THE MERCIES OF GOD
[p. 55] THE MERCIES OF GOD
We come now to the appeal and exhortation of the apostle. And it is important to notice that the ground of his appeal is “the mercies of God”. In connection with this it will be needful for us to take into consideration a subject which is plainly indicated in chapter 8, and fully set forth in chapters 9 - 11. That is, the sovereignty of God in mercy.
It is not until chapter 8 of this epistle that we read of “God’s elect”. We have first a most blessed setting forth of what God is in righteousness, power and grace as a Saviour God. Then the blessings and privileges of those who are justified by faith and receive the Spirit are brought before us. This leads up to the result that there are those on earth who have God’s love shed abroad in their hearts, and who are responsive to that love. They love God, and they cry, in affection, “Abba, Father”. Now the question arises, Who are they who thus know God and respond to His holy love? The answer is, They are “God’s elect”.
The gospel is fully and freely proclaimed to all. What God is as a Saviour God, He is towards all mankind. But such is the alienation of man’s heart from God that apart from sovereign mercy none would repent or believe the gospel. Indeed this is implied in what is stated in Romans 3: 9 - 18. There must be a work of sovereign mercy in man, or none would be justified and saved.
Man after the flesh has no fear of God before his eyes; the mind of the flesh is enmity against God; and they that are in the flesh cannot please Him. There is nothing in the flesh that responds to God, or that He can build upon. God wholly rejects man in the flesh, and if we see the character and state of that [p. 56] man we must admit that there is an absolute moral necessity for his rejection by God. There must be an entirely new beginning — a work of God in man; in short, a man must be “horn again” in order to have any capacity to see or enter into the kingdom of God. Man must be the subject of sovereign mercy.
Ishmael and Esau, and the children of Israel who made the golden calf, and Pharaoh (see Romans 9: 7 - 17) all represent man in the flesh in different phases of his character. Ishmael typifies man in the flesh as one who will not honour Christ or give place to Him. Esau represents man as bent on self-gratification and heedless of the blessing of God. The idolatrous children of Israel in the desert set forth man as proving false to every obligation which in self-confidence he undertakes in relation to God. And Pharaoh is the type of man as the opponent and oppressor of God’s people. Put these four different characters together, and you have a complete picture of man in the flesh. God is entitled to reject that man; indeed his rejection by God is a moral necessity.
The principle of sovereignty is clearly established in the case of Isaac and Jacob, and the children of Israel. All the privilege and distinction of which the Jew boasted had come to him on the line of God’s sovereignty. It was not for him, at any rate, to resist the thought of that sovereignty. But what the Jew had to learn, and what we have to learn, is that God’s sovereignty makes nothing whatever of the flesh. Israel went about to establish their own righteousness (Romans 10: 3); they had not learned the true lesson of their own history — that God would give no place to the flesh.
God called Abram in sovereign mercy from the confusion of a lawless world, and from that day to this the sovereignty of God has been the only cause and guarantee of blessing for man. The man of the world may cavil at God’s sovereignty but the believer loves [p. 57] it. He sees that nothing but mercy would do for him; he glorifies God for His mercy, and is thankful to be a vessel of mercy.
It is in God’s sovereignty that blessing has come to the Gentiles (Romans 9: 25, 26). Israel having sought righteousness, not by faith, but by the works of the law, have stumbled. They have proved themselves to be a “disobedient and gainsaying people” (Romans 10: 21) in spite of all their pretensions. Blindness in part is happened to Israel, and because of unbelief they have been broken off from the olive tree of promise. In this we see again that God entirely sets aside man in the flesh.
But while, as to His public dealings, God has now turned to the Gentiles as foretold in the Old Testament Scriptures, He did not do so without securing “a remnant according to the election of grace” even from Israel. Of this Paul was himself a proof, and the “firstfruit” of Pentecost also shewed that God had reserved to Himself a remnant from the midst of the blinded nation. Israel’s unbelief and rejection of Christ has been the occasion of their being broken off, but at the same time God secured a remnant from among them in sovereign mercy. Their unbelief has opened the way for the grace of God to go out to the Gentiles, so that through the very failure of man God carries out His own purposes.
