Papers Regarding F.W. Grant's Doctrine
Lord Adalbert Percival Cecil
Table of Contents
New Birth, Salvation, Sealing
[The editor {of Helps by the Way, i.e., F. W. Grant} prints the following paper, (upon the same subject as a previous one) not as implying agreement on this point with the beloved brother who writes it, but as feeling that the temperate expression of individual belief, upon points where fundamental truth is not in question, will only aid those desirous of knowing for themselves what is truth. A spirit of controversy is to be dreaded; but a comparison of what those taught in the Word have gathered (as they believe) from it, is never unprofitable to one for whom there is no authority but the word itself. The editor would take this opportunity of stating that, for the same reason, the writers whose initials are attached to different articles are alone to be considered responsible for all the details of them, he himself only fully for those without signature, and for the general purport of the rest, where his dissent is not expressly intimated. The subject of this paper he hopes to take up to express his own view at another time.]
MR. EDITOR.—I believe Scripture plainly teaches not only a distinction between new birth and sealing with the Spirit, but also an interval of time between the two things. It may be long or short; but the interval of time is there, in the same way as when a man first builds his house, and afterwards dwells in it.
Before a man is born again he is looked at by God as dead in trespasses and sins. He has no more movement towards Him than a corpse has. You may speak to him about God; but he neither hears, responds nor sees. He has neither faith nor repentance, nor anything else, till by the Spirit’s action he is quickened or born again. That he is a responsible creature I have no doubt, and that the Spirit strives with man also I have no doubt; and that man has the power of resisting these strivings, also is true. If he goes to hell he will go there by his own will, not by the will of God. But the quickening action of the Spirit is another thing, and produced through the Word of God. A man is born of water. Cp. John 15:3; Eph. 5:26; 1 Pet. 1:23; James 1:18; and of the Spirit, John 3:5. The Word acts on the faculties of the man, i.e., his mind, conscience and heart, like water; they are cleansed morally; besides new life from the Son of God is communicated, so that there is a new beginning in the man, just as really as when a new babe is born. There was never before in the world such a being. His natural life counts for nothing up to that time, it is all moral death before God.
I believe a heathen man who had never heard of Christ might be quickened, by the light of creation, the Spirit of God using the light of it to convince him of the reality of God as Creator, so that, forsaking idolatry and working righteousness up to the light of his conscience, he would be accepted, though only saved by the work of Christ, as a child is saved. A Jew was quickened by the reality of Jehovah being brought before him, and the promises of Messiah, etc. A professing Christian, by the Person of the Son being brought before him by the Word, as we see in John 1:1-13. John 5:25 says: The hour is coming and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear shall live! So also Eph. 1:13:
In whom, ye [Gentiles] also trusted, after that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation.
Mark, there is neither prayer, faith, repentance, or any other fruit of the Spirit’s work mentioned. The man is morally dead, at one moment. The Son of God through the medium of the Word, speaks to him; he hears, he lives. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God. Rom. 10:17.
The first fruit is a truth, a hope, as we see in Eph. 1:13; but at the same time repentance. The mind is now turned to God. In the light of God’s presence the man sees himself, and the sins he has committed. His conscience is aroused, and by the light of the law, and much more by the cross, and glory of Christ it may be, he finds himself a condemned criminal under sentence of death. Perhaps, if the full light of a glorified Christ has been brought to bear upon him, he sees himself an enemy of God, and born in sin. The struggle of Rom. 7 begins. This may go on more or less after he is saved, where the full truth has not been set forth, but at all events it begins when he is born again; he finds himself carnal, a slave of sin when measuring himself by the law; for the good he would he does not, but the evil he would not that he does. Then he argues that, the will being right, it is no more he that does it, but sin that dwells in him. He sees sin as a distinct evil principle in him, but he born of God distinct from it. Then a third discovery comes out, that he has no power over sin, though longing to do right, for the good he would he does not, but the evil he would not that he does. The struggle goes on, till he gives up his state as thoroughly wretched! Oh wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?
But what press upon him most perhaps are his sins, and his rejection of Christ. He is a criminal under sentence of death for the one, an enemy of God for the other. I am supposing all this time that the truth of what he is has been pressed upon him in the light of the full truth of Christ.
Now, I come to the second stage of my subject. The gospel is now preached so that the soul receives it. Eph. 1:13, says,
In whom ye also trusted, after that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation: in whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise.
The soul though conscious of a change wrought in it, is sensible that this will not meet the question of sin. The righteousness of God requires death from the sinner, and new birth is not death but life! How sweetly then the Gospel comes in: Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and was buried, and rose again the third day according to the Scriptures (1 Cor. 15:1-4). This good news meets, on the one side, God’s righteous claims, and on the other side the sinner’s need. The original question of sin is once and forever settled. Besides the Man who stood as my substitute and representative is buried; I see my sepulcher; Christ rises the third day cleared from all my guilt, a risen accepted man, raised again for my justification. This is the Gospel of my salvation; salvation is brought to me in the good news of the Son of God. I receive it, have peace, am reconciled, and delivered.
The blood of Christ is now applied to the conscience. The heart is sprinkled from an evil conscience, besides the body washed with pure water, and immediately God puts his seal on the reception of the Gospel with the Spirit. The love of God is shed abroad in the heart by the Holy Ghost, Rom. 5:5. The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus sets the soul free from the law of sin and death, Rom. 8:2. In the present ruined condition of things, the knowledge of deliverance maybe delayed for some time in souls, but the actual thing is there in every soul that is sealed by the Holy Ghost. The Gospel of my salvation has brought salvation and the knowledge of it at the same time.
This to me, seems the only clear explanation of the doctrine of new birth, salvation, and sealing, as the Word of God teaches it; and answering to the true experiences of a soul coming to the Lord Jesus Christ for the first time.
We have seen that before the new birth takes place the man is morally dead. The voice of the Son of God speaks, as to dead Lazarus; the soul hears and lives; faith is now produced in the form of trust and hope, without certainty. The mind is turned to God; there is a repentance, issuing in judging self, realizing its criminal state and lost condition; there is also prayer for salvation and the Spirit, which is not yet received. The Gospel is preached to such a soul, it believes unto salvation; the finished work of Christ is now rested on, and Christ risen again for our justification, and in glory. The blood of Christ is applied to the conscience, and the immediate sealing of the Spirit follows!
I now give instances from Scripture. First, in the type of the consecration of the priests, Aaron and his sons are first washed with water, Lev. 8:6, answering to the water of the word of regeneration. Then Aaron is robed and anointed alone, before he is sprinkled with blood, as the Lord was anointed with the Holy Ghost before he died. His sons are anointed not till after the sacrifice has been killed and the blood has been sprinkled upon them. But the sprinkling of blood and the anointing with oil go together with the sons of Aaron. Thus the application of the blood and consequent sealing of the Spirit come consequent on the Gospel being preached and the finished work of Christ rested on. John 1 agrees with this. New birth, 1:13, is connected with the Person of the Son, specially his divinity, the baptism of the Holy Ghost, 1:33, with his work, 1:9.
In John 3, new birth was a thing a Jew ought to have known about. Ezek. 36:24-26, prophesied of Jehovah causing Israel in the latter day to be born of water and of the Spirit in order to enter the kingdom of God. The Lord said to Nicodemus, Art thou a master in Israel and knowest not these things? . . . But what follows, John 3:12, is the introduction of the heavenly revelation of Christianity in contrast to this, and the Gospel is introduced. The Son of man must be lifted up, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life! This is salvation! and connected with it is the knowledge of it brought to the soul, in John 3:18, He that believeth on Him is not condemned.
In John 4, The gift of the Holy Ghost follows in beautiful order. He is the living water, the power of communion and worship, who comes consequent on the soul knowing God in the character of Giver, and Jesus in the character of the Son of God His gift. John 4:10, He gives the Holy Ghost, consequent on redemption and His glorification. But I must hasten on.
Acts 2 gives us the wonderful work that took place consequent on the descent of the Holy Ghost on the day of Pentecost. Peter preached that God had made Jesus, whom the Jews had crucified, Lord and Christ. He was God’s Anointed owned by heaven, raised up to sit on David’s throne, but in the meantime as Lord sitting at the right hand of God till His enemies are made His footstool. Convicted that Jesus was the Anointed, they were born of God. Cp. 1 John 5:1. Immediately they said, Men and brethren, what shall we do? Peter said, Repent, and be baptized, every one of you, unto the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. Thus, here again, comes the new birth first through hearing, then repentance and remission of sins, and the immediate consequent sealing of the Holy Ghost. It was a short interval between their new birth and sealing, but still an interval, in the middle of which they repented and were baptized.
In Acts 8, we have in the account of the conversion of the Samaritans, a decided interval between their new-birth and sealing. Philip went down to the city of Samaria, and preached the Anointed unto them. They believed, and were baptized, yet 8:16 tells us that the Holy Ghost had as yet fallen on none of them. No doubt there was a longer interval, on account of there being a need that manifested unity should be maintained through the apostles Peter and John coming down from Jerusalem to lay their hands on them, so that Jerusalem should own the work of God at Samaria. Still the fact remains that first they were born again through believing that Jesus was the Anointed, and after an interval were sealed.
Acts 10 gives the account of the conversion of the first Gentile; vv. 2, 3 give clearly the godly character of the man; there was every mark of his being born of God, yet Peter had to tell him words whereby he and all his house should be saved, ch. 11:14. Accordingly he went down, preached the gospel to him, which he received, and was immediately sealed with the Holy Ghost.
In Paul’s own case there seems to have been three days interval between his being born again through meeting the Lord on his way to Damascus, and his sealing by the Spirit. Could it be said that he was saved and sealed, when he was three days without sight and neither ate nor drank? Born again he was, and Ananias was given a sign whereby he should know it.
Behold he prayeth (Acts 9:11, 17, 18).
In Lydia’s case, Acts 16, she was evidently a godly proselyte before Paul met her. Her heart the Lord opened that she attended to the things spoken by Paul, and she consequently embraced Christianity.
The Philippian jailor’s case was more sudden. But even here the earthquake first sent the terrors of God through his soul, before the peace, giving message came:
Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house {Acts 16:31}.
In the Epistle to the Romans, conviction as to the guilt of sin is argued out in chapters 1-3:20, and there repentance and circumcision of heart are alluded to. In Romans 7, conviction as to the flesh being all bad is argued out, and there the new mind and will is clearly formed. Rom. 3:20, to ch. 4, end, shows God as Justifier meeting the state of guilt, and Romans 8, God the Deliverer meeting the state of man as a slave of sin and born in it. They are two parts of the same salvation, the first part of which is generally apprehended in the soul first, in the present ruined condition of things, but where the truth is fully preached the latter would be learned at the same time, with deeper conviction preceding it. The explanation of so many souls who have been apparently sealed by the Spirit, and yet remain in or get back to the experience of the 7th of Romans, is in the many law teachers of the day bringing the people of God into bondage like the case of the Galatians, the type of which we have in the children of Israel in the wilderness, accepting the law to walk by, instead of abiding in the faith of the God of Abraham.
The teaching of no interval between new birth and sealing, would seem to me to lead to very fatal doctrine. Repentance and prayer, etc., must either then come in before a man is born again and sealed by the Spirit, which would be the denial that man is dead in trespasses and sins, or else they must come in after the sealing of the Spirit, which would be a denial of sinner-repentance, which no one who knows Scripture could hold for one moment in the case of a sinner coming to Christ. Besides it is contrary to the experience of all true hearted Christians. I would appeal to every one of my readers, whether the truth of the reality of God and of the Person of His Son did not come to their souls, first; then repentance and prayer for salvation as a consequence, then the reception of the gospel and immediate sealing of the Spirit; yet it was not repentance or prayer that saved them, but faith in the gospel.
From Helps By The Way – New Series 1880, pp. 175-182.
Is Jesus the Anointed, and the Lord, or Not?
Is the Assembly and its discipline One?
Is its Rule the Word or Christian Opinion?
And are Assemblies to walk by the Word, or is every man to do that which is right in his own eyes?
Such are the questions that come before the godly mind, as it has paper after paper brought before it, without a single reference, to that which is the foundation of all Assembly order, and discipline; in which papers the prominence of men are painfully prevalent, showing where those are, who issue such papers, leaving one the painful impression that if perchance at the beginning of their souls history they have bowed to the fact, that God hath made that same Jesus, Lord and Christ, they have sadly fallen from what is involved in that truth, to the level of the Corinthians, occupied with human leaders, “I am of Paul,” “I of Apollos,” etc., and therefore have the stamp of carnality branded upon them, as being “carnal,” and walking as men.
But before proceeding further, I would draw attention to Matt. 18:18-20, where we have the principles of true gathering set before us, and the power of binding and loosing brought in, in connection with it; and I would ask, Who is the one in the midst, by whom alone the Assembly has power to bind and loose? The answer is, as given us in the preceding chapters of our Gospel. It is He, who came on earth, the true Son of Abraham, the Son of David, Matt. 1:1, the fulfiller of the promises, the royal heir to the throne of Jerusalem, who was born by the miraculous conception of the Holy-Ghost, in Bethlehem’s manger, who was called Jesus, signifying Jehovah Savior, but He Emmanuel “God with us.” It is He who was baptized of John in Jordan, and who was Anointed and sealed with the Holy Ghost, Matt. 3. It is He who offered Himself as the Anointed One to His own nation, preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom, but who was rejected, Matt. 4–12, and crucified, Matt. 27. Therefore His character, as the sower sowing the seed of the kingdom, had its results as we see in Matt. 13, in the kingdom being set up now in a mysterious form, the Anointed One having been rejected by the Jews: and this present form of the kingdom is set forth in the seven parables in that chapter, whilst the rejected King is in heaven. In Matt. 16 we see the Assembly and the kingdom in its present form, (the administration of the latter of which was handed over to Peter,) replacing Judaism.
But who is the one whom Peter confesses as the foundation of the Assembly? He is the Christ, rejected and crucified by Israel, but declared Son of the living God in victory over death. On this rock, Christ says, I will build my Assembly. Here we get the Assembly of living stones built on the foundation of a rejected Christ, but Son of the living God, in resurrection from the dead. In Matt. 18 we get the gathering of two or three to His name, on that ground, with the promise of His presence in the midst. Now, dear reader, have you Him before you? “The Anointed,” the “Son of the living God,” whose name is JESUS! It is He alone that gives authority to bind and loose! Woe to that man, or to that Assembly that sets itself against such a Person!
In John 20 as declaring His Father’s name in the midst of His assembled brethren, and imparting to them His resurrection life, He gives the administrative power, of forgiving and retaining sins, to those whom He had thus fitted for the ministry, and put into the full place of sonship before the Father, as members of the one family of God!
And now, dear reader, let us go on for a moment to Acts 2, when the Kingdom and the Assembly were set up. What was the great truth bowed to on that day? Why, that God had made that same Jesus, whom the Jews had crucified, LORD and CHRIST! ver. 36.
