YOUR dying in death, if you die in Jesus, will be for you a “dying unto sin.” How this is possible, and how this shall proceed, is a mystery, which never discloses itself to you altogether. But that it is so, you believe. You believe it on the ground of God’s Word. You believe it because in heaven a sinful life is unthinkable. And you believe it so willingly and so eagerly, because it is so appealing a thought to you, so intimately-rich and inwardly enrapturing, of once never, never more to sin, not even with the faintest desire of your heart.
That “dying unto sin” will not consist of your departure from your flesh. When your flesh doeth evil, it is your soul, your self, it is you, who employ your flesh to sin, and Satan, who never was clothed in a body of flesh, is the dreadful “father of all sinners” who has generated all sins from pure spirit.
That “dying unto sin” must therefore be something else. It is not something which you will do yourself, in your last hour, by cursing the world, making holy resolutions and making solemn vows. It is equally little something that your loved ones do, who surround your deathbed. It must be something that in dying God works in you, hence that dying unto sin can be no other than the perfecting of your sanctification. To this we add, that it must be something, that takes place at once. For so long as you are still conscious and have breath to speak, prayer for grace continues; something that after dying unto sin would have no more sense. Also in many cases death is as a bolt of lightning that strikes, by murder or a stroke. And on the other hand the moment breath is gone, the dying unto sin must be perfected. For here we speak of one who goes to heaven, and as sinner, no one enters there.
Also this.
Among the elect who die, there is great difference. One dies aged and full of days with a sinful life before conversion, and many sins in his life after his conversion, behind him. A second goes into eternity, just when the world was about to disclose itself to him, and he was ready for the world. A third dies as young man or maiden. A fourth still younger. And finally there are those, which already in the cradle close their little eyes for good, or which died before they ever reached the cradle.
All this makes a difference, great difference. With the one consciousness of sin, knowledge of sin, bitter memories of sin; with the other no single sin sinned and no sin ever known.
And though thereby “dying unto sin” may differ in form with the one and the other, fundamentally it must be the same with all.
The same with the floweret of a day and with the old man of eighty and more years.
SO taken, dying unto sin cannot be anything else, than that by death you are loosed from the band of this world.
Think of what Scripture says of a regenerated person. Such a person received in himself “the seed of God.” That seed of God was and remains in him, and can never be removed from him, and by reason of that seed that is in him he can never sin again. Or think of what Paul testified regarding himself. He himself did no more wrong, but sin that as a stranger still dwelt in him. Noteworthy in this connection is what Jesus said to His disciples: “Now are ye clean through the word which I have spoken unto you (John 15, 2), and he who is clean, has no more need to be washed, save only his feet, whereby he walks about in the world and takes up of the dust of the world.”
The antinomian abuses this, by committing more sin, and God shall judge him. But he who takes this in the sacred sense, confesses herein, that he himself, from himself can no more sin and that thus sin which every time again enchants him, and which equally often he mourns, is every time a foreign something that as a parasitic plant winds itself around his soul, and thus does not have its root in his heart, but in the world.
You know indeed what “sanctification” is.
Not first to become two tenths clean, then three tenths and four tenths, and so on. For, the seed of God that is implanted in you by regeneration is absolutely clean, there never was sin in it, and sin can never mingle itself in it.
Sanctification can never be otherwise than twofold: first germination of the seed of God, and secondly loosening of what springs up from the seed of God out of the entwining of the parasitic plant of sin, which from the world winds itself around you.
Now that germination of the seed of God is surely not the dying unto sin, for only in eternity does that germination go through in full.
Hence it must indeed be the being pulled loose from the entwining of the parasitic plant, wherewith the world held you enwound.
A taking away with one wrench of that evil parasitic plant, which fed on the life of your soul.
WHAT now is that parasitic plant?
Consider carefully, that with the infant and with the man of years it must be one and the selfsame thing. With the man of years it may be broader ramified, may have run up higher, but with both it must be one and the same in sort.
Is now that parasitic plant something, that on a certain day came upon you, and which was not with you at first?
Surely not.
With that parasitic plant around you you were born. In the entwining of that parasitic plant you were conceived. That parasitic plant awaited you before you came to exist. And that parasitic plant will remain rampant, when you shall be no more.
That parasitic plant was not in Adam when God created him, but the seed of that parasitic plant was sown in Adam by Satan. By Adam’s unbelief and unfaithfulness it is come to germination. From him it has with ever broader ramification extended itself in all mankind. And now it is inwoven in that race, in our world, in society, in human customs, in our human consciousness, in everything. In everything that constitutes circles of human life and unites people in one association or in one race.
By reason of this, Jesus alone excepted, every child born of a woman, is born in the branches and twigs of this parasitic plant; and that, when a man is regenerated, this parasitic plant continues to entwine him. It also produces seed, and that seed in every human heart, makes new shoots to lift up their heads. The difference is, that with regeneration that seed of the parasitic plant goes out from the heart, to give place to the seed of God. But the branches and twigs of the parasitic plant continue to entwine him. And sanctification is, that already in this life God gives the pruning-knife into our hands, somewhat to liberate ourselves, and to cut away from around us the troublesome twigs, which vex us most. So we get air. And God gives us His church, the fellowship of saints, wherein still more room is made, and in which the branches and twigs of the parasitic plant, have by no means that vexing, stifling power over us.
But we remain, until our death, entangled in that evil snare.
And in our death the deliverance is, that God lifts our whole being out of this snarled ramification of the parasitic plant, liberates us altogether from it, and brings it to pass, that no single branch or twig or thorn of that parasitic plant can any more touch us.
This goes through even in our consciousness, for in dying God also cuts off the remembrance of our sins.
Then they sink away as in the depth of the sea, in which no one (including yourself) can find them. YET this “dying unto sin” has also its positive side.
You have come up from the world. You belonged with that world. As a child of man you were member of one great human race. You did not stand by yourself. You existed and lived in relation to that race, to that world, to her life. That was your fellowship, the world in which you were at home, the great body of which you were a small member. And into that world-relation, which enwound you, sneaked that parasitic plant, that sometimes vexed you unto death.
Good. From that world, from that fellowship, from this relation in dying you are set free.
But now without relation you can not by yourself alone drift upon yourself.
You truly belong to a race, you must stand in a fellowship, you must live in a relation. To be member of a body, is the ordinance of your creation.
And see, in dying it comes to pass, not only that the parasitic plant passes away, and you are lifted out from the relation of that old sinful world; but you are simultaneously transposed into another generation, in another world, into another relation; you become member of another body, and that is called the body of the Son of God, the new, the redeemed humanity, the assembly of just men made perfect.
The beginning of this was enjoyed already here in the fellowship of saints. But, O, on so small a scale. In so narrow a circle. And over against this there always stood the mighty fellowship of the old sinful world, and pressed in upon it.
And the grace God shows you in dying, is first, indeed, that He lifts you out for good from that sinful relation of that old world. But also that He inweaves you into the full fellowship of that new humanity, into that holy world-relation of Christ, so that after dying your world round about you no longer goes in against the seed of God in your heart, but harmonizes in full with the new life of childship in you, makes it germinate the more richly, and sustains it.
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