The Believer Crucified with Christ

I am crucified with Christ; nevertheless I live.

IT is a peculiar delight that our apostle takes in exalting the gospel of Christ above the law of works, and in raising the life and the privileges of a Christian, above the life of a heathen or a Jew, or above any other character or profession amongst men. He divests himself of all former characters, and abandons all other principles of life, that he

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may put on the christian, and derive a better life from Jesus the Son of God by faith in his name; and this he does not only in his own person, but as sharing in the common principles of Christianity: this does not belong only to himself, but to all the saints of the Lord, as very clearly appears in other parts of this epistle, and also in other epistles that this apostle has written, though he expresses it here in his own name. I shall accordingly draw the two following propositions from the two sentences of my text, and endeavour to improve them:

Prop. I. Every true christian has communion with Christ in his death; / am cmcified with Christ,

Prop. II, Every believer lives a different life from what he himself has heretofore lived, or from what other persons are acquainted with. Though lam crucified, y&t Hive, I am dead to that life which I once lived in the iiesh; and it is quite in another way and manner, and from other principles,

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that I now live, and act. and perform the several duties of mv station.

I apply myself to the first proposition.

I. Every true christian has communion with Christ in his death, and may be said to be crucified with Christ; and that, in these four respects;

1. Every time christian is dead to the world by his interest in the death of Christ; dead to all the troubles, and to all the delights of this present state, as the apostle expresses it: God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by v:hom the tcorld is crucified unto me, and I unto the ivorld.^ He and the world had nothing to do with each other; like two dead things they had no influence upon one another. He was dead to the riches, and to the poverty of the world. Riches do not puff up the christian, when he acts according to the * Gal. iv. ±ii.

E principles of his new life nor does poverty oveiwlielm or sink his spirits; he knows with the apostle how to abound and hoic to be ahasedf and is still the same: he says to honours, and riches and reproaches in the world, ‘’ What are these things to him “who has learned to taste and value the “praise of God, and the honour he expects “among the holy angels?” He is so far dead to the relations and dearest comforts of life, that they do not draw him away from the consideration of his last end, nor from his close walking with God in the Redeemer; he knows them no more after the flesh; as the apostle speaks of the Jews, and of Jesus Christ himself ast)ne of the Jews; Henceforth know we no man after thefiesh; yea though ice have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no more. “^ I have no respect for him as heing of my nation and the seed of Israel, but as the common Saviour of mankind, and as such I live in and by him. *2 Cor. V. 16.

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He is weaned from life itself; I protest by your rejoicing ichicli I have in Christ Jesus our Lord, I die daily :^ that is I put myself daily in a readiness to die; I set myself daily upon the borders of the grave; I expose myself in my thoughts before- hand unto death: I am ready to pass that important hour whenever my Redeemer appoints me; I am ready to lie as one that has quitted all pretences to this life, and is ready to part with all the possessions of it. and this through the influence of the death of Christ. The death of Christ has been the price ov purchase of this grace that mortifies a christian thus to the world; he has bought the influence of the divine Spirit of the Father, by which influence a christian becomes a new creature, and is mortified to every thing that before had power over him.

Christ’s death is also the pattern of a believer’s crucifixion to the world. Our Lord Jesus Christ, young as he was, in the full vigour of life and in a capacity for the en- * iCor. XV. 31,

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Joyment of all the delights of sense, left the world. The death of Christ speaks this in the ear and heart of every believer, “The *’• world is not worth living in.” The death of Christ, and his abandoning the world so ^oon, have poured abundance of contempt upon the inanaer of living in this world. The life of Christ in the world, in poverty, in the form of a servant, has poured scorn upon all the grandeur, riches, and honours of it. The King of heaven, when he dwelt here upon earth, did not think them worth taking. The manner of his death and burial has poured contempt upon every thing that is magnificent in death; upon all the pomp of funerals, and the honours of the grave. He hung upon the cross, and submitted to death ill the most dishonourable way, by dying like a malefactor or a slave; his body was begged and conveyed away to a private sepulchre, in a garden, though he might have had the attendance of mourning angels, and all the show of heaven waiting at his funeral. All this was appointed to humble the pride of man to make us see that there is nothing in all the vanities of life desirable. Our Head has despised them all.

