What wise and admirable desires must those be which the Spirit of Wisdom himself works in us! If his heart is against God, we ought to tell him it is his sin; and if he cannot repent, we ought to show him that sin is the sole cause of his disability that all his alienation from God is sin that as long as he keeps from God it is sin. Knowing that my sin deserved death, he willingly died, the Just for the unjust, that he might bring me to God. Sustained by distinguishing grace, a man learns to glory in tribulations also; and strengthened by electing love, he defies the hatred of the world and the trials of life. Still, true as it is that we are free agents, yet the Lord is the potter and we are the clay upon the wheel, and it is his work, and not ours, that makes us like to Christ. Otherwise, he could not have said, "I am persuaded that things present and things to come shall not be able to separate us." If you are living in sin, you are not called; if you can still continue as you were before your pretended conversion, then it is no conversion at all; that man who is called in his drunkenness, will forsake his drunkenness; men may be called in the midst of sin, but they will not continue in it any longer. "Things present." Are we not his sons, and is there not a debt the son owes to the father which a lifetime of obedience can never remove? Whatever may be the confidences of others, and whatever may be your own, put them all away, and keep to this one declaration, "It is Christ that died." He hath taken thee from the dunghill, and he hath set thee among princes. O Paul, the thunderbolt of God will smite thee! How could they have been the sons of God before, for "to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name, who were born not of blood," then they were not make the sons of God by mere creation "nor of the will of the flesh," that is to say, not by any efforts of their own "but of God." EXEGESIS: ROMANS 8:12-13. What about your present sinfulness?" The suggestion has, no doubt, been made by others; but I venture to press it upon Christians of all denominations that they may, in turn, urge all their pastors to summon such meetings. And what if some of us should live very many years? They are blessed, but they have not had their public entrance. See you that stone rolled at the mouth of the sepulchre? The Roman had his iron foot on the Jew; yet Paul addresses those, who subjugated his race, as "brethren." Come on, slanderers! Since the day when Adam fell all things have had to toil and labor. He is powerless to obey, but he is mighty enough to resist the call of divine grace. I see the heavens on fire, rolling up like a scroll I see sun, moon, and stars pale now their feeble light the earth is tottering; the pillars of heaven are rocking; the grand assize is commenced the herald angels descend, not to sing this time, but with thundering trumpets to proclaim, "He comes, he comes to judge the earth in righteousness, and the people in equity." Romans 8:2. The desires which the Spirit prompts may be too spiritual for such babes in grace as we are actually to describe or to express, and yet the Spirit writes the desire on the renewed mind, and the Father sees it. It means, first of all, that Christ is now in the honourable position of an accepted one. I will make no answer to that accusation but this: "It is Christ that died." Eli said, "I called not, lie down again. There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. If this is his devotion, what must be his impiety? Perhaps since matter may not be annihilated, and probably cannot be, but will be as immortal as spirit, this very world will become the place of an eternal jubilee, from which perpetual hallelujahs shall go up to the throne of God. Christ once wore a thorny crown, and if you are to have all that he has, you must bear the thorny crown too? First, we are called upon to speak of the truthfulness of this great statement. Not he; his life is given solely by God. Now, believer, thou mayest be very poor, and very sick, and very much unknown and despised, but sit thee down and review thy calling this morning, and the consequences that flow from it. The carnal mind is at all times enmity against God. you a saint? Such and so bright shall our glories be in the day of the redemption of the body. For, first, if I am called then I am predestinated, there is no doubt about it. He has given thee hope, ask for faith; and when he gives thee faith, ask for assurance; and when thou gettest assurance, ask for full assurance; and when thou hast obtained full assurance, ask for enjoyment; and when thou hast enjoyment, ask for glory itself; and he shall surely give it thee in his own appointed season. Cannot we say this morning with thankful hearts, "By the grace of God I am what I am?" When Napoleon was on the island of St. Helena, he was watched by many guards, but after many complaints, he enjoyed comparative liberty, and walked alone. Let me suppose an impossible case for a moment. Yes, and the apostle seems to hint that this persuasion that Christ would not leave him made him aspire to a very great victory. I knew there was a work; I knew I prayed, and cried, and groaned for mercy, but I did not know that was the Lord's work; I half thought it was my own. At the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington. And if still another says, "I am a red-hot Methodist," answer him in the self-same way: "Christ has died." It is because the mind is so depraved that it loves something which puts the body into an abnormal condition; and here we have a proof that the imagination itself has gone astray. "There are 400 youths," says he, "in Rome as brave as I am, and that will bear fire as well; and tyrant," he says "you will surely die."" Let the gospel be really felt in the mind and it will toll the knell of selfishness, it will bring down the