THE SPIRIT OF LIFE IN CHRIST JESUSBy G.W. North'... THE LAW OF THE SPIRIT OF LIFE IN CHRIST JESUS HATH MADE ME FREE FROM THE LAW OF SIN AND DEATH." Romans 8:2No Condemnation — in Christ Jesus. This text is the glorious introduction to a whole chapter of glorious truth about the Holy Spirit which has no parallel anywhere else in scripture. It would be altogether too great a task to undertake to attempt an exposition of the whole chapter, but we will touch on it here and there, finding the truth we seek for our purposes. Paul has just concluded a lengthy passage, in which he describes himself as he discovered himself to be under the law of Moses. What the law did for him was to show him the laws that controlled him; he discovered himself to be a slave of sin, bound by chains of habit to death. Even the laws of mind and memory, which brought him joy and delight in the law of God, could not liberate him from the law of sin which worked in his members. It overpowered his will. Strong determination of mind and fixity of purpose were together powerless to liberate him; although he loathed and lamented his sin, he could not rid himself of it. It was not so much what he did that troubled him, it was what was working in his members that distressed him so much. It was against him, against his desires, his mind, his will, his beliefs, his prayers, his better knowledge, against his God; it was sinful, exceedingly sinful, and he hated himself for it. At last the battle was too great for him and he cried out to God for deliverance and found it through Jesus Christ.
"The Law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus" by G.W. North
2. From that time onwards this was his testimony, '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 me free from the law of sin and death'. It is intensely personal. He was not setting down teaching, he was recounting his experience; 'this is what I have found', he is saying, and O how precious it was to him. We are told that the words in parenthesis above are not in the most ancient and more reliable manuscripts, from which we may infer that they were not in the original epistle. They are an exact copy of Paul's words in verse four, and so the scribes, whoever they were that copied out the sacred text, are not to be thought guilty of inserting thoughts of their own, even if it was their idea to put the phrase higher up in the text. May we not infer that by doing so those people have revealed to us that they too had discovered the reason for Paul's rejoicing? He found he could walk after the Spirit and not after the flesh, and so had they.
3. How wonderful this experience is, and how glorious it is to every man who similarly discovers that the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made him free from the law of sin and death. What light in darkness, especially when it is coupled, as it is here, with the fact that there is therefore no condemnation to him because he really and recognizably is in Christ Jesus. Whenever Paul's doctrine touches upon human experience of salvation it is always based on his own experience, and what glorious doctrine it is; because of this it is the gospel indeed, God's good news and man's good news in one. If the note of personal testimony is missing from gospel preaching it is a vain hope, for what at first is an enlightening message and liberating hope will die away into darkness and condemnation. That is why Paul spoke about walking not after the flesh but after the Spirit; unless a man can do that, he has no testimony that his beliefs are right, no proof that his doctrine is correct; he is just believing in unworkable theories. The walk in the Spirit is the sole proof that the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has indeed set a person free from the law of sin and death. For if there is one thing that is absolutely certain, it is that dead men cannot walk; legs and feet they may have, but life they have not.
4. Therefore the copyists' gloss may not be a bad thing, for it emphasizes the important practical part, namely walking after the Spirit, without which all is theoretical belief. Because he was walking after the Spirit, Paul knew he was free from the law of sin and death; if this had not been so he would have walked after the flesh, because he could not have done otherwise; the walk is the test. It is entirely impossible to be free from sin and death unless the law governing it, by which it works, is nullified or countermanded in us. It is not possible to nullify or countermand spiritual and moral law unless it is replaced by another, which works in the very same elements and by the same principles as the one it replaces did. Only the working of' the new law can prevent the old one from reasserting itself and regaining power over us; in the spirit as in nature there cannot be a vacuum. The new law does not break the power of the old one — that is not its function — but it does prevent it from reasserting itself. The power of the old law of sin is broken experimentally in every believer who knows the experience outlined in (Romans) chapter six.
5. Essentially, originally and eventually man is spirit. He is not flesh, neither is he a body; he has a body of flesh in which he dwells on the earth in this world. All the time he dwells in his body man is both spirit and soul; man, by God's choice, is a spirit/soul. God is not spirit/soul, He is Spirit. God acquired a soul when the Son took a body. In God He is now the Spirit/Soul of God, the prototype and forerunner of every spirit/soul son of God by redemption and regeneration. The Lord Jesus became a soul when He was incarnated. Until then He was not a soul. To be a soul a person has to be born in a human body. He had appeared in bodily form prior to being incarnate, but He was not a soul then, for He had not been born man. He was spirit manifesting Himself in human or angelic form for the purpose in hand at that time only. Spirit was breathed into human form by God. God does not make spirits, He generates them. God is the father of spirits, not of bodies. He formed or made body, He did not generate it; He generated or gave birth to man when He breathed spirit into it. Until then the shapely dust was not man. God did not breathe spirit into man; He breathed it into a form of dust which He intended to be a man, and thus created man. Man is a manifestation of God, as well as a creation of God. God made man in His own image after His own likeness. Animals and all the lower forms of being are not a manifestation of God, they are a creation of God only. They do not bear His image, they were not patterned upon God's being; their original breath was not directly from God, therefore they are not after His likeness; they were only the work of His hands made to breathe atmospheric air.