But this being so, it is not for Gentiles to boast as if they were better than Israel, or as if they had come into light and blessing by their own will. It is all in sovereign mercy and in the goodness of God that light is now found with the Gentiles. But, alas! there is little sense of this in Christendom. Israel’s history has repeated itself among the Gentiles whom God has grafted in to partake of the root and fatness of the olive tree of promise. The Gentiles have boasted and been high-minded and have not continued in the [p. 58] goodness of God, and we are fast nearing the moment when the great Gentile profession will be cut off in the severity of God.
Consequent upon the cutting off of the Gentile, Israel will be graffed in again. They will come into all the promises made to them of old. It is true that according to the flesh they forfeited everything by their rejection of Christ, but they will come into everything on the ground of sovereign mercy in a. future day. “They are beloved for the father’s sakes. For the gifts and calling of God are without repentance”.
In view of all the way in which God has wrought to set aside and bring to nothing the boasting, conceit, high-mindedness, and self-righteousness of man in the flesh — in view, too, of the sovereign mercy in which He gives effect to the purposes of His love — one cannot wonder that the apostle breaks out in the doxology with which chapter 11 closes. “O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out! For who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who hath been his counsellor? Or who hath first given to him, and it shall he recompensed unto him again? For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things: to whom be glory for ever. Amen” (verses 33 - 36).
Nothing can be more important than that the believer should have a deep sense of God’s sovereign mercy. It is not only that He has presented His grace to us in the gospel, but we are indebted to Him for that distinguishing mercy which brought home to us individually the conviction of our guilt and utter worthlessness. According to the flesh we hated grace and rejected Christ; we preferred the world and our lusts and pleasures to God’s favour. He might have left us to take our own course and fit ourselves [p. 59] for destruction, for we had no claim upon Him in any way. In a word, we were under death and judgment. And it is to His sovereign mercy alone that we owe our blessing and salvation.
This mercy forms the ground of the apostle’s appeal in chapter 12: 1, 2. “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. And he not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, [p. 62] that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God”. If all that has gone before in this epistle — the infinite grace, love, and mercy of God — has in any way got into our hearts, it must have prepared us to respond fully and gladly to this appeal. If God has built up the knowledge of grace in our souls, and shed his love abroad in our hearts — if He has bowed our spirits in adoring praise for His sovereign mercy to us — surely the effect of all this must he that we desire to be here for His will and pleasure. We are prompted in this holy desire by every motive with which divine love could furnish our hearts. It is not to win God’s favour that we present our bodies a living sacrifice, but because that favour is shining with unclouded ray upon us. It is not to secure freedom that we do so, but because we are in holy liberty. It is not in pursuit of holiness after the flesh that we thus present ourselves, but because we know that we are “not in the flesh, but in the Spirit”, and because we have learned through the Spirit to put to death the deeds of the body.
If our bodies are to be a “living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God”, it is clear that there must be no working of the will of the flesh. The body must be held as dead towards sin, if it is to be a “living sacrifice” towards God. It must be held now as a holy vessel sanctified by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, and [p. 60] dedicated to God absolutely. A sacrifice once presented could not be recalled. It became a “holy” thing which could no more be diverted to common uses. If a man regarded it as common he was cut off from his people. I have no doubt there is a moment when the Christian presents his body as a living sacrifice, and then he is responsible ever to regard it as being devoted to God. It is never more to be animated by the will and lusts of the flesh. It is never to be for self-gratification or vain-glory. It is to be for God.
And this is not to be a mere sentiment awakened by reading a book, or the passing impulse of religious fervour roused by a stirring address; it is the “intelligent service” of the Christian. It is the sober and deliberate action of spiritual intelligence energised by the Holy Spirit.
“And be not conformed to this world”. Let us dwell a moment upon this! This world [age] is in many respects more seductive now than in the days of the apostles. The whole course of things in Christendom, has to some extent, become coloured by Christianity. Certain ideas of propriety affect most people, more or less. This makes it very easy for believers to drop down to the level of things here without coming in contact with any gross form of evil which might affect their consciences. For example, people give a Christian flavouring to politics, or try to do so, and many believers think it their duty to exercise political rights. But politics certainly belong to this age, and form perhaps one of its most prominent characteristics. There will be no politics, as we understand the term today, in the age to come, or in heaven.
