Search
Scripture Reading: Romans 7:4, 15-19
Romans 7 is a very familiar chapter to us. Not only is it familiar to us in our reading, it is also familiar to us in our experience. We often read Romans 7 and often practice Romans 7. What the Lord wants me to speak on today is the way to be delivered from the demand of the law, that is, the way to be delivered from ourselves.
Before we speak on the subject of deliverance and the way to be delivered, I will first mention one qualification. What type of persons are qualified to speak about deliverance? Brothers and sisters, although God’s deliverance is for everyone, not everyone receives deliverance. Although it is possible for everyone to be delivered from the law, not everyone is actually delivered. The problem is absolutely not with God but with man, because man does not want to be delivered and has not paid the price for deliverance. The apostle who wrote Romans 7 was eventually delivered because he paid the price; he hated something and he willed to do something. The biggest problem that confronts us today is that we are not yet delivered. Yet I would like to ask if we have deeply hated the temper that we have not been able to overcome. Have we deeply hated the sin that causes us to fall and the things that stumble us all the time? Or are we willing to say that sinning is something common to all Christians and is, therefore, unavoidable? Do we sense a hatred for the unclean thoughts, the sinful deeds, the entangling temper, and the evil lusts; do we look for deliverance from them? The apostle not only speaks of deliverance in this chapter but also of his feeling before his deliverance. Before he was delivered, he hated what he repeatedly did. He did not practice what he willed, and he did what he hated. The first question is whether we love or hate the things that we are doing. The apostle experienced deliverance because he deeply hated and desperately sought for deliverance. He was so disgusted with his life of sin that he could no longer tolerate it; he felt that he could no longer go along with it. He hated it so much that he wished to die. He would not allow it to go on for a moment longer. He experienced the deliverance because he had such a determination.
Brothers and sisters, do you have such a hunger within? Have you ever said that you cannot continue to live a life that is bound and entangled with sin? Have you realized how loathsome such a living is? Brothers and sisters, the words which God commissioned me to speak this morning are only for those who desire deliverance and consider that the level of their Christian life is too low. My words are not for those who are self-satisfied and content with living in sin and failure. They are for those who seek deliverance and have not found the way. They are not for those who think it is all right to lose one’s temper, to be lustful, or have unclean thoughts. Neither are they for those who think that they only need to confess when they have failed and that everything will be all right as soon as God forgives their sins. The victory in Romans 7 is for those who experience the failures like those in Romans 7. Anyone who is not saved cannot experience this kind of deliverance. Only those who hate their present living and do not wish to continue with such a living can experience this victory. Those who live in failure and sin, not realizing that they have to reject these things, will never find God’s deliverance coming to them.
Every time a person wants to have spiritual growth in his life before God, he must first be dissatisfied with his present living. All growth begins from dissatisfaction. One must be pressed to such an extent that he feels he cannot go on anymore, that he has reached the end of himself, and that his living is unacceptable. He must consider that it is no longer acceptable to be bound by the self, the world, and sin; and it is no longer acceptable that what he wills, he does not do, and what he hates, he does. He has to recognize that such a contradictory life cannot go on and that there must be a way out. God will grant His deliverance only to those who are living under these conditions. Therefore, we have a great need before God to ask Him to give us the grace to not be content with our life of sin and failure. Every victory begins with a realization of our failure and wickedness. Everyone who desires deliverance must first be so pressed that he feels he cannot go on. Only then can he experience deliverance. I am merely telling the way; actual deliverance can only come from God. In other words, while I am giving the light, only God gives the revelation directly. Light cannot save; only revelation can save.