6. Man Became a Living Soul. Original man was created by direct original breath from the Spirit of God. Animals' breath was gaseous, man's was spiritous. Man, to be man, must be spirit; to be human he must be soul; to have existence on the earth he must have body. Man is spiritual, sensual, physical in being; to be man he cannot be any other, for that is how God made him; God delighted in that original creation, but since then man has undergone a tragic change in spirit and soul. Physically he is the same, but in spirit and soul he is utterly different, so God, when communicating truth to us about ourselves, has found it necessary to change His form of address. When God created man he was spiritual, that is, his spirit was in a condition of pristine purity, without sin, so was his body; he was fully conscious of his originator, in all its senses the soul alive unto Him; His body also, in all its members and motions, its desires and appetites, its laws and functions, was of one accord with it. Man was entirely spiritual. In every realm of his being man was attuned to God. Nothing in him was out of touch or out of gear. The mind of his spirit, and the operation of the laws of his entire being, in accordance with it, were all directed to do God's will — he was spiritual. Man knew no other than that until he sinned, and when he did so he ceased to be spiritual. He was still basically spirit, but he was no longer spiritual, he was only spiritous, and because his sin was directed to the satisfying of his flesh in both its appetites and desires, its affections and attractions, he became a carnal soul — man was no longer spiritual but carnal, that is, dead. He was not alive with the life of God and therefore was not alive to God. Being no longer spiritual, that is, no longer able to live in the condition in which he was created, he was no longer allowed to live in the conditions which God had created for him — he was turned out of paradise.
7. This then is the background to Paul's approach to his teachings about man's life in the Spirit: man must be restored to his original native state. Adam fell from his native state, that is, the condition of his nature, what it was, how it was, where it was, and found himself in another condition, another nature. His native state of spirit had become death, his native condition of soul became sin, his native state of body became carnal. Paul found out all these things about himself and he was devastated. But he also found out that Christ Jesus lived a life that was exactly what God originally intended for man; He was spiritual. If a man wishes to be spiritual he must have and live the life of Jesus Christ. The section commences on that note, 'the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus'. The life that Jesus lived and the way He lived it are the law for all God's sons. He lived by the Spirit and developed His own spirit from and in that Spirit. His spirit and mind had control over all His being; He was spiritually-minded. He minded the Spirit and therefore His own spirit, and thereby had life and peace. There was no conflict in Him. There was no sin in Him, not in any realm or member of Him; nothing warred against the law of His mind; what He thought and willed He was able to do. He did not live in or walk after the flesh but in and after the Spirit. He was subject to the law of God, thoroughly dead to sin and alive unto God, therefore all the righteousness of the law was fulfilled in Him. It is into this life that the baptism in the Spirit is designed to bring us. This baptism is obligatory because it is absolutely necessary, for only thereby are our spirits baptized into Jesus Christ. He is now as He was then in Spirit, and the purpose of God is that, by this baptism we shall receive and for ever have the spirit of Christ, the spiritual man.
8. It is quite impossible for any man to know the working of the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus in himself unless he is in Christ Jesus. Life in Christ Jesus is exclusive to Him, and if we are to know His life we must be in Him; we cannot be without Him and expect to have His personal life in us. Therefore every person who would know the reality of Christ's own life within his or her own self must be in Him, otherwise there can be no end to the life of sin. Condemnation and frustration is the common state of all enlightened men who wish to live Christ's life and find themselves unable to do so. They truly desire to do His will and can never accomplish it. As Paul explains, he was in that state himself once; despite all his prayers and efforts he languished in defeat and wretchedness until the Spirit showed him the way and took him out of himself and his sin into Christ. There and then he discovered the law of the Spirit of life and how it worked. When he went this way he found the dominion of sin was broken in him, for like Christ he died to it.
9. BAPTIZED INTO CHRISTIt was a marvellous and totally unexpected thing, as undeserved as it was unexpected — he was baptized into Christ. No-one had told him what would happen to him and that is why so much of this man's a teaching was so personal. He was not a product of the Church; he had persecuted it. He did not learn the way of salvation from it, nor from the apostles of Christ (he had hated them also); quite the opposite from that, the Church has learned from him. What happened to him, that is to say, what Christ did to him at Damascus first of all and then revealed to him afterwards, became the substance of all Paul's ministry. Quite simply, the Christ he had first met on the Damascus road baptized him in the Spirit in that city three days later. He baptized him into His death and into His resurrection, and via these into Himself, into His nature, His life and self.
10..That day Saul of Tarsus passed from death unto life for the first time, and from that moment he was conscious of being kept alive in Christ in whom the law of the Spirit of life is constantly in operation. This is how it must be with everyone. Eternal life is not possible to a man otherwise; it is no use a man trying to walk according to the Spirit unless he is first baptized into Christ. Until this happens to a man the law of sin and death continues to operate, working condemnation in him. No number or manner of assurances to the contrary will ever persuade him that it is not so. To be free from condemnation and guilt a man must be baptized into Christ. There and nowhere else does the law of the Spirit of life make a man free from the law of sin and death so that he can walk after the Spirit. Doing so he does not then need assuring that he is not under condemnation, because he has the assurance of the Spirit within himself and he knows he is not condemned. Moreover, by his walk he proves this both to himself and also to all other knowledgeable persons who observe him.
