10 January
1994
Dr. R. Kent
Hughes
College
Church
Wheaton,
Illinois 60187
Dear Pastor
Hughes
My
intention is to write to you on the subject of your finely-crafted new book,
Disciplines of Grace, with its obvious heart-burden for the
spiritual welfare of the believer.
But first,
in that you are pastor of College Church, my initial church home ('40-'45),
it may be of interest to you as to how that eventuated. Our dear brother,
Evan Welsh, then pastor there, shared the Gospel (of which I knew absolutely
nothing) with me, as only Evan could. Ultimately, I was saved, but long
avoided the strangeness, to me, of Christians and church meetings.
Evan, in
rightly seeking to draw me thereto, persuaded me to attend a Wednesday
evening (prayer) meeting, in hopes of getting me to "congregate," and
possibly to testify as to my conversion (from old drunk, to babe in Christ).
He left the prayer meeting (refreshments in reserve for an informal time
afterwards), and drove out to Warrenville to pick me up--amidst a heavy
snowstorm.
After
getting stuck several times, we finally arrived in the church basement, Evan
taking his seat in front, and I mine in the rear, as close to the exit as
possible. Patiently anticipating, they were all there: the Nystroms,
Carlsons, Sawyers, Webbers, Fitzwilliamses, Walkwitzes, Stoughs, Cooks,
Gerstungs, Kays, Conleys, Whitakers, Tuckers, Pattersons, Kamms, and even
dear Miss Blanchard--all unknown to me at the time.
After
several testimonies, Evan practically asked me to get on my feet. I finally
was able to share something of how the Lord had saved me--evidently a
touching time for all. Thereupon Maurice Dobbins, the fine young violinist,
rose and said that we had attended Wheaton High together, yet he had never
witnessed to me--and rushed from the meeting in tears. Highly strung
musician?
Don Hoke
had been assigned to make sure that I stayed for the "afterglow." He did his
best, but I wanted out, and out I went--plowing through the snow down to
the "Roaring Elgin" and off to Warrenville, with another mile through the
storm and finally to the "safety" of home! Later I voluntarily began to
attend College Church, and became a member.
Had I
remained there at College Church until now, I might have become Reformed,
along with you. But the Lord deemed otherwise, and for some 45 or more years
I have been a dispensationalist--of the stricter Pauline kind.
My primary
purpose in making the following comments is to compare some of the Covenant
aspects of your clearly-defined book, with that of Pauline
dispensationalism. As you are no doubt keenly aware, Pauline
dispensationalism holds to the scriptural separation of earthly Israel, and
the heavenly Church. Hence Paul is almost exclusively the sharer of Church
truth. "The Gospel which was preached by me is not after man. For I neither
received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by revelation of Jesus
Christ" (Gal.
1:11,12).
When on
earth, prior to the Cross and in His humiliation, Jesus the Messiah gave the
"Gospel of the Kingdom" (Matt.
4:23)
exclusively to the nation of Israel. After the Cross, when glorified in
heaven, the ascended Lord gave His "glorious Gospel" (1 Tim. 1:11)
exclusively to His Church, primarily through Paul. "For I [the glorified
Lord] have appeared unto thee [Saul] for this purpose, to make thee a
minister and a witness both of these things which thou hast seen, and of
those things in which I will appear unto thee" (Acts 26:16).
Paul's
Gospel is stated in 1 Corinthians 15:3-5: "For I delivered unto you first of
all that which I also received, that Christ died for our sins
according to the Scriptures; and that He was buried and that He
rose again the third day according to the Scriptures; and that He was
seen...." The heavenly Church Gospel begins with Christ's
death; not with His earthly life. "Except a grain of wheat
fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth
forth [resurrection] much fruit" (John
12:24).
The
Head gave His first and last Word to His Body, via Paul.
COVENANT
-- The Law [Ten Commandments] invites holiness because its intrinsic purpose
is to help the law-keeper know God better and to enhance fellowship with His
divine person. The Law was Jehovah's wedding present to His Bride--a call to
know and love Him (p. 20).
