Victorious Life Studies

ROBERT C. McQUILKIN

Secretary
Victorious Life Testimony

Foreword by
CHARLES G. TRUMBULL

Editor of The Sunday School Times

REVISED AND ENLARGED EDITION

CHRISTIAN LIFE LITERATURE FUND
Headquarters for Victorious Life Literature
Room 600 Perry Building
16th and Chestnut Streets Philadelphia

The publishers would esteem it a privilege to be informed of blessing definitely received by any reader as a result of the perusal of this book.

OLIVER RICHARD HEINZE,
Director.

Copyright, 1918, by

Christian Life Literature Fund

FOREWORD

Did you ever go with a very dear friend into some foreign land,—say one of the islands of the sea, like Madeira; and there you and your friend vie with each other in making new discoveries of things beautiful and fresh to both of you: new flowers, fruits, birds, vistas in valleys or mountains? If so, you know something of what it means to explore, with a friend, in the land of Victory in Christ.

It was the new and undiscovered country of the Victorious Life that brought us together, Bob McQuilkin and me. (New and undiscovered to us, that is, but as old as the Day of Pentecost.) We should never have been friends but for Him; we entered, not far apart, the “foreign land” of undreamed riches and delights; and ever since then we have been joyously telling each other of our discoveries, comparing notes, sharing our finds, and together thanking Him who alone is the Promised Land, the Life, and the Victory.

God has greatly blessed me through the discoveries of my friend, as our common Guide, the Holy Spirit, has led him on and on into always new and clearer visions of what belongs, in Christ, to every Christian. I am glad that he is now sharing his findings and his convictions with many, through these studies in the Victorious Life.

As one reads this book, let it be remembered that the Victorious Life is not optional for the Christian who wants God’s whole will. It is a simple duty for every Christian to “be filled with the Spirit” (Eph. 5: 18); and being filled with the Spirit means having Victory and all that goes with this.

We think of the New Testament, and rightly, as being God’s revelation concerning how men may be saved from the wages of sin. They deserved death penalty, or hell. This is true, but have we realized, as a clear-sighted Bible teacher has pointed out, that a much greater part of the New Testament is devoted to telling Christians how to live after they are saved than how to be saved? Have we asked ourselves why this is so? Have we realized what a sad commentary on the Gospel is the man who claims that Christ has saved him completely from the penalty of his sins, yet in whose life is plainly seen, and habitually, the unbroken power of sin?

This book tells how to be as free from the power of sin as from its penalty. It gives God’s own message on present salvation: salvation from sin now and here.

What the Victorious Life is; how to make it one’s own in practical experience; how it may be not only entered into, but maintained; how it differs in life-and-death ways from false substitutes for Victory,—these and other questions that are perplexing many a burdened and seeking Christian are discussed here and answered out of God’s word.

Closest fellowship with Mr. McQuilkin for five years, when we were together daily in editorial work, enables me to know that he has come to his present convictions after exhaustive Bible study, frequent conference with mature and trusted Bible students, and wide reading in the best works, new and old, in this field; but above all, after his rich personal experience, through surrender and faith, of Christ’s freely offered power and grace to meet all needs in the believer’s life. With thanksgiving to the Captain of our Salvation, who never asks us to win victories for Him, but Who has already won all our victories for us, This book is prayerfully commended in His Name.

Charles Gallaudet Trumbull.

CONTENTS

A WORD OF EXPLANATION

By the Author

Most of these “studies” have been published, or are yet to be published, as editorials or articles in The Sunday School Times. There has been added an introductory article written particularly for those who may have little acquaintance with the meaning of the Victorious Life.

Each chapter has been prepared as an article complete in itself, but there are three pairs of articles which form closely connected studies. The chapters entitled, “Out of Bondage Into Liberty,” and “God’s New Spelling for 'Obey’” form one study on the relation of law and grace in the life of the Christian. The two chapters on temptation form one study. The chapter on “How Jesus Lived the Victorious Life” and the one which follows on “Serving with the Mind of Christ” form a connected study on the practical meaning for us of our Lord’s humanity.

Whenever use has been made of the writings or messages of others I have endeavored to give full credit, but there should be added here a personal word of special acknowledgment. My own entrance into a new experience in Christ seven years ago came through the message of Charles G. Trumbull, who himself just a year before had found Christ in the new way that transformed his own life and with it the message of The Sunday School Times. Following my new experience and this new friendship there was the rare privilege of five years’ fellowship with Mr. Trumbull as Associate Editor of The Sunday School Times, a work that was surrendered at the call of the Lord to go into foreign missionary service. This being the foundation of these studies on the Victorious Life, it may well be that in addition to the sentences in quotation marks used with or without Mr. Trumbull’s name, there are statements and ways of putting things that have come directly or indirectly from this association. This applies particularly to the first article; the others embody more definitely suggested applications that have not been touched upon in other articles or editorials in The Sunday School Times. Those familiar with “The Life That Wins,” the leaflet that tells Mr. Trumbull’s personal experience, will recall the threefold division of the needs in the Christian life,—“fellowship, freedom from sin, fruit bearing,”—which is the division used in the first chapter of these studies.

Many have been eagerly awaiting Mr. Trumbull’s own book on the Victorious Life, which will deal with the subject in a comprehensive and connected way. It is hoped that this booklet may prove a helpful supplement to the later work.

Special acknowledgment should be made also to another beloved teacher, Professor Melvin Grove Kyle, for his illuminating suggestions on temptation. While this study of temptation and the outline were begun before taking theological work under Dr. Kyle, its development has been strongly influenced by the rich suggestions that are quoted from Professor Kyle.

The little book goes out with the prayer that whatever errors of statement or of judgment may be discovered, these errors may not bulk so large in the mind of the reader as to shut him out from the glorious blessing of victory in Christ, or if he has learned that secret to keep him from further riches of Grace the Word may have for him. As you read through these chapters will you pray through them also? If you receive a blessing, will you pray that God may use it with other readers, and that He alone may be glorified who is our Victory.

July 20, 1918.

PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION.

By the Author.

This revised and enlarged edition of Victorious Life Studies should not go forth without grateful acknowledgment for an abundant answer to the prayer that whatever errors of statement or of judgment might be found they should not hinder the blessing that God intended from these little “studies.” There is not alone thanksgiving to the Lord of answered prayer, but to those who shared in the prayer for blessing, and it is hoped that the increasing circle of those who are finding new riches of grace in our sufficient Saviour may continue to ask God’s guidance and blessing upon all attempts to put into print the message of victory in Christ.

Changes have been made here and there which affect the use of certain theological expressions which were not accurately used, and which would serve to confuse the truth. While none of these corrections, so far as I know, changes the vital truth that was intended to be expressed, the further study of terms used in Scripture, and terms used theologically that are not in the Scriptures, leads to a conviction that it is helpful to avoid the use of any term the meaning of which is not clear to the one who uses it.

While these studies were not intended as a comprehensive treatment of the subject, it was thought well to take advantage of the call for a second edition by adding two studies, one to consider the relation of the work of the Holy Spirit to the life of victory in Christ, the other to ask what the Scriptures mean by freedom from sin.

