Victory is Already Ours - Part Two

Lack of Appropriation

The trouble lies in the fact that not all believers realize what their judicial standing is in Christ. They are not possessing their possessions. They are not exercising their rights. They are not cashing their checks. The deposit of spiritual riches is in Christ at the believer's disposal in the bank of heaven. They are not actuated by a bold faith which, refusing to take into account the unworthiness of the creature, casts itself upon the mercy of God in Christ and makes copious demands upon the bank of heaven. They are wont to measure their moral and spiritual capacity by their own ability and effort, giving Christ a place, of course, but yet a scanty one. They have not yet learned to say with Paul, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” (Phil 4:13)

They move too much in the realm of the natural. They have not realized that the natural is of no avail in this great conflict with evil. They have not fully grasped the meaning of the Savior's. Word where He says that the flesh profiteth nothing. They have not yet stood where Paul stood when he cried, "I know that in me (that is, in my flesh), dwelleth no good thing" (Rom. 7: 1 8). They have not realized that it is their good "self' not yet denied which causes them to stumble. They are willing for their bad "self ' to be crucified, not aware of the fact that the good "self' is just as mischievous, for it is still "self' and victory cannot be ours until all of "self' has been assigned to the Cross according to Romans 6.

Believe What God Says

The Christian I repeat who hungers and thirsts after righteousness, the righteousness of a perennial victory, full orbed, the more-than-conqueror type, is not seeking something that is not already his. In a sense God cannot make it more his than it already is. On the divine side it is a consummated thing. We get nowhere by looking at ourselves. God expects nothing of self but that it be crucified, which judicially it already is. We are not called upon as Christians to die to sin; but to recognize the fact that we have died to sin in the death of Him who, on Calvary's Cross, put an end to the old creation, that in the power of His resurrection He might bring forth the new Our old man was crucified with Christ, and in view of this fact we reckon ourselves dead to sin and alive unto God (Rom. 6:11). The reckoning does not produce the fact; it simply springs from the fact.

God's standard of victory ("thanks be unto God, which always causeth us to triumph') appears to be altogether unattainable for unnumbered Christians, a goal never to be reached here upon earth, however great the longings for such a thing might be, or however earnestly one might strive to achieve such a position, for the very simple reason that they are not willing to believe what God says about the matter nor to do what He says must be done. How can they reckon themselves dead to sin and alive unto God according to Romans 6:11 (the Christian basis of a victorious position), when it simply is not yet a fact? They feel that they must be honest. To state such a thing would be a lie. How can they reckon themselves dead to sin and alive unto God when it seems as though every atom of their being still responds to sin, when the world still seems to master them, and the devil, in many respects, is still king.

But they are wrong. God does not ask them to affirm something which they can believe to be true because they feel it and see it. It is not a fact in themselves. It is a fact in the eternal council of God. It is a fact in the divine economy of redemption. It is a fact in the consummation wrought by the Son of God on Calvary's Cross. It is as true as its twin fact; namely, that Christ the Lord bore our sins in His body on the Cross. Feeling this latter does not make it a fact nor does believing it. It is a fact because, when the blessed Redeemer died the shameful death of a slave and a criminal on Golgotha's cursed Tree, God tells us in His holy Word that it was to put away the sin of the world. When the sinner believes and is saved he does not create the fact, he simply rests in the fact established since the foundation of the world when, as we read in Revelation, the Lamb of God was slain. Calvary was the visible expression of a fact already established by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God.

Accept the Victory

So it is with this twin-fact of the Cross so insistently proclaimed in all of Paul's Epistles. "Our old man is crucified with [Christ]."  "Ye are dead and your life is hid with Christ in God." "I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me... " (Gal. 2:20). We are told that it was a fact when on the Cross the Saviour cried with a loud voice, "It is finished" (John 19:30). Not only was guilt dealt with; sin as a principle was condemned (see Romans 8:3). The sin principle in you and me was crucified. You get nowhere in this question of victory until you believe it. You do not try to deceive yourself into believing you are dead to sin and alive unto God, when experience says something quite different. You are asked to reckon yourself dead to sin through Christ, because God says He dealt with the sin-principle that is in you (our old man was crucified) when the Redeemer died on Calvary's Cross. Victory is already yours if you are a Christian, but you must accept it in God's way and according to His terms.

F.J. Huegel