"All Christians are fit for heaven, but all too few are fit for earth.  One of the true tests of one’s spiritual growth is in one’s influence: affecting others that they not only begin the Christian life but 'grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ'" (2 Pet 3:18). –MJS
 
“We may be separated and yet not Christ-like; we may be orthodox and yet not spiritual; we may be ‘dead unto sin’ and yet not ‘alive unto God.’  We may have cut ourselves loose from every form of worldliness but in so doing we have become critical and self-righteous.  We may be loyal defenders of the faith, yea, ready even to lay down our lives for it and in so doing become bitter and unloving.” –MJS
 
“We may often have a measure of the power of the Spirit, but if there is not a large measure of the Spirit as the Spirit of grace and love, the defect will be manifest in our work.” –AM

(None But The Hungry Heart, pg. 108, Miles J Stanford--mjsbooks.com)

Nice...........thanks much.

Hi Dave and thanks for your reply.  Part of the results of sharing with one another (as you know) is the encouragement received from knowing others were encouraged by what you shared!

God's blessings to your Family!

Whenever we cannot “speak as the oracles of God” (1 Pet 4:11), through the power of communion, it is our business to remain silent.  We should be cautious not to trifle with unascertained truth—we then act as masters and not as learners.  Our position as regards the truth of God must be ever that of “new-born babes, desiring the sincere milk of the Word that we may grow thereby” (1Pet 2:2).

But there is nothing so hard for our hearts as to be humble—nothing so easy for them as to get out of the place of lowliness.  It is not by precepts merely that we are either brought into this state, or preserved there; it is by tasting “that the Lord is gracious.”  It is quite true that God is a God of judgment—that He will exercise vengeance on His enemies; but, this is not the way in which He stands toward the Christian.  He is made known to us as “the God of all grace”; and the Position in which we are set is that of tasting that He is gracious!

The great secret of growth is the looking upon the Lord Jesus as gracious.  How strengthening it is, to know that He is at this moment feeling and exercising the same love towards me as when He died on the Cross for me!  This is a truth that should be used by us in the most common everyday circumstances of life.  Suppose, for instance, I find an evil temper in myself, which I feel is difficult to overcome: let me bring it to the Lord Jesus, and virtue goes out of Him for my need.  Faith should ever be thus in exercise against temptation, and not simply my own effort; my own effort against it will never be sufficient.  The source of real strength is in the realization that the Lord Jesus is gracious.

It is the Lord Jesus Himself in whom the Father rests, and will rest forever; but then the Lord Jesus, having borne and blotted out my sins by His own Blood, has united me to Himself in heaven.  He descended from above, bringing God down to us here: He has ascended, placing us in union with Himself there.  If the Father finds the Son precious, He finds me (in Him) precious also.

The Lord Jesus, as Man, has glorified the Father on the earth: the Father rests in that; as Man, having accomplished redemption, He “has passed into the heavens,” “now to appear in in the presence of God for us.”  It is the Lord Jesus who gives abiding rest to our souls, and not what our thoughts about ourselves may be.  Faith never thinks about that which is in ourselves as its ground of rest; it receives, loves and apprehends what the Father has revealed in His Word, and what are His thoughts about His Beloved, in whom is His rest.

Moses, when he had been talking with God, knew not that the skin of his face shone; he forgot himself, he was absorbed in God.  As knowing the Lord Jesus to be precious to our souls, our eyes and our hearts being occupied with Him in intimate fellowship, they will be effectually prevented from being taken up with the vanity and sin around; and this too will be our strength against the sin and corruption of our hearts.

Whatever I see in myself that is not in the Lord Jesus is sin; but then it is not thinking upon my own sins, and my own vileness, and being occupied with them, that will humble me; but thinking of the Lord Jesus, dwelling upon the excellence in Him.  It is well to have done with ourselves and to be taken up with Him.  We are entitled to forget ourselves, we are entitled to confess and forget our sins, and we are entitled to forget all but the Lord Jesus Christ.  It is by looking to Him that we can give up anything that we can walk as obedient children.  The Lord give us to be learners of the fullness of grace which is in the Lord Jesus, so that “we may be changed into the same image from glory to glory, as by the Spirit of the Lord.”

- JN Darby

I like the example of the prodigal son because the story's main concept concerns the fact that he is his father's son, evinced by his overwhelming desire (Holy Spirit's work--Gal 5:17) to return to fellowship with his father. It does not question the concept of him being the father's son, which I believe portrays that once union is established it is inseparable, which is not the same for fellowship.

