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“THE LIBERATED SELF” Remarks of Norman P. Grubb August 4, 1954
By God’s enabling we want to pursue what we have been pursuing these previous two nights; seeking, as Aquila taught Apollos, to know the way of God more perfectly; the way by which the full life to which we are called can be lived. We had revealed to us from God’s Word last night that there is given us, as plain as could be given us, the essential secret of all history, the central and only meaning in creation as well as re-creation; and that is, that as God is union, so we are made for union. God is three, united and indissoluble , moving out from each other, ever remaining in the union, yet going out from the union—Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. We who are made in His image are therefore made for indissoluble union, a union which is to become so close—perhaps not completely so till eternity—but so close that it will be very difficult to make a differentiation.
I. PROPORTION OF SELF IN THE UNION
I pointed out to you yesterday Scriptures which showed that it is very difficult to know which is “I” and which is Christ in the union. We are to know that it is our privilege, position, and experience by grace now. He in me, I in Him, living in each other, part of each other, inter-penetrating each other. One! And last night we touched on all that flows from that. But in the heart of that truth of all history we must see something else essential which is; exactly what is my place in the union and what is His place? How much of me and how much of Him? And we came to see that the purpose for which we were created is for us to be as near as possible to zero, and He to be as near as possible to one hundred per cent. I don’t suppose we can say in human language that He is 100 per cent and we are nothing. Otherwise we disappear. And I don’t wish to disappear. I don’t know about you.
So I suppose the nearest we can say, if God can deeply deal with us enough, is that He becomes the 99.99 and we become the .01, per cent—something near that. As near as possible I must be the nothing and He the everything; certainly, I the nobody. He the Somebody. Joined and cooperating, moving out together, so that I’m conscious that I’m an I and He’s a He, and yet,—which is which in the blessed relationship?
So there is therefore a fundamental lesson that created human man has to learn, that is, that we are created helpless, unable to be good, unable to do good, unable to think aright, see aright, or do anything. We’re created only to be the containers of the One Who is all wisdom, all power, all perfection, all everything. He, joined to me, becomes the all-conqueror. I joined to Him. And it’s a union which hasn’t to be sought or reckoned on, which just is; just is! So that basic helplessness has to be discovered.
And I sought to point out to you yesterday that it must be intelligently discovered because God must have fellows who love to be what they are, not automata. He must have people who intelligently love.
[Editor’s note—Someone took a flash picture at this point]. Please don’t do that again. I hate those things. I hate them. I do, really. I think I’d like to see all cameras wiped out and everybody carrying Bibles instead. I would, frankly. I’ve written about it to my own mission. We’ve become, in a wrong sense, a gadget people, instead of a Bible people. We’re not going to win the world by cameras. We’re going to win the world by the Word of God. I was in a meeting in Korea last week, and even as I spoke of the Blood of Jesus Christ a missionary rose up in front of me, stopped and photographed me. I said, “Brother, go away! You have no business doing that when I’m talking of the blood of Jesus.” I only once took a camera to a missionary meeting—in about 1921. And immediately the Spirit of God said to me, “Don’t you produce that thing. If you produce that thing all the Africans will lose their attention in what you have told them and think, ‘What’s this wonderful thing the white man has brought?’ Hide it.” And I’ve hidden it ever since. I wouldn’t take a photo about with me, not for anything! I don’t believe deputation work is showing a lot of photos. Deputation work is preaching in the power of the Holy Ghost. And you missionaries, you will excuse yourself by just pointing to pictures instead getting something from the heart through the lips to tell the people. It’s not through the presentation of pictures; it’s through the preaching of the Word of God that the work is going to be done. So please don’t do it again. I don’t wish to rebuke anyone personally but it shouldn’t be in a meeting of the power of the Holy Ghost. It shouldn’t, brothers and sisters. If you want to do it at a picnic, do it at a picnic. But this isn’t a picnic. I’m sorry to be so vehement, but you’ve touched a sore spot. Well, we’ll continue where we were.
I was saying that it must be an intelligent union and therefore there must be an intelligent understanding of my place in that union or it isn’t fellowship. It isn’t that I love to have it so; I must have it so, and accept it as such. Therefore, I have to discover my helplessness. That’s the great lesson. I must discover my helplessness and Adam never discovered his. And there’s never one word to tell us that in the Garden of Eden he took one glance at that beautiful tree in the centre of the garden, the Tree of Life of which, if he had taken by faith, he would have had that One brought into him. That was because he never knew that he needed that One. He thought he could beat the devil on his own ground. No, you can’t do that. We’ve tried that too often and failed, haven’t we? You can’t beat the devil, not for ten seconds. But there’s Someone inside of you who can beat him. I’ve often said, “If Norman Grubb goes out to fight the devil, poor Norman Grubb. If the Holy Ghost inside Norman Grubb goes out to fight the devil, poor devil.” That’s just the difference. It surely is. Tragedy of tragedies, Adam never discovered it. He just somehow thought he could do it. But of course he got beaten all ends up, and never did discover, and humanity never has discovered, the lie of self-sufficiency, the delusion of self-sufficiency, and all that’s come out of it—egoism and all that’s come out of it. The blindness of humanity! We went that far last night.
