UNKNOWN

UNKNOWN

The question which you raise is one of interest, and one which I have often heard raised. I think that to understand the matter one has to take into account the position of those addressed. They were Jews, who had been guilty of the rejection of Christ, but who had repented and fled for refuge to lay hold on the hope set before them in the resurrection and glory of Christ. The point of the epistle is that they should hold fast the hope, and the proof of this would be in separating themselves from the existing Jewish system. If they failed in this they would involve themselves in the judgment that was coming on Jerusalem and the Jews. They would prove themselves apostate and nothing would remain for them but fiery indignation. The point is as to the application of this in the present time. It is difficult to find a parallel case. There is certainly an immense profession that will not go when the Bridegroom comes. They will be judged according to their works. But I doubt if this gives the idea of perishing in the wilderness. This is spoken of those who believe not, and in the sense of departing from the living God. This would be apostasy. I think the departure would be manifest. I should hesitate to apply it to those who are admitted to be believers, but who from one reason or another fail to enter spiritually into God’s purpose in Christ. I doubt if the expression would apply. As you say, they are linked with Christ by the Spirit. Failing in apprehension is not the same thing as perishing in the wilderness, and I do not think that any who perish will find their place in heaven.

^[p. 218] Extract from a letter by F.E.R. as to pamphlet by C. E. Moore on the Sufferings of Christ. To begin with, the construction of the type is wrong, for in the sin-offering the ending of the victim in judgment (death) took place before there was any burning at all. Hence the burning must have some other significance. The truth is that his idea of an offering for sin is limited in the paper to the outward shame and reproach of the cross, and the ending and removal of the representative. Now I do not see that in becoming an offering for sin Christ properly represented anyone (He did as bearing our sins). He represented the principle of sin which is wider than man (see the serpent of brass on the pole) and which was to be put away for the glory of God. I admit that the shame and reproach of the cross, suffering outside the gate, and the ending of the victim (in His then condition) were incidental to the sin-bearing, but they were not the sin-bearing itself. “God made him to be sin for us” goes much deeper than that. I can only understand by it that, as to His own consciousness, Christ on the cross was as sin in the presence of the holy judgment of God; and that, speaking in a moral sense, He was consumed by the terror of that judgment. I do not think anything short of this gives an adequate idea of the forsaking of God, or of the dealing with sin so as to remove it from before God.

Letter by C.A.C. as to the above pamphlet.

I cannot, of course, speak for others, but my objection to what Mr. Moore teaches is that he makes atonement to be in the ending of the life of flesh in the Person of its sinless Representative. It seems to me that to make it only this is to rob the cross of its eternal value and moral reality. “He hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin” conveys to my soul much more than the public and visible rejection of the Representative.

^[p. 219] Mr. M. seems to suggest that brethren hold that Christ was personally the object of God’s wrath. I can only say that I have never heard of such a thing. What He was personally is carefully contrasted with what He was made sacrificially, in the words, “He hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin”. Surely brethren have ever insisted that the burnt-offering shows what He was personally in all that wondrous offering of Himself, in which aspect all was “a sweet savour unto the Lord”. But sacrificially He was made sin, and this by God; and, as made sin He felt in His holy soul all the terribleness of sin, and of the wrath of God against sin; and, as being made sin and bearing its judgment, the desert and consequence of it all, and of the sins of the people, came upon Him and was borne by Him so that full judicial satisfaction is made to God. There was a Victim able to know all that the wrath of God was against sin, and who, as made sin, felt it all and bore it all, and this before the actual moment of His death. Is it not all this which gives moral value and atoning efficacy to His death? Had He not, as made sin, entered into what the wrath of God was against sin, and felt it all so as to be in spirit consumed by it, before the actual moment of laying down His life? And am I not right in saying that, apart from this unspeakable experience, His death would have had no power in itself to make judicial satisfaction to God? When I read that He “tasted death for everything” it presents to my faith that the blessed Lord has entered into all that death was as the wages of sin and the judgment of God. It all came upon Him, and was felt and borne by Him, before the actual moment of His laying down His life. The darkness and the actual death were indeed the public and manifest accompaniment of this — necessarily so — but what gave them their moral value and efficacy as a judicial separation was the fact that the One thus publicly disowned and cut off ^[p. 220] was able to enter into and bear in His holy spirit the judgment of God upon sin — the deep reality and awfulness of which no public and visible acts or circumstances could ever fully express. I admit the importance of all that was public and visible, and I trust I should not be slow to present it as needed truth, but I firmly believe that those public and visible acts derive their value as a judicial satisfaction in the first place from the greatness and moral excellence of the Person who was made sin, and in the second place from what I might venture to call His sacrificial capability — His capability to enter into and to bear the judgment of God upon sin; and this not only in its public and visible manifestations, but in the hidden and unknowable experience of His forsaking — an experience which, as to all that was morally involved in it was ended before He laid down His life. Brethren are jealous that the moral reality of the work of the cross should not be lost to our souls. They believe that Mr. Moore has pressed a part of the truth beyond its place, and that this has resulted in his denial of that which really gives value to what he seeks to press. They have been led to believe, by his own statements, that Mr. M.’s teaching weakens and destroys the apprehension of that which constitutes the great moral reality of the cross, and gives us instead merely the outward and visible acts of forsaking and death. We believe that what was public and visible derived its power to make judicial satisfaction from that which was secret and only known to God and to the blessed One whom He ‘made sin’. That brethren may have expressed themselves in ways not warranted by Scripture is very probable, but it is not expressions that we are concerned about or wish to defend. I conceive that it would be impossible to overstate or exaggerate the experience of which they have sought to speak. Often they have weakened it by the introduction of human ideas concerning it ^[p. 221] into their preaching and praise. But the thing in itself is so immeasurably beyond our conception — the reality is so much greater than all our thoughts concerning it — that there may well be imperfection in the expression of what the heart feels is inexpressible, and yet that which it would fain speak of to others or in praise to God. It is just because Mr. M.’s teaching enfeebles the sense of this — of all that it was to Christ to drink the cup — that brethren have repudiated it. Mere theology they think as little of as he does, but they are not prepared to give up what they hold to be the great moral reality of the scene of Calvary.