After outlining these studies in preparation for this new edition, it was my privilege to be associated in Victorious Life Conferences throughout the country with Dr. A. J. Ramsey, who is now giving his whole time to the work of the Victorious Life Testimony. So far as may be possible in such a word as this I wish to acknowledge the great debt of gratitude I owe to Dr. Ramsey, whose masterly expositions of Romans and First John, and other Scriptures dealing with the sin question, have served to confirm and clarify the glorious truth of God’s plan of victory over sin which a direct study of his Word will disclose to every earnest seeker. With a first-hand knowledge of classical and New Testament Greek which ranks with the leading teachers of that language, with an intimate knowledge of the ramifications of all the theological systems as well as the false “faiths,” Dr. Ramsey for eighteen years has been studying the Scriptures against the back-ground of an experience of the fulness of the Holy Spirit which transformed his own life and ministry. The result is that from all over the land have come insistent calls that he should put into print some of the results of this study which has given a new Bible to scores of ministers and other Christian workers where the message has been spoken.

Accordingly, Dr. Ramsey is hoping soon to prepare leaflets that will discuss such questions as “What is Sin?” “The Body of Sin: Who has It?” “The Old Man: Who is He?” “The Law of Sin: Who Obeys It?” “The Carnal Mind: What Is It?” “Is Romans Seven Christian?” “Is First John One Eight for Christians?” Others will deal with the conflict of “flesh and Spirit,” and the question whether a Christian has two natures, and it is planned later to issue a brief exposition of Romans. The studies in this little volume necessarily deal with some of these questions but as far as possible I have sought to avoid encroaching upon the distinctive contribution that Dr. Ramsey will bring in the careful exegesis of these Scriptures, and the scientific handling of the psychology and ethics that are involved as well as the theology.

To Dr. Ramsey I am indebted for a number of the changes in phraseology, but most of all for the glad confirmation that the truths so self evident in the Scriptures, but so obscured in the writings of men, do rest upon an irrefutable theology, an exegesis of Scripture that cannot be gainsaid. It is this that has given courage to speak plainly on some vital points that need clearing up. And it is a matter for encouragement to every humble student of the Word that without the equipment of a specially gifted mind and a scientific training, it is possible to arrive at both the understanding and experience of the simple plan of salvation from sin.

Shall we also remember as these pages are read that while the Holy Spirit does use human teachers to help us to know His truth, it is our responsibility to make the truth our own by seeing it in the Word for ourselves. Let us have nothing in our experience or our understanding of salvation merely as a result of what any man has said or written regarding the Word of God: let us have a glad original experience of Christ through searching for ourselves whether these things are so.

June 19, 1920.

VICTORIOUS LIFE STUDIES

WHAT IS THE VICTORIOUS LIFE?

Are you enjoying the Victorious Life?

The Victorious Life is a life of victory over sin. Do you have it?

The Victorious Life is a life of constant fellowship with God. Do you have it?

The Victorious Life is a life of fruit-bearing. Do you have it?

Do you have the peace of God that passeth all understanding? Do you have freedom from worry and discouragement so that you are “anxious in nothing”? Do you have the joy of the Lord, which is independent of feeling, and independent of circumstances? Are you able in all things to give thanks?

Have you, shed abroad in your heart, the love that suffers long and is kind, that envies not, that vaunts not itself, is not puffed up, does not behave itself unseemly, seeks not its own, is not provoked?

Do you enjoy in actual experience the fruit of the Spirit, in its nine-fold variety: love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, self-control? (Gal. 5: 22, 23).

Is prayer a precious reality to you, so that you can come to a living, present Lord to talk over every question that affects your life? Do you know what it is to ask and receive, to abide in him and have his word abide in you so that whatsoever you ask you receive? Do your prayers change things?

Is the Bible to you sweeter than honey and the honeycomb, more to be desired than gold? Do you go each day to the Word and get a direct personal message from the Master to your own soul, to meet the very need of that day?

If this picture of the Spirit-filled Life, as it is given in the Word of God, does not describe the experience you are having, then you do not have the Victorious Life. There is something that the Lord Jesus offers that you do not have. You may have some of these things at times, you may have glorious fruit-bearing, you may know the Lord in a vital and real way, but if there is not complete victory over sin,—which includes such things as worry, discouragement, lack of love, irritation, pride, jealousy, impatience, covetousness, worldliness, lust,—then you do not have the Victorious Life, and there is an experience in Christ awaiting you which will transform life.

Your lack in these things does not mean, necessarily, that you are not a Christian, a born-again child of God, saved by the blood of Christ: it does mean that you are not using in experience what the Lord Jesus provided for you by his death and resurrection.

The First Step Toward Victory

Do you believe there is something in the Christian life that you have not found, or that you do not possess? And do you want that experience? If you can say yes to these questions, then give thanks to God that he has led you by his Grace to take the first step toward Victory.

The first step toward the Victorious Life is for a Christian to recognize the need, to realize that there is an experience that he does not possess. As in the case of an unconverted man who can never understand nor receive the Gospel message till he comes to the place of seeing himself a sinner, so a satisfied and defeated Christian is in no place to receive the Victorious Life message. The defeated man described in the seventh chapter of Romans cries out, “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me out of the body of this death?” The reason some Christians have never tasted the victory of the eighth chapter of Romans is because they have never known anything of the struggle that is described in the seventh chapter of Romans.

A College Student’s “Problem”

A young college student came to a speaker on the Victorious Life for an interview, but started in by saying that he had no “problems” in his Christian life.

“Do you have complete victory over sin?”

“Well, it depends on what you mean by sin.”

“Do you ever have angry thoughts and feelings in your heart toward others?”

“Do you mean get 'peeved’ at people? Sure I do.”

“Do you ever worry about things?”

“Worry about things! I should say I do. Everybody does.”

“Do you ever have impure thoughts and desires in your heart?”

“Yes, I do.”

“These things are sins, aren’t they?”

“Yes, I suppose they are.”

“These are the things that put the Lord Jesus on the Cross. You have these things in your life, you do not have victory over them and other like sins, and yet you tell me you have no 'problem’ in your Christian life.”

This young college student was led by the Spirit to see the inner meaning of sin and to confess that he did indeed need something in his Christian life that he did not have.

The sin problem is the problem of all problems. If the sin problem in your life is settled in God’s way, you will have the secret of solving all other problems in God’s way. Fellowship with God, peace, joy, freedom from anxiety, power for service, the right enjoyment and use of Bible study and prayer, all of these things and every gift of grace will be open to you when you get the sin question settled. At Victorious Life conferences, Christians come to the leaders and say that they are not troubled in the matter of getting victory over sin, but that they do not get results in their Christian service and they want the Holy Spirit for power in service. In every such case it is found that the real difficulty is the sin question: there is not complete, Spirit-given victory over inward sin. When that is settled the power in service and the results follow.

When God came to choose a name for his Son, some one has pointed out, he went to the heart of the subject and called his name “Jesus,” because it is he that shall save his people from their sins. It is going to the heart of the Christian’s need, then, first to emphasize victory over sin as the road to all other blessings of the Abundant Life.

What is God’s way of securing this Victory?

There are two ways of getting money, or any other thing of value—either working for it, or receiving it as a gift.

Two Ways to Seek Victory

There are two ways of seeking after salvation—working for it or receiving it as a gift. But there are not two ways of obtaining salvation or eternal life. For when a sinner works, he works sin; and the wages of sin is death. Life is never earned. Death is. Life must be given. So the free gift of God, the only author of life, is eternal life. We are saved by Grace, not by works, for the least particle of “works” would make Grace void.