Just as one born will always be a son to his father, even though there is no fellowship (close union) between them, they are still in a father-son union genealogically. One can be in union with God but not in fellowship, which fellowship is always eventually restored. There are examples of an appearance of a union, which union is eventually evinced to never have existed by the fact of the desire of a permanent absence of fellowship.

Unlike the natural union of a family where, though they are genealogically united, they can remain out of fellowship, the union with God will ultimately be evinced by the restored fellowship, which without would leave only one alternative--there was no union to begin with!

Either one is a Christian, which means being born again, or they have never been a Christian. All newborn Christians have much to learn concerning evidences of regeneration and applied Bible doctrine, whose lifestyle will progressively evince that God is working in them.  Does not God work in every believer the unfailing desire for His will (Phil 2:13) and maintain it by His Spirit (Gal 5:17).  If their lifestyle eventually evinces that God is not working His will in them, it confirms that regeneration has yet to occur.

It's not sensible to conceive that God would give salvation to anyone, knowing it would be temporarily. If He knew there was a chance of it being temporal for any reason, why would He give it; and more so, why is it called "eternal salvation" (Heb 5:9) if it is not permanent for the individual, for if it's not permanent in one's life it was something other than salvation, because there is only one type of salvation--eternal salvation. If one could get out of eternal salvation then it wasn’t eternal, which is conflicting.  It's the "eternal" aspect of salvation that gives its greatest value and definition, without which would be worthless and of no use.

The primary block in understanding that "the gift of God is eternal life" (Rom 6:23) isn't because one is not a believer but is due to being brought up in the Christian life under the error of thinking that the recipient of salvation owes God for it, which concept understandably results in the desire to somehow pay for it. But this leaves the believer in heresy, unaware of the meaning of "gift" (free). God’s grace endowed does not incur debt to Him, but to "one another" (Rom 13:8), which left unpaid is "as one that beateth the air."

Such is the example of the story of a man who gave someone a luxurious display cabinet as a gift and while he was leaving he happened to notice the person was about to apply sandpaper to it (because he felt obligated to do something for the gift), upon which he told the man, "There's nothing that needs to be done to the cabinet, because it is finished." (John 19:30).

Granted, Scripture contains words and phrases that reveal temporal situations which appear to be related to the possession of salvation but are rather those which are related to a false pursuit, but not the possession of salvation.

Every aspect of salvation can be known and used in the service of God, but remove its eternal element, which is its pinnacle aspect, then suddenly you have a fallen disposable structure of “wood, hay, and stubble” (heretical doctrine) instead of “gold, silver, and precious stones” (the Gospel of Christ).

-NC

The sin atonement providing the forgiveness of sin for Israel was never dependent upon the congregation but upon the sin offering of the priest (Lev 4:20).  Therefore without a priest there would be no forgiveness (Num 15:28); but this was to the exclusion of willful sins (Num 15:30) because “presumptuous” sin confirms the individual’s absence of faith in God’s word.

This is why Christ is the Priest of those who believe in Him.  Thus forgiveness in the admission (confess) of sin (1 John 1:9) is made available by the priestly atonement of Christ, who is the “High Priest” (Heb 3:1) of His “Body, the Church” (Col 1:18). 

It may not be realized that God’s eternal covenant made with Abraham and his descendants did not come by the Law because “the promise” was made and settled “four-hundred and thirty years” prior to giving of the Law (Ten Commandments/sacrificial ordinances, etc.—Gal 3:17), which Law changed nothing concerning the promise.

As it can be easily understood, Christ’s priesthood is not after the Law which, “was added because of transgressions, till the seed should come” and also so “that the offence might abound” (Gal 3:19; Rom 5:20).  To be a priest under the Law one would need to be from the tribe of Levi after the Aaronic order and Christ was after the tribe of Judah, thus the works of the believer does not attain or retain his standing in the Father (only reveals it).  The believer’s place is determined by Christ’s Cross-work which makes, “us accepted in the Beloved (Jesus)” (Ehp 1:6).

-NC

By the body of the Lord Jesus on the Cross believers were made dead to the law (a), in order righteously to be joined to Another, even the risen Lord.  The reason why we had to die to the law was seen to be, not at all because the law was bad (it, on the contrary, was “holy, just and good”), but because we were bad.

That is, our flesh was so powerless to do good and so ready to do evil, that the application to us of God’s law, as Paul did, he has not power to keep it, but sin only makes the law a constant means of working death to him; and the more a man tries to keep the law the more he comes under the power of sin.  “The strength of sin is the law” (1 Cor 15:56).  So that there is only this left for us—to die to the law, and be joined to the risen Lord in a resurrection realm absolutely beyond the sphere of the law.

