As Christians, we are too apt to settle down with this — that we have been awakened and feel our sins and have found a blessed refuge in the blood of Christ. In the New Testament, this answers to the type of the Passover. As we know, the Passover lamb that was killed, the blood of which was sprinkled on the doorposts of Israel in the land of Egypt, spoke of Christ. All God’s children must ultimately find their shelter under that precious blood. But the children of Israel were not yet redeemed out of Egypt, even after the blood was sprinkled. There was need of another dealing of grace, in order to show the deliverance that Christ has really secured for the believer. The Red Sea itself was necessary to give the Israelite his deliverance from the house of bondage, just as the truth of death and resurrection gives us the full measure of the blessing which Christ has procured for us.
The New Testament fully teaches this. In 1 Peter 1 we find that we are “redeemed, not with corruptible things, as silver and gold ... but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot,” but that is not all. The Spirit of God shows that by Him we “believe in God, that raised Him up from the dead, and gave Him glory, that your faith and hope might be in God.” There you have our Red Sea; the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus was necessary to complete our deliverance.
The Blood — Death
and Resurrection
So also we find it in Romans. In chapter 3 we have the blood of Jesus; in chapter 4 we have the death and resurrection, the Red Sea being the type of the latter, as the Passover is of the former. We have Jesus shedding His blood in chapter 3; Jesus raised again for our justification in chapter 4; then in the commencement of chapter 5, we read, “Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” The Holy Spirit does not say we have peace until we have the result of the death and resurrection of Christ, as well as of His blood, applied to our souls. A soul may be filled with great joy without such knowledge, but joy and peace are very different things. He has made peace through the blood of His cross, no doubt, but the way He brings me into the enjoyment of it is by showing Himself raised from the dead for our justification. More than this, He shows that we are dead unto sin, but alive unto God, through Jesus Christ our Lord.
In Romans the Apostle first looks at our guilt in the sight of God — our actual sins; after this has been fully discussed, the other question which so often troubles the believer is taken up. In chapter 6, the point is sin and our continuing in sin. Paul shows us that we have died to sin, with Christ, and we ought to know and act on it. If we do not know this, we strive to become dead, instead of believing that we are. This error lies at the bottom of all the legal efforts among Christians.
It is not, therefore, a question of striving to be different or seeking to feel this or that, but of believing what God has done for me in the death of the Lord Jesus Christ. If we look at the Red Sea, we can understand how this applies.
Death and Salvation
After the Passover, the children of Israel came into the greatest pressure of trouble; behind them was the army of their foes, and before them only more certain death. But that which seemed to them merely the waters of death was precisely what God was about to make the path of life. When Moses’ rod was lifted up over the sea, the waters of death rose up on either side as walls, and the children of Israel passed through protected, so much the more because it was evident that God was for them. On the Passover night, the blood was merely a protection that God should not be against them; it was not yet God for them. There was no communion, for merely to have that which comes between myself and God would never give me solid comfort before God. Accordingly, the children of Israel fell into a condition of anxiety and dread, worse than they had known before.
So it is frequently so with the Christian. After the soul has been directed to Christ, there is often a deeper realization of one’s own sinfulness than ever. The sense of sin after we have looked to Christ is far more acute and intense than when we fled for refuge at the beginning. For Israel, now God was for them, but that was not all; He was against the Egyptians. And so when the Red Sea closes upon their enemies and all are dead, for the first time God uses the term salvation. He does not say salvation on the night of the Passover lamb, but when they have passed through the sea. Salvation means that complete clearance from all our foes — bringing us out of the house of bondage and setting us free and clean before God, to be His manifest people in the world.
The Rod of Judgment
At the Red Sea, the rod of judgment that was lifted up over the waters was that same rod that smote the Egyptians with all plagues. So it is in the Epistle to the Romans. Satan attempts to turn righteousness against the people of God, but Christ has come, and by His blood He has cleansed them, and by death and resurrection He has brought them out of the place over which judgment hung. They see their sin, as well as their sins, completely gone in consequence of Christ’s having undergone God’s judgment. Therefore, Romans 6 is the first place where sin in our walk is discussed, and in dealing with this question the Apostle shows that we died to sin and that the gift of God now is eternal life. Sin cannot touch the believer, for he is dead to it.
The law, he shows, cannot touch the believer either, for I have “become dead to the law.” So in Romans 7:44Wherefore, 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. (Romans 7:4), we have “become dead to the law by the body of Christ.” That is, it is the death of Christ, applied to both sin and law, that gives the believer his clearance. So it is as wrong for a believer to have a thought of being “under the law” as it would be for a woman to have two husbands at once. We are dead to the law, that we should belong to another.
No Condemnation
Finally, in chapter 8 we have the full result: “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus.” It is a great comfort that God in the Lord Jesus Christ has dealt with sin in the flesh. After Christ in His life showed me a pattern of all purity, He became a sacrifice for sin, and then God condemned sin in the flesh — this nature that troubled me. Accordingly, if God has given me a new nature found in Christ risen from the dead and also has condemned my old nature, it is very evident there can be no condemnation to those in Christ. You see in every point of view there is no condemnation to those in Christ Jesus.
Although the believer is perfectly brought out of his state of condemnation, yet he is still in the wilderness. However happy, he is groaning; he is only “saved in hope.” But now the Holy Spirit becomes the power of his groaning in the wilderness. So the analogy is perfect between the Christian and the Israelites, who were brought out of Egypt, but who never returned to it.
After they came out, they raise the song of triumph. There is no singing in Egypt. Here we find them singing on the other side of the Red Sea, but for all that, they are traveling through the wilderness — they are only going on to the rest of God — they are still toiling through a scene of trial, where, if there is not dependence on God, they perish. I speak now, of course, not in application to the Christian as a question of eternal life, but of practical experience. The wilderness is the place where flesh dies and where all hangs on the simplicity of dependence on the love of God.
Adapted from W. Kelly