Spiritual Convictions & Heavenly Affections 2
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II. We have seen what death is. We have fairly looked at him in the face, and we have seen that though he is so terrible to the flesh, he is after all the Christian's friend, not his enemy. Now, then, we pass on to view his companion and successor, RESURRECTION, which was to be our second point of consideration this morning. Back to J. C. Philpot Sermons
"If you then be risen with Christ." We thus see that there is a rising with Christ as there is a dying with him. The Resurrection of our blessed Lord has various aspects, all which bear upon the experience of the saints of God.
1. Christ rose from the dead for himself triumphant over death and hell. But he rose not only for himself that he might sit on his throne of glory according to the promise of the Father, but as the head of the Church, of that countless multitude, which when gathered together will not only exceed the stars in number, but outshine them in glory. Now as all these died with Christ when he died upon the accursed tree, and were mystically buried with him when he lay in the sepulcher; so when the mighty Jesus rose from the dead and issued from that gloomy tomb in which he had lain for three days and three nights, they at the same moment rose with him.
We read therefore that God "has quickened us together with Christ, and has raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus." (Eph. 2:5, 6.) We here see the connection that there is between Christ's resurrection and our regeneration. "Has quickened us," that is, made us alive, "together with Christ." When, then, life entered into the dead body of Christ in the tomb, it was the mystical quickening of all the members of his body, the sure and earnest pledge of their regeneration. Peter, therefore, says, "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to his abundant mercy has begotten us again unto a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead." (1 Pet. 1:3.) As but for the death of Christ there could have been no atonement for sin, so but for his resurrection there could have been neither justification nor regeneration; for as "he was delivered for our offences, so he was raised again for our justification." (Rom. 4:25.)
Regeneration, then, is the resurrection of the soul as the prelude to the resurrection of the body and soul together in the great day; and it is to be known in vital experience in the same way as death is made known. For as we die spiritually and experimentally with Christ under and by the law, so we rise spiritually and experimentally with him under and by the gospel. When Christ rose from the dead, the law had no more power over him. The law did all it could do in killing him. When he was upon the cross, the law discharged all its thunders and curses upon his devoted head. It condemned and slew him, and then the law could do no more; for it is with the law of God as with the law of man– when once it has inflicted its penalty and the criminal has died under that penalty, the law has done its office. It dies in killing. A criminal cannot be twice executed. Thus it was with Christ, and thus it was with the people of Christ– when the law had killed Christ, it was dead as regarding him, and never could touch him again. So when he rose from the dead, he rose free from all law charges, demands, and exactions; he rose as completely discharged from the penalties of the law as a criminal who goes out of prison when the Queen has signed his free pardon.
2. But how is this to be made experimentally known?By some manifestation or discovery of a risen Christ to the soul. We read, "Then were the disciples glad when they saw the Lord." (John 20:20.) Why? Because they saw in him their Lord and their God, as Thomas saw and confessed. Their doubts and fears, their unbelief and infidelity were all gone, and they rejoiced in him with joy unspeakable and full of glory. So when the soul is blessed with any manifestation of Jesus as risen from the dead, and with a sweet testimony of its saving interest in his death and resurrection, and the conscience is purged in any measure by the application of atoning blood so as to deliver it from the guilt of sin and the curse of the law, and bring it into the liberty with which Christ makes his people free, it rises experimentally with him; that is to say, it rises out of and from under the condemnation of the law and conscience, and enters into the blessedness of salvation by free grace and by free grace alone.
3. But not only does it rise from under all law charges and condemnation, but it rises out of the world by rising above the world.How many there are even of those who desire to fear God, who are kept down by the world, and to whom it has not lost its attractive power; who are held fast, at least for a time, by worldly business, or entangled by worldly people or worldly engagements. Their partners in business or their partners in life; their carnal relatives or their worldly children; their numerous connections or their social habits; their strong passions or their deep-rooted prejudices, all bind and fetter them down to earth. There they grovel and lie amid, what Milton terms, "the smoke and stir of this dim spot, which men call earth," and so bound are they with the cords of their sins that they scarcely seek deliverance from them, or even desire to rise beyond the mists and fogs of this dim spot into a purer air, so as to breathe a heavenly atmosphere, and rise up with Jesus from the grave of their corruptions.
