I believe that, when Christ died, he took all the sins of all his people, past, present, and to come, and when the whole mass was condensed into one bitter cup, he drank it all up. If he says, "Let there be light," the impenetrable darkness gives way to light; if he says, "Let there be grace," unutterable sin gives way, and the hardest-hearted sinner melts before the fire of effectual calling. It is a wonderful thing. But he says, "Get thee hence, Satan, I know I am the son of God." I have no sort of sympathy with those who cannot enjoy the beauties of nature. Having received something, we desire more. You can say, "God has given these souls to Christ, I am going to take them in Christ's name." They do not groan, so far as any pain can be, but they long with greater intensity than you and I long, for the "adoption, to wit, the redemption of the body." Yes, my lady, thou art a debtor to the poorest man that ever walked the earth. Come on thou world in arms! And this solemn text drops an awful warning: "How shall ye escape, if ye neglect so great salvation." Weigh the riches of Christ in scales and his treasures in balances and then think to count the treasures which belong to the saints. He has, in fact, no right at all, except as he is taken in connection with his co-heir. Come on, slanderers! First, God predestinates us to be like Jesus that his dear Son might be the first of a new order of beings, elevated above all other creatures, and nearer to God than any other existences. Take care that you pay your debts before you spend money upon your pleasures. Now I must confess there is something very pretty about this theory, something so fascinating that I do not wonder that some of the ablest minds have been wooed and won by it. It is true that death was the payment of the debt, but resurrection was the public acknowledgment that the debt was paid. Yet more, I fancy that. It would be a foolish pride indeed, if two prisoners in the Queen's Bench were to boast, one saying, "I owe a hundred pounds," and the other replying, "I am a greater gentleman than you are, for I owe a thousand." I have (continues the objector), stood upon the mountain-top, until my whole soul has kindled with the scene below, and my lips have uttered the song of praise. Therefore, beloved, all the glory must be unto God and not to us. No priest sat down; he must always stand; for there was always work to be accomplished, always something to be done. So it is: prayer prompted by the Holy Spirit is the footfall of the divine decree. That will be the subject of this blog. But since we have become enemies, how much less can we hope to be saved by works! He who hung on high Calvary was such a lover of the souls of men that from that glorious fact I am brought to this blessed persuasion, "I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Now, to come to what is evidently in the text, and to dwell upon it for a little while, Paul being thus persuaded that there was a love of God, and that there was a union through love between the soul and its God, now says that HE IS PERSUADED THAT NOTHING CAN EVER BREAK THOSE BONDS. How can a heavenly one be content till he ascends to the heavenlies? What is God to us? So far as mere prescience goes, every man is foreknown, and yet no one will assert that all men are predestinated to be conformed to the image of the Lord Jesus. "I have been in trade," says another, "and this commercial pressure has brought me exceedingly low, and distressed me: is it for my good?" He might have sent you to hell; but you are here. The traveller has reached the hospice. "We are joint heirs with Christ.". This he does by arousing our desires. He is chosen Dictator, but as soon as ever his dictatorship is over he retires to his little farm of three acres, and goes to his plough, and when he is wanted to be absolute monarch of Rome he is found at his plough upon his three acres of land and his little cottage. But it is added, "We groan within ourselves." Over them all the believer triumphs. These are blessed subjects, though I cannot speak upon them as I would. Abel, the protomartyr, entering alone into heaven, shall not have a more secure title to the inheritance than he who, last of woman born, shall trust in Christ, and then ascend into his glory. It shall work, it is working for thy good. Consider what you owe to his power; how he has raised you from your death in sin, and how he has preserved your spiritual life, how he has kept you from falling, and how, though a thousand enemies have beset your path, you have been able to hold on your way! The desires which the Spirit prompts may be too spiritual for such babes in grace as we are actually to describe or to express, and yet the Spirit writes the desire on the renewed mind, and the Father sees it. Here are beings that know evil, and know also good, beings placed under infinite obligations by bonds of love and gratitude to choose for ever the good, beings with a nature so renewed that they always must be holy beings; and these beings can commune with the incarnate God upon spurring as angels cannot, upon the penalty of guilt as angels cannot; upon heart-throes, conflicts, reproaches, and