"Know ye not, that so many of
us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? Therefore
we are buried with him by baptism into death; that like as Christ was raised up
from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in
newness of life. For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his
death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection Knowing this, that
our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed,
that henceforth we should not serve sin. For he that is dead is freed from
sin."
VER. 3, 4. The original meaning of the word
baptism is immersion, and though we regard it as a point of indifferency,
whether the ordinance so named be performed in this way or by sprinkling - yet
we doubt not, that the prevalent style of the administration in the apostle's
days, was by an actual submerging of the whole body under water. We advert to
this, for the purpose of throwing light on the analogy that is instituted in
these verses. Jesus Christ by death underwent this sort of baptism - even
immersion under the surface of the ground, whence He soon emerged again by His
resurrection. We by being baptized into His death, are conceived to have made a
similar translation - In the act of descending under the water of baptism to
have resigned an old life, and in the act of ascending to emerge into a second
or a new life - along the course of which it is our part to maintain a
strenuous avoidance of that sin, which as good as expunged the being that we
had formerly; and a strenuous prosecution of that holiness, which should begin
with tile first moment that we were ushered into our present being, and be
perpetuated and make progress toward the perfection of full and ripened
immortality.
'
Baptized into his death
' - or regarding ourselves as if like Him we had actually been slain
and buried, and like Him brought forth anew and made alive again, before that
God who for our sins had swept us beyond the circle of His favoured creation.
This would have been had not Christ died; and though He by pouring out His soul
for us, has kept us in the favour that else would have been forfeited and that
for ever - yet the argument is the same, if prevented from going down into the
pit, as if after being cast headlong into it for our sins we had again been
extricated therefrom. how shall we whom sin had at that time blotted out from
the family of life, now that we are readmitted, again indulge in it ? How shall
we run counter to those holy antipathies of the divine nature, of the strength
and irreconcilableness of which we already in our own persons have had so fell
a manifestation How shall we, rescued from destruction, again welcome to our
embraces the destroyer, or, living anew under the eye of that God who could not
endure the presence of sin and so consigned it to the exile of death
everlasting, shall we live again in that very course which made our former
existence so offensive to Him and so incompatible with the whole spirit and
design of His government! Has He changed His taste or His character! Or makes
it any difference to the argument, that a Mediator interposed and took upon
himself the whole weight of that avenging arm, which was lifted up for our
extermination! Is not the exhibition of God's hatred and hostility to sin just
as impressive, that the stroke of jealousy fell upon the head of His own Son,
as it would have been, had it fallen on the guilty millions, whom this mighty
Captain shielded from the vindictive discharge that else would have overwhelmed
us? And whether these billows of wrath have all been broken on the Rock of our
Salvation; or first made to pass over us, we had again been summoned from the
depth and caused to emerge anew into the sunshine of God's reconciled
countenance - does it not equally prove that He, the everlasting enemy of sin,
will, in any new economy that He may institute, still evince it to be that
hateful thing for which He has no taste, and can have no toleration?
So
much for the application of the phrase '
dead unto
sin,' when understood forensically. We trust that however
imperfectly we may have illustrated this part of the argument, you have been
made to perceive that there is in it the force and the power of a most
impressive consideration; and, whether you have seized upon it or not, be at
least very sure of this - that, such is the fact of the matter, there is no
indulgence for sin under the dispensation of the gospel. It is a restorative
dispensation, by which you are alike kept from the penalty of sin and cured of
its polluting virulence. It restores you to the favour of God, but it restores
you not to the liberty of sinning; and the argument where with we would arm and
fortify the principles of all who now feel themselves alive in Christ Jesus is
- shall we continue in that hateful thing which would have brought me to the
death, had not my Saviour, for my deliverance and preservation, bowed down his
head unto the sacrifice?
We have already tried to set forth in your
hearing the forensic interpretation, that might be given of the phrase
'
dead unto sin. ' - dead for sin - not that
the sentence was inflicted, but that the sentence was pronounced; and the
argument why they should not continue in sin, is as strongly applicable to
those who are delivered from a doom that was impending, as to those who are
recalled from a doom that was actually executed. There were a most direct force
in the consideration - should a revived criminal press it upon his moral
feelings - how can I recur to that which is so odious in the sight of my
country's government, that I had to suffer a death for it, from which I, by a
miracle perhaps of mercy, have been restored? And it ought to be as powerful a
consideration with a reprieved criminal, whose sentence has been suspended, and
perhaps by the intercession of a Mediator been finally withdrawn. The
recurrence to that which brought down the sentence, were just as monstrous a
violence done to the whole spirit and object of the administration under which
I live, in the one case as in the other; and be assured that -there were the
very same violence done to the spirit ,- of Heaven's administration - should
those who are redeemed from death under the economy of the gospel, live in that
which had sunk them under so fearful a condemnation.
