Spiritual Poverty and
Heavenly Riches
Preached at Trinity Street Chapel, London, on
Tuesday Evening, July 30, 1844, by J. C. Philpot
"Having nothing—and yet possessing all things." 2
Cor. 6:10
In the Gospel of Jesus Christ there are many 'apparent
contradictions'. I use the word apparent, for there are no real
contradictions. What at first sight appears paradoxical and inconsistent is
found, when we see it in the Spirit's light, to be perfectly consistent and
harmonious with the whole scheme of revealed truth. The very glory of the
gospel is, that it is a mystery; and if it is a mystery, there will be
things in it apparently contradictory, and utterly irreconcilable by human
reason.
The Apostle in this chapter has brought together some of
these apparent contradictions, as worked out in his own experience. He says,
"By honor and dishonor, by evil report and good report; as deceivers, yet
true; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as
having nothing, and yet possessing all things." To a natural man, to a
reasoning mind, to one not initiated by divine teaching into the mystery of
the gospel, what clashing and contradiction are to be found in these
expressions! And yet, when seen in the light of the Spirit and known and
felt in a gracious experience, all the apparent contradictions disappear,
all the seeming inconsistencies are blessedly harmonized, and we taste a
beauty and glory in the very paradoxes and very apparent contradictions. Mr.
Deer, who of all men seems to have been led most deeply into experimental
truth, speaks in similar language of Christian experience:
'Tis to feel the fight against us,
Yet the victory hope to gain;
To believe that Christ has cleansed us,
Though the leprosy remain."
With God's blessing, I shall attempt this evening to show
how the apparent contradiction in the text is reconciled to, and is
harmoniously consistent with, not only revealed truth, but also with the
experience of every one taught of the Spirit. May the Lord in mercy crown
the word with his blessing.
"Having nothing!" The Apostle might have, and
doubtless had, some reference here to his needy state naturally. The Lord
saw fit to keep him in a state of absolute dependence upon himself for
temporals. He did not use, as he tells us, the liberty which he had as an
Apostle to "live by the gospel" that he preached; but he consented to
voluntary poverty that he might not "hinder the gospel of Christ." So that,
in a literal sense, the Apostle speaks here of "having nothing," as being
completely dependent upon the Lord for the bread that he daily ate, and the
clothing he daily wore. And yet, though such a beggar in temporals, rich
in spirituals; though "having nothing," except what the Lord gave him as
alms for his daily need, yet in the enjoyment of spiritual mercies, and in
the possession of Christ in his heart, the hope of glory, "possessing all
things."
But, I think, this would limit the Apostle's meaning; we
would not get, so to speak, into the mind of the Holy Spirit in this
passage, if we confined our interpretation merely to this point, that the
Apostle by "having nothing" only meant that he had nothing in a temporal
sense. We will take the expression in a higher sense, and place it upon
another and more spiritual footing—we will view the Apostle speaking here,
not so much of his temporal state as literally dependent upon God for daily
food; but consider him as speaking of his state spiritually. And thus
we shall find, that the two clauses of the text, so far from clashing with
or contradicting each other, meet, in the soul's experience, in a most sweet
and blessed harmony. And we are borne out in this interpretation by the
Apostle's own words in this very Epistle, (2 Cor. 12:11) where he says,
"Though I be nothing." To "be nothing," and to "have nothing," are
expressions that differ but little; so that we may bring the Apostle's own
authority and his own interpretation to bear upon the text; and consider,
that when he said "having nothing," his views were carried beyond this
present temporal scene and the struggles for daily bread; that he had a
higher reference, and looked at things in a spiritual point of view, when he
spoke of himself "as having nothing, and yet possessing all things."
Thus, then, if God enable us, we will unfold the two
branches of the subject, and show, what it is to "have nothing," and what it
is to "possess all things" And then we shall see how these two opposites, or
rather apparent opposites, so far from contradicting each other, are
brought, in the experience of the child of God, sweetly to harmonize.