There are two ways of seeking after the Victorious Life, present freedom from the law of sin—working for it, striving and struggling after it, or receiving it as a free gift, without effort. There are not two ways of obtaining Victory. For when a saved sinner struggles with inward desires toward evil he is under the law—using his own efforts—and not under grace, and the struggle at some time or other always ends in defeat.

The Victorious Life is a free gift from God. It cannot be earned. It therefore must be accepted on the same terms as salvation from the penalty of sin. It must be received as a gift. To enjoy a gift one has but to take it, and thank the giver.

“Sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not under law, but under grace” (Rom. 6:14). “My grace is sufficient for thee” (2 Cor. 12:9).

To believe these words of God is to enjoy the gift of victory.

“The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus made me free from the law of sin and of death” (Rom. 8:2).

To believe this word is to enjoy present freedom from the law of sin. “Every one that committeth sin is the bondservant of sin.... If therefore the Son shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed” (John 8:34, 35).

“If ye are led by the Spirit, ye are not under the law” (Gal. 5:18), that is, we are under Grace. And Grace means, Jesus Christ is doing it all for us, winning the victory for us by his indwelling power.

The Much More Salvation

These Scriptures show clearly that God’s way of victory over present sin is by the power of the Holy Spirit. That new law, the law of the Spirit, makes us free from the law of sin. “If, while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, shall we be saved by his life” (Rom. 5:10). This is the “much more salvation,” present salvation by his indwelling life. Reconciled saints need to be “saved,” and the Victorious Life is nothing other than salvation by free grace, in present action, applied to each temptation and problem.

God’s plan of salvation from the present power of sin, therefore, is exactly the same plan as he has revealed for salvation from the death penalty of sin. Both are by free grace without effort on your part. Both are to be received and enjoyed by faith. After the remarkable passage in the fifth chapter of Galatians, which gives the nine-fold fruit of the Spirit, there is this statement: “If we live by the Spirit, by the Spirit let us also walk” (Gal. 5:25). That is, since we have been born again by the supernatural power of the Holy Spirit, by that same supernatural Spirit, without effort on our part, let us also live our daily lives, winning victory over sin by just letting the fruit of the Spirit be produced, letting the rivers of living waters flow out (John 7:38).

It follows from this that every Christian really has received the gift of Victory from God, for it is just the indwelling Christ through the power of the Spirit. But how few, how very few Christians are enjoying the remarkable results of that gift, the freedom from the law of sin, the fruit of the Spirit. Why is this? A generation ago there were very many earnest Christians who thought it presumptuous to be sure of their salvation. They may have been saved and been blessed with all spiritual blessings in Christ, but they were not, and some Christians to-day are not, enjoying assurance of salvation. Even so defeated Christians, who walk now and then after the flesh and fall into sin, are not enjoying the freedom that Christ purchased for them. They are not living up to their privileges in the Lord. The word of freedom has not been benefiting them, because it has not been united by faith with them that heard. “For indeed we have had good tidings preached unto us, even as also they: but the word of hearing did not profit them, because it was not united by faith with them that heard” (Heb. 4:2).

The Two Simple Conditions

The simplicity of entering into this New Life has been a stumbling block to many. For there are but two conditions for victory, and every Christian has been given grace to meet these two conditions. The first is surrender. For that resurrection life of Jesus can only operate when our self effort ceases. “Yield yourselves unto God” (Rom. 6:13). Or as Weymouth translates it: “Surrender your very selves unto God.” And this was spoken to Christians. This surrender of the Christian to God is positive, not negative. It is not as a surrender of things, nor of an evil self life, but a yielding of self with all its powers to God, as alive from the dead. With this positive surrender everything contrary to God’s will goes out of the life.

Surrender a Definite Matter

Failure frequently comes in the life of Victory because there has not been a complete surrender. Something has been held back. Or we have been too superficial in our understanding of what crucifixion of the old self life means. Now our Lord is lovingly ready to meet us when we come eager for full salvation and willing to make full surrender to him. He will show us if we ask him, and wait for his answer, whether there is anything that is not wholly surrendered to him. Some Christians say this matter of surrender is very vague, and they cannot tell whether they have really surrendered completely. As a matter of fact, the Holy Spirit is always very definite when we deal with him earnestly. One woman who said the surrender matter was entirely too vague for her to know whether she had surrendered, after some questioning remarked: “Well, of course, I would not be willing to have my two sons go to Africa as missionaries.” The matter of surrender was very definite for her and until this Christian mother lays her two boys on the altar for Christ she will not know complete victory.

Young people sometimes stumble over surrendering such things as worldly amusements, the theatre, dramatic moving pictures, dancing, card-playing, smoking. They argue that they do not regard these things as sins, though others may believe them to be. But surely if we are facing the question of getting such a great Gift as Christ as our Victory and very Life, these things are small matters to yield. But if they are not sins, are they “weights” in the Christian race? “Let us ... lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us” (Heb. 12:1).

When A Christian Robs Christ

But, it may be objected, how can a Christian surrender? Does he not already belong to Christ? Ah, that is the sad tragedy of it. Will a man rob God? Yes, the Church of Christ is largely robbing him to-day of the only offering he cares for—ourselves as living sacrifices. We are indeed bought with a price, the precious blood of Christ, we are not our own, we belong to him. Have you acknowledged this ownership in every detail, not with your lips alone, but with your life, in its every action? That is the first requirement for Victory. And Victory will never be enjoyed until the surrender question is settled. An earnest young Christian woman was in defeat and distress because there was something she would not yield. She acknowledged it was pride, but she could not give it up.

“Whom do you belong to?” she was asked.

“Christ.”

“What price did he pay for you?”

“His own life.”

“But you are saying to him there is something you are holding back. What are you doing?”

“I suppose I am crucifying him afresh,” she answered, the tears coming.

“Yes, you are robbing him.”

But the struggle went on and she would not yield.

“Will you kneel down and just tell the Lord that you are robbing him, and that you intend to keep on robbing him?”

She shrank from such a thought, and she kneeled down and told her Lord that she would yield that one thing she was holding back, and that there was nothing that she was not willing to do that he wanted.

She arose with a radiant face, and as the days went on it developed that God did not want her to do the thing she was shrinking back from doing. A Christian may be kept out of victory because he says he would not be willing to go to the mission field, or send his sons to the mission field. God may not want him to go, but he can never have Victory as long as there is an unwillingness to do what God may want him to do. For this is doubting God and his love.

More Needed Than Surrender

But there are multitudes of Christians who are truly surrendered, holding nothing back, who do not have Victory. For the surrendered life is not necessarily the Victorious Life. Surrender is our part. The supernatural work of Victory is God’s part. God is doing his part as soon as we yield ourselves, and we get the benefit of it when we believe that fact. This is Victory by faith. “Faith does nothing. Faith believes that God is doing it all.” Faith is just believing the word of God. Those marvelous promises, or rather “facts” of God’s Grace which have been quoted above can only be received by the Christian who is holding nothing back from God. Then all the rest is God’s work.

Is he faithful? We have surrendered. Is our part then to believe that God will give us Victory? No, that is not faith. “Victory’s final secret,” as Mr. Trumbull has put it, is to believe that Christ is doing his part, that his Grace is sufficient, that we are free from the law of sin, that we are under Grace and not under law and that therefore sin is not having dominion over us, that he is meeting all our needs, but we are walking in the Spirit. This is “letting God.”

