New creation

Isaiah 66:2; Galatians 6:15

Sometimes we'll find something in scripture that just leaps out and gets in our face. When it happens, it's hard not to think about it all the time; and we see it everywhere we look. One of those things had happened to me this year. Like happens so often to me (not only to me, I'm sure), it's a truth I've known for years, but it's taken on a new depth and I feel almost like I never new it before.

I've been struck by the thought that God is no longer dealing with man in the flesh. That's the "brethrenese" version. The English version is this: God started something with Adam. He created Adam to have a relationship with him, but Adam choose something else. From Adam to Christ, God has demonstrated that there is nothing for Him in Adam or in his descendants. So the crucifixion marks the point where God wrote off the human race. It wasn't just that one Man died there: as far as God is concerned, the whole human race is done. God is finished with us. The death of Christ was the summing-up and finishing of the entire human race, so far as God is concerned. That's why Scripture refers to Christ as the "last Adam" (1 Corinthians 15:45).

Of course God knew all along that Adam's race is hopelessly lost, but it wasn't until the cross that He gave the verdict (Romans 8:3). So when God justified Abraham (Genesis 15:3; Romans 4:1-5), He knew very well that Abraham had nothing to offer. But that didn't stop God from justifying him. That's one reason Romans calls God the One "who justifies the ungodly" (Romans 4:5).

God justifies us on exactly the same basis that he justified Abraham, and exactly the same way. We are justified by faith without works (Romans 4:5, 5:1), just like Abraham. But there is a difference between how God dealt with Abraham and how God deals with us.

Men and women aren't only guilty sinners before God, they're lost, guilty sinners before God. Justification deals with the guilt, but it doesn't deal with the lost-ness. It's not enough for God to deal with a sinner's guilt: a sinner will sin again – that is, after all what sinners do. God deals not merely with the guilt of actual sins committed, but with the source of the sins: the sinner himself. This is what Romans 5:9–10 teach: having been justified, we shall be saved. And so there is the discussion in Romans 6 about our having died with Christ. When He was crucified, I was crucified. And I have every right – in fact, I have the duty – to "reckon" myself to have died with Him there (Romans 6:11).

Romans 7 takes the discussion a little further than Romans 6, and introduces a new concept in v. 5: "when we were in the flesh". This isn't the language of Romans 6: it's a new concept. It's what old "brethren" referred to as "standing" contrasted with "state". These two words aren't actually in Scripture, but they do capture a Scriptural concept: "standing" refers to my relationship with God, "state" refers to how I practically live my life. My standing is that I am accepted in Christ before God. My state is that I am down here, walking in a wicked world.

So Romans 7 introduces our standing when it says "when we were in the flesh" (Romans 7:5–6). Romans 8 discusses this in more detail when it says we are "not in the flesh, but in the Spirit" (Romans 8:9). So there is a contrast between Romans 7 and Romans 8. Romans 7 is the experience of a man whose standing is "in the flesh". Romans 8 is the experience of a man who is "in the Spirit".

Let's go back to the old "brethrenese" expression: "God is done with man in the flesh". Man is God's creature, and God has every right to demand certain things from man. But Scripture is explicit: God has found that man has produced nothing of value for Him (Isaiah 5:1–7; Luke 13:1–9; Romans 3:9–19). So Scripture concludes that man as a creature responsible to God is a failure.

But God has done something wonderful and terrible: He has provided His own Man, a Man who is not lost, a Man who actually has produced every fruit that God has looked for in man. The Son from eternity has become a Man, and He has done everything that God wanted from man. So Scripture calls Him the "last Adam" (1 Corinthians 15:45). He is, in a way, the accomplishment of what God wanted in man. And here's the important part: since God has found in His Man what he couldn't find in any other man from the Fall to the Crucifixion, He has stopped looking. This is the point that seems so hard for us to accept: God isn't looking for anything in me, because He has found everything He wants in Christ.

Does that mean that God isn't saving men and women anymore? Not at all! But it does mean that He is dealing with them in an entirely different way, and on an entirely different principle. Up until the Cross, man was on trial: "Not only was man lawless without law, and a transgressor under law, but when grace came in the Person of the blessed Son of God, they would none of it" ("Union in Incarnation, the root error of modern theology", Collected Writings of J. N. Darby, Volume 29, p.193). The trial has ended and the verdict is in. God is not looking for anything from me – He knew all along there was nothing there, and the whole history of the human race corroborates that. It was men and women who had the Law – who had the holy scriptures in their own native language – who turned the Son of God over to the Gentiles and demanded He be put to death. And it was the lawless Gentiles who actually nailed the Son of God to a cross and left Him to die. So God has already proven that no matter what He has done to work with man, man – Gentile and Jewish alike (Romans 3:9) – just proves his own worthlessness.

