MR.
CLUFF AND HIS VIEWS AS TO “DEAD TO NATURE”
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ABOUT the years 1878 and 1879 considerable confusion was caused for
a time in the minds of many by the teaching of a Mr. Cluff as to the
believer being “dead to nature.” This teaching, while having
a superficial appearance of spirituality, was in fact destructive of
it, and tended in its results either to unreality or to legality. The
following letters by Mr. Darby, written at the time, will indicate what
were the issues as to the truth involved in this teaching:—
August
16th, 1878.
MY DEAR BROTHER,—Exaggerations
are always dangerous and, where imagination is at work, deceive to people’s
cost; but the subject is a serious one. “Dead to nature”
is not a scriptural expression; so we must see what people mean and
what Scripture says. But deadness to the world and all the flesh is
after, is what is wanting among Christians.
As regards
natural relationships, they are very carefully maintained in Scripture.
The matter stands thus: God established certain relationships,
“from the beginning it was not so” [divorce}—”
he which made them at the beginning made them male and female.”
Sin has come in and spoiled all. A new power has come in which, while
fully recognising them as of God, and using them as images of the highest
spiritual relationships with Christ and the Father, has nothing to do
with them—is above and out of them. In general those who say much
about them and being dead to nature, do so because they are not. Paul
lives alone, and as a rule says, “let every man have his own wife.”
The speaking against it is of Satan. The Lord had considered the lilies
and how God had clothed them: Seeking these things as an object is another
matter. Adam was to dress
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and keep the garden when he had no sin; but we need to have our affections
on things above by a new power, and need a single eye to it to keep
us above the power of what is corrupted; “all things are lawful
for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any.” They
even who had wives must “be as though they had none,” for
“the time is a constrained one.” Nature is of God, but its
corruption is not; and it is corrupted, under the bondage of corruption—and
that is the difficulty. But “dead to nature” is legality:
to seek it as it is, is not of the Spirit, though He has given us all
things richly to enjoy. My body is of the old creation; my life, as
born of God, of the new; and we are left for spiritual exercises in
this very way. Nor is the matter therefore so simply spoken of, as some
would humanly: it is meant to be a holy exercise, and those who do not
spare the body may be satisfying the flesh. The apostle speaks for spiritual
power and for order; every man has his own gift; but it is a gift. He
wills that men marry as a rule, but tells them the married man cares
for the things of the world, that they will have trouble in the flesh,
but he spares them.
We have died
with Christ; our life is hid with Him in God: He is our life. We have
been crucified with Christ, yet live, but not we, but Christ lives in
us; and this life lives by faith of the Son of God. But you will find
that when applied, it is always in view of certain objects which turn
the heart from Christ. “All that is in the world, the lust of
the flesh,” etc., “is not of the Father.” We are dead
“to sin,” “to the rudiments of the world.” You
will further find that these are distinguished, and that the highest
Christian state does not contemplate this at all. In the Epistle to
the Romans the Christian is looked at as a man alive in this world,
as we are, but justified, and Christ our life. Here we get “dead
to sin,” Christ having died to it, and “our old man is
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crucified with Christ that the body of sin might be destroyed, that
henceforth we should not serve sin, for he that is dead is justified
from sin” (not sins)—you cannot accuse a man of sin in the
flesh if he is dead. Colossians goes further: “ye have died”;
and here they are risen also, and so are looked at as risen men on the
earth: they are dead to the rudiments of the world, are not alive in
the world subject to ordinances. So we are dead “to the law by
the body of Christ,” in Romans: it is also said, “if Christ
be in you the body is dead because of sin.” But dead to nature
is, in all that we are said to be dead to, quite unknown to Scripture
in word or thought. It falsifies the idea of the bearing of death there.
But none
of these is the highest measure taken in Scripture. These think of sin,
though of death to it, but never of our living in it. Colossians goes
a step further, and on to ground which is fully developed in Ephesians.
When man’s highest condition in this respect is spoken of, he
has not died to anything: he is viewed as dead in trespasses
and sins, and then as a new creation—a creation after God. It
is just mentioned; Colossians 2:13. This is fully developed in Ephesians
2 and here note, Christ is not viewed as life-giving, but as raised
when a dead man, He having descended in grace to where we were, and
in an effectual work for us, so that we rise with Him and into the same
place. This is referred to in 2 Corinthians 5:14, 17, and in the remarkable
summary in John 5:24. All this stands on a different ground from being
quickened and having died: we have changed our place and position, are
created anew. But if dying is to be brought in and dwelt on, people
are really in general under law, and do not count themselves dead; and
if they talk of dying to nature, which Scripture does not, they will
soon find to their cost that nature is not dead.
