Life on the Highest Plane
The Believer A Saint By Condition
"Yield," "yield", "Yield" - by a definite, intelligent, voluntary act of the will the believer must choose Christ as his new Master and yield himself to Him as Lord. Christ and sin cannot both "reign" over your life at the same time. There is no possibility in God's plan for such a compromising alliance. Jesus Christ not only desires to enter every life as Saviour but to rule as Lord and to reign as King. He not only designs to take possession but to assume control. He is not content to be recognized only as he owner of the house but purposes as well to be manager of the household. He is not satisfied to become something only to us but wishes to be everything.
Romans 6:14-22 reveals two incontrovertible facts:
1. We are able not to sin.
2. If we sin, we sin because we want to sin; because we will to sin; because we choose to yield to our old master instead of to our new Master.
But it also clearly implies that by "reckoning" ourselves dead unto sin and by "yielding" ourselves unconditionally to Christ we may come to have a totally changed attitude to sin. Love for it and indulgence in it will become hatred for it and resistance to it. Sin is not dead and it will continue to entice but it will meet with no response from us. Our former master still lives and works hard at his task but Christ, our new Master, makes us deaf to sin's appeals by making us dead to sin itself.
The believer becomes dead to the law. If one is to come into real liberty in the Lord and be released from the futile striving to attain by his own effort what by faith he may obtain as God's gift, he must apprehend this second reversal in his relationships. Paul in the light of his own experience expounds this truth quite fully in Romans seven. Paul as a sinner had tried to become righteous by keeping the law of God. He had failed utterly and had come to Christ as his Saviour that he might be made righteous in Him. But in Romans seven as a saint, he was trying to become holy by attempting to keep God's law in his own strength. He had learned that he could not be saved by his own efforts but he had still to learn that he could not be sanctified in that way.
The law is holy and demands of man both perfect righteousness and perfect holiness, but it cannot give to any one the power to be righteous or holy. So when one comes into a realization of the holy nature of God's law and of its rightful demand for holiness of life the attempt is made to live such a life in one's own strength. It is this that Paul is telling us in Romans six and seven, we neither can do nor need try to do. He tells us this in three different statements each of which unfolds a distinct phase of this truth.
First, the saint in the new sphere is under a distinctly different regime from the sinner in the old sphere. He is no longer under law but under grace.
Romans 6:14, "For sin shall not have dominion over you; for ye are not under the law but under grace."
Second, the believer has come under the regime of grace through his union with the Lord Jesus Christ in His death and resurrection. So that now under grace he fully shares Christ's relationship to the law. In His incarnate life Christ Jesus as the representative Man met every demand of the law both for righteousness and holiness. In His death, as the sinner's Saviour, He met every claim of the law for righteousness against the sinner and in His resurrection, as the Head of the new creation, He met every claim of the law for holiness against the saint. The law has no further claim against the believer either for righteousness or for holiness for every claim has been fully satisfied.
Third, the believer is, therefore, dead to the law.
Romans 7:4, "Wherefore, my brethren, ye also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ: that ye should be married to another, even to him who is raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God."
Galatians 2:19, "For I through the law am dead to the law, that I might live unto God."
It is the function of grace to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves. It is the work of grace to undo the work of sin. Sin made us unholy: grace makes us holy. Grace always operates through Jesus Christ who dwells within us in the very perfection of His own holiness through the power of the Holy Spirit.
Does this not show us how needless and futile are our efforts to compel ourselves to live well pleasing unto God, to achieve victory over sin through good resolutions or through will power, and to live a holy life through legal bondage to certain principles or practices? The way of sanctification is as simple as the way of salvation. As truly as Christ is our Saviour just so truly He is our Sanctification. Our part is to believe and to receive.
Holiness is a gift and a gift is not "attained" but "obtained." Christ Himself is our holiness. Holiness does not come as a result of "works" but as "fruit." "Becoming servants to God ye have your fruit unto holiness" (Romans 6:22).
Becoming "dead to the law" does not give to any Christian the licence to sin. Far from it. His death to the law is accomplished only through his marriage union with the Holy One Himself and that for one definite, distinct purpose, that he may "bring forth fruit unto God" and live wholly unto Him. It is for the one purpose of enabling him to do the will of God in every department of his life.
The believer becomes dead to self. The exact words are not in Scripture but the thought is clearly there in the following passages which show the believer's radical reversal in his relationship to self.
2 Corinthians 5:15, "And he died for all, that they that live should no longer live unto themselves, but unto him who for their sakes died and rose again."
Galatians 5:24, "And they that are Christ's have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts."
~Ruth Paxson~
(continued with # 7)
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