I. "Having nothing."
Is that the experience of
a man in a state of nature? It cannot be; we know it is not. Could any man,
in a state of nature, honestly take such an expression into his mouth? Some
might say, "Man has nothing by nature." It is true; but though that is his
state, it is not his experience. Man by nature is in that spot in which we
read (Rev. 3:7) the church of Laodicea was. I do not mean to say, that the
Laodicean church was in a state of nature. She was a true church, though
fallen; the grace of God was in her, though she had backslidden from that
spiritual standing which she once occupied. But her language in her fallen
state was that of every man in his unregenerate condition, "I am rich, and
increased with goods, and have need of nothing;" though to the
heart-searching eye of Omniscience she was "wretched, and miserable, and
poor, and blind, and naked."
The Apostle, then, in using the expression, "having
nothing," is not speaking of man in a state of nature, but of his own
experience, and of the things he had spiritually felt and known. He was
describing the state into which he had himself been reduced. I say,
"reduced;" for we do not set out with this experience, nor do we come here
in a day. There is a stripping, emptying process carried on by God the
Spirit in the conscience; and it is only after we have passed through this
stripping and emptying process, that we come into the experience of the
Apostle, "having nothing." Until the Lord brings the soul down from its once
lofty eminence, breaks to pieces its self-righteousness, and cuts from under
its feet that ground on which it once proudly took its stand, it cannot come
into the spiritual meaning of these words.
The wealthy stock-broker that walks daily upon Exchange
cannot honestly say he "has nothing," when he knows that he has his
thousands; nor can any one say, spiritually, he "has nothing," while he has
any stock of strength, wisdom, or righteousness left. But if this wealthy
stock-broker, through some unsuccessful speculation, (mark, I am merely
using this as a figure; I am not saying that speculation of any kind is
justifiable) were reduced to complete beggary, then he could say, he "had
nothing;" and his conscience (if he had one, which few speculators have)
could bear witness that he spoke the truth. Now I use this figure just to
show the way in which the Lord deals with his people.
When we first set out Zionward, we start full of SELF—we
have no idea what God means to do with us. Our idea of getting to heaven is,
by accumulating a treasure of good deeds, heaping up an amount of piety, and
living a life whereby we may propitiate God, and secure to our souls a seat
in glory. Nature never can pursue any other path; nature knows no other way
to heaven, but to climb up by the ladder of good works, and to crane itself
up to glory by working at the winch of human merit.
But we read, "My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither
are your ways my ways, says the Lord—for as the heavens are higher than the
earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your
thoughts." (Isa. 55:8, 9.) Our thoughts are, to make ourselves rich; his
thoughts are, to make us poor. Our thoughts are, to increase in piety; his
thoughts are, to make us sink down into the ruins of self. Our thoughts are,
to advance day by day in sanctification and holiness, and continually
increase the amount of good works we mean to produce; his thoughts are, to
teach us feelingly our helpless and hopeless state, and to strip us of all
boasting in the flesh. But we struggle against this humiliating process. Our
proud heart rebels against God's dealings with us in this manner; and being
ignorant, for the most part, of what the Lord is doing in us by thus
stripping us of the fancied treasure we are getting together, our proud,
presumptuous, hypocritical heart rises up in perverseness and anger against
it.
We do not often see what the Lord is doing with us until
some months, perhaps years, after we have been put into the furnace. I am
sure I can say so for myself. We certainly do not know, at the time, what
the Lord is doing with us, when he is stripping us of our fancied religion.
But when we come out of the furnace, and the Lord makes it clear to us how
much tin and dross we have lost, we see the reason why we were put there.
When we come out of the waters, we are glad we were sunk there, though we
may have been half drowned in the process, when we see our filthy rags left
at the bottom.
There is a word in the song of Hannah (a song I am very
partial to, for it is a sweet epitome of the Lord's dealings with his
people) that throws a light upon the text. In reviewing God's dealings with
her, that gracious woman says, "The Lord kills, and makes alive; he brings
down to the grave and brings up. The Lord makes poor, and makes rich; he
brings low, and lifts up." (1 Sam. 2:6, 7.) What a wise and well-taught
woman Hannah was! She knew both sides of the question. She was not for
liberty without bondage, pardon without guilt, mercy without misery,
salvation without condemnation, the riches of Christ without the poverty of
the creature. She (as we find 1 Sam. 1) had passed through an experience
that had taught her better things. She had poured out her soul before the
Lord in groans and cries, and he had manifested his mercy to her conscience.
