LECTURE
XXXI.
ROMANS vi, 8 - 10.
"Now
if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him: knowing
that Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more; death hath no more
dominion over him.For in that he died, he died unto sin once : but in that he
liveth, he liveth unto God."
By the death of Christ a full penalty was rendered for
sin, insomuch that He could no more be reckoned with on account of it. He
undertook to be surety for all who should believe; and having finished His
undertaking, the matter was closed, and the creditor now ceased from putting in
any further claim, or preferring any further challenge against Him. For us to
be dead with Christ, is just to share in this very exoneration. It was for us
that the account was settled; and, just as much as if by death the appointed
penalty we had settled it ourselves, do we now stand acquitted of all further
count and reckoning because of sin. In the covenanting of ordinary trade, a
deficiency from our engagements brings us into debt; but should an able
cautioner liquidate the whole, we, in him,may be said to have sustained the
prosecution,and borne the damage, and are now clear of the weight of conscious
debt - because in him we have made full and satisfactory payment. In our
covenant with the Lawgiver of heaven and earth, a deficiency from our
engagements brings us into guilt; but should a competent mediator take upon his
own person the whole burden of its imputation and its penalty, we, in him, may
be said to have been pursued even unto death which was its sentence, and should
now feel clear of tbe weight of conscious guilt - because in him we have
rendered a full atonement. And we live beneath our privilege, we fail in making
the required usc of the great propitiation, we arc deficient of the homage that
is due to its completeness and its power - ifwe cast not the burden of legal
condemnation away from our spirits. It is detracting from the richness and the
efficacy of Heavens boon, for us to cherish the haunting imagination of a
debt, that the revealed Surety has done away - or, changing the terms, to
cherish the haunting imagination of a guilt, for which the High Priest whom God
Himself has set forth, has made a sacrifice where-with God Himself has declared
that He is well pleased.
So that it is your positive duty to take the
comfort of this, and to feel the deliverance of this. In as far as you do not,
in so far you nullify the work of redemption, and cast a dimness and a
disparagement over the most illustrious exhibition of Heavens grace -
dignified as it is with the full expression of Heavens righteousness. Be
dead with Christ then; and, this you are by putting faith in the atoning
efficacy of that death. He who so believes is as free from condemnation, as if
the cup of it had been put into his own hands, and he had already exhausted it
to its last dregs - as if in his own person, he had walked the whole length of
the valley and shadow of that death which every sinner has rightfully incurred
- as if what was only possible for the Godhead to have borne within a given
compass of time he himself had borne, the sufferings of that eternity which is
in reserve for all the guilt that is unexpiated. Be dead with Christ, by giving
credit to the gospel testimony about the death of Christ, and the whole of this
tremendous retribution for sin with you is as good as over; and it is your own
comfort, as well as Gods commandment, that you henceforth, with the
assurance of being set at liberty from sin, walk before Him relieved from the
bondage both of its conscious guilt and of its anticipated
vengeance.
But in order to be fully conformed to the death of Christ, we
must advert to what is said in the 9th and 10th verses, about the full and
conclusive efficacy of it - so conclusive, that it had not again to be
repeated, for He had to die only once, and death hath no more dominion over
Him. There was power enough for the whole purpose of our deliverance from,
guilt in the one offering - a truth of sufficient worth, it would appear, to be
urged by the apostle in other places of the New Testament, when he says, that
Christ did not offer Himself often; for then must He have often suffered since
the foundation of the world - but now once, hath He appeared to put away sin by
the sacrifice of Himself: And Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many:
And it is through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all, that
we are cleansed from guilt: And, finally, laying upon this point the stress of
a frequent reiteration, does the apostle say that it is by one offering that we
are for ever perfected. There is surely a real practical importance in a matter
so much insisted on; and accordingly, we infer from another passage,that it was
to save the believer from the constant recurrence and revival, in his heart, of
a sense ofguilt - it was that, once purged, he should have no more conscience
of sins - it was that he should look on the controversy between him and God as
now fully adjusted, and at an end - it was that in the contemplation of that
one act, even the decease which Christ accomplished at Jerusalem, He should
feel as conclusively relieved from the imagination of guilt, as the son, in
whose behalf the father has interposed and given ample satisfaction to all his
creditors, feels himself relieved from the imagination of debt - it was that we
should no longer conjure into life again, those fearful misgivings,which the
one death of Christ and our death with Him should hush into everlasting
oblivion - So that, if it be our duty to rejoice in the comfort of our full
acquittance, through the satisfaction rendered by Him who poured out His soul
for us - it goes to enhance the comfort still more, that there is an amount and
a value in this same satisfaction,for meeting all the exigencies of our future
history in the world - thus ministering the very antidote to our fears, which
the apostle John urges upon his disciples, that if any man sin we have an
Advocate with the Father, even Him who is the propitiation for our sins, Jesus
Christ the righteous.