NOTE: If anyone is following this thread for study purposes:The last four sections (7 through 10) are very important. I’ll delay posting another section for a day or two to provide time to catch up and reflect.Roger
11. The life in Christ Jesus can only be known and lived by this law of the Spirit. Unless this baptism takes place and this spiritual law be realized in experience so that the whole personality is brought into obedience to it, no man can possibly live the eternal life. We may observe how this law operates by reading the events that led up to the birth of Jesus. Unless the Holy Spirit had come upon Mary in the beginning there would have been no human Jesus Christ. His life came from the Holy Spirit and not from her; she only gave Him His human body. All the biological processes by which a human body is formed were taken over in Mary by the Holy Spirit, who activated and commenced and superintended their function. Thereby Jesus was made of a woman: (1) under the law of Moses (which law was the law of God and very strong against adultery); (2) according to biological law; (3) according to the law of faith; (4) according to the law of the Spirit of life. Biological processes are laws — God's laws — and when He sent His Son into the world He did not work apart from female biological law but through it. Jesus was born as a result of voluntary co-operation between God and a woman. Two laws co-operated and combined; one human and one divine — the law of the body of Mary and the law of the Spirit of God. The spirit of each co-operated by the law of faith to produce the human Son of Man.
Freedom from the law of Sin and Death'... the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death'. Romans 8:212. We therefore see that the unique life of Jesus of Bethlehem and Nazareth and Calvary was produced entirely by the law of the Spirit of life. This is the life which God means us to understand when we read the phrase 'the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus'. This life is not subject to the law of sin and death simply because it is the law of righteousness and life, and all the time we live by it we shall live free from sin as God intends us to. Other laws must operate too, all combining to this end. We must observe John's statement for instance — 'if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin'. We do not ordinarily think of that operation as law, but it is. When Paul says, 'ye are not under law but under grace', he does not mean that under grace all law is suspended or nullified; he means these two things: (1) we are not now under the Mosaic legal system of blood sacrifices for sin or thank offerings etc., (2) we are not now under the law of sin and death.
13. We are here being instructed into the law of being and personality; in all moral intelligences these co-exist. In fact, without moral intelligence, personality cannot be. There can be physical that is to say animal existence, but no one ever thinks of speaking of an animal as a person; it may have an intelligence of a sort, but it is not moral, it does not act morally but instinctively according to its nature. A higher will and intelligence may train it to respond to a certain name and to do certain things, but it will never be thought of as a being, a person. It will remain a creature, an animal; it has being, therefore existence, but without personality. On the other hand, man, in common with angels and God, has moral intelligence; all three have both being and personality. In God's being there is no sin, therefore there is no death in Him because sin is the cause of death. But beyond, far beyond this negative aspect of His being, God is positively righteous. Being always morally right and good He is eternally alive — He is life itself. His nature is love and His personality is grace — that is to say that in His attitude towards us God is always gracious. Apparently this graciousness was the quality of nature and personality which came through most strongly to people of Jesus' acquaintance; 'the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ' certainly made terrific and unforgettable impact on Paul.
14. Now exactly the same life that was in Christ is in the Holy Spirit, as it is in the Father also; although they share the same life, they embody and express it in three different ways as three distinct yet related persons. We must express this life also, and for this reason must walk in the Spirit and after the Spirit. God has ordained it that way for us, but He did not do so for the sake of it, He did so because there is no other way. It was quite impossible on earth for men to walk in the life of Jesus of Nazareth the human being. They could walk after Him — that is, follow Him — with Him or away from Him, but not in Him. Men could not walk in what He was in the flesh. That was unique, but in the Spirit it is now possible (and O what grace this is) to walk in what Christ is in spirit. To this end the Holy Spirit is now in charge of all things to do with Christ. We must be in the Spirit and after the Spirit and be led by the Spirit or we cannot have and shall not know the life of Christ. We may have and enjoy some of His benefits, but that is not good enough for God's sons. Beyond all these He wants us to have the privileges of sonship, and enjoy all the benefits of a son and heir of God. Therefore the Spirit is made unto us the Spirit of adoption or sonship, and this He accomplishes by coming into us and witnessing with our spirits that we are the children of God.
15. Made unto Us — All Things. When Jesus Christ was made in flesh He was made the substance of all the virtuous things we read of in the Old Testament. The people of His day were able to see, hear and handle in a man, at least in part, what the eternal life really was. He was the personification to them of all spiritual virtues and graces and powers. Though sinless, He was made in the likeness of sinful flesh; He came for sin and to be made sin; this was His daring. Being so absolutely perfect He could be made the embodiment of sin and all human imperfection, and not be ruined by it. To that generation He was made everything perfect and glorious and needful and wonderful, then at the end of His life for that generation He was made everything imperfect and shameful and sinful and terrible. What He was made for that generation He was made for every generation before and since; He was made sin for us. Hallelujah! Just as truly as He was made the substance of everything virtuous to that generation, so to us also He is made the substance of all virtues and graces and powers. Paul lists some of them: 'wisdom, righteousness, sanctification and redemption' (1Cor. 1:30); we could add to this list almost ad infinitum if we had power to comprehend what no language can possibly express.
