A Letter to a Friend.

BELOVED BROTHER, –

Many thanks for a sight of the letter you inclose. If I do not consider the question raised quite as important as the writer does, it is only because I think there is misapprehension in his mind as to what he is commenting on; and even then, the difference that remains is really important. I shall therefore give you my thoughts somewhat fully, and with all the simplicity of which I am capable; so that if I be in error, at least that error may be made clear, although I cannot say for myself that I have any doubt of the truth of what is stated in the paper in Help and Food which our brother quotes. I do not, of course, mean by this that every expression used is of the wisest.

Of one thing our brother may be assured at the outset, that with the doctrines with which he connects me I have no sympathy in reality whatever. I have long lamented their spread, and protested, as far as I could, against them. There is no need to dwell upon this here. Let Us see that we do not, in the earnestness of our protest, give up what is in fact true. For truth and error come oftentimes near enough together, to make this a real danger. The most specious, and so most perilous, forms of error are indeed but the exaggeration, and so the distortion, of truth; and so I believe it to be very much in the case we are speaking of. The Lord will, I trust, overrule the differences which at the present time obtain among us, to make us look the more narrowly at all that we have learned; and may we, in the matter of doctrine as all else, know how to take forth the precious from the vile, for only thus shall we be as Jehovah's mouth.

The first passage in our brother's letter which has to do with me refers to the expression in the paper on Romans in the July number of Help and Food, " Our place in natural life is ended." He asks, " Is this true either in fact or for faith? If so, what becomes of natural relationship, natural affections, eating, drinking, marriage, etc.?" He argues, therefore, we must not press our being dead with Christ beyond the Scripture-application of being " dead to sin" " to law," to the " rudiments of the world." Christ actually died and went to heaven, but we are living on earth with our natural life.

Our brother might have gone further. He might have shown, without possibility of dispute, that our constant standard of walk is " as He walked " when Himself down here, not of course as ascended; and no higher standard of walk is possible for us. To me, the supposing any higher, or any other, is really so monstrous, stands at once so self-condemned, that I did not in fact suppose it necessary to guard my language from such interpretation.

No doubt it might have been guarded, or so expressed as not to need this; but if our brother will consider once more the whole paper from which he takes those words, he will surely see that it is of place and standing I am speaking; and I think he will hardly deny, in that connection, that what I have said is truth. By our "natural life" he will surely see that our life as in the old nature-our life in the flesh-is intended. The standard of walk is nowhere in question throughout the paper. Nor is it a question of being men, but of whether identified with the first man or with the second. Christ down here in the world was always this, amid earthly relationships and responsibilities which He surely owned, and which we too are to own and walk in according to God. Our place in natural life-or in life naturally, if that be better,- was in Adam, the first man:that is ended; thank God, it is! Our brother may perhaps say, That is a condition, not a place. This I need not take up now, however, as my concern is here only to clear my meaning. It will come out more clearly still as we proceed.

The next question raised is as to the " old man," which our brother understands to be a " personification of the whole body of sin as a master, which found its complete and final condemnation at the cross of Christ," and he refuses the thought of the cross being "my" condemnation, as what would make it no better than law. He quotes Rom. 8:3 -"condemned," not me, but "sin in the flesh," and adds, "I am saved by Christ as my substitute, not condemned in my substitute." The last sentence seems little more than a difference in words, yet it has an evident bearing on the subject of the old man. But is it true that as a sinner I am not condemned-in the cross? Is there any contradiction between being saved by a substitute and condemned in one? Was it not my condemnation that Christ bore? or did He bear wrath without condemnation? Surely, the very fact of being condemned in a substitute implies my personal escape from this, does it not? And yet our brother says that it is all the same thing to be condemned by the law, and to be condemned in a Saviour!

Scripture is plain that " by nature, we were children of wrath, even as others," and that "he that believeth not is condemned already." Surely, therefore, as long as we are unbelievers, wrath and condemnation attach to us. Could there be escape for us without another taking this? In what, then, was Christ our substitute ? For the " body of sin personified " He was not a substitute, surely! Does not our brother confound the effect of substitution with the fact of it? I am sure he would contend most earnestly for both; and yet is there not a real danger of letting slip somewhat of what we all acknowledge as necessary truth?

