Christian Victory

by L.E.MAXWELL

DELIVERANCE BONDAGE AND FREEDOM

"O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?"
Romans 7:24

Does Paul's agonizing cry strike a familiar strain in the experience of some of our readers? Have you been tormented with a deep sense of your fruitlessness, crushed with an awful sense of failure? And you sigh for freedom, you pant for life, you long for liberty.

Paul's despairing cry, "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" was forever echoing in my heart. I, too, had agonized and prayed and yearned and wept. There had been years of earnest toil and some little fruit, but in my secret soul I wept in shame, for there was a great lack. I was not victorious. I was the victim of a thousand things which I loathed. Oh, that awful "law of sin warring in my members against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity"(F. J. Huegel in The Cross of Christ -the Throne of God).

Early Christian Experience

Come back to these early never-to-be-forgotten days of your first love for Christ. It was all joy unspeakable. Your newly pardoned soul cried, "Abba, Father". Old things had passed away, behold, all things had become new. The vile and the immoral and the wicked thing such as cursing and drunkenness became unthinkable. All your enemies seemed slain. Your cup of joy, the joy of sins forgiven, was full and running over. Concerning your awful past, you had real peace, "peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ."

A new-born soul often wonders why other Christians are not as full and free and happy as he is. He so enjoys salvation that he wonders what is the matter with some older saints - perhaps there is plenty wrong with many of them. He wonders why they do not enjoy the wonderful service of Christ. He doubts not that he will go right on in happiness unalloyed to the end of life.

Sooner or later the average believer comes to make a shocking discovery. He becomes alarmed over his double-minded wanderings, his muddy and mixed life. His sense of God's presence becomes broken and uneven. He can enjoy seasons of refreshing and blessing in God's service, but he finds another principle warring in his members. He finds that he is proud and selfish and un-Christlike in so many ways. It is frightfully disturbing to discover base ingratitude, wounded pride, wicked thoughts, love of ease, unwillingness to be disturbed, and many secret, selfish desires. Honestly faced, these things create an awful disturbance of his former peace.

Shocking Demands

It is a good indication that we are born again when we hunger and thirst after righteousness. A grand old saint once said to us, "During my twenty years of wilderness wanderings there was forever ringing in my heart this verse, 'As the hart panteth after the waterbrooks, so panteth my soul after Thee, O God.'"

However, in our hunger and thirst after righteousness, we come face to face with the dreadful standards of Christ. We long to be like Jesus, to obey Him, to do His will; but why does He torture and tantalize us with the impossible and the unattainable? In the most matter-of-fact way He bids us love our enemies, go the second mile, rejoice when we are persecuted, "rejoice...alway" and "evermore," and be thankful "in everything" and "for all things."

What He commands is both impossible and unreasonable, completely beyond the natural. Small wonder that an honest and awakened soul was so shocked by the law of Christ as to cry out, "Either this is not true or we are not Christians!"

What shall we do with these exalted demands? Are they mere ethics, beautiful to admire and to discourse upon, but only to be lived by supermen, men far removed from our order of life? Or, instead, does the Spirit of God so bear down upon our redeemed souls that the sky-high requirement of Christ is no mere mockery?

What then? Shall we despairingly resign ourselves to defeat? Not if we hunger and thirst after righteousness. We cannot abide the thought that Christ has given us these commands, only to mock us and leave us to grovel and groan in despair.

Perplexity and Defeat

Many Christian pastors in this condition are puzzled and nonplussed to know what to do for themselves and their defeated church members. Some try to believe it is a mark of deep spirituality to be able to discern how "exceeding sinful" they are. Yet they feel like hypocrites in preaching the Gospel as God's power unto salvation when they themselves are the slaves of self and of a thousand things of which they may well be ashamed.

An old preacher who once found himself wandering in this wilderness and knowing not the way out, says of those days:

Many anxious Christians came to me, complaining of the same things. How could I help them on that point, when I did not know how to get right myself? I took them to the seventh chapter of Romans and there left them saying, "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" I was there myself, and supposed I must live and die there (A.B.Earle).