3. A believer is not only dead to this world, but he is dead in an especial manner to sin, by the death of Christ. Sin is mortified in him by the crucifixion of his Lord; sin received its death wound upon the cross of our Redeemer. The apostle speaks of this at large in his epistle to the Romans; ICnoimng this, that our old man is crucified with him; that is, the principle of sin within us, the corrupt nature that we brought into the world with us; that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin, for he that is dead is freed from sin. Likewise reclcon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin,^ Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof Did Jesus Christ undergo a painful and shameful death, that sin might die, and: shall a christian revive it? Did our hovd- * Rom. vi. 6, 7, 14, 12, E S

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Jesus Christ nail sin to his cross, and shall we subdue ourselves to the power of it, when our Lord has subdued its power? Sinful pleasures can have no allurements to a christian, for they are all nailed to the cross of Christ.

The death of Christ has slain sin, and the christian will not suffer an enemy so conquered and so trampled upon to overcome him. This is the language of the ehristiau life, this is the spirit and the temper of the christian nature; but too often the believer sinks beneath it.

3. A believer is dead to the law of works, by the death of Christ; he is free from the rigour and curses of the law, by his union to Christ in his death; Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the laic being made a curse for us,^

A believer is dead to the law as a cove-Bant of works, and the law is dead to him ;^

*Gal. iii. IS.

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for considered as sach, it can neither hurt nor help him nor does he either fear or hope for any thing from it. Christ, our surety and our representative was crucified, sustained the accursed death, and thereby fulfilled the law, so that it has no more to say to Christ; and if we are one with him, it has no more to say to us, it cannot condemn us. The apostle, in his epistle to the Romans, not only shews that it cannot condemn us, but he shews that it has not power in us or over us, to irritate and provoke sin, as formerly it had; Wherefore my brethren, ye also are become dead to the law, by the body of Christ. When we were in the flesh, the motions of sin that were by the law, that is, that took occasion to raise up in opposition to the commands of God, and the law of God, did work in our members to bring forth fruit unto death. But now we are delivered from the law, that being dead wherein we were held; that is, the covenant of works being dead, being finished by our Lord Jesus Christ,

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our great representative that suffered for us, we may now serve him in newness of spirit, under the principles of a divine life, and not in the oldness of the letter,^ by the constraint and terrors of the law, as I shall afterwards shew you.

4. A believer is dead to the Jewish dispensation of the gospel, and to all yokes and tokens of bondage, by the death of Christ. For the Jews had the gospel preached to them as well as we, but under darkness, and clouds, and figures, and many ceremonies, whereby the glory of it was obscured, and the liberty and beauty, and light of it were mingled with much bondage and terror; but oar Lord Jesus has cancelled all these forms of things by his death, and has freed believers from them; Wherefore if ye be dead imth Christy says the apostle, from the rudiments of the world by which he has a peculiar regard to the Jewish ceremonies; why as though living in the

* Rom. vii, 4-, 5, 6.

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world, are ye subject to ordinances now / fov our Lord Jesus Christ blotted out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, contrary to us, that shewed us our §uilt, and did not give us effectual relief; he took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross; which was but a shadow of things to come:^ but our Lord Jesus has removed the shadow. The believer, by his communion with Christ, is dead to the ceremonies of God’s own invention, and by the death of Christ he is released from all that bondage; he will not, there fore, make yokes of his own to cast upon his own neck, nor will he impose new yokes upon the necks of his brethren. The bondage and yokes are all broken, and the chains and slavery are all abolished by the death of Christ. He stands fast in the liberty wherewith the death of Christ has made him free.

Thus have I shewn you very briefly in what sense a believer is crucified together with Christ; he is dead to the world, he is * Col. ii. 14, &c.

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dead to sin, he is dead to the law, he is dead to all the yokes of bondage and ceremonious worship; and all this in and hj a dying Saviour, his union to him, and communion with him.

II. The second proposition that T mentioned is this; the believer lives a very different life from what he did before faith; / am crucified xvitli Christ, nevertheless 1 live.

Hence it plainly appears, that it is not the same sort of life he lived before, for a death is passed upon that; he has lost a sort of life, but he has not lost all manner of life, for he lives still. To shew what difference there is betwixt the life of a christian before and after his faith or interest in Christ, I shall do little more than go over the same heads again which you have already heard; I shall only apply them in a positive way to the life of a christian, as before I shewed you wherein a christian has parted with them, and is dead to them.