Will you not “let go, and let God?” Now?

If you do, you can say with Paul, not only as a truth of your position in Christ, but as the blessed truth of your experience: “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me” (Gal. 2:20).

What It Is Not

The Victorious Life is not a life free from temptation, but a life of victory over temptation. First Corinthians 10:13, with its “there is no temptation” is an absolute guarantee from God that victory over all temptations is possible; for he himself provides the way of escape. Jesus,—in his resurrection Life,—is the Way.

The Victorious Life is not a life free from the possibility of falling into sin. It is always possible at any moment to sin, and as soon as our eyes get off Jesus faith slips, self is in control, and the result is sin.

The Victorious Life is not dependent on circumstances. Nothing is too hard for God, not even your hard circumstances. And let us always remember that the Victorious Life is “the Life that is Christ.” He is as able under one circumstance as under another.

The Victorious Life is not an attainment by growth. True growth in Grace really begins when we take the Grace of the Lord for complete victory over sin. Growth in Grace does not mean gradually getting rid of our sins, but it does mean growing from one degree of glory to another degree of glory as we behold the Lord and are changed into his image (2 Cor. 3:18).

The Victorious Life gives no cause for boasting of spiritual attainment. Grace excludes boasting. It gives us no holiness of our own. The holiness and the victory are His, and the most mature saint in the walk of faith needs the same secret of Victory as the young Christian just entering into the Life. His strength is ever made perfect in weakness. My weakness is never made stronger, though as I learn more of the Bible teaching of what faith is I may get more and more established in acting by faith.

Continuing in Victory

We continue in the Life of Victory as we entered it, by continuing the attitude of surrender and faith, moment by moment. It is the principle of “contact”; as long as the trolley keeps on the wire the electric power is supplied to run the car; as we keep looking unto Jesus there is Victory. If a slip of faith comes, if the trolley gets off the wire, and sin enters (which is always possible but never necessary), do not stop to argue with Satan about the sin or listen to his suggestion that you never had Victory: confess, receive instant forgiveness (1 John 1:9), look again in faith just as when you entered into the blessed “rest of faith.”

Does this message leave you with joy and gladness in your heart, because you know that this life is yours? Have you taken the Gift? Or are you like the young Christian who told an older woman that she had surrendered and believed a thousand times, and she was in hopeless darkness about it all.

“Well,” this older Christian said, “just stop doing that, or trying to do anything, and trust him to do it all.”

“I have done that a hundred times,” was the discouraged answer.

She had no will power to do anything, and she was hungry for Victory.

“If you can do nothing else, just lift up your heart to Christ.”

“I can’t. My heart is too heavy to lift up.”

It Is as Simple as This

“Well, one thing you can do, for it is just a physical act. You can lift up your eyes. Will you do that?”

The young woman promised that she would do that, and on the way home she kept her eyes directed upward as unto him. The next day she gave her testimony with a radiant face, rejoicing in the Lord: “I lifted up my eyes, and my heart went up with them.”

The Victorious Life is just as gloriously simple as that—just looking up—unto Jesus—and KEEP ON LOOKING.

OUT OF BONDAGE INTO LIBERTY

“They do not care a snap of their fingers whether Abraham was justified by faith or works,” writes a leading American preacher in a recent article that seeks to interpret the heart-cry of men to-day for a prophet who can give them “a spiritual interpretation of the world-rending and home-smashing events that are taking place.”

Yet that very same question which was the all-important thing for Abraham, to-day, nearly four thousand years later, is still the question that goes to the root of the world’s spiritual problem.

There is nothing more important for the Christian to understand than the distinction between law and grace. For to understand that is to have in one’s heart the Gospel message. It is not too much to say that the chief cause of powerlessness in the Christian church to-day, a powerlessness that is made the more acutely evident by the world’s sore travail, is that so many thousands of Christians are still living under law.

They have not found the emancipation of grace.

They do not walk at liberty, which was purchased for us by Christ.

They do not stand fast in the freedom wherewith Christ has set us free.

They are not “free indeed” with the freedom which the Son of God won for us.

This is not an academic question. It is not a discussion of points of law, nor the making of fine distinctions in the deeper spiritual mysteries. It is a question of sin.

When our Lord was telling the Jews that if they believed him and followed him they would know the truth, and the truth would set them free, they threw back their shoulders in their pride of ancestry and boasted that they were Abraham’s seed, and were never in bondage to any man. The Son of God did not stop to discuss questions of race, or of political liberty, but went to the heart of the matter with one of his tremendous verilies: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Every one that committeth sin is the bondservant of sin” (John 8:34).

Christians Who Are Bondslaves

That Word of the King of kings is the word that needs to be thundered to-day, or, what is more effective, whispered to-day into the souls of men. There is no bondslavery comparable to this. A man may be on the side of righteousness so far as the conflict of nations is concerned to-day, but what avails that for the solving of his individual problem if he is the bondservant of sin?

If, then, the question of law and grace is a question of sin, it is the most vital matter that can concern men to-day. Always alongside of sin is another word beginning with S—“Salvation,”—that is, this word is always alongside of sin in this age of Grace. When our Lord told the Jews of this bondslavery, he did not leave them there, but added that wondrous word: “If therefore the Son shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.”

There is needed to-day a great challenge to be thrown at an unbelieving world, a testimony that cannot be answered,—Christians walking at liberty, men and women living in the midst of these awful days of stress with the “freedom indeed” which belongs only to sons of God. But instead of that an unbelieving world is constantly face to face with the puzzling spectacle of professing Christians who are bondservants of sin, who do not know the meaning of liberty.

For let us remember the word of the Master, and not nullify it with theological explanations to make it fit into the experiences of Christians: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Every one that committeth sin is the bondservant of sin.” And Christians are bondservants of sin because they are living under law and not under grace. They are not using, not enjoying, the freedom that Jesus Christ purchased for us.

Have We Nothing to Do with Law?

So fundamental is the correct understanding of the Christian’s relation to the law, that if Satan is not able to beguile Christians into staying in bondage under the law he will seek to drive them into an opposite error that is just as deadly to true liberty. This is the notion that a Christian has nothing to do with the law, and is under no obligation to have his life conform to it. Young Christians who have seen something of the wonder of their deliverance from the law have jumped to the conclusion that the Old Testament books that deal with the dispensation of law have such an indirect bearing upon their lives that they can neglect them. Portions of the New Testament are also divided in this fashion from the rest of the Word, and even Christians with a deep spiritual vision have argued that the Sermon on the Mount had little in it for them because it was on legal ground, and we are under grace. Their teachers may not have intended this application of their instruction about freedom from the law, but it illustrates the danger, and shows the need of clear light from the Word to avoid the pitfalls on each side.

So the Word of God urges on the one hand, “For freedom did Christ set us free: stand fast therefore, and be not entangled again in a yoke of bondage” (Gal. 5:1), and cautions on the other, “For so is the will of God, that by well-doing ye should put to silence the ignorance of foolish men: as free, and not using your freedom for a cloak of wickedness, but as bondservants of God” (1 Peter 2:16).

And Paul puts the two messages together in Galatians 5:13 and 14: “For ye, brethren, were called for freedom; only use not your freedom for an occasion to the flesh, but through love be servants one to another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word, even in this: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.”

Law in the New Testament

But in what sense are we freed from the law, if we are still to keep the law? The New Testament takes hold of the law of God as revealed in the Old, and makes it infinitely higher in its requirements.

