OCTOBER 6TH, 1927
OCTOBER 6TH, 1927
[p. 155] BELOVED BROTHER, — I was much interested in your letter and in the local exercise to which it referred, and am sorry to have been unable to send you a line in reply until now. I have more than once looked to the Lord to guide and help you in dealing with the matter, and I have no doubt He will do so.
I can sympathise with the feeling of difficulty, for I know by experience that it is not easy to arrive at a clear and definite judgment as to how far the Lord would have the element of compassion to weigh in cases where there is evidently a want of mental balance. I think these cases cast us much on the Lord that we may really get His mind and act with Him in reference to them. I have noticed, more particularly of late, how often there is a mental, or semi-mental, side to cases which exercise the brethren. I have no doubt that the enemy seeks to take advantage of mental abnormality to introduce moral disorder.
If a person is quite irresponsible he is hardly a subject for disciplinary action, but rather for medical care and restraint. Such cases have simply to be accepted as a sorrowful and humbling discipline. But the difficulty is more of a test when, along with moral disorder of a pronounced kind, there is sufficient sanity to pursue in large measure the ordinary duties of life. There may be much irrationality without irresponsibility. And there is a point when things pass from the stage in which they can be regarded compassionately as being the outcome of mental derangement, or in which they can be dealt with by admonition, to the stage in which it may be needful for the honour of the Lord’s Name, and to maintain the holiness which becomes God’s house, that the saints should pronounce a definite judgment of assembly character upon them.
If the saints are called upon to judge, their judgment must necessarily proceed on moral grounds. Priestly discernment puts “difference between the holy — and the unholy, and between unclean and clean”, Leviticus 10: 10. I do not see that we are called upon to fix the exact amount of personal responsibility in every case, for this is often — as you say — only known to God. The judgment of the saints must be in reference to what is suitable to God, and to those amongst whom He dwells. I have thought that Numbers 5 — which has been under your consideration — is important in its bearing on a [p. 156] certain cases. In Leviticus there is nothing said about the one with an issue, or defiled by the dead, being put out of the camp. The uncleanness of the issue is emphasised that a moral judgment may be formed as to it. But when the camps of Israel are definitely set in relation to “the tabernacle of the tent of testimony” it becomes imperative that those camps be not defiled “in the midst whereof I dwell”. The thought of being defiled by the dead is, previously to Numbers, only suggested, I believe, in Leviticus 21, where the priests are not to make themselves unclean for a dead person, save an immediate relation. But in Numbers this thought is somewhat prominent (Numbers chapters 5, 19, 15), and it gives occasion to the striking statute in regard to the red heifer. It is now a question of what defiles the camps in the midst of which God dwells, and of defiling the tabernacle of Jehovah (19: 13), and the sanctuary of Jehovah (19: 20).
It strikes me that the instruction of this is important. The leper would be one in whom the will of the flesh was active in a marked way. The one with an issue would represent, as I suppose, an unrestrained manifestation of what one was naturally, but something less serious morally than leprosy. But to be defiled by the dead would be often, in the conditions of the wilderness, inevitable, so that, it seems to me, this case emphasises not the responsibility of the individual but the question of what is suitable to God and to the holiness of His dwelling. Things being taken account of from this standpoint, all three classes were to be put out of the camp, though they doubtless would represent three different degrees of personal responsibility. Neither the “camps”, the “tabernacle”, nor the “sanctuary” are to be defiled, and what does, or does not, defile is to be discerned according to a spiritual estimate of its moral character as under the eye of God.
I do not know that I have, at present, anything more definite in the way of light from Scripture to suggest. It does not add anything to what you have already had before you. But I am glad to share a little in your exercises.
My warm love in the Lord to your dear wife and yourself, and to all the dear brethren with you.
Yours very affectionately in Him,
October 6th, 1927.