Book Recommendation: Law and Grace

If you've talked with me much, you know I am very fixated with the whole question of Law for the Christian. Last night I picked up a slim volume from my bookshelf, Law and Grace by Alva McClain. It's been on my shelf for a few years now, but I've never taken the time to read it.

Wow.

I highly recommend getting a copy of this. In fact, I plan to buy several copies to give away. This is a brilliant little gem.

I don't find it as meaty as Darby's books, but then I really didn't expect to. It's far easier to read than some of my favourites; by the same token, it's a much more powerful message because it's more clearly expressed.

But don't think this is a lightweight book. It touches all the essential points of the Scriptural teaching touching the Law in the life of the Christian. And the arguments are clearly and logically applied.

Really, get a copy of this book. You won't regret it.

Play it again, John (Pt. 5)

So our Greatest Hits of J. N. Darby count-down looks like this:
#10 "The Melchisedec Priesthood of Christ" (Collected Writings of J. N. Darby, Vol. 2)
#9 "The Sabbath: or, Is the law dead, or am I" (Collected Writings of J. N. Darby, Vol. 10)
#8 "God's Grace and Man's Need" (available from STEM Publishing)
#7 "Two Warnings and an Example" (available from STEM Publishing)
#6 "Wilderness Grace" (available from STEM Publishing)
#5 "First Resurrection; or, Resurrection of the Just" (Available from STEM Publishing)
#4 "Progress of Evil on the Earth" (Available from STEM Publishing)

I warned you at the outset this can't be a hard and fast ranking. Which ones I consider "top ten" varies from day to day, and the ranking in the top ten change at least daily. No sooner will I post this to my blog, than I'll think of several I should have posted. It might be interesting to see if anyone else has any to add: put them in the comments.

We have three more slots to fill, so here are two more favourite papers by JND:

#3 "Cleansing by Water: and what it is to walk in the light" (Collected Writings of J. N. Darby, Vol 23; Available from STEM Publishing)

I wish I had ranked this article as #9 or 10, as it's well worth reading, but I think it would have been better to have ranked it a little lower. Still, what's done is done.

This is a response to a tract, as so many of Darby's papers are, and it can be hard to get into the flow of the article for several paragraphs. But I am continually astonished (and, frankly, shamed) by this statement:

The ground they go upon is the common ground of unbelief in the offering of Christ — the doctrine of continually cleansing and recleansing in Christ's blood. This is wholly unscriptural, and subversive of true Christian standing according to the word — that the worshippers once purged should have no more conscience of sins. Nothing can be clearer or more positive than the teaching of Hebrews 9 and 10 on this subject, where it is elaborately argued, in contrast with the repetition of Jewish sacrifices, and as giving us boldness to enter into the holiest. (p. 281)

Notice how JND classifies the whole idea of recleansing as "unbelief in the offering of Christ." And I have to say, after weighing the question, I am convinced he is correct. The whole idea of going to Christ to be cleansed by blood again is fundamentally a denial of what Scripture teaches: that He has purged our sins.

Now, I want to be the first to point out that I hardly live out the truths in this paper, and I frankly don't think it's entirely correct. But I think it is brilliant nevertheless, and is one of JND's best articles. I have personally read and re-read it many times.

Here's some classic JND regarding 1 John 1:

And note here, what is spoken of is "walking in the light as God is in the light." It is not according to the light, but in it. There is no darkness at all in God. This is the revelation afforded, the message heard... The question is not raised if we walk according to it or not. We are in the full revelation of God without a veil, or in darkness, having no knowledge of God. It is not the question how far we live up to it. But the Christian is really walking there. (pp. 284--285)

This is really the heart of Darby's ministry: the practical effect of positional truth on the day-to-day life of Christians who are having to walk it out down here until the Lord Jesus comes to get us. "Brethren" used to have a real message that was desparately needed by poor downtrodden souls; but now we largely seem content with our "church order" checklists. But I digress.

I personally think Darby's writings on progressive sanctification are among his best. Another of note is "Cleansing and Deliverance" (also available from STEM Publishing ). Really, you should check these out.