So Romans 7 looks back to the times before and says "when we were in the flesh" (Romans 7:5–6). It's taking about relationship. God used to deal with man as a responsible moral creature: that's what it means when it says "in the flesh". Now God deals with us "in the Spirit" (Romans 8:3), and He accepts us "in the Beloved [Christ]" (Ephesians 1:6). So God isn't treating me as a responsible moral creature: if He treated me like that, I would be totally lost (Psalm 143:2). When the relationship is Creator and creature, I am totally lost. So God has put me into a new relationship: I am now "in Christ". What does it mean to be "in Christ?" it means that I am accepted (Ephesians 1:6), it means that I am dead to sin (Romans 6:11), it means that I have no righteousness (Philippians 3:9). And this last point is probably the hardest to grasp: God is not interested in my goodness. Neither my sins nor my righteousnesses have the slightest effect on the relationship between God and me.

Now, this is all a question of standing, not of my practical state in this wicked world. So even though God doesn't seem my sins, I might actually sin. And make no mistake: He will chasten me as a son. He has not called us to live in sins just because He has forgiven us. He hasn't called us to claim a heavenly standing while enjoying sin and debauchery as our earthly state.

But the inescapable truth is that the Christian life flows from standing to state. God doesn't start with how we live and reason from that to how He deals with us: that is exactly what He did in the Old Testament, and He Himself has said that didn't work. What He's doing now is the exact opposite: He says, "I have given you a perfect standing before Me, now I want your earthly state to reflect it".

And here's where human responsibility comes in. We are called to accept our standing. What does it mean to be in Christ? It means, among other things, that we are content to have no righteousness of our own (Philippians 3:9). As long as I am clinging to the idea that I produce, can produce, or have produced righteousness, then I am in exactly the state of the man in Romans 7, "when we were in the flesh".

J. N. Darby, William Kelly, et al. were adamant that Romans 7 is actually the experience of a man who has been born of God, but hasn't yet been sealed with the Holy Spirit. I actually agree with them. But the fact is that there is an experimental truth in Romans 7: if you want to relate to God as a responsible creature, you'll end up experiencing all the defeat and heartache of the last half of Romans 7. If you want to experience Romans 8, then you need to give up on yourself. God has already given up on you, you need to join Him and be content to be in Christ, with no righteousness of your own.

Galatians 6:15 makes this point strikingly: "neither is circumcision anything, nor uncircumcision; but new creation". We're not called to live as Jews (circumcised), nor as Gentiles (uncircumcised). Both law and lawlessness have been shown to be incapable of producing fruit in lost man. God doesn't want a Christian life of circumcision or of uncircumcision: God wants to see an entirely new creation. The Christian life isn't the life of a forgiven sinner: it's the life of men and women who no longer have lives of their own. It's the life of someone who has died with Christ, and now He is their life (Colossians 3:1–4). In practical terms, our responsibility is to accept what God has said. It's our responsibility to accept that God sees me "in Christ", where I have no righteousness of my own.

What does it mean that "God is done with man in the flesh?" It means that God has demonstrated that man as a responsible moral creature is incapable of pleasing God. And so He no longer deals with us as responsible moral creatures. God has found what He was looking for in Christ, and He's not looking anymore. What He wants is for me to join Him and look at "this Man" (Isaiah 66:2), at Christ (2 Corinthians 3:18).

Why hast Thou made me thus?

I've heard an awful lot of "ministry" recently attempting to refute "calvinism". I'm afraid for the most part what the speakers are offering is actually worse than "calvinism", but that might be a post for another time.

But I can't help but notice that [almost] without exception, the attacks on "calvinism" prominently feature an argument that goes something like this: God would be a monster if He demanded that all men everywhere repent, when He knows very well they can't.

This sort of emotional rhetoric tends to get traction with people; I guess it catches the attention of the audience pretty effectively.

Setting aside the question of whether men really can repent, this is a very serious accusation. Regardless of all the merits of anyone's views on "calvinism"– regardless of the correctness of a person's reasoning about election or freewill or predestination– anyone making a claim that God would be wrong to do something is on very shaky ground.

The thing is, scripture specifically condemns that argument. Consider Romans 9:19–20 for a moment. Romans 9:19 poses the question: why does God find fault with men if God's will cannot be overcome? Doesn't God always get what He wants? How can He find fault with someone if the outcome is what God chose? The answer is in the very next verse: "who art *thou* that answerest again to God?" (v. 20).

We can argue about what Scripture teaches about election. Some see corporate election in Romans 9. Some find a doctrine of Reprobation in Romans 9. But regardless of what you think about all those issues, there is one indisputable fact: Romans 9:20 teaches that man has no right to judge God.

But here's the thing, when you say "God would be a monster if He…" then you're doing exactly what Scripture says you've no right to do. There is no other way to interpret Romans 9:19–20.

