Darby Simplified – The First Man and the Second

The moment I, as a poor sinner, look by faith to Jesus as my divine sin-bearer, all my sins are gone – they are put out of God’s sight for ever. Christ is in heaven – He could not take my sin there. I am pardoned through His blood, peace having been made through the blood of the cross. And the glorified Man is in heaven, appearing in the presence of God for us – of His Father and our Father, of His God and our God.

A preaching on Genesis 3 by John Nelson Darby

J N Darby
John Nelson Darby

After covering the basics of the gospel, Darby said that sin must be put away perfectly. The sinner brought back to God must be spotless. Christ did not enter heaven again until He had settled the whole question of our sins and of sin itself. The moment I, as a poor sinner, look by faith to Jesus as my divine sin-bearer, all my sins are gone – they are put out of God’s sight for ever.   I am pardoned through His blood, peace having been made through the blood of the cross. And the glorified Man is in heaven, appearing in the presence of God for us – of His Father and our Father, of His God and our God. No sin there

Man has a Conscience

Man is by nature a ruined sinner, shut out by sin from the presence of God with no way back in his present state. The last Adam brings us back, not to an earthly paradise, but into the very presence of God in heaven. God does not bring a sinner back to innocence, but to the “righteousness of God”.   The believer is “made the righteousness of God in him.” (2 Cor. 5:21)

Man has a conscience – he knows good and evil. Even if a godless man steals, his consciences tells him that he has done wrong.

Now look at Satan’s temptation. He wanted to make God’s creatures think that God had been keeping something that would be for their good back from them – that He was jealous of their becoming as Himself. Satan’s great lie was, “Ye shall not surely die.” (v.4) It is his constant aim to make men believe that the consequence of sin will not be all that God has said it would be.

The Woman’s Sin

The woman listened to Satan; she lusted. Her heart was away from God, so she followed her own way – just like men do now, trying to make themselves comfortable away from God. Would you to meet God just as you are? God would say ‘Come and be judged’. So you would hide from God, as Adam and Eve did. Not only did they hide themselves from God, they hid themselves from themselves and from one another: the covering of the fig-leaves was just to hide the shame of their nakedness. And when they were hiding away from God, they were away from the only source of blessing. The light had come in and they wanted to get as far from it as possible.

Let us look at the character of their sin. They believed that the devil had told the truth, and that God did not. Satan wanted them to think that God was keeping from them the very best thing they could possibly have. And men are still believing the devil’s lie – hoping to get into heaven their own way, when God has said that nothing defiled shall enter in. Men are looking to Satan for happiness, instead of believing God. They cannot believe that God wants to make him happy.

Now I may say, ‘I have done very little wrong.’ But I am still making God a liar. All Adam did was to eat an apple. What harm was there in eating an apple? Alas! Adam and Eve cast off God, and that was the harm. Whether it was eating an apple, or killing a man, as Cain did later, the principle was the same. It was casting aside God’s authority, and making Him a liar.

Adam hides himself from God. He wanted to get out of His presence?  But the God of love brings the knowledge of the harm into man’s conscience. He does that in love, for if He were dealing with men in judgment He would have left them under it.

God called to Adam. When God speaks, it awakes the conscience; but this is not conversion. God speaks to show man to himself, and bring him back to blessing. His conscience is awakened and that brings him back to the presence of God. You would not hide from a policeman if you have done nothing wrong. But you try to hide yourself from God, because you have done what you know He hates, and that separates you from Him. Man cannot bear to meet God. Innocence, once gone, can never be restored.

The Effect of Sin

Sin has made man get away from God, and it has forced God to drive him from His presence. Man is out of paradise: toil, suffering, sorrow, sickness and death tell us that. And there is only one way back to God, and that is through the Second Man. Christ comes in by the door into the sheepfold, so there is no getting in some other way. He is the door, and whoever enters must come by Him. The flaming sword shut every other avenue to the tree of life. There was no possibility of creeping up to it by some unguarded path.