A college president likewise bewailed his former stagnations and fruitlessness covering a score of years:

I will not dwell upon the unpleasant theme of a ministry of twenty years almost fruitless in conversions, through a lack of unction from the Holy One. My great error was in depending on the truth alone to break stony hearts. The Holy Spirit, though formally acknowledged and invoked, was practically ignored. My personal experience during much of this time consisted in "sorrows and sins, and doubts and fears, and howling wilderness."

But I discovered in one who came across my path the fullness of the Holy Spirit, enjoyed as an abiding blessing, styled by him, "Rest in Jesus." I was convicted; I sought earnestly the same great gift, but could not exercise faith until I had made a public confession of my sin in preaching self more than Christ, and in being satisfied with the applause of the Church above the approval of her divine Head.

Self-Effort and Despair

How long do we have to wander in the wilderness of a divided affection before we enter into the land of our inheritance? Certainly there can be no spiritual ground for delay. Just as there is no gap of time between the justification of Romans five and the Christian victory of Romans six, there is no reason why God's redeemed people should not pass immediately from the afflictions of Egypt into the rest of Canaan.

The fact, however, remains that the most of us seem to learn the truth of Romans six through the miseries described in Romans seven; but let us beware of thinking that a Romans-seven experience is Christian experience. It may be the experience of many Christians, but it is neither necessary not Scriptural. We Christians need not wander in the wilderness of a double-minded state any more than Israel had to spend thirty-eight years in the wilderness before entering into the promised rest of Canaan. There is only one reason for their long delay - "They could not enter in because of unbelief." Their failure was the failure of faith, and ours is the same.

Let us further explain. Why do so many Christians seem unable to believe at once for Christian victory? Why is it so difficult to "enter into rest"? Why do the majority of Christians learn victory only through the struggles and agonies of Romans seven?

Our real trouble is that we do not easily learn to despair of self-improvement. We feel that if only we were more watchful, more prayerful, more resolute and determined, we might yet be able to realize rest and Christian victory. We strive and struggle and redouble our efforts - ah me, are we not backsliding unless we agonize and sweat and bleed? - but all to no avail. "The flesh profiteth nothing." Blessed be nothing! But this is hard to learn - to unlearn self. We do not learn to trust Christ for victory until we cease to trust in the flesh.

Hudson Taylor speaks of his unquenchable yearnings for more holiness and life and power in his soul:

I felt the ingratitude, the danger, the sin of not living near God. I prayed, agonized, strove, fasted, made resolutions, read the Word of God more diligently, sought more time for meditation and prayer - but all was without effect. Every day, almost every hour, the consciousness of sin oppressed me. I knew if I could only abide in Christ all would be well, but I could not...each day brought its register of sin and failure, of lack of power. To will was indeed present with me, but how to perform I found not.

Then came the question: Is there no rescue? Must it be thus to the end - constant conflict and, instead of victory, too often defeat?... I hated my sin, and yet I gained no strength against it. I felt I was a child of God. His Spirit in my heart would cry, "Abba Father"; but to rise to my privileges as a child I was utterly powerless.

"God is a tower without a stair
And His perfection loves despair."

Not until we have come to an end of all self-righteousness and satisfaction in ourselves, not until all our peace and joy and strength of will and purpose and resolution have come to despair, can faith stretch forth her hands to lay hold of victory in Christ. Only when we have finally learned the tragedy and the futility and folly of every human attempt to overcome the law of sin and death, are we shut up to faith that can reckon on our death-resurrection relationship to sin "through Jesus Christ our Lord."

Entrance into Rest

The following simple steps may lead some readers out of their wilderness wanderings into the blessed land of rest and fruitfulness:

Recognize Your Need

Some Christians do not yet realize their need. It would do such persons a world of good to find themselves in the tanglefoot of Romans seven. A cultured gentleman once told C.I.Scofield that he did not see how Paul found it so hard to be good. The man's idea of being good was general good behaviour, honesty, and neighbourliness.

Dr. Scofield asked: "Did you ever try to be meek?"

"No, sir! I don't admire a meek man."

