No spiritual mind that sees the antichristian character of the Irvingite community, as tested by the person and the work of Christ, can look for truth in its application. For the center of all is false and evil; yet it may not be amiss to prove their wanderings from the word of God here also. And the work of Mr. Sitwell, the apostle of Spain and Portugal (or in their strange dialect, of the tribe of Naphtali), “Creation and Redemption,” the third edition of which lies before me, furnishes the means of ascertaining their views authoritatively.
The treatment of justification is characteristic of the body, for he professes to combine the disjointed fragments of doctrine, and to put each in its place, as well as to repudiate the falsehoods that have been added to it. Thus he hopes to show how needlessly the high churchman is divided from the low, justification being not only imputed at first but imparted at last. Here is this “end of controversy.” “There are seven ways mentioned in scripture, or which can be fairly deduced from it, whereby a man is justified. These are—1, Faith. 2, Blood of Jesus Christ. 3, Righteousness of Christ. 4, Word of Christ, by means of the ministers of the church. 5, Sacraments of the church. 6, Works. 7, Resurrection. In each of these seven the double sense and power of justification, viz., imputation and impartation, will be found in operation” (p. 231).
To any intelligent Christian this suffices. It is pretentious and deplorable confusion, the effect of which is to darken the truth and perplex every one heeding it. “What saith the scripture?” There is but one way or principle in which a soul is justified. It is by faith (έκ π. Rom. 5:1), as the apostle had expressly laid down before, apart from works of law, the only other way conceivable—the very way whereby he had said no flesh shall be justified in God's sight, Rom. 3:20, 28. The blood of Jesus is not another way, but the efficacious ground (Rom. 3:25; 5:9), for it cleanses from every sin; and His resurrection is the proof and living witness of its acceptance (Rom. 4:24, 25). Undoubtedly it is. God reckoning faith for righteousness, as in Abram's case (Rom. 4), for the soul believing on God that justifies the ungodly (ver. 5), as David also testifies. If we ask the source therefore, it is grace—God's grace (Titus 3:7), and no desert of man whatever. The gospel meets him as a lost sinner: therein is God's righteousness revealed, for all is over with man's. But so glorified is God with Christ's work on the cross that He can be and is just and the justifier of him that has faith in Jesus. To say, “Yet the justifier,” &c., shows God's righteousness to be unknown.
Nor is this all. The salvation of the gospel embraces God's dealing in the cross with sin, as well as our sins, the root no less than the fruit. What he is troubles the renewed soul as much or more than past evil deeds. Has this been overlooked of God? In no wise. As Adam is the fallen head, Jesus is the living one; for without dying He had abode alone. It is not only that Christ died for us: we who believe are entitled to say that we died with Him. This if we were dumb is the expression of our baptism. We were baptized unto His death; that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness of life. Accordingly this we know, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away, that so we should no longer be slaves to sin. For he that died (the Christian) has been and is justified from sin. It is our abiding status since redemption. Nevertheless, as Galatians enables each to say, “I live; yet not I but Christ liveth in me” —Christ risen our life. Ours is, as Rom. 5 calls it, a “justification of life.” Baptism however is the sign of our death with Christ, the sole efficacy being His work, on which faith rests before God; and as 1 Corinthians 10 warns, all is ruin where there is not life. But life is only by the faith of Christ, and therefore through the word and Spirit (John 3:3, 5, 6; James 1:18 Peter 1:23-25; 1 John 5:1, 4, 5). Indeed this is necessarily implied in faith which cannot be without God's revealed word (Rom. 10 I 7), of which Christ is the object and center, and now for the Christian His accomplished work also.
What then does James 2 mean? Not at all the justifying of a sinner before God, but that of a true professor as distinguished from a false one before men. Hence says he, “Show me thy faith apart from works, and I by my works will show thee my faith.” And this is strikingly confirmed by the samples alleged; for faith alone gave true character to Abram's offering up of Isaac or Rahab's receiving the spies: without it, what had either work been? Murder, or treason, as is clear.
