LIFE AND LAW | AdventAI

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Feb 24, 1904

LIFE AND LAW.

We repeat again the same scripture we used last week:—

"If any man hath not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His. And if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the Spirit is life because of righteousness. But if the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwelleth in you, He that raised up Christ Jesus from the dead shall give life also to your mortal bodies through His Spirit that dwelleth in you. "So then, brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh to live after the flesh: for if ye live after the flesh, ye must die; but if by the Spirit ye put to death the deeds of the body, ye shall live." Rom. 8: 9-13.

We learned in our previous study that the source of all life was one—namely, God the Creator; that God had given this life to the world through His Son; that the God of life is the God of law; that His own perfect plan comprehended only perfect life in harmony with perfect law; that each thing created had a law peculiar to itself, differentiating it from all other creatures; that it maintained existence only as it continued in harmony with the law of its being; and that continuance of God's highest creatures in life depended on their relation to His highest law, the Decalogue, the reflect of His own character.

Nearly all these findings are axiomatic truths. Admitting the truth of the Scriptures, we need but to hear their simple statement to admit their verity.

Each of God's creatures receives life from Him according to the law of its being. If the law is perverted in its being, the life must be perverted also. If the law is perfect, the inflow of the life will be perfect also.

Man in his normal condition has a tripartite nature. He is composed of body, soul, and spirit. The body includes the fleshly, material part of man, manifest to our physical feelings. The life of the body is the soul. And every creature that breathes has soulical life. Without this life, the body is dead, and would soon decay. By that soulical life the physical man in and through his physical organs performs all the various functions of the fleshly man.

All the senses are operative. The man talks, sees, hears, tastes, smells, feels. The brain thinks. The mind aspires, plans, loves, hates.

The spirit of man is that higher life which connects him with God; which leads him to worship, toil, sacrifice, for others' good, which, by the power of the endless life, harmonizes him with the Master of the universe. The normal, spiritual life holds in subjection the soulical life, the physical man. It is God ruling, working, "to will and to do of His own pleasure" in harmony with the voluntary choice of man.

In the beginning, direct from God, man received the spirit life. That life controlled the whole man. His physical life was perpetuated by the food he ate, the air he breathed, the water he drank. But the spiritual life controlled all according to the will of the Creator. The spiritual life was fed by the word of God, ministered unto by heavenly angels, and received direct from the great Fountain continual supplies.

Perhaps it can be made plainer by some homely though imperfect illustration. Imagine a little tree planted in a circle of perfectly-adapted living soil. Around this soil is another circle of soil, perfectly adapted to its purpose, but inferior in quality to the central soil. Into this outer circle the roots of the tree penetrate. Apart from these is a great fountain pulsing out its streams of life in every direction. On the side toward the fountain the outer circle is open, so that the perfect life current flows direct from the fountain to the plant and to the inner circle of the soil. Through this medium the outer circle also receives vitality and added richness from the currents of life. The inferior soil in the outer circle constantly drinks in from the water flowing about it, and conveys life to the roots of the tree, which transmutes them into limb and leaf and flower and fruit.

Such was the primal man. His physical nature received life from the great fountain, through the channels of food and air and water. The spiritual nature received eternal life direct from God through the channel of His law, His word. The higher life controlled and enriched the lower. If man had continued obedient to the law of God, he would have lived forever.

But man sinned. He turned from God to the tempter. He rejected God's word and the higher life for the lower life. By that very act, he closed the channel of the spiritual life from God. He yielded, through a demand upon his appetite, the physical man to Satan, and sin became incarnate, infleshed. The normal law of man's physical life became perverted. Man's will and desires were placed athwart the current of God's life, and all its channels were perverted, and man became a dying soul. All the perverted flesh tended to corruption and decay. Yet, man having shut off the inflow of spiritual life, by the rejection of the word of God, the only channel of life that was left in his condition was the physical man, the flesh. Through that channel God poured His life; the flesh received it and constantly poisoned it by the sin within. Yet notwithstanding this, existence was prolonged even by the life perverted through the flesh.

There is where fallen man stands to-day; where he always has stood. He possesses no life save that which he receives from the flesh, that which is nourished through the flesh, that which is perverted by the flesh. He may prolong it and improve it in proportion as he brings his mode of life into harmony with the physical law of his being; but he knows no higher life, and is separated by the flesh from the life of God; and sooner or later his life becomes extinct. His spiritual nature is dead. His condition is thus expressed by the apostle: "Dead through your trespasses and sins;" "separate from Christ," "without God in the world," "alienated from the life of God." Eph. 2:1, 1:1, 4:18. They are carnal, without the Spirit. Rom. 8: 5-9.

The only power which can break this bondage and bring life to the soul is Jesus Christ. This He does to the soul who is willing, submissive, believing. When the mind of the flesh, which is contrary to God's law (Rom. 8:7), is yielded, Jesus Christ brings in the mind of the Spirit, the flesh is broken through, and the soul has access once more to the life of God flowing through the channel of His received word.

The reception of this life is set forth in many scriptures; we quote, however, but two:—

"And the witness is this, that God gave unto us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He that hath the Son hath the life; he that hath not the Son of God hath not the life. These things have I written unto you [believers], that ye may know that ye have eternal life, even unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God." 1 John 5:11-13. "I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I [the carnal Paul] that live, but Christ liveth in me [by His Spirit]; 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." Gal. 2: 20.

He who does not have that indwelling Spirit by faith "is none of His." But he who has that Spirit, the soul in whom Christ dwells, albeit the flesh is still the flesh of sin, therefore counted dead, finds the spiritual inflow life. And he finds it life, not because it flowed from the Fountain as perfect life, but because it is received through the only channel in which it can reach the heart—"righteousness." "The spirit is life because of righteousness." Rom. 8: 10. "In the way of righteousness is life." Prov. 12: 28.

More than this. When man lives in the flesh, unbelief closes the avenues to the life of God. The only life he knows is the life that filters through a corrupted flesh, perverted by the perverted channels of a perverted law. The law that was ordained unto life, perverted in the flesh, is found to be unto death. Rom. 7: 10. The law of righteousness in God has become in the flesh "the law of sin and death." The spiritual man was dead, reason and will a slave.

But when all was yielded to Christ, He came. The carnal mind was slain. The Spirit of Christ came in a ruling power, by the choice of the soul, over the flesh and fleshly desires. The mortal body is quickened by a new life power. The functions of the flesh, formerly servants to sin, become servants of righteousness. Rom. 6: 17-22. The Spirit puts to death in their inception, "the deeds of the body," and the man lives. Rom. 8: 10-13. This life, maintained by faith, issues in glorious immortality at the second coming of Christ.

Reader, have you this life? or are you living according to the flesh? Is it life? or is it death?