Some men say that their Gospel is the Sermon on the Mount.

It is the most hopeless Gospel a sinner ever struggled with.

For in this sermon our Lord pours the spiritual meanings into the law of God. It may have been possible for a man to abstain from the outward act of murder, but our Lord takes that command and shows that the inward fact of murder is in a man’s heart if he is angry with his brother. So does the Master lift the command against impurity into a place where the strong moral man, who does not have the secret of victory, is convicted of impurity.

Not only is there this spiritual interpretation of the law, which makes it the more impossible to keep it, but there is the new commandment the Lord gave his disciples, to love one another as he loved them. And as though this were not enough, the New Testament epistles, after the death and resurrection, when the dispensation of law was fully over, show us that to break the law of God at one point makes us guilty of all: “Howbeit if ye fulfil the royal law, according to the scripture, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself, ye do well: but if ye have respect of persons, ye commit sin, being convicted by the law as transgressors. For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet stumble in one point, he is become guilty of all. For he that said, Do not commit adultery, said also, Do not kill. Now if thou dost not commit adultery, but killest, thou art become a transgressor of the law” (James 2:8-11).

This startling passage says that if Christians have respect of persons—and has not the Spirit here put his finger upon one of the most pathetic and abominable sins of Christian churches of our day?—these Christians are convicted as transgressors of the law, and are guilty of all. Then the Apostle goes on to speak of the sins of murder and adultery as samples of the kind of thing that a Christian is guilty of when he shows respect of persons,—the awful sin of unlove.

Law Never Abrogated

This leads us into the truth that the law of God is pure and holy and spiritual, and has never been abrogated. The New Covenant does not take away the law: it provides a way of fulfilling the law. There are many senses in which the word “law” is used in the Scriptures, but we are looking now at the righteous law of God which must be fulfilled, and the breaking of which is sin, for sin is lawlessness, or the breaking of the law. James tells us that to stumble in one point is to break the whole law, for the law is a unity.

The law is a unity because it is an expression of the character of God, and God is one.

To break it in one point is to sin against God. It is a true revelation of the Scriptures that “God is law,” though these words do not occur. The words “God is love” do occur, and love is the fulfilling of the law.

When God gave the perfect law to men God knew that men could not keep it apart from the secret of Grace. But men did not know it. And God cannot do anything for a man by grace until man learns that he is a transgressor of the law of God, and that it is impossible for him to keep it. Israel said, “All that Jehovah hath spoken we will do.” They indeed needed a tutor unto Christ.

The law, then, was added to show man what sin is, to make sin exceeding sinful, to prove to man that he is a sinner. This work the law did all through the old dispensation. But this work the law must continue to do for every individual before he can enter into the meaning of grace.

That Seventh of Romans Struggle

That is what the struggle of the seventh chapter of Romans means. That is a struggle under law, the picture of a man who has been brought under condemnation by the law. The law is a great mirror let down from heaven in which a man may see himself as he is. That is why the law brings condemnation and death. It is a curse,—not because the law is not holy, but because it convicts the man of his unholiness. Law does this in the New Testament as well as the Old, and with infinitely more searching terribleness because of the high spiritual interpretation of the inner meaning of the outward commands. The law of God has done its work in a Christian when he has seen that it is impossible for him to be good according to God’s standard.

Not all have seen this. Dr. Scofield tells of a gentleman who came to him at the close of a talk on how a Christian might get out of the struggle of the seventh chapter of Romans into the victory of the eighth chapter, and asked him this: “Doctor, what was the trouble with Paul anyway? Why did he find it so hard to be good? I don’t find it very hard to be good.”

“What do you mean by being good?” the preacher asked.

“What every one means—living a clean life, being honest, paying your debts, treating people right, and if your neighbor gets in trouble put your hand in your pocket and help him out.”

“Oh,” Dr. Scofield responded, “Paul did those things all his life. Any gentleman would do those things. Paul was not talking of that when he said it was a struggle to be good.”

“Well, what did he mean?” the business man asked, somewhat taken aback.

“Not Built That Way!”

“Did you ever try to be meek?” was the preacher’s next question.

“What’s that?”

“Did you ever try to be meek?”

“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?”

Nothing. “Faith does nothing”; faith believes that Jesus has done it all.

Now this is exactly the case with Christian living, and the keeping of the law of God. Whenever a Christian sins, sin is having dominion over him, and that means that he is living under law where he does not belong, and needs to get under grace. Here, just as in salvation from the penalty of sin, grace means that Jesus Christ is doing it all. What is left for me then in the matter of winning victory over sin? Nothing. Faith believes that Jesus is doing it all. That is grace, and nothing else is. For if my effort enters, it is not of grace, but partly by the work of the law. That is making void the grace of God, “for if righteousness is through the law, then Christ died for nought” (Gal. 2:21).

Christian liberty is changing the bondslavery of sin for the bondslavery of Christ; it is freedom from the law in order that the law may be kept in us by Another; it is changing the law that “made nothing perfect” for “the perfect law, the law of liberty.” “So speak ye, and so do, as men that are to be judged by a law of liberty” (James 2:12).

GOD’S NEW SPELLING FOR “OBEY”

“Trust and obey” is frequently given as the key to living the Victorious Life. “Surrender and obedience,” another suggests as the things necessary for continuance in victory. Instant obedience to every word of God, another says, is absolutely necessary if one would be in victory. Another teacher points out that the New Testament reduces all God’s commandments to two,—believe in Jesus and love one another,—and our duty is thus simplified: we are to obey these two commandments and victory is ours.

But to obey these commandments is exactly what I cannot do. If I obey these two commandments, the whole law of God is fulfilled in me. It is because I have failed to fulfil this perfect law of God, that I cry out with Paul, “Wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me?” The answer to that question gives me the secret of the Victorious Life, the Life that results in obedience. Of what avail is it to tell me that the secret of living the Victorious Life is to obey God, when the very reason I am hungry after the Life is because it results in obedience. That Life does what I have failed to do—obey God.

So long as we make obedience the cause or producer of victory, so long are we under the law. We are living under the Old Covenant. The law says, “He that doeth them [God’s statutes] shall live in them”; that is, it is the law-keeper’s obedience which brings life and victory.

But, it will be answered, when Christians are urged to obey it is not intended that they should do this in their own strength. We must constantly seek divine help to obey. There is the human side and the divine side. On our part we are to strive with all our willpower against sin, and God’s part is to help us in the struggle.

Making Victory Impossible

There is one trouble with this program of human effort co-operating with divine power. It always leads to defeat, bringing the struggling man under the dominion of sin. It produces the man pictured in the seventh chapter of Romans. It is the program followed by nearly all Christians.

And that is why nearly all Christians are living in defeat practically all of the time.

It is not that defeats come now and again in the face of difficult temptations; the distressing thing in the experience of most earnest Christians is the consciousness that complete victory is never enjoyed; the occasional bad falls are but indications of a chronic condition of defeat.

The Two Covenants

The reason for this life of defeat is that Christians mingle law and grace, and this makes complete victory an impossibility. When we are in defeat it is because we are under the Old Covenant, which can make nothing perfect. It may be that we are clear intellectually on the distinction between law and grace, but it is the mingling of them in daily experience that results in defeat before sin. The secret of victory, then, is to get entirely from under law and get wholly under grace for the needs of the present moment. What does this mean? How can it be done?

