SEPTEMBER 17TH, 1890

SEPTEMBER 17TH, 1890

The first remark I would make on Mr. R——’s letter is in regard to purpose as connected with eternal life. I fail to understand his difficulty. I suppose it was God’s purpose that eternal life should be revealed as the condition of the second Man, and that we should have it in Him.

^[p. 24] I am not surprised at his being unable to understand my statements as to eternal life, for we look at things from different points of view. As far as I can gather he regards eternal life as the life of the Son as a divine Person, as, in fact, equivalent to “In him was life”, (John 1:4) while I regard it as a condition which, although ever existing essentially in the Son, is presented in Scripture as characteristic of the second Man. In fact, it is difficult for me to understand that he sees in Christ a real Man, the pattern (though the ‘Firstborn’) of the many sons God is bringing to glory. The failure to see the position of mediation which belongs to “the man Christ Jesus” (1 Timothy 2:5) is the cause of half the present difficulty.

I fail to find in any of the gospels the statement that Christ is eternal life. On the contrary, eternal life there refers without exception to something given to man, or into which man is to enter. In 1 John the object appears to be to unfold the eternal life, which had been revealed in Christ, in order that saints might know that they had it. I do not believe that the idea of its being an essential personal title of the Son can be maintained; not but what God’s purposes of grace and eternal life for man were in Him. He has this glory, He is a quickening Spirit.

Now if eternal life means a condition which (though existing eternally in the Son) characterises the second Man, it is evident that the full revelation of it could not be until Christ was wholly separated by death from the first or responsible man lifted up from the earth. In His own Person He was of course the eternal life, the second Man, when here in the days of His flesh (and was manifested as such to the apostles), but the revelation was veiled by the part which He had taken in the responsible life of man on earth, “made in the likeness of sinful flesh”, (Romans 8:3) so that He might become a sacrifice for sin; and this condition was real, so that He was a real Babe, grew in wisdom and stature, and ^[p. 25] hence any displays of heavenly relationship and being were until after the cross moral. But in death He was wholly separated from the condition into which He had entered, and in resurrection He is the full and complete revelation of God’s purpose — the second Man, the eternal life.

As to the communication of eternal life, I have no question for a moment that a soul is spiritually alive as the result of new birth: still new birth is only a foundation, and is not necessarily in itself the reception of Christ. Eternal life is in Christ, and in receiving Christ eternal life is received, but it is in Christ (the second Man) “God has given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son”. (1 John 5:11) He that has the Son has life. But eternal life is to live in Christ, and though it may be said that a soul in receiving Christ is alive in Him, there is no power by which the believer can be formed in the heavenly man until the Spirit is received. Hence in John 20 the communication of the Spirit was connected with the breathing of Christ. Eternal life for us is not simply ‘a vital principle’, but a new man.

As regards speaking of eternal life as a sphere or order of blessing, I think it is justified by such scriptures as John 4:36; John 12:25 and John 17:3; but it is as living in Christ we enjoy the sphere. I may speak of my home as being objectively my life, but I live in it.

The truth of relationship (as children) runs with eternal life, is in fact inseparably connected with it. In receiving Christ relationship is received, it is that of the second Man, and we are formed in it by the spirit of sonship.

I do not regard new birth and quickening as equivalent. In the first I believe a new foundation is laid by the Spirit in man through the word, while quickening is that a soul is made to live spiritually in the life and relationship of the second Man. In a word,

quickening is the equivalent of ‘new creation’, and the result of it is that the believer has passed out of death into life.

I add one word in regard to 2 Corinthians 5:21. My object in my letter to Mr. O. was to exclude from the passage any thought of mixed condition, and to show what was true of the believer abstractly, as in Christ, apart from any question of what he is practically here. Still ‘in Christ’ involves not only a spiritual but an actual quickening (1 Corinthians 15:22), and it is when the saints are in this condition of life that they will be fully the display of God’s righteousness, though for faith they are already become that righteousness in Christ.

F E. Raven.