Part 8

Let us endeavour, then, to realise the legal condemnation gone; the judicial forgiveness granted; the adoption of sons bestowed; the Father’s table spread; the Father’s forgiveness ready; the Father’s love shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given us. And realizing this, shall we not draw near in faith? Shall we not confess to Him that we are heartily sorry for all our misdoings? Shall we not ask Him for His parental forgiveness? Shall we not feed at His table? Shall we not rest on His loving arm? Shall we not regard it as our chief joy to please Him? And shall we not out of the fulness of loving hearts exalt His name for the unspeakable riches of redeeming love; and praise Him from the bottom of our hearts that by His marvellous grace we even now ‘have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins?’ and having it, can appeal to a Father’s love for daily forgiveness as for daily bread?

XII. PURITY.

‘Who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works.’—TIT. ii. 14.

IF we wish to understand the various passages in the word of God on the subject of redemption, we must never forget the two parts of which redemption consists, so often brought before you in these lectures—the satisfaction of the law by the payment of redemption price, and the actual deliverance of the ransomed people as the result of the finished atonement. It is of especial importance that we bear this well in mind in the study of those texts in which redemption is spoken of as being either now in progress or still in the future, for there is no possibility of any present or future atonement, that having been for ever completed on Calvary, and such passages can only refer to the work of deliverance which will not be complete till the glorious day of our Lord’s appearing. The atonement is complete, but the deliverance is in progress still, and those texts refer to it.

I believe that this remark is of great importance to the right understanding of this text. It occurs in the midst of one of the most practical chapters in the Bible. The words are addressed to the various different classes of society. Aged men are exhorted to be sober and sound in faith; aged women to be in behaviour as becometh godliness; young women to be sober and to love their husbands and their children; servants to be obedient, pleasant, not contradictory, and honest; and all of us to deny ungodliness and worldly lusts, and to live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world.

Now, according to the text, the great motive power to all this is the fact that our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ ‘gave himself for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people zealous of good works.’ Let us study then the redemption work, and the redemption power; and may God the Holy Ghost so bless it to our souls that we may be led in practical life to adorn the doctrine of God our Saviour in all things!

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I. The redemption work.

To redeem in these words clearly means to deliver, as the result of the finished atonement. The foundation of the deliverance is the fact that our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ gave Himself for us. The actual deliverance is described in the words, ‘that he might redeem us from all iniquity.’ A question has arisen as to the meaning of this expression. Does it mean that He might redeem us from the curse and judgment of all iniquity and so set us legally free, as when He said, ‘Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us?’ or does it mean that by the power of the Holy Ghost He might deliver us from the bondage of all iniquity, and so make us actually a holy people unto Himself? There is much to be said for both interpretations. ‘Iniquity’ may stand here for the curse, or guilt, of iniquity, as ‘sin’ stands for the guilt of sin in 1 Pet. ii. 24: ‘Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree.’ Or it may stand for sin itself, and its deadly power over the ruined soul. I am inclined on the whole to prefer this latter application, and to believe that the words describe the actual deliverance from the dominion of sin. The context clearly points in that direction, and so, as far as I can judge, do the words. The word here rendered iniquity strictly means ‘lawlessness.’ It is the same word as that in 1 John, iii. 4, where it is translated ‘transgression of the law,’ and appears generally to express the actual disobedience to the law, or will of God. If this be the case the idea evidently is that in our natural condition we are slaves and bondsmen to disobedience, or lawlessness. But that the great God and Saviour made an atonement for us in order that He might set us free from that dreadful yoke, and call us out to be a people set apart for His praise. This is in harmony with what we are taught in Rom. vi. 19, for there we are described as having in former times ‘yielded our members as servants to uncleanness and to iniquity’ (the same word), and as now being set free by the grace of God. But there can be no such freedom without redemption from the curse of sin. You remember that when a man had sold himself to be a slave, the only way in which he could obtain his liberty was by his kinsman legally redeeming him from his master. So it seems to be here. Christ our kinsman has paid the ransom in order that we, being redeemed, may be freemen unto God, and may now as freemen have the joy of serving Him.

