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The Purifying of The Heavenly |
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A vital truth-faithfully defended for over 100 years.
CHRIST, as the one representative man - the embodiment of the entire race - was required, not just to die, but to openly, publicly, voluntarily put to death the Body of Sin, in order to declare - as the race and for the race (himself included) - his repudiation of, even unto death, the sin principle, the diabolos, the "law of sin in the members" which infects every particle of the Body of Sin; and thus to demonstrate and vindicate the holiness and majesty and justice of God. And no one of the condemned race - himself included - could enter into the divine life until that divinely-required declaration by the race (concentered in him) had been made. This was the cleansing sacrifice for the race that God required. Therefore that cut-off, blood-shedding death was essential for his own ascent to eternal glory. Any theory that he did not need, like all his brethren, that Eden-prophesied, diabolos-destroying, foundation-of-perfection-laying sacrifice immediately cuts him off from the race, and makes him a substitute. He is then no longer the Head of the Body, the Representative, the Example, the Firstfruits, the Forerunner, the Captain (Heb. 2: 10, archegos: the one who is first in anything). Brother Roberts stressed this over and over in combatting Renunciationism, which was the Truth's first major experience with the age-old antichrist error. As brethren Thomas and Roberts repeatedly emphasized (and later writers who followed them), if Sin was not actually IN Christ's flesh, and was not actually physically put to death in his crucifixion, then that crucifixion did not manifest the justice and righteousness of God, but the reverse: injustice and unrighteousness. If he himself was unrelated to the sacrificial redemption, then Sin was not actually and really put to death, and he never achieved the destruction of the diabolos: the purpose for which he was created. It is the old orthodox theory of making God say to the world -
That is, pure Substitutionism: vicarious sacrifice. Whereas the Truth, as so beautifully brought out constantly in the teachings of brethren Thomas and Roberts, has God saying -
Here is reasonableness and beauty: the Sin-Body overcome and put to death in public, obedient, loving vindication of God's holiness and justice. And in return, supreme glory and life achieved for ever more by a God-strengthened Christ, offered freely through him to all sin stricken men and women who will in humility and love accept this glorious Way and its gracious and God-honoring terms. Surely the saddest of all are those who say, in their sleepy bewilderment, "Is it a first principle?" Is the heart-truth at the root of the Sacrifice of Christ a first principle! Is it still important that a truth zealously and faithfully defended for over 100 years, continue to be preserved as part of the Faith? What a tragic question! If this truth, faithfully defended in fellowship by sound brethren against Tumey, Cornish, Strickler, Bell, is not a first principle - what IS? How loud and clear the 1940 trumpet! How can a knowledge of the Truth have slipped so far so fast?
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