Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 640
“Only let your conversation be as it becomes the Gospel of Christ” Philippians 1:27.
THE word “conversation” does not merely mean our talk, one with another, but the whole course of our life and behavior in the world. The Greek word signifies the actions and the privileges of citizenship and we are to let our whole citizenship—our actions as citizens of the new Jerusalem—be such as becomes the Gospel of Christ. Observe, dear Friends, the difference between the exhortations of the legalists and those of the Gospel. He who would have you perfect in the flesh exhorts you to workthat you may be saved, that you may accomplish a meritorious righteousness of your own and so may be accepted before God.
But he who teaches the doctrines of Divine Grace urges you to holiness for quite another reason. He teaches you are saved because you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and he speaks to as many as are saved in Jesus and asks them to make their actions conformable to their position. He only seeks what he may reasonably expect to receive—“Let your conversation be such as becomes the Gospel of Christ. You have been saved by it, you profess to glory in it, you desire to extend it. Let, then, your conversation be such as becomes it.”
The one, you perceive, bids you to workthat you may enter Heaven by your working. The other exhorts you to labor because Heaven is yours as the gift of Divine Grace and he would have you act as one who is made meet to be a partaker of the inheritance of the saints in light. Some persons cannot hear an exhortation without at once crying out that we are legal. Such persons will always find this Tabernacle the wrong place for them to feed in. We are delighted to preach good high doctrine and to insist upon it that salvation is of Grace alone! But we are equally delighted to preach good high practice and to insist upon it, that that grace which does not make a man better than his neighbors is a grace which will never take him to Heaven, nor render him acceptable before God!
I have already remarked that the exhortation is given in a form which is highly reasonable. The followers of any other religion, as a rule, are conformed to their religion. No nation has ever yet risen above the character of its so-called gods. Look at the disciples of Venus—were they not sunk deep in licentiousness? Look at the worshippers of Bacchus— let their Bacchanalian rebels tell how they entered into the character of their deity. The worshippers to this day of the goddess Kale—the goddess of thieves and murderers—the Thugs—enter most heartily into the spirit of the idol that they worship.
We do not marvel at the crimes of the ancients when we recollect the gods whom they adored—Moloch, who delighted in the blood of little children. Jupiter, Mercury and the like, whose actions stored in the classical dictionary are enough to pollute the minds of youth. We marvel not that licentiousness abounded, for “like gods, like people.” “A people are never better than their religion,” it has often been said—but in most cases they are rather worse. It is strictly in accordance with nature that a man’s religion should season his conversation. Paul puts it, therefore, to you who profess to be saved by Jesus Christ, “Let your conversation be as it becomes the Gospel of Christ.”
To get at this we must meditate for two or three minutes upon what the Gospel is, then take up the points in which our conversation ought to be like to the Gospel. And finally, utter a few earnest words to press upon professors of religion here the stern necessity of letting their conversation be such as becomes the Gospel of Christ.
I. “THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST!” WHAT IS IT? We look at the last two words, “of Christ.” Indeed, if you understand Christ you understand the Gospel. Christ is the Author of it. He, in the council chamber of eternity proposed to become the Surety for poor fallen man! He, in the fullness of time, worked out eternal redemption for as many as His Father had given Him. He is the Author of it as its Architect and as its Builder. We see in Christ Jesus the Alpha and the
Omega of the Gospel. He has provided, in the treasury of Grace, all that is necessary to make the Gospel the Gospel of our salvation.
And as He is the Author of it, so He is the matter of it. It is impossible to preach the Gospel without preaching the Person, the work, the offices, the Character of Christ. If Christ is preached, the Gospel is promulgated and if Christ is put in the background, then there is no Gospel declared. “God forbid that I should know anything among you,” said the Apostle, “save Jesus Christ and Him crucified.” And so saying, he was carrying out his commission to preach the Gospel both to Jews and to Gentiles. The sum total, the essential, the marrow—what the old Puritans would have called the quintessence of the Gospel—is Christ Jesus! So that when we have done preaching the Gospel we may say, “Now of the things which we have spoken He is the sum,” and we may point to Him in the manger, to Him on the Cross, to Him risen, to Him coming in the second advent, to Him reigning as Prince of the kings of the earth—yes, point to Him everywhere—as the sum total of the Gospel.