TSA The Supernaturalist Association The Spirit of Christ

Chapter 17

The Newness of Spirit

But now we have been discharged from the law,
having died, to that wherein we were holden;
so that we serve in newness of the Spirit,
and not in oldness of the letter. Romans 7 : 6

If ye are led by the Spirit, ye are not under the law. Galatians 5 : 18

THE work of the indwelling Spirit is to glorify Christ and reveal Him within us. Corresponding to Christ's threefold office of Prophet, Priest, and King, we find that the work of the Indwelling Spirit in the believer is set before us in three aspects, as Enlightening, Sanctifying, and Strengthening. Of the Enlightening it is that Christ specially speaks in His farewell discourse when He promises the Indwelling Spirit as the Spirit of Truth who will bear witness of the Christ, will guide into all Truth, will take of Christ's and declare it unto us. In the Epistles to the Romans and Galatians the Holy Spirit's work as Sanctifying is especially prominent. Sanctification was needed in congregations just brought out of the depths of heathenism. In the Epistles to the Corinthians, where wisdom was so sought and prized, the two aspects are combined; they are taught that the Spirit can only enlighten as He sanctifies (1 Cor.2, 3:1-3, 16 ; 2 Cor.3). In the Acts of the Apostles, as we might expect, His Strengthening for work is in the foreground. As the promised Spirit of Power, the Holy Spirit fits enlightened Souls for a bold and blessed testimony in the midst of persecution and difficulty.

In the Epistle to the Church at Rome, the capital of the world, Paul was called of God to give a full and systematic exposition of the Christ's Gospel and the scheme of the Christ's redemption. In this exposition the work of the Holy Spirit must have an important place. In giving his text or theme (Rom 1: 17), "The righteous shall live by faith," Paul paves the way for what he was to expound, that through Faith both Righteousness and Life would come. In the first part of his argument, to v. 11, he teaches what the Righteousness of faith is. He then proceeds (v. 12-21) to prove how this Righteousness is rooted in our living connection with the second Adam (the Christ Jesus of Nazareth), and in a justification of Life. In the individual (Romans 6 : 1-13) this Life comes through the believing acceptance of Christ's death to sin and His life to God as ours, and the willing surrender (6: 14-23) to be friends (John 15 : 15) of God and of righteousness. Proceeding to show that in Christ we are not only dead to sin, but to the law also as the strength of sin, Paul comes naturally to the new law which the Christ-gospel brings to take the place of the old: the law of the Spirit Of life in Christ Jesus.

We all know how an impression is heightened by the force of contrast. Just as the apostle had contrasted (Romans 6 : 13-23) the service of sin and of righteousness, so he here (Romans 7 : 4) contrasts, to bring out fully what the power and work of the Spirit is, the service in the oldness of the letter, in bondage to the law, with the service in newness of the Spirit, in the liberty and power which Jesus through the Spirit gives. In the following passages, Romans 7 : 14-25, and Romans 8 : 1-16, we have the contrast worked out; it is in the light of that contrast alone that the two states can be rightly understood. Each state has its key-word, indicating the character of the life it describes. In Romans 7 we have the word L-a-w twenty times, and the word S-p-i-r-i-t only once. In Romans 8, on the contrary, we find in its first sixteen verses the word S-p-i-r-i-t sixteen times. The contrast is between the Christian life in its two possible states: 1. In the law. 2. In the Spirit. Paul had very boldly said, not only, "You are dead to sin and made free from sin that you might become servants** to righteousness and to God" (Rom.6), but also, "We were made dead to the law, so that, having died to that wherein we were holden, we serve in newness of spirit, and not in, oldness of the letter." We have here, then, a double advance, on the teaching of Romans 6. There it was the death to sin and freedom from it. Here it is death to the law and freedom from it. There it was newness of life (Romans 5: 4) as an objective reality secured to us in Christ; here it is newness of spirit (Romans 7: 6) as a subjective experience made ours by the indwelling of the Spirit. He that would fully know and enjoy the life in the Spirit must know what life in the law is and how complete his freedom from the Law with which he is made free by the Spirit.

In the description Paul gives of the life of a believer who is still held in bondage of the law and seeks to fulfill it, there are three expressions in which the characteristic marks of that state are summed up. The first is the word f-l-e-s-h. "I am carnal (fleshly) sold under sin. In me, that is, in my flesh, dwells no good thing." (Romans 7: 14, 18). If we want to understand the word c-a-r-n-a-l, we must refer to Paul's exposition of it in First Corinthians 3: 1-3. He uses it there of Christians, who, though regenerate, have not yielded themselves to the Spirit entirely, so as to become spiritual. They have the Spirit but allow the flesh to prevail. And so there is a difference between Christians, as they bear their name, carnal or spiritual, from the element that is strongest in them. The element of the flesh? Or the element of the Spirit? As long as they have the Spirit, but, owing to whatever cause, do not accept fully His mighty deliverance, and so strive in their own strength, they do not and cannot become spiritual. Paul here describes the regenerate man, as he is in himself. He lives by the Spirit, but, according to Galatians 5:25 Paul does not walk by the Spirit. He has the new spirit within him according to Ezekiel 36:26, but he has not intelligently and practically accepted God's own Spirit to dwell and rule within that spirit, as the life of His life. Paul is still carnal.

The second expression we find in Romans 7:18. "To will is present with me, but how to do that which is good, is not." In every possible variety of expression (Romans 7: 15-21) Paul attempts to make clear the painful state of utter impotence in which the law and the effort to fullfil it leaves a man: "The good which I would, I do not; but the evil which I would not, that I do." Willing but not doing: such is the service of God in the oldness of the letter and in the life before the Day of Pentecost (see Acts 2 and Matthew 26: 41). The renewed spirit of the man has accepted and consented to the will of God; but the secret of power to accomplish that Will, the Spirit of God, as indwelling, is not yet known. In those who know what the life in the Spirit is, God works both to will and to do. The Christian testifies, "I can do all things in Him that strengtheneth me." But this is only possible through faith and the Holy Spirit. As long as the believer has not consciously been made free from the law with its, 'He that doeth these things shall live through them,' continual failure will attend his efforts to do the will of God. He may even delight in the law of God after the inward man, but the power is wanting.

