1879 223 "And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat. But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." (Gen. 2:16-17.)
None can deny to God that He was entitled to lay this or any other command upon the man He had created, and it carried with it an obligation to absolute obedience. Directly God prefers a demand we are thereby constituted debtors to Him, since we owe unquestioning, unqualified obedience; and directly we fail therein we become defaulters who have brought ourselves under the penalty attached to its breach, which penalty God was equally entitled to impose. We are, everyone, then, debtors to God, because in the exercise of His inherent and unimpeachable authority He has been pleased to lay upon us certain commands, and we have everyone of us incurred the penalty, because we have failed to discharge these admitted obligations.
Our relations to Him as intelligent creatures of His hand, to whom He has vouchsafed to make known His will, involve the obligation to render Him perfect, uniform, and unceasing obedience. This constitutes the debt we owe to Him, an inextinguishable debt which attaches to our existence and nature in common with other intelligences, as angels, who are equally bound to obey His behest and for the same reason.
The fulfilling His will is obedience, the exercise of our own independent will is lawlessness, which is sin. Every defaulting debtor to God is undoubtedly a sinner, and every sinner has put himself under the penalty attached to his sin. To speak precisely, a debt to God is not in its nature a sin, nor is a debtor to God necessarily a sinner, because, as before remarked, men and angels are thus debtors simply because God has given to them His commands, whether they be broken or fulfilled. A defaulted debt becomes a sin, and a defaulting debtor a sinner, when God is the Creditor. Being by nature and by practice hopelessly sinners and irretrievably guilty, we are lost.
At this point grace comes in. Man's state being at its worst, God does His best, making demonstration that in the same act in which Jewish, human, and Satanic enmity are respectively raging, His sovereign goodness is laying a mighty and impregnable foundation for its supreme and eternal display. He gave His Son and was in Him reconciling the world unto Himself: the world received Him not! The Son of man must then be lifted up (and Christ gave Himself that they might do with Him as they listed). This brought in the cross! The climax of man's wickedness and hatred of God and goodness, and the climax of God's love to the ruined and the lost, coalesced there in Christ's obedience unto death. The one in whom was His eternal good pleasure, God's Lamb, who knew no sin, became sin for us, and in order that He might take away the sin of the world. The One who had never sinned nor could, being essentially "the Holy," had laid upon Him the iniquities of us all; He bare our sins Himself in His own body on the tree, being accounted guilty for us, and thus bore the penalty under which we lay on account of being defaulting debtors, sinners, guilty, lost! Whatever that penalty was He must have endured its equivalent on the cross, or God were not the holy God that He is, and we were not as believers the ransomed ones that we are. Never yet has any sinner proved in his own person the full extent of the penalty of his sins, its experience being as yet restricted to Him who became our Substitute; never can any mere creature fathom what He endured under the infliction of God in righteousness. This however we do know, that the work done has finally discharged every claim of God against us on account of our sins, as effectually as it has glorified Himself to whom it was done, and every desire of whose heart has equally found eternal satisfaction in the blessed person of Him who was the doer of it.
The question now comes, What part has the love of God to us in this, and where does forgiveness come in? Forgiveness is the personal thing resulting from or consequent on our individual exercise of faith. Upon this God makes good to the soul the blessed and eternal consequences of the work done for us by another; as Paul says, "Who loved me and gave himself for me."
The love of God was shown:
(1) in His embracing us in His eternal counsels as "vessels of mercy, which he had afore prepared unto glory;"
(2) in having provided a ransom, even His own Son, and given Him that we might be saved;
(3) in accepting Him as a substitute for us when He might have insisted upon our endurance of the penalty individually in our own persons; and lastly,
(4) in producing faith in our hearts unto eternal life — for this faith is the gift of God, as much as was the gift of His Son.
