GREENWICH, JUNE 23RD, 1893
GREENWICH, JUNE 23RD, 1893
Mr. Hoare.
My Dear Brother, — I am glad to send a few lines in answer to your letter, not as laying down the law on the subject on which you write — but as giving you what seems to me to be the teaching of Scripture on the subject. I may begin by saying that if ‘the communication of divine or spiritual life’ in ‘new birth’ is understood to designate that initial and effectual work of the Spirit in the soul of man which forms the point of moral affinity with God, and is therefore the point of departure for any blessing into which that soul may be ultimately conducted, I should have no objection to the expression, and should not certainly quarrel with it — though it is undeniable that Scripture does not speak of ‘life’ in direct and immediate connection with new birth — thus in our doing so I think there is considerable danger of disconnecting life, in our thoughts, from the One in whom man is or can be justified — and who as having borne the judgment of death that rested on man is now as last Adam a quickening Spirit towards men. I apprehend that though, in any case, man must be born again, yet that life connects itself now with faith in Christ’s Person (as raised again for our justification)
[p. 78] and the consequent communication of the Spirit of life. The believer is thus made alive in the Spirit, is after Christ’s order. Not only is the person forgiven but God has now His end, the believer is now for Him, and His love is known. That Scripture connects the truth of life with Christ and subjectively with the Spirit cannot, I think, be contested. Christ gives the water that in the believer is a well of water springing up to eternal life. He quickens whom He will. He is the bread of life. He came that the sheep might have life. He gives His sheep eternal life. He breathed on the disciples the breath of life. He has annulled death and brought life and incorruptibility to light. The last Adam is a quickening Spirit. And as to the place of the Spirit subjectively we have the well of water springing up to eternal life. It is the Spirit that quickens, the flesh profits nothing. The Holy Spirit was communicated (as a breath of inward life). He is the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus. If Christ is in the believer the Spirit is life. We live in the Spirit and of the Spirit reap eternal life. Such is, as I judge, the present form that quickening takes. I need hardly say that the above refers to life giving, the communication of life, i.e., of the power by which we live. There is another point of importance and that is the food of life by which we are sustained in life, and there it is Christ (not the Spirit) and eating Him we live because of Him; and in view of this I cannot see any possible danger of getting into an incarnation of the Spirit. Of the place and necessity of new birth I believe that I have as strong a sense as any — without it we are nothing nor could be anything — but I do not care to put it in the place of that which Christ came that we might have, and which He has made effectual in us in [p. 79] the communication consequent on reception of the Spirit of life. The point at which Israel may be said to live in the millennium will be, I judge, when by the coming of the deliverer out of Zion ungodliness is turned away from Jacob, the law is written in their hearts and they are freed of death and its power. Death is swallowed up in victory. I imagine they will be born again before the tribulation. At the same time if anyone said that the exercises of the Psalms are the exercises of a soul spiritually alive I should readily enough accept it, but they are not free of death. With love in the Lord to Mrs. Hoare and yourself, also to Miss Evans.
Believe me,
Your very affectionate brother,
F. E. Raven.