I should
earnestly press being dead, crucified with
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Christ; Christ and nothing else our life—not of the world as Christ
is not of the world—that the Spirit of God be the source of all
our thoughts and desires, to live Christ. Death to sin we have, to the
world, our old man crucified with Christ; and if Christ be in us, the
body dead because of sin. So all that is in the world, the lusts and
pride, is not of the Father. But neglecting of the body may be being
“vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind”; and dead to nature
does not enter into the sphere of scriptural thought. Who is dead to
it? And what is he dead to? Is the new man dead? The question would
be, Is nature dead? and that they will soon find out it is not. They
should not eat nor drink: now, they should not do this save to the glory
of God, and with prayer and thanksgiving—have no motive but Christ
in anything, the body of sin being destroyed.
What is specially
wanted now is undivided devotedness. I dread anything that would weaken
that. But dead to nature, in word or thought, Scripture does not know;
and in the highest character of Christianity, dead to anything does
not come in at all, but a new nature in relationship with the Father
and with Christ, and in Him, sitting in heavenly places. If I talk much
of being dead to nature, I am occupied with it. I write briefly and
in a hurry, but you will find, I believe, the principles of Scripture
here.
J.N.D.
January,
1879.
Someone has sent me —‘s tracts from the Voice.
There is a good deal of truth as to the new position and new creation,
which I fully accept and insist on where it can be. But it is fresh
truth poured in and poured out, not matured in the soul. I know what
it is, and we all have to learn it. It is delighting in the wondrous
fresh truth, but it is not Christ. In this respect I do not think he
knows himself. It is a more
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subtle self, delighting in having done with self, not Christ taking
the place of self. All through, it is Christ “in all,” but
not “Christ all.” It is striking how this runs through every
page. This easily accounts for the effect in others. Now realising the
life of Christ as dead to the world is of all possible moment, but this
is by Christ being all, not by the life of Christ in us being all. He
looks for the 'sense of power,' but it is when we are weak we are strong.
I think his view of the way Christ is presented in Luke very defective.
I do not mean anything unorthodox. When self has become practically
nothing and Christ experimentally all, the truth he has learned may
become a most useful weapon of ministry. When we are young in the truth,
it fills the mind always more surfeitingly; and to a mind like his where
there is considerable treasury of thought, the danger is greater. It
is not knowing we are nothing, but being it, which is the point. More
of the power of life in Christ we do need and need greatly, at least
as far as I am concerned. Truth he has seized very considerably, but
I do not find Christ everywhere and what He is—we dead and Christ
our life there, and the new sphere we belong to. These are details which
have struck me, but they are of no importance now: they run in general
into the great point I have noticed. I do not think he understands the
wilderness or that he has gone through it; perhaps there is more. Nor
do I think he is clear on the connection of Colossians and Ephesians;
but all this is by the bye. They were brought to God Himself at Sinai.
J. N. D.
1879.
MY DEAR BROTHER,—I
must tell you that I have never adequately read the articles in the
Voice, to give you an exact answer, and in what I have there
is such thorough obscurity in the important passages that it
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is not easy to lay fast hold of their import; they are the statements
of one who has never thoroughly digested and realised his own thoughts.
It is only last week that I read the larger number of them. These I
had at least a month ago; they had been sent to me anonymously. But
I would not delay answering a letter so kindly written, and give you
what is now with some distinctness on my mind. Further inquiry may enable
me to speak with more detail. But there is another point I must refer
to. If the effect in all those under the teaching is substantially the
same, though it would be unjust to charge all the particular statements
on the teacher, we are as much concerned before God with the result
in souls, even the weakest dear to Him, as in the particular ideas of
the teacher. It is something which produces that effect. Now I always
found the effect produced by this teaching to be, not Christ before
the soul, but itself. They had got something wonderfully new and beautiful,
what was not heavenly (that was common) but divine; and where Christ
was spoken of, it was not Christ Himself, but Christ in them, conscious
power of His life in them. This was chiefly with women: men were more
usually unhappy because they had not this gold tried in the fire. The
effect on others, 'convicted Laodiceans'—for all were in Laodicea
(a name nearer the truth than they thought), was that they were rich
and increased in goods; others were to go down to Bethany too; they
supped with Christ. I cannot say this seemed to me of God. It was themselves
and Stradbally, not Christ.
