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The highest goal in the salvation of God is the dispensing of His life into man. This is God's ultimate desire. Only by partaking of the divine life can we have a divine living. It is impossible to have a God-like living with our human life. The manifestation of our life is nothing but sin. In this respect God dealt with our sins and iniquities in a way that would maintain His righteousness. We have seen that the Son of God was judged for this purpose. Those who are in Him have been forgiven of their sins.
But the salvation of God did not stop with the forgiveness of sins; it went deeper to deal with the source of sin. We have said that man's sins are not caused by his environment. Rather, they originate from the person. The mode of living is merely a natural consequence of the kind of life that is possessed. Since man's life is corrupted, his outward behavior cannot help but be evil.
For example, when I knock on the stand before me with my fingers, a certain sound is produced. You can tell at once that this is a sound produced by wood. If I knock on a piece of metal, it will give a different kind of sound, and you can readily tell the difference between the two. The contrast in sound is caused by the difference in constitution. No matter how I change my manner of knocking, I cannot make a piece of wood sound metallic. Nor can it be done vice versa.
The same is true of the behavior of man. Our environment cannot precipitate something that does not exist within us. A slow person is slow under any kind of circumstance. But a quick disposition is readily detected under the slightest stress in the environment. All outward conduct is a direct result of our inward life. Hence, temptations in the environment are merely catalysts to hasten the exposure of our inner substance. They can never bring forth anything that has not hitherto existed in man.
A friend told me once that the human life is programmed by its environment. A good environment will produce fine personalities, and an unhealthy environment is the cause of all vices. All that one needs to do is control the environment, and proper personalities will automatically follow.
I said, "According to what you have proposed, it would mean that salt-water fish have become what they are because of living in the sea, and fresh-water fish are the direct product of the river water. This is surely not true. The environment can never govern what is not in us. The environment only exposes what lies dormant within us!"
Of what does the human life consist? It consists of all kinds of evil and corruption. Give it a gentle knock, and everything will fall out into the open. Many moralists say that all we need to do is suppress ourselves. Many have tried it. They held themselves tightly by the reins, fearing that their evil nature would break loose once they let go even a little. This kind of person is most miserable. Daily they repress their desires. But we know that they can never succeed for long.
Can we change the human life? Never! Not only are we unable to change it; even God cannot change it. The life of man is like a sin factory that daily manufactures hundreds of products. Therefore, in addition to the work of forgiveness, God had to deal with the source of sin. Since He is not going to change our life, what basic solution did He provide to save us? We have to look at the second aspect of His salvation.
Romans 6:7: "For he who has died is justified from sin." If a man wants to be delivered from sin, the only way is for him to die. He who has died is freed from sin; it is no longer possible for him to sin.
I know a friend who had an insatiable appetite for card games. Day and night he was obsessed by them. When he could not find partners for a game, he felt tormented beyond measure. Even when he did not have cards in his hands, he would feel better just looking at them. His whole life was governed by cards. However, he is dead now. After he died, he no longer loved cards. Even if you stuffed cards into his hands, he would not take them anymore. Death has delivered him from his cards.
Consider another example of a very arrogant person. He boasts of everything about himself. There is no way to remove or suppress his pride. One day he dies. If the whole world gathered around him to eulogize and extol his glorious deeds, what would he do? Would he still be proud of himself?
God's salvation for man is death! He who is dead is freed from sin. We have to see the verse that precedes the one we just read.
Romans 6:6: "Knowing this, that our old man has been crucified with Him in order that the body of sin might be annulled, that we should no longer serve sin as slaves." We have to take a closer look at this passage. The Greek word "annulled" has two meanings: one is unemployed; the other is paralyzed or crippled. The idea of unemployment is stronger in this passage. Hence, we can translate this as "that the body of sin might be unemployed."
There are three important agents in this passage. The first is sin, the second is the old man, and the third is the body. Sin is personified; it is a master. This sin does not refer to individual sins. Rather, it is a powerful lord that binds, entangles, and compels man to commit all of the particular sins. Man becomes the slave to sin, being subject to such a tyrant and carrying out all its dictates.
Under ordinary circumstances, man does not feel too much pressure from this master. But the minute he makes up his mind to overcome it, he will find that no matter how much energy he summons, he can never succeed in overturning its power. The more he tries to control his temper, the more he will lose it. Sin is the master. It forces man to submit.
The old man mentioned in the Bible is our own person. Deep in man there is a love for sin. When temptation comes, man rejoices to hear its call and gladly succumbs to its sway. It is true that sin is a powerful agent, but when it is met by the old man, the result is an instant collaboration.
In such a setting, the two go about searching for an instrument and discover the body. The body is thus employed. They will either tell the eyes to look, the ears to listen, or the hands to move. In this way the body executes the order dictated by sin and seconded by the old man. Sin is the director, the old man submits to its orders, and the body carries them out practically in the form of transgressions. These three are one. They agree with one another. The product of this collaboration is the multitude of sins that we commit.
God's salvation is different from our human concepts. His way is deliverance from sin. We think that everything would be all right if sins were uprooted from our being. But God's salvation is not the eradication of sins. He does not pull out our sins like uprooted trees.
The eastern mind always thinks that perfection is attained as soon as one has all sins repressed. But our person is one that loves to sin. It does not even want to suppress sin. Even when it tries grudgingly, there is no lasting result. The way of God is not a subjugation of sin, nor is it a mortification of the body. It is an exchange of person. The old man that was attached to sin is removed, and a new life that abhors sin is put in its place. When temptation comes, this new life naturally shuns it. In this way, the body loses its function in regard to performing sins.
