The Gospel Mold

Romans vi. 17

There is a remarkable difference between the Old and New Versions in the rendering of these words. The Old puts them thus:

“But God be thanked, that ye were the servants of sin, but ye have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine which was delivered you.”

The New is as follows:

“But thanks be to God, that, whereas ye were bond-servants of sin, ye became obedient from the heart to that pattern of teaching whereunto ye were delivered.”

The idea is borrowed from the smelting-furnace, wherein the metal is brought to a fluid state, so that it can take on the shape of the mold into which it may be poured. Below there in the earth the mold or matrix lies prepared, the reverse of the design. At a given signal the contents of the furnace are discharged, and obey the form of the pattern which awaits them. Some time elapses, during which the metal cools. Then the mold is destroyed, but the pattern remains fixed forever on the substance that yielded itself to its shape.

This process furnishes the apostle with a wonderful illustration of the effect produced upon his converts by his teaching. They had been the bond-slaves of sin, presenting their members to uncleanness, and to iniquity unto iniquity, having no fruit to show for years, which as they reviewed them gave them nothing but regret, and for which no compensation was possible, because the wages were death; and yet these people had become saints, walking with God in purity and righteousness all their days, because their hearts, melted in penitence and contrition, had willingly assumed the shape of his teaching and so had become conformed to the image of the Son of God. If we were to obey from our hearts that same type of teaching, might it not bring about in us a similar transformation?

Of course we must distinguish between the design or image to which we are to be conformed, and its mold or type in the apostolic teaching. If you go into some great foundry, you will not be able to discern the exquisite beauty of the designs in the molds, because these are hidden in the darkness of the ground; you must be conducted to the show-room and see the finished design, to produce which the mold has been prepared. Similarly the perfect beauty of the likeness of our Lord, to which we are one day to be conformed, is beheld only by those whose eyes are purged from all earthly influences and behold Him as He is. The mold of the apostolic teaching is all that we now behold; but if we reverently and heartily accept and yield to it, we shall some day awake in the perfect likeness of our Lord, and shall be satisfied. Let us comfort ourselves with this assurance. As He is, so we shall be. Can you not image the reluctance and questioning of the metal, when first it leaves the heart of the furnace and begins to pour along its appointed channel toward its destination? How cold it is! how dark, how perplexing! And when the mold is entered, and the dividing streams part company to take their several ways into the dark and subterranean passages, how regretfully they must regard their happy past! how they must wonder what is happening! how prone they must be to murmur at their exclusion from light and air! But if they refuse to take on the prepared pattern they will only expose themselves to added pain, because broken up with ruthless hammers, plunged again into the furnace, and compelled to retrace their way. Better far to obey immediately and gladly the pattern to which they have been delivered. When that is achieved, and the mold is broken, and the finished work is brought to light, the metal will be satisfied. The founder also will rejoice with exceeding joy.

There is a great prejudice against doctrinal preaching in these degenerate days, wherein men seek the attractive edifice, with little regard to foundationlaying. But the apostle lays great stress on doctrine, and says that it is as essential to Christlikeness as the mold is to the fashioning of metal into the predestined design. Doctrine is to the words of Scripture what those great generalizations which we know as laws are to the facts of nature. The comet obeys the attraction of the sun, the apple falls to the ground, the grain of dust follows a certain curve in its drift through the air, and men class them together under the great common law of gravitation; similarly we find in Scripture different declarations about God that may be classed under certain majestic common statements, and we call those statements doctrine. Doctrines, therefore, are the laws of the spiritual realm, gathered from a comparison of many scattered texts; and as we ponder them reverently and prayerfully we are thinking over again the deep thoughts of God. In meditation and obedience we surrender ourselves to them, or, in the words of the apostle, we are “delivered” unto them; and as we obey them from the heart we take on their shape, which is the image of Jesus Christ.

We may well ask, What is that form of teaching, and those doctrines, to which the apostle specially refers? Some of them are as follows:

I. The doctrine of oneness

WITH JESUS. Directly we believe, we are in Him as He is in us. We are joined to the Lord and are one spirit; we are members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones. This is not only a matter of present personal experience, but we learn that it is the realization of a divine conception and purpose. We were, indeed, chosen in Him before the worlds were made. We suddenly awake to the fact of our union with Jesus, but that union was present to the mind of God in the distant ages of the past.

