We are redeemed and justified by God, yet if there is the redemption and justification of God and nothing more, God remains outside of us. In addition to being redeemed by God, God Himself in Christ as the Spirit has come into us. This is why at the end of the second section of Romans, we find the phrases “Christ is in you,” “the Spirit of God dwells in you,” and “the Spirit of the One who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you” (8:10, 9, 11). When Christ delivers us, the God who redeemed us is no longer only objective to us. Rather, the God who redeemed us becomes the subjective God to us. He is now not only the God in the heavens but the God in us. God is now able to come into us in Christ as the Spirit. Now we are mingled with God as one. He as the Spirit can bear witness with our spirit (v. 6). His Spirit and our spirit—two spirits—can be joined as one (1 Cor. 6:17). Deliverance is in the Spirit; it can never be realized outside the Spirit.
We must learn how to realize God’s deliverance in the Spirit. This is the central point I would like to fellowship with you. Deliverance is not in teaching or correction; it is in the Spirit. The book of Romans stresses the point that God the Spirit is now in our spirit to be the living deliverance to us. If we are going to realize the deliverance of God, we must be in the Spirit, know the law of the Spirit of life, know how to walk according to the mingled spirit, and know how to cooperate with the Spirit (8:2, 4-6, 14).
Now let us see this matter of our deliverance in greater detail. All children inherit certain things from their parents. As those who are the sons of Adam and who are in Adam, we have inherited primarily two things—sin and death (5:12; 1 Cor. 15:22). Sin is under the condemnation of God, and it always brings in death (Rom. 6:23). Because we are sinners and are sinful, we are under death and are doomed to eventually die. Not only so, the Bible tells us that we are dead already (Eph. 2:1, 5). Hence, as those who are the descendants of Adam and who are in Adam, we are sinners and we are sinful. Moreover, we are under death, we are dead, and we are going to die. The two main items in our inheritance from Adam are sin and death.
Just as in Adam we receive a certain inheritance, in Christ also we gain an inheritance. Christ is versus Adam. Accordingly, our inheritance in Christ is versus our inheritance in Adam. Whereas in Adam we inherit sin, in Christ we inherit righteousness (Rom. 5:12, 19); and whereas in Adam we inherit death, in Christ we inherit life (1 Cor. 15:22; Rom. 5:18). Righteousness is versus sin, and life is versus death. Righteousness brings us redemption, and life brings us deliverance from the sinful nature. We are now redeemed by Christ as our righteousness and delivered by Christ as our life. We must realize that we are not redeemed by the righteousness of Christ. Rather, we are redeemed by Christ Himself as our righteousness (1 Cor. 1:30; Jer. 23:6). In like manner, we are delivered by Christ as our life. In Christ we inherit righteousness and life.
Because we are born as humans, we are in Adam. We are transferred out of Adam into Christ by death and resurrection. By death we are able to be transferred out of Adam, and by resurrection we are enabled to be transferred into Christ. We could say that by death we “died out of Adam” and by resurrection we were “raised up into Christ.” Our transfer from the realm of Adam into the realm of Christ can be accomplished only by a process of death and resurrection.
How then can we die and be raised up? To die and be raised up is not a simple or small matter. Here we have to see something wonderful. Both this death and this resurrection have been accomplished by Christ. If we are united with Christ and are identified with Him, what He experienced in the past will be our experience, our history. Once we become united and identified with Christ, we have a long history. Once we are in Christ, our background involves far more than it did before we were in Christ. Since we are now in Him, we must realize that we were crucified on the cross outside of Jerusalem, buried in a tomb, and resurrected from death and the grave. What Christ experienced is now your history. His history is your history. When He died on the cross, you died in Him. When He was buried, you were buried in Him. When He resurrected, you resurrected in Him. You are in Him. You are united with Him. You are identified with Him. Because this is the fact, the apostle Paul could proclaim that “our old man has been crucified with Him,” that “we have been buried...with Him,” and that God has “raised us up together with Him” (Rom. 6:6, 4, cf. 8-9a; Eph. 2:6). In Christ, we have been crucified, buried, and resurrected. We need to have the vision, the revelation, that this fact has been completed in Christ. If you realize this fact by seeing it in the Scriptures, this will be a standing for you from which nothing and no one will be able to move you. Always reckon that you have died, been buried, and resurrected. Be assured that what has happened to Christ has happened to you as well. Take this fact as your standing.
Christ’s history being our history can be rather hard for our natural mind to understand. When I was in my twenties, I read these things in Romans but was not able to understand them. I said to the Lord, “You died on the cross nineteen hundred years ago. How is it possible that I could have died then too?” Although at first I could not understand this, one day the Lord opened my eyes. It is quite simple. Today it is possible for events that take place in America to be seen on television in the Far East at the same moment they take place. This is possible because of electricity. We could say that the Spirit is like the electricity in this illustration. It is in the Spirit that things which happened long ago can be realized by us today. According to the illustration, the events that are recorded in America can also be stored by electronic means and then be retrieved and played back in the Far East many years later. In the same way, all the things wrought by Christ so long ago can be transmitted to us in the Holy Spirit.
With the Holy Spirit there is no problem of space or time. Whether or not we experience Christ’s history depends upon whether or not we are in the Holy Spirit. If we are in the Holy Spirit, the death and resurrection of Christ will be very real to us. This is because these facts are transmitted to us by and in the Spirit. It is only in the Spirit that we can realize the reality of the death and resurrection of Christ. Just as it is impossible for people in the Far East to see the things that happen in the United States without electricity and television, it is impossible for us to experience the reality of the death and resurrection of Christ without the Spirit. Just as electricity makes viewing distant events natural and easy, the Holy Spirit makes everything that Christ has experienced our history, our story. The day that I saw this vision, I was very happy. I said to the Lord, “O Lord, now I know that I am in You. I am one with You. What You have experienced is my history. You died, and I died. You resurrected, and I resurrected. Now by Your death and resurrection I am out of Adam and in Christ.” This is the practical experience of Romans 5 and 6.