In the end, there is nothing in the whole question of God's sovereignty or man's responsibility that is more important than our personal submission to God. This is exactly what the book of Job teaches (Job 32:1–3). Elihu was angry at Job's friends because they kept condemning Job even though they couldn't answer him. But he was angry with Job because he justified himself rather than God. Job was right in what he said, but he was wrong because he did not justify God. And that's exactly the position these speakers are putting themselves into.

Sometime within the last couple years I was listening to William McRae's excellent series on Romans (available at Voices for Christ). One of the messages is called "Scriptures Greatest Theodicy" (on Romans 9:1–13). Right around the 30 minute mark, he says something to the effect that "nothing provokes the flesh like the doctrine of election". That's something to bear in mind when we're thinking about this whole subject.

Two kingdoms

At a bible conference this last weekend,  someone read Ephesians 5:5 and said,  "We are in the kingdom of heaven. There are people in the kingdom of heaven who do all these things, but they won't be in the kingdom of God. "

With that one sentence, he explained the difference between those two kingdoms better than everything I've read on the subject.

Deliverance: the cost

I have been cut to the quick by this letter by JND:

above all, we must be in earnest to have it. Who is willing to be dead to what nature and flesh would desire? Yet that is the only way of deliverance. People will tell you it is our standing in Christ. I admit it as Colossians 3, and as faith owns in Romans 6 and Galatians 2; but who is willing to be in the standing? It is standing, or else we are in the hopeless effort of Romans 7, or an honest monks' labour, which I have tried; and even if we have experimentally learned, as it must be learned, who is carrying out 2 Corinthians 4, so as to have the conscience living in it by an ungrieved spirit? Letters of J. N. Darby, Volume 3 p 90

I have to confess this describes me pretty well. I am quite content to be dead to the parts of the world that seem (in my judgment) to be a problem. But there are bits I like, and I tend to cling to those pretty desperately.

Mortifying

My friend Caleb made a comment to me the other day that I thought I'd pass on:

Romans 8:13 says we're to put to death the deeds of the body. Colossians 3:5 says we're to put to death our "members which are upon the earth". There's one sure way to put to death what comes from the first Adam: looking at the face of God (Exodus 33:20). If we want to put to death our members on the earth, we need to look at Christ (2 Corinthians 3:18). As we behold the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, death works in us.

Frankly, I need to be reminded of that.

Living power

My friend Berlin commented:
If there is one thing needful in the so-called brethren assemblies, in particular, and the household of faith in general it is a fresh recovery of these recovered truths. Not just a recovery of doctrine, but a recovery of their living power over the soul.

I think that really gets to the heart of the matter.

The lack of truth in the household of faith is astonishing. We all (and I really mean that, no group is exempt) treat the word of God like it's not.  I've ranted about this before, but when we treat man's opinion like it's scripture, then we soon treat scripture like it's man's opinion.

I'm reminded of this frequently when I hear pithy sayings of "brethren" that really aren't biblical at all. But they're treated like received wisdom, and the Word of God gets filtered through them.

I could give examples, but I'm just not feeling it right now.

But truth alone isn't enough. The fact is, There are any number of people who have [some] truth and remain entirely unaffected by it. Possessing truth is no guarantee that the flesh won't try and use it as an "occasion" to fill some lust. Religious flesh is just as fallen as licentious flesh, and loves to substitute intellectual for spiritual. "Living power" is precisely what we are in such want of.

One reason I've been on such a kick about man's fallenness recently is that I recognize my own tendency to try and live the Christian life in fleshly power.

See, it's me I'm preaching at, not you.

Sovereignty (Reprise)

I finished reading God's Sovereignty and Glory in the Election and Salvation of Lost Men by R. A. Huebner (from Present Truth Publishers and available as a free PDF download). It is a good book, but not a perfect book. I thought I'd write down some of my impressions here.

There are very few topics so divisive as the question of God's sovereignty in salvation. People throw around terms like 'calvinist' and 'arminian', which I'd prefer to avoid. But the first question everyone is going to ask is, 'Calvinist or Arminian?' So let's briefly answer that question and get it out of the way: RAH's view definitely tends to the 'calvinist' side of things. He thoroughly condemns the notion that man has freewill, insists that men are entirely lost, defends the notion of 'unconditional election', and clearly teaches that it is only through God's effectual (i.e. compelling) call to the elect that any are saved. Interestingly, he doesn't really address the question of 'Limited Atonement', although he does spend just a small amount of time discussing 'Eternal Security'. The book does address the question of the 'Doctrine of Reprobation' and condemns it as non-scriptural. In other words, RAH presents a view we might describe as 'single predestination', or perhaps 'moderate Calvinism'.

So now that's out of the way, let's look at some of my impressions.