PAULINE
-- The believer grow in his knowledge of the Father as he increases in the
knowledge of His Beloved Son. "He that hath seen Me hath seen the
Father." "Truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with the Son,
Jesus Christ" (John 14:9; 1 John 1:3).
The growing
Christian's fellowship with the Father and the Son is from the positional
vantage point of being in Christ, in the presence of the
Father. Personal. Intimate. "[He] hath raised us up together, and made us
sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus." "For through Him we both
have access by one Spirit unto the Father" (Eph.
2:6,18).
The
Father's wedding gift to the Bride will be His Beloved Son, her all-glorious
Bridegroom--as the
beauteous Bride will be His gift to His Son.
"I pray for them; I pray not for the world, but for them whom Thou hast
given Me; for they are Thine. All Mine are Thine, and Thine are Mine;
and I am glorified in them" (John 17:9,10).
COVENANT
-- The Law reveals God's holiness, that He is a consuming fire. Further, it
exposes His moral beauty because in it we see, especially in Commandments
5-10
of
the
second table, His nature expressed in moral imperatives. Because the Ten
Commandments form a unity of love (love for God first, and then love for
mankind), they induce a profound interrealization of love in the law-keeper
(p. 20).
PAULINE --
The Father's holiness, glory, and moral beauty are manifested in His Son. "Christ, who is [not only God the Son, but] the image of God." "For God,
who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shone in our hearts,
to give the light of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ"
(2
Cor.
4:4,6). "We love Him, because He first loved us." "The love of God is shed
abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who is given unto us" (1 John
4:19;
Rom.
5:5).
COVENANT
--
Of
course, all
believers sin and fall short
of
the
Law. But they keep it in the Person
of
Christ, and
their souls long for it and exult in it as they walk in the Spirit (p. 21).
PAULINE --
"But if ye be led of the Spirit, ye are not under the law." "For I, through
the law, am dead to the law, that I might live unto God." "But now we are
delivered from the law, having died to that in which we were held, that we
should serve in newness of the spirit and not in the oldness of the letter"
(Gal.
5:18; 2:19;
Rom.
7:6).
"Forasmuch
as ye are manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ ministered by us,
written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of
stone but in fleshly tables of the heart." "If the ministration of death,
written and engraved in stones, was glorious ...how shall not the
ministration of the Spirit be more glorious?" "We all, with unveiled face
beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same
image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord"
(2
Cor.
3:3,7,8,18).
COVENANT
-- I am convinced that for the Christian, the understanding
of
God's Ten
Words, the Decalogue, coupled with a determination to live them out by God's
Spirit, will invite God's grace and will free His children to soar above
the ignorance, moral relativism, and ethical desolation o
f
our culture
(p. 22).
PAULINE --
"Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was
contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to His Cross"
..."which are a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ. For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ"
(Col. 2:14,17;
John
1:17).
Law-grace is one thing, for one people; Christgrace is quite another, for
quite another people.
COVENANT
-- This thundering preamble rolling down from Mount Sinai--"I am the Lord
your God, who brought you out
of
Egypt, out
of
the land
of
slavery"--was meant to kindle in God's people a deep love and gratitude and
to motivate them to keep His Ten gracious Words (p. 33).
PAULINE --
In Romans Six Paul makes it clear to the believer that through his
identification with Christ in His death unto sin, he has been freed from Adamic sin's power and reign. Being thereby re-created in Christ (2 Cor. 5:17),
he
is told to reckon himself dead indeed unto sin, and alive unto God in Christ
Jesus (Rom. 6:11). Christ is now our Christian life, and that life is
our motivation, rather than our fluctuating gratitude and love (wrong
source).
COVENANT
-- Moses ascended to the top
of
Sinai and
into the cloud of
glory that looked like a "consuming fire," and there he remained for forty
days while God instructed him and then presented him with the Law engraved
on stone with his own finger. What a colossal spiritual landmark
this was for
God's people. There had never been anything like it in the history
of
the
world--and there never would be again (p. 42).
