One with Him in Death

“Forasmuch then as Christ hath suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves likewise with the same mind: for he that hath suffered in the flesh hath ceased from sin; that he no longer should live the rest of his time in the flesh to the lusts of men, but to the will of God.” — i Peter iv. i, 2.

“ibPifSl, ‘”

“^1 l’ long that may be for any one of us? Shorter to ‘ifJIi some of us than we think; but, in a sense, short to t all. The sands run swiftly through life’s hour-glass. /^^.’S The shadow hastens to go down upon the dial. V!Sh The waves eat away so quickly the dwindling shoal of land which crumbles beneath us. And the years, with inexorable pressure, lay their hands on us, and urge us to flee towards the goal. Such thoughts were much in the Apostle’s mind. In the next Epistle, he says, “the putting off of my tabernacle cometh swiftly” (R.V.).

The Christian finds nothing in such thoughts to make him sad. Every milestone marks the growing nearness of his home. The waves cannot be crossed too swiftly by the eager traveller who impatiently counts the hours that interpose between him and the embrace of wife or child. Before us lie the ages of eternity. Hark to the murmur of their waves, as the trained ear catches the beat of the ocean’s music, borne on the night breeze! Ages filled with a blessedness of personal enjoyment and rapturous ministry lyhich defy tongue to tell or heart to picture. The dim outlines already sketched stir the heart with ecstasy; but what will the completed picture be, when God fills in the details with his own’ hand! Take heart, fellow-sufferers and fellow-workers, our redemption draweth nigh. Day is breaking. “Now is our salvation nearer than when we believed.”

But the blessed future must not divert our thoughts from the duties to be discharged during the rest of the time which we are to spend in the flesh. We must not be dreamers, but warriors. We must fill our shortening days with strenuous endeavour; like the weary toiler who hastens with redoubled energy to finish the garment at which she has been working with sore firjzro, iDecause ths only candle she can afford is burning low, and must soon flicker out. There is therefore a noise of war in this verse. To arms! to arms! Arm yourselves with the same mind; and when we ask What viind? we are told to arm ourselves with the mind that took Jesus to his death.

In a venerable old church at Innsbruck, famous for containing the tomb of the great Emperor Maximilian, there is a magnificent bronze statue of Godfrey of Boulogne, the illustrious crusader. His head is covered with a helmet, and on the helmet rests a crown of thorns. Of course, there was a meaning in the mind of the artist other than that with which we now invest the strange conjunction. He doubtless designed to represent the sacred cause for which that helmet was donned. But we may discover an apt symbol of the teaching of our Apostle, who unites in these verses the armour of the Christian soldier, and the recollection of Christ’s suffering in the flesh.

This witness of the sufferings of Christ first takes us to the cross; and after gazing reverently on that spectacle of love, we are brought to a point where two ways diverge. And the only way of discovering and maintaining the right path is to imbibe the spirit of that wondrous death; and to glory in the cross of Christ. In hoc signo vinces. And thus we shall “no longer live the rest of our time in the flesh, to the lusts of men, but to the will of God.”

I. Divergent Paths. — (i) On the one side the broad way, trodden by so many feet, of indulgence of the flesh. “The lusts of men.” Lust is appetite run wild. There is no harm in any natural appetite, considered in itself. Each is implanted in us for wise and necessary purposes. Man is made as a t;ije Ifainlcasttcaa of tlje JFkalj. 149

self-acting machine; and he is not only reminded of necessary duties by the whirr of the alarum, but is driven to perform them by the goad of hungry appetites on the one hand, and by the attraction of satisfied appetites on the other.

But appetite has been spoilt by the Fall. It has become disturbed in its action, so that it does not now work as God intended it to do, when He made man, and pronounced his nature very good. When man fell, appetite broke from the enfeebled grasp of the will, and began to seek after its own gratification, irrespective of those necessary uses and legitimate bounds which had been assigned by the Creator’s love and wisdom. And so all down the ages, the appetites of man’s nature have treated the Imperial will as the barons of the middle ages often treated their Liege Sovereign, whom they practically set at nought, following their own wild and lawless ways, Aod the mischief of this revolt has been manifested by the way in which the lawlessness of the flesh has infected the mind; so that mind and heart have followed its leadings towards unnatural and excessive indulgence, and men have “fulfilled the desires (or lusts) of the flesh and of the mind.”

These habits have descended to us from the generations which have preceded us. Each one of us is therefore born into the world, subject to the action of appetites which are no longer in the same pure and holy state in which they came from the Creator’s hand, but are biassed strongly in the direction of lawless and unholy manifestation. And if we obey their promptings, as so many do, we become their slaves; sink to the level of the brute creation, which know no law but that of appetite; and come under the wrath of God (Eph. ii. 3).

Now, what we need is, not that these appetites should be eradicated — but that they should be controlled; kept only for necessary uses; deprived of all those evil gratifications which have become to them a second nature. Never in this life will they lose the capability of desiring unholy gratification; but those desires, passing as a momentary thrill through our being, and failing to attract or master the will, are not necessarily sins; and it is clearly possible to live in the flesh, which is very sensitive and susceptible to evil suggestion, and yet not to gratify its demands in a single iota Ijeyond the limits of the will and law of God.

This is what the Gospel promises. Not that we should be deprived of any part of our nature. Not that we should never feel the thrill of temptation, and the tendency on the part of our flesh to respond. Not that we should even reach a condition in which it would be impossible to sin. But that the unholy confederacy between the flesh and the spirit should be broken, so that whatever may be the passing spasms of the flesh in the direction of unlawful gratification, they may not be accepted or permitted by the moral nature — the will — the regal individuality of man.

