GREENWICH, JANUARY 17TH, 1891

^[p. 48] GREENWICH, JANUARY 17TH, 1891

Mr. J. Edmondson.

My Dear Brother, — I think some minds attach to the words ‘in an absolute way’ quite a different force from what I do. I have explained it as meaning ‘so as to exclude every other thought’. And if you apply this to the text you quote, you will see the force of what I say — “as he is so are we in this world”. This is evidently viewing the believer abstractly. i.e., according to what he is in the Son — if you apply it in an absolute way it would make it mean that we are like Him as He is in glory — while the fact is that we are still living and walking ‘in flesh’ here, and by faith. In the same epistle we read “it doth not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when he shall appear we shall be like him for we shall see him as he is”. You could not say absolutely of a believer ‘he cannot sin’ yet John says of one born of God “he cannot sin” because he views the believer abstractly as born of God. The same thing applies to 2 Corinthians 5:21 and to other passages which speak of the believer as ‘in Christ’. He is a new creation in Christ, a man of a new and heavenly order — but he has not yet done with old creation and its order — so that in my point of view, to apply new creation truths in an absolute way would make nonsense of them. They are none the less positively descriptive of what the believer is in Christ. It presents itself to me in something of the way we see, in dissolving views — the new one has come into view before the old has completely faded away. Hence the mixed condition. Two things are true to a christian: the calling and the way — the calling abides eternally — the way comes to an end when we reach Christ where He is. I trust that this may tend to make things clearer.

Your affectionate brother,
F. E. Raven.