And thus she had learned both sides of the question. She had known black, as
well as white; darkness, as well as light; sorrow, as well as joy;
stripping, as well as clothing; humbling, as well as raising; a furnace to
pass through, as well as coming out like tried gold; floods of water to wade
in, as well as to stand upon the bank blessing and praising the Lord. That
gracious and wise woman, speaking by divine inspiration, has left this
sentence upon record; and there it stands as a bulwark against all those who
say, "That a man can know Christ and salvation without any stripping and
emptying process;" "the Lord makes poor, and makes rich."
Now Hannah must have had an experimental meaning in these
words. She had no temporal necessities; her husband Elkanah was not a poor
man; his coming up to Shiloh yearly, with his wives and children, shows that
he could afford to travel. And we read, that "he gave to Peninnah his wife,
and to all her sons and her daughters portions; but to Hannah he gave a
worthy (or "double") portion." We hear only of her 'soul trouble';
therefore, when she said, "The Lord makes poor," she must have had reference
to the spiritual dealings of God with her soul. Taking, then, these words of
Hannah as throwing light upon what Paul says here, "having nothing," we see
that the Apostle means spiritual poverty and nothingness.
The Lord makes poor by taking away fancied riches. To
use a figure, (and sometimes figures throw light upon truth,) a man may have
invested all his property in a bank. He may get up in the morning, and
please himself with thinking what a wealthy man he is; but before the hour
of noon tidings come that the bank is broken; that, like many banks, it has
been nothing but a swindling company; and that he is completely ruined.
Before the tidings came, he thought himself rich; and yet all the time his
wealth was but fancied, only a bubble. While he was counting and calculating
on the wealth which he thought so securely invested, it had all been
swindled away months and years ago; and he finds himself in the deepest
poverty, when he fancied himself abounding in riches.
So spiritually, how many people think they are sure to go
to heaven; their hope is firm and steadfast; they never doubt their faith;
they have no exercises of mind, no trials, no desponding seasons, no
harassing temptations, no fiery darts from Satan; and they are quite
confident that they are safe for eternity. But unless God the Spirit has
revealed salvation with power in their conscience, their hope stands upon a
slippery foundation. It will not do to take the Scriptures, and get your
religion out of them, unless God seals mercy and pardon with power upon your
conscience. Like the man whose money was all in the swindling bubble bank,
you may fancy yourself rich when you are really a bankrupt, and dream of
wealth in the midst of poverty. You may resemble the man of whom we read
(Isa. 29:8), "It shall be even as when a hungry man dreams, and, behold, he
eats; but he awakens, and his soul is empty; or, as when a thirsty man
dreams, and behold he drinks; but he awakens, and, behold, he is faint, and
his soul has appetite." He dreams in the night, that he is sitting down to a
banquet; but the pangs of hunger convince him to the contrary in the
morning.
So a man may dream and delude himself by thinking how
much religion he possesses; but when the Lord begins to show him what vital
godliness really is, and convinces him that all saving faith stands, not in
the wisdom of man, but in the power of God; and that he has not a grain, nor
an atom, but what the Spirit works in the heart, he sinks down into the
depths of soul poverty. Grace makes a man's heart honest in the fear of the
Lord; and therefore when he weighs up his religion in the "balances of the
sanctuary," unless he feels that faith, hope, and love have been powerfully
wrought in his conscience, he begins to find how much of his confidence
stands in the flesh, and how much that he fancied to be a safe foundation
for eternity was built upon nothing else but delusion or fleshly excitement.
Now it is from feeling this, and experiencing a measure
of the stripping hand of God in the conscience (and I have known what it is
to roll upon my bed in trouble while being stripped of my false religion,
though I believe that the root of the matter was in my soul at the time),
that the Lord drives his people out of the refuges of lies in which many a
professor hides his deluded head. For instance, there is–
1. Our own RIGHTEOUSNESS,
that Babel by which we would gladly climb up into heaven, and escape the
rising waters of the flood; that proud tower must be leveled, and fall into
complete ruin. The Lord, by bringing the law in its purity and spirituality
into the conscience, discovers to us what sin is, and thus opens up the
depravity of the heart and the vileness of our nature. There are many people
who are strongly opposed to hearing anything about sin; they cannot bear to
have "corruption," as they call it, even touched upon. But depend upon this,
if you never know the malady, you can never prize the remedy. It is not very
pleasant to go into a hospital, and look at the sores of the patients there;
but what takes the patient there but the very sores which are so disgusting
to the eyes of the healthy?