And this entirely falls in with the Epistle of James, which does not, like most of Paul's, bring out the wonders of Christ's blood, death, and resurrection, and ascension. His object is to insist on practical reality in those who professed the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, Lord of glory. Hence he speaks in his first chapter not only of faith and enduring temptation, but of that intrinsic life which grace gives to those otherwise dead. “Of His own will He begat us by the word of truth that we should be a kind of first-fruits of His creatures.” A Christian walk is the effect, and ought to be the expression, of the life we have in Christ. It is, as the apostle says, faith working by love, the only faith of value in the sight of God. It would seem that there was excessive danger for Israel (a danger now so long prevalent in Christendom) of a merely sentimental or intellectual faith, not insincere but without a real work of the Spirit of God's word in the conscience, a faith resting on evidence or tradition, to which our Lord did not trust Himself (John 2). Man “must be born again.” This only produces reality. “He that believeth hath everlasting life.” This therefore is what James throughout insists on, rather than Christ's blood, however indispensable this may be for cleansing us from all sin. But even the acknowledgment of Christ's blood might be without living faith, as we see in Hebrews 10. Those were not wanting even in early days, who after being thus set apart had given it up and sinned willfully, counting the blood of the covenant an unholy thing. Good reason there was then for insisting on a new nature in Christ as the basis of practical holiness.
No believer doubts what the portion of the saints will be when changed at Christ's coming. But it will only be the displayed perfection of what grace has now given us, and given us to know by the Spirit. We shall be found in Christ, not having a righteousness of our own, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith. Yet are we not waiting for righteousness then; but, as the same apostle tells us, we through the Spirit by faith wait for the hope of righteousness (that is, heavenly glory). The righteousness we have already in Christ entitles us by God's word to look for nothing less, even as Christ is already entered in personally; and we shall be with Him and like Him.
Mr. S. confounds (p. 236) baptism with water, important as it is outwardly, with baptism in virtue of the Spirit, which scripture strongly distinguishes; he surpasses a Jew in his idolatry of the sacraments, but in this hardly worse than millions outside Irvingism. Only it is to be remarked here that the fatal virus peculiar to their company reappears in p. 251: “So our Lord, having come into flesh, always laid down His life as a sacrifice to God While our Lord died daily, and we are called to imitate Him in this,” &c. Now this is not only misconception in every way, and false, but most evil. Death, death with Christ in His death, is the necessary way of life for us, sinful as we are, even though a new creation in Christ: to make it so for Christ is blasphemy. These statements betray the old heterodoxy as to our Lord's person. What else is the meaning of His always laying down His life and dying daily?
But the truth of revelation is that we died with Christ. So elsewhere we are called to “mortify our members,” that is, to put them to death, but never to die, as the mystics think and teach, ignorant of what grace gives us in Christ dead and risen. Our old man was crucified with Him. Therefore are we to reckon ourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. But that Christ had anything to die to daily is the worst of slanders. Our comfort of faith is that we died with Him when He died. When the apostle speaks of dying daily, he refers to his constant exposure to literal death, and not at all to the Christian doctrine which Mr. S. misunderstands, not only for us but, alas! for the Lord, the Holy One of God. They may strive to conceal this deadly wound to the truth and to His glory; but it cannot be hid. The leveling down of Christ and the leveling up of ourselves naturally go together, both wholly in opposition to God's word.
The idolatry of ordinances accompanies both, evil enough in a Jew ignorant of the Messiah: how much more terrible is the unbelief, now that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding that we may know Him that is true, and we are in Him that is true, even in His Son Jesus Christ!
Of sanctification personally, that first action of the Spirit which sets us apart to God in new birth, before peace and liberty, Mr. S. knows nothing. It is clearly laid down in 1 Peter 1:2, as well as in 1 Corinthians 6:11, &c. He only speaks of it, and even so speaks feebly and imperfectly, as one seeing no more than is seen in Christendom generally. He had not learned that the Holy Spirit invariably works by keeping the eye on Christ. See 2 Corinthians 3 and the N. T. as a whole. We are Christ's epistle in the world, and can only reflect Him aright by walking in the Spirit, as we live in the Spirit, Who is here to glorify Christ.
This is strikingly shown in John 17 “Sanctify them by (or, in) the truth; Thy word is truth. As Thou hast sent Me into the world, I also have sent them into the world; and for their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they also may be sanctified by truth” (ver. 17-19). There are thus in His mind two especial means of Christian sanctification: the Father's word, the truth: and Christ set apart on high as the glorified man Who forms, as the personal model before our faith.
It is accordingly no question now of the law, grave as its function is when used lawfully; nor yet of prophecy unveiling the government of the world. Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. The Father sent Him into the world that we might know His word—know it in Him that is true. And now sent into the world by Him Whose death has severed His own from the world, they behold Him in heaven, as the further power of fashioning them spiritually. Both are needed, and both are given. Christ was infinitely more than the obedient man under law; He was the manifestation of God in man. He that had seen Him had seen the Father. The only-begotten Son Who is in the bosom of the Father, alone did, alone could, reveal Him; He manifested the truth about every one and everything, and this in grace—in a love superior to evil.
