If God's love to His people was an everlasting love as it respects eternity past, it must needs be a free love, in that it was fixed upon His chosen in Christ before they had done good or evil-yes, even before in God's eternal mind they were beheld as having any goodness in them, for there could be no goodness in any creature but what God resolved to give it from Himself-the infinite ocean of goodness. And His resolving to bestow goodness, special goodness, or special grace, upon one creature and not another, was from His sovereign love to one creature-when He passed by, or did not so love another, according to the good pleasure of His will; not because God's people were better than others, did the Lord set His love upon them and choose them, but because the Lord loved them. He loved them because He would love them, because He would be gracious unto whom He would be gracious, and show mercy on whom He would show mercy.
Oh, how silent would all flesh be before infinite Sovereignty, and how should they adore sovereign free love that are the happy objects of it!
Excerpt from the letters of Ann Dutton (1692 - 1765)
Romans 4:1-8
What shall we say then that Abraham our father, as pertaining to the flesh, hath found? 2For if Abraham were justified by works, he hath whereof to glory; but not before God. 3For what saith the scripture? Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness. 4Now to him that worketh is the reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt. 5But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness. 6Even as David also describeth the blessedness of the man, unto whom God imputeth righteousness without works, 7Saying, Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered. 8Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin.
Union of Christ with the Church
Instead of that nominal union which many talk of, which is produced by the creature's believing - the Scriptures speak of a real oneness. "Both He that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all of one," is the Scripture testimony (Heb.2:11) and so I believe. I cannot conceive how the spotless Lamb of God could be made to bleed, or bleeding, how His blood could, sanctify or cleanse from their sins any of the family of Adam unless such a union previously existed between Him and them as made their sins, of right, chargeable to Him; and His suffering of death and enduring of the curse, accounted as done by them. Instead of this union being founded in Christ's assumption of human nature; the Scriptures speak of His taking flesh and blood as a consequence of His relation to children who were partakers thereof. "Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, He also Himself likewise took part of the same; &c." What children? Those of whom Christ says, "Behold I and the children which God hath given me." See Heb.2:14,13.
Instead of this oneness being a union of feeling or views, the Scriptures speak of it as a oneness of life. Hear the Apostles; "Ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God, when Christ, who is your life shall appear &c." Col.3:3,4. This life which is one in the Head and in the body, was in the only begotten of the Father, from the beginning; for in Him was that life which is the light of men. John 1:4, compared with vs.14. Hence as it was said of Adam - Gen.5:1,2 - "In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made He him. Male and female created He them; and blessed them, and called their name Adam, in the day when they were created;" so it must have been with Christ, when He was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, and brought forth when there were no depths (Prov.8:23,24); He must have been brought forth a perfect Christ, head and body, He and His bride in Him. Hence His people were chosen in Him, (not into Him) before the foundation of the world; and they were created in Christ Jesus unto good works and as Christ - not as the essential Word, He is the Beginning of the creation of God (Eph.1:4; 2:10 & Rev.3:14). Christ was thus another or second Adam, not of the earth, earthy, but the Lord from heaven; not a living soul merely, but a quickening spirit. I Cor.15:45,48. Again as Eve when produced from the original creation in Adam, was bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh; so the church in her quickened members, being born again, born of the Spirit, they are manifested as members of Christ's body; and are of His flesh and of His bones, spiritually. See Gen.2:23 & Eph.5:30. Thus Adam both as a husband and a head was a figure of Him that was to come. As is the distinction between the two Heads - the first man and the second man, so is the distinction between the two lives brought forth severally in the distinct heads; consequently, so is the distinction between the bonds of union by which each Head is united with its body and members. The one bond is earthly, the other is spiritual; the one commenced in time and is dissolved in time, the other commenced in eternity, and therefore unchanged by time, will be eternal.
Older
Top
