Deliverance and Its End
– F. E. Raven

G.A.R.

I dare say some might think at first sight that this is a strange chapter to take up as a text on which to speak about deliverance; but really it is not so strange as it may appear,

• for there is in it a kind of bringing together of the truth of both Romans and Colossians.

• Deliverance, in the way in which I want to speak of it, is three-fold.

• Tonight, I take up the subject of deliverance from sin, the world, and the power of Satan; these are rightly put together in a line of a hymn, and are inseparably connected.

• That is one aspect of deliverance, and a very important one too.

• Another aspect of deliverance, which is distinct from the first, is from the law. And the third aspect is from the flesh.

• All three are distinctly treated in Scripture, though they coalesce in the believer.

• My subject tonight is deliverance from sin, the world, and Satan’s power.

I think one may readily see that if you are delivered from sin and from the world, you are delivered from Satan’s power;

• because, as far as I understand it, it is by sin and the system of the world that Satan can act upon us.
  • He is “the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience”;

• and the power by which Satan holds men in bondage is sin and the world.

• The connection of the three is so intimate that it is difficult to draw a definite line between them, except in saying that they are three distinct things;
  • for Satan existed as a being before sin, and sin existed before the world, so that evidently the three things are in themselves distinct.

Now in regard to the passage I read – I commend it to your study when you have leisure – I would remark that though it starts from a very small beginning, it opens out into a very large circle. The beginning is in the last verse of chapter 2.

• “Born of God” is the beginning with every one of us; we are subjects of the work of God.
  • “Every one that doeth righteousness is born of God”,

  • that is John’s beginning.

• I may say in passing, that John does not, like Paul, take up the saints on the ground of their responsibility, for that is not exactly John’s line, but on the line of the work of God in them;
  • and the beginning of the work of God in the soul evidently is, that a man is born of God.

• Then if you run down chapter 3 the next thing is the calling; that gives our position.
  • “What manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the children of God”.

• Then you pass on to another point, the nature which is suited to the calling.
  • “He that doeth righteousness is righteous, even as he is righteous”.

• And there is another element connected with it, but I cannot go fully into that point at present, and that is love; though righteousness and love do not stand on quite the same footing.

• But they are the two proper characteristics of the Christian, he is righteous as Christ is righteous, and he loves his brother.

• Then in the latter part of the chapter, in connection with this question of love, is opened out the Christian circle.
  • “We know that we have passed out of death into life because we love the brethren”.

• It is that which made me say that in this chapter you touch on one side Romans and on the other Colossians. You are brought first to the great truth of a man of another order –
  • “He that doeth righteousness is righteous even as he is righteous”,

• and then to the truth of the Christian circle; Romans gives the one and Colossians the other.

Now, of necessity two things are involved in the chapter, deliverance from sin and from the world.

• Deliverance from sin is really involved in doing righteousness. How do you know that a person is righteous as Christ is righteous?
  • Because he practises righteousness; he has been delivered from the dominion of sin.

• Then again, in having passed out of death into life we have passed out of the system of the world, because the world is in death.

• John looks at things morally, and for him the world is death, and believers know that they have
  • “passed out of death into life, because we love the brethren”;

• therefore practical deliverance from sin and from the world is involved in the chapter, and I want to show how it is effectuated in the believer.

• Possibly many here know it well enough, much better than myself; but to all of us, to the most advanced and to the youngest, this question of deliverance is a very important one indeed.

• I do not judge that it is effected simply by the acceptance of doctrine.

• I think you can understand the expression, that you must get a certain amount of leverage in the soul in order to bring about practical deliverance from sin and from the world.

• To talk about the Christian practising righteousness unless as set free from sin is out of the question, you must have died to sin to live to God.

• And further, it is not true of anybody that he has passed out of death into life except as set free from the world –
  • “He that hateth his brother abideth in death”

  • – that is the world morally.

• I will return to that point, but what I want to show you first is the leverage, that is, the power by which God effectuates deliverance in the soul of the Christian.

• If I were to put the question, ‘How is deliverance effected for the Christian from sin and from the world?’ the natural answer would be, ‘By death’. I admit it; it is effectuated in that way.

• But then the Christian has to die to it, and how is he to be brought to that? I dare say some would answer, ‘We have died to it in the death of Christ’. That will not do.

• I say the death of Christ is your title to die to it, to die to one as to the other.
  • “Our old man has been crucified with him”

• – that is your title to die to sin; and the world is crucified to the believer in the cross of Christ – that is your title to die to the world.

• I quite admit the title of the Christian to die by the death of Christ both to sin and to the world;
  • but my present point is what it is that gives power in the soul to die to sin and to the world.

• I believe Scripture makes it very plain; if a Christian is going to travel that path, and to enter into the thought of God about him, he must be attracted by the grace of God and by what God presents.

• I do not approve of asceticism, people may make an effort in such ways to cut off the connection, but I believe it is all totally false; I do not think they know what they are doing.

I repeat what I said at the beginning, that God, by the very nature of what He is, is entitled to have everything for His own satisfaction; that God created everything, man and everything else, for Himself.

