Not Our Own—Bought with a Price 2
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II. But now for the REASON.Why are we not our own? "You are bought with a price."
The Lord would not let us be our own, for he knew what the consequence would be. Would you like for a favorite child, before he arrives at years of discretion, to be his own? You who are parents, have you ever allowed your children to be their own masters? If you have, you have regretted the day, and they have regretted it too. Now shall God allow us to be our own masters when we are not fit to rule and govern ourselves? Shall he allow us to have our own way, when we are not fit to have our own way? And shall he leave us at liberty to walk in paths which he knows will bring misery and wretchedness upon us in the end? "No!" he says "these are my people– they shall not be like other people. They are bought with a price. I gave my dear Son to die for them. He has shed his precious blood to redeem them from death and hell, and bought them with no less a price than his own sufferings, his own most precious death upon the cross."
But now look at the VALUE of this price. Who can estimate it? Not all the intellect of angels. Let there be assembled a council of angels; let them all consult together, and attempt to value the price which was paid to redeem the church of God. Angelic intellects would all fail to determine its real value. Can what is finite understand and appreciate what is infinite? Believe, for a moment, in your heart that the Lord Jesus Christ is the true and proper Son of God; believe he is one with the Father in essence, glory, and power; in a word, believe he is God as well as man; and believe that the blood which he shed upon the cross is invested with all the value, validity, and merit of Godhead. Now, what value can be set upon a price like this?
We could set a value, an imaginary value, upon what a man might do. We might go a step further, and set an imaginary value on what an angel might do. But when we come to put our intellect into the scale with what God is; and when we attempt to value that precious blood, which was the blood of the Son of God; then you might as well attempt to grasp the stars with your hand; you might as well attempt to gather up the Atlantic ocean in a bucket; you might as well attempt to count the sand upon the sea-shore, as to estimate it at its right worth. We are lost in a blessed confusion, lost in a holy admiration, lost in wondering gratitude, lost in a sense of what that blood must be in worth and value, when it was no less than the blood of him who was the Son of God.
It is thus we seem to get a glimpse of the meaning of the words, "You are bought with a price." How deep, how dreadful, then, of what awful magnitude, of how black a die, of how ingrained a stamp must sin be– to need such atoning blood as this to put it away!
What a slave to sin and Satan, what a captive to the power of lust, how deeply sunk, how awfully degraded, how utterly lost and undone must guilty man be to need a sacrifice like this. "You are bought with a price." Have you ever felt your bondage to sin, Satan, and the world? Have you ever groaned, cried, grieved, sorrowed, and lamented under your miserable captivity to the power of sin? Has the iron ever entered into your soul? Have you ever clanked your fetters, and as you did so, and tried to burst them– they seemed to bind round about you with a weight scarcely endurable?
But have you ever found any liberty from them, any enlargement of heart, any sweet going forth from the prison-house, any dropping of the manacles from your hands, and the fetters from your feet, so as to walk in some measure of gospel liberty? "You are bought with a price." You were slaves of sin and Satan; you were shut up in a dark cell, where all was gloom and despondency; there was little hope in your soul of ever being saved. But there was an entrance of gospel light into your dungeon; there was a coming out of the house of bondage; there was a being brought into the light of God's countenance, shining forth in his dear Son. Now, this is not only being bought with a price, but experiencing also the blessed effects of it.
Being, then, bought with a price, WHAT were we bought from? The service of SIN. Shall we then serve sin again? The service of the WORLD. Shall we serve the world again? The service of SELF. Shall we serve self again? Forbid it, heaven! forbid it, love! forbid it, gospel! forbid it, every constraint of free, sovereign, super-abounding grace upon a believing heart!
You say "Ah! I wish it were so with me. But alas! I am so entangled; sin is so strong, I am so weak. I would use my eyes aright; I would employ my ears aright; I would guide my tongue, my hands, my feet, every member of my body aright– but I cannot." Does not all this teach you what a miserable wretch you would be unless you were bought with a price? This misery, this bondage, this darkness, and death– have these no lessons laid up in them? Do they convey no instruction to your heart? Will you never learn anything from them? Will you go on still adding to your darkness, getting further from God, walking more and more in the ways of carnality and death? Forbid it, God! forbid it, heaven! forbid it, grace! forbid it, every sweet constraint of gospel mercy and gospel love! Then you are bought with a price that you may not walk in ways that would bring with them bondage and misery.
