FOUR LECTURES ON THE MORAL FEATURES OF CHRISTIANITY
[p. 159] GRACE — ITS CLIMAX AND DISPLAY
Ephesians 1: 1 - 9; Ephesians 2: 1 - 10
My thought is to continue the subject which I have tried on previous occasions to bring before you, namely, grace, passing on today to what I may call its climax. We have had before us grace from the outset, in its application to us, as set forth in the One who is the vessel of it; we have had, too, the teaching of grace, and the supremacy of grace. Now my point is to look at the subject on another side, and that is of display. We have our part in grace; but God will have His part too; and God’s part in grace is in its display to His praise. And you will find that almost every allusion to grace in the Epistle to the Ephesians is in contrast to the way in which it is presented in the Epistle to the Romans. In the latter you get grace pretty much on the side of our need, but in the Epistle to the Ephesians it is looked at more on God’s side, as a display of Himself; and you get an expression which I do not think is found elsewhere, “to the praise of the glory of his grace”. So, too, in chapter 2, “That in the ages to come he might shew the [p. 171] exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness towards us in Christ Jesus”. God will be glorified in the display of “the exceeding riches of his grace” and by that expression I understand the public witness in ages to come to the riches of His grace, and that witness will be in the church. You will find in the Revelation that God intends to have in eternity a witness to His righteousness, and the same thing is seen in principle in Isaiah, namely, that in the millennium God will have a witness to His righteousness. But if God has a witness to [p. 160] His righteousness, He will have also a witness to His grace, and it is that which is brought out here.
Now that is what I shall come to presently, and it will involve pointing out the difference between grace in its application to us and in its display; and that will necessitate reference to another point, namely, the distinguishing a little more definitely between grace and love. I do not know that we have been quite accustomed to make the distinction, but the distinction is to me plain enough. You would not say that God is grace; but God is love; and God did not love man on account of man’s condition. It was in the sovereignty of love that God loved man; God is love, and never was any other than love; it is the one word which is employed in Scripture to describe the nature of God. Every activity of God originated in love, and the result of every activity will be for the satisfaction of His love. But I understand grace to be the fruit of God’s taking account of man in his condition of weakness and need down here. There was no necessity, I imagine, for grace in eternity, when there was no weakness to be dealt with; but it is a wonderful thing that the blessed God should have come out in that way, and that He should have seen fit to adapt Himself in a sense to man’s condition. He might have stood at a distance; the common philosophic idea of God was that He was at far too great a distance from matter to have anything to say to man, or for man to have anything to say to Him. The truth is, that when the light of Christianity came in, it brought out the blessed truth that God, without in any way sacrificing the integrity of His Being, could adapt Himself to man in man’s condition of sin and ruin down here. God takes care of righteousness, He will not sacrifice righteousness for the sake of grace; but He makes grace to reign through righteousness, and the great end of it is “eternal life”. These are the three links in the chain, it begins with grace, grace reigns “through righteousness”, and it is “unto eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord”.
I see three distinct elements in grace in its application to us; the first is light, the second is support, and the third is favour. It is remarkable that though you get the idea of grace in the gospels you get no statement in them about grace. I do not know whether others have observed it, but it is curious that the word “grace” never occurs, so far as I know, in two of the gospels, namely, Matthew and Mark, and it is never used in the sense in which I am speaking of it in the gospel of Luke, although that is the great grace gospel. The only gospel in which the word does occur in the sense I refer to is that of John, and there grace is put in contrast to law; Christ came “full of grace and truth” for He was making God known, and then it adds, “The law was given by Moses, but grace and truth have come to pass by Jesus Christ”. I think that is the only connection in which the word “grace” occurs in John’s gospel. When you come to the epistles, they are full of grace, they make known the glad tidings of the grace of God.