16. Now what we have seen to be true of Christ Jesus is also true of the Holy Spirit to the same degree, though not in the same manner. The Holy Spirit is made unto us all the many virtues of God which we so desperately need. Perhaps the simplest illustration of this is in that marvellous section of the Galatian letter wherein Paul speaks of the fruit of the Spirit. Each of the graces mentioned there is nothing other than one of the many precious virtues of Jesus; it is as though the writer had examined His person and had set down an analysis of His personality and personal qualities. Though not exhaustive, this group of characteristics put together by Paul is a description of the man Jesus, His manner and ways to God and to men - and wonderful He is. More wonderfully, this is what He is made to us by the Spirit so that we may enjoy and display His life. Still more wonderfully He is made that, through us, to God. The fruit of the Spirit is the spiritual substance of the life of Christ which made Him such indestructible Rock, even when He was made sin on the cross, with the result that the attack mounted upon Him there by the devil and his armies was broken upon Him. By the fruit of the same Spirit abiding in us as He did in Christ, the fact that Christ lives in us is proved. There is no other proof that this is so; the Spirit is given to us basically for this purpose.
17. One of the wonderful things discoverable in the New Testament about God is how greatly the persons of the Godhead love each other. So great is this love that they integrate and identify with each other almost to the point of loss of personal identity, if not of individuality; this they do purely for love's sake, that the overall purposes of God may be unitedly fulfilled. Quite irrespective of the need to preserve their own distinctive personalities and natural roles, they give all their energies to the project in hand, whatever it is, in order to maintain the unity and single-mindedness of the trinity. Paul shows us here how the Holy Spirit identifies with the Son in order to be the Spirit of sonship in us; 'Father', He cries, and in so doing fulfils His other purpose of identifying Himself with our spirits also. He does this by and through the urgent immediacy of need within us because of regeneration; first He creates it, then he fulfils it; it is this need which makes the Holy Spirit so indispensable to each of us. Just as Christ did this same thing over a period of time when He identified with humanity as a whole by incarnation, so the Holy Spirit does it with individuals in order to certify that they are regenerate. Christ did this so that He may identify with us humanly, that is, in human nature and form; the Holy Spirit does it so that we may identify with Christ spiritually, that is, in spiritual nature and manner. As we shall see, this is not the only way or the only reason for which He does it; another instance in this same section affords us a further insight into His versatility and activities. Paul speaks of 'the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead'; without question, the person who raised Him from the dead was the Father, for Paul says so in chapter six.
The Self-effacing Spirit. 17. Plainly the Holy Spirit is determined not to take to Himself any of the glory or credit which belongs to the Son or the Father; He intends that either the Son or the Father must have that. This characteristic humility is displayed almost unobtrusively throughout, as when He refers to Himself as the Spirit of God. This phrase is generally taken to mean the whole being of' God under the headship of the Father, which is proper and natural, for the Father is the highest expression of authority in any family or society. Given His full title, the Holy Spirit should be spoken of as 'The God, The Holy, The Spirit'. This being recognized, He is at once seen to be a person most profound and august, totally beyond our powers of comprehension. Whether we call Him God the Holy Spirit, or the Spirit of God, or just the Spirit, it is all the same (and all are quite proper expressions to use). He is quite happy with them. As long as He is fulfilling the work of the Father towards Jesus the Son, or fulfilling the role of the Son in us towards the Father, He is content. The Holy Spirit is a glorious person, adapting His own wonderful self to the wishes and requirements of God to us according to our need, and so magnifying Him. Whatever the office He must fill in order to do this, whether Comforter, Teacher, Leader, Empowerer or any of His other functionary offices, the blessed Holy Spirit is content as long as thereby the Father and the Son may be glorified; He is the ever-present self-sacrificing workman of God. What a wonderful person He is.
18..It is very noticeable that, in this lengthy passage about the person and work of the Holy Spirit, He is not called by His full name or given His full title. This is not a mark of disrespect; Paul would no more be disrespectful to the Blessed One than he would ignore or blaspheme Him. The apostle loved and honoured Him. This use of the shortened form of the name of the third person of God is not confined to references to the Holy Spirit alone. In scripture the practice is more regularly used when referring to the Lord Jesus Christ than when speaking of the Holy Spirit. With either person, the general reason for this is to draw attention to, or lay emphasis upon, the particular position which that person is then occupying or the specific work or the nature of the work He is doing. It is the apostle's purpose throughout this entire section to emphasize the intensely spiritual nature of all he is saying. From the commencement of chapter eight and throughout, he uses the word spirit in various ways and connections many times (once with reference to man) and the full title, the Holy Spirit, once only. The insistence here is that everything is of spirit, whether of the Spirit of God or the spirit of man. That it is absolutely holy also must be unconditionally accepted; that goes without saying. The apostle's unshakable resolve here though is to make sure that everybody understands that nothing of what he is saying is addressed to the flesh; it is not of the flesh, or for the flesh, or in the flesh; everything is of, in and by spirit. God is Spirit, man is spirit; Paul is teaching things of spirit, whether they be things of God or things of man. He deals with things, powers, works and desires of the flesh in chapter seven, and leaves the subject there, showing his determination to do so by switching from flesh to body when speaking of human physical being in this section. He does this so as to eliminate from our minds all thoughts (whether they be suppositions or calculations) that anything other than spirit can possibly engage in what he now has to say.