#2 Propitiation and Substitution (Collected Writings of J. N. Darby, Vol 29; Available from STEM Publishing)

One of my favourite articles by JND is this very short gem. One thing I like about it so much is that it's a great illustration of Darby's thinking: he takes a step back from the point in question and asks "What does the Scripture actually say?" I have found when I do that, the immediate question generally falls apart, and a larger answer emerges.

The specific question of this article is that of atonement. Is it limited to the elect? or is it unlimited?

My intercourse with saints, and especially with those who preach, has led me to discover that a good deal of obscurity in their manner of putting the gospel (and I may add a good deal of Arminian and Calvinistic controversy) arises from not distinguishing propitiation and substitution. I am not anxious about the words, but about the practical distinction, which is very simple, and, I think, of moment. I say the words, because in propitiation, in a certain sense, Christ stood in our stead. Still there is a very real difference in Scripture.

The article examines the question in terms of Leviticus 16, where there are two goats: one is subsititutionary, the other is propitiary. The conclusion is that both the Calvinist and Arminian views are incomplete: both see only part of the truth, and people draw false conclusions from not realizing they only see half the question:

The Arminians take up Christ's dying for all, and generally they connect the bearing of sins with it; and all is confusion as to the efficacy and effectualness of Christ's bearing our sins, for they deny any special work for His people. They say, If God loved all, He cannot love some particularly; and an uncertain salvation is the result, and man often exalted. Thus the scapegoat is practically set aside. (p. 287)

The Calvinist holds Christ's bearing the sins of His people, so that they are effectually saved; but he sees nothing else. He will say, If Christ loved the church, and gave Himself for it, there can be no real love for anything else. Thus he denies Christ's dying for all, and the distinctive character of propitiation, and the blood on the mercy-seat. He sees nothing but substitution. (p. 288)

I found this article extremely helpful in seeing this question in a much broader perspective.

Play it Again, John (Pt. 4)

We're not yet done with "The Best of John Nelson Darby." There's a whole lot more meat on them bones, and I'd like to chew a little more of it.  But first I want to take a break and talk about a necessary tangent.

Reading Darby is hard. I'd like to say it isn't, but it is. No sooner do you attempt to read Darby than you discover two features of his writing. First, he doesn't write to be understood so much as to think on paper. His writing is convoluted and poorly organized: paragraphs sometimes span several pages, sentences run on for miles, and long tangents appear every few pages.

Second, he's a brilliant writer. This was a man who spoke umpteen languages (including, apparently, fluent Maori) and spent his life in study. There's a good chance he was smarter than you, and it can be hard to fight through the convoluted prose of someone of superior intellect. It can be particularly unnerving when he includes Latin and Greek in the text: I have just a tiny smattering of Greek, and no Latin at all. Getting past some of those pages has been hard.

And it's not just that he's a brilliant writer (although he is): another problem is that he wrote almost 200 years ago---language has changed a lot in that time. Darby wrote just about the same time as Jane Austen, and it's worth keeping that in mind when reading his articles. I read an article online a few years ago that argued Darby was anti-intellectual. They were arguing his teachings deliberately hid from secular history and scholarship. This astonishing statement was based on this quote:

History was not written in heaven. I believe that the attempt to interpret prophecy by history has been most injurious to the ascertaining of its real meaning. When we have ascertained, by the aid of the Spirit of Christ, the mind of God, we have, as far as it be history, God's estimate of events, and their explanation. But history is man's estimate of events, and he has no right to assume that these are in prophecy at all, and it is clear that he must understand prophecy before he can apply it to any: when he understands it, he has what God meant to give him, without going farther. I do not admit history to be, in any sense, necessary to the understanding of prophecy. I get present facts, and God's moral account of what led to them, and thereby His moral estimate of them: I do not want history to tell me Nineveh or Babylon is ruined, or Jerusalem in the hands of the Gentiles. Of course, where any prophecy does apply to facts, it is a true history of those facts; but it is much more. It is the connection of those facts with the purposes of God in Christ, and whenever any isolated fact, however important in the eyes of man, is taken as the fulfilment of a prophecy, that prophecy is made of private interpretation; and this I believe to be the meaning of that passage. Of course, when any prophecy is fulfilled, the fulfilment is evidence of its truth, but the Christian does not need this; and evidence of truth and interpretation are two very different things. ("Notes on Revelation" )

