GREENWICH, JUNE 15TH, 1891
[p. 56] GREENWICH, JUNE 15TH, 1891
Mr. J. Edmondson.
My Dear Brother, — I will do my best to answer your questions according to such light as one has on Scripture.
(1) It seems to me that all the statements as to eternal life in John’s gospel are really grounded on the death of Christ and the gift of the Spirit (see John 3:14, and John 4:14). John 5 seems to give the rights of His Person (Son of God) and John 6 the great truth of incarnation — and as to these, they were there before or after death — John 20: 17 - 22 surely means the same thing — but I would not wish to weaken the force of the ‘now is’. It seems to me that the Lord in John recognises nothing save the heavenly things He brought which however involved the power of the Spirit (John 6: 63). How far Christ fulfilled when here the office of the Spirit I cannot say — the Spirit another Comforter.
(2) A soul is not quickened by faith. It comes into salvation by faith and receives the Spirit. This latter is on the responsibility side. When the soul is once there, i.e., in salvation, God can and does view the whole thing as His own work (Ephesians 2:5), for indeed He was foremost in it. I do not think the gospel and new birth are ever mixed up in Scripture. It appears to me that those who are in the faith of the gospel are told that they are born again, i.e., that the real foundation in them is of God.
(3) 2 Timothy 1:10 is the great truth that life and incorruptibility have been brought to light by the glad tidings entrusted to Paul. It appears to me that this refers to an actual heavenly conviction of life in a man. This life came out in a moral way in Christ as a Man here and the eyes of the apostles were opened to see it. They saw it because they were in His company(saw Him, too, in resurrection). It was a different thing from the testimony addressed to the world, and could [p. 57] be discerned only, I judge, by those familiar with Him.
(4) I do not think John by his testimony takes us into Canaan — his great thought is eternal life here on earth though it is heavenly — “He that eateth me even he shall live by me”, comes after “he that eateth my flesh”, etc. I think that as being here we have to appropriate and to be abidingly in touch with Christ’s death so that we may be in the sense of deliverance — and at the same time such appropriates and enjoys and digests the heavenly grace expressed in His incarnation and thus lives on account of Him.
(5) Life in Colossians 3:3, 4, refers, I think, to life in the sense of its sphere, associations, objects, joys, what we live to — and these for the believer are hid with Christ in God. The object is to lead the mind there — and hence I should rather say it is objective though it involves our being quickened.
(6) I believe the expression ‘this life is in His Son’ conveys an abstract thought, viz., that it is life distinct and morally apart from what we are and have naturally as men down here. I believe it to refer to what there is in actuality in the Son and not yet in actuality in us — to the relationship and knowledge in which eternal life practically consists and into which faith enters. He that has the Son has life.
(7) “The Spirit is life” (Romans 8: 10), I take to be potential. He cannot be life in any objective sense — Christ is this — but He is the answer in the believer to what is true for him in Christ. I would connect it with John 4:14.
(8) I believe John 12:59 refers to Psalm 133:3, and I think the same idea is found in 1 John 2:8. Commandment is, so to say, the ordinance of God — what He has ordained, what it has been in His will to establish, and to this faith bows.
(9) I entirely agree with you. Eternal life is connected with manhood in Scripture — but what in the second Man gives character to manhood was ever [p. 58] in essence in the Eternal Son. I say ‘in essence’ because it was not in human form or condition.
(10) I think life is used in Scripture in two distinct though connected senses — both in implied contrast to death morally, first in the sense of blessing and thus given, and secondly in the sense of character, i.e., what is moral, and in connection with this of what is inherent in God.
The close of your letter was an encouragement to me. Many statements of mine have been thought bad because opposers did not see the sense in which I was using life. On the other hand I am convinced that in their own minds is an entirely wrong thought as to life. They conceive of it as the life of the Eternal Son and as something having a substantive existence so that it can be communicated as water into a vessel, thus virtually setting aside the reality of quickening and ignoring the truth that the Eternal Son who was in the form of God now lives as man. The fulness of the Godhead resides in Him bodily.
I thank God there is general readiness to receive me in England.
With love in the Lord,
Your affectionate brother,
F. E. Raven.