“THE GRACE OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST”
C. Hammond
This is one of God’s jewels. I am taking it out of its setting, but a jewel has an intrinsic value.
Here it is connected with the giving of the saints, but the one who wrote this knew what the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ was. What I would like to enquire is whether we have personally had to do with the Lord in our experience, and if we have, what effect it has had upon us. It had a tremendous effect on Paul who wrote this scripture; he brings it forward from his own experience. He had been in touch with Jesus. One whom he had not known in the flesh, but whose voice he heard from the glory, Saul was a religious man, ultra-religious, a zealot; but we can be extraordinarily zealous in religion and be without Christ! But Saul, afterwards Paul, had met Jesus, and he writes of His grace. Grace, it has been said, is love away from home, but active. Think of how far grace has had to reach out to some of us here!
How far love, which energises grace, has had to traverse to bring us to where we were intended to belong. God’s intention is that we should be restful and at home in His presence; as Mr. Taylor once said, ‘on easy terms with God’.
Peter, in a similar way, says, “for Christ indeed has once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God”, 1 Peter [3: 18. Has the gospel really brought us to God—the God we have sinned against, the God we have offended, the God we have ignored?
Yet we can know Him through the glad tidings, as we meet Him in Jesus. God is prepared to be known in relationship with us. We can even, by the gift of the Holy Spirit, know Him by the name of relationship—‘Father’. The essence of the glad tidings is that the Just One brings us to God. Of all the myriads who have lived, there is only one Man who could be designated ‘the Just’. “The unjust” is plural and involves thousands of men, women, and children. Is everyone here at home with God, restful, and able to go into His presence without a sense of condemnation? We can be restful because our acceptance before Him is in another Man.
I have known of some who were breaking bread who did not have peace, one of the blessings of the gospel. They seemed to think only of Christ on the cross, that things finished there. If they had finished there we might be thankful that the past had been met, but we would not know where we stood before God at the present time. Who of us can say that we have not sinned many times since we were ‘converted’? But sin allowed interrupts our communion. It is Peter who is referring to ‘the Just’, and what a subject of grace Peter was, one who was intense in his desires but not always so intense in the fulfilment of them. He could say to the Lord, “I will in no wise deny thee”, Mark 14: 31. He was one who, warned by the Lord, could shortly afterwards be denying his Lord! We would credit Peter with good intentions, but he did not know himself, as is the case with many of us. We can have integrity and yet be found mistaken in what we think we are equal for in our own strength.
So I take up these two believers because they are remarkable examples for us. The one who wrote what we have read in 2 Corinthians 8 was once an ultra-religious man, as we have said. It might be said, ‘Can we not regard his religion? He has something—he is not godless’.
What is often found is that religious persons are the hardest to convert. They have a sense that they are doing something and are hoping for improvement! But these are not the credentials that God can recognise. The only credential is that we are “of the faith of Jesus”, and if that is true God will give us the sense of being justified by Him. That is what the scripture says (see Romans 3: 26). Thank God if it is so with us! Do we believe that Christ died for our sins and was raised again for our justification? That means that God retains us as justified persons. How can that be? Surely the record is there, and may be on our conscience. But our justification rests not on rectifying our conduct or anything of that kind. Our justification rests not only on the fact that Jesus died for our sins, our offences, but that He has been raised again for our justification. We are justified in a living Man. Some may say, ‘I had the sense of that at one time, but I have lost it’. If you really had it you can never lose it! What you may have lost is the joy of it, the joy of seeing that your acceptance before God is in Christ.
So I refer to Paul and Peter; it is a story of divine grace, and it is with myself, and many here will say ‘Amen’ to that! Paul (when he was known as Saul) witnessed a terrible event—he saw a believer being stoned to death, but kneeling down and praying for his enemies! Think of the serenity of soul of Stephen at such a dire moment, that he said, “Lord, lay not this sin to their charge”. That was the spirit of another Man, the Lord Jesus, who when on the cross said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do”, Luke 23: 34. Jesus had accepted all from the hand of His Father and not from men. So with Stephen, one like ourselves, praying, “Lay not this sin to their charge”. Saul was the official witness to the death of Stephen. He was then great in his
own eyes. We are naturally that way, but grace has the extraordinary effect of reducing us, but never leaving us where it found us.
