Romans 6:5-7 For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection:… 1. The text is an effort to convey by a curious and vigorous figure the close spiritual assimilation which faith produces between the Christian and Christ. What St. Paul says literally is, that believers have "grown together into one" with Christ, so as to become of like nature with Him in the matter of His death. 2. But how can any inward change, passing in the mind of a man today, be said to bear a likeness to what happened when Christ bare our sin? Easily enough. Consider the moral significance of Christ's death for sin. Was it not, to begin with, the first full recognition ever made on this earth of the guilt of sin, and of the integrity of the law? The Son, being of one mind with the Father, owned that sin was hateful, and the Divine law holy, and its sentence just. Now, whenever I with my whole heart accept of that death as reconciling me to God by satisfying His law on my behalf, do I not enter into sympathy with God's point of view, just as His own Son did? Can we call such an experience anything but spiritual incorporation into the likeness of Christ's death? The man who has got such a view of his own sin does in a very real sense die in his heart to sin. Seek to know the fellowship of Christ's sufferings; become conformed to His death; then the old evil self must die within the bosom, killed by the Cross that killed our Saviour. 3. If faith in the Cross of Christ prove thus effectual to cut the nerve of a sinful life, surely we shall also "grow together with Him in the likeness of His resurrection." The very object for which Christ and our old sinful self died, is that the believer, once set free from sin, should be point by point conformed to the likeness of the risen Jesus. It may appear to some as though this thing which we call faith were too feeble or uncertain for a work so great. What! may one say, shall a man reverse his tastes, break his habits, and change his life into the likeness of One so unlike him as Jesus Christ, merely because he puts faith in Christ to save him? What is there in this "faith" to work so astounding a revolution? 4. The answer to that, in part at least, is tiffs: that we have really no deeper or more powerful agent for working any such change than just this same faith. It combines the strongest motives and most sustaining elements in character; such as confidence, loyalty, affection, reverence, authority, and moral attractiveness. You constantly find that large bodies of men, parties in the State, armies in the field, schools of opinion, whole nations even at critical moments, are swayed simply by the transcendent influence of one outstanding trusted leader. Still more absorbing is the influence which an individual may acquire over one other soul that entirely believes in him. Take a single element in "faith" — the mere persuasion of one man that another is able and willing to aid him in his enterprises. Let it be a fixed idea with a poor individual that some influential friend will back him up in his business, and that in such backing lies his best chance of success. What is there he will not do rather than forfeit assistance from that quarter on which all his hopes are built? Add to such a selfish expectation of help the far deeper bond of personal reverence or of proud admiring love. Let the relation become like that of some tried and faithful lieutenant to a gallant leader, or like that of a maiden to the lover whom she both believes in and dents upon. Can bounds be set to the power of faith like theirs? Let the object of such devotion be really noble and wise, who shall say how far baseness and selfishness may be burnt out of the heart that cleaves to the idol it has chosen for itself? Let that idol be itself erring or misguided, who will wonder if the soul that worships it be dragged down the same devious and unhappy path to share the same fall? If to all this you could add in a rare instance some overwhelming obligation of a strictly moral kind, like a bond of gratitude deep as life for a benefit never to be forgotten, or a claim of supreme authority no less sacred than a father's, more subduing than a king's — who does not see that in such a faith as that you would have the mightiest of all forces within human experience? 5. This is our faith in Christ — this, but beyond analogy greater and more masterful, because human parallels are infinitely too weak to express it. The Christian trusts in Jesus, but not as a man trusts in his fellow's support, for our Saviour is the mighty God. The Christian is tied to Jesus with a heart devotion based on reverence and warming into love; but not as women cling to their lovers, or partisans to their hero-chieftain, for our Saviour commands a reverence which is worship, and wins an affection which is supreme. The Christian owes to Jesus obedience for the service He has rendered, and for the right He possesses to command; but not under such limitations as always environ human authorities, even the highest, since our Saviour is Lord of the conscience as well as of the heart, and His moral mastery is absolute, as His judgment shall be final. Does it seem, then, any longer a thing futile or unreasonable to say, that through such faith as that a man may come to grow together into one with the Divine Object of his devotion, until the man's life is penetrated with Christ's spirit and conformed in everything to His matchless likeness? 6. Still, the tie which links a believer to His Saviour offers points of contrast quite as striking. Men do get assimilated no doubt to the objects of their earthly devotion. Still no union wrought by any such faith on earth can adequately represent the unique life junction which, through a special act of God's Holy Spirit, makes these twain one — the living Head of God's new family and each lowly, trusting sinner who cleaves to Jesus as his spiritual life. For one thing, the union of a believing soul to Jesus has its roots in a certain mysterious oneness which God's gracious will has established between the heirs of salvation and their new representative and Second Adam, the Lord from heaven. For another thing, this relationship involves not a portion only of the man's experience, not some transient, or secular, or subordinate interest, but the believer's very self — his true and deepest being. It is the old man which is crucified with Christ, that moral personality which has hitherto been the very centre and source of all my words and actions. The believer's very self hangs thenceforward on Christ's self. His spiritual being is new made, for it is informed by another Spirit as its inspiring and ruling influence, even by the Holy Spirit whom Jesus gives. Such a change as this is effected, indeed, by faith. But such faith comes of the operation of God. When the old man dies and the new man lives in a human being there is an evident re-birth; and for that we must postulate an immediate operation of the Divine Giver of life. (J. Oswald Dykes, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection: |
    |