"Well, God does. Christ was meek and lowly. Suppose you go out and determine to be meek and meet your enemies with love. Would you find that easy?"

"No, sir! That's not in my line! I'm not built that way." (Quoted by Dr. McQuilkin in The Message of Romans.)

How true! Not one of us is built that way. That man needed to find himself so "exceedingly sinful" that he would cry, "O wretched man that I am!"

Reckon on Fact

"We who died to sin, how shall we any longer live therein?" (Romans 6:2, R.V.). "We" believers in Christ were joined to Him at the cross, united to Him in death and resurrection. We died with Christ. He died for us, and we died with Him. That is a great fact, true of all believers, true the moment they are saved. Christ died, not only for sin, but also unto sin; "died unto sin once" for all. Paul therefore commands us: "Even so reckon ye also yourselves to be dead unto sin, but alive unto God in Christ Jesus" (Romans 6:11, R.V.). To "reckon" means to count, count upon the fact of my death to sin through union with Christ in His death and resurrection. I am not to try to make myself believe what is not so. This reckoning is no mere make-believe.

I must realize, however, that the phrase, "dead unto sin," has nothing to do with feeling or personal experience. Much less does it refer to sinlessness. It is a great fact, irrespective of my feeling or spiritual experience, that through my union with Christ I am "dead unto sin." I am bidden to act upon this fact.

Let there be no mistake about the right order of my reckoning, namely, Fact, Faith, Feeling.

FACT: "In Christ" I died to sin.

FAITH: I act upon the fact - reckon myself "dead unto sin, but alive unto God in Christ Jesus."

FEELING: Faith fastens on fact and lets feeling come trailing along. Feeling will rise and fall, will come and go, but faith follows fact and turns not back to follow feeling.

I am to reckon moment by moment on my union with Christ in death and resurrection - reckon till God makes real.

Reject Sin's Reign

"Let not sin therefore reign" (Romans 6:12). The word "therefore" indicates that since I died to sin, that is, when I was justified, I should not let sin reign in my body.

When Paul says, "Let not sin therefore reign," he speaks of sin not as a "banished presence" but as a broken dominion. I need not let sin lord it over me.

The phrase "let not" implies that I must choose to let not sin reign. Sin can reign and will reign unless I deliberately choose to reject sin's dominion.

In rejecting sin's reign I may have to do so around some humiliation, some confession, some place of open shame. Any argument with the Spirit over sin will block the path to power and peace. Cost what it may, let me say to sin a "No" that will carry with it the power of the Risen and Indwelling Christ.

Refuse Self

Paul says, "Yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God" (Romans 6:13). We call this the surrender of ourselves unto God - body, soul, and spirit. We are to present not only our very selves, but also our eyes and ears, our feet and hands, our every member as an instrument of righteousness unto God.

The whole of our "old man," including self, has been "crucified with Christ." The risen Christ-life contradicts self. It must be "yet not I, but Christ."

Rest on God's Word

"Sin shall not have dominion," is the word of promise in Romans 6:14. Has death no more dominion over Him? Even so "sin shall not have dominion" over those who yield entirely to the control of the Holy Spirit, for "the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death" (Romans 8:2).

RESURRECTION LIFE
Is It Through--
ERADICATION? SUPPRESSION?
OR COUNTERACTION?

PARDON me, Honourable Judge, you see I am a Christian; I am a new man in Christ. It was not my new man, but my old man that did the wrong," said the self-excusing culprit on trial.

To this the judge is reported to have replied: "Since it was the old man that did the wrong, we'll sentence him to thirty days in jail. And inasmuch as the new man had complicity with the old man in the wrong, we'll give him thirty day also. You will therefore go to jail for sixty days."

Defeat

The above story came to mind as we read an editorial in the Sunday School Times on "Deflating Dual Personality," from which we quote the following:

Lieut. General Sir Arthur Smith of England, in a very helpful article entitled "Fear" in the officers' Christian Union Bulletin, exposes the foolishness of excusing sin merely on the ground of a split personality by the following incident:

I know of a headmaster, of ____, a man of wise discretion and of a sound mind, who took into his school a particularly difficult boy. He went absent. "Next time, it is three of the hardest," warned the headmaster. The boy kept straight for a bit and then went absent again.

