"The Law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus" by G.W. North

THE SPIRIT OF LIFE IN CHRIST JESUSBy G.W. North'... THE LAW OF THE SPIRIT OF LIFE IN CHRIST JESUS HATH MADE ME FREE FROM THE LAW OF SIN AND DEATH." Romans 8:2No Condemnation — in Christ Jesus. This text is the glorious introduction to a whole chapter of glorious truth about the Holy Spirit which has no parallel anywhere else in scripture. It would be altogether too great a task to undertake to attempt an exposition of the whole chapter, but we will touch on it here and there, finding the truth we seek for our purposes. Paul has just concluded a lengthy passage, in which he describes himself as he discovered himself to be under the law of Moses. What the law did for him was to show him the laws that controlled him; he discovered himself to be a slave of sin, bound by chains of habit to death. Even the laws of mind and memory, which brought him joy and delight in the law of God, could not liberate him from the law of sin which worked in his members. It overpowered his will. Strong determination of mind and fixity of purpose were together powerless to liberate him; although he loathed and lamented his sin, he could not rid himself of it. It was not so much what he did that troubled him, it was what was working in his members that distressed him so much. It was against him, against his desires, his mind, his will, his beliefs, his prayers, his better knowledge, against his God; it was sinful, exceedingly sinful, and he hated himself for it. At last the battle was too great for him and he cried out to God for deliverance and found it through Jesus Christ.

2. From that time onwards this was his testimony, 'there is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus (who walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit) for the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death'. It is intensely personal. He was not setting down teaching, he was recounting his experience; 'this is what I have found', he is saying, and O how precious it was to him. We are told that the words in parenthesis above are not in the most ancient and more reliable manuscripts, from which we may infer that they were not in the original epistle. They are an exact copy of Paul's words in verse four, and so the scribes, whoever they were that copied out the sacred text, are not to be thought guilty of inserting thoughts of their own, even if it was their idea to put the phrase higher up in the text. May we not infer that by doing so those people have revealed to us that they too had discovered the reason for Paul's rejoicing? He found he could walk after the Spirit and not after the flesh, and so had they.

3. How wonderful this experience is, and how glorious it is to every man who similarly discovers that the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made him free from the law of sin and death. What light in darkness, especially when it is coupled, as it is here, with the fact that there is therefore no condemnation to him because he really and recognizably is in Christ Jesus. Whenever Paul's doctrine touches upon human experience of salvation it is always based on his own experience, and what glorious doctrine it is; because of this it is the gospel indeed, God's good news and man's good news in one. If the note of personal testimony is missing from gospel preaching it is a vain hope, for what at first is an enlightening message and liberating hope will die away into darkness and condemnation. That is why Paul spoke about walking not after the flesh but after the Spirit; unless a man can do that, he has no testimony that his beliefs are right, no proof that his doctrine is correct; he is just believing in unworkable theories. The walk in the Spirit is the sole proof that the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has indeed set a person free from the law of sin and death. For if there is one thing that is absolutely certain, it is that dead men cannot walk; legs and feet they may have, but life they have not.

4. Therefore the copyists' gloss may not be a bad thing, for it emphasizes the important practical part, namely walking after the Spirit, without which all is theoretical belief. Because he was walking after the Spirit, Paul knew he was free from the law of sin and death; if this had not been so he would have walked after the flesh, because he could not have done otherwise; the walk is the test. It is entirely impossible to be free from sin and death unless the law governing it, by which it works, is nullified or countermanded in us. It is not possible to nullify or countermand spiritual and moral law unless it is replaced by another, which works in the very same elements and by the same principles as the one it replaces did. Only the working of' the new law can prevent the old one from reasserting itself and regaining power over us; in the spirit as in nature there cannot be a vacuum. The new law does not break the power of the old one — that is not its function — but it does prevent it from reasserting itself. The power of the old law of sin is broken experimentally in every believer who knows the experience outlined in (Romans) chapter six.