So stout, unwounded professors may say, "This gloating
over corruption and the sores of human nature, how disgusting it is!" It is
disgusting to a healthy man to look at these sores. But if the man had a
wound made in his conscience, and was covered with bruises and putrefying
sores, how glad he would be to be admitted into the spiritual hospital; to
have Jehovah-rophi, "the Lord my healer," come to his bed-side, and heal him
by a touch of his gracious hand, and the application of the balm of his
blood to his conscience.
2. So with our own WISDOM.
I do not know how it is with you; perhaps the Lord has led you otherwise.
But when I set out, what a wonderful stock of wisdom I thought I would get
from reading the Scriptures, and good men's books; and I thought, by such
helps I could easily understand the truth. But the Lord has to teach us
different lessons from this. I have been to the University, have learned
languages, studied commentators, and thought to make myself wise by
cultivating my natural understanding. I have passed through all those things
which are by many considered such wondrous helps; I bought book upon book,
and commentator upon commentator. And what did all these helps do for me?
They never gave me one grain of true wisdom. I value all these things in
their proper place. But there is no greater delusion than to think we can
learn the truths of God by the exercise of creature intellect.
When the Lord begins to open up his truth in our
conscience, he shows us (and that is the main point I am aiming at) our own
folly, and that though we may "know his mysteries" and "have all knowledge,"
yet, short of his teaching, we know nothing as we ought to know. This is
what the Apostle says, (1 Cor. 3:18) "If any man among you seems to be wise
in this world, let him become a fool, that he may be wise." We thus become
fools for Christ's sake; and learning what ignorant besotted wretches we are
strips us of our fancied wisdom, and brings us down to our true level. You
would not think it, but I assure you it is true; I have, as I told you
before, learned languages, studied commentaries, and exercised my mind upon
the Scriptures; but I have often felt, that a poor ploughman who only knew
how to handle the plough– if the Lord teaches him more deeply by his grace
than myself, is a wiser man than I. And the greatest dolt that cannot read a
word in a book, and does not know great A from great B, if the Lord but
teach him, knows better and deeper the meaning of the word of God and the
nature of the kingdom of heaven, than I, or any man, ever could by all our
study of God's word distinct from that teaching. When, then, we come to know
and feel in our conscience that 'divine teaching' is the only source of all
true knowledge, the pride of human wisdom is brought down. And what a mercy
it is to be brought there!
3. So again, with respect to our own
STRENGTH. How strong we think we are
when we set out in the divine life! We do not need God to strengthen us
against temptation; we may not dare actually to say so; but we never think
of the Lord's keeping us, or of his strength being made perfect in our
weakness. We have little idea of being guided and kept continually by him
that "our footsteps slip not," and of his power being thus made known. But
we go on leaning, as we think, upon the Lord and depending upon him, but in
a great measure, in reality, depending upon ourselves. After a time,
however, we begin to find 'our' strength fail us; we have no power to stand
against the temptations that attack us; our inward slips and falls, and the
idolatrous workings of our depraved nature, startle and alarm us. From these
things we painfully learn our weakness, and come to that spot where the
Apostle was, when Christ said to him, "My strength is made perfect in
weakness." (2 Cor. 12:9.)
4. So with respect to holiness and inward
SANCTIFICATION. There is much talk about
holiness. That "without holiness no man shall see the Lord," is most
certain; and that there is a holy principle which the Lord communicates to
every man to whom he gives a new nature, is most certain also. But how often
is mere fleshly holiness mistaken for the inward sanctification of the
Spirit! And until we learn painfully that we have no real holiness of
nature's growth, and until we are made to know our own vileness and
defilement, we never can learn what gospel holiness is. As long as the Lord
lets us, we whiten the sepulcher, and make the outside of the cup and
platter clean. But when we painfully feel what defiled wretches we are by
nature and practice, what vile thoughts fill our mind, what perverseness is
working and bubbling up from the bottom of our heart, we cry out with the
leper, "Unclean, unclean;" and with Paul, "O wretched man that I am! Who
shall deliver me from the body of this death?"
And thus, as the Lord leads us into the secret, we come
into the experience of the Apostle—"Having nothing."
