Jottings

by J. Miller | Category: Jottings | Feb 1951

Paul's epistles are replete with references to death and life. In the believer's case the order is death and life; in the sinner's it is life and death. The believer in the Lord Jesus has passed out of death into life (John 5.24). The sentence of death which was passed upon him has been borne by Another, even His Saviour and Substitute.

It is a blessed fact that " Christ died for us " (Romans 5.8), but it is also true in divine reckoning that "we died with Christ" (Romans 6.8). "Christ died for our sins" (1 Corinthians is. 3), but it is also true that "He died unto sin" (Romans 6.10). Though we never could die for sins, "for" signifying dying in a substitutionary manner, we, nevertheless, died to sin (Romans 6.2), for "our old man (that old man signifying our old corrupt selves by nature) "was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away, that so we should no longer be in bondage to sin" (Romans 6.6). Thus the believer is ever to reckon himself "to be dead unto sin, but alive unto God in Christ Jesus" (Romans 6.11).

When Paul exhorted the Colossians to set their mind on things above, and not on things upon the earth, he says, "For ye died, and your life is hid with Christ in God," and he further adds that Christ is our life (Colossians 3.1-4). The believer is not simply a person who has adjusted his mind to a new form of religious life; he has died to the life he lived and the things he enjoyed in the past, and he has been quickened to life in a new and heavenly order of things. In this new life he was raised together with Christ, but in another view of the believer he is living in a body with certain lusts and appetites, and is found walking about in this defiling world. In contrast to the exhortation that the believer is to set his mind on things above, he is told to mortify his members which are upon the earth-fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, the which is idolatry (Colossians 3.5). He is to mortify, that is, to put to death, these sins (nekrosate " aorist, implying a definite act").

Paul says in Romans 8.13 "For if ye live after the flesh, ye must die; but if by the Spirit ye mortify (thanatoute, make to die, R.V. marg.) the deeds of the body, ye shall live." The issue is a serious one, either we must kill these divers forms of sin or they will kill us. There must be no quarter given, for they are unpitying. The mind of the flesh is death, it is out to kill; it can never be reformed or regenerated. The flesh in man killed Christ, and it would kill all in whom Christ's likeness is.

Because of the five members of Colossians 3.5 cometh the wrath of God on the sons of disobedience. We see in this how seriously the matter is viewed by God. If God will pour out the vials of His wrath on men for such sins, the believer should be at pains to make an end of them in himself. Then Paul adds, "In the which ye also walked aforetime, when ye lived in these things." These things have free course in unregenerate man, they are his habits of life. In some men the one form of sin may be more encouraged and manifested than another.

Besides killing these our members upon the earth, we are to put away such things as "anger, wrath, malice, railing, shameful speaking out of your mouth; lie not one to another" (Colossians 3.8, 9). These things lodged with us in past days and were often carefully nursed as though their growth would be to our advantage. Think of how Cain nursed his wrath till it grew beyond his control and he killed his brother, which proved his undoing. These things belong to the old man and our past life, and as 1 Peter 4.2 says, "ye no longer should live the rest of your time in the flesh to the lusts of men, but to the will of God." The rest of our time may be very brief, but we can live it in such a way that we shall be unashamed before the Lord at His coming.

The believer is to put away the whole of such things as anger, wrath, malice, railing (or blasphemy), shameful speaking out of his mouth, and not to lie to his fellow-believer; the reason for this is, that he has put off the old man with his doings (Colossians 3.7, 8). The old man's deeds are clearly indicated in this chapter. This putting off of the old man took place at the time of regeneration, a past event in the history of the Colossians (Colossians 3.9, 10), as was also the putting on of the new man (new, neos, means young, fresh, new as to time; new in Ephesians 4.24, is new, kainos, as to quality, not worn out, or marred through age). At the time of regeneration the believer put on the new, young or fresh man, and in such newness "the old (archaios, ancient, of a former age) things are passed away; behold, they are become new" (kainos) (2 Corinthians 5.17). The old life in which we knew men after the flesh has passed, and as Paul shows, even where men in his day had known Christ after the flesh, after they had by a new creation become new creatures in Christ, they knew Him so no more. There was in them a complete re-orientation of thought in regard to Him. He was now to such the Christ, the Son of the living God.

The new man which the believer has put on, Paul says, is being renewed unto full knowledge. The new man needs to be renewed or renovated (from kainos). A process is going on which is unto full knowledge, after or according to the image of the new man's Creator. This, as the Lord said, is the true meaning or import of the eternal life which is given by the Son to all that the Father has given to Him. He said, "And this is (the) life eternal, that they should know Thee the only true God, and Him whom Thou didst send, even Jesus Christ" (John 17.8). Here in this new life which is given to all believers is a competence to acquire the knowledge of God, and without it the knowledge of the true God as revealed in Christ the Son is impossible.

Full or perfect knowledge as Paul shows is according to the image of God the Creator of the new man. In Ephesians 4.24 the new man is said to be created after or according to God, in righteousness and holiness of truth. And as what is true of the new man at the beginning, so all renewing unto full knowledge must be according to the image of the Creator. Underlying these texts, Ephesians 4.24 and Colossians 3.10, is an allusion to Genesis 1.27, where we are told that "God created man in His own image." The restoration of the image of God in redeemed men is one of the great purposes in the coming of Christ and of the gift of the Holy Spirit to all believers.

In all those who know that they are new creatures there cannot be such distinctions as Greek, Jew, barbarian, Scythian, circumcision, uncircumcision, bondman, freeman; here Christ is all, and in all (Christ is all things in all things). All distinctions, racial, religious, intellectual, social, are obliterated, Christ is all. His light (He who is the Light of the world) puts out all other lights. One common relationship exists wherever He is known by a living faith and that is Christ; human distinctions which have segregated men and keep them apart are gone, they have fled before the rise of the Sun of righteousness.

The clothing suited to the new man is indicated in verses 12 and 18, and here God's saints are called God's elect, who are holy and beloved. These are to put on a heart of compassion (or bowels of mercies, A.V., "splagchna are properly the nobler viscera, the heart, lungs, liver, etc."), which describes the tender, sympathetic feelings of those whose whole inward being has been renewed by grace. Allied to this is kindness (chrestotes from chrestos, useful, profitable, good), which is that disposition in one who is useful, and consequently good. Then follows meekness, a gentle attitude to others in which there is no harshness, and this is allied to longsuffering in which we have the long sustained bearing of the ill treatment of others. The believer is to bear and forbear and be ready to forgive. And above all these excellencies he is to put on love, the bond of perfectness, which binds the moral robes of a Christian gentleman together.

J. Miller | Feb 1951
Jottings