Copyright
© 2018 Michael A. Brown
‘…since you have taken off your old self with its
practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in
the image of its Creator.’
(Col. 3:9-10)
UNTIL a person sees for themself
the deep corruption of their own inward nature, they will never think that they
will end up in eternal hell. S/he will
always tend to lean on the self-deception that there is something ‘good’ enough
or ‘worthy’ enough in their life or character that will justify them before God
and therefore open up the way to heaven for them, or, conversely, that they
could never go to hell because they are not a ‘bad’ person.
The result of our separation from the life
of God in the Fall is that our inward nature has been infected by sin and death
at its very root. Our nature is
spiritually dead and therefore corrupt from the root upwards: ‘I know that nothing good lives in me, that
is, in my sinful nature.’ (Rom. 7:18).
And when the root is corrupt or poisoned, then there can be only one
effect upon the plant and its fruit, of course…
The consequence of this in our life through
and through is sinfulness, carnality, the love of this world and sinful
pleasures, self-will, defiance towards God, self-centredness and selfishness,
slavery to sinful habits, the love of darkness rather than light, spiritual
blindness (cf. John 3:19-20, 8:34; 2 Cor. 4:3-4; Eph. 2:1-3, 4:17-19), and the
thousand-and-one different ways, smaller or greater, hidden inwardly or
manifested openly, in which sinful thoughts, attitudes, words and acts manifest
in our life.
The Lord Jesus and the apostle Paul summed
this up in the following ways:
‘What comes out of a man is what
makes him “unclean.” For from within, out of men’s hearts, come evil thoughts,
sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness,
envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All
these evils come from inside and make a man “unclean.”’ (Mark 7:20-23)
‘The acts of the sinful nature
are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and
witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions,
factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who
live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.’ (Gal. 5:19-21)
Without Christ, we cannot do or be other
than according to what we are deep down inside: we are incapable of not sinning
in one way or another. When Isaiah saw
the Lord, he became aware of the uncleanness and corruption of his own heart,
and he cried out in despair (Isa. 6:5). Similarly,
Job despised himself and repented in dust and ashes (Job 42:6). Simon Peter too caught a glimpse into the
sinfulness of his own heart and, as a result, asked the Lord to depart from him
(Luke 5:8). The apostle Paul had seen
and understood enough about himself to know that, despite his own religious
righteousness, he was ‘chief of sinners’ (1 Tim. 1:15).
Watchman Nee made the point that our
problem is not simply that we need forgiveness for acts of sin that we may have
committed. Although this is true, our
dilemma goes much deeper than that. We
need deliverance from what we are.[1] When we have seen ourselves for what we
really are in the depths of our inner depravity, pollution and corruption, and
when we realize what our sinful natures are capable of, then we know that,
apart from Christ, there really is only one thing that God can do with us, as
Jesus himself said to the religious Pharisees of his day:
‘You clean the outside of the cup
and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. First clean the inside of the cup and dish,
and then the outside also will be clean…
You are like white-washed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but
on the inside are full of dead men’s bones and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to
people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and
wickedness… You snakes! You brood of vipers! How will you escape being condemned to hell? Therefore I am sending you prophets and wise
men and teachers...’
(Matt. 23:25-28,33-34a)
Similarly, in the prediluvian world, when
there were no restraints on human sin, and its destructive potential was left
to grow unchecked and to manifest itself fully, we are told that:
‘The LORD saw how great man’s
wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts
of his heart was only evil all the time.
The LORD was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart
was filled with pain… Now the earth was
corrupt in God’s sight and was full of violence. God saw how corrupt the earth had become, for
all the people had corrupted their ways.’ (Gen. 6:5-6,11-13)
God makes no attempt to reform, change or
improve our old nature. It is beyond
cure (Jer. 17:9). There is only one
thing that he does with it. Putting it
in human terms, he ‘cuts it down,’ ‘roots it up,’ ‘does away with it,’ ‘gets
rid of it,’ ‘throws it away,’ ‘removes it,’ ‘kills it,’ and ‘destroys it,’
etc. This is the kind of everyday
language we use ourselves when we deal with something that we know is corrupt,
defiled, poisoned, dead, going bad, dirty beyond being able to be cleaned,
useless, broken or ruined beyond repair, etc.