For sin we were
ready to die. For sin we would have died had not Christ interposed, and
undergone in His own person that shedding of blood without which remission is
impossible. The demonstration given of God's antipathies to the power and
existence of sin in His kingdom, is as strong by the falling of the deadly blow
upon the head of a Mediator, as if it had fallen direct on the head of those He
died for. And shall we from whom the stroke of vengeance has been averted -
shall we who are still in life but virtually in a life from the dead - shall we
who in Christ may so read what but for Him would have happened to ourselves, as
to be baptized into His death and to be planted together in the likeness of it
- shall we, kept from falling into the abyss of condemnation, and therefore as
good as if summoned again from its depths on the platform of God's favoured and
rejoicing family - continue in that hateful thing, which but for Christ would
have destroyed us, and of God's abhorrence to which the atoning death of Christ
gives so awful and impressive a manifestation?
But while we have thus
insisted on the forensic interpretation of the phrase
'dead unto sin' - yet let us not forbear to urge the
personal sense of it, as implying such a deadness of affection to sin, such an
extinction of the old sensibility to its allurements and its pleasures, as that
it has ceased from its wonted power of ascendancy over the heart and character
of him who was formerly its slave. We think that this sense too was in the mind
of the apostle; and that he speedily taken it up in the prosecution of his
argument. But we are rather induced to believe, that he starts his argument
with the phrase understood forensically - that out of the premises already
established he gathers an immediate and very powerful dissuasive against the
continuance of the believer in sin - that, without assuming as yet any
revolution of desire on his part, he plies him with a question which ought by
its moral influence to work such a revolution, and a question too that emanates
direct from the truth about which the apostle had just been previously
employed, even that Christ died for us; or, in other words, that we, under a
rightful sentence of death, had yet been suffered to live by the transference
of the doom upon the person of another.
And shall we in these
circumastances, persist in doing the very thing that had brought that doom upon
us? - a very pertinent question most assuredly at this stage of his reasoning;
and a question, which, did it tell with the impression it ought on the heart of
a disciple, would lead him to abjure sin; and so from the thought that he was
dead unto it forensically, would it conduct him to the reality of being dead
unto it actually and habitually and personally.
But you will surely
perceive that, to bring about this effect, something more is necessary than
merely to address to the corrupt mind of man some new moral suasion that had
never been brought to bear upon it. We are not aware that it lies within the
influence of any argument, to deaden the appetites of nature for that which is
sinful. It is true, that, in consequence of what Christ hath done, a new topic
and a new suggestion can be offered to the sinner, which had no such topic
could have at, all been urged upon him. But we not enough to bring argument
how- from without, whereby to assail the propensities of the human heart - that
additional to the great outward transaction of Christ's atoning death, from
which we have endeavoured to fetch a persuasive for turning from all iniquity -
there must be also an inward operation upon every disciple, ere the persuasive
can be so listened to as to be practically effectual: or, in other words, - as,
through what Christ hath done for us we arc forensically dead unto sin, so,
that we may be regarded as having already undergone the curse in Hirn - -so,
there must also be a something done in us, a personal change wrought, a
deadening process undergone whereby sin is no longer of power over us.
Now though this be the work of the Spirit - yet the Spirit accommodates His
work to the nature of the subject upon which He is employed. He treats man as a
rational and intelligent being. It is not by the resistlessness of a blind
impulse, that He carries any given effect on the desires of the heart - but by
making man see what is desirable, and then choose it, and then labour after it
with all the strenuousness of a willing and purposing and acting creature. He
does not become personally dead unto sin, or personally alive unto
righteousness, but by the operation of the Holy Ghost. Yet this operation is
not a simple fiat, by which the transition is brought about without the steps
of such a process - as marks the judgment, and the feeling, and the conscience,
and the various other mental faculties of him who is made to undergo this great
regeneration. Agreeably to the language of our Shorter Catechism, though this
be the work of God's Spirit - yet it is a work whereby He convinces and He
enlightens the mind, and He renews the will, and He persuades to that which is
right, and He enables for the performance of it.