PAULINE
-- Possibly for Israel the giving of the Law was the greatest of all
landmarks, but not for Paul; for him it
was
the Cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. "But God forbid that I should
glory, except in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is
crucified unto me, and I unto the world. For in Christ Jesus neither [the
Law's] circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new
creation" (Gal. 6:14,15).
COVENANT
-- The fact is, in the life to come we will be evaluated and judged by our
words. Our Lord gave a mighty discourse on this in which He said, "But I
tell you that men will
have to
give account on the day of judgment
for every careless word they have spoken. For by your words you will be
acquitted, and by your words you will be condemned" (Matt. 12:36,37) (pp.
62,63).
PAULINE --
The believer, whose life is hidden with Christ in God, will not stand before the Great
White Throne, to which our Lord refers. "There is, therefore, now no
condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus" (Rom. 8:1). The believer is
liable to chastening (child training) for verbal sin. "For if we would judge
ourselves [confessing one's sins via 1 John 1:9] we should not be judged. But when we are judged, we are chastened of the Lord, that we should not be
condemned with the world" (1 Cor. 11:31,32).
COVENANT
-- But for many, legalism had murdered the Sabbath. Seeing this, our goal is
to uncover the Sabbath for what it was, to show how it related to the
Christian church's radically new Lord's Day, and then consider how to
enhance the
flow of
God's grace in our lives today (p. 69).
PAULINE --
The Church's, the Christian's Lord's Day, resurrection Day, needs no
supplementation from any source. It is a glad day of rest and service for
the believer, who is positionally resurrected and ascended in Christ.
The Lord's
first day of the week is in complete contrast to the Law's
last day of the week. When the Lord Jesus stepped from the tomb on the first
day of the week, Christianity was born. The old Adamic creation
was judicially left in the death of the tomb. "Therefore, if any man be in
Christ [risen] he is a new creation; old things are [positionally] passed
away [in death]; behold, all things are become new" [new creation]
(2 Cor. 5:17).
COVENANT
-- Honestly answer, "Do I truly reverence my parents? Do I make
provision for them? Do I give them consideration? Does my
character honor them? If you
answer in
the negative, list your
offenses. Then pray over the list,
repenting
of
each
offense. Change! You may rest assured that
if you
do that which God asks you to do, you will receive supernatural help to do
it (p. 107).
PAULINE --
The Christian life is not a matter of change, but rather exchange. The Adamic life will never change; it must be "Not I, but Christ" (Gal.
2:20). He is to count himself as having died unto the sinful, indwelling old Adamic man, and to count himself alive unto God in Christ. It is the Christ-centered Christian who
will honor his parents. "For we who live are always delivered unto death for
Jesus' sake, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our
mortal flesh" (2 Cor. 4:11).
COVENANT
-- Jesus is not calling for physical mutilation, but spiritual
mortification, cutting off
spiritually harmful practices from one's life.
There must be a severing, a gouging out of sin, if there is to be victory. This must be decisive and complete--as serious and final as a hand or foot
or eye cast upon the floor (p. 133).
PAULINE -- When Paul
speaks of mortification, he lists the symptomatic sins, but he deals with their source, the old Adamic man. "Mortify, therefore, your
members which are upon the earth: fornication, etc...seeing that ye have put
off the old man with his deeds" (Col. 3:5-8).
The old Adamic man is
the source of sin in the believer. It is not a matter of struggling to
control that indwelling source, but rather to count, by faith, upon what God
did with that source at Calvary. "Knowing this, that our old man was
crucified with Him, that the body of sin [source] might be destroyed
[annulled], that henceforth we should not serve sin." "Walk in the Spirit
[who ministers Christ within] and ye shall not fulfill the lust of the
[Adamic] flesh" (Rom. 6:6;
Gal. 5:16).
COVENANT
-- We must discipline ourselves to the fact of the numinous, the presence of
God and His
angels, because that will steel us against our lower nature (p. 135).