(2) What a glorious contrast to the will of the flesh is “the will of God!” To do this will Jesus came to earth. To do this was, as He said, his “meat.” It was the fire-cloud that lit his pathway; the yoke in carrying which He found rest; the Urim and Thummim, which dimmed or shone with heavenly guidance. There is no course more safe or blessed than to live in the will of God. God’s will is good will. Where the will of God lies across the wilderness pathway, there flowers bloom, and waters gush from rocks of flint. Sometimes the flesh rebels against it, because it means crucifixion and self-denial: but under the rugged shell the sweetest kernel nestles; and none know the ecstasy of living save those who refuse the broad, easy road of the lusts of men, to climb the steep, upward path of doing the will of God from the heart.

II. The Secret and Power of Self-Denial. — It is not easy to refuse that broad, easy road. No effort is required to take it. Life tends to roll easily and luxuriously down its gentle slopes. The stream insensibly bears the boat, gaily decked with flags, and filled with careless or idle pleasure-seekers, toward the fatal rapids. What is the secret which shall lead a man to say “No” to self; to turn a deaf ear to its solicitations; and to face the steep ascent? And, supposing he has the desire to resist, what power is there strong enough to enable him to stem the torrent, beating and seething against him at every stroke?

77?^ answer t’s found in the cross of our blessed Lord. — “Christ suffered in the flesh.” “The pious contemplation of his death will most powerfully kill the love of sin in the soul, and kindle an ardent hatred to it. The believer — looking on Jesus as crucified for him, and wounded for his transgressions; and taking in deep thoughts of his spotless innocency, which deserved no such thing, and of his matchless love, which yet endured it all for him — will then naturally think: Shall I be a friend to that which was his deadly enemy? Shall sin be sweet to me, which was so bitter to Him; and that for my sake? Shall I ever lend it a good look, or entertain a favourable thought of that which shed my Lord’s blood? Shall live in that for which He died, and died to kill in me? Oh, let it not be!”

All this is true; and yet there is a truth beneath. It must never be forgotten that Christ died “in the likeness of sinful flesh.” He died, not only for sin, but to condemn sin in the flesh. In his death an entire break was made between the life which He had lived in contact with sin, though Himself sinless, and that other life which He spends on the resurrection side of death. And since we are viewed in the mind and purpose of God, as having died with Him in his death, and being raised in his resurrection, we must also regard ourselves as having passed out of the life in which flesh and sense reign supreme, into that other life where they are for ever left behind, and have no footh Id or abode. “In that He died. He died unto sin once; in that He liveth, He liveth unto God. Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

Let us take high ground in dealing with the solicitations and promptings of the flesh. Let us meet every thrill of passion with the complete indifference, the stony silence, of death. Let us say, as fashionable people are wont to say of acquaintances whom they do not wish to see, / am not at home to them. Let us treat them, as Peter treated his Lord, whom for many months he had known as his bosom friend, and yet denied him, saying, / know not the man.

And so, when strong desires come through our bodies, and strive to send evil thoughts and passions through the heart and

-52 ©n£ toitlj Him in ieatlj.

will, they will find the fire-proof iron door slammed suddenly in their face, so that the dread contagion may not spread. The flesh may have its desires; but the cleansed heart will refuse to yield to them. And thus the flesh will be crucified and mortified with its affections and lusts, and the conscience kept void of ofifence.

This power of refusing to harbour or consider the unholy promptings of the flesh is a very blessed one. But it is not of man, nor to be built up by holy resolution or endeavour. It is the power of God in man; the life of the risen Jesus; the grace of the Holy Spirit, who strives against the flesh, so that we may not do the things that otherwise we would (Gal. v. 17, R.v.). Realize that as one with Christ you have, in the mind of God, died. Deliberately choose that death at once and for evermore as your portion and lot. Then look to the Holy Spirit to put the sentence of death into daily and hourly execution. And you will find that though the flesh still lives, it will no longer govern you; but the Spirit of God will govern it through you, robbing it of power, and keeping it so utterly in subjection that you may be tempted to think that it is changed in nature. This, however, will be a mistake, for if the Spirit’s power is relaxed for only an instant, the old fatal habits will re-assert themselves, and if persisted in will work with more than their former force.

Ill, A Stirring Injunction. — “Arm yourselves with the same mind.” Drink into the spirit of Christ’s death till it be repeated in you, and you die to the flesh as He died to it. Thus shall be repeated the ancient legend of the stigmata which grew in the flesh of the saint engaged perpetually in meditating on the wounds of Christ. And every time you dare to refuse the lawless strivings of self, you will enter more into the meaning of his death and of his resurrection. Let us resolutely put this piece of celestial armour on. It will need resolution and determination, as the first shocks of battle will be trying and terrible. But victory is sure. And though there will be no cessation in the temptation, there will be cessation in the yielding to it, which is sin: “For he that has died is freed from sin” (Rom. vi. 7, R.v.). And in time the bodily desires, long thwarted, will give less and less trouble, as if they were weary of the incessant defeat.

“Wouldst thou then have much power against sin, and much increase of holiness, let thine eye be much on Christ; set thine heart on Him; let it dwell in Him, and be still with Him. When sin is likely to prevail, go to Him, tell Him of the insurrection of his enemies, and thy inability to resist, and desire Him to suppress them, that they may gain nothing by their stirring but some new wound. If thy heart begin to move towards sin, lay it before Him: the beams of his love shall eat out that fire of those sinful lusts. Wouldst thou have thy pride, and passions, and love of the world killed, go sue for the virtue of his death, and that shall do it. Seek his spirit — the spirit of meekness, humility, and Divine love. Look on Him, and He shall draw thy heart heavenwards, and unite it to Himself, and ma!:c it like Himself. And is not that the thing thou desirest?”