The author had latched onto the quote, "I do not want history to tell me Nineveh or Babylon is ruined, or Jerusalem in the hands of the Gentiles" and concluded Darby was afraid to study history.  Of course, the real problem was the author's own [barely functional] illiteracy. He completely failed to grasp that "want" 200 years ago meant "lack" as opposed to "desire".  What Darby was actually saying is, it's not necessary to have a thorough grasp of history to read and understand Scriptural prophecy. He was claiming that Scriptural prophecy is essentially self-contained. He was certainly not claiming that Scripture is historically inaccurate, but that's the general gist the author was attempting to give.

Besides his tendency to "think on paper" rather than striving for clarity, and his use of dated English (hardly his fault when he died in 1882), one difficulty with reading Darby is the context in which he wrote. A good deal of his papers are tracts, letters, or articles written in a theological controversy of the time. This can be more than a little annoying, as we rarely have the papers, articles, or tracts to which he is replying. So an article by JND written in response to Cardinal Newmann might seem a little difficult to get into, if we haven't the original article.

I think, though, that the danger here is more than just the lack of context; the danger is that it can be hard to catch the relevance of an article entitled "Remarks on a Tract by Someone-or-other".  Worse, it can be hard to get past several pages of specific replies to objections to get to the real point of the paper: not the specifics that Someone-or-other brought up, but the arguments from Scripture that strike at the heart of the argument.

See, the real value of reading Darby is not to get a hold of some doctrinal position or grasping some point of theology.  The real value is that this was a man who was perhaps unequaled in his ability to point out the implications of some idea or another. Darby was simply brilliant in his ability to get to the root of a problem; to see how the implications of a relatively minor point would affect, colour, and influence positions on much more major points. Darby had a real gift for seeing watersheds for what they are: minor points that had major implications.

When I first read Darby, I wondered why he spent so much time beating on a small point here or there while more or less ignoring much more prominent points. Eventually I came to see that he was correctly seeing that the "minor" points had much larger implications than what I had thought were much "greater" questions.  His insistence on the imminent return of Christ was not a shibboleth: it was a result of his [correct] appraisal that this minor doctrinal point has major moral implications.  Is the imminent return of Christ a major theological question? not really. But it has major moral outcomes.

But the good news is, reading Darby is worth the effort.

I set out to read Darby about 12 or 13 years ago, because so many people worshiped the man, and at the same time so many vilified him. I had to read this stuff for myself, to try and figure out what the deal was. I started with a set of Notes and Comments on Scripture, which was given me as a gift. I didn't read the whole set, but I read bits here and there. After that, I was given Volumes 16 & 17 of The Collected Writings of J. N. Darby; I read those, then was given Volumes 1 & 3. Shortly after I finished those, I found a used copy of Volume 12. Then I just bit the bullet and bought all 34 volumes plus the index. At this point, I've read Volumes 1--24 and am partly through Volume 25. So I've read enough to have an idea how to "break the code" and get into the books. That's really why I started out with "J. N. Darby's Greatest Hits": I thought I'd share my favourites with both my readers.

So if you're willing to listen to me, I can tell you the best place to start is Volume 12 (Evangelic 1). That's a collection of his gospel messages. They're short, clear, and fairly simple to grasp: a lot of them are transcripts of sermons he preached, and his sermons were much "better" than his writing. He apparently had an easier time being understood when he could see his audience in front of him.

But the real value of Volume 12 is this: it gives you a look  into his mind. Darby was fascinated with God's love and His grace. While following generations have generally painted him as some sort of legalistic fanatic, his own words are much more saturated with his basking in God's love than in blasting people who disagreed with him. If you don't start at the beginning, the rest gets blurry. To Darby, the beginning was the Gospel. So read Volumes 12 (and 21) first.