Let us endeavour, if
possible, to trace the succession of those moral influences, by which man under
the gospel is conducted from the natural state of being alive to sin and to the
world, to the state of being dead unto these things and alive unto God.
Ver. 5, 6. Ye are planted together in the likeness of His death
- By His death He bore the curse of a violated law and now it has no further
charge against Him. He acquitted himself to the full of all its penalties; and
now he is for ever exempted against any future reckoning with a creditor whom
He has conclusivly set aside; and just because He has completely satisfied him.
He is now that immortal Vine, who stands for ever secure and beyond the reach
of any devouring blight om the now appeased enemy; and we who by faith are
united with Him as so many branches, share in this blessed exemption along with
Him. We have as good as had the sentence of death discharged upon us already.
In Christ our propitiation we have rendererd the executor all his dues. In Him
our Surety we have paid a debt, for which we can no longer be craved or
reckoned with. And here we are like unto Christ, in that we are as secure from
the visitation of the great penalty, as if we had borne it ourselves - in that
as with Him the hour and the power of darkness have now passed away, and never
again to go over Him; so we, just as if we had undergone the same trial and the
same baptism, come forth acquitted of all our trespasses and the hand of the
avenging adversary shall never reach us.
And as we thus share in His
death, so shall we also share in His resurrection. From the humiliation of the
grave, He arose to the heights of subhimest glory. By what He hath borne in our
stead, we now stand as exempted from punishment as if we had borne it
ourselves. By what He hath done of positive obedience in our stead, He hath not
only been highly exalted in His own person; but He hath made us the partakers
of His exaltation, to the rewards of which we shall be promoted as if we had
rendered the obedience ourselves. And it is thus that we understand the being
planted together with Him in the likeness of His death, and the being planted
together with Him in the likeness of His resurrection.
The sixth verse we
think ushers in the transition from the forensic to the personal. By being dead
unto sin we understand that we are spoken of as in the condition of having
already undergone the penalty of death, and so being acquitted of this great
penal consequence of sin. We get into this condition, not by actually suffering
the death; but, as it is expressed in the third verse, by being baptized unto
the death of Christ, and so as in the fourth verse by being buried with Him in
this baptism, and in the fifth verse planted together with him in the likeness
of His death - All indicative of our being forensically dealt with on account
of Christ's death, just as if we ourselves had undergone the suffering which
for us He hath endured.
And we would even carry this style of
interpreta tion to the first clause of the sixth verse; and understand by the
old man being crucified with Him, that the sinner is now to be reckoned with,
just as if, in his own person, he had sustained the adequate punishment of the
guilt, for which Christ rendered the adequate expiation. And all this however
for a posterior end - all this for a purpose specified in the remaining part of
the verse now under consideration - all this for the achievement of such a
personal change upon the believer, as that in him the body of sin might at
length be altogether destroyed; and that henceforth, or from the moment of his
becoming a believer, he might not serve sin. This tallies with another part of
the Bible, where it is said that Christ gave himself up for us - suffered in
our stead - died the death that legally impended over us, so that the sentence
is as much over and away from us, as if it had been inflicted on our own
persons - This He did for an end even posterior to that of our deliverance from
condemnation - for an end analogous to the one stated in the verse before us -
even that the body of sin might be destroyed, and that we should not serve sin;
or, as we have it in the passage now referred to, that He might redeem us from
all iniquity and purify us unto Himself a peculiar people zealous of good
works.
Now where it may be asked is the connection? How comes it that
because we are partakers in the crucifixion of Christ, so that the law has no
further severity to discharge upon us - how comes it that this should have any
effect in destroying the body of sin, or in emancipating us from the service of
sin? Whence is it that exoneration from the penalty, should lead to
emancipation from the power? What is the hidden tie that conducts the believer
from being forensically dead unto sin, to his being personally dead unto sin
also? How is it that the fact of his being acquitted leads to the fact of his
being sanctified? and what is the precise nature of that step which conducts
from the pardon of a reconciled, to the purity of a regenerated creature?
