Some aspects of the first death and how it separated us from God, were discussed in our last lesson. We noted the dual nature of the young Christian, newly born-again, and how mutually antagonistic they are. Jesus certainly spoke the truth when He said, “No man can serve two masters.” We cannot be loyal to the first Adam, and at the same time be subject to the last Adam. One of them must be condemned to be executed. This Christ did when He went to the cross, nailing our old Adam to the tree.
The verdict of death was passed upon the entire Human family in that judicial sentence pronounced upon Adam’s race when God issued His first command and declared the punishment which would be meted out for disobedience. Let us look at the fearful judgment pronounced:
“And the Lord God ______________ the man saying, Of _________ tree of the garden thou mayest __________ eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of _______ and _______, thou shalt __________________ for _______________ that thou __________ __________ thou shalt _______________” (Gen. 2:16-17).
The awfulness of that judgment of God upon man has yet to be fully grasped by any mortal. How comprehensive and final was that decree of death upon all in Adam! It was the fiat of the Ruler and Maker of the Universe. “Surely die.” How very final it sounds! In the margin of your Bible it reads, “Dying thou shalt die.” There is not only the crisis of death in that very day, but a moral deterioration in man which progresses with his seeming life. The very gift of physical life but provides the fertile soil in which these seeds of spiritual death bring forth this fearsome degeneration.
“Thou shalt surely die,” was the sentence passed upon all that partakes of the flesh, or what we are in the First Adam. That verdict is written over everything we do in the flesh, apart from Christ. After we are born again and feel the pulsating movements of the Christ-life within us, we are inclined to think that this sentence of death has been annulled, but we really have not died to all we are in Adam until we can say with St. Paul: (Write out the verse found in Gal. 2:20).
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St. Paul, as we have just seen, recognized this decree of God upon all he was in the first Adam, and availed himself of God’s full provision. Later when beset by opposition which threatened his life, he wrote to the Corinthians and said: “We have the sentence of _________ in _____________ that we should not _________ in ourselves” (2 Cor. 1:9). Only dead people can feel the touch of resurrection life in their bodies. God’s operation upon the human soul is null and void until we provide Him with the platform of death.
The reign of death. “As by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned” (Rom. 5:12).
The reign of life. If by one man’s offence death reigned by one; much more they which receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ.” (Rom. 5:17).
St. Paul, writing to the Galatians, clearly stated this same truth: “If a man ________ himself to be _____________ when he is ___________, he ______________________” (Gal. 6:3).
Paul says, Man is nothing. Any other idea of himself is deception. It is the hardest act of man’s life to admit that his value when trying alone is “0”. It is equally difficult for him to hand it, worthless as it is, into the only capable hands that can make it count─the hands of his Creator, God. Even a child wants to be somebody─either bigger or stronger or richer or better than others. He inherits it through both sides of the family back to our common ancestors, Adam and Eve. Jesus made a conclusive statement which was in harmony with God’s decree. Speaking of the believer’s relationship with Himself, He likened it to the picture of the vine. Of the branches, He said, “Without me, ye can do ___________” (John 15:5).
Man can do nothing of himself. A zero by itself reads thus “0”. It is worthless. Why then have zeros? Because they have value when used behind a figure with positive value. Thus a “0” behind a “1” gives us 10. A row of zeros looks useless, such as 000000, but put ONE in front of them and we have 1,000,000.
The Bible abounds with incidents of man deliberately putting himself behind God, and he was used without limit to the honor of God. If he tried to take the glory and got in front of God, he robbed the Infinite of His rightful honor. God never shares His honor with sinful man who is under the judicial sentence of death.
Again, if man endeavors to be good in his own efforts, he “labors for nought.” If he adds self-righteousness by his own efforts, even though he might be in full-time service, they are worthless. God views them as “filthy rags.” The only good is the one who becomes swallowed up on God. He has lost his own identity, but in doing so has really found it. God with an “o” spells “good.” By becoming a partaker of the divine nature, we for the first time understand true holiness. Thus a man can only become good when he becomes identified within Him. “In him we live and move, and have our being” (Acts 17:28). Heaven is a holy place and only those who derive all their goodness from Him shall enter.
So we learn that man, being nothing, has no value except as he is linked to God, but when so associated, he enhances the value of the digit and fulfills a purpose. Paul said:
“The body . . . for the _______; and the Lord for the ________” (1 Cor. 6:13). God being spirit needs a body to inhabit in order to reveal what He is like to man. Man, being body, but having no spiritual wisdom, righteousness or power of his own, needs the Spirit of God to supply these. “I in them, and thou in me.”
There are other Scriptures which endorse this decree of death, and which Paul teaches to the young churches. Fill in the blanks from the Scripture references.
“For though I preach the gospel, _______________________________” (1 Cor. 9:16).
“If any man think that he knoweth any thing, _____________________________” (1 Cor. 8:2).
“Not that we are ______________ of ourselves to think _____________ as of ourselves” (2 Cor. 3:5).
“In nothing am I behind the very chiefest apostles, _______________________ (2 Cor. 12:11).