The whole system was set up under the revelation of Jesus in glory made LORD and CHRIST. Those who bowed were baptized to that name; they continued steadfastly in the Apostles’ doctrine, and in the fellowship and breaking of bread, and in prayers, showing thereby their allegiance to and acknowledgment of the Lordship of Jesus, and that He was the King, the Anointed One. I want my reader to mark that the whole new order of things was set up, under the acknowledgment of those who composed it, that Jesus who was crucified, was in glory, made Lord and Christ. It was He that was owned as such in that circle! It was the same thing with the first Gentile assembly planted at Antioch, Acts 11. The men of Cyprus and Cyrene who heralded the message, preached to the Grecians the LORD Jesus. The result was that many turned to the LORD. Barnabas heard of the work, and sent forth from the Assembly at Jerusalem, he found them turned to the Lord, and rejoiced, and exhorted them with full purpose of heart to cleave to the LORD, ONE LORD! what a truth! Before even the unity of the body of Christ was known as a truth in the Assembly, the Lordship of Christ was bowed to, thus owning God’s act of power in exalting Him as such, and also as the foundation of all order and discipline, both in the Kingdom and the Assembly. Ah, dear brethren, is not the secret of the self-will and independence we have seen manifested in so many professed brethren and saints so lately, explained by the fact, that many have never bowed individually in their souls to the Lordship of Christ. They have received the truths of salvation, but it is to be feared, they never have had their independent wills broken, by the acknowledgment of the truth that ought to precede salvation, viz., Jesus made Lord and Christ! The fatal absence of this truth is seen in all their papers! the very foundation on which all the order and discipline of the Assembly of God hangs; and indeed of the individual soul’s new birth and blessing!
But one word more as to this truth, which is so pressed in the 1st Epistle to the Corinthians. Here we have an Epistle bringing in the corrective power to disorder in the Assembly of God! What is the corrective power to party spirit, in the Assembly of God, and following party leaders? The name of our Lord Jesus Christ! 1 Cor. 1:10. What is the power of discipline for the Assembly gathered to the name of the Lord! The power of our Lord Jesus Christ, 1 Cor. 5:4. What is the table round which the saints are gathered to express the one body, the Assembly, in communion with their one altar, and to remember the Lord? The Lord’s Table; 1 Cor. 10:21. The Lord’s Supper; 1 Cor. 11:20. What are the commandments that regulate the saints there gathered. The commandments of the Lord! 1 Cor. 14:37.
Seeing these things are so, it is no light matter to reject an Assembly decision, and doubly so when it seeks through grace to walk with the Lord, and act by His Word. Mr. Grant’s formation of a party, which is heresy, by his doctrines, was not a matter that came out before one Assembly merely. God allowed it to come out, and be manifested in, I think I may say, the three largest Assemblies in Canada, at one time. The evil was judged at Montreal true, because everything came out there; but at Montreal, at Ottawa, and Toronto, amongst hundreds of saints, and independently of one another, Mr. Grant’s course came up; and of these Assemblies, each Assembly (except the schismatics gone out) bears an undoubted witness, Mr Grant’s views formed a party here, and therefore beyond all gainsaying he is a heretic. Philadelphia bore the same witness, only happily without division. Then I ask, if he is a heretic, by such an undoubted witness; is it the Word or not, Titus 3:10 that the heretic should be rejected? (Was the delegate put over the Assemblies to reject him, and the Assemblies to receive him?) Then if, as the Word says, he is to be rejected, Montreal was right, and acted rightly, and if so every Assembly is bound by the word of God and His principles as to the “One Body and One Spirit,” to bow to the judgment, as that of the Lord!
Have these brethren that have separated ever considered what a heretic is in the sight of God. Supposing a man had a servant in his house, and that servant one day came and ran a knife into his master’s body, I don't think he would have him long in his house. And yet a man by spreading his opinions, can form a schism or rent in the body of Christ, (1 Cor. 12:25), and if an Assembly puts him out, they find fault with what the Assembly has done, and brethren take sides with the man who has committed one of the seven abominations the Lord hates, i.e., sowing discord amongst his brethren! (Prov. 6:19.)
These brethren have altogether gone off the ground of the Word of God. One paper says, (headed “power of an Assembly,” (Extract from a letter) which is beneath notice, only it is taken up, and adopted as truth, by a brother B.C.G. {B. C. Greenman}, of whom I had hoped better things,)
It is the power of an Assembly to act in discipline, on what, by general consent, among orthodox Christians, or say, amongst those gathered to the name of the Lord Jesus, is held to be false or deadly doctrine.
Here the Word of God is utterly set aside. The rule of orthodox Christians, or the opinion of those gathered to the name of the Lord Jesus is the rule of discipline!
A large number of brethren see with him.
What has that got to do with it? The paper is a total subversion of the order and discipline of the Word of God. An Assembly cannot bow to what God says as to what evil or true doctrine is, and has no power to put it out!! unless as above! Let that brother solemnly listen to the word of the Apostle as to the teaching of evil doctrine.
I would they were even cut off which trouble you {Gal. 5:12}!
Addressing the Assembly, he says,
Know ye not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump (Gal. 5:9, 10).
Again, the Lord Himself, addressing the angel of the Assembly in Pergamos,
Thou hast there them that hold the doctrine of Balaam (Rev. 2).
Why are these Assemblies fault with, if they were not to judge what false doctrine was, and put out those that were spreading it?
In another paper, dated Milford, Delaware, the two things pressed are the unity of the body and unanimity. In a late edition just received, he states the normal condition of the Assembly is as having the mind of Christ, and says without this there can be no discipline! In other words unless the Assembly is in its normal condition, it has no power of discipline!! Poor, unhappy assemblies of F.W.G. then that have got away from the normal condition!! Now it is a remarkable thing, that in all the places where discipline is mentioned, (I mean in the books that refer to it) it comes before the unity of the body is taught or brought out. And as for unanimity, however desirable, it cannot be proved anywhere in the Word. The word in the Greek (2 Cor. 2) signifies the mass, the many, not all. The Jerusalem conference is referred to by B.C.G. to show that Plainfield was the place where F.W.G.’s matter ought to have been settled, but that was Apostolic and unique There is no such metropolitan Assembly now. No Apostles. But if they will have it, as to unanimity, it was the Apostles and elder brethren looked into the matter, not the Assembly, though the Assembly agreed to the decision, and that principle is just what those brethren refuse. It is the unanimity of the Assembly, that is the point with them. Besides how small the question of unanimity is, or any other question such as haste in action, or other things insinuated when the simple question is proposed, “Where is the Lord in the matter,” and “what does His word say?” In all these papers, as I said, there is a fatal absence of the one foundation of all order and discipline, “the Lordship of Christ!” I may add, the authority of the Word as the rule for the Assembly to walk by, and the using the theory of the unity of the body for independence and self-will, instead of endeavoring to keep the “unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. Blessed it is to unite the blessed truth of the unity of the body with that of the Lordship of Christ; and those Assemblies who are bowing to the decision of the Montreal Assembly, are, I believe, acting in that blessedness, and inheriting the blessing of the Lord, and of His presence with them.
But if so, those gone outside are a sect proclaiming if not in word, I am of Grant! and are to be looked at, as any other sect, the making of which is the wisdom of the world, touching every fundamental truth of Christianity, and destroying the idea of the one Assembly, see 1 Cor. 1–3, and so if the wisdom of the world to begin with, it must end up in becoming part of the world, and be judged with the world, 1 Cor. 1; Rev. 3:1-6.
But with that there is still the more fatal step of the setting aside of the Lordship of Christ; and so off the track which the Lord Jesus leads in, what can there be but the dark downward course of Jude’s Epistle, as the result of denying the only Master and Lord Jesus Christ, ver. 4. Not the Savior, but the ignoring of Him as Lord!
I know that none of the true sheep of Christ will perish! He is the blessed present Servant of their necessities. In His very place of Master and Lord, behold Him, laying aside His garments and girding Himself for present service to the saints: What an example for us, dear brethren, in the present necessitous condition to His loved Saints. May we seek to follow Him!
And let every true hearted saint turn their eyes away from all human leaders, and get up in spirit into that mount, where the Father’s voice was heard saying,
This is my beloved Son, hear Him (Matt. 17).
Moses had had his day’s testimony, likewise Elias, now was the day of the Son’s testimony, resulting in the disciples getting their place “in Him.” Brethren, we are separated to the Son, and His Word! Who will dare after that to mingle the day of the Son’s testimony with the day of Moses and Elias! Yet that is the error we have got to meet to-day!
Remarks on a Paper Called “Life and the Spirit,” &C.
The question is raised, whether the Christian blessings, such as forgiveness, as we know it, justification, acceptance, death to sin, and life in Christ, as also life in the Son, go with quickening, or with the sealing of the Spirit; or as I would rather put it, with quickening or with receiving the gospel of our salvation, followed by the immediate sealing of the Spirit. Together with this comes the question as to the difference between God giving the blessings, at quickening, as the writer, F. W. G. believes, and their being afterwards administered to the soul, which brings the apprehension of having the blessings. There is another thing which is the result of this first, which is also raised by the writer on “Life and the Spirit,” whether the man in the 7th of Romans is a quickened man seeking peace and getting into his standing in Christ, or that of a sealed man, “not in the flesh but in the Spirit,” learning how to abide in Christ for fruitfulness.
Well, my reader, Scripture must settle the controversy, and in lowliness of mind, yet with firmness, as feeling the importance of it, I would appeal to the Scriptures for the settlement of the difference.
The writer quotes such passages as John 3:36; 5:24, etc., to show that eternal life goes with faith and therefore with quickening. He quotes Col. 2:13, to show that quickening and forgiveness go together, and Romans 5:18-19 to show that justification and life go together, and then reaches the conclusion, that all that are quickened, are justified, forgiven and have eternal life.
Now as to eternal life in one sense, they do have it, for no doubt quickening is from the Son, who was the eternal life with the Father from all eternity. The Son quickens whom He will! (John 5:21). But this is not eternal life in the full Christian sense of it. No doubt the moment a soul wakes up to the reality of things, through the call of the Son of God, he gets life, and so far as to the character of it, eternal life. But eternal life is far more than a communication, or a nature; it is the Life of a Person, a Divine Person, and that Person the Son of God! (See 1 John 1:2; 5:20.) He that hath the Son hath the life: and He that hath not the Son hath not the life; Gk.! (See new translation.) (1 John 5:12.) It is the heavenly thing spoken of in John 3:12 in contrast with the earthly things pictured by new birth into the kingdom which was the highest blessing of Judaism! (5:3-10), and of which Nicodemus, a master in Israel, ought to have known about.
But this, i.e. eternal life, was nothing less than in a Person come down from heaven, who was therefore God, yet man too, the Son of man which is in heaven, who was lifted up on the cross, that whosoever believeth might in Him have eternal life! (5:12-16), and this replacing as a present thing the highest blessing promised to Judaism. This was given in connection with the full revelation of God in grace, as righteous, love and light; and in connection with the revelation of the Father, who had given all things into the Son’s hands (John 3:35-36). All through John’s Gospel eternal life is put in contrast to Judaism, and as that life that takes its place.
The Gospel of John judges the world and Judaism from the beginning; only those received the Son who were born of God by His sovereign will (John 1:10-13). Consequently, the revelation of eternal life in John 3 is in connection with accomplished redemption, and the Father revealed in the Son, which the disciples though born of God never received by faith till after the cross, as we see from John 14:9; 16:27-31.
So John 5:24, 25. The dead sinner hears the word of the Son, and lives; he gets quickened, but there is something else he has to do before getting eternal life, he has to believe the Father that sent the Son. (Cp. 1 John 4:14, 15.) This is the full revelation of Christianity again that the disciples never believed till after redemption was accomplished!
This too, is put in contrast to Judaism, as pictured by the pool of Bethesda, which could not give healing to a man without strength. The Lord, in ver. 25 attaches new birth to this dispensation, as in chapter 3 it belongs to the past, as also to the future.
I wake up perhaps by the call of the Son of God, to the fact that He is a reality, God and man in one Person (John 1:1-14). But that is not all the revelation of Jesus as Son of God. He brought grace and truth to man, in contrast to Moses who brought the law, and the truth was of God fully revealed in grace without a veil, and the Father, (5:17, 18), and that we have seen the disciples never received till after He had become the Lamb of God, as accomplishing redemption 5:29-33. He baptized with the Holy Ghost consequent upon this. Vers. 33, 34.
It was only when He as the risen, victorious Son of God, the last Adam, had revealed His God and Father to the disciples, and had breathed peace on them, giving them the knowledge of redemption that they received this more abundant life! Eternal life in its fullness! (See John 20:19-22.) And here my reader the writer confounds between the Son of God quickening, as He ever did, from the beginning, as a Divine Person, and Himself as Son of man, the last Adam, the quickening Spirit, giving life more abundantly. In John 5, where the work of the cross is not mentioned though supposed, He is the divine Son quickening. But in John 6 He is not only that, but the Son of man, the true bread from heaven, the true Passover lamb, going back to where He was before; completely judging the flesh, which profits nothing, by the cross, and communicating life more abundantly as the last Adam, the quickening spirit! In this He was fulfilling and replacing the types of the Manna and Passover Lamb! See 5:32, 33, 52-63.
In Col. 2:13, the writer argues that forgiveness and quickening go together. If he had learnt to distinguish between the Son quickening as a divine Person, (John v), and quickening as the raised Son of man (John 6), he would not have made this mistake!
The Son as God quickening is one thing! The last Adam quickening is another. This is life more abundantly! (John 20:22.) And this is insisted on as a state which had never been yet in John 7:39, but was to come in, consequent on the glorification of the Son of God and the gift of the Holy Ghost. The two things which historically followed on one another are brought together in Rom. 8, viz. the state of more abundant life, characterized by the Holy Ghost, and the Person as God indwelling the believer. Our brother denies that John 20:22 is any communication of life; how he can do so, I don’t know when the Son says,
Receive ye [the] Holy Spirit! {JND New Trans.}
The writer takes away from us the Life which characterizes Christianity! and makes quickening the only life that is communicated! True it is in Christ now as having accomplished redemption; but not as communicated as the Life distinct from mere quickening! And here also the writer would seem to connect our justification with Christ’s resurrection from the dead, and not with faith at all by his sentence in page 6 and line 6, 7, of his paper on “Life and the Spirit.” And I would add he would appear to make our quickening our justification, by his words in the words following. But as this is not followed up I do not dwell further upon it!
What follows in his remarks on Rom. 5:18, as to justification of life, has been already answered. If he had seen the distinction between the Son quickening, and the last Adam giving more abundant life, or as Eph. 2 and Col. 2 puts it, God quickening us together with Christ, where life is seen according to its fullness in the counsels of God, he would have seen that whilst justification and forgiveness do go with life, it is with the full communication of it, of life more abundantly, and not with mere quickening.
It is whom He called, them He also justified, Rom. 8:30, not dead sinners, though as to their former condition they were dead. That calling and life go together it is evident from John 5:25, Rom 10:17, John 11:43, (in type;) and other places.
So Abel heard the call, as shown by his bringing the slain lamb, as a sacrifice to God; and thereby obtained witness he was righteous. (Gen 4. Cp. with Heb. 11:4.)
So Noah, (who had already found grace in the eyes of the Lord,) built an ark to the saving of his house, and thereby became heir of the righteousness which was by faith. Gen 6:8-22, cp. with Heb. 11:7.
So Abraham heard the call, (Gen 12), but was not justified till Gen. 15.
So Israel in type first heard the call, (Exodus 4:29-31), but were not typically justified or saved till ch. 12 and 15.
So the priests were first washed with water, typically the new birth, then sprinkled with blood, and anointed with oil; typifying forgiveness and the Holy Ghost received. So Gideon, a godly man; but without peace, which he got on the presentation of the sacrifice. All justified souls have peace. (Cp. Judg. 6:11-24; Rom 5:1.)