Now I would just direct your thoughts for a few moments
in the WAY in which the Lord brought his Apostle here. What an
unheard-of way it was! It is enough to strike our minds with wonder and
astonishment. He took him up into the "third heaven," (as we read 2 Cor.
12:2) to that blissful abode of eternal happiness and purity, where he saw
and heard things "not lawful," nor "possible," for a man to utter; and his
soul was bathed in such unutterable bliss and overwhelming joy, that he knew
not whether he was in the body, or out of the body. But did this teach him
his weakness? Not so; he learned no weakness there—for we read, "Lest I
should be exalted above measure, through the abundance of the revelations."
The pride and presumption of his carnal mind would puff him up; as Deer
says, "The heart uplifts with God's own gifts."
There was "given to him, therefore, a THORN in the flesh,
the messenger of Satan to buffet him, lest he should be exalted above
measure." Now here we have the experience of the Apostle in learning the
secret of his own weakness. A "messenger of Satan" was sent "to buffet him."
There is something very expressive in that word; it means literally,
"beating a man with a fist." Here, then, we have the Apostle coming down
from the "third heaven," and the Lord sending "a messenger of Satan to
buffet him." Whatever this thorn in the flesh was, this vile temptation, as
an emissary of the Devil, beat his face to a pulp, smote him with the fist
of wickedness, and by these infernal assaults brought him into the greatest
distress and horror of mind. Under the pressure of this "thorn in the
flesh," "this messenger of Satan," (some vile temptation, no doubt,
perpetually haunting and harassing his soul) "he asked the Lord thrice that
it might depart from him." Now what was the Lord's answer? "My grace is
sufficient for you; for my strength," (not your strength) "is made perfect
in weakness. Most gladly therefore," says the Apostle, "will I glory in my
infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me." He could bear the
very buffetings of "the messenger of Satan," he could endure the rankling
"thorn in the flesh," he could submit to the vile temptation that
perpetually haunted him, in order that he might find the strength of Christ
made perfect in his weakness.
But what a mysterious dealing was this! That this highly
favored man of God should come down from the "third heaven" to the very
gates of hell, (that is not too strong an expression, for "the messenger of
Satan" came from hell)—that he should sink, I say, in soul feeling to the
very gates of hell, there to be buffeted by "the messenger of Satan;" and
all to teach him a lesson that heaven did not teach him, the strength of
God made perfect in weakness!
Do you not think, my friends, that if we are to learn our
weakness, we must learn it in the same way? How did Paul get his religion?
And must we not get ours, in our feebler measure, through the same channels,
by the same means, and by the same inward teachings? If we are to learn the
secret of Christ's strength, it is not by making daily advances in fleshly
holiness, and getting stronger in SELF day by day. It is not by old nature
being so mended and improved, as by and by to be transformed into grace,
just as the colors in the rainbow are so harmoniously blended that you can
scarcely tell where the one ends and the other begins. For this is what is
really meant by "progressive sanctification," that the old nature is so
gradually softened and blended into grace, that we can scarcely tell where
the old man ceases and the new nature commences. I say, did the Apostle
learn Christ's strength in that way? No—but by being buffeted by Satan's
messenger, and thus being beaten out of his own strength, he found Christ's
strength made perfect (what a word that is, perfect!) in his weakness.
If, then, you know not experimentally the meaning of the
expression in the text, "having nothing" in self, you may depend upon it,
your religion, however highly you may think of it, is but a delusion; or if
you have not learned it in some measure as Paul did his, in the experience
of a feeling heart. I am not setting up a rigorous standard for conformity;
but we must all learn our weakness and Christ's strength in the same way
that the Apostle learned his. If you know anything of Christ it must be by
learning what you are by nature, and by finding in him a remedy for every
malady, and a mercy for every misery.
II.
Now this leads me to the second part of
the text, "Possessing all things." I
hinted that these two clauses of the text, so far from being really
contradictory, had a most blessed and harmonious consistency. They dovetail
into each other; and so far from being inconsistent, heighten and illustrate
each other. When we look at a beautiful picture, we do not say, that the
shade disturbs or destroys the light, or that the light disturbs and
destroys the shade—but we see that the light and the shade mutually relieve
each other. So in a beautiful prospect, sunlight and shadow do not destroy
each other; but the light sets off the shade, and the shade sets off the
light. The light and the shade are really contrasting; but the contrast
enhances the beauty of the landscape. It is true, a reasoning man may say,
"Having nothing and yet possessing all things!—It is a flat contradiction!"