So we have to have a further little glance at this problem of self-sufficiency, and the replacement of it by God’s Sufficiency. And then we’re to move on to the gospel remedy which God has given us. II. FORSAKING OF SELF
I just point out what is of course obvious to us who are Bible teachers and Bible students; how you can trace out in almost every great life of the Bible, the period, the long period that it took for God to get a person to discover his insufficiency, to break to pieces his self-reliance, and then to replace it by God-reliance. And God-reliance is union. In every case you’ll find great moments when these men came out into union. But the union couldn’t be realized until the man had become the nothing so that God could become the everything. It couldn’t! You cannot know a free Christ inside you until you’ve been freed from yourself. You can’t know two people inside at the same time. You can’t know the indwelling Christ in His liberated presence conveying His mind to us, conveying His Word to us, conveying His power to us, and conveying His beauty and purity to us unless we’ve first of all been through that basic experience which has put out the self-sufficient self. Put it out! And it’s a real putting out. It’s as real a crucifixion for me as it is for Jesus Christ in the Spirit. When Paul said, “I am crucified,” it wasn’t a theory. It was something he had gone through. Those nails had pierced his personality even as they had pierced those Holy hands and feet. And we all no doubt take delight in digging out those simple facts for ourselves and expounding to others the evidences in the histories of the great biographies of the Bible. The years it’s taken God to give blind, earnest, utterly consecrated men such an eye opener to their helplessness, and then the replacement of their helplessness by Himself. That’s the meaning of the burning bush. We all know the story of Moses. I needn’t dwell much on these things because we know them so well.
(a) Moses
We all know the whole point of Moses was he gave up everything but himself. He didn’t even know that he hadn’t given himself up, nor did he know that he needed to give himself up. That’s the point! It’s our blindness that’s our trouble. Just the same as in our unredeemed condition; our blindness is the trouble. We don’t know that we are going to hell. We don’t see ourselves as sinners. And the Holy Ghost has to take the veil from our eyes. Then we know it and can find the remedy.
Now the law of the Spiritual life is that we never have a greater need than to have a sense of our need. According to our need, so is our supply. According to our hunger and thirst, so are we filled. Thus only insofar as we see our need can we receive the supply. And so we know how Moses royally, gloriously, daringly flung everything in this world away except himself, to follow Jesus the Christ. Hebrews 11:26. He didn’t know that he needed to fling himself away; didn’t even realize that he was relying on himself. Thus he had to go through that forty years of disillusionment. I often wonder why these great men didn’t become atheists. Perhaps it is surprising that we didn’t either because of the terrible strippings that we have to have after our dedication. When we follow Jesus, leave all and follow Jesus, down we go—bang, bang, bang, down to the bottom. And the old mystic who said, “The only way to heaven is through hell,” spoke the truth. The only way to heaven is through hell. He’s perfectly right. It is in hell that we leave our wretched 1ittle self; then we go up to heaven. Leave them where they belong. So we get these devastating periods in all these men’s lives. Here is Moses, he followed God out with his heart, left everything, even the great deal the world had to offer, in order to be God’s servant in delivering the people. And God threw him on the dust heap for forty years and made him do the one thing which is an abomination to the Egyptians—tend sheep. Of course, he had the same red line of life inside him which he held throughout the period. We know that is where he had full sight of his inability. So you see that he had to learn a further lesson than that lesson of a mere outward consecration. He had to give up something more than things—he had to give up himself. You can’t give up yourself until you’ve first seen yourself. Then came the union. The union was pictured to him in a perfect way. He saw a common bush aflame. What puzzled him was that the fire didn’t go out. He looked again. Why didn’t it go out? The bush was not consumed. And then the Divine voice came out of the bush, “I am.” In essence God said to him, “Now you can see, Moses; you can see the relationship for which you were created. This relationship is really a fact about you, but you cannot see it, or haven’t been able to see it as yet. You are a common bush. And in the common bush lives the Divine fire. The fuel of the fire is the bush and yet the fire, as it were, puts back new life into the bush so it goes on burning and goes on living.” Out of the common bush comes the fire which burns without dying and which speaks with a Divine voice to the world. “The trouble with you, Moses, is this: For all these years you’ve been an uncommon bush and the Divine fires don’t come out of uncommon bushes—they only come out of common bushes. So you have to discover that you’re just a common bush in the wilderness. Then out can come the Divine fire.”
So you see the union pictured right before his eyes and he entered right in. And Moses lived the union life after that. He never had to look here and there to find that living Person. That living Person dwelt in him. And whenever he did look here and there he got it in the neck for doing so. I haven’t time to go into a great deal of detail. But on one occasion when he had spoken out that word of authority from the union, “It’s all right, you won’t see Pharaoh and those hosts again. See what God will do for you. Stand still and see the salvation of the Lord.” But then he wavered a moment and looked up instead of looking in. He looked up and said, “Oh God help us.” God said, “Why cry to Me? Why waste your time praying? (Prayer sometimes is just a waste of time when it’s the prayer of unbelief which is very often the case.) Why waste your time looking up here? You speak to the children of Israel that they go forward; and you lift up your rod, stretch it out, and you divide the sea.” Not “I divide the sea,” but “you divide the sea.” That’s union. “Speak out from the word that is within you. Speak out that word. Stretch out that rod and the sea will open in front of you.” That’s union. That’s the two acting together. The little and the big, joined. The naught and the hundred joined And the hundred comes out through the naught. And so we could repeat instance after instance like that. I’ll touch on one or two more for a brief moment in order to remind us of that fact. They are all familiar to us.
(b) Jacob
Look at Jacob. We would say that it is incredible because we are mainly living on our own resources. That is where all our failings come from. Mainly it is some elements of self- reliance, self-scheming, and self-effort about us. We don’t see it. And God has to give us a great unveiling. I doubt whether any soul can come through into the deeper relationship with God without a personality crash. There has to be a personality crash sometime, when everything is going to be a ruin around you—probably when you are serving Him. It can suddenly dawn on you. Now I like the dawning on Jacob. It’s clearer than the dawning on Moses. We all know Jacob’s scheming, and we all know the consequences which were going to come to him; Esau was going to have his blood. Esau swore he would kill him for what Jacob had done to him.
We know how Jacob was at the bottom of his heart obedient. (These things only happen to obedient hearts not the disobedient. I am not talking to the unelect. Only the obedient heart can hear God’s voice and follow him.) God said to Jacob, “You go back. You go back now.” Sure enough he heard in a few days, “Esau is coming to meet you with four hundred men. There is going to be a public lynching here. He is going to show the whole world what he is going to do to you.” And fear was upon Jacob. Upon whom wouldn’t it be?
