the wrong place. They would have put
it between the fifth and sixth chapters. After chapter 6 all is so perfect,
so straightforward; and then comes breakdown and the cry, “O wretched man
that I am!” Could anything be more of an anticlimax? And so some have
argued that Paul is speaking here of his unregenerate experience. Well, we
must admit that some of what he describes here is not a Christian experience
, but none the less many Christians do experience it. What then is the
teaching of this chapter?
Romans 6 deals with freedom from sin. Romans 7 deals with freedom from the
Law. In chapter 6 Paul has told us how we could be delivered from sin, and
we concluded that this was all that was required. Chapter 7 now teaches that
deliverance from sin is not enough, but that we also need to know
deliverance from the Law. If we are not fully emancipated from the Law we
can never know full emancipation from sin. But what is the difference
between deliverance from sin and deliverance from the Law? We all see the
value of the former, but where is the need for the latter? Well, to
appreciate this we must first understand what the Law is and what it does.

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: chapter 8.6 The Absolute Lordship Of Christ
: “Know ye not that your body is a temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you,
: which ye have from God? and ye are not your own; for ye were bought with a
: price: glorify God therefore in your body” (1 Cor. 6:19, 20).
: This verse now takes us a stage further, for, when once we have made the
: discovery of the fact that we are the dwelling place of God, then a full
: surrender of ourselves to God must follow. When we see that we are the
: temple of God we shall immediately recognize that we are not our own.
: Consecration will follow revelation. The difference between victorious
: Christians and defeated ones is not that some have the Spirit while others

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进入TrustInJesus版参与讨论
l**********t
发帖数: 5754
131
chapter 9.1 The Flesh And Man’s Breakdown
Romans 7 has a new lesson to teach us. It is found in the discovery that I
am “in the flesh” (Rom. 7:5), that “I am carnal” (7:18). This goes
beyond the question of sin, for it relates also the matter of pleasing God.
We are dealing here not with sin in its forms but with man in his carnal
state. The latter includes the former but it takes us a stage further, for
it leads to the discovery that in this realm too we are totally impotent,
and that “they that are in the flesh cannot please God” (Rom. 8:8). How
then is this discovery made? It is made with the help of the Law.
Now let us retrace our steps for a minute and attempt to describe what is
probably the experience of many. Many a Christian is truly saved and yet
bound by sin. It is not that he is necessarily living under the power of sin
all the time, but that there are certain particular sins hampering him
continually so that he hears the full Gospel message, that the Lord Jesus
not only died to cleanse away our sins, but that when He died He included us
sinners in His death; so that not only were our sins dealt with, but we
ourselves were dealt with too. The man’s eyes are opened and he knows he
has been crucified with Christ. Two things follow that revelation. In the
first place he reckons that he has died and risen with the Lord, and in the
second place, recognizing the Lord’s claim upon him, he presents himself to
God as alive from the dead. He sees that he has no more right over himself.
This is the commencement of a beautiful Christian life, full of praise to
the Lord.
But then he begins to reason as follows: ‘I have died with Christ and am
raised with Him, and I have given myself over to Him for ever; now I must do
something for Him, since He has done so much for me. I want to please Him
and do His will.’ So, after the step of consecration, he seeks to discover
the will of God, and sets out to obey Him. Then he makes a strange discovery
. He thought he could do the will of God and he thought he loved it, but
gradually he finds he does not always like it. At times he even finds a
distinct reluctance to do it, and often when he tries to do it he finds he
cannot. Then he begins to question his experience. He asks himself: ‘Did I
really know? Yes! Did I really reckon? Yes! Did I really give myself to Him?
Yes! Have I taken back my consecration? No! Then whatever is the matter now
?’ The more this man tries to do the will of God the more he fails.
Ultimately he comes to the conclusion that he never really loved God’s will
at all, so he prays for the desire and the power to do it. He confesses his
disobedience and promises never to disobey again. But he has barely got up
from his knees before he has fallen once more; before he reaches the point
of victory he is conscious of defeat. Then he says to himself: ‘Perhaps my
last decision was not definite enough. This time I will be absolutely
definite.’ So he brings all his will-power to bear on the situation, only
to find greater defeat than ever awaiting him the next time a choice has to
be made. Then at last he echoes the words of Paul: “For I know that in me,
that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me
, but to do that which is good is not. For the good which I would I do not:
but the evil which I would not, that I practice” (Rom. 7:18, 19).

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: Chapter 9: The Meaning and Value of Romans Seven
: We must return now to our study of Romans. We broke off at the end of
: chapter 6 in order to consider two related subjects, namely, God’s eternal
: purpose, which is the motive and goal of our walk with Him, and the Holy
: Spirit, who supplies the power and resource to bring us to that goal. We
: come now to Romans 7, a chapter which many have felt to be almost
: superfluous. Perhaps indeed it would be so if Christians really saw that the
: old creation has been ruled out by the Cross of Christ, and an entirely new
: creation brought in by His resurrection. If we have come to the point where
: we really ‘know’ that, and ‘reckon’ on that, and ‘present ourselves’

q********g
发帖数: 10694
132
很赞,这本书是我的信仰启蒙之一。
l**********t
发帖数: 5754
133
chapter 9.2 What The Law Teaches
Many Christians are suddenly launched into the experience of Romans 7 and
they do not know why. They fancy Romans 6 is quite enough. Having grasped
that, they think there can be no more question of failure, and then to their
utmost surprise they suddenly find themselves in Romans 7. What is the
explanation?
First let us be quite clear that the death with Christ described in Romans 6
is fully adequate to cover all our need. It is the explanation of that
death, with all that follows from it, that is incomplete in chapter 6. We
are as yet still in ignorance of the truth set forth in chapter 7. Romans 7
is given to us to explain and make real the statement in Romans 6:14, that:
“Sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not under law, but under
grace.” The trouble is that we do not yet know deliverance from law. What,
then, is the meaning of law?
Grace means that God does something for me; law means that I do something
for God. God has certain holy and righteous demands which He places upon me:
that is law. Now if law means that God requires something of me for their
fulfillment, then deliverance from law means that He no longer requires that
from me, but Himself provides it. Law implies that God requires me to do
something for Him; deliverance from law implies that He exempts me from
doing it, and that in grace He does it Himself. I (where ‘I’ is the ‘
carnal’ man of ch. 7:14) need do nothing for God: that is deliverance from
law. The trouble in Romans 7 is that man in the flesh tried to do something
for God. As soon as you try to please God in that way, then you place
yourself under law, and the experience of Romans 7 begins to be yours.
As we seek to understand this, let it be settled at the outset that the
fault does not lie with the Law. Paul says, “the law is holy, and the
commandment holy, and righteous, and good” (Rom. 7:12). No, there is
nothing wrong with the Law, but there is something decidedly wrong with me.
The demands of the Law are righteous, but the person upon whom the demands
are made is unrighteous. The trouble is not that the Law’s demands are
unjust, but that I am unable to meet them. It may be all right for the
Government to require payment of 100 shillings but it will be all wrong if I
have only ten shillings with which to meet the demand!
I am a man “sold under sin” (Rom. 7:14). Sin has dominion over me. As long
as you leave me alone I seem to be rather a fine type of man. It is when
you ask me to do something that my sinfulness comes to light.
If you have a very clumsy servant and he just sits still and does nothing,
then his clumsiness does not appear. If he does nothing all day he will be
of little use to you, it is true, but at least he will do no damage that way
. But if you say to him: ‘Now come along, don’t idle away your time; get
up and do something’, then immediately the trouble begins. He knocks the
chair over as he gets up, stumbles over a footstool a few paces further on,
then smashes some precious dish as soon as he handles it. If you make no
demands upon him his clumsiness is never noticed, but as soon as you ask him
to do anything his awkwardness is seen at once. The demands were all right,
but the man was all wrong. He was as clumsy a man when he was sitting still
as when he was working, but it was your demands that made manifest the
clumsiness that was all the time in his make-up, whether he was active or
inactive.
We are all sinners by nature. If God asks nothing of us, all seems to go
well, but as soon as He demands something of us the occasion is provided for
a grand display of our sinfulness. The Law makes our weakness manifest.
While you let me sit still I appear to be all right, but when you ask me to
do anything I am sure to spoil that thing, and if you trust me with a second
thing I will as surely spoil it too. When a holy law is applied to a sinful
man, then his sinfulness comes out in full display.
God knows who I am; He knows that from head to foot I am full of sin; He
knows that I am weakness incarnate; that I can do nothing. The trouble is
that I do not know it. I admit that all men are sinners and that therefore I
am a sinner; but I imagine that I am not such a hopeless sinner as some.
God must bring us all to the place where we see that we are utterly weak and
helpless. While we say so, we do not wholly believe it, and God has to do
something to convince us of the fact. Had it not been for the Law we should
never have known how weak we are. Paul had reached that point. He makes this
clear when he says in Romans 7:7: “I had not known sin, except through the
law: for I had not known coveting, except the law had said, Thou shalt not
covet”. Whatever might be his experience with the rest of the Law, it was
the tenth commandment, which literally translated is: “Thou shalt not
desire...” that found him out. There his total failure and incapacity
stared him in the face!
The more we try to keep the Law the more our weakness is manifest and the
deeper we get into Romans 7, until it is clearly demonstrated to us that we
are hopelessly weak. God knew it all along but we did not, and so God had to
bring us through painful experiences to a recognition of the fact. We need
to have our weakness proved to ourselves beyond dispute. That is why God
gave us the Law.
So we can say, reverently, that God never gave us the Law to keep; He gave
us the Law to break! He well knew that we could not keep it. We are so bad
that He asks no favour and makes no demands. Never has any man succeeded in
making himself acceptable to God by means of the Law. Nowhere in the New
Testament are men of faith told that they are to keep the Law; but it does
say that the Law was given so that there should be transgression. “The law
came in... that the trespass might abound” (Rom. 5:20). The Law was given
to make us law-breakers! No doubt I am a sinner in Adam; “Howbeit, I had
not know sin, except through the law: ...for apart from the law sin is dead.
.. but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died” (Rom. 7:7-9).
The Law is that which exposes our true nature. Alas, we are so conceited,
and think ourselves so strong, that God has to give us something to test us
and prove how weak we are. At last we see it and confess: ‘I am a sinner
through and through, and I can of myself do nothing whatever to please God.’
No, the Law was not given in the expectation that we would keep it. It was
given in the full knowledge that we would break it; and when we have broken
it so completely that we are convinced of our utter need, then the Law has
served its purpose. It has been our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ, that
He Himself may fulfill it in us (Gal. 3:24).

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: chapter 9.1 The Flesh And Man’s Breakdown
: Romans 7 has a new lesson to teach us. It is found in the discovery that I
: am “in the flesh” (Rom. 7:5), that “I am carnal” (7:18). This goes
: beyond the question of sin, for it relates also the matter of pleasing God.
: We are dealing here not with sin in its forms but with man in his carnal
: state. The latter includes the former but it takes us a stage further, for
: it leads to the discovery that in this realm too we are totally impotent,
: and that “they that are in the flesh cannot please God” (Rom. 8:8). How
: then is this discovery made? It is made with the help of the Law.
: Now let us retrace our steps for a minute and attempt to describe what is

l**********t
发帖数: 5754
134
chapter 9.3 Christ The End Of The Law
In Romans 6 we saw how God delivered us from sin; in Romans 7 we see how He
delivers us from the Law. In chapter 6 we were shown the way of deliverance
from sin in the picture of a master and his slave; in chapter 7 we are shown
the way of deliverance from the Law in the picture of two husbands and a
wife. The relation between sin and the sinner is that of master to slave;
the relation between the Law and the sinner is that of husband to wife.
Notice first that in the picture in Romans 7:1-4 by which Paul illustrates
our deliverance from the Law there is only one woman, while there are two
husbands. The woman is in a very difficult position, for she can only be
wife of one of the two, and unfortunately she is married to the less
desirable one. Let us make no mistake, the man to whom she is married is a
good man; but the trouble lies here, that the husband and wife are totally
unsuited to one another. He is a most particular man, accurate to a degree;
she on the other hand is decidedly easy-going. With him all is definite and
precise; with her all is vague and haphazard. He wants everything just so,
while she accepts things as they come. How could there be happiness in such
a home?
And then that husband is so exacting! He is always making demands on his
wife. And yet one cannot find fault with him, for as a husband he has a
right to expect something of her; and besides, all his demands are perfectly
legitimate. There is nothing wrong with the man and nothing wrong with his
demands; the trouble is that he has the wrong kind of wife to carry them out
. The two cannot get on at all; theirs are utterly incompatible natures.
Thus the poor woman is in great distress. She is fully aware that she often
makes mistakes, but living with such a husband it seems as though everything
she says and does is wrong! What hope is there for her? If only she were
married to that other Man all would be well. He is no less exacting than her
husband, but He also helps much. She would fain marry Him, but her husband
is still alive. What can she do? She is “bound by law to the husband” and
unless he dies she cannot legitimately marry that other Man.
This picture is not drawn by me but by the apostle Paul. The first husband
is the Law; the second husband is Christ; and you are the woman. The Law
requires much, but offers no help in the carrying out of its requirements.
The Lord Jesus requires just as much, yea more (Matt. 5:21-48) but what He
requires from us He Himself carries out in us. The Law makes demands and
leaves us helpless to fulfill them; Christ makes demands, but He Himself
fulfills in us the very demands He makes. Little wonder that the woman
desires to be freed from the first husband that she may marry that other Man
! But her only hope of release is through the death of her first husband,
and he holds on to life most tenaciously. Indeed there is not the least
prospect of his passing away. “Till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or
one tittle shall in no wise pass away from the law, till all things be
accomplished (Matt. 5:18).
The Law is going to continue for all eternity. If the Law will never pass
away, then how can I ever be united to Christ? How can I marry a second
husband if my first husband simply refuses to die? There is one way out. If
he will not die, I can die, and if I die the marriage relationship is
dissolved. And that is exactly God’s way of deliverance from the Law. The
most important point to note in this section of Romans 7 is the transition
from verse 3 to verse 4. Verses 1 to 3 show that the husband should die, but
in verse 4 we see that in fact it is the woman who dies. The Law does not
pass away. God’s righteous demands remain for ever, and if I live I must
meet those demands; but if I die the Law has lost its claim upon me. It
cannot follow me beyond the grave.
Exactly the same principle operates in our deliverance from the Law as in
our deliverance from sin. When I have died my old master, Sin, still
continues to live, but his power over his slave extends as far as the grave
and no further. He could ask me to do a hundred and one things when I was
alive, but when I am dead he calls on me in vain. I am for ever freed from
his tyranny. So it is with regard to the Law. While the woman lives she is
bound to her husband, but with her death the marriage bond is dissolved and
she is “discharged from the law of her husband”. The Law may still make
demands, but for me its power to enforce them is ended.
Now the vital question arises: ‘How do I die?’ And the preciousness of our
Lord’s work comes in just here: “Ye also were made dead to the law
through the body of Christ” (Rom. 7:4). When Christ died His body was
broken, and since God placed me in Him (1 Cor. 1:30), I have been broken too
. When He was crucified, I was crucified with Him.
An Old Testament illustration may help to make this clear. It was the veil
of testimony that separated the Holy Place from the Most Holy Place, and
upon it were embroidered cherubim (Exod. 26:31; 2 Chron. 3:14) whose faces,
by analogy from Ezekiel 1:10 and 10:14, included that of a man as
representing the human head of the whole natural creation (Psalm 8:4-8). In
Old Testament days God dwelt within the veil and man without. Man could look
upon the veil, but not within it. That veil symbolized our Lord’s flesh,
His body (Heb. 10:20). So in the Gospels men could only look upon the
outward form of our Lord; they could not, save by Divine revelation (Matt.
16:16, 17), see the God who dwelt within. But when the Lord Jesus died, the
veil of the temple was rent from top to bottom (Matt. 27:51) as by the hand
of God, so that man could gaze right into the Most Holy Place. Since the
death of the Lord Jesus, God is no longer veiled but seeks to reveal Himself
(1 Cor. 2:7-10).
But when the veil was rent asunder, what happened to the cherubim? God rent
only the veil, it is true, but the cherubim were there in the veil and were
one with it, for they were embroidered upon it. It was impossible to rend
the veil and preserve them whole. When the veil was rent the cherubim were
rent with it. And, in the sight of God, when the Lord Jesus died the whole
living creation died too.
“Wherefore, my brethren, ye also were made dead to the law through the body
of Christ.” That woman’s husband may be very well and strong, but if she
dies he may make as many demands upon her as he likes; it will not affect
her in the slightest. Death has set her free from all her husband’s claims.
We were in the Lord Jesus when He died, and that inclusive death of His has
for ever freed us from the Law. But our Lord did not remain in the grave.
On the third day He rose again; and since we are still in Him we are risen
too. The body of the Lord Jesus speaks not only of His death but of His
resurrection, for His resurrection was a bodily resurrection. Thus “through
the body of Christ” we are not only “dead to the law’ but alive unto God.
God’s purpose in uniting us to Christ was not merely negative; it was
gloriously positive—“that ye should be joined to another” (Rom. 7:4).
Death has dissolved the old marriage relationship, so that the woman, driven
to despair by the constant demands of her former husband, who never lifted
a little finger to help her carry them out, is now set free to marry the
other Man, who with every demand He makes becomes in her the power for its
fulfillment.
And what is the issue of this new union? “That we might bring forth fruit
unto God” (Rom. 7:4). By the body of Christ that foolish, sinful woman has
died, but being united to Him in death she is united to Him in resurrection
also, and in the power of resurrection life she brings forth fruit unto God.
The risen life of the Lord in her empowers her for all the demands God’s
holiness makes upon her. The Law of God is not annulled; it is perfectly
fulfilled, for the risen Lord now lives out His life in her, and His life is
always well-pleasing to the Father.
What happens when a woman marries? She no longer bears her own name but that
of her husband; and she shares not his name only but his possessions too.
So it is when we are joined to Christ. When we belong to Him, all that is
His becomes ours, and with His infinite resources at our disposal we are
well able to meet all His demands.

