I received your letter today just as I was leaving for the office. It was with some apprehension that I opened it, but when I read it, my heart was overwhelmed with joy, and I couldn’t keep back the tears. I thank God and praise His holy name because in His grace He has also bestowed upon you this glorious gift which is mighty to preserve us and satisfy all our needs in rest. Great is this mystery of godliness: God manifested in the flesh. “If Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit is life because of righteousness.” The voice is Jacob’s, but the hands are Esau’s. The inward man needs to grow, and the outward man must perish. Song of Sol. 1:5: “I am dark, but lovely, O daughters of Jerusalem, like the tents of Kedar, like the curtains of Solomon.” The earthen vessel is dark, but the treasure inside the vessel is lovely. 1 Kings 8:12. “Then Solomon spoke: ‘The Lord said He would dwell in the dark cloud.’” (Formerly He lived in tents.) It has been said that the tents of Kedar were made of a fabric produced from black hair.

Christ became a minister of the circumcision for the sake of God’s truthfulness. He circumcises our hearts and cuts off all our bridges so that we may truly experience that only a new creation avails anything in Christ. The old things have passed away, and all things have become new.

I hardly know what to write to you now, since you yourself have God’s anointing. The anointing will teach us all things and remind us of what Jesus has said: “He will take of what is Mine and declare it to you.” It is certainly no meager storehouse it draws from either, since it draws from Christ Himself. Jesus sanctified Himself in order that we, too, might truly be holy. How amazing God’s ways are with us! He leads us down—deep down—and He lifts us up. He lets us test our own strength on the holy commandments of the law so that we might realize how incapable we are of doing any good thing at all. He does this so that we get to know sin (sin in the body, our corrupted nature), but there where we have gotten to know sin, we have gotten to know grace even better. When we were in the flesh, we bore fruit unto death, but now we’ve passed from death to life, that we might bear fruit unto life eternal. The mind of the Spirit is life and peace; the mind of the flesh is death. As many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are children of God. But the Spirit leads us in the spirit of the law, and so the righteous requirement of the law is fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. Rom. 8:4. Just as Christ became for us justification, He will, when we walk in the Spirit, also become for us sanctification and, finally, redemption.

If there are any exhortations in Christ, I want to remind you of 1 John 2:24: “Therefore let that abide in you which you heard from the beginning”!

I greet you in Christ with Prov. 4, from verse 10. Take these words seriously to heart. Now you have peace, the peace which passes all understanding, but if you want to hold onto this peace, you must be prepared for war. Put on the helmet of salvation; gird your waist with the truth; take the sword of the Spirit; have your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel; and above all, take the shield of faith, with which all the fiery darts of Satan must be quenched. Thus equipped, you will be prepared to meet every kind of enemy. Even the large crowd you spoke of that came against you will have to retreat when confronted with such an array of weaponry. As it says in Prov. 25:26: “A righteous man who falters before the wicked is like a murky spring and a polluted well.” You have no right to give in. We can be quick to show kindness toward our opponents, as it is written, but we must never give in to them. “I have overcome, and we shall overcome,” it’s written.

Greet your friends, the men and women who have the same precious faith. May God give all of you grace and progress in liberty so you may look into the perfect law of liberty and continue in it, because then we don’t just become forgetful hearers, but doers of the work. He is mighty to preserve you blameless until His day.

John writes in a number of places that he no longer wanted to write with pen and ink, but that he wanted to see them soon and speak together face-to-face. Perhaps God can do this for me as well; yes, I know He can. His will be done in this matter too.

Prov. 20:6: “Most men will proclaim each his own goodness, but who can find a faithful man?”

I’ll close now. Greet those who are at home. I want to tell you again how unspeakably glad I am that by God’s grace you have entered into rest in Him. We who believe enter into rest.

Your brother, active in rest and duty-bound in liberty,

PS: Prov. 29:25. “The fear of man brings a snare, but whoever trusts in the Lord shall be safe.”