And then we know the old schemer again sent presents of camels, presents of donkeys, presents of sheep, and this and that. But he knew in his heart that Esau would wipe them aside. Esau wasn’t after presents of camels, sheep, and donkeys. He was after some other donkey! And as a last resort we know what Jacob did. Jacob thought, “Esau, the hard, hard Esau, will have pity when he sees the women and children. I will send them forward with camels. When he sees little children, that will break him up.” But Jacob knew very well that it wouldn’t touch him. Esau didn’t care “that” [he snapped his fingers—Ed.] for all the little children in the world.
At last Jacob was alone with God. And there you see still an utterly blinded person who hadn’t sight of his own false attitude. He just couldn’t get outside the realm of, “What could Jacob think about? What could he scheme?” It wasn’t Jacob wrestling with the angel; it was the angel wrestling with Jacob because Jacob was self-enclosed. And the angel wrestled with Jacob to get him out of that self-enclosure. How could he do it? How could he get him out? Here was Jacob making some last scheme. “Now what last scheme can I make? I know Esau will snap his fingers at the camels and he will snap his fingers at the families. What can I do? Oh, I know what I’ll do. At least I have a good strong pair of legs because I’ve lived in the wilderness for twenty years. I can run harder than Esau. I’ll run for it anyhow.”
So the angel touched his thigh. Bang! Crack! He couldn’t even walk. That’s the way God gets us. In a flash it opened. No one can say how that opening comes. It’s just that he saw. He saw after twenty-one years that although he loved his God, although he was a believer and a true follower, his whole being in the methods of service was centred around the way he could do it. And he saw it! And those energetic arms that clung around himself clung now around the living God. It was God-like energy in the right place. And so instead of saying, “I will not let Jacob go,”Jacob said, “I will not let you go. You have to bless me.”
He came through. The union took place. The angel said, “Now Jacob, you’re a Prince. You have prevailed with God and you’ve prevailed with man. The next day when Esau came Jacob couldn’t run; he couldn’t even walk; he limped as he went. He was a good prey for Esau all right, and Esau came and said, “Now my day is come.” “But when he was within ten yards of Jacob those arms of Esau’s, which had been aching for twenty years to drive a spear into Jacob, went around Jacob and he kissed him. He couldn’t help it. God changed him in a second. That’s union, and that’s authority. But you always see passing through somehow a devastating eye-opener to my helpless self, and to the One Who’s given to me. That blessed One always is. He always was in Moses if Moses could only have seen it. He always was in Jacob if Jacob could only have seen it. But you can’t see Him and yourself at the same time.
(c) Joseph
The one who always puzzles and delights me is Joseph. Joseph is the one I know—of whose history you can trace—who doesn’t give any indication where or when he entered into the union. I think Joseph was marvelous.
Evidently in Joseph’s early life there were manifestations of self. You can see it in the way he told his father about his brothers’ sins and so on. You can see it in certain indications. At the same time God came to him and imparted great revelations to Joseph in dreams. And then what? Well, we all know. For fourteen years things happened which made those dreams nonsense. Who could believe in them? Fantastic! Everything went from bad to worse, and still worse in the vilest manner. And that holy young man never failed to follow God because God always favoured him.
God doesn’t favor the grouser. God doesn’t favor people who kick and resent. He favors those who yield. Joseph was the yielded one while he was in Potiphar’s household . He was the yielded one while in the prison because every time he found favor; and so they put him into positions of responsibility which is the proof of it. It says, “God blessed him.” Well, who could believe in dreams after that? One person who couldn’t was Joseph. Yet, without any warning, and after fourteen years when every single thing had crashed around him, suddenly the butler and the baker said, “Oh we’ll tell you what’s wrong with us. We’ve had dreams.” “Oh, dreams,” he said, “isn’t God an interpreter of dreams? Tell me.”
That’s union. We can all say doesn’t God do things? But you have union when you can say, “And God will do it through me.” That’s union. See when God and I are one! Therefore it’s going to come out through God’s agents and we’re the only agents He has on earth. He does it through us. And union is when we don’t just say, “Well, God can do it,” but “God does it and He’ll do it through me.” That’s union.
And in a flash Joseph said, “Isn’t God the interpreter of dreams? Tell me.” And they told him. And then, even then, it all went wrong! You know how the butler forgot to tell Pharaoh. Oh, the ungratefulness of the one who was rescued. And suddenly the commission comes. And Joseph has to pick himself out of prison and stand before the greatest monarch in the greatest court in the history of those days. Enough to frighten anybody! And here Pharaoh, in an important way, says, “Oh, I hear you’re a person who can interpret dreams.” “It’s not in me. God shall give Pharaoh an answer of peace.” Union. It’s not in me but there is Somebody who will give it to you and He will give it to you through me. I don’t know how Joseph had that. I don’t know where he passed into the realized union. Whether it was back in his childhood—I don’t know. Well, we get a few instances. I can’t take any more.
(d) Elisha
I always like to touch for a moment on Elisha because it gives us such a good picture. There you get so exquisitely the young, consecrated missionary, the young, consecrated servant of Jesus Christ, loving to go out into service, thrilled to follow the great Elijah.
Now God loves that innocent core of consecration but it’s got to go deeper. You know how Elisha made a feast at home. Broke up the ploughing instruments and killed the oxen; a farewell feast before he went off to follow Elijah. And the implication is, “This is grand!”—in other words, “In due course I’ll be an adequate successor to Elijah.” That’s what the implication was.