But this is not all that is done for us, or nearly so, for the text does not merely refer to the bondage from which He died to deliver us, but leads us also to consider the new life to which He came to raise us. It takes the positive side as well as the negative. It looks forward as well as backward. It describes the new-master to whom being redeemed we belong, as well as the old master from whom by redemption we are delivered. Now you see this transfer very clearly in the text. The old master is lawlessness, the new master is Christ Himself. He came to redeem us from all iniquity, and ‘purify unto himself a peculiar people.’ ‘Peculiar’ does not mean odd, or eccentric; but special, and separated, as you may see by a comparison of Deut. vii. 6, and xiv. 2. In chap. vii. 6, we read, ‘The Lord thy God hath chosen thee to be a _special_ people unto himself,’ and in chap. xiv. 2, ‘The Lord hath chosen thee to be a _peculiar_ people unto himself.’ You see that these words respecting Israel of old exactly correspond to those here spoken of the redeemed Church, and they completely explain what is here meant by the word ‘peculiar.’ As Israel was a peculiar people, delivered from Egypt, and set apart unto God, so those who are in Christ Jesus are redeemed from the old bondage of their past lawlessness, and set apart as a special people unto Him who has redeemed them by His blood.

Observe then the three characteristics of this new service, the service of the redeemed.

(1.) It is the service of the Redeemer Himself. In redeeming us from iniquity He makes us His own, and sets us apart unto Himself. If redeemed we belong to the Redeemer. We love Him, we follow Him, we serve Him, we are His.

(2.) It is a pure service.

He does not merely separate, but purifies us unto Himself. He carries on such a sacred work in the soul, and effects such a marvellous change that the words of St. John are realised, ‘Every one that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure,’ and that we even know something of the blessing which He described in the words, ‘Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.’

(3.) It is a zealous and active service.

If we are thus redeemed we are not to sit still, and quietly rejoice in a holy abandonment of soul; but we are to be up and doing. There is a great work to be done for God, and who is to do it if they are idle whom the Lord has redeemed? We want no slothful, listless, inactive, self-indulgent believers. Our missions are crippled for the want of help; and our work at home sometimes seems paralyzed by the lukewarmness of professors. But those who are brought near to God, and purified as a peculiar people unto Himself, must be filled with zeal for His service; for the lukewarm professor is a scandal to the Church of God. The object of the Lord’s death was to call out a zealous people; and when there is no zeal, there is no effective result from the cross, for the purified people, redeemed by His grace, will, according to the text, be ‘zealous of good works.’

Now all this is a work at this present time in progress. It is not, like the atonement, complete, but is going on now. It is at this present time in progress in the Church. The people who form the purchased possession are being daily gathered in to God. He has not yet accomplished the number of His elect. The body of Christ is not yet perfected, and our earnest desire is that day by day, yes, this very day, immortal souls may be delivered from the power of darkness, and translated into the kingdom of His dear Son. So also is it progressive in the soul of each individual. We are not suddenly wafted into perfection, or made pure as Christ is pure. This chapter is a very clear proof of that, for while it speaks of the great purpose of the Lord’s death, viz., to redeem us from all iniquity it is full of exhortations to all classes amongst us against practical misconduct. It is perfectly clear, therefore, that the deliverance is not yet complete. There is temptation around and temptation within; sin in the world and sin in our own hearts; corruption in society and corruption in our own nature; so that even after we have actually experienced redeeming grace, we may say, as St. Paul did, ‘Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?’ (Rom. vii. 24.)

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II. This leads to our second subject, the redemption power.

The redemption power is the Redeemer Himself, and so, as pointed out in a previous lecture, the Lord Jesus is called in Isaiah, lix. 20, ‘the Redeemer,’ and in the quotation of that passage Rom. xi. 26, ‘the Deliverer.’ And this applies whichever way you understand the words. If you apply them to the curse of sin it is He that delivers from that curse by the satisfaction of the law through His precious blood. He paid the ransom, and in the Father’s name He has set us free. Or, if you apply it to the bondage of lawlessness, it is equally He that delivers, for it is just as much His office to release from the dominion of sin by the power of the Holy Ghost as it was to remove the curse. In either sense the passage brings Him before us as a present living Deliverer, not merely one who has given Himself for us, but one who is now engaged in actually delivering us from all iniquity and purifying unto Himself a peculiar people. The first clause, ‘He gave himself for us,’ describes His work on the cross finished at once and for ever; the latter part, ‘That He might redeem us from all iniquity,’ His present work as a risen and living Saviour, continuously employed in delivering and purifying His Church. Whatever we may think of the clause, ‘that he might redeem us from all iniquity,’ this is clearly the meaning of the words that He might ‘purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works.’ So that either way we are brought to the indisputable and most important lesson, that in our great struggle against sin, either without or within; either in the world or in our own hearts; and in our efforts to aim at the practical Christian life exhibited in this chapter, we may take the greatest possible encouragement from the fact that it is the present office of our living Lord to deliver and to purify. We may be profoundly conscious of the deep, inbred corruption of our own nature. We may know by bitter experience how often we have failed; we may be humbled to the dust at the thought of our shortcomings; we may be ready to say, as St. Paul did, ‘Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?’ but in the midst of it all we may look up in peaceful trust, and thank God for the delivering power that is in Christ Jesus, our risen and living Head. We may say as St. Paul did, ‘I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord.’

