In an article to which our attention was directed some time ago, on "Plymouth Brethrenism," in a highly respectable journal, the writer speaks as if nothing could be more painful than controversy with fellow-Christians; but adds, that if we would be followers of Him who is "THE FAITHFUL AND TRUE," we must not seal our lips where serious error is taught. The writer also laments the " outbursts of irritable feeling," which have sometimes characterized the reviewers of Brethren, and proposes to meet them calmly, quietly, and deliberately.
The article, though written in a Christian spirit, and, we doubt not, true to the writer, who judges of Brethren's views by The Received Doctrines of the Reformed Churches, in place of a close comparison with the word of God, is like all such that we have read, most inaccurate and untrue. A long list of ecclesiastical and doctrinal peculiarities and errors are stated, as held and taught by the Brethren. Their views, however, are incorrectly stated, and what is given as the truth to correct the error is not in accordance with the word. It may compare well with the theology of certain schools of the Reformed Churches, but not with the holy scriptures, which should ever be our only standard. We have thought that it might serve the cause of truth, and be for edification, were what Brethren really hold on these heads plainly stated and proved from scripture; but this would be outside of our present sketch. We select one, " The Forgiveness of Sins," as it is practical, and may be useful to some readers. It will also show what we have said of the inaccuracy of the writer, who says, that one of the doctrinal points with the Brethren is,-
"That it is not lawful to pray for the pardon of our sins, because, if we are real Christians, they were forgiven eighteen hundred years ago upon the cross."
No authority is given for this statement; therefore we cannot compare. But this is the usual style of accusing Brethren-strong statements of error without proof.
The cross, we all believe, is the only ground of pardon, but it is never said to the sinner who believes in Jesus, " Thy sins were all forgiven when Christ shed His blood on the cross." The divine order seems to be, that Christ put away sin on the cross, and that we are pardoned when we believe, not " eighteen hundred years ago." " But now once in the end of the world hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself." And to the chief of sinners penitent at His feet, the blessed Lord says, "Thy sins are forgiven." Thus we learn that sin was put away on the cross according to the claims of the divine glory, so that the Father is free to run and meet the returning prodigal, embrace him with the kiss of reconciliation, invest him with the best robe, and seal him with the ring of His eternal love. At the same time, if we want to see our sins put away, we must look back to the cross; it is nowhere said that the Lord puts them away from our hearts; only on the cross. Those who look to their hearts in place of the cross, to see their sins put away, will be bitterly disappointed. We only know that our sins were "put away," "made an end of," on the cross, and forgiven when we believe. The word of the Lord is the only ground of the full assurance of faith. However correct our experience may be, we cannot build upon it; the word of God is the soul's only resting place. The words of the hymn sweetly express this truth:-
" My soul looks back [not, within] to see
The burden Thou didst bear,
When hanging on th' accursed tree,
For ALL my guilt was there."
As to the other part of the alleged doctrine of the Brethren-" That it is not lawful to pray for the pardon
of our sins." We are well aware that much has been made of this report by the opponents of Brethren. It has been used in the pulpits and by the press to turn them to ridicule. This, we believe, is more from ignorance of what Brethren do hold, than from malice. But, alas! it is the sacred truth of God that is turned into ridicule; they cannot hurt the Brethren. On nothing do their reviewers show more incompetency to revise and correct their writings than on the elementary subject of forgiveness. They have evidently no proper thought of the completeness of redemption, or the privileges of relationship. Hence they teach that Christians must pray to God daily for the pardon of their sins, and come to be cleansed afresh by the blood of Jesus, as if we might be lost and saved every day. " The words of the apostle John," says the Christian Observer, " are evidently meant for believers." (1 John 1:77But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin. (1 John 1:7).) "The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth [not has cleansed, but is actually cleansing] us from all sin." This is the doctrine of the Observer-a staunch Church of England journal-but which the Brethren as a body would pronounce most unsound and inconsistent with the context and all scripture, especially the gospel. The apostle is speaking of believers walking in the light as God is in the light, not even according to it, but in it. How could this be, if their sins were not cleansed away by the blood of Jesus? He is not speaking of a continuous, but of an absolute cleansing from all sin, suitable to the unsullied light of God's presence. But to return.
