READING ON ROMANS 4 AND 5
[p. 136] READING ON ROMANS 4 AND 5
Romans 4: 22 - 25; Romans 5: 1 - 11
GAT There are some who are not clear about the question raised at the close of our last reading. Would you mind me raising the question again about Christ not shedding His blood?
JT What is the difficulty about it?
GAT Some think He did and some think He did not, as it was brought out in the reading.
JT Well, of course it is a question of how the words may be used. As a matter of literality, the blood was shed after He died. It could not therefore be an act of His own, but He laid down His life, which is equivalent to blood shedding in the sense that blood shedding is the giving up of the life to which sin was attached sacrificially. It is said that without shedding of blood there is no remission, so that great emphasis is laid in the Scriptures on the shedding, or on the pouring out of His blood. He speaks of it being poured out for us, and shed for the sins of many. In Matthew and Mark the reference is, I think to “many” in Luke it is to us, to christians.
AL In Hebrews 9, from which you are quoting, as to the shedding of blood, He is looked on as both the offerer and the victim. It says, “Who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God”. That would involve the shedding of His blood, would it not?
JT Yes, and the further statement that He entered by His own blood.
AL Yes, He has entered in by the power of His own blood, and I think it is very clear that it involves the shedding of His blood. Hebrews 9 would have no importance if the blood of the victim was not presented to God.
JT Yes, if you bring the type into it in that way, He was not only the victim but the offerer. He was the priest as well.
AL Yes, and the priest never entered in without blood.
JT So the contrast is that Aaron entered in with [p. 137] blood not his own, whereas Christ entered in by His own blood, having obtained an eternal redemption.
WLP Is not this a technical point, and the fact of it being His blood is of great importance?
JT I think Hebrews 9 makes it clear that He was not only the sacrifice, but the priest as well — the offering priest, so that He entered by His own blood, yet historically He died before the blood was poured out. So that we must not be material nor literal in dealing with the matter. It is a question of the value of the blood as poured out, and obviously from Hebrews 9 He entered, He is in the presence of God now representatively, by His own blood.
RSS You said this morning that the termination of that condition of manhood, both for Christ and for us shows the moral necessity for the pouring out. It was necessary for us, because flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God. It was a moral necessity that it should be poured out, but as to the matter of fact there is no question it was after the Lord died that the spear pierced His side and His blood flowed forth.
JT And in truth the blood is presented in scripture as from God’s side, as descriptive of what God is. It is the blood of the covenant. The covenant was on God’s part, not on Christ’s part. That is, Christ’s life belonged to God — the life belonged to God. His body, I apprehend, was His own, for God gave it to Him. “A body hast thou prepared me”, but the life, according to the type, is in the blood, and God claimed that from the beginning, pointing on to the time when Christ should become man. God laid claim to that life, so that the pouring out of that life, or that blood, was a witness of what God is, what God is to us.
ANW And there can be no question that, as John presents it, the very reference to it is to show that that life is given up. John is the only one that gives emphasis to the fact that He died.
JT He is the only one that gives the fact of the spear piercing His side, but the others, Matthew, Mark and Luke, refer to the shedding of His blood in the institution of [p. 138] the supper.
ANW John brings to light the fact emphatically that He died on the cross. It seems to me his is the only gospel that records the fact that the soldiers came and found He was dead, and it emphasizes too that the soldier pierced His side, from which the blood and water flowed forth. They, John says, bear witness (1 John 5: 8).
JT He evidently lays emphasis on a dead Christ; that is, the complete ending of that order of life. John lays emphasis on that again in his epistle. He says the blood is the witness, and that the Lord has come by water and by blood. He has come that way.
R S. S. John is the apostle who takes up man’s condition. “Except a man be born again”, for instance. That is the way it begins. It is a question of the condition of man and the termination of that condition.
JT And so the Book of Revelation makes a good deal of the blood.
R.S.S. Why, do you think?
JT I think it is all on that same line, that that life had to be given up: that, the efficacy of Christ’s sacrifice depended on that life being given up, terminated.
RSS Of course (I speak reverently) in a way the Lord could scarcely have shed His own blood. It says, “Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed”, Genesis 9: 6. One might take his own life, but the Lord could not do that. In one sense it was taken from Him: in another He gave it up. I think we have to bear in mind those two aspects.
JT I think we do well to take note of the way faith is introduced and enlarged on in this section, beginning with chapter 3. We have there a law of faith. “Where then is boasting?” it says. “It has been excluded. By what law? Of works? Nay, but by law of faith”, Romans 3: 27.
R S. S. Which means, of course, on what principle, does it not?
JT The exclusive power of it, as shutting out all human pretension in regard of God, and in regard of man’s relation with God. This remarkable thing called “the law of faith” works for the exclusion, in christianity, of all [p. 139] pretension to man having any part in the work of redemption, and this law must be in the saints. It is not a question of what is in God, nor in the mercy-seat, but of what is in man — this law.
DR Is Abraham in that way taken up as a sample man?
JT I think Abraham and David are brought in to emphasize the working out of this law of faith, which excludes, in the very nature of it, human pretension.
WCR So, God is just and the justifier of him that is of the faith of Jesus. Is that the thought?
JT Yes.
WLP What would be the difference in faith and the law of faith?
