10, CROOMS HILL, GREENWICH, JULY 7TH, 1888

^[p. 4] 10, CROOMS HILL, GREENWICH, JULY 7TH, 1888

Mr. J. S. Oliphant.

My Dear Brother, — Just a line to say that should the meeting on the 17th not come off, I would readily come over and see you — or meet Lowe and yourself.

I have thought to add a word, not as asserting my thoughts, but because I judge brethren have been a little at cross purposes in the use of terms. There seems to me two ideas in John — ‘life’ and ‘eternal life’ — intimately connected yet distinct. Christ is the source and head of life — and the expression and seat of ‘eternal life’. As source of life He, by His word, communicates life to the believer — by whom His word is, as one might say, assimilated (the work of God being there) and the believer lives by Him. “He that eateth me shall live by me”. (John 6:57) “He that hath the Son hath life”. (1 John 5:12) It is a dependent life, inseparable from its source though in us in the power and reality of the Spirit. But more than this, in being drawn to the Son, who as Son of Man has been lifted up, we are morally out of the world and the flesh — in the infinite and eternal blessedness which is expressed and exists in Him as Man, in a new position and relationship which He has constituted for man before the Father, Whom He has revealed. We are ‘in the Son’ — and He is the true God and eternal life. I am not saying if that is right or wrong — but it is this sense that some of us have used the term ‘eternal life’ — perhaps, in appearance, a little to the exclusion of life, certainly not intentionally. I say this in the hope of helping to clear up misunderstanding.

Ever your affectionate brother,
F. E. Raven.