• If you do not accept that you cannot know what sin is.

• The point of departure was when man listened to the temptation to act for himself; sin came in, and man stepped outside the circle of divine satisfaction.

• The evidence of sin was this, that self became an object to man, he was to be governed by his own will, that is sin; you get a definition of it in this chapter,
  • “sin is lawlessness”.

• Man’s thoughts centred round self, and self became the great controlling principle with him.

• It has been said, and I do not think the expression is too strong, that man set himself as a rival to God; for what God is entitled to, man claimed on his own account, and the world was all built up on that.

• Satan greatly helped man to that end, for he is the god and prince of this world; and it is by the system of the world that Satan keeps man in bondage. That is the working and connection of things.

• When the Lord came into the world, and was led of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil, Satan in one of the temptations takes Him up apart into a high mountain and shows Him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time, saying,
  • “All this power will I give unto thee, and the glory of them, for that is delivered unto me, and to whomsoever I will I give it”, and if you will but acknowledge me as the prince and god of this world, “all shall be thine”.

• The Lord met it in the perfection of truth, in the power of the word of God,
  • “It is written, Thou shalt worship Jehovah thy God, and him only shalt thou serve”, and He rebuked him too.

• I only refer to that in order to make plain the connection between these three things, sin, the world, and Satan.

This is the one chapter in Scripture in which we get a definition of sin;

• “Sin”, we are told, “is lawlessness”,

• the two things are precisely equivalent, that is, lawlessness is sin and sin is lawlessness.
  • The principle of sin is in the indisposition of man to be under restraint of God.

• That was the effect of man listening to the enemy, he became as God. You remember what the temptation was –
  • “Ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil”;

• man became an object to himself, and in becoming an object to himself set himself as a rival to God.

• When the man of sin is revealed, he shows himself that he is God, and claims to be worshipped as God – man has gained his end, he is bolstered up by Satan, and thus it is that you get the climax and full expression of sin in
  • “the man of sin”, “the son of perdition”.

• It does not appear to me as if Satan came to the front; he has taken the place of god and prince of this world, but his way is to act through man.

• You find in the Revelation a trinity of evil;

1. there is the first beast, which I suppose represents the great Imperial system;

2. and the second beast, that is the personal Antichrist, the man of sin;

3. and finally there is Satan, who has then been cast out of the heavens, and who gives his power and authority to the beast – he is the ruling spirit.

• And Satan exercises great power in regard to man now, through the system of this world; for this world has been built up in sin, and man has turned everything to account for his own satisfaction, to his own ends, to please himself, and through this great system Satan works on man and holds him in bondage.

• I do not go further into it, but only allude to it in order to show the intimate connection between sin, the world, and Satan.

I think you will understand now that if one is to be for God he must be set free from sin and the world;

• for if I am in bondage to sin and to the world, I am practically under the power of Satan, the enemy of God;

• and more than that, sin and the world are so totally opposed in nature and principle to God that I could not possibly be for God if I were not free from their power.
  • Christ died for our sins, “that he might deliver us from this present evil world, according to the will of God and our Father”.

• It is a great thing to understand where the secret of deliverance lies, how you are practically set free from sin and the world in such a way as that you can live to God.

• It is a blessed thing to live to God as dead to sin. We read of Christ,
  • “In that he died, he died unto sin once; but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God”.

• He died to sin to live to God. As to His own personal path, of course that was ever to God; but He died to sin once and lives to God, that we too might die to sin and live to God.

• It is a great thing for all of us to reach that point; for God is entitled to have everything for His own satisfaction, and to live to God, as I understand it, is to live for His satisfaction.

There are two things in Scripture to which the Christian is said to die, sin and the world.

• In regard to law you are become dead to it; God has released you from one bond, and formed another.

• Then in regard to the flesh,
  • “you are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you”;

• that is the change that takes place in the Christian, he is no longer in the flesh, but in the Spirit.

• You are never said to die to the flesh, that I know of, but by the Spirit you
  • “mortify the deeds of the body”.

• But you can very well understand that in each case deliverance stands on a different basis.

• The law is compared to a husband; and you could not be free from law if God had not dissolved the bond.

• On the other hand, you could not be in the Spirit, if you had not received the Spirit of God.
  • But in regard to sin and the world, which is my point tonight, we have to die.

I lay this down as an undoubted principle, that the title of a Christian to die is in the death of Christ;

• it is not that I have died in the death of Christ, but the death of Christ is my title to die.

• I could not think of dying to sin if our old man had not been crucified with Christ. That is my title to die to sin.

• What I understand by it is, that all that comes under the idea of our old man, what a man is as in the flesh, God has dealt with judicially in the death of Christ for Himself and for me too.

• If it were not so, you could not die; if our old man had not been crucified in the cross of Christ, you would be on the footing of responsibility as to the old man;
  • but our old man has been dealt with in the cross of Christ, that we might not be on that footing, but that we might be privileged to die with Christ.

And in regard to the world, the same truth applies. The apostle says,

• “God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world”

• that is, that for the Christian the world has come to an end in the cross, as Christ Himself said as to it,
  • “Now is the judgment of this world”.