Probably no one has put more concisely and clearly the distinction between the Old Covenant and the New than has Andrew Murray in his “Two Covenants.” Under the Old Covenant, he points out, God says: “Obey me, and I will be your God.” In the New Covenant God speaks in some such words as these: “I will put my law in your heart, and ye shall obey me.” In the Old Covenant, Andrew Murray says, there were two parties, man and God. Man failed to keep his part of the agreement and the covenant was broken. In the New Covenant there is only one party. God undertakes the whole responsibility. The first is law. The second is grace. If man has any responsibility in the second, except to receive God’s provision through faith, then it is no longer of free grace.

A clear-thinking Presbyterian elder, a man of culture and trained mind, who recently saw the truth of Christ as his victory for the first time, was asked what he thought was the difference between the Old Covenant of works and the New Covenant of Grace. Several verses of Scripture had just been quoted which brought out the distinction. He was a man of few words, and he answered by holding up two fingers of his left hand, and one finger of his right hand. He had seen at once, five minutes after entering into victory, what Andrew Murray makes the theme of his helpful book on the Spirit-filled life,—that in the New Covenant it is not man co-operating with God, but God assuming the whole work, and doing it for man.

“I Could Not Live Up to It”

Another Presbyterian elder, also a clear thinker, a lawyer of ability, was recently facing the question of the need of victory in his own life. When the Scripture promises were presented to him, and he was asked whether he would take victory, his reply was a decided “No.”

“Why won’t you?”

“Because I am not sure I could live up to it.”

He still had two parties in his contract. He was still thinking under, and living under, the Old Covenant.

It sounds reasonable when a Christian says, “Of course, I am sure that Christ will always be faithful to his part, but the failure will come because of my weakness.” When a Christian says that, he is not in victory; he has missed the very heart of the Victorious Life. He is still under the Old Covenant. For God made the New Covenant with full knowledge of that weakness of mine. Indeed it was just because of that weakness of mine that the New Covenant was made. Had the weakness not been there the Old Covenant would have sufficed. The New Covenant is of no avail, and means nothing, if it is not to operate in spite of that weakness.

Man’s Part in Victory Over Sin

If God does everything in the matter of my obeying the law, what is my part? To do nothing. The human side of this New Covenant is to see that self is kept from doing anything, so that Grace may work. It is the effort of the self life, the human struggle described in Romans 7:7-24, which prevents the victory of Grace.

But surely Grace on God’s part needs something on man’s side if it is to be brought into touch with man. Yes, it needs to be told to man so that he may hear it as a message of good tidings. “Belief cometh of hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ” (Rom. 10:17). The word of good tidings to law-breaking Christians is that God has put his law in our hearts so that we shall obey him.

What are we to do with the word of good tidings? Believe it. If we do not believe that the law of the Spirit hath made us free from the law of sin, our unbelief does not affect the truth of God’s word, but we ourselves lose the benefit of those good tidings. “For indeed we have had good tidings preached unto us, even as also they: but the word of hearing did not profit them, because it was not united by faith with them that heard” (Heb. 4:2).

“Obey” Becomes “Believe”

The “obey” of the Old Covenant has become in the New Covenant “believe.” The responsibility for obedience has been taken entirely by Christ, and man’s part is to believe that astounding fact. Christians are still urged to obey, but always the spelling of that word is “believe.”

“Seeing ye have purified your souls in your obedience to the truth ... having been begotten again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, through the word of God.... But the word of the Lord abideth for ever. And this is the word of good tidings which was preached unto you.... For you therefore that believe is the preciousness: but for such as disbelieve, ... A stone of stumbling, and a rock of offence; for they stumble at the word, being disobedient.”

These scattered verses in the first and second chapters of First Peter present the new spelling of the old “obey.” Obedience to the truth is simply believing the word of good tidings, and they who stumbled at the word were disobedient because they did not believe the word of good tidings. It is a striking commentary that the King James Version uses “disobedient” in 1 Peter 2:7, where the Revised Version reads “disbelieve.”

If this change from law to Grace is simply a different putting of the matter, leaving man’s responsibility the same, then indeed there is no good tidings for the Christian in the matter of freedom from sin, and the Victorious Life teaching is a myth. If telling us to believe is just another way of asking us to obey, then are we no better off than before, and we must await our resurrection bodies in order to enjoy freedom from the law of sin against which we have been struggling. For with all our mind and heart we may want to obey, but there is that “different law in our members” preventing us from doing the things that we would. What is the new factor in Grace that changes everything? Is it something real, or something that I must produce by my own understanding, just a new attitude to the law?

Is Your Name in This Will?

It is something as real as the inheritance that a millionaire father wills to his son. God gives us a will in the third chapter of Galatians, and he speaks in it of an inheritance, and in words as carefully chosen and as accurate as in a perfect human will he explains who are the heirs in that will. The promise was given to Abraham and to his seed, not “seeds” as of many; “but as of one, and to thy seed, which is Christ” (Gal. 3:16). The closing verse of that will reveals the importance of that distinction the Holy Spirit makes between the singular and plural of the word seed. This distinction has puzzled scholars and some have called it an example of Paul’s juggling with words, but it need not puzzle any of the heirs whose names are in this will. “And if ye are Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, heirs according to promise.”

There is but one seed, Christ, and all that I am to get through this will, I get because I am in him. What is the inheritance promised in the will? If an earthly father knows how to will good gifts to his children, what shall be said of the heavenly Father’s gift? The will says that it is “the promise of the Spirit” and that it is through faith (Gal. 3:14). The promise includes complete freedom from the law.

But does not the law also come from God? “Is the law then against the promises of God?” is a most natural question, and it is asked in this legal document which tells us of our inheritance. The answer to that question contains one of the most significant statements in the whole Word of God on the relation of law and grace: “God forbid: for if there had been a law given which could make alive, verily righteousness would have been of the law” (Gal. 3:21).

Where “High Ideals” Fall Down

There is as much difference, then, between being under law and under grace, as there is between a dead man and a live man. If a high ideal could have given life, the word tells us, if God could have provided a law which could make a dead man alive, Grace would not have been needed, for righteousness would have been by the law. The free gift of the New Covenant is a new LIFE. That is what the promise of the Spirit provides. Does this give a vivid light upon Romans 8:2, “The law of the Spirit ... made me free from the law of sin and of death?” And the power of the law of the Spirit is the resurrection life of Christ Jesus. So the complete verse reads, “The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus made me free from the law of sin and of death.”

The passage in Romans eight goes on to show how Jesus did for us the thing we could not do, and that as a result of what he did, and is doing through the Spirit, “the requirement of the law is fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.” If we are appropriating the promise of the Spirit, our inheritance through faith, we are having fulfilled in us the law of God at this present moment. That is what the Word of God says. That is what happens when we are under Grace and not under the law. Obedience to the law is guaranteed while we are under Grace,—walking in the Spirit. Disobedience to the law can come only when the Christian is living under law,—walking after the flesh.

But, some one asks, is not a Christian always under Grace? He is, in his position, and the Victorious Life is simply walking by faith in that position won by Christ. “We believed on Christ Jesus, that we might be justified by faith in Christ, and not by the works of the law: because by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified. But if, while we sought to be justified in Christ, we ourselves also were found sinners, is Christ a minister of sin? God forbid. For if I build up again those things which I destroyed, I prove myself a transgressor” (Gal. 2:16, 18).

