GRACE - ITS SUPREMACY
[p. 144] GRACE — ITS SUPREMACY
Romans 5: 20, 21; Romans 6: 14; Hebrews 4: 16; 2 Corinthians 12: 9; 2 Timothy 2: 1
When the subject of grace opens out to one it appears so vast that it is difficult to know at what point to take it up. To begin with, I have been struck by the great difficulty of attempting any definition of grace. You would hardly arrive at a right idea of grace by looking the word out in the dictionary, or by going to the original; neither will supply you with a satisfactory definition of it. I think the fact is that no one can get a right idea of it except as he knows God. It is the case in regard to many terms used in Scripture that you can only rightly construe them from Scripture itself And further, it appears to me that you have to gather the idea of grace not simply from Scripture, but from acquaintance with God.
Now I need hardly say that grace connects itself most intimately with God Himself; and apart from the knowledge of God I do not think you can understand it. The first principle of grace is, I think, God’s adaptation of Himself to man in man’s state of sin and weakness; and that is to me the most wonderful thing in it. It is not exactly the same thought as love; love will act for its own satisfaction. And so it is with God; God is infinite and perfect, and labours for the satisfaction of His love, so that all may be happy as blessed in it. It is not simply that all things are of God, but all things are for God; that is the result of the working out of God’s purposes, everything is to be for the satisfaction of His love. But that entirely depends on the great truth of God being divinely perfect.
[p. 145] No one but God could work to such an end. But that is not quite the idea of grace. God has seen fit to come out of His own place, if I may use the expression, to reach man in the state of sin and weakness and degradation in which man was sunk, as departed from God, and in which man was very well content to remain. If God had been pleased to leave man in the degradation of heathenism, man would have been content to remain there. There might have been philosophers, but the great mass of men would have been unaffected by philosophy. It is a well known fact that philosophy never reached the masses; philosophers were a limited class who did not affect the mass of men. I dwelt on a former occasion on grace as relief accorded by God to man, and spoke of the vessel of it, taking up certain passages in the Gospel of Luke which, I thought, brought it out. Subsequently, I took up the teaching of grace, a very important point in regard to our walk down here. My point now is somewhat different, though one may call it another development of the same subject; it is the supremacy of grace, or rather, it is grace in its supremacy. As we had grace in its teaching. So we have grace in its supremacy, the reign of grace. I will tell you what helps to explain it to me. There will come a time when the throne of iniquity will be set up in this world; and also when the throne of righteousness will be established in the coming of the Lord, “a king will reign in righteousness”. But what marks the present moment is the reign or supremacy of grace, for there is no principle in the world which is so mighty as grace. And there is another thought connected with grace, and that is support, which is the application of grace to us all as believers, and the application of grace specially to the servant of the Lord. Those are the points I desire to bring out now by the help of God.
[p. 146] The different scriptures that I have read will, I think, enable me to present the subject. In the two passages from the Epistle to the Romans we get the supremacy of grace in its application to us all. Look at the last two or three verses of chapter 5: “Therefore as by the offence of one, judgment came upon all men to condemnation; even so by the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life. For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous. Moreover the law entered, that the offence might abound. But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound: that as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord”. Then in chapter 6: “Sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not under the law but under grace”. Now, the importance of those two passages is, that they reveal to us what is in the mind of God. It is not in them a question of what is realized in the soul of the Christian, but of what is in the mind of God. Sin has reigned by death; but that state of things has received a death blow, and now grace is to reign through righteousness unto eternal life; that is the divine thought, and that is what led me to the expression, “the supremacy of grace”. For where sin was the greatest, grace abounded; the apostle in the chapter takes up specially the case of the Jew, those who were under law, for they were the worst of all. “The law entered that the offence might abound”. There was plenty of offence in the Gentile, but it was in the Jew that the offence abounded. Here it says that, where sin abounded, grace super-abounded, because grace rose above sin wherever sin was, and hence it rose above the sin of the Jew just as much as above the sin of the Gentile. In the commission in the last chapter of the [p. 147] Gospel of Luke, it is said that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in Christ’s name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. What was to be made evident was the supremacy of grace, that where sin abounded grace super-abounded; the divine thought was that the moment should be marked by the reign of grace.