Where then this faith is found (God seen to be "light," therefore requiring atonement, but also "love" and therefore giving His Son to render it; the sinner owning his guilt and the awful penalty thereof, but cast upon God in mercy for individual salvation), He makes good to the heart as a distinct personal act of divine favour or grace, the efficacy and the value of the work of the cross. This is divine forgiveness.
Nor is it that we have one kind of forgiveness for debts and another for sins; indeed, speaking with exactness, it would be more correct to say that while sins are forgiven, DEBTS NEVER ARE, for God does not cancel our obligations to Him. Since these obligations constitute our debts to God, it is clear they can never be liquidated because in their very nature they are as continuous as our relations to Him as His creatures; and grace, so far from invalidating this, has only established it upon the higher and eternal basis of what we more emphatically and fully owe to Him as being sons to the Father. For the same reason our debts being looked at simply as current obligations to God, they cannot be forgiven, inasmuch as there is no guilt involved therein: on the contrary, obedience to God and dependence upon Him, constitute the very perfection of a creature.
It must be evident, therefore that when scripture speaks of our debts being forgiven (see Matt. 6:12; Matt. 18:23–35; Luke 7, etc.), the term is used in the more general way, as indeed uniformly in the word, namely, as defaulted debts, trespasses or sins which God forgives, as we have seen, because Christ has died and made atonement. Thus in the parables referred to we are seen not only as debtors, but as so thoroughly insolvent, so hopelessly bankrupt, that we have not a penny in the pound to offer. This is carefully noted in the words, "forasmuch as he had not to pay," and again, "when they had nothing to pay." Deliverance comes to us, then, not because God cancels the obligation, but because the penalty has been borne for us by the competent Substitute His own love had provided.
Here we may remark that we are never taught to forgive on the same theological principle as we are forgiven upon, but because we are forgiven, in like manner we are to forgive. Nothing is said as to the measure or as to the method. Who, for instance, could ask God to forgive in the same measure as he had forgiven his fellow-men? But in like manner he could. And as to the method or principle, God's ground of forgiveness is the righteous satisfaction He has received in the endurance by another of the penalty we had incurred, while our ground of the forgiveness of others is simply that God has forgiven us.
Further, upon this principle, God is righteous on His part, and to all the claims of His character in holiness and truth, in forgiving sins, and "He is faithful and just" to Christ, and to those who are His, in giving to our hearts the blessed sense of this forgiveness due to the value of the satisfaction rendered by that adorable One to God!
Finally; if any question be asked as to debts which may be defaulted in the future, or since we believed, the answer is plain, when the penalty was borne for me by another, every one of my debts was future. That penalty has been borne "once for all," and thereby every defaulted debt of the believer for ever discharged. The obligation of obedience can never be liquidated so long as God is God, but thanks be to Him, the penalty of every breach of it has been so borne or paid by the God-provided Substitute, that God is glorified in forgiving our sins, and has blotted them out of His sight for ever. By paying the penalty Himself, Christ has discharged for faith every defaulted debt, and delivered from his Creditor's judgment every defaulting debtor who has believed unto salvation; the knowledge of which brought home to the heart personally, in sovereign goodness and divine power, is what scripture means by the forgiveness of sins. R.
1879 237 Dear Sir. Editor,
I have just read a paper in the Bible Treasury for this month, entitled "The penalty paid and sins forgiven," and from it turn to God's word, "Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature; old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new." (2 Cor. 5:17.)
There cannot be a more absolute statement of the difference between an unconverted sinner and a believer in Christ — a difference both as to position and condition. The believer is in Christ, a new position, and he is a new creation, old things are gone, all things are new. That is, both as to his person and to his circumstances, his condition is totally changed. With the old position are gone also all the responsibilities belonging to it. If but one which belongs to the old creation still remained, it could not he true that all things are become new. Not that the believer in Christ, the new creation, has no responsibility, but that it is essentially and totally distinct from that of the old creation.
The obligation and responsibility of obedience to God attaches to every creature. In the paper before me I read, "Directly God prefers a demand we are constituted debtors to Him, since we owe unquestioning, unqualified obedience." True, angels are debtors; Adam before he sinned was a debtor. Obedience is a debt which no payment liquidates. A debt never extinguished, constantly due, constantly to be paid. And one moment's omission constitutes sin and makes man a sinner. But if a sinner, another debt presses upon him. The debt of obedience is not cancelled because he failed, but he has incurred the penalty of failure. So there are two distinct debts now resting upon the defaulter — that of obedience which remains in all its force, and the penalty or debt of disobedience. Adam while unfallen and innocent owed the former, but he owed it equally when he fell; he did not cease to owe obedience, because he makes himself incapable of paying it. His position, his condition, his whole moral being was changed from innocence to guilt, from wealth and happiness to toil and misery. But his liabilities remained. The original claim of the Creator is not relaxed, could not be, and ought not. When to this debt of obedience which he cannot pay there is added the penalty of death for disobedience, then, indeed, man is irretrievably lost.
Grace has come into this frightful scene, and has appeared to all. Christ has been here. He has met both debts. He has paid the penalty of sin, He has cancelled our responsibilities as mere creatures by taking us clean out of our old condition. We are in Him, and the responsibilities of "any man in Christ" can never be the same as of any man not in Christ. He, the blessed Lord, provided for both debts on the cross, and they are not the same. In paying the penalty He shed His blood for us: in meeting our creature responsibility He died for us, and we died with Him. Therefore in virtue of that death we have died to sin, died to law. Law has now no claim upon us, we are outside its sphere, and beyond its reach — in Christ; if not, we are under its curse; either under the law's curse, or in Christ. Can there be any two positions more widely different? The debts we owe to God as being in Christ can never be identified with those which man owes as being out of Christ. And scripture positively asserts it, for "old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new."
Having died with Christ we are freed from sin. (Rom. 6) All our responsibilities to law, that is, as mere creatures to God, are gone; for we are married (or belong) to another, even to Him who is raised from the dead, having died to that which formerly held us. (Rom. 7) Debts are never forgiven, speaking accurately, but they cease with death.
There is one sentence in which I think an unscriptural word is used, and I am sure, inadvertently. Speaking of Christ, I read in this paper, "being accounted guilty for us." He was made sin for us, and God dealt with Him as such; but God never accounted Him guilty. God made Him sin; but He was, and God accounted Him, holy, the Lamb without blemish. He was made a curse for us, but it is never said guilty.
I have said that Adam's creature responsibility to God was the same, whether toiling for bread in the sweat of his face or amidst the delights of Eden. His sin and fall made no change in this respect. Whether inside or outside the gate of that garden, whether he had power or not, the obligations of obedience remain the same. But when a man believes in Christ, there is an immense, an infinite change. The whole debt is cancelled, as well as the penalty of disobedience — death — paid. A debtor is a man alive in the world; how can we be debtors if we have died with Christ? How can old-creation debts subsist when we are a new creation in Christ? Romans 6 and vii. are conclusive upon this point.
A little farther on I read, "that while sins are forgiven, DEBTS NEVER ARE, for God does not cancel our obligations to Him." Here evidently the debts, as the sins, are those of the unconverted, and equally evident these old obligations are supposed to continue after we are in Christ. This I energetically deny. Else if "our" refers only to us as Christians, we reply, we do not wish them cancelled, we pray to feel them more. We should lose great part of our joy if our obligation were cancelled. To feel that we owe ourselves to Him, and that He deigns to accept us, is cause for boasting. But I say again, the obligations of believers are distinct from those of unbelievers, and to say that while our sins are forgiven, our debts are not forgiven, seems misleading, not to say mischievous. Certainly it is inaccurate (the paper says "not correct") to say debts are forgiven, but the thought is correct. That is, the right word may not be used, though no one can mistake the meaning. Strictly, the debtor is forgiven, the debt is cancelled. And when God forgave us, all our creature debts were cancelled; not liquidated, for that means payment, and we cannot pay. And this is what God has done by Christ's death and blood. The shed blood paid the penalty — His life for ours, and God righteously forgives. Christ not only gave His life for ours, but we have died with Him, and every obligation or responsibility that lay upon us as creatures of the old creation is cancelled, clean gone for ever. We are created anew in Christ Jesus. "Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new."
