JANUARY 20TH, 1899
JANUARY 20TH, 1899
... Many thanks for your letter. I think it is a most blessed thing, as you say, to be delivered from the influence of man. We make no real headway in divine things until we are thus delivered. No doubt some are peculiarly prone to set value upon merely natural influences, but all this lies outside the Christian circle, and has to be displaced. God has taken us up to introduce us to a circle of things which is entirely of Himself, and where there is no breakdown and no disappointment of any kind. Nothing short of this will satisfy Him, or those who by His grace have come under the mighty attraction of His purpose as set forth in Christ glorified. That you may press on after this with undiverted steadiness of soul and fixed purpose of heart is my heart’s desire and prayer.
As to Colossians 3, I am not aware that F.E.R. has said anything different from what beloved J.B.S. used to press so often in latter years — that for the saints to be risen with Christ is as much the mind of God for them as that they should be justified. Both are set forth in Christ. Justification is that I apprehend by faith that Christ risen is my righteousness. To be “risen with Christ” is that in the apprehension of my soul I pass outside every order of man here to take an entirely new footing with God in association with One who is outside, as I have said, every kind of man here — whether Jew, Greek, barbarian, etc., etc. And I come to this in the apprehension of my soul “through faith of the operation of God who raised him from the dead”. Souls must come to the apprehension of it, but that which they apprehend is the pleasure of God for all His saints — just as much as justification.
There are many truly converted souls who are not in the light of God as the Justifier. And in like manner there are [p. 22] many who have not apprehended the pleasure of God that they should be “risen with Christ”. They have not come in view of a scene where “Christ is everything and in all”, and it is to this end that saints are “risen with Christ”. But that the saints should be “risen with Christ” is as much the mind of God for them as that they should be justified.
There was nothing in the purpose of God between the Red Sea and Jordan. Indeed in God’s mind the two coalesce. But forty years came between in the experience of the people.
January 20th, 1899.