It wasn’t an adequate man who stood by Elijah when he was going to be taken up. It was an inadequate man, a man with a holy desperation in his soul. Strange how he was tested out. Four times over Elijah said to Elisha, “You tarry here while I go yonder. While the Lord calls me yonder you tarry here.” But Elisha knew something. After eight years serving Elijah—he had been pouring water on his hands for eight years, it says—Elisha knew that this man alone, of all men that he knew, had something he hadn’t, something which alone could make Elisha able to take Elijah’s place. He didn’t have the Word as we have it. He hadn’t the Spirit as we have, so that to him it was all centred in Elijah. And so with all the vehemence of an intense soul he said, “Elijah, as the Lord liveth, and as my soul liveth, I won’t leave you. You’re the one I have to get something from.”
You see, the filled soul had become empty. The one who had gone out so gladly and confidently was now a hollow drum. He said to Elijah, “I’m desperate. If I have to follow you, there’s something you have that I haven’t.” And then on the fourth occasion you remember how Elijah said to him, “What do you want, Elisha?” In a flash it came, “A double portion.” Greedy fellow! “A double portion of your spirit.” And Elijah said, “You’ve asked a hard thing. You’ll receive it if you see me when I’m taken from you.” That’s it. That’s the inner sight. “If you see me,” not human sight. If we had been there, unless he had anointed our vision we would not have seen God. It’s only the anointed who see things, just as only Paul heard the voice on the road to Damascus. And you know when Elijah was taken up, it says that he was taken up by a whirlwind. But Elisha cried a great cry to Elijah, “My father, my father, the chariots of Israel and the horsemen thereof.”
Now the proof is this: you know how he began to operate in the Spirit. The Spirit was in him now. There was this indwelt relationship and he was operating by the Spirit. And in the course of that a year or two later, you know how he was giving away the secret of King Benhadad who was attacking Israel. Benhadad was annoyed because someone was giving away his secrets. And he said, “Who is it that is informing the king of Israel of my strategy and plans?” And they said, “Oh, it’s that prophet Elisha that tells him.” Then he said, “Where does he live?” “Dothan.” And Elisha woke up with his servant one morning and the little city was totally surrounded by the army. They were done! And in a moment the servant said as any of us would, “Alas master! What shall we do?” Did Elisha pray? Did he groan? Not at all. In a second, he said, “Fear not! For they that be with us are more than they that be with them.” What did he mean? And then he said, “Lord open the young man’s eyes that he may see.” And he saw the mountain full of chariots and horses of fire round about Elisha. That’s what Elisha had seen when Elijah went up. He had seen the Lord of hosts. He had seen the hosts. He lived in the vision now. He lived in the union. And in one second he could always say, “Of course this One is with me. Of course He’s the One living in me. He’s carrying His own work through. Of course it’s all right. God’s going to conquer in this situation. Of course He’s allowed the situation for the purpose of conquering in it. It’s not my situation. I’m merely the little one who is sharing it with Him.” He was living in it, you see. So there wasn’t even a prayer prayed. Just the word of faith.
Those are just a few instances. You can find the same if you trace the critical moment in Joshua’s life or David’s life or Isaiah’s life, and, of course, in Peter’s life. Probably we can get a little clearer sight of it in Paul’s life, and so on.
So I’m leaving that now. That’s only done in God’s own way and time. But perhaps it is good for us to recognize that God has to bring us experientially to the bottom of ourselves until we know we’ve been to the bottom. Oh, I know by the grace of God; I know that twenty years ago God took me to the bottom. Smashed me up. I’ve got to keep there. But once you have been there you know how to go back there. He took me. He broke me to bits. You’ll know when He’s done it. I mean that. I can’t say how. I needn’t make it up. Grace is not by works. It’s by grace. And He does it in His own way and time.
III. REMOVAL OF INDEPENDENT SELF
Now what we want to examine somewhat closely for a few minutes is: What is the full remedy God has given for the getting rid of this independent self? You see, we’ve come out of our fallen condition used to living by the independent self, by our own opinions, our own activities, our own plans, our own resources, reliance on ourselves. Now we get a carryover of that into our Christian lives. Of course we do. If we didn’t, we should be perfectly victorious. Every single failure is to be traced to a resurrection of the independent self in some form—every time! It’s caused by a moving out from the union instead of abiding in it. Every time.
Now we must examine: What complete remedy has the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ provided for a continuous and total removal of the independent self?—not of self, but the independent self. Sometimes you hear people talk about or even in hymns you read about death to self. I shouldn’t like that. I tell you I don’t want to die that. You can’t have a death to self. You can have a death to the independent quality of your self so that the real self may take its proper place—that’s a cipher indwelt by a 100 percenter. So it isn’t death to self. It is death to that wrongful attitude of yourself, the independence of the self. That’s the point.
Now what’s the complete remedy that God has given for a continuous, complete, and final clearing out of this independent action, this independent self? Well, of course, we know the remedy but it is good and profitable that we run through it again and look at certain aspects so that we may get the complete picture.
(a) Self Exposure
I mentioned to you, in passing, this illuminating fact that God could not get over to Israel: God cannot get the depth of His grace over until He can give us this self-exposure. He can’t do it. And He couldn’t to Israel. You get that in Exodus 19. It’s interesting to me that He tells Israel the very thing which He tells us later on—that His intention was that the whole nation should be a kingdom of priests. That’s what we come out to be—priests and kings. That’s the highest thing we can be. We shall perhaps speak about this later on, but this is the highest privilege given to us in and through Christ. Now He intended Israel for that, for He said so in Exodus 19 at the time they came to Mount Horeb. He tells Moses to tell them that He had carried them out on eagles wings and all that lovely account of His grace. Then He said in verse 5, “Now therefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people for all the earth is mine. And ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests.” Not a couple of priests in the kingdom but the whole lot of them priests, a royal priesthood, a kingdom of priests; everyone being a priest by which of course the gospel should have gone throughout the world.
Now you see the catch in it. You see how God always has to test us until we’ve discovered our helplessness. He tested Adam by the tree of the knowledge of good and evil which he mustn’t eat, at the same time providing his need, if he’d find it, in the Tree of Life. It was to test out whether he could learn that, by himself, he couldn’t resist the temptation to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. He must have another counteracting Person inside himself to do that. And he never saw it.
