DECEMBER 17TH, 1932

DECEMBER 17TH, 1932

^[p. 212] DEAR MR. —, — I received your letter as written with a true desire to maintain the truth as to the Person of our Lord Jesus Christ, and I am in full sympathy with this desire, for, like yourself, I believe that “all divine truth centres in the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ”, and also “that all error, of every kind and degree, is against His Person”.

But there is an infinite fulness in the testimony of Scripture concerning His Person and glory, and it is well that we should soberly and reverently enquire how the Scriptures present His varied glories to us.

With reference to Romans 8: 3, I think you will agree with me that that precious verse contrasts what the law could not do with what God has done. He has condemned sin in the flesh by sending His own Son into the place of being “for sin”, of course in a vicarious and sacrificial way. He was the anti-type of the brazen serpent, in the likeness of that in which the venom was, but wholly free of the venom in Himself. He was sent into the place of sin and death, but the One who was sent was God’s own Son. He was sent “for sin”, that is to be in the place of sin sacrificially, and He was not this until He was upon the cross. It was at God’s cost that such a sacrifice has been furnished, for it was His “own Son” who was sent “for sin” — the One who was His delight according to Luke 3: 22 and many other scriptures. His going to the cross that in Him sin in the flesh might be condemned is thus the expression of infinite love on God’s part. The more we enter into His perfection, and into the delight which God found in having such a Son, the more we shall be affected to think that such a Person should be sent “for sin”. In no other person, and by no other sacrifice, could sin in the flesh be condemned in such a way that God should be glorified in its condemnation, and a new status in Christ Jesus and in the Spirit made possible to saints. His Deity is, of course, behind it all, but it is as One perfect in manhood that He was sent “for sin”.

It is not exactly His coming into the world that the Spirit is calling our attention to in Romans 8: 3, though of course, He could only be a sacrifice for sin as having come here, but the point is that One who was God’s own Son has been sent in love to the place of sin that sin in the flesh might be condemned. “His own Son” is that blessed One who in His holy perfection, and in His delightfulness to God as Man here, was suitable in His spotless purity to be a sacrifice “for sin”.

^[p. 213] The thought of all that He was as God’s “own Son”, as it is presented to us in the gospels, gives a most touching force to such a One as that being sent into the place of sin and sin’s condemnation.

Then if we pass on to verse 32 the import of the precious words “his own Son” becomes yet more evident. God “has not spared his own Son, but delivered him up for us all”. When was He “not spared”? When was He “delivered up”? Such words could not possibly apply to Him as in eternal Deity, They apply, and could only apply, to that solemn period immediately preceding the cross when His “hour” came, and He was delivered up to man’s hour and the power of darkness. But the One who when that hour arrived was not spared but delivered up, in view of the accomplishment of redemption, was God’s own Son — a divine Person here in holy manhood. The whole force of the Scripture is lost if this is not seen.

I trust you will understand that I do not make these few remarks in any spirit of controversy, but as setting forth my apprehension of the scriptures you refer to. I am conscious that though I have been slowly learning in the school of God for more than fifty years there is much that I have yet to learn.

Yours sincerely in the Lord,

December 17th, 1932.