5. Essentially, originally and eventually man is spirit. He is not flesh, neither is he a body; he has a body of flesh in which he dwells on the earth in this world. All the time he dwells in his body man is both spirit and soul; man, by God's choice, is a spirit/soul. God is not spirit/soul, He is Spirit. God acquired a soul when the Son took a body. In God He is now the Spirit/Soul of God, the prototype and forerunner of every spirit/soul son of God by redemption and regeneration. The Lord Jesus became a soul when He was incarnated. Until then He was not a soul. To be a soul a person has to be born in a human body. He had appeared in bodily form prior to being incarnate, but He was not a soul then, for He had not been born man. He was spirit manifesting Himself in human or angelic form for the purpose in hand at that time only. Spirit was breathed into human form by God. God does not make spirits, He generates them. God is the father of spirits, not of bodies. He formed or made body, He did not generate it; He generated or gave birth to man when He breathed spirit into it. Until then the shapely dust was not man. God did not breathe spirit into man; He breathed it into a form of dust which He intended to be a man, and thus created man. Man is a manifestation of God, as well as a creation of God. God made man in His own image after His own likeness. Animals and all the lower forms of being are not a manifestation of God, they are a creation of God only. They do not bear His image, they were not patterned upon God's being; their original breath was not directly from God, therefore they are not after His likeness; they were only the work of His hands made to breathe atmospheric air.

6. Man Became a Living Soul. Original man was created by direct original breath from the Spirit of God. Animals' breath was gaseous, man's was spiritous. Man, to be man, must be spirit; to be human he must be soul; to have existence on the earth he must have body. Man is spiritual, sensual, physical in being; to be man he cannot be any other, for that is how God made him; God delighted in that original creation, but since then man has undergone a tragic change in spirit and soul. Physically he is the same, but in spirit and soul he is utterly different, so God, when communicating truth to us about ourselves, has found it necessary to change His form of address. When God created man he was spiritual, that is, his spirit was in a condition of pristine purity, without sin, so was his body; he was fully conscious of his originator, in all its senses the soul alive unto Him; His body also, in all its members and motions, its desires and appetites, its laws and functions, was of one accord with it. Man was entirely spiritual. In every realm of his being man was attuned to God. Nothing in him was out of touch or out of gear. The mind of his spirit, and the operation of the laws of his entire being, in accordance with it, were all directed to do God's will — he was spiritual. Man knew no other than that until he sinned, and when he did so he ceased to be spiritual. He was still basically spirit, but he was no longer spiritual, he was only spiritous, and because his sin was directed to the satisfying of his flesh in both its appetites and desires, its affections and attractions, he became a carnal soul — man was no longer spiritual but carnal, that is, dead. He was not alive with the life of God and therefore was not alive to God. Being no longer spiritual, that is, no longer able to live in the condition in which he was created, he was no longer allowed to live in the conditions which God had created for him — he was turned out of paradise.

7. This then is the background to Paul's approach to his teachings about man's life in the Spirit: man must be restored to his original native state. Adam fell from his native state, that is, the condition of his nature, what it was, how it was, where it was, and found himself in another condition, another nature. His native state of spirit had become death, his native condition of soul became sin, his native state of body became carnal. Paul found out all these things about himself and he was devastated. But he also found out that Christ Jesus lived a life that was exactly what God originally intended for man; He was spiritual. If a man wishes to be spiritual he must have and live the life of Jesus Christ. The section commences on that note, 'the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus'. The life that Jesus lived and the way He lived it are the law for all God's sons. He lived by the Spirit and developed His own spirit from and in that Spirit. His spirit and mind had control over all His being; He was spiritually-minded. He minded the Spirit and therefore His own spirit, and thereby had life and peace. There was no conflict in Him. There was no sin in Him, not in any realm or member of Him; nothing warred against the law of His mind; what He thought and willed He was able to do. He did not live in or walk after the flesh but in and after the Spirit. He was subject to the law of God, thoroughly dead to sin and alive unto God, therefore all the righteousness of the law was fulfilled in Him. It is into this life that the baptism in the Spirit is designed to bring us. This baptism is obligatory because it is absolutely necessary, for only thereby are our spirits baptized into Jesus Christ. He is now as He was then in Spirit, and the purpose of God is that, by this baptism we shall receive and for ever have the spirit of Christ, the spiritual man.