The Holy Spirit, in the Epistle to the Hebrews, founds an argument on the fact of Levi being in Abraham when the latter paid tithes to Melchizedek and was blessed by him. Since the less is blessed by the greater, he argues, the Levitical priesthood was clearly inferior to that of Melchizedek, on the model of which Christ’s was constituted. Thus we may be said to have done in Jesus what Jesus did as our representative and High Priest. We are and we were in Him that is true. We died in Him, rose with Him, ascended when He left Olivet beneath His feet, and sat down with Him when He took His seat at the right hand of the throne of God.

II. The doctrine of imputed RIGHTEOUSNESS. Men sneer at it, but it is unquestionably an integral part of the apostle’s teaching, especially in chapters iii. and iv. of this epistle. More than once we are told that, as righteousness was reckoned to Abraham because he believed, so it is reckoned to all that believe in Him who was delivered for our offenses and raised again for our justification. It were easier to take the sun out of the heavens than to take the doctrine of reckoned righteousness out of the epistles of the New Testament.

There are two railway lines to the Crystal Palace — the Low and the High Level. If you travel by the one you must climb numberless stairs before you reach the palace, but with the other you have only to pass easily across the road. The first illustrates the efforts of men to obtain a righteousness of their own; the second, God’s method of justification. He not only forgives us, but by the act of His grace puts us on the level of the righteousness of Christ — His obedience unto death, His resolute conformity to the Father’s will — and bids us live on that level by the power of the Holy Spirit.

III. The doctrine of emancipation FROM THE CURSE OF A BROKEN LAW. “Sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not under law, but under grace.” We are under law when we have transgressed law. Adam was under the law when he had taken the fruit, and Joseph’s brethren when his words aroused their consciences and made them remember their sin, which lay half hidden under the dead leaves of the years. The murderer is under the law when, fleeing from justice, he trembles at each snapping twig. So long as our sins are unconf essed, and faith is not exercised for the transference of their burden to Jesus, we are under law. But so soon as we believe, we enter upon the privileges of that union with Jesus which we described above. We see that in Him we have met the deserved penalty of a broken law; that in Him we have exhausted the curse which was due to us; that in Him we have met the demand that the sinner should die. The law has had all it can ask.

and is satisfied; we are no longer under its thrall or power; we have passed into the realm where God’s grace is supreme.

IV. The doctrine of identification with Christ in resurrection. He “raised us up together,” “that like as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness of life.” In the story of the deluge, the ark bore Noah and his family from the old world, where corruption and sin had reigned, to the new world of resurrection and life as it emerged from its watery grave; even so the Lord Jesus, the true ark of safety, has borne us, through His death and resurrection, into the world of life. It is on this thought that the apostle bases the appeal, “If then ye were raised together with Christ, seek the things that are above.”

This is the beginning of sanctification:

to feel that in Jesus we no longer belong to the world that cast out and crucified Him, but to that in which He reigns forevermore; to know that His cross and grave stand between us and the past; to realize the power of His resurrection in its daily detachment from sin and attachment to God. V. The doctrine of Christ’s

ABSOLUTE OWNERSHIP. It was not

enough that Christ should deliver us from the condemnation and penalty of sin; He has also redeemed us to Himself, to be a people for His own possession, so that we should become His bond-servants and slaves. Ah, what a claim is this, that He should be able to put His hand on each of our members and say, “This is Mine; I purchased it for Myself, and to use it at any prompting but Mine is sacrilege.”

You cannot overcome sin by a negation; you must have something positive with which to combat its solicitations. Sin asks that our members should be presented to it as weapons for its unholy use, but it cannot produce a single sufficient argument or ground for its claims. Then Christ comes and claims that we should place our members at His disposal, and produces the Father’s warrant that all His blood-bought ones should be considered His in a unique and special sense: “Thine they were, and Thou gavest them Me.” As He produces this warrant, there is no excuse for dallying or delay; we gladly present our members as servants to righteousness unto sanctification, and in doing so we find the best and all-sufficient answer to the eager biddings of the flesh:” We are Thine, O blessed Redeemer; Thou only hast a right to us, for Thou hast redeemed us to God by Thy blood. Other lords besides Thee have had dominion over us, but henceforth by Thee only will we make mention of Thy name.” Such are some of the doctrines included in that gospel teaching into which, as into a mold, the apostle wished his converts to be delivered. Let us meditate on them till they become the habitual furniture of our souls; let us ask the Holy Spirit to work through them with living energy, making them operative and mighty in our daily experience; let us dare to take our stand upon them as certain facts and realities: then, like these converts at Rome, we shall find ourselves freed from sin, and, being emancipated from its intolerable thraldom, we shall become the happy servants of God, having our fruit unto sanctification, and the end everlasting life.