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: chapter 9.2 What The Law Teaches
: Many Christians are suddenly launched into the experience of Romans 7 and
: they do not know why. They fancy Romans 6 is quite enough. Having grasped
: that, they think there can be no more question of failure, and then to their
: utmost surprise they suddenly find themselves in Romans 7. What is the
: explanation?
: First let us be quite clear that the death with Christ described in Romans 6
: is fully adequate to cover all our need. It is the explanation of that
: death, with all that follows from it, that is incomplete in chapter 6. We
: are as yet still in ignorance of the truth set forth in chapter 7. Romans 7

l**********t
发帖数: 5754
135
chapter 9.4 Our End Is God’s Beginning
Now that we have settled the doctrinal side of the question we must come
down to practical issues, staying a little longer with the negative aspect
and keeping the positive for our next chapter. What does it mean in everyday
life to be delivered from the Law? At the risk of a little overstatement, I
reply, “It means that from henceforth I am going to do nothing whatever
for God: I am never again going to try to please Him.” ‘What a doctrine!’
you exclaim. ‘What awful heresy! You cannot possibly mean that!’
But remember, if I try to please God ‘in the flesh’, then immediately I
place myself under the Law. I broke the Law; the Law pronounced the death
sentence; the sentence was executed, and now by death I—the carnal ‘I’ (
Rom. 7:14)—have been set free from all its claims. There is still a Law of
God, and now there is in fact a “new commandment” that is infinitely more
exacting than the old, but, Praise God! its demands are being met, for it is
Christ who now fulfills them; it is Christ who works in me what is well-
pleasing to God. “I came... to fulfill {the law}” were His words (Matt. 5:
17). Thus Paul, from the ground of resurrection, can say: “Work out your
own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God which worketh in you
both to will and to work, for his good pleasure” (Phil. 2:12, 13).
It is God that worketh in you. Deliverance from law does not mean that we
are free from doing the will of God. It certainly does not mean that we are
going to be lawless. Very much the reverse! What it does mean however is
that we are free from doing that will as of ourselves. Being fully persuaded
that we cannot do it, we cease trying to please God from the ground of the
old man. Having at last reached the point of utter despair in ourselves so
that we cease even to try, we put our trust in the Lord to manifest His
resurrection life in us.
Let me illustrate by what I have seen in my own country. In China some
bearers can carry a load of salt weighing 120 kilos, some even 250 kilos.
Now along comes a man who can carry only 120 kilos, and here is a load of
250 kilos. He knows perfectly well he cannot carry it, and if he is wise he
will say: ‘I won’t touch it!’ But the temptation to try is ingrained in
human nature, so although he cannot possibly carry it he still tries. As a
youngster I used to amuse myself watching ten or twenty of these fellows
come along and try, though every one of them knew he could not possibly
manage it. In the end he must give up and make way for the man who could.
The sooner we too give up trying the better, for if we monopolize the task,
then there is no room for the Holy Spirit. But if we say: ‘I’ll not do it;
I’ll trust Thee to do it for me’, then we shall find that a Power
stronger than ourselves is carrying us through.
In 1923 I met a famous Canadian evangelist. I had said in an address
something along the above lines, and as we walked back to his home
afterwards he remarked: ‘The note of Romans 7 is seldom sounded nowadays;
it is good to hear it again. The day I was delivered from the Law was a day
of Heaven on earth. After being a Christian for years I was still trying my
best to please God, but the more I tried the more I failed. I regarded God
as the greatest Demander in the universe, but I found myself impotent to
fulfill the least of His demands. Suddenly one day, as I read Romans 7,
light dawned and I saw that I had not only been delivered from sin but from
the Law as well. In my amazement I jumped up and said: “Lord, are you
really making no demands on me? Then I need do nothing more for You!”
God’s requirements have not altered, but we are not the ones to meet them.
Praise God, He is the Lawgiver on the Throne, and He is the Lawkeeper in my
heart. He who gave the Law, Himself keeps it. He makes the demands, but He
also meets them. My friend could well jump up and shout when he found he had
nothing to do, and all who make a like discovery can do the same. As long
as we are trying to do anything, He can do nothing. It is because of our
trying that we fail and fail and fail. God wants to demonstrate to us that
we can do nothing at all, and until that is fully recognized our
disappointments and disillusionments will never cease.
A brother who was trying to struggle into victory remarked to me, ‘I do not
know why I am so weak.’ ‘The trouble with you’, I said, ‘is that you
are weak enough not to do the will of God, but you are not weak enough to
keep out of things altogether. You are still not weak enough. When you are
reduced to utter weakness and are persuaded that you can do nothing whatever
, then God will do everything.’ We all need to come to the point where we
say: ‘Lord, I am unable to do anything for Thee, but I trust Thee to do
everything in me.’
I was once staying in a place in China with some twenty other brothers.
There was inadequate provision for bathing in the home where we stayed, so
we went for a daily plunge in the river. On one occasion a brother had cramp
in one leg, and I suddenly saw he was sinking fast, so I motioned to
another brother, who was an expert swimmer, to hasten to his rescue. But to
my astonishment he made no move. So I grew desperate and called out: ‘Don’
t you see the man is drowning?’ and the other brothers, about as agitated
as I was, shouted vigorously too. But our good swimmer still did not move.
Calm and collected, he remained just where he was, apparently postponing the
unwelcome task. Meantime the voice of the poor drowning brother grew
fainter and his efforts feebler. In my heart I said: ‘I hate that man!
Think of his letting a brother drown before his very eyes and not going to
the rescue!’
But when the man was actually sinking, with a few swift strokes the swimmer
was at his side, and both were safely ashore. When I got an opportunity I
aired my views. ‘I have never seen any Christian who loved his life quite
as much as you do’, I said. ‘Think of the distress you would have saved
that brother if you had considered yourself a little less and him a little
more.’ But the swimmer knew his business better than I did. ‘Had I gone
earlier’, he said, ‘he would have clutched me so fast that both of us
would have gone under. A drowning man cannot be saved until he is utterly
exhausted and ceases to make the slightest effort to save himself.’
Do you see it? When we give up the case, then God will take it up. He is
waiting until we are at an end of our resources and can do nothing more for
ourselves. God has condemned all that is of the old creation and consigned
it to the Cross. The flesh profiteth nothing! If we try to do anything in
the flesh we are virtually repudiating the Cross of Christ. God has declared
us to be fit only for death. When we truly believe that, then we confirm
God’s verdict by giving up all our fleshly efforts to please Him. Our every
effort to do His will is a denial of His declaration in the Cross of our
utter worthlessness. Our continued efforts are a misunderstanding on the one
hand of God’s demands and on the other hand of the source of supply.
We see the Law and we think that we must meet its demands, but we need to
remember that, though the Law in itself is all right, it will be all wrong
if it is applied to the wrong person. The “wretched man” of Romans 7 tried
to meet the demands of God’s law himself, and that was the cause of his
trouble. The repeated use of the little word ‘I’ in this chapter gives the
clue to the failure. “The good which I would I do not: but the evil which
I would not, that I practice” (Rom. 7:19). There was a fundamental
misconception in this man’s mind. He thought God was asking him to keep the
Law, so of course he was trying to keep it. But God was requiring no such
thing of him. What was the result? Far from doing what pleased God, he found
himself doing what displeased Him. In his very efforts to do the will of
God he did exactly the opposite of what he knew to be His will.

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: chapter 9.3 Christ The End Of The Law
: In Romans 6 we saw how God delivered us from sin; in Romans 7 we see how He
: delivers us from the Law. In chapter 6 we were shown the way of deliverance
: from sin in the picture of a master and his slave; in chapter 7 we are shown
: the way of deliverance from the Law in the picture of two husbands and a
: wife. The relation between sin and the sinner is that of master to slave;
: the relation between the Law and the sinner is that of husband to wife.
: Notice first that in the picture in Romans 7:1-4 by which Paul illustrates
: our deliverance from the Law there is only one woman, while there are two
: husbands. The woman is in a very difficult position, for she can only be

l**********t
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136
chapter 9.5 I Thank God!
Romans 6 deals with “the body of sin”, Romans 7 with “the body of this
death” (6:6; 7:24). In chapter 6 the whole question before us is sin; in
chapter 7 the whole question before us is death. What is the difference
between the body of sin and the body of death? In regard to sin (that is, to
whatever displeases God) I have a body of sin—a body, that is to say,
which is actively engaged in sin. But in regard to the Law of God (that is,
to that which expresses the will of God) I have a body of death. My activity
in regard to sin makes my body a body of sin; my failure in regard to all
that is wicked, worldly and Satanic I am, in my nature, wholly positive; but
in regard to all that pertains to holiness and Heaven and God I am wholly
negative.
Have you discovered the truth of that in your life? It is no good merely to
discover it in Romans 6 and 7. Have you discovered that you carry the
encumbrance of a lifeless body in regard to God’s will? You have no
difficulty in speaking about wordly matters, but when you try to speak for
the Lord you are tongue-tied; when you try to pray you feel sleepy; when you
try to do something for the Lord you feel unwell. You can do anything but
that which is related to God’s will. There is something in this body that
does not harmonize with the will of God.
What does death mean? We may illustrate from a well-known verse in the first
letter to the Corinthians: “For this cause many among you are weak and
sickly, and not a few sleep” (1 Corinthians 11:30). Death is weakness
produced to its extremity - weakness, sickness, death. Death means utter
weakness; it means you are weak to such a point that you can become no
weaker. That I have a body of death in relation to God’s will means that I
am so weak in regard to serving God, so utterly weak, that I am reduced to a
point of dire helplessness. “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver
me out of the body of this death?” cried Paul, and it is good when anyone
cries out as he did. There is nothing more musical in the ears of the Lord.
This cry is the most spiritual and the most scriptural cry a man can utter.
He only utters it when he knows he can do nothing, and gives up making any
further resolutions. Up to this point, every time he failed he made a new
resolution and doubled and redoubled his will-power. At last he discovers
there is no use in his making up his mind any more, and he cries out in
desperation: “O wretched man that I am !” Like a man who suddenly awakes
to find himself in a burning building, his cry is now for help, for he has
come to the point where he despairs of himself.
Have you despaired of yourself, or do you hope that if you read and pray
more you will be a better Christian? Bible-reading and prayer are not wrong,
and God forbid that we should suggest that they are, but it is wrong to
trust even in them for victory. Our help is in Him who is the object of that
reading and prayer. Our trust must be in Christ alone. Happily the “
wretched man” does not merely deplore his wretchedness; he asks a fine
question, namely: “Who shall deliver me?” “Who?” Hitherto he has looked
for some thing; now his hope is in a Person. Hitherto he has looked within
for a solution to his problem; now he looks beyond himself for a Savior. He
no longer puts forth self-effort; all his expectation is now in Another.
How did we obtain forgiveness of sins? Was it by reading, praying,
almsgiving, and so on? No, we looked to the Cross, believing in what the
Lord Jesus had done; and deliverance from sin becomes ours on exactly the
same principle, nor is it otherwise with the question of pleasing God. In
the matter of forgiveness we look to Him on the Cross; in the matter of
deliverance from sin and of doing the will of God we look to Him in our
hearts. For the one we depend on what He has done; for the other we depend
on what He will do in us; but in regard to both, our dependence is on Him
alone. He is the One who does it all.
At the time when the Epistle to the Romans was written a murderer was
punished in a peculiar and terrible manner. The dead body of the one
murdered was tied to the living body of the murderer, head to head, hand to
hand, foot to foot, and the living one was bound to the dead one till death.
The murderer could go where he pleased, but wherever he went he had to
carry the corpse of that murdered man with him. Could punishment be more
appalling? Yet this is the illustration Paul now uses. It is as though he
were bound to a dead body and unable to get free. Wherever he goes he is
hampered by this terrible burden. At last he can bear it no longer and cries
flash of illumination, his cry of despair changes to a song of praise. He
has found the answer to his question. “I thank God through Jesus Christ our
Lord” (Rom. 7:25).
We know that justification is ours through the Lord Jesus and requires no
work on our part, but we think sanctification is dependent on our own
efforts. We know we can receive forgiveness only by entire reliance on the
Lord; yet we believe we can obtain deliverance by doing something ourselves.
We fear that if we do nothing, nothing will happen. After salvation the old
habit of ‘doing’ reasserts itself and we begin our old self-efforts again
. Then God’s word comes afresh to us: “It is finished” (John 19:30). He
has done everything on the Cross for our forgiveness and He will do
everything in us for our deliverance. In both cases He is the doer. “It is
God that worketh in you.”
The first words of the delivered man are very precious—“I thank God”. If
someone gives you a cup of water you thank the person who gave it, not
someone else. Why did Paul say “Thank God”? Because God was the One who
did everything. Had it been Paul who did it, he would have said, “Thank
Paul”. But he saw that Paul was a “wretched man” and that God alone could
meet his need; so he said, “Thank God”. God wants to do all, for He must
have all the glory. If we do some of the work, then we will get some of the
glory; but God must have it all Himself, so He does all the work from
beginning to end.
What we have said in this chapter might seem negative and unpractical if we
were to stop at this point, as though the Christian life were a matter of
sitting still and waiting for something to happen. Of course it is very far
from being so. All who truly live it know it to be a matter of very positive
and active faith in Christ and in an altogether new principle of life—the
law of the Spirit of life. We are now going to look at the effects in us of
this new life principle.
R*o
发帖数: 3781
137
zan

to
,
activity
but

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: chapter 9.5 I Thank God!
: Romans 6 deals with “the body of sin”, Romans 7 with “the body of this
: death” (6:6; 7:24). In chapter 6 the whole question before us is sin; in
: chapter 7 the whole question before us is death. What is the difference
: between the body of sin and the body of death? In regard to sin (that is, to
: whatever displeases God) I have a body of sin—a body, that is to say,
: which is actively engaged in sin. But in regard to the Law of God (that is,
: to that which expresses the will of God) I have a body of death. My activity
: in regard to sin makes my body a body of sin; my failure in regard to all
: that is wicked, worldly and Satanic I am, in my nature, wholly positive; but

l**********t
发帖数: 5754
138
Chapter 10: The Path of Progress: Walking In The Spirit
Coming now to Romans 8 we may first summarize the argument of our second
section of the letter from chapter 5:12 to chapter 8:39 in two phrases, each
containing a contrast and each marking an aspect of Christian experience.
The are: Romans 5:12 to 6:23: ‘In Adam’ and ‘in Christ’. Romans 7:1 to 8
:39: ‘In the flesh’ and ‘in the Spirit’.
We need to understand the relationship of these four things. The former two
are ‘objective’ and set forth our position, firstly as we were by nature
and secondly as we now are by faith in the redemptive work of Christ. The
latter two are ‘subjective’ and relate to our walk as a matter of
practical experience. Scripture makes it clear that the first two give us
only a part of the picture and that the second two are required to complete
it. We think it enough to be “in Christ”, but we learn now that we must
also walk “in the Spirit” (Rom. 8:9). The frequent occurrence of “the
Spirit” in the early part of Romans 8 serves to emphasize this further
important lesson of the Christian life.

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: chapter 9.5 I Thank God!
: Romans 6 deals with “the body of sin”, Romans 7 with “the body of this
: death” (6:6; 7:24). In chapter 6 the whole question before us is sin; in
: chapter 7 the whole question before us is death. What is the difference
: between the body of sin and the body of death? In regard to sin (that is, to
: whatever displeases God) I have a body of sin—a body, that is to say,
: which is actively engaged in sin. But in regard to the Law of God (that is,
: to that which expresses the will of God) I have a body of death. My activity
: in regard to sin makes my body a body of sin; my failure in regard to all
: that is wicked, worldly and Satanic I am, in my nature, wholly positive; but