So there is a new obedience, a new obligation, a new debt. We are elect through sanctification of the Spirit to a Christ-like obedience. (1 Peter 1) The sprinkled blood creates the new obligation and debt. And we by grace render obedience on a new ground, with new conditions, given to a new nature, from new and heavenly motives, and in a new sphere — in Christ.
Again I read, "Deliverance comes to us, then, not because God cancels the obligation, but because the penalty has been borne for us by the competent Substitute His own love had provided." This, coming in immediate connection with "When they had nothing to pay," seems to say that because man had nothing to pay, his debt is not cancelled. I should rather have thought that for this very reason the debt must be cancelled. But in truth the parable referred to is not apposite to the question before us. It is parabolic instruction regarding forgiveness to each other. God's forgiveness of us is the grand motive and pattern set before us, and the next paragraph in the paper confirms this meaning, "In like manner." True, we have deliverance because God in His love provided a Substitute. But how we are delivered from law and its righteous claims, and our debts not cancelled, I fail to see. And what is of far more importance, it obscures the all-sufficiency, the complete perfectness of Christ's work upon the cross.
My only thought in sending you these few remarks is that simple souls may know their full deliverance through Christ. He has paid for us the uttermost farthing.
Oh what a debt I owe,
To Him who shed His blood,
And cleansed my soul, and gave me power,
To stand before His God!
Yours truly in Christ, B.
1879 253 Dear Mr. Editor,
Your readers must determine whether your correspondent's strictures on my paper are scriptural or not; for myself I see no reason to depart from what I have advanced. As to responsibilities he says, "If but one which belongs to the old creation remained, it could not be true that all things are become new," and almost immediately after, "The obligation and responsibility of obedience to God attaches to every creature." I ask, Did not that belong to the old creation, and does it not equally obtain in the new, "constantly due, constantly to be paid"? Have I ceased, or shall I ever cease, to be a creature? And if not, how can my creature responsibilities have ceased? Shall I be told that God has forfeited or foregone His creatorial rights? Brethren must judge for themselves, but for my own part I say once for all, as I have no intention of pursuing controversy, that I refuse such teaching as forms the staple of this critique. My moral sense revolts when I am told that my responsibilities to God as His creature are at an end. Your correspondent says he turns to scripture, but scripture nowhere teaches that "when God forgave us, all our creature debts were cancelled." It as much traverses scripture "thought" as scripture language.
Does not my obligation of obedience to God and dependence upon Him, which my paper specifically referred to, attaching to me from my birth, continue for ever, yea, without a moment's interruption or suspension? To say that after my conversion it is an element of the new creation while before it was of the old, is to import a line of truth which would have only obscured my subject, and equally so would have been the effect of introducing death to sin, the law, and the world, true as it all is, simply because it in no wise alters the fact that I (the entity, the creature) owe this to God, saved or unsaved, whether in the new creation or the old. Adam innocent or Adam fallen, or man in Christ (our present standing) or man in glory by and by, is equally and always under such obligations, though upon wonderfully dissimilar grounds. I might further ask as to the moral duties, natural relationships and their claims, honesty, uprightness, speaking truth with one's neighbour, subjection to authority and the like, whether these also were cancelled at the cross, see Romans 13, Ephesians 6, etc. Surely they are the same obligations as I was always under, although set up anew upon grounds as much higher as more imperative. It is a serious and pernicious misuse of 2 Corinthians 5:14–17, to argue from it that because we are in the new creation all the claims upon us of the old are abrogated. So much as is really scriptural in your correspondent's remarks on the new creation, my paper leaves ample room for in the words, "grace, so far from invalidating this, has only established it upon the higher and eternal basis of what we more emphatically and fully owe to Him as being sons to the Father." The character of a son's obedience is incomparably higher than that of a servant's, but the principle of obedience is there in either case, as is evident.
