Blood of Christ (Reading) — Watchman Nee

Adam’s Disobedience and Christ’s Obedience

We come now to Romans chapter five, verses 12 to 21. In this great passage, grace is brought into contrast with sin. And the obedience of Christ is set against the disobedience of Adam. It is placed at the beginning of the second section of Romans with which we shall now be particularly concerned.

And its argument leads to a conclusion which lies at the foundation of our further meditations. What is that conclusion? It is found in verse 19, already quoted. For as through the one man's disobedience, the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the one shall the many be made righteous.

Here the spirit of God is seeking to show us first what we are, and then how we came to be what we are. At the beginning of our Christian life, we are concerned with our doing, not with our being. We're distressed rather by what we have done than by what we are.

We think that if only we could rectify certain things, we should be good Christians. And we set out therefore to change our actions. But the result is not what we expected. We discover to our dismay that it is something more than just a case of trouble on the outside.

But there is in fact more serious trouble on the inside. We try to please the Lord, but we find something within that does not want to please him. We try to be humble, but there is something in our very being that refuses to be humble.

We try to be loving, but inside we feel most unloving. We smile and try to look very gracious, but inwardly we feel decidedly ungracious. The more we try to rectify matters on the outside, the more we realize how deep seated the trouble is within.

Then we come to the Lord and say, Lord, I see it now. Not only what I have done is wrong, I am wrong. The conclusion of Romans 5 verse 19 is beginning to dawn upon us. We are sinners. We are members of a race of people who are constitutionally other than what God intended them to be.

By the fall, a fundamental change took place in the character of Adam, whereby he became a sinner, one constitutionally unable to please God. And the family likeness which we all share is no merely superficial one, but extends to our inward character also.

We have been constituted sinners. How did this come about? By the disobedience of one, says Paul. We are sinners, not because of ourselves, but because of Adam. It is not because I individually have sinned that I am a sinner, but because I was in Adam when he sinned.

Because by birth I come of Adam, therefore I am part of him. What is more, I can do nothing to alter this. I cannot, by improving my behavior, make myself other than a part of Adam, and so a sinner. Do you see the oneness of human life?

Our life comes from Adam. If your great-grandfather had died at the age of three, where would you be? You would have died in him. Your experience is bound up with his. Now, in just the same way, the experience of every one of us is bound up with that of Adam.

None can say, I have not been in Eden, for potentially we all were there when Adam yielded to the serpent's words. So we are all involved in Adam's sin. And by being born in Adam, we receive from him all that he became as a result of his sin.

That is to say, the Adam nature, which is the nature of a sinner, we derive our existence from him. And because his life became a sinful life, a sinful nature, therefore the nature which we derive from him is also sinful.

Humanity’s Bondage to Adam’s Sin

So as we have said, the trouble is in our heredity, not in our behavior. Unless we can change our parentage, there is no deliverance for us. But it is in this very direction that we shall find the solution of our problem.

For that is exactly how God has dealt with the situation. In Romans chapter five, verses 12 to 21, we're not only told something about Adam, we're told also something about the Lord Jesus. As through the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the one shall the many be made righteous.

In Adam we receive everything that is of Adam. In Christ we receive everything that is of Christ. So we are presented with a new possibility. In Adam all was lost. Through the disobedience of one man we were all constituted sinners.

By him sin entered and death through sin. And throughout the race, sin has reigned under death from that day on. But now a ray of light is cast upon the scene. Through the obedience of another, we may be constituted righteous.

Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound. And as sin reigned unto death, even so may grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord. Our despair is in Adam. Our hope is in Christ.

Death as God’s Way of Deliverance

God clearly intends that this consideration should lead to our practical deliverance from sin. Paul makes this quite plain when he opens chapter six of his letter with a question, shall we continue in sin?

His whole being recoils at the very suggestion. God forbid, he exclaims. How could a holy God be satisfied to have unholy, sin-fettered children? And so how shall we any longer live therein? God has surely therefore made adequate provision that we should be set free from sin's dominion.