We also try to excuse ourselves. Adam laid the blame on the woman. “The woman whom thou gavest me, etc.” (v.12) It was as much as saying, ‘Why did you give me this woman? It was your gift caused the sin’. But Adam is condemned by the very excuse. “Because thou hast hearkened etc.” (v.17). Our excuses become our condemnation.

God does not comfort Adam or his wife. He shows man his sin to convict his conscience, not to make him happy. If my child has been naughty, do I wish him to be happy about it? No, I want to forgive him, but he must first feel his sin. God must have us see that we have sinned against Him. We justify God in condemning us. To see sin as God sees it is repentance. It is “truth in the inward parts.” It is holiness and truth in the heart.

God’s Way

God did not leave these poor condemned sinners without comfort. He said to the serpent, “The seed of the woman shall bruise thy head.” It was a new thing that God was bringing in – a new person and a new way. Christ was ‘the seed’. Blessing would come by the Seed of the woman through whom the curse had entered. This was perfection of grace. If sin had come in, sin had to be put away entirely. He who shut man out from heaven has fully provided that which shall shut him in again. We brought back to God through the precious blood of Christ. Christ loved us and gave Himself for us. That is God’s grace.

God commends his love to us, in that, we being still sinners, Christ has died for us.” (Rom. 5:8 Darby) We do not want a good Adam, – but a great God and Saviour. In the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ, see all the wrath of God for sin was laid upon Jesus.

Sin must be put away perfectly. The sinner brought back to God must be spotless. Christ did not enter heaven again until He had accomplished this. “When he had by himself purged our sins, he sat down,” (Heb 1:3). When all was finished, He took the throne of righteousness. Adam was cast out of the earthly paradise; Christ, as the last Adam, is in the heavenly paradise.

God justifies me when He says, ‘My Son has been given for your soul, and died for sin’. I am clothed with Christ; I am become the righteousness of God. What more could I have or want? I do not know Him fully, but He has redeemed me; and I am in Him that is the life. He is in me, and I in Him; and where He is, there I shall be in due time. I am still in the body, and bear about with me the bondage of corruption; but Satan’s power is crushed. The serpent’s head is bruised. He has been overcome: Christ went down under the full power of him that had the power of death; and He came up from it triumphant, for it was not possible He should be held by death.

He has overcome

We are told, “Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.” (James 4:7). We are not to overcome him (we could never do that), but when he meets Christ in me, he cannot stand that, he must flee.

The Lord Jesus Christ came down from heaven in love, devoted Himself to God for our salvation. He drank the cup of wrath for sin; He tasted death, shut out from God’s presence that He might bring us back into the presence of God without judgment and without sin. This makes us happy and blessed for ever. He knew what the holiness of God was, and what His wrath was; and therefore He knew what He was delivering us from. How I shall hate sin, if I have seen Christ agonising for mine upon the cross! This changes my heart.

The moment I, as a poor sinner, look by faith to Jesus as my divine sin-bearer, all my sins are gone – they are put out of God’s sight for ever.  Christ is in heaven – He could not take my sin there. I am pardoned through His blood, peace having been made through the blood of the cross. And the glorified Man is in heaven, appearing in the presence of God for us – of His Father and our Father, of His God and our God.

The Love of God 1 John 4:9 
by J. N. Darby

God presents what He is to men, so we know that He is holy, righteous and love. He is love, and love draws me. Love is the divine nature.

I need to be separate from evil: “Without holiness no man shall see the Lord.” (Heb 12:14). It is not said, ‘He is holiness’. Indeed I as a sinner would be repelled by mere holiness. He is holy. He is just, and He is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity. (Hab 1:13) He may be the God of judgment, but He blesses His own so that they might be eternally happy in holiness, for He is holy love.

A summary by Sosthenes

J N Darby
John Nelson Darby

God presents what He is to men, so we know that He is holy, righteous and love.  He is love, and love draws me.  Love is the divine nature.