Read the remaining part of 1 Cor. 6 and state in one word what other picture Paul used to express the purpose of our bodies. _________
Madam Guyon, a devout French Catholic woman of noble birth, experienced much of God in her personal life. By many revelations from the Holy Spirit, she attained to great spiritual wisdom. God was able to use her mightily in the salvation of nuns, priests, and much higher dignitaries within the Roman Catholic church. For this, she suffered banishment and imprisonment within the walls of the Bastille. When asked to write her autobiography, she started her life story with these classic words:
The Frightful Ruins
“You will not attain sanctification save by much trouble and labor, and by a road which will appear to you quite contrary to your expectation. You will not, however, be surprised at it if you are convinced that God does not establish His great works except upon ‘the nothing.’ It seems that He destroys in order to build. He does it so in order that this temple He destines for Himself, built even with much pomp and majesty, but built none the less by the hand of man, should be previously so destroyed, that there remains not one stone upon another.
“It is these frightful ruins which will be used by the Holy Spirit to construct a temple which will not be built by the hand of men, but by His power alone. God chooses for carrying out His works either converted sinners whose past iniquity serves as counterpoise to the exaltation, or else persons in whom He destroys and overthrows that ‘own’ righteousness, and that temple built by the hand of men, so built upon quicksand, which is the resting on the created, and in these same works, in place of being founded on the living stone, Jesus Christ. All that He has come to establish, by entering the world, is effected by the overthrow and destruction of the same thing He wished to build. He established His Church in a manner that seemed to destroy it. Oh, if men knew how opposed is the ‘own’ righteousness to the designs of God, we should have an eternal subject of humiliation and of distrust of what at present constitutes our sole support.”
Jesus summed up this whole truth in a statement made to the Jews: “We heard him say, I will __________________________ that is ________ with _________, and within three days _________________ another made __________________” (Mark 14:58).
God will not leave one stone upon another. See Matt. 24:2.
Christ recognized this divine judgment of His Father upon all in Adam. Although Creator of the Universe, He, as man, took on Himself that state of utter dependence and trust. By so doing He showed that He had accepted the warrant of death passed upon all forms of self-determination, self-dependence, self-sufficiency, self-knowledge. Let us read what Jesus said of Himself in this respect. Fill in the blanks in that part of the verse which applies to this truth.
John 3:27 ___________________________________________________________
John 5:19___________________________________________________________
John 5:30___________________________________________________________
John 7:16___________________________________________________________
John 8:28___________________________________________________________
John 8:54___________________________________________________________
John 12:49__________________________________________________________
In nature we find examples of this law of weakness being enacted. A fly can walk on the ceiling because of a vacuum in its web-like feet. Mollusks cling tenaciously to the rock in a tempest, all because of this same vacuum. Do you remember the story of the scene of battle when Elisha gave instructions to the kings: “Thus saith the Lord, Make this valley full of ditches” (2 Kings 3:16)?
As we further study the Bible, we notice that when this point of complete abandonment and trust was reached, Omnipotence stepped into the vacuum so created, and a mighty work was wrought.
Scripture Examples
In the following examples underline those words which show man’s nothingness with one line, and the action of God in response with two lines.
Example: “When they had nothing to pay, he frankly forgave them both” (Luke 7:42).
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“Then said he, Go, borrow thee vessels abroad of all thy neighbors, even empty vessels; borrow not a few. . . . She said unto her son, Bring me yet a vessel. And he said unto her, There is not a vessel more. And the oil stayed” (2 Kings 4:3, 6).
“And Simon answering said unto him, Master, we have toiled all night, and have taken nothing: nevertheless at thy word I will let down the net. And when they had this done, they inclosed a great multitude of fishes: and their net brake” (Luke 5:5-6).
“A friend of mine in his journey is come to me, and I have nothing to set before him. . . . I say unto you, Though he will not rise and give him, because he is his friend, yet because of his importunity he will rise and give him as many as he needeth” (Luke 11:6, 8).
“A certain woman . . . had suffered many things of many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was nothing bettered, but rather grew worse . . . straightway the fountain of her blood was dried up” (Mark 5:25, 26, 29).
“The multitude . . . have nothing to eat. . . . And they did all eat, and were filled” (Matt: 15:32, 37).
“The mother of Jesus saith unto him, They have no wine. . . . When the ruler of the feast had tasted the water that was made wine . . . saith . . . thou hast kept the good wine until now” (John 2:3, 9, 10).
“Peter said, Silver and gold have I none; but such as I have give I thee. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth rise up and walk” (Acts 3:6).
Godly Men Confirming the Same Truth
William Bramwell: “The slavish fear of being nothing is over; the soul keeps its place in God, and is ready for all that can come upon it.”
Rees Howells: “I had received a sentence of death as really as a prisoner in the dock.”
A. B. Simpson: “The great mistake of most persons in seeking for a deeper spiritual life is the attempt to become something themselves and have something which they can call their own holiness. On the contrary, God is ever seeking to withdraw us from ourselves, to lead us to realize our helplessness and nothingness, and to find our all in Himself continually and forevermore.”
Testing Time
1. Read the Beatitudes in Matthew 5:3-11 and pick out the ones which show the necessity of nothingness to our own selves.
2. Read the story of the prodigal son in Luke 15:11-24, and write down those parts of verses which depict the want and destitution which led him back to the Father.
3. Paul said, “As having nothing, and yet possessing all things.” Explain how Paul could have nothing and yet possess all things. 2 Cor. 6:10.
4. Read the passage of Scripture in 1 Cor. 1:26-31, which is sometimes called God’s tool kit. List the tools mentioned and the purpose of each.
5. Tell briefly what you think God’s purpose was in placing the decree of death upon all mankind.
6. Read 1 Kings 17:10-16, and show the widow’s destitution and the resulting miracle in response.
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