There can be no doubt that the Spirit of God both originates and
carries forward the whole of this process. He gives the faith which makes
Christ's death as available for our deliverance from guilt, as if we had
suffered the death in our own persons; and He causes the faith to germinate all
those moral and spiritual influences, which bring about the personal
transformation that we are enquiring of. But these He does, in a way that is
agreeable to the principles of our rational nature; so that His agency does not
supersede the question - how is it that a belief on our part, that we are so
far partakers of the death of Christ as to partake in the deliverance which it
hath wrought from the guilt of sin - how is it that this belief destroys the
being of sin upon our persons, and releases us from that slavery in which
nature is held to its allurements and its charms?
We apprehend one way
of it, to be through the expulsive power of a new affection to dispossess an
old one from the heart. You cannot destroy your love of sin, by a simple act of
extermination. You cannot thus bid away from your bosom, one of its dearest and
oldest favourites. Our moral nature abhors the vacuum that would be formed, by
an old affection taking its departure from the chambers of the inner man,
without any new affection to succeed it. The former favourite will retain his
place and his ascendancy there, till he is supplanted by a new one, ready to
take up his room, and to give the sensation of full and well-liked company - so
as not to leave the heart in a state of dreary and woful abandonment. It is
thus that the man who feels his only portion to be on earth, and that heaven is
hopelessly beyond his reach, resigns himself to the full and undivided sway of
earthly affections. He cannot bid them away from him. They cleave to him with a
tenacity and a power of adherence, that nothing but the mastery of a new
affection can possibly over come; and whence, if heaven is impregnably shut
against him, whence can he fetch the instrument that will drive out the legion
of earthly feelings and earthly desires and earthly idolatries, which now lord
it over him, and have established the empire and tyranny of sin within the
confines of his moral and spiritual nature?
Let it be his feeling that
heaven is unattainable; and this will chill and discourage within him all
longing for the enjoyments that are there - so that his love of the enjoyments
which are here, will keep undisturbed possession of his soul and give the
character and the colour of atheism to all its movements. He will live without
God in the world; and never till the favour of God be made accessible to him -
never till the joys of the upper Paradise are placed within his reach - never
till the barrier be thrown down, which defends his approaches to the happy
world that lies in the distant futurity away from him - never till then will
the powers of the world that is to come carry it over the pleasures of the
world that is present, and by which he is immediately surrounded. The old
affections will cleave and keep their obstinate and undisputed hold, just
because the proper engine is not brought into contact with the heart, and which
can alone avail for the dispossession of them. They will not give way at a
simple mandate from the chair of reason or philosophy; and nothing can expel
them from the bosom - but the powerful and victorious rival-ship of new
affections sent into the heart, from new objects placed within the grasp either
of certain or of possible attainment.
Now the death of Christ is the
breaking down of the else insuperable barrier. It has fetched other objects
from afar, and placed them within the attainment of sinful man, and presented
them to his free choice, and brought the delights of eternity to his very door
- so that, if he just have faith to perceive them, he is brought into the very
condition, that, by the bias of his moral and sentient nature, is most
favourable to the extinction of old appetites, and that just by the intruding
and dispossessing power of a new one.
The things that are above now lie
at his door for acceptance, and are urgently soliciting admittance within the
repositories of his heart, and we may now bid him set his whole affection on
the things that are above - which if he does, like the rod of Aaron, it will
swallow up all his subordinate and earthly desires; and he will henceforth
cease to set his affections upon the things that are beneath. Let him just by
faith look upon himself as crucified with Christ; and then he will have got
over that wall of separation, which stood between him and a joyful immortality.
That spiritual and everlasting death, which is the natural doom of every
sinner, is now as good as traversed, and got over by him - for, in the person
of his dying Saviour with whom he stands associated in the whole power and
effect of his atonement, he has already borne the whole weight of this
condemnation ; and there is now nothing between him and that heaven, all the
felicities and glories of which have now entered into competition with the
world and its evanescent gratifications - And it is thus that the world is
disarmed of its power of sinful temptation.
It is thus that the cross
of Christ crucifies the world unto you, and you into the world. it is thus that
sin receives its death-blow, by its old mastery over the heart being dethroned
and done away, through the still more commanding mastery of other affections,
which it is now competent for man to have, because the objects of them are now
placed within the reach of his attainment. It is thus that the cross of Christ,
by the same mighty and decisive stroke wherewith it has moved the curse of sin
away from us, also moves away the power and the love of sin from over us. And
we no longer mind earthly things, just because better things are now within our
offer, and our conversation is in heaven - whence we also look for the Saviour
the Lord Jesus Christ.