But here is our problem. We were born sinners. How then can we cut off our sinful heredity? Seeing that we were born in Adam, how can we get out of Adam? Let me say at once, the blood cannot take us out of Adam.

There is only one way. Since we came in by birth, we must go out by death. To do away our sinfulness, we must do away with our life. Bondage to sin came by birth. Deliverance from sin comes by death. And it is just this way of escape that God has provided.

Death is the secret of emancipation. We died to sin, but how can we die? Some of us have tried very hard to get rid of this sinful life, but we have found it most tenacious. What is the way out? It is not by trying to kill ourselves, but by recognizing that God has dealt with us in Christ.

This is summed up in the Apostle's next statement. All we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death. But if God has dealt with us in Christ Jesus, then we have got to be in him for this to become effective.

And that now seems just as big a problem. How are we to get into Christ? Here again, God comes to our help. We have in fact no way of getting in. What is more important, we need not try to get in, for we are in.

God’s Inclusion of Believers in Christ

What we could not do for ourselves, God has done for us. He has put us into Christ. Let me remind you of 1 Corinthians 1 verse 30. I think this is one of the best verses of the whole New Testament. Ye are in Christ.

How? Of him, that is of God, are ye in Christ. Praise God. It's not left to us either to devise a way of entry or to work it out. We need not plan how to get in, God has planned it. And he has not only planned it, but he's also performed it.

Of him are ye in Christ Jesus. We are in, therefore we need not try to get in. It's a divine act, and it is accomplished. When the Lord Jesus was on the cross, all of us died. Not individually, for we've not yet been born, but being in him, we died in him.

One died for all, therefore all died. When he was crucified, all of us were crucified. Of him are ye in Christ Jesus. The Lord God himself has put us in Christ, and in his dealing with Christ, God has dealt with the whole race.

Our destiny is bound up with his. What he has gone through, we have gone through. For to be in Christ is to have been identified with him in both his death and resurrection. He was crucified, then what about us?

Must we ask God to crucify us? Never. When Christ was crucified, we were crucified. And his crucifixion is past, therefore ours cannot be future. I challenge you to find one text in the New Testament telling us that our crucifixion is in the future.

All references to it are in the Greek aorist, which is a once for all tense, the eternally past tense. And just as no man could ever commit suicide by crucifixion, for it were a physical impossibility to do so, so also in spiritual terms, God does not require us to crucify ourselves.

We were crucified when he was crucified, for God put us there in him. That we have died in Christ is not merely a doctrinal position, it is an eternal fact. The Lord Jesus, when he died on the cross, shed his blood, thus giving his sinless life to atone for our sin and to satisfy the righteousness and holiness of God.

To do so was the prerogative of the Son of God alone. No man could have a share in that. The scripture has never told us that we shed our blood with Christ. In his atoning work before God, he acted alone.

No other could have a part. But the Lord did not die only to shed his blood. He died that we might die. He died as our representative. In his death, he included you and me. We often use the terms substitution and identification to describe these two aspects of the death of Christ.

Now, many a time, the use of the word identification is good, but identification would suggest that the thing begins from our side, that I try to identify myself with the Lord. I agree that the word is true, but it should be used later on.

It's better to begin with the fact that the Lord included me in his death. It is the inclusive death of the Lord which puts me in a position to identify myself, not that I identify myself in order to be included.

It is God's inclusion of me in Christ that matters. It is something God has done. For that reason, those two New Testament words, in Christ, are always very dear to my heart. The death of the Lord Jesus is inclusive.

The resurrection of the Lord Jesus is alike, inclusive. We'll look at the first chapter of 1 Corinthians to establish the fact that we are in Christ Jesus. Now, we'll go to the end of the same letter to see something more of what this means.