l**********t
发帖数: 5754
139
Chapter 10.1 The Flesh And The Spirit
The flesh is linked with Adam; the Spirit with Christ. Leaving aside
now as settled the question of whether we are in Adam or in Christ, we
must ask ourselves: Am I living in the flesh or in the Spirit?
To live in the flesh is to do something out from' [13] myself as in
Adam. It is to derive strength from the old natural source of life that
I inherited from him, so that I enjoy in experience all Adam's very
complete provision for sinning which all of us have found so effective.
Now the same is true of what is in Christ. To enjoy in experience what
is true of me as in Him, I must learn what it is to walk in the Spirit.
It is a historic fact that in Christ my old man was crucified, and it
is a present fact that I am blessed "with every spiritual blessing in
the heavenly places in Christ" (Eph. 1:3); but if I do not live in the
Spirit, then my life may be quite a contradiction of the fact that I am
in Christ, for what is true of me in Him is not expressed in me. I may
recognize that I am in Christ, but I may also have to face the fact
that my old temper is very much in evidence.
What is the trouble? It is that I am holding the truth merely
objectively, whereas what is true objectively must be made true
subjectively; and that is brought about as I live in the Spirit.
Not only am I in Christ, but Christ is in me. And just as physically a
man cannot live and work in water but only in air, so spiritually
Christ dwells and manifests Himself not in flesh' but in spirit'.
Therefore if I live "after the flesh" I find that what is mine in
Christ is, so to say, held in suspense in me. Though in fact I am in
Christ, yet if I live in the flesh--that is, in my own strength and
under my own direction--then in experience I find to my dismay that it
is what is in Adam that manifests itself in me. If I would know in
experience all that is in Christ, then I must learn to live in the
Spirit.
Living in the Spirit means that I trust the Holy Spirit to do in me
what I cannot do myself. This life is completely different from the
life I would naturally live of myself. Each time I am faced with a new
demand from the Lord, I look to Him to do in me what He requires of me.
It is not a case of trying but of trusting; not of struggling but of
resting in Him. If I have a hasty temper, impure thoughts, a quick
tongue or a critical spirit, I shall not set out with a determined
effort to change myself, but, reckoning myself dead in Christ to these
things, I shall look to the Spirit of God to produce in me the needed
purity or humility or meekness. This is what it means to "stand still,
and see the salvation of the Lord, which he will work for you" (Exod.
14:13).
Some of you have no doubt had an experience something like the
following. You have been asked to go and see a friend, and you knew the
friend was not very friendly, but you trusted the Lord to see you
through. You told Him before you set out that in yourself you could not
but fail, and you asked Him for all that was needed. Then, to your
surprise, you did not feel at all irritated, though your friend was far
from gracious. On your return you thought over the experience and
marveled that you kept so calm, and you wondered if you would be just
as calm next time. You were amazed at yourself and sought an
explanation. This is the explanation: the Holy Spirit carried you
through.
Unfortunately we only have this kind of experience once in while, but
it should be a constant experience. When the Holy Spirit takes things
in hand there is no need for strain on our part. It is not a case of
clenching our teeth and thinking that thus we have controlled ourselves
beautifully and have had a glorious victory. No, where there is a real
victory there is no fleshly effort. We are gloriously carried through
by the Lord.
The object of temptation is always to get us to do something. During
the first three months of the Japanese war in China we lost a great
many tanks and so were unable to deal with the Japanese tanks, until
the following scheme was devised. A single shot would be fired at a
Japanese tank by one of our snipers in ambush. After a considerable
lapse of time the first shot would be followed by a second; then, after
a further silence, by another shot; until the tank driver, eager to
locate the source of the disturbance, would pop his head out to look
around. The next shot, carefully aimed, would put an end to him.
As long as he remained under cover he was perfectly safe. The whole
scheme was devised to bring him out into the open. In the same way,
Satan's temptations are not primarily to make us do something
particularly sinful, but merely to cause us to act in our own energy;
and as soon as we step out of our hiding-place to do something on that
basis, he has gained the victory over us. If we do not move, if we do
not come out of the cover of Christ into the realm of the flesh, then
he cannot get us.
The Divine way of victory does not permit of our doing anything at
all--anything, that is to say, outside of Christ. This is because as
soon as we move we run into danger, for our natural inclinations take
us in the wrong direction. Where, then, are we to look for help? Turn
now to Galatians 5:17: "The flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the
Spirit against the flesh". In other words, the flesh does not fight
against us but against the Holy Spirit, "for these are contrary the one
to the other", and it is He, not we, who meets and deals with the
flesh. What is the result? "That ye may not do the things that ye
would."
I think we have often understood that last clause of this verse in a
wrong sense. Let us consider what it means. What would we do'
naturally? We would move off on some course of action dictated by our
own instincts and apart from the will of God. The effect then of our
refusal to act out from ourselves is that the Holy Spirit is free to
meet and deal with the flesh in us, with the result that we shall not
do what we naturally would do; that is, we shall not act according to
our natural inclinations; we shall not go off on a course and plan of
our own: but shall find instead our satisfaction in His perfect plan.
Hence we have the principle: "Walk by the Spirit, and ye shall not
fulfill the lust of the flesh" (Gal. 5:16). If we live in the Spirit,
if we walk by faith in the risen Christ, we can truly stand aside'
while the Spirit gains new victories over the flesh every day. He has
been given to us to take charge of this business. Our victory lies in
hiding in Christ, and in counting in simple trust upon His Holy Spirit
to overcome in us our fleshly lusts with His own new desires. The Cross
has been given to procure salvation for us; the Spirit has been given
to produce salvation in us. Christ risen and ascended is the basis of
our salvation; Christ in our hearts by the Spirit is its power.
__________________________________________________________________
[13] The author has in mind the Greek preposition ek, the sense of
which is not easily conveyed by any single English word.--Ed.
________________________________________________________________

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: Chapter 10: The Path of Progress: Walking In The Spirit
: Coming now to Romans 8 we may first summarize the argument of our second
: section of the letter from chapter 5:12 to chapter 8:39 in two phrases, each
: containing a contrast and each marking an aspect of Christian experience.
: The are: Romans 5:12 to 6:23: ‘In Adam’ and ‘in Christ’. Romans 7:1 to 8
: :39: ‘In the flesh’ and ‘in the Spirit’.
: We need to understand the relationship of these four things. The former two
: are ‘objective’ and set forth our position, firstly as we were by nature
: and secondly as we now are by faith in the redemptive work of Christ. The
: latter two are ‘subjective’ and relate to our walk as a matter of

l**********t
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140
chapter 10.2 Christ Our Life
“I thank God through Jesus Christ”! That exclamation of Paul’s is
fundamentally the same as his other words in Galatians 2:20 which we have
taken as the key to our study: “I live; and yet no longer I, but Christ“.
We saw how prominent is the word ‘I’ throughout his argument in Romans 7,
culminating in the agonized cry: “O wretched man that I am!” Then follows
the shout of deliverance: “Thank God... Jesus Christ”! and it is clear
that the discovery Paul has made is this, that the life we live is the life
of Christ alone. We think of the Christian life as a ‘changed life’, a ‘
substituted life’, and Christ is our Substitute within. “I live; and yet
no longer I, but Christ liveth in me.” This life is not something which we
ourselves have to produce. It is Christ’s own life reproduced in us.
How many Christians believe in ‘reproduction’ in this sense, as something
more than regeneration? Regeneration means that the life of Christ is
planted in us by the Holy Spirit at our new birth. ‘Reproduction’ goes
further: it means that new life grows and becomes manifest progressively in
us, until the very likeness of Christ begins to be reproduced in our lives.
That is what Paul means when he speaks of his travail for the Galatians “
until Christ be formed in you” (Gal. 4:19).
Let me illustrate with another story. I once arrived in America in the home
of a saved couple who requested me to pray for them. I inquired the case of
their trouble. ‘Oh, Mr. Nee, we have been in a bad way lately’, they
confessed. ‘We are so easily irritated by the children, and during the past
few weeks we have both lost our tempers several times a day. We are really
dishonoring the Lord. Will you ask Him to give us patience?’ ‘That is the
one thing I cannot do’, I said. ‘What do you mean?’ they asked. ‘I mean
that one thing is certain’, I answered, ‘and that is that God is not going
to answer your prayer.’ At that they said in amazement, ‘Do you mean to
tell us we have gone so far that God is not willing to hear us when we ask
Him to make us patient?’ ‘No, I do not mean quite that, but I would like
to ask you if you have ever prayed in this respect. You have. But did God
answer? No! Do you know why? Because you have no need of patience.’ Then
the eyes of the wife blazed up. She said, ‘What do you mean? We do not need
patience, and yet we get irritated the whole day long! What do you mean?’
‘It is not patience you have need of’, I answered, ‘it is Christ.’
God will not give me humility or patience or holiness or love as separate
gifts of His grace. He is not a retailer dispensing grace to us in doses,
measuring out some patience to the impatient, some love to the unloving,
some meekness to the proud, in quantities that we take and work on as kind
of capital. He has given only one gift to meet all our need—His Son Christ
Jesus, and as I look to Him to live out His life in me, He will be humble
and patient and loving and everything else I need—in my stead. Remember the
word in the first Epistle of John: “God gave unto us eternal life, and
this life is in his Son. He that hath the Son hath the life; and he that
hath not the Son of God hath not the life” (1 John 5:11, 12). The life of
God is not given us as a separate item; the life of God is given us in the
Son. It is “eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 6:23). Our
relationship to the Son is our relationship to the life.
It is a blessed thing to discover the difference between Christian graces
and Christ: to know the difference between meekness and Christ, between
patience and Christ, between love and Christ. Remember again what is said in
1 Corinthians 1:30: “Christ Jesus... was made unto us wisdom from God, and
righteousness and sanctification, and redemption.” The common conception
of sanctification is that every item of the life should be holy; but that is
not holiness, it is the fruit of holiness. Holiness is Christ. It is the
Lord Jesus being made over to us to be that. So you can put in anything
there: love, humility, power, self-control. Today there is a call for
patience: He is our patience! Tomorrow the call may be for purity: He is our
purity! He is the answer to every need. That is why Paul speaks of “the
fruit of the Spirit” as one (Gal. 5:22) and not of ‘fruits’ as separate
items. God has given us His Holy Spirit, and when love is needed the fruit
of the Spirit is love; when joy is needed the fruit of the Spirit is joy. It
is always true. It does not matter what your personal deficiency, or
whether it is a hundred and one different things, God has one sufficient
answer—His Son Jesus Christ, and He is the answer to every human need.
How can we know more of Christ in this way? Only by way of an increasing
awareness of need. Some are afraid to discover deficiency in themselves and
so they never grow. Growth in grace is the only sense in which we can grow,
and grace, we have said, is God doing something for us. We all have the same
Christ dwelling within, but revelation of some new need will lead us
spontaneously to trust Him to live out His life in us in that particular.
Greater capacity means greater enjoyment of God’s supply. Another letting
go, a fresh trusting in Christ, and another stretch of land is conquered. ‘
Christ my life’ is the secret of enlargement.
We have spoken of trying and trusting, and the difference between the two.
Believe me, it is the difference between Heaven and hell. It is not
something just to be talked over as a good thought; it is stark reality. ‘
Lord, I cannot do it, therefore I will no longer try to do it.’ This is the
point where most of us fail. ‘Lord, I cannot; therefore I will take my
hands off; from now on I trust Thee for that.’ I refuse to act; I depend on
Him to act and then I enter fully and joyfully into the action He initiates
. It is not passivity; it is a most active life, trusting the Lord like that
; drawing life from Him, taking Him to be my very life, letting Him out His
life in me.

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: Chapter 10.1 The Flesh And The Spirit
: The flesh is linked with Adam; the Spirit with Christ. Leaving aside
: now as settled the question of whether we are in Adam or in Christ, we
: must ask ourselves: Am I living in the flesh or in the Spirit?
: To live in the flesh is to do something out from' [13] myself as in
: Adam. It is to derive strength from the old natural source of life that
: I inherited from him, so that I enjoy in experience all Adam's very
: complete provision for sinning which all of us have found so effective.
: Now the same is true of what is in Christ. To enjoy in experience what
: is true of me as in Him, I must learn what it is to walk in the Spirit.

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l**********t
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chapter 10.3 The Law Of This Spirit Of Life
“There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus,
who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. For the law of the
Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made free from the law of sin and death
” (Rom. 8:1, 2, A.V.).
It is in chapter 8 that Paul presents to us in detail the positive side of
life in the Spirit. “There is therefore now no condemnation”, he begins,
and this statement may at first seem out of place here. Surely condemnation
was met by the Blood through which we found peace with God and salvation
from wrath (Rom. 5:1, 9). But there are two kinds of condemnation, namely,
that before God and that before myself (just as earlier we saw there are two
kinds of peace) and the second may at times seem to us even more awful than
the first. When I see that the Blood of Christ has satisfied God, then I
know my sins are forgiven, and there is for me no more condemnation before
God. Yet I may still be knowing defeat, and the sense of inward condemnation
on this account may be very real, as Romans 7 shows. But if I have learned
to live by Christ as my life, then I have learned the secret of victory, and
, praise God! “there is therefore now no condemnation”. “The mind of the
spirit is life and peace” (Rom. 8:6), and this becomes my experience as I
learn to walk in the Spirit. With peace in my heart I have no time to feel
condemned, but only to praise Him who leads me on from victory to victory.
But what lay behind my sense of condemnation? Was it not the experience of
defeat and the sense of helplessness to do anything about it? Before I saw
that Christ is my life, I labored under a constant sense of handicap;
limitation dogged my steps; I felt disabled at every turn. I was always
crying out: ‘I cannot do this! I cannot do that!’ Try as I would, I found
that I “cannot please God” (Rom. 8:8). But there is no ‘I cannot’ in
Christ. Now it is: “I can do all things in him that strengtheneth me” (
Phil. 4:13).
How can Paul be so daring? On what ground does he declare that he is now
free from limitation and “can do all things”? Here is his answer: “For
the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus made me free from the law of
sin and of death” (Rom. 8:2). Why is there no more condemnation? “For ...
”: there is a reason for it; there is something definite to account for it.
The reason is that there is a law called “the law of the Spirit of life”
and it has proved stronger than another law called ‘the law of sin and
death”. What are these laws? How do they operate? And what is the
difference between sin and the law of sin, and between death and the law of
death?
First let us ask ourselves, What is a law? Well, strictly speaking, a law is
a generalization examined until it is proved that there is no exception. We
might define it more simply as something which happens over and over again.
Each time the thing happens it happens in the same way. We can illustrate
this both from statutory and from natural law. For example, in this land, if
I drive a car on the right hand side of the road the traffic police will
stop me. Why? Because it is against the law of the land. If you do it you
will be stopped too. Why? For the same reason that I would be stopped: it is
against the law and the law makes no exceptions. It is something which
happens repeatedly and unfailingly. Or again, we all know what is meant by
gravity. If I drop my handkerchief in London it falls to the ground. That is
the effect of gravity. But the same is true if I drop it in New York or
Hong Kong. No matter where I let it go, gravity operates, and it always
produces the same results. Whenever the same conditions prevail the same
effects are seen. There is thus a ‘law’ of gravity.
Now what of the law of sin and death? If someone passes an unkind remark
about me, at once something goes wrong inside me. That is not law; that is
sin. But if, when different people pass unkind remarks, the same ‘something
’ goes wrong inside, then I discern a law within—a law of sin. Like the
law of gravity, it is something constant. It always works the same way. And
so too with the law of death. Death, we have said, is weakness produced to
its limit. Weakness is ‘I cannot’. Now if when I try to please God in this
particular matter I find I cannot, and if when I try to please Him in that
other thing I again find I cannot, then I discern a law at work. There is
not only sin in me but a law of sin; there is not only death in me but a law
of death.
Then again, not only is gravity a law in the sense that it is constant,
admitting of no exception, but, unlike the rule of the road, it is a ‘
natural’ law and not the subject of discussion and decision but of
discovery. The law is there, and the handkerchief ‘naturally’ drops by
itself without any help from me. And the “law” discovered by the man in
Romans 7:23 is just like that. It is a law of sin and of death, opposed to
that which is good, and crippling the man’s will to do good. He ‘naturally
’ sins according to the “law of sin” in his members. He wills to be
different, but that law in him is relentless and no human will can resist it
. So this brings me to the question, How can I be set free from the law of
sin an death? I need deliverance from sin, and still more do I need
deliverance from death, but most of all I need deliverance from the law of
sin and of death. How can I be delivered from the constant repetition of
weakness and failure? In order to answer this question let us follow out our
two illustrations further.
One of our great burdens in China used to be the likin tax, a law which none
could escape, originating in the Ch’in Dynasty and operating right down to
our own day. It was an inland tax on the transit of goods, applied
throughout the empire and having numerous barriers for collection, and
officers enjoying very large powers. The result was that the charge on goods
passing through several provinces might become very heavy indeed. But a few
years ago a second law came into operation which set aside the likin law.
Can you imagine the feelings of relief in those who had suffered under the
old law? Now there was no need to think or hope or pray; the new law was
already there and had delivered us from the old law. No longer was there
need to think beforehand what one would say if one met a likin officer
tomorrow!
And as with the law of the land, so it is with natural law. How can the law
of gravity be annulled? With regard to my handkerchief that law is at work
clearly enough, pulling it down, but I have only to place my hand under the
handkerchief and it does not drop. Why? The law is still there. I do not
deal with the law of gravity; in fact I cannot deal with the law of gravity.
Then why does my handkerchief not fall to the ground? Because there is a
power keeping it from doing so. The law is there, but another law superior
to it is in operation to overcome it, namely the law of life. Gravity can do
its utmost but the handkerchief will not drop, because another law is
working against the law of gravity to maintain it there. We have all seen
the tree which was once a small seed fallen between the slabs of a paving,
and which has grown until heavy stone blocks have been lifted by the power
of the life within it. That is what we mean by the triumph of one law over
another.
In just such a manner God delivers us from one law by introducing another
law. The law of sin and death is there all the time, but God has put another
law into operation - the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus, and
that law is strong enough to deliver us from the law of sin and death. You
see, it is a law of life in Christ Jesus—the resurrection life that in Him
has met death in all its forms and triumphed over it (Eph. 1:19, 20). The
Lord Jesus dwells in our hearts in the person of His Holy Spirit, and if we
let Him have a clear way and commit ourselves to Him we shall find that He
will keep us from the old law. We shall learn what it is to be kept, not by
our own power, but “by the power of God” (1 Peter 1:5).