We may fancy an infidel, or a person that had never seen the Bible, picking
up a leaf in the street, and reading, without knowing it to be the word of
God, this list of apparent contradictions. Would not the pride of his heart
rise up, and would he not throw it away with scorn and say, "The man that
wrote it is a fool." But seen in the Spirit's light, we find that so far
from contradicting each other, they beautifully harmonize.
For instance. "Having nothing," that is the needful
preparation, the indispensable preliminary to "possessing all things;" and
only so far as we "have nothing," do we "possess all things." But how do we
possess all things? Not in self; that is very clear. We possess all
things in Christ. We find the Lord himself, if I may use the expression,
puzzling his opponents by the apparent contradiction between those
Scriptures that speak of him as God, and those that speak of him as man. For
example; he asked the Pharisees, "What do you think of Christ? Whose son is
he? They said unto him, The Son of David. He said unto them, How then does
David in spirit call him Lord, saying, The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit on my
right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool? If David then call him
Lord, how is he his son?" (Matt. 22:42-45.) The difficulty was, to reconcile
how David could call him Lord, if he were David's son? How could the son be
Lord, and the child reign over the father? Now that difficulty could not be
explained except by acknowledging Christ's divine nature, in which he was
David's Lord; and his human nature, in which he was David's son. By seeing
the union of the two natures in one glorious Immanuel this apparent
contradiction disappears, and we see a blessed harmony in the very seeming
inconsistency.
So in this passage, "having nothing, and yet possessing
all things"—how can that apparent contradiction be reconciled? It is
thus—"having nothing" in self, "possessing all things" in Christ. And just
in proportion as I have nothing in self experimentally, so I possess all
things in Christ. For my own beggary leads me out of self to his riches; my
own unrighteousness leads me, under the Spirit's teachings, into Christ's
righteousness; my own defilement, into Christ's sanctification; my own
weakness, into Christ's strength; my own misery, into Christ's mercy.
But how do we "possess all things" in Christ? Let us take
for our guide what the Lord the Spirit says in that striking passage, "Who
of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and
redemption." (1 Cor. 1:30.) Let us see, then, how of God Jesus is made these
things unto us.
1. Look we first, then, how he is made
RIGHTEOUSNESS. Assuming that the Lord
has, by his inward teaching, brought us down to poverty and beggary, our own
righteousness has disappeared; we have "seen an end of all perfection, and
found God's law exceeding broad." Now this has prepared our soul for the
reception of Christ's righteousness. I do not wonder that men who hold
freewill views should call Christ's imputed righteousness "imputed
nonsense;" such blasphemies (for they are blasphemies) do not strike me as
amazing. As long as we hold the principle of freewill in the creature, all
that Christ is and has for his people is nonsense, because it is giving us
what we do not want, bestowing on us a treasure we do not stand in need of;
so that the expression, however blasphemous (and it is most blasphemous), is
fully consistent with the whole scheme of human freewill and creature
righteousness.
But when the Lord makes known by his teaching in the
conscience, that we have no righteousness; that, as the Prophet speaks, "all
our righteousness are as filthy rags," (and what a figure is that!) and
convinces us that we must have a perfect righteousness in which to stand, or
sink into hell under the overwhelming wrath of God; as the Spirit opens our
eyes to see the glorious righteousness of the Son of God, and that all the
obedience, both acting and suffering, of Jesus is imputed to those who
believe on his name—having none of our own, we are led, taught, and guided
to embrace this imputed righteousness as all our justification before the
throne of God.
And thus the deeper we sink into a conviction that we
have no righteousness of our own, and the more we trample under foot our own
filthy rags, the higher do we rise in an experimental reception of Christ's
glorious righteousness as suited to all our necessities. Thus, not having
any righteousness of our own, not an atom whereby God can be pleased, we
indeed "have nothing;" yet, in having Christ's righteousness, we "possess
all things." We possess a full satisfaction made to God's righteous law; all
the demands of God are honored, justice is completely fulfilled; not a
single atom is missing, not a single iota deficient, not a thread in the
garment lacking.