JT The two things have to be apprehended separately. The use of the word “law” in this epistle is very striking. Faith existing, there is a certain law in it, and it is brought in here as exclusive of man’s pretensions. That is, it: excludes all that which we have to do with in christendom today in the way of pretension in the things of God. That is what this law does, but obviously the law cannot exist without the faith, and the faith is not in God. It is in us, so it reads: “Nay, but by law of faith; for we reckon that a man is justified by faith, without works of law”, Romans 3:28. Then he says: “Do we then make void law by faith Far be the thought: no, but we establish law”, Romans 3: 31. What I have in my mind is the importance of seeing how faith is brought in as the mercy-seat is introduced; that it says through faith in His blood. The idea of the mercy-seat is linked up with faith in man, and, this faith existing, a law is in it which excludes boasting.
GWH So it gives man no place.
JT It makes everything of God, what He has effected in Christ, and disallows man.
ANW Would the thought of law suggest that it is perfectly logical? Faith seems illogical to men, but it has a system all its own that is perfectly workable. The point is to see the centre of that system, which I would suggest is the mercy-seat.
JT Yes, just as with electricity or anything in God’s [p. 140] creation, there is a certain law governing it, and the more it is worked out the more it will be found that the law is accurate in every particular. The more, therefore, you inquire into creation, the nearer you get to God as the Creator, and the more you will discover that everything is worked out on the principle of law. Everything in the creation is worked out on that principle, and the scientist is concerned about that law. That is what concerns him — to discover that law and its workability. Well now, the same thing is obviously found in what is moral. That is, if God in the first chapter conies in as the Creator, in the third He comes in sacrificially. In coming in in that way, He is to be apprehended on the principle of faith. That is the thing to get hold of, and in that faith, which lays hold of what is presented on God’s side, there is a law, and that law is workable, and faith is logical when the law is understood. There is no discrepancy. Things are found to work out logically, and, in proof, this epistle is a most logical epistle. It is the enforcement of what is of God on the mind through the conscience, so that things are worked out in a man’s soul logically and you cannot shake a man who has entered into things in this way. That is, it is not simply that he is resting on the statements of Scripture. He is working on the principle of law.
ANW As Mr. Darby said, infidelity is irrational. Is it not?
JT Quite, most irrational.
JB Does the law of faith not save from superstition?
JT Quite.
HG Do you mean there is a sort of established method of operation in that way? It is not a mere sentimental kind of thing, but you see that God is working on certain lines, along established lines. Is that the idea?
JT That is it. He has come out now in the working out of His scheme of redemption. It is in the light now. He brings forward in chapter 4 certain evidences from the Old Testament that He was already working on it before, only the thing was very obscure. He had already begun on these lines. Abraham and David are witnesses to the fact [p. 141] that God had begun on these lines before. Abraham seized the idea and David seized it, and now he says, it was not written on his account alone, but on ours also. Things were written for us and they are understandable now in that the thing has worked out in Christ.
DR Would it be right to say that righteousness is only made practically good in us in proportion to our faith? As it is said of Abraham, that he “believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness”.
JT Yes, I think one only answers to God in the measure of his faith.
WCR In the beginning of Romans 8 we get the same thought you were speaking of, the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set me free.
JT That is another reference.
WCR It is law. It seems to be the power connected with the Spirit. The Spirit is one thing and the law of the Spirit another.
JT Many christians are just resting on the statements of Scripture, and of course the soul clings to the Scriptures, you know. I get the benefit of the light there, but I do not know the law that governs it. I know that I get the benefit of the light to that extent, but how different it is with a man who knows the law of it. I do not suppose anybody really knows the law of electricity, but there are those who know something about it and how different it is to such, and so in this epistle the intent is that we should be established. Not only God has said this and that, but how it works out morally.
HG Abraham and David were before their day in that sense. We often speak of men being before their days.
JT They were pioneers.
HG So, taking the question of circumcision, the act itself really recognizing man after the flesh, the men who had faith would see after all that God was working in view of another order of man, the setting aside of the man after the flesh, so that a man who had faith would see beyond the system he was engaged with. Is that the idea?
JT That is the idea, and what you find is that the [p. 142] Spirit, in referring to these men in the New Testament, interprets what they did and said in the light of the New Testament.
ANW Abel, for instance.
JT Just so, and Abraham. He “rejoiced to see my day” the Lord says, “and he saw it, and was glad”. That is, He puts that interpretation on some event in Abraham’s life.
GWH And when it says that Abel by faith offered unto God, did he offer in the light of Christ?
JT Oh, yes, he did. He was ahead of his day. The faith period had not yet come in.
ANW He must have understood something of the law of God’s world morally.
WCR And Moses esteemed the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt. He looked on.
JT Quite so.
ANW Is it not true that men try to reach up to the laws of creation by the laws known to them? They never can reach the origin, but by faith we understand it.
JT So Hebrews 11: 3 says, “By faith we apprehend that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that that which is seen should not take its origin from things which appear”. We apprehend that.
GAT Would you explain what you said about faith being in us, not in a Person but in ourselves. Did you say that?
JT Faith, you see, must be in us. It is not in God. You cannot attribute faith to God. Immediately the mercy-seat is brought in, you get, “Through faith in his blood”, Romans 3: 25. That is, the idea of the mercy-seat assumes there is faith here. It would be inefficacious otherwise.