Christ represented me upon the cross, not the body of sin in me, but me the sinner; and He represented me in death and curse, bearing my sins in His own body on the tree; and only thus could justification or deliverance come to me; and thus "our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be annulled, that henceforth we should not serve sin."

Notice how the inspired word brings out the difference I am insisting on. It is our old man that was crucified with Christ:here our brother owns personification; I maintain, the person. But when that which was our master is spoken of, there is no personification:it is not "that our old man," or "that he might be annulled," but that the "body of sin " might be. Why this change in the apostle's language ? Why personification in the case in which the cross is before us, and this dropped at once where it is simply the thought of mastership, or bondage ? Does it not suit, at least, well with the thought of the cross as atonement, and of atonement as that by which deliverance necessarily comes, and has come? And that this is the fact and truth intended, the whole argument of the seventh chapter bears unmistakable witness. It is in seeing that Christ died, not for my sins only, but as my substitute in the full reality of that, putting me entirely away-sins and sinner-from the sight of God, and giving me my new eternal place wholly in another, in Christ before God,-it is this, I say, that takes me out of myself, and as the law of the Spirit, frees me from the law of sin and death. It is the law of " life in Christ Jesus " that does this, and it is of the greatest consequence to see this:it is a method, a power, a law, and a revealed law, which does this. I fear any casting of the least cloud over the revelation.
Our brother thinks that it being "our old man" shows that it is something which has to do with us still as Christians. I have shown in the paper in question, as others have done before, that it is always in Scripture spoken of as for us done with, put off, crucified, never recognized as in us, as sin or the flesh is. This, surely, is a difficulty in the way of supposing them one thing. While it is easy to understand that, in looking back upon "my" former self, I should call it " my" old man. And this falls in with the whole purport, not merely of the chapter preceding, where our connection by nature with the old head is reasoned upon and made the ground of a comparison as to our link by new nature with the new Head.

I cannot, therefore, accept that our old man being crucified with Christ means, " not the person, but the condition of sin which characterizes and governs the person; and by being judicially dealt with by God at the cross is a reason for not serving as a slave sin, as once the person did."Nor do I think it possible to take " He that has died is justified from sin" as being "discharged" from a master's service, I believe "justified" means always cleared from guilt, and that this is the great point. I do not know an instance in which it means discharged from service. And, moreover, is it not plain that to make "he that has died" to be the master, is to make it in that case the master which is discharged ? Surely this alone should be decisive as to the whole matter. If he that has died is the one discharged, and so the passage says unmistakably, then our brother, and every one else, must see that it is I, not my master, who died, as it is I, not my master, who am discharged. There can be no clearer proof that our " old man " is not our old master, but our old self.

Galatians 6:14 is not in point, however much at first sight it may seem so. When the apostle speaks of being by the cross crucified to the world, and the world to him, it is not a question of justification or of atonement at all. The shame of the cross, along with its being a final thing, as death is with us here, these are the thoughts present to him. The world has put its brand upon Christ; well then, it has branded me, he says. But it is the world that has the real brand. In slaying Him, it has slain me, and the separation is final. But here, as I have said, there is no thought of atoning efficacy in the cross, or of justification. In this case the responsibility must cease. You could not say, The body of sin has been condemned in the cross, therefore I am justified from sin. Condemning it does not justify me; the law condemns it too, but does not justify at all. But myself receiving judgment in another, my Substitute, does justify me, and that is what the apostle says.

