An Extract.
“THERE is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus.” (Romans 8:11There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. (Romans 8:1).) The apostle does not here speak of the efficacy of the blood in putting away sins (all essential as that blood is, and the basis of all the rest), but of the new position, entirely beyond the reach of everything to which the judgment of God applied. Christ had indeed been under the effect of the condemnation in our stead; but when risen He appears before God. Could there be a question of sin, or of wrath, or of condemnation, or of imputation there? Impossible! It was all settled before He ascended thither. He was there because it was settled; and that is the position of the Christian in Christ. Still, inasmuch as it is by resurrection, it is a real deliverance. It is the power of a new life, in which Christ is raised from the dead, and of which we live in Him. It is—as if the life of the saint—the power, efficacious and continued, and therefore a law, by which Christ was raised from the dead— “the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus;” and it has delivered me from the law of sin and death, which previously reigned in my members, producing fruit unto death. It is our connection with Christ in resurrection, witness of the power of life which is in Him, and that by the Holy Ghost, which links the “no condemnation” of our position with the energy of a new life, in which we are no longer subject to the law of sin, having died to it in His death, or to the law, whose claims have ceased necessarily for him who has died, for it has power over a man as long as he lives. Christ, in bearing its curse, has fully magnified it withal. We see at the end of Ephesians 1 That it is the power of God Himself which delivers; and assuredly it had need be so—that power which wrought this glorious change—to us this new creation.
This deliverance from the law of sin and death is not a mere experience. It will produce precious experiences; it is a divine operation, known by faith in His operation who raised up Christ from the dead; known in all its power by its accomplishment in Jesus, in the efficacy of which we participate by faith. The difficulty of receiving it is, that we find our experience clashing with it. That Christ has put away my sins, and that God has loved me, is a matter of simple faith through grace. That I am dead is apt to find itself contradicted in my heart. The process of chapter 7 must be gone through, and the condemnation of sin in the flesh seen in Christ’s sacrifice for sin, and I alive by Him, judging sin as a distinct thing (an enemy I have to deal with, not I), in order to have solid peace. It is not all that Christ has put away our sins. I live by Him risen, and am linked with this husband; and He being my life—the true I in me—I can say I have died because He has. “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me”....
Before God we are “not in the flesh.” This indeed supposes the existence of the flesh; but, having received the Holy Ghost, and having life of the Holy Ghost, it is He who constitutes our link with God.