But if, as members of his mystical body, they are already risen with Christ, as it was not possible for the Head to be held by death when God loosed the pains thereof (Acts 2:24), so neither shall they ever be buried in the grave of carnality and worldliness. They must rise spiritually if they rose mystically. If savingly interested in the reality of Christ's resurrection, they must know the power of Christ's resurrection.
But how blessed it is to know a little of this power; to rise, in our feelings and affections, from the grave of carnality in which we are so often fast held; from that death and bondage, legality and self-righteousness, which so press us down. And not only so, but to rise above the smiles and frowns of the creature, above the distracting cares of daily occupation and business, far away from the company of ungodly men and dead professors. Thus to mount up is a fulfilling of the promise– "Though you have laid among the pots, yet shall you be as the wings of a dove covered with silver, and her feathers with yellow gold." (Psalm 68:13.) O to get away from the dust and dirt of the pots; from the clay and rubbish of the potter's yard; where all foul vermin breed among the broken potsherds; and to be a dove soaring on its silver wings and golden feathers up to heaven's gate! Do we not know sometimes what it is thus to mount up in affectionate desires after living union and communion with the Lord Jesus? This is being risen with Christ.
But how many who, with all their faults and failings, we still hope fear God, seem more like Lazarus in the tomb, "bound hand and foot with grave clothes, and his face bound about with a napkin," than like Lazarus after the word had been spoken, "Loose him, and let him go." Alas! too many members even of Christian churches, who have made an open profession of faith in a risen and ascended Jesus, seem much more concerned about the prosperity of their shop or farm, and more anxious about their wives and families, and the poor perishing things of time and sense generally, than about the prosperity of their soul. But while thus held down in and by their grave clothes, they find it as impossible to disentangle themselves from them as Lazarus was to loosen his own bands of death. Nothing short of the same voice of love and power which called forth the sleeping Lazarus can bring them out of the tomb to see the face of a risen Christ.
You that are dead and yet alive, buried and yet risen, can you trace in your souls anything of these two points which this morning I have endeavored to open up? Can you find anything like death, and anything like resurrection? Have you ever sunk under the terrors of a broken law, under guilt of conscience, under a sense of condemnation, under fears of eternally perishing, under a solemn conviction that by no exertion of your own you could save your soul from the wrath of God; and thus have died to all your own strength, wisdom, and goodness? Can you look back to any special season when such an experience of death was wrought in your soul? Or if you cannot lay your hand upon any particular time or special season, yet can you trace that, for a longer or shorter period, you have had convictions of sin, and that they have been of such a nature, reality, and depth as to bring your heart down with labor, and make you feel that unless Christ be revealed to your soul, you must sink into eternal misery?
Though painful at the time, and though perhaps we were then quite ignorant what the Lord was doing with and in us, yet how good it is, how strengthening and encouraging to faith to be able to look back to a season when the Lord laid judgment to the line and righteousness to the plummet, so as to disannul our covenant with death and to tread down our agreement with hell. Convictions are not consolations; the law is not the gospel; bondage and imprisonment are not deliverance and liberty; but they precede them, prepare for them, and are indispensable unto them.
But has the Lord gone a step further in your soul's experience? Has the Spirit of God wrought upon your heart in any way of mercy and goodness by revealing salvation through sovereign, super-abounding grace? Has he ever given you to see the beauty and blessedness, grace and glory of the Person of a risen Christ, and thus brought into your heart a sweet acquaintance with his love and blood and salvation, as so suited to your case, as so adapted to all your wants and woes, as so meeting in every point the extremity of your desperate state by nature and practice? Has the Lord the Spirit thus raised up in your soul any measure of faith in the Son of God, any faith of adherence, if not faith of assurance, so that, as the Scripture speaks, you cleave to the Lord with purpose of heart (Acts 11:23); that is a firm resolve and fixed resolution, in his grace and strength, to hold on and out unto the end, and sooner die than part with a good hope in him?