B. remarks, "a debtor is a man alive in the world; how can we be debtors if we have died with Christ?" As to the first part of this, I demur to his definition of a debtor; one "alive in the world" is certainly a debtor, but a debtor is not necessarily "alive in the world," and as to the latter part, is it not enough that scripture says, "Brethren, we are debtors"? (Rom. 8:12.) But again, in this epistle the Christian is looked at as alive in the world, and am I debarred from that line of truth, or that scriptural standpoint, when in character with my subject? He says (which I fully accept, nor have I written anything to the contrary), "there is a new obedience, a new obligation, a new debt;" then I suppose there is still a debtor, and notwithstanding death with Christ. There is much more that I might challenge, especially (what I am most concerned about) the general drift of his remarks, but I spare your readers. Any farther difference between us, so far as it is relevant, resolves itself into this, that he speaks of what is "new," while I have spoken of what is as old as creation and as enduring as the creature's relations to his Creator, and this because I was treating in an abstract way of the ever-existing obligations of a created being, whether those of an angel, an innocent or fallen man, or a man in Christ.
B. says, "strictly, the debt is forgiven, the debt is cancelled." I answer that it is travelling entirely beyond the record to affirm that the debt is cancelled. On the contrary, the righteous penalty of its default has been borne by the divine Substitute, establishing thus the validity of the debt, but clearing the defaulting debtor. Not, however, clearing him of what he owes as a creature by terminating his obligations to God, but of the penal consequences attaching to him as a defaulter.
I submit, then, that your correspondent has not shown that the believers' debts to God (which I termed "our obligations to Him") are either cancelled or forgiven; indeed he acknowledges that we do not wish them cancelled, and should lose a great part of our joy if they were: as to the unbeliever, I should have thought it evident that his sins and debts alike are neither one nor the other. I repeat that debts regarded as current obligations are not forgiven, for they do not necessarily involve guilt, neither are they cancelled, for as B. says, "the original claim of the Creator is not relaxed, could not be, and ought not"; defaulted they become sins and are blotted out only by the blood of Christ, in other words, by endurance of penalty in the person of our divine Substitute. May I also suggest that the all-sufficiency, etc., of Christ's work and the full deliverance flowing from it, to which B. refers, does not consist in, nor is it founded upon, or secured by, any cancellation whatever, but is by substitution under judicial penalty, in a word "through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all" in atonement? And the sure way to cloud these things (which, however, I am persuaded your correspondent does not wish to do) is to put them upon some other ground.
In conclusion, I frankly admit that "accounted guilty" is not scripture; is "accounted holy" scripture either? He was holy, as your correspondent says; "accounted" signifies He was not.
Affectionately yours in Christ, R.
P.S. — B. says, "debts — speaking accurately — cease with death" (speaking accurately they cease with life, that is, at death), and he argues that inasmuch as we have died with Christ we are exempt from all the creature responsibilities. Very plausible, but stop a moment; have I died as a creature? This fallacy is at the bottom of all his reasoning. It is true that in the reckoning of faith I have died as a man in the flesh, but I deny in toto that I have died as a creature, either as a matter of fact or as a matter of faith. Faith says, I am not in the flesh; faith never says, I am not a creature. Otherwise how could it be said, "Doth not even nature itself teach you?" And I have not died to creature responsibilities unless I have also died to nature. It is a reductio ad absurdum to use new-creation truth for denying as though obsolete what God has indisputably connected with nature and the creature. What I hold on new creation is found in your columns of June last. May I courteously suggest to your correspondent that he should peruse an article in "A Voice to the Faithful." for December last, entitled "Is Nature Dead?"