• Our title to die to sin and to the world lies in the cross of Christ, and were it not for that we should still be alive in the responsibility of the old man.

• That is the first thing we have to learn, for we have to apprehend the truth of God in divine order.

• First we have to learn the great work that Christ has done, the foundation of righteousness, and the grace in which God presents Himself to us; and until that lesson is learnt the soul cannot learn any other.

• Peace, and favour, the hope of glory, and reconciliation, all express the grace in which God presents Himself to us, for
  • “Grace reigns through righteousness unto eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord”.

• If you are not established in the grace of the gospel, it is futile to attempt any other lesson; but the instant the soul is established in the sense of what God is toward it in grace, then the question is raised, what am I going to be for God?
  • And it is a very simple answer – I am to live to God.

• And how are you going to live to God? Not on the old footing, that is perfectly certain, because there is no such thing as man living to God on the footing of a man upon earth now that Christ is gone.

• Christ has been rejected; His life is taken from the earth, and therefore it is totally impossible to live to God on the footing of a man upon earth.

• On what footing, then, are you going to live to God? I want to bring before you, in the answer to this, what really gives a person power to reckon himself dead indeed unto sin.

• It is in the apprehension of Christ as the second Man that the soul is drawn away from all that is connected with sin, and from all that in which sin is operative.

• That I believe to be the leverage by which a soul is enabled to die to sin, that is, to reckon itself dead unto sin, but alive unto God in Christ Jesus.

• I would that I might be enabled in a few words to bring before you what God has brought to pass for Himself in the Lord Jesus Christ, as the second Man.

• God has secured this – that man should be to His infinite and eternal satisfaction. I am looking at the Lord Jesus Christ now in a different aspect from what He is as making known to me the grace of God:
  • He has done that, and I know nothing about the grace of God except what reaches me through the Lord Jesus Christ;

• but now I apprehend Him as the second Man, who has entered in to the eternal satisfaction of God.

• He is thus to us the tree of life; and it is in our apprehension of Him thus that we are enabled to reckon ourselves
  • “dead indeed unto sin”,

• for we have in view the thought of being alive unto God in Christ Jesus. It is a wonderful privilege to join Him, to be of His company;
  • but you first have to learn what He is as Man before you can have the thought of joining Him, and by that I mean that you account yourself alive to God in Christ Jesus.

• He is the second Man, who has been raised from the dead by the glory of the Father.

• There has been a Man here upon earth who has held everything for God; One who, in the presence of all the power of evil and everything adverse, has held, as I may say, the fortress completely alone, not another with Him, for the glory of God;
  • One in whom the question of good and evil has been completely solved, who was divinely perfect in the knowledge of good and evil, and in whom was the perfect refusal of evil and the unvarying and consistent choosing of good.

• It is a great thing to apprehend that, in the midst of the terrible confusion of this world, the great question of good and evil has been completely solved in the Lord Jesus Christ.

• We have in Isaiah the expression, referring I suppose to Christ,
  • “Butter and honey shall he eat, that he may know to refuse the evil and choose the good”.

• That was perfectly illustrated in Christ down here; but that is not all the truth, for He went down into death, to bear the judgment that rested upon man, for the glory of God,
  • and He comes forth from the dead by the glory of the Father – though the glory of the Father was indeed there before He was raised – God had been completely glorified.

• And all this has come to pass in a Man: the question of good and evil is solved, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is done with in that sense, for what came in by it has been answered:

• God has been glorified in the putting away of sin, and Christ as Man raised again from the dead by the glory of the Father, so that
  • “in that he died, he died unto sin once; in that he liveth, he liveth unto God”

• – all to the perfect satisfaction of the heart of God.

• And on that ground we can live to God, we can reckon ourselves dead to sin, but alive unto God in Christ Jesus.

• The question has to be raised in people’s souls whether they prefer Christ to Adam, the second Man to the first.

• And yet there are very few Christians who could give you any very clear idea of the second Man.

• If I prefer the second Man to the first, I am delighted to think that I can be in His life in the presence of God, entitled to account myself alive unto God in Him.

• Then comes in the other point, that if I am to be in His life, I must part company with the first man, and in this everybody has to begin with himself.

• It is not quite so easy as it may seem. The first man comes very close home to us, and in that sense sin comes very close home to us,
  • because the whole spirit and principle of the first man is wrong, and you cannot touch the first man without touching sin.

• The moment I become an object to myself sin is proved to be there; I have to cease from that, because I have learnt that I am in the company of One who is to the perfect and eternal satisfaction of God.

• Christ has to be presented to us in this way; and the question has to be raised in the soul of every Christian, whether he prefers the second Man to the first.

• We belong to the second Man, and we have to appreciate the second Man; and as we appreciate the second Man, we are emboldened and enabled to part company practically with the first, and that is how we die to sin.

• The believer practises righteousness, and proves that
  • he is “righteous even as He” [Christ] “is righteous”.

• But you will never practise righteousness save as you appreciate the second Man.