If we be dead with Christ, and death have no more
dominion over Him - this is tantamount to guilt being no longer chargeable upon
us. And ought not this to be felt as a precious enhancement of the blessing?
setting an irrevocable seal as it were upon our reconciliation with God -
placing it securely beyond the reach, not merely of the impediments which sin
already contracted had thrown in the way; but also beyond the reach of all
those future accidents, that the sin, into which we shall be surprised or into
which we shall stumble, may afterwards involve us. We set not the remedy at its
full worth, if we use it not to quiet the alarms of the guilt that is before
us, as well as of the guilt that is behind us - if, like the children of
Israel, we think that some great purifying ceremonial must be set up anew to
wash away the outstanding defilements of the current year, under which they are
meanwhile in a state of distance and displeasure from God - if we regard not
the fulness that is in Christ as a perennial fountain, which is at all times
accessible; and is a very present cure to the conscience, under the many
inroads and solicitations of that sinful nature which never ceases to beset us
with its urgency - Thus overbearing the sense of guilt with the sense of that
healing virtue which lies in the blood of the one sacrifice; and upholding the
spirit of the believer, even while opprest with the infirmities of his earthly
tabernacle, in the clear and confident feeling of his acceptance with
God.
But is not this, it may be said, equivalent to the holding forth of
a Popish indulgence for all sins, past, present, and to come? And, is not this
a signal for antinomianism? And will not the feeling of onr death to the guilt
of sin, make us all alive to the charm of its many allurements - now heightened
by a sense of impunity? And will not the peace that we are thus called upon to
maintain,even while sin has its residence in our hearts, lull us still further
into a peace that will not be broken,even though sin should reign over our
habits and our history? We have sometimes thought so, my brethren, and, under
the suggestion of such a fear, have qualified the freeness, and laid our
clauses and our exceptions and our drawbacks on the fulness of the gospel; and,
solicitous for the purityof the human character, have lifted a timid and a
hesitating voice when proclaiming the overtures of pardon for human guilt.
But we are now thoroughly persuaded, that the effective way of turning
men from sin to righteousness, is to throw, wide and open before them, the door
of reconciliation; and that a real trust in God for acceptance, is ever
accompanied with a real movement of the heart towards godliness; and that to
mix or darken the communications of good-will to the world through Him who died
for it, is not more adverse to the rest of the sinner, than it is adverse to
the holiness of the sinner; and that, after all, the true way of keeping up
love in the heart, is to keep up peace in the conscience - thus making your
freedom from the guilt of sin, the best guarantee for your deliverance from its
power; and this because if you can interpose the death of Christ in arrest of
condemnation, when Satan for the purposes of disturbance would inject the fears
of unbelief into your bosom,he the great adversary of souls, paralysed at the
very sight of such a barrier in all his measures of hostility against you,
would retire a baffled enemy from that contest, in which, for the purposes of a
sinful dominion over you, he tried to assail and to conquer by the force of his
temptations.
But the certainty of that connection, which obtains between
a death unto the guilt of sin, and a death unto its power, will be more
manifest afterwards: And, meanwhile, after having said so much on the clause of
being dead with Christ, it may now be time for offering our remarks on the
clause that we shall live with Him.Yet before we proceed to the elucidation of
this latter clause, we may remark a sanctifying influence in the former one. We
are looked upon by the Lawgiver as dead with Christ - that is, as having in Him
borne the penalty of our sins, and therefore as no longer the subjects of a
curse that has already been discharged, of a condemnatory sentence that is
already executed.
