Boston, Feb. 17th, 1867.
I do not know if in my “Synopsis” I have sufficiently remarked on the structure of the Epistle to the Romans. However, this point has been much developed in my mind. In the first chapter I end the Introduction with verse 17. Verse 18 begins the argument, which shows the necessity of the gospel, because of the sins of either Jew or Gentile.
From chapter 3: 21 we have the answer of grace in the blood of Christ to sins committed, explanation of the patience of God with regard to past sins, and the ground of justice revealed in the present time. Then, in chapter 4, the resurrection as an accomplished fact is added.
In chapter 5:1-11 he shows all the blessings which flow from that which precedes; peace, favor, glory to come, joy in tribulation, joy in God Himself. This brings out sovereign grace, and the love of God-love which is shed abroad in our hearts by His Spirit which He has given us. A chief division of the epistle is found at the end of verse 11 of chapter 5. As far as the end of this verse, the apostle has spoken of sins, then of grace.
Now (from ver. 12) he begins to speak of sin. Before it was our offenses; now it is the disobedience of one. It is Adam (everyone, no doubt, having added his part to it) and Christ. It is no longer, consequently, Christ who died for our sins, but it is we who are dead in Christ which puts an end to the nature and position which we had from Adam. That is also why the apostle speaks of our death, and does not go any farther. If he had spoken of our resurrection with Christ, he would have encroached on the doctrine of Colossians and Ephesians, and would have been obliged to come to union with Christ, which is not his subject here. His subject is, How am I, a sinner, individually justified with God? The answer: Christ has died for our offenses; there are the fruits of the old man put out of sight; then you are dead with Christ-this puts your old man away (to faith).
Besides, chapter 6 answers to the objection, “Shall we sin?” &c. How, says the apostle, shall we live to sin if we are dead? You have a part in this death-certainly it is not to live. Union does not exist at all in this argument; only, if we are dead, we must live by some means or other.
Now it is to God by Jesus Christ. This suffices to show the practical bearing of this doctrine. Union relates to our privileges. We are perfect in Christ, members of His body. The fact that we are in Christ is supposed in chapter 8: 1, and affirmed in a practical manner in verse 9 of the same chapter, but there it relates to deliverance. But the object of the apostle in his arguments is to show that we have done with the flesh, and consequently with sin and that we derive our life from another source; so that justification is a doctrine of deliverance from sin, and not of the liberty of sinning. In chapter 7 death applies to our relations with law. The end of the chapter shows us the experience of a renewed soul (as to the conscience and its position) still in the flesh, of which the law is the rule-the law, which, when we are renewed, is understood in its spirituality. The consequence of all this is developed in chapter 8, which makes us see our position with God, the effect of what we find ourselves in Christ, as chapter 5: 1-11 shows that which God has been for us sinners, and what, consequently, we have learned Him to be in Himself. The end of chapter 8 resumes in triumph the consequences of these truths.
As to your question on the Psalms, you must not believe what they tell you. From the confession of Mr. Newton, never from mine, his views are found in the Psalms, not in the Gospels. My doctrine is exactly opposed to that of Mr. Newton. He taught that Christ was born in a state of distance from God, and could only meet God on the cross; only by His piety He took away many of the consequences of His native position. On the contrary, I believe that He was born, and lived until the cross in perfect favor with God, and that in grace He entered in spirit into the troubles and sorrows of His people, and particularly at the end when His hour was come. On the cross He, in fact, drank the cup. But I do not at all think that it is a question of His sufferings only in the Psalms; I believe even that a much fewer number of Psalms apply directly to Christ than people generally think. The Psalms, looked at in their prophetical sense, depict the circumstances and trials of the remnant of Israel.
