EXTRACTS

Ques. This teaching is for an emergency. Apparently it was the young coming along at that time. Would a brother or sister amongst us linking themselves on with a worldly person for a wife or husband be a dead bone?

JT They might get a proposal of marriage by that young person. They are both young and they are, so to say, the generations that are going into the land potentially, because earlier than this the six hundred thousand that came out of Egypt never came into the land, only Caleb and Joshua. All the others are strewn in the desert. It makes it very solemn and yet I am taking them on as though nothing had happened. This is what is meant, I think, by the authoritative law here in verse 14 being brought to bear on these matters, what the young people are apt to indulge in and excuse themselves. The brethren have to be severe in these cases. It is for their good, because we say, ‘What harm is there in it—he is a Christian?’. Yes, a Christian, but he is living in the grave, living with dead people morally, and he himself is dead, and yet you want to marry a dead person! That is the idea, that the thing has to be dealt with, and we have to be severe with it. It is not our feelings, but what the law says.

J. Taylor (Vol. 100, p.245)

Now another thing comes in at the beginning of chapter 2, and that is the apostle’s great combat that the saints might enter into the truth of the mystery and know that all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are in it. You do not need to go outside, so what one would seek to press is, that if there are a few believers in the recognition of this they would get light. I think it would be a great thing that saints should recognise this, because then they would get light. I think if we had more shame about being devoid of any little

spiritual means it would bring about exercise. The law ordered that the males in Israel were to appear three times a year before the Lord and no one was to appear empty.

It is a great thing that we should be in the power of these things. The Lord is at our right hand, but it is of the utmost importance that we should make use of the Spirit.

J. Taylor (Vol. 6, p.351)

Every moral quality of the Lord was of Himself. He derived nothing in that sense from man. He did not even get learning from man; the Jews said, “How knoweth this man letters, having never learned?” Whatever moral quality we see in Christ as a man down here upon earth, the perfection of faith, or confidence, or allegiance, or devotedness, nothing was derived, all was of Himself. He became man, and in becoming man He beautified and adorned the humanity that He took; and every real trait of beauty in humanity in His case was Himself; He took that state and form that He might glorify God in it completely. He was manna come down from heaven, and everything was carried out down here in heavenly grace, in that which was of Himself.

F. E. Raven (‘Letters’, p.295)

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