EagleswingI am so glad you have discovered the writings of G W North. I have been richly blessed through the life and ministry of many saints of God but I regard this man's influence as the most definitive in my own understanding the work of the Spirit.He was a very close and personal friend. He and his wife stayed in our home on several occasions. He went to be with the Lord last year, a couple of days after his 90 birthday. I have almost completed the archiving of his writings into pdf format, and if you have not already discovered the site you will find the sources for your posts here. The Doctrine of the Spirit in RomansHis writing was not always easy to follow at first reading but it is pure gold. If you have not heard him in action I suggest go up into God
19. How full of precious instruction is this chapter. Paul wrote it to enlighten us as to some of the more basic offices and ministrations of the Spirit: in it He is called the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus; the Spirit of Him (the Father) that raised up Christ from the dead: the Spirit of leadership: the Spirit of adoption: the Spirit of witness: the Spirit of fruitfulness: the Spirit of intercession. He comes to men to enable them to walk after Him and not after the flesh. He has created such a variety of possibilities, and opened up such prospects for us — joint-heirship with Christ, glory, love, power — that we are almost overwhelmed by them. So great are the blessings, that for evermore we are indebted to God to refuse to live after the flesh any more. It is true that this is a negative commitment, but it is a very necessary one indeed. This is a personal debt we owe Him, which, if we fail to discharge on this earth in this life, we can never discharge hereafter. We can only discharge this by living positively for Him; until we do this we shall not be able to have and enjoy our inheritance as we ought. By the law of the Spirit of God we have to live by the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus to such effect that the Spirit of Jesus shall be reproduced in us — then we shall not be held and motivated in any way by the law of sin and death.
20. The Holy Spirit has come for the whole man — spirit, soul and body; not for a third, or two thirds of him, but for all of him, and the direct purpose of His coming is the reproduction of the life of Christ in every man bought with His blood. But, although He is so powerful, He cannot do this without our co-operation, and this must be total. We must be very attentive to Him and obey Him willingly and lovingly, for He will not force us to do so. Firstly it is necessary for us to recognize what God has in mind, namely that we should be conformed to the image of His Son. Everything else, whatever it may be, is subordinate to that. All the Holy Spirit's energies are directed to this end in every man; He has it always in mind, and all the time He is thinking how best to accomplish it. He was there in conference with Father and Son when it was decided that all God's sons should be predestinated, having already, in God's heart, been conformed to the image of the Son. That was the original determination, and it must have first place in every man's thinking. God's design is not to make us equal to the Son; that could never be. He is God and in His sonship He is unique; but that uniqueness apart, the Spirit is come to conform each one of us to Him in the likeness of His glorious humanity — the nature in which the Son subsisted as a man on earth.
21. This the Spirit cannot do unless He receives one hundred percent co-operation from us; He has to change and adjust spirit, mind and body totally and progressively to the end in view. Unless we allow the power of God to affect us in every realm of our being, His task is impossible; not even God can accomplish it. There is nothing else for it. Man is so utterly degenerate; his need so great and his case so hopeless, that apart from total re-making he is lost. Hope for man lies in God alone, and the Spirit of holiness and love has come to bring it. He is equipped with all the power of God, backed up by and enhanced with the redemption in Christ Jesus, with the fixed intention of re-making us entirely thereby. He (1) brings believing men the spirit of Christ to identify us with Himself; (2) imparts the mind of Christ that He may teach us; (3) develops (in us) the soul of Christ that He may fellowship with us; (4) quickens our mortal body that He may walk and work with us. The result is that our entire life, our whole human nature is renewed. This is the degree to which God will save men on this earth; Jesus came to justify us, Father comes to own us, the Holy Ghost comes to glorify us. God expects all our minds to be instinct with this and all our thoughts to be ablaze with it.
22. Let This Mind Be in YouThe part the mind plays in it all is a very important one and this cannot be overlooked or neglected without dreadful loss. Paul sets out the mental position like this: 'they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh; ... to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace ... the carnal mind is enmity against God'. The phrases 'carnally minded' and 'spiritually minded' may be thought of as 'the minding, or the mind of, the flesh' and 'the minding, or mind of, the Spirit'. Fleshly thinking or thinking only or generally for the satisfaction of the flesh with purpose to fulfil its desires apart from the will of God is sin and death. Thinking from the viewpoint of the promotion, comfort and advancement of life in and for the flesh is anti-God; He calls that carnal. By contrast, spiritual thinking, or thinking by the Spirit is to use the same mental powers and processes for the purpose of fulfilling the will of God, while in the body and with the same flesh. The Holy Spirit gives this enabling, which will be rewarded by the blessing of seeing things from the viewpoint of the Holy Spirit. This will enable Him to promote and advance the life of Christ in us for the glory of all concerned. This is not possible unless the mind of Christ, that is, His thinking and His way of thinking becomes ours. Only the Holy Spirit can bring Christ's power and process and practice of thinking into us. Unless this ability becomes ours He cannot make us what He wants; it cannot be done by external forces working upon us; they may do, but without a change of mind we cannot be changed people. If we were mindless, inanimate objects, His power could perform miracles on and with us, but could not reproduce the likeness of Christ in us, for that consists in and develops from changing states of thought. We are human beings, having reflexes which are not under the control of the conscious mind; we have wills capable of response or of rejection; we have imaginations also and memories, and can frame and speak words, formulate plans and decide actions. To do all this is part of life, a major part, and God is very concerned about it. He insists that we be Christ-like, and to be that we must think, and think with the right kind of mind, the spiritual mind. A person's mind is as important to him as his heart. It is exceedingly difficult to assess the relative importance of mind and heart in the life of man.
