Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 614
Delivered on Sunday Morning, February 12, 1865
“For Christ’s sake.” Ephesians 4:32.
THIS is the great argument of awakened sinners when they seek mercy at God’s hands. Once they could boast of their own righteousness. They could rest upon their feelings, their resolutions, their goodness of heart, or their prayers—but now that God the Holy Spirit has shown them what they are and revealed to them the desperate evil of their hearts, they dare not offer any other plea than this—“For Christ’s sake.” They look and there is no man to succor. They cast their eyes around and there is no helper and their heart knows neither peace nor hope till they behold the Person and sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Then straightway their mouth is opened with arguments and they can plead with God with prevailing reasons, saying, “For Christ’s sake, for Christ’s sake, have mercy upon me.”
Indeed, Beloved, this is the only argument which can prevail with God in prayer, whether the prayer comes from saint or sinner. It is true that God did not originally love us for Christ’s sake, for His electing love was Sovereign and absolute—the Father loved us not because the Savior died—but the Savior died because the Father loved us from before the foundation of the world. Nevertheless the only channel of communication between a loving Father and His elect people is the meritorious and glorious Person of Christ. The Father gives us no privilege except through His Only-Begotten, nor are we looked upon as accepted or acceptable except as we stand in and through our Lord Jesus, accepted in the Beloved, perfect in Christ Jesus.
I must use no other argument when I plead with God but the name of His dear Son, for this is the sum of all heavenly logic. Whatever Covenant mercy I may wish for, this is the key which will unlock the storehouses of Heaven. No other name will prevail with God to scatter His mercies among undeserving sinners. He who knows how to plant his foot on the solid foothold of, “for Christ’s sake,” needs not fear, like Jacob, to wrestle with the Angel of God. But if we forget this in our prayers, we have lost the muscle and sinew from the arm of prayer—we have snapped the spinal column by which the manhood of prayer is sustained erect—we have pulled down about our own ears the whole temple of supplication as Samson did the house of the Philistines.
“For Christ’s sake,” this is the one unbuttressed pillar upon which all prayer must lean—take this away and it comes down with a crash! Let this stand and prayer stands like Heaven—reaching upward—holding communion with the skies. In two ways, as the Holy Spirit may enable us, we will read the words before us. It is God’s argument for mercy—“For Christ’s sake.” It is our reason for service—“For Christ’s sake.”
I. GOD’S ARGUMENT FOR MERCY. He forgives us “for Christ’s sake.” Here let us first look at the force of this motive. And then, secondly, let us notice some qualifications in it which may, through God’s blessing, be the means of comforting seeking sinners who desire to find rest in and through Jesus Christ.
1. Let us consider the force of this motive by which God is moved to forgive sinners, “for Christ’s sake.” You know that if we do a thing for the sake of a person, several considerations may work together to make our motive powerful. We may be willing not only to do some things, but many things—no, all things—for the sake of the individual admired or beloved. The first thing which will move us to do anything for another’s sake is his person, with its various additions of position and character. The excellence of a man’s person has often moved others to high enthusiasm, to the spending of their lives—yes, to the endurance of cruel deaths for his sake.
In the day of battle, if the advancing column wavered for a single moment, Napoleon’s presence made every man a hero. When Alexander led the van there was not a man in all the Macedonian ranks who would have hesitated to lose his life in following him. For David’s sake the three mighties broke through the host, at imminent peril of their lives, to bring him water from the well of Bethlehem.
Some men have a charm about them which enthralls the souls of other men who are fascinated by them and count it their highest delight to do them honor. There have been, in different ages, leaders, both warlike and religious, who have so entirely possessed the hearts of their followers that no sacrifice was counted too great, no labor too severe. There is much to move the heart in the excellence of a person. How shall I, in a fitting manner, lead you to contemplate the Person of our Lord Jesus Christ, seeing that His charms far exceed all human attractions as the sun outshines the stars?
Yet this much I will be bold to say, that He is so glorious that even the God of Heaven may well consent to do ten thousand things for His sake! Brothers and Sisters, we believe our Lord Jesus Christ to be very God of very God, co-equal and co-eternal with the Father, essential Deity. Jesus is no distinct God, separate from the Father, but, in a mysterious manner, He is One with the Father, so that the old Jewish watchword still stands true. “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God is one Lord.” And yet Jesus is Jehovah-Tsidkenu, the Lord our righteousness.