Now this is resurrection, for this is a rising up out of the ruins of self to embrace a risen Christ! And wherever there has been death there will be this resurrection. The wicked die in their sins, but not so the righteous. Many die in the convictions of their natural conscience, as Saul, Ahithophel, and Judas. But the saint of God never dies under the weight and burden of spiritual convictions; for in them there is a heavenly life which can never die. Being risen with Christ, as a member of his mystical body, he will never die in despair nor under the wrath of God. He may fear again and again lest he should so die; and through fear of death and what comes after death may all his life-time be subject to bondage; but liberty and deliverance, however long delayed, will come at last. The resurrection of Christ is the sure pledge of this; for as Jesus must rise from the tomb and could not lie there longer than the appointed time, so the saint of God will not ever lie under a sense of wrath; will not ever groan and sigh under terror and apprehension; will not ever be in the tomb of darkness and gloom. The Lord will bring him forth and manifest his risen power in his own time and way to his soul; and then he will have in his conscience a blessed testimony of Christ's resurrection by knowing the power of it in his own heart.
III. But we come now to our third point– ASCENSION, and its consequence– SESSION, or sitting at the right hand of God.
A. ASCENSION. Jesus did not tarry upon earth long after he had risen from the dead. Forty days he spent here below to be seen of his disciples, to whom "he showed himself alive after his passion by many infallible proofs" (Acts 1:3), to leave indisputable testimony that he was the same Jesus who was crucified at Calvary. But he did not tarry longer than was necessary for this purpose, and to establish their wavering faith. At the end of the forty days, he ascended from Mount Olivet in the open sight of his eleven disciples, in whose presence "he was taken up, and a cloud received him out of their sight." (Acts. 1:9.) Thus there was a visible departure of our gracious Lord; and this was performed in the presence and sight of all the eleven apostles to confirm them in the reality and certainty of his going up on high; for, though they did not see him when he rose, they saw him when he ascended. Eye-witnesses, as has been observed by learned divines, were not necessary unto the act of Christ's resurrection, but were necessary unto the act of his ascension; for to see him when risen was a sufficient proof of his resurrection, but he must be seen ascending for proof of his ascension. I have insisted upon this point, because I wish to lay a firm basis on which our faith may stand. But we will now consider the ascension of our gracious Lord experimentally.
As then we have union with Christ in death and in resurrection, so we have union with him in ascension. We therefore read in a passage which I have before quoted, "and has raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus." (Eph. 2:6.) There were certain steps from the cross to the crown taken by our blessed Lord, in which we have union and fellowship with him–
1st—death
2nd—burial
3rd—quickening
4th—resurrection
5th—ascension
6th—session, that is sitting down at God's right hand.
In all these points and steps the Church has union and communion with Christ. We have seen death, burial, quickening, resurrection, and now we come to ascension. We have not literally ascended any more than we have literally risen; but we ascend spiritually as we arise from the dead spiritually. Our bodies are here below, but our souls, we trust, are risen and ascended with Christ. What this ascension is experimentally we shall see more particularly when we come to our last point, for it is contained in the precept, "Set your affection on things above." Have you not every now and then heavenly affections, spiritual desires, earnest breathings, actings of faith and hope and love– those living tenants of the soul, which pant and flutter like so many imprisoned birds in their cage? It is these affections that ascend with Christ to where he is at God's right hand, when the Spirit opens the cage and the young eagles mount on high.