But while this was the essential and first want which only He, the Son of God yet a man in the world, could supply, ver. 19 adds more and differently—Christ as man glorified according to divine counsel and perfection in heaven before the Father. In the one case it was Christ as the Lord come down and on the earth revealing God the Father; in the other it is the same Christ as man setting Himself apart in glory, and the truth revealed then and there. Both were new and unique, that the truth might be known and work effectively; and the believing Jew no less than the besotted pagan needed to be sanctified practically according to both principles, distinct as they are, yet united in the person of the Lord. It is the revelation of the Father in the Son in grace, and of the Son as glorified man in righteousness, that the mission of His servants might be according to the truth which separated them from the world according to God's nature and the relationship of His children, though nothing be so foreign and distasteful and hateful to the world as His grace and the objects of it.
But the book commented on scarce rises above the measure of Israel, and is quite short of the truth of that sanctification which the N. T. presents, as we have seen its total deficiency and indeed error about, justification. It proves what the new apostolate is worth.
Is it not passing strange that men who have studied scriptural figures and symbols should have failed to see the use made of “water” as compared with “blood” in this very connection? “But ye are washed “; “The washing of water by the word” “This is He that came by water and blood,” &c., are samples; and the types of the O.T. answer to the figures of the New. We all know that in Christendom such things are passed over for the most part without serious thought, perhaps without a word: sometimes they are confounded, oftener all is vague. The difference is that the action of the blood of Christ is once and forever, as the Epistle to the Hebrews pointedly and repeatedly says, whereas that of the water is not only the dealing with the soul at the start, but whenever need arises throughout the walk (John 13). Thus the propitiation abides in its unchanging value before God for the believer; but the impurities of daily walk need the application of the word and Spirit continually. To be washed or loosed from our sins by blood is once for all; but, if bathed in water ever so truly, the soiled feet call for fresh washing. It is the answer of the Spirit by the word to Christ's advocacy. Expressly and evidently the notion of repeated application of the blood overthrows the truth of the unity of Christ's sacrifice and of its efficacy on our behalf. On the other hand the teaching of the constant need of the washing of water by the word is bound up with practical holiness. It is just because we are brought nigh to God by Christ's blood that we are called to habitual self-judgment lest we grieve the Holy Spirit of God whereby we were sealed unto the day of redemption. Yet more should we humble ourselves on actual failure.
The propriety of the figure is obvious. Water among other uses is to cleanse. For this the Holy Spirit employs God's word. We are begotten by the word of truth (James 1 Peter 1; 1 Corinthians 4), and cleansed by reason of the word (John 15:3). So deep is the original uncleanness that nothing short of death, Christ's death, can avail us. Therefore He came by water and by blood. He purifies as well as atones by His death; and purifies our hearts consequently by faith (Acts 15:9 Peter 1:22), as scripture declares. Only the washing of the water by the word applies through our entire earthly path, exposed as we are to defilement continually. Not so the cleansing by blood, which takes place once for all. For the blood of Jesus cleanseth from all, from every sin. If He needed to be offered often, He must suffer often, whereas it is but once, once for all, as Heb. 9; 10 insists. But the communion, interrupted by sin, must be holily restored. Hence the need of the water for purification for defilement by the way. Compare Numbers 19—and so the Jews by-and-by. It is not enough to look on Messiah-Jehovah pierced (Zechariah 12): a fountain also is opened for sin and for uncleanness, a fountain not of blood, pace Cowper, but of water. See Zechariah 13:1.
Thus all Christians must allow progressive holiness as a matter of growth through the truth and that self-judgment which is the more incumbent on us because we enjoy not only the word and prayer, but the remembrance of Christ in His supper regularly. There is such a thing as deliverance when the soul after toiling under law is brought to give up self and condemn the flesh as utterly and incurably evil. This however is simply the normal state of the believer, no longer striving in vain to improve what God has condemned in the cross (Rom. 8:3), but, resting on that work of Christ as a sacrifice for sin, sees himself in Christ henceforth; so that he is now to live by the faith of Him dead and risen, and to abhor in himself what he finds not in Christ. This some call sanctification or perfection, and consequently turn it to error by making it a matter of feeling, instead of owning it true of all who submit to the righteousness of God.
Plainly therefore according to scripture we are personally “sanctified” or set apart livingly to God when born of Him by faith of the truth, sanctified by the Spirit unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus. Thereon follows the practical call to holiness, because God, our God and Father, is holy, as we see later on in the same chap. 1 of 1 Peter. Holiness in spirit and ways is a duty flowing from the relationship of saints and children already formed by sovereign grace—not in order to become, but because we are, His and in the nearest way through Christ our Lord.