The Gospel of the Grace of God
The Gospel of the Grace of God
Unto Me, who am less than the least of all saints, is this grace given, that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ. Ephesians 3:8
To whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. Colossians 1:27
The mystery of sanctification is that the perfections of Jesus Christ are imparted to us, not gradually, but instantly, when by faith we enter into the realisation that Christ is made unto us sanctification. Sanctification does not mean anything less than the holiness of Jesus Christ being made ours manifestly, and faith is the instrument given us to use in order to work out this unspeakable mystery in our lives. There are two “means”; the Gospel of the Grace of God, and faith, which enables the life and liberty and power and marvel of the holiness of Jesus Christ to be wrought out in us.
1. The Instrument of Faith
Do we know anything about this mystical union whereby the unsearchable riches of Jesus Christ are made ours? If we have been born from above (rv mg) of the Spirit of God, the deep craving of our hearts is to be as holy as Jesus Christ, and just as we took the first step in salvation by faith, so we take the next step by faith. We are invited, we are commanded and pleaded with, to believe the gospel of the grace of God, which is, “Christ in you, the hope of glory.”
The one marvellous secret of a holy life is not in imitating Jesus, but in letting the perfections of Jesus manifest themselves in our mortal flesh. Do we believe that? Do we believe it with the same simple trust and confidence we had when we first trusted Jesus to save us?
The way to believe it is to listen first. “So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.” Have we listened? Have we ever listened with the ears of our spirit to this wonderful statement—“Christ in you”? Do we hear that? If we are born of the Spirit of God, we do hear it, we hear it more eagerly, more passionately, more longingly than anything else that can be told. We are invited and commanded by God to believe that we can be made one with Jesus as He is one with God, so that His patience, His holiness, His purity, His gentleness, His prayerfulness are made ours. The way the gift of faith works in us and makes this real is by hearing. We first hear, and then we begin to trust. It is so simple that most of us miss the way. The way to have faith in the gospel of God’s grace, in its deepest profundity as well as in its first working, is by listening to it. How many of us have brought the ears of our spirit straight down to the gospel of God’s grace?
Our idea of faith has a good deal to do with the harmful way faith is often spoken of. Faith is looked upon as an attitude of mind whereby we assent to a testimony on the authority of the one who testifies. We say that because Jesus says these things, we believe in Him. The faith of the New Testament is infinitely more than that; it is the means by which sanctification is manifested, the means of introducing the life of God into us, not the effect of our understanding only. In Romans 3:24-25, Paul speaks about faith in the blood of Jesus, and faith is the instrument the Spirit of God uses. Faith is more than an attitude of the mind; faith is the complete, passionate, earnest trust of our whole nature in the Gospel of God’s grace as it is presented in the Life and Death and Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.
2. Implicit Trust in Jesus
Some of us have never allowed God to make us understand how hopeless we are without Jesus Christ. It was my experience of the tempter, and my knowledge of my own heart under his assaults, that made me a preacher of Paul’s gospel. It was my own exceeding sinfulness of heart that ever more and more taught and compelled me to preach Jesus Christ alone, His blood and His righteousness. Everyone who is born again of the Spirit of God knows that there is no good thing outside the Lord Jesus Christ. It is no use looking for sanctification through prayer or obedience; sanctification must be the direct gift of God by means of this instrument of faith, not a half-hearted faith, but the most earnest, intense, and personal faith.
Sanctification is “Christ in you.” Is anything we hear in testimonies to sanctification untrue of Jesus Christ? It is His wonderful life that is imparted to us in sanctification, and it is imparted by faith. It will never be imparted as long as we cling to the idea that we can get it by obedience, by doing this and that. We have to come back to one thing, faith alone, and after having been put right with God by sanctification, it is still a life of faith all through. Those who are in the experience of sanctification know that it means that the holiness of Jesus is imparted as a sovereign gift of God’s grace. We cannot earn it, we cannot pray it down, but, thank God, we can take it by faith, “through faith in His blood.”
When we have become rightly related to God, it is the trial of our faith that is precious (see 1 Peter 1:7). Satan tries to come in and make the saint disbelieve that sanctification is only by faith in God; he comes in with his “cinematograph show” and says, “You must have this and you must do that.” The Spirit of God keeps us steadily to one line—faith in Jesus, and the trial of our faith, until the perfections of Jesus Christ are lived over again in our lives.
3. Identification with Jesus
God says that He will give us the desires of our heart. What are our desires? What do we desire more than anything else on earth? If we are born again of the Spirit of God, our one desire is a hunger and thirst after nothing less than holiness, the holiness of Jesus, and He will satisfy it.
“Whoso eateth My flesh, and drinketh My blood, hath eternal life.” Just as we take food into our bodies and assimilate it, so, Jesus says, we must take Him into our souls. Faith is not seeing food and drink on the table; faith is taking it. So many say, “Oh, yes, I have faith that the Lord Jesus will save me.” If we have faith that the Lord Jesus will save us, we are saved, and we know it. When by the Spirit of God Jesus is made real to us, His presence makes everything as natural as breathing. His presence is the reality.
What do we do to earn a gift? Nothing; we take it. If we have the slightest remnant of thinking we can earn it, we will never take it; if we are quite certain we do not deserve it, we will take it. We come with the sense of abject unworthiness, knowing that “in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing”; if ever I am to be holy, I must be made holy by God’s sovereign grace.
That is the Gospel. We receive it by faith; and the Spirit of God is the One Who makes the simple act of faith the supernatural work of God. To those outside Christian experience it sounds foolish; to those inside it is wonderfully real. Immediately we stretch out the instrument of faith with implicit trust, the Spirit of God imparts to us the holiness of Jesus Christ and all that that means; and it is on this line alone we live. Obedience is the means whereby we show the earnestness of our desire to do God’s will. We receive this perfect adjustment to God as a gift, and then begin to manifest the life of Jesus Christ in our mortal flesh.
Those of you who have never had this experience of sanctification, think! The perfections of Jesus Christ made yours entirely! The Lord showing His love, His purity, His holiness through you! “I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.” It is not power to live like Jesus; it is Christ living in us, and it is His life that is seen, but it is only seen as by faith we walk in the light.
What does Paul say? “My little children, of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you,” and again, “We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works.” How many of us can look up into God’s face by simple faith, trusting entirely in the great gospel of His grace, and say—“Lord, make the sanctification in me as real as the sanctification revealed in Thy Word”? Are we willing for Him to do it? Then we must turn from every other thing and trust in Him. Jesus Christ re-creates us by His marvellous life until we are a new creation (rv mg) in Him, and “all things are of God.” The life is lived naturally as we lived the old life. Consciously? No, infinitely deeper; it is lived moment by moment by the faith of the Sons of God; only in rare moments are we conscious of it. When we come up against a crisis, for a moment we hesitate and wonder how we are going to meet the difficulty then we find that it is the perfections of Jesus Christ imparted into us that meet it, and slowly and surely we begin to live a life of ineffable order and sanity and holiness, kept by the power of God. No wonder the Apostle Paul says, “When He shall come to be glorified in His saints, and to be admired in all them that believe”!
Have you any doubt about the gospel of the grace of God? None whatever, you say. Then launch out in simple faith and say, “My God, make the sanctification of the New Testament mine; make the unsearchable riches of Jesus Christ mine till my Lord and I are one” —so much one that it never consciously occurs to you to be anything else, and in all the circumstances of life you will find that you have the perfections of Jesus Christ—at the back of you? No, dwelling in you! No wonder the Apostle John is so eager that we should walk in the light!