Bear this, then, in mind, that when Christ ascended, he ascended not only for himself, but as the great Head of the Church. "I go to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God." He ascended as the Head of his mystical body, and thus took the whole of the body into heaven with him. As upon the cross all the elect of God died with him; as in the tomb they were all buried with him; as when he rose they all rose with him; so when Christ ascended into heaven they all ascended with him. He therefore said, "I go to prepare a place for you." He prepared a place by taking possession in his own Person, that where he is there his people may be also.
Thus when the Lord Jesus Christ ascended up into heaven and took his seat at the right hand of the Father, when all the angels sounded their golden harps and the courts of heaven were filled with glorious harmony, as the principalities and powers in heavenly places and the spirits of just men made perfect beheld the Son of God sitting down upon his throne of glory, the Church of God virtually ascended with him, and sat down with him at the right hand of the Majesty on high. This mystical sitting down in heavenly places with Christ is the foundation of our spiritual ascension; for as those divine realities are handed down into our soul by the power of God, and their sweetness and blessedness made experimentally manifest in our hearts, our affections rise and ascend until they all center in Jesus at the right hand of the Father.
Do you not thus know the ascension of Christ not only in doctrine but in experience? Have you never had a view of Christ at the right hand of God? When you thus saw him by the eye of faith your heart went up toward him, and your affections flowed out where your heart was gone, for you saw him at the right hand of the Father, as having ascended and led captivity captive. I hope I know something of this in soul experience or I could not describe it to you. O that you and I knew more of it, and that our affections were more set upon things above, and less upon things of the earth.
B. SESSION. Consequent upon the ascension of Christ is his Session, that is, in the language of our text, sitting "on the right hand of God."
Now this Session of Christ at God's right hand implies several things; first, Acceptance, that is, the approbation of his heavenly Father, and his acceptance of him as the God-man Mediator, which was manifested by his placing him at his own right hand; secondly, Exaltation to regal dignity and power; thirdly, Intercession, for he was "to sit as a priest upon his throne" (Zech, 6:13); and fourthly, Mediation, as the Church's living Head, for our life in the text is declared to "be hid with Christ in God."
But we shall find that this session with Christ is full of heavenly fruit, and like the tree which John saw in vision, its fruit and leaves are for the healing of the nations. These fruits must be experimentally known that they may be handled, tasted, and enjoyed. Thus every precious promise which was ever applied to your soul, every mark of grace, every sweet whisper, every look of love, every glimpse of the King in his beauty, are all so many testimonies that Jesus is at God's right hand. Why? Because they are so many fruits of his intercession.
Do you not find your need of a Mediator when you approach the throne of grace? Where do you direct your prayers? Do they not all ascend to where Jesus sits? And must they not be perfumed with the incense of his intercession in order that they may enter the ears of the Lord of sabbath? Do you know anything of spiritual communion with the Lord Jesus Christ? To whom do you unbosom your sorrows? Before whose face do you lay your woes? To whom do you resort in times of temptation and distress. Who can support you under them, or deliver you out of them? Are you not looking for a manifestation of the love and blood and grace of Jesus? Does not this show that your hope is anchored within the veil where the forerunner is for us already entered? (Heb. 6:20.)
C. But I just intimated that one of the fruits of the Session of Christ at the right hand of God, and to which I must now confine myself, is that he might be a living Head over all things to the Church. For this end, as Paul tells us, God "set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places." (Eph. 1:20-23.) The apostle, therefore, in our text, says, "your life is hid with Christ in God." Thus Jesus as risen, as ascended, as sitting at the right hand of the Father, is "our life." We have no other; for he is "the way, the truth, and the life." But this life is "hid with Christ in God." By the word "HID" we may understand mainly two things; 1st, that this life is concealed from the world. The spiritual life of a child of God is altogether hidden from the carnal eye. Secondly, it signifies that this life is stored up in him, deposited in his hands, and laid up safely and securely in his bosom. Out of him then, as our life, come all our daily supplies of faith and love and every grace. From him comes all my power to preach, all your power to hear. From him comes every sensation of contrition and brokenness, every feeling of humility, simplicity, and godly sincerity; from him, as "of God made unto us sanctification," is derived that "holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord."