After Volume 12, I would recommend Volume 16 (Practical 1) and Volume 2 (Prophetic 1) as the next steps. The practical volumes (Vols. 16 & 17) are what we now call "Christian Living" books. I found Volume 16 a lot better than 17, but that might just be me.  But I would suggest getting into Volume 2 fairly quickly too. Darby was a monster of prophecy, and his prophetic works are sheer brilliance.

I would suggest the next step is Volume 10 (Doctrinal 3). This is a volume almost entirely dedicated to Darby's writings on Law. It is well worth reading and re-reading, but is probably best read after Vols. 12, 16, and 2.

If you really want to, you can read Volume 1 (Ecclesiastical 1) right at the start, but I'd recommend against it until you get used to Darby's unique brand of English via Volumes 12, 16, and 2. Darby's ecclesiastical writings are brilliant no doubt, but they're also detailed and long. There's a lot to be learned there, but it can be hard to dig out unless you've learned to read Darby already.

So I'm going to put up more of JND's greatest hits, but I wanted to get this out there first.

Zonked

I ran across a gathering of Christians I was interested in checking out: they're an hour away from us, so we had to get going a little early this morning. But that's OK, we got the kids and everyone ready, made a big pot of coffee, and got out the door only 9 minutes after I had wanted to leave.  We drove an hour through the rainy NorthWestern spring to get to the place they gather just about 15 minutes before the time I had found online. In we went... to find them in full swing. A woman came out from the kitchen area and told us they had started an hour early today then would have a bit of a breakfast or lunch together (she'd been working on that). So instead of 15 minutes early, we were 45 minutes late.

It seemed a little rude to walk in about the time they were wrapping up and presumably join in on food, so we decided to leave. We had a nice second breakfast with hot chocolate at a McDonald's before coming home, and laughed about it pretty hard.

I hold no illusions that a 1-hour drive every week will be a workable solution. But finding a decent gathering that could be a once-a-month thing would be great. More importantly, it's possible someone there would know somebody closer to us, perhaps meeting in a home or something.  That would be great.

Confession

For we dare not class ourselves or compare ourselves with some who commend themselves; but these, measuring themselves by themselves, and comparing themselves with themselves, are not intelligent. ( 2 Cor. 10:12, Darby)

For do I now seek to satisfy men or God? or do I seek to please men? If I were yet pleasing men, I were not Christ's bondman. (Galatians 1:10, Darby)

I've been pretty quiet on this blog recently, partly because I haven't had a lot to say. I've long thought things would be so much better in general if people with nothing to say made it a point to say exactly that. But I've been thinking, praying and agonizing in private; and those are things that really don't work well in this medium. And frankly, some of my agonizing and prayer really isn't any of your business, so I've kept it to myself where it belongs.

But I've come to some tentative conclusions, and I feel some of them are worth speaking about. The most important is this: I have used the failures, sins, and hypocrisies of other Christians (most particularly "brethren") as an excuse to do things I have spoken out against. I've spent some time in some churches practising some of the things I spoke out against in my blog and elsewhere, and I excused myself by saying things like "brethren do the same thing."

I was wrong to do that. I have forgotten that I am to be Christ's servant, and that means I answer to Him. If I believe Scripture speaks against clericalism, then the fact that "brethren" have de facto clergy really is irrelevant. Others' failure to live up to their convictions doesn't give me license to compromise on mine. I have to answer to Christ, not to the Christians around me.

When we left the "brethren" a year and a half ago, I fell into the trap of allowing the things I had seen there goad me into turning my back on what I believed (and believe) to be what Scripture teaches about the Church. I took my family to visit any number of churches that practised the very things I had said were unscriptural. Some of that was legitimate, but some wasn't. Most of the time I wasn't being malicious. That's not the point. The point is, whenever I encountered a conflict between what I saw in Scripture and what I saw in practice; I rationalized it by pointing out that "brethren" are no better. And that's the problem: even if everything I told myself is true, the "brethren" aren't my rule of life, Scripture is (or ought to be).