23. There can be little doubt that right from the very beginning, in the formation and development of a human body within the womb, the heart and the brain come into being simultaneously. This is of necessity, for between them heart and brain constitute the twin indispensable basic functional mechanisms of human beings; they are interdependent — one cannot be without the other. At that stage their functions and capacity are limited, though their potential is great. Each is so dependent upon the other, that to destroy either would be to destroy both. This is so at every stage of life, but for that which we seek it is only necessary to perceive life's beginnings, so that nature itself should teach us. In its earliest stages the natural impulses of the heart are received from the brain as they are to this day in the body of everyone now reading this. These messages that command the heart to beat are not consciously generated by the intellectual mind; they function from the brain by means not yet known, from a part not yet discovered. The function of the heart and the function of the brain are of equal importance; between them, together with the blood of the mother, they produce a living body. We must therefore take extreme care when pondering these verses lest we miss vital truth, which to ignore could mean spiritual death. We must have a spiritual mind or we cannot have a spiritual heart; if one is carnal so is the other. They are twinned by God and cannot be put asunder, nor can their state be made different from each other; they must both be life or both be death. This must inevitably lead to a similar and even more basic point than this; it concerns the cause or origins of life within us. None of this would be possible unless the Spirit of Christ were given us. The mind of the Spirit and the Spirit of Christ are as it were twins; we must have both. Without either there could be no life, they cannot exist apart from each other; they exist together as one. This also is the Holy One's ministry in man. It is His charge to quicken our spirits within us, raising each man's spirit from its death, regenerating it thereby into a spirit like Christ's, that is, like the spirit that was in the body of the man called Jesus. The Spirit of God has to come into us, and He does so in order to generate a Christ-like spirit in us. Not until this happens is Christ indwelling us.
24. Now this miracle besides being most wonderful is also most necessary. In order to sensibly believe we have the life of Christ, we must be living, thinking spirits; to think otherwise than this is plainly illogical. By command and provision of God, having been regenerated, we have so to live in these bodies of ours on this earth that the glorious image of the Son may be seen and unmistakably recognized in us in this world. The Spirit of the Lord is very aware of that. His commission from the Father is to complete the triumph of redemption in every realm of every human being who has received Him. This He does by bringing the salvation of God into us, causing it to work in our mortal body, as well as in our spirit and mind. In Paul's language this is how it happens, 'if Christ be in you the body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit is life because of righteousness. But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by His Spirit that dwelleth in you'. Though often misunderstood and all too frequently misinterpreted, these are nevertheless some of the most precious words in scripture. By some they are thought to be an assurance of the ultimate resurrection of the body, and doubtless they may have that meaning and be quoted in that connection. Others have applied them to physical healing, and interpreted them to mean that; but although both of these interpretations may be given to the text, it can only be done dubiously, for they are not what Paul meant by it. (to be continued...)
The Death by which We Live. 25. When Paul introduces the bodily resurrection of Christ into his teaching he does not always do so in relation to our mortal bodies, nor is he always thinking of the resurrection at the end of the age. This text is a prime example of the use to which he puts the fact and power of the resurrection throughout the whole of this section, as also in the sixth chapter. What he is saying here is that the Spirit dwelling in our mortal bodies will quicken them here and now — the end of the age is not in view. Paul is not here saying God will raise our bodies from the dead at the last trump, but that He will quicken them at this moment while they are still alive on this earth. The message is that constant bodily quickening is definitely and graciously included in God's eternal life-plan for man. This is all part of the process which He perfected in Christ and demonstrated by His resurrection for us; apart from this it is not possible for any man to enjoy salvation in all its fulness. The death of which Paul is here speaking is not physical death. This is what he says, 'if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the Spirit is life because of righteousness'. Quite obviously this death is a death which takes place in the mortal flesh, but is not of the flesh; it does not to any degree destroy the body; it is a spiritual death, not a physical one. Paul is continuing the teaching he commenced when writing earlier with great penetration about his own experience prior to his deliverance by Christ. His contention is that by the death of Christ he was delivered: (1) from the unconscious spiritual death in which he was born and lived in until he was rejuvenated; (2) from the conscious death he died, when the law came to him personally, that is when it was applied to his condition and he realized what life was; (3) into the conscious death which reigned in him from the moment when Christ came into him. Not one of these deaths is a physical one.
26. Any confusion which may reign in any heart over this matter may have arisen because the death of Christ of which we speak is associated with His physical death. Christ's physical death was necessary for our salvation: that was entirely by choice of God. It was most natural and fitting that the greater spiritual death which Christ died to sin should coincide with His lesser physical death inflicted upon Him by the cross. His physical death was vital, but though absolutely necessary for our redemption, the greater death, that is, the death to sin, was not that of the body. 'He bore our sins in His body on the tree', this is the reason why a body was prepared for Him; He needed one so that He could live in it dead to sin, and then, while still in it, finally die to the sin, our sin, which was placed upon Him on the cross for our sakes. God did not will an eternity of physical sacrifice, He did not want bodies to be offered to Him for sin on altars constantly streaming with blood. He wanted someone, a man, perfectly sinless, and willing and able to take sin upon himself and be made sin, a God-man obviously, a person strong enough to bear it and bear it away and defeat it by dying to it in toto in a human body. When Christ was incarnated He became a true man, like all other men; His person and His body were not the same. He, the real person, that is, His soul, though resident in His body, must not be confused with His body.