There is one thing in particular that I would notice in the passage, namely, that grace was not to be at the expense of righteousness, nor to reach man in such a way as to give man the impression that God was indifferent to sin. How God brought to pass the reign of grace was by the complete judgment and putting away of sin from before Him, and this was effected by the Lord Jesus Christ; He appeared once in the end of the world to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself, that grace might reign through righteousness unto eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. The great end in view is eternal life, not simply that man may know the grace of God in the forgiveness of his sins, but that grace may reign unto eternal life. No doubt in its full scope and application the passage refers to the future; but it has, I judge, an application to the present. I think it is a mistake to use all the passages of Paul which refer to eternal life in a too exclusively future sense, for Paul commonly presents a thing in its moral aspect, and thus apart from any question of time; this particular passage is abstract, and shews us what was in the mind and thought of God. I want everybody here to accept this, that the thought and purpose of God for a Christian is eternal life. You may say that according to Paul I cannot get it until Christ comes. I do not think that is really the idea of Paul. The apostle says, “He that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap eternal life”. There [p. 148] is such a thing as reaping eternal life; but you will not reap eternal life of the Spirit if you do not first accept the truth that eternal life is the thought of God about you: God has provided for righteousness, and grace reigns through righteousness unto eternal life. In this world, where I once was the slave of sin and under the sentence of death, it is possible that I can reap eternal life! I can hardly conceive anything more amazing. The Spirit is a well of water in the believer springing up unto eternal life; and this is connected intimately with the deliverance of the soul from the law of sin and death. “The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus”, the apostle says in Romans 8, “hath set me free from the law of sin and of death”.
Now I come to another point of very great comfort, namely, that sin is not to have dominion over you, because you are not under law but under grace. Do you accept this, that sin is not to have dominion over you? You may dread sin; every believer dreads sin and fears lest it should have dominion over him, but sin is not to have dominion over you. We have not yet come to what I would speak of as the application of grace to the soul; it has so far been the divine thought, that “sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not under law, but under grace”. That could not have been the case in times gone by, in which sin did have dominion. But now the revelation of this thought of God is a great comfort to me. Knowing what I am, how sin besets me, my liability to be brought under the power of evil, and the temptation of the world, it is a very great comfort to know that sin shall not have dominion over me. If I were under law, sin might have dominion over me; but I am under grace, and sin does not have dominion over me, God takes care that it shall not.
I want to come now to another thought in connection [p. 149] with grace, and I turn to the passage in Hebrews. “Seeing then that we have a great high priest, that is passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our profession. For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need”. Now we advance a little further here, for in this passage we do not get simply the divine thought, as in the passages in Romans, but, as it were, the application of it; that is to say, we “come boldly”, we act in a certain sense. The first thing is to get hold of the divine thought; then to avail ourselves of that which has been placed within our reach, and that is the throne of grace. The throne of grace is accessible to us so that we may “obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need”. It is not here exactly a question of sin, for the provision connects itself with our infirmities; we are conscious of infirmities (I suppose every Christian is); there is the possibility of falling, but in regard to it the throne of grace is available, God is accessible, and we come boldly to the throne of grace to obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need. I think the truth of it hangs on the fact that we have a great high Priest, a representative, who has passed through the heavens, right through to the throne of God. If I were seeking to get on in the world, I would like to be well represented at court if I could not go to court myself, to have a representative there. So in regard to Christians, we are not in heaven, but we have a representative in heaven, One who has passed through the heavens and sympathizes with our infirmities. The practical result is this, we “come boldly to the throne of grace”. Grace is [p. 150] enthroned, it is again the thought of the supremacy of grace, as seen in the expression “throne”. Do not confound the idea of