A great many people think that while sinners have no power against sin, saints have; that is, that God gives the new creature strength in itself to overcome indwelling sin.  But this is a fatal error.  Many, many Christians today are struggling against sin, with the idea that God expects them, since they have become His children and have learned to hate sin, to “pray for divine help” and then “fight the good fight” against sin.  And so they struggle manfully, but with what sorry success because their whole theory is in error.  It is because they do not finish the verse “Fight the good fight . . . of faith.” God has not given us, even in our new nature, power over sin. His plan is entirely different: He Himself becomes the power in us that overcomes sin.  He does not delegate this power (b).  He said, “All power is given unto Me,” so He Himself exercises it within us, in the person of the Holy Spirit, who has come to dwell in us for the very purpose of delivering us from the power of indwelling sin.

It is an outright perversion of the truth of God to teach (as did the Puritans and as do the Covenant theologians) that while we are not to keep the law as a means of salvation, we are yet under it as a “rule of life.”  This is to take away the taskmaster’s whip, and yet expect him to rule those subjects which he could barely govern while he has his whip.  Such teaching is in the theory of Antinomian (lawlessness), for it takes away the condemnatory power of the law upon those that are still allegedly under the law.  But in practice this teaching is legal enough.

Let a Christian only confess, “I am under the law” and straightway Moses fastens his yoke upon him, despite all the protests that the law has lost its condemning power.  Men have to be delivered from the whole legal principle, from the entire sphere where law reigns, ere true liberty can be found.  This was done on the Cross.  There we “died unto the law” (Gal 2:19); we were there “discharged from the law” (Rom 7:6); and are now “not under the law” (Rom 6:14).  And those who, with child-like faith, believe this enter the blessed sphere where grace reigns, and the law of love is a delight, and where the service is in “newness of the Spirit,” not is “oldness of the letter.”  The Holy Spirit, indwelling the believer, performs in him the will of the Father, whose will, at last, is His will (Rom 8:3, 4; 12:2).

-Wm R Newell

(a) Gentile/law of sin and death—Jew/this and the Law of Moses
(b) This is not to be confused with “power to tread on serpents” as in Luke 10:19, which did not concern the power of sin itself but of sinful angels, e.g. vs 17, 20)
-NC

I want it to be known to all who read my posts that the material I use is public domain and is free to share, since there are no copyrights (esp. for 1923 or prior, which is all of the material’s timeline).
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“Delight thyself also in the Lord; and He shall give thee the desires of thine heart” (Ps 37:4).

According as the Lord is the object of your delights, the desires of your heart will be answered.  There is no answer to them, no satisfaction, until the Lord Jesus is the object of your affection.  When He is, then the heart finds everything to satisfy it.

If every treasure or gain you could wish for were stored in some fort, or castle, your first work would be to possess the stronghold, and the next to explore and enjoy all the treasures in it.  If I delight in the Lord, I possess Him.  Love possesses what it delights in, even when there is no compensation.  How much more when there is!  His love begets ours, though it is always in advance of ours, and passes knowledge.

The mistake with some is the attempt to satisfy the heart with the things which answer to the desires of the heart.  First one thing and then another is sought after and even possessed; for instance peace, and the assurance of glory, and other distinct and special blessings, but the heart is not satisfied because many other things are wanting, and where there is want there is not satisfaction.  There is no real satisfaction until everything is complete and without break or interruption.  The heart seeks where it may rest in a sphere where everything is very good.  The divine nature cannot be satisfied with anything short of this.

The unsatisfied state of the natural heart tells how it has departed from God.  The way with us is that we often seek and obtain some particular good, and the very enjoyment of it makes us feel more the absence of the things which suit it, so that the possession of the good thing awakens the sense of the imperfection of the rest, just as one would feel if part of one’s dress were excellent and new, but the rest old and worn.  Every saint, through grace, obtains and possesses some of the treasure of glory, but these beautiful and rare things only cast in the shade the common things around, and the heart feels that instead of being satisfied, it is ruffled by the contrasts which intrude and beset it.

In fact, it is the treasures which have been sought, and not the fort where they are all stored in permanency and in order, and where there is no disturbance nor incongruity, but everything abundant and appropriate; “In Him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily” (Col 2:9).  Where everything is perfect and beautiful, and all timely and suitable, where without discrepancy or contrast, each is contributing its beauty and excellence, and adding to and setting off the other; this is the scene where the heart is satisfied, and this is only found in the Lord Jesus, and only secured by delighting in Him who is the center and source of all, where all is divine order and divine permanency.

