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p13 [F Rowan] MY DEAR BROTHER, . . . The two things in the Bible Treasury [June, 1878] are true*, but not connected. But the clear difference was not brought out till the examination of Cluff's doctrine brought it out. If we wait on God, erroneous doctrines become inlets to clearer truth. Dying to sin, and rising with Christ is experimental; but we enter on this ground by faith, or it is a vain human effort to get at it. In Colossians 3 God says we are dead; Romans 6, faith hold we are dead; then 2 Corinthians 4:10 carries it out in practice. Ephesians is the sovereign work of God setting us in Christ. We say we are dead apart from practice; but it is for all that experimental, but on the discovery of Romans 7, and then, by redemption and the presence of the Holy Ghost, the consciousness of our new place. You cannot connect Ephesians 2 and Romans 6. In Colossians 2:12 is Romans 6, and resurrection added, and in verse 13, Ephesians - only not going on to heaven, as Colossians does not. It is as believers we have died with Christ: still God and faith reckon me there when He died, "crucified with him," because the sin in my flesh was condemned then: in God's mind I was there. I only possess it when I have the Spirit, see Romans 8:9, 10, but then I go back to the work there according to verse 3: but there is no union there. Now there is real union.

{*'The believer has died out of his old Adam standing in the death of Jesus, and has been quickened, raised up, and seated in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.']}

[53012E]

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