Now though we share alike with Christ, in this
privilege of afinal acquittance from that death which has no more dominion over
Him, and is for ever averted from us - yet it was at His expense alone, and not
at ours, that the acquittance was obtained. It would have cost us an eternity
of suffering in hell,to have traversed the whole of that vengeance that was
denounced upon iniquity; and it was therefore so condensed upon the person of
the Saviour,who had the infinity of the Godhead to sustain it,that on Him,
during the limited period of His sufferings on earth, all the vials of the
Almightyswrath were poured forth and so were expended.By our fellowship
with Him in His death, we have been borne across a gulf, which to ourselves
would have been utterly interminable; and have been landed on a safe and
peaceful shore, over whichno angry cloud whatever is suspended; and have been
conclusively placed beyond the reach of those devouring billows, into which the
despisers of the gospel salvation shall be absorbed, and have forever their
fiery habitation. But this is just because Christ has, in the greatness of His
love, for us travelled through the depths of all this endurance - just because,
in the agonies of the garden and the sufferings of the cross, were concentrated
the torments of millions through eternity - just because, in that mysterious
passion which for us He underwent, He with tears and cries and anguish
unutterable, forced the way of reconciliation - And we who are dead with
Christ, partake in all thetriumphs of this sore purchase, but not in the pains
of it; and have now our feet established ona quiet landing-place. And the
sanctifying influence to which we now advert, and which no real believer can
withstand, is gratitude to Him, who hath wrought out for us so mighty a
deliverance.It is the respondeney of love from our hearts, to that love which
burnt so unquenchably in His,and bore Him up under the burden of a worlds
atonement. It is the rightful sentiment, that now we are not our own, but the
ransomed and redeemed property of another.
This touches, and touches
irresistibly, upon him who rightly appreciates all the horrors of that
everlasting captivity from which we have been brought, and all the expense of
that dreadful equivalent which Christ had to render - And he thus judges, that,
as Christ died for all, then were all dead; and He died,that those who live
might live no longer to themselves, but to Him who died for them and rose
again.We believe that we shall also live with Him. To explain the phrase of our
being dead with Christ,we had to ascertain how it was that Christ was dead; and
we find by the following verse that He died unto sin, and we in like manner are
dead unto sin; or, in other words, the wages of sin being paid to Christ, there
is no further reckoning between them - and, as this transaction was for us and
in our stead, it is just as if death the wages of sin had been rendered unto
us; and sin can now hold no further count, and prefer no further charge against
us.
This sense of dying unto sin on the part of Christ, will conduct us to
the sense of His living unto God. The life that He now lives with Him,has been
conferred upon Him in the shape of wages. In other words, it is a reward
consequent upon what He has done for us, and in our stead-even as the death
that He bore was a punishment, consequent upon His having become accountable
for us, and in our stead. This will recall to you, my brethren, a distinction
to which we have already had occasion to advert; and for which there seemeth a
real warrant in the book of revelation--the distinction that there is, in point
of effect, between the passive and the active obedience of Christ - the one
satisfying for sin and making an end of its curse and punishment - So that to
be dead with Christ and dead unto sin, is to live in the condition of those, on
whom the curse and the punishment have already been expended; and who have
therefore nothing now to fear from its charges - whereas to live with Christ or
to be alive unto God, is to share with Him that positive favour which Christ
hath merited from God by His positive righteousness. It is something more than
simply to cease from being the children of wrath, and the heirs of damnation -
it is to become the objects of a positive good-will, and the heirs or the
expectants of a positive reward.The single term also, indicates that the
privilege of sharing with Him in His life, is distinct from and additional to
the privilege of sharing in His death. By the one we only escape the curse - by
the other we obtain the blessing. By the one, we are lightened of the debt
which He hath discharged through His sufferings - by the other, we share in the
property which He hath acquired through His services. The one shuts against us
the gate of hell. The other opens for us the gate of heaven. Did we only share
with Him in His death, we would be found midway between the region of pain and
the region of positive enjoyment; but by also sharing with Him in His life, we
are elevated the higher region, and partake in those very gloriesand felicities
to which the Saviour has been exalted. Had the alone work of the Saviour been
an expiation for sin, there would have been a death,and such a death as would
have exempted us from its endurance. but there would have been no resurrection.
But in the words of the prophet Daniel, our Saviour did more than finish
transgression and make an end of sin - He also brought an everlasting
righteousness; and so reaped for Himself and those who believe in Him a
positive reward, the first fruits of which were His own resurrection to
blessedness, and the consummation of which will be a similar resurrection to
all His followers.
It was the atonement which laid Him in His grave. It
was His righteousness that lifted Him forth again, and bore Him up to
paradise.Had there been an atonement and nothing more, like prisoners dismissed
from the bar we would have been simply let alone. But He brought in a
righteousness also - so that we not only are relieved of all fear; but,
inspired with joyful hope, we, in addition to being dead with Him, believe that
we shall also live with Him. And thus it is, that,while He was delivered up
unto the death for our offences, that the guilt of them may be absolved in the
atonement which He made - He was raised again for our justification, or that we
may share in that merit for which He Himself was exalted, and on account of
which we too believe that we shall be exalted also.