"Why did you do that? he was asked.

"I did not mean to, but I could not help it," was the reply. "You see, I have a dual personality; one half of me did not want to do it, but the other half did!"

"You know the punishment for that? I am going to give three to your good personality and three to your bad!"

The boy was given six of the hardest, and the headmaster has had no trouble since.

That was wise discernment and understanding. But is the "dual personality" of the psychiatric jargon anything new? Turn to Romans 7:15-25, where St. Paul says, in effect, "The very thing I want to do, I fail to do; and the beastly thing I hate doing and I want not to do, that is the very thing I go and do. O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from this dual personality? I thank God through Jesus our Lord." How grateful we should be for a Bible that meets man's need today.

The Scriptural truth relating to the personality of a redeemed person is that he still has his old nature, but that the Holy Spirit has come to dwell within him. As the teaching has been so clearly given by Evan Hopkins and other Keswich teachers, the secret of victory is not eradication, not suppression, but counteraction. That is, the old nature, with its liability to sin, is not done away with, nor is it kept down merely by a continual struggle on our part; but victory is complete and continual just in so far as we allow the Holy Spirit to have full control in our lives and work out His purposes in us. The principle is summarized in Galatians 5:16: "This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh."

In Romans 7 Paul does not excuse himself because of the mysterious "other self" in his being. Nor can he cast off conviction by placing the blame on the "old man." Even when he says, "It is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me," he is not shaking off his responsibility, but is merely explaining the fact that in his defeated state he has no control over the surgings of indwelling sin. He does not want to sin; but he admits that it is he himself who is doing that which he hates. He recognized how he is mastered by the power of the flesh, the self-life.

The old man in me, and the new man, are just two parts of the same responsible person, the same single individual. It is the conflict and moral contradiction between "flesh" and "Spirit." Iam both, and I cannot excuse myself on the basis that I have "good intention and bad action."

"How to perform that which is good I find not" (Romans 7:18) is the cry of the defeated Christian who is trying to be good by his own effort and resolution. He finds himself beaten back at every turn by the inability of the flesh. This man is not the careless Christian who is not yet awakened to his own fleshliness and depravity, but, rather, the believer who is in dead earnest to walk with and to please God.

Discovery It seems that the apostle travelled a long way before he learned to say, "I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing." But it was only then that he admitted his inability to "find" in the flesh the "how to perform that which is good." The final outcome of all this conflict and enslavement is a cry of agony: "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" This wail of wretchedness is also a cry for help.

There follows then the burst of thanksgiving: "I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord." With this discovery of Christian victory Paul emerges from the thraldom of self and the flesh.

As an unregenerate man, Paul had once been under the curse of legal condemnation. Then as a Christian (so it seems) he was for a time under the death-doomed feeling of experimental condemnation. Note that in this latter experience he does not cry: "O guilty man that I am!" but rather, "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me?" He finds that "through Jesus Christ" he stands freed, not by any self-effort, but by virtue of being "in Christ."

Then follows another burst of praise: "There is therfore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus," that is, "no sort of condemnation," whether legal or experimental. The lost sinner is under judicial or legal condemnation until he is justified in Christ. The defeated believer is under experimental condemnation until he sees victory in Christ. But when the believer sees that to be "in Christ" is to be "free indeed," freed from experimental as well as legal condemnation, he cannot but shout with delight, "Thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ."

Why is the liberated believer happy? What is the ground of his deliverance? As already observed, he is "in Christ Jesus." That is the blessed ground of all his redemption. He is partaker of "the redemption that is in Christ Jesus."

The question remains: How is he delivered from bondage? What is the practical power of his freedom? How does experimental freedom come about? Here is the answer, in the very next verse: "For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free [freed me] from the law of sin and death" (Romans 8:2). When the believer comes into life-union with Christ risen, he is made partaker of a new force, a new power, a new principle of life - "the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus." But the defeated believer of Romans 7 has not yet discovered the secret of spiritual victory. Although earnest, and determined to live a good life, he has not learned the folly and futility and utter inability of the flesh.

