Reconciled and Saved
“For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son; much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.” — Romans v. 10.
Among the ten thousand plants that clothe the naked world, from the cedar of Lebanon to the hyssop on the wall, or, as we would say, from the pine on the mountains to the lichen on the rock, none are found where the execution falls short of the design. Nor among the countless tribes of animals which people the regions of air, earth, and water, does God in any case appear to have begun a work and stopped in the middle — left it imperfect. He never made an unfinished flower, or an unfinished insect, and it were strange if he should make an unfinished saint; and that we should not be able to say of those whom he redeemed with the blood of his Son, what I can say of every primrose on the bank, and of every sea-shell on the shore — Great and marvellous are thy works, Lord God Almighty; just and true are thy ways, thou King of saints. Who shall not fear thee, 0 Lord, and glorify thy name?
“Wherefore hast tl ou made all men in vain?”” I saw the prosperity of the wicked — there are no bands in their death; their strength is firm; they are not troubled as other men, neither are they plagued as
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other men. Therefore pride compasseth them about; their eyes stand out with fatness; they have more than heart could wish; they prosper in the world; they increase in riches. Yerily I have cleansed my heart in vain, and washed my hands in innocency. For all day long have I been plagued, and chastened every morning.” These plaints and questions prove that the book of Providence is not so easily read as that of Nature; that its wisdom in design and perfection in execution are by no means as plain. Here God’s way is often in the sea, his path in the mighty waters, and his footsteps are not known. But that is because the scheme of providence is not, like creation, a finished work. Take a man to a house when the architect is in the middle of his plan, and with walls half built, and arches half sprung, rooms without doors, and pillars without capitals, what appears perfect order to the architect who has the plan all in his eye, to the other will seem a scene of perfect confusion; and so stands man amid that vast scheme of providence which God began six thousand years ago, and may not finish for as many thousand years to come. Raised to the throne of Egypt, Joseph saw why God had permitted him to be cast into a pit, sold into slavery, and though innocent of any crime, committed to prison. And raised to heaven, looking back on God’s dealings with him in this world, and seeing how there was not a turn in the road nor a crook in his lot but was good, how his trials turned out blessings, and that, while others lost by their gains, he gained by every loss, the saint, now that God’s works of providence stand before him in all their completeness, shall take his harp, and throwing his soul into the song, sing with the rest around the throne — Great and marvellous are thy works, Lord God Almighty; just and true are thy ways thou King of saints.
Now, God’s work in grace forms no exception to his works in nature, and in providence. A man designs a great literary work, and he dies; or throwing it aside for something else, he leaves the world but a fragment of it. The studio of the painter has unfinished pictures; our streets have unfinished houses; and man has many a plan lodged in his busy brain that he never or but partly executes. But wkere God begins a good work he carries it on to the day of the Lord Jesus. He does not stop in the middle. No. Hell holds none that were ever converted; Christ plucks no brand from the burning to toss it back again into the fire; and though few may pass in at the strait gate, none that ever went in afterwards came out No, thank God! Salvation once begun, is not a thing of chance or fortune — there being undoubted security that, here, as elsewhere, God’s work shall not come short of his gracious design.” For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son; so much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life*’’
L Consider our state by nature — we are the enemies of God.
Some things, such as the harmony between the divine decrees and man’s responsibility, such as three persons existing in one Godhead, we are to receive and to believe on the simple authority of Gods word. There are other things, again, in which, “as face answereth to face in water,” so the state of our hearts answer eth to the statements of God’s word; and such is the case with Paul’s saying, The carnal mind is enmity against God. For was there ever a man who underwent a saving change that did not feel when he was converted that he was conquered, when he is sanctified that he is subdued? This enmity does not lie, as some fancy, in bad habits, education, or other such accidental and extraneous circumstances. It has its source in the mind itself. Regarded as a disease, it is not like a cold which any one may take, but a consumption, which is constitutional and hereditary: and what are all these sins and crimes which the apostle describes as works of the flesh, “adultery, fornication, uncleanliness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revilings, and such like,” but, like the flushed cheek, the languid eye, and throbbing temples, and bounding pulse of fever, the symptoms of an enmity that lies lurking in every heart? The temptations and circumstances that call out the enmity in so many different ways, and to so many different degrees, no more create it than the showers and sunshine create the deadly hemlock which has its seed in the soil.