Now, you see, it’s just the same here. In Exodus 19:4-5, God said, “Now I’ve brought you out. You’re a peculiar treasure. And I brought you up on eagles wings that you may be a kingdom of priests on one condition.” “If you will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant.” Just that. If you obey my voice and keep my covenant. That’s the very thing He had been telling them to do all the years. Every time anything happened they grumbled and groused and they kicked and they disobeyed. Their whole history was that. They had just been dragged along by grace, that’s all. Keeping the covenant? They’d never come within a hundred miles of it. But what happened? Moses told them this in verse 7 and, in verse 8, all the people answered together, “All that the Lord has told us we will do.” They couldn’t do one thing the Lord told them to do, much less all. That’s blindness. And so God had to turn away and find another way. Totally blind by the illusion of self-sufficiency. Self-ability!
Now we turn to the Gospel Age. First of all, let me point out to you the gracious approach of God to us. Yet at the same time you can see quite clearly from it the difference between infancy and adolescence, between the elementary and the mature. The true lesson, what God is really after, you can see in Romans. Now you notice this fact; that God’s first approach to fallen humanity is almost purely external not internal because they couldn’t take the internal. Almost purely external, almost purely objective. You see, in our fallen condition we start as extroverts. So God necessarily reveals Himself to us at first through the external. We try to remain people who don’t care about what goes on inside. We don’t want to look too much in there. We try to dance our way through life, to pleasure our way through life. We try not to look inside; we try to remain on the extrovert side of life.
When God begins His external processes of conviction and grace in us over a good many years, we become introverts and a great deal of our life may have to be spent searching into ourselves and learning all sorts of things. But we must not remain there. If you remain an introvert, you haven’t reached there yet. You just come out an extrovert on the other side again. But now that you are a father you have forgotten yourself in God and concern yourself with other peoples’ needs. So extrovert, introvert, extrovert is the way of the Spirit. But we’ve got to go through the introversion stage and usually it takes some time to go through. That is the purgation, illumination, and the union of the old mystics—the same thing. But when you come out in the union, you have forgotten yourself and get on with the job because you have al1 you need now.
Now you see that, here, God is dealing first of all with extroverts. He is dealing with people who have not considered, and don’t wish to consider, what goes on inside them. They try to live on the outside of life. So God meets them on the outside of life. And you find in the first five chapters of Romans every approach of God through grace to man is practically on the external, because they could understand that. They couldn’t understand the subjective truth. They couldn’t have understood a word of what we’re saying here today, because those things are only for the enlightened saints or, anyhow, for partially illumined saints.
And so just to run through it very quickly; you see in Romans 1:18, “the wrath of God is revealed from heaven.” That’s external . Any poor dark heart in any country can understand that the wrath of God is revealed from heaven. And then follow all the list of sins which anyone can see. Anyone can see the wickedness, vileness, and the abominations of man which go through the remainder of Romans 1. They’re as plain as a pike-staff to any honest person.
Now you pass on to chapter 2 and you get the presentation of external judgment. Verse 5, “After thy hardness and impenitent heart treasurest up unto thyself wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God.” And following on you have what that righteous judgment is. Then in verse 16 you have the presentation of the Judge Himself. “In the day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ.” Now all I’m pointing out is that these are truths external to mankind which anybody can understand. Any lost sinner can understand the wrath of God from heaven, the sins he’s committed, the judgment day that’s going to come, the grounds of the judgment, and the Judge.
He even goes further than that in His grace, for in 3:19 He gives us fore-view of the verdict. So none of us need to go away deceived. And thus in verse 19 He says, “That all the world may become guilty before God.” So already it is revealed to us that the verdict will be our guiltiness and the consequences, of course, our damnation. Then finally in the same chapter you get the presentation of an external Saviour. It is that glorious statement that starts away in verse 23 onwards. “For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God; being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: whom God hath set forth”—external you see—“set forth as propitiation through faith in His blood.”
So that the whole presentation of a saving Gospel to a lost world is as simple as ABC on the externals of life. Wrath, sin, judgment, Judge, guilt, salvation through a manifested Saviour in history. He is One that all can see, dying in our place on Calvary, shedding His precious blood on our behalf on Calvary’s Cross. Any little child can embrace that. Beautifully, wonderfully simple. But that, brothers and sisters, is not sufficient for living the Christian life. That’s exactly why we’ve our problems. If it was sufficient you wouldn’t need anything more. The point is, we do need more. And the Bible gives us more. It’s not sufficient for living the Christian life. Just to know that our past is blotted out in His precious blood and we’re saved from wrath doesn’t enable us either to live the Christian life or to fulfil an adequate ministry. That’s just what we know.
Now we move on and we begin to find an internal problem, with an internal answer to it. Much more difficult. That’s the meat of God’s Word. We now pass from the milk to the meat. I’m skipping very rapidly because we can’t go into every detail in this short time. But in Romans 6 we begin to get the internal problem about ourselves. It isn’t our sins that begin to trouble us now; it’s the sinner that troubles us. It’s the one who does the sin. “How shall we continue in sin?” The emphasis is on ourselves; not the sin, but ourselves. The consciousness of that past is blotted out. Now it says here, “What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound?” Our problem now has become a self that does not conquer as it should do, a self that isn’t as holy as it should be, a life which isn’t as pure as we wish it to be, a self which doesn’t glorify Jesus as it should do, a self that can’t produce the fruits that it wants to do. The problem of ourselves has arisen now. Now that’s an internal problem. Now we’re getting down to the real meaning of life. The other is merely the external crust of it; it’s merely the outer gate of it. Now we’re getting at last to the inner gate which shou1d take us on to the road itself.
