The perfect Scriptural presentation of this relationship, given in complete and masterly outline with almost the stroke of a pen, and yet weaving together all the intricate threads that make the pattern of the new life in Christ, is Gal. 2:20: Paul's master analysis of his own condition as a new man in Christ. The first half of that verse will repay unceasing study, until the Spirit illuminates in personal understanding and experience the fundamental and subtle balance of truth in the three operative statements-"I am crucified with Christ": "nevertheless I live": "yet not I, but Christ liveth in me."
The first is clear, in the light of what we have already been seeing of the death of Christ and of ourselves in Him. The "I" which has been crucified with Christ is, of course, the old ego-centric self with which we came into the world.
The second-"nevertheless I live"-is the new Paul, our new selves, risen from the dead in Christ, the same self as before so far as our organs and faculties are concerned, but "renewed in the spirit of our minds," "created in righteousness and true holiness," the dead and risen self to which Paul refers when he says, "Reckon ye yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God-yield yourselves unto God as alive from the dead." This renewed "I" has a pure heart (Acts 15:8; 1 Pet. 1:22), a purified soul (I Pet. 1:22), pure mind (H Pet. 3:1), dedicated body (Rom. 6:13; 12:1) the temple of the Holy Ghost.
But then Paul definitely qualifies this second statement by a third: "Yet not I, but Christ liveth in me" Why does he do this? Because the real new I is Christ in me.
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There can, then, be only one possible purpose in God's grace in salvation-to restore man to his sole and original destiny- "Christ in you, the hope of glory."
We stress this again because the only infallible, inexorable consequence of a sinner receiving salvation is not always made plain by Gospel preachers. It is often easy to get the impression that it is certainly necessary to have our sins forgiven, to be delivered from the wrath to come, to receive an assured entrance into heaven; but to submit to the total control of Christ is something which may and should follow, but does not necessarily do so; and even that it is possible to enjoy the former without the latter. Nothing could be more false or absurd. There is no salvation conceivable, possible or actual, other than God's way in infinite grace of destroying the false form of life in which man lives, and replacing it by the true. The false form of life is that which has self in the centre, which is the sin in which my mother conceived me, which is the false god. The true form of life is that which has God at its centre-Christ living in me.
It is for that reason Paul used the striking expression in Gal. 1:17 to describe his conversion-"when it pleased God-to reveal His son in me." The startling fact is that on the road to Damascus it was the exalted Christ who spoke to him from heaven; yet he writes years afterwards that the out-come of God's dealings with him those three eventful days was not an external revelation of an ascended Christ, but an internal revelation of the Indwelling Son.
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The atoning work of Christ, which makes it possible for a lost sinner to stand in the sight of God as one who had never sinned, is only the gate-way to life, not the life itself. The life itself is, and can never be anything but, Jesus Himself, "that eternal life which was with the Father and was manifested unto us," coming into the cleansed vessel, occupying His holy temple, being the life of the branch now attached to the Vine, the life of the member of the body now attached to the Head.
Do we see the point? Salvation is only salvation when it is God-Father, Son and Holy Spirit-returning to live in the personality created for Him, but exiled from Him through the fall. This is the inner reality of such parables as the prodigal returning to his Father. Therefore salvation is only salvation to any individual believer when the Spirit has given the inner witness of the presence of the Indwelling Christ.
It is certainly true that a new born babe in Christ might not be able to interpret his new living experience in these exact terms; but it must be true that he has not merely an external faith in a Christ crucified 2000 years ago, but also, as the inevitable result of the heavenly gift of repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ, the inner revelation of "Christ in me", my Saviour, my Lord, evidenced by an inner witness that is both incomprehensible to the world, and indescribable.
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"They are not of the world" - John 17:16.
Though we are Christ's, we share in this divided world. We are part of it. We eat its food, partake in its activities, earn its money, taste of its sorrows and tragedies, endure its temptations. Though one'd with Christ in spirit, we are still one with the world in body.
Therefore, though new men in Christ, we still have a duality of consciousness: we have self-consciousness, world-consciousness, flesh-consciousness as well as Christ living in us. Not that it is wrong to be self or world-conscious; we are in the world (but not of it: John 17:13,16), in the flesh (but not of it: Galatians 5:24), in self (but not of it: Galatians 2:20). A great proportion of our waking hours must necessarily be spent in the affairs of this world, with Christ in the background rather than the foreground of our consciousness. Sin only enters when we are consciously drawn into activities and attitudes which we know to be displeasing to Him.