Nor is this all the truth. Consumption, fell and deadly as it is, usually threatens and attacks but one organ. The constitution may be otherwise hale and sound. The best things, it may indeed be said, have their defects — there are spots in the sun for instance; there is more or less of alloy in all gold; and weeds spring up to deform the fairest gardens. But, as is proved, whenever circumstances occur to call it out, ’ this enmity ajffects the whole man; so that he is as much under its influence as every sail, yard, mast and timber of a ship, are under the government of her helm. True, that does not always appear; but no more does the fire that sleeps in the cold flint, until there be a collision with steel; ah, see how it flashes out then — fire in every chip of the flint, in the whole texture and fabric of the stone. The carnal mind, according to Paul, not only has but is enmity against God. Enmity is of its very nature, as it is of the nature of grass to be green, or sugar to be sweet, or vinegar to be sour. If it were not so, man would not need to be born again, to get a new heart; like a watch that had but started a jewel, or lost the tooth of a wheel, it were enough to be repaired without being renewed.
What a plain and affecting proof of this have we in that history of our blessed Lord, which is not more a beautiful exhibition of love on God’s part, than a hateful one of hatred on man’s. Here is the thing; ’ so put to the proof that there is no occasion for speculation; nor any room for dispute. Here is God incarnate; here is God in Christ; in the most favourable of all circumstances for man — God in Christ reconciling the world unto himself, coming not to condemn the worJd, but that the world by him might be saved. And did he find in men friends or foes? I once saw the poor, pale, cold corpse of a beautiful little girl taken out of the roaring flood in which her father — he was a drunkard — when drowning himself, drowned her; monster, and slave of vice, he was seen to raise his hand in the black swirling pool and lay it on her young head, pressing it down till he and she both sank together. But fancy a drowning man raising himself before he sank, and putting forth his dying strength to wound the hand stretched out to save him — to plunge a knife into the heart of a kind man who had periled his own life to save his. What hatred were that, which could prompt to so black a deed! Yet, when they dragged him to the rock of Nazareth to cast him over, when the kiss of Judas was on his cheek, when the cry of “crucify him ^’ was in his ear, when the thorns pierced his brows, and the iron nailed him to the cross, did not God in Christ feel that he had come not to save his friends, but to save his enemies? I would hold any man my enemy that would kill my son; and if men by nature were not God’s enemies, why did they kill his Son? why do they still reject him? The letters did not burn so bright on the plaster of Belshazzar’s wall, nor does the sun shine brighter in the heavens than these words on the cross — he that runneth may read them — “Herein is love indeed, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his son to be the propitiation of our sins.”
II. Consider the reconciliation. The time has come when Jacob must face an angry brother. He had taken cruel advantage of Esau’s necessities, and still worse of his ungodliness, to possess himself of the birthright. There are men who will buy the widow’s bible when the cries of hungry children tempt her to sell it; but Jacob did not sin against a hungry man merely, — the man was a hungry brother. I am at the point to die, cried Esau, and what profit shall this birthright be unto me? Besides most cruelly possessing himself of the birthright, Jacob most foully defrauded Esau of the blessing. He had settled the account with God, and was forgiven. He had to settle it with his brother now; and the prospect, as well it might, filled him with alarm. So when the messengers returned, saying, Thy brother cometh to meet thee, and four hundred men with him, it went like a knife to his heart. The shock threw him on his knees. God of my father Abraham, he cried, God of my father Isaac, deliver me from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau, for I fear him lest he will come and smite me; and the mother with the children. Busy, guilty, fancy conjures up a dreadful retribution — Esau’s long pent up wrath breaking in a bloody tempest on his head. Already he hears the shouts of the assailants, and the groans of the wounded; sees his poor children lie bleeding at his feet, and Rachel in the grasp of a ruthless foe, stretching out her arms, and beseeching him to save her. What shall he do? Fight? It is vain to think of that. Esau’s master in cunning, he is no match for the bold hunter in open battle. Flee? Encumbered with wives and little ones, he will rather die with than desert, it is vain to think of fleeing. One refuge is still open to him! — our first, and last, and best resort. He betakes himself to prayer; wrestling with God till the break of day. I have seen the sun set on a troubled sea where the billows burst in white foam on rocky headlands, and roared in thunders on the beach; and to-morrow the same sun set on the same sea, smooth as a glassy mirror. A change as great, and in as short a time, has passed on the soul of cpacob. Yesternight was spent in an agony of prayer; and this night he lays his head in sweet peace on its pillow. He has been pressed to Esau’s bosom; the long estranged brothers have looked each other in the face; have embraced; have kissed each other; and wept together; and buried in one grave Esau’s wrongs and Jacob’s crimes — being enemies they were reconciled.
