As regards the first question: washing naturally applies to something that is cleansing. Our state may show that now nothing but death to sin can cleanse us from sin, but the water signifies cleansing: as "ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you."
"Regeneration" is passing from one state to another, used only in Matthew 19, and in Titus. "Born of the Spirit" is the actual communication of divine life—"that which is born of the Spirit is spirit." This is life: the other (regeneration) is de facto death, though this can only be by life. But it supposes an entrance into a new state, when fully brought to light, of which resurrection is the expression—life out of death—hence leaving sin and an evil nature behind. So we are baptized to His death, that we walk in newness of life. It is not merely that I have got life from or through—but I am quickened with. But that supposes death, the putting away, but judgment of the old man.
"Sanctified," though it includes this, yet contains something more: we are sanctified to something, not merely washed from. No doubt this does cleanse, but it gives also an object to which I am attached and so sanctified. A creature is practically and morally always what his object is. "That he might sanctify and cleanse it" (Eph. 5:2626That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, (Ephesians 5:26)) is not quite correct—ἁγιάσῃ καθαρίσας (Crag. They go together, but the cleansing, though a positive thing from evil, is connected with consecrating the affections to God: There are holy affections in sanctification: these clearly exclude evil ones; but there are the two things, though they cannot be separated. The word is in every respect the instrument. The washing of regeneration is typified, as Peter says, by the flood. It cleared away the old, but it began a new world.
As regards Acts 15, there is not the semblance of a church court, a representative collection of ministers and elders from all parts of the circle of jurisdiction. There are the apostles with universal authority given by Christ and a local church, whose elders all of them come together, the whole church giving its adhesion. God's wisdom did not allow this matter to be settled at Antioch, where a now Gentile church had begun; or you would have had a Gentile free church, and a Jerusalem circumcised church under the law. Hence the original apostles and the Jewish elders and church decide the point, and declare the Gentiles are free. Moses had his own teachers everywhere. But it was the authoritative deciding of the freedom of the Gentiles from the law—a vital matter for the whole church of God, and it is called the decree of the apostles and elders. But there is not the most distant appearance of a representative church court. To say nothing of the absence of the apostles, could the elders of the Presbyterians of Edinburgh, tacking on all the members there, decree for all Presbyterians even over the whole world? But in the original constitution I do not think it is pretended to be anything but a human arrangement.
I have completed my work in the New Translation. I have had it read over too by another, and corrected several slips or verbal omissions, and made uniformity of words as far as possible. I have added a good many notes, and here and there made it clearer, but there is little to alter.
Affectionately yours in the Lord.
1868.