brokenness of spirit as angels cannot: and to them the Lord Jesus can reveal the glory of holiness, the bliss of conquering sin, and the sweetness of benevolence as only they can comprehend them. It is an intense regret to me that I cannot present it to some of you. Now I must call your attention to this clause, remarking that in other passages of God's Word, Christ is said to have sat down for ever at the right hand of God. No. I have been dwelling upon the black side in order to bring the bright one out by contrast. Can those lips say, "Depart, ye cursed," to the man for whom they once did intercede? It is a great honor to any man to be like Christ; God does not intend that his children should have no honor, for he puts honor upon his own people; but, still, the true glory lies with him, since he has made us and not we ourselves. Am I one of those who are ordained unto eternal life, or am I to be left to follow my own lusts and passions, and to destroy my own soul? The man is perfectly safe, and quite content, so far as that goes, and exceedingly grateful to think that he has been rescued; but yet I hear him groan because he has a wife and children down in yonder plain, and the snow is lying too deep for travelling, and the wind is howling, and the blinding snow flakes are falling so thickly that he cannot pursue his journey. time is gone, and change is over, and I am floating on thy pacific waves where winds can never howl and tempests never lower. We shall have no need to envy angels, for what are they but ministering spirits, servants in our Father's halls; but we are sons, and sons of no inferior order, no sons of a secondary rank like Abraham's children born of Keturah, or like the son of the bondwoman, but we are the Isaacs of God, born according to the promise, heirs of all that he hath, a seed beloved of the Lord for ever. Learn, then, that it is wrong to ask, concerning any particular act of providence; is this for my good? But, do you know, I have never felt that with regard to Christ. I thought Christians were a humble, timid people." I wonder what the things present are with you, my dear hearers. He goes on to say, "Heirs of God;" for if they are heirs they inherit their Father's property. He was born into this world in a very humble place, amidst the oxen, and in the manger; but yet he lacked not the songs of angels, and the adoration of the heavenly hosts. Perhaps you ask me, how is this. You are not to be conformed to the mightiest of the apostles, you will one day be purer than were Paul or John while here below; you are not to be conformed to the sublimest of the prophets, you shall be like the prophets' Master; you are not to be content with your own conception of that which is beautiful and lovely, but God's perfect conception incarnated in his own Son is that to which you shall certainly be brought by the predestination of God. Oh, yes, rivers of consolation flow from my calling. We are to stand at the door expecting the Beloved to open it and take us away to himself. and a voice calls, "I am Jesus, whom thou persecutest." Not the "liberty, equality and fraternity," which the democrat seeks for, which is frequently another name for his own superiority, but that which is true and real that which will make us all free in the Spirit, make us all equal in the person of Christ Jesus, and give us all the fraternity of brethren, seeing that we are all one with our Lord, in the common bond of gospel relationship. "Yes," saith he, "I will. And now I come to my last point, upon which briefly but I hope interestingly. Whosoever loveth God, without doubt, is a Christian; and whosoever loveth him not, however high may be his pretensions, however boastful his professions, hath not seen God, neither known him for "God is love, and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him." Happy in what he has received, for that very reason he groans to get the fulness of what is promised him. Yes, but Christ died for the lascivious. You go out to your pleasures, but your conscience goes with you, and spoils your mirth. He uses a noun, and not an adjective. Ye are young brides, and the marriage day is not come, and by the love your spouse bears you, you are led to long and to sigh for the marriage day. Well, that wish to change God, proves that thou art not in love with the God that now is, the God of heaven and earth; and though thou mayest talk of natural religion, and boast that thou dost reverence the God of the green fields, the grassy meads, the swelling flood, the rolling thunder, the azure sky, the starry night, and the great universe though thou lovest the poetic beau ideal of Deity, it is not the God of Scripture, for thou hast wished to change his nature, and in that hast thou proved that thou art at enmity with him. And who amongst us has not been so foolish as to desire that there were no God? He sees hosts of angels; but those hosts are the servants of his enemy. So it may by possibility be this morning; so it will be if the Spirit of God shall be our instructor, and fulfil his gracious promise to "lead us into all truth.". Can you heartily say that you can never rest