Position to Person

This is written primarily for, and dedicated to, each hungry heart, worldwide, who has gained spiritually from the study of The Complete Green Letters.  This volume might be considered an advanced addition to the larger work, an assist in coming to know the Persons-- the Son and the Father--more fully from the vantage point of our position in their Presence.

EXCERPT:

IDENTIFICATION HISTORY

PURPOSE -- It is our intention to share the scriptural basis for personal and intimate fellowship with God our Father through His Eternal Son, the Lord Jesus Christ (1 Cor. 1:9, 1 John 1:3,4). Although built upon the birth truths, it is by means of the identification truths--the growth truths--that this communion is developed and established. Substitution is no substitute for identification! Theses first few pages outlining identification history are important as preparation for t he realization of a more personalized position.

BIRTH'S LIMITATIONS -- Every born-again believer can certainly thank God for Martin Luther (1483-1546), the obscure monk whom He laid His hand on nearly 500 years ago. It was through brother Martin that our Father brought to light again the life-giving truth of justification by faith alone. "As it is written, the just shall live by faith" (Rom. 1:17)

The world, the Church, and the devil have never been the same since God restored the truth of justification through the faithful Luther. However, foundational as the birth truths are, they are not the intended means of spiritual growth.

BIRTH SANS GROWTH -- The Lutheran Church is an example of this: little birth truth and no growth truth, resulting in ritualism, legalism, lack of assurance, plus a large element of the Charismatic, as well as Liberalism. In general, the Reformation-oriented Reformed (Covenant) Churches, with birth truth but little or no growth truth, also reflect this imbalance in the unscriptural application of "the law as the rule of life" for the believer.

REMISS REFORMATION -- J. Butler Stoney, an early Plymouth Brethren leader, went to the heart of the matter:

In the Reformation there was, through grace, a great deliverance. The ground-work of Christianity was recovered; namely, justification by faith. But though this was restored, it was not maintained that the old Adamic man was crucified on the Cross, and hence they only refused the exaction of Popery, but considered the flesh as still before God. Refusing the exaction was right; but the retention of that on which the exaction could be made, the old man was and is the weakness of the Reformation.

Wm. R. Newell commented on this subject:

Almost all theology of the various "creeds of Christendom" date back to the Reformation, which went triumphantly to the end of Romans Five, and, so far as theological development or presentation of truth is concerned, stopped there. Consequently, you must not regard yourself as bound to accept all that legal doctrine of sanctification, which has been, and still predominantly, the sine qua non of orthodox belief.

To anyone who has examined their writings, there is an inescapable conclusion that the Reformed theologians have kept the vision of believers limited generally  to the propitiatory work of Christ, not seeing the end of our history in Adam through our identification with Christ in His death on the Cross; thus freeing us from the power of sin, the grip of the law, and the old Adam creation, and setting us at liberty on resurrection and ascension ground above, in Christ Jesus.

Lewis Sperry Chafer never hesitated to warn the  Church concerning the dangers of Covenant theology:

The all but universal disregard on the part of theologians of the Pauline revelation respecting the Church  has wrought confusion and damage to an immeasurable degree. Two factors serve as paramount causes of this deplorable neglect of Paul, namely:  a) the Reformation did not recover this truth as formerly it was held by the early Church;  b) that attitude of the theologians, being bound and confined within the limitations of Covenant theology, has been one of avoidance of what to them seems new.

While there were occasional references to the Church universal in post-Reformation literature, it was not until around 1850 that this extensive and important body of truth was formed into a doctrinal declaration. It was given to J. N. Darby of England to achieve this distinctive ministry (Systematic Theology IV:37)

JOHN NELSON DARBY -- It was some 350 years after the truths of substitution and new birth were reaffirmed through Luther, that God restored the truths of identification and growth. Foundational and far-reaching as the Reformation was, it proved to be but the ground-work for the vast array of growth and related truths that God made available through another unknown, one John Nelson Darby (1800-1882).

A lawyer, Darby withdrew from the bar early in his promising career, responding to a higher calling. Two years after his subsequent ordination, he resigned his curacy in the liberal Irish Anglican Church, as a result of its low spiritual condition. Knowing better than to try to reform what he considered to be  the "ruined" Church, he set out to make all things new--"New Testament." Listed below are some of the vital doctrines that have been formulated and/or clarified by Darby:

IDENTIFICATION AND RELATED TRUTHS -- Our full assurance of salvation, and unconditional eternal security; our complete acceptance by the Father in His Beloved and Eternal Son; the Church as the Body of Christ; the distinction between Israel and the Church and therefore between Law and Grace; the basic dispensations in the rightly-divided Word; the pre-tribulational, premillennial Rapture of the Church; much light on prophecy; our identification with Christ in His death unto sin, His burial, resurrection and ascension; our deliverance from the reign of sin and the old man in Romans Six; our freedom from the principle of law, via Romans Six through Eight; our position in the glorified Lord at the Father's right hand; and God's purpose to conform us to the image of His Son.

IDENTIFICATION'S PATH -- During the past century and more both streams of Darby's Plymouth Brethren movement--the Exclusives, or Closed (Darbyites), and the Inclusives, or Open (Mullerites)--have possessed the identification, or growth truths, in their extensive writings--predominantly the Closed.

However, in an effort to maintain their mode of (NT) gathering, they have given insufficient time and attention to that "better part." It has been a matter of over-emphasis on the Body, hence a neglect of the Head. For the Plymouth Brethren, both Open and Closed, gathering takes  precedence over growth. Their theory is, gather right in order to grow (spiritually) right; wheras the Scripture insists upon growing correctly in order to gather correctly.

SHARE OR SHRIVEL! -- Herin lies a lesson for each of us, indeed a principle.  The Brethren have all but lost the benefit of that which they have kept to themselves. For the movement as a whole, this has been all but fatal. However, it is hoped that if and when the prodigal becomes needy and hungry enough, he will arise and return to the father and his food!

While the identification and position truths for growth remain practically dormant among the Brethren, God sowed them on other, at the times less fallow ground--that of Bible Conferences. By this means these truths have blossomed and become fruitful in hungry hearts worldwide.