were dead in trespasses and sins.” “You were dead.” In other words, he is recognizing that there was a time in experience with reference to earth when, insofar as relation ship to God was concerned, he was dead. Then something happened. He came into contact with the foun tain of life itself, Jesus Christ, and the life of Christ had become his and no longer could he say: “I am dead.” Now he could say: “I am alive — alive with the very life of Christ.” Notice the testimony of the Lord Jesus Himself in terms of His mis sion. He said, “I am come that men might have. . . . ” What word would you put in there as indicating the greatest need of man? Man has a multiplicity of needs. What does man need most? “I am come that men might have life.” That mere statement by itself indicates that man is devoid of life apart from Christ, that he is in a state of spirit ual death, that he is spiritually stillborn. He is alive on the plane of the physical but dead so far as rela tionship to God is concerned. He is dead because of the devastating in fluence of sin. Death — the Severance Sometime ago I came to realize the tragedy of that word “death” as descriptive of man’s condition before God. It was brought to my attention through the reading of a book by a Scottish scientist by the name of Henry Drummond. Drum mond wrote a number of books, but the one which I was reading this particular day was entitled Natural L aw in the Spiritual World. I came across his statement defining death from the scientific standpoint, and as I recall this is how he worded it, “Death is the severance of the cor respondence between the organism and the environment.” When I first read that it made me blink! What did he mean? “Death is the severance of the correspondence be tween the organism and the en vironment.” And then I put into practice a little habit I have had for a long time, and that is that when I do not understand anything immediately upon reading it, I always read on to see if there is anything in the context that may help me to understand it.
Like a Fish in Water I read on, and I am glad that I did. Professor Drummond unfolded his thought until I came to see what he meant. It may be illustrated by the fish and the water. The fish is an organism made to live in the environment of water. God estab lished a correspondence between the fish and the water, between the organism and the environment and, other things being equal, when the fish is in the water you have a condition of life. If you take the fish out of the water, then you bring about ultimately a condition of death, because you have broken the correspondence between the organism and the environment. When I saw that, I put the book down and said, “Why, that is exactly the meaning of the third chapter of Genesis.” God made man for Himself. Adam and God had wonderful fellowship together be cause there was a divinely estab lished correspondence between the organism, man, and the environ ment, God. Truly Adam lived and moved and had his being and fel lowship in God. There was un broken communion between the creature and the Creator because a condition of life existed. Then came the tragic story of the introduction of sin. God had said, “. . . in the day that thou dost eat thereof thou shalt surely die,” and the very moment that Adam ate of the for bidden fruit, he died. No, he didn’t drop dead, but he died on his feet! The seeds of physical death were planted in his constitution, and spiritually, the correspondence be tween him as the organism and God as the e n v i r o nm e n t was broken, and there was death. Man was thus severed from God and the evidence of t h i s is s e en in the biblical record and the experience of man. He may live physically but he carries around in his body a coffined soul, dead toward God. The Apostle Paul is reminding himself of that as he says, “For to me to live is Christ.” Unbreakable Correspondence Jesus Christ as the source of life has come into my experience and Correspondence Established . . . Broken
now I am alive; I am no longer dead. There has been the establish ing of a correspondence between the organism and the environment which, thank God, shall never be broken. For what we have in Jesus Christ is far superior to what Adam had before the fall. An indissoluble relationship has been established between the believer and the Lord Jesus Christ, because the believer now is a partaker of the divine nature. The believer now is alive with the very life of the Lord Jesus so that he can truly say, “For to me to live is Christ; He is the source of my life; He is my life.” When does life begin? Well, it begins when Jesus Christ becomes your life, not before. That is when you begin to live before God. I was born again when I was 15 years of age. I was a member of a Wesleyan Methodist Church back in dear old England, but I was not right with God. Then God reached my heart with the power of His grace in a gospel tent where meetings were being conducted by the Plymouth Brethren. Faith laid hold upon the sperm of God’s Word and the Holy Spirit brought me to the birth; I was bom again. I began to live then at 15 years of age. I began to live before God. Jesus Christ was mine. And I declare to you that Jesus Christ is the source of my life now and forever. I think that is what Paul meant. “For to me to live is to have Christ living in me as the source of my life.” The difference between the unsaved and the saved is the differ ence between being dead or being alive with the life of the Lord Jesus Christ. If you are a believer then thrill to this truth — that your life is rooted in the ever-living Lord Jesus Christ, and you can say, “For me to live is Christ” because He is the source of your life. Christ the Sovereign of Life But I am perfectly sure Paul meant far more than that. If I understand the Apostle Paul aright, he was indicating that Jesus Christ was not only the source of his life, but He was also the sovereign of his life, that the great aim and goal of Paul’s life was to live for the Lord Jesus. A man’s aim in life is the great
CO N T IN U ED 17
FEBRUARY 1957
Made with FlippingBook Online newsletter