I need to be separate from evil:  “Without holiness no man shall see the Lord.” (Heb 12:14).  It is not said, ‘He is holiness’.  Indeed I as a sinner would be repelled by mere holiness.  He is holy. He is just, and He is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity(Hab 1:13)  He may be the God of judgment, but He blesses His own so that they might be eternally happy in holiness, for He is holy love.

Whatever our state may be, God is perfect in His love, and He would make us learn, enjoy and walk in it now, not when we get to heaven.

Our selfish, unbelieving nature hinders us down here, but this only serves to magnify God’s grace and love.  In spite of all, He brings us to the knowledge of perfect love because “Perfect love casteth out fear, for fear hath torment” (v.18).   If, when thinking of God, we fear, we have torment.  That is the conscience.   Man may seek to bury his conscience, but only succeeds in hardening it.

If we seek peace in ordinances, it is not love but fear. The effect of true ministry is to put the soul in direct contact with God.  False ministry brings in something between the soul and God.

The soul must have the blessed consciousness of perfect peace with God.  God brings you into the joy of His perfect love in His presence; “Who shall separate us? … More than conquerors.” (Rom. 8:35)

The family character of the children of God is light and love.  It is God’s nature, and seen in both in Christ and in all God’s children.  I must have the new nature to know this; but how do I get it?  Where is it found?  In Jesus Christ Himself, image of the invisible God. (Col 1:15).   In Christ I find a perfect manifestation of His love. “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us(v10).

There is no mention of anything required of us, but the simple fact of what we were “dead in trespasses and sins.” (Eph. 2:1)

Though He is a God of judgment, He brought out the means of our approach: through Christ’s sacrifice.  Abel’s faith testified how man was to approach to God, so from Abel downwards God showed mercy.

Man as man refuses to come to God “none righteous.”  (Rom. 3:10) When Christ comes, it is another thing altogether.  God now approaches man in grace; not man approaching God.  He visited men in their sins, “that they might live through him.” (v.9)  All around was darkness, degradation, and idolatry. God took them out of that condition that they might live through Christ. “God has given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son.”  (1 John 5:10). Thus we are brought into His presence.

We live through His only-begotten Son. He is bringing us into His presence, before the One in whom all His delight was from eternity.  It is the eternal enjoyment of it to know eternal life in the Son; but down here we often question it, because we do not see this love in us. He is “a propitiation for our sins.(1 John 2:2)

God has loved me not only when I wanted it, but because His knew what I wanted.  He has not mistaken my case; Christ on the cross made the propitiation for my sins.  So I can say, “Herein is love.” (v.10)  I have found God, and my soul rests there. The cloud has been taken away for ever. If you say, ‘I have committed such and such a sin’; I answer, ‘It is for the sins you had or still have that Christ died; for He died for your sins.’

He cannot bear sin, and therefore He must put the sinner in his sins away, because He cannot bear the sins.  I learn to judge sin according to God, because I am brought into the light.  I find many sins in myself. He is the propitiation for my sins. I believe this, and then I enter into communion with Him. Why do I find fear and torment when I find sin in myself?   Can I not trust that love?  Have I not believed the love God has towards me?

God does not expect fruit from man, but His grace produces fruit.  We should feel sin, and know it has been blotted out.  We are told that  “The glory thou hast given me I have given them, that the world may know that thou hast loved them as thou hast loved me.” (John 17:24)  “There is no fear in love.” (v.18).   It is a matter of communion and we live through Him. “… Perfect love casteth out fear.”

I am not honouring God, if I do not trust the work of Christ in love on the cross.  I come to Him just as I am, and then I know God.  He enables me to trust in blood of Jesus Christ His Son – the perfectness of His work in putting away sin.

 

The Righteousness of God

counter the belief, which was taught at that time that Christ became our righteousness, that is that what was due under the law from us, He took on himself. Hence He would help us walk in according to the same law here if we are to follow Him.