1879 254 Dear Mr. Editor,
Having in my former paper clearly stated what I believe to be the truth, there is no need to go over that ground again, save just so far as R.'s reply necessitates. I stated
(1) that man as a creature owes obedience to God;
(2), that man having failed had incurred the additional debt or penalty of debt;
(3), that man in this condition lies under the pressure of two debts, of obedience which he cannot pay, which the Creator never relaxes, and of death, the penalty of disobedience, or debt of sin;
(4) that scripture calls this state of man the "old things;"
(5) that Christ met both these debts upon the cross. In paying the penalty He shed His blood, in meeting our creature (or old creation) responsibility He died for us, and we died with Him.
I referred particularly to one scripture; there are many, but one is amply sufficient. First, let me say, I would not willingly grieve, nor say one unbrotherly word to R., remembering we are members of Christ, and partakers of the one loaf.
We both agree as to the responsibility of the creature. Responsibility supposes relationship, and relationship implies duties. The question is, are these duties, relationships and responsibilities the same in the new creation as in the old? I affirm they are not. And 2 Corinthians 5:17 declares it. R. asks, "Have I ceased or shall I ever cease to be a creature." But is this the question? Is it not rather — Have I ceased to be of the old creation? Why such a question from R.? as if I had said that the believer ceased to be a creature. Nothing in my paper implies such a thought. Again, "And if not how can my creature responsibilities have ceased?" and after a few more words he says he is "not prepared to receive such teaching as forms the staple of this critique." But as there is no such teaching in what I wrote, let it pass. He insists "that I (the man, the creature) owe this to God, saved or unsaved," etc. Who denies it? The old creation and the new owe obedience, but is it the same? It is altogether a new kind of obedience and obligation: the old is gone for ever. Take only one point, the obedience demanded of the old creation was to obtain life. "This do and thou shalt live." The obedience rendered by the new creation is because life is possessed, not sought for. Is not this an essential difference, completely changing the character and nature of the obedience, obligation, duty, or whatever other term we may use? And so for all else. The word says, "all things become new."
"Adam innocent or Adam fallen, or man in Christ (our present standing) or man in glory by-and-by, is equally and always under such obligation, though upon wonderfully dissimilar grounds." This is just what I contend for. So wonderfully dissimilar is it that scripture calls it a new creation — calls it death to sin, the law, and the world. Yet R. insists that the old debts continue! So then our having died with Christ makes no difference, and has not delivered us from the old indebtedness: consequently we are still under the curse of the law which says, that he who offends in one point is guilty of all! (James 2:10.) A little before R. asks, "Does not my obligation to God, and dependence upon Him, which my paper specifically referred to, continue?" etc., etc." Certainly, obligation too, and dependence upon God not only continue, but are far greater. But when I turn to his former paper, I find the obligation, specifically referred to, is that, while sins are forgiven, "DEBTS NEVER ARE." If there be any meaning in words, and if their meaning is determined by the context, then it is here asserted that the debts incurred by the sinner are never cancelled when he is converted. It is not here, in the part referred to, an abstract question of the creature's indebtedness, but a positive assertion that the old debts incurred while in an unconverted state remain upon the believer after he is converted. Now it is this that I deny. The word of God asserts the contrary of what it. says. This may be called strong language. So it is. I rather like plain words. And though I love and respect R. as an unknown brother, not merely as "your correspondent," yet the truth takes precedence.
He says that "it is a misuse of 2 Corinthians 5:14, 17, to argue from it that because we are in the new creation all the claims upon us of the old are abrogated." A simple soul does not consider it a misuse to argue so, for the plain reason that God says, "old things are passed away" and "ALL things are become new." But this comes immediately after the question whether moral duties and natural relationships were cancelled at the cross. My paper never logically suggested that question. But I refer your readers to the "wonderfully dissimilar grounds," and there they will find all the moral duties and natural relationships which belong to us, not cancelled, but enforced with Christ as the motive power for their observance. I have said enough on this part.
