Gooding, David: 12 - How Dead is the Old Self?

Now to come to another matter, this time very practical matter, ask to say something more than I did earlier on about the old man. For this morning, I was emphasizing again and again that the believer has put off the old man. In fact, I happen to be quoting Colossians chapter three and verse nine. You have put off the old man with his doings. But to many people, this thing is very difficult, because it seems to them that practical everyday experience tells them the very opposite. What is the use, they say, telling me that my old man was crucified with Christ when on Tuesday mornings generally, and very often on Fridays as well, sometimes on Mondays and Wednesdays in addition, and most Thursdays, not to talk of Saturdays and Sundays, I find him very much alive. Is the point of trying to tell me, you theologians, that my old man has been crucified with Christ? Doesn't make sense. And if you're going to ask me to reckon myself dead indeed unto sin, well, that's also nonsense because sin is very much alive in my life. And if it isn't normally erupting all over the place, um, do you see, sometimes it does, and that makes matters worse, that you say when sin begins to erupt and show its vigorous, very much alive old self, then you come along and tell me to reckon I'm dead to it when all the while I'm very much alive to it. Yes. So I think I understand your difficulty. And certainly we may start our observations from the fact that God is never going to ask you to reckon anything that isn't true. And if God says, reckon yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, he's not giving you some psychological advice, say, I'm dead, I'm dead, I'm dead, I'm dead, I'm dead, I'm dead, I'm dead, so that if you say it, only say it enough times, you'll become dead. No, no. When God asks you to reckon, he asks you to reckon on things that are fact. Yeah. So how shall we do? Well, it's a long question and much longer than I have time to deal with, but I find it helpful to start perhaps thinking on these matters in Romans chapter six. And I'm going to read some verses there, by your permission, Romans chapter six. and verse six, Where Paul says, knowing this, and mark the participle, knowing, knowing, not feeling, but knowing. Progress in sanctification d- starts with our knowing certain facts. Knowing this, that our old man was crucified with him, that the body of sin might be done away, that we should no longer be in bondage to sin. For he that has died is, has been justified from sin. Verse nine: knowing, another thing we've got to know, that Christ being raised from the dead dies no more, death has no more dominion over him. For the death that he died, he died to sin once, but the life that he lives, he lives unto God. In that very same way as Christ died to sin once and is risen again once, so reckon yourselves also to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that you should obey its lusts. Verse fourteen: for sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law, but under grace. So here we start with the statement as of a fact in verse six that our old man has been, was crucified with Christ. God says it's a fact. How shall I understand it? Well, first of all, we must notice that at this point Paul is asking us to understand a legal fact. A legal fact. And for the moment, we've got to be, uh, amateur lawyers, if nothing else. Do see. And that sometimes goes against the grain. We're so eager to be practical, be practical, brother, they say, be practical and get on with practical Christian living. Why should I bother about legal facts and the law? Well, let me give you an illustration. I've often heard my father speak when I was a, a, a young man, a boy, in fact, of what used to go on in his town, as in many English towns, years and years ago, before the dawn of civilization. The recruiting sergeant from the army would come round, and he'd get a lot of chaps in a pub and get them pretty well sozzled, you'll see, and a bit dim. Offer them the queen's shilling, which they took, and of course, hey presto, they were in the army. Legally bound, so that if now they didn't turn up or ran off, they could be put in jail. They'd taken the Queen's shilling and bound themselves legally to be in the army. So these, uh, poor Ipswich, uh, fellows, do they, not like most of us, not very, not very, you know, bright in the top, would go off to the parade barracks. They were in the army now, and they come out to drill, and the drill sergeant, utter fiend incarnate as they used to be, would bellow and rage and thrash them with an inch of their life. So that by the time they'd done six months under him, they'd be afraid of him more than they would of ten thousand Germans. Do you see? Ah, he'd only got to shout and ooh, the tension. If he said get out of the trench and go and face the machine guns, I'd go and do it, you'll see. Well, imagine one of these chaps, and he's toiling around the parade ground under this great bully of a sergeant, you'll see, and acting now almost like a a machine. When his rich uncle comes from the States and discovers the boy is in the army, you'll see, decides to buy him out, for in those days you could buy people out of the army. So the rich young goes to the army officials, and he says that Private so-and-so he's come to buy him out, and he pays the money and buys the lad out, comes along and says, you come with me. You're free now, take off that