THE GRACE OF GOD AND HIS LOVE
[p. 467] THE GRACE OF GOD AND HIS LOVE
Titus 2: 11 - 15; Ephesians 1: 3 - 6
There are two sides to the gospel; there is the side connected with the grace of God, and there is the side connected with the love of God. There is the grace of God, which brings salvation to all men, as in Titus 2, and I do not doubt but that many a christian follows that line; but there is not a word in the passage about the purpose of God as to man. It is “the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men”, and it has its teaching in those who appreciate that grace, and the teaching is that “we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world; looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and Saviour ..”. But there is another line of things that God has revealed in Christ, namely, the counsel of His love, which is that we should be before Him as children according to His nature; and that is what comes to light in the child of promise. And if you apprehend the true Isaac, and the light of divine purpose in Him, then you learn that God has “chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love; having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself according to the good pleasure of his will”.
Now, if the child of promise in that sense, and what is revealed in Him, should take possession of your heart, the practical effect will be that the flesh will not be tolerated, for it is nothing but a hindrance. The flesh will be continually clinging to this thing and to that thing down here, like certain creatures which cling so tenaciously to a rock that it is most difficult to remove them. The flesh clings as tenaciously as ever it can to the world and to what is seen, and that baffles and hinders [p. 468] many a christian, so that he enters to a very small extent into the light of God’s purpose about him. If it pleases God to give you the light of His counsel in the child of promise — and all the counsel of God is revealed in the child of promise, the true Isaac — then you will realise that Jerusalem above is free, which is our mother; we are all the children of promise; and then the flesh, Ishmael, is cast out, and we stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free, and are not entangled again with a yoke of bondage. That is the path marked out for the christian who gets the light of God’s purpose in Christ.
Many christians are, alas! in bondage, and there are two reasons for this. The first is that they have but a very poor apprehension of the counsel of God’s love, and the other hangs upon this, that they tolerate to a large extent the flesh, and what they tolerate becomes their scourge; they find the flesh continually clinging to something natural; they perhaps give too much place to objects of natural affection, and that may hinder the soul and keep it in bondage. The contrast to this comes out here in type, Isaac is weaned, he is separated from the natural, and then it is that the counsel of God is revealed in him. And so, too, all God’s counsel in regard of us is revealed in Christ apart from the flesh, and God has given us the power by which that counsel can be effectuated in us, the well of water which springs up in us to eternal life, and as the well of water springs up, the rule of the flesh is refused.
God has thus given to the believer a power that is superior to the flesh. You cannot get rid of the flesh by any effort of your own. If a man were to shut himself up in a monastery all his life, he could not get away from the flesh, nor really from the world. In a babe there is no image of the world yet formed; the principle of will is there, and as the child grows up and comes to years, the image of the world is formed in the heart, and it can never get rid of it. If a man shuts himself up [p. 469] from the world, he has got the image of the world in his heart, and can no more get free from it than from the flesh. No power can free you, nor anyone, from the flesh except the Spirit of God. He is the well of water in the believer that springs up unto eternal life. You are entitled to be free from the flesh, for God has condemned not only sin, but sin in the flesh, in order that He might impart the Spirit. And the practical benefit that you will gain will be a full entrance by the Spirit of God into God’s purpose concerning you, and you will not get it otherwise.