p31 Dear Mrs. Bevan, - They confound the whole of the truth in Ephesians. It is the act of God who took Christ, and set Him at His right hand, and us by the same power, setting us in Him, making us sit together in heavenly places in Him. Canaan under Joshua is warfare, and in this sense experience - warfare carried on by us in grace, as led by Christ in Spirit: and confounding these two things is one of the great mischiefs. But the use of the rest of the images is also false. The Red Sea is, I doubt not, an image of Christ's death and resurrection for us: but it is so as bringing us completely to God, not experience at all, but redemption, dying, and rising again: the wilderness and Canaan are experience. Thus "Thou hast led forth the people whom thou hast redeemed. Thou hast guided them by thy strength to thy holy habitation." They were not in Canaan as an inheritance, but "Ye have seen … how I bare you on eagles' wings, and brought you unto myself." It is God's work bringing them to Himself, complete - not experimental, as of journeying or conflict experiences. It is all wrong confounding these. Even to Sinai, where originally they were to worship, all is simple grace. There they enter on the process of experimental knowledge of themselves.

The wilderness is no necessary thing nor part of God's purpose, nor mentioned when coming out of Egypt (Ex. 3, 6, and 15.) The thief on the cross never went through any wilderness, nor any Joshua (Canaan): redemption put him straight into Paradise. The "Ifs" of scripture are all connected with the journey and conflict, and met by the sure promise of God, because we and (so to speak) God, for faith, are both tested there. I admit fully there is a deliverance by dying with Christ to sin, in Romans, and to the world, in Colossians. But the wilderness, and Canaan as in Joshua, are not sitting in heavenly places, but man tested in his journey in this world, and conflict in heavenly places with spiritual wickedness. Now, for this last we have to be dead with Christ. Hence, Joshua is "every place that the sole of your feet shall tread upon;" it is active taking possession as the Lord's host, not sitting in heavenly places: in Ephesians we wrestle against spiritual wickedness in heavenly places, but having done all to stand. It is confounding the responsible man with the redeemed man. Redemption is always absolute and perfect: the responsible man, whether past Jordan or not, tested. I may war as in the flesh and be captive to sin, and set free and in the Spirit obtain the victory or stand fast. As to culpability and redemption, Egypt is the flesh even when started on the road. The wilderness is a usual but not necessary part of God's ways - what the world becomes to those who are redeemed, or stand on that ground, and individually tested if they get to the end, viewed not as in heavenly places, but through redemption on a journey there; for scripture does so consider us: so in Philippians, so in Hebrews, though otherwise very different. Joshua - Canaan - is another thing; being God's host, we are realising what belongs to those who are risen with Christ.

I may look at redemption as complete in Christ, and then in Christ I am brought to God: I may look at it as the beginning of exercise for myself, tribulation working experience, and find a Joshua and Caleb place through God's faithfulness; or I may be fighting God's battles as the Lord's host; but neither are sitting in heavenly places. I may have eaten the grapes of Eshcol in the wilderness, and fail before Ai in Canaan: but redemption is perfect, and sitting in heavenly places in Christ - one the absolute power, the other the blessed effect, of God's work. I have no going to Gilgal, constantly there, to renew the moral condition before God which even victory endangers.

Be assured these people never know themselves. There is an anecdote of John Newton: when a person wrote to him he was in his C of Cardiphonia (a work I quite forget), he replied that he had forgotten one trait of C, that he never knew himself to be there. … We must not confound righteousness with experience, though complete judgment of self ministers to the knowledge of divine righteousness.

I have had a good journey through the Cévennes, and a good deal to encourage, though the world creeps in.

Montpellier, October 4th.

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