The Good

To start, RAH has a necessary ministry in reminding us of man lost-ness. This is one of the most important teachings of Scripture, because it touches every single facet of the Christian life. As RAH points out– as JND and WK pointed out before him– Christianity starts with man entirely lost. "[T]he mind of the flesh is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God; for neither indeed can it be: and they that are in flesh cannot please God" (Romans 8:7–8). The Christian life isn't the life of the forgiven sinner, it's the life of someone who has realized he cannot please God, and so he accepts Christ as his life (1 Corinthians 1:30–31; Galatians 2:20; Philippians 3:8–11). The Christian is "in Christ" where he has no righteousness of his own.

Of course the majority of Christendom doesn't accept that man is totally lost. So they spend a lot of time and effort trying to improve what God has already condemned (Romans 8:1–4). Ask me how I know… I've spent an awful lot of time down that path.

The single best thing about this book, in my opinion, is showing that man is completely lost.

Again, I don't want to use sectarian language, but many of the self-described 'calvinists' I have known seem to have a pretty mild view of man's lost-ness that doesn't quite seem to measure up to Scripture. Ephesians presents men as 'dead in trespasses and sins', from which some of my Calvinist friends conclude that unregenerate men and women are somehow in a passive state. They are not: consider Romans 1–3, where fallen men and women are very much alive in sins. The problem with fallen man isn't that he hasn't a will, it's that he is self-willed. And so some have concluded that God actively prevents the non-elect from repentance, as though a fallen man might actually be in danger of repenting without God's active intervention! But now I rant.

God's Sovereignty and Glory in the Election and Salvation of Lost Men is valuable solely on the basis that it sums up so well the teaching of Scripture that fallen man has absolutely nothing to offer God: neither before nor after God forgives us of our sins. And it points out some subtleties, including that Scripture doesn't view man as lost until Christ is rejected. God has put man on trial (not because God didn't know what fallen man is, but because He wanted to demonstrate it), and the trial wasn't over until the Son of God came here to be rejected. RAH points out that if Christ had come and hadn't been rejected, that would have proven that man wasn't entirely lost: that there is still something there God can work with.

The Bad

All of RAH's books suffer from two characteristic faults: they are repetitive and hyper-focused. Honestly, this is nothing that couldn't be fixed with a good editor. I think if RAH's books were cut down in length, they'd be better books. Don't get me wrong: I appreciate that he is zealous for the truth, but at some point it gets hard to keep my attention. Doubtless he repeats himself to make a point, but there comes a point where the constant repetition actually gets in the way.

Hyper-focus isn't quite as big a problem in this book as in some of his others, but RAH has a strong tendency to tunnel-vision. That is, he tends to see everything as somehow a symptom of whatever he's addressing. This can make it easy to dismiss his writing at times. Again, this could easily be fixed by an editor. Simply reducing the length of these books would have the effect of removing some of the words and clarifying his message.

The Ugly

Roy Huebner's books tend to be more like scrapbooks than actual books. That is, he has a tendency to cut and paste huge quotations from J. N. Darby, William Kelly, F. G. Patterson, W. T. Turpin, A. P. Cecil, and H. H. Snell into his books. Some of those quotations occupy more than a single page! He's not trying to plagiarize, he's not trying to be dishonest, he's just recognizing that someone else has already said something so well there's no point in trying to restate it. The problem with this is that the books are choppy and long. It would have been better in, in my opinion, to try and reduce the quotes to a sentence or two and cite liberally. There comes a point where the extensive quotations actually make it hard to read.

That brings up another 'ugly' aspect of this book: the language isn't the most consistent. Huebner sometimes writes like a 19th Century writer, probably because he invested so much of his time reading them. I think it might have been a good investment of effort to rework his language and try to bring it up to the 20th or 21st Century.

In the end, there's nothing here that a decent editor couldn't fix. It would require some deep surgery of the text, perhaps; but I'm afraid there is some very valuable truth in this book that will be lost on people who might've read it, but for the awkward wording and [far too] extensive quotations.

Should I read it?

I found this a helpful book. Of course, with a title like God's Sovereignty and Glory in the Election and Salvation of Lost Men, some of my more 'freewill' friends won't even bother picking it up. More's the pity: there is a lot of truth in here that's been lost or forgotten. I would definitely recommend this book to a friend (and, in fact, I have), but I would caution them to read it slowly and try not to miss the forest for the trees.

Honestly, I think RAH has put together a good outline of what Scripture teaches when it comes to election. He addresses common objections from the 'freewill' point of view, while at the same time standing firm against ideas like a 'decree of reprobation' that Scripture simply doesn't teach.

One more thing I'd notice: I can't recall any discussion of the whole question of 'Limited Atonement' in this book. RAH is now asleep in Christ, so he can't comment on it. But I suspect I know what he'd say: Darby has answered that question quite ably in his little paper "Propitiation and Substitution". I'd definitely encourage reading this short article: well worth the time.