MONTREAL, MARCH 14TH, 1873
MONTREAL, MARCH 14TH, 1873
[p. 206] Dearest R T Grant, Assuredly repentance is needed, and there is no solid knowledge of the cross without it. The question for my mind is not exactly that, but how to preach it. We must have faith in the word to repent. What word? It was, with remission of sins, to be preached in Christ’s name. Christian repentance implies grace, I mean recognising grace in a measure. Repentance is for me practically judgment of the past in the sense of grace. People may preach solely love and remission: this is not complete, there is what is defective in it. But where God works it produces repentance, but often calling for much ulterior deepening, sometimes through sorrow. But repentance may be preached legally as a preliminary, and then remission. But in this case grace is seldom fully known, because the base supposes man’s action preparing himself for it. Reaction against this has partly produced the revival preaching, where repentance is thrown into the shade. When God works He makes both meet. Repentance has to be preached, because there is God’s Cain over man and man’s judgment of himself, but preached in Christ’s name, which carries grace with it. It is easy to put the just line on paper. In preaching, love to souls and living with God — and God’s love to souls, which involves necessarily His holiness — will alone give preaching its true character. I am sure, and it is evident, that conscience must be reached, or nothing is done. But that is power, and God’s power. Law itself may be used lawfully, when there is a reckless conscience, and with blessing; only grace and remission must go with it. But the cross convicts of sin, where really understood, more deeply than anything.
Yours affectionately in the Lord.
[p. 207] Dear J James, — I do not understand what people mean by being actually dead, seeing they are living at — . But patience clearly is our part. It is not like a heresy: it is only an absurdity. If they hold the flesh to be really gone, then indeed it is a mischievous error. I should not have to reckon were I really dead, and the context makes it clear. “Reckon” (Romans 6: 11) is the estimate I form according to faith of my condition and standing, the estimate of my faith, not a statement as to the state I am in; and this is equally true as to “alive.” But the statement here is not that I have life, but that I so account of myself. But when he adds, “Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal bodies to obey it in the lusts thereof,” it is a plain testimony that it is not gone, or it would be a very poor conclusion — besides other passages, that “the flesh lusts against the Spirit,” and that “if we say that we have no sin we deceive ourselves.” The “always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus,” is assuredly the holding the flesh practically dead. The circumstances which tested it, delivered to death, are in the following verse.
They should explain what they mean by being actually dead, for to me it has no meaning at all. If it is merely that the motions of sin are not in activity, that may be the case. But if they think that the flesh is changed, and that sin is not there, they deceive themselves, and it always leads to self confidence and self esteem one of the most mischievous fruits of the flesh The Christian purifies himself, but does not reckon himself pure The reckoning applies to the estimate of the two natures: do I say I am alive, I mean alive to God as born of the Spirit, if he refers to flesh, he does not own it as life, but reckons it dead. Besides it is seldom never in words said that the flesh is dead, but that I am. It is once said the body is dead because of sin, while actually it is not so, or our old man is crucified with Him, which actually it was not. If they say, “I am dead” is actually so, they are clearly talking nonsense. Exaggerated truth is always error, and leads to the denial of the real truth, and ceases necessarily to be experimental, for what is not true cannot be true in me.
I could not give my lecture again, for though the great truths are clear in my mind, what I actually said was what I was given at the moment.
Yours affectionately in Christ.
Boston, March 19th, 1873.