COMING TO THE LIVING STONE, LIBERTY.

COMING TO THE LIVING STONE, LIBERTY.

I am glad to get tidings of you and of those dear to the Lord around you. I rejoice to hear that you are going on. “Whereto we have already attained, let us walk by the same rule, let us mind the same thing” (Philippians 3: 16). No one gets more but as he is going on, and prizes what he has received. I like to hear of additions, and if they are in the power of God they will be a gain to us all. I am often afraid that the acceptance of a truth is considered equal to the practical adoption of it. I see many have come into outward fellowship who have never in their souls “left the ship” and walked through death, the death of Christ, to join Him at the other side of death. See Matthew 14. I have seen in print that ‘coming to the Living Stone’ is conversion, building on the rock. This I am sure is incorrect. You are converted if you have “tasted that the Lord is gracious”, but when you have come to Christ risen, the Living Stone, you are consciously of the same order as He is; you are of His kindred, His brethren, and you never know Him in resurrection until you come to Him. You come to Him, in His own life; you have appropriated His death, the water, and you are with Him who has breathed on you.

I may surprise you, but if you examine you will find that while many enjoy peace at times, very few are in the liberty of Romans 8: 2. The Corinthians and the Galatians had not liberty. Liberty is that in the life of Christ you are free from the law of sin and death. Many imagine that they are dead to sin by the reckoning of faith — a great deception. How could you believe that you are holy?

^[p. 25] Holiness by faith is a delusion. If you were to say that in the eye of God you were perfectly clear, and that He does not impute sin, I should fully agree with you, but when any one says that he is holy by faith, I say he deceives himself. How could he believe that which is not true? The old man has been judicially terminated in the cross for every believer, and hence you are in Christ in the eye of God, and He never reverts to the flesh; but you and I do revert to it; hence we cannot say that we are free from sin but as each of us can say: “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me” (Galatians 2: 20). “For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death” (Romans 8: 2). It is by the Spirit of God and not by my faith that I am free from sin and death, and if I am not walking in the Spirit, I am in the flesh. I have been greatly helped by seeing that when you are enjoying Christ living in you, it is then the world becomes a wilderness, a dry and barren land where no water is.

‘Tis the treasure I’ve found in His love
that has made me a pilgrim below.’