The following extracts will show the effect of this teaching as regards life or eternal life; how the true scriptural idea of it is destroyed in the soul, and that it only becomes a fact at the resurrection. Christ Himself as the life is also reduced to what is experimental. Such is the result of the new system which was introduced at Witney in April, 1888. This teaching appears to be generally adopted among Brethren in India.
“Indian Extracts, No. 21.”
“Please circulate among those in fellowship.”
If I am right then it follows that Eternal Life must not be confounded with the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ. How then are we to understand, “This is the true God and eternal life”? In the same way as when we identify a man with his experimental life. J. has been converted and he is quite another man . . . What the disciples “handled” was not part of the life, but it was part of the Word of life, it was part of Jesus. If I am right in my “scriptural facts” it is an absurdity to speak of “the Personality of Eternal life,” because it is the personality of “zoee,” which is experience and never person. But now suppose I am wrong as to my scripture facts . . . Suppose, on further investigation, it could be demonstrated that Eternal Life did mean His eternal Person? What is the fault that could be laid to my charge . . . Would it be the dreadful fact of my rejection of the Personality of Eternal Life? (pp. 25, 26).
“All the days of our life,” neither beginning of days nor end of life.
It is the exercise, experience, activity of that which lives. “Zoee” is never that which does live, but always the result produced by living, or I might say it is the fact of living (p. 22).
Scripture, as I read it, invariably when speaking of the life says it is in Christ, and not it is Christ, though Christ (experimentally) is it . . . Now is the life Mr. L. leads the person of Mr. L.? Surely not; but Eternal Life is eternal “Zoee,” and so cannot be a person. If an intimate friend of his were to describe his life minutely another might exclaim, “Yes, that is Mr. L. exactly.” And it is in this way Darby says Eternal Life is Christ Him self.
Another thing. We must distinguish between having life in Christ and having life in oneself. The former is having it in title or assured to us, as, “We have . . . an house . . . eternal in the heavens” (2 Cor. 6). It is ours, but we have not yet got it . . . (cp. John 6:50, 5150This is the bread which cometh down from heaven, that a man may eat thereof, and not die. 51I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever: and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world. (John 6:50‑51)). Yet though the Lord had at least eleven with Him who had been born again, His words prove that they had no life (“Zoee”) in them because they had not eaten His flesh or drunk His blood (p. 26).
Letters by General Haig and J. Dow.
The final issues of existence (judgment or Eternal Life) were vested in Him, so that one who heard His words and believed in God who sent Him was safe from judgment and sure of Eternal Life, and that matter passed at once from the domains of death to that of life, &c. If someone corrects me and says I must not alter “hath Eternal Life” to “is sure of Eternal Life,” I say that in the sense as elsewhere in Scripture, e.g. 2 Cor. 5:11For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. (2 Corinthians 5:1), “we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.” It is ours, but we have not yet got it.
Look now into the future and see life in the new creation . . . Now as many as received Jesus had been born of God, God’s “seed” was in them; but that “seed” is never called “life” in the Bible – much less “Eternal Life.” The seed was in them. Eternal Life was secured to them. When the Holy Ghost was given them and enabled them to eat the flesh and drink the blood of the Son of man and to feed on Him, then they had Eternal Life in them; but the thought of John 6:4747Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me hath everlasting life. (John 6:47) was not yet effectuated, nor has it been even now – see verse 40 – it is connected with the post-resurrection state. The Spirit is God’s earnest, but John 6:4747Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me hath everlasting life. (John 6:47) contemplates Eternal Life in its fullness in resurrection glory (Letter from General Haig, pp. 27-29).
So we have called the new birth “the Eternal Life”; and one born of God a “quickened soul,” &c.; while all these terms are distinct and entirely separate in scripture use, so the words “personality of Eternal Life,” are foreign to Scripture (Letter by J. Dow, p. 35).
Extracts From “Notes of a Conference Held at Lahore,”
December, 1890.
Quickening is to give life, and we have commonly used the word to mean imparting new birth. He causes them to live.
Quickening is not merely imparting a new vital principle but causing them to live. Those born of God have Eternal Life in the sense of having it assured to them. New birth is never called “life” in Scripture (p. 33).
The disciples could not have the life of the Son (as Man) with the Father, until they had entered into the work of the cross. Though they were born of God, they could have no life in them till His death . . . The outcome of the new birth in the Old Testament saints is never once called life in the Scriptures.
New birth is the sovereign action of God, preliminary to all else . . . It is not our receiving Christ, though those that have been born of God do receive Him (p. 36).
