The Normal Christian Life

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 heart, God says, is "desperately sick" (Jer. 17:9), and he must do something more fundamental than cleanse it: he must give us a new one.

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?

It is not that I was saved on one basis [the Blood of Christ] and that I now maintain my fellowship on another.

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 many were made [or 'constituted'] sinners."

God does not require us to crucify ourselves. We were crucified when Christ 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 and indisputable fact.

As the last Adam, Christ is the sum total of humanity; as the second Man he is the Head of a new race.

God's means of delivering us from sin is not by making us stronger and stronger, but by making us weaker and weaker.

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 an intellectual knowledge at all, but an opening of the eyes of the heart to see what we have in Christ.

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."

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.

In his death we all died. None of us can progress spiritually without seeing this.

...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.

In dealing with Christ God has dealt with the Christian; in dealing with the Head he has dealt with all the members.

All the spiritual experiences 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.

As we stand steadfastly on the ground of what Christ is, we find all that is true of him becoming experimentally true in us. If instead we come on to the ground of what we are in ourselves, we will find all that is true of the old nature remaining true of us.

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?"

The Cross was the means God used to bring to an end to "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.

Let me say emphatically that, unless our eyes be opened by God to see that we have died in Christ and been buried with him, we have no right to be baptized.

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.

God has done everything. 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.

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."

When the Galilean 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.

In respect of his divinity the Lord Jesus remains uniquely "the only begotten Son of God."

God is not out to reform our life. It is not his aim to bring that life 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.

Upon what basis, then, was the Spirit first given to the Lord Jesus to be poured out upon his people? It was upon the fact of his exaltation to heaven. This passage [Acts 2:32-36] makes it quite clear that the Holy Spirit was poured out because 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.

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...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.

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.

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.

If we lack the experience, we must ask God only for a revelation of this eternal fact, that the baptism of the Holy Spirit is the gift of the exalted Lord to his Church.

Baptism is an outward expression of an inward faith. When in my heart I truly believe that I have died, have been buried and have risen with Christ, then I ask for baptism. Thereby I declare publicly what I believe privately. Baptism is faith in action.

There is nothing stereotyped about God's dealings with his children. Therefore we must not, by our prejudices and preconceptions, make water-tight compartments for the working of his Spirit, either in our own lives or in the lives of others.

...if we are to know in experience that which is ours in fact, our first need is of divine revelation.

True revelation of the fact of the Spirit's indwelling will revolutionize the life of any Christian.

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...Revelation is the first step to holiness, and consecration is the second.

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.

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.

...let it be settled that 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.

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.

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.

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.

The "wretched man" of Romans 7 tried to meet the claims 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.

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.

In the matter of forgiveness we look to Christ on the Cross; in the matter of deliverance from sin and of doing the will of God we look to Christ in our hearts.

To live in the flesh is to do something "out from" 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.

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...It is not a case of trying but of trusting; not of struggling but of resting in Him.

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.

We think of the Christian life as a "changed life" but it is not that. What God offers us is an "exchanged life," a "substituted life," and Christ is our Substitute within.

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...

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 God's Word. Then half an hour can be more profitable than five hours of forced reading.

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.

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...

What does it mean to walk after the Spirit? It means two things. First, it is not a work; it is a walk. That is why Paul contrasts the "works" of the flesh with the "fruit" of the Spirit (Gal. 5:19, 22). Then second, to "walk after" implies subjection. 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.

What the Father has devised concerning us the Son has accomplished for us, and now the Holy Spirit communicates it to us.

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.

As we have seen, this [revelation] 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 experience in our lives. Thus we have: 1. Revelation (Objective). 2. Experience (Subjective).

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's goal in man was "sonship," or, in other words, the expression of his life in human sons.

"We which live are alway 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.

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.

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 the spring of natural life that is tainted with the flesh. We must see this clearly.

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, could prove a barrier to the very thing that God is seeking to manifest in us.

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, Jesus absolutely repudiated such action.

The soul is the seat of the affections, and what a great part of our decision and actions is influenced by these!

"Do you like the will of God?" It is a tremendous question.

Many a time we have to come to the place where we are willing to let go to him 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.

God must bring us to a point - I cannot tell you how it will be, but he will do it - where, through a deep and dark experience, our natural power is touched and fundamentally weakened, so that we no longer dare trust ourselves.

What, then, is the secret? Clearly it is this, that in approving Mary's action at Bethany, the Lord Jesus was laying down one thing as a basis of all service: that you pour out all you have, your very self, unto him; and if that should be all he allows you to do, that is enough.

The Gospel is not just to satisfy sinners. Praise the Lord, sinners will be satisfied! But their satisfaction is, we may say, a blessed by-product of the Gospel and not its primary aim. The Gospel is preached in the first place so that the Lord may be satisfied.

True satisfaction is brought to the heart of God when we are really, as people would think, "wasting" ourselves upon him. It seems as though we are giving too much and getting nothing - and that is the secret of pleasing God.

The idea of waste only comes into our Christianity when we underestimate the worth of our Lord. The whole question is: How precious is he to us now? If we do not think much of him, then of course to give him anything at all, however small, will seem to us a wicked waste. But when he is really precious to our souls, nothing will be too good, nothing too costly for him...

God does not set us here first of all to preach or to do work for him. The first thing for which he sets us here is to create in others a hunger for himself. That is, after all, what prepares the soil for the preaching.

The Gospel has as its one object the producing in us sinners of a condition that will satisfy the heart of our God.