And it is the kind of language that the New Testament also uses to
describe what God will ultimately do with our old nature:
‘The axe is already at the root
of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down
and thrown into the fire.’ (Matt. 3:10)
‘Rather,
be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell.’ (Matt. 10:28)
‘First
collect the weeds and tie them in bundles to be burned…’ (Matt. 13:30)
‘And throw that worthless servant outside, into the
darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’ (Matt. 25:30)
‘If anyone does not remain in me, he is like a
branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown
into the fire and burned.’
(John 15:6)
‘The dead were judged according to what they had
done as recorded in the books… If
anyone’s name was not found in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of
fire.’ (Rev.
20:12,15)
Being thrown into the lake of fire is not
simply the consequence of God’s justice, or the condemnation resulting from any
particular acts of sin which were not repented of. Yes, there are the elements of God’s justice
(Rev. 20:12-15) and of punishment for sins committed (Matt. 25:46), but it goes
deeper than just these. It is not any
given act of sin which takes a person to hell.
Acts of sin which are not confessed and repented of simply compound our
dilemma. It is our fallen nature in Adam
(which gives rise to our acts of sin) that takes us to hell. Just that, and that alone. Our old nature is not fit for anything except
to be thrown out and got rid of. Outside
Christ, we are condemned already.
Acts of human goodness (of which we are
all capable) cannot save us from this eternal fate, because it is our inward
nature that is corrupt from the core that takes us to hell. The tree of death in Eden was the tree of
knowledge of good and evil. So goodness
still exists in a world which is given over to sin and spiritual death. Acts of human goodness are laudable, and
should always be encouraged of course, but human goodness in and of itself
cannot save us, because it cannot change what we are deep down inside. It simply masks to an extent the inner
presence of this corrupt root, but what is deep down inside still remains there
and manifests itself in multitudinous other ways (smaller or greater) in our
lives (cf. Matt. 7:11). As Jesus said,
even evil people know how to give good gifts to their children (Matt. 7:11)!
So it is the person who seeks God for
mercy having recognized his/her sin who is justified by God, rather than the
one who justifies him/herself, thinking s/he has no sin (Luke 18:9-14). It is the person who knows full well that
s/he has no merit in him/herself, and who is completely dependent on the work
of Christ for him/her, that receives eternal life and goes to heaven.
As we stand, if we do not belong to Christ
and know his life-transforming power, then there is only one place that we will
go to after death. Only one thing can be
done with our deeply corrupt nature: to throw it away, to get rid of it, to
burn it, to kill it off, etc. This is
the only thing fit for it. The lake of
fire is simply eternity’s garbage dump where all the rubbish is thrown, burned
and got rid of once and for all.
To resolve our dilemma, God killed our old
nature (as Nee put it) by nailing it to the cross when Christ died, in order
that by his grace we can then be subjectively set free from its power over us
through the greater power of Christ’s resurrection life working in us. This resurrection life of Christ is sown into
us by his Spirit through the new birth as we repent and receive Jesus into our
life:
‘We were therefore buried with
him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from
the dead… we too may live a new life. … For we know that our old self was
crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we
should no longer be slaves to sin… For
sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace.’ (Rom. 6:4,6,14)
‘I have been crucified with
Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.’ (Gal. 2:20)
‘For Christ’s love compels us,
because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live
should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was
raised again.’
(2 Cor. 5:14-15)
‘He saved us through the washing
of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us generously
through Jesus Christ our Saviour.’
(Titus 3:5-6)
‘But because of his great love
for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were
dead in transgressions – it is by grace
you have been saved.’