I will speak for a moment about the three points I have just referred to, and first, that the grace of God comes to us in the way of light, making God known to us and making known what the pleasure of God is in regard to man. That is the very first idea I ever get of grace, I get an insight in my soul by the gospel into the pleasure of God about me, and I could not get anything more blessed down here. The extraordinary part of it is that people are so slow to receive grace; it is so often mixed up in their minds with the idea that they must do or feel something; but the grace of God which comes out in the gospel makes known what God has done,
[p. 162] and His pleasure in regard to us down here. It is all worked out in the Epistle to the Romans; God has provided everything; He has set forth His pleasure in regard to man in the Lord Jesus Christ; His pleasure as to what I am to enjoy as the effect of faith is all made known; you cannot add to it, and you cannot take from it. You may be very foggy about it; but you cannot alter it, and when you get clear about it you come to this, that you might have been clear a long while before, had it not been for mists in you. The grace of God is often clouded by mists in us, but it is simple enough in itself. God has been pleased to set forth in the Lord Jesus Christ that instead of man being under the pressure of judgment and death, His pleasure in regard to man is that he may be in peace and favour. And when the gospel is accepted, it comes to the soul as light, and the soul begins to realize what the thought and pleasure of God is in regard to man. Christ is “the Head of every man”, and in Christ as the Head of every man, God has set forth His pleasure; and when the truth of what God has secured and established in the Lord Jesus Christ comes home to me, the grace of God becomes my light. I can rest in the pleasure of God, and if I do not, I am unbelieving. I cannot conceive a greater slight on God than the refusal to rest in His pleasure when He has been pleased to make it known, and yet thousands and thousands of souls are practically refusing to rest there. They want to add to it; but it cannot be added to, because everything is perfectly secured in Christ, and God will not have it added to. The only thing is to accept the light of the pleasure of God, receiving everything in it, forgiveness of sins, peace and favour. There is no question outstanding or unsettled.
But when I come to speak of the saint, then I [p. 163] get grace in another aspect, namely, support. I learn that grace is the pre-eminent and governing principle. Whatever can be brought against man, grace will carry him superior to it. If all the powers of earth and hell were arrayed against the saint, grace can enable him to overcome them, grace reigns through righteousness — ‘ye are not under law, but under grace’, — we are supported by grace, and the very sense in the soul of the grace of God becomes the support of the soul. We “come boldly to the throne of grace”; it is the consciousness in the soul that grace is enthroned; and the sense of that is the practical support of the soul here in this world. It is blessed to think of what is in God and the Lord Jesus Christ, and that it is available for us, and we are to have the joy of it in our hearts. That is the support of every saint down here; grace is support.
Now all this is found in Romans. In that epistle the apostle says, “I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth”; and then the first expression of God’s grace is that we are “justified freely”; it is the light coming to us and making known to us that which God has secured in Christ. Then “grace reigns through righteousness”, that is the principle of the moment; it is no longer the reign of sin by death, but grace reigning through righteousness unto the blessed result of eternal life; that is, that grace will effect its own result; it will not fail, and eternal life will be the issue of it. And then there is another thing, that “we are not under law but under grace”, we are in God’s favour.
Now I pass on to the last part of my subject, namely, grace in its display. I do not touch now on what we have had before us on a former occasion, the teaching of grace, what the effect of grace is in the soul; but I think I may just say that if grace [p. 164] can be viewed as light and support, this necessitates another principle, namely, administration. And this is apparent in the gospel; the gospel is the glad tidings of the grace of God, and administration is necessarily connected with it; power has come down from on high to carry out the ministry of the gospel, and thus the thought of administration evidently is allied with grace. If it were not so, grace would not be available to man; God might have gracious thoughts in regard to man, but if God were not pleased to make those gracious thoughts known in the ministry of the gospel, the grace would not be effective for man.
But I doubt if love as a principle admits of the idea of administration. I think I can tell you what the principle of love is as contrasted with grace — love is attraction, love draws everything toward it. Grace works outward from God; the grace of God brings salvation to all men; but love draws inward to God. I suppose most here are acquainted with the simplest elements of astronomy; and if so, you know that the whole system of heavenly bodies is held together by the principle of attraction. If you take a limited part, what is called the solar system, every planet in that system is held in its place by the principle of attraction centred in the sun: no planet can move out of its own orbit, because of that influence. Now I think you could hardly have a better illustration of the principle of love; and I believe that great principle of attraction will prove itself to the very widest extent in the vast universe of bliss, and that every family in heaven and upon earth will be held in its own proper place by the influence of attraction; and the source and centre of the attraction is in God. That is what love is to me, that blessed principle in God, the divine nature, by