One perfection, or even many, does not satisfy the heart; one perfect One with every perfection does satisfy it, but it is not the perfections I seek, but the perfect One—not the fruits of the garden, but the garden itself; and there I sit under His shadow with great delight and His fruit is sweet to my taste.  If the garden is mine, if I possess the Lord Jesus, I possess not the fruits nor treasures only, but I possess Him in whom they are in fullness, and every desire of my heart is met at one and the same time in unfading light and eternal perfection.

-JB Stoney

The reason why my postings often involve material which concerns the Law and "the old man" is because this is the forefront of our "wrestling" (Eph 2:6), where the Holy Spirit continually causes us not to do "the things that ye would" (Gal 5:17). It is here where the Spirit restrains the sinful nature (old man) so the Father can constrain us to "will and to do of His good pleasure" (Phil 2:13).


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There are those who teach that the man in Romans Seven is not a child of God at all, and thereby lead people into the manifest error that a mere child of nature may “with the mind serve the law of God” (v 25), as “delighting in it” (v 22). But this is in spite of Paul’s own assurance that “the mind of the flesh is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be; so, then, they that are in the flesh cannot please God” (8:7, 8).

The mind of the man in Romans Seven is subject to the law of God, as the mind of the flesh or of one in the flesh cannot be. Thus the man passing through this experience, with a right will, and absolute powerlessness to accomplish it, is clearly converted and is a child of God. The need of the experience of the old man in the seventh of Romans is the need of learning practically to abide in the Lord Jesus at all times, to accept Him for life as well as for position.

Romans Seven concerns the work of, and freedom from, the law. That law reveals me as evil to my heart’s core. It makes me learn this experientially, by putting me under responsibility not to be the thing I am in the flesh. It occupies me with myself and with the evil—very profitably, surely, until I have learned the extent of it. I am taught by heart-breaking experience to “know that in me, that is in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing” (v 18). In the face of a right will, I cannot accomplish my desire. I may argue that it is not I that do the evil, it is “sin that dwelleth in me” (vs 17, 20), and still that is not deliverance. It only makes me cry the more, “Oh, wretched man that I am” (v 24)!

The Father never means me to be able, with the Pharisee (Luke 18:11), to thank Him for the goodness that I find in myself. Self-conscious humility is spoiled by the very consciousness. If I will be at it, He leaves me to find in this irreparable flesh, which cannot be mended, what I may break my heart over, but never alter. It is a quicksand which spoils all my building—a morass impractical to cultivation; and the Father uses this, in His sovereignty over evil, to wean me from self-confidence and self-complacency, and cast me over to dependence upon Him.

Peace through our own evidence—peace through our own work or effort or self-complacency—cannot be identified with “peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom 5:1). The Father cannot trust us with such perilous self-contemplation. The growth which He intends for His people is confounded with a self-consciousness which is the primary hindrance to that growth. Our Father has made the Lord Jesus to be our sanctification as much as our righteousness (1 Cor 1:30), and the way of it is, occupation with the Lord Jesus, and with Him alone. Only as “we all with open face” are “beholding . . . the glory of the Lord,” do we become “changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord” (2 Cor 3:18).

Sanctification, or growth, is no more acquired by self-cultivation than righteousness is. It is “faith that worketh by love” (Gal 5:6); it is faith that does all this, because it is the Holy Spirit who carries it out as the Lord Jesus is our only Object for that faith. The believer taken up with the beauty of the Lord Jesus is the one who is learning the secret of it all—“For me to live is Christ” (Phil 1:21).

- FW Grant

A believer can be discouraged or dissatisfied but does not have to be disappointed, cast upon hardness but not cast down, intentionally offended but not offended, heartbroken but joyous in Christ.
 
The access to disappointment is dependence on self or others but dependence on God never disappoints.  If we depend on His Word that, “All things work together for good to those who love God” (Rom 8:28), there cannot exist a justifiable disappointment for the believer? 

If we depend on His Word that the believer is completely cleared and guilt-free of sin’s eternal curse of damnation, which is the greatest of grace’s gifts because it allows eternal fellowship with Him, we are entirely fictional in finding disappointment.
Discouragement and self-disappointment is expected during the “babe in Christ” stages, but during the maturing stages (which has no pinnacle) one finally learns that everything that is desired, even in the disruption and distraction of the “old man,” ultimately results in, “to will and to do of His good pleasure,” because He, “works in you” this overall (Phil 2:13). 
 
We can and should be dissatisfied with our “old man” when we encounter its workings from self and others, but we never need to allow disappointment (which is faith-building), considering that God not only foreknows all our occurrences but also foreknows that our ultimate desire in them is to please Him. 