RSS You are not now speaking of the object of faith, but of faith which is in us.
JT Yes, it says, “righteousness of God is revealed therein, on the principle of faith, to faith”, Romans 1: 17. That is, there must be the principle of faith in me to lay hold of it, so directly the mercy-seat is introduced you have “through faith in His blood” brought in. Here God is working in man correspondingly with that which He presents in Christ. Otherwise it would not be efficacious. The thing would be a dead letter, and from that point onwards, throughout chapter 4 you have this great principle of faith developed after the mercy-seat is introduced, and Abraham and David were ahead of their day, because the day of faith is the present day strictly — “God’s dispensation, which is in faith”, 1 Timothy 1: 4. That is the present time. These men were ahead of that.
DR And “without faith it is impossible to please him”, is it not?
JT Quite.
JB Then those men belonged to this present dispensation in that sense?
JT They are brought into it here.
JB Hebrews 11: 40 brings them into it, does it not?
RSS I rather thought what characterized Old Testament saints was faith; what should characterize New Testament saints is love. How does that agree with what you are saying?
JT Oh, but it is faith working by love. This is pre-eminently the dispensation of faith, because there is nothing for sight now. Of old there was, especially in the previous dispensation. That is, the tabernacle and the cloud. It was a dispensation of sight.
R S. S. Yes, but really the height of the thing lay in faith then.
JT Oh, that is it. That is, these men that had faith went beyond the day in which they lived. The day in which they lived was dispensationally a day of sight as far as God’s outward ways went, but our day is not that, so that John’s gospel makes much of faith. The Lord asks the question, “Do ye now believe?” John 16: 31.
GWH He was inquiring about the principle of faith within them, or if it were there. Is that the idea?
JT Yes, you see after He arose from the dead (and it is a very solemn thing) He found the disciples, the apostles to a man, acting in unbelief. He reproached them, it says,
[p. 144] with their unbelief and hardness of heart. It shows that, in spite of the greatest possible advantages, the flesh is essentially unbelieving; yet He goes to work and before He went to heaven He brings about in these very men a state of faith. He brought about in them a state of faith, so that during the ten days between His going to heaven and the coming of the Holy Spirit what they did was marked by faith. There is no evidence of unbelief.
If we do not have faith, we may have our meetings and all that we go on with, a system of meetings, local and general, but what is underlying it all? The twelve had the most wonderful time for three and a half years with Christ. No one ever had such an opportunity, but what was the result? The result was that He had to reproach them with their unbelief and hardness of heart after that. I mean these privileges, these advantages, in themselves may be a dead letter unless there is faith.
WCR It speaks in another place about the word not being mixed with faith.
JT Quite so, that is a point. The word was not mixed with faith — therefore it is ineffectual.
GWH At new birth do you get faith as a principle?
JT I think so. I think the principle is there.
GWH Otherwise we could not believe.
JT The effect of it is that one feels after God. What you are feeling after you do not see.
GAT I can understand having faith in a person — I have faith in God, that He can do so and so, but I cannot catch what it is to have faith in myself.
ANW Does not that last remark help you?
GAT I cannot get it.
ANW In connection with new birth, that obviously is in yourself.
GAT But what does faith rest on?
JT Faith has to have something to rest on. Something must be presented to us to believe.
JB Testimony, would you say?
JT Quite, the gospel. But then there is a capability that is not in the flesh.
GAT [p. 145] Would you mind telling us how it works amongst us?
JT It works that way — the truth is presented to you, you believe it. The woman Mary Magdalene that met the Lord first at the sepulchre came to the apostles and told them she had seen the Lord. Now Mary, of all the women amongst them, should have been accredited because she had had seven demons before she was converted; they were cast out of her by the Lord. She was a remarkable testimony of His power, to what He had effected in her, and yet when she brought this report to the apostles it says that what she said to them was as idle tales. Now that is a remarkable thing. I should believe any sister here in Detroit, or any brother; why should I regard something that he said to me, or she said to me, as an idle tale? What: does that prove? It proves what the flesh is in spite of the greatest possible advantages which they had. They had been in the company of the Lord for three and a half years and they had been companions of this godly woman too, and yet they could not believe in this remarkable testimony, this wonderful fact, the resurrection of Christ. They not only disbelieved the thing; they made the woman and others liars.
RSS And in spite of the fact, that seems to be rather unaccountable to us, that the Lord Himself, as recorded for instance in Mark, probably four times, on His way to Jerusalem testified what would take place and then that He would rise again; in one place I know it says the third day. That always seems difficult to understand — why it did not affect them.
JT And the other scriptures too — the Old Testament.
GWH Did I understand you to say that the principle of faith is to increase continually in the believer?
JT Well, the thing is to get that principle. Have I got it?
HG That is the point, I am sure, because, as you said, christianity does not consist in meetings or in congregations. Christianity is a faith system, and if we are going to be held here for God in any sort of reality we have to have a foundation of faith laid in our souls at the outset. Hence [p. 146] the importance of a scripture of this kind. One feels a good many souls have never had to do with God on the faith principle; have never seen how God has secured in Christ a mercy-seat, a groundwork, and is free to come out in all the grace, and goodness, and mercy of His heart to man. Even that principle has not been laid in a great many souls. They may have had credit for a certain amount of light, but are dissatisfied and do not really have peace with God because the foundation of faith has not been laid in their souls. I do not know if you go with that?
