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JANUARY, FEBRUARY, MARCH AND MAY, 1901

Note by F.E.R., that led to the correspondence. ‘By “dying to sin” is meant the arriving at that conclusion or state of mind in which the believer is in accord with the death of Christ, in other words, reckoning himself dead to sin. Evidently, Romans 6: it encourages him to take this view’.

The point at issue is, whether we reckon ourselves dead because we are dead, or whether our having died or being dead really consists in the christian in the reckoning. I do not believe that the former is the thought of Scripture. Christ, with whom we are going to live, has died to sin, and we are to account ourselves dead with Him. All lies in the reckoning. What has taken place in fact in Christ, commands the consent of our mind, and in this way governs our practice. I cannot see anything in that of the nature of asceticism. It is a conclusion arrived at in the mind for once and for all, and that is not what I understand by asceticism, which implies an effort to die. The reckoning is in no way a question of will, but is reached by the Spirit of God, and the mind is maintained in it by the Spirit.... Our having died is an important matter for us, but it in no sense affects what we are for God as the fruit of His own work.. .. Doctrinal death has worked most prejudicially.. .. It has been a part of orthodoxy to ^[p. 164] believe that we are dead, and it has been urgently insisted on. It is all right if it be true, but I cannot see the good or even the honesty of attempting to maintain it when it is evidently not true.... I suppose the Spirit of God can bring one in mind into accord with the import of Christ’s death, and that this is desirable for the christian, so that he may be able to say as the apostle: “I am crucified with Christ”. If we are risen with Christ through faith, we are certainly dead, for the two are correlative, but this is a question of realisation, or it means nothing: for God all were dead when Christ died. I can see no object in our death with Him save that of deliverance from the world system.. .. In the eye of God we were already dead, and then God sent His Son that we might live through Him, and that He might be the propitiation for our sins. God then gave us His Spirit that we might live in Christ. Our having part in the death of Christ is of no value to God if we were already dead in His account. Death with Christ is a practical thing, of all importance to us who are left in the scene in which we have been alive, and it lies in the mind being in accord with the death of Christ, which is based in Scripture, not on faith but on baptism.. .. It is not arrived at by faith but by consistency with our baptism, by the Spirit of God. I entirely admit that when we have arrived at this we have the right and privilege to account ourselves alive to God. If the apostle admonished the Romans to account themselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus, he did not mean to imply that they were in Adam not in Christ, for it is evident that he thought of them as in Christ by the possession of the Spirit of Christ, but he is speaking in a practical way to lead them to part company with things in which they had once lived, and to account of themselves as belonging to another system of things. As I have already said, what can be the value in the eye of God that I am dead with Christ? He justified ^[p. 165] me as a sinner because Christ died for me, and He gave me of the Spirit simply because I believed, without waiting for any accord of mind on my part with the death of Christ. I am totally unable to find any basis for this idea of doctrinal death with Christ. The two points you touch on are on the one hand the fact that if Christ died for all, all were dead, and on the other, that in the face of the exhortation to account ourselves dead to sin we are regarded as having once been alive in sins. I agree that this latter is brought to a close in our identification with the death of Christ. I judge the first statement to refer to where all men were in the eye of God, that is under the judgment of sin, death. By one man sin entered into the world and death by sin, and death passed upon all men. All were there in the eye of God, and Christ entered into that place, but to rise again. His entering into it proved that a]l were there. But I cannot see that this is contrary to the fact that as a matter of fact we were alive in this world in the practice of sin, and in this connection have had to die to sin to live to God. The law was the ministration of death, bringing home to men where they were as under the judgment of God, but the gospel brings to light the necessity of our being separated from a world of sin by identification with the death of Christ, in order that we may live to God. It is only too true that the man who is lying under the sentence of death can be alive in sin in this world. The answer to the first in grace is that a man receives living water, and to the second that in the power of the Spirit he parts company with the world of sin in which he was living. The one depends on the other. As a matter of truth there can be no link between the man that was under death and God; the judgment of God lies between. But Christ has come in and has borne the judgment, so that as Head of every man, He can address Himself to every man with a view of communicating to him living water; and ^[p. 166] having received this, I am free of the judgment under which I was — God has formed a link with me by Christ, and now I die to the world of sin in which I was once alive. The fact of being at the same time dead and alive is possible when one views each in their proper relation, the first in relation to God and the second in relation to the world. The Spirit has relation to the first, baptism and reckoning oneself dead to the second.

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