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: chapter 10.2 Christ Our Life
: “I thank God through Jesus Christ”! That exclamation of Paul’s is
: fundamentally the same as his other words in Galatians 2:20 which we have
: taken as the key to our study: “I live; and yet no longer I, but Christ“.
: We saw how prominent is the word ‘I’ throughout his argument in Romans 7,
: culminating in the agonized cry: “O wretched man that I am!” Then follows
: the shout of deliverance: “Thank God... Jesus Christ”! and it is clear
: that the discovery Paul has made is this, that the life we live is the life
: of Christ alone. We think of the Christian life as a ‘changed life’, a ‘
: substituted life’, and Christ is our Substitute within. “I live; and yet

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chapter 10.4 The Manifestation Of The Law Of Life
Let us seek to make this practical. We touched earlier on the matter of our
will in relation to the things of God. Even older Christians do not realize
how great a part will-power plays in their lives. That was part of Paul’s
trouble in Romans 7. His will was good, but all his actions contradicted it,
and however much he made up his mind and set himself to please God, it led
him only into worse darkness. ‘I would do good’, but “I am carnal, sold
under sin”. That is the point. Like a car without petrol, that has to be
pushed and that stops as soon as it is left alone, many Christians endeavour
to drive themselves by will-power, and then think the Christian life a most
exhausting and bitter one. Some even force themselves to say ‘Hallelujah!
’ because others do it, while admitting there is no meaning in it to them.
They force themselves to be what they are not, and it is worse than trying
to make water run up-hill. For after all, the very highest point the will
can reach is that of willingness (Matt. 26:41).
If we have to exert so much effort in our Christian living, it simply says
that we are not really like that at all. We don’t need to force ourselves
to speak our native language. In fact we only have to exert will-power in
order to do things we do not do naturally. We may do them for a time, but
the law of sin and death wins in the end. We may be able to say: ‘To will
is present with me, and I perform that which is good for two weeks’, but
eventually we shall have to confess: ‘How to perform it I know not’. No,
what I already am I do not long to be. If I “would” it is because I am not.
You ask, Why do men use will-power to try to please God? There may be two
reasons. They may of course never have experienced the new birth, in which
case they have no new life to draw upon; or they may have been born again
and the life be there, but they have not learned to trust in that life. It
is this lack of understanding that results in habitual failure and sinning,
bringing them to the place where they almost cease to believe in the
possibility of anything better.
But because we have not believed fully, that does not mean that the feeble
life we intermittently experience is all God has given us. Romans 6:23
states that “the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord
”, and now in Romans 8:2 we read that “the law of the Spirit of life in
Christ Jesus” has come to our aid. So Romans 8:2 speaks not of a new gift
but of the life already referred to in Romans 6:23. In other words, it is a
new revelation of what we already have. I feel I cannot emphasize this too
much. It is not something fresh from God’s hand, but a new unveiling of
what He has already given. It is a new discovery of a work already done in
Christ, for the words “made me free” are in the past tense. If I really
see this and put my faith in Him, there is no absolute necessity for Romans
7 to be repeated in me—either the experience or the conduct, and certainly
not the tremendous display of will-power.
If we will let go our own wills and trust Him, we shall not fall to the
ground and break, but we shall fall into a different law, the law of the
Spirit of life. For He has given us not only life but a law of life. And
just as the law of gravity is a natural law and not the result of human
legislation, so the law of life is a ‘natural’ law, similar in principle
to the law that keeps our heart beating or that controls the movement of our
eyelids. There is no need for us to think about our eyes, or to decide that
we must blink every so often to keep them cleansed; and still less do we
bring our will to bear upon our heart. Indeed to do so might rather harm
than help it. No, so long as it has life it works spontaneously. Our wills
only interfere with the law of life. I discovered that fact once in the
following way.
I used to suffer from sleeplessness. Once after several sleepless nights,
when I had prayed much about it and exhausted all my resources, I confessed
at length to God that the fault must lie with me and asked to be shown where
. I said to God: ‘I demand an explanation’. He answer was: ‘Believe in
nature’s laws’. Sleep is as much a law as hunger is, and I realized that
though I had never thought of worrying whether I would get hungry or not, I
had been worrying about sleeping. I had been trying to help nature, and that
is the chief trouble with most sufferers from sleeplessness. But now I
trusted not only God but God’s law of nature, and slept well.
Should we not read the Bible? Of course we should or our spiritual life will
suffer. But that should not mean forcing ourselves to read. There is a new
law in us which gives us a hunger for it. Then half an hour can be more
profitable than five hours of forced reading. And it is the same with giving
, with preaching, with testimony. Forced preaching is apt to result in
preaching a warm gospel with a cold heart, and we all know what men mean by
‘cold charity’.
If we will let ourselves live in the new law we shall be less conscious of
the old law. It is still there, but it is no longer governing and we are no
longer in its grip. That is why the Lord says in Matthew 6: “Behold the
birds... Consider the lilies”. If we could ask the birds whether they were
not afraid of the law of gravity, how would they reply? They would say: ‘We
never heard the name of Newton. We know nothing about his law. We fly
because it is the law of our life to fly.’ Not only is there in them a life
with the power of flight, but that life has a law which enables these
living creatures quite spontaneously and consistently to overcome the law of
gravity. Yet gravity remains. If you get up early one morning when the cold
is intense and the snow thick on the ground, and there is a dead sparrow in
the courtyard, you are reminded at once of the persistence of that law. But
while birds live they overcome it, and the life within them is what
dominates their consciousness.
God has been truly gracious to us. He has given us this new law of the
Spirit, and for us to ‘fly’ is no longer a question of our will but of His
life. Have you noticed what a trial it is to make an impatient Christian
patient? To require patience of him is enough to make him ill with
depression. But God has never told us to force ourselves to be what we are
not naturally: to try by taking thought to add to our spiritual stature.
Worrying may possibly decrease a man’s height, but it certainly never added
anything to it. “Be not anxious”, are His words. “Consider the lilies, .
.. they grow.” He is directing our attention to the new law of life in us.
Oh, for a new appreciation of the life that is ours!
What a precious discovery this is! It can make altogether new men of us, for
it operates in the smallest things as well as in the bigger ones. It checks
us when, for example, we put out a hand to look at a book in someone else’
s room, reminding us that we have not asked permission and have no right to
do so. We cannot, the Holy Spirit tells us, encroach thus upon the rights of
others.
Once I was talking to a Christian friend and he turned to me and said: ‘Do
you know, I believe that if anyone is willing to live by the law of the
Spirit of life, such a man will become truly refined.’ ‘What do you mean?
’ I asked. He replied: ‘That law has the power to make a man a perfect
gentleman. Some scornfully say: “you can’t blame those people for the way
they act; they are just country folk and have no educational advantages”.
But the real question is, Have they the life of the Lord within? For I tell
you, that life can say to them: “Your voice is too loud”, or, “That
laughter was not right”, or, “Your motive in passing that remark was wrong
.” In a thousand details the Spirit of life can tell them how to act, so
producing in them a true refinement. There is no such inherent power in
education.’ And yet my friend was himself an educationalist!
But it is true. Take the example of talkativeness. Are you a person of too
many words? When you stay with people, do you say to yourself: ‘What shall
I do? I am a Christian; but if I am to glorify the name of the Lord, I
simple must not talk so much. So today let me be extra careful to hold
myself in check.’? And for an hour or two you succeed—until on some
pretext you loose control and, before you know where you are, find yourself
once again in difficulty with your garrulous tongue. Yes, let us be fully
assured that the will is useless here. For me to exhort you to exercise your
will in this matter would be but to offer you the vain religion of the
world, not the life in Christ Jesus. For consider again: a talkative person
remains just that, though he keep silent all day, for there is a ‘natural’
law of talkativeness governing him (or her!), just as a peach tree is a
peach tree whether or not it bears peaches. But as Christians we discover a
new law in us, the law of the spirit of life, which transcends all else and
which has already delivered us from the ‘law’ of our talkativeness. If,
believing the Lord’s Word, we yield ourselves to that new law, it will tell
us when we should stop talking—or not start!—and it will empower us to do
so. On that basis you can go to your friend’s house for two or three hours
, or stay for two or three days, and experience no difficulty. On your
return you will just thank God for His new law of life.
It is this spontaneous life that is the Christian life. It manifests itself
in love for the unlovely—for the brother whom on natural grounds we would
not like and certainly could not love. It works on the basis of what the
Lord sees of possibility in that brother. ‘Lord, You see he is lovable and
You love him. Love him, now, through me!’ And it manifests itself in
reality of life—in a true genuineness of moral character. There is too much
hypocrisy in the lives of Christians, too much play-acting. Nothing takes
away from the effectiveness of Christian witness as does a pretense of
something that is not really there, for the man in the street unfailingly
penetrates such a disguise in the end and finds us out for what we are. Yes,
pretense gives way to reality when we trust the law of life.

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: chapter 10.3 The Law Of This Spirit Of Life
: “There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus,
: who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. For the law of the
: Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made free from the law of sin and death
: ” (Rom. 8:1, 2, A.V.).
: It is in chapter 8 that Paul presents to us in detail the positive side of
: life in the Spirit. “There is therefore now no condemnation”, he begins,
: and this statement may at first seem out of place here. Surely condemnation
: was met by the Blood through which we found peace with God and salvation
: from wrath (Rom. 5:1, 9). But there are two kinds of condemnation, namely,

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chapter 10.5 The Fourth Step: “Walk... After The Spirit”
“For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh,
God,
sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering
for
sin, condemned sin in the flesh: that the ordinance of the law might be
fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit”
(Rom.
8:3).
Every careful reader of these two verses will see that there are two
things
presented here. They are, firstly, what the Lord Jesus has done for us,
and
secondly, what the Holy Spirit will do in us. “The flesh” is “weak”;
consequently the ordinance of the law cannot be fulfilled in us “after
the
flesh”. (Remember, it is again here a question not of salvation but of
pleasing God.) Now, because of our inability God took two steps. In the
first place, He intervened to deal with the heart of our problem. He
sent
His Son in the flesh, who died for sin and in doing so “condemned sin in
the flesh”. That is to say, He took to death representatively all that
belonged to the old creation in us, whether we speak of it as ‘our old
man
’, ‘the flesh’, or the carnal ‘I’. Thus God struck at the very root of
our trouble by removing the fundamental ground of our weakness. This was
the
first step.
But still “the ordinance of the law” remained to be fulfilled “in us”.
How could this be done? It required God’s further provision of the
indwelling Holy Spirit. It is He who is sent to take care of the inward
side
of this thing, and He is able to do so, we are told, as we “walk...
after
the Spirit”.
What does it mean to walk after the Spirit? It means two things.
Firstly, it
is not a work; it is a walk. Praise God, the burdensome and fruitless
effort I involved myself in when I sought ‘in the flesh’ to please God
gives place to a blessed and restful dependence on “his working, which
worketh in me mightily” (Col. 1:29). That is why Paul contrasts the
“works
” of the flesh with the “fruit” of the Spirit (Gal. 5:19, 22).
Then secondly, to “walk after” implies subjection. Walking after the
flesh
means that I yield to the dictates of the flesh, and the following
verses
in Romans 8:5-8 make clear where that leads me. It only brings me into
conflict with God. To walk after the Spirit is to be subject to the
Spirit.
There is one thing that the man who walks after the Spirit cannot do,
and
that is be independent of Him. I must be subject to the Holy Spirit. The
initiative of my life must be with Him. Only as I yield myself to obey
Him
shall I find the “law of the Spirit of life” in full operation and the “
ordinance of the law” (all that I have been trying to do to please God)
being fulfilled—no longer by me but in me. “As many as are led by the
Spirit of God, these are sons of God” (Rom. 8:14).
We are all familiar with the words of the benediction in 2 Corinthians
13:14
communion of the Holy Ghost, be with you all”. The love of God is the
source of all spiritual blessing; the grace of the Lord Jesus has made
it
possible for that spiritual wealth to become ours; and the communion of
the
Holy Ghost is the means whereby it is imparted to us. Love is something
hidden in the heart of God; grace is that love expressed and made
available
in the Son; communion is the importation of that grace by the Spirit.
What
the Father has devised concerning us the Son has accomplished for us,
and
now the Holy Spirit communicates it to us. When therefore we discover
something fresh that the Lord Jesus has procured for us in His Cross,
let us
, for its realization, look in the direction that God has indicated,
and, by
our steadfast attitude of subjection and obedience to the Holy Spirit,
keep
wide open the way for Him to impart it to us. That is His ministry. He
has
come for that very purpose—that He may make real in us all that is ours
in
Christ.
We have learned in China that, when leading a soul to Christ, we must be
very thorough, for there is no certainty when he will again have the
help of
other Christians. We always seek to make it clear to a new believer
that,
when he has asked the Lord to forgive his sins and to come into his
life,
his heart has become the residence of a living Person. The Holy Spirit
of
God is now within him, to open to him the Scriptures that he may find
Christ
there, to direct his prayer, to govern his life, and to reproduce in
him
the character of his Lord.
I went, late one summer, for a prolonged period of rest to a hill-resort
where accommodation was difficult to obtain, and while there it was
necessary for me to sleep in one house and take my meals in another, the
latter being the home of a mechanic and his wife. For the first two
weeks of
my visit, apart from asking a blessing at each meal, I said nothing to
my
hosts about the Gospel; and then one day my opportunity came to tell
them
about the Lord Jesus. They were ready to listen and to come to Him in
simple
faith for the forgiveness of their sins. They were born again, and a
new
light and joy came into their lives, for theirs was a real conversion. I
took care to make clear to them what had happened, and then, as the
weather
turned colder, the time came for me to leave them and return to
Shanghai.
During the cold winter months the man was in the habit of drinking wine
with
his meals, and he was apt to do so to excess. After my departure, with
the
return of the cold weather, the wine appeared on the table again, and
that
day, as he had become accustomed to do, the husband bowed his head to
return
thanks for the meal—but no words would come. After one or two vain
attempts he turned to his wife. ‘What is wrong?’ he asked. ‘Why cannot
we
pray today? Fetch the Bible and see what it has to say about wine
drinking.
’ I had left a copy of the Scriptures with them, but though the wife
could
read she was ignorant of the Word, and she turned the pages in vain
seeking
for light on the subject. They did not know how to consult God’s Book
and
it was impossible to consult God’s messenger, for I was many miles away
and
it might be months before they could see me. ‘Just drink your wine’,
said
his wife. ‘We’ll refer the matter to brother Nee at the first
opportunity
.’ But still the man found he just could not return thanks to the Lord
for
that wine. ‘Take it away!’ he said at length; and when she had done so,
together they asked a blessing on their meal.
When eventually the man was able to visit Shanghai he told me the story.
Using an expression familiar in Chinese: ‘Brother Nee’, he said, ‘
Resident Boss ' wouldn’t let me have that drink!’ ‘Very good, brother’,
I said. ‘You always listen to Resident Boss!’
Many of us know that Christ is our life. We believe that the Spirit of
God
is resident in us, but this fact has little effect upon our behaviour.
The
question is, do we know Him as a living Person, and do we know Him as
‘Boss
’?
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Chapter 11: One Body in Christ
Before we pass on to our last important subject we will review some of the
ground we have covered and summarize the steps taken. We have sought to make
things simple, and to explain clearly some of the experiences which
Christians commonly pass through. But it is clear that the new discoveries
that we make as we walk with the Lord are many, and we must be careful to
avoid the temptation to over-simplify the work of God. To do so may lead us
into serious confusion.
There are children of God who believe that all our salvation, in which they
would include the matter of leading a holy life, lies in an appreciation of
the value of the precious Blood. They rightly emphasize the importance of
keeping short accounts with God over known specific sins, and the continual
efficacy of the Blood to deal with sins committed, but they think of the
Blood as doing everything. They believe in a holiness which in fact means
only separation of the man from his past; that, through the up-to-date
blotting out of what he has done on the ground of the shed Blood, God
separates a man out of the world to be His, and that is holiness; and they
stop there. Thus they stop short of God’s basic demands, and so of the full
provision He has made. I think we have by now seen clearly the inadequacy
of this.
Then there are those who go further and see that God has included them in
the death of His Son on the Cross, in order to deliver them from sin and the
Law by dealing with the old man. These are they who really exercise faith
in the Lord, for they glory in Christ Jesus and have ceased to put
confidence in the flesh (Phil. 3:3). In them God has a clear foundation on
which to build. And from this as starting-point, many have gone further
still and recognized that consecration (using that word in the right sense)
means giving themselves without reserve into His hands and following Him.
All these are first steps, and starting from them we have already touched
upon other phases of experience set before us by God and enjoyed by many. It
is always essential for us to remember that, while each of them is a
precious fragment of truth, no single one of them is by itself the whole of
truth. All come to us as the fruit of the work of Christ on the Cross, and
we cannot afford to ignore any.



【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: chapter 10.5 The Fourth Step: “Walk... After The Spirit”
: “For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh,
: God,
: sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering
: for
: sin, condemned sin in the flesh: that the ordinance of the law might be
: fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit”
: (Rom.
: 8:3).
: Every careful reader of these two verses will see that there are two

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chapter 11.1 A Gate And A Path
Recognizing a number of such phases in the life and experience of a believer
, we note now a further fact, namely that, though these phases do not
necessarily occur always in a fixed and precise order, they seem to be
marked by certain recurring steps or features. What are these steps? First
there is revelation. As we have seen, this always precedes faith and
experience. Through His Word God opens our eyes to the truth of some fact
concerning His Son, and then only, as in Faith we accept that fact for
ourselves, does it become actual as experience in our lives. Thus we have:
Revelation (Objective).
Experience (Subjective).
Then further, we note that such experience usually takes the two-fold form
of a crisis leading to a continuous process. It is most helpful to think of
this in terms of John Bunyan’s ‘wicket gate’ through which Christian
entered upon a ‘narrow path’. Our Lord Jesus spoke of such a gate and a
path leading unto life (Matt. 7:14), and experience accords with this. So
now we have:
Revelation.
Experience:
A Wicket gate (Crisis)
A narrow path (Process)
Now let us take some of the subjects we have been dealing with and see how
this helps us to understand them. We will take first our justification and
new birth. This begins with a revelation of the Lord Jesus in His atoning
work for our sins on the Cross; there follows the crisis of repentance and
faith (the wicket gate), whereby we are initially “made nigh” to God (Eph.
2:13); and this leads us into a walk of maintained fellowship with Him (the
narrow path), for which the ground of our day-to-day access is still the
precious Blood (Heb. 10:29, 22). When we come to deliverance from sin, we
again have three steps: the Holy Spirit’s work of revelation, or ‘knowing
’ (Rom. 6:6); the crisis of faith, or ‘reckoning’ (Rom. 6:11); and the
continuing process of consecration, or ‘presenting ourselves’ to God (Rom.
6:13) on the basis of a walk in newness of life. Consider next the gift of
the Holy Spirit. This too begins with a new ‘seeing’ of the Lord Jesus as
exalted to the throne, which issues in the dual experience of the Spirit
outpoured and the Spirit indwelling. Going a stage further, to the matter of
pleasing God, we find again the need for spiritual illumination, that we
may see the values of the Cross in regard to ‘the flesh’—the entire self-
life of man. Our acceptance of this by faith leads at once to a ‘wicket
gate’ experience (Rom. 7:25), in which we initially cease from ‘doing’
and accept by faith the mighty working of the life of Christ to satisfy God
’s practical demands in us. This in turn leads us into the ‘narrow path’
of a walk in obedience to the Spirit (Rom. 8:4).
The picture is not identical in each case, and we must beware of forcing any
rigid pattern upon the Holy Spirit’s working; but perhaps any new
experience will come to us more or less on these lines. There will certainly
always be first an opening of our eyes to some new aspect of Christ and His
finished work, and then faith will open a gate into a pathway. Remember,
too, that our division of Christian experience into various subjects:
justification, new birth, the gift of the spirit, deliverance,
sanctification, etc., is for our clearer understanding only. It does not
mean that these stages must or will always follow one another in a certain
prescribed order. In fact, if a full presentation of Christ and His Cross is
made to us at the very outset, we may well step into a great deal of
experience from the first day of our Christian life, even though the full
explanation of much of it may follow later. Would that all Gospel preaching
were of such a kind!
One thing is certain, that revelation will always precede faith. When we see
something that God has done in Christ our natural response is: ‘Thank you,
Lord !’ and faith follows spontaneously. Revelation is always the work of
the Holy Spirit, who is given to come along-side and, by opening the
Scriptures to us, to guide us into all the truth (John 16:13). Count upon
Him, for He is here for that very thing; and when such difficulties as lack
of understanding or lack of faith confront you, address those difficulties
directly to the Lord: ‘Lord, open my eyes. Lord, make this new thing clear
to me. Lord, help Thou my unbelief!’ He will not fail you.