It was only
here that I read the first three of the articles, the Pauline Epistles;
and I shall now tell you what I find answering to the effect in souls,
and often expressed by them, though sometimes obscurely, in them and
the articles, Colossians being the principal alleged basis. Christ being
our life (which no Christian,
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of course, objects to), we are livingly in Him, but He as man is in
God, so we are in God. Our life is in God—not hid in Christ there,
but we alive in God—so as all the fulness of the Godhead is in
Him, and we are complete in Him, we are entered into this place, into
this fulness which is in Him: connected with this is that we are not
merely justified, but actually and livingly God’s righteousness,
we are it, we livingly. Now I have heard of this being stated
much more crudely, and some of the statements in the articles are very
obscure, but if they mean anything they mean that all is in the condition
and state in which Christ is Himself; as He is, so are we. There is
no mediatorial Christ. Now Scripture never speaks of Christ in God.
When Christ speaks distinctly as Man, He says, “my God”;
and so the Holy Ghost; “The God of our Lord Jesus Christ,”
etc. And I have always remarked that when we are placed in the same
glory and acceptance—as we are, or shall be—what belongs
to His Person is always carefully secured. Here we are put together.
You would never find Christ saying to His disciples, “Our Father“—a
rightly formed Christian mind would be deeply shocked at it—though
He says, “My Father and your Father.” As an inference man
would say, we can thus say “our“—not one
taught of God. And this is what those who have received this teaching
are come to, not these words, but this evil thing. It is such a connection
with Christ in life, who is a man in God, that we are there too, only
in heaven, dead not merely to sin but to nature; and, as far as I have
found, it is always justified by such inference. A mediatorial Christ
is lost by union. There is another point which I have not mastered,
though it is in what I read connected with this—righteousness
in incorruptibility; of this, therefore, I cannot speak. But what I
have stated is the real substance and root of the doctrine, and is wholly
false—not of God, though
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it may seem elevating and high. The very barrier that Scripture has
carefully put when speaking of our privileges, you have overstepped;
and hence souls have got, not Christ all, but an exalted self.
Since this
question has come before me, I will look through such of the articles
as I can command. I never saw them until I came here. I have spoken
plainly, because Christ and souls are in question, but I have not a
trace of ungracious feeling. What would rouse souls to more devotedness
would always be welcome to me, but we are sanctified by the truth. I
write at once that I may meet the letter graciously sent me, but I will
(D.V.) look further into the articles, though I have very little
time; and if called for, as far as I judge, write again.
J.N.D.
1879
... That
there is a wholly new creation of which the blessed Lord is Head; that
there all is new; that in the moral sense the cross closed the history
of the first man, and that all is new, the Second Man not mingled with
the first; that we now reckon ourselves dead, and alive to God in Him,
not in Adam; that forgiveness is not all; that justification in this
character is not all; it applies to our responsibilities as belonging
to the former estate, while there is a wholly new position of acceptance
ending in glory, in our present estate in Christ—is not what is
in question. How far it is realised is a question with individual souls.
That everything may be turned into mere doctrine, is alas! true; and
I may add, that the cross and the glory answer to one another.
But there
is more than this in your teaching: not mere careless expressions, or
mistaken ones, to which we are all liable, but a formal systematic doctrine,
not so clearly brought out in your printed papers, but
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which has taken possession of those taught by you, and is insisted on
as something new and transcendently precious and beautiful—and
is something new, and wholly and mischievously false—and runs
through all your papers, though not so broadly stated as by those who
are adepts in it, still quite clearly to one who can judge in such a
case; not union with Christ, not being in Him, and He in us, but, He
being in God, such an identification with Christ as makes us to be actual
divine righteousness, as so identified with Him; He in God in the glory,
but we partakers actually ourselves of divine righteousness and incorruptibility,
which sustains us wholly above nature.
'He is in
the region of life hid with Christ in God; he enjoys the state and breathes
the breath of the new creation' (Voice, vol. xi, p. 218). ‘We
behold the righteousness of God subsist in a living Person for our hearts;
He is there—He in whom we have become God’s righteousness...
Righteousness is dwelling in life of new creation' (p. 221). See also
pages 224, 163. 'Not only life, which might be said of the Old Testament
saints, but incorruptibility—the power of divine righteousness
which sustains in the new creation place' (p. 73). 'We, having become
God’s righteousness in Christ, can bring forth fruit unto God,
fruit unto holiness' (p. 74). 'As truly and really as we were constituted
sinners, so are we truly and really constituted righteous as in Him
who has become, in resurrection, the power of God to us. Christ Himself,
risen in victor-strength, is to be known in the saint as really
as he felt the terrible power of evil in his Adam-state. There is actual
positive righteousness, not only justification by faith. It is established
in the cross, and in virtue of the work done there it flows
down with glory in its train, and lifts Man out of death, and sets Him
to be its own channel from and in glory. That Man, crucified in weakness,
is exhibited as God’s Son in power, according
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to the Spirit of holiness' (p. 313). Then in page 314: Having received
'the gift of righteousness...' the believer 'enjoys life in righteousness.'