As to what the brother says as to being in the Son having to do with life and nature may be a great deal of it quite true, but all the difficulty is answered by what has been said previously, viz., distinguishing between mere life, and life more abundantly. Are we “in the Son” when we get life, or when we get it more abundantly? Still if “in the Son” means identification in life and nature, it involves position too and I would ask the writer, if all Old Testament saints had life in the Son, how is it that the term is not once mentioned till John 6:56, nor afterwards till John 14, 15, where it is teaching all founded on an accomplished redemption, and the Son of man having been glorified on the cross (John 13:31, 32).
We get that place, consequent on the Son of God becoming a man, accomplishing redemption, and taking his place in glory as the last Adam, yet still Son of God, by birth, as man, and also by position, by resurrection from the dead; and this involves not mere nature but position as also more abundant life communicated! See Heb. 1:5, Rom. 1:4. He has as man, yet as declared Son of God entered into a new state described as, according to [the] Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead {Rom. 1:4}.
And this communicated to us gives us the full place of sons, no longer nepioi Gk., i.e., children under age, but uioi. Gk., in the full place and relationship of sons. See Gal. 4:1-6. But to return to the two passages where the expression “in the Son” is first mentioned. It is
he that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him
{John 6:56}!
Could an Old Testament saint do this? A Jew was forbidden to eat blood! Can I be “in the Son and He in me,” if I do not know him? But this was the condition of the disciples in John 14:8, 9.
All then that the writer says in the middle of his paper falls to the ground! “Life from God” Old Testament saints had. The Son quickened when on earth, but, “life in the Son” could not be for any till redemption was accomplished, and He was glorified as man; and was communicated to those who received the blessed revelation of the Son revealing the Father and of an accomplished redemption.
I turn now to Rom. 7. Is it the experience of a quickened man seeking peace and justification, or of a Christian (i.e.,) a man sealed by the Spirit, seeking how to abide in Christ to bear fruit unto God? I say unhesitatingly it is the former. The writer denies it!
True, if a man is delivered from the power of sin, which is here joined with his getting justification of life, he gets into a new standing and state, where he does bear fruit unto God. But it is a new standing and state, not abiding in Christ. There is not a word as to this last.
Now what is the doctrine we have learnt in the Epistle to the Romans, whereby we are to test those who cause divisions and contentions contrary to that doctrine, (Rom. 16:17). It is a sad mark of want of establishment in those who have raised this question, that they lead us back to it, for the Epistle to the Romans was written to the end that the saints might be established! (See Rom. 1:11.) Paul is an apostle called of God. He writes concerning Him who is the subject of the gospel, God’s Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, made of the seed of David according to flesh, but declared Son of God with power according to spirit of holiness by the resurrection from the dead (Rom. 1:2-4). Made of the seed of David according to flesh, by resurrection from the dead, He entered into a new state as man according to spirit of holiness, declared Son of God in this new p1ace and state, to communicate life in accordance with that new place and state as the last Adam. Such was the subject of the gospel!
Paul’s thesis then is the gospel, and is addressed to all that be in Rome, saints themselves called of God. If they were dead in trespasses and sins, he could not call them saints, but he speaks of justification to those already called of God!
It is the great subject of the book. The apostle is not ashamed of the gospel, it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth, for therein is righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith, as it is written, the just shall live by faith. This justification, then, is connected with salvation in these verses, and not with quickening (Rom. 1:16, 17).
Rom. 1:18–3:21, takes up the state of the world to bring out the necessity of the gospel, and shows the need of another kind of righteousness than that of law, by which the sinner can be justified. Up to the end of ch. 1 the state of the heathens is taken up, Rom. 2:1-16 the state of philosophers, and the principles of God in judgment. Then Rom. 2:16–3:21 the Jews under law, circumcision and the promises, ending up with Scriptures proving the whole world guilty, and under sentence before God! The law could not justify, it could only give the knowledge of sin!
Where is then righteousness? There is none in man for God. But there is in God for man. Rom. 3:21-31 lays the ground, showing it is in God through Jesus and His blood. Rom. 4 shows that it is on the principle of faith, giving Abraham and David as the two great Old Testament examples. God in David’s case imputes righteousness by forgiving and not imputing sin. (See Psa. 32.) In Abraham’s case, God gives justification in connection with the promise of the heir, Isaac, to be raised up out of Sarah’s dead womb! which two cases bring out the double aspect of justification, in the book. 1st. Forgiveness, and non-imputation of sins, and the result of being reconciled to God up to ch. 5:11: 2nd. justification of life from sin, Rom. 5:12, 8:4. We not only have peace with God, through our Lord Jesus Christ, as to all our sins having been cleared away by the work of Christ, but we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand (5:2), and boast in hope of the glory. This latter aspect of justification, as I have said, is argued out from ch. 5:12 and onwards.
But first of all God’s love has gone out universally to all, for all connected with Adam were born in sin—consequently all is headed up in two men, Adam and Christ, sin came in before law.
Through Adam’s transgression all connected with him were born in sin under death’s reign, and liable to condemnation. Through Christ’s obedience unto death, all connected with Him, get grace, righteousness, the final result being, of reigning in life by One. He takes His place as Head of a new race, after his obedience unto death, as Adam became head of a sinful race after his disobedience. Sin, death and condemnation went out to all on the one hand, grace, righteousness and eternal life, present and final, went out to all on the other hand; Rom. 5:18 gives the universal tendency of the consequences of Adam’s transgression or Christ’s work; Rom. 5:19 the application to them who belong to each race. When we get Christ we get delivered from Adam, and his race, and get justification of life in Christ dead, risen and glorified! the final result being the redemption of the body! The law coming in by-the-bye that the offence might abound, and to give the knowledge of sin (Rom. 5:20; 7).
But how get delivered from this Adam condition? ch. 6 explains it; externally by baptism, really by faith, to which is attached justification all through, (Rom. 6:3, 4, and 6-11, 5:1, &c.). But it is justification from sin, (ver. 7), but by death, through, the application of Christ’s act of righteousness in death to ourselves as in the Adam state, our old man having been crucified with Him as well as our sins borne on the cross. But this is deliverance as well as justification, not from sins but from the power of sin, and that as no longer under the law but under grace. (See ch. 6:14.) If a man, is under the law he is therefore under the dominion of sin, and Rom. 7 shows it, but then he is not under grace, he is a slave of sin, not redeemed, not justified! It is in vain that our brother tries to divorce justification from this part of Romans, to maintain a doctrine of deliverance for sealed believers. Rom. 6:7, 8:1-3 clearly show that justification of life from sin goes alongside deliverance from the power of sin. It is through obeying the form of doctrine delivered him, (that is grace manifested in the death and resurrection of Christ,) that he is delivered and justified, and that is by giving up the law altogether as the way of deliverance and justification, which the man has not given up in Rom. 7. Till he does, there is no fruit for God; even though quickened, he is in captivity, under the power of sin! When he does, being now set free from sin, which is nothing but the power of redemption applied to him, and become a servant to God, he has his fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life, (Rom. 6:22, 23). This is in a way the end of the subject, the reigning in life by one Jesus Christ, as we saw at the end of ch. 5.
Rom. 7 {i.e., Rom. 7:7—end}, is a parenthetic chapter showing the bearing of the law on the subject. It is brought in by-the-bye, the apostle speaks, at the end of Rom. 5, but not only that the offence might abound, but to give the knowledge of sin, and as the schoolmaster to instruct that it has no power to deliver, to free from condemnation as to sin, or to produce practical righteousness; in other words to produce that which would justify positively by the law, and so bring life. (See Rom. 8:1-3.)
But first of all the deliverance is stated, (Rom. 7:1-6): then the apostle goes back to the time when we were in the flesh; and shows the action of the law, as to exciting the motions of sins owing to sin being there; forbidding lust, which we never knew as sin until the law forbade it; and thus tracing back lust to its source, thus giving the knowledge of sin.
There was a time when the apostle was alive without the law once, without conscience as to its real claims; but when quickened, when called of God, then the commandment came, sin revived, and he died. Sentence of death was written on his conscience. Now, if as it is being taught, justification, death to sin and life to God come with quickening, how is it that the apostle after quickening was only brought to own the sentence of death in himself, so that by obeying the doctrine delivered, he should be set free by the death and resurrection of Christ. But here is a man, according to our brother, already dead to sin and alive to God and justified, and yet the sentence of death written on his conscience as a quickened man. The truth is, quickening does not meet the need of the conscience, as it does not meet the requirements of God, but the death of Christ does, first, for forgiveness and justification from sins, second, for justification of life from sin, deliverance from its power.
If a man has not been brought to the knowledge of sin, that in him, that is in his flesh, dwells no good thing, he is unrepentant as to the full doctrine of it, he has never fully judged himself as a man, and therefore is not fully saved.
Both forgiveness of sins and deliverance and a new standing in Christ come after repentance, and therefore after quickening, otherwise a dead sinner can repent. But Rom. 7:13-25 is only the illustration of sin working death in the apostle by the law, i.e., by that which is good. He is learning its horrible nature, but under law, evidently quickened, but not delivered, not in his new standing. First, measuring himself by the law, he is fleshly, a slave of sin! (Rom. 7:14.) Is this a sealed man? I pity him. Second, he finds his will right, and so concludes he has got a new I, distinct from sin, (Rom. 7:17). But third, he finds though he has got the new nature, he has no power, for the good he would, (that is to keep the law; always the measure of good in this chapter,) he does not, (Rom. 7:18, 19). Consequently sin has dominion over him, he is under the law and not under grace; 4th, the struggle goes on till he gives up the man here as a wretched man, gives up the law as the way of deliverance, and cries Oh, wretched man that I am, who shall deliver from this body of death! (Rom. 7:24.) He thanks God as His deliverer through Christ. God has not only given Christ for him to die, (Rom. 5:9,) but to him in the glory for present justification of life, freedom from condemnation, joined to the communication of the Spirit of life from the last Adam, setting him free from the law of sin and death (Rom. 8:1, 2).
Sin, law, death, captivity, inability to do good mark the man in Rom. 7. Freedom from condemnation, the Spirit of life and liberty, peace, sin condemned, not in the flesh but in the Spirit, the Holy Ghost, sonship, mark the 8th.
Looking at all this the doctrine of our brother is most serious, it brings Christianity down to the former level. It tacks all the blessings of Christianity on to a quickened man under the law, instead of seeing that that man’s state won’t do for God, setting it aside, and replacing it by Christ in glory, and our standing in Him, and the seal of the Spirit that goes with it, which takes us out of the flesh, and puts us in the Spirit. It is the old story of trying to patch up the old garment with the new, putting the new wine into old bottles, the old bottles of man in the flesh, or Judaism if you like, instead of setting that man aside, not attaching the blessings of Christianity at all to what is Jewish, (but that is Rom. 7, a man in the flesh under law,) but setting it all aside, and attaching all to Christ, the Head of a new race in whom is justification, eternal life, and all the Christian blessings. If any man be in Christ it is a new creation; old things are passed away, behold all things are become new. Quickening, if not more, is Judaism in its best phase, but to be in Christ is to be of a new race; and redemption, justification and all Christian blessings are attached to Him.
Thus whilst Rom 7 cannot be the experience of a man dead in trespasses and sins, for he wishes to do good, he learns to discern sin, and that in him dwells no good thing, he delights in the law of God after the inward man; on the other hand, it is not the experience of a sealed man, for with the Spirit comes the knowledge of all things freely given to us of God, 1 Cor. 2:12; where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty; the soul also cries Abba, Father, (ch. 8:15), and in Rom. 7 there is neither the one nor the other. The Spirit sets free from the law, but here is a man under law, not seeing his way out, not seeing his way into the glory, whereas the Christian boasts in hope of the glory of God (Rom. 5:2).
Therefore it is the experience of a quickened man still under law on the way to getting the best robe put upon him, but not yet having it on, (see Luke 15), and struggling till he takes the man in glory and a standing in Him instead of himself, and a standing in Adam and in the flesh. This connects itself with the gift of the Holy Ghost, bringing into a new state, and giving the knowledge of sonship. (Cp. John 14:20.)
But our brother will retort, you are confounding the blessings given on God’s side at quickening with the administration of them given in the gospel, which brings the apprehension of them in the soul. Now what does our brother mean?
Does he mean that justification can be administered like forgiveness at baptism, and be lost again if I do not walk with God? Would it be morally right for God to forgive or justify me if unrepentant of my sins or sin? Yet I believe our brother would own that repentance must come after quickening.
God’s purpose to forgive and justify, which He manifests in quickening, is very different to the actual thing done upon repentance and faith. It is in vain to say the prodigal had on the best robe before he came to his father, or the kiss, type of justification and reconciliation; he had not, and to say so would be to deny Scripture; and this agrees with the Scripture, Rom. 8.
Why then, it will be asked; is it that Christians sealed by the Spirit are found in the experience of Rom. 7. I answer simply that they are put under law by Judaizing teachers, and taught that the 7th of Romans is the Christian’s experience, just what our brother is doing, at all events in regard to unestablished Christians. And one has in consequence to teach them over again the doctrine of justification by faith, and this to those who hold high pretensions of superior light and knowledge (Gal. 3). May the Lord deliver and give light and establishment to see where all this is leading to.
Just one word more as to what a person has to believe to get the sealing of the Spirit. Our brother seems to assert, that it is faith in the Person apart from the work that brings the sealing. He seems to teach that a man can be sealed by the Spirit through faith in the Person without knowing the efficacy of Christ’s work, page 14, 8 lines from bottom. Let us again appeal to Scripture to decide the difference.
What did the disciples already born of God believe, to get peace, and the consequent impartation of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus that set them free from the law of sin and death, in John 20:19–22. They believed in the risen Person of the Son of God, who showed them His hands and His feet, a proof of His work accomplished, as a consequence of the proclamation of His word, peace unto you. They received His word, and got peace; with that proclaimed the 2nd time, founded on the revelation of Himself as the sent one of the Father, came the impartation of His Spirit of life, eternal life in its fullness, which in Romans 8 is joined with the gift of the Holy Ghost.
So on the day of Pentecost, the people were first awakened through the preaching of Peter to the fact that Jesus was the Christ, i.e., the Anointed. They heard the word, and so were born of God. (Cp. 1 John 5:l.) But till Peter preached repentance and remission of sins in the name of Jesus Christ, they were not sealed with the Holy Ghost! (Acts 2:36-38). But remission of sins is joined with the work in a special way. In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins (Eph. 1:7; Col. 1:14). JESUS is always the name connected with salvation, and how are we saved from our sins except through His work. (See also Acts 2:23.) In Acts 8:32-35, this is especially seen in the case of the Ethiopian eunuch, who was reading Isa. 53, about Jesus as a lamb led to the slaughter, when Philip met him, and to whom, when he asked what it meant, Philip preached JESUS as the explanation.
So in Acts 10, it is through His Name whosoever believeth in Him shall receive remission of sins, JESUS is the Name of God’s Anointed one! Perhaps this name has escaped the view of our brother in this matter. So the apostle Paul was not sealed till he arose and was baptized and washed away his sins, calling on the Name of the Lord. Again the Name of JESUS, but in connection with the washing away of His sins. Our brother will say, this is governmental! True, but still it is in connection with the washing away of his sins.
So in Acts 19 the whole force of the passage is that before Paul met with the men, they had only received John’s baptism, that is believing in a Christ that was coming. But when they believed Paul, they were baptized in the Name of the Lord Jesus, that is of Jesus made Lord, who had already died! Jesus signifying Jah, Savior! Jehovah become a man to save His people from their sins, by dying for their sins and being raised for their justification! (Rom. 4:25).
In Rom. 5 we have the Holy Ghost given consequent on the one who was delivered for our offences, [again the work] and raised again for our justification.