A young man in Bible school was struggling desperately, but without success, to lay hold of victory over sin. He was working hard to believe God, not knowing that his own fleshly energy was actually thwarting God. He little realized the fact that "it is God which worketh." At the height of his misery a visiting speaker dwelt upon the phrase, "Let God." It so struck this determined and zealous young fellow that he had a motto made and tacked up over the door of his dormitory room - that he might be reminded continually that victory could come only as he "let God" undertake. So deep-dyed, however, were his deadly doings and self-efforts that he still strove to "let God." One day a strange thing occurred. As he came into his room, one corner of the motto dropped down so as to cover the letter "d". He read the words "Let Go." To him there came a new secret. Instead of striving to let God, he was to let go and trust God.

When the believer comes to the end of himself and discovers the spiritual secret of victory through faith in the new Fount of life, "the law of the Spirit of life," and "the law of sin and death." These are two opposing powers, contradictory principles, each working with all the power and fixedness of law. The more powerful principle of resurrection life counteracts the corrupt principle of sin and death, but only on the condition that we cease all fleshly efforts and yield ourselves entirely to the possession and control of the Holy Spirit.

The revelation of the Spirit's power as the secret of deliverance from sin's dominion seems to some Christians almost like a second conversion. Certain theologians have, therefore, drawn up a second "Gospel of the Spirit" as separable from our justification "in Christ," almost forgetting that when we were justified from sin's penalty, we were then and there brought into vital union with Christ in His resurrection life.

Experimental deliverance from sin's power is therefore through simple surrender to and appropriation of the new power of "the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus." The difficulty of explaining these deeper truths helps us to account for the various and conflicting doctrinal camps, each school of thought building, for the most part, upon a partial understanding of the Scriptures.

Counteraction

There are three chief schools of teaching regarding victory over sin: (1) Some teach that victory is by the suppression of evil desires - and virtual assumption that Romans 7 represents normal Christian experience; (2) the "holiness" school teaches deliverance from sin through eradication, once for all, of the whole sin principle, including even the tendency to evil; (3) others with better Bible balance hold that the secret of victory lies in the counteraction of the principle of sin and death through the principle of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus.

Having discovered the secret of deliverance from sin's power, the believer faces a grave danger, the danger of building upon a state or experience, as though he had arrived at a once-for-all freedom from the law of sin and death. Two things must be continually borne in mind. Entrance into victory is one thing; walk in victory is quite another. It is all the difference between doorway and pathway. Entrance may be a moment of crisis experience; walk is a life-long process of obedience. We dare not put confidence in any realized state; we must seek to walk in a moment-by-moment supply of the "Spirit of life in Christ Jesus."

In his excellent book, The Law of Liberty in the Spiritual Life, Evan Hopkins illustrates the difference between a state of purity and a maintained condition of purity. For illustration, he supposes the passing through the room of a candle or lamp. That room is all lighted up and is instantly delivered from darkness. But it could not be said to have been delivered once for all. The tendency to darkness is still there. Of course the light, having once entered the room, did bring a state of light, but only the continued presence of the light can counteract the tendency to darkness. The room is therefore dependent moment by moment upon the presence of the light for its maintained condition of freedom from darkness.

Our bodies and beings are somewhat similar to this room. We have tendencies to darkness and death. In our physical beings we are dependent each moment upon air and food and new pulses of lifeblood to counteract our natural tendencies to speedy mortification. Only the presence of life, not merely as a state but as a maintained condition, can prevent our decay and death. It is the same with spiritual holiness and moral purity. Only the continual presence of the "Spirit of life in Christ Jesus" can counteract our tendencies to sin and death. We shall never come to a state of independence, or to a realized state of purity on which we can depend as having an existence apart from Christ's continued presence and activity. It is divine wisdom to leave us to depend entirely upon Him and the life-giving power of His Spirit to counteract our ever-present tendency to moral darkness, to evil disease, to "the law of sin and death."