old uniform, you're free to go where you like and do what you like, old chap, you see. And the man said, marvelous, marvelous, marvelous, and goes down the street, and for that night he's very happy, you'll see. He happens to be walking on the street on Monday morning, and here comes the sergeant major. What are you doing here? Get back to the ground. Oh, you're back to the ground. We'll see. And he's toiling around the ground when his rich uncle comes along, says, what are you doing here? Well, the sergeant major said I got to come. Emmanuel, you don't have to take any notice of what he says. You're free. Legally free. Come on. Oh no, but the sergeant major said. No, no, no. You're free. I bought you. As far as that sergeant major concerned, you're dead man. Takes him by the arm and walks him out. When the sergeant major comes and tries to bully him thereafter, ah, but I'm free, look. Got the receipt from Her Majesty. Bought out. Would be important to get the legal thing straight, wouldn't it? The first step to breaking the dominion of sin in a person's life, what is it? Well, look at verse fourteen again. Six fourteen. For sin shall not have dominion under over you. Why not? Ah, you say, because the Holy Spirit has come to reside in me. Well, that's surely true, but that isn't what the verse says, is it? What is it that has broken the dominion of sin? Why, this legal fact that you are not under law. You say, how did I get out of law then? Well, consider what law is, ladies and gentlemen. God's holy law is not a little friendly advice. I should do this this way if I were you, but of course, if you prefer to do it somehow else, well, okay, but do it this way if you like, please. No, no. God's law is a command, plus a penalty if you don't do it. And the penalty is death, you know, and eternal death at that. My dear fellow believer, if you were still under law, I tell you straight now, you might as well give up. Why, you say I'm a dear believer. Yes, but if you were under law, it says thou shalt love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, and the very first time you come short of that, you must be condemned to eternal perdition. What would you do? Well, I tell you what, if the law came to me, woke me up in my bed on a Monday morning and said, gooding, get up. Thou shall keep the law now, you shall love the Lord with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, and if you don't, I shall curse you. That will be eternal petition. You know what I should do? Just keep in bed. I should, I know myself, and rather half I say, well, if you're going to, if that's what I've got to do. You mean to say I've got to love the Lord my God with all my heart, mind, soul, and strength, and the moment I fall a little bit short, you're going to curse me and send me to eternal perdition. Well, I give up straight away then. Do you know what the law would say then? It would curse me for staying in bed. No good pretending. God's standards of holiness are God's standards of holiness. If ever God is going to take us seriously and start us on a course of practical holiness in which progressively we become more holy. First of all, he has to deal with the legal side of it. You're not going to be ten— one hundred percent holy, not even tomorrow, after you, are you? You mean to say tomorrow you're going to come short? What about the legal implications of that then? Before God can launch us realistically on a course of holiness that's going to be progressive holiness, many mistakes along the road and coming short, he's got to cope with the legal side and put the legal side on a right foundation, and thank God that's precisely what he's done. Sin shall not have dominion over you. Why? Because you're no longer under law, that is under command plus penalty. Because if you were, sir, you'd only have to do one sin, and that would be the end of you. Now, as a believer, when you come short, what happens? You say, well, that's, that's, that's hold the boat, and that's me finished. No, no. You can tell the Lord about it, can't you? You can confess your sin. There is forgiveness. You can get up and go again. If you were under law, command plus penalty, the first mistake, and that will be you finished. So it is very important for me to know that I am not under law. You say, how did you get out of it then? Well, as verse, the above verse tells you, our old man was crucified with Christ. And now we come to the point, don't we? Who's the old man? And this time we've got to, uh, be careful we don't fall into the popular mistake. I mentioned it the first week, let's mention it again. Lots of folks think that before they were converted, they were composed of two parts, the nice part and the nasty part. The nasty part was the old man. The nice bit, I don't know who he or she was, but anyway. And many people there are who think that of the two, the, the nice bit was the biggest bit by a long way. There was a nasty little bit called the old man or woman, what have you, mostly kept under covers discreetly. We'll see. And when they get converted, they think, well, that's that nasty bit is still very much alive, and how can you tell me the old man has been crucified when the old man, that nasty little bit of me, is still very much there? Well, of course, that's a quite complete misconception of the old man, isn't it? The old man was crucified. You say, what part of me was that? Well, let me put a question to you. When you were baptized, remember