But because we have not believed fully, that does not mean that the feeble life we intermittently experience is all God has given us. Romans 6:23 states that “the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord,” and now in Romans 8:2 we read that “the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus” has come to our aid. So Romans 8:2 speaks not of a new gift but of the life already referred to in Romans 6:23. In other words, it is a new revelation of what we already have.
I feel I cannot emphasize this too much. It is not something fresh from God’s hand, but a new unveiling of what He has already given. It is a new discovery of a work already
done in Christ, for the words “made me free” are in the past tense. If I really see this and put my faith in Him, there is no absolute necessity for the experience of Romans 7—either the unhappy struggle and failure, or the fruitless display of will-power—to be repeated in me.
If we will let go of our own wills and trust Him, we shall not fall to the ground and break, but we shall fall into a different law, the law of the Spirit of life. For God has given us not only life, but a law of life. And just as the law of gravity is a natural law and not the result of human legislation, so the law of life is a “natural” law, similar in principle to the law that keeps our heart beating or that controls the movements of our eyelids. There is no need for us to think about our eyes, or to decide that we must blink every so often to keep them cleansed; and still less do we bring our will to bear upon our heart-beat. Indeed, to do so might rather harm than help it. No, so long as it has life it works spontaneously. Our wills only interfere with the law of life. I discovered that fact once in the following way.
I used to suffer from sleeplessness. Once after several sleepless nights, when I had prayed much about it and exhausted all my resources, I confessed at length to God that the fault must lie with me and asked to be shown where. I said to God, “I demand an explanation.” His answer was “Believe in nature’s laws.” Sleep is as much a law as hunger is, and I realized that though I had never thought of worrying whether I would get hungry or not, I had been worrying about sleeping. I had been trying to help nature, and that is the chief trouble with most sufferers from sleeplessness. But now I trusted not only God, but God’s law of nature, and very soon slept well.
Should we not read the Bible? Of course we should, or our spiritual life will suffer. But that should not mean forcing ourselves to read. There is a new law in us which gives us a hunger for God’s Word. Then half an hour can be more profitable than five hours of forced reading. And it is the same with giving, with preaching, with testimony. Forced preaching is apt to result in preaching a warm gospel with a cold heart, and we all know what men mean by “cold charity.”
If we will let ourselves live in the new law, we shall be less conscious of the old. It is still there, but it is no longer governing and we are no longer in its grip. That is why the Lord says in Matthew 6, “Behold the birds . . . Consider the lilies.” If we could ask the birds whether they were not afraid of the law of gravity, how would they reply? They would say, “We never heard the name of Newton. We know nothing about his law. We fly because it is the law of our life to fly.” Not only is there in them a life with the power of flight, but that life has a law which enables these living creatures, quite spontaneously and consistently, to overcome the law of gravity. Yet gravity remains. If you get up early one morning when the cold is intense and the snow thick on the ground, and there is a dead sparrow in the courtyard, you are reminded at once of the persistence of that law. But while birds live, they overcome it, and the life within them is what dominates their consciousness.
God has been truly gracious to us. He has given us this new law of the Spirit, and for us to “fly” is no longer a question of our will, but of His life. Have you noticed what a trial it is to make an impatient Christian patient? To require patience of him is enough to make him ill with depression. But God has never told us to force ourselves to be what we
are not naturally—to try, by taking thought, to add to our spirit-ual stature. Worrying may possibly decrease a man’s height, but it certainly never added anything to it. “Be not anxious,” are His words. “Consider the lilies, . . . they grow.” He is directing our attention to the new law of life in us. Oh, for a new appreciation of the life that is ours!
What a precious discovery this is! It can make altogether new men of us, for it operates in the smallest things as well as in the bigger ones. It checks us when, for example, we put out a hand to look at a book in someone else’s room, reminding us that we have not asked permission and have no right to do so. We cannot, the Holy Spirit tells us, encroach thus upon the rights of others.
Once I was talking to a Christian friend, and he turned to me and said, “Do you know, I believe that if anyone is willing to live by the law of the Spirit of life, such a man will become truly refined.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
He replied, “That law has the power to make a man a perfect gentleman. Some scornfully say, ‘You can’t blame those people for the way they act; they are just country folk and have no educational advantages.’ But the real question is, Have they the life of the Lord within? For I tell you, that life can say to them, ‘Your voice is too loud,’ or ‘That laughter was not right,’ or ‘Your motive in passing that remark was wrong.’ In a thousand details the Spirit of life can tell them how to act, so producing in them a true refinement. There is no such inherent power in education.” And yet my friend was himself an educationist!
But it is true. Take, for example, talkativeness. Are you a person of too many words? When you stay with people, do
you say to yourself: “What shall I do? I am a Christian; but if I am to glorify the name of the Lord, I simply must not talk so much. So today let me be extra careful to hold myself in check”? And for an hour or two you succeed—until on some pretext you lose control and, before you know where you are, find yourself once again in difficulty with your garrulous tongue.
Yes, let us be fully assured that the will is useless here. For me to exhort you to exercise your will in this matter would be but to offer you the vain religion of the world, not the life in Christ Jesus. For consider again: A talkative person remains just that, though he keep silent all day, for there is a “natural” law of talkativeness governing him (or her!), just as a peach tree is a peach tree whether or not it bears peaches.
But as Christians we discover a new law in us, the law of the Spirit of life, which transcends all else and which has already delivered us from the “law” of our talkativeness. If, believing the Lord’s Word, we yield ourselves to that new law, it will tell us when we should stop talking—or not start!—and it will empower us to do so. On that basis you can go to your friend’s house for two or three hours, or stay for two or three days, and experience no difficulty. On your return you will just thank God for His new law of life.