Nature furnishes us with many illustrations of the great principle of counteraction, of one law counteracting another. In the spring of the year, for instance, plant life shoots upward, overcoming the law of gravity. Airplanes likewise, as well as the birds of the air, move and operate in spite of the ever-present pull earthward. Think also of the mighty magnet of a crane. Tons of steel are easily hoisted in defiance of all the down-drag of gravity. 'Tis true that the law of gravity still operates, but the law of the magnet operates to counteract the ever-present power of gravity. The engineer, however, knows full well that if the electric life of the magnet fails to operate, even for one second, the law of gravity will operate with a vengeance.

Come back into Bible history. At the Red Sea there existed all the natural law of the tides, but there was also present the more powerful law of the supernatural east wind which counteracted the tendency of the tide. However, when the supernatural law of God's east wind was suspended, then, "the sea returned to his strength" (Exodus 14:27).

A boatload of vacationers was merrily coasting on the great Niagara river. Although they well knew that to drift beyond a certain point without steam up would prove fatal, they carelessly allowed the pressure to drop in the boiler. They had not time to raise steam. Naught could be done to counteract the mighty current of the Niagara. They would soon drift to their doom. But, lo, it was found that some barrels of oil were on board. Steam pressure was speedily raised by firing those boilers with oil. Soon the mighty current of the Niagara was counteracted by the power of the fresh steam pressure. In the moral and spiritual sphere our situation is similar. The current of sin and death is too strong for us. Whatever can be done? The answer is oil - "the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus."

To the Ephesian believers Paul said, "Be filled with the Spirit"; or, better, "Be ye being filled with the Spirit." This command implied that in order to enjoy a maintained condition of fullness, the Ephesians must keep on receiving fresh supplies of the Spirit according to need and demand. In prison at Rome Paul felt the need of the supply of the Spirit. When false brethren preached Christ in a way to add affliction to Paul's bonds, the apostle still rejoiced that Christ was preached. He said, "I therein do rejoice, yea, and will rejoice. For I know that this shall turn to my salvation through your prayer, and the supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ" (Philippians 1:18, 19). Paul's rejoicing prepared him to receive new infillings of the life-giving Spirit. No state of past experience would do; only a condition maintained through fresh supplies of the Spirit could suffice, even for the great apostle.

Bishop Moule sets forth this same truth in his comment upon the text: "Of His fullness have all we received, and grace for [instead of] grace."

The image is of a perpetual succession of supply; a displacement ever going on; ceaseless changes of need and demand. The picture before us is as of a river. Stand on its banks, and contemplate the flow of waters. A minute passes, and another. Is it the same stream still? Yes. But is it the same water? No. The liquid mass that passed you a few seconds ago fills now another section of the channel; new water has displaced it or, if you please, replaced it; water instead of water. And so, hour by hour, and year by year, and century by century the process holds; one stream, other waters, living, not stagnent, because always in the great identity there is perpetual exchange. Grace takes the place of grace; ever new, ever old, ever the same, ever fresh and young, for hour by hour, for year by year, through Christ.


MEDITATIONS AMONG THE TOMBS

By Uncle Adam

Some folks dey thinks dey's mighty dead
But dey're jes' playin' possum;
Dey's got it all in deyr head,
But you jes' only cross 'em.

A heap of folks is walkin' 'round
All dressed up in deyr grave clothes-
You've hardly got 'em under ground
When - 'fore you know it - dey've rose.

It's mighty fine to have a cross
Upon your breast a-danglin';
'Taint quite so nice to suffer loss
'Thout frettin', spite, or janglin'.

Say, missus, 'spose you had to scrub
Or wash to earn y'r livin',
Could you find Jesus in y'r tub
And jes' keep on thanksgivin'?

Some folks, it sometimes seems to me-
And yet, perhaps, it mayn't be-
Dey 'pears to say, "How dead we be;
Ain't we nice corpses, ain't we?"

'Pears like de Massa said one day
Dat we sh'd jes' keep reck'nin'
Dat we is dead, and look away
Up where He lives, a-beck'nin'.

And as we look an' live on high,
His upris'n life will fill us,
De dead suah way for us to die
Is for His love to kill us.

-Selected