Date: July 29, 1934Place: Foochow
Many people pay considerable attention to deliverance from sin, but they have no idea of what it means to be delivered from the law. Why did Paul mention deliverance from sin, that is, being dead to sin in Romans 6 and then speak about deliverance from the law in chapter seven? Why do we have to be delivered from the law after we are delivered from sin? What is the difference between deliverance from sin and deliverance from the law? What is the relationship between sin and the law? Is there any correlation between deliverance from the law and deliverance from sin?
Romans 6:14 says that sin will not lord it over us because we are not under the law but under grace. This means that we are first delivered from the law and then from sin. When we are no longer under the law, sin will not lord it over us. Yet many believers turn this around. They only pay attention to the matter of deliverance from sin and overlook the matter of deliverance from the law. Sin and the law are linked to each another. This is analogous to the principle of Chinese medicine. Western medicine deals with a sickness either internally by medication or externally by surgery. But in Chinese medicine there is no such thing as an external treatment, because Chinese medicine only tries to deal with the root of illnesses. It does not independently tackle the outward symptoms of illnesses. Sin is the outward symptom of a sickness, whereas the law is the root of the sickness. Man sins because he is under the law. The law is the cause, while sin is the effect. It is useless for anyone to just deal with the outward effect without first dealing with the root cause.
Many people have been troubled by the problem of sin for years and have been struggling without any success. They have failed because they have only taken care of the matter of deliverance from sin without understanding the need to be delivered from the law. In Romans 6 Paul told us how we can be delivered from sin. In chapter seven he goes on to say that it is not enough to just be delivered from sin; we must know how to be delivered from the bondage of the law as well. Actually, Romans 6 is the same as Romans 7, and Romans 7 is the same as Romans 6. Chapter seven is necessary because something is left unresolved in chapter six. Romans 7:8 says that "without the law sin is dead." Strictly speaking, without deliverance from the law in chapter seven, there can be no deliverance from sin in chapter six. Only after we are delivered from the law can we be truly delivered from sin.
We must next ask, "What is the law? What is the definition of the law?" Many people think that being delivered from the law is being freed from the Ten Commandments. Some may think that being delivered from the law is being freed from the ceremonial ordinances of the Old Testament, such as the statutes governing the priestly services. They may also think that being delivered from the law is being freed from moral precepts. Actually, the removal of the letter of the law cannot keep anyone from committing sin. God's demand on man in the entire Old Testament is summed up in the law. The law is God's demand on man. Keeping the law means that God has a demand and that we try to do His will and please Him according to our own effort. This is keeping the law.
In the New Testament, God has set the law aside and replaced it with grace. God no longer asks man to do anything to please Him. This is a very significant word. Keeping the law is doing something to please God, whereas being delivered from the law is no longer doing anything to please God. God has no intention for us to do anything by ourselves to please Him. If we cannot get through on this point, we cannot get through on the matter of sin.
Let us first consider God's thought concerning man. The real issue is not what the environment says or what other men say, but what God says. God's thought concerning man is that man cannot please Him by doing anything himself. In himself, man is full of sin and totally incapable of pleasing God. In God's eyes, man only deserves to die. He is hopeless, and nothing in him can ever please God. Nothing that issues from man can please God. God has only one valuation of man; He has only one view concerning man — death. This is why the Bible says that we are dead in Christ. This is God's valuation of us.
God has only one valuation concerning us — death. There is a Foochow native expression, Gai-si, which means "deserving death." God has no intention that we improve ourselves, do better, or advance step by step. We are totally incapable of doing these things. However, we do not recognize this fact; we think that we can still do many things. For example, after a man has believed in the Lord, he may say to himself, "I can get up at six o'clock in the morning to read the Bible and to pray. I can be patient, and I can love." God never says that we can make it, and He does not even have an expectation that we can make it. The cross is God's ultimate valuation of us. It is easy to acknowledge this fact while we are listening to a message, but in our practice in daily life, we still try to please God. This is where the root of our problem lies.
Why do we need to be baptized? Baptism is our answer to God's demand. God demands that we die, and we answer this demand by being baptized. "Or are you ignorant that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death?" (Rom. 6:3). Through the cross God signals that we must die and that we deserve nothing but death. The death of the cross is God's demand on us; it is God's valuation of us. We must answer this demand by being baptized. "We have been buried therefore with Him through baptism into His death" (v. 4). Only a dead person can be buried. Baptism is a kind of burial; it declares that we have died and that we deserve only to be buried in the grave. First Peter 3:21 says that baptism is "the appeal of a good conscience unto God." God has pronounced our death, and Christ included us in His death when He died on the cross. When we acknowledge this fact, we offer ourselves up to be baptized. Hence, baptism is our acknowledgement to God that we deserve to die and that we have indeed died in the death of Christ. Baptism is our answer before God of a good conscience. Baptism is not a formality of joining a religion. It is a reckoning, an acknowledgement, and an answer to God's valuation concerning us.
If we clearly see this, we will be delivered from the law. We know that we deserve only to die and that we are not qualified to please God with any of our work. As soon as we try to do anything to please God, we should consider what the Lord has done on the cross and realize that we have been freed from the law. We have been crucified with Christ. God has no intention that we do anything anymore. We are crucified already. This is God's valuation, and this is the stand we should take.