Blessed change to Jacob; and yet but a faint image of our reconciliation to an offended God! What is that? what does it imply? what blessings does it bring? We shall never know them* never know them fully on this side the grave — till we get to heaven; for eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. But this, meanwhile, we know, reconciliation is sin pardoned; death discrowned; peace of conscience; a sense of divine love; a sight of coming glory: the prospect when the ills of life are past and the storms of life are over, and the battle of life is fought, and the burdens of life are borne, and this body is mingling in the grave with kindred dust, that our spirits shall join the kindred spirits of the skies, and be forever with the Lord. Ah, were we assured of our reconciliation to God, and did we estimate it aright, how often, like one who said to his physician when he told him that he would recover, Don’t say it! or, like another who said when told that he was dying, It is the best news I have heard for a long time — would our longing souls spread out their wings to depart; how welcome the hour when death should sever the last tie that bound us to earth and kept us from heaven!
III. The means of reconciliation.
Suppose a man is lying under sentence of death Shrinking from the gallows tree, he has sent off a petition for mercy; and waits the answer in anxious suspense. One day his ear catches rapid steps approaching his door — they stop there. The chain is dropped; the bolts are drawn; a messenger enters with his fate — on these lips, death or life. And the answer? Ah, the answer is that the sovereign pities the criminal, but cannot pardon the crime. The blood deserts his cheeks; his hopes dashed to the ground, he wrings his hands, and gives himself up for lost. And now the messenger draws near; and, laying his hand kindly on the poor felon’s shoulder, tells him that there is one way by which he may yet be saved — if the king’s son would change places with him, put these fetters of his on his own limbs and die in his room, that would satisfy justice, and set him free. Drowning men will catch at straws; not he at that. The king give uj. his son! the king’s son, the prince royal, the heir of the kingdom consent to die for a poor, obscure, guilty wretch like me, if. there is no hope but that, there is no hope at all! Now fancy, if you can, his astonishtoenj, sinking to incredulity, and then rising into a paroxysm of joy, when the messenger says, I am the king’s son; it is my own wish, and my father’s will, that I should die for you; for that purpose am I come, have I left the palace, and sought you in this dreary prison; take you the pardon, and give me the fetters. In me shall the crime be punished; in you shall the criminal be saved. Escape! Behold, I set before you an open door!
Such love never was shewn by man. No. But greater love has been shewn by God. He gave up his Son to death that we might not die but live; to be punished that we might be pardoned; to shed his blood that we might be cleansed from sin; to be buried, that we, buried and bound in the chains of death, might rise again. God laid on his own dear Son the iniquity of us all. When he hungered and thirsted, when the manger was his cradle and the cold ground his bed, when his heart was full of sorrow and his limbs were racked with pain, when his friends fled in terror and his Father hid his face, when his brow was crowned with thorns and his body nailed on the cross it was that we, being enemies, might be reconciled to God by the death of his Son. Did David, when he stood beneath night’s starry dome, and considered the heavens the work of God’s fingers, the greatness of God, and the littleness of man, exclaim, What is man that thou art mindful of him? how nmch more may
God’s people break out into expressions of adoring wonder, when they stand beneath a cross where, in its display of God’s glory outshining all the stars, Jesus hangs — pouring out his soul to death; a sacrifice for sin; dying, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God. No language appears to me so fitted to be a vehicle for the feelings that should rise in a believer’s heart as he contemplates that amazing spectacle, as David’s glorious outburst when summoning all things celestial and terrestrial to the choir — glorious angels with their harps, the seasons with their voices, woods and meadows with their songs, the skies with their thunders, and ucean with its many voiced waves; leader of the song, he cries. Praise ye the Lord from the heavens: praise him in the heights: praise ye him, all his angels: praise ye him, sun and moon: praise him, all ye stars of light: fire and hail: snow and vapours; stormy wind fulfilling his word; kings of the earth and all people; young men and maidens; old men and children. Praise ye the Lord.
rV. Reconciled by the death of Christ, his people are saved by his life.