proud from their elevated solitude, and it will restore the down-trodden to the rights of our common manhood. God forbid! Brutus slays his sons; but some Christians would spare their sins. He has, in fact, no right at all, except as he is taken in connection with his co-heir. Do you feel the longings, the loves, the confidences of a child? "Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered." Brethren, as soon as a man believes in Christ, he is no longer under the curse of the law. Is that your call? Look again at that noble youth, Mutius Scoevola. ", II. And once again, all things work in opposition to Sabbath. troubles? Ungodly men prosper well enough in this world, they root themselves, and spread themselves like green bay trees: it is their native soil; but the Christian needs the hothouse of grace to keep himself alive at all and out in the world he is like some strange foreign bird, native of a warm and sultry clime, that being let loose here under our wintry skies is ready to perish. Every carnal mind in the world is at enmity against God. It is curious to see how some men are proud of being greater debtors than others. May the Spirit of God enable me to expound to you this most blessed portion of God's Word. The whole "carnal mind is enmity against God. "For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth. Edited by C. H. SPURGEON. Our Lord Jesus Christ will say, in the judgment, concerning certain persons, "I never knew you," yet in a sense he knew them, for he knows every man; he knows the wicked as well as the righteous; but there the meaning is, "I never knew you in such a respect as to feel any complacency in you or any favor towards you." And let the idle and slothful remember that they are a great anomaly; they are blots in the great work-writing of God; they mean nothing; in all the book of letters with which God has written out the great word "work," they are nothing at all. In the East the firstborn is the lord and king of the household. Martin Luther declared that he constantly preached justification by faith alone, "because," said he, "the people would forget it; so that I was obliged almost to knock my Bible against their heads, to send it into their hearts." Let the sacred mounds of our fathers' sepulchres speak to us. He meets it by the blessed fact that "It is Christ that died." In illustrating the effectual call of grace, which is given to the predestinated ones, I must first use the picture of Lazarus. I have done when I have called your attention to one more thing. He gave to us the fulness of his joy, for "my joy shall be in you, that your joy may be full." What a broad assertion it is. I say, it is utterly needless for me to refresh your memories about your present condition; but I feel it will be a good and profitable work if I remind you that there are high privileges of which you are possessors even now; there are divine joys which even this day you may taste. Oh! It is true we can work no miracles, yet can we do works which mark God's children. Let us mark a yet more positive passage, Romans ix. The dreariest thing you can read is the newspaper. Napoleon had been used to gilded halls, and all the pomp and glory of imperial state, and it was hard to be reduced to a handful of servants. God grant to you all to be believers in Christ, now and for ever. Sinner! You see what you are to come to, therefore, set Christ before your eyes always. But next: why cannot we administer also to the blessed part of the glorious testament! Unless we are the sons of God the Holy Spirit's indwelling shall not be ours: we are shut out from the intercession of the Holy Ghost, ay, and from the intercession of Jesus too, for he hath said, "I pray not for the world, but for them which thou hast given me.". True, many things are yet in the future, but even at this present moment, we have obtained an inheritance; we have already in our possession a heritage divine which is the beginning of our eternal portion. And now, it may be, some of you are convinced of sin, by the Holy Spirit. you have had many troubles, have you not? though that bell hath the very sound of heaven, and though all men do in a measure hear it, for "their line is gone out into all the earth and their Word unto the end of the world" yet there was never an instance of any man having been brought to God simply by that sound. Life in the Spirit contrasted with life in the flesh. you converted? He loves Christ so much that he loves us notwithstanding our unloveliness, because Jesus Christ has covered us with his robe of righteousness, and he has said, "My Father, consider them as lost in me, hidden in me, made one with me." I conclude by saying, see, my dear hearers, the absolute necessity of the Holy Spirit, for if the saints know not what they should pray for as they ought; if consecrated men and women, with Christ suffering in them, still feel their need of the instruction of the Holy Spirit, how much more do you who are not saints, and have never given yourselves up to God, require divine teaching! Fire such as martyrs felt at the stake were but a plaything compared with the flames of a burning conscience. Last of all, I have another practical point. for that ours will be. Those in heaven, have, as it were, stolen there. I would I could speak more powerfully, but my Master alone can impress upon you the enormous evil of this horrid state of heart. Oh! Have not all men, at times, wished that our religion were not true? The text says, "The carnal mind is enmity against God." Let me show you that you have not been hearing strange doctrine. no; but the whole Bible tells us, from beginning to end, that salvation is not by the works of the law, but by the deeds of grace. May God help you, and help me, to groan all our days with that kind of groaning. Some men groan after wealth, they worship Mammon. Blessed is the man to whom