(c) Death unto Sin
It says here in Romans 6, verse 10, “For in that He died, He died unto sin once.” It doesn’t say “for sin” there—it says, “unto sin.” “ He died unto sin.” In other words, when they nailed Him there was a willing sacrifice, He died for the world. The world could say no more to Him. And the flesh could say no more to Him. Sin could say no more to Him. He had died unto it. And He rose again to a new life.
Now in God’s sight, God sees me, as a believer, as one who has died there in Christ. Died unto sin. Then, later on, risen with Christ. And therefore it says here that I’m to reckon myself as one who has died and was buried with Christ. Now, brother and sister, we’ve got to tackle that because the fact is that most of us haven’t believed that. Most of us in our hearts say, “it’s a theory.” We have not believed it. We have not utterly and finally believed it to the point that we have actually experienced it, that we really are so cut off from sin, the world, and the flesh, that they have no right to us. We’re cut right off from sin, the world, and the flesh. Crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts. Crucified the world. Died unto sin. Cut off in His death and burial. That’s a strong statement. But that’s what God’s Word says. A very great number never believe it. It took me a long time to believe that.
I would like to say here one thing which might help. I think one reason why down in their hearts some folks don’t accept it is because they say, “Well, honestly, it doesn’t work.” You see, honestly, I say that I’m dead to sin but in five minutes time I’m irritable again. Now how can I say I’m dead to sin when in shoots irritation again? Or pride or any other sin? I may say it, but it really doesn’t work.” I want you to see this. There’s a difference between the quantity—I don’t say “quality”—but between the quantity of our death and His death. If we see that, we see the solution to our problem. What I mean is this: Jesus’ death and resurrection are so complete, physically and spiritually, that He is utterly out of the realm of the world, the flesh, and the devil that they can’t touch Him. He’s not within hearing distance. He is untemptable now. His death is more complete than ours. Ours is an incomplete death, because so far it is only spiritual. It is not yet physical and so we are still within the realm in which we can be called upon by these things. Now the proof of that you’ll find in Romans 6 where the resurrection is put in the future. In Romans 6:5 it says, “If we be planted together in the likeness of His death, we shall be also”—now we are—“we shall be also in the likeness of His resurrection.” Look at verse 8, “Now if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him.” “Shall” not “are”. Shall live with Him. We carry that over into Romans 8 where you come into triumphant life. We have not discussed that yet. We are brought right into the middle of the triumphant life. He says, “Oh, its not complete yet.” Look at Romans 8:23, “Not only they but ourselves also which have the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body. For we are saved by hope.” And so on. “We with patience wait for it.” In other words, we must recognize that we have an incomplete redemption. It’s going to be complete when our bodies are resurrected. Then we become untemptable with Jesus.
Now I don’t know whether I get the point over, but it’s very important. May I try to illustrate it like this. I don’t know whether this will convey anything to you. You can see the two differences in the quality of death in Satan and fallen man, first of all. Now you take this difference: Satan as Lucifer sinned irretrievably against God. We haven’t much description in God’s Word of the depth of that sin. He sinned so irretrievably against God. When Satan sinned against God he became dead to God didn’t he? I just use that expression. Satan became “dead to God.” He became so dead to God that God can’t reach him. He’s been cast out of heaven. He’s a devil forever. It’s for him that God has prepared the fire—for the devil and his angels. He’s completely cut off. Therefore, his death is complete and there can be no response of Satan to God. God can’t speak to Satan. He’s out of hearing distance. That’s a final death. Now it says in the Genesis story that if man sinned, he would die. So we died to God, But we didn’t die to God so completely that He couldn’t make us hear Him. See the difference? We died to God, didn’t we? Adam died to God. Spiritually he died. We’re dead in trespasses and sins. We’re joined to the devil and so on. But we’re not so joined to the devil that God can’t make us hear. He can’t make the devil hear but He can make us hear. See the difference? The devil is unreachable by good. We are reachable by good.
So there are proportions in the death. You see, there are two classes of people, both dead to God—Satan and his angels and fallen man. The one death is irretrievable and can’t be reached by good. The other is retrievable. It can be reached by good. It is not such a final death that it can’t be reached by good.
Now you take the Saviour and ourselves. The Saviour is dead now to sin—Adam was dead to God. Now, if Jesus on the Cross died to sin, it couldn’t touch Him. He died to the world, died to the flesh, and rose again. They can’t reach Him. He’s where He cannot be tempted. His whole body, His whole being has gone right in. He’s the Man in the Glory. He has the complete redemption and nothing can ever touch Him again. We’ve not reached that place yet. We have it yes, in the Spirit. So it’s a real death. Now somehow I must get it over that it is a real death, a real cutting off, a public burial. The burial is the public notification of a death isn’t it? You bury a body and so the whole world can see that the person is finished. Now that’s what we must have. You and I must have a death which is public to everybody, which is a publicly settled thing. I’ve died with Jesus and I’m cut off from sin, cut off from the world, cut off from the flesh. But I’m not out of their reach yet. Jesus is out of their reach, but I’m not. I’m in a body which is still corruptible. I’m in the world but not of it. I’m not of the world but I’m in it. Sin can reach me. So my death is one which still leaves me within hearing distance of the things which I’ve left behind and they call mighty much at me. Do you see the difference?
Now when you see that difference, you see how you can take the position that you’re really dead and yet can still have a response. You’re still in the surroundings, in the environment which can call to you. You have the same thought again in Romans 6:16, on the servant question. “Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death or of obedience unto righteousness?” Now there we’re given the picture of a change of service. What has ben described as death in the previous verses is now spoken of as a change of service. You see the same thought there.