The next paragraph begins with demurring to my definition of a debtor. It is not a definition, nor given as such, but a simple statement. I use "alive in the world" in the same sense as does Colossians 2:20, in contrast with having died with Christ. The debtor is in my paper one not dead with Christ. The value of quoting as refutation of what I said, "Brethren, we are debtors," let "your readers" judge. But it would seem not to be without effect upon R.'s mind, for after saying with me, "there is a new obedience, a new obligation, a new debt" which I insisted on in my former paper, and of which new debt it is that I say, we believers do not wish it cancelled, he pertinently adds, "then I suppose there is still a debtor, and all I would ask is, was this new indebtedness cancelled at the cross?" And this is called the general drift of my remarks, of which more might be said, but having compassion on your readers he says, "your correspondent has not shown that the believer's debts to God … are either cancelled or forgiven;" and this in face of my words plainly and unmistakably given, and quoted by himself "that we do not wish them cancelled! "I appeal to every reader with a sound and unbiassed judgment, whether my paper attempted to show the believer's debts cancelled. I said our debts were those of grace, and we boasted in them. Our brother has kindly commended to my notice an article in "A Voice to the Faithful." I with equal kindness ask him to read my paper again.
There is not a sentence in this last paragraph, from "I submit then," but is open to comment. Let two suffice: "neither are they cancelled, for God does not forego His claims." No, God does not, cannot, forego His claims: therefore we died with Christ; but for this very reason the old debts are cancelled, because (we having died with Christ) they cease to be current obligations. Who talks of current obligations with a dead man? Another remark I must notice, "that the all-sufficiency of Christ's work and the full deliverance flowing from it … does not consist in, nor is it founded upon, or secured by, any cancellation whatever," etc. This needs analyzing. The "cancellation" is part of the full deliverance which is founded upon the all-sufficiency of Christ's work, not His work upon the "cancellation" as the sentence seems to mean, nor (stranger still) secured by it. No, the all-sufficiency of Christ's work is the foundation and security of our full deliverance, and "cancellation" is part and parcel of that deliverance. As to the word "accounted," I used it because R. did, but guarded it by saying, "He was holy." But in truth the whole paragraph is beside the mark. And so is the postscript. No right-minded believer says he has died to nature; but as this is only postscript, I pass it by and "spare your readers."
Sir, it has not been my sweetest occupation to go through R.'s reply, and I would fain have been spared. Only a few concluding observations let me make. In one part of his reply R. says that to have brought in death to sin, the law and the world, would have obscured his subject. Doubtless, for the continuance of old-creation debts, and death to sin and law, are incompatible. The obligation of the creature to the Creator may be spoken of in an abstract way (was it so in the former paper?). But when we speak of man's relation to God, of the wondrous redemption by Christ, does it convey a true, not to say adequate, idea of the all-sufficiency of His work, to make no mention of the believer's death with Christ, and therefore as a necessary consequence death to sin and law, and this also for a further result, that having so died the believer is raised again, made alive, united to Christ, married to another? Does not our death with Christ, and creation anew in Him occupy far more space in Paul's writings, than the fact of our sins forgiven? Not of course that it is more important, but harder to learn. But these results of the cross are so intimately connected that it is impossible for the instructed soul to hear of one without immediately thinking of the other. I repeat, the full deliverance which is founded upon the cross, not only consists of blotting out my sins and transgressions, but gives me to know that I am delivered from the body of this death, that my old man to which are attached all my old responsibilities is crucified with Christ. Therefore being told to put off the old man and all his belongings and so by faith having put him off, and put on the new, not only I, but every believer is now entitled to say, "The penalty is paid, sins are forgiven, and the whole debt cancelled."
Yours very truly in Christ, B.