"God knows you are without strength, that you cannot do anything, and that you are completely helpless. And this is why He crucified you...So we can say, 'I can now really see that God has absolutely no demand on me. I today know I can do nothing, and therefore God has had me crucified. Why, then, should I strive anymore?"
(The law is God's demands on our flesh. And we are freed from the law because God made us to die to it. We are dead to the law, and that means God has no demands on us! Whew!)
"To be delivered from the law is to be delivered from God's demand, which means that...we give up the idea of trying to please God.
"Knowing that God does not expect anything from us is the only way not to despair.
"We should no longer make any resolution, neither expect progress nor strive for victory - because we know that all these come from the old Adamic life. We will ignore it altogether...All our defeats and falls derive from the old Adamic life. Should we ask the Lord to give us strength so that we will not do it again, to men this looks excellent but to God this is unnecessary because we have died in Christ. Our history has ended, and therefore none of our decisions and desires count.
"We have been delivered from the law on one hand and we have been joined to Christ on the other hand.
"If we want to look at ourselves we can only look at ourselves in the Lord...You should only see yourself in Christ....[the important thing is] never to look at ourselves outside of Christ.
"The relationship between Him and us is that of life. In other words, it is an indissoluble relationship. Christ does not come to be some outward things to us. He comes to enter into us to be our life. The relationship of life is an eternal bond...Possessing Him as our life, our union with Him is indissoluble.
"Our union with Christ today is that which Adam in the beginning never had. It is an eternal, indestructible relationship, such that even God Himself has no way to dissolve it. This life abides in us..
"Christ as our life is the foundation of a Christian. Christ in us as our life reacts on our behalf against all outside influences.
"Christ not only died for us on the cross but He also lives for us within us. Who can make us live like Christ? None except the One who gives the life of Christ to us...We who are resurrected in Christ will bring forth fruit to the glory of God.
Watchman Nee
I am still learning from and pondering the above quotes, but these are my thoughts on them: We can't please or love God on our own strength. God knew we couldn't do right, so He killed us off. That ended the demand of the law on us, for dead people don't have to keep the law. In fact, dead people don't do much at all. They don't improve or make resolutions or get better. They can do...nothing. That pretty much describes our ability and potential in the flesh. We know that in our flesh dwells nothing good. The flesh (natural human effort) is a zero. It stinks and always will. We can't prop it up, animate it, improve it or fix it. It's what we were, not what we are. It's not the source of our life anymore, for through the work of Christ our old life source, flesh, has been cut away and we have been raised with a new life source, Christ.
We are alive now only in Christ. We are "In Christ people." We live by His life, not our own. The old way was trying on our own strength. The new way is Christ living in me! He is the only Life that ever pleased God. He always does the things that please Him. He is not only my righteousness, He is the living out of the righteous life in me. I live by faith. That means I have confidence that He is my righteousness already and that He will bring that out. I act, make choices, live and love, but it's really Christ doing all those things (Gal 2.20), animating and motivating and living His life through me, for it is God who works in me to will and to do of His good pleasure (Phil. 2:13). We live not by our own efforts (flesh, law), which is death, but by the Spirit of Christ in us (Spirit, grace), which is life. And we are privileged to watch that life come forth in us, the very resurrection life of Christ!
With love to all,