A Summary by Sosthenes of a Paper by John Nelson Darby

For the original paper click here – JND Collected Writings Vol 7 (Doctrinal 2)

J N Darby
John Nelson Darby

In this paper Darby sought to counter the belief, which was taught at that time that Christ became our righteousness, that is that what was due under the law from us, He took on himself.  Hence He would help us walk in according to the same law here if we are to follow Him.  Personally, I have not heard this taught, nor do I know where it is still taught, but any tendency for Christians to place themselves under a legal obligation must have its root in this unscriptural teaching.  There is that favourite Easter hymn ‘There is a green hill far away’.  It goes on ‘He died to make us good’  and ‘try his works to do’.  Oh dear!

Is the righteousness of God legal righteousness?

We should bless God that Christ is our righteousness and that by His obedience we are made righteous.  It is the settled peace of our souls.

There are three stages of sin: lust, willful lawlessness (or transgression), and hatred of God. In sovereign grace Christ was made sin for me, and died to put me in a wholly new position.   He is the heavenly Man; He is my righteousness and He has set me in the righteousness of God, seated in heavenly places in Him.  Christ was the root and spring in life of the redeemed race. We are united to Christ in His new position, where He is the righteous man at the right hand of God.  The first is wholly set aside, judged, condemned, and dead.  “I am dead to the law, by the body of Christ, being married to another, even to him who is raised from the dead.” (Rom 7:4)

If, as sinful creatures, we were under the law of righteousness, we could only be condemned. “Do this and live” (Luke 10:28) is not written on the gate of heaven.  It was written on Sinai, which is not the gate of heaven.

Judaism was flesh under law, and flesh was judged.   This was what judgment was  pronounced on.  It is a mistake if I look to legal obedience, the law reaches the disposition and condition of my heart, when spiritually apprehended.  It does not only say, ‘Do’, but ‘Be’.  If I say ‘Love and do not lust’ (the two aspects of the law), righteousness is taken out of the sphere of doing.  Doing becomes evidence of my state and nature.

The Error of Substituted Righteousness

I know of no scripture which says that a doer of the law was entitled to heaven, or which promises heaven to a doer of the law.

The error put out by a Mr Molyneaux, which JND sought to counter went along the following lines:

No man can enter into the kingdom of heaven unless he is garbed in a perfect robe of righteousness.  Over the gate of heaven is written, Do this and live.  Though a man is cleansed from his sin in the blood of Christ, and sanctified by the Spirit of God, He cannot go to heaven on that basis.  He needs something more still; he must have a perfect obedience. Heaven is suspended on a perfect obedience, God said to Adam, ‘Do this and live.’ He failed. You must present a perfect obedience when you come to God. It is the active righteousness of Christ; it is not His sufferings — that blots out sin; it is not His Spirit — that sanctifies the heart; but it is His perfect righteousness.  ‘By his obedience shall my righteous servant justify many’. (Isa 53:11, misquoted)  The wedding garment is the righteousness of Christ… To enter into heaven legal righteousness is absolutely required.  It may have been very gracious of the Lord to have righteousness provided it for me, but it had to be done.

This doctrine (no doubt unintentionally) denies the extent of sin and the true character of redemption.  Nor is Christ’s righteousness a scriptural expression, though no Christian doubts He was perfectly righteous.  Law is perfect in its place.

Calvin goes a step farther: I understand, by the righteousness of God, that which can be approved before the tribunal of God; as, on the contrary, men are accustomed to the righteousness of men, what is held and esteemed righteousness in the opinion of men (Rom. 1;  2 Cor. 5) – (I cannot find this quote – Sosthenes).   His statement is very poor. He implies that to come short of the glory of God means that we can glory before God in the same shortness.  In Romans 10 he makes the righteousness of God that which God gives, and our own righteousness, that which is sought from man.

The great evil of the whole scheme is, that it is a righteousness demanded of man as born of Adam, though another may furnish it. The thing furnished is man’s righteousness. If Christ has done it for me, it is still what I ought to have done. It is meeting the demand on me — ‘Do this and live’.

The Truth of God’s Righteousness

The righteousness of faith is contrasted with that of law.  The law says ‘Do this and live’.   I do not accept the principle that the requirements of righteousness have been met by another, but righteousness on another principle altogether.   But the righteousness which is of faith speaketh on this wise . . . that if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. (Rom 10:9).