In Rom. 8 consequent on Christ accomplishing His act of righteousness on the cross, on His being raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, and there in that new place given as God’s gift of eternal life, Himself the Son revealing the Father! (See Rom. 5:18; 6:4, 23; 8:3, 9-18.)
In Gal. 3:13, 14, we have the Holy Ghost given consequent on His work on the cross, and justification by faith through it, and in Gal. 4:4-6 consequent on redemption, and our getting our full place as sons by faith through it.
In Eph. 1:13, the Jews who believed had first trusted in the Christ through hearing the word of truth, the gospel of their salvation. They heard, they lived! (Cp. John 5:25; 1 John 5:1.) But “trusting” is a very different word from “believing,” which follows: we read afterwards, in whom having believed they were sealed {see Eph. 1:13}!
But who was the One in whom they believed? Why the One who was the subject of the gospel of their salvation, who died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and was buried, and was raised again according to the Scriptures! See 1 Cor. 15:2-3. May our brother be greatly stirred up to preach the One who is the subject of the gospel, and preach in connection with Him the gospel with increased earnestness, and he will find that souls in receiving the gospel, will be sealed with the Holy Ghost!
Quickening then comes when first called of God, then repentance, then remission of sins. (Cp. Psa. 32:1-4; Acts 2:37, 38.) Together with that comes the full revelation of God in grace, and the Father, in the gospel, (putting the quickened man into a new standing and state, as justified and having eternal life), and the seal of the Spirit, giving both the knowledge of remission, justification, deliverance and sonship. The sealed man cries “Abba, Father”; and this in direct contrast to having the spirit of bondage again to fear, which is Romans 7.
I would add a word as to Life, as marking the epistle to the Colossians distinctively from the Spirit as we have it in Ephesians; as has been remarked before by our beloved departed brother, J. N. D. But what sort of life is it? I answer unhesitatingly, it is “the life that constitutes Christianity!” The measure of good to walk by of a man merely quickened is the law! But the measure of the Christian walk is the will of God as displayed in the Lord Himself as the heavenly man on earth. See Col. 1:9, 10. The meetness for the inheritance of the saints in light is alone in a righteousness and life suitable for the heavenly inheritance: Col 1:12, of which the Son was the beginning as the risen and ascended man, Head of a new creation, (vers. 18, 19). In Him dwelt all the fullness of the Godhead bodily; and He was Head of His body the Church, the mystery hid from ages and generations, but now revealed, and in the Colossian aspect, “Christ in you” the hope of glory,(ver. 27). Will our brother say that this was no further communication of life than quickening? If he does he is blind to what really constitutes it! Is Christ as the Life of His body, the Church, merely a new birth, a new nature! If so then all Old Testament saints necessarily belong to the Church, and what is distinctive in Christianity is all gone
As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in Him
(Col. 2:6).
Is this mere quickening? Then how is it that when the Son came into the world only those received Him who were already born of God? John 1:10-13. All the rest of the world knew Him not, or rejected Him. Again, our brother argues, that quickening together with Christ (meaning quickening), and forgiveness go together. Yet, he says, we must have life in Christ, (meaning quickening) in order to be dead with Christ. How is it then that circumcision, or death with Christ and burial with Christ come in Col. 2:11, 12, before our being quickened together with Him in ver. 13. But if quickened together with Him takes in Life in its fullness, in the Christian sense of it, then all is plain.
Quickening could go on under the law, and with its many shadows, its meats, drinks, holidays, Sabbaths. Not so the Christian life which is in a dead, buried and risen Christ, and communicated to us in resurrection power, so that we seek the things above where the Christ our Life sits at the right hand of God. When He our Life shall appear then shall we also appear with Him in glory (Col. 3:1-4). No doubt Old Testament saints will appear with us, yet as a distinct class; not as belonging to the Church of the firstborn written in heaven (Heb. 12:23)!
Finally Old Testament saints could have life without putting off the old man at all, but we who have life more abundantly have put off the old man with his deeds, and have put on the new man, etc., where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free, but Christ is all and in all. And will our brother say that Christ in us for Life is no more than quickening? (Col. 3:9-11).
Born of God or quickening, truly is life, but it is a nature. I am born of God! But here it is Christ in all, for life! That is not mere nature otherwise it is a fresh incarnation of Christ! Yet blessed be God it links itself with the nature and is characterized elsewhere by the Holy Ghost! Christ in all is the Christian life!
A Sequel in Answer to the Tract on “Life in Christ and Sealing With the Spirit” by F. W. G.
Painful it is to have to sit down again, and answer one, who as to his light and knowledge on the Scriptures one had hoped better things of. But it is on that very account that his doctrines are so dangerous to the saints; Satan delighting to use those who have influence to mar the work, and testimony, that God and His instruments have raised up in these last days.
Thus it was in the days following the apostle Paul’s departure, grievous wolves entered in, not sparing the flock, also amongst the saints men arose speaking perverse things to draw away disciples after them (Acts 20:29, 30). Such arose even amongst the elders!
I have no hesitation in saying that the book is a bad book. Not only are there contradictory statements, far more so, than any he seeks to prove against his brethren, but I must say, a bold reasoning away plain Scriptures to mean exactly the opposite of what they say. If I did not know the writer, and so hope better things of him, it would really make me doubt if there was a true state at bottom. And all this is done not without warning and beseeching, by the writer of these pages, and other brethren in letters, which makes it all the more sad, looking like a determined will to make a breach of fellowship with his brethren whatever happens. In the book itself there is practically no word of retractation, beyond a formal word at the beginning, as to the paper originally edited, under the title of “Life and the Spirit,” but really a development of the statements therein put forward. It is reiterated that Old Testament saints had life in the Son, without a Scripture to support the theory; that there is no further communication of life than quickening, to the saints of the present dispensation, and that all the Christian blessings go with this quickening—which is immediately followed by the sealing of the Holy Ghost—consequently, to be consistent, there is no interval of time betwixt new birth and sealing, no middle class, as the writer himself says, pages 25 and 83, and uses Rom. 8:9 to prove it. Yet he says at the beginning of his paper, page 6, “that it is not in contention that quickening and sealing are distinct things, not even whether they are distinct in time, they surely are. Moreover the interval may be, as we see in the Acts it has been, one of some duration!” And this is largely proved afterwards from page 35 to 52.
Now here are two distinctly contrary statements, which the writer has got to explain and reconcile. But evidently this is the result of judging his brethren; God has allowed him manifestly to fall into contradictory statements himself.
But this is not the worst feature of the book. The direct statements of the Word of God are reasoned away. Ch. 3, page 53-64 give us a painstaking effort to show that we can have all the blessings of Christianity and not know it, we can be forgiven and not know it, we can have justification and not know it, we can have peace and not know it, we can have the Spirit and yet be in bondage. I put some of F.W.G.’s statements and those of the Word of God side by side, in order to show his direct contradictory statements.
Word of God
Acts 13:38, 39 – “Through this man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins, and by Him all that believe ARE justified from all things.”
Rom. 5:1 – “Being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Gal. 4 – “Because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts crying Abba, Father.”
2nd Cor. 3:17 – “Where the spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.”
John 14 – “At that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you.”
F.W.G.
Page 56, line 29 – “But suppose with forgiveness of sins known in this way, liberty is there at once for the forgiven soul, it is still another thing to say that every forgiven soul has it. We at least, thank God, may say that liberty is for the forgiven soul.”
Page 60 – “Of course if conscious having is meant, there can be no dispute, but is it not possible to possess what we are not conscious of possessing?”
Page 61, line 18 – Alluding to J.N.D.’s plain comments on these passages, he says, “There is no contention except as to the word invariably, and, as we have seen, this is, in fact, by those who contended for it, given up. That ‘where the Spirit of the Lord is there is liberty,’ is fully owned as characteristically true, and nothing more can be maintained by those who can accept as consistent with it, that those who are sealed may remain in the spirit of bondage, after
Rom. 5:5 – “The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Spirit, which is given to us.”
2 Cor. 3:17 – “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.”
John 14:20 – “At that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you.”
Rom. 8:18 – “The Spirit Himself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God.”
John 4:14 – “Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst.”
John 10:4, 5 – “My sheep hear my voice, and a stranger will they not follow, but will flee from him, for they know not the voice of strangers.”
1 John 2:9 – “He that saith he is in the light, and hateth his brother, is in darkness even until now.”
1 John 3:6 – “Whosoever abideth in Him sinneth not; whosoever sinneth hath not seen Him, neither known Him.”
all, etc. This admits all that is contended for.”
Page 62 – After quoting another passage from brethren, he says, as himself going with it, “Thus though where the Spirit of the Lord is there is liberty, sealed ones may be in bondage. Though in that day ye shall know that . . . ye are in Me and I in you, they may not be consciously in Christ and Christ in them. Though the Spirit Himself beareth witness with our spirit that we are the children of God, they may not have conscious sonship.
Page 63 – “ Who would argue from this passage that if a man never thirsted he had never received the Holy Ghost!
“Look around, then, and ask, in such a day as the present, How many are Christ’s sheep?
“But why quote further passages? Is it not plain, that they are all characteristic, not absolute, and that the question is not here raised of how far Christians may fall short of the Christian character.”
These are just samples of the way our brother reasons away the Word of God, though I know he hides himself behind some apparent contradictory statements of his brethren, but as going along with these statements, and whatever he may say, I for one firmly believe what the Shepherd of the sheep says, in an absolute manner, My sheep hear My voice, and a stranger will they not follow. I do not believe the true sheep of Christ will follow this new voice. They may be misled for a while, but the Shepherd’s voice is true, and those that do follow strangers, will eventually be found to be not of His sheep.
Page 65 to the end, is simply a development of F. W. G.’s views in his former paper, as to Rom. 7, and is fully met by my paper called “Remarks on Life and the Spirit,” See p. 8-18. If justification is not treated of as complete till Rom. 8:1-3, and goes along with deliverance from the power of sin, as shown in that paper, then his whole argument falls to the ground. Justification and life in Christ are part of the gospel, not an after experience for fruitfulness and holiness.
That paper, which while affecting to despise, he cannot answer, also meets the subjects raised, whether eternal life, justification, peace, and acceptance with Christ, etc., go with quickening or with the reception of the gospel, and the immediate consequent sealing of the Spirit, which take up largely the book, from pages 15 to 28. (“Remarks,” pages 2-8.) So I do not take it up over again, and send this out as a sequel to “Remarks on a Paper called Life and the Spirit.”
If there is, besides quickening, “eternal life in the Son,” and the consequent communication of that life, as more abundant life, on the reception of the gospel, then it meets all the questions, as to the Old Testament saints not having it, in common with us; it also meets the difficulties of justification and life going together, as the portion of those linked with the last Adam, and of quickening together with Christ being no more than quickening, and of forgiveness going along with it, as in Col. 2.
Born again Old Testament saints were, and millennial saints will be, John 3:3, 5. Christians are now, John 5:25; and that too in a new way by the Son’s quickening, who was the eternal life now manifested, but if we have not this life communicated in more abundant life besides, we are brought down as to the communication of life to a common level with them. If eternal life is the same as new birth, then Old Testament saints knew God in grace revealed in light as we do, they knew the Father also, for all through John the communication of eternal life is connected with that revelation, and is defined in John 17:3, as that they might know thee, (i.e., the Father,) the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent.
We read of the Assembly of the Firstborn written in heaven, as a distinct company, and marked with life distinct from the spirits of just men made perfect in Heb. 12:23, an epistle that does not speak of union with Christ by the Spirit, but rather of life in the real ones, as constituting them sanctified brethren, and priests unto God.
So as my former paper practically meets what is said in the pages before mentioned, I have only to add a word as to “life in the Son,” and “life in Christ.” Had Old Testament, saints “life in the Son,” putting them on common ground with us as to this life therefore, or they had not? But first of all, what is it to be “in the Son?” Is there such a thing hinted at in Old Testament scripture? Not in one passage. F.W.G. cannot produce one and does not. He reasons round that it means life and nature, not position, then says that life was in the Son in the beginning, and that He was the Eternal Life ever with the Father, and then concludes that if they had life, it was life in the Son, meaning connection with Him, as I understand him, by life and nature, and that this was eternal life.
I ask then, why is Old Testament Scripture absolutely silent on the whole thing? How can F.W.G. dare to tread where Scripture is absolutely silent?
I have looked through the passages where “in the Lord” or “in Him” are mentioned in the Old Testament, and in every case, where “in the Lord,” or “in Him,” could be referred to our question in point, the Scriptures refer to Israel’s connection with Jehovah in the millennium. See Isa. 45:19, 24, 25; Jer. 3:23; Psa. 72:17, etc. Twice it is mentioned in Josh. 22:25, 27, as to having part in the Lord, as belonging to His one nation, whose land the land of Canaan was. But, as to being “in Jehovah,” as a present thing, much less being “in the Son,” Scripture is absolutely silent. Saints could trust in the Lord, could delight themselves in the Lord, etc., as it is expressed often in the Psalms, but as to themselves being “in the Lord,” nothing is said. Neither is eternal life mentioned but twice, Psa. 133:3; Dan. 12:3, both passages referring to the millennium, and future blessing of Israel.
Why then does our brother dare to tread upon ground as to which Scripture is absolutely silent. Abraham was called of the God of glory, Acts 7:1; so Samuel, 1 Sam. 4, consequently they were born of God, as has been shown. Abel received testimony he was righteous. Noah and Abraham were justified by faith. See Heb. 11:4, 7; Gen. 15. Enoch walked with God, which was impossible to do unless he had a nature by which he could do it. But as to anything further than such like examples, Scripture is absolutely silent, and we shall find it our wisdom to be silent too.
But what then is it to be “in the Son?” And what to “abide in Him?” These are questions raised by our brother, which many had supposed to be settled. The first mention of either expression, (beyond the expression of John 1:4, “in Him was life,” which refers only to the Son Himself,) is in John 6:56,
He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, abideth in me, and I in him,
a fact too that has not yet been answered by our brother, who says that Old Testament saints had life in the Son! But here it is in connection with feeding upon the flesh and blood of the Son of man given up to death, the antitype of the Passover Lamb. Consequently those, who should be participants in feeding on the Lamb given up to death, were the ones who abode in Him and He in them. That no one did till after His redemption work was accomplished.
“Abiding in Me and I in Him” refers to the Son of man ascending up to where He was before, after having fulfilled the antitype of the Passover Lamb. Like Israel fed on the roasted lamb, inside the blood-sprinkled house, abiding in the house when they did it, so Christians in their place in Christ feed upon the Lamb slain on Calvary’s cross. Here clearly it is not mere nature and life, but place too. Our place is in the Son of man, who at the same time makes us alive with Himself as the life-giving Spirit. See vers. 62, 63.
In John 10:30 the Son’s oneness with the Father is testified of, and in ver. 38 is defined in another way as:
that ye may know and believe that the Father is in me, and I in Him.
The Father is thus one with the Son, and the Son one with the Father, in equality of persons, in common life, nature, and place. The Son in the bosom of the Father (John 1:18)!
is not this a place, as well as community of life and nature?
Believe me that I am in the Father, and the Father in me (John 14:11)!
This is clearly in connection with the Son on earth revealing the Father as absolutely and divinely one with Him, and yet as become man. He was going into the new place, (John 14:1), they were to believe in Him as the Son revealing the Father in that new place, as gone into it as man. But down here on earth, He was in the Father and the Father in Him, one with Him as we have seen in John 10, and the Father one with Him on earth.
The Father that dwelleth in me doeth the works (John 14:10).
