APRIL 9TH, 1926

APRIL 9TH, 1926

DEAR —, — In answer to your letter of the 3rd inst. asking what is meant by the expression, “the good of reconciliation”, in one of my books, I may say that I understand this to mean that the soul is in full accord with the precious divine truth of reconciliation. God has reconciled us to Himself through the death of His Son. He has removed from before Him everything about us that was unsuitable to Himself. He would have us in His presence completely divested of all those features which gave Him no pleasure — features which came in by our connection with the fallen man. Everything connected with that condition has been completely judged and sacrificially removed in the body of Christ’s flesh through death. It has no place now before God. We are with Him on the footing of Christ, and of what has been effected in the death of Christ. This has in view our being presented holy and unblamable and irreproachable before the Fulness of the Godhead (See Colossians 1).

^[p. 144] Now to be in the good of this would imply that our souls have come by the work of God into accord with His mind. We have judged that all those moral features which we derived from Adam fallen are displeasurable to God, and we are thankful to know that they have been removed in a death of infinite value, which has glorified God, and set Him free to have us before Him according to the good pleasure which He has found in Christ. It now becomes our exercise and joy to refuse practically all those things which have been the outcome of our condition of alienation and enmity, and to give place to those blessed features of Christ in which God delights. This is a matter of continual exercise; it involves the cleansing ourselves from every pollution of flesh and spirit, and the perfecting of holiness in the fear of God. It is not brought about all at once, but is the product of an exercise worked out in dependence upon God, and by His Spirit, through which we purify ourselves even as Christ is pure, knowing that we have been taken up to be fully conformed to Him eternally.

God has effected reconciliation so that He might have us before Him completely detached from what came in by Adam, and invested with the beauty of Christ. As we come spiritually into the good and gain of this it leads to the refusal of what is not Christ in a practical way, and to the putting on of the beautiful features of Christ. The end in view is that nothing may appear in us but what is of Christ. This will be fully attained in conditions of glory, but it becomes the pleasure of the saint to move morally in that direction now.

I trust these few remarks may be of some help, and that you will prove the grace of the Lord in all your exercises as to the blessing of your own soul, and the blessing of those in whose welfare you are interested.

With love in the Lord Jesus,

Yours affectionately in Him,

April 9th, 1926.