JT Oh, that is it. You look back over fifty years — some here have experienced that time — what advantages places have had and men have had. Well, the time comes when the most precious light is presented and the thing is refused, you know, deliberately refused. Well, what is that? Where have we been? These twelve apostles had had the most wonderful advantages, and yet here is a thing brought to them that they ought to have already accepted, this light of the resurrection. The thing is an idle tale they say. It seemed to them as idle tales.
Ques Then the measure of your faith is the evidence of your acquaintance with God?
JT And then you see faith working by love, and, as I was remarking, what a task the Lord had before Him on the morning of the resurrection. This is what He found, you see, and He goes about and works with these men with the result that after He goes to heaven, during the ten days that intervene between His going to heaven and the coming of the Spirit, they act in the most intelligent way. They are marked by faith. That is what He brought about.
ANW Referring to your remark, which I think is very true, have we abused the Scriptures? Is it possible to say that? I hardly like to say it, but have we abused the Scriptures to bring about the charge you make against us? One has perhaps had faith in the Scriptures which has not put one’s soul in touch with God.
HG I believe that is so.
ANW I mean we have referred to the first verse of chapter five, whereas we have overlooked perhaps the [p. 147] third chapter.
GWH Would you connect what you are saying with Ephesians 1: 17, “The spirit of wisdom and revelation in the full knowledge of him”? Would that be the same thing?
JT God will give you that, you mean?
GWH Yes, the apostle’s prayer.
JT Yes.
GWH They evidently had not the spirit of it.
GAT Faith made good in my soul would prepare me to accept the truth when it is presented to me.
JT As soon as the light comes from God you embrace it. Not that we swallow things down without exercise. The principle of this epistle is to work the thing into our souls through the conscience into the mind, so we have the thing intelligently, and yet through the conscience.
GAT Would you say Simeon was in the good of that?
JT Yes, quite. He was one that was prepared. He had come by the Spirit into the temple, and he is prepared for the thing, and embraced the light as it came, and so did Anna.
GAT That has made clear to me the reason why I do not always accept the truth.
JT You may depend there is some bit of flesh, of will, at work.
HG I think, generally speaking, people have an impression that if they are justified, they are justified for this world; that they will be under advantage in connection with this world, whereas really justification is for the world to come. It was so with Abraham. It speaks of him being the heir of the world. It was not this world, as I understand it. Our outlook often indicates how little our souls are in the light of what men call faith. Christianity is a faith system.
ANW From the fact that the first verse of the fifth chapter was true before that verse was written, one wonders how many would be in the good of it if that verse was not written.
H G. Is that true, what I was saying? Am I right?
JT Surely! That is the point of the meeting, that the saints should have faith. You come to meetings and you [p. 148] listen to things, but what effect have they on you? As the Lord says, “Do ye now believe?” Well then they say, Yes, Lord, “we believe that thou camest forth from God”, but that is not all. There is more than that. He has come from God and He has gone to God. We have to believe all the truth.
WCR I suppose what we believe governs us?
JT Yes, that is so. If one believed that Jesus came out from God and that He went in to God, one must believe that He left the world, as it says, “Knowing ... that he should depart out of this world to the Father” (John 13: 1) — out of it, so one would go out of it willingly.
HG Does not Abraham set forth the principle in a sense? He knew he was the heir of the world and yet he pays his way here — he buys a burying place for Sarah. Well, a man who has such faith, even if he is cut off from the earth, is not surprised, and yet in his own soul he carries a sense that the world, everything, belongs to him: so he is an anomaly. No one can understand him, but he can understand the line by which God is working. Someone spoke of the way some of our brethren here suffered for their faith in connection with recent matters, I see man has no place here. As far as the world is concerned it is only here on sufferance. As far as God is concerned, the man of the world is only on sufferance. Though faith can take that in, the christian says, I can claim nothing here. If they cut me off, it is what they did to Christ. I wait the time. So a christian waits and faith supports him in the most difficult position and enables him to act intelligently in the midst of the most difficult position.
JT Yes, I think Rahab illustrates that. “By faith the harlot Rahab perished not with them that believed not, when she had received the spies with peace”, Hebrews 11: 31. She perished not with those that believed not. Whilst she acted traitorously as regards her country, she acted on the principle of faith. From God’s point of view, the present occupants of the earth are only on sufferance, and Rahab seized that.
GAT Would you think what Mr. G. was just speaking [p. 149] about would be brought out in Revelation 10 where the strong angel comes out and sets his right foot on the sea and the left upon the earth? He maintains the whole thing there.
JT It is testimony that it is God’s, and then he has a little open book in his hand, which he gives the prophet. I suppose in what he spoke the history of Western Europe is taken up. It is there and the prophet understands what it all means. It is very bitter in the carrying out of it, but then the people of God have got to go through that bitterness. God will take up the inheritance and we have to suffer in the process, but it is ours.
JB I was noticing in reading about the apostle Paul in the Acts that it speaks of his reasoning. I suppose we really get set forth in the book of Romans his reasonings with regard to Christ.
JT I think this is a remarkable treatise on the gospel, and it is a reasoning of the thing.
JB Again and again we get the word “reasoned” — a reasoning from the Scriptures.
