Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 882
Delivered on Sunday Evening, APRIL 11, 1869, by, the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington.
“Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with Him.” - Romans 6:6.
EVERY new man is two men—every Believer in Christ is what he was and not what he was—the old nature and the new nature exist at the same time in each regenerate individual. That old nature the Apostle calls a man, because it is a complete manhood after the image of fallen Adam. It has the desires, the judgment, the mind, the thoughts, the language and the action of man as he is in his rebellious estate. He calls it the “old man,” because it is as old as Eden’s first transgression. It is as old as we are. It is the nature born with us, the natural depravity, the fleshly mind which we inherited from our parents. It is tainted by the old serpent and bears within it a dread propensity to his old sin.
When Adam first plucked the forbidden fruit, sin polluted our race and the original stain abides in all mankind—it is manifest in the most ancient history and continues to reveal itself all along the pages of the story of this blighted world. The old nature, then, is what the Apostle means. The lusts of the flesh, the carnal desires, the affections of our estranged hearts—these he calls the old man. I am much mistaken if every Christian does not find this old man still troubling him.
He has a new nature which was implanted in him, as through the Spirit’s sacred working he was led to hate sin and believe in Jesus to his soul’s salvation. It is the heavenly offspring of the new birth, the pure and holy result of regeneration. That new nature cannot sin—it is as pure as the God from whom it came and like the spark which seeks the sun, it aspires always after the holy God from whom it came. Its longings and its tendencies are always towards holiness and God and it utterly hates and loathes that which is evil, so that, finding itself brought into contact with the old nature, it sighs and cries as the Apostle tells us, “O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?”
Hence a warfare is set up within the Believer’s bosom—the new life struggles against the old death—as the house of David against the house of Saul, or as Israel against the accursed Canaanites. The enmity is irreconcilable and lifelong. As the Lord has sworn to have war with Amalek throughout all generations, so does the holy seed within the saint wage war with inbred sin so long as it remains. Neither nature can make peace with the other. Either the earthy water must quench the heavenly fire, or the Divine fire, like that which Elijah saw, must lick up and utterly remove all the water in the trenches of the heart. It is war to the knife—exterminating war.
In the text the Apostle says that the old nature is in every Believer crucified with Christ. I take the liberty also to refer you to two or three words which occur in the verse before the text, where he speaks of baptized Believers as having taken upon themselves the likeness of Christ’s death. And then he speaks of the old man being crucified, which was Christ’s death and therefore without straining the text we may gather from it that the old man in us dies in the same way as Christ died—that the death of Christ on the Cross is the picture of the way in which our old corruptions are to be put to death.
That shall make our first point, the old nature crucified. The second point shall be that if ever the old nature is put to death at all, it must be with Christ—we are crucified with Him. The old man is crucified with Him. And then, in the third place, we shall have some practical and solemn applications to make.
I. Now, first, THE OLD MAN IS TO DIE, BUT IT IS TO DIE IN THE LIKENESS OF CHRIST’S DEATH BY CRUCIFIXION.
1. What kind of death was that? First, our Lord died a true and real death. There were certain heretics who disturbed the early Christian Church who said that our Lord did not really and actually die. But we know that He died, for His heart was pierced by the spear and the flowing of the blood and water proved that He was, in very deed, most truly dead.
Moreover, the Roman officer would not have sanctioned that the body be given up if he had not made sure that He were dead already and even made doubly sure by piercing our Lord’s most blessed side. Christ really and truly died. There was no sham or make-believe. It was no phantom which bled and the atoning death was no fainting spell or long swoon.
Even thus it must be with our old propensities—they must not pretend to die, but actually die. They must not be restrained by holy customs. They must not be mowed up by temporary austerities, or laid in a trance by fleeting reveries, or ostentatiously buried alive by religious resolves and professions. They must actually die and die a real and true death before the Lord and within our souls. Sometimes persons who are really alive appear as dead, because death reigns over a part of their bodies. The heart beats exceedingly indistinctly. The pulse is but faintly felt, the lungs are languidly heaving—they lie in a state of coma, their hands are powerless as those of a corpse and their eyes are closed and every member palsied—yet they are not dead. They are, in some measure and really and truly, as to their vital organs, still in the land of the living.