Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 476
Philippians 3:20.
THERE can be no comparison between a soaring seraph and a crawling worm. Christian men ought so to live that it were idle to speak of a comparison between them and the men of the world. It should not be a comparison but a contrast. No scale of degrees should be possible. The Believer should be a direct and manifest contradiction to the unregenerate. The life of a saint should be altogether above and out of the same list as the life of a sinner.
We should compel our critics not to confess that moralists are good, and Christians a little better. But while the world is darkness, we should manifestly be light. And while the world lies in the Wicked One, we should most evidently be of God, and overcome the temptations of that Wicked One. Wide as the poles asunder are life and death, light and darkness, health and disease, purity and sin, spiritual and carnal, Divine and sensual. If we were what we profess to be, we should be as distinct a people in the midst of this world, as a white race in a community of Ethiopians. There should be no more difficulty in detecting the Christian from the worldling than in discovering a sheep from a goat, or a lamb from a wolf.
Alas, the Church is so much adulterated, that we have to abate our glorying, and cannot exalt her character as we would. “The precious sons of Zion, comparable to fine gold, how are they esteemed as earthen pitchers, the work of the hands of the potter!” O for the time when “our conversation shall be in Heaven,” and the ignoble life of the man, whose god is his belly, and whose end is destruction, shall be rebuked by our unworldly, unselfish character. There should be as much difference between the worldling and the Christian as between Hell and Heaven, between destruction and eternal life.
As we hope at last that there shall be a great gulf separating us from the doom of the impenitent, there should be here a deep and wide gulf between us and the ungodly. The purity of our character should be such that men must take knowledge of us that we are of another and superior race. God grant us more and more to be most clearly a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people, that we may show forth the praises of Him who has called us out of darkness into His marvelous light.
Brethren, tonight I exhort you to holiness, not by the precepts of the Law—not by the thunderings from Sinai—not by the perils or punishments which might fall upon you if you are unholy. But by the privileges to which you have been admitted. Gracious souls should only be urged by arguments from Divine Grace. Whips are for the backs of fools, and not for heirs of Heaven. By the honorable citizenship which has been bestowed upon you, I shall beseech you to let your conversation be in Heaven. And I shall urge that most prevailing argument, that the Lord Jesus Christ is coming, and therefore we should be as men that watch for our Lord, diligently doing service unto Him, that when He comes He may say unto us, “Well done, good and faithful servants.” I know that the Grace which is in you will freely answer to such a plea.
Our text, I think, might be best translated thus—“Our citizenship is in Heaven.” The French translation renders it, “As for us, our burgessship is in the heavens.” Doddridge paraphrases it, “But we converse as citizens of Heaven, considering ourselves as denizens of the New Jerusalem and only strangers and pilgrims upon earth.”
I. The first idea which is suggested by the verse under consideration is this—if our citizenship is in Heaven, then WE ARE ALIENS HERE. We are strangers and foreigners, pilgrims and sojourners in the earth, as all our fathers were. In the words of Sacred Writ, “Here we have no continuing city,” but, “we desire a better country, that is an heavenly.” Let us illustrate our position. A certain young man is sent out by his father to trade on behalf of the family—he is sent to America, and he is just now living in New York.
A very fortunate thing it is for him that his citizenship is in England. Though he lives in America and trades there, yet he is an alien and does not belong to that afflicted nation. For he retains his citizenship with us on this side of the Atlantic. Yet there is a line of conduct which is due from him to the country which affords him shelter, and he must see to it that he does not fail to render it. Since we are aliens, we must remember to behave ourselves as aliens should, and by no means come short in our duty. We are affected by the position of our temporary country.
A person trading in New York or Boston, though a freeman of the city of London, will find himself very much affected by the trade of the United States—when the merchants of his city suffer, he will find himself suffering with them, the fluctuations of their money market will affect his undertakings and the stagnation of commerce will slacken his progress. But if prosperity should happily return, he will find that when the coffers of their merchants are getting full, his will be the better. And the happy development of trade will give buoyancy to his own ventures.