You will see then, that
as we understand the phrase of our dying with Christ forensically - some
understand this phrase of our living with Christ forensically. It is our living
through His righteousness, in that favour which is better than life - the sense
of which favour will keep our spirits tranquil and happy here; and will often,
even among the turmoils of our earthly pilgrimage,brighten into such a gleam of
comfort and elevation, as shall be the foretaste to us of the coming extacy -
when, on our entrance into the habitation of Gods unclouded and immediate
presence, we shall share with our Redeemer, now on high in His full enjoyment
of the divine glory; and, beheld as we shall be in the face of Christ, of that
love wherewith the Father hath loved Him.But just as a believing sense on our
part, of our being dead with Christ unto sin in the forensic sense of the
phrase, leads, as we have already affirmed, to our being dead unto sin in the
personal sense of the phrase, so as that we become dead in our regard for sin -
in like manner, my brethren, a believing sense of our living with Christ in the
forensic sense of the phrase, will lead to a living with Him in the personal
sense of the phrase also.
So as that the style and character of our life
shall resemble His - loving what He loves, sharing with Him in His tastes and
in His powers as well as in His privileges, walking along with Him in the very
same track of happiness and glory - For which purpose it is altogether
essential, that we be endued with a heart which delights in the very same
pursuits, and feels the working and aspiration of the very same properties. Or,
in other words, admitted as we are to rejoice with Him in that favour of God
which He hath purchased by His obedience,we shall not have the conviction and
the feeling of this, without also rejoicing with Him, even as He does now in
beholding the character of God - in gazing with delight on the aspect of His
pure and unspotted holiness - in copying upon our own spirits all those graces
and virtues which we admire in His. So that to live with Christ in tile
fellowship of those privileges which by His merit He has won, will bring in its
train our living with Him in the fellowship of all that kindred excellence by
which His person is adorned - being alive unto God, not merely in regard to our
right through Christ to His friendship; but alive unto Him, in the restoration
of a nature that is now attracted by the charm of His moral attributes, and
finds both its delight and its dignity to live in the imitation of
them.
There is a sure transition between our being justified by faith,
and our being sanctified by faith.There is a provision made for this, in the
mechanism of the moral nature of man below; and there is a provision made for
it, in that celestial mechanism which has been set up in heaven - and from
which there come down those holy influences, that serve to regenerate our
world. Faith makes known to us the love of God, and upon this gratitude calls
forth the love of the heart to Him back again.Faith reveals to us that
exquisite union, which is held out in the gospel, between the awful and the
lovely attributes of His nature; and the fear that hath torment being now
allayed, and the consciousness of personal security being now established, we
can, without dread and without disturbance, take an entire view of the
Divinity, and add to the homage of our thanksgiving, the homage of a reverence
that is free from terror, to such a full and finished glory. Faith opens to our
sight the real character of heaven, in the sacredness of its angelic delights
and its holy services - so that to rejoice in the hope of our living there, it
is indispensable that we should rejoice in the devices and the doings of
saintliness here.
Neither can we cherish the belief that we shall live
with Christ, unless the kind of life that is held through eternity along with
Him,be dear and congenial to our bosoms - so that grant the faith through which
we obtain an interest inHis righteousness to reside and operate within us,
there are securities in the very constitution of the inner man, that we shall
aspire after and at last attain unto holiness.Yet however suited the mechanism
of our heart sis, to this purifying operation of faith - it will not move,
neither will it persevere in the movement,without a continued impulse from
above; and, to secure this, there has been raised, if I may use the expression,
a mechanism in heaven - by the working of which, a stream of living water is
made to descend upon the moral nature of man, so as to attune all its emotions
and desires to those of the spiritual nature of the upper paradise.