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1. The believer before lived a life of the worlds exercised on visible things, but now he lives upon things spiritual and invisible j for he is dead to the world and alive to heaven. His sorrows now are of another kind, they are laid out upon sin, whereas before they were laid out only upon the uneasiness and disappoinments he met with in the world. His joys before arose from sensible things and the comforts of this life, but now his joy abounds from his interest in Jesus Christ, beyond all the joys he once experienced in the pleasures of the world. Before, he hoped for some advancing circumstances in the world; but now he hopes for advancement in heaven, for glory amongst the angels, and a place amongst the best of God’s creation. His desires once were, “Oh “that I might enjoy the satisfaction, delight, pleasure, and the advancement of this” world P’ but now his soul being mortified to them, breathes after the presence of God, longs for spiritual entertainments, and has a perpetual tendency towards the enjoyments of heaven. His life is now divine and heavenly; whilst he uses the things of this world, he dispises them and lives above them. Whilst he manages the affairs and business of his secular callings and the concerns of this present state, his heart is at every turn putting on her divine wings and rising heavenward and endeavouring to get above those very affairs which now and then his thoughts are too much entangled with, and in which it is necessary that they should be sometimes engaged whilst he is in this world; but he is ever afraid that they should cleave too closely to him, he is ever afraid of the chain and bondage. For having tasted the pleasures of a divine release, he would not willingly be clogged and fettered again. He uses the world therefore with the utmost caution, lest it should ensnare him, and draw him away again from his highest hope and his best beloved joy.

S. Before, the believer’s life was a life of sin, in common with the rest of mankind, the children of sinful Adam; but now it is a life of holiness for he is dead to sin and alive to God. This, in the sixth chapter of his epistle to the Romans, the apostle makes appear at large; he says, that we are not only crucified with Christ, but we are risen with him too; and as our Lord Jesus Christ being once dead and risen again by the power of God, lives to God for ever, so we being dead to sin, must henceforth and for ever live to that God who hath raised Jesus from the dead: before, we were dead in trespasses and sins, but now you who were once dead hath he quickened that you should no more be the children of disobedience, no more serve the lusts of the flesh and of the mindf and walk like the children of the world, as others do; but as the children of life, as the children of grace, as heirs of everlasting glory in that heaven, where nothing shall enter that defiles.

The lust of the fleshy the lust of the eye and the pride of life, were the springs and principles of his motions and actions before; but now the love of God is a powerful and divine principle. Then his meat and drink

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was to fulfil some sinful desire; ‘now to do the will of bis Father which is in heaven. Before he had much rather sin than suffer; now he had much rather suffer than sin. Hearing, reading, conversing of vanity, and the scandals and reproaches that were cast upon christians, might be once his pleasure, whilst the things of God were his aversion, and devotion was accounted by him a dull business, and a tiresome hour; ‘’ But now,’^ says be I will go unto the altar of God “unto God my exceeding joy.^ Religion “is now my delight, for that world where ^’ God is for ever worshipped is my highest” hope and my everlasting prospect.’’

S. The believer’s life before was influenced by the law or covenant of works, but now it is influenced by the gospel or covenant of grace; and there is a vast difference between his present and former principles. The spring of actions and duties arose fornjerly from the threatenings of the law, but now they arise from the promises, from the

* Psahn xliii. 4.

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hopes from the comforts of the gospel. The expectation of man in a carnal state is the expectation of eternal happiness, arising from the covenant of works, from his own righteousness: but now from the righteousness of the Son of God, and from the free and abounding promises of the covenant of grace. He is not now urged to duty by the terrors of the law, so much as by the sweet allurements of the gospel; therefore in that text which I have just cited, this sense is very evident, that now being dead to the law, ice should serve God in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter /* not from the hurries and vexation of conscience, that come upon it from the commanding and threatening law of God as a covenant of works, but by the sweeter and kinder motives of the gospel of the grace of God, that bringing salvation hath appeared to all men: teaching us, that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world; and behold now one of the * Rom. vii. 6.