But there is hope in Israel even in this; for here is the blessedness of being bought with a price. If we fall into bondage, leave for a time the service of our kind Master, listen foolishly to Satan's temptations, get unwarily entangled in his snares, then does our Master say, "Away with you! Away with you! I will have no more to do with you. You have listened to Satan; you have gratified self; in this instance you walked wrong; in the other you spoke what was amiss. I will have no more to do with you. Away with you! Go and serve your master, and let your master pay you his wages. I turn you out as a master turns out an unfaithful servant."
If the Lord would say so to us, well we might answer, "I have deserved it all. If you never should appear for me again; if you should give me up to the service of sin, Satan, and the world, and banish me forever from your presence, I have deserved it. I could not lift up my hand in hell and say, 'You have done unjustly;' –I have deserved it all."
Now when the soul is brought here, mourns and sighs over its base entanglements, looks again to the Lord, seeks mercy at his hands– then comes this word from the Lord, "Return, O children of men; I will heal your backslidings." And the Lord once more takes us into his service, and shows us we are bought with a price. He won't let us go! Satan shall not have us! The world shall not reign and rule as before! He has cast his blessed cord of love round our heart, and though we wander to the utmost, he brings us back, and we can look to him again and again, as our Lord and our God. "You are bought with a price."
III. Then what follows? The EXHORTATION– "Therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God's." The Lord does not deal with us in his precious gospel as the law does; bidding us do– and giving us no power to do. But what he bids us do he gives power to do, and to do it willingly, cheerfully, and with the obedience of a son– not the fears of a slave.
A. Now when do we glorify God in our BODY? When we use the faculties of our body in the service of God, and glorify him by their employment.
1. When, for instance, we use our EYES – not to feed our carnal mind, not to pamper the flesh, and entertain every roving imagination or base and wicked desire, but to read the word of God with reverence, earnestness, diligence, and a desire to know and do God's will, we glorify God with our eyes. When we look up, as we do sometimes, as though our eyes would pierce the very heavens, to see Jesus at God's right hand, though we expect not to see him by the eye of sense, we use our eyes aright, because we are looking up to him who has bid us look unto him and be saved.
When we turn away our eyes from beholding vanity, and keep them fixed simply upon gospel truths and gospel ways, then we glorify God with our eyes; for we use them as God would have us use them. When we can drop a silent tear over our sins, we use our eyes aright; for then the tear drops down the cheek under a sense of real penitence and godly sorrow for our great and grievous sins. When we can look at the dear people of God with eyes of affection; when we view not their infirmities, nor their sins nor short-comings– but see only the mind and image of Christ in them, then we glorify God with our eyes. When we can sympathize with those under affliction, look upon them with eyes of pity and tenderness, instead of staring upon them with cold, lack-luster eye– then we glorify God with our eyes.
2. When we hear God's truth; when his word enters through the ear into our very heart; when everything falls down before it opposed to God and godliness, and Jesus comes in the power of his word into the soul to make himself precious, then we glorify God with our EARS. When we listen to the experience of God's people, and what they say touches our heart and reaches our affections, then also we glorify God with our ears. And when we turn our ears away from lying tales and slander and detraction, to prejudice us against any of his dear family, we glorify God with our ears; because we stop them against ungodly lies and anything which detracts from the love and affection we should bear to God's saints.
3. We use our LIPS aright when we employ them in prayer and supplication, when the heart and lip both go together, and as we seek the Lord upon our bended knee, our mouth utters the earnest desires of our soul. We glorify God also with our lips when we speak well of his name, praise and bless him for his manifested mercy, thank him for all his goodness in providence, and ascribe to him all that we are in grace. We glorify him with our lips when we speak a word in season to his people, to encourage the fainting, comfort the downcast, and strengthen the exercised. And we glorify God also with our lips when we speak words of condemnation to the ungodly– and, if a minister, searching words to hypocrites, faithful words to loose professors, and warning, rebuking, reproving, or encouraging words to all who desire to fear God– which shall be in harmony with his truth and our own experience, and be spoken in a right spirit.
4. We glorify God with our HANDSwhen we give to the poor and needy according to our ability, and administer to their needs as circumstances may require. When we keep our hands from cheating, or pilfering in any secret way, from practicing fraud in business or other matters, and set a strict watch over our fingers, to employ them only in the service of God– then we glorify God with our hands.
5. When our FEET bring us to the house of prayer, to assemble ourselves with God's saints, and take us away from places of error and where God is not, then we glorify God with our feet. When we walk also in gospel paths, in obedience to gospel precepts, are found attending to gospel ordinances, and live in a way becoming our profession, then we glorify God with our feet– for we then run the way of his commandments.
