Married to Another

Wherefore, my brethren, ye also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ; that ye should be married to another, even to him who is raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God. ROMANS 7:4

Catherine Booth could never be content with a Christianity that hoped for the best. She had been brought up in a devout home and had feared God from her earliest years, and at about sixteen she saw that this very fact was her danger. She tells the story in her address Assurance of Salvation. The temptation that came to her was a quiet one: that she had been half a Christian all her life, that she should not expect the kind of change she read of in books, and that she must be content with what she had. It frightened her. She resolved that she would never rest until she was “as thoroughly and truly changed, and know it, as any thief, or any great outward sinner.” For six weeks she sought God, often into the small hours. And she found Him. “I knew Him,” she said. “I can’t tell how, but I knew Him.”

A fact, and a witness to the fact

Out of that experience came one of her most characteristic convictions: that a Christian may know that he is saved, and ought not to be content until he does. She defined assurance with precision. It is, she said, “the testimony of God’s Spirit to a fact which has transpired.” The Spirit does not testify to something that has not happened. If a person has no assurance, the first question is not whether his feelings are faulty, but whether the thing itself has taken place. “Get salvation, and you will get assurance.”

The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God. ROMANS 8:16

She was careful to say that faith and assurance are not the same thing. Faith is the means; assurance is the result. The believer takes God at His word, commits himself to Christ, and then the Spirit bears His witness. She pointed to the First Epistle of John, which seems to have been written for the very purpose of letting believers know where they stand.

These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life. 1 JOHN 5:13

Not the letter only

Her warning was against resting in what she called the letter. Many people, she found, had been told that if they believed the verses they were saved, and they did believe the verses, and they were miserable. They had accepted the written record into their minds and stopped short of trusting the living Christ. To such people she gave a blunt piece of advice. If someone comes with a Bible and tells you that because you believe this and that you are saved, and your heart knows nothing of it, answer them with Job: “Miserable comforters are ye all: I will never be content until I know God.”

He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in himself. 1 JOHN 5:10

She valued the Scriptures above almost anything, and said so. But she saw that knowledge alone has no power to change anyone. “Knowledge is as powerless as ignorance,” she said, and she had known ministers with their heads full of the Bible who confessed to her that they were slaves of some besetting sin. The power is not in knowing about Christ. It is in being joined to Him.

Union

This was the real subject of the sermon, and it is why she took Romans 7:4 as her text. Paul pictures the believer as a woman once married to the law — a husband who could show her her sin but could give her no power over it — who is now, by the death of Christ, set free and married to another. Under the law, she said, you see that sin is sin, and struggle against it, and go down. United to Christ, you see it, and resist it, and stand. The difference is not in the effort. It is in the marriage.

I will even betroth thee unto me in faithfulness: and thou shalt know the LORD. HOSEA 2:20

She could not explain the union, and did not try. She called it a mystery, like the wind that blows where it wills, and turned instead to the Lord’s own picture of the vine and the branches. A branch broken off may keep its shape and its greenness for a while. It may even be nailed up against the wall beside the vine, so close that no one but the gardener can tell the difference. But it bears no fruit, because no sap is flowing. That, she said, is the condition of many professing Christians: close to Christ, correct in form, and dead.

Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me. JOHN 15:4

A needed caution

Her teaching on assurance was a gift to many who had lived for years in fog. But it needs one qualification, and the reader should hold it firmly. She sometimes spoke as though anyone without a conscious assurance ought to suspect that they were not saved at all. The wider church has usually been more careful. Many true believers, especially those of a melancholy temperament, or passing through illness or grief, walk for a time without the felt witness of the Spirit, and are no less His. Scripture speaks of those who fear the Lord and yet walk in darkness and have no light (Isaiah 50:10). She herself allowed, in the same sermon, that a pilgrim may lose his scroll for a while as Bunyan’s Christian did, provided he cannot rest until he finds it again. That is the balance to keep. Assurance is the normal inheritance of the children of God, and it is right to seek it. Its absence, for a season, is not proof that one is not a child.

Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves. 2 CORINTHIANS 13:5

What she was right to refuse was complacency: the settled contentment of those who have never known Christ, never sought to know Him, and see no reason why they should. For her, being married to Christ was not a figure of speech. It was the most real relationship of her life, and she wanted everyone she preached to to have it. When He comes, she told her congregation, you will not be ashamed of who knows it. You will have a husband worth being proud of.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Can you say, not merely that you believe, but that you know Christ? If not, do not despair, and do not settle. Seek Him until you find Him.

2. Ask whether your confidence rests on a verse you once agreed with, or on a living Christ you trust today.

3. Name one sin under which you still go down. Bring it to Christ not as a problem to solve but as something your union with Him is meant to overcome.

4. If you are passing through darkness and cannot feel the Spirit’s witness, keep walking in obedience and trust. Read Isaiah 50:10 and take it as written to you.

5. Spend some time this week simply thanking Christ for joining you to Himself, without asking Him for anything.

A PRAYER

Lord Jesus, I do not want to be content with a half-Christianity. I want to know You, not only to know about You.

Where I have rested in the letter and missed the Person, forgive me. Where I have been close to You and not joined to You, graft me in.

Let Your Spirit bear witness with my spirit that I am Yours. And when I cannot feel it, keep me trusting what You have said.

You have married me to Yourself. Let my life bear fruit that shows whose I am. Amen.