Yet many of us try to accomplish something by our flesh. We try to do something according to the power of the flesh in order to please God. But when God opens our eyes, we will see that no one except the Lord Himself can ever please God. "And those who are in the flesh cannot please God" (Rom. 8:8). If we had been able to do God's will, God would have kept us and not crucified us. Consider our experience. We have stumbled enough already. Why are we still walking according to our self? God has no further demand on us, yet we still have demands on ourselves! This was the experience of the man in Romans 7. He was trying to will by himself. The man in Romans 7 repeatedly tried to will by himself. The word "I" is repeated many times in this chapter; it shows us the root of the problem. If a man continually wills in himself, it shows that he has not yet been delivered from the law. Every time he fails, he wills again. This cycle will go on until one day he completely loses hope in himself. Then he will cry as Paul did, "Wretched man that I am!" (7:24). Only then will he experience deliverance.
God does not expect us not to sin. God gave the law in order for man to break it. In this way man is exposed and sin is made manifest. "I did not know sin except through the law" (7:7). If we realize that the law is not for us to keep and that we deserve only to die, we will see that the cross is our only stand. If we stand firmly on this position, Romans 6 will become our experience. As long as we are not delivered from the law, we are not delivered from sin. As soon as we are delivered from the law, we are delivered from sin.
It is futile for us to hope that we can be delivered from sin when we are not delivered from the law. We can only be delivered from sin when we stand on the ground of resurrection. If we are not delivered from the law, we have not died. Consequently, we cannot stand on the ground of resurrection. Romans 7:4 says, "So then, my brothers, you also have been made dead to the law through the body of Christ so that you might be joined to another, to Him who has been raised from the dead, that we might bear fruit to God." Whenever we give up hope in our old man, we accept the Lord's accomplished fact in Romans 6:6. Yet we often overturn the accomplished fact of the cross. The cross shows us that our old man has died, but we still walk according to the old man. This is denying the work of the Lord on the cross.
We are not here to deal with sin; we are here to deal with the law. When we die to the law, we die to sin as well. "Without the law sin is dead" (7:8). As soon as we are freed from the law, we are freed from sin. Yet we often bring back many matters which the cross has put to death. Many believers say, "I cannot imagine that I could still commit such a sin!" I would reply, "Is that so? Don't you realize that you can commit a greater sin than that?" As long as a man is in the flesh, he can commit any sin. No one can accomplish God's will in the flesh. Unless we stand on the ground of death and resurrection, we can never be freed from sin and can never accomplish God's will. Only those who have died to the law through the body of Christ can be "joined to another, to Him who has been raised from the dead, that we might bear fruit to God" (7:4).
Once I spoke with a man who was over seventy years old about the matter of deliverance from the law. He remarked that this was the most glorious fact in the whole world. I asked when he was delivered from the law, and he answered, "Fifty years ago." Then he went to say, "It is good to hear your preaching on the deliverance from the law and from sin today. The day that I saw I was delivered from the law, I was in the heavens. I struggled to please God for many years after I was saved. But the more I tried, the more I failed. I thought that God had the greatest demands in the whole universe, and I discovered that I could not meet even His slightest demand. One day when I was reading Romans 7, the light suddenly dawned. I saw that the Lord had not only delivered me from my sin but also had delivered me from the law. I jumped up in amazement and said, `Lord, is it true that You will no longer have any demand on me? If it is, I do not have to do anything for You any longer!'"
Philippians 2:13 says that "it is God who operates in you both the willing and the working for His good pleasure." The willing in this verse is different from the willing in Romans 7. This is not a willing that one struggles to achieve by gritting teeth. It is the result of the operation of God's power within us. Such a willing and working is spontaneous.
Dr. F. B. Meyer once said that when God has a demand, it does not matter whether or not we are willing; all that we have to do is ask God to make us willing. Once he prayed to the Lord, "God, I am not willing, but work in me until I am willing." A few days after he prayed, he became willing. On the wall of his house was a frame which read, "Lord, I am willing to be made willing."
One sister in Shanghai always ill-treated those in her house. She prayed that God would make her love others. The Lord's love touched her, and He operated in her to make her willing to love others. As a result she began to love others from her heart. This is not a kind of love that one can muster up with will-power; it is the result of the Lord's operation in a person, which expresses itself in a spontaneous love for others.
Believers must not only be willing in their conduct, but also willing in their mentality. In order for us to become willing in our conduct, we must first become willing in our mentality. Hence, we have to ask God to make our heart willing to do His will. Psalm 119:36 says, "Incline my heart to Your testimonies." Acts 16:14 says that the Lord opened the heart of Lydia the seller of purple-dyed goods so that she gave heed to the things being spoken by Paul. This is not a passive act; we are still responsible for our conduct. At the same time, however, the Holy Spirit has to bring a person's mentality to the point where it agrees to yield. Hence, our willing and working are not according to ourselves, but according to His operation. May the Lord operate in us to will and to work for the accomplishment of His will.