JT The thing is worked out logically in the school of one Tyrannus at Ephesus. The apostle reasoned there daily.
RSS It is likely this epistle to the Romans is a summary of what we get in the Acts, where we do not get the details.
GWH You said this morning chapter 3 was for God, did you not?
JT Chapter 3 is God coming out in righteousness.
GWH And chapter 4 is reckoning.
JT Chapter 4 is what Abraham our father found. It is our side. What have I found? So it begins: “What shall we say then that Abraham our father according to flesh has found?”
HG You have discovered the line God is working on.
Is that the idea?
JT Yes.
R S. S. It is still objective?
JT It is, but these men are brought in to show how [p. 150] faith works. What has Abraham found on this line? Well, he found wonderful things. It goes on to say, “For what does the scripture say? And Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness”, Romans 4: 3. He found that. And then it says further, in verse 6, “Even as David also declares the blessedness of the man to whom God reckons righteousness without works”. So that these two men found these things. The one found righteousness, and the other found, as it were, the blessedness of it. Not that David only spoke of the blessedness, but he had the light of it.
HG And I suppose Abraham being brought in before the law and David after would suggest that it is the same undeviating principle that God was working on from the outset. Law had not changed it at all.
ANW So it would test the Jew, who counted on Abraham and David.
JT It would blast their thoughts in regard of works and boasting, that these very men who were their great worthies were marked by this principle of faith. When you come to the working of the thing from our side, what we find is that God has not only acted in the death of Christ in establishing righteousness, but He has acted in power for us in raising Christ from the dead. “Who has been delivered for our offences and has been raised for our justification”. Hence this chapter brings in the power of God.
RLC There is a man in us that would take us off the line of faith. In Galatians it says: “Received ye the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?” Galatians 3: 2. There was a tendency to slip away from it into that which was beggarly and of no help to them.
JT It is the toleration of the flesh in one way or another. We see the working of the flesh in those who advance, and how it works to rob us of the most precious light that God may give us.
GAT This should exercise us, that the Spirit of God is preparing us for the ministry that He will bring to us when we are in condition to receive [p. 151] it.
JT So circumcision is brought in here as a trial of the righteousness which he had. Circumcision is the proof of it. In other words, the Holy Spirit in the christian is the answer to this righteousness that God is pleased to confer, and that means that I cannot allow the flesh. That is what I understand.
HG Circumcision recognized man after the flesh. This is the very reverse of what circumcision was. The presence of the Holy Spirit virtually says, ‘I have done with that man’. When God gives the Spirit of another Man, He says, ‘I have done with you’.
JT And circumcision in the meaning of it involves the Spirit. “We are the circumcision, who worship by the Spirit of God, and boast in Christ Jesus, and do not trust in flesh”, Philippians 3: 3. That is, circumcision has been the proof of righteousness, so circumcision in the spiritual significance of it is that the flesh is to be disallowed continuously.
JB Would Colossians come in there? “If ye continue in the faith grounded and settled”, Colossians 1: 23. There is continuance there.
JT What was the connection?
JB With regard to what was being said about getting off from the line of faith and the allowance of the flesh. So it says in Colossians, “If ye continue in the faith” as though there was a possibility of getting off those lines. Is that the meaning of it there?
JT Oh, yes, it is continuance in the thing, in the faith.
WCR Faith there is more christianity, is it not? Not the law of faith.
JT Yes, it is “the faith”.
JS In the epistle of James we get the practical meaning, and I suppose what you have been remarking would convey our thoughts to those men you spoke of. It was Abraham that had the works of faith. We do not need to be deceived in any way with one saying he has faith when he has not the works of it.
JT Yes, James shows if you say you have faith, you must prove it by [p. 152] works.
WCR Apparently from that there is live faith and dead faith.
JT As to the reference there to dead faith and living faith, the living faith is evidenced in works.
H.De B. Faith supported by love.
WCR This morning we had the righteousness of God presented to us, and then we are told the righteousness of God is towards all and upon all that believe.
JT What have you got to say about that?
WCR I wanted you to open it up a little for us.
JT Well, I think God as it were clothes us with that garb on the principle of faith, as you believe. It is towards all, which is the general bearing of the gospel, as we have it in Luke 7. It was there for Simon as much as for the woman. It was there for faith, as we have often remarked, but He says to the woman, “Thy faith has saved thee; go in peace”. It was put on her, so to speak. “Her sins, which are many, are forgiven” (Luke 7: 47), He says, and she goes forth clothed with righteousness.
WCR In 2 Corinthians 5, we are spoken of as the righteousness of God in Him.
JT We are made that. It is there not simply the blood, but as having the answer to His having been made sin. “Him who knew not sin he has made sin for us, that we might become God’s righteousness in him”, 2 Corinthians 5: 21. It is a very remarkable word. I suppose it contemplates what we shall be as in the glory with Christ.
WCR Would we be that now at all? Would believers be a kind of a declaration of the righteousness of God at the present time?
JT Oh, well, they would be in the measure in which they set forth the thing, but how can I say I am, or assume to be the righteousness of God? That I am accounted righteous on the principle of faith is something that I know myself. I can hardly prove that to anyone else. I think “that we might become God’s righteousness” is what He displays in the future: that I come out in a glorified body, the full expression of God, acting in answer to the death of Christ. “That in the ages to come he might shew the [p. 153] exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus”, Ephesians 2: 7. That is, His righteousness is not destructive, as I remarked. It is constructive, and He brings out into public view the full result of it. That is to say, men in glorified bodies like Christ’s.