Is not this “place,” as well as life and nature? Was He not going into a new place, to reveal the Father in that now place? Is not the Father’s house a place? Had he not a standing as a man on earth, the Son of man which is in heaven, and as one with the Father there? John 3:13. Why He says so! Consequently here we have evidence it is not mere life and nature, it is oneness, and takes in too the thought of place.
John 14:20. But going into that new place, He was to send down the Comforter to abide with the family, and in each of them. Is this “place” or not? Surely this in the case of the Comforter is distinctly “place,” He was going to abide with them on earth and in each of them. What would be the consequence? At that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, in oneness, common life, nature and place, and ye in me, and I in you, in oneness, life and place with the Son in His new place as the glorified man, and He in them on earth, one with them.
John 15. Now when we come to the vine, it is clearly profession! An unfruitful branch of the vine can be taken away; if a man abide not in the Son, he is cast forth as an unfruitful or dead branch, and it is worth nothing but to be cast into the fire, and be burned. But the thought again is profession of oneness, common life, nature and place with the vine. This is tested as to reality by the test of the branch remaining in its connection with the vine, (i.e. the Son,) or not. A branch of a vine is one with the vine, and has in appearance a common life, nature and place in it till found unfruitful and cast forth.
John 17:20; 21. The thought of oneness comes out still clearer from these verses; the Lord said,
Neither pray I for these alone, but for all that shall believe on me through their word, that they all may be one, as thou Father art in me, and I in thee, that they maybe one in us!
Now here the unity {oneness} of the family of God was to be after the manner of the unity existing between the Father and the Son, two distinct Persons, yet One in life, nature and place. If He has His place now as man even in the bosom of His Father, ver. 5, and we have our place in Him consequent on redemption, we clearly can be said in Him, the Mediator, to have our place of oneness in the Father and the Son, as well as being joint participants in the new life, which ought to give a visible oneness here on earth. But it is wholly in the Son become a man, who has gone into death, having finished the work the Father gave Him to do, and is glorified as man with the same glory He had as Son with the Father before the world was. We are made one with Him in all the blessing he has entered into as man, consequent on redemption. He ever having the pre- eminence. He is not ashamed to call us brethren; our Father calls, us His children, His sons.
But if this is true, how could Old Testament saints be said to have “life in the Son?” He had not become a man. He was in His own incommunicable Deity. If to be in the Son is oneness and place, besides life and nature, then Old Testament saints were one with God, and so in the deity, for He was only God then, one with the Father !!
Besides it could not be according to John 12:24,
Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone, but if it die it bringeth forth much fruit!
Thus no one could be one with the Son, except as consequent on accomplished redemption.
I trust our brother will recoil from such a dreadful result of his teaching.
But blessed be God we are one with the Son as become man, accomplishing redemption and entered into His glorified place, glorified as man with the glory, He had with the Father before the world was; and we by His infinite grace, and by the love of the Father are given that place of oneness and life, with all the blessings he has in fact entered into as man. His Godhead place is communicable to no one.
I in them, and thou in me (John 17:23).
gives equally the thought of oneness, and dwelling-place, besides life and nature.
The same may be pressed as to 1 John 2:6, 8, 24. Made possessors of eternal life, we abide in Him, keeping His word, the love of God is perfected in us, which is surely “place,” it is perfected in us, not outside of us! This possession of life “is true in Him, and in us,” and if “the Word we have heard from the beginning abide in us, (what is this but place and dwelling?) we shall abide in the Son, and the Father!” Eternal life, as we have seen, is the life that constitutes the Christian state, which no Old Testament saint had. But this received in its fullness, puts us in the Son.
Whosoever abideth in Him sinneth not, whosoever sinneth hath not seen Him nor known Him (1 John 3:6).
This is absolute, and any other interpretation of John’s epistle only shows that it is not understood. “He cannot sin because he is born of God” cannot be taken characteristically, it is an absolute statement of the man identified with the new nature.
A Christian is not only justified from all things, and in Christ before God, but he is absolutely, as John teaches, confirmed by Paul in Rom. 7:17, identified with the new nature he possesses as born of God. Spirit, soul and body is set apart to God, identified before God and for faith with that new life! Though the flesh and sin still remain in him.
1 John 3:23, 24; 4:12, 15; 5:20 a11 give clearly the thought of “place,” which the very word “meno” gives strength to, as well as of life and nature.
I would also add that “en” is often used in Greek to signify “in the power of.” (See Col. 1:16, 17.) Sometimes also it signifies simply “in connection with,” as in instances in Romans 16 and elsewhere.
The term “in Christ,” I need not dwell on, as our brother shows it involves place as well as life and nature. The great difference, as it seems to me, between the terms “in the Son,” and “in Christ,” is the difference between relationship and place. “In the Son” has the additional blessed thought of relationship and knowledge of the Father. Christ is more the man in His now standing before God.
Old Testament saints are doubtless now, by redemption and Christ’s glorification, brought into the new heavenly place that is the result of those two things, but as our brother says, there is absolute silence as to there being any fresh communication of life; as to them; [I say, yes,] but not as to us; we have communicated Christ Himself as our life! besides the Holy Ghost dwelling in us as a distinct Person, as God! F.W.G. is surprised at the thought of a two-fold quickening or making alive; on this ground, the Son of God once born, could never have been quickened again after death, and there could be no resurrection from the dead, which is expressed in Rom. 8 as the quickening of our mortal bodies by His Spirit that dwelleth in us!! Let him affect to despise this, but it is most sober truth!
In my own case of salvation, God certainly applied Psa. 71:20, not when I was born again, but when after repentance I was led to rest on the finished work of Christ, which the Holy Ghost made me see from that verse. It was after the great troubles, that Christ was quickened again, in resurrection power. It was after God made me understand these troubles, He quickened me again, and I was sealed with the Holy Ghost.
We are born children of God on being called of God! But death and resurrection needs to be applied in the power of redemption, and it is as quickened together with Him out of death, (see 2 Cor. 5:14-17), we are brought into an entirely new creation, not by the Son quickening, when first called of God, but by God giving us the man quickened out of death, who is the last Adam the quickening Spirit; so that having Him we are immediately quickened together with Him, raised up together and made to sit together in heavenly places in Christ {see Eph. 2:5, 6}, and this is said in Eph. 2 to be saved by His grace, which even our brother allows is more than quickening, and in Col. 2 forgiveness of sins goes with it!
And here I must be allowed to say a word in respect to what I must call the apparent dishonest way of quoting from our beloved brother, J.N.D., in support of his false doctrine. (See page 18, line 12, F.W.G.) The Synopsis, Volume IV., page 412, line 1, rends thus:—“He has quickened us, and not only that, He has quickened us together with Christ. He has not said in a direct way that Christ had been quickened, although it may be said, when the power of the Spirit in Himself is spoken of; He was however raised from the dead, and when we are in question, we are told that all the energy, by which he came forth from the dead, is employed also for our quickening,” etc.
F.W.G. to support his view, quotes J.N.D., beginning at the point, “He was raised from the dead,” five lines below where I have begun, to try and show that J.N.D. is on his side, as to there being no more communication of life than mere quickening.
It is the same in regard to his tract commenting on “ Sealing by the Spirit.” (See pages 53, 54, F.W.G.) He tries to set page 37, line 14, (Canadian edition) and page 29, last three lines, against page 45, line 5 &c., to try and show they are contrary one to the other. But I answer they are quite consistent. In the one case J.N.D. is describing the normal condition, of a soul sealed by the Spirit; in the other, the state of sealed souls in Christendom, “thrown back” by Judaizing teachers into bondage. Pages 38, 39, clearly explain his meaning.
Pages 29-33 need a short review. The subject is sealing by the Spirit. How was Christ sealed? Our brother says, (page 29), “Christ was sealed (with the Spirit), by the Father! the Father’s voice affirming Him to be His beloved Son.”
“With us the Spirit is the witness of sonship, the Spirit of adoption, sent forth into our hearts because we are sons to affirm it. . . . But then it follows that the Spirit is not the seal of any special faith apart from that which constitutes us sons. Because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying Abba, Father. Gal. 4.” (F.W.G.)
Now here is the plain doctrine stated, we become sons by faith in Christ at the moment of quickening, and are immediately sealed by the Holy Ghost, because we are sons: Consequently there is no middle class, no interval, as at the beginning of his tract he argues there is, between new birth and sealing!! (See page 6.) “It is not in contention that quickening and sealing are entirely distinct things, not even if they are distinct in time, they surely are. Moreover the interval might be as we, see in Acts it has been, one of some duration!” These cases he takes up between pages 32 and 52.
I have now only to put the contradictory statements side by side.
F. W. G.
Page 6 – “It is not in contention that quickening and sealing are distinct things, nor even that they are distinct in time. They surely are.
“Moreover the Interval
Contradictory
Statements
Page 25 – Rom. 8:9. “If we are to take ‘he is none of His,’ in the simple straightforward way, in which all would naturally understand it, then it is here declared, that all
Word of God
Romans 7:21-8:2 – “I delight in the law of God after the inward man, but I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity might be, as we see in Acts it has been, one of some duration, although the cases in the Acts have really no representative in the present day.”
Page 35, line 12 – “I do not doubt then the correctness of quoting the history of the Acts as evidence with regard to sealing!”
Acts 2:38. Page 47, line 8 – “They were to be baptized for the remission of sins. Submitting to the authority of Christ, they received the assurance of the remission of sins, the effect of His work. . . .
In that same baptism which expressed this, he was assured, that if this were truth of heart with him, his sins were washed away. . . . Here the apostle’s words are plain that repenting and being baptized for the remission of sins, they should receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. . . . Believers repenting and being baptized for the remission of sins, received the Holy Ghost.”
Page 48 – “Acts 8. Here we find no change of Christ ’ s people are recipients of the Spirit, and there is practically no middle class that have not yet received it. That some brief interval may exist between new birth and sealing, would not, I think, be denied by it.” (See also page 83, 16 from bottom.)
Page 6.-“The cases of the Acts have really no representative in the present day.”
Pages 6, 7 – “Our place in Christ is the inseparable accompaniment of eternal life in the believer, and his therefore from the first moment of quickening.
“If life for us is in Christ from the first moment of it, forgiveness of sins and justification, attach necessarily to this also. . . . As having life in Christ, we are dead with Christ, dead to sin, dead to the law and not in the flesh.”
“As to sealing with the Spirit, it is connected with the faith and confession of Christ risen and glorified, rather than with appropriating faith in His blessed work.”
Page 29 – “With us the Spirit is the witness of sonship, the Spirit of to the law of sin which is in my members. Oh, wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death. I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. . . . There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.”
Rom. 8:30 – “Whom He called them He also justified.”
Gal. 1:15 – “When it pleased God, who called me by His grace to reveal His Son in me.”
1 Cor. 1:23 – “But we preach Christ crucified, . . . to them that are called both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.” It was said of already quickened souls,
Acts 1:4 – “To wait for the promise of the Father.”
Acts 1:5 – “Ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost not many days hence.”
Acts 2:38 – “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ, unto the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.”
Acts 8:16 – “As yet He was fallen on none of them, only they were order, but a delay in receiving the Holy Ghost. Apostles’ hands are here used to convey it.”
Pages 48, 49 – “The next case is that of Saul of Tarsus, and here again there is delay. Three days and three nights he is without sight, . . . then receives his sight and washes away his sins in baptism. . . . . He himself apparently receives the Holy Ghost after baptism
. . . Whatever he may have known the Holy Ghost is given to him after baptism , in which authoritatively his sins are washed away.”
“ Acts 10 – Cornelius was already converted! and already knew of Jesus. Peter announces Him as Lord of all, . . .. to Him give all the prophets witness, that through His Name whosoever believed in Him, should receive remission of sins. Here God comes in, at once giving the Holy Ghost apart from baptism and the laying on of hands.”
“adoption, sent forth into our hearts, because we are sons to affirm it.”
Page 31, line 16 – “Eph. 1:18. The gospel of their salvation is that upon the hearing of which they, learned to believe in Christ, and believing in Him were sealed.”
Page 46 – “God’s seal, the seal of the Holy Ghost, is the witness of the perfection which alone God can approve. . . .
‘For Him hath God the Father sealed.’ . . . The indwelling of the Holy Spirit can only be the witness to the perfection of the one in whom He can thus dwell, Christ’s personal perfection; ours in Him.” “The Spirit of God is the seal of the believer, as the one who is in the value of Christ’s work before God, not in the value of the apprehension of that work.”
[Thus according to this teaching, the moment a man believes in Christ be is born a son, and immediately sealed by the Holy Ghost. But according to the statements in the lst column, there is an interval. – A.P.C.]
“baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.”
Acts 22:16 – (Ananias being sent to Saul, already converted, said to him), “and now why tarriest thou, Arise and be baptized and wash away thy sins calling upon the name of the Lord.”
Acts 9:17 – “Brother Saul, the Lord even Jesus that appeared unto thee in the way that thou camest, hath sent me that thou mightest receive thy sight, and be filled with the Holy Ghost.”
Acts 10:1, 2—Cornelius, a devout man and one that feared God, saw an angel who said unto him, Acts 11:13, “Send men to Joppa, and call for Simon Peter, who shall tell thee words whereby thou shalt be saved.”
Acts 10:43 – (Peter preached to Cornelius already born again), “To Him give all the prophets witness, that through His Name whosoever believeth in Him shall receive remission of sins. While Peter yet spake these words the Holy Ghost fell on all them which heard the word.”
There is another point which has not been answered fully, and that is the statement our brother makes at the beginning of chapter 3, page 53, “as to the difference between the possession of such things as peace with God, forgiveness, justification, liberty, and the place in Christ, and the apprehension of what we possess.”
The view he maintains is “that while every believer has these things in Christ from the moment of his being such, he has nevertheless to receive them, for the most part as administered by the Word, and in such a way as that he shall enjoy them holily, or not enjoy them. Moreover that whilst the Holy Ghost is the witness to us of all our blessings and the power of the Christian life, it is by the Word that all is made known to us: error in doctrine, and unholiness, may to almost any extent hinder His witness and our realization.” I suppose this is our brother’s explanation, (and I think it is about the only one,) of his bold statement at the beginning of his book, which as written there is pure Judaizing teaching; pages 7, 8, viz., “while it is surely true that the Spirit is the witness to us of sonship, and the place in Christ, as He is of all our blessing and the power of the whole Christian life, yet it is as the Spirit of truth He acts, and only in the reception of the truth are these made good to us, while even after attainment they are still capable of being lost, if the walk is not with God, though the Spirit still, however grieved, abides.”
Now I am not going through Old Testament types and shadows to explain New Testament doctrines, which I believe is largely the ground our brother is on, and consequently goes astray, but I will go at once to the clear waters of the new testament, to let this light shine in upon the types and shadows of the old.
Now first as to the question of possession and apprehension, let us see what is of necessity to be believed first, for a soul to be born of God?
The Gospel of Matthew at once sets before the soul, Jesus as “the Anointed King,” the true Son of Abraham, the Son of David. Receiving the seed of the Word of the kingdom into an honest and good heart, and understanding it, be lives! (Matt. 13:23.)
The Gospel of Mark sets before the soul, as the beginning of the gospel, that Jesus is “the Anointed Prophet”; it is through hearing his word and receiving it, (Mark 4:20,) I am born of God.
The Gospel of Luke sets before the soul, Jesus as “the Son of Man,” anointed with the Holy Ghost, offering Himself to man. He who hears the word and keeps it, lives! (Luke 8:15.)
The Gospel of John sets before the soul Jesus as “the Son of God.” Hearing His voice, waking up to the fact that He is a Divine Person, and has spoken to me, my soul lives. (John 5:25.)
