No. We all know that the word "carnal" here signifies fleshly. "All things are yours, for ye are Christ's and Christ is God's.". Though we cannot pay all, we can at least acknowledge the debt. He is powerless to obey, but he is mighty enough to resist the call of divine grace. First, then, my brethren, a SPECIAL PRIVILEGE mentioned in the text. God will never say that they are guilty. ), then it follows that God must be over all things and must control all things. what can destroy thee if omnipotence is thy helper? "They are so; but not when they are arrayed in the robes, and invested with the credentials of their Sovereign. I can stop his accusation with this perpetual care of Jesus for his people." Only let the gospel be preached, and there shall be an end of war; let it thoroughly pervade all ranks of society, and saturate the mind of nations, and there shall be no more lifting of the spears, they shall be used for pruning hooks; no bathing of swords in blood, for they shall be turned into the peaceful ploughshares of the soil; we shall then have no hosts encountering hosts; we shall have no millions slain for widows to deplore; but every man shall meet every other man, and call him "brother." He gave to us hi inmost heart; he loved us even to the death. There have been many who have been won from drunkenness by hearing the preaching of God's Word even under myself, and those persons have been ready to carry me on their shoulders, from very gratitude, for joy; but I would be bound to say they make a far more feeble display of their thankfulness to my Master. And now, if you and I are enabled this morning to go beneath the bloody tree of Calvary, and shelter ourselves there, how safe we are! He loved me to the death; and albeit that he foresaw and foreknew that I should reject him, yet he would not take "No" for answer from me; but he resolved that his true grace should conquer me truly, and make me willing in the day of his power. Even up in heaven they have not their full reward. Now, do you hate God for sparing you? "Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above." 10. Do you think so? But yonder is the Saviour,, and he is called Jesus, "For he shall save his people from their sins." How can I pray? Who can condemn when Christ hath died, hath risen from the dead, is enthroned on high, and intercedes? Ah, it was the groan of death! "Come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you, and will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty." It becomes our business then to take the Spirit's witness through his Word, and through his works, but I would seek to have immediate, actual, undivided fellowship with the Holy Ghost, who by his divine Spirit, should work in my spirit and convince me that I am a child of God. He will guide you both negatively and positively. We teach every Sabbath day, that the whole shower of devine wrath was poured upon Christ's head, that the black cloud of vengeance emptied out itself upon the cross, and that there is not left in the book of God a single sin against a believer, nor can there possibly be even a particle of punishment ever exacted at the hand of the man that believeth in Jesus, for this reason, that Jesus has been punished to the full. A CHRISTIAN BROTHER was asked, one day, "To what persuasion do you belong?" Though without sin, he was not without suffering. And these appear to be four at least. We read that, when David had cut off Saul's skirt. I hear a ribald song; that music of hell shall jar in my ear when gray hairs shall be upon my head. Romans 8:38-39. Climbing the lofty Alps, or wandering through the charming valley, skimming the blue sea, or traversing the verdant forest, we have felt that this world, however desecrated by sin, was evidently built to be a temple of God, and the grandeur and the glory of it plainly declare that "the earth is the Lord's and the fulness thereof." O ye first-born whose names are written in heaven, I take my seat with you and join your rapturous adoration. Why, dying is the end of work; it is living that is hard work. OBSERVE the title whereby he addressed the Church "Brethren." We have, indeed, in the death of Christ, a great atonement; an atonement so great, that none can measure its height and depth, its length and breadth. But there are one or two doctrines which we will try to deduce from this. But the man that yearns after more holiness, the man that sighs after God, the man that groans after perfection, the man that is discontented with his sinful self, the man that feels he cannot be easy till he is made like Christ, that is the man who is blessed indeed. time is gone, and change is over, and I am floating on thy pacific waves where winds can never howl and tempests never lower. Joint heirs with Christ Jesus! Look! "All things work," at this very instant and second of time. You may cast your eye to the remotest star, or send your thoughts beyond into the untraversed leagues of space, but look where you will, as all is Christ's, so all is yours. So it is a grand thing, whenever Satan comes and begins to accuse you, just to say, "Christ has died, Christ has died." I do really think I should be impatient to speak for myself. In Hebrews 3:1 , you find this sentence. "But thou hast long resisted grace, and long stood out against the warnings of God." There is no holiness in us of our own creating; no good thing in us of our own fashioning. There he would stand, silent, motionless; till Christ would say, with a voice louder than ten thousand thunders, "What dost thou here? Let the truths of Christianity work out their perfect work: and pride, bitterness, wrath, envy, and malice, must see their graves. I. Consider how many mercies you have received at his hands all your life long! Catalogue of Commentaries & Expositions. I have thus illustrated the call in two ways, by the state of the sinner in his sin, and by the omnipotence which overwhelms the resistance which he offers. a. He will rather glory in his high connection, and with reverence obey the commands of his Heavenly Parent. I groan, for I can do no more. I do not believe that the Bible is to be understood except by receiving these doctrines as true. III. If you are now led to repent of sin; if you will now cast yourself on the blood and righteousness of Christ, your eternal salvation shall be as sure as your present existence. Yonder woman is one of the daughters of the King, but see how pale she is, what furrows are upon her brow! Now, conscience, answer another question! Communion is the fountain of conformity. God made man not pure spirit, but body and spirit, and the spirit alone will never be content until it sees its corporeal frame raised to its own condition of holiness and glory. In too many instances ministers of religion has propagated doubt, and the result is a general hardening of the popular feeling, and a greatly-increased neglect of public worship. The holiest men, the most free from impurity, have always felt it most. You went to the house of God, not to pray, but to laugh. I have affirmed, and I am sure most Christians will bear witness, that what I said was the truth, that if any man loveth God he loves him because God gave him grace to love him. God has given Christ the heathen for his inheritance, and the uttermost ends of the earth for his possession, and we are co-heirs with him. 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. This is the part of the subject from which our craven spirit often shrinks, but if we were wise it would not be so. Prayers which are the offspring of great desires, sublime aspirations, and elevated designs are surely the work of the Holy Spirit, and their power within a man is frequently so great that he cannot find expression for them. We do not like groans: our ears are much too delicate to tolerate such dreary sounds; but not so the great Father of spirits. "The Lord is the portion of mine inheritance and of my cup." But here are we who know both good and evil; we understand the one, and the other too, and now there is begotten in us a nature which loves holiness and cannot sin, because it is born of God; we are left free agents, yea, we are freer than ever we were, and yet in this life, and in the life to come, our path is like that of the just which shineth more and more unto the perfect day. It is not the Spirit that groans, but we that groan; but as I have shown you, the Spirit excited the emotion which causes us to groan. Look at our memory; is it not true that the memory is fallen? 2. Come on thou world in arms! If I read in the Scriptures that in the most heroic acts of faith God the Holy Ghost helpeth his people, I can understand it; if I read that in the sweetest music of their songs when they worship best, and chant their loftiest strains before the Most High God, the Spirit helpeth them, I can understand it; and even if I hear that in their wrestling prayers and prevalent intercessions God the Holy Spirit helpeth them, I can understand it: but I bow with reverent amazement, my heart sinking into the dust with adoration, when I reflect that God the Holy Ghost helps us when we cannot speak, but only groan. We shall first look over these four pillars of the believer's faith, and then, afterwards, we shall ourselves take up the apostle's challenge, and cry, "Who is he that condemneth?". Romans 8:37 "The enemy is behind us. Now, the apostle sets the whole matter before us when he said, "The whole creation groaneth," and you know what comes after that, "travaileth." To be cheered under many things, which otherwise would depress him, the believer may betake himself to the matchless mysteries of the grace of God, which are wines on the lees well refined. "Thou madest him to have dominion over all the works of thy hands: thou hast put all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen, yea, and the fowl of the air and the fish of the sea, and whatsoever passeth through the paths of the sea." GenesisEarly Chapters, and Patriarchs. We are debtors to the past. Our first birth gave us humanity; our second birth allies us with Deity. If we be debtors we never ought to be proud. 