which every family which God intends to bless will be held in its own place, and disorder will be [p. 165] completely shut out; all that is of evil and contrary to love will be excluded by the very power of love; it is that which will characterize, I judge, the eternal state, when God will be all in all. I do not believe that anything is acceptable to God but what is the fruit of love. God may and does bear with a great many things; He may, in a certain sense, own people that are zealous; but for a service to be really grateful and fragrant to God it must be the fruit of love. If everything is right in my family, I am a centre of affection there; of course, I am not perfect, but if I am not the centre of affection, and if all affection has not its relation to me, things are not right. But God has the right to be supreme, and God is divinely perfect, and therefore love is perfect in God, and God Himself is the blessed centre of affection. And every family in heaven and on earth will be ranged, as it were, round this blessed centre, and will be held in its own proper place; that is the great end before God. There will be the new heavens and the new earth in which righteousness resides; there must be righteousness because sin has called in question the glory of God; but righteousness is not the principle which will hold all together; that will be love. It will be effectual here upon earth. Do you think that there will be need of elaborate legislation here when every man loves God with all his heart, and his neighbour as himself? Do you think when the church is in heaven that you will find anything that tends to alienate the affection of one from another? Love will reign supreme in heaven; I believe it reigns supreme there now, but we shall know and taste it fully when we are in heaven. And we shall not get on very much together down here if we do not love one another; but if you are under the influence of God’s love it will most certainly work out in love to those that are of God down here. It is impossible [p. 166] for a man to know the love of God and to fail in love to the saints. It is what we lack; love is called in Scripture “the bond of perfectness”, there is no other bond which will really hold all together except love. And you see the perfect exemplification of it in the Lord himself when He was here upon earth; what sustained Him in all that He had to pass through, and held to Him His own, was love, and nothing could quench it. Even if the Lord pronounced woes upon the scribes and Pharisees, it was the necessity of love, because of their terrible perversity and the hindrance which they presented to man as to the truth of God; they assumed to be the teachers and to instruct others in the things of God, and yet they were only misleading; hence it was perfect love which stirred the indignation that pronounced such terrible woes upon them. Love sustained the Lord in His arduous path here, and it was superior to every evil and opposition which He met.
One word more. The place and privilege of Christians is known; we are put in the place of children, and it is love which has given us that place in regard to God: “Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the children of God”. And there is another thing to be said about love, it is love which will have us in heaven. You go to heaven because love will have you there. It has been said that love will have the company of its objects; and hence love will have the saints in heaven because it is love. This truth comes out in Ephesians 2: “God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us” — it is not here His grace that is spoken of, but His great love — “even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, ... and hath raised us up together [Jew and Gentile], and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus”. I argue from it that if you had a full sense of the love of God, you would be conscious of being in heavenly places in Christ. I have said that it is not faith that takes you to heaven now, it is love; and that is the appreciation of and response to God’s love. How you will get to heaven in result will be that Christ will take you there; but in the present, it is God’s love that has carried you there. It is a remarkable passage; it does not speak of grace in that connection; it shows you what is characteristic of God, that He is “rich in mercy”; but then there is also the sovereignty of His love, “his great love wherewith he loved us, even when we were dead in sins”. I ask, Do you believe that the love of God will have you in heavenly places? The love of God would have Israel in the land; and the love of God will have its perfect satisfaction when it has the church in heavenly places. The love of God is a wonderful thing, and it is the bond by which He holds us to Himself. The first effect of the Holy Ghost’s presence in the believer is that the love of God is shed abroad in his heart; and the same Spirit enables him to cry, Abba, Father. The whole thing seems to me divinely perfect; I cannot conceive any security for a blessed eternity except in love, but in love I do see it. And just as in the law of attraction I see the assured stability of the solar system, so I see in love the security for eternity of the vast universe of bliss. It would be well if we knew more about it. There is nothing I desire more for myself than in my soul to know the greatness of God’s love and what His love would have. Love draws me to himself, and holds me to Himself, and is not content till I am in heavenly places.
It may be I am speaking too much about love, and yet not too much. But I want to pass on to [p. 168] the display of grace. We read in Ephesians 1: 5, “Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved”. Here you get the expression, “the glory of his grace”. I understand by that the climax of it, the full satisfaction of His grace. In His grace He has made us “accepted in the beloved”. When it becomes evident that the saints are in the place of the sons of God before the Father, there will not be any doubt of the greatness of God’s grace; it will be the glory of His grace.
