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p505 [S O M Cluff] MY DEAR. BROTHER, - I have received your letter. The desire of your heart, to walk with the risen Christ, I have not doubted. . . .

I do not know that I shall serve the Lord by saying a great deal. We are poor creatures, and if there be anything right and good, it is through Him, though, thank God, connected with life in us. The word is everything to us as means; Christ lived by it; gave up His spirit as soon as all was finished - that the things concerning Him had an end. "How, then, shall the scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it must be?" "They knew not the scriptures, that he must rise again from the dead." They are the mind of God Himself, expressed in a way suited to men. Christ was what He said, and what He said was what He was. Men will be judged by His words. Quite true, we need a new nature (itself by the word) and divine teaching to understand it; but what we understand is divine too. All the Holy Ghost reveals to us is ours. But all that is ours, as of God, must be revealed. I say this, that we may feel that all that is really of God in our minds is of the word; the rest nothing, or worse.

I think you will yet see more as to the righteousness of God, when what it is to be in Christ is more unfolded to your soul. The righteousness of God is simply God's righteousness, a quality or attribute of His. We are made the righteousness of God in Him, because Christ would not see of the fruit of the travail of His soul, if He had us not thus with Him. But the display of God's righteousness is in His going to the Father, with the judicial part, that the world having rejected Him will see Him no more - that is, come as Saviour.

Where I see the soul delivered is when, having adequately learned, for it is experimental, that it has no strength at all, and there is no good in it, it is wholly off the ground of its Adam responsibility before God, and any responsibility connected with its acceptance; and has passed by personal, divine teaching, wholly off that ground, while fully recognising that responsibility, but finding itself lost on that ground, and passes by redemption into a wholly new place, that of the Second man, now risen from the dead, and that livingly, with the Holy Ghost to give it its power. This is the basis, for He is now glorified also. This involves our being dead with Him, but it is not in its highest form connected with that or resurrection with that blessed One. In Ephesians it has no place: we are dead in sins there, and sovereign grace has taken and put us into Christ in heavenly places, as it took Him from death and set Him there. Preliminary experience of death and resurrection with Christ is not directly connected with this; to occupy it, I do not doubt, we must go through it, but this is the discovery of no strength; the manner of it is made perfect in weakness. And everything, on to the new heavens and new earth, is based on that, and the blessed putting away of sin out of God's sight, when He shall have His rest.

I have no wish, dear brother, to weaken your testimony to our being in a risen and glorified Christ; I believe it every way needed. But the first testimony of all is to live there. Though all Christ said was Himself, yet His life was the faithful and true witness. I am quite ready to believe you do so more than myself. But still His words must be the spring of our thoughts; we must live by them. Our responsibility now is to shew out Christ, who is in us, though His presence is associated with love in us according to the love wherewith He, the blessed One, was loved. God will teach you, only we must receive, and what we get from the word must still be given us. . . . The Lord be with you. . . . Here, with a weary head, I have written a long letter, when, in starting, I scarcely thought to say a word. I have no doubt the gracious Lord will lead you into all the truth.

Your affectionate brother in Christ.

Pau, June.

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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 .