The first Adam, the flesh, is thoroughly and wholly condemned.  God looks for nothing from the first.   Another, the last, Adam is set up — the Second Man.

To make this clearer — there are two ways I can consider the relationship between God and man.  I may take the counsels of God and begin with them. This is Ephesians. Or I may take the actual state of men as responsible children of Adam, and show how grace meets this state – this is Romans.  Romans and Ephesians confirm one another, but from a different point of view.

Ephesians

When I read in Ephesians of the counsels of God, I find nothing of the law at all.  All is God’s work, and all is in Christ.   Man is found dead in sin.  All is God’s work from beginning to end. Christ is seen — in order to bring about this blessed counsel in grace — dead; and we, as dead in sin, are brought back to God with and in Him, according to these counsels.

Romans

In Romans we have the ways of God in His moral government met by grace.  Man is proved to be dead, dying under the effects of sin and his moral condition as a living responsible being.  He is a child of the first Adam, a sinner who has ruined himself, and his responsibility is met by grace.  The curse is taken by another; it is not met by another fulfilling it.

I must have righteousness; but I am not under law.  If righteousness came by law, Christ died in vain.   I am crucified with Him; nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me(Gal 2:20).   As regards walk, If ye be led of the Spirit, ye are not under law (Gal 5:8).   If we are led of the Spirit, we are going right, but we are not under law. We are not children of the bondwoman.

This is the view taken in the Romans — If I build law after Christ, I am a transgressor.  But I through law, am dead to law (i.e., not bound to it), that I might live unto God (which no one under law ever did: it is weak through the flesh); for by works of law shall no flesh be justified, be he Jew, or Christian, or who he may, or whoever may do them.  See Rom 3:20

Imputed Righteousness

A believer in Christ is justified through faith – he is reckoned righteous. He has Imputed righteousness.  However it is not the value or strength of his faith which is accounted as righteousness and then imputed.  Yet righteousness will be imputed if we believe.  Abraham was accounted, and we are accounted, righteousness on the ground of believing.  That is the meaning of imputed righteousness.  It is not a substantive righteousness, apart from the person, and afterwards reckoned to him, but the condition of the person in God’s sight. God views him as righteous, though nothing entitles him to it inherently.  It is righteousness reckoned to him, in his standing before God. Hence it is imputed or reckoned.

It is not merely that God does not impute the sin done, but he does not view the believer as in sin, but as in righteousness.  It is not a question of innocence.  The Greek word is not dikaioma (δικαίωμα, Strong 1345,  an act of righteousness), when imputed righteousness is spoken of, but dikaiosune (δικαιοσύνη, Strong 1343,  God’s judicial approval) — not an act or sum of things done, but a state.  He is reckoned to be in the state of dikaiosune: dikaiosune is imputed to him.

The Quality of Righteousness

The Epistle to the Romans places the individual on the ground of righteousness, and shows us liberty in life, but it does not reach the union of the body with Christ.   All the world is guilty before God, but grace meets this.   In Romans, I find the responsible man in flesh proved guilty, not dead; but with no remedy for his condition. So death is brought in, providing righteousness: God’s, not man’s.  God’s righteousness has its character, quality, and source from God, not from man.

It is not “the righteousness of God”, which is spoken of, but “righteousness of God” — the quality of righteousness.  It must first be found in God Himself; or it would not have that essential quality.  As a result, we are created in true righteousness and holiness, as to the new man, after God.

God’s Righteousness by Faith

How and why are we accounted righteous?  It is the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe (Rom 3:22) – Jew or GentileWe are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: whom God hath set forth [to be] a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God (v.24-25).  It is plain: God who knew everything, is righteous in remitting the sins of the Old Testament believers, to whom He exercised forbearance, because of the blood of Jesus.