In
other words, there is a true sanctuary there, whereof Christ Himself is the
minister, and it is His office, not merely to carry up the prayers of his
people to Him who sitteth upon the throne, mixed with the acceptable odour of
His own merits - but also to send down from the Holiest of Holies upon our
world, that regenerating influence by which man is awakened to a new moral
existence, and upheld in all the affections and in all the exercises of
godliness. He is the prevailing Advocate, through whom our ascending
supplications rise with acceptance to God. But He, the Lord from heaven, is
also the quickening Spirit, through whom the light and the heat of the
sanctuary are made to descend upon us. It is thus that faith is deposited at
the first; and it is thus that faith is upheld ever afterwards, in power to
work within us all the feelings and all the fruits of righteousness. The
HolyGhost, that blessing so precious and so pre-emninent,as to be styled the
promise of the Father - it was by His power and agency express, that Christ was
revived, and His resurrection from the grave was accomplished; and, as if to
fulfil and illustrate the saying of our Saviour that "because I live ye shall
live also", this very power has been committed to His mediatorial hand; and it
is just by its working that He quickens us, who by nature are dead in
trespasses and sins, into a spiritual resurrection.
Thus are we made
spiritually alive unto God, and walk in newness of life before Him And if it be
asked, how shall this virtue be brought to bear upon us, we answer that the
prayer of faith will bring it down at any time - that with it the door of
heavens sanctuary is opened; and the required blessing passes with sure
conveyance into that believers heart, the door of which is open to
receive it:
And, such is the established accordancy between the doings
of the upper sanctuary and the doings of the church upon earth, that every
member thereof, who lives in the favour of God because of the righteousness of
Christ imputed unto him,will live also in the love and likeness of God because
of the holiness of the Spirit infused into him.
The only practical
inference I shall at present insist upon, is founded on the connection that we
have so abundantly adverted to, between the faith of a sinner and his
sanctification. The next verse will give us room for enlarging upon this
all-important topic. But meanwhile be assured, that you may, with as much
safety, confide the cause of your holiness upon earth to the exercise of
believing, as you confide the cause of your happiness in heaven to this
exercise. The primary sense of believing that we shall live with Christ, is,
that, through His righteousness, we shall be admitted to that place of glory
which He now occupies - there to spend with Him a blissful eternity; and
according to this belief, if real, so shall it be done unto us. But in like
manner also, let us just believe that we shall live with him here, by entering
even now upon the fellowship of those virtues which adorn His character, and of
that Spirit which actuated the whole of His conduct; and according to this
belief, if real,so shall it be done unto us.
It is indeed to the eye of
nature a most unlikely transformation, that creatures so prone as we are to
sense and to ungodliness; and beset with the infirmities of our earthly
tabernacle, and weighed down under that load of corruption wherewith these vile
bodies are ever encumbering us, that we should break forth, even here into an
atmosphere of sacredness, and inhale that spiritual life by which we become
assimilated to the saints and the angels that now surround the throneof God.
But the more unlikely this is to the eye of nature, so much the more glorious
will be the victory of our faith, that it triumphs over the strength of an
improbability so grievous. And if, like Abraham of old, we against hope believe
in hope; and stagger not at the promise because of unbelief, but are strong in
faith giving glory to God - then, barren as we constitutionally are of all that
is spiritually excellent, still, such is the influence of our faith over our
sanctification, that, if there be truth in the promises of God, we shall be
made to abound in the fruits of righteousness.The best practical receipt I can
give you, my brethren, for becoming holy is to be steadfast in the faith.
Believe that Christs righteousness is your righteousness; and His graces
will become your graces. Believe that you are a pardoned creature; and this
will issue in your becoming a purified creature. Take hold of the offered gift
of Heaven;and you will not only enter, after death, on the future reversion of
heavens triumphs and heavens joys - but before death, nay even now,
will you enter upon the participation of heavens feelings, and the
practice of heavens moralities.
Go in prayer with the plea of
Christs atonement and His merits; and state, in connection with this
plea, that what you want, is that you be adorned with Christs likeness,
and that you be assisted in putting on the virtues which signalised Him. And
you will find the plea to be omnipotent; and the continued habit of such
prayer, applied to all the exigencies of your condition, will enable you to
substantiate the example of your Saviour, throughout all the varietiesof
providence amid of history. In a word, faith is the instrument of
sanctification. And when you have learned the use of this instrument, you have
learned the way to become holy upon earth now, as well as the way to become
eternally happy in heaven hereafter.
The believing prayer that God will
aid you in this difficulty; and counsel you in this perplexity; and enable you
to overcome in this trial of charity and patience; and keep up in your heart
the principle of godliness, amid the urgency of all those seducing influences
by which you aresurrounded - this you will find, my brethren, to be the sure
stepping-stone, to a right acquittal of yourself, in all the given
circumstances of your conditionin the world. And let the repeated experience of
your constant failures, when you had nothing but the power and the energies of
nature to trust to,shut you up unto the faith.
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Lecture 32
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