FROM ADAM TO CHRIST...Abraham Kuyper...But my person, as by faith I stand in Christ, must go from strength to strength. That person was once born in the old man, and therefore was born in trespasses and sin, and is a child of wrath by nature. And he would never have come out and escaped from the old man of himself. That he could not do. He was identified with the old man so completely that the latter was his very ego. He had no other life or existence. But in regeneration a change took place. By this divine act our person is in principle detached from his former ego in the old man. The root was notched and, by the constant action of storm and gravitation, the severed parts separated more and more. Our person is no longer identified with the old man, but opposes him. Even tho he succeeds in enticing us again to sin, even in the yielding we do not what we will, but what we hate. Only hear what St. Paul says: “The good which I would I do not, but the evil which I would not that I do. Now, if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me.” (Rom vii. 19, 20)... Wherefore the child of God must not be identified with the old man after regeneration, for this opposes the plain teaching of the Word. He is the old man no more, but wars against him. As God’s child he is become the new man—not in part, but wholly. “Old things are passed away, behold all things are become new.”37 In this, and nothing less, is cause of his glorying. His person is passed from death into life. He is translated from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of God’s dear Son. He is so fully identified with the new man that, while still living in this world, he is already set with Christ in heaven, where his citizenship is, and where his life is hid with Christ in God. If the word of the Psalmist does not refer to the old man nor to the new, to whom, then, does it refer? The Scripture answers: to believers, their person, their ego, which, being detached from the old man and opposing him, is identified with the new. They go from strength to strength. It is true the use of “ego” in both senses is apt to confuse one; yet St. Paul does the same thing. He says “I” and “not I “: “I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.” (Gal. ii. 20) The same person who fell in Adam and out of Adam received the old man with whom for a time he was identified, is now changed, translated, and risen with Christ; out of Christ he received a new man, and with that new man he is being more and more identified. Hence he goes from strength to strength. This identification of our person with the new man is, immediately after regeneration, still very slight; while we are so thoroughly bound to the old man, with almost all the fibers of our being, that it seems as tho he were still our very self. But by the operation of the Holy Spirit we gradually die to the old man, and at the same time the new man is quickened in us more and more. And, since both the dying of the old and the gradual rising of the new man are profitable to our person, the Holy Spirit testifies concerning His own work that we, God’s children, go from strength to strength until every one of us in Zion appeareth before God. (Psalm 84:7) It refers not only to our growing into the new man, but just as much to our gradual deliverance from the dying old man. In both it is the same working; hence both afford us increase of strength... The seventh chapter of Romans is very instructive in this respect. St. Paul says, “I delight in the law of God after the inward man,” (Rom vii. 22) i.e., after my inward affections. There is indeed another law in his members, which brings him into captivity to the law of sin; but he has not the least love or sympathy for that law, but with the law of his mind he wars against it...Dr. Abraham Kuyper
Posted on: Tue, 01 Oct 2013 23:38:32 +0000
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