Our Standing

We stand in a known revealed righteousness, not in hope of forbearance, great as the mercy that we have received may be.   God is just and the justifier.  Here there is an all-important principle: the righteousness of God means just that: God’s own righteousness — He is just.  It is not man’s, or any other positive righteousness made up of legal merit.

In His Blood

The righteousness of God is declared or manifested by virtue of the blood of Christ. God is righteous in forgiving and justifying; witness the former saints, who were borne with before His blood was shed.  We appreciate it now by faith; we are justified by his blood. (Rom 5:9) Man is a sinner, without law and under law.  Now, entirely apart from law (choris nomou, χωρὶς νόμου Strong 5655, 3551), God’s righteousness is displayed in justifying the believer through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, and through faith in His propitiating blood.  God is righteous and justifies those who believe in Jesus.  We understand that God’s righteousness is the quality or character that is in God Himself.  We are justified by His grace, through redemption, and righteousness is declared in God’s act of remission.

The Doctrine of Resurrection

Justification by His blood is not all.  A very important part of Romans remains — the doctrine of resurrection.   He was raised again for our justification, as He was delivered for our offences.  How is righteousness set forth?  In the resurrection of Christ.  But there is more: God has shown His righteousness in setting Christ as Man at His right hand.   Christ had a title to be there, and He is there.  Righteousness is in heaven. He demonstrates righteousness to the world “because I go to my Father.” (John 16:10)

Christ is our life, and we have received a nature which in itself is sinless.  Looked at as born of God, we cannot sin because we are born of God.  It is a life holy in itself, as born of Him.  But we also have the flesh, though we are not in it, and even though we have this new life, we do not meet the just demands of God.  If we should pretend to present the deeds done in the body, we cannot fulfill our responsibility before God.  That is, we do not have righteousness by being born again.  We need, and have, a perfect righteousness apart from our life, though in Him who is our life.  Christ is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption. (1 Cor 1:30) We cannot have settled peace any other way.  We are accepted in Christ – His perfection, with no diminution of its value. God delighted in His obedience, and we are received in that.   What we have done as children of Adam, He took on the cross in grace, and entirely put it away.  And this is our acceptance with God.  It is needed for us, for otherwise we have no righteousness.  For us it is a joy, because we enter, as objects of His grace, into the immediate delight that God has in His own Son.

Abraham believed that God was able to perform what He had promised.  We believe that God has raised up our Lord Jesus from the dead, and therefore, like Abraham, our faith is reckoned for righteousness.

The first Adam is set aside. I am not in the flesh (in the state to which the law applies).  I have an entirely new status before God in resurrection, by virtue of the work of Christ. The risen Christ is the pattern and character of my acceptance, as He is the cause of it.  As He is, so am I in this world. (1 John 4:17)

I Fail

Even though I am not under law, have I not neglected duty?  Yes, but this has been atoned for.   My responsibility is not to make good the failures of the old or first Adam: I am wholly out of that.  In absolute and perfect acceptance in the second before God, I am called to yield myself to God as one that is alive from the dead.  The old thing is gone — atoned for.

I should serve, not in the oldness of letter, but in newness of spirit.  Instead of satisfying the requirements the law in my old condition under law, I am passed out of it.  Christ has borne the curse that I merited.  I have  passed into another condition — Christ’s — before God, as one alive to God through Him, God having been perfectly glorified.

The Doctrine of Romans 5-8

This is the doctrine of Romans 5, 6 and 7, founded on chapter 4, and the results fully developed in chapter 8.  Chapter 5 applies resurrection to justification, founded on His death.  Chapter 6 applies resurrection to life.  You are justified because you are dead, and have now to walk in newness of life. How can a man dead to sin still live in it?   If he does, he is not dead.

Law has dominion over a man as long as he lives.   But we are not alive; we are dead.  In a word, Christ is alive for me before God, and I am justified, but as having died; and thus I have a place in this blessing. Hence I am dead to sin, and no longer alive in the nature to which law applied.  Therefore, Paul says, in Romans 7:5,When we were in the flesh.”  I am married to another, I cannot have two husbands at a time — Christ and law.  But, if under law, I have died under it in the body of Christ, and I am free. Through law, I am dead to law.

