Put Off and Put On – Christian Message of Victory Oct-Dec 1979

1. RENUNCIATION

“The old man, which waxeth corrupt after the lusts of deceit,” must be “put away” or renounced.  “The old man” is a Pauline expression, and is a bold and vivid personification of that form of character and life which is the source and seat of original and actual transgression.  Apart from the regenerating power of the Holy Spirit, it is a form of character common to us all.
“The expression, ‘our old man,’” says Godet, “denotes human nature such as it has been made by the sin of him in whom originally it was wholly concentrated; fallen Adam reappearing in every human ego that comes into the world under the sway of the preponderance of self-love, which was determined by the primitive transgression.”
“By the ‘old man,’” says Dr. Rainsford, “the apostle means our natural self, with all its principles and motives, its outgoings, actions, corruptions, and belongings; not as God made it, but as sin and Satan and self have marred it.  The old Adam never changes; no medicine can heal the disease; no ointment can mollify the corruption; it can only be got rid of by death.”
“The old man” is incorrigible and incurable; there is no mending it, educating it, or Christianizing it.  It remains the same whether you treat it with encouragement or severity.  “It is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be” (Rom. 8:7).  The old man is enmity against God (8:7); not merely an enemy, but embodied, unmitigated enmity.  Everything about it is hostile to God.  It hates His law and tramples it under foot.  It hates His will and contradicts it.  It hates His ways and refuses to walk in them.  It hates His plan of salvation and refuses to submit to it.  “The old man” is offensive to God.  “They that are in the flesh cannot please God” (8:8).  It is impossible to please Him with anything that appertains to “the flesh”—a phrase which may be used interchangeably with “the old man.”  The seed of the flesh cannot please Him; the will of the flesh cannot please Him; the wisdom of the flesh cannot please Him; the glorying of the flesh cannot please Him; the warring of the flesh cannot please Him; the circumcision of the flesh cannot please Him.  Whether “the old man” appears in all his rottenness, or whether he assumes a religious and attractive guise, he can never be anything but offensive to God.
The apostle says “the old man” is “growing corrupt” (Eph. 4:22).  The use of the present participle indicates the continuance or progress of corruption.  The words denote the steady advance of that inward process of disintegration, deterioration, and destruction; that awful rotting away, piecemeal, of the life that is subordinated of the desires of deceit.
The expression “lusts of deceit” refers to every strong passion that fills the soul to the exclusion of God.  These lusts are all the likings and longings which listen credulously to the Satanic insinuation, “Ye shall not surely die.”  Men are thus seduced and ensnared under false pretences, for sin is always an enormous fraud.  The lust of making money develops into avarice; the lust of power into tyranny; the lust of pleasure into sensuality.  It may be a lust of proficiency in physical, political, social, or mechanical science; but if it engrosses the soul to the exclusion of God, shutting out the desire and pursuit of justification and sanctification in Jesus Christ, it is a result and characteristic of “the old man.”
In a most striking manner the Apostle has set the new man in direct antithesis to the old.  Adhering a little more closely to the original, the antithesis are still more complete.  The actual self and the possible one are contrasted in every point.  The one is “the old man,” the other is “the new man.”  The one is “created,” the other is “corrupted.”  The one is “after lusts,” fashioned in their likeness; the other is “after God,” fashioned in His.  The one consists in “righteousness and holiness,” which have their root in “the Truth”; the other consists in passions which have their foundation “in deceit.”  The one hastens ever downward to the gulf of ruin; the other is carried ever upward, and, like the river to its original source, speeds homeward to God.
Professor Findlay powerfully says:  “Strangely did the image of Jesus confront the pagan world; keenly its light smote on that gross darkness.  There stood the Word made flesh—purity immaculate, Love in its very Self—shaped forth in no dream of fancy or philosophy, but in the veritable man, Christ Jesus.  It was the sight of Jesus, and men like Jesus, that shamed the old world, so corrupt and false and hardened in its sin.
“When Jesus lived, died, and rose again, an inconceivable revolution in human affairs had been effected.  The Cross was planted on the territory of the god of this world; its victory was inevitable.  Jesus was the type and the head of a new moral order, destined to control the universe.  To see the new and the old man side by side was enough to assure one that the future lay with Jesus.  Corruption and decrepitude marked every feature of Gentile life.  It was gangrened with vice—wasting away in its deceitful lusts; but the ‘grain of wheat’ had fallen into the ground to die, and though there might be a long, cruel winter, though many a storm and blight might delay its growth, the harvest was secure.”
Of all subjects, none is of greater importance than that of possessing an accurate knowledge of the character of “the old man,” because of his power to deceive.  He loves to put off his old ways, and call himself a Christian.  He knows how to cover his rags and corruptions; “to make clean the outside of the cup and platter”; and to appear in a garb so devout and decorous that the very elect are deceived.  Christ represents him as claiming, at the last, a life-long intimacy.  He has sat with Christ at the same table; he has lived in the streets in which Christ has taught; by His name demons have been cast out, and many mighty works have been done.  Yet Christ utterly disowns this religious “old man,” and says, “I never knew you” (Matt. 7:22-23; Luke 13:26-27).
How is this renunciation to be accomplished?  If we have heard Christ and have been taught in Him, we have surely been made aware, not only of the necessity of putting on another, but how that which is “after the lusts of deceit” may be put off, and that which is “after God” may be put on.  Jesus not only taught the Truth of God, but fulfilled all its requirements in Himself.
Renunciation is impossible excepting from without.  When the powers that should control man are largely gone over to the enemy and become traitors, when the mandates of conscience are treated as so much waste-paper, what becomes of man’s power of self-control?  He cannot accomplish his own deliverance from the power of “the old man” by struggling, willing, resolving, or self-effort of any kind.  “It is as impossible as to execute the gymnastic feat of taking himself by his own coat-collar, and lifting himself up from the ground with his own arms.”

