GREENWICH, AUGUST 29TH, 1896

GREENWICH, AUGUST 29TH, 1896

The matter as to which you write is one on which many minds are in perplexity. I think it may arise from the failure to distinguish between the christian looked at in the light of a responsible man here, and in the light of divine purpose. In the former light he is viewed as justified and sealed by the Spirit, and is to be ruled by the Spirit and not by the flesh. This is not exactly a question of nature, but of rule, and is the ground taken up in Romans and Galatians. But when the christian is looked at in the light of divine purpose, i.e., as a son or child of God for which he has been wrought by the Spirit of God, then the thought of nature comes in. He is chosen to be before God holy and without blame in love. He has put on the new man which is created after God in righteousness ^[p. 122] and holiness of truth. He is righteous as Christ is righteous. By nature I understand to be meant that by which a person or a substance is characterised so as to be morally what he is; but you cannot talk of the nature until you have the person. If a person is characterised by the divine nature that is his nature and that only. Sin and the flesh may be there but they no longer predominate so as to characterise. The body of the flesh and the old man have as to their domination been put off and hence I decline to admit the idea of two natures in the christian because I do not see it to be the teaching of Scripture, though very conscious that if a man say he has no sin he deceives himself. But sin is not the nature of the child of God and in that light I am entitled by faith to regard myself.