• The Son of God was manifested to undo the works of the devil, that is what is brought out here; He was manifested to take away our sins, and in Him is no sin;
  • “whosoever abideth in him sinneth not”.

  • “In this the children of God are manifest, and the children of the devil”;

• the children of God do not practise sin, but they practise righteousness, they belong to Christ’s company, and are righteous even as He is righteous.

Then there is the other point, namely, death to the world. And I will tell you what I think emboldens a person to enter upon that ground – it is, that

• it begins to dawn on the soul that there is a circle here upon earth, in which is expressed the character and ways of Christ,

• a circle outside of all the distinctions of flesh, a circle in which is so expressed the truth of Christ, that
  • “we know that we have passed from death unto life because we love the brethren”.

• It is not a circle of amiable, cultivated, or refined people, but one where are expressed,
  • “bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, longsuffering, forbearing one another, and forgiving one another; if any man have a complaint against any”

• and the peace of Christ rules in the heart, and the word of Christ dwells there in all wisdom. It is the new man, where
  • “Christ is all and in all”.

• I dare say some might ask me, ‘Where is that found?’ I will tell you where it is found – in Scripture. It is a great point to see that a thing is found in Scripture.

• People want to see it in fact; I say it is lamentable if you cannot see it in fact,
  • but if I see a thing in Scripture that is enough, I will not have anything else, because that and that only is the right thing.

• I see such an idea in Scripture as a blessed circle where there is neither Jew nor Greek, circumcision nor uncircumcision, bond nor free,
  • but where Christ is all and in all;

  • and where instead of the communion of knowledge, or of education, or art, or science, or anything of that kind,

• what is expressed is the character and qualities of Christ, such as He was here.

• It is a heavenly circle, too; and that is what is really reached by a person that is dead and risen with Christ.

• I believe that the apprehension that such a circle is revealed in Scripture, and the anxiety to reach it, encourages and strengthens a person to accept the place of death to the world,
  • for if I am going to have part in that circle, all that binds me to the world must go.

• Society and the organisation the world presents to me, is no longer an attraction, because of what I have discovered in Scripture.

• I have learnt by experience that if you are attracted simply by the character of any particular company here upon earth, you will find that company will fail you, you will discover all kinds of flaws on closer acquaintance.

• But if you are attracted by what Scripture presents, if you get the scriptural ideal, the effect will be that you will be anxious to constitute one of such a company, and that the power of Scripture will be maintained in you.

• It is sometimes urged on us that we are set to reform the world; but if I have got to reform the world, the first I have got to look after is myself. As the apostle says to Timothy,
  • “Take heed to thyself”.

• But whether it be a question of death to sin or to the world, you cannot bring yourself to it by effort or self abnegation; you will come to it when you really feel the necessity of it.

• If I have got any apprehension at all of what Christ is, as Man living to God, then the necessity comes to me, if I am going to join Him, I must die to the man that is here.

• And then in regard to the world, if I get, by the grace of God, any idea of that circle of blessing to which Scripture refers –
  • “passed out of death into life because we love the brethren”,

• then I must part company with the organisation and rudiments of this world, because it is a sphere of things to which all that is of the world is perfectly foreign, and which nothing but the power of God can support.

• And it is in that way, by the light of these things breaking across the soul, that one is strengthened and encouraged;
  • it finds a certain leverage in the apprehension of these things which enables it to accept the place of death to sin and to the world.

• Take the Christian circle as it is brought out in Colossians 3, do you think any man of the world would be at home in that circle?

• He would not care to be in it; I do not think it would be the least attractive to him.

• But if you have got any thought of what is agreeable in the sight of God, that is a circle which is exceedingly beautiful and blessed to His eye, it is
  • “the elect of God, holy and beloved”,

• it is the reproduction of Christ under the eye of God, an out-of-the-world, heavenly, condition of things down here upon earth.

It is just that which I commend to you. I fear lest souls may not quite have understood all that has been presented,

• but I beg of you not to reject a thing because you do not understand it at the moment.

• Have a little patience; try to understand it; try to see if there is not something in it. I think you will find that there is a great deal in it.

I was noticing last week that there is an essential difference between sin and the world, and the law;

• for you could not speak of sin and the world in the sense in which law is spoken of as a husband in Romans 7.

• The idea of a husband involves a legal bond; and without the dissolution of the bond that exists you could not form a new bond.

• That is what is true in regard to the law; and where the law differs from sin and the world is in that the bond has been dissolved in order that a new bond might be formed.
  • You are “become dead to the law by the body of Christ, that you should be married to another”,

• that is, that a new bond might be formed on the part of the Christian.

• The meaning of it is, that so long as men were under the letter of the law they could not be joined to the One who is the spirit of the law;

• and therefore they must be freed from the first bond, the letter of the law, in order that they might be joined to the One who is the spirit of the law, and that is the way by which we
  • “bring forth fruit unto God”.

• That is what God has brought about.

• If the bond had not been dissolved you could not be free of the bond, and another bond could not be formed;
  • for if you formed a second bond while the first existed, you would put yourself in the position of an adulteress – that is the argument of Romans 7.