2. RENEWAL

The negative side of the truth in Jesus is enforced in the decisive “putting away,” as clothes that belong to the region of corruption and death, of “the old man.”  The positive side of the truth is described in the words which follow:  “Be renewed in the spirit of your mind” (Eph. 4:23).  There is a difference between the word “renewed” and the word “new” in the verse that follows.  To be “renewed” is, properly, to be made young again.  Decrepitude and decay give place to rejuvenation in the spiritual nature of the inner man.
This renewal takes place, not simply in the mind, but in the spirit of it.  It is the special seat of renewal.  The organism of the mind survives as it was, but the spirit which inhabits and governs it is entirely changed.  There is a renovation of the ruling and motive power.  The love, for example, retains all its ardor, but it attaches itself to objects quite in contrast with those of its earlier preference and pursuit.  Connected with the steam locomotive, gliding with such speed along the rails, is a piece of mechanism called the reversing gear.  By the action of this gear the direction of that engine can be completely reversed.  Though it is seen proceeding with such speed in one direction, in a few moments, by the application of this mechanism, it may be seen moving with equal velocity in the contrary direction.
Sanctification does not change a man’s faculties; it does, however, harmonize, purify, and strengthen them; and the employment, objects, and motives of his powers are so completely changed that he becomes “a new creation.”  The new life is so different to the old as to be like the life of another person.
We are thus “being renewed,” and we are transfigured by the renewing (Rom 12:2).  Divine creation is not a mechanical work.  A man builds a house, and when he has built it he had done with it, and may never see it again; still the house stands.  An artist paints his picture; it passes from his easel, is hung in the gallery, and he has done with it.  Quite a different relation exists between God and His creatures.  The universe, which God has made for Himself, would not stand if the Builder were to leave it; its foundations would shake, its walls be rent, it would sink in ruins.  God’s fair pictures in sky and sea, in mountain, lake, and river, would immediately lose their glorious beauty if the Divine Artist left them as the other artist does.  The Creator is also the Renewer.  The sun creates the day when he comes forth from his chamber, but he renews it moment by moment, and but for his renewing, the darkness of night would immediately envelop us.  So it is with the regenerate.  All would be darkness but for the shining of the Light.  All would be death but for the Presence of the Life.  There is constantly being communicated to us, in response to our faith, a nature that is really fresh and new.

3. APPROPRIATION

“Put on the new man, which, after God, has been created in Righteousness and Holiness of Truth” (Eph. 4:24).  “Put on the new man which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of Him that created him” (Col. 3:19).  In the word “new” there is not merely the idea of youthfulness, but the freshness of a higher nature.  In contrast with the gradual renewal of verse 23, this putting on is once for all.  The “being renewed” is a process, this is an act.  As one puts off and lays aside one’s clothing, so, having put off “the old man,” we are to put on “the new man,” which has already been created according to the Pattern, and is therefore waiting to be put on.
This new life is “after God” from its beginning.  But in the beginning we bear the image of God only in a rudimentary form.  The outline is there, but the details are only reproduced in our nature in proportion to our faith and faithfulness.
Jesus came to restore the apparel we had lost, nay, to be to us infinitely more than we had lost.  If we attempt to imitate Him we shall produce a grotesque caricature, but if we “put on” the Lord Jesus Christ nothing will be omitted.  The difference between a true Christian and a humanly virtuous man is, that the one draws on Christ for everything, and the other draws upon himself.  One manufactures a suit for himself, which, when finished, is but a collection of filthy rags; the other finds a complete wardrobe in putting on Him Who is “made of God unto us Wisdom, and Righteousness, and Sanctification, and Redemption” (1 Cor. 1:30).
Dr. Dale has thus strikingly put this truth:  “We are to ‘put on’ Christ.  We are to make our own every separate element of His Righteousness and Holiness.  We are to make His humility ours, and His courage, His gentleness, and His invincible integrity; His abhorrence of sin, and His mercy for the penitent; His delight in the righteousness of others, and His patience for their infirmities; the quiet submission with which He endured His own sufferings, and His compassion for the sufferings of others; His indifference to ease, and wealth, and honor, and His passion for the salvation of men from all their sins and all their sorrows.  We are to make His perfect faith in the Father ours, and His perfect loyalty to the Father’s authority; His delight in doing the Father’s will; His zeal for the Father’s glory.
“The perfection at which we have to aim is not a mere dream of the imagination, but the perfection which human nature has actually reached in Christ.  The fountains of my life are in Him.  It is the eternal purpose of the Father that as the branch receives and reveals the life which is in the vine, I should receive and reveal the life which is in Christ.  If I am in Christ, the spiritual forces which were illustrated in the righteousness and holiness of Christ’s life are already active in my own life.  Christ is the prophecy of our righteousness, as well as the sacrifice for our sins, for He came down from Heaven to give the very life of God to man, and in the power of that life all righteousness is possible.”

