DIFFICULTIES ANSWERED
DIFFICULTIES ANSWERED
I thank you for your letter, because it gladdens my heart to hear of your rightful exercises before the Lord. If you read Joshua in the last edition of the Synopsis you will see how dear Mr. D. viewed Jordan. The root of the present trouble is that, while the standing and calling are accepted as God’s grace, there is an absolute refusal of the state which He gives in connection with the standing and the calling. By state I do not mean practice, but what God confers. He gives the dignity, but He gives the mind, means, and manners, suited to the dignity. Christ did not take the place of the last Adam until He rose from the dead. He is the beginning, the first-born from the dead, and it is as we are dead with Him that He is our life. He died for us, and has placed us before God to His infinite satisfaction, but it is only as we by faith accept our death with Him that we are either dead to sin, or dead to the world. The latter is crossing Jordan; there is no water there, no judgment there, but everything that detained us here according to the tastes of a man, are left, like Peter leaving the ship to go to Jesus.
As to your difficulties. (1) There is wrath abiding on every sinner, and it is not removed except for the believer. Every one “born again” is sure to be a believer, but the work begins with God. There is no sense of grace until there is faith. Man failed in Eden by departing from faith, and there is no sense of grace until he has faith.
As to your second difficulty, Christ, as a Babe, was of His own kind, “that holy thing”. His flesh could not see [p. 106] corruption, but He did not take the place of the last Adam until He rose from the dead. See John 17. It was thus given to Him to have “authority over all flesh”, and He gives eternal life. He asks to be glorified. By man came death, by man came resurrection from the dead. We could not share in the new creation except old things had passed away, behold all things are become new. The saint in the kingdom will be an altered man, born again: the saint now is a new order of man.
I hope this will be satisfactory to you.