Now these are the fundamental truths that the disciples accepted when Jesus was on earth. They were born of God, not yet saved, without remission of sins, without the possession of redemption or the knowledge of it. It was not accomplished. But they believed that Jesus was the Anointed King and Prophet, and believed in Him as the Son of God, as a Divine Person come from God, God and man in one Person. They were born of God. (1 John 5:1; John 5:25.)
The fact of the Christ, the Son of God’s death did not change at once the place of the disciples, except as to God’s purpose and counsel, though in fact the blood of Christ had glorified every attribute of God’s nature, and satisfied the demands of His justice in regard to our sins. The veil of the temple was rent, and access into the holiest opened up to man. Still none of these things were yet applied to the disciples. They were as yet only born of God.
But the scene in John 20, Luke 24, etc., changed everything. The Son of God victorious over death reveals Himself to Mary Magdalene, and sends her with the glad tidings to the disciples,
Go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father and your Father, and to my God, and your God {John 20:17}.
That same evening He Himself comes into their midst, speaks peace to them; 1st, showing them His hands and feet, as a proof that all their sins were gone, and that justice was satisfied; 2nd, revealing the Father, and breathing into them His own life of resurrection, thus putting them into the full place of sons before the Father. Or as Luke puts it, giving proofs of his real manhood, for righteousness, life, and peace, so that they were assured of remission of sins, of righteousness, eternal life, peace and sonship, in Himself who had died for them and risen again. See John 20:16-23; Luke 24:5-8, 36-48.
Now, my reader, this is salvation! What I believe answers in antitype to the Red Sea. Till then they were not saved, but when saved did they not know it? When forgiven did they not know it, when at peace, did they not know it? when put into the place of sons did they not know it? Why it is all as plain as noon-day they did.
They knew Jesus as the Anointed King who had dispensed to them royal pardon; they knew Him as the Anointed Prophet, as the One who had heralded to them peace; they knew Him as the Anointed Priest who had now offered the sacrifice and had settled the whole question of their sins; they knew Him also as the Son of God, not merely as a Divine Person, but as the Son revealing the Father, putting them into the full place of sons, so that they knew the Father. They now worshiped God in the Spirit! they boasted in Christ Jesus, they had no confidence in the flesh (Phil. 3:3).
Now, so far as we have gone, we have seen that as long as the disciples were merely “born of God,” knowing simply “Jesus as the Christ,” they neither possessed nor had the knowledge of the possession of the blessings of Christianity, and that even after they had to accept the mere fact of His death. But that, when the glad tidings of peace were preached to them by the risen Son of God, they came into possession of all the blessings, (except as yet Assembly standing and blessing,) and at the same time came into the knowledge of their possession.
Now, I say in this we have the normal view of what our brother calls, “the possession, and apprehension of the possession.” I leave my reader to judge which is true, the Bible view of the matter or his views. But our brother will say, it was not so in the history of the Acts. There was a time when only the forgiveness of sins and salvation were known as governmental blessings. Well, first of all, I totally deny that the blessings were merely administrative in a governmental way. The apostles were not only beginning to carry out Matthew’s commission, which by the way referred primarily to the heathen nations, but especially Luke’s commission, where the Lord said,
Thus it is written and thus it behoved Christ to suffer, and to be raised from the dead, and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His Name amongst all nations, beginning at Jerusalem (Luke 24:46-48).
Now this last is not a commission of governmental remission of sins. There is no mention of baptism in it. But this was what was carried out by Peter and John amongst the Jews, and afterwards more fully by Paul amongst the Gentiles.
Our brother is his paper confounds the two commissions of Matthew and Luke together, and is consequently on the high road to Romish confusion, where the forgiveness of baptism is confounded with eternal forgiveness for another world.
Now because God dealt in patience with the Jewish nation, and only unfolded to them that “Jesus was the Anointed,” and Peter and John did not go farther than preach remission of sins, and salvation to these Jews, God allowing his people at the same time to continue linked up with Judaism for a while, till the time of his patience with that nation was over, is this to be an example to us for this present day? Are we only to preach a gospel of salvation and remission of sins, and continue to be mixed up with a Judaized Christianity? Is this God’s will for us? I say, unhesitatingly, No!
If that was the case, we should have no glad tidings of heaven opened, and the Son of man in full acceptance there, as Stephen saw in Acts 7 end; no Jesus as Paul saw, as Son of God, outside Judaism altogether, and the beginner of a new creation, as well as, Head of His body, the church, which last I fully own is a matter of after apprehension to being saved.
But the gospel of Paul telling of a heavens opened, of Christ accepted and we in Him, of righteousness and the Spirit, ministered from that glorified One, is not apprehension, it is the gospel of the glory of the Christ to be received. It is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth.
God’s way all through has been to act, in accordance with the revelation He gave at the time. He revealed Himself to Abraham as God Almighty, and he was responsible to walk up to the light God revealed Himself by then. He revealed Himself to Moses and Israel under the covenant name of Jehovah, and the real ones were quickened and blessed in accordance with that revelation. On earth, when Jesus came as a man, the disciples believed in Him as the Christ, the Son of God, a divine Person come out from God. They were born again, as receiving that revelation, the Son of God now quickening.—John 5:25. After redemption for a moment the full revelation was received of the Son entered into the resurrection place, revealing now God in grace, without a veil, and the Father, and the disciples were not only now born again, but put into the place of sons, as now knowing God and the Father, and having life more abundantly. For a short interval, Acts 2 to 8, the fullness of the revelation of the Gospel was kept back through God bearing with Judaism, and owing to the failure of the twelve, but with Paul the fullness of the Gospel of the glory of the Christ was preached, with a result in accordance with the fullness of the revelation, and men henceforth were responsible to receive the revelation, or else come short of God’s salvation.
Paul’s doctrine is that when you have forgiveness, you know it; when you have justification, you know it, when you have peace, you know it; when you are a son, God sends forth the Spirit of His Son into your heart, and you cry Abba, Father.
Details of doctrine there are, the doctrine orderly developed, as in Rom. 1–8, to the end that the saints may be established, but the possession of the blessings themselves, and the knowledge of them, according to Paul go together.
I believe our brother confounds with many others, “enjoyment,” and “ knowledge,” or “258.” Let me say that the thought is totally different. I may know I have a thing and not enjoy it a bit. So there is not only possession, and apprehension or knowledge of what we possess, but enjoyment too. This last I fully own a saint may lose, but be cannot lose either possession, nor the knowledge of possession, unless as to the last in special cases through false teaching by Judaizing teachers or heretics, such as we see in the Epistle to the Galatians and the 1st Epistle of John. The one he has by the reception of the gospel, the second by the Holy Ghost who ever abides in Him, the third depends on his walk.
Let me direct the attention of our brother to the Epistle to the Philippians, where we have Paul pressing on to apprehend that for which he was already apprehended of Christ Jesus; but where is his start? What were the marks of the true circumcision to begin with? Otherwise they were not that at all! Phil. 3:3,
We are the circumcision who worship God in the Spirit, and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh!
I would ask my brother with all soberness, how is it then that his new Christian sealed by the Spirit, has still confidence in the flesh as in Rom. 7?
I have only to add a few more comparative statements of F.W.G. and the Word of God, taken from page 65-the end, as to the doctrine of Rom. 7.
F. W. G.
Page 65 – “The first and second part of Romans are thus plainly continuous, and it is not contrary to this, that in ch. 7, neither Christ nor the Spirit is mentioned till the question of deliverance comes in.”
Page 88 – “The question in chapter 3–5:11 is clearly justification and peace with God, a question which in the 7th chapter the apostle does not again take up, but that of power to live for God.” Page 67 – “Whilst it is true that Rom. 7 takes one back under law, it is now no longer to show that we are not justified by it, but that it is the practical strength of sin. . . . It is quite a different thing to realize what the flesh is in us as sinners seeking peace, and what it is in us as saints, and children of God, realizing themselves as such; quite a different thing to learn impotency to work out righteousness, and to learn our impotence even as Christians in the
Word of God
Rom. 5:16 – “The judgment was of one offence unto condemnation. The free gift of many offences unto justification.”
v. 17 – “They which receive abundance of grace, and of the gift of righteousness, shall reign in life, by one Jesus Christ.”
v. 18 – “By one righteousness unto all men, unto justification of life.”
v. 19 – “As by one man’s disobedience, the many were made sinners, and by the obedience of one shall the many be made righteous.”
v. 21 – “So might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
Rom. 6:7 – “He that is dead is justified from sin.” Rom. 7:7 – “The law said, thou shalt not lust.”
v. 12 – “The law is just.”
v. 19 – “The good that I would,” viz: the positive
REMARKS
F. W. G. divorces righteousness and justification from Rom. 5:12 to ch. 8.
The texts in the 2nd column show how false this view is.
And here is a man according to t his continuous doctrine, first forgiven and justified (Rom. 3:1 to 5:11). Then afterwards gets eternal life in Christ (Rom. 6:23) to set him free, then has to go under the law, and is brought into bondage to get a fresh apprehension of deliverance afterwards. And yet we are told all these blessings are given to the man when first quickened.
If justification is only found in the 1st part of the Romans; what gives the positive robe of righteousness for heaven is left out, for up to ch. 5:11 we have only the doctrine of justification from sins!
working out of holiness. It should be clear that the first of these belongs to the first part of the Romans, and is decided then, and that the second belongs to the second part, and is quite distinct. To confound these is to confound the Passover and the Red Sea.”
righteousness of the law, “I do not.”
v. 4 – “Ye are become dead to the law by the body of Christ.”
Rom. 8:1 – “There is therefore now no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus.”
I trust my reader will through these few remarks have his eyes opened to the utter confusion of the book, and of the doctrine of our brother.
Again I say how blessedly simply the doctrine of the word of God. First called by the sovereign grace of God, I find myself to be a guilty criminal under sentence of death, an enemy of God, a captive of sin; am brought to repentance and confession of sins, and of my Adam state, the law proving me guilty and giving me the knowledge of sin; I turn away from myself to God and find in Him, through Jesus and His blood, remission of sins, and justification of life, so that on the one hand all my sins are put away by his death, my old man crucified with Him, and on the other hand a positive righteousness in Him, who has died out from under our sins and sin, and risen into a new place before God, having left everything behind that could be brought up against the sinner for judgment. Believing in His Name for the remission of sins, and receiving in Him my new place before God as an accepted man and a son, I am sealed with the Holy Ghost and cry Abba, Father, waiting in that place for the redemption of my body when Christ comes again.
No doubt Rom. 1–8 was written to the end that the saints might be established. We need to be built up and established in an orderly system of doctrine set forward of the different parts of it. But the chapters develop the gospel, which received, is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth.
Eternal Life and the Holy Ghost
I see more and more the importance in these days not only of preaching the gospel to sinners, but of preaching it correctly. There is much of the former, thank God! increasingly so, and very often with much heart, and God blesses it abundantly. Still, the after-fruits sadly show very often that there has been a sad lack of correctness in presenting it, as well as a great want of presenting it in its fullness. Souls lack the enjoyment of solid peace. You find numbers resting on a supposed change that has taken place inside them; others judging whether they are saved by the fruits of faith, resting rather on the Spirit’s work inside, than on Christ’s work and Person outside them. There is need, then, of pressing the truth in its right place, as well as its being pressed home to the heart by the power of the Holy Ghost. Alas! often when the truth is preached correctly and fully there is great want of heart, and there is not near so much blessing in consequence; so Christians should look to the Lord that there should be improvement in this respect, so that a full and correct Gospel presented may be combined with a heart filled with the Holy Ghost, so that out of the belly may flow rivers of living water {see John 7:38}.
May God help me in this as I write this paper, that poor souls may get a taste of God’s living water, that thirsty souls may come to Christ, and live.
It is clear to me that eternal life, as a life in itself, is outside of us. It is the Son of God on high (1 John 5:11). He was the eternal life whilst on the earth, which the apostles had seen with their eyes, handled, looked upon. This life had been with the Father from all eternity, but was manifested in “the Son” on the earth (1 John 1:1, 2) to the apostles. This life—the Son now risen from the dead and glorified—the apostles declared to others, that they, receiving the knowledge of it, might be brought into fellowship (i.e., association in having an object in common) with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ (1 John 1:3), as having in common this eternal life. Again, we know Him that is true, and we are in Him that is true—even His Son Jesus Christ our Lord. This is the true God and eternal life (1 John 5). These passages shew clearly that eternal life is identified with the Person of the Son of God, who was God’s gift to a ruined world,
for God so loved the world, that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have eternal life (John 3:16).
This wondrous Person, then, was born into the world, lived, died, and rose again, and is presented to the sinner as an object of faith, that he by simply believing might himself become a possessor of God’s gift of eternal life.
Now this Person of God’s Son, as the Eternal Life presents Himself to the soul in a double way. 1st, He makes Himself heard by the soul which up to that moment of time lay in a state of moral death without repentance or faith or anything else.
The soul that hears shall live (John 5:25).
Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God (Rom. 10:17).
Thus the man is born again, not of blood, that is naturally, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God (John 1:13).
Then, 2nd, He breathes into every believing soul His own resurrection life, on the reception of the gospel, as the Victorious Son of God over death, as exhibited in the words,
Receive ye the Holy Spirit (John 20:23).
It is not till then that the believer may be said to have received eternal life in its fullness. This second manifestation connects itself, as I have said, with the reception of the gospel, and with the seal of the Holy Ghost.
The great struggle of Rom. 7 scripturally goes on, I believe, between these two manifestations—though it often is prolonged after the soul is saved, through the false teaching of the day. The moment the soul is born again it desires to fulfill the law of God, but alas! it discovers itself fleshly, sold under sin (Rom. 7:14). The good it would it does not, the evil it would not that it does (Rom. 7:15). But then if the will is on the right side then there is a new I, which is not sin, or the flesh. The man is born of God (Rom. 7:16, 17). In the flesh dwells no good thing, the will is on the right side, but how to perform that which is good, alas! there is no power (Rom. 7:18). There is delight in the law of God after the inward man, but there is another law in the members warring against the law of the mind, and bringing him into captivity, till he cries out, Oh, wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me! (Rom. 7:22-24) and he looks away to Christ in glory who communicates to him His own victorious life of resurrection, setting the believing man free from the law of sin and death (Rom. 7:25; 8:2). Thus we must not confound between the new birth, which is the operation of the Holy Ghost inside the man, and eternal life which is in the person of God’s Son, God’s gift, outside the man! (Rom. 6:23).
John 3 brings out very clearly the difference between being born again, and having eternal life. Being born again was necessary for a Jew to enter the kingdom of God, as Nicodemus ought to have known; he needed to have clean water sprinkled upon him, to be morally cleansed by the Word from all his idols, and filthiness, and for a new heart to be given him (see Ezek. 36:25-28), to be fit for the regeneration age of the thousand years of Christ’s reign on His return. But the Lord after reproving Nicodemus for not understanding this, begins to talk about the new heavenly things that He was going to introduce. No one could explain this but the One who had come down from heaven, the Son of man who was in heaven (John 3:12,13). And what, dear reader, was this heavenly thing but the gift of eternal life in the Son to be received by faith—a life that had come down from heaven, but was in heaven all the time, and was going back to heaven. This is expressed in those blessed words,
God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish, but have everlasting life (John 3:16).
And therefore, my dear reader, you have not got to look inside yourself, for God’s gift of eternal life, but to look outside yourself to God’s Son, who is now gone back to the glory, so that believing in Him you “may not perish, but have eternal life.”