The Brethren, certainly, are not in the habit, at least in public, of praying to God for the pardon of their sins. Not because they think it " unlawful," or because they were pardoned eighteen hundred years ago, or because they do not sin, but because it would be unbelief, as they are not in the position of sinners before God, but of children before the Father. When a sinner is converted -born again-he changes ground; he leaves, and leaves forever, the ground of the natural man, and is henceforth on the new ground of eternal life and salvation; so that it would be unbelief, in the most inexcusable way, to go back to the old ground and ignore the gracious work of God in the new birth. " Verily, verily," says the blessed Lord, " I say unto you, 'He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life."... " For ye are all the children of God," says the apostle, " by faith in Christ Jesus." (John 5:2424Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life. (John 5:24); Gal. 3:2626For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. (Galatians 3:26).) But if they do not pray as sinners to be pardoned, they confess their faults as children according to the mind of the Lord. " If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." (1 John 1:99If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. (1 John 1:9).) Here, it is not said that God will be gracious and merciful to forgive if we pray to Him, but that He will be faithful and just to forgive us our sins if we confess them. That is, He is faithful and just to Christ, who died for us, put away our sins on the cross, and whose blood is sprinkled on the mercy-seat; ever, as it were, before the eye of God. Surely, in the light of this text, we could not pray to God to be " faithful and just," that we know He must ever be to the finished work of Christ; but we could not too fully or freely confess our sins, and this in the deep sense of what they are in the sight of that blood which was shed for them, and in the presence of His holiness, whose children, though unworthy, we ever are. It is a thousand times more searching for a child to confess the details of his failure, than merely to ask-it may be mechanically-to be pardoned.
Thus we see that the word of God is more consistent than the theology of men, and thrice happy the Christian who is content to walk in the light of that truth, though he should be misunderstood and misrepresented. The day is coming when the Lord will vindicate those, who, though having but little strength, kept His word, and denied not His name.
" If sin-cleansing by the blood of Jesus, in 1 John 1:77But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin. (1 John 1:7), is assumed to be only going on, it would falsify the same apostle's language in Revelation 1:55And from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, and the first begotten of the dead, and the prince of the kings of the earth. Unto him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood, (Revelation 1:5), where we are said to be already washed by His blood, and this comes out more strikingly in any exact rendering, like Dean Alford's version: Unto him that loveth us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood.' His love is constant, but the washing, or loosing, us from our sins is set forth by a participle of that tense which expresses an action simply past, excluding duration. John could have used no such form, if we had to come before God for daily cleansing by the blood of Jesus; for in this case it would be correct to employ, not the aorist, but the imperfect tense, which precisely expresses a continued or repeated action.
" How, then, did the apostle use the present? Was there laxity in his expression, when he said, The blood of Jesus his Son cleanseth us from every sin'? On the contrary, the tense is just as exact in 1 John 1:77But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin. (1 John 1:7), as his use of distinctive participles in Rev. 1:55And from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, and the first begotten of the dead, and the prince of the kings of the earth. Unto him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood, (Revelation 1:5). A little learning is proverbially dangerous; and in the exegesis of scripture, voluminous commentators are apt to go astray, no less than their followers. But to give an opinion on such a question hardly becomes people ignorant of the fact, that the present in Greek, as in most languages, is in no way limited to an incomplete action yet in course of performance; for it no less correctly expresses an absolute present, as in general propositions, doctrinal statements, apothegms, and descriptions of manners, customs, or matters of frequent occurrence. Just so, in English we say, ' Food nourishes the human body; poison kills.' The idea intended is not the continuance of the act, but the quality of each material, or their opposite effects on man. Almost every chapter in the epistles furnishes instances. Take a plain and kindred statement from 1 John 2: ' He is the propitiation for our sins.' Does the present here mean that He is actually now atoning for our sins? Clearly not; such an interpretation of the present would incontrovertibly overthrow the atonement. It is here evidently used in its absolute sense, without reference to any definite moment, for expressing the great and blessed truth of His propitiation. Just so in our text the notion of continuous cleansing would distinctly contradict the grand doctrine of the Epistle to the Hebrews, and of the gospel in general. It is therefore the gravest error....
"We have seen, then, that continuous cleansing by blood cannot be meant, not merely because it has no just sense in itself, but because it opposes other scriptures which treat the effect on the Christian as complete. Scripture cannot be broken. Repeated application of Christ's blood the word does not countenance anywhere else, even if the word here implied it, which it does not. It remains, therefore, that we must fall back on the only possible sense of the present here open to us, namely, that the apostle states, in an absolute way, the cleansing of believers by the blood of Jesus, expressed (as it regularly is in such propositions) in the present, but abstractedly, without reference to time past, present, or future, as one of the main characteristics of their place or standing. Hence it is no question of this or that sin, when confessed: His blood cleanseth from every sin. Details are not before us, nor restoration after failure. It is the proper and divine value of His blood. Consequently, if it were the design of the Holy Spirit to reveal this absolutely, the present tense was the one exactly suited to the apostle's hand, as we see it now before us. The effort to limit, or even apply the expression ‘cleanseth,' to the continuous force of the present, is therefore mere ignorance, or worse. The doctrine of the clause, the context, and scripture in general, declare unitedly and unequivocally for the absolute usage of the present in the closing verb of 1 John 1:77But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin. (1 John 1:7)."