8. It is quite impossible for any man to know the working of the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus in himself unless he is in Christ Jesus. Life in Christ Jesus is exclusive to Him, and if we are to know His life we must be in Him; we cannot be without Him and expect to have His personal life in us. Therefore every person who would know the reality of Christ's own life within his or her own self must be in Him, otherwise there can be no end to the life of sin. Condemnation and frustration is the common state of all enlightened men who wish to live Christ's life and find themselves unable to do so. They truly desire to do His will and can never accomplish it. As Paul explains, he was in that state himself once; despite all his prayers and efforts he languished in defeat and wretchedness until the Spirit showed him the way and took him out of himself and his sin into Christ. There and then he discovered the law of the Spirit of life and how it worked. When he went this way he found the dominion of sin was broken in him, for like Christ he died to it.

9. BAPTIZED INTO CHRISTIt was a marvellous and totally unexpected thing, as undeserved as it was unexpected — he was baptized into Christ. No-one had told him what would happen to him and that is why so much of this man's a teaching was so personal. He was not a product of the Church; he had persecuted it. He did not learn the way of salvation from it, nor from the apostles of Christ (he had hated them also); quite the opposite from that, the Church has learned from him. What happened to him, that is to say, what Christ did to him at Damascus first of all and then revealed to him afterwards, became the substance of all Paul's ministry. Quite simply, the Christ he had first met on the Damascus road baptized him in the Spirit in that city three days later. He baptized him into His death and into His resurrection, and via these into Himself, into His nature, His life and self.

10..That day Saul of Tarsus passed from death unto life for the first time, and from that moment he was conscious of being kept alive in Christ in whom the law of the Spirit of life is constantly in operation. This is how it must be with everyone. Eternal life is not possible to a man otherwise; it is no use a man trying to walk according to the Spirit unless he is first baptized into Christ. Until this happens to a man the law of sin and death continues to operate, working condemnation in him. No number or manner of assurances to the contrary will ever persuade him that it is not so. To be free from condemnation and guilt a man must be baptized into Christ. There and nowhere else does the law of the Spirit of life make a man free from the law of sin and death so that he can walk after the Spirit. Doing so he does not then need assuring that he is not under condemnation, because he has the assurance of the Spirit within himself and he knows he is not condemned. Moreover, by his walk he proves this both to himself and also to all other knowledgeable persons who observe him.

NOTE: If anyone is following this thread for study purposes:The last four sections (7 through 10) are very important. I’ll delay posting another section for a day or two to provide time to catch up and reflect.Roger

11. The life in Christ Jesus can only be known and lived by this law of the Spirit. Unless this baptism takes place and this spiritual law be realized in experience so that the whole personality is brought into obedience to it, no man can possibly live the eternal life. We may observe how this law operates by reading the events that led up to the birth of Jesus. Unless the Holy Spirit had come upon Mary in the beginning there would have been no human Jesus Christ. His life came from the Holy Spirit and not from her; she only gave Him His human body. All the biological processes by which a human body is formed were taken over in Mary by the Holy Spirit, who activated and commenced and superintended their function. Thereby Jesus was made of a woman: (1) under the law of Moses (which law was the law of God and very strong against adultery); (2) according to biological law; (3) according to the law of faith; (4) according to the law of the Spirit of life. Biological processes are laws — God's laws — and when He sent His Son into the world He did not work apart from female biological law but through it. Jesus was born as a result of voluntary co-operation between God and a woman. Two laws co-operated and combined; one human and one divine — the law of the body of Mary and the law of the Spirit of God. The spirit of each co-operated by the law of faith to produce the human Son of Man.

Freedom from the law of Sin and Death'... the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death'. Romans 8:212. We therefore see that the unique life of Jesus of Bethlehem and Nazareth and Calvary was produced entirely by the law of the Spirit of life. This is the life which God means us to understand when we read the phrase 'the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus'. This life is not subject to the law of sin and death simply because it is the law of righteousness and life, and all the time we live by it we shall live free from sin as God intends us to. Other laws must operate too, all combining to this end. We must observe John's statement for instance — 'if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin'. We do not ordinarily think of that operation as law, but it is. When Paul says, 'ye are not under law but under grace', he does not mean that under grace all law is suspended or nullified; he means these two things: (1) we are not now under the Mosaic legal system of blood sacrifices for sin or thank offerings etc., (2) we are not now under the law of sin and death.

