THE HOLY DIGNITY AND SPIRITUAL WEALTH OF BELIEVERS (ADDRESS)
[p. 152] THE HOLY DIGNITY AND SPIRITUAL WEALTH OF BELIEVERS (ADDRESS)
1 Corinthians 1:1-8; 1 Corinthians 1:26-31
Paul wrote this first letter to the Corinthian believers in great exercise of soul. He says, “out of much tribulation and distress of heart I wrote to you, with many tears”, 2 Corinthians 2: 4. Why was this? It was because they had dropped down into a low carnal state, which was evidenced by many signs of spiritual disorder. God’s object in leading the apostle to write this letter was to put a mighty lever under their hearts to lift them up to their true level as saints.
I think it would be pretty generally admitted by all christians that we are not in a very bright spiritual state. I am sure most of the believers in this city would admit that they are not so bright in soul as they might be, or would, perhaps, like to be. We do not know much about being filled with all joy and peace in believing, and abounding in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. This being so, a question of great importance arises. How can we be lifted up from our low state? This epistle, in great measure, supplies the answer.
It is very beautiful to see how the Holy Spirit goes to work to correct a low state. He does not begin to lash them right and left, or to say, ‘You ought to do this or that’, or ‘You should be so and so’. He begins by setting before them their holy dignity and spiritual wealth as believers on the Lord Jesus Christ. He thus lifted them up to the great and blessed thoughts of God concerning [p. 153] them, and this is the divine way of correcting a carnal and worldly state. It is God’s great lever to lift us up, and my desire is that this lever may be put under our hearts so that we may be lifted up into the holy thoughts of God concerning us.
In the first place the apostle brings before us our holy dignity. Believers were then, and are now, “the assembly of God”; they were then, and are now, “sanctified in Christ Jesus, called saints”. Thus we have great and holy dignity. If the thought of this got hold of us we could not possibly come down to the miserable things of the world which so often attract us. When a christian is carnal and worldly he has lost sight of his holy dignity as a saint.
Have we understood that we are of “the assembly of God”? Nothing would make a greater mark on christians than for them to see that they are of God’s assembly. It is not that we ought to be God’s assembly, but we are His assembly. I should like to show how this comes about, and what it means.
If we turn to Acts 15:7-9; Acts 15:13,14 we see three things. First, the belief of the gospel; Peter says, “God amongst you chose that the nations by my mouth should hear the word of the glad tidings and believe”. Second, the gift of the Spirit; “the heart-knowing God bore them witness, giving them the Holy Spirit as to us also”. Third, those who believed, and received the Spirit, were taken out from the gentiles for God’s name (verse 14).
Until a person has believed the gospel and received the Spirit he is not really a christian. There are many pious and God-fearing people who have not really believed the word of the gospel. Cornelius was a very pious man, and I suppose, a believer in Jesus before Peter went to him. He was addressed as knowing the word “which he sent to the sons of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ”, Acts 10: 36. But he had not heard the word of the gospel until [p. 154] he heard it from Peter, when he received the Holy Spirit by the hearing of faith. Souls ought not to be in this condition now, but the gospel is often so imperfectly presented that, as a matter of fact, there are many in a similar state — God-fearing, believing in Jesus as One sent by God, but not knowing the perfect efficacy of His sacrifice, or that He has been raised again for their justification, and consequently not having peace with God or the gift of the Spirit.
The word of the gospel proclaims a risen Saviour, and remission of sins through faith in Him. It presents a blessed Man who was in death and under judgment, but now for ever out of both in resurrection. Peter spoke to Cornelius and his friends of a risen and glorified Saviour, and told them that “every one that believes on him will receive through his name remission of sins”. They all believed and immediately received the gift of the Spirit. Christian blessing is all connected with Christ risen and glorified. A risen Saviour was the great subject of the apostles’ testimony all through the Acts. If Christ is risen and glorified the whole work of redemption is finished, and every foe laid low. He has come forth triumphant — raised for our justification.
That is the gospel Paul preached at Corinth. “That Christ died for our sins, according to the scriptures; and that he was buried; and that he was raised the third day, according to the scriptures”, 1 Corinthians 15: 3, 4. If you believe in that risen One you have the remission of sins; a risen Christ is your righteousness; and on this ground you receive the Spirit. A christian is one who has believed the word of the gospel and has received the Spirit. He knows God in grace and love through the gospel.