That Christ has shared in spirit the sorrows of His people I do not doubt: but I say that very few of the Psalms are direct prophecies of what has happened to Him: some of them are, as is unquestionable. But I think that the New Testament shows us very clearly the relationship of Christ with His people. No doubt the New Testament is not occupied with the remnant as the Psalms, nor with the future of Israel as the prophets, because it is a question generally of deeper truths, more important, and of another character; but it puts these things very clearly in their historical place, and quotes the prophecies which bear upon them. We see Jesus weeping over Jerusalem, announcing that which should happen either to the disciples in the midst of the people or to the people themselves. The Old Testament gives us the details as to Israel, and speaks more of the result, because that is the subject of which it treats; but the New Testament makes us see exactly the place of these things with regard to Christianity, which is its subject, and it resumes, as far as is necessary, the subject of the Old. As to the sufferings of Christ, it gives them to us historically, and in quoting the passages of which the Old Testament has spoken, it often presents to us the feelings of Christ more intimately than the Psalms do, and at other times quotes these last as explaining the history of what is past.
For my part I take what I find in the Old Testament as the same authority as the New. If the Old Testament says, “In all their afflictions he was afflicted,” the New makes us hear Jesus, who Himself said, weeping, “How often would I have gathered thy children, as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not.” I quite understand that many Christians do not well apprehend that which concerns the remnant of Israel, as well as the interest which the Lord has in it. That does not trouble me; but when one explains the. Psalms, one must explain them according to their true sense, and I believe this gives a much deeper sense of the patient grace of Jesus. At all events, I think it is important that this should remain a means of edification, and not a subject of contest; without that the person of Christ loses His savor for the heart, or at least the heart loses the sweetness of His grace. If one says that these sufferings (which I do not admit) are not to be found in the New Testament, but in the Old it is clear then that, in explaining the Old, one must speak of them. But the Lord speaks of His position as Zech. 13 describes it, and consequently of the state of the remnant.
Generally the New Testament has not the remnant for its subject, but Christ the Savior, and Christianity; but it also treats of the first of these two subjects in its place. Chapters 1, 2 of Luke are almost entirely occupied with the remnant historically and prophetically. Chapter 10 of Matthew only applies to this subject, and comprehends the whole time to the end, to the exclusion of the Gentiles and Samaritans. It is the same thing under another form in chapter 11.
They say that Christ only suffered in expiation and in sympathy. Do you think He suffered nothing when He rebuked the scribes, who hindered poor souls from receiving Him? Read chapter 23 of Matthew. Did not His heart stiffer? “He suffered, being tempted,” is an important truth in the word. When He asked His disciples to watch with Him, He was not yet drinking the cup, but He sweated as it were great drops of blood. This was not sympathy; He sought it, but did not find it. It is a very serious thing to deny the sufferings of the Son of man. There was sympathy at the tomb of Lazarus, but on approaching death, and always more or less, He suffered-He, in love, in grace, doubtless, but really; not, assuredly, because of what was in Him, or of His own relationship with the Father, but “it became Him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, to make the Captain of our salvation perfect through sufferings.”
I earnestly entreat you not to make these things a matter of controversy; it is rather a question of worship: to contest these points injures, and tends to destroy, all holy affections. When I see Paul explaining himself as he did at the commencement of chapter 9 of the Epistle to the Romans, shall I say that Christ, whose Spirit pressed the apostle to these sentiments, remained Himself indifferent to the unbelief of the well-beloved people? He died for the nation;—it is clear that it was expiatory, but it is a proof that He loved it as a nation. The sufferings of Christ are air important point, and the New Testament, as well as the Old, shows that Israel was in a peculiar manner the object of His affections, which made Him suffer. Now His sympathy was with the sorrows of humanity, but He felt, and He explained the iniquity which put an end (save in the sovereign grace of God) to all the hopes of Israel, and to the enjoyment by the beloved people of all the promises. When He says, “It cannot be that a prophet perish outside Jerusalem,” and that He called it “the city which killeth the prophets, and stoneth them which are sent unto thee”-was this said in hard indifference? The suffering was not expiatory, and He could not have sympathy with the iniquity which did that. These words only reproduce with a more touching affection, and a heart in which all egotism and self-interest were absent, the expression in the Psalms.
No doubt one may represent these things badly. The affections of the Savior are too delicate a subject for one to handle roughly without straining them, or, so to speak, hurting them; but that one should deny them is distressing to me. The Messiah has been out off, and all the hopes of the beloved people are lost with Him—to be recovered, no doubt: now, I do not believe that Christ did not suffer about it.