Can the believer truly incur any type of real guilt (not even self-induced, which would be nonexistent) on the conscience of his person when affected by the “old man,” considering God has, regardless of any situation, already declared innocence on him (but not on the old man, for sin is never forgiven when condemned—Rom 8:3)?
 
The believer’s overriding contemplation, esp. in the most heartbroken of times, can be his guiltless condition in which the Father, through His Son, our Lord Jesus has placed him and this alone can allow freedom from over-expecting more from self than what God expects; yea, which He also foreknows and thus is never condemning but chastising, loving and instructional.

The majority of believers today are in legal bondage because they do not see the essential difference between our position and that of Israel under the Law.  Israel depended upon their own obedience to get their blessings in the land.  Christians receive their blessings because of the Lord Jesus’ obedience in their stead.  He paid in full “the wages of sin”—which was death (Rom 6:23): and we have the “free gift of God”—eternal life.  This gives us rest of heart so that we have leisure to love the Father for His own sake and learn to delight in His will.

The primary reason Christians today are living such unhappy, such empty, such weak and fruitless lives, is not that they are “not consecrated,” “not surrendered, “not self-denying,” ”not obedient.”  The trouble, the one great trouble, is, Christians do not believe that they are “free from the Law, in Christ Jesus” (which Christians Gentiles were never under, as Christian Jews were before believing); and that they already have the glorious blessings they are seeking after and need only to claim them to enjoy them—that “their part” is simply to enter in and by the Spirit enjoy the infinite spoils of the Lord Jesus’ victory.

We died with the Lord Jesus, and were made alive “together with Him.”  And with Him we were raised up and seated in heavenly places in Him; where, as a real fact, every child of God now is, in His sight and reckoning, whether by his own reckoning and consequent experience or not!  This position in the Lord Jesus seated at the Father‘s right hand is the only platform from which the believer can consider aright the truths of the Word of God!

If positional truth, rather than the duties of attainment, were taught first to the saints, much more satisfactory results would follow the ministry of Christian workers.  We should note most carefully that Israel was brought into Canaan (Josh 14:1), uncircumcised (in their heart, not in their flesh) and unworthy as they were, before they were asked (Jer 4:4) to take the circumcised, separated position as the people of God.

So we, as Christians, have been already brought by Christ Jesus our Head, in His death, resurrection and ascension, into the “heavenly places,” and to us have been given “all things that pertain unto life and godliness” (2 Pet 1:3).  And it is always on the ground of where we already are, and what we already are, and what we already have, that the Holy Spirit speaks to us concerning our wholehearted recognition and acceptance of the blessed privileges and responsibilities of “the calling wherewith we are called.”

Paul does not ask a thing of the saints in Ephesians 1-3 but just to listen while he proclaims that wondrous series of great and eternal facts concerning them; and not until he has completed this catalogue of positional realities about them does he ask them to do anything at all!  And when he does open his plea for their high walk as saints, everything is based on the revelation before given of the facts of their high character and destiny as saints: “I therefore . . . beseech you to walk worthily of the calling wherewith you were called” (Eph 4:1).

Let us cease laying down to the saints long lists of “conditions” of entering into the blessed life in the Lord Jesus; and instead, as the primal preparation for leading them into the reality of this life, show them what their position, possessions, and privileges in the Lord Jesus Christ already are.  Thus shall we truly work in dependence upon the Holy Spirit; and thus shall we have much more abiding fruit of our labors among the people of God.

Wm R Newell

It is essential that we take a moment to consider the inward conflict of the growing child of God.  It may be said, “What if a man knows his sins to be forgiven and more, liberty” (which some call “sanctification,” “deeper life,” etc.), “then, surely, every spiritual desire must be gratified, and thenceforward, till heaven be gained, there can be nothing more to be wished for it.

In things spiritual, as in things natural, when children have grown up to manhood, to ripe age, or, as Scripture says, are “perfect,” they do not find that thenceforward there is nothing to do, nothing to suffer.  Quite the contrary; in one sense they may be said to begin life only when perfect.  Until the great and terrible “I” be held by grace to have been crucified with Christ, the believer can hardly be said to have begun to live the new life in its liberty; but liberty obtained, inner conflict is certain to be entered into.

Before we were brought into Christian liberty, the enabling of the indwelling Spirit was not known, but, being delivered from the thrall of the old man, we are in the moral position which should gain the victory day by day.  Not that the position itself is victory—it is the vantage ground for victory; freedom from the domination of sin is obtained by the Spirit.  Still, it is no little good to know what the vantage ground is, and a greater thing to occupy that ground.

