The Power of His Resurrection # 17

The Waters of Jericho (continued)

Elisha's Means Is the Salt (continued)

What is the present good of that? "There is therefore now no condemnation ..." no judgment, no curse, no lying under the Divine ban. "There is now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus made me free from the law of sin and of death." In the resurrection of the Lord Jesus we are delivered from the curse - that is, from the death which works vanity - and we have been brought into the place where we can go right through to the Divine end, the full realization that vanity no longer rests upon us. We are no longer held up; no longer in the position that we live and come to a point and that is the end, and we can go no further. We can go right on now! The fruit of life can come to perfection because the power of His resurrection. The condemnation has been removed.

Apart from the great condemnation resting upon all men out of Christ, is it not true that when we allow ourselves to come under a spirit of condemnation from the enemy there is brought about an instant arrest, so that we can go no further, but stop short, and everything in our lives becomes blighted, and the fruit begins to fall? It is the effect of condemnation. The enemy is always trying to get children of God back on to a ground of condemnation in order to reverse the Testimony of His resurrection, and to spoil the fruit of union with Him on resurrection ground. The people who are not absolutely certain and settled as to their being on the ground of Romans 8:1, are people who do not make very much progress; they get just so far, and thee they stop, and their fruit fails before it ripens. That is to say, they are not people who can affirm with certainty and finality that "there is ... no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus" or, to go further, that "the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus made me free from the law of sin and of death." We have to live in the joy and the assurance of that, the  certainty and the glory of that. The power of the enemy to spoil everything is destroyed when we see, that standing with our roots in the Cross of the Lord Jesus, and in the power of His resurrection, united with Him above by the Holy Spirit of anointing, we are no longer under condemnation, and there is no longer any reason whatever why we should not go right through to the fullness of Christ. When we recognize that, the enemy has lost his power.

We have pointed out before how great a change takes place between the verses that mark the close of chapter 7 and the opening of chapter 8 of the Letter to the Romans, and the same change is to be noted in this second chapter of this second book of the Kings. Romans 7 may be called the chapter of the waters of Jericho - in death and vanity by reason of the curse; and it is a painful chapter. No goal is reached: nothing gets through; everything comes to arrest - "O wretched man..." Chapter 8 opens the door to going right through in life. Why? Simply because chapter 7 is put in at this point by the Apostle to show the glory of chapter 8 as the outcome of chapter 6. Chapter 6 is Jordan. "For if we have become united with Him by the likeness of His death, we shall be also by the likeness of His resurrection"; "... our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away, that so we should no longer be in bondage to sin: for he that hath died is justified from sin. But if we died with Christ ... we shall also live with Him; knowing that Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more; death no more hath dominion over Him." "Even so reckon ye also yourselves to be dead unto sin." Did Paul write what is termed chapter 7 at this point, in order to contradict all that, and to say that it is all theoretically true, but his own condition a complete denial of it? No! He writes chapter 7, to show what chapter 6 has dealt with. Chapter 7 is in fact the condition that has been dealt with by chapter 6. And then he says: Now you see, that condition having been dealt with, this is our true position because of chapter 6. - "There is therefore no no condemnation ..."; "The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus made me free from the law of sin and of death." You cannot have chapters 7 and 8 together. or example, "But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind ..."; "For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do" alongside of "There is ... no condemnation." Paul is simply saying that chapter 6 is God's way of dealing with what is found in chapter 7, resulting in chapter 8. It is the power of His resurrection opening a clear way through, so that this hedged-up man in the arena, dragging around a dead body, has got his escape from the no-way-out life, that no-way-through life, into the open way that leads to the fullness of Christ, because he is on resurrection ground.

Christ is the Firstfruits of them that are asleep, and we have the Firstfruits. Therefore, we are linked with Christ as the Firstfruits in resurrection. And the firstfruits are always taken as a guarantee that the whole harvest will follow. The whole harvest that is going to follow is going to be a wonderful harvest, and has a part of it the redemption of our bodies.

~T. Austin-Sparks~

(continued with # 18 - ("Elisha and the Sons of the Prophets")