• This makes an essential difference between sin and the world, and law; the former are no bond, but they are elements in which man lives naturally, they belong to Egypt – Egypt is the type of the world of sin, but the law is another matter.

• In fact, the children of Israel while they were in Egypt, though under bondage to the power of the world, had no law; it was in the wilderness they came to law.

The first remark I make is this, that the way in which a Christian is righteous in the sight of God is the way by which he must live.

• You cannot be righteous on one principle and live on another, that will not do for God.

• If such a thing were possible as that a man could be righteous before God on the principle of law, then he must live on the principle of law.

• If, on the other hand, it is totally impossible for a person to be righteous before God by law, which is the principle of works, then I say he cannot live on the principle of works.

• But if it be true that the Christian is justified in Christ, then Christ becomes the principle of life to the Christian. The two things are bound to go together.

• The Galatians, like a great many Christians in the present day, sought to be justified in Christ but to live by law, it is impossible,
  • the principle of your righteousness must be the principle on which you live.

• When God created man, the question of righteousness did not arise, because man was simply what God had made him, innocent. He had not the knowledge of good and evil, so that there was no question of righteousness.

• But the introduction of sin raised at once the question of righteousness – it must be so, because righteousness is the necessary opposite of sin.

• Then comes the question, How is man going to be righteous? What is to be the principle of his righteousness?

• The first thing tried was the principle of works; God gave man law, but did not tell man what His thought and end in the law was, what was the spirit of the law;
  • but He gave the law to man, and the principle of works was the principle on which under law righteousness depended.

• What follows is this, that if man could have been righteous on the principle of works, or of law, he would have lived on the principle of works.

• But the law came at a day too late for this, because man was already under the sentence of death, and law could not relieve him of that sentence.

• I think the contrast of law and grace is illustrated in the parable of the Good Samaritan.

• The man was half dead, the priest and the Levite, the representatives of the law, could not relieve him of the pressure, and therefore they passed by on the other side.

• The Good Samaritan came where the man was, and relieved him of the pressure under which he lay.

• And so Christ has come in to relieve man of the pressure of death which was upon him, by glorifying God in death, and as raised from the dead is now righteousness for the Christian.

• To put it in the words of the apostle in the epistle to the Romans,
  • “Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth”.

• By end I understand to be meant the purpose, the object, of the law; and thus having Christ for righteousness before God we must of necessity live by Christ.

I want to say a little more in regard to justification, because I feel that our thoughts of justification are often too limited.

• Many a Christian who is clear enough as to forgiveness of offences does not see justification in its fulness as the Christian’s relief from the judgment of God that lies now upon man.

• Many a Christian would say, I am justified from my sins, I am saved in that sense, and I shall never come into judgment.

• But then justification goes farther than that, because Christ is risen, and the thought of grace is to relieve man from the pressure of death that is on him; and justification is not complete unless a man is relieved from that pressure.

• I mean this, that for the Christian it is not only a question of faith in the blood, but faith in the One that is risen, as it says,
  • Christ “was delivered for our offences and raised again for our justification”.

• And being the statement of Scripture, it is clear that nobody comes to justification in its completeness until he reaches by faith Christ risen.

• And it is an immense point to apprehend Christ risen, to see the truth that
  • He “was raised again for our justification”,

• that the Christian might be as free before God from the judgment of death as Christ is.

• The evidence that the Christian is justified not only from offences, but from the sentence of death which was upon him as the result of sin, is that
  • his body becomes the temple of the Holy Ghost, and he passes out of death into life.

• He is not yet raised, but he is justified in Christ; if he were raised he would be justified in that sense in himself;

• but he is not yet justified in his own person, but in Christ, and the proof and result of justification is, that the Holy Ghost is given,
  • “The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us”.

You will bear with my dwelling upon this, because of the importance to every Christian to get a thorough ground-work in his soul in the knowledge of justification,

• and then to apprehend what is unfolded to us in Romans 5,

• namely, what the attitude of God is toward the believer consequent upon being justified.

• A very common illustration that has been used of the gospel, namely, that of a substitute, of one who suffers a penalty in the place of another in order that the latter may go free,
  • does not seem to me to be right in principle or application, for in the gospel the first to go free is the substitute.

• Christ, who suffered for us, was the first to be raised from the dead,
  • He “was raised again for our justification”.

• No living soul of man was justified until Christ was raised from the dead. Then the believer is justified.

• And as I said before, he is not only justified from his offences, but he is justified from sentence of death that lay upon him, so that he can be raised up in the power of the Holy Ghost.

• I do not say his body is yet raised up, but the person is raised up, as we see in the case of the man at the pool of Bethesda, in John 5.

Now I pass on to the question of deliverance from law.

• We saw last week that deliverance from sin and from the world is effectuated only as a glimpse is gained of another Man, the second Man, and of the Christian circle.

• A person is not content to take the place of death to sin except as the soul has the apprehension of another Man, of a Man that having been raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, now lives to God, as having died to sin.