It is only when he submits to the law of faith, "He that liveth shall do these things," because he knows that he has been made free from the law, that he may be joined to another, to the living Jesus, working in him through His Holy Spirit, that he will indeed bring forth fruit unto God (see Romans 7: 4).

The third expression we must note is in Romans 7:23: "But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members." This word, c-a-p-t-i-v-i-t-y, as that other one, sold under sin, suggests the idea of slaves sold into bondage, without the liberty, or the power to do as they will. They point back to what he had said in the commencement of the chapter, that we have been made free from the law. Here is evidently one who does not yet know what real liberty means. This sense of bondage points forward to what he is to say in Romans 8: 2: "The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death." The freedom with which we have been made free in Christ, as offered to our faith, cannot be fully accepted or experienced as long as there is ought of a legal spirit. It is only by the Spirit of Christ within us that the full liberation is effected. As in the oldness of the letter, so in the newness of the Spirit, a twofold relation exists: the objective or external and the subjective or personal. There is the law over me, and outside of me, and there is the law of sin in my members, deriving its strength from the objective one. Just so, in being made free from the law, there is the objective liberty in Christ offered to my faith, and there is the subjective personal possession of that liberty, in its fullness and power, to be had alone through the Spirit dwelling and ruling in my members, even as the law of sin had done. This alone can change the complaint of the captive: "Oh, wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" into the song of the ransomed: "I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. The law of the Spirit made me free."

And how now have we to regard the two states thus set before us in Romans 7: 14-23 and 1-16? Are they interchangeable, or successive, or simultaneous?

Many have thought that they are a description of the varying experience of the believer's life. As often as by the grace of God the believer is able to do what is good, and to live well-pleasing to God, the believer experiences the grace of Romans chapter 8, while the consciousness of sin or shortcoming plunges him again into the wretchedness of Romans chapter 7. Though now the one and then the other experience may be more marked, each day brings the experience of both.

Others have felt that this is is not the life of a believer as God would have it since the provision of God's grace has placed new life within our reach. They saw that a life in the freedom with which Christ makes free when the Holy Spirit dwells within us is within our reach. They entered this new life and it was to them indeed as if now, for ever they had left the experience of Romans 7 far behind. They cannot but look upon it as Israel's wilderness life, a life never more to be returned to. And there are many who can testify what light and blessing has come to them as they saw what the blessed transition was from the bondage of the law to the liberty of the Spirit.

And yet, however large the measure of truth in this view, it does not fully satisfy. The believer feels that there is not a day that he gets beyond the words, "In me, that is, in my flesh, dwells no good thing." Even when kept most joyously in the will of God, and strengthened not only to will but also to do, the believer knows that it is not he, but the grace of God. And so the believer comes to see that, not the two experiences, but the two states are simultaneous, and, that even when his experience is most fully that of the law of the Spirit of life in Christ making him free, he still bears about with him the body of sin and death. The making free of the Spirit, and the deliverance from the power of sin, and the song of thanks to God is the continuous experience of the power of the endless life as maintained by the Spirit of Christ. As I am led of the Spirit, I am not under the law. Its spirit of bondage, its weakness through the flesh, and the sense of condemnation and wretchedness it works, are cast out, again and again, by the liberty of the Spirit.

If there is one lesson the believer needs to learn, who would enjoy the full indwelling of the Spirit, it is the one taught in this passage with such force: that the law, the flesh and self-effort are all utterly impotent in enabling us to serve God. It is the Spirit within, taking the place of the law without, that leads us into the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free. "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty."

Beloved Lord Jesus! I humbly ask Thee to make clear to me the blessed secret of the life of the Spirit. Teach me what it is that we are become dead to the law so that our service of God is no longer in the oldness of the letter. And what that we are married to Another, even to Thyself, the Risen One, through whom we bring forth fruit unto God, serving in the newness of the Spirit.

Blessed Lord! with deep shame do I confess the sin of my nature, that in me, that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing; that I am carnal, sold under sin. I do bless Thee, that in answer to the cry, "Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" Thou hast taught me to answer, "I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus made me free from the law of sin and death."

Blessed Master! teach me now to serve Thee in the newness and the liberty, the ever-fresh gladness of the Spirit of life. Teach me to yield myself in large and wholehearted faith to that Holy Spirit, that my life may indeed be in the glorious liberty of the children of God, in the power of an indwelling Saviour working in me both to will and to do, even as the Father did work in Him. Amen.

**Note: When the apostle Paul was writing, he did not have the benefit of John's gospel to guide him. Peruse any of these timelines and see how John's gospel was written many years after Paul had been put to death in Rome. Considering apostle John's standing as one of the disciples closest to Jesus of Nazareth, it's not too far-fetched to imagine that John's writings might be more reflective of God's Inspiration and Will than the writing of Paul whose dramatic conversion, though impressive, should not be compared with three years of face-to-face discipleship such as apostle John enjoyed with the LORD, Jesus of Nazareth. The greatest and most important distinction (among many lesser distinctions) between the writings of Paul and the writings of John can be found here in John 15:15. In this brief and absolutely definitive passage, the Lord Himself has set aside the use of the word "slave" and introduced the compassionate word "friend" to define the proper status of the relationship that now exists between Himself and His disciples. This is a grand distinction! How much better is it to be a friend rather than a slave of the Almighty?