And this is in perfect analogy with other and
most familiar exhibitions of our nature, in the scenes of business and ordinary
affairs. Let us just conceive a man embarked, with full and earnest ambition,
on some humble walk of retail merchandise - whose mind is wholly taken up
through the year, with the petty fluctuations that are taking place in prices
and profits and customers; but who nevertheless is regaled by the annual
examination of particulars at the end of it, with the view of some snug
addition to his old accumulations. You can figure how the heart of such a man,
may be engrossed with the play of all those anxieties and feelings and mental
appetites, which are incidental to such a condition - how wedded he is to his
own little concern - how watchful of the turns and movements that may affect
its prosperity - and, withal, how complacently he cherishes the anticipation of
that decent competency, which forms the all that he has learned to aspire
after. You must see how impossible it were to detach the affections of this
individual from the objects and the interests of this his favourite course, by
a simple demonstration of their vanity; and with what moral tenacity he would
cleave to the pursuits of his present gainfulness; and what a mighty and
peculiar force were necessary, to disengage him from the operations of that
counter over which there was unceasingly kept up the most agreeable play that
was within the reach of his ever arriving at. But just suppose, that, in some
way or other, this reach were greatly extended; and, either some splendid
property, or some sublime walk of high and hopeful adventure, were placed
within his attainment; and the visions of a far more glorious affluence were to
pour a light into his mind, which greatly overpassed and so eclipsed all the
fairness of those homelier prospects that he wont to indulge in - Is it not
clear to all your discernments that the old affection which he could never get
rid of by simple annihilation, will come to be annihilated, and that simply by
giving place to the new one - that the field of employment from which no force
could have torn him, he now willingly abandons, and that just for the more
alluring field on which he has been invited to enter - that the meaner ambition
has now disappeared from his bosom, and just because the loftier ambition has
overborne it - that the game in which he aspired after hundreds is now given
over, and just because a likelier game of many thousands has enticed him away
from it - that the worship he formerly rendered to an idol of brass is now
renounced, and just because seduced from it by the superior fascination of that
worship which he is now rendering to an idol of gold!
Do not you see
from this, how it is that the higher idolatry has superseded the lower; and
also how it is, that both idolatries are to be extinguished - how it is that if
we had only faith to realise the magnificence of eternity, and to believe that
through the death of Christ the portal was now opened to its blessedness and
its glory, that this would deaden all our worldliness together - Not merely
laying one species of earthly ambition, by the lighting up of another; but
disposing of all by the paramount importance of an object, that greatly
surpassed all, and so absorbed all. Does not this throw explanation on the
mystery of sin being slain in its influences, simply by a believing view on our
part of sin slain in its curse and condemnation; and how, after all, the mighty
instrument for achieving our deliverance from the power of things seen and
sensible, is our confidence in the efficacy of that death which has opened up
fur us access to things eternal - so as to make this the victory that
overcometh the world, even our faith?
And this illustration, by the
way, may help to show how the gospel can do what the law cannot do. Were the
humble trafficker asked to purchase for himself some place of occupancy and
lucrative partnership on that higher course, where merchants are called
princes, and are held to be the honourable of the earth - it is likely that the
consciousness of utter inability for thie enterprise, would cheek all his
ambitious tendencies within the sphere that he already moved in, and lead him
to lavish as before every energy and affection that belonged to him on the
scene of his present hopes and present anxieties. But, instead of the place
being sold, were the place given to him - were he freely and gratuitously
offered admission to it with all the flattery of its thriving channels and
splendid anticipations - there were then a moving power to disenchant him from
all his present affections, in the things held forth to him as a present, which
it never had when held forth to himn in the shape of a bargain, to the terms of
which his means were totally and hopelessly inadequate.