Suppose that our Lord, having satisfied divine justice and expired on the cross, had dissolved the union between the divine and human natures, and leaving in the grave a body which he needs no more, had returned to the bosom of his Father — still the Son of God, but no longer also the Son of Man, in these circumitances, his death had been in vain. There was the medicine, but where was the physician to administer it? there was balm in Gilead, but no physician there. When we die our work is done. Not so with Jesus Christ. He had a great work to do after his death — a work foreshadowed on the great day of atonement in yonder ancient temple. The high priest, having sacrificed a lamb without spot or blemish, carries its blood in a golden bowl within the vail, into the Holy of Holies; offering it before the mercy-seat. By and bye, returning with the blood that he had offered, he takes a bunch of hyssop, and sprinkles it in red showers on the people. Now are they ceremonially clean before the Lord; and so David, with his eyes no doubt on better blood, prays, Sprinkle me with hyssop and I shall be clean; wash me and I shall be whiter than the snow. Even so the great and true High Priest, Jesus, rises from yonder grave and ascends to yonder throne, that he may apply to his people the benefits of his redemption. He lives to provide for our wants on earth, and advocate our cause in heaven; so that our life is as much dependent on his as that of the branches on the tree, or the body’s various members on the life of their heart and head. Because he liveth we live also — it being by a living Saviour that the salvation procured by his death is made ours, and applied to us in all its saving blessings. And if God, when we were enemies, was reconciled through the death of his Son, being reconciled, God and we now friends, how certain is our salvation! If a man under the influence of divine grace love his enemies well, how much better will he love his friends? Shew me a man po imbued with the spirit of Christ that he will even risk his Kfe to save an enemv, that is not the man to abandon his friends in their hour of need, when their back is at the wall. Lover of my soul, and Saviour of sinners, shall I believe less good of thee than of man? If thou didst love us so when we were thine enemies, how much more now when we are thy friends!
We attach little value to what costs us little; what is easily won is carelessly wasted. Of all men they are the most careful of their money, who have earned it by the hardest labour; of all churches and nations, as history shews, they guard their liberties with the most jealous care who have bought them at the greatest price; and of all the lambs in Jesse’s flock, I have no doubt David loved that one best, and carried it most in his bosom, which he had risked his life to pluck from the lion’s jaws, when, following the spoiler to the forest, he faced him, and turned him, and took him by beard and smote him. The great price at which Christ purchased his people is one great security for their safety. He paid too much for these jewels to let Satan steal them, or one of them be missing that day when he maketh up his jewels. If he came from heaven to die for you when jou hated him, can he leave them to perish who now love him? No, never! The mountains shall depart, he says, and the hills be removed, but my kindness shall not depart, neither shall the covenant of div peace, saith the Lord, that hath mercy on thee.
I hear that in the burst of joy which breaks out in heaven whenever a sinaer is converted on earth. It 8^ was when Goliath fell, his armour ringing on the ground, and David with foot on his mighty trunk, stood hacking at his giant neck, that shouts rose from the lines of Israel; and spectators on some neighbouring hill-top, of a conflict where our countrymen meet the foe in battle, we would pray while they fought; nor, till we heard the shout of victory rise from the field itself, above the roll of musketry and roar of cannon, and saw the foe waver and break and scatter before our brothers’ arms, would we rise to take up the battle cheer, give thanks to God, and give way to a patriot’s
But when do the angels, who watch from the skies the events of earth, rejoice? They saw the Magdalene at Jesus’ feet; and while she was weeping, they were rejoicing over her. They saw the thief turning to Jesus’ cross; and while he was bleeding, they were rejoicing over him. It is not when this battle is fought out, but begun; when this race is closed, but entered on; it is at the birth of the new-born soul that there is joy in heaven — joy in heaven over every sinner that repenteth, and as soon as he repenteth; because “whom he did predestinate, them he also called; and whom he called, them he also justified; and whom he justified, them he also glorified” — and all the devils of hell cannot break this linked and golden chain that binds the believer to the throne of God. “Whom he loveth he loveth to the end.”