The Spirit of God dwelling within us energizes the desire of the new life which He has implanted in us.  He leads to humility, gentleness, and courage, and all in a divine way.  We do not mean such qualities apart from the Spirit, which in that case may be merely traits of the Adamic life.

When our old man stirs us up to desire its old things, the Spirit of God does not remain passive in us, but occasions conflict within: “For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would” (Gal 5:17).  He restrains the believer from doing the things which the flesh likes, and constrains him to do the things which the Father loves, and effects this by acting upon the new man.  The believer is not, and never will be, free from having sin in him in this world; nor will he be free from the danger of committing any kind of evil: and he is never, practically, safe except when he realizes his weakness, and walks in dependence upon the Holy Spirit.

Should he say, “I cannot help doing evil,” then he denies the Spirit of God in him as the enablement for righteous living, and remains in the mire of sin.  Should he say, “I am holy, or spiritual, or heavenly,” and in his heart think of what he is in himself, then it is the old man at work in another and more dangerous form, and he has denied the Spirit of God in His ability to produce spirituality, and heavenly mindedness.  This last is worse than the first, for the first is unbelief in God and the last is belief in himself.  The truth is, there is constant conflict proceeding within the growing child of God, and the Spirit is continually restraining from evil, as well as leading to good.

The flesh in its pride would say, “I can live to God by means of law-keeping and religious observances”; and the flesh in its lusts would say, “I am safe for eternity, and thus can live for myself.”  The new life the Father has given us has no affinity for either the one or the other of these evils, and the Spirit of God opposes the flesh in each.

– HF Witherby

I would also like to add that I believe the Law was intended only to reveal sin and not deliver from it (Heb 7:19), thereby incurring guilt (John 15:22, 24; Rom 5:13), because deliverance is never effected by man, but by God--through the Holy Spirit within man (Eze. 4:6).

The Lord's spiritual state (sinless--Heb 4:15) and resurrected body exemplifies what is intended for the eternal state (1 Cor 15:37; Phil 3:21), apart from the deity of course, and was not intended (even in Adam and Eve) for this life, or God would have done everything differently. His intention has always been that His Holy Spirit would be an eternal part of the believer (John 14:16; Rev 22:17) once indwelt, which will forever sustain the life of Christ in the believer (Col 3:4).

God has never intended for man to effect fellowship with Himself apart from the life of His Son; this the OT foreshadowed and the NT produced (complete in Christ, incomplete in self now but not later), which is the "Everlasting Covenant" or "testament" (Heb 13:20) made, not between God and man but between the Father and the Son, which began with the sacrifice of Christ in His blood (Matt 26:28; Mark 14: 24; Luke 22:20; 1 Cor 11:25; Heb 12:24; Rev 5:9).

At present, Israel has no covenant with God but will later (Millennium) and the believer never will need one, though he will be the eternal recipient of it.

“Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh” (Gal 5:16).  To “walk in the Spirit” is the only measure of right living for the Christian.  Do you inquire, “What is it to walk in the Spirit?  It is to walk in communion with the Father, by the Holy Spirit, having the Lord Jesus Christ as my one Object.  Nor am I left in this to the sentimental fancies of my own mood, nor to the fickleness of my own impulses, nor to the bias of my own religious likes and dislikes.

“The Word of God must necessarily be my only chart.  “Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way?  By taking heed thereto according to Thy Word” (Ps 119:9).  Look at the martyr Stephen for a blessed pattern of it.  What engaged the attention of this man of God, “full of faith and power,” this man full of the Holy Spirit?  Two things.  The Word of God on earth, and the Son of God in glory—Acts 6 and 7.

Many Christians fall into the serious mistake of making the moral law their standard of holy living.  But the law never gave man an object outside himself; grace does.  If I am trying to keep the law for salvation, who is it for?  Myself.  Yes, self is my real object.  If, when I have once possessed salvation, I am trying to keep the law in order to retain it, what is my object?  For whom do I want to retain it?  For myself, to be sure.  Then self is my object.

On the other hand, grace puts a new object before the saved one, and the Holy Spirit supplies a new spring of action entirely.  Self is displace by the Lord Jesus, and human efforts by the Spirit’s activities.  “He died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto Him which died for them, and rose again” (2 Cor 5:15).

“But I thought,” says one, “that though we are not under the law for justification, we are under it for holy living.”  No.  There is no higher standard of holiness than “walking in the Spirit,” and on this point the Word of God could not possibly be plainer: “If ye be led of the Spirit, ye are not under the law” (Gal 5:18).