satisfied till you. Some think that the fall was only felt by the affections, and that the intellect was unimpaired; this they argue from the wisdom of man, and the mighty discoveries he has made, such as the law of gravitation, the steam-engine, and the sciences. Jonah went down to the depths of the sea, but he oame up with this testimony, that there was nothing there to separate us from the love of God. It is the challenge of a justified sinner protesting with holy and inspired fervour that his character is clear and his conscience clean, even in the sight of heaven. I want to sit down, and suck all the sweetness out of this blessed truth: "It is Christ that died." Others of you who can do little yourselves, can this day assist by sending forth men of God to preach the gospel of Christ. I will make no answer to that accusation but this: "It is Christ that died." And perhaps he goes to Eli to ask what he wants with him. There is one thing I have noticed, in looking over the old levitical law, under the description of the tabernacle. do I converse with him, commune with him? We must understand the word "together," also in another sense. Oh, that you would come and learn it! He has given thee hope, ask for faith; and when he gives thee faith, ask for assurance; and when thou gettest assurance, ask for full assurance; and when thou hast obtained full assurance, ask for enjoyment; and when thou hast enjoyment, ask for glory itself; and he shall surely give it thee in his own appointed season. How will we, when we once get to heaven, love and adore him as our dear elder brother with whom we shall be on terms of the closest familiarity and most reverent obedience. The Lord in boundless grace has resolved that a company whom no man can number, called here "many brethren," shall be restored to his image, in the particular form in which his Eternal Son displays it. "No," says he, "I can stop his mouth with this cry, 'It is Christ that died;' that will make him tremble, for he crushed the serpent's head in that victorious hour. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David, Daniel, all the mighty ones that have gone before, tell out the tale of their history, write their autobiography, and they say, "We!" I think you will see that, like links in a chain, these different truths draw each other on the spirit of adoption proves the fact of adoption; by the act of adoption we are children; if children then heirs; if heirs, heirs of God; but since there is another heir, we must therefore be joint heirs with Christ Jesus. Romans 8:1 is widely misunderstood for two reasons: first, katakrima, the word typically translated as condemnation, does not mean that. "Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?" Now let me ask my congregation, do any of you know that you are God's children? Think not that our longings here below are not shared in by the saints in heaven. I know not how to open my lips in thy majestic presence: I am so troubled that I cannot speak. to be of that temper before described, Romans 8:5; to mind and affect the things of the flesh, doth cause death, or will end in it: the second or eternal death is chiefly intended. Into predestination itself I will not now pry. Overleap the boundaries of Christ's possession if you can, and then dream of ending a limit to the possessions of the elect of God. Out of stock. Whatever God would have done under the circumstances, that Jesus did. Tell the men of the world that it is right that they condemn you for all your past life, for doubtless you have been what they say you are, you will not dispute that fact; but tell them also that what Paul wrote to the Christians at Corinth is true of you, "Ye are washed, ye are sanctified, ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God." I. Fellowship in his sufferings is needful to communion with his glory. Remarks upon the Catalogue of Commentaries. 6. He had been a drunkard, a spendthrift, and had not a penny to bless himself with, and his house had become a little hell; he was groaning at the thought of going home to such a scene of quarrelling and distress. "If Satan bring an accusation before God against any of the Lord's redeemed, that accusation is made against the Redeemer himself, for God's people are so one with Christ, that you must first bring the charge against Christ himself ere you dare to lay it against any of his elect. They are blessed, but they have not had their public entrance. I repeat it again, any one of them is all-sufficient. I see him putting his own imprimatur thereupon, stamping it with his own signet, dignifying it with his own seal, and again I cry, "Yea rather, who is risen from the dead," who then can condemn the believer? PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON Romans 8:14-39 . You have heard of Regulus the Roman general; he was taken prisoner by Carthagenians, who anxiously wished for peace. Methinks I see the fathers at their midnight lamps, the ancient saints in their much-frequented closets, the thrice brave preachers in their pulpits denouncing error, and the faithful pastors reproving wrong. 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