“No, sir! I don’t admire a meek man.”
“Don’t you? Well, God does. His Son was meek and lowly. But now suppose you started off some morning and determined to be meek all that day, to love everybody, no matter what mean things another man might say. Would you find it easy?”
“I couldn’t do it. That’s not in my line. I’m not built that way.”
Just so, we are not built that way. We need to be built over. A new life needs to come in. And when the law has brought us to that point, and we cry out with Paul, “Wretched man that I am!” then the law has done its proper work. The tragic thing is that most Christians stop right there in their reading of the seventh chapter of Romans. They do not go on to the glorious word of deliverance. There is a way out. Paul has been in bondage under the law of sin. But a new law enters, and he exclaims, “The law of the Spirit ... made me free from the law of sin and of death.” What is the new power of that law of the Spirit? “Life in Christ Jesus.” What happens when the law of the Spirit is working, when we are enjoying the freedom indeed wherewith Christ hath set us free? The requirement of the law is fulfilled in us. This law of the Spirit, of the new Life in Christ Jesus, hath set us free from the law of sin and death, in order that we might keep the law of God. And it is kept in us just as long as we walk in the Spirit. God’s plan is that we should walk in the Spirit all the time; that is “abiding in Christ.” The struggle of the seventh of Romans is a struggle under the law, it is human effort apart from grace. It is not given as the normal Christian experience, but a parenthesis between two passages of glorious liberty, placed there to show what bearing the keeping of the law has upon the Christian’s experience. The normal Christian experience is freedom from the dominion of sin.
What Grace Says
“Sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not under law but under grace.” The secret of victory, therefore, is to keep under grace, which is walking in the Spirit. How is this to be done? All Christians who have real assurance of salvation see clearly that we are saved by grace. Law has condemned them. Law says “Do,” and we cannot do.
Grace says, “Jesus Christ has done it for me.”
“How much in the matter of my salvation has he done?”
“All of it.”
“How much is there left for me to do?”