And, in like
manner, should any child of this world that is amongst us, have heaven set
forth to him as the reward of that obedience on which heaven could look with
complacency - there were a sense of in competency for the task, which would
lead him to place this spiritual region at an impracticable distance away from
him; and, with the feeling that earth was his alone portion, would he still
grovel as before among the pursuits and the pleasures of that scene of
carnality, on which he all along had been wont to expatiate. But let heaven,
instead of being exposed as the purchase of his merit, be set before him as a
present to his necessities - instead of the law bidding him acquire it by his
doings, let the gospel bid him receive it as a gift of God through Jesus Christ
our Lord - in a word, instead of holding it forth to him for a price to be paid
by himself, let it be held forth to him as the fruit of that price which the
Saviour hath already rendered, by a death in the whole power and value of which
he is freely invited to partake - then will it be seen, that, the firmer his
trust, the faster will be the practical hold that the unseen world takes of his
heart, and the more powerful its controlling influence over the whole of his
habits and his history. The faith in a free pardon, which some might apprehend
would rivet him to sin, has just the effect of disenchanting him from that
territory of sense where its wiles and its entanglements are laid. The stronger
the faith is, in the nearness and certainty of the coming of heaven - the
fuller is the access into the believer's soul, of a taste for heaven's joys,
and an impulse towards heaven's services. It is the very thing which reaches
that exterminating blow, whereby the body of sin or the being of sin is
destroyed; and the man is dispossessed of the tyranny wherewith it had lorded
over him, and now ceases to be its slave - just because the death of Christ has
opened for him the gates of everlasting blessedness, and his heart transformed
from the present evil world is conformed to the delights and the doings of the
upper paradise.
We are far from having touched on all the principles,
which come into living and actual play within the believer's heart; and by
which he is conducted from the state of being crucified with Christ
forensically, to the state of being crucified with him personally - so that he
dies unto the power of sin; and, through the Spirit, mortifies the deeds done
in his body; and finally crucifies the flesh with its affections and lusts. But
let it here be remarked, that, in the bringing of this about, there is a strong
likeness, in point of moral history and example, between Christ and His
faithful disciple. There is a real analogy between the death for sin undergone
by the former, and the mortification unto the power of sin that is undergone by
the latter. There is a similarity between the spiritual exercise, which
conducted the Saviour to that victory which He achieved over the world in dying
for its salvation; and that spiritual exercise, which conducts the believer to
the victory which he achieves over the world, in dying unto the sinfulness of
its earthly affections. The one for the joy that was set before Him endured the
cross; and the other for the same joy, now set freely and gratuitously before
him, endures the cross that is laid by the gospel on nature's inclinations. The
one made a voluntary renunciation of all that was in the world, on leaving it;
and the other makes the same voluntary renunciation, in transferring his love
to that God, the love of whom is opposed to the love of the world.
We
mistake the nature of Christ's work upon earth, if we think not that He had to
struggle with the fascination of this world's pleasures, and the seducing
influence of this world's glories - for the God of this world had power to try
Him though not to prevail over him; and in all respects was He tempted like as
we are. From His infancy to his death, was there a contest of strenuousness and
suffering and self-denial; amid all, that lIe might win the victory over a
world that plied him with its countless idolatries. And as was the Master so is
the servant. We have to follow Him in the steps of this holy warfare. The cross
is little counted upon in these days of soft and silken professorship; and
smooth indeed is that pilgrimage, through which many are looking forward to the
triumphs of a coming eternity. But let us not deceive ourselves. There is a
process of crucifixion that must be gone through, not upon the flesh as with
the Saviour, but through the affections of the flesh. There must be a striving
against sin, if not unto the death of the body, at least unto the death of its
dearest and most darling appetites. There must be a winding up of the purposes
and energies of the spiritual power, to that pitch of resistance against the
sinfulness of nature, which wound up the soul of our Redeemer to the resolute
giving up of Himself unto the sacrifice. And though the death unto sin, and the
baptism into that death, and the being planted with Christ in the likeness of
it, and the being planted with Hun, have been here understood and reasoned upon
forensically - yet our faith in this understanding of it, has not wrought its
genuine effect upon us, unless we are dying unto the power of sin in our
affections; and are purifying ourselves in the waters of spiritual baptism; and
are daily likening unto Christ, in that superiority over the world which led
him to surrender it; and are inflicting the violence of crucifixion on all that
is sinful in the propensities of nature - So as that we are not merely
judicially dealt with as if in our own persons we had suffered and died - but
really and historically, in these persons, do we share with Christ in the
fellowship of his sufferings and in a conformity to His death.
Ver.