• One is thus strengthened and encouraged to part company with sin, because he goes in faith to join the Man that is to the perfect satisfaction of God.

• His thought now is, I am entitled by grace to join that Man; and to join Him I must of necessity part company with the man that is here, and with the principle that dominates him, which is sin.

• For sin is looked at in Romans 6 as the dominating principle of the man that is here.

• And again, as to deliverance from the world, it is as I am attracted by the character of the Christian circle, the circle where Christ is all and in all, that I am led to accept the place of death to the world; I feel the incongruity of the two spheres.

• The Christian circle is where the affections and sensibilities of Christ are seen in exercise. The world I understand to be the sphere and scene in which the flesh lives.

This question of law is a very great hindrance to many of us, and I think it takes us a long time to get free of law.

• I will tell you how it works; people go to the Scriptures to find exhortations and rules; they want chapter and verse, as they say commonly, for their doctrine, and they want precepts for their conduct.

• That is all legality, it is the letter, and I think people are uncommonly fond of the letter; they go to Scripture in that sense to a large extent.

Now the apostle says in the passage I read,

• “If I build again the things which I destroyed, I make myself a transgressor”,

• which means that if a person after seeking to be justified in Christ, and seeing that justification is alone in Christ, then goes back to law as a rule of life, that person builds again the things which once he destroyed, and he makes himself a transgressor
  • his transgression is in having left the law, for if he goes back to it he condemns himself for having left it.

• The passage involves the truth of which I spoke a few moments ago, that the Christian has to live on the principle on which he is righteous; you cannot divorce the two things, righteousness and life;
  • if Christ is the righteousness of the Christian before God, then Christ is the life of the Christian.

• Law cannot be, Christ must be, the life of the Christian.

Now in looking at law for a moment as law, that is, law in the letter, I must repeat that the letter did not express the end of God in the law;

• the mind of God in the law lay underneath, and those to whom the letter of the law was given never knew the mind of God in it;
  • Moses “put a veil upon his face”, we are told, and they were not allowed to see “the end of that which is annulled”.

• The end does not mean, I judge, its termination, but the object and purport of God in it.

• The consequence was, that Israel took up all the law in detail, sacrifices and everything else; and as Peter expressed it, it was a burden which neither they nor their fathers were able to bear.

• The people that were under law never kept the law, it was too burdensome by far for man to keep.

Now, I think, the first thing in regard to being free from law is, that one must learn in some way or other what is the effect of law,

• “the letter kills”.

• A person has to be killed by law, has to die in that sense; the apostle does not say simply that he is dead to the law, but he says,
  • “I through law have died to law, to live to God”.

• I suppose it works in this way, that law brings home to a man the truth of his own utter powerlessness.

• That is the lesson to be learnt; I do not care how it is learnt, in all probability by law, but it has to be learnt.

If I look abroad, there are very few men in the world who think themselves powerless.

• I have seen men of great determination and strong will, and have thought them strong. I do not think that now.

• I quite admit that there are people of a certain force of character, people who seem to carry things before them; but their strength of will and determination is not morally in opposition to the course and current of things here.

• And then again, I have a strong suspicion that men of great determination and will, who are running in the current of the world, are helped by a power that is greater than themselves.

I am not sure to what extent men come under spiritual influence; but I have a strong impression that there is such a thing in the world as spiritual influence, not only for good but for evil,

• and that a man of will and determination may be carried on by spiritual influence stronger than himself.

• And as a matter of fact, I feel doubtful if there is such a thing really as free will with man, because where a man is dominated by the principle of sin, he is not free as to will.

• People talk about free will, but it is simply rubbish, because if a man is a slave to sin, which he is by nature, there is no question of free will, he is controlled by a principle which is beyond himself.

• For sin is not limited to man. The apostle John says,
  • “the devil sins from the outset”.

• Sin came into the world by man, but it did not originate with man.

• And if it is true that a man is by nature under the power of sin, then it is not a question of his will, but of sin that he is controlled by, a principle which he does not circumscribe.

• Again I say that there are spiritual influences at work, and so long as men are running in the current of sin and of the world, they are often carried by those influences a long way beyond what they intended to go.

• I think we should find plenty of instances of that. I believe it accounts for many dreadful things which take place in the world; dreadful ends very often had small beginnings.

• But people going in a certain current, have found that they were helped while they were going down the stream.
  • Now, I believe the test of the power of will is when you attempt to go against the stream.

• Let a man be for God here, and then find what amount of power he has got.

• Let his mind recognise the rights of God, like a man waking up to the spirituality of the law, that he is to love God with all his heart and his neighbour as himself,
  • let him begin to recognise the goodness of the law and the right and authority of God, and then see how much power he has got.

• Every one of us knows very well, as the apostle says in Romans 7, that
  • “when the law came, sin revived and I died”;

• that is, when I saw and allowed that God had a will and right over me, I found I was totally powerless.

• And why? Because I wanted to go against the stream, against the current of sin, and then I found out that I had not an atom of power.

• That is the way in which the law worked, and in which it killed man, for the law killed a man in his own experience. The apostle says,
  • “I was alive without the law once, but when the commandment came, sin revived and I died”.