Romans 7 is a great chapter, and we cannot cover all of it today. We will only mention verse 4. In this verse, the first thing mentioned is: “So then, my brothers, you also have been made dead to the law.” In other words, we are dead to the law. Brothers, have we realized that we need to be delivered from the law? If I say that we should be delivered from sin, everybody understands because sin is loathsome, and it is right to be delivered from it. If I say that we should be delivered from the world, everyone also understands because the world has crucified our Lord and is indeed evil. If I say that we should be delivered from ourselves, everyone also understands because the flesh is something evil. If I say that we should be delivered from uncleanness or licentiousness, we can still understand. But if I say that we should be delivered from the law, some may say that they do not feel the need for such a deliverance. If the apostle says that we need to be delivered from the self, we say, “Amen.” If he says that we need to be delivered from the world or sin, we would again say, “Amen.” But when he says that we have been delivered from the law or that we are dead to the law, we do not know how to respond. We realize that what the apostle said cannot be wrong, but we do not understand why he said it. We understand deliverance from sin, from the self, and from the world. But we cannot understand the reason for deliverance from the law. Why did the apostle tell us that we are delivered from the law and that we are dead to the law? What does deliverance have to do with the law? It has a great deal to do with it. Deliverance from the law has a great deal to do with deliverance from the world, from sin, and from the self. Therefore, this is a very important matter.
Brothers and sisters, if we desire to experience deliverance, it is very important that we realize that God has no more hope in us. If we are seeking deliverance, we first need to understand ourselves and realize that we are hopeless. We have to clearly see how God evaluates us and how we evaluate ourselves. All of us belong to Christ; we are His. We may have been Christians for many years, but I am afraid that we have lived a life of failures and frequent stumblings and downfalls. But what happens after each failure? Almost everyone makes a resolution after a failure, saying to himself, “Next time I will do better and will not fail.” Every failure brings another heartache and self-condemnation, and the question is raised once more, “Why did I do this? Why did I fail again? I am a believer and should not be this way. This is too poor!” You become very disheartened. After you fail, as with almost everyone, there are two results. First, you resolve to do better the next time. Second, you feel sorry and sigh, looking back at what you have done and asking why you are so bad. This is what you do all the time. When you fail, you are heartbroken and ask, “How could I have fallen so low? I will never do anything like that again. Lord, deliver me from this!” Your experience is similar to that of Romans 7. Before one heartache goes away, another occasion for heartache comes. One resolution has not worked, but you still find yourself making a second resolution. This goes on time after time and things still do not improve. This is your situation. What is the reason for this? The reason is that you have not yet been delivered from the law, and have not yet seen what the law is, and what being delivered from the law is.
If you want to understand what it is to be delivered from the law, you must first understand the relationship that the law has with us. The law is God’s requirement on our flesh. The law is God telling us that we should or should not do something. It is what God says concerning what we ought and ought not to do. It is what God forbids or commands us to do. Therefore, the law is God’s requirement on us. In brief, the law is all the demands that God places on those who are in Adam and all the commands that God gives to those who are in Adam, commands that tell them what they should or should not do. (God does this to prove the corruption and the hopelessness of the flesh.) Not only can God put us under the law, but we, who are in Adam, can also put ourselves under the law, hoping that we can please God. We set up ordinances for ourselves to keep, saying, “I should not do this. I should not do that.” In addition to the commandments that God has given us, we have also given ourselves many other commandments which are just as severe as the ones God has given. Therefore, God puts His demands on us, and we also put demands on ourselves. This means that we still have a hope in the things of Adam, thinking that we can improve and striving to advance and overcome. Brothers and sisters, God has put us under the law, and at the same time we have put ourselves under the law.
What does it mean to be delivered from the law? It is to entirely lose hope in ourselves. Not only should we entirely lose hope in ourselves, but we should not hope at all. Do not hope for anything concerning ourselves any longer. This is the way to be delivered from the law. God allows us to sin day after day in order to make us realize that we are corrupt and unclean, and it is impossible to improve. We cannot overcome, and we cannot keep the law. There is no possibility for us to be helped; we are completely useless, and we are not improving. God wants us to realize that the reason He crucified us on the cross, which He did in Christ, is because we are corrupt beyond any hope. When we consider ourselves to be hopeless and realize that God considers us to be hopeless, we will only stand on the position God gives us. God says that we are corrupt to the core and hopeless. We need to say the same thing, that we are corrupt to the core and hopeless. All that we can do is sin. We do not cherish any hope about ourselves anymore. This is what it is to be delivered from the law. What a great deliverance this is! The unique way of deliverance is to consider ourselves as being hopeless.