Christ as the Last Adam and the Second Man

In 1 Corinthians 15, verses 45 and 47, two remarkable names or titles are used of the Lord Jesus. He is spoken of there as the last Adam, and he is spoken of, too, as the second man. Scripture does not refer to him as the second Adam, but as the last Adam.

Nor does it refer to him as the last man, but as the second man. The distinction is to be noted, for it enshrines a truth of great value. As the last Adam, Christ is the sum total of humanity. As the second man, he is head of a new race.

So we have here two unions, the one relating to his death and the other to his resurrection. In the first place, his union with the race as the last Adam began historically at Bethlehem and ended at the cross and the tomb.

In it, he gathered up into himself all that was in Adam and took it to judgment and death. In the second place, our union with him as the second man begins in resurrection and ends in eternity, which is to say it never ends.

For having in his death gone away with the first man in whom God's purpose was frustrated, he rose again as head of a new race of men in whom that purpose shall be fully realized. When therefore the Lord Jesus was crucified on the cross, he was crucified as the last Adam.

All that was in the first Adam was gathered up and done away in him. We were included there. As the last Adam, he wiped out the old race. As the second man, he brings in the new race. It is in his resurrection that he stands forth as the second man.

And there too, we are included. For if we have become united with him by the likeness of his death, we shall be also by the likeness of his resurrection. We died in him as the last Adam. We live in him as the second man.

Receiving Deliverance by Faith in the Finished Work

The cross is thus the power of God which translates us from Adam to Christ. But to say that all that we need comes to us in Christ by free grace, though true enough, may seem impractical. How does it work out in practice?

How does it become real in our experience? Our crucifixion can never be made effective by will or by effort, but only by accepting what the Lord Jesus did on the cross. Our eyes must be open to see the finished work of Calvary.

Some of you, prior to your salvation, may have tried to save yourselves. You read the Bible, prayed, went to church, gave alms. Then one day your eyes were opened and you saw that a full salvation had already been provided for you on the cross.

You just accepted that and thanked God and peace and joy flowed into your heart. Now salvation and sanctification are on exactly the same basis. You receive deliverance from sin in the same way as you receive forgiveness of sins.

For God's way of deliverance is altogether different from man's way. Man's way is to try to suppress sin by seeking to overcome it. God's way is to remove the sinner. Many Christians mourn over their weakness, thinking that if only they were stronger, all would be well.

The idea that because failure to lead a holy life is due to our impotence, something more is therefore demanded of us leads naturally to this false conception of the way of deliverance. If we are preoccupied with the power of sin, with our inability to meet it, then we naturally conclude that to gain the victory over sin we must have more power.

If only I were stronger, we say, I can overcome my violent outbursts of temper. And so we plead with the Lord to strengthen us that we may exercise more self-control. But this is altogether wrong. This is not Christianity.

God's means of delivering us from sin is not by making us stronger and stronger, but by making us weaker and weaker. That is surely rather a peculiar way of victory, you say. But it is the divine way.

God sets us free from the dominion of sin not by strengthening our old man, but by crucifying him. Not by helping him to do anything, but by removing him from the scene of action. For years, maybe, you've tried fruitlessly to exercise control over yourself.

Perhaps this is still your experience. But when once you see the truth, you will recognize that you are indeed powerless to do anything. But that in setting you aside altogether, God has done it all. Such a revelation brings human self-effort to an end.

Knowing Deliverance Through Divine Revelation

The normal Christian life must begin with a very definite knowing, which is not just knowing something about the truth, nor understanding some important doctrine. It is not an intellectual knowledge at all, but an opening of the eyes of the heart to see what we have in Christ.

How do you know your sins are forgiven? Is it because your pastor told you so? No, you just know it. If I ask you how you know, you simply answer, I know it. Such knowledge comes by divine revelation.

It comes from the Lord himself. Of course, the fact of forgiveness of sins is in the Bible. But for the written word of God to become a living word from God to you, he had to give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him.

