GOD'S MEASURE OF APPROACH AND MY MEASURE

GOD’S MEASURE OF APPROACH AND MY MEASURE

We had a very interesting talk together (five of us) as to when we are “in Christ”. Some of them thought that I did not make it a matter of experience enough. I, on the other hand, wanted them to accept that there is a great difference between the way the blessed God approaches the converted soul, and the way the convert approaches Him. God can come to the repentant sinner, as the father to the prodigal, with open arms, in the boundlessness of His love, and in the full virtue of Christ’s work. He, blessed be His name, never improves in His approach. This is the gospel of the glory of Christ. But, on the other hand, the prodigal, or Saul of Tarsus, has really to part company from himself in the cross before he can enjoy the nature of the acceptance in which God can have him; and this was the side they were contending for, and which ^[p. 79] I fully accept, but not by it to measure how God can come to me.... It is remarkable the way the Lord is exercising hearts and consciences as to the very foundations of the faith.

I believe deliverance from the “body of death” — from “the law of sin and death” — has not been enough before souls; they have put up with the flesh as an appendage which they submit to, rather than to be free of it in the Spirit, and in the Spirit only.