Dear Mr. Editor, It does seem to me a pity that our valuable and able brother J. N. D. should be so fond of making startling statements, which tend to puzzle and distress serious minds. Himself endowed with a keen acute mind, he should have mercy on more simple ones. He says, “People do not know what they mean by Original Sin.” If so, why does not he tell them what it is? Many quite understand a passage of scripture, or a truth, and hold it to their souls' comfort, that are unable to explain what they believe. J. N. D. says, “It is never said, Christ has put away sin.” It is very sad to make such statements—I mean to put it in that way. Tens of thousands, and that multiplied by tens of thousands, have received deep blessed comfort from the thought—a correct one—that their sins were “put away,” pardoned, that He (the Lord) had “by himself purged our sins;” that we ought not to “forget that we are purged from our old sins” and so forth. All this J. N. D. would heartily agree to: why then startle and confuse dear saints by saying, “It is never said, Christ has put away sin?” It is not true to the believer. It is true to the unbelieving world on whom sin lies, and so under judgment. It is true in one sense that God never has forgiven, and never will forgive sin—but if I say this, which is true, without saying that, God having laid the sin and the wrath due for sin on another—even the blessed Lamb of God, I make that which is true untrue. If a poor distressed soul comes to me, and asks “Can I obtain forgiveness?” and I say “God never forgives sin,” without saying “the Lord laid on Jesus the iniquity of us all, so that he that believeth is forgiven and justified,” I say what is untrue as to the inquirer, though a blessed truth as maintaining the righteousness of the Just One. But, blessed be His name, “God is just, yet the justifier of him that believeth in Jesus.” But J. N.D. says, “The result is not yet produced.” It is to the believer. “He has done the work that does it.” Could not J. X. D. have said “Dear saints, you are reconciled to God by His blood, you have redemption by His blood even the forgiveness of sins?” “You that are Christ's have passed from death unto life;” but the blessed work of Christ has not been of use to them that believe not, nor will it be completed even to them that are saved, until the last saint is gathered in. Again, as to original sin, why does J. N. D. make difficulties? It may show great acuteness, but it shows little mercy. A saint may not be able to give a logical definition of the term, but a believer knows that “all men are by nature children of wrath,” as “by faith in Christ Jesus children of God.” He knows that man, in his will, affections and understanding, comes into the world corrupt—that he cannot make the “flesh” good, but that he must be “born again of the Holy Ghost” and be “made a partaker of the divine nature.” Christ did put away sin; that is He did that by which I, a “child of wrath,” am by faith made a child of grace. I, dead in trespasses and sins, am quickened by grace— “all trespasses being forgiven” —and “kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed.” That sin lies on the unbeliever, and judgment for On, I believe the word says so; and therefore sin to them is not put away, but “the wrath of God abideth on them.” In fact, the Holy Ghost convicts the unbeliever of sin, because he does not believe that sin is put away.
Your affectionate brother in Christ.
Dear, Mr. Editor, I cannot answer for letters put in by those who have received them, because the inquiry to which they are an answer may be met most justly by that answer, but does not appear in the answer. But I have more to say. Original sin is theology, and not scripture, and the fruit of men's minds, which have not to be explained but refuted as not the expression of God's. In this case it has no really ascertained meaning at all. My explanation of it would be merely my thought; and it is constantly used and said to be put away and used for children's salvation, entirely out of the bounds of scripture; and those who use it do not know what they say or whereof they affirm; and it is very useful for them to know this. Such I judge is the case of your correspondent, though I have no wish or reason to complain of his note. If your correspondent uses the statements of scripture which he quotes and drops the theological expression of original sin, he will be all right. But his letter shows that he has everything to learn on the points he speaks of. He confounds, from the outset and all through, sin and sins, being born of God with forgiveness and divine favor. Speaking of sin in contrast with sins, scripture never speaks of its being forgiven at all, and carefully makes the difference between the two. It is just the vagueness and confusion which is on your correspondent's note which leaves so many souls in confusion and uncertainty, and binders their progress. Many of your readers know that the Romans treat distinctly, and with diligent care, in two different well-defined parts the question of sins involving guilt, and sin, as the state which is the subject of deliverance, not of forgiveness, giving to each part a statement of resulting blessing. The last phrase of your correspondent's note I totally deny as wholly erroneous.
J, N. D.