My reader, are you born again? This change is necessary, both for heavenly and earthly blessing, even for the most educated and learned, as Nicodemus. Educated life will not do for God; nor will moral life do for Him. It is but the cultivation of the crab-apple tree, which will only produce more crabs. Adam nature is a ruined thing. It has been weighed in the balances, and has been found wanting. It may clothe itself in an archbishop’s dress or a lord’s mantle, but the gorgeous apparel only hides an hideous mass of corruption that comes out of a
heart deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked {Jer. 17:9}.
It lives sumptuously every day and has a gorgeous funeral, and lots of people to applaud it in its career here, but the curtain falls, and then!!! In hell, the man who has been led by it lifts up his eyes in torments. Oh, sinner, awake, awake! Adam life will not do for God, it must be set aside; it is a condemned thing. In Adam you inherit nothing but a sinful nature, and the consequence is death; it produces the dreadful fruits of sins without number, and the rejection of Christ. Own yourself lost, and accept God’s gift of eternal life, His Son Jesus Christ, and you shall rise out of your death, and find a new spring of life outside of yourself, in Christ. You shall inherit a righteous nature, and the end everlasting life. Nay, you need not wait till the end to have Christ, for He said,
He that believeth on Me hath everlasting life (John 3:16).
Have you heard the Son’s voice speaking to your inmost soul! Then you are most assuredly “born again,” and need not trouble about that. What you want now as an awakened, repentant soul is to believe the glad tidings of God’s love in the gift of His Son, and then you will not only rejoice in an inward change but in the fullness of eternal life in God’s dead and risen and glorified Son as imparted to you, and you will rejoice in the known possession of eternal life!
But some one says, I have believed on Christ, and yet I don’t know I have eternal life. Supposing some friend of yours had died at M—, and left a sum of money in the Bank, how would you know you had it, unless one of the trustees, or the banker, wrote to tell you of it? Would you not know it by the letter? And does not John write to believers in his epistle, that God had given to them eternal life, and this life is in His Son, and that He had written these things to them, that they might know that they had eternal life? How blessed this is! and is not God’s word sufficient for any reader of these lines, to make him know, as a believer, that he has eternal life! (1 John 5:11-13). Receiving this witness, my reader, you also receive from an ascended Christ God’s second gift, the Holy Ghost, who bears witness with the believer’s spirit that he is a child of God.
I would dwell a little more on this second gift of God, for the establishment of any child of God who reads these lines. He does two great things which I shall at present dwell on. First, He associates the believer in life with the risen and ascended Christ, bringing Christ as life into the soul. Secondly, He indwells the believer as God. In this way only is eternal life inside us. Christ on the cross not only satisfied the demands of justice, and put away our sins, but He glorified God. That is to say, He not only paid what was due, but did so much on the other side, that God owed to Him a positive debt for what He did. He therefore put Him in the glory. This is what the Saviour alluded to in John 17:4, 5, when he said,
I have glorified thee on the earth, I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do, and now, Father, glorify thou me with Thine own self, with the glory I had with Thee before the world was.
The ascension of Christ was the answer to this. But consequent upon this the Holy Ghost came down, bringing the heavenly Christ into believers’ souls, and dwelling in them as God.
As to the first, Rom. 8:9-11 tells us,
Ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you.
We are no longer associated with Adam, we have passed into a new state, of which the Spirit of Christ is the source and character. It is the Spirit of the risen and ascended Christ, and
if any man have not the Spirit of Christ he is none of His {Rom. 8:9}.
But if Christ is in us, that is our new state. He is a Christ that died, the body is then dead, because of sin, but the Spirit is life because of righteousness (Rom. 8:10). He is likewise the Spirit of Him who raised up Christ from the dead, and if He dwells in you, He will raise up your mortal bodies when Christ comes (Rom. 8:11).
Thus the presence of the Spirit of God in us dissociates us from the Adam state, brings the risen Christ into us, and is the earnest of the future resurrection of the body. Now, numbers of dear saints do not see this blessed truth. Through not seeing their association with the second Man by the Holy Ghost, they look on the flesh, the life of Adam, as part of themselves. They still think of themselves as connected with Adam, and consequently with sin (I am not speaking of sins now). But Rom. 7 teaches us that sin is a distinct thing from the new “ I,” and Rom. 8 teaches us that the new “I” is one with Christ by the Holy Ghost, that the believer is in Christ, and Christ in Him, consequently no longer in Adam. The spirit of life in Jesus Christ has set him free from the law of sin and death, and sin itself is condemned in the flesh by the cross (Rom. 8:2, 3). Oh, the blessedness of this! I see my Adam state, as born in sin, for faith passed away in the death of Christ. I see my new Life—Christ—in the glory, and the Holy Ghost come down brings that Christ into my soul, so that nothing but Christ shines around me. If I look above, I see Christ my righteousness and eternal life! If I look within, there is Christ by the Holy Ghost. If I look forward, there is Christ coming to fetch me to glory. If I look back, I see the cross the end of my history as a child of Adam; all my sins atoned for and put away.
Oh, happy saint of God! why are you ever unhappy? Do you say, Circumstances are all against me? Well, have you not Christ? Are friends taken away? Does not Christ remain? But I have sinned so often, and the Father’s hand is laid on me in chastisement! Does that touch Christ, and God’s sovereign grace? I am crippled for this life; I cannot work for Christ, or talk for Christ, or serve Christ. But have you not Christ, and the glory with Him in the front? Oh then, cheer up, poor sufferer; lift up your head. Sovereign grace has given you Christ and the glory with Him, and though your body be covered with boils from head to foot like Job, eternal life remains, glory be to God! and the glory with Christ.
But besides the Holy Ghost bringing the heavenly Christ as Life into the soul, He dwells there as God. He is a distinct Person from yourself. He bears witness with your spirit that you are a child of God (Rom. 8:16). Believer, know you not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, and you are not your own? (1 Cor. 6:19.) You are bought with a price, even the precious blood of Christ. Christ has gone up on high to prepare a place for you, and is coming again to receive you to Himself (John 14:2, 3); but in the meantime He has sent down the Holy Ghost to take possession of you till that day. You therefore belong to God,—therefore “glorify God in your body, which is His.”
An Answer to Why Messrs. R. & H. Left N. H. H.
In our day of ruin the devil seems bent on attacking the two great truths of Christianity, 1st, the Person of God’s Son; 2nd, the unity of the brethren, or of Christ’s “one body.” In the history of “brethren,” this was first marked in the division of 1848 {Bethesda}, when there was a refusal of those who made division to judge evil doctrine that affected the Person of our Lord Jesus Christ. In the divisions that have taken place in the last 8 or 9 years, the object of the devil has been to destroy the effort of brethren to endeavor
to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace {Eph. 4:3};
notably so in the last attack on the truth by Mr. F. W. G.
I now turn to the subject of the paper before me, where this will be seen. God has allowed it to happen, that those who have been encouraged to write this late paper against “brethren,” are the wrong men to lead their forlorn hope! in their attack against God’s citadel and truth.
There is a well-known proverb, which says, “They who live in glass houses should not throw stones.” But our friends we fear have not this wisdom, and they must expect, if they throw stones at their fellows, that they will get a few back, which in their glass dwellings they will now feel a bit the discomfort of.
It may do them good to tell them that the real reason why they left Natural History Hall was not what they say, but there was a moral reason in the history of both their souls that was at the bottom of their departure, and which if they had judged in God’s presence, they never would have left. This is well known in the case of at least one, i.e. Mr. H., by many of the brethren at Montreal, who know that at the end of a dishonest course, when too, most scandalous things had been going on in his own family and at his own home, as regards him and his wife and son and he had lost the confidence of his brethren, and had found that his ministry was not received in the Assembly, he then sought a reason and excuse for leaving the Assembly, when he had no longer freedom to carry on his ministry publicly there. The other who had been cashier to a firm which had defrauded the Government out of thousands of dollars, still goes on with the firm, though the partner is now dead who did it. An association which lays the suspicion on him of dishonesty! (See Psa. 50:16, 18, first part.) Having said so much as to what is known amongst brethren in Montreal concerning the leaders in this last defection I proceed to their paper.
In page 2 they say, “The teaching of Lord A. P. Cecil, supported as it was by Mr. Mace, of first life by new birth, and afterwards the gift of eternal life for the believer, got possession of our minds, and reconciled us to the excision of the brother who was directly opposed to this, (as we then thought) fundamental truth.”
Now they know, or ought to know, that this is putting our teaching under false colors. I have never to my knowledge separated eternal life and new birth. If they had taken the trouble to look at the tract, “Eternal Life and the Holy Ghost,” they would have read this, (page 2, line 11 from bottom), “Now the Person of God’s Son, as the Eternal Life, presents Himself to the soul in a double way. 1st. He makes Himself heard by the soul, which up to that moment of time lay in a state of moral death, without repentance or faith or anything else. ‘The soul that hears shall live.’ John 5:25. ‘Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.’ Rom. 10:17. Thus the man is born again, ‘not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.’ John 1:13.
“2nd. He breathes into every believing soul His own resurrection life, on the reception of the gospel, as the victorious Son of God over death, as exhibited in the words, ‘Receive ye the Holy Ghost.’ John 20:23. It is not till then that the believer may be said to have received eternal life in its fullness.”
Again, if these men would only have taken the trouble to look into the paper called “Remarks on a Tract called ‘Life and the Spirit,’ with a Sequel,” they would have read these words, “now as to eternal life, in one sense they do have it, (that is from the first moment of quickening), [see the sentence preceding;] for no doubt quickening is from the Son, who was the eternal life with the Father from all eternity! ‘The Son quickens whom He will!’ John 5:21. But this is not eternal life in the full Christian sense of it,” etc., page 2.
Now I leave this to brethren to judge whether eternal life is separated from new birth. All that is said is that the fullness of it is not received till the reception of the gospel, and till the Spirit of life of the risen Christ breathed into them sets them free from the law of sin and death. Will these brethren deny this? I answer if they do they have denied the Christian state. And this is what their leader calls a doctrine of double quickening.
“Brethren” can well understand that a man can form a pool of water from the waters of a river close by, and then afterwards let in further and ever- inflowing supply that brings a fountain there, that shall ever keep the waters of that pond fresh. Will such call these two supplies, two ponds of water, or two kinds of water, as Mr. G. tries to fasten on the writer of the “Sequel,” two new births, or two lives, etc. He knows that what he said is false, and knows that the accusation is down-right wickedness. New birth and the further inflow of the living water by and in the Holy Ghost afterwards, are not two different lives, or two new births, but life and life in abundance, as Scripture says.
Let me tell this leader, that if he does not know what he is about, Satan knows well what he is about, and under cover of a charge of a doctrine of double quickening, he is trying to rob the brethren of what constitutes the true Christian state. He denies there is any communication of either life or the Holy Ghost in John 20:22. (See page 72 1st paragraph, “Life in Christ and Sealing with the Spirit.”)
Now after these plain statements what were these men doing just previous to leaving the assembly? Why, just trying to make out that what had been taught by A.P.C. and A.M. {Alfred Mace} was that new birth was in no sense eternal life, and that eternal life was a thing received afterwards. Now I call this positive wickedness. They say we thought you held that. I say, you have no right to think, you have the plain statements given in the tracts, and then you put a color on the teaching of the brother which altogether changes his meaning, and it is to catch the brethren in the same net you have been caught in yourselves.
But in vain the net is laid in the sight of any bird. And perhaps now, in the light of this paper, it may begin to dawn upon some that Mr. Pollock does not teach such different doctrine as to life to what A.P.C. does, as these men try to make out. Mr. Pollock holds that at new birth the believer has eternal life, as far as it is in the Son Himself, outside him, and as begun in the soul of the believer. Life through the Son! But Mr. Pollock also holds, as far as I know, with the writer that the possession of “eternal life in the Son,” as received in the gospel, and brought into the soul by the Holy Ghost, is something far more than new birth. We are now not only new-born, but “in the Son,” and “the Son in us.” And I would ask the writers of this paper how do they think that A.P.C. could go on in fellowship with Mr. Pollock, and that the year after the conference at Montreal took place, where the difference in sentiment is said to have taken place, in six or seven conferences all around the United States and Canada, if there had been the difference they try to make out between him and A.P.C. So I throw this charge back into their face, and I have no doubt that Mr. Pollock when he reads their paper will be as astonished as I am at their foul effort to make division between brethren. Perhaps they have forgotten that this is one of the seven abominable things the Lord hates.
I insert here an extract from a letter received by our brother, F. Hart, sr., from Mr. Pollock, dated Nov. 9th, 1887, after he had just received intelligence of the withdrawal of F.R. and Mr. Harper from Natural History Hall, as to some remarks Mr. H. has made about Mr. Pollock agreeing with their notions as to eternal life; “His charge against Guignard, Lowe and myself of holding the same doctrines that he does is absurd, and we may well pass it over. I should have thought that my tract was enough to have stopped his charge against me, and certainly Lowe’s book ought to have been enough to have cleared him.”
As to what Mr. Lowe said I have no knowledge. All I can say is that though there were small points of difference in doctrine, we were fundamentally on the same ground, and to the last we had fellowship together in the things of the Lord.
Who said, “a soul could be born again apart from the person and work of Christ?” I know not! They say, page 3, line 7 from bottom, “This, with what previously had been learned through Mr. Pollock, delivered him from Lord Cecil’s teaching; but it also led him to see that the excision of Mr. Grant was unrighteous.”
Oh, indeed! And so a supposed notion that error was held, or a little difference as to “eternal life” between two brethren, which has by no means separated these two brethren one from the other, led Mr. R. from Lord C.’s teaching, and made him see that Mr. Grant’s excision was unrighteous!
And let me seriously ask Mr. R., And do you believe that Natural History Hall put Mr. G. out for a little difference as to “eternal life,” such as he speaks about? Has he so forgotten the issue, or did the truth never get hold of him?
Let me tell him that it was not a difference about eternal life that was the great ground of separation from Mr. G. as to doctrine, but it was the practical denial of what “unity” is. Let me turn him, as he seems to forget, to the first head as to Mr. G.’s doctrine, put forward in the protest of 38 brethren against it.
“1st. That Old Testament saints were ‘in the Son,’ by virtue of being quickened with the life that is in Him, (pages 13, 14,) there being no proof that eternal life in the Son (John 17:3) was given at all in the Old Testament, He being then in the Elohim, not yet manifested, though in Himself, He was ever the Eternal Life with the Father, as all receive. Moreover ‘in the Son’ is shown from John 10:31-38 to signify oneness, it being there oneness between the Father and the Son, and in John 12:24; 14:20; 17:20, 21, as regards us, to mean oneness with Him in spirit, life and nature, and involving union, which could not be till redemption was accomplished, figured by the corn of wheat, one with it, the children of one family, one with the Son, He being their one life before God and the Father, and He one life in them, making them one family before the world.”
Now where does Mr. R. find here that a difference about eternal life was the great question? The point was what was unity, and what was not. Did he never remark, moreover, that when “eternal life” was mentioned in the protest words “in the Son” were carefully added. What was insisted on was that “in the Son” signified to be one. Mr. Grant stood up and said, “Oneness is not a scriptural term! ‘In the Son’ and ‘one with the Son’ are not the same thing; ‘In the Father’ and one with the Father’ are not the same thing. (See statement signed by John James, Lyman and others, page 8, line 12.)
Again, He said, “Scripture teaches that new birth is ‘life in the Son.’ If Old Testament saints were born again, then they had ‘life in the Son.’” (Page 9.) Again, “‘In the Son’ means ‘life in the Son.’” (Page 14, “Life in Christ, &c.”)