WCR Now the beginning of Romans 5 seems to be a kind of an answer to what Christ did. The righteousness of God is presented, and the power of God, then in the love of God, but the first part of chapter 5 seems to be an answer in us.
JT Yes, that we have peace with God. I think the fourth is a chapter that ought to be especially dwelt upon, as showing how the believer comes into the thing; that he comes into the reality of God’s power working for him and the possession of the seal of circumcision; that one has in one’s soul by the Spirit a conscious thing, a seal of the righteousness that I already have, namely, the disallowance of the power of the spirit of the flesh. Now that is what circumcision spiritually means.
ANW Why is that so obscure there? Why is the Spirit so content to be obscure there until chapter 8?
JT He is only for the moment establishing the principle of faith in these men, in Abraham and David, but we can put a good deal into it from Colossians and Philippians. We can see what circumcision means for us. That is, God had revealed Himself to Abraham as the Almighty God. It is in that connection we get circumcision. It is a question of God’s power. If God is Almighty, then I do not need to trust the flesh. It is not to be trusted, but disallowed, and the ordinance of God for me means that He has raised Christ and that power is working in me. That is what it means for me. Therefore I do not need to trust the flesh at all. It profits nothing and I disallow it.
DR Then is it on the strength of that that we have the statement in verse 11, “We also joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ”?
JT You joy in God instead of in the flesh.
GAT I can see much more clearly than I could this morning how I [p. 154] get relief.
GWH The very fact of the believer having the Spirit indicates that all he has derived from Adam, the fallen condition, is gone in the cross, is it not? The identity remains.
JT The identity of the believer remains, but by the power of the Spirit he is in accord with the righteousness of God. It is how his death was seen in the cross, and at the same time He brings the sinner in before Him without his sins, and the seal of that is the Spirit really. I have with me every day the seal of that, so that I do not allow the flesh. Otherwise I lose the sense of it. I must have the seal. He received the seal, it says, from God.
RSS So Romans 4 assumes that we have the Spirit.
JT Yes, it does. That is (if you understand) if you use circumcision in its spiritual significance.
RSS Quite so. I suppose most of us understand. We talk a great deal about circumcision and the Spirit. They do not seem to be very relative on the face of it, but circumcision was what marked the people of God as God’s in Old Testament times; the Spirit is what marks the people of God in New Testament times. We are sealed by the Spirit. That is the relation between the two.
JT Baptism has to do with what is outside of a christian; circumcision has to do with what is inside of him, so I cannot disallow the flesh but by the Spirit. The force of it you see is in the endeavour to bring in an heir according to the flesh, to bring in a product of the flesh for God. Circumcision disallows that. The child that is to be brought in is to be brought in on the principle of divine power, not human power, so that Isaac is born after Abraham was too old to be a father according to the flesh, so circumcision is the seal of the righteousness which he had before.
DR Speaking of circumcision in that light, it would correspond with the beginning of Ephesians where it says, “having believed, ye have been sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise”, Ephesians 1: 13.
JT It works with it in that way, that the Spirit in you maintains you in accordance with the light you have received in [p. 155] the gospel.
HG You do not apply then the resurrection of Christ here so much to the power of death that lay upon man?
JT Oh, I think it is more than that, Mr. G., because it is worked up from this: “Therefore it is on the principle of faith, that it might be according to grace, in order to the promise being sure to all the seed, not to that only which is of the law, but to that also which is of Abraham’s faith, who is father of us all (according as it is written, I have made thee father of many nations,) before the God whom he believed, who quickens the dead, and calls the things which be not as being; who against hope believed in hope to his becoming father of many nations, according to that which was spoken, So shall thy seed be: and not being weak in faith, he considered not his own body already become dead, being about a hundred years old, and the deadening of Sarah’s womb, and hesitated not at the promise of God through unbelief; but found strength in faith, giving glory to God; and being fully persuaded that what he has promised he is able also to do”, Romans 4: 16 - 21. It is a question of God’s power. That was what he believed in there.
GAT Did not Sarah laugh at this?
JT Yes, you see what is alluded to here is Genesis 15 to 17. That is, it is faith in a God who reveals Himself as Almighty. That is chapter 4 of Romans.
HG It was the inability of the flesh to bring forth anything for God.
JT Yes. Well, if I have discovered that I may as well hold to it and the Holy Spirit enables me to hold to it.
LES Would you say a word as to the distinction between faith and the Spirit.
JT The Holy Spirit comes into the believer consequent upon faith and He is the power by which faith is sustained, and by which faith acts in the believer, so that without the Holy Spirit one could not lead a life of faith in this world such as is presented in the New Testament. I do not deny they led a life of faith in the Old Testament, but then the Spirit of God takes up certain things they did and said, and [p. 156] clothes them with divine thoughts. Their public life in many respects was occupied with things that are seen, but christianity is “The just shall live by faith”. He lives by it.
JB Does not Habakkuk call attention to that?
JT That is the passage I referred to. It is quoted three times in the New Testament (Romans 1: 17; Galatians 3: 11; Hebrews 10: 38). It seems to be the one expression from the Old Testament that christianity is hung upon. “The just shall live by faith”.