13. We are here being instructed into the law of being and personality; in all moral intelligences these co-exist. In fact, without moral intelligence, personality cannot be. There can be physical that is to say animal existence, but no one ever thinks of speaking of an animal as a person; it may have an intelligence of a sort, but it is not moral, it does not act morally but instinctively according to its nature. A higher will and intelligence may train it to respond to a certain name and to do certain things, but it will never be thought of as a being, a person. It will remain a creature, an animal; it has being, therefore existence, but without personality. On the other hand, man, in common with angels and God, has moral intelligence; all three have both being and personality. In God's being there is no sin, therefore there is no death in Him because sin is the cause of death. But beyond, far beyond this negative aspect of His being, God is positively righteous. Being always morally right and good He is eternally alive — He is life itself. His nature is love and His personality is grace — that is to say that in His attitude towards us God is always gracious. Apparently this graciousness was the quality of nature and personality which came through most strongly to people of Jesus' acquaintance; 'the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ' certainly made terrific and unforgettable impact on Paul.

14. Now exactly the same life that was in Christ is in the Holy Spirit, as it is in the Father also; although they share the same life, they embody and express it in three different ways as three distinct yet related persons. We must express this life also, and for this reason must walk in the Spirit and after the Spirit. God has ordained it that way for us, but He did not do so for the sake of it, He did so because there is no other way. It was quite impossible on earth for men to walk in the life of Jesus of Nazareth the human being. They could walk after Him — that is, follow Him — with Him or away from Him, but not in Him. Men could not walk in what He was in the flesh. That was unique, but in the Spirit it is now possible (and O what grace this is) to walk in what Christ is in spirit. To this end the Holy Spirit is now in charge of all things to do with Christ. We must be in the Spirit and after the Spirit and be led by the Spirit or we cannot have and shall not know the life of Christ. We may have and enjoy some of His benefits, but that is not good enough for God's sons. Beyond all these He wants us to have the privileges of sonship, and enjoy all the benefits of a son and heir of God. Therefore the Spirit is made unto us the Spirit of adoption or sonship, and this He accomplishes by coming into us and witnessing with our spirits that we are the children of God.

15. Made unto Us — All Things. When Jesus Christ was made in flesh He was made the substance of all the virtuous things we read of in the Old Testament. The people of His day were able to see, hear and handle in a man, at least in part, what the eternal life really was. He was the personification to them of all spiritual virtues and graces and powers. Though sinless, He was made in the likeness of sinful flesh; He came for sin and to be made sin; this was His daring. Being so absolutely perfect He could be made the embodiment of sin and all human imperfection, and not be ruined by it. To that generation He was made everything perfect and glorious and needful and wonderful, then at the end of His life for that generation He was made everything imperfect and shameful and sinful and terrible. What He was made for that generation He was made for every generation before and since; He was made sin for us. Hallelujah! Just as truly as He was made the substance of everything virtuous to that generation, so to us also He is made the substance of all virtues and graces and powers. Paul lists some of them: 'wisdom, righteousness, sanctification and redemption' (1Cor. 1:30); we could add to this list almost ad infinitum if we had power to comprehend what no language can possibly express.

16. Now what we have seen to be true of Christ Jesus is also true of the Holy Spirit to the same degree, though not in the same manner. The Holy Spirit is made unto us all the many virtues of God which we so desperately need. Perhaps the simplest illustration of this is in that marvellous section of the Galatian letter wherein Paul speaks of the fruit of the Spirit. Each of the graces mentioned there is nothing other than one of the many precious virtues of Jesus; it is as though the writer had examined His person and had set down an analysis of His personality and personal qualities. Though not exhaustive, this group of characteristics put together by Paul is a description of the man Jesus, His manner and ways to God and to men - and wonderful He is. More wonderfully, this is what He is made to us by the Spirit so that we may enjoy and display His life. Still more wonderfully He is made that, through us, to God. The fruit of the Spirit is the spiritual substance of the life of Christ which made Him such indestructible Rock, even when He was made sin on the cross, with the result that the attack mounted upon Him there by the devil and his armies was broken upon Him. By the fruit of the same Spirit abiding in us as He did in Christ, the fact that Christ lives in us is proved. There is no other proof that this is so; the Spirit is given to us basically for this purpose.