(Eph. 2:4-5), and cf. John 3:3-8; Eph. 1:19-20; Jas. 1:18, 1:21; 1 Peter
1:3,23-25; 2 Peter 1:4)
So the life of God that was lost in the
Fall is restored to us through Christ, regenerating us spiritually, and the
growth of this new nature within us is empowered by his Spirit who indwells
us. As we learn to walk through life
with him, it is the intention of God that this new nature in Christ should then
become the controlling dynamic of our life, conforming us into the renewed
image of Christ within us, rather than for us to continue to be dominated and
controlled by our corrupt old nature (John 1:4, Eph. 4:24, Col. 3:3-4). It is the restoration of the life of God to
us in this way, and this alone, that opens up the way to heaven for us.
As this new nature grows within us in our
Christian lives, we become consciously and progressively more aware of the
corruption of our old nature, and we understand just how displeasing this is to
God. So we learn to deal with it by
putting into practice the exhortations of the New Testament writings. As we confess and genuinely repent from our
sin and selfishness, God forgives us and the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us
from our sin:
‘Though your sins
are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as
crimson, they shall be like wool.’
(Isa.
1:18)
‘…the blood of
Jesus, God’s Son, purifies us from all sin.’
(1
John 1:7)
‘How much more, then, will the
blood of Christ… cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that
we may serve the living God!’
(Heb. 9:14)
Furthermore, as we agree with God to
actively do away with manifestations of our old nature, then these are
progressively replaced by Christ’s new nature within us:
‘And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it
off and throw it away. It is better for
you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell.’ (Matt. 5:29)
‘For if you live according to the sinful nature, you
will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you
will live…’
(Rom. 8:13)
‘Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the
sinful nature with its passions and desires.’ (Gal. 5:24)
‘You were taught, with regard to your former
way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its
deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on
the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.’
(Eph.
4:22-24)
‘Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger…’ (Eph. 4:31)
‘Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your
earthly nature: sexual immorality, lust, evil desires… But now you must rid yourselves of all such
things as these: anger, rage, malice…
since you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put
on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its
Creator.’ (Col.
3:5,8,9-10)
‘Therefore, get rid of all moral
filth and the evil that is so prevalent and humbly accept the word planted in
you, which can save you.’
(Jas. 1:21)
‘Dear friends, I urge
you as aliens and strangers in the world, to abstain from sinful desires, which
war against your soul.’
(1
Peter 2:11 AV)
The Holy Spirit who lives within us
desires that we should live in obedience to God’s word and will, and that we
should therefore put off our old self and put on the new self. So, as the verses above say, in following the
Spirit’s desires we will put off from ourselves the sins of the flesh, such as
falsehood, stealing, bitterness, anger, slander, sexual immorality and
impurity, and so on, and we will put on the new nature in Christ which is
created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness, and is characterized
by the fruit of the Spirit:
‘So I say, live by
the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature… But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy,
peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and
self-control.’
(Gal.
5:16,22-23)
As we grow in Christ, we must learn to
choose to respond to situations in life out of our new nature in Christ by the
grace and power of the Spirit within us, rather than choosing to give way to
the temptation to respond or react out of our old nature and thereby give place
to sin. In making this choice, and in
learning how to appropriate and live out of the grace, inward strengthening and
power of the Holy Spirit, we can master and rule over the desires of our old
carnal nature and put them to death (cf. Rom 8:13).
As we submit ourselves to this ongoing
process, and learn to walk in our new nature, rather than in the desires of our
old nature, the dispositions of our inner character change and our lives begin
to reflect and bear fruit for the kingdom of God. We become more and more characterised by
spiritual life, rather than by sin and spiritual death, and we become deeply
grateful to God for the grace that he continues to lavish on us in our new life
in Christ (Eph. 1:6-8,13-14; 2:4-10).
[1] Nickel, J. “Reading Nee:
Watchman Nee’s The Normal Chistian Life
Summed Up in Six Key Quotes”, Kindle Version, 2017.
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