What a beautiful picture has the holy Spirit made use of
in Psalm 45:14, to show us Christ's imputed righteousness, where, speaking
of the Queen, he says, "She shall be brought unto the King in clothing of
needlework." What a sweet expression that is, if I can explain it without
vulgarizing it! Every stitch in the clothing of needlework must have had the
needle to pass through it. And O, what a succession of laborious stitches
must the clothing of needlework have gone through in which the church is
attired! Now, when we look at every holy thought that passed through
Christ's mind, every holy word that dropped from Christ's lips, every holy
action performed by Christ's hands; at every holy emotion, every holy
prayer, every act of obedience, from the moment that he came into the world
until the moment he died on the cross, we see how stitch by stitch the
justification of the church was wrought out. We thus see how all the demands
of the law were completely satisfied, and how the Queen stands before her
Bridegroom in the clothing of needlework. And when Jesus looks upon the
clothing of needlework, he sees that every part of that clothing has been
accomplished by his own hands. Thus, however needy and naked we are as to
our own righteousness, when standing in his righteousness we possess "all
things," and we need no more.
2. So with respect to WISDOM;
for he "of God is made unto us wisdom." We have none; not an atom, not a
grain of true wisdom. But Christ is "made unto us wisdom," in all the
circumstances of life, in all the difficulties of the way. So that we cannot
come into any condition or circumstance of difficulty, for which there is
not a provision in his wisdom. Having none of our own, in him we possess all
wisdom.
3. So with respect to STRENGTH.
Strength of our own we have none. We are all weakness, and cannot stand a
day. People talk of their firm standing; but if God were to deal with them,
as with Job, take away the hedge, and let Satan come upon them with one of
his temptations; if he did not support them, they would be at once swept
away.
Christ being strength to the soul, he supports it in
every state into which it may come. Not having any of our own strength, we
have the strength of God; not the strength of a man, like ourselves, but the
strength of God in every state. So that, as the Lord said to Paul, "My grace
is sufficient for you." Our sufficiency is in his strength, not in our own.
Our strength fails when we need it most. His strength is suited for every
place, for every case, every condition, every circumstance; so that a man
may say, "Christ is my strength; I therefore have strength; for I have just
as much as is suited to my day;" as the promise is, "As your day is, so your
strength shall be."
4. And so with respect to
SANCTIFICATION. We have none in ourselves; but Christ of God
being made unto us "sanctification," we have all holiness in him. Holiness
is to have Christ dwelling in our hearts; to have him making our bodies his
temple, and working in us that which is well pleasing in his sight. He is
the fountain of holiness. There is an external sanctification, whereby the
church was sanctified in him before the foundation of the world; and an
internal sanctification by his indwelling presence. Shall I go then to the
filthy streams, or to the fountain of living waters? I might as well dip a
cup into the common sewer, or fill a goblet from the puddle that rolls down
the dirtiest street in London, while a fountain of pure water was at hand,
as look to my own holiness, when "the holy child Jesus," the Son of God, is
sanctification to all that believe in his name; internal sanctification by
his indwelling Spirit, and external sanctification by his covenant headship.
So I might similarly carry out every other circumstance.
Happiness, in this world, we have none; life is a blank; afflictions,
troubles, and trials are our lot here below, for "through much tribulation
we must enter the kingdom." Can we find comfort here? It is blighted.
When the Lord drove Adam out of paradise, he planted the cherubim there with
the flaming sword pointing every way; and man will never enter this paradise
again below. But in Christ we possess all things.
Thus the Lord leads us into these two branches of divine
truth, by showing us first that we have nothing, and then, that in him we
possess all things. There are two rooms in the chambers where God brings his
people, as he says, "Come my people, enter you into your chambers." These
are the two rooms in the spiritual chambers—the room of self-abhorrence, and
the room of admiration of Jesus; the room of humility, and the room of
exaltation; the room of poverty, and the room of riches; the room of beggary
on our part, and the room of wealth in him; the room where all that the
creature has is felt to be a blank, and the room where all that Jesus gives
him, and all that Jesus has, is seen to be the source of eternal bliss and
happiness.
So that these two branches of divine truth, so far from
clashing with each other, sweetly, gloriously, and blessedly harmonize. And
just in proportion as we are let down into the one, we are led up into the
other; and just as much as we know spiritually, experimentally, and vitally
of the one as "having nothing" in self; just so much shall we know
spiritually, experimentally, and vitally of the other to "possess all
things" in Christ.