the mercy-seat and the throne of grace; I judge they are not at all the same thought. The mercy-seat is where God addresses Himself to men, puts Himself in communication with men to declare His righteousness. What I understand by the throne of grace is the sense in the soul that grace is enthroned; and if you have not that sense, I do not think that you will come boldly to seek grace. Whatever we may have to meet — and we may have to meet many difficulties in passing through this world, many things that will try and test us — it is a great thing to have the sense in the soul that grace is enthroned, that there is no emergency, no difficulty in which it is possible for us to be placed down here in which grace is not available to us. If I wanted the ear of some great person in the country, it would be a great thing for me to know that he was accessible. That is the idea to me of the throne of grace, God is accessible, attentive to the supplications of His people, so that you can come boldly to obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need. It is not mercy and grace because you have failed; but in order that you may not fail, you receive consideration in the circumstances in which you are placed, and you find grace for seasonable help. Now it is a blessed thing to have all this in passing through this world. I pity the man who is without it. Of all men, I think, the infidel is most in need of pity, for he has no resources outside of himself; while for the Christian what greater comfort can there be than to know that he has resources in God? God is the refuge of the Christian however much he may be tested. And God does allow His people to be tested; and the more light you get the more you will be tested. An accession of light in divine things is [p. 151] sure to bring testing; but it is then a comfort to know that I have a resource in God, that the throne of grace is open to me, that I am represented in heaven; I might be in danger of failing, but the Lord can say, “I have prayed for thee”. Peter was in great danger of failing in faith, after he had failed in conduct, but the Lord had said to him, “I have prayed for thee”. And so the Lord can say to us, for “He ever liveth to make intercession for us”. I think the effect of these things upon the soul is to give us great encouragement. The more I study Scripture the more confident I am that one great purpose of ministry is to encourage the saints. I see the anxiety of the apostle so to bring the word of God to bear upon the saints as to be for their comfort and encouragement; he was continually bent upon their encouragement. And God would encourage the hearts of His people; and the way by which He does it is by showing them how accessible He is to them; it is not simply grace, but the throne of grace, grace is enthroned. And we find this here in the application to us of grace in the infirmity with which we are compassed. I think all are conscious of infirmity, I know that I am; but as I said, there is no greater comfort than the consciousness that we are not left to our own resources, but have ever a resource in God.
Now I come to the passage in 2 Corinthians 12: “And lest I should be exalted above measure through the abundance of the revelations, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet me, lest I should be exalted above measure. For this thing I besought the Lord thrice, that it might depart from me. And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me”. Here,
[p. 152] we have the application of grace to the servant more particularly, though I think the principle applies generally. If you have followed what I have said, I think you will observe that this passage verifies the remark I made that if one gets an accession of light he is bound to be tested. I doubt if any one ever had experience of getting light from God but what he found that something came along to test him, and if possible to baffle him in his course. We find in the case of the apostle, that he got a great gain of light spiritually, he was caught up into the third heaven and heard words unspeakable which it was not lawful to utter down here; that is to say, he was taken by the power of God into the great reality of the scene of which he testified. When he comes down here again there is a danger of his being puffed up by the abundance of the revelations; and he gets a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet him and apparently to baffle him, because it tended to hinder him in the service of the testimony. I daresay you have noticed that the apostle urges the saints to pray that he may have utterance: there was something come in which, I judge, tended to hinder him naturally in the utterance of the great things which God had entrusted to him. He beseeches the Lord three times (he was in earnest about it) that the thorn in the flesh might depart from him; it does not depart from him, but what he learns is this, “My grace is sufficient for thee, for my strength is made perfect in weakness”, I do not think anything can be greater gain to a servant of the Lord than to have experience of the strength of the Lord, for it is a great thing to carry out any little service in the strength of Christ. The apostle