The Life of Christ Manifested

Next Part The Life of Christ Manifested 2

The Life of Christ Manifested in the Death of the Creature

"For we who live are always delivered unto death for Jesus' sake, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh." 2 Cor. 4:11

It is very sweet, as well as instructive, to trace the wisdom of God as manifested in the way wherein the Scriptures of the New Testament were written. They were not revealed in any systematic form; they were framed according to no dry theory of truth, or as a code of doctrines and duties, as a human lawgiver would have modeled them; but in their original form they came forth from the pen of the Holy Spirit just as circumstances arose in the Church. And, for the most part, God overruled all the evils that broke forth from time to time in the Church, that they might draw forth epistles from the hearts of the apostles, the Holy Spirit teaching them how and what to write. Thus, to the turning aside of the Galatians unto "the weak and beggarly elements" of the law, we owe that noble defense of justification contained in Paul's epistle to that church. To the persecution under which the church at Philippi was suffering we owe that epistle so full of choice experience. To the mistakes of the Thessalonians concerning the second coming of Christ we are indebted for two epistles full of power and sweetness. To the wavering character of the Hebrews we owe that blessed epistle wherein the apostle has so opened and unfolded the spiritual character of the Levitical dispensation. And to the suspicion of the Corinthian church with respect to the call of the apostle to the ministry, we, in a good measure, owe the experimental epistles addressed to them. It is sweet to observe the providence of God foreseeing that these and similar evils would exist in the Church, and permitting them to break forth in the times of the apostles, and thus preparing a remedy beforehand, which should be useful to the end of the world, the heart of man being the same in all generations, ever teeming forth with the same corruptions, and to be met only with the same remedies.

It was, then, as I have just hinted, the strong suspicion of the Corinthians respecting the call of the apostle Paul to the ministry that drew out of his bosom much of his personal experience. The second epistle to the Corinthians more especially abounds with it, and no chapter in it more than that which contains our text. "For we who live are always delivered unto death for Jesus' sake, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh."

But we would indeed be mistaken if we limited the experience contained in the text to the apostle Paul, as though it were some of his personal or ministerial experience, with which we, as individuals, had nothing to do. On the contrary, it is so worded as to take in all the quickened family of God. "We who live," says the apostle, as though he would include every living soul whom God the Holy Spirit had quickened into spiritual life. With God's blessing, then, we will look at the words the apostle has here dropped, and see whether we can trace a similar experience in any of our hearts.

"For we who live are always delivered unto death for Jesus' sake, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh."

I. The first thing which strikes the mind is the expression, "We who live"—indeed, it is the key of the whole. It cuts off at one decisive stroke all who are dead in sins or dead in a profession, and draws that narrow and discriminating line which every one taught of God will always draw. Thus it sets all aside except the quickened family of God; and with the same decisive hand that sets aside all who are dead God wards, it lays down a searching line of experience to try the people of God themselves. And this, we may observe, is one important use of vital experience as laid down in the Scriptures, that the family of God may be tested thereby, and brought to the touchstone, whether the work upon their hearts be real or not.

Then, "we who live," includes all whom God has quickened, and into whom He has breathed a new nature—all in whom He has begun and is carrying on the work of faith with power. And how much is summed up in these words, "we who live!" For what is this life but life everlasting? As Jesus said, "He who believes on Me has everlasting life" (John 6:47). And again, "He who hears My word, and believes on Him that sent Me, has everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life" (John 5:24). This spiritual and eternal life was from all eternity stored up for the elect in the Son of God as their covenant Head, that they might receive it out of His fullness who fills all in all; and into the heart of each vessel of mercy is this divine and supernatural life breathed in the appointed time. Whatever be their distance from God through sin, however "alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their hearts," when the appointed time to favor Zion has come, life and light are breathed into their souls that they may live forever, that they may see Christ's glory, and sit down with Him in His kingdom.

But before they are brought to the eternal enjoyment of that weight of glory to which they are predestinated, there is a spiritual process to be undergone, a path to be trod, an experience to be carried on with power in their souls. And it is in the possession of this experience that we find the traces of the footsteps of the flock—the landmarks which God has set up in Zion.