What you needed was to know Christ in that way, and it is always so. So there comes a time, in regard to any new apprehension of Christ, when you know it in your own heart, you see it in your spirit. A light has shined into your inner being and you are wholly persuaded of the fact.

What is true of the forgiveness of your sins is no less true of your deliverance from sin. When once the light of God dawns upon your heart, you see yourself in Christ. It is not now because someone has told you, and not merely because Romans 6 says so.

It is something more even than that. You know it because God has revealed it to you by his spirit. You may not feel it, you may not understand it, but you know it, for you have seen it. Once you have seen yourself in Christ, nothing can shake your assurance of that blessed fact.

If you ask a number of believers who have entered upon the normal Christian life how they came by their experience, some will say in this way and some will say in that. Each stresses his own particular way of entering in and produces scripture to support his experience.

And unhappily, many Christians are using their special experiences and their special scriptures to fight other Christians. The fact of the matter is that while Christians may enter into the deeper life by different ways, we need not regard the experiences or doctrines they stress as mutually exclusive, but rather complementary.

One thing is certain, that any true experience of value in the sight of God must have been reached by way of a new discovery of the meaning of the person and work of the Lord Jesus. That is a crucial test and a safe one.

And here in our passage, Paul makes everything depend upon such a discovery, knowing this, that our old man was crucified with him, that the body of sin might be done away so that we should no longer be in bondage to sin.

So our first step is to seek from God a knowledge that comes by revelation. A revelation, that is to say, not of ourselves, but of the finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ on the cross. When Hudson Taylor, the founder of the China Inland Mission, entered into the normal Christian life, it was thus that he did so.

Hudson Taylor’s Discovery of Abiding in Christ

You remember how he tells of his longstanding problem of how to live in Christ, how to draw the sap out of the vine into himself? Well, he knew that he must have the life of Christ flowing out through him, and yet felt that he had not got it.

And he saw clearly enough that his need was to be found in Christ. I knew, he said, writing to his sister from Qingqiang in 1869, that if only I could abide in Christ, all would be well. But I could not.

The more he tried to get in, the more he found himself slipping out, so to speak, until one day, light dawned. Revelation came, and he saw. Here, I feel, is the secret. Not asking how I am to get sap out of the vine into myself, but remembering that Jesus is the vine, the root, stem, branches, twigs, leaves, flowers, fruit, all indeed.

Then, in words of a friend that had helped him, I have not got to make myself a branch. The Lord Jesus tells me I am a branch. I am part of him, and I have just to believe it and act upon it. I've seen it long enough in the Bible, but I believe it now as a living reality.

It was as though something which had indeed been true all the time had now suddenly become true in a new way to him personally, and he writes to his sister again. I do not know how far I may be able to make myself intelligible about it, for there is nothing new or strange or wonderful, and yet all is new.

In a word, whereas once I was blind, now I see. I am dead and buried with Christ. I am risen to and ascended. God reckons me so and tells me to reckon myself so. He knows best. Oh, the joy of seeing this truth.

I do pray that the eyes of your understanding may be enlightened, that you may know and enjoy the riches freely given us in Christ. Oh, it is a great thing to see that we are in Christ. Think of the bewilderment of trying to get into a room in which you already are.

Think of the absurdity of asking to be put in. If we recognize the fact that we are in, we make no effort to enter. If we had more revelation, we should have fewer prayers and more praises. Much of our praying for ourselves is just because we are blind to what God has done.

The Finished Work of Christ as the Foundation of Assurance

Let me remind you again of the fundamental nature of that which the Lord has done on the cross. I feel I cannot press this point too much, but we must see it. The finished work of Christ really has gone to the root of our problem and dealt with it.

There are no half measures with God. Knowing this, says Paul, that our old man was crucified with him, that the body of sin might be done away, that so we should no longer be in bondage to sin. Knowing this.

Yes, but do you know it, or are ye ignorant? May the Lord graciously open our eyes.