MARCH 10TH, 1902

MARCH 10TH, 1902

My Dear —, — I am glad to answer your note to the best of my ability. I have often heard in times gone by the thoughts suggested by the persons that you refer to (i.e., that it was possible for the Lord to have yielded to the temptation). In fact they are quite common among dissenters. I think that anyone having the sense that Christ is really in nature God would at once reject the thought that He could take up anything morally unsuitable to Himself. We are told that sin is lawlessness, and to attribute the idea of lawlessness to God is simply nonsense and worse. All things are said to subsist by Christ, and how could this be if there were lawlessness there? Even regarded as Man, He is the Son of God “according to the Spirit of holiness”. That is, so to speak, His generation. Christ was begotten miraculously of the Holy Spirit, and as born of the woman He was designated ‘that Holy thing’. Nothing can be more carefully guarded, and to maintain peccability in Christ is going right in the face of Scripture, and I am sure that I do not know ^[p. 184] what would be gained by the thought. One great point was that perfect evil should be confronted by perfect good, so that the two should be brought to an issue. And I judge that this was the meaning of the temptation, and this is of the greatest value; we get in it a true idea of both, and how evil is to be met. I take it that Christ enters into the temptation on account of man and Israel; He was in a sense tested, but only to bring out a sweet savour. And now we know what is of evil, and what is of God — presented to us in a way in which it could not have been presented apart from the incarnation.

Affectionately yours,
F. E. Raven.