says, “Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me”. The Lord gives the apostle a most [p. 153] reassuring word, to assure him that whatever service he had to carry out he should not be hindered by the messenger of Satan, but that in every circumstance, the grace of Christ was sufficient for him. The strength of Christ is something that you could not describe; it is as different from natural strength or natural ability as anything can be. I will tell you how it works; the grace of Christ brings the heart of the servant so blessedly into the reality of things that a man finds ability to speak of them. If you attempt to speak of such things mentally you will be entirely at fault: you can only speak of divine things with any measure of power in so far as they are really enjoyed in the heart. That is how Christ works, how He makes His grace effective, in so directing the heart of the servant into the things, that out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks, and one can find utterance, even though there be an infirmity of the flesh tending to obstruct. So it was with the apostle, he had remarkable experience of the grace of Christ with him in all his service, even though, I suppose, he never lost the thorn in the flesh. And the thorn in the flesh was a messenger of Satan, not a messenger of God; God allowed it to come to the apostle, but it was the messenger of Satan to obstruct him in his pathway of service down here. But then he had the support of the Lord. It is a great experience to be supported by grace in the difficulties of the pathway here. And in the case of the servant, it is grace that is his support. That is one element of grace, it not only relieves but it supports; and I suppose that there is not a Christian but has some experience of what the support of grace is in the difficulties of the pathway, and in the details of service down here.
But now we will pass on to the passage in 2 Timothy: “Thou therefore, my son, be strong [p. 154] in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. And the things that thou hast heard of me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also”. Now, it is evident that the apostle had a great sense of the very arduous path which was before Timothy. The service which Timothy had to carry out was a different service from that of Paul. The gospel was committed to the apostle, and his work was to introduce the testimony; he was the first among the Gentiles. But Timothy was not an apostle, his service was not to inaugurate the testimony, but to be faithful and not to be ashamed of the testimony when it was there; that was the peculiar service to which Timothy was called. And in this way Timothy is the type of the servant who continues to the coming of the Lord; and if I were asked what is the peculiar work of the servant in the present day, I should say it is to stand for the truth in its integrity. God has recovered to us in very great measure the outlines of the truth which was first made known by the apostle, both as to the gospel and as to the church; and the work of the servant in the present day is to hold to the truth which God has recovered to us. Paul knew what a very arduous path that would be, he was conscious that the current would be greatly against Timothy; the mass of professed Christians would be going in another direction, and Timothy was not likely to have an easy time of it. The apostle knew this, and urges on Timothy to “be strong in the grace which is in Christ Jesus”. I find it difficult to attempt to make plain what I judge to be the force of this phrase. It is not to my mind the same idea as that found in 2 Corinthians 12, namely, Christ saying, “My grace is sufficient for thee”; but the passage refers to a quality realized in the soul. If you study this epistle attentively, you will find that [p. 155] every proper characteristic quality of the Christian is said to be “in Christ Jesus”. But when I speak of what is in this way in Christ Jesus, I understand by it that which is to be realized in the soul of the Christian. There is nothing for God in Adam or in the flesh: every quality which God can own, faith and love and whatever it may be, in fact, every proper Christian quality is in Christ Jesus. The apostle had not, nor intended that Timothy should have, the faintest confidence in the flesh, but should realize what was in Christ Jesus. It is a point which comes out all through the epistle, the Scriptures were able to make him “wise unto salvation, through faith which is in Christ Jesus”; I do not think it means through faith of which Christ Jesus was the object, but a character of faith which was realized in the soul. Now the apostle urges him in that way, he was to “be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus”; there was a wonderful resource there; and if Christ Jesus be the One that dwells in the heart of the Christian, the glory and delight of the Christian, then everything that is in Christ Jesus is realized. When I look at the Lord in His pathway upon earth, I see the perfect adaptation of what was properly divine to the circumstances in which He was placed as man down here. Every moral quality of the Lord was of Himself, He derived nothing in this