EXTRACTS

… But on the point you write about (2 Corinthians 6: 14) I cannot hesitate a moment in stating what I feel.

Neither the warnings nor the motives confine themselves to worship, nor even have they any particular application that I can see. Chapter 6: 1 is as large as can be. The principles of verses 14–17 are as general and absolute as possible. Christ has no accord with Belial anywhere, nor the temple of God with idols. God does not walk in our midst only in worship.

I am not to touch unclean things everywhere, not in worship merely—I am not to touch it anywhere, because we form the temple of the living God. Being yoked is not worship—it is everything that brings us to community of thought and moral judgment. It is a question of receiving—being owned as—sons and daughters, not of worship. I do not see a trace of any application to worship in the passage, but of everything which puts two to pull together where moral principles are concerned. “Perfecting holiness in the fear of God” is the conclusion.

What is above all to be dreaded as to the saints now, is relaxation of their principles in a worldly way. Evident immorality would be at once judged, as anything gross perhaps in worldliness, but it is this tendency to loosen the absoluteness and universality of Christ as a motive which tends to eat out the spiritual life. You are quite at liberty to use this as a testimony which I would make as strong as I possibly could against any such unholy and condemned yoke. The passage applies to marriage, to partnerships, because it applies to everything where people have to walk together on some common principle, and the Christian is to bring in Christ as his one and only motive for everything. An unbeliever cannot do this, for he has not the motive, and it is impossible they can act together.

J. N. Darby (‘Letters’ Vol. 2, pp.481, 482)

What I still dread is worldliness; it weakens the spring of all. For what is there but Christ? He reveals the Father; He is eternal joy, and present life too. We do not enough feel that what is not seen is revealed to us (see 1 Corinthians 2). How could we look upon it if it were not, or how set our affections on things above? Perhaps as one draws nearer we see clearer, or are more occupied with it, but it seems to me all. People go on around me with their occupations, and I suppose must, and I know ought in one sense; but it seems to me another world which ends in nothing. At any rate, the fashion of it passes away—Christ, and His word, and they who do God’s will, never. All that is eternal; only we have to seek His guidance to serve Him, with His wisdom and according to His will.

J. N. Darby (‘Letters’ Vol. 3, pp.112, 113)

But the creature must have an object to live for, and so it was as, to Paul’s soul, it was by the faith of Jesus Christ. By faith in Jesus Christ Paul lived indeed. The Christ who was the source of his life, who was his life, was its object also. It is this which always characterises the life of Christ in us: He Himself is its object—He alone. The fact, that it is by dying for us in love that He—who was capable of it, the Son of God—has given us thus freed from sin this life as our own, being ever before the mind, in our eyes He is clothed with the love He has thus shown us. We live by faith of the Son of God, who has loved us, and given Himself for us. And here it is personal life, the individual faith that attaches us to Christ, and makes Him precious to us as the object of the soul’s intimate faith.

J. N. Darby (‘Synopsis’ Vol. 4, p.264)

But I say without any hesitation that it is the responsibility of every one of us to maintain the truth. We do not maintain the truth merely by clinging tenaciously to the terms of the truth, but by being ourselves the exponents of the truth. You may think what I say is hard, but I judge that we ought to be prepared to surrender everything—whatever we have in this life, the dearest ties and associations, whatever honour or glory or position we may have—in order to be exponents of the truth which the Lord has given us to maintain. It is very easy to justify having things agreeable here—and God may allow us to enjoy many things here—but they may readily be too prominent with us, and when they are the truth has a second place; and which, I ask, should have the first place—the things of this life, or the truth? Every right-minded person would allow that the truth is to be the first thing, and we are at all costs to maintain it; and the divine way to maintain it is by ourselves being the expression of it, and everything has to be subordinate to that. So I say that in a sense the less a man has in this world the better. If we have confidence in God, God can care for His people, and He is not limited to human methods. People make provision for their families in their way, and think that God is bound to that way. God has His own way, and can make provision in His own way; He is not bound to any particular way.

F. E. Raven (Vol. 2, p.268)

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