JULY 8TH, 1944
JULY 8TH, 1944
BELOVED BROTHER, — ... I do not favour the thought of God securing by the gospel two distinct families of saints during this present period. The Son of God was revealed in Paul that he might preach Him as glad tidings to the nations. Sonship is in God’s mind and purpose for men and this is made known in the glad tidings which have been proclaimed in the whole creation which is under heaven. And Paul laboured incessantly, according to God’s working in him, to present every man perfect in Christ. He had no thought of being content with anything less than this, and to this end God wrought in him. Why this intense solicitude if the divine purpose was that many should only know the shelter of the blood? Because there cannot be a family of saints blessed by God unless by His purpose and election. Now can we think that God purposes to give many saints a lower place than what He has proposed in the glad tidings? Men are indeed slow to rise to God’s great grace; they would prefer to be hired servants. But God gives the very best in order to satisfy His own love and because He can do it righteously through the death of Christ. When God began with us He had the end — His own end — in view, and He will not be diverted from it. When God calls men it is in view of His purpose, however slow they may be to come to it. The epistle to the Romans makes this clear. To suppose that God’s elect can come under the shelter of the blood and not move farther, and this by God’s appointment, seems to me to take the type altogether out of its divine setting, and it seems to attribute to God what is the result of unbelief and dullness of heart in man. If men have not the Holy Spirit it is because they have not believed the glad tidings as presented by Paul. All you can say of them is that a work of God has begun with them, but it has not [p. 336] come to maturity. They stop short of what God has proposed to them. I do not think it is good to suggest to such persons that they are in the place that God has appointed for them. I should think it was encouraging unbelief.
With very much love in the Lord,
Yours affectionately in Him,
July 8th, 1944.