Now God has visited us in this way to take us out of the world for Himself. We have not been converted that we may make the world better, or that we may build up [p. 155] religious causes or systems here, but that we may be taken out of the gentiles for God’s name — to be the church, or assembly of God. There is nothing in the world for God; everything there is ruled by lust and pride, and God is unknown. But he has visited the gentiles to take out of them a people for His Name. We have been converted and have received the Spirit that we might be of God’s assembly. This is a very great and holy dignity. There is no great dignity in being a member of a sect or denomination, but there is great dignity in being of God’s assembly. It is, indeed, beneath the true dignity of a christian to belong to any human association. Every believer is called to the great dignity of being of God’s assembly.
It must be evident that to be of God’s assembly necessitates a very high degree of sanctification. We could not be of any assembly of dignity in the world without having qualifications suitable to that assembly. We could not be of the Privy Council or the House of Lords without suitable qualifications. Now the qualification for the assembly of God is sanctification. Nothing else would suit God; He is holy, and He has called us in sanctification (1 Thessalonians 4: 7). All believers are “sanctified in Christ Jesus”. If we think of qualification for a human assembly, a man must have certain rank in order to be of the House of Lords, and there are two ways in which he may get it — by inheritance or by gift. Now it is quite certain that none of us have inherited sanctification in a natural way. We inherited sin and defilement (see Psalm 51: 5). The king, by the exercise of his royal prerogative, can make a man a peer who has not inherited any title. He can confer the honour as a gift. It is on that principle that we obtain sanctification; by God’s infinite grace we are “sanctified in Christ Jesus”.
Now I should like to make clear what it means to be [p. 156] sanctified in Christ Jesus. In order to understand it we must remember that Christ Jesus came into the world to bear our sins and to be made sin for us. He came in flesh for this very purpose, and on the cross He took our place in condemnation and death. Everything that was due to us came upon Him, and was endured by Him in infinite love. And in bearing all that was due to us He really made an end of us before God.
Let me try to put it simply. Suppose God takes account of me, what would He have to record in His book? Many sins, a polluted nature, and, to conclude, the sentence of death recorded against me. Would there be nothing else? No good works, no redeeming features, not one item on the credit side of my account? No, not one. God could not take account of anything else in me but these three things. But if Christ Jesus came into the world in love to bear my sins, and to be made sin sacrificially on my behalf, and to die for me — and He did all this by the grace of God — what is there left for God to take account of in regard to me? The three things which comprised everything in me of which God could take account are all disposed of and blotted out of His book. If you ask how I stand with God according to His grace, the answer is that God does not take any account of me. All that belonged to me was taken account of and ended at the cross.
Now let me go a little farther. Sins and sin and death were all in the closest contact with the Lord Jesus when He was upon the cross. We adore Him for the love in which He took that place. But the moment He bowed His head in death He had done with sins and sin, and the moment He rose from the dead He had for ever done with death. He is apart from sins and sin and death for ever. I think every believer would assent to this, but it is [p. 157] a great and blessed thing for the soul to get well hold of it.
Christ is apart from sins and sin and death. He came into these things in divine love to us but now He is apart from them all for ever. Do you question it? No, I am sure you do not. Well, then God would have you to know that you are “sanctified in Christ Jesus”. It is not that you are apart from sins or sin or death, but He is, and you are sanctified in Him. God now takes account of Christ Jesus and of all believers as being sanctified in Him. God has made Him to be to us sanctification. A Man who is apart from the whole system of evil which obtains here, and all its consequences, is our sanctification. This is the high degree of sanctification that qualifies us to be of God’s assembly.
Those who apprehend this are saints — holy ones. A saint is not one who earns the title by his extraordinary personal piety. He is a man who sees that God took account of him at Calvary and made an end of him there, as connected with a world of evil, and that he is now justified and sanctified in a blessed Man at the right hand of God. All believers are saints by divine calling. If the King issues a patent of nobility the person named in it would be called to the dignity which it conferred. He might have been a ploughman or a crossing sweeper before, but he is called to dignity by the royal prerogative. We are saints by divine calling and this is a high and holy dignity.
God has visited us and brought us to believe in Christ; we have received Christ and God has made Him to us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption. We are of God’s assembly, sanctified in Christ Jesus, and saints by divine calling. What blessed grace! If we apprehend it, it will put a great distance [p. 158] between our hearts and the world. We ought to go about with a deep sense of the holy dignity to which God has called us.
Then we have great spiritual wealth in Christ (verses 4, 5). The favour of God is given us in Christ Jesus, and in everything we are enriched in Him. If we are not happy it is because we have lost sight of the favour given us in Christ Jesus. We are so foolish; we turn to the world or look into our own hearts, instead of keeping our eyes on Christ Jesus, the risen and exalted Man in whom God has given us His favour.
