<< previous (1:235) | next (1:237) >>

p387 MY DEAR BROTHER, - Though I am glad of every jealousy as to Christ and His work, yet we approach the subject altogether from a different point of view. You say we should be no losers if they were confined to the cross, because it would suffice to their comfort and help: I wholly reject this view of the matter. My soul rests, I trust, simply on the cross, but I think I am an immense loser if I lose anything of those sorrows and ways of love in which my Master went in grace. I understand the difficulty printing gives, as it presents points to all for which all are not prepared; hence I am not anxious to prove or explain. People will see clearer as they get on; and if they have the essentials, if they lose much, at least they are safe.

You say if the awful hour of the cross sufficed to deliver Jew and Gentile from an eternity of misery, surely it would to supply to their comfort and help while here all such experiences. This is every way false, and to me only shews a soul - forgive my plainness - not peacefully settled on the cross. Our experience and the cross are two distinct things. Atonement gets out of the reach of experience: it only connects itself with experience when its value is not fully known as such. But it further shews, as is consequently quite natural, that you have not before you in the smallest degree the question at issue. The remnant of the Jews will not have the knowledge of that deliverance until they look on Him whom they have pierced, and hence want all that accompanied it as sorrow and distress before deliverance to sustain and hold up their souls; and this is the constant current of thought in the Psalms. "This poor man cried, and the Lord heard him," and the like, in a multitude of passages. Besides your principle would make the sorrows of Christ, as suffering being tempted, entirely useless (we should lose nothing) even for us. They are not the cross. I will not enter into your own arrangement of the psalm, and the difficulties you have created to yourself by it, but meet the main points on which your mind rests as to my statements.

The New Testament is most distinct in its evidence that there was something besides anticipation; though anticipation of what closed these sufferings aggravated the passage towards what so closed it. I really cannot understand the state of several minds here except by a growing conviction that they have no real sense of what atonement is. Take the simplest things: was it no suffering to be deserted, betrayed, denied by those dear to Him, to look for compassion and find none? Was it no suffering which made Him weep over beloved Jerusalem? no suffering to give up all He was so deeply attached to in the earthly elect people of God, and His Messiahship as then to be made good? Did Paul not suffer when he had wished himself accursed for his brethren according to the flesh, whose were the promises, the law, the covenants, and Christ according to the flesh? Did he feel this deeply, and Christ Himself not? Was it not indignation of God against Israel? It is the technical term in Psalms and prophets for it. You may see the use of the word as to Egypt in Psalm 78:49; for its use as to Israel see Isaiah 10:5, 25; 26:20; 30:27 applies to the nations, but Israel will be in it: Jeremiah 15:17 where it is exactly the Spirit of Christ entering into what was on the Jews; so Lamentations 2:6, &c., Daniel 11:36, where we have the whole scene of the latter days. The application of indignation and wrath to Israel in government is the just and clear expression of the word of God. (Read Lam. 1, 2.) Do you think, or do you not think, that the Spirit of Christ entered into all this Himself, or was it merely Jeremiah's feelings? Or did He sorrow over sufferings in Zedekiah's time, and not enter the least into the far more terrible ones depicted in Daniel and Matthew 25, where it is said as a principle, "In all their afflictions he was afflicted"? Read in Micah 7 and stop at verse 9: has Christ in Spirit had no part in that? Yet in all this there is not atonement, no shedding of blood, no expiation. Those animated with the Spirit of Christ entered in their measure into them, as Jeremiah and Micah, and indeed others shew; but they had nothing to do with expiation. I really see nothing but ignorance, and, alas! often ignorance of what expiation is, as the objections made to what I have said. That such are safe I freely admit; pious even in the confusion they make between sorrow and expiation, I freely admit too; but that they lose nothing I cannot. They lose immensely, and lose what I have no thought, with God's help, of losing with them. The only detail that remains is the period at which Christ specially entered into this. I may tell you that some of my adversaries find the great sin of all exactly in what you insist as good and necessary. On the cross they declare there was expiation and no other suffering: elsewhere it may be. But I do say, because scripture is express and emphatic on the point, that there was a change in the position of the Lord previous to the cross; provided that it be distinguished from expiation, and that it were not by birth, but by grace when here as a Man, the moment is, comparatively speaking, indifferent, and to be learned simply from scripture. He began specifically to announce it to His disciples on His last journey from Galilee to Jerusalem. John declares several times that nobody touched Him, or the like, for His hour was not yet come. That hour is thus distinctly marked in scripture as in contrast with His ordinary ministry. At the last supper He refuses to drink with His disciples as He usually did. In Luke 22:35-36, referring to their mission in Israel, in which He cared for them as Jehovah Messiah, He marks the difference as "when" and "now." The same difference is marked in the most emphatic way in verse 53. If that was their hour and the power of darkness, the previous ones were not; nor, though they led the way to it, and Christ in that hour turned to His Father's will in it in His perfect piety, is their hour and the power of darkness expiation. It may result in that hour, in His being forsaken of His God on His appeal from that power to God; but the evil power of darkness and the forsaking are not the same (woe be to him who thinks it so), though they may go together, and one precede the other, and He appeals from the sorrows of one to God against it, and then finds Himself forsaken as no one else who trusted Him ever was. Further, the Lord states, "My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death. Tarry ye here and watch with me." Here was real sorrow, suffering (and not mere anticipation), for it was the present power of death upon His soul, and the power of darkness; yet it is clear He was not drinking the cup, for He prays He may not.

