Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 781
Delivered on Lord’s-day Morning, NOVEMBER 17, 1867, by, the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington.
“I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ lives in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me.”- Galatians 2:20.
IN great ranges of mountains there are lofty peaks which pierce the clouds, but, on the other hand, there are, here and there, lower parts of the range which are crossed by travelers. They become national highways and afford passages for commerce from land to land. My text rises before my contemplation like a lofty range of mountains, a very Andes for elevation! I shall not attempt, this morning, to climb the summits of its sublimity—we have not the time and we fear we have not the skill for such work—but I shall, to the best of my ability, conduct you over one or two practical Truths of God which may be serviceable to us this morning, and introduce us to sunny fields of contemplation.
I. At once to our work! I call upon you to observe very carefully, in the first place, THE PERSONALITY OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION as it is exhibited in the text before us. How many personal pronouns of the first person are there in this verse? Are there not as many as eight? It swarms with “I” and “me.” The text deals not with the plural at all. It does not mention someone else, nor a third party far away, but the Apostle treats of himself—his own inner life, his own spiritual death—the love of Christ to him, and the great sacrifice which Christ made for him. “Who loved me, and gave Himself for me.”
This is instructive, for it is a distinguishing mark of the Christian religion that it brings out a man’s individuality. It does not make us selfish. On the contrary it cures us of that evil, but still it does manifest in us a selfhood by which we become conscious of our personal individuality in an eminent degree. In the nocturnal heavens there had long been observed bright masses of light—the astronomers called them “nebulae”—they supposed them to be stores of shapeless chaotic matter until the telescope of Herschell resolved them into distinct stars. What the telescope did for stars the religion of Christ, when received into the heart, does for men!
Men think of themselves as mixed up with the race, or swamped in the community, or absorbed in universal manhood. They have a very indistinct idea of their separate obligations to God and their personal relations to His government. But the Gospel, like a telescope, brings man out to himself. It makes him see himself as a separate existence and compels him to meditate upon his own sin, his own salvation, and his own personal doom unless saved by Divine Grace. In the broad road there are so many travelers that as one takes a bird’s eye view of it, it appears to be filled with a vast mob of men moving without order—but in the straight and narrow way which leads to eternal life every traveler is distinct—he attracts your notice and he is a marked man.
Having to go against the general current of the times, the Believer is an individual upon whom observant eyes are fixed. He is a distinct individual, both to himself and the rest of his kind. You will very readily see how the religion of Jesus Christ brings out a man’s individuality in its very dawn. It reveals to him his own personal sin and consequent danger. You know nothing about conversion if you merely believe in human depravity and human ruin but have never felt that you are depraved, and that you yourself are ruined! Over and above all the general woes of the race there will be one particular woe of your own. If you have been convicted of sin by the Holy Spirit, you will cry like that shrill-voiced Prophet of Jerusalem in the days of the siege, “Woe unto myself also!”
You will feel as if the arrows of God were mainly aimed at you and as if the curses of the Law would surely fall upon you if upon none else. Certainly, beloved Hearer, you know nothing about salvation unless you have personally looked with your own eye to Jesus Christ! There must be a personal reception of the Lord Jesus into the arms of your faith and into the bosom of your love. And, if you have not trusted in the Crucified while standing alone in contemplation at the foot of the Cross you have not believed unto life eternal.
Then, in consequence of a separate personal faith, the Believer enjoys a personal peace. He feels that if the earth were all at arms he would still find rest in Christ, that rest being peculiarly his own, independently of his fellows. He may talk of that peace to others, but he cannot communicate it. Others cannot give it to him, nor can they take it from him. Wherever the Christian religion is truly in the Son, it soon leads to a personal consecration to God. The man comes to the altar of Christ and he cries, “Here I am! O most glorious Lord, I feel it to be my reasonable service to give spirit, soul, and body unto You. Let others do as they will. As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”