this reasoning is not abstract, but experimental. Who is he that condemneth." He will write the prayers which I ought to offer upon the tablets of my heart, and I shall see them there, and so I shall be taught how to plead. Paul is but giving us two sides of the truth, both equally true, the one needful for our warning, the other admirable for our consolation. You believe that all things will in the end work for your good. (+44) 01236 827 978. God's great love for us is supremely demonstrated in Christ Jesus our Lord, who gave Himself for us on the cross. These two expressions are the great distinguishing marks whereby we are able to separate the precious from the vile, by discovering to us who are the children of God. But in the case of the believing poor, their claim upon us is far more binding, and I beseech you do not neglect it. As soon as the Israelite had plucked the first handful of ripe ears, they were to him so many proofs that the harvest was already come. Thou didst for awhile leave the Firstborn when he was made a curse for us, so that he cried in agony, "Why hast thou forsaken me?" "All things work together for good," but not to all men; they only work together for the good of "them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. The text says, "The Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered." We are saved by hope. The Father knew how happy his Son would be to associate his chosen with himself, for of old his delights were with the sons of men. At any rate, meet the attack of the world as you met the attack of Satan, with this weapon only: "It is Christ that died," and you will be "more than conquerors through him that loved us.". In this volume we give you Charles H. Spurgeon commentary on Paul's Epistle to the Romans. And yet it is within reach of every truly penitent sinner. My spiritual distress robs me of the power to pour out my heart before my God. See what effectual calling can do. But I repeat it, this universal call is rejected by man; it is a call, but it is not a attended with divine force and energy of the Holy Spirit in such a degree as to make it an unconquerable call, consequently men perish, even though they have the universal call of the gospel ringing in their ears. 16-18. God is well pleased with the death of Christ as the vindication of his justice, and for Christ's sake he says to me, "I have blotted out as a thick cloud thy transgressions, and as a cloud thy sins: return unto me; for I have redeemed thee." III. Sonship towards an earthly parent brings with it a host of duties, and shall the Everlasting Father be unregarded? For spiritual blessings which we know to be according to the divine will we could ask with confidence, but perhaps these would not meet our peculiar circumstances. Now, please to notice that my text is in the present tense. But in addition to his sermons, he regularly reading a Bible passage before his message and gave a verse-by-verse exposition, rich in gospel insight and wisdom for the Christian life. Secondly, I see here, a remedy for all sin. "It is Christ that died. Let us, who believe in inspired Scripture, unite our prayers that it may be even so. Our confidence is therefore strong, and it is so because Christ's dying has removed all sin from all believers. Shall we not, in some degree, repay the immense debt of our obligation by seeking to make the future also debtors to us, that our descendants may look back and acknowledge that they owe us thank for preserving the Scriptures, for maintaining liberty, for glorifying God? Speak of pedigrees, the glories of heraldry thou hast more than heraldry could ever give thee, or all the pomp of ancestry could ever bestow. On, that you would know and feel your dependence upon the Holy Ghost that he may prompt the once crucified but now ascended Redeemer that this gift of the Spirit, this promise of the Father, is shed abroad upon men. Brethren, we can confidently say, then, hearing such a testimony as that, "We know that all things work." He draws near to teach us how to pray, and in this way he helps our infirmity, relieves our suffering, and enables us to bear the heavy burden without fainting under the load. O my soul! You will be "a jolly good fellow" while you join them in their folly; but when you give up their ways, their habits, and their society, then they will say that you are melancholy, and no longer fit company for such, "hail fellows, well met", and they will turn away from you. Then he adds "If children then heirs" though this does not hold true in all families, because all children are not heirs, frequently the first-born may take all the estate; but with God so long as they are children they have equal rights. Why, dying is the end of work; it is living that is hard work. That prayer which came from heaven will certainly go back to heaven. Where he is every saint shall be ere long. then I must love him," and he was quickened in that selfsame hour. I must close this point time goes much too swiftly this morning when descanting upon this delightful theme by observing that we are to be conformed to Christ in his glory. Are you persuaded of this love of God to you? Whether you will receive it, or not, must rest with yourselves. Then it appears if we are called joint heirs with Christ, we legally and strictly have no inheritance apart from him. "Therefore, brethren, we are debtors." Paul. Again he speaks, and fixing his eyes full on the Judge himself, he cries, "Who is he that condemneth?" We know not what we should pray for as we ought, and then it is that we groan, or utter some other inarticulate sound. If you were a free man, and had married a wife, a slave, you could not feel perfectly content, but the more you enjoyed the sweets of freedom yourself, the more would you pine that she should still he in slavery. 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