27. Man is a living soul. God made him so originally; He inspirited with His own breath the body He had previously formed of dust. He made the body for the soul, not the soul for the body. So important is this that he called man Soul, not Body. The soul is of spirit, it is spiritous and could best be thought of jointly with spirit, thus spirit/soul. It is true that the spirit/soul can only have human identity by the body, but it must always be recognized as distinct from it. Before the Lord Jesus dismissed His spirit from His body on the cross, He shouted out 'it is finished'; this was the indication that He had met, accepted and been made sin, and had conquered and ended it before He died. In the process of dying physically He had died to sin also, and this accomplished He was willing for expiry, but not until then. Christ had to deal with sin while in the flesh before He left His body; while bearing the world's sin He had to keep His spirit/soul pure from personal sin all the while His blood was being shed, or He could not have redeemed us. He had to be shown to be dead to sin before His death to sin could be, or there could have been no justification for God or sinners. He had to die to sin all the while He was dying for sin and because of sin, and He did this in order that God may be justified in all He had done, especially in taking this step. Because He did accomplish this greatest of miracles concurrently with the death He died to sin, He was able also to shed from His body the blood that should inevitably redeem us from sin. That perfect Man would not release His spirit from His body till all forms and powers of sin had been comprehensively dealt with.
28..This is the death Paul was talking about, this rigid refusal to become personally interested in and involved with sin, except as far as it was necessary to destroy its power over humanity and remove it. That this death was demonstrated and gloriously effected at the time of Christ's physical death was absolutely right according to the nature of things, making that death all the more wonderful and infinitely more powerful and effective. The subtlety of sin is that it has created in mankind a state of unconscious death, with the result that people physically alive are quite unaware that they are dead with a death more terrible than physical decease or the diseases that cause it. This death is existence in a state of death towards God, (of being unaware of Him, and not knowing Him or that He even exists), as being opposed to eternal life, which consists in knowing God. When God gave the law to Israel He did so in order to convince them of sin by making them aware of Himself and what He wanted and did not want and would not have. Paul says the law enhanced sin, that is, it focussed attention upon sin, lighting it up and making it appear what it was; with customary frankness he illustrated this from his own life and experience. Like us all, he was born fallen and dead by the sin of Adam. He was in sin, though not consciously; he did not know what sin was. Not understanding it, he was quite unaware of it, so he lived happily with it, and felt really alive. Then came the time when, by some means or other, (possibly at Bar-mitzvah when the law came to him, as to every boy) sin came to him; when that happened it was enhanced to him personally. He instanced this enhancement by referring to his inward struggle with sin in relation to the tenth commandment, 'thou shalt not covet'. He had coveted many a time without knowing that it was covetousness, or lust. Then one day he realized the meaning of the law, and it dawned on him what he was doing and had always been doing. He had been existing in sin, totally dead to God, very much alive to self, and he knew he was a sinner.
29. As every other 'normal' person, he had been living in the grip of lust, wanting this or that or him or her for one purpose or another. In total ignorance of true spiritual life, he had lived only to satisfy his own physical, mental, aesthetic, or religious desires; he had certainly not known this was sin. But when this realization dawned on him, and he recognized that all his behaviour and everything associated with it was sin, he died. All his enjoyment had been self-indulgence, and it turned sour on him; his former life passed away. In desperation he turned wholeheartedly to religion for help and became a Pharisee. He adamantly refused to do anything that broke the ten commandments, or in any way infringed the ordinances of God as the Jews interpreted them; he treasured the law and delighted in it in his mind. As touching the righteousness that was in the law he was blameless, excelling just about everybody in the country, but he was dead, he could not live what he believed; he was one great mass of inward contradiction and corruption and he knew it. He found that nothing could halt or reverse what was going on in him; he discovered that sin was governed by law, that a spiritual process was at work in his members and he was its slave. Neither law nor will, nor religion, nor good works, nor circumcision, nor anything else could stop him from sinning, or take sin out of him. A power was dominating his mind so that he sinned as by law; it was inbred in him, he did it naturally. Sin, he discovered, was his nature, his lord, his custodian, his predestination. He was conformed by it and to it, an unwilling slave of a tyrant master. Sin had slain him, he was dead, in death; it was in him. First it had been a death he did not know, now it was a death he did know, or thought he did, but how to get rid of it or get out of it he did not know. O what a death.