But there is one thing which we must be sure to remember. The purifying power depends entirely on the reconciling blood. According to this text, in order that He might redeem and purify, He first gave Himself for us; or, in other words, in order that He might deliver, He first made satisfaction for sin by bearing its burden Himself. We may, therefore, be perfectly sure of this, that we shall never know His power as a deliverer unless we first know the power of His atonement. Not one amongst us could ever have been delivered if the curse of God had not first been removed, and that curse of God could never have been removed except by the fact that the Son of God became a curse for us. Till that was done there was no hope of deliverance, and till that is applied or appropriated there is no hope of personal holiness. Before the special, or peculiar, people could be purified unto Himself, they must be set free from the curse, and redeemed through the power of His blood. Not one of that people has the curse of God still resting on his soul, for so long as the curse remains it is perfectly impossible that any one of us should be one of the people. While, therefore, you trust in a Saviour living to deliver, be sure you keep well in view that same Saviour having died to atone. His life will be nothing to you unless you first know His death. You will never experience the power of His work in you until you realise His most gracious work completed for you on the cross. That blotting out of sin through the precious blood of the Lamb must lie at the foundation of all true holiness. It is the rock on which we stand, and unless there be a sure standing ground there is not the slightest hope of progress. If, therefore, you wish to press onward, and earnestly desire to be heart and soul holy to the Lord, and I am sure I am speaking to many that do, be sure you keep close to the great old foundation truths. Trust your living Lord as your living Deliverer. Accept His promises of the Holy Spirit’s power in all their fulness and throw yourself on Him for their complete fulfilment; but while you do so remember that the one power which in the purpose of God could remove the curse was the atoning blood, and the one hope of your being partaker of the deliverance rests altogether on the one fact that the great God our Saviour in boundless mercy gave Himself for you.

XIII. RESTORATION.

‘And when these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh.’—LUKE, xxi. 28.

IT is perfectly clear that the redemption alluded to in these words is something still future. It is the bright hope which is to cheer the little flock through the storms of the latter days. When the world is full of perplexity, and men’s hearts are failing them for fear, the Lord’s people are to look up in calm, happy, peaceful, trusting hope in the full assurance of their approaching redemption. ‘When these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh.’ It is perfectly clear, therefore, that our Lord was not speaking of the great redeeming act which took place eighteen hundred years ago on Calvary, but of the final deliverance, the completion of His redeeming work, when He will come in His kingdom and set His people free. This final deliverance must be our subject in this lecture. May the Lord bless it to our souls, and grant that, when the time comes, we may be amongst those who rejoice in the blessing!

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I. The redemption here spoken of is the deliverance of Jerusalem. We must not isolate the passage from its context, or forget that the words were spoken to Jewish believers. Thus up to the end of the 24th verse our Lord foretold the destruction of Jerusalem with the terrible afflictions that were to precede it, concluding with the words, ‘Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled.’ Then follows the description of the latter days, and all the perils preceding the advent, concluding with the words, ‘Look up, and lift up your heads, for your redemption draweth nigh.’ Surely, then, there is a connexion between the 24th and 28th verses. The one describes the desolation, and the other the recovery: the one the bondage, the other the freedom; the one the captivity, the other the deliverance; the one the iron yoke on the neck of the captive, and the other the glorious restoration when the Deliverer shall appear in Zion.