If you want confirmation, read Luke 15. The shepherd went after the lost sheep until he found it; the woman (typical of the Holy Spirit) searched until she found the lost piece of silver; and what does that represent but the work of God in souls which has become hidden by some obstruction—business, home life, or the world? In a meeting such as this the Spirit is searching for those in whom the work of God may have become obscured, to bring that work into circulation again. We, in whom the Spirit of God has worked, are we in circulation and adding to the wealth that is amongst the people of God? Then there is the prodigal son about whom we have heard many times. Was not divine grace magnified when the Father went out to a self-righteous person and besought him to come in? What did the elder son say? “To me hast thou never given a kid that I might make merry with my friends”. Have we then a circle of friendship outside the Father’s house where there is merriment and dancing? My advice to the younger people is, ‘Cultivate the companionship of those who will do you good’.
To return to Saul, what effect had the Spirit’s arrow of conviction with Saul? It refers to his
“still breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord” (Acts 9: 1), when suddenly he heard a voice which did arrest him. It was the voice of the Lord Jesus, who was watching Saul on that Damascus road. Suddenly a light shone round about him, and falling on the earth he said, “Who art thou, Lord?”, and He said, “I am Jesus, whom thou persecutest”. In persecuting the saints down here Saul was directly affecting the Lord Jesus.
Dear young people, how do we view these believers in whom God has worked and who have
been attached to the Lord Jesus? Maybe our view of them is somewhat mixed. The Lord says virtually to Saul, ‘What is the reason for your opposition?’. If we are really believers we are to spend eternity in their company! We might say, ‘Well, we shall all be changed then’; but the work of God in the saints is to be appreciated and valued now. If God has worked in our souls the normal effect with us is that we shall appreciate His work in others and respect it, and with them our life is to be now.
Saul’s opposition had been to those who “were of the way”, but now he is sent to Damascus to be with those he once had persecuted! Doubtless the death of Stephen had left an indelible impression with Saul, for in Acts 22: 20 he says to the Lord, “When the blood of thy witness Stephen was shed, I also myself was standing by and consenting”. This was the man who wrote “ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that for your sakes he, being rich, became poor, in order that ye by his poverty might be enriched”. The Lord Jesus left the status of deity (not deity itself), to come down here into this world and to suffer in His spirit all that sin had brought in. Oh, what a Saviour He is! So through Isaiah God says, “I have redeemed thee, I have called thee by thy name; thou art mine”, Isaiah 43: 1. The Lord would call you personally; He would say, ‘You are Mine’. Have we admitted the claims of Christ? Saul did, and was told how much he must suffer “for my name”.
Now Peter was also a remarkable example of the work of God in grace. He was one full of energy—almost impetuous at times—but who had undoubted affection for Christ. The final touch of the Lord with Peter, whilst the Lord was still with the disciples, was when Jesus was in that judgment hall. In Luke’s gospel we have the affecting record portraying the wondrous grace of the Lord. When
taunted, with mockery and scourging, and the angry crowd surging round Him, the Lord turns and looks at Peter who remembered the word of the Lord to him that he should deny Him thrice. It penetrated Peter’s soul and he went forth without and “wept bitterly”. The Lord had to do with Peter after that, as related in John 21, and after Pentecost what does Peter say to the lame man in Acts 3: 6?—“Silver and gold I have not; but what I have, give I to thee—In the name of Jesus Christ the Nazaraean, rise up and walk”. Previously Peter had strenuously denied his connection with Jesus the Nazaraean (Mark 14: 71), but now he is affirming the authority and grace that was in that name. We might wonder that one who so signally failed previously could serve with such power; it but indicates the recovering power of the Lord’s grace.
May everyone here have a real link with the Lord Jesus, and find the grace abounding that reaches out to us. Many of us may not be where we should be, but God can reach out to us, as the psalmist says in Psalm 139, “Whither shall I go from thy Spirit? and whither flee from thy presence?” There is infinite patience in the overtures of divine grace, and love is behind it, and love will bring us to be restful in the presence of God. If there is anyone here who has no sense of a vital link with Christ, get into the presence of God tonight, for that link is vital to your present and eternal blessing. May God grant this, for His name’s sake.
Preaching at Plainfield
30 March 1975