EDITORIAL

At the time of this writing, we will have completed over forty years of editing the Message of Victory.  It has fulfilled a purpose and been used to bless.  It has been a joy to have had the pleasure of mutual correspondence and fellowship with our readers.
After much, much prayer and deep consideration of all the issues involved, we feel guided to tender our resignation as editors of the Message of Victory.  We have already intimated this to the Board of Trustees, but have agreed to edit it until the end of 1980 unless a new editor is chosen.
We would like to share with you briefly our reasons for this decision.  It is not because of old age, although we do feel that we must carefully husband our remaining strength for the most Spirit-guided tasks before the night falls upon our life’s work.  Our burden is to proclaim the message of a vital, heart-cleansing, Spirit-infilling work of the Holy Ghost, wrought in the heart subsequent to the new birth.  We feel desperately in earnest  about getting more Christians involved in vital holiness.  Then, you might well ask, “Why discontinue editing the Message of Victory?”
We have published as you know, from time to time, our vision of the truth of the Body of Christ, His true Church on earth.  We have always believed this truth to be clearly taught in the Epistles of Paul.  But more recently, further revelation of this truth has increased.  Light received must be integrated into every avenue of one’s life.  We must become our message.  We must act upon truth or it will become darkness.
For the last five years we have labored both within M.O.V.E. and outside.  Gradually we have turned over many details to others within the organization.  When in 1974 we moved out of premises owned by the M.O.V.E. into rented premises of our own, we experienced the fact that the angel of the Lord went before us and brought us to a district previously prepared by Himself.  These have been years of most unusual happenings which we can only attribute to God Himself and conclude that it is vital to move into the stream of His divine purpose.
That which we engaged in outside was accompanied by a supernatural agency of the Spirit seldom witnessed by us in all our previous years of working within an organization.  What was the lesson to be learned?  Was God endeavoring to teach us that His Body is wider than any given denomination or Church group?  A return to New Testament practice and methods has ever been accompanied by revival.  Now, if this has been our experience in preaching and teaching ministry by word of mouth, what was the Spirit trying to say to us about our periodical and publishing efforts.  Would they not also receive a fresh impetus if they represented the wider concept of His invisible Church?
So during the next year we will gradually phase out of the editing so as to be free to discover God’s full plan. It is not without pain that we have made this decision for we love M.O.V.E.  The workers are now mature enough to be making most of the necessary decisions, while we give ourselves to prayer and the ministry.  If we are spared until 1981, we expect to send forth, D.V., an even more pungent, Spirit-laden, printed message under a different format and title but one which will press home the fact that God made provision through Calvary to destroy the “hell within every human breast” through the cleansing blood of Jesus Christ.—Edwin and Lillian Harvey.

