The Law of the Spirit of Life

For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death. ROMANS 8:2

Torrey insisted that the baptism with the Spirit is for service, not for cleansing from sin. But he did not therefore think the Spirit had nothing to do with holiness. Quite the reverse. In The Person and Work of the Holy Spirit he gives a series of chapters to what the Spirit does within the believer: setting him free from the power of indwelling sin, forming Christ within him, bearing the fruit of Christlike character, guiding him as a son, and bearing witness that he is a child of God. This is the inner side of Torrey’s teaching on the Spirit, and in some ways the most helpful.

Three laws

Torrey read Romans 7 and 8 as a story of three laws. There is the law of God outside us, holy and just and good, which Paul approved in his mind. There is the law of sin within, which kept saying, in effect, you cannot do the good you want. And the battle between them ended in defeat.

O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. ROMANS 7:24–25

Then Paul discovered a third law, the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus. What the law of God could not do, because it was weak through the flesh, the Spirit could do in him: fulfil the righteousness the law requires in those who walk after the Spirit.

That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. ROMANS 8:4

Torrey’s practical point was this. When we come to the end of ourselves, admit our inability to keep God’s law, and look in helplessness to the Spirit to do what we cannot, surrendering our thoughts and desires to Him, He sets us free from the power of the sin that dwells in us. It is the privilege of the child of God, Torrey wrote, to have victory over sin every day, every hour and every moment.

The flesh still there

It is important to hear what Torrey did not say. He did not teach that the believer’s sinful nature is removed. The desires of the flesh remain. What changes is that we are no longer in the flesh or living after it. Through the Spirit we put to death, day by day, the deeds to which those desires would lead.

For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live. ROMANS 8:13

Torrey wrote that the Spirit’s power may be so full that a believer is hardly conscious of the flesh at all; it may seem dead and gone. But it is only kept in the place of death by the Holy Spirit. If we took our eyes off Christ, or neglected the Word and prayer, down we would go.

This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh. GALATIANS 5:16

He told of a man he had known who made extraordinary progress and became a teacher of thousands, and who seemed to Torrey to be growing self-confident. Torrey invited him to his room and warned him frankly. He found it safer himself, he said, not to be too sure at the end of each day that there had been no failures, but to ask God to search his heart. It is a wise word from a man who could otherwise sound very confident.

Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall. 1 CORINTHIANS 10:12

Christ formed within

The next step in Torrey’s thought comes from Paul’s prayer in Ephesians 3.

That he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man; That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith. EPHESIANS 3:16–17

In Christ on the cross, Torrey said, we have Christ for us. By the Spirit we have Christ in us, and there lies the secret of a Christlike life. He was impatient with the popular talk of his day about doing as Jesus would do, not because it was wrong to want to live like Christ, but because any attempt to imitate Christ in our own strength ends in disappointment. The more clearly we see Him, the further short we know we fall. The answer is not to try harder but to let the Spirit form Christ within.

A personally conducted life

Torrey then turned to Romans 8:14. As many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. “A true Christian life,” he wrote, “is a personally conducted life, conducted at every turn by a Divine Person.”

This led him to one of his most liberating emphases. Many Christians, he observed, live in bondage to long lists of rules they have made for themselves. They fear they have not made enough, or that they have broken one unawares, and some even imagine they have committed the unpardonable sin. That, said Torrey bluntly, is not Christianity; it is legalism.

For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father. The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God. ROMANS 8:14–16

The Christian is not governed by rules outside him but led by the Spirit of adoption within. And if he goes astray in a thoughtless moment, he does not fall into terror. He goes to his Father, confesses, believes he is forgiven because God says so, and goes on light-hearted.

Where to read him with care

Two cautions are needed.

First, Torrey read Romans 7 as the experience of a man under law rather than the normal experience of a Christian. Many of the church’s greatest teachers, from Augustine to Luther and beyond, have read it the other way, as the honest cry of a regenerate man who still feels the pull of sin. Both readings have their defenders. The danger in Torrey’s reading is that a Christian who still recognises himself in Romans 7 may conclude he has missed the Spirit altogether. He probably has not. The struggle itself is a sign of life.

Second, Torrey’s phrase victory every moment is true as a statement of what the Spirit makes possible. It is not a promise that we shall never again fail. Torrey himself went to God each evening asking to be shown his failures. Hold the promise high and the practice humble.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Name one sin against which you have been fighting in your own strength. Tell God plainly that you cannot overcome it, and ask the Spirit to do what you cannot.

2. Read Romans 7:14–8:4 and notice where the word I dominates and where the Spirit appears.

3. Look at the rules you live by. Which are from Scripture, and which are self-made burdens that breed fear? Bring the second kind to God.

4. Instead of asking what Jesus would do in your own strength, ask the Spirit to form Christ in you as you face today’s choices.

5. At the end of today, ask God to search your heart, confess what He shows you, and receive His forgiveness because He says so.

A PRAYER

Holy Spirit, I have tried to be good in my own strength, and I have failed. I come to the end of myself and look to You.

Set me free from the power of the sin that dwells in me. Put to death the deeds of the flesh, and keep them in the place of death.

Form Christ in me, and bear Your fruit in my life — love, joy, peace, and all the rest — not as my achievement but as Your work.

Lead me as a son, not as a slave. When I go astray, bring me back quickly to my Father, and let me go on with a light heart. Amen.