Further Remarks open Righteousness and Law, with Answers to different Objections. London: W. H. Broom.
The following extract will suffice to introduce this pamphlet to the reader:
I close by stating, as briefly as I can, what the real question in all this controversy is, and what I believe to be the truth as to it. My opponents hold that we are all under the law, and that Christ, born under the law, kept it for us, and that this is the way we are justified and obtain righteousness. It is well my readers should recall that all this controversy arose from the preaching of Mr. Molyneux, in Exeter Hall, who declared that if a man was born again of the Spirit, and washed in Christ's blood, still he could not go to heaven; that there was written on heaven's gates, Do this and live;” that we are sanctified by the Spirit, cleansed by Christ's blood, but had positive righteousness only by the law’s being kept. As to which, remark it is not merely that the law is a rule of life which is asserted, but specifically that righteousness comes by the law. All this I reject, founding my opposition on the plain and repeated statements on the Word of God. It is making a righteousness in flesh for men in the flesh by the law to which they are, as in the flesh, subject; and, moreover, at the same time, excusing their fulfilling it actually, by another's doing it for them. But, specially, it is a first Adam righteousness, a righteousness for man in flesh.
Now, I believe that it is not the mind of God to set up righteousness of man in flesh, or to set up sinful flesh again in any way. He has put the saints in a wholly new position in the second Adam, passing sentence of death and condemnation on the flesh never to be removed. Christ, as come down here, in the likeness of sinful flesh, but perfectly sinless, come under the law, in the place and circumstances where man was, but having entered into them by a miraculous birth, as every Christian owns, was perfect in this place, glorified God in it. And all that perfectness was needed for God's glory, and for His being our Savior; but He did not do it to set up man in the flesh again, (flesh had proved in His death its hopeless enmity to God,) but to bring man into a wholly new state, (where even Adam innocent had never been,) by resurrection, Himself the first fruits. The Old Testament saints having to await our entering into it to be made perfect with us. The Lord Jesus gives us a place, not under law, but in resurrection, and finally with Himself risen Hence the blessed Lord, to glorify His Father, yea, God's own nature in this behalf, not only, as I have said, was perfect, and kept the law in the midst of temptations, glorifying God in every way in life, but through the Eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, bearing our sins and the wrath due to them, taking the curse of the law on Himself—thus cleared the believer perfectly, having by one offering perfected forever them that are sanctified. We, believing in Him, are clear, justified from all things which attached to us, in our position of men in flesh. But flesh in His death is judged, condemned, and sentenced forever. But this was as not all. He glorified God perfectly in dying. Now is the Son of man glorified, and God is glorified in Him. Hence, raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, God has glorified Him in Himself, and straightway. This is witnessed in His resurrection and, we may add, ascension. But He is raised again for our justification and appears in the presence of God for us. Hence we have justification of life, and from him risen a wholly new life, standing, and nature, though we have the treasure in an earthen vessel, standing before God as to acceptance, in the acceptance He is in, by His glorifying God in what He stood in for us, on the cross. We are not in the flesh at all; not in the flesh. but in the Spirit; and the Spirit of God dwelling in us, we know we are in Him and He in us. It is a new creation, where what belongs to the old things is passed away. Hence, when in Christ, we reckon ourselves dead to sin, to the old man, and the law, alive to God by Jesus Christ thus risen and gone on high, when had by Himself purged our sins. Our place in the Spirit is wholly in Him, according to the power of the life of the second Adam, risen front the dead. We are dead and our life is hid with Christ in God. This it is connects inseparably godliness and justification. Christ is both righteousness and life to us. We are in Him for one, He in us as the other, the Spirit given to us giving us the consciousness of it (John 14) This, and not our being under law, is the true way of godliness. It is not the imposition of human righteousness on flesh which world it not; but the display of the life of Christ in us. Against that as the Apostle says, speaking of the fruits of the Spirit, there is no law. The safeguard of this is not changing the principle and putting us back, under law, which Scripture forbids, but the precepts, commandments, example of Christ, the government of God, and the discipline of the church itself.
Our acceptance is in the whole of the work of Christ, and in Himself who has done it, and that according to the value God has, and has manifested for it, in virtue of which Christ sits at His right hand, and we in Him. To return into flesh and law, is to ruin and subvert all this. It is not Christianity. The man who only sees that Christ has died for him, knows what justifies him from all his sins as a man in flesh, has the ground of peace, and is a Christian; the man who sees that he is risen with Christ, and in Him, in God's presence, according to the glorifying of God by the man Christ Jesus, knows his acceptance in the beloved, and the character of it. Christ is his righteousness. He knows what the righteousness of God is—that He is made it in Christ, who was made sin for us. He who brings us buck under law, brings us hack into flesh, and subverts the whole truth. It may be only a blunder in His mind, and he may sincerely trust in Christ's precious blood, and he a Christian; but all is obscured and muddied by his views; he cannot stand in the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free. He does not know what it is to be dead with Christ; to reckon himself dead; nor risen with Him; nor sitting in heavenly places in Him. All this is dark to him, as we have seen in those who have written against this view. Being dead to sin they openly deny, save as dead to their guilt, to which, on the contrary, they ought to be ever alive; and being in resurrection in Christ, is a hopeless riddle to them.