To see that God’s favour is given to us in Christ Jesus gives us an idea of the scope and nature of the favour. There may be different measures of favour. If I give a beggar a few pence I shew him favour, but it is not very great. But to see that God has given us favour in Christ Jesus is wonderful. The full scope of it hardly comes out in the scripture before us, but the fulness of it is sonship. Read Galatians 3: 26 to 4: 7. There we see the full blessedness of the favour given us in Christ Jesus. Sonship is the fulness of the blessing of Christ (Romans 15:29). How much need there is for the apostle’s ministry of this infinite favour to come to our hearts in divine power! “The glory which thou hast given me I have given them, that they may be one, as we are one”, John 17: 22. I understand the glory which the Father has given to the Lord Jesus to be sonship. “I will be to him for father, and he shall be to me for son” (Hebrews 1: 5) speaks of the glory which the Father has given Him as Man, and He has given us that glory. In Christ Jesus we are sons, and thus brought into a unity which lies altogether outside what is of man. Soon this unity will be displayed; the saints will come out conformed to the image of God’s Son, and the world will know that the Father sent Him, and that He [p. 159] has loved us as He loves Him. This is the full measure of the favour given us in Christ Jesus. The Father of our Lord Jesus Christ has “marked us out beforehand for adoption through Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will”, Ephesians 1: 5. We do not get this blessed fulness developed in 1 Corinthians but we do get there that it is in Christ that we are enriched, and other scriptures give us the fulness of it. “In everything ye have been enriched in him”. “Everything” is a big word. We have not to go outside of Christ for anything; our every need is supplied in Him. That comes out at the end of the chapter. We are “in Christ Jesus, who has been made to us wisdom from God, and righteousness, and holiness, and redemption; that according as it is written, He that boasts, let him boast in the Lord”. We have to learn that everything is given to us in another man.
Christ Jesus is made unto us wisdom from God. Philosophers exercise their minds on the state of things in this world, but they cannot find any solution of the problems which sin has introduced. The simplest believer has more wisdom as to these things than the greatest philosophers. An old monk said, ‘Would’st thou know the wisdom and wonders of God’s everlasting plan? Behold on the cross of dishonour a cursed and a dying Man!’ God met the whole question of sin with His own wisdom by sending His Son into this world to die. That wondrous death has become the tomb of all that was contrary to God and the birth-place of every spiritual blessing. The more I think of the death of Christ the more I see the wisdom of God in it. This is a terrible scene of evil; I do not wonder at men going out of their minds if they look at the confusion and darkness without the knowledge of God. But it is most blessed to see the wisdom of God coming into such a scene and in such a [p. 160] way. So that evil is removed in holy judgment and all that is good and of God is brought in and established in righteousness.
Then Christ Jesus is made unto us “righteousness”. If we look at ourselves in God’s light we see that we have no righteousness. But Christ has been raised again for our justification. A devoted and greatly honoured servant of God said on his death bed, ‘Christ is my righteousness, and that settles everything’. You cannot have a doubt or a misgiving if you see that a risen Christ is your righteousness. You go along with your heart full of peace and joy and praise.
“And holiness”; can you measure the distance between Christ on the Father’s throne and any shade of sin’s defilement? That blessed One is made unto us holiness. As we pass through this scene of evil where feet and garments are so easily defiled, God cleanses us morally by ministering Christ to us in the power of the Holy Spirit as our sanctification.
Then He is also made unto us “redemption”. He is coming again to take us actually out of this flesh and blood condition, and out of all the circumstances in which we come in contact with what is evil here. He is going to end our pilgrim story very soon in the glory of His own presence. Men have gone out of their minds through intense application to the reckoning of days and years in prophetic periods, but the only prophetic period we need to consider is “the twinkling of an eye”, 1 Corinthians 15: 52. There are other prophetic periods for Israel and the nations but this is the one for us.
Beloved friends, what a present is ours and what a future! Christ has gone to the Father to prepare a place for us; He is holding that place in the Father’s love for us. It is our privilege to be ‘in spirit there already’, but the moment is fast approaching when we shall be in it [p. 161] actually. The Lord Himself will descend with an assembling shout, and we shall be caught up together with the raised saints to meet Him in the air, to be for ever with Him. These bodies of humiliation will be transformed into conformity to His body of glory; we shall bear the image of the heavenly One. Then will be seen in public display the grand triumph of God in redemption. And God ‘gives us now as heavenly light, what soon shall be our part’.
Why are all these blessed things presented to us? It is that the holy dignity and spiritual wealth which are ours as in Christ Jesus may be a mighty lever under our hearts to lift us up from everything that is carnal and worldly and earthly. May God give our souls to know the mighty elevating power of this blessed ministry, and make it effectual in each one of us!