PAULINE -- Instead of
God being in our presence, Paul reveals that we are positionally in His
presence. "For ye have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God."
"But now in Christ Jesus ye who once were afar off are made nigh by the
Blood of Christ" (Col. 3:3; Eph.
2:13).
COVENANT
-- In assessing the spiritual significance
of
the
sin of
covetousness, we invariably are taken very deep into the interior of our
souls. This is where the battles are won and lost. The Scriptures are
calling us to do all we can to root out this deadly desire (p. 175).
PAULINE -- The
Christian life, according to Paul, is one of faith, both for
justification, and for sanctification (Acts
26:18).
There is no rooting
out of the indwelling Adamic source of sinful desires. The battle against
sin was fought and won on Calvary's Cross. We are to exercise faith in that
finished fact, our identification with Christ in His death unto sin. "Reckon
ye also yourselves to have died unto sin." "For sin shall not have dominion
over you; for ye are not under the law but under grace" (Rom.
6:11,14).
COVENANT
-- Jesus said, "But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all
these things will be given you as well" (Matt. 6:33). His explicit meaning
is that He will provide everything necessary for a rich, full life to
His children who seek His sovereign reign.
Therefore, if we are Kingdom seekers and as such have everything, we
will have no need to covet anything. Kingdom seekers are ipso facto not coveters. Tempted to covet? Seek His Kingdom and His righteousness (p.
181).
PAULINE -- The
believer has been in Christ's heavenly kingdom since the day he was saved. "Giving thanks to the Father, who hath made us partakers of the saints in
light; who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated
us into the [heavenly] kingdom of His dear [ascended] Son"
(Col.
1:12,13). And He "hath blessed
us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ" (Eph. 1:3). Having
everything is not the answer to the insatiable vice of covetousness.
COVENANT --
If one knows Christ, it is possible, through discipline, to live within the
spiritual perimeters, the borders, of the Law. How so? . Because Jesus
fulfilled the Law (Matt. 5:17). Therefore, because Jesus Himself fulfilled
the Law, and because we are in Christ and He is in us, we can live within
the blessed
borders of
the Law. Jesus' indwelling puts our souls in spiritual sympathy with the
Law. We resonate with it--and we want to live it out (p. 188).
PAULINE --
Paul's center of life was the ascended Lord Jesus Christ. "For to me to live
is Christ" (Phil. 1:21). He was his focus of faith. "That I may know Him,
and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings,
being made conformable unto His death." "I press toward the mark for the
prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus" (Phil.
3:10,14).
COVENANT
-- All mental sin, all fantasizing, all voyeurism are to be radically dealt
with through stringent discipline (p. 193).
PAULINE --
Paul insists that all sin is dealt with by faith in the fact of sin's
condemnation by the Cross. "For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ
Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law
could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending His own
Son, in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh
( Rom. 8:2,3).
COVENANT
-- In a culture in which most Christians cannot even name the Ten Words,
it remains our task to know them all. If they are to
serve as a moral aide memoire, they must be in your mind. You must
know what the two divisions are--the significance of the first four Words
and then the second Six. You must work at being able to
describe the essence of each - one (p. 195).
PAULINE --
The Christian cannot be expected to focus on that which he knows he
has died to, especially when he knows that he is alive unto the Father in His Beloved Son, who is his very Christian life. "If
[since] ye, then, be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above,
where Christ [and the Christian] sitteth on the right hand of God. Set your
affection [heart] on things above, not on things on the earth" (Col. 3:1,2).
MJS -- My
burden for Covenant theology, Dr. Hughes, is that it advance beyond the
birth-level of substitution, and rise with Paul to our position in the
glorified Lord. That heavenly realm of identification renders His grace
"exceedingly abundantly above all" grace that the Law might contain.
The price
of the new birth is His death for us; the price of growth is our death with Him. All resurrection life springs out of death. Substitution for
birth; identification for growth. I am afraid, dear brother, that
substitution is no substitute for identification.
Yours for
His very best, as it is in Christ Jesus.
Resting in
Him,
Miles
cc: Various
friends