MAY 11TH, 1934
MAY 11TH, 1934
MY DEAR BROTHER, — I received your letter of the 3rd inst. I do not know why you should imagine that I had said, or implied, that you denied any part of the truth as to the Son of God in manhood. There is no trace of such an implication in my letters.
I would gladly serve you to the utmost of my ability, though your letters do not encourage one to continue a correspondence which appears to be fruitless of result. But my affectionate interest in you prompts me to call your attention to the passage in Romans 1 which you have selected as proving eternal Sonship. I do so once more because I feel sure that, if you are prepared to submit your thoughts to correction by the Lord’s authority as embodied in the Holy Scriptures, a careful examination of Romans 1: 1 - 4 will, by His grace and the help of the Spirit, lead to considerable adjustment of your apprehension of the truth.
It cannot be denied that Paul is writing from the standpoint of his own connection with the glad tidings of God. He was separated to those glad tidings; by Jesus Christ he had received grace and apostleship on behalf of His Name for [p. 228] obedience of faith among all the nations; he was in a distinctive way minister of the glad tidings, minister of Christ Jesus to the nations. Romans 1: 1 - 7 is the formal assertion of his apostleship; no one else ever had, or could have, the relation to the glad tidings which he had.
The glad tidings to which Paul was separated, and of which he became minister, concerned the Son of God. He, as revealed in Paul (Galatians 1: 16), and as Paul knew Him, is the great and blessed Subject of the glad tidings. That He was pre-existent as subsisting in the form of God is of the very essence of the faith, but as divinely pre-existent He was not, and could not be, the subject of glad tidings. How could there be glad tidings for sinful men apart from redemption and the revelation of God’s righteousness? Apart from the incarnation and death of our Lord, Paul could have had no apostleship or ministry of glad tidings. So he carefully asserts that it is the Son of God as come of David’s seed according to flesh, and marked out Son of God in power by resurrection, who is the Subject of God’s glad tidings.
Those glad tidings were “before promised ... in holy writings”, but they were not announced in Old Testament times for the very simple reason that the facts which they announce, and which constitute their essence and substance, had not then come to pass. That which would, in due time, be made known to the nations as glad tidings was promised, but every child knows that a promise is not the thing promised. All was before the mind of God, as purposed by Him to be brought to pass in due time. But to say that the glad tidings existed, and had a living subject, prior to the incarnation of our Lord, is pure nonsense. The glad tidings are not a purpose, nor are they a promise; they are the blessed ministry confided to Paul of God’s righteousness and grace, revealed on the ground of accomplished redemption, which God would have made known to the nations, and wherein His Son is preached as the blessed glorified Man in whom every divine thought as to the blessing of men is set forth.
The question at issue between us is not as to our Lord’s eternal pre-existence in the form of God; I trust we are of one mind as to that. The question is, When did He become the Subject of the glad tidings of which Paul was minister? Clearly not until after He was risen. Every Old Testament promise showed what God had in His mind, but those promises [p. 229] were not fulfilled so as to become the subject of glad tidings to the nations until after Christ’s resurrection. The whole teaching of Scripture and all the apostolic preaching which is recorded is in absolute harmony as to this. I have referred to the characters in which the Lord is the Subject of promise in a previous letter, and need not repeat it.
It is absolutely certain that the glad tidings of which Paul speaks in Romans 1: 1 - 4 concerned the Son of God as incarnate and risen. It is equally certain that the promises in holy writings of old referred to Him as in conditions which were yet future. You insist, without one word of Scripture to substantiate it, that they concerned Him as in pre-incarnate Deity, and that if we do not accept this “we might just as well argue that the God who promised the glad tidings did not exist as God”! I think you must see how absurd is such reasoning.
Yours sincerely in the Lord,
May 11th, 1934.