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: Chapter 11: One Body in Christ
: Before we pass on to our last important subject we will review some of the
: ground we have covered and summarize the steps taken. We have sought to make
: things simple, and to explain clearly some of the experiences which
: Christians commonly pass through. But it is clear that the new discoveries
: that we make as we walk with the Lord are many, and we must be careful to
: avoid the temptation to over-simplify the work of God. To do so may lead us
: into serious confusion.
: There are children of God who believe that all our salvation, in which they
: would include the matter of leading a holy life, lies in an appreciation of

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chapter 11.2 The Fourfold Work Of Christ In His Cross
We are now in a position to go a step further still and to consider how
great a range is compassed by the Cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. In the
light of Christian experience and for the purpose of analysis, it may help
us if we recognize four aspects of God’s redemptive work. But in doing so
it is essential to keep in mind that the Cross of Christ is one Divine work
—not many. Once in Judaea two thousand years ago the Lord Jesus died and
rose again, and He is now “by the right hand of God exalted” (Acts 2:33).
The work is finished and need never be repeated, nor can it be added to.
Of the four aspects of the Cross which we shall now mention, we have already
dealt with three in some detail. The last will be considered in the two
succeeding chapters of our study. They may be briefly summarized as follows:
The Blood of Christ to deal with sins and guilt.
The Cross of Christ to deal with sin, the flesh and the natural man.
The Life of Christ made available to indwell, re-create and empower man.
The Working of Death in the natural man that that indwelling Life may be
progressively manifest.
The first two of these aspects are remedial. They relate to the undoing of
the work of the Devil and the undoing of the sin of man. The last two are
not remedial but positive, and relate more directly to the securing of the
purpose of God. The first two are concerned with recovering what Adam lost
by the Fall; the last two are concerned with bringing us into, and bringing
into us, something that Adam never had. Thus we see that the achievement of
the Lord Jesus in His death and resurrection comprises both a work which
provided for the redemption of man and a work which made possible the
realization of the purpose of God.
We have dealt at some length in earlier chapters with the two aspects of His
death represented by the Blood for sins and guilt and the Cross for sin and
the flesh. In our discussion of the eternal purpose we have also looked
briefly at the third aspect—that represented by Christ as the grain of
wheat—and in our last chapter, in our consideration of Christ as our life,
we have seen something of its practical outworking. Before, however, we pass
on to the fourth aspect, which I shall call ‘bearing the cross’, we must
say a little more about this third side, namely, the release of the life of
Christ in resurrection for man’s indwelling and empowering for service.
We have spoken already of the purpose of God in creation and have said that
it embraced far more than Adam ever came to enjoy. What was that purpose?
God wanted to have a race of men whose members were gifted with a spirit
whereby communion would be possible with Himself, who is Spirit. That race,
possessing God’s own life, was to co-operate in securing His purposed end
by defeating every possible uprising of the enemy and undoing his evil works
. That was the great plan. How will it now be effected? The answer is again
to be found in the death of the Lord Jesus. It is a mighty death. It is
something positive and purposive, going far beyond the recovery of a lost
position; for by it, not only are sin and the old man dealt with and their
effects annulled, but something more, something infinitely greater is
introduced.

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: chapter 11.1 A Gate And A Path
: Recognizing a number of such phases in the life and experience of a believer
: , we note now a further fact, namely that, though these phases do not
: necessarily occur always in a fixed and precise order, they seem to be
: marked by certain recurring steps or features. What are these steps? First
: there is revelation. As we have seen, this always precedes faith and
: experience. Through His Word God opens our eyes to the truth of some fact
: concerning His Son, and then only, as in Faith we accept that fact for
: ourselves, does it become actual as experience in our lives. Thus we have:
: Revelation (Objective).

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147
chapter 11.3 The Love Of Christ
Now we must have before us two passages of the Word, one from Genesis 2 and
one from Ephesians 5, which are of great importance in this connection.
“And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept;
and he took one of his ribs, which the Lord God had taken from the man, made
he a woman, and brought her unto the man. And the man said, This is now
bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman (Heb.
ishshah), because she was taken out of Man (Heb. ish)” (Gen. 2:21-23).
“Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave
himself up for it; that he might sanctify it, having cleansed it by the
washing of water with the word, that he might present the church to himself
a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that it
should be holy and without blemish” (Eph. 5:25-27).
In Ephesians 5 we have the only chapter in the Bible which explains the
passage in Genesis 2. What we have presented to us in Ephesians is indeed
very remarkable, if we reflect upon it. I refer to what is contained in
those words: “Christ... loved the church”. There is something most
precious here.
We have been taught to think of ourselves as sinners needing redemption. For
generations that has been instilled into us, and we praise the Lord for
that as our beginning; but it is not what God has in view as His end. God
speaks here rather of “a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any
such thing; but... holy and without blemish”. All too often we have
thought of the Church as being merely so many ‘saved sinners’. It is that;
but we have made the terms almost equal to one another, as though it were
only that, which is not the case. Saved sinners—with that thought you have
the whole background of sin and the Fall; but in God’s sight the Church is
a Divine creation in His Son. The one is largely individual, the other
corporate. With the one the view is negative, belonging to the past; with
the other it is positive, looking forward. The “eternal purpose” is
something in the mind of God from eternity concerning His Son, and it has as
its objective that the Son should have a Body to express His life. Viewed
from that standpoint—from the standpoint of the heart of God—the Church is
something which is beyond sin and has never been touched by sin.
So we have an aspect of the death of the Lord Jesus in Ephesians which we do
not have so clearly in other places. In Romans things are viewed from the
standpoint of fallen man, and beginning with ‘Christ died for sinners,
enemies, the ungodly’ (Rom. 5) we are led progressively to “the love of
Christ” (Rom. 8:35). In Ephesians, on the other hand, the standpoint is
that of God “before the foundation of the world” (Eph. 1:4), and the heart
of the gospel is: “Christ... loved the church, and gave himself up for it
” (Eph. 5:25). Thus, in Romans it is “we sinned”, and the message is of
God’s love for sinners (Rom. 5:8); whereas in Ephesians it is “Christ
loved”, and the love here is the love of husband for wife. That kind of
love has fundamentally nothing to do with sin as such. What is in view in
this passage is not atonement for sin but the creation of the Church, for
which end it is said that He “gave himself”.
There is thus an aspect of the death of the Lord Jesus which is altogether
positive and a matter particularly of love to His Church, where the question
of sin and sinners does not directly appear. To bring this fact home Paul
takes that incident in Genesis 2 as illustration. Now this is one of the
marvelous things in the Word, and if our eyes have been opened to see it we
will certainly worship.
From Genesis 3 onwards, from the ‘coats of skins’ to Abel’s sacrifice,
and on from there through the whole Old Testament, there are numerous types
which set forth the death of the Lord Jesus as an atonement for sin; yet the
apostle does not appeal here to any of those types of His death, but to
this one in Genesis 2. Note that; and then recall that it was not until
Genesis 3 that sin came in. There is one type of the death of Christ in the
Old Testament which has nothing to do with sin, for it is not subsequent to
the Fall but prior to it, and that type is here in Genesis 2. Let us look at
it for a moment.
Could we say that Adam was put to sleep because Eve had committed a serious
sin? Is that what we have here? Certainly not, for Eve was not yet even
created. There were as yet no moral issues involved and no problems at all.
No, Adam was put to sleep for the express purpose that something might be
taken out of him to be made into someone else. His sleep was not for her sin
but for her existence. That is what is taught in these verses. This
experience of Adam had as its object the creation of Eve, as something
determined in the Divine counsels. God wanted an ishshah. He put the man (
ish) to sleep, took a rib from his side and made it into ishshah, a woman,
and brought her to the man. That is the picture which God is giving us. It
foreshadows an aspect of the death of the Lord Jesus that is not primarily
for atonement, but answerable to the sleep of Adam in this chapter.
God forbid that I should suggest that the Lord Jesus did not die for
purposes of atonement. Praise God, He did. We must remember that today we
are in fact in Ephesians 5 and not in Genesis 2. Ephesians was written after
the Fall, to men who had suffered from its effects, and in it we have not
only the purpose in Creation but also the scars of the Fall —or there would
need to be no mention of “spot or wrinkle”. Because we are still on the
earth and the Fall is a historic fact, ‘cleansing’ is needed.
But we must always view redemption as an interruption, an ‘emergence’
measure, made necessary by a catastrophic break in the straight line of the
purpose of God. Redemption is big enough, wonderful enough, to occupy a very
large place in our vision, but God is saying that we should not make
redemption to be everything, as though man were created to be redeemed. The
Fall is indeed a tragic dip downwards in that line of purpose, and the
atonement a blessed recovery whereby our sins are blotted out and we are
restored; but when it is accomplished there yet remains a work to be done to
bring us into possession of that which Adam never possessed, and to give
God that which His heart desires. For God has never forsaken the purpose
which is represented by that straight line. Adam was never in possession of
the life of God as presented in the tree of life. But because of the one
work of the Lord Jesus in His death and resurrection (and we must emphasize
again that it is all one work) His life was released to become ours by faith
, and we have received more than Adam ever possessed. The very purpose of
God is brought within reach of fulfillment by our receiving Christ as our
life.
Adam was put to sleep. We remember that it is said of believers that they
fall asleep, rather than that they die. Why? Because whenever death is
mentioned sin is there in the background. In Genesis 3 sin entered into the
world and death through sin, but Adam’s sleep preceded that. So the type of
the Lord Jesus here is not like other types on the Old Testament. In
relation to sin and atonement there is a lamb or a bullock slain; but here
Adam was not slain, but only put to sleep to awake again. Thus he prefigures
a death that is not on account of sin, but that has in view increase in
resurrection. Then too we must note that Eve was not created as a separate
entity by a separate creation, parallel to that of Adam. Adam slept, and Eve
was created out of Adam. That is God’s method with the Church. God’s ‘
second Man’ has awakened from His ‘sleep’ and His Church is created in
Him and of Him, to draw her life from Him and to display that resurrection
life.
God has a Son who is known to be the only begotten, and God is seeking that
the only begotten Son should have brethren. From the position of only
begotten He will become the first begotten, and instead of the Son alone God
will have many sons. One grain of wheat has died and many grains will
spring up. The first grain was once the only grain; now it is changed to be
the first grain of many. The Lord Jesus laid down His life, and that life
emerged in many lives. These are the Biblical figures we have used hitherto
in our study to express this truth. Now, in the figure just considered, the
singular takes the place of the plural. The outcome of the Cross is a single
person: a Bride for the Son. Christ loved the Church and gave Himself up
for it.

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: chapter 11.2 The Fourfold Work Of Christ In His Cross
: We are now in a position to go a step further still and to consider how
: great a range is compassed by the Cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. In the
: light of Christian experience and for the purpose of analysis, it may help
: us if we recognize four aspects of God’s redemptive work. But in doing so
: it is essential to keep in mind that the Cross of Christ is one Divine work
: —not many. Once in Judaea two thousand years ago the Lord Jesus died and
: rose again, and He is now “by the right hand of God exalted” (Acts 2:33).
: The work is finished and need never be repeated, nor can it be added to.
: Of the four aspects of the Cross which we shall now mention, we have already

l**********t
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148
chapter 11.4 One Living Sacrifice
We have said that there is an aspect of the death of Christ presented to us
in Ephesians 5 which is to some extent different from that which we have
been studying in Romans. Yet in fact this aspect is the very end to which
our study of Romans has been moving, and it is into this that the letter is
leading us as we shall now see, for redemption leads us back into God’s
original line of purpose.
In chapter 8 Paul speaks to us of Christ as the firstborn Son among many
Spirit-led “sons of God” (Rom. 8:14). “For whom he foreknew, he also
foreordained to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the
firstborn among many brethren: and whom he foreordained, them he also called
also glorified” (Rom. 8:29, 30). Here justification is seen to lead on to
glory, a glory that is expressed not in one or more individuals but in a
plurality: in many who manifest the image of One. And this object of our
redemption is further set forth, as we have seen, in “the love of Christ”
for His own, which is the subject of the last verses of the chapter (8:35-39
). But what is implicit here in chapter 8 becomes explicit as we move over
into chapter 12, the subject of which is the Body of Christ.
After the first eight chapters of Romans, which we have been studying, there
follows a parenthesis in which God’s sovereign dealings with Israel are
taken up and dealt with, before the theme of the first chapters is resumed.
Thus, for our present purpose, the argument of chapter 12 follows that of
chapter 8 and not of chapter 11. We might very simply summarize these
chapters thus: Our sins are forgiven (ch. 5), we are dead with Christ (ch. 6
), we are by nature utterly helpless (ch. 7), therefore we rely upon the
indwelling Spirit (ch. 8). After this, and as a consequence of it: “We...
are one body in Christ” (ch. 12). It is as though this were the logical
outcome of all that has gone before, and the thing to which it has all been
leading.
Romans 12 and the following chapter contain some very practical instructions
for our life and walk. These are introduced with an emphasis once again on
consecration. In chapter 6:13 Paul has said: “Present yourselves unto God,
as alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness
unto God”. But now in chapter 12:1 the emphasis is a little different: “I
beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your
bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable
service”. This new appeal for consecration is made to us as “brethren”,
linking us in thought to the “many brethren” of chapter 8:29. It is a call
to us for a united step of faith, the presenting of our bodies as one “
living sacrifice” unto God.
This is something that goes beyond the merely individual, for it implies
contribution to a whole. The ‘presenting’ is personal but the sacrifice is
corporate; it is one sacrifice. Intelligent service to God is one service.
We need never feel our contribution is not needed, for if it contributes to
the service, God is satisfied. And it is through this kind of service that
we prove “what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God” (ch. 12
Paul’s appeal “to every man that is among you” (12:3) is in the light of
this new Divine fact, that “we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and
severally members one of another” (12:5), and it is on this basis that the
practical instructions follow.
The vessel through which the Lord Jesus can reveal Himself in this
generation is not the individual but the Body. “God hath dealt to each man
a measure of faith” (12:3), but alone in isolation man can never fulfill
God’s purpose. It requires a complete Body to attain to the stature of
Christ and to display His glory. Oh that we might really see this!
So Romans 12:3-6 draws from the figure of the human body the lesson of our
inter-dependence. Individual Christians are not the Body but are members of
the Body, and in a human body “all the members have not the same office”.
The ear must not imagine itself to be an eye. No amount of prayer will give
sight to the ear—but the whole body can see through the eye. So (speaking
figuratively) I may have only the gift of hearing, but I can see through
others who have the gift of sight; or, perhaps I can walk but cannot work,
so I receive help from the hands. An all-too-common attitude to the things
of the Lord is that, ‘What I know, I know; and what I don’t know, I don’t
know, and can do quite well without.’ But in Christ, the things we do not
know others do, and we may know them and enter into the enjoyment of them
through others.
Let me stress that this is not just a comfortable thought. It is a vital
factor in the life of God’s people. We cannot get along without one another
. That is why fellowship in prayer is so important. Prayer together brings
in the help of the Body, as must be clear from Matthew 18:19, 20. Trusting
the Lord by myself may not be enough. I must trust Him with others. I must
learn to pray ”Our Father...” on the basis of oneness with the Body, for
without the help of the Body I cannot get through. In the sphere of service
this is even more apparent. Alone I cannot serve the Lord effectively, and
He will spare no pains to teach me this. He will bring things to an end,
allowing doors to close and leaving me ineffectively knocking my head
against a blank wall until I realize that I need the help of the Body as
well as of the Lord. For the life of Christ is the life of the Body, and His
gifts are given to us for work that builds up the Body.
The Body is not an illustration but a fact. The Bible does not just say that
the Church is like a body, but that it is the Body of Christ. “We, who are
many, are one body in Christ, and severally members one of another.” All
the members together are one Body, for all share His life—as though He were
Himself distributed among His members. I was once with a group of Chinese
believers who found it very hard to understand how the Body could be one
when they were all separate individual men and women who made it up. One
Sunday I was about to break the bread at the Lord’s table and I asked them
to look very carefully at the loaf before I broke it. Then, after it had
been distributed and eaten, I pointed out that though it was inside all of
them it was still one loaf—not many. The loaf was divided, but Christ is
not divided even in the sense in which that loaf was. He is still one Spirit
in us, and we are all one in Him.
This is the very opposite of man’s condition by nature. In Adam I have the
life of Adam, but that is essentially individual. There is no union, no
fellowship in sin, but only self-interest and distrust of others. As I go on
with the Lord I soon discover, not only that the problem of sin and of my
natural strength has to be dealt with, but that there is also a further
problem created by my ‘individual’ life, the life that is sufficient in
itself and does not recognize its need for and union in the Body. I may have
got over the problems of sin and the flesh, and yet still be a confirmed
individualist. I want holiness and victory and fruitfulness for myself
personally and apart, albeit from the purest motives. but such an attitude
ignores the Body, and so cannot provide God with satisfaction. he must deal
with me therefore in this matter also, or I shall remain in conflict with
His ends. God does not blame me for being an individual, but for my
individualism. His greatest problem is not the outward divisions and
denominations that divide His Church but our own individualistic hearts.
Yes, the Cross must do its work here, reminding me that in Christ I have
died to that old life of independence which I inherited from Adam, and that
in resurrection I have become not just an individual believer in Christ but
a member of His Body. There is a vast difference between the two. When I see
this, I shall at once have done with independence and shall seek fellowship
. The life of Christ in me will gravitate to the life of Christ in others. I
can no longer take an individual line. Jealousy will go. Competition will
go. Private work will go. My interests, my ambitions, my preferences, all
will go. It will no longer matter which of us does the work. All that will
matter will be that the Body grows.
I said: ‘When I see this...’ That is the great need: to see the Body of
Christ as another great Divine fact; to have it break in upon our spirits by
heavenly revelation that “we, who are many, are one body in Christ”. Only
the Holy Spirit can bring this home to us in all its meaning, but when He
does it will revolutionize our life and work.
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chapter 11.5 More Than Conquerors Through Him
We only see history back to the Fall. God sees it from the beginning. There
was something in God’s mind before the Fall, and in the ages to come that
thing is to be fully realized. God knew all about sin and redemption; yet in
His great purpose for the Church set forth in Genesis 2 there is no view of
sin. It is as though (to speak in finite terms) He leaps in thought right
over the whole story of redemption and sees the Church in future eternity,
having a ministry and a (future) history which is altogether apart from sin
and wholly of God. It is the Body of Christ in glory, expressing nothing of
fallen man but only that which is the image of the glorified Son of man.
This is the Church that has satisfied God’s heart and has attained dominion.
In Ephesians 5 we stand within the history of redemption, and yet through
grace we still have this eternal purpose of God in view as expressed in the
statement that He will ‘present unto himself a glorious Church’. But now
we note that the water of life and the cleansing Word are needed to prepare
the Church (now marred by the Fall) for presentation to Christ in glory. For
now there are defects to be remedied and wounds to be healed. And yet how
precious is the promise and how gracious are the words used of her: “not
having spot”—the scars of sin, whose very history is now forgotten; “or
wrinkle”—the marks of age and of time lost, for all is now made up and all
is new; and “without blemish”—so that Satan or demons or men can find no
ground for blame in her.
This is where we are now. The age is closing, and Satan’s power is greater
than ever. Our warfare is with angels and principalities and powers (Rom. 8:
38; Eph. 6:12) who are set to withstand and destroy the work of God in us by
laying many things to the charge of God’s elect. Alone we could never be
their match, but what we alone cannot do the Church can. Sin, self-reliance
and individualism were Satan’s master-strokes at the heart of God’s
purpose in man, and in the Cross God has undone them. As we put our faith in
what He has done—in “God that justifieth” and in “Christ Jesus that
died” (Rom. 8:33, 34)—we present a front against which the very gates of
Hades shall not prevail. We, His Church, are “more than conquerors through
him that loved us” (Rom. 8:37).