The last time I was in Canada, I met a certain Mr. G. He was a good man and was also good in the gospel. God used him to save many sinners. Now he is old, over sixty years of age. One day we were walking on the street and talking, and we came to this topic. He said that this is the lesson we have to preach to others all the time. I asked him what he meant, and he began to tell me his history: “When I was a young believer, I was very zealous. I wanted to serve the Lord well, advance, and make myself good. But things always turned out the opposite way. The more I tried, the worse I became, and the more I realized that I could not make it. I was disappointed as well as bewildered. I found no solution. One day another brother said to me, ‘Mr. G., God never cherishes the hope that you cherish for yourself. You have so much hope for yourself, but God has no hope in you!’ I was very surprised and asked him what God had to say about me. He said, ‘God knows that you are powerless and that you cannot do anything. You are hopeless. This is why He crucified you on the cross. What you deserve is only crucifixion and nothing else.’ From that day on, the scales seemed to fall from my eyes. I saw that God has not required anything of me, and I saw that I could do nothing. This is why He crucified me on the cross. If that is the case, why do I still need to struggle?”
Brothers and sisters, in theory and in doctrine we know very well that the old Adamic life is irreparable and incurable. But the surprising thing is that in our experience, we still try to repair and improve it; we still cherish hope for the Adamic life. Many people say, “I am surprised that I still commit such a sin!” But I say that we should be surprised if we no longer committed such a sin! Is there any sin that we could not commit? We can commit any sin; the root of all sins is in us. God considers us hopeless and impossible to reform. This is why He crucified us on the cross. When the Lord died, we died also. God’s crucifixion of us on the cross is His evaluation of us. In effect, God is saying that we deserve only death and annihilation.
Brothers and sisters, how different is our evaluation of ourselves from God’s evaluation of us. We think that we are able to do something. We think that we can overcome, be holy, and make progress. But God does not cherish any such hope. All we are from head to toe is sin; we are absolutely useless. There is no way to save us except by the way of death. Without death, there can be no deliverance. We always think that there is still a chance for improvement and victory. But there is no such thing. Today we see the first fact, which is God’s evaluation of us, how much He thinks we are worth. Brothers and sisters, the ones who see this are blessed before others. Countless numbers of Christians have experienced repeated stumblings, defilements, failures, disappointments, and journeys of hopelessness before they see that God has absolutely no hope in them. The sooner we see this fact, the better it will be for us, because this is the starting point of all deliverance. All genuine release of life begins here. We should see that we deserve nothing but death. The sooner we see this, the faster we will grow. The whole problem hinges on how we view the old Adamic life. We know and have mentioned this over a hundred times: the old Adamic life is irreparable and unalterable. But how many of us have really seen that we deserve to die? How many have seen that there is not another way besides death? Understanding the doctrine is one thing, knowing and seeing is another. Doctrines can only make us understand something in the mind, but seeing requires revelation in our spirit. All the things which do not come from God’s revelation and from our seeing are the things that do not count; they are not effective at all.
The meaning of being delivered from the law is to be delivered from God’s demands. This means that we have ceased all hope of pleasing God; this comes as a result of understanding the Adamic life and the work of Christ. We no longer hope to do anything to please God. As long as we still hope to please God by our own effort, we are not yet delivered from the law, and we will not be able to avoid heartaches and disappointments. The only way not to be disappointed is for us to know that God has no more hope in us.
We have seen that, first, we need to be delivered from the law. But how can we be delivered from the law? The only way is death. Death can deliver us from the law because as long as we live, the law will have a demand on us. A living person is not supposed to break the law because the law will punish him. This is what the apostle said, that as long as the husband lives, the law puts its demands on the wife. However, if he dies, the power of the law will not reach her and will not make demands on her. Therefore, to be delivered from the demand of the law, there is no way except by death. As long as we live, the law will continue to put its demand on us.