To refer again to verse 10 (John 10:9-179I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture. 10The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly. 11I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep. 12But he that is an hireling, and not the shepherd, whose own the sheep are not, seeth the wolf coming, and leaveth the sheep, and fleeth: and the wolf catcheth them, and scattereth the sheep. 13The hireling fleeth, because he is an hireling, and careth not for the sheep. 14I am the good shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known of mine. 15As the Father knoweth me, even so know I the Father: and I lay down my life for the sheep. 16And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd. 17Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I might take it again. (John 10:9‑17)), “If they had life how could He come to give it?
The new birth is the beginning of the process that leads on to Eternal Life. The new birth makes you as secure as God can make you. You are absolutely secure from that moment. God has given me Eternal Life, but before that I was born again. To be born again involves Eternal Life eventually, but it does not necessarily mean the enjoyment of it here.
The Spirit is life – induces life. I believe that life begins from the moment the Spirit is given . The seventh of Romans is not what God calls life (pp. 38-40).
Neither resurrection nor life is a title, though neither resurrection nor life can be known, save in Him. He produces that result for others (p. 46 ).
We have been priding ourselves that we have life, even in an utter stagnant state of soul out of communion when we are away from God in spirit; it is humbling to find that God does not recognize that as life (p. 47).
He gave them their commission to go forth and betoken it with an act of power; showing Himself as the giver of life then He gives them authority, they could not go forth as sent ones, nor use this authority until the Holy Ghost came down, and then they had life in them too (p. 49).
Extracts From “a Few Words on Life,” by C. E. M.
(Winder, Leeds).
The saints of old must have been born of the Spirit, or they could have had no part in the hopes which God revealed to them. But life was still future, for there was not yet the man who as a divine Person had always lived, and now as a man could live for ever, and who could achieve life for others, because He could lay down what He had in common with them – His human soul – and take it again by a power which was inherent in Himself.
Life for them was a future thing, not yet brought to light. God had life for them, and in witness thereof took away Enoch, to show that life was somewhere else than here; He had it for them, but it had not come. There is no such thing as life for man apart from the accomplished fact of a man beyond the reach of death? That and nothing else is life.
Eternal Life, primarily and properly, is the inherent essential power to live for ever . . . In like manner Eternal life and the condition of having it, though inseparable, are distinct . . . Eternal life for man is the privilege bestowed by God, His gift, and beyond all risk of forfeiture of living for ever (p. 6).
Eternal life is the final result of His death and resurrection but it is the last thing administered; that is to say, Eternal Life is not an actual fact in the persons of those that are Christ’s, until the whole man is set by God’s power, the same power that raised up Christ beyond death for ever.
But at present Eternal life for man exists nowhere as an accomplished fact save in Christ’s own person.
Nevertheless now, as a thing quite outside ourselves eternal life is given of God, and possessed by believers.
John’s Gospel and Epistle teach us how (p. 7).
. . . The Word, in whom is and always was life; that is the inherent essential power of living; who as God, and eternally existing, was eternally, by His nature, out of the reach of death (p. 8).
He who has brought what He alone possesses down to us in His flesh and blood being given for us to eat and drink – creature life ended, that we may receive in Him that which is eternal, – now gives Eternal Life, because as man He has gone back to what He had before He became man and this is Eternal Life (p. 12).
The sent one replaced, as man, in the original glory He had from all eternity. Surely this is Eternal Life.
For now that what He has brought down and done for us is made good in Himself. He gives that we should live for ever, in having for ever before us Eternal Life, where only and as only, it could be in its true character in man and for man (p. 13).
N. B. – Important passages are put in italics.
We can hardly be surprised at the above statements by the followers of Mr. Raven, when he expresses himself on these important points as below; separating new birth and quickening into distinct things, denying faith, new affections and the reception of Christ to new birth.
As to communication of life, I have no question for a moment that a soul is spiritually alive as the result of new birth: still new birth is only a foundation, and is not necessarily in itself the reception of Christ. Eternal life is in Christ, and in receiving Christ eternal life is received but it is in Christ (the Second Man) “God has given to us eternal life, and this life is in His Son.”
I do not regard new birth and quickening as equivalent.
In the first, I believe a new foundation is laid b y the Spirit in man through the word, while quickening is that a soul is made to live spiritually in the life and relationship of the Second Man. In a word, quickening is the equivalent of “new creation,” and the result of it is that the believer has passed out of death into life (Letter of F. E. R., Sept. 17 1890).
In Scripture new birth is never connected with faith, but is the sovereign gift of God. Eternal life is always on the ground of faith, though of course it is also the sovereign gift of God.
Scripture does not connect life with birth. Nature is life in essence, but there is not the whole framework so to speak; i.e. the affections, & c. (Notes of a Brothers’ Meeting at Mr. Oliphant’s, 14th January, 1890).