【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: chapter 11.4 One Living Sacrifice
: We have said that there is an aspect of the death of Christ presented to us
: in Ephesians 5 which is to some extent different from that which we have
: been studying in Romans. Yet in fact this aspect is the very end to which
: our study of Romans has been moving, and it is into this that the letter is
: leading us as we shall now see, for redemption leads us back into God’s
: original line of purpose.
: In chapter 8 Paul speaks to us of Christ as the firstborn Son among many
: Spirit-led “sons of God” (Rom. 8:14). “For whom he foreknew, he also
: foreordained to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the

l**********t
发帖数: 5754
150
Chapter 12: The Cross and the Soul Life
God has made full provision for our redemption in the Cross of Christ, but
He has not stopped there. In that Cross He has also made secure beyond
possibility of failure that eternal plan which Paul speaks of as having been
from all the ages “hid in God who created all things”. That plan He has
now proclaimed “to the intent that now unto the principalities and the
powers in the heavenly places might be made known through the church the
manifold wisdom of God, according to the eternal purpose which he purposed
in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Eph. 3:9-11).
We have said that the work of the Cross has two consequences which bear
directly upon the realizing of that purpose in us. On the one hand it has
issued in the release of His life that it may find expression in us through
the indwelling Spirit. On the other hand it has made possible what we speak
of as ‘bearing the cross’; that is, our co-operation in the daily
inworking of His death whereby way is made in us for the manifestation of
that new life, through the bringing of the ‘natural man’ progressively
into his right place of subjection to the Holy Spirit. Clearly these are the
positive and the negative sides of one thing. Equally clearly we are now
touching more particularly on the matter of progress in a life lived for God
. Hitherto in dealing with the Christian life we have placed our main
emphasis upon the crisis by which it is entered. Now our concern is more
definitely with the walk of the disciple, having especially in view his
training as a servant of God. It is of him that the Lord Jesus said: “
Whosoever doth not bear his own cross, and come after me, cannot be my
disciple” (Luke 14:27).
So we come to a consideration of the natural man and the ‘bearing of the
cross’. To understand this we must, at the risk of being tedious, go back
once more to Genesis and consider what it was that God sought to have in man
at the beginning and how His purpose was frustrated. In this way we shall
be able to grasp the principles by which we can come again to live in line
with that purpose.

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: chapter 11.5 More Than Conquerors Through Him
: We only see history back to the Fall. God sees it from the beginning. There
: was something in God’s mind before the Fall, and in the ages to come that
: thing is to be fully realized. God knew all about sin and redemption; yet in
: His great purpose for the Church set forth in Genesis 2 there is no view of
: sin. It is as though (to speak in finite terms) He leaps in thought right
: over the whole story of redemption and sees the Church in future eternity,
: having a ministry and a (future) history which is altogether apart from sin
: and wholly of God. It is the Body of Christ in glory, expressing nothing of
: fallen man but only that which is the image of the glorified Son of man.

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Chapter 12.1 The True Nature Of The Fall
If we have even a little revelation of the plan of God we shall always think
much of the word ‘man’. We shall say with the Psalmist, “What is man,
that thou art mindful of him?” The Bible makes it clear that what God
desires above all things is a man—a man who will be after His own heart.
So God created a man. In Genesis 2:7 we learn that Adam was created a living
soul, with a spirit inside to commune with God and with a body outside to
have contact with the material world. (Such New Testament verses as 1
Thessalonians 5:23 and Hebrews 4:12 confirm this threefold character of man
’s being.) With his spirit Adam was in touch with the spiritual world of
God; with his body he was in touch with the physical world of material
things. He gathered up these two sides of God’s creative act into himself
to become a personality, an entity living in the world, moving by itself and
having powers of free choice. Viewed thus as a whole, he was found to be a
self-conscious and self-expressing being, “a living soul”.
We saw earlier that Adam was created perfect—by which we mean that he was
without imperfections because created by God—but that he was not yet
perfected. He needed a finishing touch somewhere. God had not yet done all
that He intended to do in Adam. There was more in view, but it was as yet in
abeyance. God was moving towards the fulfillment of His purpose in creating
man, a purpose which went beyond man himself, for it had in view the
securing to God of all His rights in the universe through man’s
instrumentality. But how could man be instrumental in this? Only by a co-
operation that sprang from living union with God. God was seeking to have
not merely a race of men of one blood upon the earth, but a race which had,
in addition, His life resident within its members. Such a race will
eventually compass the downfall of Satan and bring to fulfillment all that
God has set His heart upon. It is that that was in view with the creation of
man.
Then again, we saw that Adam was created neutral. He had a spirit which
enabled him to hold communion with God; but as man he was not yet, so to
speak, finally orientated; he had powers of choice and he could, if he liked
, turn the opposite way. God’s goal in man was ‘sonship’, or, in other
words, the expression of His life in human beings. That Divine life was
represented in the garden by the tree of life, bearing a fruit that could be
accepted, received, taken in. If Adam, created neutral, were voluntarily to
turn that way and, choosing dependence upon God, were to receive of the
tree of life (representing God’s own life), God would then have that life
in union with men; He would have realized ‘sonship’. But if instead Adam
should turn to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, he would as a
result be ‘free’ to develop himself on his own lines apart from God.
Because, however, this latter choice involved complicity with Satan, Adam
would thereby put beyond his reach the attaining of his God-appointed goal.

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: Chapter 12: The Cross and the Soul Life
: God has made full provision for our redemption in the Cross of Christ, but
: He has not stopped there. In that Cross He has also made secure beyond
: possibility of failure that eternal plan which Paul speaks of as having been
: from all the ages “hid in God who created all things”. That plan He has
: now proclaimed “to the intent that now unto the principalities and the
: powers in the heavenly places might be made known through the church the
: manifold wisdom of God, according to the eternal purpose which he purposed
: in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Eph. 3:9-11).
: We have said that the work of the Cross has two consequences which bear

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chapter 12.2
The Root Question: The Human Soul
Now we know the course that Adam chose. Standing between the two trees, he
yielded to Satan and took of the fruit of the tree of knowledge. This
determined the lines of his development. From then on he could command a
knowledge; he ‘knew’. But—and here we come to the point—the fruit of the
tree of knowledge made the first man over-developed in his soul. The
emotion was touched, because the fruit was pleasant to the eyes, making him
‘desire’; the mind with its reasoning power was developed, for he was ‘
made wise’; and the will was strengthened, so that in future he could
always decide which way he would go. The whole fruit ministered to the
expansion and full development of the soul, so that not only was the man a
living soul, but from henceforth man will live by the soul. It is not merely
that man has a soul, but that from that day on the soul, with its
independent powers of free choice, takes the place of the spirit as the
animating power of man.
We have to distinguish here between two things, for the difference is most
important. God does not mind—in fact He intends—that we should have a soul
such as He gave to Adam. But what God has set Himself to do is to reverse
something. There is something in man today which is not just the fact of
having a soul, but which constitutes a living by the soul. It was this that
Satan brought about in the Fall. He trapped man into taking a course by
which he could develop his soul so as to derive his very life from it.
We must however be careful. To remedy this does not mean that we are going
to cross out the soul altogether. You cannot do that. When today the Cross
is really working in us, we do not become inert, insensate, characterless.
No, we still possess a soul, and whenever we receive something from God the
soul will still be used in relation to it, as an instrument, a faculty, in a
true subjection to Him. But the point is, Are we keeping within God’s
appointed limit—within the bounds set by Him in the Garden at the beginning
—with regard to the soul, or are we getting outside those bounds?
What God is now doing is the pruning work of the vinedresser. In our souls
there is an uncontrolled development, an untimely growth, that has to be
checked and dealt with. God must cut that off. So now there are two things
before us to which our eyes must be opened. On the one hand God is seeking
to bring us to the place where we live by the life of His Son. On the other
hand He is doing a direct work in our hearts to undo that other natural
resource that is the result of the fruit of knowledge. Every day we are
learning these two lessons: a rising up of the life of this One, and a
checking and a handing over to death of that other soul-life. These two
processes go on all the time, for God is seeking the fully developed life of
His Son in us in order to manifest Himself, and to that end He is bringing
us back, as to our soul, to Adam’s starting-point. So Paul says: “We which
live are always delivered unto death for Jesus’ sake, that the life also
of Jesus may be manifested in our mortal flesh” (2 Cor. 4:11).
What does this mean? It simply means that I will not take any action without
relying on God. I will find no sufficiency in myself. I will not take any
step just because I have the power to do so. Even though I have that
inherited power within me, I will not use it; I will put no reliance in
myself. By taking the fruit, Adam became possessed of an inherent power to
act, but a power which played right into Satan’s hands. You lose that power
to act when you come to know the Lord. The Lord cuts it off and you find
you can no longer act on your own initiative. You have to live by the life
of Another; you have to draw everything from Him.
Oh, friends, I think we all know ourselves in measure, but many a time we do
not truly tremble at ourselves. We may, in a manner of courtesy to God, say
subconscious thought is that really we can do it quite well ourselves, even
if God does not ask us to do it nor empower us for it. Too often we have
been caused to act, to think, to decide, to have power, apart from Him. Many
of us Christians today are men with over-developed souls. We have grown too
big in ourselves. We have become ‘big-souled’. When we are in that
condition, the life of the Son of God in us is confined and almost crowded
out of action.
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chapter 12.3
Natural Energy In The Work Of God
The power, the energy of the soul is present with us all. Those who have
been taught by the Lord repudiate that principle as a life principle; they
refuse to live by it; they will not let it reign, nor allow it to be the
power-spring of the work of God. But those who have not been taught of God
rely upon it; they utilize it; they think it is the power.
Let us take first an obvious illustration of this. Far too many of us in the
past have reasoned as follows. Here is a delightfully good-natured man,
with a clear brain, splendid managing powers and sound judgment. In our
hearts we say, ‘If that man could be a Christian, what an asset he would be
to the Church! If only he were the Lord’s, what a lot it would mean to His
cause!’
But think for a moment. Where did that man’s good nature come from? Whence
are those splendid managing powers and that good judgment? Not form new
birth, for he is not yet born again. We know we have all been born of the
flesh; therefore we need a new birth. But the Lord Jesus had something to
say about this in John 3:6: “That which is born of the flesh is flesh”.
Everything which comes not by new birth but by natural birth is flesh and
will only bring glory to man, not God. That statement is not very palatable,
but it is true.
We have spoken of soul-power or natural energy. What is this natural energy?
It is simply what I can do, what I am of myself, what I have inherited of
natural gifts and resources. We are none of us without the power of the soul
, and our first need is to recognize it for what it is.
Take for example the human mind. I may have by nature a keen mind. Before my
new birth I had it naturally, as something developed from my natural birth.
But the trouble arises here. I become converted, I am born anew, a deep
work is effected in my spirit, and essential union with God that has been
set up in my spirit, but at the same time I carry over with me something
which I derive from my natural birth. Now what am I going to do about it?
The natural tendency is this. Formerly I used to use my mind to pore over
history, over business, over chemistry, over questions of the world, or
literature, or poetry. I used my keen mind to get the best out of those
studies. But now my desire has been changed, so henceforth I employ the same
mind in the things of God. I have therefore changed my subject of interest,
but I have not changed my method of working. That is the whole point. My
interests have been utterly changed (praise God for that!), but now I
utilize the same power to study Corinthians and Ephesians that I used before
to pursue history and geography. But that power is not of God; and God will
not allow that. The trouble with so many of us is that we have changed the
channel into which our energies are directed, but we have not changed the
source of those energies.
You will find there are many such things which we carry over into the
service of God. Consider the matter of eloquence. There are some men who are
born orators; they can present a case very convincingly indeed. Then they
become converted, and, without asking ourselves where they really stand in
relation to spiritual things, we put them on the platform and make preachers
of them. We encourage them to use their natural powers for preaching, and
again it is a change of subject but the same power. We forget that, in the
matter of our resource for handling the things of God, it is a question not
of comparative value but of origin—of where the resource springs from. It
is not so much a matter of what we are doing, but of what powers we are
employing to do it. We think too little of the source of our energy and too
much of the end to which it is directed, forgetting that with God the end
never justifies the means.
The following hypothetical case will help us to test the truth of our
argument. Mr. A. is a very good speaker: he can talk fluently and most
convincingly on any subject, but in practical things he is a very bad
manager. Mr. B., on the other hand, is a poor speaker: he cannot express
himself clearly but wanders all round his subject, never coming to a point;
yet on the other hand he is a splendid manager, most competent in all
matters of business. Both these men get converted, and both become earnest
Christians. Let us suppose now that I call on them both and ask them to
speak at a convention, and that both accept.
Now what will happen? I have asked the self-same thing of both men, but who
do you think will pray the harder? Certainly Mr. B. Why? Because he is no
speaker. In the matter of eloquence he has no resources of his own to depend
upon. He will pray: ‘Lord, if you do not give me power for this, I cannot
do it’. Of course Mr. A. will pray too, but maybe not in the same way as Mr
. B. because he has something of natural resource upon which to rely.
Now let us suppose that, instead of asking them to speak, I ask them both to
take charge of the practical side of affairs at the convention. What will
happen? The position will be exactly reversed. Now it will be Mr. A.‘s turn
to pray hard, for he knows full well that he has no organizing ability. Mr.
B. of course will pray too, but perhaps without quite the same urgency, for
though he knows his need of the Lord he is not nearly so conscious of his
need in business matters as is Mr. A.
Do you see the difference between natural and spiritual gifts? Anything we
can do without prayer and without an utter dependence upon God must come
from that spring of natural life, and is suspect. We must see this clearly.
Of course it is not true that those only are suited for a particular work
who lack the natural gift for it. The point is that, whether naturally
gifted or not, they must know the touch of the Cross in death upon all that
is of nature, and their complete dependence upon the God of resurrection.
All too readily do we envy our neighbor who has some outstanding natural
gift, and fail to realize that our own possession of it, apart from such a
working of the Cross, may easily prove a barrier to the very thing that God
is seeking to manifest in us.
Shortly after my conversion I went out preaching in the villages. I had had
a good education and was well versed in the Scriptures, so I considered
myself thoroughly capable of instructing the village folk, among whom were
quite a number of illiterate women. But after several visits I discovered
that, despite their illiteracy, those women hand an intimate knowledge of
the Lord. I knew the Book they haltingly read; they knew the One of whom the
Book spoke. I had much in the flesh; they had much in the Spirit. How many
Christian teachers today are teaching others as I was then, very largely in
the strength of their carnal equipment!
Once I met a young brother—young, that is to say, in years, but who had
learned a good deal of the Lord. The Lord had brought him through much
tribulation to gain that knowledge of Himself. As I was talking to him I
said, ‘Brother, what has the Lord really been teaching you these days?’ He
said, ‘Only one thing: that I can do nothing apart from him.’ ‘Do you
really mean’, I said, ‘that you can do nothing?’ ‘Well, no’, he replied
. ‘I can do many things! In fact that has been just my trouble. Oh, you
know, I have always been so confident in myself. I know I am well able to do
lots of things.’ So I asked, ‘What then do you mean when you say you can
do nothing apart from Him?’ He answered, ‘The Lord has shown me that I can
do anything, but that He has said, “Apart from me ye can do nothing”. So
it comes to this, that everything I have done and can do apart from Him is
nothing!’
We have to come to that valuation. I do not mean to say we cannot do a lot
of things, for we can. We can take meetings, and build churches, we can go
to the ends of the earth and found missions, and we can seem to bear fruit;
but remember that the Lord’s word is: “Every plant which my heavenly
Father planted not, shall be rooted up” (Matt. 15:13). God is the only
legitimate Originator in the universe (Gen. 1:1). Anything that you plan and
set on foot has its origin in the flesh, and it will never reach the realm
of the Spirit however earnestly you seek God’s blessing on it. It may last
for years, and then you may think you will adjust here and improve there and
maybe bring it on a better plane, but it cannot be done.
Origin determines destination, and what was “of the flesh” originally will
never be made spiritual by any amount of ‘improvement’. That which is
born of the flesh is flesh, and it will never be otherwise. Anything for
which we are sufficient in ourselves is ‘nothing’ in God’s estimate, and
we have to accept His estimate and write it down as nothing. “The flesh
profiteth nothing.” It is only what comes from above that will abide.
We cannot see this simply by being told it. God must teach us what is meant,
by putting His finger on something which He sees and saying: ‘This is
natural; this has its source in the old creation; this cannot abide.’ Until
He does so, we may agree in principle but we can never really see it. We
may assent to, and even enjoy, the teaching, but we shall never truly loathe
ourselves.
But there will come a day when God opens our eyes. Facing a particular issue
we shall have to say, as by revelation: ‘It is unclean, it is impure; Lord
, I see it!’ The word ‘purity’ is a blessed word. I always associate it
with the Spirit. Purity means something altogether of the Spirit. Impurity
means mixture. When God opens our eyes to see that the natural life is
something He can never use in His work, then we find we do not enjoy the
doctrine any longer. Rather we loathe ourselves for the impurity that is in
us; but when that point is reached, God begins His work of deliverance. We
are going on shortly to look at the provision He has made for that
deliverance, but we must stay for a little longer with this matter of
revelation.

