Jottings

by J. Miller | Category: Jottings | Feb 1962

In this dispensation of God's grace believers have been given wonderful liberty. Freed as Jewish believers were from the bondage of legalism with its rites and ceremonies connected with bodily cleansings, it took them long to appreciate the freedom which Christ had given them, as Paul wrote to the Galatians, "With freedom did Christ set us free: stand fast therefore, and be not entangled again in a yoke of bondage" (Galatians 5.1). One cannot read the latter part of the Acts with the Roman and Galatian epistles and fail to see what great difficulty Paul, especially among the apostles, had to uproot the legal prejudices of the Jewish believers, especially those of them who had once belonged to the sect of the Pharisees.

There was also the liability of turning their new found liberty into licence, and for the flesh to gain control when the yoke of legalism had been broken and cast aside, and thus Paul again wrote, "For ye, brethren, were called for freedom; only use not your freedom for an occasion to the flesh, but through love be servants one to another" (Galatians 5.18). Previously, despite all their forms and legal restrictions, the heart of the Jew was untouched, and Paul briefly but pungently shows that Jewish society was corroded through and through with flagrant manifestations of the flesh, as he wrote to Titus, "For we also were aforetime foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving divers lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, hating one another" (Titus 3.3). Jewish formal religion was but a veneer covering the corruptions of the heart, for one cannot think of a worse catalogue of evils than Paul lists in this verse. The story of what is called "The good Samaritan" (Luke 10) clearly shows Jewish utter rejection of the moral law; "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." The meaning of the moral law in its statutes manward was love, as Paul again shows in Romans 13. 8-10. A people without law are a mob, and any law which only controls the outward actions by constraint or external oppression, and does not reach the heart, is little better than prison rules and regulations. Such is not the teaching of the law of Christ. His atoning work proclaimed in the gospel reaches the heart and frees the conscience from condemning guilt. The Spirit, who is given to every believer, produces warmth of affection for the Divine Redeemer for what He has done, and kindles love for our Father in heaven and for the Spirit who has graciously revealed the love and grace of God toward us, so that the word of God, finding a place in such hearts, results in a loving response to its message towards God and man. Thus it is that the words of Paul, in Romans 8.4 (R.V.M.) may find fulfilment, "that the requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit."

The freedom which believers enjoy in this dispensation of grace is not a freedom to act as they please, but is a freedom to learn and to do the will of God, for God has ever, in every age, a will for His saints to learn and to obey. Over against this, Satan is the Adversary who sets himself to deflect saints from learning and doing God's will. Thus in the hearts of God's saints there is ever and anon a struggle going on between the Spirit of God and the Adversary, a struggle which is more fierce at some times than at others. The struggle ceases when once the will of God has conquered, when the saint is able to say, as the Lord said, "Not My will, but Thine be done." There is, of course, a great difference between the Lord and His saints. In Him the flesh had no place. In His case there was no lusting of the flesh against the Spirit. Satan had nothing in Him to work upon. But as He contemplated in the garden of Gethsemane the Cross which He would endure, His whole being shrank from that ordeal of shame and woe, and in His weak humanity He fell to the ground in His agony. But He rose supreme in His thrice repeated declaration, "Not My will, but Thine be done."

When a saint reaches this point of self-renunciation, of complete alignment with the will of God, he is an overcomer and a victor. Here is true freedom. Here is a disciple hating all else save the doing of the will of God. Here is a disciple who is willing to go down into the water of baptism and to pass through death in a figure, renouncing self and sin, to walk henceforth in newness of life. He is willing to learn to observe all the things which the Lord taught His disciples. Matthew 28.19,20 and Romans 6 make these matters plain. The believer is to reckon himself dead unto sin, but alive unto God in Christ Jesus. His members, once servants of sin, are to be instruments of righteousness. See also Romans 12.1, 2.

By a strange perversity believers who have the Holy Scriptures in their possession, against the reading of which nowadays they are subject to no legal enactment, consider, in certain cases, that it is a kind of legalism to obey what the commandments of God enjoin upon them. They like to move about at will amongst believers of all sects, thinking that " All one in Christ " forms a sufficient bond between them, and so, little or no effort is made to put into practice what the Lord taught His apostles and what they in turn taught the saints. Let us ask ourselves if life in any sense is a sufficient bond and regulating power to keep together any nation or community of men on earth. Does partaking of a common life on the part of nations form a sufficient means of guidance for the nations? or does "the common life in Christ" form a sufficient basis for community life in the case of the children of God? Being partakers of the common life in Christ was deemed by the early Brethren, commonly called " Plymouth Brethren", to be the ground on which they gathered, which is amply proved by their early writings. But what is the record of the events of those early days? Was it on the basis of the common life in Christ that Mr. Darby separated from Mr. Newton in Plymouth? and upon which the followers of these teachers separated into different" meetings" or groups, refusing intercourse and fellowship with each other? Was it on the ground of the common life in Christ that Mr. Darby separated from Mr. Muller in Bristol at a later time? No, these separations did not take place on the ground of the common life in Christ, but on other matters altogether. Those who separated from the others did not, and could not, regard those from whom they separated as lost souls, as not being possessors of eternal life, because they had taught the eternal security of all believers in Christ, and quite correctly taught the truth of eternal security, but they taught as erroneous that "all one in Christ" was the doctrine of the apostles upon which the churches in the days of the apostles were gathered.

What did the early Brethren teach in 1884 as to the church of God? They wrote this

"For what is a church - the Church of God? Scripture testifies of what it once was - gathering together of believers upon the ground of the common salvation (for this was the simple band of union which kept them together), and ordered by the power of the Holy Ghost. The Churches in Corinth, Thessalonica, and in Asia, whatsoever the special need of rebuke might have been for each, were thus distinct from the ungodliness around them; and were in a position where Christ could exercise His administrative power. The only signification of a 'Church' in scripture, is a union of Christians; it is not represented as composed of written document, but of living individual and, as a whole a union of believers as such; and in this manner the pillar and ground of the truth, a speaking, acting testimony for God."*

Here is the ground of gathering of the Brethren at the beginning of this movement, a Church of God with them was "a gathering together of believers upon the ground of the common salvation", "a union of believers as such." Yet they speak with another voice when they say that it is "in this manner the pillar and ground of the truth, or a speaking, acting testimony for God." We would ask, Is the common salvation the Truth, the whole Truth for which the church of the living God, the house of God, stood as a pillar of witness in the days of the apostles? Surely "the Truth" for which the house of God stands as a pillar of testimony (1 Timothy 3.15) is more than " the word of the truth of the gospel" (Colossians i. 5). In this latter scripture the truth is that part of it which refers to the gospel. Is not salvation something that leads on to a knowledge of the truth in relation to standing and state, to positional and conditional truth? Paul wrote to Timothy that God "willeth that all men should be saved, and come to the knowledge of the Truth" (1 Timothy 2.4). Were not the disciples of the Lord to be baptized into the name of the Trinity and taught to observe all things whatsoever the Lord had commanded? (Matthew 28.19, 20). Did not the early disciples in Jerusalem, who had all been saved, baptized and added together, continue steadfastly in the apostles' teaching or doctrine, in the Fellowship, in the breaking of the bread and the prayers? (Acts 2.41, 42).

*Christian Witness, 1884, page 389, Plymouth.

J. Miller | Feb 1962
Jottings