7. Here again I would understand a forensic death - this death we are
counted to have suffered in Christ as a penalty for sin, the death which
releases us from all further charge and reckoning because of sin - the death
which as effectually shields us from the further infiictions of severity from
the unrelenting exactor, as the dying of the slave secures his escape from the
cruelties of that tyrant, beyond whose reach he now is situated. The connection
between the master and the servant ceases with the payment of wages; and when
death, the wages of sin, is rendered to the sinner, the final settlement is
made, and they become free the one from the other. Now it is true that these
bitter wages of sin were inflicted not upon us but upon Christ; but for us He
sustained them, and we are in as exempt a condition from any further reckoning
on account of sin, as if the adjustment had been made with us the principals,
instead of being made with Christ the surety - or as if we had borne the whole
punishment - or as if death, which is the fruit of sin, had been actually laid
upon us.
Now it is very clear how this should rightfully free us from the
punishment; but how should it also free us from the power? We have already
unfolded one way, in which deliverance from the former heads to deliverance
from the latter; and the text suggests another way of it. Sin is here
represented in the light of a tyrant, and the sinner as his slave. But let it
be remembered, that there is a personal and a living tyrant, from whose cruel
and malignant breast the whole mischief of sin has emanted upon our world - one
with whom the extension of sin is a matter of power and of policy - one whose
dearest ambition is concerned in the warfare, that is now going forward between
the principles of light and of darkness - one whose heart is set upon the
object of bringing men under the dominion of sin, and who finds his full and
final gratification in the execution of the curse which it afterwards entails
upon them. The errand upon which the Saviour came, was to destroy the works of
the devil; and you all perceive how, by His death upon the cross, He lifted the
curse and the punishment of sin at least away from all who believe on Him, and
how they who by faith are dead in Him are freed at least from condemnation.
They have been extricated from the tyrant's grasp, in as far as death and the
power of death are concerned. He has no further claim upon them, as the
subjects of that infernal kingdom, where he is to hold the reign of terror and
of vengeance through-out all eternity; and where, in addition to the penal
torments wherewith he shall exercise his unhappy victims, the agency of their
own sinful passions will lay a heavy burden on the misery that overweighs them.
It is not enough adverted to - how much sin is its own punishment - how much,
by the very mechanism of our sentient nature, wretchedness and wickedness are
allied the one with the other - how inherently and how essentially suffering
and moral evil are ever found in company - that there is an essential
bitterness in sin itself, independently of any arbitrary infliction which in
the shape of fire or of any material chastisement may be laid upon it in hell -
and that this is just as true of sin under the gospel as under the law.
The new economy under which we live has not so altered the character or
the constitution of things, as that goodness shall not of itself be a matter of
enjoyment, and as that sin shall not of itself be matter of anguish and
tribulation. The gospel has not changed the bitter into a sweet. It has not
given a new set of properties to the affections of our immoral nature. It has
not infused the feeling of solemn and sacred delight into the affection of
ungodliness. it has not given the character of a sweet and tranquil emotion to
the affection of anger. It has not associated the transports of angelic love,
with the attraction of malignity. Though you should be delivered by the death
of Christ from time penal sufferings, that attached to these evil principles in
the heart - yet there are other sufferings, that spring imnmediatehy and
necessarily from the very exercise of the principles themselves; and from which
you cannot be delivered, but by the utter extirpation of the principles. In
other words, you are not freed from the tyrant who lords it over sinners by a
mere release from the penalty of disobedience. lIe is not disarmed of all his
power to make you wretched, by your legal deliverance from inmprisonment in the
future hell. If sin is still permitted to reign in your heart,he can establish
a lien there, that were enough to embittcr your whole eternity. And, in order
that the death of Christ and your participation in that death shall give you
complete freedom from the great tyrant and adversary of our species, he must be
dethroned from his power over your present desires, as well as from his power
over your future destiny.
Sinful affections will always be painful
affections. And your deliverance is wrought, not by changing the quality of
these affections, not by turning the painful into the pleasurable, but by
ridding you of the affections altogether. And we repeat, that, if by being dead
in Christ we are freed from Satan, this cannot be fully accomplished but by our
being in the language of time text freed from sin - from sin, not merely
disarmed of its curse, but from sin disarmed of its power and finally destroyed
in its existence.