R S. S. In the beginning of chapter 5, there was a remark made in connection with the righteousness of God, the power of God, and the love of God. I think these three chapters are connected with those three things in God, are they not?
JT Yes, quite.
RSS Did you make some remark about that, Dr. R.?
WCR I said they were presented objectively to us, and I thought perhaps the beginning of the fifth chapter was our answering to it.
JT The fifth chapter begins with a “Therefore”. It is very interesting to follow the gradual development in structure in Paul’s writings; how he gathers things up. Now he has attained volume, so to speak, in which he is perfectly free. “Therefore having been justified on the principle of faith, we have peace towards God”. He brings the christian on to the plane of faith, and from that he works out a wonderful experience. He develops, as you might say, christianity, how it is worked out in the believer from the divine side; not yet from the Spirit’s side in the believer, but in the way the light affects the believer. That is chapter 5. He works it out from that point of view. He has attained a very wonderful plane or altitude, whence he develops the result of what he had been presenting, so he says, “Therefore having been justified on the principle of faith, we have peace towards God through our Lord Jesus Christ: by whom we have also access by faith into this favour in which we stand, and we boast in hope of the glory of God”. That is what christians are characteristically. That is how matters stand with us.
[p. 157] FWT Would you say that light is only light as there is corresponding faith?
JT Yes, it is quite obvious that the light of the gospel as presented in this world is not light to any except those who have faith.
FWT I meant experimentally in us. That is, as light is received there must be the faith to support it.
JT Yes, so that the measure in which we receive the light is the measure of our faith.
RLC The system of faith is established now by the Spirit, is it not? It says in Galatians 3: 25, “But, faith having come”. He refers to faith’s day there, does he not?
JT Yes, he does.
WCR Where it says, “access by faith into this favour in which we stand”, what does that mean?
JT I think he is just treating of the christian’s position characteristically, as if he said, Now this is how it is with christians; this is how the matter is with christians. “Having been justified on the principle of faith, we have peace towards God through our Lord Jesus Christ; by whom we have also access by faith into this favour in which we stand, and we boast in hope of the glory of God”. It is a concise way of putting the christian position for anyone whom it might concern. This was a wonderful company of people.
ANW The christian position individually, would you say?
JT Yes, as it is worked out in the individual.
GAT And it ought to be true of every christian that he rejoices. It is for every christian.
JT Yes, and it is for every christian to find out, have I reached this altitude?
GAT You do not believe in sad christians then?
JT This shows a company of victorious christians, rejoicing in hope of the glory of God.
WCR And boasting in tribulation.
JT He goes on to say, “And not only that”. There is more than that for us.
Ques What does “the glory of God” mean in this [p. 158] scripture?
JT It is the showing out of what He is in His attributes.
Ques As coming out where?
JT In the millennial world. That is what we are rejoicing in hope of. The apostle presents a company of victorious people, and the very worst things that can happen to us are working for us. We get several workers in the next paragraph, and they are all working for us, so that the very worst things that you see happening to us are our workers. It is to bring in the munificence of the position.
Ques Is that where faith comes in?
JT It is through faith we have access into this position, “And not only that, but we also boast in tribulations”. That is another thing.
HG Only a man who had faith would know he was in favour when he was in tribulation. Is it not the antithesis really of what marked judaism in a way as indicating the importance of being in the light of faith?
JT So that no circumstances can arise to baffle a man who is in faith. “Not only that, but we also boast in tribulations”. That is certainly a new thing in this world. If you analyse the experiences of the Old Testament saints, you will find they dreaded tribulations.
HG The king could say, Let it not be in my day, but in the day of my son. He passed it on to his son.
JT And “the thing which I greatly feared is come upon me”, Job 3:25. These things show they were not in victory, whereas the christian is. Then he goes on to say, “Knowing that tribulation works endurance; and endurance, experience; and experience, hope”. A worldling would think these workers were against him. A christian regards them as his workers. Jacob submitted to the things that befell him, but he complained afterwards. He was not in victory.
WCR How can we boast in tribulation? Can you boast in the actual tribulation, or is it rather in the thought of what it will effect in you?
JT That is it.
HG “Knowing that”.
JT Quite so.
WLP [p. 159] You rise above it.
JT Faith says, It is a worker, it is one of the workers. It is a remarkable triumph. It is as if Paul would say, If you only understood christians, this is the kind of thing that we know. The things that you regard as against you are our workers. They are working for us.
GWH So David brought back from Ziklag great spoil. Tribulation brings great fruit, does it not?
JT It worketh patience — one of the scarcest things in the whole world perhaps is patience, and tribulation works it, so that what happens in the way of adversity has got to be looked at and we have got to see whether it is really working this in us. Otherwise it hardens us and sours our spirits. It defeats the divine end unless we are in faith.
JAW All this tends then to build up in us by the Spirit a constitution in which we can really rejoice in the midst of tribulation, and it is all in hope of the glory of God, is it not?
Ques Is it rejoicing in hope of the glory of God as relief?
JT Oh, no, you love the thought of God coming out. What can Satan do against a man who rejoices in tribulation? He is invulnerable.
GWH But a man who would rejoice in tribulation is a man who would accept it from the hand of God, would he not?