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: chapter 12.2
: The Root Question: The Human Soul
: Now we know the course that Adam chose. Standing between the two trees, he
: yielded to Satan and took of the fruit of the tree of knowledge. This
: determined the lines of his development. From then on he could command a
: knowledge; he ‘knew’. But—and here we come to the point—the fruit of the
: tree of knowledge made the first man over-developed in his soul. The
: emotion was touched, because the fruit was pleasant to the eyes, making him
: ‘desire’; the mind with its reasoning power was developed, for he was ‘
: made wise’; and the will was strengthened, so that in future he could

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154
chapter 12.4 The Light Of God And Knowledge
Of course, if one does not set out to serve the Lord whole-heartedly,
one does not feel the necessity for light. It is only when one has been
apprehended by God, and seeks to go forward with Him, that one finds
how necessary light is. There is a fundamental need of light in order
for us to know the mind of God; to know what is of the spirit and what
is of the soul; to know what is Divine and what is merely of man; to
discern what is truly heavenly and what is only earthly; to understand
the difference between things which are spiritual and things which are
carnal; to know whether God is really leading us or whether we are
walking by our feelings, senses or imaginations. It is when we have
reached a position where we would like to follow God fully that we find
light to be the most necessary thing in the Christian life.
In my conversations with younger brothers and sisters one question
comes up again and again. It is: How can I know that I am walking in
the Spirit? How do I distinguish which prompting within me is from the
Holy Spirit and which is from myself? It seems that all are alike in
this; but some have gone further. They are trying to look within, to
differentiate, to discriminate to analyze, and in doing so are bringing
themselves into deeper bondage. Now this is a situation which is really
dangerous to Christian life, for inward knowledge will never be reached
along the barren path of self-analysis.
We are never told in the Word of God to examine our inward condition.
[15] That way ends only to uncertainty, vacillation and despair. Of
course we have to have self-knowledge. We have to know what is going on
within. We do not want to live in a fool's paradise; to have gone
altogether wrong and yet not know we have gone wrong; to have a spartan
will and yet think we are pursuing the will of God. But such
self-knowledge does not come by our turning within; by our analyzing
our feelings and motives and everything that is going on inside, and
then trying to pronounce whether we are walking in the flesh or in the
Spirit.
There are several passages in the Psalms which illumine this subject.
The first is in Psalm 36:9: "In thy light shall we see light". I think
that is one of the best verses in the old Testament. There are two
lights there. There is "thy light", and then, when we have come into
that light, we shall "see light".
Now those two lights are different. We might say that the first is
objective and the second subjective. The first light is the light which
belongs to God but is shed upon us; the second is the knowledge
imparted by that light. "In thy light shall we see light": we shall
know something; we shall be clear about something; we shall see. No
turning within, no introspective self-examination will ever bring us to
that clear place. No, it is when there is light coming from God that we
see.
I think it is so simple. If we want to satisfy ourselves that our face
is clean, what do we do? Do we feel it carefully all over with our
hands? No, of course not. We find a mirror and we bring it to the
light. In that light everything becomes clear. No sight ever came by
feeling or analyzing. Sight only comes by the light of God coming in;
and when once it has come, there is no longer need to ask if a thing is
right or wrong. We know.
You remember again how in Psalm 139:23 the writer says: "Search me, O
God, and know my heart". You realize, do you not, what it means to say
Search me'? It certainly does not mean that I search myself. Search me'
means You search me!' That is the way of illumination. It is for God to
come in and search; it is not for me to search. Of course that will
never mean that I may go blindly on, careless of my true condition.
That is not the point. The point is that however much my
self-examination may reveal in me that needs putting right, such
searching never really gets below the surface. My true knowledge of
self comes not from my searching myself but from God searching me.
But, you ask, what does it mean in practice for us to come into the
light? How does it work? How do we see light in His light? Here again
the Psalmist comes to our help. "The entrance of Thy words giveth
light; it giveth understanding unto the simple" (Psalm 119:130 A.V.).
In spiritual things we are all simple'. We are dependent upon God to
give us understanding, and especially is this so in the matter of our
own true nature. And it is here that the Word of God operates. In the
New Testament the passage which states this most clearly is in the
Epistle to the Hebrews: "The word of God is living, and active, and
sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing even to the dividing of
soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and quick to discern the
thoughts and intents of the heart. And there is no creature that is not
manifest in his sight: but all things are naked and laid open before
the eyes of him with whom we have to do" (Heb. 4:12, 13). Yes, it is
the Word of God, the penetrating Scripture of Truth, that settles our
questions. It is that which discerns our motives and defines for us
their true source in soul or spirit.
With this I think we can pass on from the doctrinal to the practical
side of things. Many of us, I am sure, are living quite honestly before
God. We have been making progress, and we do not know of anything much
wrong with us. Then one day, as we go on, we meet with a fulfillment of
that word: "The entrance of Thy words giveth light". Some servant of
God has been used by Him to confront us with His living Word, and that
Word has made an entrance into us. Or perhaps we ourselves have been
waiting before God and, whether from our memory of Scripture or from
the page itself, His Word has come to us in power. Then it is we see
something which we have never seen before. We are convicted. We know
where we are wrong, and we look up and confess: Lord, I see it. There
is impurity there. There is mixture. How blind I was! Just fancy that
for so many years I have been wrong there and have never known it!'
Light comes in and we see light. The light of God brings us to see the
light concerning ourselves, and it is an abiding principle that every
knowledge of self comes to us in that way.
It may not always be the Scriptures. Some of us have known saints who
really knew the Lord, and through praying with them or talking with
them, in the light of God radiating from them, we have seen something
which we never saw before. I have met one such, who is now with the
Lord, and I always think of her as a lighted' Christian. If I did but
walk into her room, I was brought immediately to a sense of God. In
those days I was very young and had been converted about two years, and
I had lots of plans, lots of beautiful thoughts, lots of schemes for
the Lord to sanction, a hundred and one things which I thought would be
marvelous if they were all brought to fruition. With all these things I
came to her to try to persuade her; to tell her that this or that was
the thing to do.
Before I could open my mouth she would just say a few words in quite an
ordinary way. Light dawned! It simply put me to shame. My doing' was
all so natural, so full of man. Something happened. I was brought to a
place where I could say: Lord, my mind is set only in creaturely
activities, but here is someone who is not out for them at all'. She
had but one motive, one desire, and that was for God. Written in the
front of her Bible were these words: Lord, I want nothing for myself',
Yes, she lived for God alone, and where that is the case you will find
that such a one is bathed in light, and that that light illuminates
others. That is real witness. [16] Light has one law: it shines
wherever it is admitted. That is the only requirement. We may shut it
out of ourselves; it fears nothing else. If we throw ourselves open to
God, He will reveal. The trouble comes when we have closed areas,
locked and barred places in our hearts, where we think with pride that
we are right. Our defeat lies then not only in our being wrong but in
our not knowing that we are wrong. Wrong may be a question of natural
strength; ignorance of it is a question of light. You can see the
natural strength in some but they cannot see it themselves. Oh, we need
to be sincere and humble, and to open ourselves before God! Those who
are open can see. God is light, and we cannot live in His light and be
without understanding. Let us say again with the Psalmist: "O send out
Thy light and Thy truth: let them lead me" (Psalm 43:3).
We praise God that sin is being brought to the notice of Christians
today more than hitherto. In many places the eyes of Christians have
been opened to see that victory over sins, as items, is important in
Christian life, and in consequence many are walking closer to the Lord
in seeking deliverance and victory over them. Praise the Lord for any
movement toward Himself, any movement back to real holiness unto God!
But that is not enough. There is one thing that must be touched, and
that is the very life of the man, not merely his sins. The question of
the personality of the man, of his soul-power, is the heart of the
matter. To make the question of sins to be everything is still to be on
the surface. Holiness, if you only regard sins, is still something on
the outside, still superficial. You have not yet got to the root of the
evil.
Adam did not let sin into the world by committing murder. That came
later. Adam let in sin by choosing to have his soul developed to a
place where he cold go on by himself apart from God. When, therefore,
God secures a race of men who will be to His glory, and who will be His
instrument to accomplish His purpose in the universe, they will be a
people whose life--yea, whose very breath--is dependent upon Him. He
will be the "tree of life" to them.
What I feel more and more the need of in myself, and what I feel that
we all as the Lord's children need to seek from God, is a real
revelation of ourselves. I repeat that I do not mean we should be for
ever looking in on ourselves and asking: Now, is this soul or is it
spirit?' That will never get us anywhere; it is darkness. No, Scripture
shows us how the saints were brought to self-knowledge. It was always
by light from God, and that light is God Himself. Isaiah, Ezekiel,
Daniel, Peter, Paul, John, all came to a knowledge of themselves
because the Lord flashed Himself upon them, and that flash brought
revelation and conviction. (Isa. 6:5; Ezek. 1:28; Dan. 10:8; Luke
22:61, 62; Acts 9:3-5; Rev. 1:17).
We can never know the hatefulness of sin and the hatefulness of
ourselves unless there is that flash of God upon us. I speak not of a
sensation but of an inward revelation of the Lord Himself through His
Word. It does for us what doctrine alone can never do.
Christ is our light. He is the living Word, and when we read the
Scriptures that life in Him brings revelation. "The life was the light
of men" (John 1:4). Such illumination may not come to us all at once,
but gradually; but it will be more and more clear and searching, until
we see ourselves in the light of God and all our self-confidence is
gone. For light is the purest thing in the world. It cleanses. It
sterilizes. It kills what should not be there. In its radiance the
dividing asunder of joints and marrow' becomes to us a fact and no mere
teaching. We know fear and trembling as we recognize the corruption of
man's nature, the hatefulness of our own selves, and the real threat to
the work of God of our unrestrained soul-life and energy. As never
before, we know how much of us needs God's drastic dealing if He is to
use us, and we know that, apart from Him, as servants of God we are
finished.
But here the Cross, in its widest meaning, will come to our help again,
and we shall seek now to examine an aspect of its work which meets and
deals with our problem of the human soul. For only a thorough
understanding of the Cross can bring us to that place of dependence
which the Lord Jesus Himself voluntarily took when He said: "I can of
myself do nothing: as I hear, I judge: and my judgment is righteous;
because I seek not mine own will, but the will of him that sent me"
(John 5:30).
__________________________________________________________________
[15] The two apparent exceptions to this are found in 1 Corinthians
11:28, 31 and 2 Corinthians 13:5. But the former passage calls upon us
to discern ourselves as to whether we recognize the Lord's body or not,
and this is in particular connection with the Lord's table. It is not
concerned with self-knowledge as such. The strong command of Paul in
the latter passage is to examine ourselves as to whether or not we are
"in the faith". It is a question of the existence or otherwise in us of
a fundamental faith; of whether, in fact, we are Christians. This is in
no way related to our daily walk in the Spirit, or to
self-knowledge.--W.N.
[16] This is one of several references by the author to the late Miss
Maragaret E. Barber of Pagoda Anchorage, Foochow. See also pp. 95-6,
239, 256-7, 266-7.--Ed.
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: chapter 12.3
: Natural Energy In The Work Of God
: The power, the energy of the soul is present with us all. Those who have
: been taught by the Lord repudiate that principle as a life principle; they
: refuse to live by it; they will not let it reign, nor allow it to be the
: power-spring of the work of God. But those who have not been taught of God
: rely upon it; they utilize it; they think it is the power.
: Let us take first an obvious illustration of this. Far too many of us in the
: past have reasoned as follows. Here is a delightfully good-natured man,
: with a clear brain, splendid managing powers and sound judgment. In our

l**********t
发帖数: 5754
155
Chapter 13: The Path of Progress: Bearing the Cross
In our previous chapter we have touched several times upon the matter of
service for the Lord. As we come now to look at the provision that God has
made to meet the problem created by the soul-life of man, it will be helpful
if we approach that problem by considering first the principles which
govern our work for Him and from which no one who tries to serve Him may
deviate. The basis of our salvation, as we well know, is the fact of our
Lord’s death and resurrection; but the conditions of our service are no
less definite. Just as the fact of the death and resurrection of the Lord is
the ground of our acceptance with God, so the principle of death and
resurrection is the basis of our life and service for Him.

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: chapter 12.4 The Light Of God And Knowledge
: Of course, if one does not set out to serve the Lord whole-heartedly,
: one does not feel the necessity for light. It is only when one has been
: apprehended by God, and seeks to go forward with Him, that one finds
: how necessary light is. There is a fundamental need of light in order
: for us to know the mind of God; to know what is of the spirit and what
: is of the soul; to know what is Divine and what is merely of man; to
: discern what is truly heavenly and what is only earthly; to understand
: the difference between things which are spiritual and things which are
: carnal; to know whether God is really leading us or whether we are

l**********t
发帖数: 5754
156
chapter 13. 1 The Basis Of All True Ministry
No one can be a true servant of God without knowing the principle of death and the principle of resurrection. Even the Lord Jesus Himself served on that basis. You will find in Matthew 3 that, before His public ministry ever began, our Lord was baptized. He was baptized not because He had any sin, or anything which needed cleansing. No, we know the meaning of baptism: it is a figure of death and resurrection. The ministry of the Lord did not begin until He was on that ground. After He had been baptized and had voluntarily taken the ground of death and resurrection, the Holy Spirit came upon Him, and then He ministered.
What does this teach us? Our Lord was a sinless Man. None but He has trodden this earth and known no sin. Yet as Man He had a separate personality from His Father. Now we must tread very carefully when we touch our Lord; but remember His words: “I seek not mine own will, but the will of him that sent me”. What does this mean? It certainly does not mean that the Lord had no will of His own. He had a will, as His own words show. As Son of man He had a will, but He did not do it; He came to do the will of the Father. So this is the point. That thing in Him which is in distinction from the Father is the human soul, which He assumed when He was “found in fashion as a man”. Being a perfect Man our Lord had a soul, and of course a body, just as you and I have a soul and a body, and it was possible for Him to act from the soul—that is, from Himself.
You remember that immediately after the Lord’s baptism, and before His public ministry began, Satan came and tempted Him. He tempted Him to satisfy His essential needs by turning stones to bread; to secure immediate respect for His ministry by appearing miraculously in the temple court; to assume without delay the world dominion destined for Him; and you are inclined to wonder why he tempted Him to do such strange things. He might rather, you feel, have tempted Him to sin in a more thoroughgoing way. But he did not; he knew better. He only said: “If thou art the Son of God, command that these stones become bread”. What did it mean? The implication was this: ‘If You are the Son of God You must do something to prove it. Here is a challenge. Some will certainly raise a question as to whether Your claim is real or not. Why do You not settle the matter finally now by coming out and proving it?’
The whole subtle object of Satan was to get the Lord to act for Himself—that is, from the soul—and, by the stand He took, the Lord Jesus absolutely repudiated such action. In Adam, man had acted from himself apart from God; that was the whole tragedy of the garden. Now in a similar situation the Son of man takes another ground. Later He defines it as His basic life-principle—and I like the word in the Greek: “The Son can do nothing out from himself” (John 5:19). That total denial of the soul-life was to govern all His ministry.
So we can safely say that all the work which the Lord Jesus did on earth, prior to His actual death on the cross, was done with the principle of death on the cross, and resurrection as basis, even though as an actual event Calvary still lay in the future. Everything He did was on that ground. But if this is so—if the Son of man has to go through death and resurrection (in figure and in principle) in order to work, can we do otherwise? Surely no servant of the Lord can serve Him without himself knowing the working of that principle in his life. It is of course out of the question. The Lord made this very clear to His disciples when He left them. He had died and He was risen, and He told them to wait in Jerusalem for the Spirit to come upon them. Now what is this power of the Holy Spirit, this “power from on high” of which He spoke? It is nothing less than the virtue of His death, resurrection and ascension. To use another figure, the Holy Spirit is the Vessel in whom all the values of the death, resurrection and exaltation of the Lord are deposited, that they may be brought to us. He is the one who ‘contains’ those values and mediates them to men. That is the reason why the Spirit could not be given before the Lord had been glorified. Then only could He rest upon men and women that they might witness; and without the values of the death and resurrection of Christ no such witness is possible.
If we turn to the Old Testament we find the same thing is there. I would refer you to a familiar passage in the seventeenth chapter of Numbers. The matter of Aaron’s ministry has been contested. There is a question among the people as to whether Aaron is truly the chosen of God. They have entertained a suspicion, and have said in effect: ‘Whether that man is ordained of God or not, we do not know!’ and so God sets out to prove who is His servant and who is not. How does He do so? Twelve dead rods are put before the Lord in the sanctuary over against the testimony, and they are there for a night. Then, in the morning, the Lord indicates His chosen minister by the rod which buds, blossoms and bears fruit.
We all know the meaning of that. The budding rod speaks of resurrection. It is death and resurrection that marks God-recognized ministry. Without that you have nothing. The budding of Aaron’s rod proved him to be on a true basis, and God will only recognize as His ministers those who have come through death to resurrection ground.
We have seen that the death of the Lord works in different ways and has different aspects. We know how His death has worked in regard to the forgiveness of our sins. We all know that our forgiveness is based upon the shed Blood, and that without the shedding of Blood there is no remission. Then we have come further and in Romans 6 have seen how death works to meet the power of sin. We have learned that our old man has been crucified in order that henceforth we should not serve sin, and we have praised the Lord that here too His death has worked for our deliverance. Further on still the question of human self-will arises, and the need for consecration is apparent; and we find death working that way to bring about in us a willingness to let go our own wills and obey the Lord. That indeed constitutes a starting point for our ministry, but still it does not touch the core of the question. There may still be the lack of knowledge of what is meant by the soul.
Then another phase is presented to us in Romans 7 where the question of holiness of life is in view—a living, personal holiness. There you find a true man of God trying to please God in righteousness, and he comes under the law and the law finds him out. He is trying to please God by using his own carnal power, and the Cross has to bring him to the place where he says, ‘I cannot do it. I cannot satisfy God with my powers; I can only trust the Holy Spirit to do that in me.’ I believe some of us have passed through deep waters to learn this, and to discover the value of the death of the Lord working in this way.
Now mark you, there is still a great difference between “the flesh”, as spoken of in Romans 7 in relation to holiness of life, and the working of the natural energies of the soul-life in the service of the Lord. With all the above being known—and known in experience—there still remains this one sphere more which the death of the Lord must enter before we are actually of use to Him in service. Even with all these experiences we are still unsafe for Him to use until this further thing is effected in us. How many of God’s servants are used by Him, as we say in China, to build twelve feet of wall, only, when they have done so, to undo it all by themselves pulling down fifteen feet! We are used in a sense, but at the same time we destroy our own work, and sometimes that of others also, because of there being somewhere something undealt with by the Cross.
Now we have to see how the Lord has set out to deal with the soul, and then more particularly how this touches the question of our service for Him.