Your statement as to page 26* is as incorrect as it can well be. I find nothing in page 26 of Christ having the exercises of a soul awakened, &c. What I find there is this: Christ has passed through all these kinds of sufferings, only the last, of course, as a perfect being to learn it for others: I need not say He was perfect in all. Now allow me to say that having the exercises of a soul - your words are as charging me, Christ "had the exercises . . . learning when a sinner," &c.; my statement is, Man may be looked at, &c., as in this state, and then that Christ passed through the suffering as learning it for others: now allow me to say, when people take on themselves to accuse they should be exact. I am perfectly sure that it was the impression of your mind, but this I am satisfied flows from not entering into what expiation is, and what Christ suffered. I acquit you wholly of any wrong intention in it, be it so, say that, and I have no more to say. But it is different when we make a charge of what we do not understand. I believe Christ did enter into all the exercises of a soul in this state, and in particular of Israel, to whose state in the latter days the condition of souls under the law is very analogous. They have God's judgment of sin before their eyes; so had Christ then, but He was not under it as drinking the cup. They are awakened, quickened, upright in desire, yet not delivered: Christ had the life by which they are quickened, and felt all that one perfectly upright could feel; and what He was in Himself they will receive, as nature and desire, through Him. Christ was in the deepest way learning - Himself perfectly good - all that evil was experimentally, as the hatred of man against Him. The reproaches of them that reproached God fell on Him; and here this was come up to a crisis without restraint, and according to the power of Satan in it. No christian man can deny it. He had hatred for His love, and here it came out unrestrained, and all Satan's power in it; yet He was not yet drinking the cup of God's wrath, though this hatred of course went on in its effects to the time He did.

{*["Collected Writings," vol. 7, p. 288.]}

It is expressly stated in my tract that He passed through it as a perfect being, learning it for others. I pity with my whole soul those who do not see it; who, being ignorant of the true power of expiation in the drinking of the cup on the cross, do not see the reality of His suffering in Gethsemane, including anticipation, which is distinctly referred to in the passage; and who deny the power of Satan as pressing on Him, which He distinctly declares ("The prince of this world cometh"); and man's hour as the enemy of God; or suppose that Christ felt nothing about it. Was the full power of Satan let loose upon Him when He said, "This is your hour, and the power of darkness," which was before the cross, though in its effect continued up to it? Israel will not learn the knowledge of God's favour resting upon them, and hence dread rejection and condemnation. This Christ went through as suffering far more deeply than ever they will, because He was distinctly anticipating the cup He had to drink, which they were in their measure dreading, but never will. You repeat, Christ's having the exercises of a soul when a sinner! which is your own imagination, not what I have said. But I think you wholly and deplorably wrong when you say, "What could intensify their sufferings equally with a knowledge of God's favour resting on them?" They are beset by enemies, treachery, betrayal, all recognised as deep sufferings of Christ. There is the subtlety and besetting of Antichrist, the deep dark power of Satan pressing upon them, using withal the fear of judgment, or the cup of God's wrath to press upon their soul and turn them aside. It is not a question of "equally," but of the pressure on them running up into the wrath they dread; and this Christ did go through - as to Antichrist, what was equivalent - before He drank the cup; but anticipating it He declares He did. It is used constantly in the Psalms to encourage the remnant of Israel, as distinct from the subsequent full knowledge of atonement. Satan departed from Him for a season: He came, therefore, back again. Was it not where it is said, "This is your hour and the power of darkness"?

I have been interrupted, and could not finish the current of my thoughts, and I have answered all that is material; and I repeat my full and deep conviction, that where it is not malice, and sometimes when it is, the difficulties or objections arise from the soul not having true rest in divine righteousness, and a just (adequate we never can) estimate of atonement; and hence incapacity to look with adoring peace and interest on the sorrows of the blessed Lord as such. The cross itself, or rather what is called by such, atonement on it, is mixed up with our experiences and comfort in them, and immense loss is the result in both respects. This which I have gathered from many souls who had difficulties, and it has been a help to me as to the state of such, is entirely confirmed by your letter. I dare say passages might be made clearer in my tract; as a professed reprint I could not do that; but, as to the doctrine contained in it, all the attacks made have only convinced me that, while Christ's connection with the remnant may be beyond the habits of thought, which is not always in any way a blame, of many, the want of receiving the testimony of scripture, or ignorance of its statements, is the real and only ground of objections made; and the search into scripture it has occasioned to myself has only confirmed me in the truth of what is said, and the real character of the objections, itself a confirmation of the justness of my thoughts; while I admit, as I said, it may not be for all meat in due season, but what to do when it is printed at all.

Your affectionate brother in Christ

October, 1864.

[51236E]

This document may be found online at the following URL: http://www.stempublishing.com/authors/darby/letters/51236E.html.

You are welcome to freely access and use this material for personal study or sending to other Bible students, compiling extracts for notes etc, but please do not republish without permission.

With the prayerful desire that the Lord Jesus Christ will use this God-given ministry in this form for His glory and the blessing of many in these last days before His coming. © Les Hodgett .