p231 [G Biava] [From the Italian] DEAR BROTHER, I have not my dictionary, so you must bear with my Italian this time. We are "children, of God by faith in Christ Jesus"; but here he speaks of Christians, so that it is impossible for us to separate the condition of the child of God and the possession of faith.

What you have already quoted is a clear proof that Peter was a believer. "Ye are clean." (John 15:3.) He adds likewise what renders the passage stronger in chapter 13, "Ye are clean, but not all," speaking of Judas, who betrayed Him. This is not all: the Lord prayed that Peter's faith should not fail, and so it was. He had faith then, and that as we learn in Matthew 16, through the revelation of the Father Himself. Election has nothing to do with it - it is true that it is before the foundation of the world - the being clean has much. It confounds the new birth and the sealing, "After that ye believed ye were sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise." (Eph. 1:13.) "The Holy Ghost was not yet given, because that Jesus was not yet glorified." (John 7:39.) But the passage in Galatians marks clearly the difference between new birth and sealing. "Ye are," Galatians 3:26 tells us, "all children of God by faith in Christ Jesus." Then (Gal. 4:6), "Because ye are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father." "Because ye are sons," not in order that ye may be; it could not be more clear.

But our brother does not yet know the meaning of sealing: God does not seal an unbeliever, a sinner, in his natural condition. This would be impossible. He will receive such an one in His grace; then He seals him. Further, the new life is not the Holy Ghost, or we should be an incarnation of the Holy Ghost; this would be nonsense simply. "That which is born of the Spirit is spirit," but it is not the Spirit, who is God. But when the Holy Ghost dwells in us, our bodies are temples of the Holy Ghost (1 Cor. 6). The difference is of all importance. The Holy Ghost acts in us, through the word, to produce the new birth, but it is one thing to build a house, and another to dwell in it. When he says that a Christian could not deny Jesus, he forgets that Peter's faith did not fail at this juncture because the Lord had prayed for him, and then He looked at him at the right moment. His will was not in it, but he had to learn the lesson of his own weakness. We are not born again without the Holy Ghost; but His work and His indwelling are two distinct things. People confound His operation and His coming. The Son of God created the world, but He did not come until His incarnation. The Holy Ghost has wrought from the beginning; He wrought in creation; but He did not come till the day of Pentecost. The Lord said, that if He went away He would send Him, but if He did not go away He would not come… Man must be in the glory, redemption having been accomplished, before the Holy Ghost could be given to believers, because the Holy Ghost is received by believers only. Now we are children of God by faith, and as we have seen; because we are sons the Spirit of the Son is given to us. (See also Acts 2:38; 5:32.)

Your affectionate brother.

Leeds, July 2nd, 1873.