PERSONAL EXPERIENCE PAGE

James Brainerd Taylor was converted at the age of about fifteen, and then for six years lived a life of more devoted service to our Lord Jesus Christ than the average of those of us who profess to be converted, and was more used of Him than the most of us are in the advancement of His kingdom.  During this time he gave up bright earthly prospects to go into training for the ministry.  But in the midst of all that he is able to say of God’s grace to him in his own soul, and of His blessing upon his labors during these six years, there come in from time to time such words as these:
“I think that I really hate sin and love holiness.  Yet I must say I am not satisfied with any of my performances, because so much sin is mixed with them.  Nothing short of perfect holiness can ever satisfy the soul.”
“Alas!  in all things I come short, and in many I offend.”
“Spiritual pride, that bane of the human soul, lurks within me, and is ever ready to destroy my peace.  Many and strong are my temptations to sin.”
“I can, indeed, say that not this world, nor ten thousand more, could purchase the hope which I have.  And if I know my own heart, I do think that the desire to have God as my Father, Jesus as my Savior, and the Holy Spirit as my Sanctifier is predominant.  But yet I feel that whereas I ought to be a full-grown man in Christ, I am only a babe.  To think that I have been now five years a professor of religion and made so little progress is indeed a cutting thought.”
“Oh! to live religion!  To have Heaven in view, the love of God in the heart, the world, the flesh, and the devil, under one’s feet.  Then come life, come death, all, all will be well; oh, my friend, I am tired of living by halves.  God says, ‘Son, give me thine heart.’  I answer, Oh, for an entire surrender!  I long for complete deliverance from remaining corruption, for sanctification in soul, body, and spirit, for that perfect love which casteth out all fear; and until I attain this I shall feel that I am unfit to be a minister of Jesus Christ.”
And afterwards, looking back upon this time, he wrote:
“I have had keener sorrows for indwelling sin than I ever experienced before conversion.  Oh, the distress which I have felt on account of pride, envy, love of the world, and other evil passions which have risen up and disturbed my peace, and separated between God and my soul!”
But by the grace of God he held on always to his hope in our Lord for perfect salvation from all these sins, and so was preserved from the temptation, through yielding to which many of us condemn ourselves to lives of little glory to God, and little blessedness to ourselves or to others, to settle down in his struggling state as the normal Christian life.  Though he had as yet only attained to “the flesh lusteth against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh, and these are contrary the one to the other, so that ye cannot do the things that ye would” (Gal. 5:17), he still pressed on in hope that it might presently be with him according to that other word, “But they that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts” (verse 24); and, “If any man be in Christ he is a new creature:  old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new” (2 Cor. 5:17).  And “according to his faith,” so presently it was to him.
Of his state of mind at the end of the six years, just before God “delivered” him “out of the hand of” his inward spiritual “enemies,” that he “might serve Him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before Him all the days of his life” (Luke 1:74-75), he wrote:
“My earnest desire then, was as it had been ever since I professed religion six years before, that all love of the world might be destroyed, all selfishness extirpated, pride banished, unbelief removed, all idols dethroned, everything hostile to holiness and contrary to the Divine will crucified, that holiness to the Lord might be engraved on my heart, and evermore characterize my conversation.”
And of the deliverance itself he wrote:
“The Lord heard my cries and groans, and was witness to my tears and my desires for holiness.  I pleaded and wrestled with Him, and, praise to His Name, after six long years I found what I had so long and so earnestly sought.”
And here he gives an extract from his journal containing the entry which he made in it at the time:
“For some days I have been desirous to visit some friends who are distinguished for fervor of piety, and remarkable for the happiness which they enjoy in religion.  It was my hope that by associating with them, and through the help of their prayers, I might find the Lord more graciously near to my soul.
“After my arrival I took up a hymnbook, where I found a hymn descriptive of my situation.  The perusal of this increased my desire that the Lord would visit me and ‘baptize me with the Holy Ghost.’  My cry to Him was, ‘Seal my soul for ever Thine.’  I lifted up my heart in prayer that the blessing might descend.
“At this very juncture I was most delightfully conscious of giving up ALL to God.  I was enabled in my heart to say, ‘Here, Lord, take me, take my whole soul, and seal me Thine, Thine now and Thine for ever.  “If Thou wilt Thou canst make me clean.”’
“There then ensued such emotions as I never before experienced:  all was calm and tranquil, silent, solemn, and a heaven of love pervaded my whole soul.  I had a witness of God’s love to me, and of mine to Him.
“Shortly after I was dissolved in tears of love, and gratitude to our blessed Lord.  The Name of Jesus was precious to me, ‘’Twas music in my ear.’  He came as King, and took full possession of my heart, and I was enabled to say, ‘I am crucified with Christ; nevertheless, I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.’  Let Him, as King of kings and Lord of lords, reign in me, without a rival.”
On his now “witnessing both to small and great” what the Lord Jesus had done for him and what He had become to him “there arose no small stir about that way.”
Some called it enthusiasm, and others gave it the harder name of fanaticism.  It was alleged by some of his Christian friends that he put in a claim to perfection, and much else of the same kind.  While others reported that he had after a while acknowledged that he had been deceived in all this matter through a failure diligently to search the Scriptures.  In reply to an inquiry whether he had made such an acknowledgment he said:
“No, never.  I am ready to testify to the world that the Lord has blessed my soul beyond my highest expectations.  People may call this blessing by what name they please:  faith of assurance, holiness, perfect love, sanctification.  Whether they give it a name, or no name, it continues a blessed reality, and, thanks to my heavenly Father, it is my privilege to enjoy it:  it is yours also, and the privilege of all to enjoy the same, and to go beyond anything I have ever experienced.”