GOD PRESENTED IN THE GOSPEL
Romans 3: 24-26; 8: 3, 4, 31-39
I desire to speak of God. It is important that we know God. Each of us must have to do with God. God would that every knee should bow and every tongue confess, so that each of us must take account of themselves in relation to God. If you think of it for a moment, I believe that you will recognise that it is just that God has the right to make an appeal to His creatures so that they should take account of Him. We read in the book of Job that God addressed Himself to Satan that he should give an account of himself and should tell Him what he had been doing that very day. God would have us recognise that He has the right to address Himself to us so that we give account of ourselves; He has in view to develop the fear of Himself in us.
We see in the gospel of Luke that there is a question of a certain farmer that God had made to prosper; God had given him good harvests. This was so much so that his granaries were not sufficient to hold all the riches that God had given to his farm. This man made his plans; he said that he was going to demolish all his granaries, that he would build greater, that he would put there all his produce and the goods that God had given him; and then he said to his soul: “Soul, thou hast much good things laid by for many years; repose thyself, eat, drink, be merry”. When he said that, he was still a young man or a man of mature age for he considered that he still had many years before him, but God said to him: “Fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee”. What a solemn consideration: this night even shall it be demanded of thee. We do not know of his plans for the course of the day, or the evening, but he still had some hours to live. This may be the case for someone here this evening. It is important that we realise that nobody knows at what moment God may call us so as to render an account of ourselves.
In the first passage read, we see that God presents Christ; He draws our attention to Christ, not Jesus as He was down here, but Jesus as He is now. The great glory that attaches to Jesus is that He is a Man in the very presence of God; He has been at another time on the cross, or in the grave, but He is glorified in the presence of God, a real, living Man before God. God draws the attention of all to Christ. He says: there is the Propitiator. The idea of a propitiator is that God can set Himself and show mercy to whosoever. It is God Himself who draws attention to that: He does not ask us to provide this position. He draws our attention to Christ as being One who has shed His precious blood, giving testimony to His death and the value of this death. God is able in all righteousness to show His mercy to all those who come to Him by faith in Jesus. God has always shown His mercy and the ground on which He has done it is on this precious death which was foreseen before taking place at the suited time, and which has now taken place. In Psalm 32, David describes the blessing of the man whose transgression is pardoned and whose sin is covered. David had in himself a joy such that he could describe the blessing of a man whose sins are pardoned. There are people who say that you cannot know that in this life, that we can only hope for the best. But David says, I know the blessing and I can describe it. If David could speak of it, dear friends, there are many today who can speaks of it too, many who enjoy pardon from their sins, who find their pleasure in drawing near to God and speaking to God, without any cloud on their conscience, without a shadow on their hearts. The ground for all that is the precious death of Christ through the value of which God justifies from all charge whosoever believes in Jesus. It must affect many that God has presented Jesus as a propitiation by faith in His blood. It is not only to show that He was righteous in pardoning sins in times past, but so that we might understand that He ever maintains the same attitude and that He is ready to show mercy to whosoever will, having a righteous basis for acting thus. It is of the highest importance that this is understood. There is the evidence that our pardon is immutable; it is in the heart of God to pardon and Christ has borne the judgment, having borne the chastisement that fell on us. God has an absolute right, which nobody can discount, to pardon whosoever comes to Christ.
So we read in Genesis that when Adam and Eve sinned, that they became conscious of their guilt in the sight of God and realised that the best they could do was not suitable—for all they could do was to sew together aprons from fig leaves, but when they heard the voice of Jehovah walking in the garden, they hid themselves behind the trees that were found there—they showed by that how they realised straightaway that the best they had been able to do was of no value at all in God’s eyes. But God Himself came out as a Saviour God. He clothed them in coats of skin. For that, He had had to kill an animal to take its skin. In doing this, He showed that it would be a matter of mercy for guilty man on the basis of the death of a substitute, and this substitute is Jesus. The glory of the present moment is found in this fact that the work of redemption has been done and that Jesus is crowned with glory and honour in the presence of God, so that the whole world can understand that the work is done, that God is infinitely satisfied in it, and that now he turns towards man in mercy, but a mercy that none can reproach Him for manifesting. In truth, He is affirming His rights. He says, “I will show mercy to whom I will show mercy, and I will show compassion to whom I will show compassion”. It is good to know God in that light: One who loves to show mercy, and also One who takes the greatest care to show on what basis He can act thus, so that even Satan cannot discount that. This is what is preached in the gospel. It is said, “for the showing forth of his righteousness … so that he should be just, and justify him that is of the faith of Jesus”.