Do not be alarmed.  We are not fostering the lawless spirit of the age, nor granting to anyone, much less the Christian, a license to break the law.  No, the very opposite.  Rather, the righteous requirement of the law is “fulfilled in us (not by us), who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit” (Rom 8:4).  We have seen in Galatians 5:18 that if we are led of the Spirit we are not under the law.  So that it is as though the Apostle had said that the righteous requirement of the law is fulfilled in us who are not under the law (all who are saved are led by the Spirit through the “new man” and the unsaved by Satan through the “old man”: note mine—NC).

“The law was not made for a righteous man” (1 Tim 1:9).  In itself the law is “holy, just and good; but when it was applied to man in the flesh, the unrighteous man, it only made manifest what was already there.  “The carnal mind is enmity against God” (Rom 8:7).

Let us now look at the other side.  And what a refreshing contrast it is to turn from the old to the new.  But what, it may be asked, is the new spring?  It is nothing less than the Spirit of God—“the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus” (Rom 8:2).  And what do we get from this source?  Why, the first fruit produced by the Spirit is the very thing which the law demanded, but could not produce, love!

Every one born of God loves (1 John 4:7, 8; 1 Cor 13:1-3); but it is not after a natural order at all.  Man naturally loves because of what the object is.  But that is not the way the Christian loves, at least it is not the only way.  He loves not merely because of what he sees in another who is naturally amiable and attractive, but because of that which the Father has put into him; that is, a new life—a life in the power of the Spirit, a life in the Son who is Love.

The Father did not love us because of any merit in us to draw it out, but because of what was in Himself—because of what His own heart was.  Our love, as Christians, is after the same order; it is divine in character.  Hence, “Everyone that loveth is born of God and knoweth God.”  “If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and His love is perfected in us.”  “We love Him, because He first loved us” (John 4:7, 12, 19).

Henceforth we are exhorted to “walk in love”; that is, we are to allow the divine life—this life, after a new creation order—to have, so to speak, its own way in us; we are to follow its divine instincts, and to find our happiness in its unhindered manifestation.

We are not to use our liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but in love to serve one another.  The only thing that can now avail, says the Apostle, is the “faith which worketh by love” (Gal 5:6).  In other words, the very thing which the law vainly demanded, grace has richly supplied.  Thus the righteous requirement of the law will be fulfilled in us who are not under it—who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.

While the law told me what I ought to be for God, and that I came short of the glory of God (Rom 3:23), even at my very best, grace tells me what God has been for me at my very worst.  “Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound.”  The very person who, in the light of God’s presence says, “There is no good thing in me,” that is, in my flesh, can say with equal certainty, “There is no condemnation for me,” in the Lord Jesus Christ.

More than this, the Father is causing the worst things in our earthly path to work together for our heavenly good (Rom 8:28).  So that the believer can say, “Though no good thing I deserve, yet no good thing will He withhold (Psa 84:11).  If He gives me to see no good here, I can with confidence turn my heart away and say, it is all good there.  My Father has found all in His Beloved Son, and all I want I have in Him also.”  “Seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God.  Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth.  For ye died, and your life is hid with Christ in God” (Col 3:1-3).

- Geo. Cutting

What determines the quality of individuals is their nature.  True, the Holy Spirit in a believer is most valuable but this is referring to Him and not the regenerate individual.  It’s the nature that determines the outcome of one’s character, identification and person-hood because everything we do is the result of our nature.  Animals do not possess the ability of autonomy as a human does because they have instinct instead of a nature, therefore, instinct directs animals and a nature directs humans. 

Scripture teaches all humans since Adam are born with a sinful nature (Rom 5:12), so what makes the difference of an individual at regeneration?—the addition of a new nature or “new man” (Eph 4:24; Col 3:10), which now coexists with the old nature.  What makes the new nature valuable?—it is created after the image of Christ (Col 3:10) and through it the Holy Spirit brings, not His life, but the life of the Lord Jesus (Gal 2:20; Col 3:4).

The “new man” or, new nature is not all you (the regenerate) but part of you because the “old man” or old nature is also still part of you.  It’s not as though the believer’s nature is half of the old and half of the new, but it is mostly of the new because the Spirit opposes the old nature (Gal 5:17) and restrains it from further domination (Rom 6:12, 14). 

Just as Satan “cannot cast out Satan” (Matt 12:26; Mark 3:23), “old man” cannot cast out old man; neither can the believer in his “new man” cast out the old man because as already indicated (Gal 5:17), it must be by the Holy Spirit.  It is due to His opposition to the old nature in the believer, which is the “carnal mind” that cannot “be subjected to the law of God” (Rom 8:7), that the Father “worketh in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure” (Phil 2:13).