A Christian Under Law

When a Christian sins, transgresses the law, he is building up that which he has destroyed.

He is acting as though he were back under the law.

He is doing the deeds of the old man that has been crucified with Christ.

He is denying the resurrection life of Christ which is in him.

He is walking after the flesh and not after the Spirit.

He is back on the basis of working instead of resting in the finished work of Christ.

He is under the works of the law instead of the hearing of faith.

He is not standing fast in the freedom wherewith Christ has set him free.

There is but one thing to be done in order to get back at once under grace and the faith life,—confess the sin and take cleansing in the blood of Jesus. This is wholly of Grace; no Christian would be so foolish as to try to atone for his sin or to help the Lord Jesus do a complete work of cleansing.

It is exactly the same sort of folly that leads the Christian to seek to add his own effort in the business of winning victory over the next temptation that assails him. “If we live by the Spirit [if we have been born again by the Spirit], by the Spirit let us also walk” (by the same supernatural power let us live day by day and hour by hour, letting God do it all by the Spirit) (Gal. 5:25).

God’s new spelling for “obey” is “believe.” And, as Mr. Trumbull put it to a Christian who was grieving because she did not have the faith to believe, “The faith for salvation is the faith for victory.” Faith is just believing the word of God.

A Christian Under Grace

Have you believed the good tidings of future salvation and glory? Believe the same good tidings for present salvation from sin.

If you are under grace, sin shall not have dominion; you are walking in the Spirit.

Christ is dwelling in your heart by faith.

You are freed from the law with its works.

Yet the law of God is in your heart and it is your nature to keep it.

You are a new creation.

You are walking in newness of life.

You can finish the second chapter of Galatians as Paul finishes it: “For I through the law died unto the law, that I might live unto God. I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me: and that life which I now live in the flesh I live in faith, the faith which is in the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself up for me. I do not make void the grace of God” (Gal. 2:19-21).

WHEN TEMPTATION STRIKES

There is no state of grace that can be reached on earth which will guard a man from being tempted. The Victorious Life is a life of victory over temptation, but not a life of freedom from temptation.

Many a young Christian in the first flush of joy over new-found victory has somehow felt that this glorious new liberty was indeed freedom from temptation. For certain temptations have been taken completely out of the life. Perhaps it was the taste for tobacco, and the desire for smoking has been taken away. Or the questionable “border-line” amusements (questionable only to border-line Christians),—dancing and cards and the theater,—have completely lost their attractiveness and offer no temptation.

But suddenly, some day, temptation strikes from an unexpected quarter, and failure comes. It may be all over in a moment, but sin has entered. Perhaps it was a sudden flash of impatience, or irritation, or jealousy. Satan, close at hand, cunningly whispers, “You never had the experience of the Victorious Life.... And you never will.” Or he whispers that still more cunning word, “This higher life business is all a mistake.” And so the soul that has taken Christ as victory is often plunged into discouragement when the truth dawns that in the Victorious Life temptations multiply.

In this problem of temptation in the Victorious Life, as in every other conflict with our great Adversary, our safety must be found in the Word of God.

“Can a Dead Man Be Tempted?”

A common error regarding temptation in the Christian life is the belief that temptation is directed against a “sinful nature” within us. Some months ago there was discussed in Notes on Open Letters in The Sunday School Times the question of an earnest seeker who had taken Christ as his victory and was puzzled by this matter of temptation. He wrote:

How should temptation affect us? Christ had no sinful self in his temptation to contend with. Adam before the fall had not his sinful self to contend with; but we, since the fall, have a sinful self, even though we are in victory, if I understand rightfully. In Romans we read that the old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin, for he that is dead is freed from sin. If we are dead why should evil thoughts or temptations of any kind find in us the slightest desire of yielding to them? What should be the effect of feeling them? A dead man has no life, has he?

Temptation is never aimed against a dead man, nor against evil in a man. There is no meaning in “tempting evil.” There is no need for Satan to direct attacks against that which is already on his side. It is because we are alive and have power to sin that we are exhorted to reckon ourselves dead to—separated from—sin, not dead to temptation.

Temptation Hits Natural Desires

Temptation is directed against the human nature, and finds its entrance through the natural desires and impulses of the body. That is all Satan had to work upon in the case of Adam and Eve, and in the case of “the last Adam,” our Lord himself. Both Adams were sinless men before temptation came,—and “the last Adam” was sinless after temptation came. But both lived in temptable bodies; and it is these human bodies, not any sin nature dwelling in us, that make temptation possible.

A lost man may have depraved and unnatural appetites, as the drink or drug habit, which drop off at regeneration. But the natural appetites remain, and through these temptation may come in many forms.

Satan has no other plan of temptation for Christians than that which he tried successfully upon the first Adam and with disastrous failure upon the last Adam. A study of these two conflicts with Satan reveals the startling fact that all our multiplied temptations come to us through three channels, and three only. If these citadels are held, victory is certain. To understand this not only simplifies the problem of temptation, but shows why certain forms of temptation fall away from the Christian who takes Christ as his victory, while temptation in many other forms remains.

Perhaps no one has summed up more concisely, in terms of everyday experience, these three channels of temptation, than does Professor Melvin Grove Kyle in his teaching on temptation in his seminary classes.

Our Three Desires

Dr. Kyle points out that man has three natural desires: (1) the desire to enjoy things; (2) the desire to get things; (3) the desire to do things.

These three cover the whole range of human desires. For the desire to enjoy things concerns everything that has to do with a man’s body. The desire to get things concerns everything that a man sees outside of himself, the things that he can obtain in one way or another for himself. The desire to accomplish things includes everything that goes out from the man to affect in one way or another that outside world. Professor Kyle’s suggested definition of temptation is this: “Temptation is the incitement of a natural desire to go beyond the bound set by God.”

With this analysis before us, let us look into what happened when Satan came to our first parents. Let it be remembered that none of these three desires necessarily has to do with sin. Adam and Eve had these desires before sin entered. Our Lord Jesus had these same natural human desires.

Sin is doing something that God has told man not to do, or not doing something that God has told him to do. Eve’s failure began, under temptation, when she was willing to consider Satan’s questioning of God’s word.

Eve’s Threefold Temptation

“And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat.” There was the threefold temptation. “She saw that the tree was good for food”; her desire to enjoy things was incited, and she faced the question of satisfying in an unlawful way that desire for enjoyment. She saw that the fruit was “a delight to the eyes”: her desire to get the attractive thing she saw was incited, and she faced the question of whether she should satisfy that desire in a way that God had forbidden. Finally she saw that the tree was “to be desired to make one wise.” Satan had told her that she and her husband would be as God if they ate the fruit. Her desire to accomplish things took the form of reaching out after equality with God.

Now turn for a moment to the analysis of sin and temptation that the Holy Spirit gives in 1 John 2:16: “For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the vainglory of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.” Here is an inclusive statement of all that is in the world. The apostle is stating here the only three ways in which it is possible for a man to sin. Note that they are the three points at which Eve failed.

When the desire to enjoy things goes beyond the bounds set by God it becomes “the lust of the flesh.” The lawful desire to get things, when it turns into sin, becomes “the lust of the eyes.” When the desire to do things leads a man away from God, it becomes “the vainglory [or the pride] of life.”