17. One of the wonderful things discoverable in the New Testament about God is how greatly the persons of the Godhead love each other. So great is this love that they integrate and identify with each other almost to the point of loss of personal identity, if not of individuality; this they do purely for love's sake, that the overall purposes of God may be unitedly fulfilled. Quite irrespective of the need to preserve their own distinctive personalities and natural roles, they give all their energies to the project in hand, whatever it is, in order to maintain the unity and single-mindedness of the trinity. Paul shows us here how the Holy Spirit identifies with the Son in order to be the Spirit of sonship in us; 'Father', He cries, and in so doing fulfils His other purpose of identifying Himself with our spirits also. He does this by and through the urgent immediacy of need within us because of regeneration; first He creates it, then he fulfils it; it is this need which makes the Holy Spirit so indispensable to each of us. Just as Christ did this same thing over a period of time when He identified with humanity as a whole by incarnation, so the Holy Spirit does it with individuals in order to certify that they are regenerate. Christ did this so that He may identify with us humanly, that is, in human nature and form; the Holy Spirit does it so that we may identify with Christ spiritually, that is, in spiritual nature and manner. As we shall see, this is not the only way or the only reason for which He does it; another instance in this same section affords us a further insight into His versatility and activities. Paul speaks of 'the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead'; without question, the person who raised Him from the dead was the Father, for Paul says so in chapter six.

The Self-effacing Spirit. 17. Plainly the Holy Spirit is determined not to take to Himself any of the glory or credit which belongs to the Son or the Father; He intends that either the Son or the Father must have that. This characteristic humility is displayed almost unobtrusively throughout, as when He refers to Himself as the Spirit of God. This phrase is generally taken to mean the whole being of' God under the headship of the Father, which is proper and natural, for the Father is the highest expression of authority in any family or society. Given His full title, the Holy Spirit should be spoken of as 'The God, The Holy, The Spirit'. This being recognized, He is at once seen to be a person most profound and august, totally beyond our powers of comprehension. Whether we call Him God the Holy Spirit, or the Spirit of God, or just the Spirit, it is all the same (and all are quite proper expressions to use). He is quite happy with them. As long as He is fulfilling the work of the Father towards Jesus the Son, or fulfilling the role of the Son in us towards the Father, He is content. The Holy Spirit is a glorious person, adapting His own wonderful self to the wishes and requirements of God to us according to our need, and so magnifying Him. Whatever the office He must fill in order to do this, whether Comforter, Teacher, Leader, Empowerer or any of His other functionary offices, the blessed Holy Spirit is content as long as thereby the Father and the Son may be glorified; He is the ever-present self-sacrificing workman of God. What a wonderful person He is.

18..It is very noticeable that, in this lengthy passage about the person and work of the Holy Spirit, He is not called by His full name or given His full title. This is not a mark of disrespect; Paul would no more be disrespectful to the Blessed One than he would ignore or blaspheme Him. The apostle loved and honoured Him. This use of the shortened form of the name of the third person of God is not confined to references to the Holy Spirit alone. In scripture the practice is more regularly used when referring to the Lord Jesus Christ than when speaking of the Holy Spirit. With either person, the general reason for this is to draw attention to, or lay emphasis upon, the particular position which that person is then occupying or the specific work or the nature of the work He is doing. It is the apostle's purpose throughout this entire section to emphasize the intensely spiritual nature of all he is saying. From the commencement of chapter eight and throughout, he uses the word spirit in various ways and connections many times (once with reference to man) and the full title, the Holy Spirit, once only. The insistence here is that everything is of spirit, whether of the Spirit of God or the spirit of man. That it is absolutely holy also must be unconditionally accepted; that goes without saying. The apostle's unshakable resolve here though is to make sure that everybody understands that nothing of what he is saying is addressed to the flesh; it is not of the flesh, or for the flesh, or in the flesh; everything is of, in and by spirit. God is Spirit, man is spirit; Paul is teaching things of spirit, whether they be things of God or things of man. He deals with things, powers, works and desires of the flesh in chapter seven, and leaves the subject there, showing his determination to do so by switching from flesh to body when speaking of human physical being in this section. He does this so as to eliminate from our minds all thoughts (whether they be suppositions or calculations) that anything other than spirit can possibly engage in what he now has to say.