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: Chapter 13: The Path of Progress: Bearing the Cross
: In our previous chapter we have touched several times upon the matter of
: service for the Lord. As we come now to look at the provision that God has
: made to meet the problem created by the soul-life of man, it will be helpful
: if we approach that problem by considering first the principles which
: govern our work for Him and from which no one who tries to serve Him may
: deviate. The basis of our salvation, as we well know, is the fact of our
: Lord’s death and resurrection; but the conditions of our service are no
: less definite. Just as the fact of the death and resurrection of the Lord is
: the ground of our acceptance with God, so the principle of death and

l**********t
发帖数: 5754
157
chapter 13.2 The Subjective Working Of The Cross
We must keep before us now four passages from the Gospels. They are: Matthew
10:34-39; Mark 8:32-35; Luke 17:32-34; and John 12:24-26. These four
passages have something in common. In each you have the Lord Himself
speaking to us concerning the soul-activity of man, and in each a different
aspect or manifestation of the soul-life is touched upon. In these verses He
makes it very plain that the soul of man can be dealt with in one way and
in one way only, and that is by our bearing the cross daily and following
Him.
As we have just seen, the soul-life or natural life that is here in view is
something further than what we have in those passages which are concerned
with the old man or the flesh. We have sought to make quite clear that, in
respect of our old man, God emphasizes the thing He has done once for all in
crucifying us with Christ on the Cross. We have seen that three times in
the Epistle to the Galatians the ‘crucifying’ aspect of the Cross is
referred to as a thing accomplished; and in Romans 6:6 we have the clear
statement that “our old man was crucified”, which, if the tense of the
word means anything, we might well paraphrase: ‘Our old man has been
finally and for ever crucified’. It is something done, to be apprehended by
Divine revelation and then appropriated by faith.
But there is a further aspect of the Cross, namely that implied in the
expression ‘bearing his cross daily’, which is before us now. The Cross
has borne me; now I must bear it; and this bearing of the Cross is an inward
thing. It is this that we mean when we speak of ‘the subjective working of
the Cross’. Moreover it is a daily process; it is a step by step following
after Him. It is this which is now brought before us in relation to the
soul, and let us note that the emphasis here is not quite the same as with
the old man. We do not have here the ‘crucifixion’ of the soul itself, in
the sense that our natural gifts and faculties, our personality and our
individuality, are to be put away altogether. Were it so it could hardly be
said of us, as it is in Hebrews 10:39, that we are to “have faith unto the
saving of the soul”. (Compare 1 Peter 1:9; Luke 21:19.) No, we do not lose
our souls in this sense, for to do so would be to lose our individual
existence completely. The soul is still there with its natural endowments,
but the Cross is brought to bear upon it to bring those natural endowments
into death—to put the mark of His death upon them—and thereafter, as God
may please, to give them back to us in resurrection.
It is in this sense that Paul, writing to the Philippians, expresses the
desire “that I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the
fellowship of his sufferings, becoming conformed unto his death” (Phil. 3:
10). The mark of death is upon the soul all the time to bring it to the
place where it is always subordinate to the Spirit and never independently
asserts itself. Only the Cross, working in such a way, could make a man of
the calibre of Paul, and with the natural resources hinted at in Philippians
3, so distrust his own natural strength that he could write to the
Corinthians: “I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus
Christ, and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness, and in fear, and
in much trembling. And my speech and my preaching were not in persuasive
words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power: that your
faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God” (1
Cor. 2:2, 5).
The soul is the seat of the affections, and what a great part of our
decisions and actions is influenced by these! There is nothing deliberately
sinful about them, mind you, but it is simply that there is something in us
which can go out in natural affection to another person and which as a
result can influence wrongly our whole course of action. So in the first of
the four passages before us the Lord has to say: “He that loveth father or
mother more than me is not worthy of me; and he that loveth son or daughter
more than me is not worthy of me. And he that doth not take his cross and
follow after me, is not worthy of me” (Matt. 10:37, 38). You note that to
follow the Lord in the way of the Cross is set before us as His normal, His
only way for us. What immediately follows? “He that findeth his soul shall
lose it; and he that loseth his soul for my sake shall find it” (Matt. 10:
39, mg.).
The secret danger lies in that subtle working of the affections to turn us
away from the pathway of God; and the key to the matter is the soul. The
Cross has to deal with that. I have to “lose” my soul in the sense in
which the Lord meant those words, and which we are seeking here to explain.
Some of us know well what it means to lose our soul. We can no longer
fulfill its desire; we cannot give in to it; we cannot gratify it: that is
the ‘loss’ of the soul. We are going through a painful process to
discourage what the soul is asking for. And many a time we have to confess
that it is not any definite sin that is keeping us from following the Lord
to the end. We are held up because of some secret love somewhere, some
perfectly natural affection diverting our course. Yes, affection plays a
great part in our lives, and the Cross has to come in there and do its work.
Then we pass to the reference in Mark chapter 8. I think that is a most
important passage. Our Lord had just taught His disciples at Caesarea
Philippi that He was going to suffer death at the hands of the elders of the
Jews, and then Peter, with all his love for his Master, came up and rebuked
Him and said to Him: ‘Lord, do not do it; pity Thyself: this shall never
come to Thee!’ Out of his love for the Lord he appealed to Him to spare
Himself; and the Lord rebuked Peter, as He would rebuke Satan, for caring
for the things of men and not the things of God. And then to all present the
word was spoken once more: “If any man would come after me, let him deny
himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For whosoever will save his
soul shall lose it; and whosoever shall lose his soul for my sake and the
gospel’s shall save it” (Mark 8:34, 35, mg.).
The whole question at issue is again that of the soul, and here it is
particularly of the soul’s desire for self-preservation. There is that
subtle working of the soul which says, ‘If I could be allowed to live I
would do anything, be willing for anything; but I must be kept alive!’
There you have the soul almost crying out for help. ‘Going to the Cross,
being crucified—oh that is really too much! Have mercy on yourself; pity
yourself! Do you mean to say you are going against yourself and going with
God?’ Some of us know well that in order to go on with God we have many a
time to go against the voice of the soul- our own or other people’s—and to
let the Cross come in to silence that appeal for self-preservation.
Am I afraid of the will of God? The dear saint whom I have already mentioned
as having had such an influence upon the course of my life, many times
asked me the question: ‘Do you like the will of God?’ It is a tremendous
question. She did not ask, ‘Do you do the will of God?’ she always asked,
‘Do you like the will of God?’ That question cuts deeper than anything
else. I remember once she was having a controversy with the Lord over a
certain matter. She knew what the Lord wanted, and in her heart she wanted
it too. But is was difficult, and I heard her pray like this: ‘Lord, I
confess I don’t like it, but please do not give in to me. Just wait, Lord—
and I will give in to Thee.’ She did not want the Lord to yield to her and
to reduce His demands upon her. She wanted nothing but to please Him.
Many a time we have to come to the place where we are willing to let go
things we think to be good and precious—yes, and even, it may be, the very
things of God themselves—that His will may be done. Peter’s concern was
for his Lord and was dictated by his natural love for Him. We might feel
that Peter had a marvelous love for his Lord, sufficient even for him to
dare to rebuke Him. Only a strong love could bring one to attempt that! Yes,
but when there is purity of spirit without that mixture of soul, you will
not be led into Peter’s mistake. You will recognize the will of God and you
will find that that is what your heart delights in alone. You will no
longer even shed a tear in sympathy with the flesh. Yes, the Cross cuts
deeply, and we see here once more how utterly it has to deal with the soul.
Once again the Lord Jesus deals with the matter of the soul in Luke chapter
17, and now it is in relation to His return. Speaking of “the day that the
Son of man is revealed”, He draws a parallel between that day and “the day
that Lot went out from Sodom” (verses 29, 30). A little later He speaks of
the ‘rapture’ in the twice repeated words: “One shall be taken, and the
other shall be left” (verses 34, 35). But between His reference to the
calling of Lot out of Sodom and this allusion to the rapture, the Lord says
these remarkable words: “In that day, he which shall be on the housetop,
and his goods in the house, let him not go down to take them away: and let
him that is in the field likewise not return back. Remember Lot’s wife” (
verses 31, 32). Remember Lot’s wife! Why? because “whosoever shall seek to
gain his soul shall lose it: but whosoever shall lose his soul shall save
it alive” (verse 33, mg.).
If I mistake not, this is the one passage in the New Testament that tells of
our reaction to the rapture call. We may have thought that when the Son of
man comes we shall be taken up automatically, as it were, because of what we
read in 1 Corinthians 15:51, 52: “We shall all be changed, in a moment, in
the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump...” Well, however we reconcile
the two passages, this one in Luke’s Gospel should at least make us pause
and reflect; for the emphasis is here very strongly upon one being taken and
the other left. It is a matter of our reaction to the call to go, and on
the basis of this a most urgent appeal is made to us to be ready (compare
Matt. 24:42).
There is surely a reason for this. Clearly that call is not going to produce
a miraculous last-minute change in us out of all relation to our previous
walk with the Lord. No, in that moment we shall discover our heart’s real
treasure. If it is the Lord Himself, then there will be no backward look. A
backward glance decides everything. It is so easy to become more attached to
the gifts of God than to the Giver—and even, I should add, to the work of
God than to God Himself.
Let me illustrate. At the present time17171938.—Ed. I am writing a book. I
have finished eight chapters and I have another nine to write, about which I
am very seriously exercised before the Lord. But if the call to ‘come up
hither’ should come and my reaction were to be ‘What about my book?’ the
answer might well be, ‘All right, stay down and finish it!’ That precious
thing which we are doing downstairs ‘in the house’ can be enough to pin us
down, a peg that holds us to earth.
It is all a question of our living by the soul or by the spirit. Here in
this passage in Luke, we have depicted the soul-life in its engagement with
the things of the earth—and mark you, not sinful things either. The Lord
only mentioned marrying, planting, eating, selling—all perfectly legitimate
activities with which there is nothing essentially wrong. But it is
occupation with them, so that your heart goes out to them, that is enough to
pin you down. The way out of that danger is by the losing of the soul. This
is beautifully illustrated in the action of Peter when he recognized the
risen Lord Jesus by the lake-side. Though with the others he had returned to
his former employment, there was now no thought of the ship, nor even of
the net full of fishes so miraculously provided. When he heard John’s cry
of recognition: “it is the Lord”, we read that “he cast himself into the
sea”.
That is true detachment. The question at issue is always, Where is my heart?
The cross has to work in us a true spiritual detachment from anything and
anyone outside of the Lord Himself.
But, even here, we are as yet only dealing with the more outward aspects of
the soul’s activity. The soul giving rein to its affections, the soul
asserting itself and trying to manipulate things, the soul becoming
preoccupied with things, the soul becoming preoccupied with things on the
earth: these are still small things, and do not yet touch the real heart of
the matter. There is something which is deeper yet, and which I will try now
to explain.

【在 l**********t 的大作中提到】
: chapter 13. 1 The Basis Of All True Ministry
: No one can be a true servant of God without knowing the principle of death and the principle of resurrection. Even the Lord Jesus Himself served on that basis. You will find in Matthew 3 that, before His public ministry ever began, our Lord was baptized. He was baptized not because He had any sin, or anything which needed cleansing. No, we know the meaning of baptism: it is a figure of death and resurrection. The ministry of the Lord did not begin until He was on that ground. After He had been baptized and had voluntarily taken the ground of death and resurrection, the Holy Spirit came upon Him, and then He ministered.
: What does this teach us? Our Lord was a sinless Man. None but He has trodden this earth and known no sin. Yet as Man He had a separate personality from His Father. Now we must tread very carefully when we touch our Lord; but remember His words: “I seek not mine own will, but the will of him that sent me”. What does this mean? It certainly does not mean that the Lord had no will of His own. He had a will, as His own words show. As Son of man He had a will, but He did not do it; He came to do the will of the Father. So this is the point. That thing in Him which is in distinction from the Father is the human soul, which He assumed when He was “found in fashion as a man”. Being a perfect Man our Lord had a soul, and of course a body, just as you and I have a soul and a body, and it was possible for Him to act from the soul—that is, from Himself.
: You remember that immediately after the Lord’s baptism, and before His public ministry began, Satan came and tempted Him. He tempted Him to satisfy His essential needs by turning stones to bread; to secure immediate respect for His ministry by appearing miraculously in the temple court; to assume without delay the world dominion destined for Him; and you are inclined to wonder why he tempted Him to do such strange things. He might rather, you feel, have tempted Him to sin in a more thoroughgoing way. But he did not; he knew better. He only said: “If thou art the Son of God, command that these stones become bread”. What did it mean? The implication was this: ‘If You are the Son of God You must do something to prove it. Here is a challenge. Some will certainly raise a question as to whether Your claim is real or not. Why do You not settle the matter finally now by coming out and proving it?’
: The whole subtle object of Satan was to get the Lord to act for Himself—that is, from the soul—and, by the stand He took, the Lord Jesus absolutely repudiated such action. In Adam, man had acted from himself apart from God; that was the whole tragedy of the garden. Now in a similar situation the Son of man takes another ground. Later He defines it as His basic life-principle—and I like the word in the Greek: “The Son can do nothing out from himself” (John 5:19). That total denial of the soul-life was to govern all His ministry.
: So we can safely say that all the work which the Lord Jesus did on earth, prior to His actual death on the cross, was done with the principle of death on the cross, and resurrection as basis, even though as an actual event Calvary still lay in the future. Everything He did was on that ground. But if this is so—if the Son of man has to go through death and resurrection (in figure and in principle) in order to work, can we do otherwise? Surely no servant of the Lord can serve Him without himself knowing the working of that principle in his life. It is of course out of the question. The Lord made this very clear to His disciples when He left them. He had died and He was risen, and He told them to wait in Jerusalem for the Spirit to come upon them. Now what is this power of the Holy Spirit, this “power from on high” of which He spoke? It is nothing less than the virtue of His death, resurrection and ascension. To use another figure, the Holy Spirit is the Vessel in whom all the values of the death, resurrection and exaltation of the Lord are deposited, that they may be brought to us. He is the one who ‘contains’ those values and mediates them to men. That is the reason why the Spirit could not be given before the Lord had been glorified. Then only could He rest upon men and women that they might witness; and without the values of the death and resurrection of Christ no such witness is possible.
: If we turn to the Old Testament we find the same thing is there. I would refer you to a familiar passage in the seventeenth chapter of Numbers. The matter of Aaron’s ministry has been contested. There is a question among the people as to whether Aaron is truly the chosen of God. They have entertained a suspicion, and have said in effect: ‘Whether that man is ordained of God or not, we do not know!’ and so God sets out to prove who is His servant and who is not. How does He do so? Twelve dead rods are put before the Lord in the sanctuary over against the testimony, and they are there for a night. Then, in the morning, the Lord indicates His chosen minister by the rod which buds, blossoms and bears fruit.
: We all know the meaning of that. The budding rod speaks of resurrection. It is death and resurrection that marks God-recognized ministry. Without that you have nothing. The budding of Aaron’s rod proved him to be on a true basis, and God will only recognize as His ministers those who have come through death to resurrection ground.
: We have seen that the death of the Lord works in different ways and has different aspects. We know how His death has worked in regard to the forgiveness of our sins. We all know that our forgiveness is based upon the shed Blood, and that without the shedding of Blood there is no remission. Then we have come further and in Romans 6 have seen how death works to meet the power of sin. We have learned that our old man has been crucified in order that henceforth we should not serve sin, and we have praised the Lord that here too His death has worked for our deliverance. Further on still the question of human self-will arises, and the need for consecration is apparent; and we find death working that way to bring about in us a willingness to let go our own wills and obey the Lord. That indeed constitutes a starting point for our ministry, but still it does not touch the core of the question. There may still be the lack of knowledge of what is meant by the soul.
: Then another phase is presented to us in Romans 7 where the question of holiness of life is in view—a living, personal holiness. There you find a true man of God trying to please God in righteousness, and he comes under the law and the law finds him out. He is trying to please God by using his own carnal power, and the Cross has to bring him to the place where he says, ‘I cannot do it. I cannot satisfy God with my powers; I can only trust the Holy Spirit to do that in me.’ I believe some of us have passed through deep waters to learn this, and to discover the value of the death of the Lord working in this way.

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