It has been well said that, "Love does not function according to the quality of its object, but according to its nature."

-NC

“Put Off … The Old Man” (Eph 4:22)

God always takes the initiative in salvation.  Before He asks or expects man to act, He has acted.  The work of the Lord Jesus in salvation is a completed work.

What the Father has made true for us positionally, He longs to make real in us experientially.  This requires our intelligent cooperation in willing consent and in active choice, as the imperative “that ye put off” clearly shows.  Therefore we should learn what our responsibility is, and seek to fulfill it.  May we consider three practical ways in which we may “put off the old man”?

Reckon On The Crucifixion Of The Old Man

Such reckoning means simply believing what God says in Romans 6:6 (“our old man was crucified with Him”), and knowing it as a fact in one’s own salvation.  This demands a definite act of faith, which results in a fixed attitude toward “the old man.”  We are to see him where God sees him (it)—on the Cross crucified with Christ.  Furthermore, it involves our consent to God’s condemnation of that old “I” as altogether unworthy to live, and as wholly stripped of any claim (guilt or rule) upon us.

Recognize The Presence Of The Self-life

While God makes it perfectly clear that identification with Christ in His death and resurrection takes us in toto ( total, whole) out of the of position in sin and in the flesh, He nowhere says that sin is taken out of us in our earthly life.  All the verses of Romans Six tell us of God’s perfect provision for deliverance from sin’s power, but not one verse teaches us that we are here and now delivered from sin’s presence.

As we walk in the light, the Holy Spirit will perform an ever deepening work of conviction as to the self-life.  This will lead to honest self-judgment (1 Cor 11:31), and confession (1 John 1:9), as sins are brought to our consciousness.

Renounce The Old Man In Its Entirety

“Put off” calls for unconditional renunciation.  “Henceforth walk not.”  The Christian has begun a walk on a new road in a new sphere leading to a new goal.  He should in time be prepared to turn from the old life in its entirety.  To put off the “old man” is but the negative side of a holy walk.

This is followed by a definite attitude toward the “old man” that will ensure refusal of his claims as soon as recognized.  When we consign our entire old life to death—as God has already done, in Christ—we can trust the Holy Spirit to give us a hatred for every individual expression of the life.  Thus, we are choosing in line with God, and against ourselves.

“Put On The New Man” (Eph 4:24)

This is the new creation in the Lord Jesus; the saint possessing a new, spiritual, divine nature; the human personality with Christ at its center, crowned as its Lord, and indwelling as its Life (Col 3:4). 

The Christian is patterned after the Lord Jesus in the perfection of His character in its twofold expression: righteous, in relation to man; holy, in relation to God.  Paul’s appeal is for us to become what we are, in Christ.  But again we must do our part in putting on “The New Man.”  May we consider three suggestions as to how we may do this?

Claim Your Position In Christ

In Ephesians 2:4-6 God states a fact of salvation which is true of every saint, whether he ever knows the fact or not.  It is true that every believer was united with Christ in His death and resurrection the moment he believed, and is in Christ who is seated in the heavenlies at the Father’s right hand.  This new position in Christ is the very foundation of our sanctification and of a walk in newness of life (Rom 6:14).

To take our position in the Lord Jesus, daily, by a definite act of faith, and to see ourselves “far above all,” is to begin the day in victory—fortified  against the power of the world, Satan, and the flesh (our greatest enemy).  We have the advantage, but we are called upon to use it!

Covet Your Possession In Christ

Every believer is the possessor of every spiritual blessing by virtue of being in Christ.  Perhaps our desire for spiritual treasures is at a low ebb.  To claim these effectually we must covet eagerly.  To “Put on the New Man” will mean seeking after spiritual riches, and setting in the affections primarily and preeminently upon heavenly things, rather than earthly.  Co-resurrection with Christ lifts one into a sphere where only Christ and His things can ever satisfy.  “If (since) ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God.  Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth” (Col 3:1, 2).

Count Upon The Power Of The Spirit

To take our position in the Lord Jesus, and to covet our possessions in Him, cannot be done by dependence upon anything in ourselves.  God made provision for just such impotency.  The Holy Spirit is resident within us to make Christ a living reality to us, and in us (See Rom 8:2-14 for the Spirit’s ministry).  It is His work to conform us to the image of Christ (2 Cor 3:18).  Our part is to count upon the Holy Spirit both to keep the old man in its place where God has put it, and to manifest the life of the Lord Jesus.  This is true growth in Grace.

Remember, God has dealt with the “spider,” not only the web! 

- Ruth Paxson