Law is for the first Adam, for the unrighteous.  Righteousness is in the Second man.  The law is righteous, but it was given to sinners when in their sins, and never as a law to anybody else. The law imposed the rule. “Thou shalt love” (Deut. 6:5).  That is a transcript of the divine mind – It loves sovereignly.  Christ here was love, and was perfect in holiness — holy enough in His being to love sinners as above sin, and further — what law cannot do – to give Himself up for sinners.

We are to be “imitators of God as dear children” (Eph 5:1) — “to lay down our lives for the brethren.” (1 John 3:16).   The law knows nothing about this, and law teachers strive against the whole doctrine of Paul, and the righteousness of God.

Where, then, and what is the righteousness of God? God’s righteousness is His perfect consistency with His own perfect and blessed nature.

March 2014

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ADOSS Newsletter No 6 – March 2014

Not the ruler of the synagogue but a brother - depiction from an icon in a Russian Orthodox ChurchΣωσθένης Ὁἀδελφὸς – Sosthenes the Brother

sosthenes@adoss.co.uk – 

ADOSS Newsletter No 6 – March 2014

Dear Christian Friends

ADOSS is progressing well, thank God, which gives me a lot to pray about.

I summarised two groups of articles – JND’s Faith once delivered to the Saints and the Present Hope of the Church.  These have been prepared for e-publication but I have not had enough replies from critical readers correcting the work.  Thank you for the input so far – but I need more before the booklets can be released in electronic or hard copy form.

The Sufferings of Christ

I have done a summary of JND’s  The Sufferings of Christ  – on Christ’s Sufferings from Men and from God, in His Spirit, and in Anticipation.  It is a most holy subject, and I am surprised it brought out so much criticism in Darby’s time.

This is the second of a series which can go on indefinitely Fundamental Truths’.  The first was on ‘The Resurrection’More will come, if the Lord will.  Your suggestions are welcome.

The Righteousness of God

I must confess to the fact that I am struggling with this one, originally in Doctrinal vol 2 (Series vol 7).  Darby sought to counter the belief, which was taught at that time, that Christ became our righteousness, that is that what was due under the law from us, He took on himself.  Hence He would help us walk in according to the same law here if we are to follow Him.  Personally, I have not heard this taught, nor do I know where it is still taught, but any tendency for Christians to place themselves under a legal obligation must have its root in this unscriptural teaching.  There is that favourite Easter hymn ‘There is a green hill far away’.  It goes on ‘He died to make us good’  and ‘try his works to do’.  Oh dear!

I hope to have this one done in a week.

Co-operation

I still need friends who will review ADOSS critically.  I am all too aware of my shortcomings, but I do not want anything erroneous to be on the website, or worse still in print.  So PLEASE take an article and compare it with the original (ask me for this) and see if I have covered the ground accurately and comprehensively, but in modern language, and reduced to about 1/3 the length.

So long as you have a love for the truth, love for the Lord and His people, and have the capabilities I do not mind who helps me:  male or female, old or young, ‘or whatever church connection.

Some new Friends

I am receiving more and more correspondence with godly souls.  Some of course are people just wanting money – one Roman Catholic priest wanted funds for Mass vestments and other things.  I pointed out that God was not interested in vestments, they were not necessary and, besides, all real priests in his congregation (ie all believers), were already clothed in the ‘best robe’!

But there are others – one sister hanging on to the idea that we will have to face the great tribulation – but most sound.

The Church

More and more, the ruined state of the Church is evident.  Wouldn’t we all like to see it totally united in its pristine pentecostal state?  But there are inconsistencies everywhere.  It just casts us on God.  When I was a boy, there was a brother in London who served widely, Percy Lyon.  He might have been a bit eccentric, but his teaching on the ‘broken-hearted churchman’, has remained with me all my life.

May you prove God’s grace.  Maranatha!

Your Brother, Sosthenes

 

 

 

 

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