While we are in this divided world we cannot have solely a Christ-consciousness; we must also have a self-consciousness. Certainly it is the renewed self, which knows how to maintain its abiding place; yet it is also a self-conscious self, responsive to all the stimuli of its environment, therefore as open to temptation fleshward as to Christ-control spirit-ward. It is still a case of "nevertheless I live," as well as, "yet not I, but Christ liveth in me."
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"We. . . who have the firstfruits of the Spirit groan inwardly as we wait. . .for our adoption" - Romans 8:23.
We shall never in this life be free from a sense of self, as well as a realization of the indwelling Christ. We shall never, therefore, be free from temptation in a world that exists to tempt, nor be free from the daily necessity of vigilance and abiding. The chapter of triumphant living, Romans 8, significantly enough is the very chapter which warns against the subtleties of the surrounding flesh, and expresses our groanings amidst our rejoicing - as we long for the final redemption of the body, and are saved, not only by faith, but by hope.
For this reason, then, it is of utmost importance that we understand the exact relationship between the renewed self and the other Glorious Self, Christ Himself who dwells within. It is the hardest lesson we have to learn, and cannot be learned except in the hard way. Nothing but frequent and strong doses of the false activities of self can teach us this lesson. It is peculiarly subtle because it is now not a case of a troublesome bad self, but an anxious, frustrated, condemned good self; not good in the positive sense of being able to do good things, but good in the negative sense of wanting to do good and no longer wanting to do evil; a purified self, but though pure, still empty: just as a cup may be clean, but what really matters is the fluid it contains.
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Our nature is one thing, influences upon our nature another. In our unredeemed condition, the influences to which we temporarily responded were upward, we were tempted upward; but such responses did not make us good, because we were owned by the evil (self-loving) spirit. We continued basically to walk that same broad road to destruction.
It is equally so in the redeemed life. We need to get one fact clarified. We must not locate either evil or good fundamentally in us humans. Evil is a person, good is a Person. Evil is that spirit of evil, good the Holy Spirit. That is why when Jesus as a man was called "Good Master", He immediately repudiated the name and said, "Why callest thou Me good? There is none good but one, that is, God." And when Peter on one occasion urged Him to look to His own self-preservation, Jesus said to him, "Get thee behind Me, Satan".
Jesus traced a self-interested statement back through Peter to its source in Satan. He did not mean that Peter was permanently possessed by Satan. He had just told Peter that he had the Spirit of God (Matt. 16:17); but Peter was responding to a temporary influence downward. Just as the good was not in Jesus as the Son of man, nor the evil in Peter, so with us.
Our nature is the nature of the one who indwells us, and we share that nature and live that quality of life.
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We humans, as we have seen, have always been containers of another, the false god or the True. The nature we have manifested has not been our own; it has been the nature of the one indwelling us. These are the two natures the Bible speaks of. In our unredeemed condition we were "by nature the children of wrath", because we contained the "spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience". In our redeemed lives, there have been given to us "exceeding great and precious promises, that by these ye might become partakers of the divine nature". We were "slaves of sin", now we have become "slaves of righteousness".
In the old the trend of our lives was downward on the road of self-love. In the new the trend of our lives is upward on the road of self-giving. This is what the Bible means by the old man and new man. The old man was I with the old spirit within me, the new man is the same I with the new Spirit within me. We can never be old man and new man at the same time, for the one becomes the other. "Seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds; and have put on the new man": not put one on top of the other, like an overcoat over a coat, but taking off one to wear the other.
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The New Creation\tJanuary 13
"I know that nothing good lives in me" Romans 7:18.
Most mistakenly we often seem to think that God put Adam there to test him, to see whether he would obey or not. Not so. It was because by no other means could he discover his own innate helplessness.
It was not as we often erroneously think, that Adam could have done the good deed of rejecting the advances of Satan. If that were so, man could be good by his own unaided effort. But he was placed between those two trees to learn that of himself he can do nothing good, and is not expected to! It was to teach him the basic fact of his creation, that his own human spirit is an empty, helpless vessel so far as living the good life is concerned: "in me, that is in my flesh (my humanity) dwelleth no good thing." He was not created to be good. He was created to be indwelt by the Good One, and the negative command not to eat of the tree, followed by the direct temptation to do so, was not to stir into action some potential capacity in Adam for obedience and goodness nor to demonstrate that he could be good if he would, but to reveal to him the one essential point he had to learn about himself that he was created helpless so far as being and doing good is concerned and then that his little human spirit had one marvelous potentiality: it could be the container of the Divine Spirit via the tree of life, and yet not lose its own individuality in being so; but [the fact is] that the two can dwell together, each in the other, in an eternal fruitful bond of union.
