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ascended One, Who once walked the earth. Secondly, we are not dealing with the
mediatorship of Christ which would be rightly expressed by the preposition "through",
but with our oneness expressed by the preposition "in". We died to sin in the likeness of
His death, we walk in the likeness of His resurrection; but we live, actually and really,
"in Him".
This, then, is the mode of apprehending this most important truth. We "reckon", with
a reality as great as that with which Christ was reckoned with the transgressors. Just as
surely as He was treated as a transgressor as a result of that reckoning, nothing being
abated of all the horror of desertion, crucifixion and death; so, as surely, shall we be
treated as justified and free from the dominion of sin, when we, too, reckon ourselves to
have died to sin on the one hand, and, on the other, to be alive to God "in Christ Jesus".
The reader is requested to notice the entire absence from this passage of any
approximation to the language of a certain school of teaching, which urges its followers
to "crucify themselves" and to "die more and more" if they would enter into this blessed
state. Instead of exhorting us to crucify ourselves, the next section goes on to urge that
we should "yield ourselves unto God as those that are alive from the dead". It is good for
us to abide by the Word of God, and He assures us that the "crucifying" was done for us
by His blessed Son. The "dying" was in our room and stead. Before anything else of an
experimental nature is introduced we are told to "reckon".
The following extract from the writings of Romaine are much to the point here:--
"True spiritual mortification does not consist in sin not being in thee, nor in it being
put upon the cross daily, nor yet in its being kept upon it. There must be something more
to establish perfect peace in thy conscience; and that is the testimony of God concerning
the body of sin. He has provided for thy perfect deliverance from it in Christ.
Everything needful for this purpose was finished by Him upon the cross. He was thy
Surety . . . . . the law has no more right to condemn thee, a believer, than it has to
condemn Him. Justice is bound to deal with thee as it has with thy risen and ascended
Saviour. If thou dost not see thy complete mortification in Him, sin will reign in thee
. . . . . If it be not mortified in its power . . . . . This believing view of his absolute
mortification in Christ is the true gospel method of mortifying sin in our own persons."
We have considered sanctification in its three aspects, and may now add the scriptural
method of apprehending it in its fullness.
Sanctification.
(1)
A sphere: newness of life.
(2)
A condition: oneness with Christ.
(3)
A state: freedom from bondage.
(4)
It is apprehended by "reckoning".