Then again, think of religion. We live in a country where Christianity has a public and recognised place as forming part of what is right and proper in this age. No great state ceremonial would be complete apart [p. 61] from the presence of those who are supposed to represent Christianity, and to give its sanction to the proceedings. So that Christianity, instead of being quite apart from the course of this age, is looked upon as its crowning glory. But the Christian is not to be conformed to this age.
Take the ordinary social life of the world. It has its pleasing amiabilities, its many devices to pass smoothly the hours of leisure, its entertaining intelligence of everything that is done under the sun, and, it may be, a pinch of religious flavouring thrown in. But it all belongs to “this world”, to which the Christian is not to be conformed.
“But be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind”. The renewing of the mind is that gracious operation of God whereby saints become capable of entering intelligently into the apprehension of things which lie altogether outside this age. The Christian has a new kind of intelligent faculty by which he apprehends things that are outside the sphere of sight and the range of the senses. He becomes intelligent in the actings and ways of God, and familiar with that resurrection world which is the scene of “the wonderful works of God”.
The effect of apprehending these things is that the Christian is transformed; he comes out here in a new way, with new traits and characteristics. He thinks soberly of himself (verse 3); he does not mind high things but goes along with the lowly; he is not wise in his own conceit (verse 16); he does not avenge himself, but overcomes evil with good (verses 19 - 21); he is subject to the powers that be (Romans 13: 1 - 7); he puts on the Lord Jesus Christ, and makes no provision for the flesh to fulfil the lusts thereof (Romans 13: 14); he bears the infirmities of the weak, and does not please himself (Romans 15: 1). If we think of what we are naturally, this is indeed a wondrous transformation.
“That ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God”. It is in taking the practical and experimental course to which we are here exhorted that we prove the blessedness of God’s will concerning His saints. I understand this to mean that we learn our right place in relation to the saints; we also learn how to behave ourselves in the world, and in our individual responsibility as in the kingdom of God. A few words on each of these three things may not be out of place.
The first thing is to be exercised as to the measure of faith which God has dealt to us. There is a danger of seeking to take a place amongst the saints according to one’s natural ability, and thus to have high thoughts above what one should think. We have to learn, through exercise, our “measure of faith”. Then there are also “gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us”. A gift is some special and divinely given qualification to serve the Lord, but in its exercise it is important not to go beyond “the proportion of faith”. A man has to give attention to his gift. A gift is not given to be exercised occasionally at certain convenient times; it is intended to be at all times characteristic of the one who has it. It is his great business, and must not be made secondary to anything else. Finally, love is to be the all-pervading spirit of our intercourse with the saints. Unfeigned love and kindly affection one towards another will enable us in honour to prefer one another; it will move us to distribute to the necessity of saints, and to be hospitable; it will enable us to rejoice with those that rejoice and to weep with those that weep.
Then as to the world we are passing through (chapter 13) it is the will of God that we should be subject to the powers that be, paying tribute and paying to all their dues. It is no part of the Christian’s business to control the powers that be, or to choose his own [p. 63] rulers; his place is to submit to every ordinance of man for the Lord’s sake, whether it be to the king as supreme, or unto governors (1 Peter 2: 13, 14). Of course if the powers were to command something positively against the commandments of God it would be the Christian’s duty to obey God rather than man, but this is not a case which often arises.
In our individual responsibility as in the kingdom of God (chapter 14), we have to be careful not to despise a brother because he does not feel free in conscience to eat or drink or do certain things which to us seem perfectly lawful. On the other hand, the brother with a conscience as to certain things must be careful not to judge the one whose conscience is in greater liberty. The great thing is not to put any stumbling-block or occasion to fall in any brother’s way. An earnest care for one another’s welfare and prosperity would regulate all this, and in thus seeking one another’s good we should truly serve Christ and become acceptable to God and approved of men.
It is as we practically take the course which God’s will has marked out for us that we prove how good and acceptable and perfect is that will. In that course we find “righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit”. We are here for the pleasure of God, and we find that in the path of His will our hearts experience the deepest satisfaction and joy.