Hence, God's salvation is entirely different from the concepts of other religions. God does not deal with sin, nor does He touch the body. All He takes care of is the old man within. This old man is just our life. When the old man is put to death, it means that the old life is terminated, and a new life is put in its place. The two ends, sin and the body, are left untouched, but the middle agent is taken away. Sin can now no longer communicate with the body.
The man that is constituted with this new life is called the new man in the Bible. When temptation comes again, the new man reacts very differently from the old one. He no longer hearkens to those lures. He never seconds the motion of sin, and he never actuates the body to commit evil. The new man is diametrically opposed to sin. He is deaf to the suggestion of sin.
What about the body? At this point, although the body is still willing to be a slave to sin, the power of the latter is blocked by the new man from being transmitted to the body. This new man no longer obeys sin or agrees with its proposals. Under these circumstances, the body has nothing more to do; it becomes unemployed. Formerly, my mouth constantly cursed. Now it does not function that way anymore; it has lost its job. My hands that used to fight with others have been discouraged by the new man. Now they no longer fight; they are likewise unemployed. My eyes, my ears, and even my whole body have become unemployed in regard to sin.
This is what the Bible means when it says, "Knowing this, that our old man has been crucified with Him." It clearly tells us that God deals with the old man. The result is that the body of sin is unemployed, that we should no longer serve sin as slaves. That means we will no longer come under the sway of sin. We have nothing more to do with it.
We can see that the basic strategy in God's salvation is the removal of our life. Our life is just the old man. In God's eyes this has to die. If it does not die, it will produce millions of sinful offspring. It will give birth to jealousy, pride, murder, adultery, and so forth. It has an inherent and insatiable love for sin, and no matter how much you suppress it, it will still run after sin. It takes no effort for it to perform evil, but it is impossible for it to be patient, loving, and holy. There is no other way for God to take but to pronounce death for this life. Its last breath has to be taken from it. It must be utterly terminated. When this happens sin will lose its partner forever.
One time I was at the home of one of my friends. He had a maid who gave him much trouble. Not only was she lazy, but she had the habit of stealing. She possessed every vice that a maid could have. My friend asked for my advice. His intention was for me to preach to her some in the hope that she might change. I told him an extremely simple answer: Give her up and hire another! This is the same way that God deals with us. The human life can never be improved through preaching. God says, "I do not need you anymore." With that He simply kills it. This is God's salvation.
This is the difference between God's provision and our concept. We hope to suppress sin in order to tame the wild desires of it. But what result have we obtained? Many unbelievers have changed their conduct at different times. They were sinful and repulsive; now they are mild and gentle. But this is not the salvation of God. The salvation of God does not depend on how many sins you have committed in the past or how much you have improved. It is not a matter of changing from violence to gentleness. God sees sin as something related to our life. He deals with the problem at its root by removing the life. As long as this life continues, sin remains. But the day that this life is put to death, sin ceases.
This death, furthermore, is not the death that some people talk about, where one merely considers everything in the past to be gone for good. The amazing thing is that you can consider as much as you want that your temper is gone and dead, but in actuality it always comes back. You can only have a psychological reckoning. In reality it is still very alive. It follows you everywhere you go. Whenever you turn around it is there. You can never rid yourself of your temper, no matter how hard you try.
How can we die? The answer again goes back to this one fact: God has put us into Christ. God has caused Christ to die, and when we are in Him we died also. We have said that the forgiveness of sin is because we are in Christ. God has put us into Christ. God has caused Christ to die, and since we are in Him, we died also. When God judged Christ, He judged us also. By this judgment our sins are forgiven. We cannot put ourselves to death. The death of Christ, in which God has included us, makes us dead with Him.
Let us read again Romans 6:6: "Knowing this, that our old man has been crucified with Him in order that the body of sin might be annulled, that we should no longer serve sin as slaves." There is no alternative for our old man but to die. There is no choice left for him to take. However, it is not a simple matter to die. God had to include us in Christ and then crucify Him on the cross. When Christ died on the cross, we were all included. From that moment on, we were no longer ourselves; we no longer existed. We never can or will crucify ourselves. It is our co-crucifixion with Him that took care of the old man. This is the basic solution to the problem of sin.
Not only in Romans, but other places in the Bible say that we are crucified with Christ. Galatians 2:20 says, "I am crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me." It is no longer I who live, because the "I" has been crucified with Christ on the cross.
Read Galatians 5:24 again. "But they who are of Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and its lusts." We do not do the crucifying; we are crucified already with Christ.
We have seen that Christ bore our sins on the cross. Now we see that He also bore our very person on the cross. He has become a substitute for our sins as well as our person. On that day on the cross, there were not only our sins, but also our person. God has included both our sins and our person in Christ. When Christ was crucified, so were we. If we see this one point, the rest will be clear.
A hymn describes well this fact:
I am crucified with Christ,
And the cross hath set me free;
I have ris'n again with Christ,
And He lives and reigns in me.
Oh! it is so sweet to die with Christ,
To the world, and self, and sin;
Oh! it is so sweet to live with Christ,
As He lives and reigns within.
Hymns, #482, verse 1
We can see from the Bible that Christ is not an individual person. He is a corporate man. This is like a legal term, a "juristic person." Everyone is incorporated into such a corporate person. Whatever the juristic person does signifies the act of everyone else. Using our previous analogy, it is the same as saying that if Hwang-ti had died, all of his descendants would have died; the whole Chinese race would have been terminated there. We are included in Christ. When Christ died on the cross, we who are in Him died on it as well. By the judgment of Christ we are forgiven; by His death we are set free from ourselves. On the negative side, we receive the forgiveness of sins outwardly and the termination of the old life inwardly. On the positive side, we start afresh in Christ with the new life obtained from God.
