NO PROGRESS UNTIL ONE IS IN LIBERTY
[p. 153] NO PROGRESS UNTIL ONE IS IN LIBERTY
I am glad to hear any details of your state. I desire to ‘naturally care for your state’ as part of Christ’s things. I trust the readings will be of real help. I am sure you are right to go on with Romans until souls have learned not only acceptance with God, but liberty by the Spirit. The work of Christ has opened the way for God’s heart to express itself fully; as you have faith you enjoy His acceptance. Next He gives you the Spirit that you may be practically free from the law of sin and death. By faith I realise His grace to me, and by the Spirit I am in Christ before Him, and practically not in the flesh. I do not believe that there can be any progress in His things until one is in this liberty. Then you can come to His side. I believe many among us are reading scripture the way Moses saw the land from Mount Pisgah, and think because they see it that they are there. I heard of a brother only last Sunday saying that the prayer in Ephesians 3 was within the compass of a babe, or words to this effect. It is evident he did not know the magnitude of the truth presented there. I read lately from the pen of an earnest Christian in system that Christ dwelling in your heart by faith was state, or holiness in effect. Scripture has no divine force if misapplied.
I do not think that ———— means to convey that the Lord did not know in Matthew 16 but that He was the dependent Servant. The hidden manna was one of His greatest glories. I think the Lord was educating Peter for the new structure, but He did not bear witness of Himself, but as soon as the revelation was made to Peter He announced His intentions. The revelation was about Himself.
I am sure that while we can in some measure apprehend the greatness of eternal life outside of everything here, we know very little (though needing it) of manna — how the One who was ever in communion with the Father lived divinely in every detail of man down here; nor do I believe we are in His grace here, but in proportion as we are in [p. 154] the power of His life, outside of all here. It is as we live in this, that “the life I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Him-self for me” (Galatians 2: 20), is known. If you do not maintain His divine greatness, you can never apprehend the beauty and perfection of His life here as the dependent Man. I believe that it is a subject more for worship than for explanation. The temptation of Satan was an attempt to divert the Lord from dependence, and it is there he succeeds with us; you are out of faith when you use your own means, and this is the danger when we have any natural resource, material or mental.
I am trying to set forth the formation and calling of the bride. There is much interest.