11-26. No Recycling!
“If any man be in Christ, he is a new creation; old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new” (2 Cor. 5:17).
The old life is neither to be recycled nor reformed. We are all-new creations in the all-new Man, Christ Jesus.
“The illustration of a man drafted for the army, and finding a substitute to stand in his stead is not the Gospel. The Gospel is that you were under the judgment of death, and that the Lord Jesus has borne that judgment. It is not that you should keep the man who was under judgment, but that you should be completely severed from him in your death on the Cross.” -J.B.S.
“We could not be saved by Him, and keep the life on account of which He died. Here there is great confusion among believers. If there were true apprehension of the work of the Lord Jesus on the Cross—that He so bore the judgment on man that all the man who had offended against God has been judicially removed to His infinite satisfaction, and that He who saved us from death is now our Life—there would be a wonderful testimony to the grace of God.”
“The Reformers failed because they did not see that as faith alone could save, and place man outside himself in the Lord Jesus, he must not return to that which through grace has been crucified. In not seeing this, the Reformers left the door open for the system and ritualism which have grown up since in the church; and hence the simple and only effectual way of dealing with either is, at the start, to refuse any place to the old man except crucifixion.” -J.B.S.
“The Lord Jesus is the answer, but the Cross is needed to clear the way for Him.”
“For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death” (Rom. 8:2).