30. In this conscious state of death he existed for many years, groaning over his wretchedness and crying out for a deliverer, thinking there was no way out and becoming harder and harder as time went on. When he met the Church he found a company of men and women who had discovered the secret that had eluded him, and he hated them for it. Brooding over his condition and refusing to believe the gospel, his zeal reached fanatical proportions, and he sinned yet more; breathing out threatenings and slaughter, full of bigotry, blasphemy and blood lust, he worked out a plan to destroy all the Christians and stamp out Christianity in his lifetime. Fanatically he threw himself into a frenzied extermination programme. He was so convinced he was right, that he actually achieved the remarkable distinction of living with a clear conscience towards God, at the same time being a murderer of men and a hater of Jesus Christ, so dead was he. But in various ways the Lord began to deal with him, gradually goading him along, till, in his wretchedness, he cried out within himself for deliverance from himself. Conflicts and contradictions raged within him, confusing all his thoughts, but all to no avail. He was the embodiment of sin and hated himself for it; but he had committed himself and, filled with pride, he went rushing blindly on in total ignorance of salvation and what it was about. But Christ loved him none the less, and one day came in mercy to him and shone upon him. He was blinded, the light was so intense. He fell to the ground, his body was laid in the dust, he could eat no food, he was incarcerated in darkness, he was brought to death. It was a terrible experience. Physically he was still alive, but he did not know what was happening to him or when it might end; all he could do was pray and cry out to God. His state was dreadful, unforgettable, so were his prayers; they were heart cries, that was all. He had no difficulty in recalling them, they were all much about the same, pitifully full of ignorance and despair. To him it seemed his body was full of death; he knew he was a dead man. 'O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?' he cried; perhaps he was still saying it when the Lord delivered him.
31. Like Unto His Glorious Image When Ananias laid his hands on him, all the raging turbulence within Paul ceased at once and for ever. He received into himself the Holy Spirit and, by Him, the spirit of Christ, which could not be imparted by Him in the days of His flesh. Thereby He brought His death, the complete works and effects of it, to Paul, to his whole spirit, soul and body. It was profound. Paul became a new man. The Lord did not bring His bodily death to him, He brought and applied the effects and accomplishments of it to him: the man Paul still lived. Christ brought in to him that death which He accomplished for him while yet breathing in the body of His flesh on the cross, His own personal death to sin on behalf of man. To Paul it was as final in the spirit/soul realm as physical death is in the bodily realm, and more permanent. Short of physical death it was as the commencement of a new life to Paul. Christ's death was a great personal triumph, but not just for Himself, He died for others also: for everyone who was to be a partner with Him of His life and a member of His spiritual body. That death therefore had to be made available to them. For this, God sent the Holy Spirit, for He is the Spirit of the life which was in Christ Jesus while here in the flesh (as well as in eternity) enabling Him to live on earth dead to sin. He came because He had to, there was no other way we could be made members of the same body (in which He wrought the miracle) and live and walk in the same element in which He lived and walked. Jesus was the man of the Spirit, He lived entirely in the Spirit, physically and spiritually, and His physical body was the medium in which He wrought the miracle for His spiritual body of many human members. If any man saw the truth of identification and unification with Christ it was Paul. He saw the fundamental necessity of it, both for God and for man. He also fully realized that, apart from these things, the whole plan of redemption would not have been proposed, for it could not have worked; redemption is set upon and proceeds from identification and unification of Christ's people with Himself. The whole idea of substitution, necessary as it was, had to resolve itself into identification or all would fail. Substitution teaches 'instead of me', identification declares 'as me'. Paul saw, that as Christ had accomplished everything as a whole and at once, every basic thing had to be done in him as a whole and at once also — not piecemeal. He understood why human beings were made as they were, and fully grasped the deeper meanings and desires of God which underlay the words of God spoken in the beginning, 'let us make man in our image after our likeness'. Everyone, and everything to do with each one's salvation throughout the whole of life here and hereafter was proposed, conformed arid predestinated by one person and one act in eternity and we all were justified into that pre-arranged and prepared position.
32. Paul's failure had lain in the fact that, being unregenerate, laws contrary to the law of his mind were working in his members, warring against him. He had thought and wished and willed good, but the members of his body did otherwise; they seemed to have a will of their own. Powers not under the control of his mind were working in him, in his mind, in his body, throughout his whole system, in his mind particularly; all nature was under sin's dominion. There was a law operating in all his members which he could neither change nor control; he was corrupt through lust. He realized that the body must be brought to a death. For this reason, and to do this thing, Christ comes into us. He broke the power of the law of sin and death, which would have dominated over his will in His own body, and because He wants our bodies to be conformed to His body He comes into us to bring all those contrary powers and activities in our members to death. In love and holiness He makes us partake of His essential death, the greater one, so that being planted together in the likeness of His death, we should be also of His resurrection.
33. The Great Man that He was, He had to become as mere man and be raised from the dead by the glory of the Father; the Spirit of life quickened His dead body because of His and the Father's righteousness. He had to be raised because He had conquered sin. It would have been sin if He had not been raised — He deserved it. In us the death of Christ and the quickening of the Spirit work together. Christ's death to sin must permanently abide and work in us; if that death did not operate in us sin would work in our members instead. In the same way, because of righteousness, the Spirit must abide in us also, for it is He who brings to us the Spirit of Christ who operates in us this same law of liberty from sin and death. It is only right that all who will have the death to work in them should have the life too, otherwise it is impossible to be and to do righteousness. This is the only way a person can be kept free from sin; this is that death into which we are baptized and buried and planted. Like everything else of major significance in spiritual life it is a two-way experience — we are baptized into it and it is baptized into us. END