Supposing I’m employed by a steel firm. I’m joined to that firm. I’m alive to that firm. They pay me. I work for them. I belong to them. Now supposing I get fed up with the steel firm and decide that the hosiery firm is better. They’ll give me better wages. Now I die to the steel firm. I’m cut off there. I don’t take its wages; I don’t obey its orders; and I don’t do its work. I turn my back. I’m separated, as it were, by death. Now I join the hosiery firm. I’m alive now to the hosiery firm. I do its work, receive its wages, and so on. But the steel firm can send its agent over and say, “Here, don’t be a fool. I’ll do better for you.” Our problem is that, like fools, we listen to him, go back, and then have to crawl back in humiliation. You see what I mean? You see, the change of service doesn’t mean that we’re out of reach and call of the old service. But it means we’ve cut ourselves off. We belong to the new service, the new realm, but we’re still within reach of the other.
Now that’s what it means. We’ve died with Christ in spirit, but not yet died with Christ in body. See, Christ has died in spirit and body and risen in spirit and body. We’ve only died in spirit and risen in spirit. And so the inner realm is reachable by sin but we do not live in it. We do not live in it! I can’t get it over enough because I know many of us play with this. I know many of us say, “Theoretically I’m dead to sin.” But we haven’t irretrievably, irrevocably, understood the position and taken it and had a public burial of some kind. We haven’t come clean out. I’ve come clean out. I’m finished with sin. It has no dominion over me. There’s no need for me to give it any hearing of any kind. I’m finished with the whole business. Sin, flesh, and world—Romans 8! What does Romans 8 say?—verse 9. “Ye are not in the flesh but in the spirit.” See? Romans 8:9, “Ye are not in the flesh.” Don’t say you are in the flesh then. But you see, in a sense, the paradox. For in another sense we are in the flesh because we live in it. But in our spirits we are not in the flesh. You get the same idea in Jesus’ prayer in John 17 where He says, “You are in the world, but not of it.” Now we’re not of the world but we’re in the world. And we’re not of the flesh but we’re in the flesh. But there’s a real difference there. We’re not in the flesh. We have no business to say we walk in the flesh. We don’t walk in the flesh. We walk in the Spirit. We’re cut clear. The flesh has been crucified with its affections and lusts. But the flesh is here and can call to us—it surely does, and so can the world. Now that’s the important point that must be reached.
Now I must pass on. I’m not looking at this clock for I’m going on for another moment or two because I want to clear this over a bit.
IV. THE LIBERATED SELF
Now I want you to get another most significant thing about this way of deliverance. Romans 6 is a freed self. “Freed”—not “free,” made free by identification by faith with His death. A freed self. It says so here in verse 7. “He that is dead is freed from sin.” We are freed selves in Christ’s death and burial. But, brothers and sisters, that doesn’t take you to the end of it. Oh, no, you come bang up against another problem in chapter 7. Now I’m a freed self, dead indeed unto sin, alive unto God in my Lord Jesus Christ. Now I get about it; now I serve the Lord. Shall I? Bang, I go down again in Romans 7, because Romans 7 says, “Do it then, try it out. Here you are; here are the standards. Serve Him, fulfill His law, try it out.” Bang, bang, bang, down you go again because we’ve to learn the second lesson which is our helplessness— our helplessness. And the heart of Romans 7 is verse 18, the last half, “for to will is present with me, but how to perform that which is good I find I haven’t the power.” So the lesson we have to learn next is this: Yes, a freed self, but though redeemed, still a helpless self. Romans 6 is a freed self. Romans 7 is a helpless self.
Now we are back in the garden of Eden. Now we are back in the very lesson which Adam failed to learn—his helplessness. The very lesson that Israel failed to learn at Mt. Sinai, their helplessness. Now we have to learn it all over again. The redeemed self cannot do it, the redeemed self is merely a container—can’t do a thing, “in me, in my flesh dwelleth no good thing.” It’s merely a container. It’s a free container now. It’s no longer a bound container, it’s freed—free from sin free from the world, but it’s still only a container. And if you up and try to serve Jesus, down you come again. You can’t do it.
So Romans 7 gives us first of all Paul’s experience in the past at his conversion. You find Paul’s conversion experience in verses 7-13 all in the past tense telling us how he was caught out by the law. All the laws, all the commandments of God were external except one. They all said, “Don’t kill, steal, don’t be idolatrous, keep the Sabbath.” The tenth one was a spiritual one—“Don’t covet.” And that caught Paul out somewhere in his past experience. Oh, he didn’t steal, he didn’t murder, he didn’t worship idols. “Thou shalt not covet!” You mustn’t even want the thing. Oh, he was caught out. The only spiritual law caught him out and he found lust in his heart. That’s his past experience. That’s how he came through.
Now Romans 7:14 to the end is his present experience. He has changed the tense. Look he has changed to “I am” from “I was.” Up to there it was, “I was.” Verse 14 says, “I am carnal, that which I do I allow not.” [A few sentences lost here in the change over of tapes—Ed.]
It’s the permanent experience of every one of us when we are out of Romans 8, but not when we are in Romans 8. Romans 7 is the inevitable experience of a person who tries to run his life by himself and you can go back there at any time. Then you are back in Romans 7. But you don’t live in Romans 7; you live in Romans 8. We only come back to Romans 7 when we leave 8. Paul said, “I am there, I myself am there. All my life I am there—if I am fool enough to live there. But I’m not going to live there. I’m going to live in Romans 8. But if I go and pay a visit to Romans 7, well, I’m in Romans 7. When I leave off walking by the Spirit, and begin to walk by my own self effort, back I am in Romans 7 again.”
That’s the lesson we have to learn—this utter helplessness of self. Romans 8 is the empowered self . We have the three there. Romans 6 is the freed self, but that’s not enough; Romans 7 is the helpless self—you have to make that discovery. Romans 8 is the empowered self.