This unfolds to us another way, in which the death of
Christ, and our fellowship therewith, may be brought to bear on the practical
object of so withstanding the assaults of temptation, as that sin shall not
have the dominion over us. It is not a matter of fancy, but a matter of most
distinct scriptural revelation, that these assaults are conducted by a living
and personal and withal most actively vicious and vindictive adversary, who is
altogether intent on the object of retaining as entire and unbroken a moral
ascendancy as he can possibly achieve over our species. You know how it is,
that, by death Christ hath destroyed him who has the power of death, that is
the devil - how He stood to have all wreaked upon Himself, which could be
rightfully inflicted upon us because of our disobedience - how, after this, we,
who partake in the benefits of His death, may challenge an exemption from the
cruel mastery of him who wont to maintain a resistless and unquestioned sway
over the propensities of our fallen nature - how, in the very moment of
conflict with his enticements and his wiles, this challenge may be made; and
he, giving way to the force of it, will desist from his unholy enterprise of
seducing us away from the new obedience of the gospel.
Upon every
occasion of exposure to the fascinations of moral evil, may we go through the
spiritual exercise of asserting our freedom from the power of him, who arms
these fascinations with all their influence; and, strongly confident in the
plea, that, by the death of Christ and our death in Him, Satan has virtually
done his worst upon us, and already expended that power wherewith he wont to
hold us in bondage - why it is no vain imagination that such a plea, if
faithfully pressed against him in the hour of spiritual conflict, will surely
prevail over him; and he, retiring a vanquished foe from the field of warfare,
will leave us freed from the power of sin as we are freed from its curse and
its condemnation.
It has been rightly said that we think not enough of
those higher agencies which are concerned in the doings and the difficulties
and the whole discipline of our preparation for eternity. We are apt to look on
the conflict in which we are involved, as a mere contest with flesh and blood -
when in fact it is a contest with principalities, and powers, and spiritual
wickedness in high places. We should know the might of our adversaries, that we
may go rightly armed to the battle. And be assured that the death of Christ, is
not a more effectual shield against the power that would drag you to the place
of condemnation; than it is against the power, that would now so lord it over
the affections of your heart, as to perpetuate the reign of sin within you, and
make you as effectually the slaves as before of those evil desires and
principles which war against the soul. Christ hath spoiled the great adversary
of all his power. He hath left him no claim of ascendancy whatever over those
who believe in Him. It is true, that, in the mysterious struggle which took
place between him and the prince of darkness, there was a sting put forth which
pierced Him even unto the death; but, in the very act of being so pierced, the
sting was plucked away, and Satan is now bereft of all his power to hurt those
who are buried with Christ in baptism, and have been planted together with him
in His likeness.
He did not merely disarm him of his power to scourge
you, and leave untouched his power to seduce you. It was an entire dethronement
that He effected of the God of this world; and what you have distinctly to do,
my brethren, in the heat and urgency of your besetting temptations, is to set
up your death unto sin in Christ, as your defence against the further authority
of sin over you - is to interpose the plea of His atonement between you and the
attempts of the great adversary - is to affirm, in opposition to all his
devices, that he can no more compel your services than a tyrant or a
task-master can compel services from a dead slave. It is not possible, my
brethren, that Satan, thus withstood and thus striven against, shall prevail
over you. The man who, rivetting all his confidence in the death of Christ, has
become partaker of all its immunities and of all its holy influences, will not
only find peace from the guilt of sin, but protection from its tyranny. Thus
you will not only be to him a barrier from the abyss of its coming vengeance;
but it will be to him a panoply of defence against its present ascendancy over
his soul. The sure way to put Satan to flight, is to resist him steadfast in
this faith, which will be to him who exercises it, a shield to quench all the
fiery darts of the adversary.
We are aware of the charges of strange
and mystical and imaginary, to which this representation, however scriptural it
may be, exposes us. But we ask on the one hand, those who have often been
defeated by the power of temptation - whether they ever recollect in a single
instance, that the death of Christ believed and regarded and made use of in the
way now explained, was a weapon put forth in the contest with sin; and we ask,
on the other hand, those who did make use of this weapon - whether it ever
failed them in their honest and faithful attempts to resist the instigations of
evil? We apprehend that the testimonies of both, will stamp an experimental, as
well as a scriptural soundness, upon the affirmation of my text, that he who by
faith in the death of Christ is freed from the condemnation of sin, has also an
instrument in his possession, which has only to be plied and kept in habitual
exercise, that he may habitually be free from its power.
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