• When he was alive was the time when he thought he had power to effectuate his will. And man thinks he has still.

• I believe it is a mistake, for when a man is thinking he effectuates his own will, he is under the power of sin; it is sin he is effectuating, not his own will.

• When a man sees what is right, as we find in Romans 7,
  • “When I would do good”,

• that is, when a man would recognise the rights of God, and would love God with all his heart, and his neighbour has himself, then he finds out he is totally powerless;
  • that is, he is killed, he has no power at all in that which he knows to be right.

• And therefore it is a hopeless kind of thing for a man to be under law, because he cannot comply with the requirements of the law; it is impossible he could please God or be righteous before God on that ground.

But by the gospel he is brought to another great truth; he finds out that Christ is his righteousness.

• “Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth”:

• he is completely justified by Christ:
  • “By this man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins, and by him all that believe are justified from all things, from which ye could not be justified by the law of Moses”.

• What the law could not do, Christ has done for him; that is, the law could not relieve him of the sentence of death, it only pressed it home upon him;
  • but he finds that in Christ he is completely relieved of the sentence of death that lay upon him:

• Christ is the ministration of life, just as the law was the ministration of death.

But there is another point, and that is, he learns that Christ is the spirit of the law, and he is taught it by the Spirit of God.

• Being justified, he receives the Spirit of God, for a man receives the Spirit before he is set free from law; and then he finds out that there is another aspect in which the law can be regarded,
  • that instead of looking at the requirements and the letter of the law, he can see that Christ is the spirit of the law,

• that God had quite a different end in the law from what appeared to man, and that the thought and intent of God in the law was not the detail, not the letter, but Christ.

• That is a wonderful moment, for then I look at Scripture in a totally different way.

• I am no longer looking at it for precepts and directions in detail as to conduct, but what I read in the law is Christ;
  • I look at it objectively as furnishing instruction, as an expression of the mind of God as to what was to be effectuated in Christ.

• I begin to discern the spirit instead of the letter, and when a person is brought to that point it opens out entirely a new, prospect to him; Scripture becomes a totally different book;
  • instead of its being a book of dogmas and commandments which I do not find myself able to fulfil,

• it is a blessed book of instruction, a book of deepest interest, as showing to me what was ever in the purpose and thought of God.

• It is then that we begin to see the glory of the Lord with unveiled face; we find the truth of Christ not only in the New Testament but in every page of the Old, not only in the prophets but in the law.

• I dare say you remember what the Lord did, as recorded in the last chapter of Luke’s gospel, after His resurrection – He opened the understanding of His disciples, and
  • “beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them, in all the scriptures, the things concerning himself”;

• that is, He lighted up the book to them, they got an illumination which they never had before, they began to see all in a totally different light.

• I think many of us have come to that point. I know it in my own experience. I had no conception when I was first converted of what a wonderful book Scripture was,
  • for I was, in a sense, converted under law, and was accustomed to pray that God would incline our hearts to keep the law, as I suppose many of us have done in the past.

• It was a wonderful new light to me when I came to find out that the letter was not the great thing before God, but that Christ was
  • “the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth”.

Now, I do not think anybody will get practical deliverance from law until he comes to that point.

• The first thing is to see how completely the believer is justified in Christ, so that he receives the gift of the Holy Ghost, to dwell in his body which is freed from the judgment of God.

• Then the truth is learnt, that the believer is not under law, that Scripture is to him not a question of law and commandments and precepts, but of instruction in the mind of God, from beginning to end realised in Christ.

• I need hardly go into detail about it, it is enough to say that the sacrifices, the feasts, and institutions in the law were typical of Christ, all fulfilled and realised in Him. He is the yea and Amen of all.

• I am apart from the letter of law, for Christ who is the end of it, is my righteousness; I am justified in Him,
  • and the law is now instruction to me concerning the One in whom I am justified;

• that is what the law becomes to the Christian. And then, too, Christ becomes the delight of the believer’s soul.

• I was trying to expound last time, that there is a scene of infinite and divine rest and satisfaction into which a Man has entered to the glory of God,
  • and that the One who has entered there is the end and purpose of God, the mind of God in the law.

There is another lesson to be learnt in connection with it.

• I have sought to show you how you are freed from the letter by the apprehension of the spirit, because
  • the moment you apprehend the spirit you are free of the letter, and you are never free from the letter until you apprehend the spirit.

• But when I speak about the spirit, I do not mean the Holy Ghost, I mean the spirit of the law, that is, Christ.

• In 2 Corinthians, we are told that the Lord is that spirit. The apostle speaks of his ministry as
  • “not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life”,

• and then later down in the chapter he adds,
  • “The Lord is that spirit”,

  • that is, the spirit of the Scriptures.

• Now when I apprehend Christ to be the spirit of the Scriptures, another truth comes in, that is, that I am joined to Him by the Holy Ghost.

• And what I understand that to mean is, that the one who is joined to Him is joined to Him in order that he may take character from Him.

• When a man was under law he took his character from law, he got legality from the letter.