I'm not saying everything I've done is wrong. I'm not saying the churches I visited are in sin, nor am I even saying Christ was not in their midst. I'm certainly not telling anyone else what they ought to be doing; particularly not the people who've commented and emailed me with similar experiences and exercises.

I'm saying I put my attention where it ought not to have been. I let my quest for the biblical church take some wrong turns because I ignored the "biblical" part and kept comparing myself to my brothers and sisters in Christ. I ought to have been looking at Him, not at them.

Play it again, John (pt. 3)

Among JND's greatest writings are the series of lectures he gave in Geneva in 1840, "The Hopes of the Church of God" (Collected Writings of J. N. Darby, Vol. 2 pp. 278--382). These are written in a clearer and simpler style than he generally uses, which is largely because they are transcriptions of lectures, rather than actual articles. It seems JND was a much better speaker than writer.

"The Hopes of the Church of God" contain eleven addresses, all of which are worth reading. But I draw attention to two that I think are extremely important to understand, if we want to grasp Darby's personal theology: "First Resurrection; or, Resurrection of the Just" and Progress of Evil on the Earth. (Yep, those are both on the STEM Publishing website.)

#5 "First Resurrection; or, Resurrection of the Just"
This is a study into the two resurrections. It demonstrates that the Scripture teaches there are two resurrections: one of the just to life, one of the unjust to judgment. Further, it demonstrates that the testimony of Scripture is consistently that these two resurrections are temporally distinct: they happen quite separately.

The resurrection of the church is a thing of itself, because the church participates in the resurrection of Christ we are raised, not only because Jesus Christ will call us from the grave, but because we are one with Him. It is by reason of this unity, that, in partaking of faith, we are already raised with Christ, raised as to the soul, but not as to the body. The justification of the church is, that it is risen with Christ. (p. 304)

Observe, in the passages concerning the resurrection, not one speaks of a simultaneous rising of just and unjust; and those which refer to the resurrection of the just speak of it always as of a thing distinct. All will rise. There will be a resurrection of the just, and a resurrection of the unjust, but they will not take place together. I will cite the passages successively, which refer to it. It is at the coming of Christ that the church will rise; Phil. 3: 20, 21; 1 Cor. 15: 23. (p. 305)

If you google "Plymouth Brethren" or "John Nelson Darby," you find a multitude of online resources attacking the idea of "secret rapture". It seems every second-year student at any given Reformed seminary has written a paper repeating the slander that JND took his idea of the return of Christ from some ecstatic utterances of a young Irvingite girl. Nonsense. Darby's view of the "secret rapture" was based in the Scriptural teaching that there are two resurrections.

Interestingly, what Darby held to be the hope of the Christian, the resurrection of the just, "brethren" themselves moved away from very quickly, talking about "rapture" where Scripture talks about "gathering together unto Him" (2 Thess. 2:1, KJV). I have found in my own experience, non-biblical terminology can be very, very dangerous.

But the repeated attacks on JND and the teaching of two distinct resurrections are alone enough to make me think he was really onto something. As he himself might point out, it is always resurrection that proved the point of disbelief in the Acts. Paul on Mars Hill was interesting to tha pagans, until he mentioned resurrection. Then some scoffed, but some wanted to hear more. Resurrection is the watershed of the Gospel: the point that divides faith from unbelief.

If the first resurrection - that of the just - is not to be taken literally, why should the second - that of the unjust - be so taken? As the object of our hope, and source of our consolation and of our joy, it is but a small thing to know that the unjust shall be raised; but the precious thing - the essential - is to know that the resurrection of the just will be the consummation of their happiness; that in it God will accomplish His love towards us; that, after having given life to our souls, He will give life to our bodies, and will make of the dust of the earth a form suitable to the life which has been given to us on the part of God. We never read in the word of God of glorified spirits, but always of glorified bodies. There is the glory of God, and the glory of those who will be raised. (p. 309)

I would say this is probably the most important prophetic paper by JND.