I think I need no more dwell upon this, then; but there still remains the question of responsibility to be looked at. I agree fully with what our brother says as to this, that it attaches to the creature as such, and that the condition of the creature does not affect this. There is no-absolutely no-difference whatever as to this. And that redemption does not end our responsibility, I own fully. With all that, I do surely believe that my judicial responsibility,-for of that it is evident I am speaking only,-was so taken by the Lord as dying for me, that as to " eternal judgment" it is as if we had passed out of the body, and that in our Substitute we have done so. Is it not so ?I confess I am greatly astonished that so plain a truth could possibly be disputed by one who knows his security in Christ. Our brother must surely, some way, have missed my thought. It is no question, of course, as to our being actually in the body, nor should I have dreamt of guarding against a mistake of this kind. I was talking expressly of what substitution implies; and if it does not imply this, then, I confess, I know not how any real peace with God is possible at all. I believe, too, that this death of a substitute being the death of those for whom the substitution is the key to the expression in the following chapters, " when we were in the flesh," and " ye are not in the flesh." Not that I confound the "flesh" and the "body:" I do not. It is of course the body of sin of which the apostle speaks. Yet as we carry this with us till death, and at death escape from it, so in Christ's death being ours, we have already found our escape judicially, and are no longer identified with it before God. I trust, in this, I speak no strange language to my brethren, but what is more fully realized by them than by me. And surely our brother could not mean to deny it.

But then if, in this way, I have died with Christ, my accountability as in this sense living, is surely over; I have said, "as a child of Adam," and to this our brother objects. Of course it will always remain true that I, and all other men, have sprung from Adam. No change can possibly alter that. Men, too, we shall always be; but" the first man is of the earth, earthy ; the Second Man is of heaven. As is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy; and as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly; and as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly." We are already heavenly-of the new race, although in the image of it we are not. And this is what I meant by our accountability as children of Adam being over. As a fact, although a fact only known to faith, we are in Christ-in the Second Man, not the first; and if it is asked, " What about the sins committed afterward?" I answer, If the death of Christ did not take them all into account, I know no way at all for their settlement. But is there any doubt it did?

Responsibility goes on, of course; for the creature is, as it has been well said, always responsible. But I am responsible, as having received Christ Jesus my Lord, to walk in Him; as maintaining in my walk always, that is, the place in which His work has set me. And the standard of my walk is His walk down here,-to walk as the Second, heavenly Man, not as the first. This, as already said, will be owning, as He did, the duties and relationships which we have to one another upon earth, yet as those sanctified and sent into the world . -therefore first taken out of it. This fully owns that we are in the world, while it emphasizes the fact of redemption. I am still a man, but a redeemed man,-a man belonging by birth as well as adoption to the race of the Second Man, not the first. I have, alas! still the old nature; I am still in the guise of the first man's family; I own fully the laws which God gave to creation when He established it in that perfection from which it has departed:but I am under another Head, and so of another family. And thus, while of course as to fact we are children of Adam yet, our place and accountability are, as I fully believe, not what this implies.

I have now, I think, taken up the points of our brother's letter, save one, to which, indeed, he merely alludes, and not in direct reference to myself,-the doctrine of new creation; too important an one to enter upon at the close of a letter, already long enough. Let me say, in conclusion, that I believe the free discussion of such points as these, in brotherly love and confidence, would do only good, and great good. Souls are exercised about them. If we seek truth, and are willing humbly to confess error wherever it may be made apparent, -if we can look at Scripture, not as desiring to maintain views of our own, but the authority of God's Word only, remembering there is no infallibility for us any where, but only there,-then, I say again, the good will be great. Soon, all thoughts of our own merely will have passed away forever. Do we not even now desire that they may be? Is it too late now, in the nineteenth century of Christianity, to look for a little company, at least, of those who in perfect freedom and faithfulness can approach each other upon topics of supremest interest and importance without forgetting the infinitely precious bonds that unite them to one another, or that dear Master whose word to us all is, "By love, serve one another."

If we seek unity of mind and judgment, it will be found in this way, not in the repression of free utterance by external authority, of whatever kind. In freedom the Spirit of God alone can find the atmosphere He wishes,-only the freedom of children in the Father's presence, whose inheritance is in the light.

It is in this spirit I have sought to reply to our brother's letter, thankful to him for the honest expression of what he feels and fears, and of his own views as he has given them. May the Spirit of truth show us each the truth where we have failed as yet to reach it, and may there be power from Him to sanctify us by it.

I am, my beloved brother,

Affectionately, in Christ,

F. W. G.