That is, we experience death to the world, death to the law, death to sin, in order that we may live a heavenly life down here in the liberty of grace, manifesting that holiness which the Spirit alone imparts. This indeed is to know the power of His resurrection.
This was the truth which the apostle pressed upon the young preacher, Timothy, when he wrote exhorting him to "lay hold on eternal life" (1 Tim. 6:12). And this is the ideal which, I am persuaded, the majority of Christians have before them from the very moment of their conversion; yet many of them have to confess with sorrow that they never seem to realize it practically. What, then, is the trouble? Why is it that so few of us know the power of His resurrection in our daily lives? May I suggest again three things?
Causes of Defeat
First, it takes us so long to get to the end of ourselves! Even after we have realized that "the flesh profiteth nothing" (John 6:63), so far as earning salvation or justification is concerned, we still imagine that, saved by faith in Christ, we are to be made perfect by the flesh. So we endeavor to harness our carnal nature and to bring it into subjection to God by law, forgetting that the Holy Spirit has declared: "The carnal mind ... is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be" (Rom. 8:7).
Therefore we struggle on, vainly endeavoring to please God on a merely human plane, "doing our little best" to work for Him and to glorify His name, only to learn at last that this old nature of ours is as incorrigibly weak at the end of years of Christian testimony as it was at the beginning. This discovery has a tendency to cast us into doubt and gloom and to make us wonder whether we have ever been converted at all, or whether everything is a hopeless sham. At such times we are tempted to give up the conflict, to cease witnessing for Christ, and to sink back to the low level of that world from which we sought deliverance. But "He which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ" (Phil. 1:6). He, the blessed Holy Spirit, holds us fast. Deep in our hearts we know, through the inward witness, that we have passed from death unto life; that a great change has taken place; and that, unsatisfactory as our actual experience may be, we are the children of God. With many there is then the tendency to assume that there is no real way to escape from the hopeless conflict as long as we are still in the body. This leads to a settling down to a low level of Christian living, as though it were the best we could expect to be under existing circumstances. Yet the Spirit of God is constantly seeking to make us dissatisfied with such a state and to long for something better. Little by little we come to the place where we are ready to admit the hopelessness of the flesh: "I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) dwelleth no good thing" (Rom. 7:18).
Then, in the second place, comes another step, one that we are generally very slow to take. We have to learn that, just as we were saved through the blood of the Cross, so we enter into a life of victory through the death of the Cross. When George Muller was asked on one occasion how he accounted for the marvelous way in which God had set His seal upon his work throughout the years, he replied in substance: "There came a day when George Muller died, and then God began to work." This is the experience into which we all need to enter. Judicially, we have died with Christ; His death was our death; but we are so slow to realize this practically and to say "Amen" to that which God has already declared to be true. Perhaps we try — try to die to the flesh, try to die to selfishness, try to die to ambition. But alas, we find in the hour of stress that we are just as much alive as ever! It is a great thing when we learn experimentally, in the presence of God, that we have died, and when in faith the soul can exclaim: "I am crucified with Christ" (Gal. 2:20). Then the struggle is over, for nothing is expected of a dead man.
How to Triumph
Yet in the Word of God we are exhorted to strive, and to "fight the good fight of faith" (1 Tim. 6:12). How shall we do this if we are dead? Ah, now we come to the third point, to that which the apostle expresses in our text. We are called to know Christ, the living Christ, and the power of His resurrection working in us, overcoming our enemies, defeating the world, the flesh, and the devil, and leading us into a life of triumphant victory. Then the soul exclaims: "Nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me" (Gal. 2:20). Thus the soul's quest is attained. Resurrection life is enjoyed even in a mortal body, and the risen Christ is seen in those whom He has purchased with His blood. This is bliss indeed — a foretaste of that which will be ours eternally in the city of God!
Copied from Care for God's Fruit-trees and Other Messages by H.A. Ironside. Rev. ed. New York: Loizeaux Brothers, [1945].
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