All this is error. Resurrection is not looked at in Scripture as victor-strength
in man, but as a divine act towards man; though Christ, as being God,
could do it. You make it a new kind of power in man: that we are partakers
of this power, the source being in Christ on high, and that this being
in us in life is righteousness. This is the system which, starting from
the truth that Christ is our life, has falsified the whole position
of the Christian and of Christ.
But I continue
(p. 361), 'The new man is in Him (Jesus) created after God in righteousness
and true holiness, righteousness as in power and place in God, to sustain
us in light and glory where He is.' 'Thus we see our side of
the new man as a throne of grace; and God’s side the
fountain of life and righteousness.' What follows I do not receive.
How is the new man a “throne of grace”? That—“throne
of grace”—is Hebrews’ doctrine, but I do not enter
on it here. But by this system what Christ is is falsified: He is a
Man in God. Righteousness, divine righteousness, is falsified: it is
an actual thing in us, not Christ made it to us, or we in Him, but we
made it through His being livingly in us: our place is falsified too;
as He is, so are we, in present moral elevation: resurrection is falsified,
as an intrinsic power in Christ as Man—life out of death consequent
on death to sin, and so reproduced in us in conscious power through
Him—not the act of God; and made life out of death to sin and
self, not out of death in sins, or with Him as risen consequent on His
death, as Scripture does; so that the new creation is falsified too.
All this exalts man in himself, while professing to do the contrary;
but I continue (p. 332): 'We are seen in Him in heaven... consequently
we are in conflict with the devil and his host there.’
This is all a
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mistake: He, Christ, at the right hand of God, is not the place of conflict.
‘Co-quickened with Him in the same righteousness (2 Cor. 5:21)'
(p. 333). There is no such statement or thought in Scripture; it is
a system of divine righteousness in actuality in us. 2 Corinthians 5:21
says nothing about quickening or co-quickening with Him. So in page
332, 'justified by faith' is accompanied by no hint of Christ’s
work. Scripture says, “delivered for our offences, and raised
again for our justification; therefore being justified by faith
we have peace with God.” This you leave out and add, 'enjoying
the justification of life—the power of righteousness actually
known in the vessel on earth.' Nor is 'the power of righteousness,'
that I can think of, a scriptural expression or thought, and at any
rate not as the ground of peace before God. It makes our state the ground,
not the work of Christ, nor His acceptance before God. Press our realising
life and divine things in power—excellent—but this alters
the basis of our relationship with God. The expression even of “justification
of life” is quite in connection with another thought, and spoken
of where all is made carefully to depend on one Man’s obedience;
so that the apostle has to guard against misuse of it in what follows
by unfolding the new life; and in the passage itself the present effect
of life is left out. In page 335 there is the same neglect of attention
to Scripture through following our own ideas: we get 'the living power
of Him who subsists in divine righteousness.’ ‘To find Him,
know Him,’ etc. Now it is the power of God, and Christ is looked
at exclusively as a raised Man by God, and we with Him, and set in Him
in heavenly places. There is no power spoken of in Christ, or in us.
The whole of what is said on Ephesians 1:13 is a falsification of the
sense of the passage; as on chapter 2 (p. 337): of all you find in it,
there is not a trace, not even as an
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object sought; it is by grace we have been saved, for God’s glory
in the ages to come: nor is even the second prayer truly stated (p.
338).
In page 361
the connection of the thought is false. In Colossians we have not the
new creation (though one verse runs close to it), but that which you
always confound with it, that is, death and resurrection: death, on
which you make the new creation depend, referring wholly to the old
(the new creation being, as said, on the ground of death in sins, not
to sin). Hence in Colossians we have only “renewed in knowledge”
after the image of “Him that created him.” But again we
have definitely as to us, not merely Christ even, this falsifying the
whole state and condition: 'The new man is in Him created after God
in righteousness and true holiness, righteousness as in power and place
in God to sustain us in light and glory where He is.' Is the new man
created in Christ in God to sustain us in light and glory where He is?
Such a wilderness of error (forgive me what may seem a hard word, but
such is the effect of leaving Scripture, and following one’s thoughts)
it would be hard to find, but it is the very essence and summing up
of all your system. Thus (p. 362) 'we come like the day spring from
on high... and hear the message to us, Give, etc.'...
