- Overcomer Literature Trust
- Swindon
- Wiltshire
The Reality of the Identification Union.
We have seen clearly that we can only apprehend our union with Christ in His death at Calvary by the revelation and co-working operation of the Holy Spirit. Now let us see how He works in co-operating power. Romans 6v5 gives this in a few brief words. ‘If we have been planted together in the likeness of His death’. This means something more than the ‘likeness’ of passing beneath water, and out in a few brief moments. To be ‘planted’ into the ‘likeness of His death’ carries in the words a mystical union brought about by the Spirit of God. J.N.Darby’s footnote to this verse says that ‘planted’ is not the clearest expression of the meaning of the original. He says it means literally ‘grown up with’ and ‘so thoroughly one'. The believer, by some operation of the Spirit, is to become ‘thoroughly one’ with the death of Christ, so that, as it were, ‘planted’ into it, he ‘grows up’ in its pattern or likeness.
The fact of verse 2, ‘we that are dead’, is opened out into fuller explanation of its meaning in verse 5. The purpose of God is manifestly that the believer is to be so conformed to the death of Christ that the life of Christ in him will grow up into the pattern of the Lamb-hood nature of Christ.
Like the grain of wheat which falls into the ground to die to bring forth much fruit, the believer is in some mystical way to be united with the First Grain of wheat in such a way, that through him also life will produce fruit(John 12v24).
Conybeare’s rendering of verse 5 is even more striking. It runs, ‘If we have been grafted into the likeness of His death’. The footnote adds, ‘Literally have become partakers of a vital union as that of a graft with the tree into which it is grafted’.
Such a ‘grafting’ can only be done by the Holy Spirit. In both cases the ‘growing up together’ so as to become ‘thoroughly one’ and the being grafted into His death, has the same objective. The identification union with Christ in His death must be made a fact in experience as well as a fact to be apprehended faith in the Word of God.
This is the sum of the whole matter at this stage. From the moment you are ‘planted’ into the death of Christ, so that you grow up into Christ in His death, so that you grow up into Christ in His likeness, for the rest of your life ‘His death’ lies at the root of your entire Christian Life. ‘If we have been grafted’, a graft is put into a tree to become one with the tree, with the intention that there shall be ONE LIFE flowing through both. Have you fully apprehended the fact of your identification with Christ at the moment that He died, so that you have become a partaker of a vital union as that of a graft with the tree into which it is grafted?
The Death Identification Applied.
Now we turn to the second, or subjective, aspect of the death of Christ in its practical application to the ‘flesh’ or Adamic life of nature in the redeemed believer. Read Romans 7v4 ‘Ye are also become dead . . . by the body of Christ . . . for when we were in the flesh the motions of sins . . . did work in our members’.
The Greek word ‘dead’ in this passage is different to all the others quoted in Romans 6v2, 7 & 8; Colossians 3v3. It is ‘thanatoo’, not ‘apothenesko’. The Lexicon says that ‘thanatoo’ means to ‘take away the vital principle’, to ‘cause to be put to death’. It is the word used in Romans 8v13, ‘though the Spirit ‘mortify’, or make to die the deeds of the body’. Here we have very clearly the subjective outworking, or application in detail to the life of the flesh, of the identification fact which the believer has already apprehended, and had made real to him in the power of the Spirit. ‘Planted into the likeness of His death’, ‘grafted’ into his place in identification-union with Christ, so that the dynamic force of His death has full power of action, the believer has now to have this applied to the ‘doings of the body’, the possible ‘motions of sins’ in his ‘members’, which have perpetually to be reckoned with as requiring the keen watchful ‘making to die’, if the identification-union with Christ is to progress into a life of full conformity to Christ.
To realize the need of this continuous application of Christ’s death in ‘making to die’ the deeds of the body, we must first get a clear sight of what the Scriptures teach about ‘flesh’ and ‘spirit’, and the way in which the ‘flesh’ has to be dealt with so that the Spirit may rule, for unless we are able to recognize the ‘flesh’ when it seeks to break in, and know how to at once deal with it, the power of the central identification will be nullified. For it must be emphasized that, however deeply we may be ‘planted’ into the death of Christ in the innermost of our being, there always will exist the necessity of watchfulness against the ‘motions of sin’ in our members breaking out into action in some degree.