sense from man, He did not even get learning from man; the Jews said, “How knoweth this man letters, having never learned?” Whatever moral quality we see in Christ as a man down here upon earth, the perfection of faith or confidence, or allegiance or devotedness, nothing was derived, all was of Himself. He became man, and in becoming man He beautified and adorned the humanity that He took. Every real trait of beauty in humanity in His case was of Himself: He took that state and form that He might glorify God in it [p. 156] completely. He was manna come down from heaven; and everything was carried out down here in heavenly grace, in that which was of Himself. We have now in a way to fill that place; and everything in a Christian which is grateful to God is in Christ Jesus, and it will only be true as Christ Jesus is really appreciated in the heart. If the flesh is distrusted, and Christ Jesus is our glory, and the delight of our hearts, every quality of Christ Jesus will be exemplified in us. And that is what is to come to pass. Supposing faith and love mark me; where is the source of them? where do they lie? Not in me, but in Christ Jesus; and they come out in me just as Christ Jesus is appreciated in my heart. And that is what is seen all through the epistle; and so you get grace made good subjectively in the servant. It is a different thought from the supremacy or reign of grace in Romans: there, as we saw, you enter into the divine thought in regard of us, that you are not under law but under grace; and then you come boldly to the throne of grace. That is one side; but then there is another side, and that is, “Be strong in the grace which is in Christ Jesus”.
Now, I want to say another word. The moment is critical and dangerous; it is the last moment here; the coming of the Lord is imminent, and I have questioned with myself very much as to how far saints are practically prepared for the coming of the Lord. I can hardly think it is so unless I hear the cry of the Spirit and the bride. The wonderful way in which the Lord presents Himself at the close of the Revelation has struck me. He says, “I am the root and the offspring of David, and the bright and morning star”; that is what He should be to the heart of the Christian, the soul delighting in the sense that He is the root and offspring of David, and the bright and morning star. But what is the answer to it? “The Spirit and the bride say, Come”. You must have the Spirit and the bride saying, “Come”, in view of the coming of the Lord. Do you think that cry has been raised? It may be I am not very quick to perceive it, but I do not hear very much of the cry of the Spirit and the bride; I see the Lord’s coming held as a doctrine, but it is another thing to get the cry of the Spirit and the bride, that is what one would desire to hear. The cry of the Spirit and the bride is the cry of affection, affection that will not be content without the bridegroom. And I do not think you will get the cry of the bride except there be in some measure the sense of union, else it would not be the cry of the bride, for the thought of the bride brings in union. It is normal to the Spirit and the bride to say, Come. But what do you think will prepare you for it? It is to be answering to the word; “That which ye have hold fast till I come”; that is what we have to do. God has been very gracious to us in these last days in recovering to us the truth. How are you going to hold it? Simply as doctrine or in terms? If you attempt it in that way you will never hold it at all, it will slip away from you without your knowing it; you will hold the terms when the value of the thing spoken of is completely gone. You can only retain the truth by the soul being in the reality of it, and I speak of this in connection with this passage, “be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus”, Christ Jesus being the object and joy of the heart; you delight to see that in infinite grace God has been pleased to displace the first man, with all his pretensions, in order that He may introduce the second. I see four points in Christ; I see manhood beautified and adorned here upon earth, so that God should be glorified in man; I see God glorified in man in the putting away of sin; I see, in the resurrection, man accepted; and in the [p. 158] exaltation of Christ, man glorified; Christ is in heaven, the glorified Man, and that Man is to be the glory and delight of the Christian. If that is the case, then I am strong in the grace which is in Christ Jesus, and in some little degree I learn how to maintain the truth which God has been pleased to give to us. Do not mistake your work. We are not called to go forth as apostles to introduce some new system of truth; our work is the work to which God called Timothy, to maintain the truth which it has pleased God to give to us; and the only possible way to do it is by your own soul being in the blessed reality of it, and the very essence of it is that Christ should be the glory of your heart, the man in whom you delight, your glory. Then the result will be that every blessed quality which came out in Him as man will be reproduced in the Christian down here, because Christ is the Man of the Christian’s heart.