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. "Not unto us, not unto us, but unto thy name be praise." The sermons he preached touched the lives of thousands. So we are persuaded of these three things: first, that God loves us; next, that God has shown his love to us by the gift of his Son Jesus Christ; and then, that his divine love comes streaming down to us because we are in Christ, and are loved for his sake. I repeat it again, any one of them is all-sufficient. "Yet," said the Judge, "I will not come down to earth to receive the payment; bring it to me." Brethren, we are debtors to the hour in which we live. "It is Christ that died.". Now, the divine will or mind may be viewed two ways. you shall not be uncrowned. And now my hearers, let me just utter this personal appeal to you. He who giveth the most light to the world, will always be able to discover his own darkness. The whole of man is defaced. For when God made promise to Abraham because he could swear by no greater, he sware by himself, saying, Surely blessing I will bless thee, and multiplying I will multiply thee. You remember the case of Samuel; the Lord called Samuel, and he arose and went to Eli, and he said, "Here am I, for thou calledst me." Having summarily disposed of all of them, Paul adds, "nor things present." I look on them, and see among their glorious ranks, some whose names are celebrated in every Christian land as the bold "lions of God," the immovable pillars of truth; men of whom the world was not worthy, whose praise is in all the churches, and who are now nearest the eternal throne. What about your present sinfulness?" His precious blood takes away every stain of guilt. Is he eternal? They said of Achilles, the greatest of the Grecian heroes, that when he was a child they fed him upon lion's marrow, and so made him brave; feed upon Christ and be Christlike. Does he contribute anything to his new life? Last Lord's day, I thought by God's good help I was enabled to persuade some of you that the death of Christ was an argument too potent to be ever denied an argument for the salvation of all for whom he died. What would some of you give if you could arrive at this assurance? And dost thou hate God for that? This was in accord with God's plan. A wife waiting for her husband's footsteps; a child waiting in the darkness of the night till its mother comes to give it the evening's kiss, are portraits of our waiting. Your very happiness makes you groan; your joy, like a swollen spring, longs to leap up like some Iceland Geyser, climbing to the skies, and it heaves and groans within the bowels of your spirit for want of space and room by which to manifest itself to men. "All things work." Again, I hear him cry, "Who shall lay anything to my charge?" 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. "We have borne," says the Apostle, in the first Epistle to the Corinthians, "the image of the earthy." The gold itself was fused in the atoning sacrifice, but the minting of it, making it into that which should be the current coin of the merchant, was the resurrection of Christ. Oh, yes, rivers of consolation flow from my calling. May God help you, and help me, to groan all our days with that kind of groaning. And now another case. Even as Christ had to drink the cup of suffering, for sin, we also have sipped of it. The evil one may whisper, "If thou be the son of God." I think I may say to those who are the beginners in the divine life, so long as your call is real, rest assured it is divine. 2. There is a general wail among nations and peoples. Have not you found it so too? Christ was always considered as having you in him, and you were always considered by God as being in Christ. Let us do what we may, it is but a farthing in the pound that we shall ever be able to pay of the debt of gratitude we owe to God. MY venerable friend, who, on the first Sabbath of the year, always sends me a text to preach from, has on this occasion selected one which it is very far from easy to handle. When the poor man was baffled by a question asked in court, he would run home and ask his adviser, and he would tell him exactly how to meet the objector. "Yea," saith every man; "that has crossed my mind sometimes. "Who is he that condemneth? Now, believer, thou mayest be very poor, and very sick, and very much unknown and despised, but sit thee down and review thy calling this morning, and the consequences that flow from it. Yes, it would. What the wealthiest man has is not his own, but God's, and if it be God's then it is Christ's, and if Christ's, then his children's; and Christ's children are often those who are hungry, and thirsty, and destitute, and afflicted, and tormented. This shall be an all-sufficient argument to shut their clamorous mouths, "Christ hath died." And with united breath they reply, "We know that all things work together for good to them that love God." Rather judge that such prayers are like Jabez, of whom it is written, that "he was more honourable than his brethren, because his mother bare him with sorrow." II. It will be the Spirit's own self pleading in me, and by me, and through me, before the throne of grace. Yes, but Christ died for the lascivious. 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