Now the question is this: “Where then is boasting?” God does not want anyone to boast in themselves. So God faces the question of our guilt. It is a question of us approaching God in the faith of Jesus. This is God’s mind for all men. I have spoken of Adam and Eve. At that moment, there were only two people on the earth; they were both in sin and guilt, far from God, and God clothed them both, which shows that His desire was that all should be saved. He could indeed have clothed one and left the other unclothed, but He came out in that way, a Saviour God, who desires that all should be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth: It is a matter of the truth about God—and that each finds their blessing in the knowledge of God.
Now in chapter 4 of Genesis, we have the two sons of Adam and Eve: Cain the oldest, and Abel the youngest, both brought up by the same parents, both instructed in the same truth. We can be sure that their parents had said how they were found sinners in the presence of God and how God had presented Himself as a Saviour God on the basis of the death of a substitute. But Cain decided to draw near to God. What does he do? He totally put aside the teaching of his parents, and wanted to ignore entirely that God had come out as a Saviour God, and he wanted to draw near to God in another way that did not recognise that death was upon him. He brought the fruits of the ground and presented them to God; God did not accept them. Perhaps there is someone here who has been brought up by Christian parents? Have you yourself grasped the light? The world which is all around you is in general the world of Cain. Cain has begun a way which is called the way of Cain and in the epistle of Jude it is said: “Woe to them for they have walked in the way of Cain”; there is nothing waiting for them but judgment, eternal loss, because the way that God has taken to come near to man is refused and another way is substituted. But Abel drew near by the good way. He had answered to the light that his parents had communicated, and he draws nigh to God with an offering of the firstlings of his flock and of their fat, so that he draws near to God in the value of the death of a substitute. In doing that, he recognised that this was God’s way. The fat of the offering spoke to God of the excellence in His eyes of the sacrifice of Christ. It is on that account that Abel was accepted.
As to those who follow the way of Cain, God says, “Woe to them”. But as to those who have not this understanding, God says that Abel still speaks, as if God addresses Himself to them: Listen to Abel: as to this world, he is dead, but he always speaks. The Holy Spirit would draw your attention to Abel, the first man in the history of this world who would go against the current. It is very important to be ready to go against the current. Abel is the first man who went against the current, for Cain established a current which was contrary to the truth and Abel had to decide if he would follow the current or go against the current. The truth required that he should go against the current, and he went against the current; as a result he was accepted by God and he still lives to God, because God says that he is not God of the dead but of the living. He has given to Abel an honourable place in Hebrews 11 as being leader in the path of faith.
Now in admitting that you have placed your confidence in Christ, that you have drawn near to God by Him, that you have been justified by God from every charge; that you have peace with God by our Lord Jesus Christ, the question that arises is: how are you going to live? What is going to be your rule of life? It is important for every Christian and particularly for young believers to know on what principles they are going to live now, because one must realise that we have to live on some principle. Someone may say: I have the right to live as seems good to me. If that is your point of view, that will become the principle of your life, but it is a very bad principle. On the other hand, if you stop to think, you will notice that each one lives on some principle. What is the righteous principle for a Christian life? The principle that suits the Christian life is to hold oneself for Christ. It is not a question of knowing this or doing that, but of holding oneself for Christ. He has established a right over us: He has given Himself for our sins so that we should never come into judgment, and He has established in this way an absolute right to control our lives. In order that we should be sustained by this principle, God has given the Holy Spirit to all those who believe in Christ. What we are by nature can never please God. God speaks of our fallen nature as the flesh and it is said that “those who are in the flesh cannot please God”.
Romans 8 shows what God has done. There is what the law could not accomplish. The law provided the perfect measure of what a man should be here, in his responsible life before God, but the law has not furnished the power to respond to this measure. Now this chapter says that “what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God …”; that is to say that God comes into view, “God having sent his own Son, in the likeness of sin and for sin, has condemned sin in the flesh”. God has not saved the flesh, He does not ameliorate the flesh, He has condemned it. But He has condemned it in our favour in Christ, so that we do not have to consider for the flesh, waiting for what will furnish some power in the Christian life; God has condemned sin in the cross of Christ so that the way should be made clear to give the Holy Spirit to those who believe on Jesus.