• Let a man get an apprehension of Christ as the spirit of Scripture, and know that he is joined to Him, and he will soon take his character from Him.

• Just remember the order of these things.

1. The first point is, the believer is justified in Christ – He was raised again for our justification.

2. Then the next is, that he apprehends Him as the spirit of Scripture.

3. Then, further, that he is joined to Him by the Holy Ghost –
   • “He that is joined to the Lord is one Spirit”;

   and he now gets his character from Him. I am sure that is the way in which Christ is formed in the Christian.

You are bound to get your character from what engrosses you. If law engrosses a man he will get punctilious and particular in trifles.

• But let him apprehend Christ as the spirit of Scripture, and then see what enlargement he will get.

• To me Christ as man is a perfectly blessed study.

• When I think of what He has been for the glory of God, resolving every question of good and evil, ever refusing the evil and choosing the good, glorifying God in the place of man’s ruin, and then raised again from the dead by the Father’s glory,
  • when I ponder over Christ in that way, it is a delight to me to think that there is such an one entered in for the eternal satisfaction of God – God has gained His end.

• That is a most blessed thought to every Christian.

And another point is this, that the infinite love of God rests in Christ as man.

• It is not simply revealed in Christ, but it rests there, and we are called into His company, we are joined to Him to take our character from Him when we have learnt that we are joined to Him.

• That is individual, I am not talking about the church.

• If you are thrown intimately into contact with people in the world superior to yourself, you will very likely in a large measure derive a certain character from them.

• It is certain that a wife to a large extent is what her husband makes her.

• The Spirit of God presents to us in Scripture one object, the second Man, the One who has been raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, who has entered in to the perfect and eternal satisfaction of God;
  • and we are joined to Him by the Spirit in order that we may take character from Him.

• The law killed us, the spirit quickens, that is the difference between the two.
  • “I”, says the apostle, “through the law have died to law, that I might live to God. I am crucified with Christ”.

• That is the way in which the bond that bound him to law had been dissolved. Christ had borne the judgment of death that rested upon him, and now he is crucified with Christ; and then he says,
  • “nevertheless, I live” – the same person,

  • “and yet not I”, not the same morally,

  • “but Christ liveth in me”;

• that is what he has come to because Christ is in him. It is by the Spirit of life that Christ is in the Christian.

Paul had apprehended what I have said, that he was justified in Christ; he had delight in Christ, and then he found that he was joined to Christ. Now he has come to this point,

• “Yet not I, but Christ liveth in me”.

• And then he goes on to say, “in that I live in the flesh” – because he recognised that he had to fill up the remains of responsible life down here –
  • “In that I live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me”;

• that is, that the Son of God was the proper object of his faith, the light of his soul, and consequently law did not regulate his conduct, but the Son of God, who loved him and gave Himself for him.

• If a person has to do with the law in the letter he will assuredly be legal.

• On the other hand, if he lives by the faith of the Son of God, who loved him and gave Himself for him, assuredly he will take a character from the love.

• But I doubt if this will be so until he has apprehended that Christ is the spirit of the law, that is, the spirit of the Scriptures.

• What can be more wonderful than that we have in the Scriptures a book the writing of which extended over a period of 1,500 or 2,000 years,
  • maintaining all through one great personality in Jehovah,

  • and pervaded by one great end and purpose, and that is Christ.

• All this testifies to one Author, and the one Author of Scripture is the Holy Ghost.
  • “Holy men of old spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost”.

• As I said before, it is as souls get an apprehension of this that they are delivered from the letter; they do not go to Scripture to look for precepts and commandments, because they are not under law,
  • they go to all the Scriptures, to the law and to the prophets, to the Old as well as to the New Testament, to get their souls fed and ministered to of Christ;

• they want to see and learn what God has ever had before Him from the beginning.

• The Man of God’s purpose was ever there, in God’s thought even before the responsible man.

• God put forward the responsible man first; but He had as His resource the Man of His purpose, and the Man of His purpose is the spirit of Scripture, the second Man, not the first man.

• And that is why infidels blunder so over Scripture, because they have got nothing before them but the first man, the man down here, and they have not an idea of what is the spirit of Scripture.

• It is a wonderful thing to have a book of which God is really the Author, which presents to us throughout the whole of it one living God,
  • and one living object, the Son of God, in whom God was to be glorified,

• who was the true ark of the covenant and the mercy seat, the One that was to enter into the holiest to the eternal satisfaction of God as Man.

• All that has now come to pass, and I say that that Man is the proper delight and object of the Christian.

I think, beloved friends, that is the way in which practically we are taught.

• Most of us, I think, could testify that we learn things, not with regularity but often in a very irregular way.

• But I think there is a regularity in the teaching of the Spirit of God, and I have tried to show this to you.

May God give to us to see the greatness of the Scriptures, the wonderful scope and character of that blessed word of God, which does not supply precepts and commandments for the first man,

• but the subject of which, from beginning to end, is the second Man.

• That is the Man to whom the Christian is joined, he is joined to the Lord, and
  • “he that is joined to the Lord is one Spirit”.