II. The first decisive step in this spiritual process is contained in the words, "We who live are always delivered unto death." But the "death" thus spoken of clearly cannot mean temporal death, for that meaning would be utterly inconsistent with the remainder of the text, and with the expression "always;" for temporal death can be but once, while the death spoken of in the text is a frequent or perpetual one. It must mean therefore a death experimentally, a death in the soul, not a death of the body.

But it may be asked, "For what purpose is this delivering of the soul unto death? What end is it to answer? What good result is it to produce?" We shall best answer this inquiry by showing the nature of this death. And we may define it, in a few words, to consist in an experimental destruction of everything that is inconsistent with that life which God himself has breathed into the soul. And as frequently in nature, so usually in grace, there is a lingering death before dissolution takes place. The seeds of death are in many people months or years before the last breath is drawn. And so at the very beginning of a work of grace spiritual dying commences; the gradual dissolution of that life to self, sin, and Satan, which every natural man lives. Thus before the blessed Spirit quickened the soul it was alive to self and dead to God; but when a new and spiritual life is breathed into it, a mighty revolution takes place, and it begins to die to self, and live to God. It is this dying to self in the various branches in which the soul formerly lived to itself, of which the text speaks.

But there is something very striking in the expression, "We who live are always delivered unto death." The sufferers of this death do not deliver themselves to it, but it is done for them and in them. In this sense God's people never commit spiritual suicide. No man ever put death into his own soul whereby self was crucified; but it is done in him by a sovereign act of Almighty power. The figure is taken from a criminal who is carried by the executioner to the place of execution; not one who goes of himself to die. This is the error of the Arminians; we may call them in this sense religious suicides. Though, after all, in them it is more mock than real, and rather resembles the stage death of an actor than a true self-immolation.

But the people of God never commit this self-inflicted death; for it is that from which they shrink, which they rebel against, and to which they will never submit until God Himself kills them; for "the Lord kills, and makes alive, He brings down to the grave, and brings up." The same idea that it is the act of another, and not of ourselves, is contained in another expression of the apostle in this same epistle (2 Cor. 1:9), "We had the sentence of death in ourselves." The sentence of death is a judicial term, and clearly means not self-condemnation, but a decision from the lips of another, and that from one armed with authority to pronounce, and power to execute it.

III. But we will look a little at the idea couched in the expression "death." We know what a ghastly object death is naturally, and that he is the king of terrors to every man who is not enjoying a sense of his saving interest in Christ and the favor of God. If then we are to carry the figure out, the meaning which we have couched in the expression of the apostle must be something analogous to death naturally, and to our conceptions and feelings with respect to it. Thus the death experimental to which the soul is delivered must be as painful, as dreadful, and as much shrunk from spiritually as natural death is naturally.

It points out, therefore, a thorough destruction of that which is naturally dear. Look at natural death in its aspect to the natural man. It comes to take him from all his delights, and from all his schemes; to remove him from the bosom of his family, and sever him from all on which his heart is set, and in which all his affections are engaged. It comes as a gloomy messenger to take him from the things which alone he understands, which alone he loves, in which his heart is wholly wrapped; and to bear him away to a dreadful and dreaded eternity. Such is the aspect that death naturally wears. Take this idea into spiritual things. This experimental death, then, to which we are delivered, and into which God by a sovereign act of power brings the soul, is that from which the flesh shrinks, for it comes as a sentence of destruction upon those things to which it so closely cleaves.