What is the power? Very simple. We get back now to the resurrection. I think it’s important to notice this. How did Jesus rise from the dead? Did He rise by Himself? No, by the glory and grace of God! Jesus became a totally dead, inanimate body for our sakes, and it was a real death. His blood really went out of His body, and they really took Him down as a corpse, and they really laid Him in the tomb as a corpse. He hadn’t one scrap of life in Him. And He didn’t rise by Himself; He did not rise by Himself. Look! Romans 8:11, “If the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead . . . .” He was raised up by another coming into Him. Now, there’s the resurrection. So this One Who was our Substitute, Who died in our place, went through all this for us. He did not rise by Himself because we cannot rise by ourselves. He rose by another coming into Him and raising Him from the dead; and we rise by Another coming within us.
Now you’ve got it. There is Christ in us. Christ in us, first of all on the basis of liberation from sin on the Cross; then a recognition of our helplessness even in our freed condition; and then the Indwelling Person who joins Himself to us and lives within us—in Romans 8. And so in Romans 8 we have, “if Christ be in you” repeated several times—“if Christ be in you,” “if so be the Spirit of God dwell in you,” “now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ,” and so on, half a dozen times over. We all know that. We have the whole pattern. Now we get the light.
Now there is some other bold thing that I must say and clear this point. Then I’ll handle it again when we meet tomorrow. You won’t like this, and you won’t believe it. We are turning off beam when we talk about having two natures at the same time. It’s all nonsense! You won’t like that one! I’m sick of hearing everywhere this theory of two natures. I’m not a half-in-half kind of schizophrenic or something. I’m one person. For one thing, I will show this; why do people read two natures into a chapter which doesn’t mention nature at all? Romans 7 doesn’t mention nature—it doesn’t mention it, and people stick two natures in there.
The only natures practically which are given us in the Scriptures are these Ephesians 3 says, “We were by nature children of wrath,” and II Peter 1:4 says that we are partakers of the divine nature.” Now really, when you look at it, it is common sense. Now, supposing I say to you that when I am unregenerate I have two natures. “Ooh,” you would say, “what heresy! You haven’t two natures when you are unregenerate; you just have one bad nature.” Take that and remember it! Two natures? You’ve not got two natures. One nature! Of course you have!
I only have one nature. I was a child of Satan, but in my condition as a child of Satan I wasn’t so dead, I wasn’t so much a child of Satan, that I couldn’t hear God. And God could influence me. But I was basically a child of Satan. I was basically egocentric. I basically followed myself, but God could influence me. And He could move upon me and He did move me until He finally found and won me. But God wasn’t my nature, and those influences about me didn’t change my nature. My nature was a fallen one. Now I have gone on the other side. My nature is a redeemed one. My nature is a Divine one, but I am influenced by the other fellow. He influences me, but he is only an influence. And sin is not my nature, the world is not my nature, the devil is not my nature—God is my nature! The seed of God is in me, the seed of God is the nature of God—I cannot sin. That’s the proof that I am born again. There is something within me that revolts against sin, and if the devil trips me up into sin I grieve over it because I have a new nature. But that other one isn’t my nature, it’s the influences around me. My new nature is Christ in me and I crucified with Him. That’s where the pure heart comes. That’s where sanctification is. That’s where this new life is. I’ve been made whole now, I am crucified with Him, I dead to sin, dead to the world, dead to Satan. Risen—ah, not I, not I—Somebody else is inside me when I am risen. I am risen and this One is joined to me now. He is my life. He is my centre. Now I am a new person, a holy person, a heart-pure person, walking with Him there but under all sorts of adverse influences which come through the world and through the flesh. But that is not my life nor is it my nature. Man is always unitary.
Such nonsense—a man can’t be two things at once. As I say, you would put him in a madhouse if he is. A man is one thing at once. I was once a child of the devil and now I’m a child of God. That’s all about me praise the Lord! The rest is just clothing. When I was a child of the devil my clothing was the mercies of God; it was only clothing. The clothing was God’s mercies God’s movings on me, God’s influences. Still it was only clothing. I was a child of the devil. Now I am a child of God and the devil’s clothing is around me—it is only clothing, it is not nature. And through that clothing comes the sin.
Now, watch or no watch, I have overstepped my time. I’m sorry; but I knew I was in for a difficult period tonight—not difficult in speaking; thank God it’s not difficult to speak to you —but difficult in exposition. I’ve sought to try and make some of these things clear. This doesn’t take us into the experience. We have to discuss how to get into the experience now. But this gives us the basis. Now do we see the meaning of life, the heart, the only meaning of life? The only life is Christ in me. There’s no other life, nothing else is life, eternal life is this glorious Person condescending to live His life in me. That’s life—Him joined to me.
Now that cannot be unless this false way of life has been remedied. This which has come in, this independent ego, this self-seeking, self-sufficient, self-working ego has to be dealt with. Otherwise you can’t have the free union in its right relationship, and therefore there are these remedies provided. First of all, the atonement for the consequences of my sins, then this identification with Him, as one who has died with Him, cut right off, as one who has risen with Him. That’s Christ in me; that’s a new relationship. In order to enter that I’ve had to learn my helplessness. Romans 6 isn’t enough without Romans 7. Some of you have learned Romans 6 but you haven’t reached Romans 7. That is why it doesn’t act. Romans 6 does not act without Romans 7—that’s the whole trouble. Some of you have tried that out. “Oh,” you say, “I’ve reckoned myself dead.” Yes, you have tried out Romans 6 but you still haven’t got to Romans 7. You have entered Romans 6, but you haven’t recognized the elements of self effort. You haven’t recognized that. You’ve reckoned yourself but it doesn’t work. Exactly! Because there is self effort in it. Romans 7 is the key. Having entered Romans 7, we’ve also had imparted to us and revealed to us the nothingness of self. “How to perform that which is good I find not.” We haven’t learned that. When we have learned that, we pass on to students of Romans 8. Then it is easy because, not only are we dead to sin, we are also free from ourselves, and now the other Person lives in me. The other Person does it. Now we are in the union.
So we will take it that far tonight I want to wrestle with the subject of how to experience and live in this relationship next time we talk. That takes some wrestling too, like this has. Now may God lead us on in His own way and in His own light. Amen.
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