Dr. Kyle points out in his study of temptation that Eve fell at every point of her nature, and sinned in “the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the vainglory of life.” He notes also that the lust of the eyes and the pride of life had no immediate outlet of expression for Adam and Eve, situated as they were in the midst of a world that was all theirs, and so the sin found immediate expression in some form of the lust of the flesh. Yet man had yielded and sinned at all three points.

Tempting Our Sinless Lord

Turning now from the luxurious garden to the barren wilderness, the same Tempter comes to our Lord Jesus, the last Adam, when he was hungry after his fasting of forty days and forty nights; and the Tempter came with the same three appeals. Our Lord Jesus had the natural desire to enjoy food for his body. He was hungry, and the desire was right. But the Tempter asked him to satisfy that hunger in a wrong way. Satan again begins his attack by a question. He does not hold before Christ the temptation to become as God. He raises the question as to whether he is the Son of God, and suggests that this be proved by making use of the omnipotence of the Creator to satisfy his own human needs. It was far more subtle than the appeal to Eve’s desire to enjoy the fruit; but at the bottom it was an attack on the Word of God. Our Lord’s answer not only checkmates the Tempter, but states a profound truth by which his brethren may enter into victory under similar temptations. “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.”

Our Lord had a natural desire to get things. What he desired to get was “all the kingdoms of the world.” They belonged to him. He came to earth to secure them. Satan strikes at this perfectly right desire to get things by showing our Lord all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them, “and he said unto him, All these things will I give thee if thou wilt fall down and worship me.” The desire to get these kingdoms was right; but the temptation was to get them in some way not of God’s ordering. Making a step outside the will of God always means exchanging the worship of God for the worship of Satan; and so our Lord answers: “Get thee hence, Satan; for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.”

Our Lord also had that third desire, the desire to accomplish things. The work he came to accomplish was to bring redemption—to the Jew first, and also to the Gentile. He came to his own with the desire that they should recognize him as the One sent from God, their Messiah. Satan strikes at this right desire, and presents to Jesus a quick way to accomplish this purpose. But again it is a way with a question mark regarding God’s Word.

It has been suggested that the thought here is that Jesus could prove to the multitude gathered below in the temple court that he was indeed the Son of God when this Messianic prophecy was fulfilled before their eyes in such a startling way. The reply of our Lord is significant. “Again it is written, Thou shalt not make trial of the Lord thy God.” This quotation from Deuteronomy 6:16 refers back to the incident at Rephidim when the children of Israel made trial of Jehovah by saying: “Is Jehovah among us, or not?” (Exod. 17:7.) So Satan asked Jesus to prove that God’s Word was indeed true, and settle the fact that he was the Son of God and that Jehovah was indeed with him.

As our first parents fell at all three points of attack, so our Lord won the victory at every point. Borrowing again an illuminating suggestion from Dr. Kyle’s study of the subject, we have here the real explanation of that word concerning our Lord that he was tempted in all points like as we are. He was tempted on every side of his nature. He did not necessarily meet every individual form of temptation that has come to other men, but he did meet the Adversary at these three points, which comprise all the possible area of temptation.

The victory over temptation has been won. His victory is a guarantee of our triumph over every form of temptation that can ever meet us. It is ours to choose whether we shall share in that victory already won by our Elder Brother, or be united with the first Adam in his defeat.

THE CONQUEST OF TEMPTATION

The Word of God never offers freedom from temptation. But it does offer to Christians victory over all temptation. One of Satan’s lies that has been accepted as almost an axiom in the thinking and the experience of Christians is that no one can expect victory over every one of his temptations. But God says: “There hath no temptation taken you but such as man can bear: But God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation make also the way of escape, that ye may be able to endure it” (1 Cor. 10:13). It is significant that this verse is immediately preceded by a word of warning: “Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall.”

There is ever before the Christian the possibility of falling. There is no state of grace from which he may not, before some temptation, step into awful sin. But God’s Word, which cannot be broken, stands pledged to us that in every temptation there is “the way of escape.” And our Lord Jesus is “the Way.” Victory over temptation was won by Christ. Satan is an already defeated foe. Defeat in temptation came to Adam. It is for every man, and every Christian, to decide whether he will share the first Adam’s defeat or the last Adam’s victory.

The two great temptation scenes pictured in the Bible, that of our first parents and that of our Lord, show that temptation finds its way into the human heart through three avenues. When man falls before these temptations the resulting sins are what the Apostle describes as “the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the vainglory of life.” Let us see how this Bible picture of the sins that are in the world corresponds with conditions in the twentieth century.

Africa’s Three Sins

A missionary recently back from the heart of Africa was describing some of the intimate things that she had learned regarding the natives. As she spoke of the daily life of the natives, and told of the chief problems of missionary work, there were three outstanding sins that were emphasized. There is the gross immorality, which came up for mention in connection with the description of the tribal dances and what they lead to. There is the grasping after possessions, a tendency to covetousness that is so deeply imbedded in their natures that the missionaries need to exercise the greatest care in dealing with new converts. This native quality came vividly to the missionary’s mind when she was speaking of the native Christian evangelists and the problem of compensating them in such a way that the old cupidity will not be aroused. A third characteristic of the native in all the villages is his consuming desire to secure a high place in the “Four Hundred” of his tribe. There are distinct social honors, and for many of the young men the passion of life is to win these honors.

This missionary had no intention of analyzing the outstanding sins of the natives, but these three things naturally came before her as she described their daily life. And these three comprise “all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the vainglory of life.”

Put into briefer form these three sins are lust, covetousness, pride. All sin comes under one or other of these three classes.

America’s Three Sins

These three are the outstanding sins of America. Dan Crawford came out of Africa into civilization just about the time the “newer” forms of dancing were having their first popularity. He made the startling statement that he had seen all of these unspeakably vile dances in pagan Africa. In America, he said, they were only in a new setting. Essentially they were the same, and they were for the same purpose. What we call the gross sin of the African flourishes in every civilized land.

Those who read a business man’s article, published several years ago in The Sunday School Times, on “The Sin That We Are Afraid to Mention,” will not soon forget his arraignment of the awful sin of covetousness, “which is idolatry.” And it was in the Christian church that this layman found the black sin that Christians keep quiet about. What then shall be said of covetousness in the business world?

There is finally that climax of all sins of America, and of man, the sin of pride, most subtle and most pervading of all, the sin that will culminate in man’s final defiance of God. Saddest of all, it is this sin which appears at its ugliest when it takes the form of spiritual pride in the life of one who is zealous to serve God and to be wholly yielded to him.

In a message that S. D. Gordon gave on temptation he remarked that there are three chief avenues by which Satan reaches men. He stated the three in these brief words: “Sex,” “Money,” “I.” It is exactly the classification that God makes in his Word. If, by his grace, we get victory at these three points, then indeed are we free from the dominion of sin.

So much for the sin that results when man falls before one or another of these temptations. But what of the temptations themselves? How do they affect a Christian who is trusting Christ for victory? What is the practical bearing on the common temptations that meet us in everyday life? Then there is the final, most important question, what is the way to prevent these desires from conceiving and bringing forth sin?

Why Not Freedom from Temptation?

A Sunday School Times reader has written of his experience. “It is not a temptation for me to take a glass of beer; there is nothing in me that requires or desires it; but sometimes it might be and has been a strong temptation to get impatient, which I have yielded to at times. Why should one be any more a temptation than the other, provided I am in victory over all sin?”