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new principles of it, looking for that Messed hope J and the glorious aj)pearing of the great Gody and our Saviour Jesus Christ.^

What manner of person should I be then, in all holy conversation and godliness, who look for a dissolving earth and heavens, and a returning Saviour to take me to dwell for ever with him! My Lord Jesus Christ has died for me, therefore I must live to him. Once I expected strength from the commands and threatenings of the law, as well as righteousness from my performance qf it; but now I find it is in vain to expect righteousness or strength there, and I have an other righteousness, and I have a better sivenihiov the Lord JehovaJi is my strength and my righteousness. How many are there, when first awakened, that run from oue end of the town to the other, to hear sermons of mere duty and terror, expecting that these should lash their consciences into holiness, and that the thunders of the threatening law should strike their hearts and melt them 5 Titus ii. 11, 12, 13,

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but they wander from place to place in vain. They hear the law and it terrifies, they hear the duty of it, and it awakens them. It shews them their guilt, for by the law is the knowledge of sin; but they are still the same persons, dead in sin, still bound in the chains of corrupt nature. The grace of the gospel alone can soften the heart, can break these bonds, can release from the fetters of sin, and make of a stubborn, and unwilling and disobedient wretch, a cheerful, and joyful, and obedient christian. They come to the blood of Christ, and they find softening virtue for their hearts, and the love of Christ constrains them and they cannot help living to him, because they hope for eternal life from him. They put all their immortal concerns into the hands of Jesus Christ, and they have put their hard hearts there too, that they may be softened. They have put also their stubborn and disobedient wills there, that they may be dissolved. They have put their guilty an sinful souls there, that they may be justified by the righteousness of another, that they may be-

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strong in the grace of another, that they may be renewed by the regenerating Spirit of Jesus Christ. They are come into that faith that worlceth by- love, which is the only thing that avails in the gospel.

Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, having given up the soul to him, believes that Jesus receives it. Hence there arises a divine light from this hope which enables the soul cheerfully to fulfil all the hard duties of a christian life. The believer has the spirit of a slave no longer, but the spirit of a son by adoption; and he finds, that the sweet doctrines of the grace and promises of the gospel have continually more influence upon him, than all the curses and terrors of the law, and all the flashes and fire of the word of hell ever had before.

4. A believer before lived in the forms and outward observances of external religion. He called this religion, and built his hopes upon it; but now his devotion is more inward and spiritual. Not but he always maintains these forms and these observances which the light of nature which the word of God, which the particular institutions of the gospel, teach and require of him; but it is the inward part of religion that his soul most aims at, and his eye is most watchful over. A carnal man may take up with forms, and thereby satisfy natural conscience; so the Jews did under a spirit of bondage, and the Jewish christians were ready to run into it. They had much ado to be brought off from those ways of living. Carnal christians also, loose professors, that think going to church, reading a chapter, and saying their prayers will bring them to heaven, all live this sort of life. But the design of a christian is to see God, and to be with Jesus Christ in all his worship. He is not easy now unless he can find God in ordinances. He is not satisfied with the shell and empty shadow, unless he can have the substance too, the pearl of great price that his soul looks after.

It is with God that he converses in prayer, and thinks a few minutes upon his knees in prayer nothing if lie cannot get near to his God there, if he does not feel his soul to have inward strivings to come hear to his God. The presence or ahsence of God in worship are things that he concerns himself about now; whereas heretofore if he did but attend to the external forms of worship, he did not understand much the meaning of a present or absent God in them.

These, then, are some of the diiferences betwixt the life of a christian before faith, and his life after faith. Before it was a life of sense, exercised on sensible things, but now he lives upon things spiritual and invisible. Before it was a life of sin, now it is a life of holiness. Before it was a life influenced by the law and covenant of works, now by the principles of the covenant of grace. Before he counted forms and outward observances, religion, and sufficient to salvation; but now he looks at inward and spiritual things.

Four words of use shall conclude this discourse.

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1. Let every soul in this assembly know, then, that if they do not live a very dijBTerent life from that which they brought into the world with them, they are not christians. For by nature we live a life of the world, we live upon this world, we live to sin and vanity; by nature we derive our righteousness and our strength from the law, at least we attempt it; though religion is always insufficient and ineffectual, when we make it consist too much in outward forms and external observances. This is the natural life of man; for the gospel is not born with us, the gospel comes by the teaching of the word, under the influence of the blessed Spirit. The gospel comes into our hearts this way, and moulds, and changes, and renews our nature, and gives us new principles, and brings us into a new world. Except a man be born again says Christ to Nicodemus, he cannot see the kingdom of God,* You cannot enter into the kingdom of Grod, you cannot come into a state of grace in this w orld, nor into a state of glory * John ill. s.