JT I think so. I think Habakkuk is a great help in this way, he first wonders why it is and then he sees that God has done it, so he arrives at a new song, on the principle of faith. I mention Habakkuk particularly, because, as far as I know, he is the only scripture writer that treats of the subject of faith in the Old Testament strictly.
AL He changed his instrument.
JT Yes, he did. He found out what God was doing, and now he says, “On my stringed instruments”, Habakkuk 3: 19. It is a higher key.
AL One note. It is not a variable note like a wind instrument.
JB In high places too.
JT He gets hinds’ feet.
HG The enemy comes imputing the power to his god, but he realizes it is not his god at all. “Thou hast ordained them for judgment; and, O mighty God, thou hast established them for correction”, Habakkuk 1: 12. A man gets salvation, does he not, when he can see that God is working behind all the power of the enemy for His people? And that brings us back to the point that it is a faith system. You have to be in the light of it to take that position. You are justified by faith on that principle.
JB The glory system would be that to come, and faith connects one at the present moment with that glory system, would it not?
JT Yes.
AL Isaiah says “the work of righteousness shall be peace”, Isaiah 32: 17. What is the difference between that and this?
JT I think that would fit in here. “The work of righteousness shall be peace; and the effect of righteousness quietness and assurance for ever”. It would fit in here as it affects faith, I think.
AL And then would you not say that Isaiah gives a little help on “through our Lord Jesus Christ”? It says: “Trust ye in the Lord for ever: for in the Lord JEHOVAH is everlasting strength” (or, the rock of ages), Isaiah 26: 4.
We get stability through our Lord Jesus Christ, would you say? Although we may shake and waver even when we are on the Rock that never shakes.
JT The believer according to this chapter does not shake either. There is nothing can disturb you if you are in the light of these things.
DR Tribulation as it comes before us here, has it not a future bearing?
JT What it says is that it works endurance. That is, you bear things pending the coming of the Lord. You are not going to give up.
DR You were speaking of these things as workers. The apostle Paul says, “For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory”, 2 Corinthians 4: 17. Is there not [p. 161] a connection between that and what comes before us here?
JT Yes, quite so.
Rem It brings us into the truth of the kingdom.
JB Why is the love of God shed abroad in our hearts mentioned last? Is that the result reached or is that the sustaining power?
JT Oh, I think the chapter leads us on to the covenant, what God is to us, so that He has found an outlet for His love. In the death of Christ He has found an outlet for it into the heart of the christian by the Holy Spirit which is given to us.
HG In that sense have we not rather to know the righteousness of God and His power before we can appreciate His love; that, while the gospel is the fruit of His love in a way, yet that is not the first thing presented to man. Is it not a question as to God’s rights being secured in your soul, and in His power?
JT And then His love.
HG And then His love, yes. “Therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith”, Romans 1: 17. It is not, therein is love revealed.
RSS We have to reach chapter 5 before we have love referred to.
HG Very often in the preaching Of the gospel the love of God is presented, but it always seemed to me more or less wrong. Because Of man being what he is, it is important that a foundation Of righteousness should be laid there, and too the light of the power of God.
AL I would like to understand that a little. You mean that in the foundation of righteousness there is the removal of man? Am I understanding you rightly?
HG I thought in righteousness God’s rights had been founded, so He might come out to men.
AL How were they founded?
HG In Christ — in the mercy-seat.
AL In His death, you mean?
H G. Oh, unquestionably.
AL Do you connect verse 5 with what we gain Of divine teaching in the [p. 162] cup?
JT Oh, yes, it runs with it. I always think of this verse in connection with the cup — the love of God.
A.L. Shed abroad?
JT Yes.
RSS You spoke of it as an outlet and an inlet.
JT In the death of Christ the love has found an outlet, but then the love is to have a place for us, and it has found an inlet into our hearts by the Holy Spirit which is given to us.
R S. S. And does this suggest, or does it go too far to say that this verse gives us in our hearts the consciousness of the love of God?
JT I think that is true. It does not say that we love too. That is chapter 8, you see, by the Spirit.
RSS Quite so, but we have the consciousness that God loves us — He loves you.
ANW So is it not rather more than faith?
JT It is by the Spirit here.
ANW I perhaps had in mind to question the difference between faith and the Spirit.
JT I might see that He loves me by the death of Christ, but this is that I am conscious that He loves me. The love is in my heart.
RSS It is the Spirit that gives consciousness always.
JT I think so.
AL Would you say that in that sense we drink of it?
JT From that side. This is from the divine side. The Holy Spirit coming from God into my heart brings His love into it.
RSS So you might say faith gives you the light; the Spirit the consciousness of it.
JT That is very good.
GAT It is encouraging in this scene, where sin has come in, that God is able to maintain for Himself a place where His love can flow, amongst men.
JT How important that one should keep one’s heart with all diligence, in view of the fact that the Spirit has brought the love of God into it. What a treasure is in the heart of the christian — the love of God.
GAT [p. 163] There is more in Romans than we thought.
JT And perhaps more in our hearts than we think — I mean the love of God is in a man’s heart. Think of the treasure that is involved in that! The love of God is in a man’s heart by the Spirit of God!
WCR So nothing that is not according to love, that is not of God, should be given a place in our hearts. We sometimes allow other things there.