#4 Progress of Evil on the Earth
This paper presents Darby's understanding of the Church in Ruin. You must grasp this idea to make any sense of his ecclesiology. This is the idea he first presented in his 1828 paper "Considerations on the Nature and Unity of the Church of Christ" (Collected Writings of J. N. Darby, Vol. 1). It is this one idea that really drove "exclusive brethren" in their ecclesiology: that the Church had become apostate, and that the apostasy would not be cured until God Himself judges it at the end of the age.

What we are about to consider will tend to shew that, instead of permitting ourselves to hope for a continued progress of good, we must expect a progress of evil; and that the hope of the earth being filled with the knowledge of the Lord before the exercise of His judgment, and the consummation of this judgment on the earth, is delusive. We are to expect evil, until it becomes so flagrant that it will be necessary for the Lord to judge it. (p. 310)

This one paper contains a wealth of teaching that mainstream Dispensationalists have really neglected. I would say this one paper presents most clearly what the difference is between mainstream dispensationlism and the [more Scriptural] simpler dispensationalism of early "brethren".

In brief, the consistent dispensational approach JND took predicted a growing apostasy in the Church. Apostasy began in the Apostles' time, and really grows without remedy until the Lord judges it. He saw the presence of the church on earth as really no different than any other period of God's earthly dealings: it fails early and irrevocably, then there is judgment.

Of course this flies in the face of both Amillenianlism (including full Praeterism) and Postmillenialism: it denies that there will be any such thing as a righteous society on earth until Christ Himself establishes it after His physical return.

This is a great paper: it's well worth the 30 minutes to read. In fact, this whole collection is worth your time.

Play it again, John (pt. 2)

I want to share some more of "The Best of J. N. Darby". So today we're going to the very first volume by JND I would recommend someone try reading: Collected Writings of J. N. Darby, Vol. 12. This is a collection of Darby's gospel messages, and it is really required reading for someone wanting to see first-hand what this Darby fellow was all about.

There are three papers in this one volume to which I particularly want to draw attention: "God's Grace and Man's Need," "Two Warnings and an Example," and "Wilderness Grace."

#8 "God's Grace and Man's Need" (available from STEM Publishing)

The first might be Darby's best gospel message. It's short, gets right to the point, and makes the case very simply that God offers justification freely to man, because man has nothing to offer God. It was always God's plan not to demand from man, but to offer forgiveness freely, based on the One Man's offering Himself without spot to God.

To turn for a moment to the use man made of the law, in contrast with God's purpose in it: God used it, as we have seen, that the offence might abound - that sin might appear exceeding sinful. Man set about to make himself righteous by the very thing by which God was proving him a sinner, and sin exceedingly sinful. This you are doing, if you are seeking to satisfy the demands of God's righteousness by your own ways. Man seeks to save himself by the righteousness of the law; but God's use was not that, for He never thought of saving any but by Jesus.

#7 "Two Warnings and an Example" (available from STEM Publishing)

This is a brief study of three main characters in the Garden of Gethsemane: the Lord Jesus, Peter, and Judas Iscariote. It's well worth a read, as it contrasts the unregenerate, the carnal Christian, and the Perfect Man in under stress.

When Christ was praying, Peter was sleeping; when Christ was submitting as a lamb led to the slaughter, Peter was fighting; when Christ was confessing in suffering, Peter was denying Him with cursing and swearing. This is just the flesh: sleeping when it ought to be waking; in energy when it ought to be still; and then denying the Lord when the time of trial comes.

#6 "Wilderness Grace" (available from STEM Publishing)

This is an interesting study: it contrasts God's dealings with Israel from the time they crossed the Red Sea until Sinai, with His dealings with them once they received the Law.

To bring into the wilderness, and not at once into Canaan. Being in the wilderness implies all sorts of trials. It may seem strange to sight, that they who had just been singing the song of triumph and deliverance (chap 15) should be allowed to be three days in the wilderness without water; and then, when they came to water, should find it so bitter that they could not drink of it. But God permits these trials, in order that we may see our own need and prove His faithfulness. From the Red Sea to Sinai Israel proved the grace which belongs to us now.

If you are at all interested in reading Darby, you really need to start with Volume 12 of Collected Writings. It gives perspective to everything else he wrote, as well as being the most readable and approachable of his writings.