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ill the world to come, unless there is such a change passed upon you as 1 have now described. Let this then be matter of your serious examination; Am I such a crea- ^’ ture as I was when I came into this ^’ world? has any great change passed ‘’ upon me? are my principles of action ‘’ new? are my passions of hope, fear, joy, and desire new, or are they the same that ^’ ever they were?’’ If amj man he in Christ he is a new creature: old things are passed away, behold all tilings are become neiv.^

S. What a shame is it that those who profess a life so excellent and so different from the world, should act and live as though they belonged unto it as though they were one with it! What a shame is it that they should be conformed to it in every thing, and be uneasy if they cannot attain that conformity! They know not how to cross the way of the world they have not courage to oppose the world, and they are content to * 2 Cor. V. 17.

swim with the stream. But this conduct is contrary to the very principles of christianity, and where it is much indulged, it will darken, obscure and deface all the glory of their profession; and they had need take great care that their conversion be right and true, for otherwise they will have much reason to fear that they were mistaken at first in their hopes, and that they are still the children of wrath. I say, where too much of the principles of this old life, which was cut off, growls strong again, they had need take care that their conversion be real, lest at last they be mistakcii in things of infinite importance. The divine life must sometimes shew itself, it cannot be always hid. Paul preached the faith that once he destroyed, and he destroyed the corruptions that once he promoted. Behold the man is a new creature; behold Saul the persecutor prayeth. Let it be said concerning every one of us,” Behold, he is a new creature!’’ that the world may observe that we are born of God.

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3. If this be as I have described, then every true christian is nearer to heaven than we generally imagine. He is dead with Christ, he is risen again, and is alive with Christ. And when he enters into heaven, he does but receive the perfection of that life which is here begun. He is risen already in his representative, and with his representative and head he is entered into heaven. God, itJio is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath qiiicJcened us together with Christ, fhy grace ye are saved, J and hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus, That in the ages to come he might shew the exceeding riches of his grace, in his kindness towards us through Christ Jesus.* Under this consideration it is that we being dead to our former life and the life of this world, being brought into a uew aad divine life, are, as the apostle tells us, come unto mount Sion, and unto the city

JSph. ii. 4,5, 6, r.

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of the living God, the heuvenlij Jerusalem and to an innumerable comj)any of angels, to the general assembly and church of the first-horn which are icrltfen in heaven, and to God the Judge of all and to the spirits of just men made perfect J’^ These are the words I ehieliy aim at, the spirits of just men made perfect. Ye belong to the same society that the spirits of just men belong to, though ye are not released from the bonds of the flesh. Ye are one with them, in Jesus Christ your head. Ye belong to the same state, ye are made denizens of the same heavenly city, though ye are not yet entered within. the gates of it, but abide your Father’s pleasure in a foreign country. Ye belong to the state above, ye are one with the spirits of the gloriiled just: and the life ye w ill live in glory, is but the same kind of life ye live in grace, though in a far ihore exalted degree. Ye are changed from death to life, from sin to grace; but the step ye will make from grace to glory

* heb. Xii. 22, 23.

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will not be a change, but an advancement in the same life.

4. Lastly; I would say this also, that ah attendance on the Lord’s supper is the proper season to awaken our meditations to communion with a dying Saviour. We eat the bread and drink the wine, and thereby represent our union with a crucified and dying Christ. The bread and wine which are incorporated with our natural bodies, made one with us by our eating, represent the union of our spirits to our Lord Jesus Christ, and our becoming one with him. Now if at these seasons, and at these ordinances, we are represented as dying together with Christ, let us remember what manner of persons we ought to be, what sort of profession we make. We sit there and tell the world, we are dead to sin, we are dead to things sensible, we are dead to the law, we are dead to ceremonies and carnal ordinances, we are dead to every thing which before we were alive

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unto; we make a profession of this before Godj angels, and men. O may our characters and our conversation correspond with such a communion with a living and dying Saviour!