The presentation of the gospel is not complete if we do not introduce the gift of the Spirit as being the great gift that God proposes. On the day of Pentecost, when those who were convicted of their sins before Peter and the other apostles, said, “What shall we do, brethren?”, Peter answered, “Repent, and be baptised, each one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, for remission of sins, and ye will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit”. It was the great blessing proposed in the gospel: the reception of the Holy Spirit. All those who were present had to be assured that they had the Holy Spirit. If they did not have Him, they were to go to the Lord about it and ask for the Holy Spirit, for the Lord said to the woman at Sychar’s well: “If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that says to thee, Give me to drink, thou wouldest have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water”. The Holy Spirit becomes in the believer the means by which the love of God is spread abroad in his heart, the means by which the glory of God is truly known by him, the means by which he prays to God and praises God with liberty, in short the means by which the things of God become real and precious to him. The Holy Spirit keeps the believer each day in contact with Christ and produces in him the desire to please God in all things. That is the principle of the life of a Christian, constantly to seek to please the Lord in all things.
The more we are marked by that, the more we are happy and the more we enjoy the blessing that God Himself gives.
Now, in order that we should be able to receive the Holy Spirit, God has sent His own Son so that all the judgment which was due to the flesh should be borne by God’s beloved Son. This judgment has been borne and exhausted and the way has been opened for God to give the Holy Spirit to all those who believe.
In Romans 8: 31, the apostle says: “What shall we say to these things?” If God is speaking to us in the gospel, He is waiting for us to express something; He desires that we should give Him a response. He would put us to the test, that is to say, if we have really understood, and if we have appropriated what is presented in the gospel. It is indeed evident that God is for us. If He has given Jesus as the Saviour who has borne our sins so that God could present Him as Propitiator, if He has given His beloved Son who has borne the judgment due to sin in the flesh so that we should be able to receive the Holy Spirit, it is indeed evident that God is for us. If therefore God is for us, who shall be against us? Nobody can be against us in an effective way if God is for us. “If God be for us, who against us? He who, yea, has not spared his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not also with him grant us all things?” God presents Himself, and He has given the best He had; He has held back nothing. Could we really know God as our Father? Think of such a Father, One who in His perfect love is infinite in wisdom and absolute in His power. What could fail for those who have such a Father, marked by such features? What would you not do for your own children if you had infinite resources, infinite power, and a perfect wisdom as to all that is good? What would you not do for them? This is exactly the position of Christians as to God: “He who, yea, has not spared his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not also with him grant us all things?” When we have believed the beginning of the gospel, we have appreciated the death of Christ as being the means by which our sins have been removed, but we go on in our minds and we seek to have a fresh impression of love. It is said, “It is Christ who has died, but rather has been also raised up; who is also at the right hand of God; who also intercedes for us”. It is love which is set in movement unto death and which has been in movement on the other side of death in triumph and glory at the right hand of God, and there love remains engaged with those who belong to Christ. He also makes intercessions for us. The apostle says, “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?” He considers many things which could come in in our way. People have been able to experience some of them. We may have encountered tribulation, we may have known distress, perhaps we have not known famine; perhaps we have not known persecution, we have probably not experienced nakedness, and if peril perhaps not of the sword; but Paul had had experience of all these things to bring him experimentally to this point that nothing: “shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord”. How great a thing it is to have Christ as Saviour and as Lord. He continues: “in all these things we more than conquer through him that has loved us”. It is not simply that Christ has loved us at some other time; He has, but the love of Christ is present and eternal.
The apostle comes to this final conclusion: “For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come”: think of the confidence one can have as to all that is before us. People who come to the true knowledge of God cannot be overcome by whatever the future has in store for them. Nothing “shall be able to separate us from the love of God”. All that may arise only comes from creatures. The apostle says, after having enumerated all these things: “nor any other creature”, as if he said that all are the domain of created things, and that we have God above all these things. So he says that “nothing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord”. It rests upon us in Christ and Christ is on high in the presence of God, a Man who is entirely for the pleasure of God, an object of eternal pleasure. It can be said to every believer in Jesus, that as Christ is “so also are we in this world”. It is so by God’s grace. May God give grace to each to know Him according as He is presented in the gospel, and may He bless the word.
VALENCE
2nd November 1952
Translated from the French magazine, ‘Ondées’, April 1953
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