I know not
that I need add any more. I have gone through a year’s articles
which were under my hand out here. I add one or two from Colossians
(vol. xii. 9). 'The new man put on as the life in actual fact,
we are co-quickened with Him now.... The whole energy of hidden
life in God is now acting in the power of righteousness in glory. And
because it is the condition of soul,' etc. (p. 10). 'That is, all is
put off that hinders us from rising up in the firmament of His power'
(p. 11). 'He who is the channel of love is God, and Man in God. This
is the first-born out of death'; and what follows (p. 12). 'Hidden life—
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the risen and exalted One who breathed a new atmosphere in John 20:22
sustains the inner man in incorruption.' 'Life hid in God' (p. 14),
'a sphere of profession where we receive the power of glory' (p. 15);
so page 16. I have quoted so many passages to shew that it is not rash
expressions but a regular system, in which the man in God as risen,
life out of death, is divine righteousness according to glory and incorruptibility.
All gives way to this; redemption and Christ’s work are really
lost in the work in us. Now it will be said, One ought not to oppose
the power of a new life in us. I quite agree. It is greatly needed.
But it is just what I feel sorrowful in these papers that a handle is
given to refuse deeply needed truths, because they are identified with
fatal errors and notions which Scripture does not support, and which
totally displace grave and important truths, a teaching which, as I
said to —, puts Christ in Himself out, that we may have a fancied
power of Christ in us. I recognise fully man’s history is morally
ended on the cross, that Christ risen from the dead is the beginning
and head of a new position of man in which Adam innocent was not; but
I cannot substitute this for redemption, nor give up Christ
my righteousness before God for a fancied divine righteousness in me.
I have lost Christ in Himself in your teaching. Your remarks,
I think, are constantly fancies; what you say of the end of Romans 5
seems to me all wrong; what you say of priesthood is quite out of the
way; but all this I leave save as bearing on the principle that runs
through all. I admit forgiveness is not all; we are also in a new position,
Christ being our life, and we, for faith, dead and risen. I see some
allusions to wild German theories, perhaps English ones, but that I
leave too. The quotations which I have made characterise the principle
I object to; but it runs all through the articles, and, I judge, takes
a ground Scripture carefully guards against.
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Christ in His own perfectness objectively is gone, and thereby what
judges self. I may add, I have a whole collection of poems and I know
not what, but I have preferred using what is printed and published,
which may deceive a young mind but not, I think, one experimentally
versed in the word, and his own heart, and to whom Christ is all. I
recognise fully the necessity of pressing life and the new creation;
but it is looking at Christ Himself objectively, which subjectively
changes us into His image. We, beholding the glory of the Lord with
unveiled face, are changed into the same image from glory to glory,
as by the Spirit of the Lord.
It seems
to me, dear brother, that for the moment it would be happier for you
not to teach at all. You will forgive me for saying that your own case
is a proof how little this extraordinary elevation gives real knowledge
of self. The effect of your teaching, as I have seen it, is three-fold.
Where a person did not know what freedom (Rom. 8) was, nor belonging
to the new creation, it has been used to set them free, only imbibing
mischief with it:: with wild, specially female imaginations; it has
puffed them up with mystic imaginations: with sober God-fearing consciences
it threw them back under law, because they had not 'the gold,' and would
labour to buy it. I have seen all such, but all with self instead of
Christ in some shape: in some, Colossians 2:9, 10 used to prove that
as the fulness of God was in Christ, and we complete in Him, we were
livingly in that fulness; and this confirmed by Ephesians 3:19, corrected
from the Greek, and by 1 John 4:17—all as the present fact of
our state. All this shewed that your articles shewed the root, not the
fruit of the system. I have only sought to shew what that root is, and
sufficiently to shew it is a regular system which dims an objective
Christ, and, as I said, a mediatorial one—not merely careless
expressions. I have only to beg
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you to believe that all I have written is in sincere Christian affection,
not weakened but strengthened by having to look into it. May I add,
that you have to learn to have less confidence in yourself, and to be
less occupied with yourself, and what passes in your own mind; more
with Christ Himself in Himself. He reads Scripture, it has been said,
well, qui non affert sed refert sensum. Our part now is to
separate the precious from the vile. I have no doubt that your sincere
desire is that you and others should walk in that 'higher life' which
knows Christ only as its object: but, not knowing yourself, it became
what you warn others against—a doctrine; and, not being dead,
Satan found opportunity to mix your own imaginations with it, and introduce
what tended to sap the reality of truth.
Ever your
affectionate brother in Christ.
J.N.D.
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