It was the 13th verse of this portion I had more particularly before my mind. The Camp was a thing understood by Israel. The Jews were deeply attached to their ancient rites, which they knew to be of God's appointment. The apostle saw the necessity of drawing them away from the shadows to the substance -- to lead them from earthly things to Jesus in the heavens, where now their worship was to be. The High Priest being in the heavens, the sacrifice there, their worship was to be there likewise. He would have them see that now it was a heavenly calling. Jesus had been rejected from the earth, and received up into heaven; Jesus had suffered without the gate, just as the bodies of the beasts offered for a sin offering were burned without the camp; and he calls upon them, in the spirit of Moses in Deut. 33: 7, "to go unto Him without the Camp, bearing his reproach."
When Paul accredited Jesus as the great sacrifice, the simple receiving this truth put him outside the camp. The thing Paul saw was the Spirit of God bringing souls into communion outside the Jewish system, etc. So with us; whatever the form, the question is, Where is God? If God is in this line of conductor in this truth -- I must be there too. For this, all that is necessary is to be prayerfully waiting upon God, and the teaching of His Spirit.
MARRIED TO ANOTHER.
"Wherefore, my brethren, ye also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ; that ye should be married to another, even to Him who is raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God. For when we were in the flesh, the motions of sins, which were by the law, did work in our members to bring forth fruit unto death. But now we are delivered from the law, that being dead wherein we were held; that we should serve in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter." (Rom. 7: 4-6.)
There is one passage in these verses which would be more correctly rendered, "that ye should be for another." That the marriage of the Church is a thing yet future is clear, from considering 2 Cor. 11 - "I am jealous over you with godly jealousy: for I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ." See also Rev. 19: 7.
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At Oxford he met John Nelson Darby and Benjamin Wills Newton. Dissatisfied with the established church, Wigram and his friends left the Anglican church and helped establish non-denominational assemblies which became known as the Plymouth Brethren.
Wigram had a keen interest in the original Hebrew and Greek texts of the Bible, which was of great interest to the emerging Brethren assemblies. In 1839, after years of work and financial investment, he published The Englishman's Greek and English Concordance to the New Testament, followed in 1843 by The Englishman's Hebrew and Chaldee Concordance to the Old Testament.
With Wigram's help, Darby became the most influential personality within the Brethren movement. Wigram is often referred to as being Darby's lieutenant as he firmly supported Darby during moments of crisis. He also helped Darby fend off accusations of heresy, also in regards to the sufferings of Christ, in articles written in 1858 and 1866, which some considered were very similar to Newton's errors two decades earlier.
George Vicesimus Wigram was converted whilst a subaltern officer in the army, and in 1826 entered at Queen's College, Oxford, with the view of taking orders. As an undergraduate he came into contact with Mr. Jarratt of the same college, and with Messrs. James L. Harris and Benjamin Wills Newton, both of Exeter College, who were all destined to take part in the ecclesiastical movement with which Wigram's name is also prominently connected. This connection was strengthened from about the year 1830, when these friends, all Devonians, were associated in the formation of a company of Christians at Plymouth, who separated from the organised churches, and were gathered to the Name alone of Jesus, in view of bearing a testimony to the unity of the church, and to its direction by the Holy Spirit alone, whilst awaiting the second coming of the Lord.
Wigram was active in the initiation of a like testimony in London, where by the year 1838 a considerable number of gatherings were formed on the model of that at Plymouth.
In 1856 he produced a new hymn book, "Hymns for the Poor of the Flock," which for some twenty-five years remained the staple of praise in the meetings with which he was associated. Ten years after the first appearance of the hymn book edited by him he stood by J. N. Darby once again at a critical juncture, when the question of the doctrine maintained by the latter on the sufferings of Christ some further dissension occurred, though the teaching was vindicated. During the rest of his life he paid visits to the West Indies, New Zealand, etc., where his ministry seems to have been much appreciated. He passed away in 1879.