DECEMBER 24TH, 1889

DECEMBER 24TH, 1889

Mr. W. Bradstock.

My Dear Brother, — Referring to our conversation of yesterday I send a line to say that, while adhering to the substance of my letters to you of May 1st and 6th, and June 6th, 1888, there is an expression in that of June 6th which I would wish to withdraw — it is as follows, ‘if it means anything it means that sin is to be completely displaced in us by divine righteousness, and this cannot be until the Lord comes’. The sentence as it stands involves confusion between a state in us conformable to God’s righteousness and that righteousness ^[p. 11] in itself. In doing this I express my regret at any difficulty the expression may have caused in any mind, though the circulation of the letters is not my responsibility. What I had in my mind was, as I think the tenor of my letters shows, that the full answer in us to Christ having been made sin for us is in our being perfected after His order in glory. The difference in present application to the believer between 2 Corinthians 5:21 and Romans 3 and 4 seems to me the difference between a place in Christ in the holiest and a place of acceptance as at the brazen altar down here. Both belong in God’s righteousness to the believer. That I ever held that any state in the believer constituted his righteousness before God I absolutely deny, Christ is made that to us of God.

I take the opportunity of adding a word in regard to eternal life. Were I now writing on the subject I should lay more stress on a point touched in my letter of June 6th, viz., the Son being in us as life in the power of the Spirit, and in connection with it the relationship of children (1 John 3: 1) into which we are brought through redemption and as the fruit of the manifestation of the Father’s Name by the Son to the men given to Him of the Father out of the world.

Believe me, etc.,
F. E. Raven.