So here was the plain issue. Mr. G. denied that the expression which means the unity of the brethren, “in the Son,” before the Father, meant to be one, and he said that that expression signified “new birth,” and that Old Testament saints were therefore “in the Son.”
Now I say that this is a distinct denial of what constitutes the unity of the brethren before the Father, and I would say more, it denies that which expresses the unity between the Son and the Father! The Lord prayed in John 17:20, 21,
That they all may be one, as thou Father art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us.
The unity was to be after the manner of the Son’s unity with the Father, and the Father’s unity with the Son, and the Lord prayed that they might be one (how? In us! And yet Mr. G. teaches that this was true in the Old Testament when Old Testament believers could not possibly be one, but when they were born of God. The Lord prays for it as a future thing that was never true till then. I say this is a distinct denial of the very ground brethren stand upon, as to unity, as far as the truth of “the brethren” goes, and beyond that it attacks the truth of the unity between the Father and the Son, which the terms “in the Son” and “in the Father” mean. Fancy the Father being in the Son by virtue of birth, or the Son in the Father in like manner! The absurdity of what this doctrine leads to shows its falsity.
So “unity” in the Son of God does involve “union,” though not the same thing; it was never true till Christ breathed into His disciples, and the Holy Ghost came down from heaven on the day of Pentecost. And it is not to be “in Deity,” as Mr. Grant teaches, but it is alone in the glorified Man who accomplished redemption.
It was Mr. Grant taught that to be “in the Son” signified to be “in Deity,” as Mr. Radford and H. well know. In controversies that went on, he said, “The Gospel of John is the Gospel of His Deity, ‘the only-begotten,’ not the First- begotten.’ The former is exclusive, and this is the force of the term ‘Son of God’ all through John’s Gospel. When He says ‘in us’ (alluding to John 17:21,) that is ‘Deity!’” (See Statement signed by J. James, Lyman, etc., page 8.)
Now, that the chief point in John’s Gospel is concerning the Son of God as “the only-Begotten,” which is the term signifying His eternal relationship with the Father, no one denied! But that the term “Son of God” excluded reference to His manhood, was denied, and it was insisted, as Messrs. R. and H. very well know, that no saint could be “in the Son” till after He had become a man, had died, risen, and was glorified, and that unity in the Son of God was alone true as to us in this manner, yet they dare to charge us in the paper with holding union with “Deity.” They know it is a false accusation, put into their hearts by “the accuser of the brethren.” (Page 5, line 8-bottom of page.)
In their quotation from the protest, they quote the sentence, to suit their accusation, “‘In the Son’ is oneness with Him in spirit, life and nature, involving union,” and carefully leave out what follows, which explains all, “which could not be for any till redemption was accomplished, figured by the corn of wheat, one with it,” etc., the figure of Jesus as Son of Man going into death!
How any honest brethren can go on too, with a leader that makes the astounding statement, (in his tract on “Relation of Assemblies,” by F.W.G., there giving as the alone ground for the separation at Montreal, that “Some of us have separated from the doctrine that Old Testament saints had life in the Son,” I cannot understand. There is a public falsehood that he knows is a lie, put forth before the whole brethren. And as leader, so are the led. They shirk the main question, and try and make it out to be a difference about “eternal life,” and supposing things of their brethren that they never held! No doubt this subject was touched on, and forcible reasons given against pressing what they taught that Old Testament saints had eternal life. But that was not the main question. It was what was “unity,” and what was not. And I boldly say that Mr. G. denies it by his doctrine.
“Community of life and nature,” (he says) “realized in dependence, and manifested in community of word and work, this is what the terms we have been looking at imply. They are the Lord’s own words, moreover, as we have seen, which affirm their similar meaning when applied to Himself and the Father or to His people in the Son and in the Father, ‘as thou Father art in me, and I in thee, that they may be one in us.’”
“This cannot be standing,” etc. (“Life in Christ and Sealing with the Spirit,” page 11, 7th line from bottom.)
So it is not unity, but community of life and nature, moreover it is realized in dependence, where is unity then? and manifested in community of word and work? It shows the writer has no notion of what constitutes either the unity between the Son and Father, nor the unity of the brethren in the Son before the Father, and he also denies the position this gives. It is a common nature got by new birth, that is all. The unity and position the unity gives is entirely taken away from us.
What wonder is it that these brethren, not seeing what “unity” is, have gone off the ground, and made division, and whoever they add, they only increase the sin of it.
I have nothing to say as to the way some of the brethren have misunderstood what I have endeavored to teach. I have only to repeat that I have never disowned the link between new birth and eternal life, only I have ever said that eternal life is more than new birth, hence the gift of God, which is eternal life in the Son, is only received in the gospel after new birth, though it may have quickened before that reception, and this gives deliverance. Christ breathing into the disciples His own Spirit of life at the same time. Eternal life in the Son is something outside of man altogether, in the Son in heaven.
As to Rom. 5:12-21, which Mr. H. in a most unseasonable time spoke on at the Lord’s Table, I have only to repeat what a brother wrote to Mr. Radford, “Explain, ‘Did grace reign from Adam to Moses?’” What answer could he give to that? Did grace reign under law? Is it not since our Lord came in the flesh that grace reigns? I would add. When did it reign through righteousness? the only answer could be, at the cross! Well then, lastly, when did “unto eternal life” come in? The only answer could be, in the resurrection of Christ, and the glory afterwards! The whole doctrine of the passage is going forward, and not going back. Adam brought in sin, death and condemnation on all his descendants; Christ, become Head, after death and resurrection, brought in grace, righteousness and eternal life to all those connected with Him. Do we deny that Old Testament saints are now or will be in glory partakers of these blessings? Nay. (We have doubtless more.) But we deny they stood in them then, that is all! And is this all you have, Mr. H. for going out?
Page 15.—And so after all their show of liberality and saying they could break bread with us, but we could not with them, they at last apply Rom. 16:17 to Lord C. I suppose this is because he applied it pretty often to them, but in soberness.
I take up the doctrine we have learnt from Rom. 7. Here is a party supporting a man who says that a man who cries out, “I am fleshly, sold under (or a slave to) sin,” who habitually breaks (nay always) “every commandment of the law,” and who cries out, “Oh, wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me!” is a man who is justified and has got the Holy Ghost! (See Rom. 7:14, 19, 24. Compare with Craig st. Circular, Dec. 19th, 1884, page 3.)
“I maintain it fully, as others also have, that the man in the experience of Rom. 7 is a sealed man!” “I believe,” he says again, “that the experience of Rom. 7 is the break-down, not of a sinner seeking peace and acceptance with God, but of a saint seeking holiness, etc.” (“Life in Christ,” &c., page 8; see also pages 66 and 67.)
He teaches also (“Life in Christ and Sealing with the Spirit,” page 27, line 5), “Thus the one born of God can never be in the flesh.”
Now the Word of God teaches that “where the Spirit of the Lord is there is liberty,” not when born of God. “The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.” “Sin shall not have dominion over you, for ye are not under the law but under grace.” (2 Cor. 3:17; Rom. 8:2; 6:14.)
Rom. 7 is a man under bondage, under the law, “sin has dominion over him,” he is not free. Moreover, the 1 Tim. 1 teaches that to apply the law to a righteous man is misapplying it, for it was not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless, etc. The Epistle to the Galatians teaches that applying the law to Christians, or to those sealed with the Spirit, was another gospel, which made the teachers of it accursed, and he would they would cut themselves off that troubled them. Gal. 1, 5. And this proves that Rom. 7 cannot be the experience of a righteous man, or one sealed, as the passages in the preceding paragraph also show.
But he answers, I don’t teach that he is under law, it is only as to his own conscience, he thinks he is. Fancy a wife divorced from an old husband and married to another, being under conscience to the old all the time!
I answer this doctrine teaches moral adultery from Rom. 7:1-4, for the husband is alive, and the woman alive to him as to conscience, and yet she belongs to Christ at the same time, according to Mr. G.’s doctrine; it is as if a woman could be to two husbands at one time, instead of being dead and risen with Christ, and separated in conscience, heart, and everything from the old one. Who is teaching contrary to the doctrine we have learnt from the Epistle to the Romans? I answer unhesitatingly this teacher is doing so, and his party is supporting him. So I send back their charges on themselves, and let God defend the right.
And is this a small difference of doctrine, such as whether Old Testament saints have “life in the Son”? As to Mr. R. applying Eph. 4:3 to the writer for teaching contrary to the doctrine we have learned, I append an extract from the Synopsis, from Titus 3:10:—
When a man tried to set up his own opinions, and by that means to form parties in the Assembly, after having admonished him once and a second time, he was to be rejected; his faith was subverted. He sins, he is judged of himself. He is not satisfied with the assembly of God, with the truth of God: he wants to make a truth of his own. Why is he a Christian, if Christianity, as God has given it, does not suffice him? By making a party for his own opinions he condemns himself.
And when added to this, there is Mr. G.’s teaching on “Propitiation and Substitution,” and the denial of “local unity” in an assembly in a city—And further misty teaching in his book on the “Numerical Structure of Scripture,” in which if I followed him, I should be “constrained” by his division of the Old Testament Scripture into 36 books, which he divides into the numbers 3 x 12, (page 55) to be led into the belief that the Trinity was revealed in the Old Testament, 3 being according to his own interpretation “the fullness of Godhead in manifestation”—Also that “the unity of the Godhead and God as Creator” is revealed in the New—(See page 64 and 110, from his division of the Bible into 5 Pentateuchs, 4 in the Old and 1 in the New.)—For “one,” according to his own interpretation, signifies “God in unity,” or as “Creator”—I say, thank you, Mr. G., I had rather abide in the old paths, I don’t know where you are leading me to, and when I am caught in the maze, or the far galleries of the supposed metal mine discovered, (page 1), how am I to get out, when my lantern-bearer falls, and his lantern goes out. Truly he is leading his followers not into the heavenly places in Christ, but into the bowels of the earth, how far no one knows!
And am I, after all these years, to learn that the Bible is come from the mould of the Pentateuch. (Paul’s Epistles too, moreover,) and that these Epistles are divided into 2 Pentateuchs, 5 individual Epistles and 5 collective, (see pages 62 & 123) and that two of the individual ones (i.e. giving the saints their individual position before God) are Ephesians and Colossians? (Page 124) Oh, I say, have pity, this is poor cold teaching. I have learnt better from my God and Father and from the teachers he has sent, and can thank Him that he gave the Natural History Hall Assembly power to manifest Mr. G. as a heretic and that he was righteously put away as a wicked person. And as for his poor followers, (haughty indeed in Montreal, when, in rebellion against the Lord who put one away, they go out, and three days after set up a new table,) I unfeignedly pray often that God would give them repentance to the acknowledgment of the truth, who are led captive by the devil at his will, lest they should have to face the Lord at His judgment seat in their sin!
Plainfield, in accepting the Craig st. table and receiving Mr. Grant after he had been put away for heresy, and deciding against Montreal under his influence, plainly acted in independence of the Lord’s authority, and is a schismatic table.
Lastly, page 21, in answer to their considerations as to the righteousness of putting away Mr. Grant:—
1st. Was Mr. Grant a heretic? He was. He formed a party by his evil doctrines of denying “unity,” mixing up law and grace, Judaism and Christianity together!
2nd. We have no delegate from an apostle now appointed over the Assemblies, or apostles; but we have the writings of the apostle to the delegate, telling him to have done with, or reject a heretic. If a master in a house has done with a servant, does the servant continue inside or outside the house? If he is put out, is it right for the household to go out with him? or to obey the Master, or the steward that carries out Master’s wishes?
3rd. A gathering is bound to obey apostolic authority given through a delegate.
4th. The word “reject” is as strong a word as “put away.” It is the same word as is used for refusing to hear the Lord who speaks to us from heaven! (Heb. 12:25), and for refusing widows from the number to be supported, (1 Tim. 4).
Therefore, (page 22),
1st, to remain with Natural History Hall is not what the Lord calls as unrighteousness.
2nd. The teaching, whether Old Testament saints had eternal life or not, was not the ground of putting away Mr. G.
3rd. I have shown that their interpretation of what A.P.C. and A.M. teach of life and afterwards eternal life being given is a false interpretation.
4th. There is no subjection of conscience demanded to English brethren, but the exhortation “to keep the unity of the Spirit” with all brethren!
Now, Messrs. R. and H. what have you to say as to leaving Natural History
Hall, unless a moral reason as shown at the beginning?
I thank God that opportunity is given now for correcting false statements and notions, that have been circulated far and wide amongst brethren, putting the question on a false basis before them. I repeat that it is not merely a question as to the true nature of eternal life, which I believe most important, and hold most firmly that God in His nature and as Father was never known in the Old Testament, nor the Son who was the eternal life for (?) He was never manifested till the incarnation; (?) God was until (?) Christ came, hid behind a vail. Where was “the life of God” seen in the Old Testament saint? It was never a question as to whether Old Testament saints had or had not eternal life. But Mr. Grant’s doctrine that Old Testament saints were “in the Son,” involved the denial of “unity” which he publicly did in the teaching, (?) As has been shown. It is shown now, besides, that it touches the truth of the “unity” between the Father and the Son. Moreover, his practical denial of any interval of time between the receiving of “new birth” and the “Holy Ghost,” left no room for repentance. There was the mixture of law and grace in his teaching on Rom. 7; and lastly, a man had all the blessings of Christianity at new birth without knowing them, the gospel being merely the means of his apprehending what he possessed before at new birth!
By this system of evil doctrine he made a party, proved publicly and independently in three of the largest Assemblies in Canada, as also in Philadelphia, one of the largest Assemblies in the States; and as making a party by his evil doctrine, he came under the title of a heretic, and on this account he was righteously put away.
I add a little extract from the judgment, as it has been spread far and wide that the action against Mr. Grant was simply for making a party, and that the doctrine by which he made the party was a thing of little or no moment.
“ASSEMBLY MEETING, Dec. 10th, 1884
It being now manifest that the Protest of Brethren of the 29th November, against the doctrines of Mr. F. W. Grant, as brought out in his late publication, “Life in Christ and Sealing with the Spirit,” has failed to produce, any retractation, but that, on the contrary, Mr. Grant is maintaining the attitude he assumed, when the Protest was read, i.e:, that he would hold to every word he had therein written; and as this admonition has failed to check the determined course of schism he is still adopting, the Assembly gathered to the Name of the Lord, in Montreal, believe the time has come, when the only course left is to obey the command of the Apostle, given in Titus 3:10: “A man that is a heretic, after the first and second admonition, reject!
By this it will be seen clearly that the ground for declaring him a heretic was the system of evil doctrine he held. He caused divisions by bringing in doctrines contrary to the doctrine we had learnt. He made the heresy by his evil doctrines!
Letter
MONTREAL, February 29th, 1888.
Dear Brethren,
Some of you will have received a “re-translation” of a letter translated into French, written in 1881, by J. N. D., on “Eternal Life.” Not having the original copy, it was re-translated from a French translation of the original written in English. In comparing it with the original there were found a good many changes, in some of which the meaning was somewhat changed. It was carelessly headed by myself “Copy of Letter of J. N. D. on Eternal Life,” whereas it was really a “translation” of another translation in the French. Lest the enemy should take advantage, I send out this explanation. The letter was felt to be so good that the writer translated it from a French translation put into my hands, and we sent it out for the benefit of the saints, not knowing that the original letter was printed. Trusting that the Lord will overrule all mistakes to His glory.
I am,
Yours in Him,
A. P. CECIL.