that? Well, I hope you were baptized. You ought to have been if you were a Christian. You were baptized, and they put you under the water, didn't they? They buried you. Which part of you did they bury? You say, what do you mean? Well, did they bury your feet and leave your head out? Oh no, you say, put me right under. Did they bury the nasty bit, you know, and leave the nice bit? No, you say, not as I remember, they didn't. No, uh, they buried the whole lot of me, now I come to think about it. Certainly so. And the old man, who was he or she? Well, the whole lot of you, from the crown of your foot to the so- the the sole of your foot to the crown of your head, the whole bang chute was the old man. And that what is in God's sight has been crucified. Finished. That's rather severe, isn't it? Because I was pretty decent. All right, you try telling that to the judge. You're caught speeding up the Ormo Road, uh, half past six at night, you'll see doing eighty, and the policeman gongs you down, and you find yourself for the magistrate. Magistrate says you were found, uh, guilty of excessive speed, Eighty along the Ormo Road. Come, come, come, come. You'll say, please, your honor, wasn't, wasn't me, really. There was some duffer in front of me, kept blocking my way whenever I went to overtake, and I lost my temper, and when that last I got a chance to go by, I passed him, but that- that, you know, sometimes that's my, that's my temper, you see, but that wasn't me really. I'm a decent chap. My temper is the old man. You think the magistrate would say, I'll find your old man. Yes? You say you, but that's the point of the law. You shouldn't have let your old man do it then. Nice people that we were. We have broken God's law. Blame it on who you like. God's law said that the penalty was death. Not just the old man die, the whole caboose die. Finished. We're talking now about the demands of God's law. How do you get free of God's law? By suffering its penalty, sir, by being executed. You say, when? Why, with Christ. When you trusted Christ, you were joined to Christ, and his death became your death. If you went up into heaven at this moment and were allowed to go into the recording room where the ledgers are kept, you'd like to have a look, wouldn't you? And when you'd looked at your own page, you looked at another page, good ink. Ha ha. Comes here preaching to us and making out his I don't know what have you. Just let's look what the recording angel's got down here. Of course you'd see some red ink, wouldn't you? Long pages of it. I tell you what else you'll see. You'll suddenly see the whole thing struck through and written across the bottom, culprit dead. You say, no, it can't be because I saw him alive in Belfast the other day. Ah, but now, yes, but as far as God's law is concerned and its penalties, they've already been executed. The criminal is dead. Died with Christ. Old man suffered the penalty he deserved, was crucified with Christ. So I'm free from the law. You say, how did you come free? Because, you know, if you kill a man, that's jolly good, but now how did you get? Ah, now that's another big story, isn't it? We've been raised with Christ and given a new life. So we didn't have. That new life is the new man, isn't it? It's nothing short of Christ himself come to live with him. So as far as the law concerned, I'm dead. Now, in actual practice, however, I stand the other side of that grave, and I have a new life from Christ as the new man. Well, you say, what is this then about putting off the old man? Well, look at it this way, if you like. All I was. You're thinking about a bundle of contradictious things I am, memories and neuroses, darkness, that complex thing that I used to be, and God has said, no good, finish. In repenting, you know, I've agreed with God, haven't I? And know what, Mr. Jeb, I was asking his opinion, you see, to make sure I got it right. Don't blame him if I haven't, because that's me not understood him. But, uh, he was saying, the real you. Where do you stand? The you that has to make the decision. Do you agree with all those old ways of thinking, those resentments, those fears, those jealousies, those envies, those lusts? Or do you say no? Christ has actually taken the roots of my being out of that soil and placed them in himself. And I'm in Christ, and Christ is in me. And in my repentance, I said, now I'm finished with that. And I'm alive with Christ. Yeah. In your repentance, you put off the old man. Ah, but you say day to day he keeps coming back. Well, yes, perhaps he does. All sorts of memories come back, don't they? Childhood wounds, natural darkness. But you see, it won't undo the fact that you are now in Christ. And what you profess to do, to die to all that. Now you've got to put it into action, haven't you? You say, but that old stuff is very much alive. Well, that's what Paul says it is, only you've got to put it to death, yes? In a practical way. Mortify, that is, put to death those old members of yours that are still upon the earth. So there is the Bible admitting they're very much alive, yes? You've got to mortify those members that are still on the earth. The power to do so is in every single in a- a occasion to remember that you're not any longer rooted in them. The real you is in Christ, and the power of Christ is available for you to stand up and say, no, I finished with that. I yield myself to Christ. So there is the legal side, then there is the practical side.