For now, I will not speak of how God’s law puts its demand on us; I will only speak of how we make demands on ourselves by our own enacted law. When do we do this? If we get up late today, we resolve to get up early tomorrow. We make resolutions to overcome when we are very defiled, when we struggle day and night with sin, when we are in the turbulent current of the world, and when we feel that our life is very wrong. We think that we can make it, that we are able to make it, and that we will make it. In this way, we consider ourselves still to be alive. But by doing this, we will not see the clear work of Christ in us. If we truly know God, we will realize that He has completely given up hope in us. This is why He had no other option than to crucify us on the cross. If we really see that we are only worthy of death, all our resolutions will be gone. I can speak the same thing for myself. Many times I resolved that I would never do such and such a thing again. But afterward, I asked myself again, “Are you not worthy of death? If you are, why do you still make resolutions?” Therefore, we must see that the way to overcome is not by making resolutions but by standing on the ground where God has placed us. We should not cherish the hope that the next time will be better. Instead, we only stand on the ground where God has put us. We should not make resolutions anymore, nor should we hope to advance. We should no longer struggle to overcome because we know that all these are the works of the old Adamic life. We have to put them in the place of death and ignore them. If we are truly standing in the place of death, we will overcome and experience deliverance from all these things. Therefore, death is our only way; it is the unique way of salvation. The world, sin, the self — nothing is able to touch a dead person. If we consider all these things as dead, they will not touch us anymore.
Now we will go one step further to consider how we have died. Verse 4 says, “So then, my brothers, you also have been made dead to the law through the body of Christ.” From this we see that our death is “through the body of Christ.” In the same way that Christ died, we died. The time that Christ died is the time that we died. Christ has died, and we have died too. This is not a spiritual suicide, in which we artificially consider ourselves to be dead. Nor is it a repeated declaration to ourselves that we are dead, in an effort to signal to ourselves that we are dead. Rather, when we see Christ’s accomplished fact on the cross and realize that God has included us in this death of Christ, we are led to the inevitable conclusion that we have died. There are two spiritual experiences in this world which are most amazing. The first is seeing God’s plan, that is, what God has planned for us and what God thinks we should do. For example, He has judged that we are dead. The second is to see what God has done in Christ for us. These two things are very wonderful. We see what God has ordained for us, we see how we have become one with Christ, and we see how, in Him, we can receive all that He has accomplished. When Jesus Christ was crucified on the cross, we were included in His death because God has included us in Him. When His body was broken, we were broken as well. His crucifixion is our crucifixion. Therefore, we and Christ are one. This is why we pay attention to the matter of baptism. Many people say that baptism is only an outward ritual and not important. No, it is altogether a testimony of something inward. We believe that when Christ died, we also died. The first thing after a death is burial and this is why we bury ourselves in the water of baptism. If we do not believe that we are dead, we would not be buried. The fact that we are willing to be buried means that we believe we are dead. Therefore, baptism is to believe that Christ has died and that we also have died. This is why we bury ourselves. The burial is a proof that we are dead. Christ has been crucified. When He was crucified on the cross, we were included in Him. When the veil was rent, the cherubim were rent as well. The veil was rent from top to bottom; it was God who rent it from top to bottom. At the same time, the cherubim were also rent by God from top to bottom because the cherubim were sewn on the veil. We know that the veil is the body of Christ, while the cherubim are God’s creatures. Therefore, when Christ died, all of God’s creation died. This is what it means to be dead to the law through the body of Christ.
