Letters on Profession and the Work of Grace

 •  3 min. read  •  grade level: 9
 
My Dear Brother, In my reply to your last letter, I omitted to point out the application of the truth of God’s work, or the “work of grace,” as I called it, to the saints in former days. It is not so readily seen as in its application to us Christians, because there is not anything like the same fullness of Scripture revelation about it, “life and incorruptibility” having been “brought to light by the gospel.” Nevertheless, the Lord shows us that in principle what is true now was true then; and although there was no revelation about the life which saints had, so that they could not have used the language of full assurance which belongs to us, yet it was a divine necessity that a man “must be born again;” and so the Lord spoke of the truth, “Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot see the kingdom of God “(John 3:5), as among the “earthly things “which, as a master or teacher in Israel, Nicodemus should have known. This shows plainly the character of the work by which life was, and is always, communicated to a sinner, and shows, too, that it is divine life, and quite different in nature from all that man is or was. “That which is born of the flesh is flesh, but that which is born of the Spirit is Spirit.”
Psa. 16; 19:7, 8; 21:1-6; 32:1-6; 40:1-5; 51:103, &c.; Ezek. 20:44; 36:25-38; 37:1-14, &c., are among the many Old Testament Scriptures which show that man needed life as a divine gift in order to have part with God, and that it was there for faith. But I do not believe that any soul had the consciousness that it possessed eternal life, because the character of the life was not then revealed, and, moreover, certain earthly blessings were then connected with that life, and to these the attention of God’s people was directed, because as to their ways on the earth they were directly subject to God’s government exercised in the earth, and this uses earthly blessings and curses as rewards and chastisements.
Rom. 3:25 shows how the death of Christ, to which God then looked forward, was the foundation upon which He thus dealt with any sinner then, passing over his sins and giving him life, though justly deserving death; and in due time, by the death of Christ accomplished, God was declared righteous His past dealings. So that we see the application of both sides of the work of grace to sinners in other days as well as in our own.
There is a great difference, of course, between a man merely professing to love and serve God, and this work of God in a soul. The one will not last nor stand the test of trial; but the other is indestructible; while, of course, it leads everyone who is the subject of it into that character of life which pleases God.
F. J. R.