What a bearing then has the resurrection, ascension, and session of Christ upon the experience of a Christian! Take these divine realities away or hide them out of sight, and what is there but carnality and death? It is from lack of an experimental knowledge of these divine truths that so little is known of spiritual religion. But nothing else is of any real value. Anearthly religion may content a Pharisee; a carnal, formal worship may satisfy a dead professor; but it is living union with a living Lord at the right hand of God, and receiving communications out of his fullness which alone can satisfy a living soul. Can you live without Christ?
If you are a real believer in the Son of God, you can no more live without Christ than without food; without prayer than without water; without faith and hope than without daily nourishment. I fully grant that we have our cold and dead seasons, and these many and long; but I am speaking now of a believer's feelings when the life of God is warm in his heart.
Now all these supplies of life and power, of grace and strength, are communicated out of the fullness of Jesus at the right hand of God, for in him it has pleased the Father that all fullness should dwell; and they are sent down by him to keep alive our dying souls, for our life is "hid with Christ in God." It is the breathings, movements, and actings of this hidden life in the soul which distinguish a real Christian from a dead professor. A dead professor is satisfied with an earthly religion, with a round of forms, with external ordinances, with the flattering applause of dying creatures like himself. But the child of God, in whose heart the Spirit dwells and whom he teaches by his own heavenly grace, is from time to time looking up unto Jesus to receive out of his fullness. His life is hid with Christ in God. In the bosom of Christ he pours out his sorrows; from that bosom he receives his joys. This is the ascension of a believing soul to where Jesus sits enthroned on high, able to save to the uttermost all that come unto God by him.
Do not be deceived; do not think that a mere external religion or a profession of the truth, without an experience of its life and power, will ever save you. It is the hidden life, and that hidden with Christ in the very bosom of God, that makes and manifests a living soul. If we have not this, we have nothing. I tell you plainly and faithfully that if you have not this inward and hidden life of God in your bosom you know nothing aright, you have nothing to save or sanctify your soul. Search, therefore, and see, you who desire to fear God, what you can find in your bosom of this union with Christ to death, resurrection, ascension, and sitting together with him in heavenly places. True religion is a heavenly religion. It comes down from God and ascends up to God; and be assured if you are partakers of this heavenly religion that your glorified bodies will hereafter ascend with your immortal souls; for "when Christ who is our life shall appear, then shall you also appear with him in glory." (Col. 3:4.)
IV. From our union with Christ in these points follows the apostle's exhortation, which I proposed to consider in the last place under the head, AFFECTION."Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth."
The apostle assumes that the Colossian believers to whom he was writing were partakers of these vital realities– that they were dead, risen, ascended, and sitting with Christ in heavenly places. He, therefore, earnestly exhorts them to the performance of those living acts which manifest the reality of grace in the heart.
We may divide his exhortation into two main points– first, negative; secondly, positive; that is, first what they should not do, secondly what they should do.
1. What believers should NOT do. He bids them, then, not to "set their affection on things on the earth." Now naturally we have no affection for anything else. There is no such thing as a spiritual desire or a heavenly affection in our soul when we are in a state of unregeneracy. So fallen are we that we love, and cannot but love the world and the things of the world. We have no heart for anything but the things of time and sense; no, rather, as our carnal mind is enmity against God, we hate everything which is spiritual, heavenly, and holy. One main part, therefore, of the work of God upon the soul is to take off our affections from these earthly things, and to fix them upon Jesus where he sits enthroned above, that we may love and hate those things which he loves and hates.