B. But we are to glorify him in our SPIRIT as well as our body; for both body and spirit are his.
1. We glorify him, then, with our spirit, when we have the spirit of FAITHin our breast, when we are not always doubting nor unbelieving; but believe God's word, receive God's truth into a tender, feeling, broken spirit, and feel the effect of faith as purifying the heart from the love of sin and the world. We glorify God with our spirit when our faith embraces theSon of God as revealed in the word in his beauty and blessedness, in his grace and glory, in his blood and righteousness, in what he is as the Son, and Christ, and the Lamb of God. We glorify God in our spirit when our faith embraces every truth of the gospel, lays hold of gospel promises, and gives heed to gospel precepts.
2. When we have a GOOD HOPE through grace, cast anchor within the veil, and by the power of this good hope press on through hosts of evils, we glorify God in our spirit, because a good hope through grace, anchoring within the veil, draws us onward to him, who is where the anchor is firmly fixed.
3. We glorify him in our spirit when we LOVE his name, his Person, his work, his word, his truth, his people, and all he has sanctified and consecrated by his Spirit and grace. A spirit of love is especially that whereby we glorify God in our spirit; for what is a Christian without love? He is a nonentity, a monster; he is not a Christian man. He is only a mannikin, an imitation of a Christian, one born out of due time, and not a man in Christ. To be called a Christian, and not love God's truth, nor God's word, nor God himself, and his dear Son, this is not being a Christian, this is not Christianity, this is not the spirit of the gospel; this is not glorifying God in our spirit. If you have no love in your breast, you are no Christian. And if you have love in your breast, you will glorify God in and by that spirit of love.
4. A spirit of MEEKNESS, HUMILITY, GENTLENESS, AND PEACEFULNESS made manifest in us is to glorify God in our spirit. Will quarreling glorify God? Will strife and contention in a church glorify him? Will bitter words, angry speeches, reviling accusations, cold looks, not speaking even to members of the same church– will that spirit of the world and of the flesh glorify God? Is that adorning the doctrine? Is that bringing forth the fruits of righteousness? Is that manifesting you are under gospel influence, and walking in the love and spirit of the gospel? If you are to glorify God in your spirit, it must be by a spirit of humility, meekness, gentleness, quietness, and peace. Does God sanction war, strife, contention? It is what God hates.
5. You glorify God also in your spirit when you submissively bear the weight of your AFFLICTIONS; when you endure your daily cross with a humble mind. It is for your good to submit to it as the will of God. Then you glorify God by a spirit of submission. Does rebellion glorify God? Does fighting against God's word glorify him? Do peevishness, fretfulness, murmuring glorify God? No! meekness, submission to the will of God; embracing the cross, whatever it be, with thankfulness, seeing the rod and him who appointed it, feeling he lays upon us much less than we deserve– this is glorifying God in our spirit.
6. A spirit of separation from the WORLD; a sweet spirituality of mind; delighting in the things of God for the pleasure found in them; feeling the truth of God to be a feast in itself, and desiring ever to walk in the enjoyment of gospel mercies and gospel blessings– this is glorifying God in our spirit. And so I might enlarge, running through the various ways in which we glorify God in our spirit, if I did not fear to weary you and take up too much time and attention.
I have laid these things before you, but I have not laid, at least designedly, a burden upon you. I have sought to keep myself from urging these things in a legal way, or speaking of them in any but a gospel spirit. I feel at this present time in a gospel spirit; I feel to be in a good spirit; and what I say to you I speak in the spirit of the gospel, in the love and affection of the gospel, for your souls' good. If I came with a thundering law, laying these things upon you as something to be done in the flesh, you might rebel, and say, "I came this evening to hear the gospel, to hear a precious Christ exalted, and his truth set before me. I did not come to be flogged." Have I flogged you? Has not rather conscience flogged you? If the word I have spoken has been a word of reproof, has that reproof not been needed? Does conscience back that reproof? I have administered it in a spirit of affection– how have you received it? Do you see that you are not your own? Do you wish to be your own? If God gave you your liberty, would you take it? If he said, "Do what you like– I give you full liberty;" would you take it?
"No!" you would say; "I would dread to be left to myself! I know what a fool I have been in times past; I know what wrong things I have said and done, left to myself. I should do the like again. Keep me, Lord, as the apple of your eye; hide me under the shadow of your wing; leave me not a single moment. Keep my eyes, keep my ears, keep my hands, keep my feet, keep my lips, keep every member of my body. And O that I may glorify you in my body and spirit, which are yours; live to your praise, walk in your fear, and do the things which are pleasing in your sight."
Is this gospel or is it law? Is it truth or is it error? Is it the word of God, the experience of the saints, and what good men have always contended for, or is it the word of man, the spawn of a legal spirit, and without any sanction, testimony, or approbation of believing hearts? I leave the verdict to your own conscience.
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