But first as to what Paul says about the ‘flesh’. By it he means the entire Adamic nature in the which we are born (John 3v6; Ephesians 2v3; Colossians 2v13). What the ‘flesh’ is God-ward we see in Romans 8v7 &8. It is in its essence ‘enmity against God’, and ‘cannot please God’. What the ‘flesh’ is manward we find summarized in Galatians 5v19-21. ‘The works of the flesh are manifest’. In these few verses you have grouped a vivid picture of the various phases of its workings. 1. In gross physical sins; 2. In evil dispositions, of hatred, variance, emulations, wrath and strife; 3. In religious forms of intrigues, divisions, sectarian parties; 4. In evil supernatural fellowship with Satan in idolatry and witchcraft; 5. In self-indulgence, in drunkenness and revellings. All these ‘works’ are easily recognized, and most believers imagine they are wholly free from ‘walking after the flesh’ because they think only of ‘flesh’ as meaning the various phases of its characteristics as given here. They do not realize that the ‘flesh’ means ‘flesh’ even when it works in a more refined form. What about variance, emulations, strife, divisions and sectarian parties, as included in the list of more fleshly sins? And they do not realize that they can ‘walk after the flesh’ at any moment unless they are walking after the Spirit, ‘making to die’ the ‘deeds of the body’ so as to be truly led by the Spirit as sons of God.
To see this clearly we must go back again to Romans 7v5, ‘When we were in the flesh’, said Paul, ‘the motions of sin did work in our members’. And they always will work at any stage of the believer’s life directly he ceases to ‘walk after the Spirit’, with the Adamic nature under the radio-active power of Christ’s death.
The whole of Romans 7 after verse 5 is an inspired picture of the actual condition of the believer as he is in himself, and as he will always be in himself directly he ceases to walk in the Spirit at any moment. Some think that Romans 7 lies between chapters 6 and 8 as a sort of passage between, and that when the believer emerges into Romans 8, Romans 7 becomes past history, but Dr. Andrew Murray says that Romans 7 and Romans 8 may be described as being simultaneous states, either of which the believer walks after according to his choice. This appears to be correct, from Paul’s concluding words in verse 25, ‘So then, with the mind, I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin’. That is, the ‘flesh’ is the flesh, all the way along, and although we may not and need not ‘walk’ or ‘live’ ‘after the flesh’, the ‘deeds of the body’ will always have to be ‘made to die’, if we are always to be ‘led of the Spirit’, and be kept free from coming under the power of the law of sin and death.
The apprehension of this solemn fact is of the most vital importance at the present hour, for among many who are pressing on into the knowledge of the life in the heavenlies there is the danger of assuming they are beyond the possibility of the inroads of the ‘flesh’, especially if they are seeking to know the life of Jesus manifested in their mortal bodies. They speak of being ‘new creations in Chris’, and they are, but we have not yet ‘new creation’ bodies. Our present bodies of humiliation await the advent of the Lord from heaven before they are conformed to the body of His glory. A grave danger at the present moment is the premature appropriation of truth, a stretching beyond ‘that which is written’(1Corinthians 4v6), for if the devil cannot get a believer down into the manifest ‘flesh’, he just gives him a push into a spirit-sphere where he gets out of focus with the central base of the Cross, and into a hyper spirituality which eventually means a spiritualised ‘flesh’. Error, it has been said, is just truth pushed a shade too far, and thus thrown out of perspective with other truth that makes up a balanced and symmetrical whole. We may also be sure that under cover of this the ‘flesh’ will begin to work in some insidious form unheeded and unrecognized.
Now as to the practical application of the death of Christ, and how it has to be done. Again let us turn to Romans 8v13, in conjunction with Romans 7v4, because in these two passages the same Greek word is used. We have seen clearly that when the identification fact is definitely appropriated there is always the practical dealing with the ‘body’ and its ‘members’ to follow.
In Romans 8v13, we are told that we have to ‘make to die’ the ‘deeds of the body’, but it is ‘by the Spirit’. What does this mean? Just this, the believer ‘makes to die’ the ‘doings’ of his body by reliance upon the Holy Spirit as he appropriates his death with Christ. ‘Ye are become dead’ writes Paul. He already is ‘dead’ by identification-union, he now reckons that he is ‘dead’ to the ‘motions of sins in his members’, as he finds them arise. ‘The Cross of Christ’, wrote the late C.A.Fork, ‘is the Divine laboratory where the flesh is cauterized, and put to death. Mortify your members accordingly, which are upon the earth by applying instantly the burning caustic of the Cross to ever tempting appetite before it can rise.’
This language is wondrously like Dr. Mabie’s words of the death of Christ being ‘radio active’. Yes, this is the blessed fact we need to understand. The death of Christ has in it dynamic power. The entire Adamic nature, described as ‘flesh’, always ready to break out in the ‘motions of sins’ in our members, must be deprived of its power by the application of the ‘caustic’, or radio-action, of that death which was more than a human death. Then, blessed be God, as the ‘caustic’ is applied by the Holy Spirit, the life of God inherent in that breath will rise in quickening power, enabling the believer to walk in victory. For it was only He who was ‘God manifest in the flesh’ that could go down into death, and rise out of it, bringing with Him all those who, in the potential purpose of God, died in Him, and now, baptized into that death, realize in Him a continual experience of newness of life to His glory.
‘Give therefore unto death your earthly members’, O child of God, and set your heart on things above, ‘for ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.’(Colossians 3v3, 5).