1. Our carnal WISDOM, for instance, is a thing to which we naturally cleave. In this day, especially, when religious education and the exercise of the intellect upon the Scriptures is the great Diana of the Ephesians, the temptation to cleave to our own wisdom in the things of God is particularly strong. But when God comes by a sovereign act of power, and delivers us over unto death, in so doing He kills us to that wisdom in which we lived, and, so far as the things of God are concerned, passes an internal sentence of condemnation upon those natural abilities which we were taught to cultivate, and in the exercise of which we found pleasure. Who ever possessed a finer understanding, or received a better education, than Saul of Tarsus? But "what was once gain to him, that he counted loss for Christ;" and he himself proved in soul experience what he so pointedly declares, "Let no man deceive himself. If any man among you seems to be wise in this world, let him become a fool that he may be wise; for the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God" (1 Cor. 3:18, 19). God by His Spirit makes an effectual stab at all creature wisdom when He enlightens the soul to see and feel its blindness and ignorance, and its utter impossibility of knowing anything savingly but by divine manifestation.

2. So, again, with respect our own RIGHTEOUSNESS. By nature we can have no understanding of any other righteousness than that which consists in obedience to the law. Whatever dim or doctrinal notions we may have of Christ's righteousness, we are unacquainted with it as our righteousness until it is personally revealed to us. A part therefore of the execution of this sentence "to deliver unto death," is the killing us to our own righteousness. The apostle says, "When the commandment came, sin revived, and I died." How did he die? Not naturally, but spiritually. The law as a manifestation of condemnation and death came into his conscience, and its spirituality being opened up to his soul, it came as a killing sentence against his righteousness as well as against his sins, manifesting it to be filthiness, and showing the pollution of his heart and the defilement of every thought, word, and deed.

3. So, again, with respect to all false hopes. We read of "the hope of the hypocrite that shall perish." This false hope, whatever it rest upon, whether the good opinion of others, reformation of life, acquaintance with the doctrines of grace, or anything short of "good hope through grace," must be delivered unto death. While carnal hope—that is every hope which springs out of or centers in the flesh—lives in the soul, spiritual hope cannot reign. The death of the one is the life of the other; and thus they resemble two rivals for one throne; one must die, that the other may live; one must go to the gallows, that the other may hold the scepter.

4. So, too, with respect to all our creature religion. There are few who do not profess some kind of religion; though this is, for the most part, traditional, and based on various grounds, as well as called by different names. What these grounds or what these names are, it matters little, so long as it stands in the flesh, and a profession may be as much based on the creature in the highest Calvinist, as in the lowest Arminian. This religion, more or less of which we all naturally possess, of whatever character it be that stands in the flesh and springs from the creature, does not stand in the power of God; is not set up by the Holy Spirit in the heart. However specious, therefore, it may be in appearance, however near it approaches the truth, however undoubted by others, however idolized by ourselves, it must be delivered unto death, that the religion from God, the religion that saves the soul, the religion of Jesus Christ, the religion of the Holy Spirit, may be set up in the heart upon the wreck and ruin of all the religion of the creature.

It seems a little thing, comparatively speaking, for a man to have his sins taken from him and delivered unto death; it may seem in many cases a harder struggle for a man to part with his self-righteousness—but when we come to something deeper, something more intricately interweaved round our heart-strings—our religion—this is the hardest stroke of all. For this is to what we are trusting to save us from endless misery. To take away our religion is something like running over a bridge, and seeing the last arch cut away before our eyes, and the roaring flood opened below. There is no retracing our steps over the bridge of life; and to find our religion, the last arch over the flood, fall to pieces, and leave us shivering in the prospect of eternity, is terrible indeed.

Why, this is the last thing a man will naturally come to. A man can part with his sins, with his companions, with his pleasures—but when it comes to his fleshly religion which he has been idolizing, when the Spirit of God takes that, and delivers it over unto death, that is one of the last strokes that take place in severing the head of creature righteousness. I believe it requires some very sharp work in a man's soul to be brought here. I have known the time when I used to roll upon my bed, and almost count how many months it might be before I was in eternity; for I feared I had a mortal sickness in my body, and felt little else but guilt and condemnation in my soul. Here was the sifting time for all my religion that stood in the flesh. When we come into these straits, and find no well grounded hope to support the soul in the trying hour, this will prove whether our faith stands in the wisdom of men, or in the power of God. Then whatever we have received of God lives, but whatever we have received from the creature withers and dies.

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