But how broad, how expressive is the exhortation, "not to set our affection on things on the earth." There is not a thing on the earth, then, according to this direction, on which we should set our affections. We love our wives, our children, our relatives; and we should do so– for husbands are bidden to love their wives even as themselves (Eph. 5:25, 33.) But we must not love them in preference to God, or inconsistently with our love and obedience to him; nor must we love them as we love him who died to save us from the wrath to come. Our affections are not to be set upon things on the earth. Business, worldly cares, the interests of our family, the things of time and sense, in whatever form they come, whatever shape they may assume, must not so entwine themselves round our affections as to bind them down to the ground. We may use them as God's creatures for the support and sustentation of our life, but we must not abuse them. We cannot in our present time-state be utterly divorced from the things of time and sense; for most of us have to gain our living by the sweat of our brow, or the harder sweat of our brain; but we are not to set our affections on them. Houses, gardens, land, property, friends, family– all these earthly things we are not to love, even if we possess them or some of them, nor set our affections on them so that they should become idols.
A main purpose of God in his rod and by a daily cross, is to wean, loosen, and divorce our heart from these natural idols, for we cannot embrace them without defilement. James speaks of one main element of pure and undefiled religion as consisting in keeping ourselves "unspotted from the world." (James 1:27.) Thus we may compare a child of God to a person dressed in clean clothes, say a very neatly appareled female who has to tread her way through some dirty alley– through one of the miserable slums of London. How carefully must she tread, how closely must she keep her garments to preserve herself from defilement.
So it is in grace– we have to walk in this world as a spotless female would walk through a narrow passage, where on every side there was nothing but filth and foulness. You cannot think perhaps that this fair and beautiful world, as it appears to our eye, can be as loathsome or as filthy as a London alley. But it is so, for everything here is defiled with the filth of sin. Thus any lovely object may be foul, because turned to an idol. It may be but a flower, and yet be an idol; it may be a darling child whom everybody admires for its beauty and attractiveness; yet it may be a defiling idol. A cherished scheme, a favorite speculation, may be an idol. A crop of wheat, a flock of sheep, a good farm, a thriving business, universal respect, may all be defiling idols; for all these things, when eagerly pursued and loved, draw the soul away from God, and by drawing it insensibly from him, bring pollution and guilt into the conscience.
2. What believers should do. Now we are, or by grace in due time shall be, through trials and afflictions and the dealings of God upon our soul, weaned and divorced from earth with all its charms and pleasures and all its polluting idols. And if we are favored with a faith's view of an ascended Jesus, and he is pleased to endear himself to our soul by some discovery of his love and grace, it will draw up our heart and affections to himself. We shall thus be enabled to perform the positive part of the precept, which is to seek those things which are above, where Christ sits on the right hand of God, and set our affections there. If we thus learn to love him, we shall love other things less; and if he is pleased to keep us near to himself, we shall endeavor, as John bids us, to keep ourselves from idols, which can only bring confusing guilt into our conscience.
I am indeed well aware that all this must be wrought in our soul by the power of God. I am not laying down or enforcing these precepts as legal duties to perform, but blessed privileges which are wrought by God in the heart. I know what a wicked heart I carry in my bosom, how soon I am drawn aside and entangled by the snares of sin and Satan. But my desire is to be ever looking up to the Lord of life and glory, that he would send down the communications of his grace, that I may experience the power of his resurrection in my heart, and thus be weaned from these things of time and sense, and have my affections more singly fixed on his blessed Majesty. And I know that true religion must ever have this effect. It must purify the heart and draw out the affections. Whether you know it or not, you may depend upon it that there is a vital reality in true religion, a living power in the grace of God; and that where God works by his Spirit, something must be done, yes, and something will be done, to make a separation between us and those who are living to themselves, and setting all their affections on the earth.
May the Lord, in his infinite mercy, lay these things with greater weight and power upon our conscience; make us to feel more and more their solemn importance, and lead us more vitally and experimentally into those heavenly truths which bear upon earth such precious fruit, and which shall be "crowned with praise and honor and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ," to whom with the Father and the Holy Spirit be ascribed equal and eternal glory!