There is a connection I will dwell upon for a moment. And it is this — you would not be fit subjects for the glory of God’s grace if you did not appreciate that grace now. There is an education going on in souls which is really fitting them for the display in them of the glory of God’s grace; we get great acquaintance with grace now; we cannot get on a day without it; we have to come to the throne of grace continually, and in serving the Lord according to our measure, we are conscious of the support of His grace. And thus we get such an acquaintance with the grace of God now that it will not be a strange thing if we become vessels for its display hereafter. The knowledge of divine grace in the present time is part of God’s way of forming the soul practically, that we may be suited to be vessels in which His grace will be set forth. Grace in the Epistle to the Ephesians has more of the character of favour than of relief, that is, that when our souls are fully acquainted with the grace of God and with the way in which that grace has adapted itself to us in a scene of contrariety, then in a scene where there is no contrariety at all, the saints will come out as the display of divine favour. There will not be in heaven a doubt about God’s [p. 169] favour, but I would hardly care for God’s favour to be displayed in me then if I were not already acquainted with His grace; it would not be God’s way. You must be morally suited if the grace of God is to have its expression in you in glory. Then the saints will come out manifestly as the bride of Christ. When the new Jerusalem, the church, comes down from God out of heaven, do you think there will be any doubt about God’s grace then? Do you not think that every stone in that city will be perfectly acquainted with the grace? There will be nothing there which will not be proper in kind, every soul there will have been formed really by the ministry of grace down here; and the consequence is that when the new Jerusalem comes down from God out of heaven, it will be the perfect full expression of the grace of God, it will be “the glory of his grace”.
One word more in regard to the verse in chapter 2. I have already pointed out that two qualities, two characteristics, of God are mentioned: “God who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us”. I repeat that the principle of love is attraction, and it is love which will have you in heavenly places for its own satisfaction; but when God has you in heavenly places then comes out something more. God will make known in us the exceeding riches, the surpassing wealth, of His grace; and how? “In kindness towards us in Christ Jesus”. Just as God will have in eternity a witness of His righteousness, so He will have a witness of His grace; and the church is that witness, and in it He will make known the surpassing riches of His grace. That is a wonderful thought, and yet it is made known to us; though I do not think it is equal to the love. My delight is in the love, in being attracted to God, and to find in His love the full satisfaction of our hearts. But none the [p. 170] less God has made known to us what He intends to display in the church. What expressions we thus have in regard of God: “rich in mercy”; “his great love”; “the surpassing wealth of his grace”; and, “his kindness towards us in Christ Jesus”! God has set the saints in a place and state before Him in which He can display in them the surpassing wealth of His grace, He has set us in [p. 167] the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, in the state which is suited to His presence; He has chosen us in Christ before the foundation of the world, that we might “be holy and without blame before him in love” — not in grace only, but in love. But when in that place and state, then it is that the church will be the vessel in which God will make known the surpassing wealth of His grace in His kindness towards us in Christ Jesus.
And you get another word which confirms the idea that it is the present experience of God’s grace which fits our souls for it, so that the favour of God will sit well upon you. The apostle says directly, “By grace ye are saved”. You have experience now of the grace of God which has saved you, you have got salvation by grace; and when it comes to be a question of the display of God’s favour, you are morally fitted to be a vessel of that display because you are so well acquainted with the grace. I do not suppose any saints will be so acquainted with the grace of God as the church. The apostle Paul said, “By the grace of God I am what I am”, and I do not think any one so well realized what the grace of God was; all mercy was shown in him, and he is a pattern of all the saints, and the church is after that pattern. I cannot conceive anything more blessed than to know that it is for the satisfaction of God’s love that He would have us in His own habitation, and will then make the saints the vessel in which He will set forth the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness towards us in Christ Jesus. Now do you not think these thoughts are divine? Did ever such things enter into the heart of man? Do you not think Scripture is true when it says, “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him”. I know that every saint will have his part in it when the time comes, but the point with me is present entrance; and if you love God you will get a present entrance through His grace into the things which God has prepared for them that love Him, and the very principle on which these things are communicated is love. It is love and love only which enters into the thoughts of love; it is only love that knows God, because God is love. Every family in heaven and on earth is named of the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, for the title “Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” brings in the thought of love; Christ is the supreme object of the love of God, and every family has its character from the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
May God give to us to see the greatness of that which is before us. I could hardly tell you the satisfaction that it is to me to get away from man and man’s thoughts into the greatness of God’s thoughts. I see such wonderful conceptions in Scripture, utterly beyond all the power and possibility of man’s heart; but those things are made known to us, and the Spirit of God works in saints, forming them according to God, that they may get an entrance into these things. Depend upon this, your capacity for entering into divine things is love. Your capacity for entering into human things may be natural intelligence, your adaptability to this world may be your ability to enter into the things of this world; but your ability to enter into the things of God is that you partake of [p. 172] the divine nature. God having made us conscious of His love, He awakens our love in return; “we love him because he first loved us”, and we get an entrance into the great things which God has prepared for them that love Him. But then, there is the great public display. God will make known in the church the surpassing wealth of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.