It is this spontaneous life that is the Christian life. It manifests itself in love for the unlovely—for the brother whom, on natural grounds, we would not like and certainly could not love. It works on the basis of what the Lord sees of possibility in that brother. “Lord, you see he is lovable and you love him. Love him, now, through me!” And it manifests itself in reality of life—in a true genuineness of
moral character. There is too much hypocrisy in the lives of Christians, too much play-acting. Nothing takes away from the effectiveness of Christian witness as does a pretense of something that is not really there, for the man in the street unfailingly penetrates such a disguise in the end, and finds us out for what we are. Yes, pretense gives way to reality when we trust the law of life.
“For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God, sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: that the ordinance of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit” (Rom. 8:3–4, mg.).
Every careful reader of these two verses will see that there are two things presented here. First, they are what the Lord Jesus has done for us and second, what the Holy Spirit will do in us. The flesh is “weak”; consequently the ordinance of the law cannot be fulfilled in us “after the flesh.” (Remember, it is again here a question not of salvation, but of pleasing God.) Now, because of our inability, God took two steps. In the first place He intervened to deal with the heart of our problem. He sent His Son in the flesh, who died for sin and in doing so “condemned sin in the flesh.” That is to say, He took to death representatively all that belonged to the old creation in us, whether we speak of it as “our old man,” “the flesh,” or the carnal “I.” Thus, God struck at the very root of our trouble by removing the fundamental ground of our weakness. This was the first step.
But still “the ordinance of the law” remained to be fulfilled “in us.” How could this be done? It required God’s further provision of the indwelling Holy Spirit. It is He who is sent to take care of the inward side of this thing, and He is able to do so, we are told, as we “walk . . . after the Spirit.”
What does it mean to walk after the Spirit? It means two things. First, it is not a work; it is a walk. Praise God, the burdensome and fruitless effort I involved myself in when I sought “in the flesh” to please God gives place to a quiet and restful dependence on “his working, which worketh in me mightily” (Col. 1:29). That is why Paul contrasts the “works” of the flesh with the “fruit” of the Spirit (Gal. 5:19, 22).
Then second, to “walk after” implies subjection. Walking after the flesh means that I yield to the dictates of the flesh, and the following verses in Romans 8:5–8 make clear where that leads me. It only brings me into conflict with God. To walk after the Spirit is to be subject to the Spirit. There is one thing that the man who walks after the Spirit cannot do, and that is be independent of Him. I must be subject to the Holy Spirit. The initiative of my life must be with Him. Only as I yield myself to obey Him shall I find the “law of the Spirit of life” in full operation, and the “ordinance of the law” (all that I have been trying to do to please God) being fulfilled—no longer by me, but in me. “As many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God” (Rom. 8:14).
We are all familiar with the words of the benediction in Second Corinthians 13:14: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit, be with you all.” The love of God is the source of all spiritual blessing; the grace of the Lord Jesus has made it possible for that spiritual wealth to become ours; and the
communion of the Holy Spirit is the means whereby it is imparted to us. Love is something hidden in the heart of God; grace is that love expressed and made available in the Son; communion is the impartation of that grace by the Spirit. What the Father has devised concerning us, the Son has accomplished for us, and now the Holy Spirit communicates it to us. When therefore we discover something fresh that the Lord Jesus has procured for us in His cross, let us look for its realization in the direction that God has indicated and, by our steadfast obedience to the Holy Spirit, keep wide open the way for Him to impart it to us. That is His ministry. He has come for that very purpose—that He may make real in us all that is ours through the finished work of Christ.
We have learned in China that, when leading a soul to Christ, we must be very thorough, for there is no certainty when he will again have the help of other Christians. We always seek to make it clear to a new believer that, when he has asked the Lord to forgive his sins and to come into his life, his heart has become the residence of a living Person. The Holy Spirit of God is now within him, to open to him the Scriptures that he may find Christ there, to direct his prayer, to govern his life, and to reproduce in him the character of his Lord.
I remember, late one summer, I went for a prolonged period of rest to a hill-resort where accommodation was difficult to obtain. While there it was necessary for me to sleep in one house and take my meals in another, the latter being the home of a mechanic and his wife. For the first two weeks of my visit, apart from asking a blessing at each meal, I said nothing to my hosts about the gospel. Then one day my opportunity came to tell them about the Lord Jesus. They
were ready to listen and to come to Him in simple faith for the forgiveness of their sins. They were born again, and a new light and joy came into their lives, for theirs was a real conversion. I took care to make clear to them what had happened. Then, as the weather turned colder, the time came for me to leave them and return to Shanghai.
During the cold winter months, the man was in the habit of drinking wine with his meals, and he was apt to do so to excess. After my departure, with the return of the cold weather, the wine appeared on the table again. That day, as he had become accustomed to do, the husband bowed his head to return thanks for the meal, but no words would come. After one or two vain attempts, he turned to his wife. “What is wrong?” he asked. “Why cannot we pray today? Fetch the Bible and see what it has to say about wine drinking.” I had left a copy of the Scriptures with them, but though the wife could read she was ignorant of the Word, and she turned the pages in vain seeking for light on the subject. They did not know how to consult God’s Book, and it was impossible to consult God’s messenger, for I was many miles away and it might be months before they could see me.
“Just drink your wine,” said his wife. “We’ll refer the matter to brother Nee at the first opportunity.” But still the man found he just could not return thanks to the Lord for that wine.
“Take it away!” he said at length; and when she had done so, together they asked a blessing on their meal.
When eventually the man was able to visit Shanghai, he told me the story. Using an expression familiar in Chinese, “Brother Nee,” he said, “Resident Boss
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wouldn’t let me have that drink!”