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II. But though the passage refers to the restoration of Jerusalem, it clearly does not stop there, but includes the redemption or deliverance of the Church. When I speak of the Church I am not speaking of those who have nothing more than outward Christianity: but of the Church of the first-born, that Church described in the words, Eph. v. 25, ‘Christ also loved the Church, and gave himself for it, that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word.’ This Church is described in Eph. i. 14, as His ‘purchased possession,’ and all the members of it are now His own. They are His own by virtue of the ransom of the eternal covenant, and it is therefore called, Acts, xx. 28, ‘The Church of God which he purchased with his own blood.’ And they are His own by the call of the Holy Ghost, gathering them out from a wicked world, and by His divine power incorporating them into Christ. Thus in one sense they have been redeemed already, for the ransom has been given for their life, and they have found forgiveness through His precious blood. They may say, every one of them, as St. Paul did in the 7th verse of that same chapter in the Ephesians, ‘In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins.’ But yet, according to the 13th verse, they are still waiting for redemption, and during the waiting time are solemnly sealed unto God, and assured of what is to come by the present earnest of the Spirit. ‘In whom also, after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise;’ and so, in chap. iv. 30, they are told not to grieve the Holy Spirit, by whom they are ‘sealed unto the day of redemption.’ There is, therefore, hereafter to be a redemption of the purchased possession, a redemption of that which has already been redeemed, or, in other words, a final deliverance of the ransomed Church. The ransom is paid, but the time is not yet come for the ransomed Bride to be finally free, and presented to her Lord in glory.

It is delightful to look forward to this coming restoration when we think of the present position of the Church of God surrounded as it is by a wicked world outside, and, what is far more painful, harassed by division, false doctrine, inconsistency, and formalism within. I am not surprised that St. Paul compares this present waiting time to the night, for there is a great deal all around us exceedingly dark, but we must never forget the approaching morning. We may be greatly distressed by witnessing such defects and difficulties as we do witness in the Church of Christ, but according to this passage we need not be disheartened, for our redemption draweth nigh. The Deliverer will soon come to Zion, and there will be no difficulties then. The Redeemer Himself will soon set all things straight. There will be complete light when the Sun of Righteousness arises with healing in His wings. We are not, therefore, going to be downcast by difficulties, or to doubt His truth because we see His prophecies fulfilled; but, whatever happens, whether persecution from without, or false teaching within, we will remember His own most assuring words, and act on them, ‘When these things begin to come to pass, then look up and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh.’

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III. It will be a redemption of the body. I need not stop to prove that the body is not yet free from the bondage of the curse. Though the soul is free in Christ Jesus the poor body is still subject as much as ever to the strong hand of death. So we read, Rom. viii. 10, ‘If Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the spirit is life because of righteousness.’ So that, even when Christ is in us, and the Spirit is life, the body still remains dead, subject to death, and actually dying as we all well know. The brightest and holiest living believers are not exempt from the trials of a death-stricken body.

But if this is the case with the living Church, how much more is it with the vast multitude of those who are now asleep in Jesus! Think of the noble line of the saints of God who were once, as we are, serving God on earth in the flesh, but who are now in the condition, to us quite inexplicable, of disembodied spirits, with the soul resting before God while the poor body in utter weakness lies prostrate in the grave. I cannot imagine a more marvellous contrast than that which now exists between the present condition of the two parts of man while awaiting the resurrection of the dead. It is impossible to imagine any thing more utter, more complete, more hopeless, than the bondage and subjection of the body; or more blessed, more peaceful, more joyous, than the present rest of the soul in the presence of the Lord Himself. But when the redemption takes place, as predicted in this verse, the body itself will be set free. You will see this in a moment if you connect two verses in Rom. viii. From ver. 10 we have already found that, even when the Spirit is life because of righteousness, the body is still dead because of sin; and the result is, as you read ver. 23, that even those who have the first-fruits of the Spirit groan within themselves. They share in respect of death the groaning of a death-stricken world. But in the midst of it all they can rise above it in triumphant hope, for they are waiting, and looking out for deliverance, as you read in the latter part of that verse, ‘Waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of the body.’ The body therefore shall be redeemed and rise again. They that are in the graves shall hear His voice, and shall come forth; and the very sea shall give up the dead that are in it. I know that men say it is impossible, and I know that there are difficulties connected with the subject which to the eye of man appear to prove its impossibility; but there is no such thing as impossibility with God. He who created can restore. He who said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light, He can say ‘Let there be life,’ and there will be life. So that, although to us death is quite irresistible; though no wealth can ward it off, and no physician’s skill can baffle it; and although, when once it has taken place, all human hope is gone for ever; yet, when the Redeemer comes to Zion, death itself will be powerless: those dear ones who now sleep in the grave will come forth in risen bodies at the bidding of their blessed Saviour; and He, the gentle, and loving, and tender Lord Jesus, will fulfil His grand prophecy as given by the prophet Hosea (xiii. 14), ‘I will ransom them from the power of the grave; I will redeem them from death. O death, I will be thy plagues! O grave, I will be thy destruction; repentance shall be hid from mine eyes.’

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