The way of deliverance is not to deliberately reckon ourselves dead. Those who have been preaching the doctrine of reckoning themselves dead are preaching the wrong teaching. What is the right teaching? The right teaching is to reckon ourselves dead in Christ. We do not die in ourselves; rather, we die through the body of Christ. Christ died, and since we are joined to Him, we also died. The secret to victory is never to look at ourselves apart from Christ and never to consider the self that is outside of Christ. This is what the Lord meant in John 15 when He said that we should abide in Him. It means that we should never look at ourselves apart from Christ. What is outside is still very uncomely and cannot be improved. If we want to look at ourselves, we can only look at ourselves in Christ. Once we look at the self outside of Christ, we will immediately fail. Many times we forget the facts that Christ has accomplished. We become angry and frustrated at ourselves and ask why we are the way we are. We continue to fail, fall, and suffer disappointment with a resulting loss of heart. Please remember that these are the things that a person does outside of Christ. Today, in Christ, I have died to the law. If anyone has not received this deliverance and freedom, I would invite you to look at yourself only in Christ. In Christ, God has crucified us because He has judged us irreparable. There is no way to save us except by death. Therefore, God has judged us to be dead, and He has crucified us together in Christ. We are therefore free and delivered from the demands of the law. There are two facts here which we have to absolutely stand on. The first is that God has considered us absolutely hopeless. Only death can deliver us from the law. The second is that in Christ God has crucified us on the cross. The first has to do with God’s plan, while the second has to do with God’s work. The first is what God has destined, while the second is what God has accomplished. God knows that there is no other way of salvation except through death. We have been broken into pieces, and there is no way for us to become whole again. Herein lies the basis of our redemption — the cross. For this reason, in our daily life we should accept this fact all the time so that we can be delivered from the law. If we stand on this ground, we will not find obstructions. Of course, we should confess and ask God for forgiveness when we fail. But we do not need to look back, because all the failures and degradations come from the old Adamic life. In man’s eyes, there is nothing better than to ask the Lord to give us the strength not to do the same thing again. But in God’s eyes, this is redundant, because if we have died in Christ, there is no need to make any more resolutions. We have died; our history is over and all our ideas and decisions are also over. Man always thinks that making resolutions is a good thing. But these are like reeds; they cannot fight the enemy, and they are absolutely useless before God.
What we have seen thus far is that God has crucified us with Christ. This alone, however, is not enough; there needs to be something more. It is that we “might be joined to another, to Him who has been raised from the dead, that we might bear fruit to God.” Not only do we need a deliverance on the negative side, we also need a joining on the positive side. Without this, our work is still in vain. For this reason, God has not only crucified us on the negative side but has also joined us, who have been delivered from the law, to the resurrected Christ. Therefore, on the one side there is an exit, and on the other side there is an entrance. On the one side there is the severance, and on the other side there is the union. On the one side we are delivered from the law, and on the other side we are joined to Christ and belong to Christ. This is the resurrection that we have been speaking about. Furthermore, this is not something individual; resurrection brings all the sons into glory. John 12:24 says, “Unless the grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it abides alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” Originally there was only one life. Now this life has entered into many seeds. Originally there was only one organism. Now it has become many organisms. Originally there was only one grain of wheat. Now this grain of wheat has become many grains of wheat. In the same way, when Christ died, He dispensed His life to all the believers. In Christ, there are also two facts. The first is that we have been included in the death of Christ. When Christ died, we also died. The second is that we were resurrected with Christ. God has dispensed His life to us. This is something that every regenerated person shares in common and possesses. I do not wish to say much about this; my emphasis is on the first fact.
We who are resurrected in Christ ought to bear fruit to glorify God. God has given us the life of Christ. By this we can live out His life. The one grain that was planted is exactly the same as the thirty, sixty, or hundred grains that will spring forth. If we plant barley, surely what will come out will not be wheat or cucumber. What is planted will be the same as what grows up; there will not be a change. If what is planted is wheat, surely wheat will grow up. How then can we live a life similar to Christ’s life, a life that bears fruit to glorify God? There is only one way; we must allow Christ to be lived out of us and allow Him to live. Christ has not only died for us on the cross but also lives for us within us. How can we live a life of Christ? The only way this could be done is for Christ to give His life to us. Therefore, we must have the life of Christ before we can bear fruit to glorify God.
Today I have presented to you these things before God. May we see that God has given up hope in us and considers us incurable. Although we think that there is hope and strength in us, God has given up hope in us. He has crucified us on the cross. Whenever we are outside of Christ and feel that we are still alive and able, we will immediately fall. Therefore, we can only see ourselves in Christ. When we are in Christ, there are only two facts: we have died and we have resurrected. The resurrected part is in Christ. Therefore, God wants us to live by His life. At the same time, everything that is in Adam has died. If we lay hold of this fact, we are dead to the law. Please remember that we are not only dead to the world, the self, and sin; we are also dead to the law. In this way, we will no longer have any hope for ourselves but will stand firmly in the position where God has placed us.
