Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 961
Delivered on Lord’s-Day Morning, November 20, 1870
“He that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit.” 1 Corinthians 6:17.
THE connection of our text is very terrible. When we are reading the sixteenth verse one seems to remember Sodom, its infamy, and the fire and brimstone that came down from Heaven upon it. But here in our text we enter into Jerusalem, the holy city, whose streets are of purity so rich and rare as to be comparable to gold clear as transparent glass. And there we seem to behold the Great White Throne of the thrice Holy, surrounded by the white robed bands of the immaculate. In looking at the text I call to mind John Bunyan’s description of the way through the Valley of the Shadow of Death. It was an “exceedingly narrow” path, not readily kept. On the right hand the dreadful gulf, and on the left the fearful quagmire.
See in my text a road fit for angels, and for the angels’ Master, and yet on either hand, in the sixteenth and eighteenth verses behold the fiends and devils howling for their prey! Happy is he who finds that path which the eagle’s eye has not seen, that center of the King’s highway of which it is written, “No lion shall be there, neither shall any ravenous beast go up thereon.” How glorious is that “way of holiness”! Gaze on it—it is clear as the sapphire, bright as the brilliant crystal. Deep down in its depths your eyes may look, and in it there is nothing to obscure, it is as the holiness of God Himself, a purity so wonderful that conscious of our shortcomings we cry, “It is high, I cannot attain unto it.”
The exceeding elevation of the Believer in being joined unto the Lord appears all the more marvelous when it is set, as in the text, in contrast with the dreadful impurity into which we might have fallen, and against which we are still solemnly warned, as if to remind us that our indwelling corruption would drag us down if Divine Grace did not prevent it. Brethren, sin is never seen to be so truly horrible as when we behold it in the light of Christian privilege. It is a terrible thing for a creature to rebel against its Creator, but for the adopted son of God to be disobedient to his ever loving Father, this is worse by far.
Sin is black if we see it in the dim twilight of spiritual conviction when our conscience is half awakened, but it grows blacker than Hell’s murkiest midnight when we set it in contrast with the amazing brightness of the Divine favor which has shone upon us, His elect—redeemed, justified, and adopted people. That yonder professor should be so careless and so inconsistent is sad, but when I remind him that he is one of the redeemed I trust he will feel his lukewarmness to be monstrous. When man is chosen of God and washed in the Savior’s blood, must it not seem to angels a prodigy of human depravity, a marvel of human corruption, that such a one should for a moment forget the way of holiness and desire the paths of iniquity?
In ourselves how heinous is all transgression, seeing we have been the objects of such ceaseless, boundless, loving kindness! For us to follow afar off, to backslide, to grow indifferent is indescribable baseness, a violation of the sacred demands of gratitude. If the more frequent sins of Christians appear thus heinous in contrast with their great privileges, much more loathsome must be vices of the fouler kind, such as Paul here speaks of—sins not to be named among us, or even thought of without horror. God forbid that any of us who claim to be of the body of Christ should degrade ourselves by filthy lusts of the flesh.
Casting a veil over the matter forbidden, not that we may forget it altogether, but may turn our eyes away from beholding vanity, we shall now endeavor to conduct you to the elevated platform of the text itself. I see in it, first, a mysterious deep which I cannot fathom. And, therefore, in the second place, we will sail across it while we speak of a manifest Grace which glistens on its surface.
I. First, then, there is in the text A MYSTERIOUS DEEP. “He that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit.” What does that joining to the Lord mean which is mentioned here? There is a joining to the Lord in election. We were chosen in
Christ Jesus from before the foundation of the world, and by Sovereign Love we were predestinated to the adoption of children by Jesus Christ. There was a further joining to the Lord in Covenant, when Jesus became of old the Head of His Church. As Adam was the head of all that came of his loins, so is Christ the Head of a spiritual seed to whom the promise belongs by the Everlasting Covenant signed, sealed, and ordered in all things and sure.
Further, Christ was joined to us when He took upon Himself our Nature. When He came into this world and was made a Man, then He was truly joined to us. He left His Father, and was joined unto His bride, and they two became one flesh. “For both He that sanctifies and they who are sanctified are all of one: for which cause He is not ashamed to call them Brethren.” He was one with us in Nature, one in our sufferings, one in our life and death, one, too, in bearing our curse, taking upon Himself our sin. All this makes up a glorious joining unto the Lord—but it is not the doctrine taught here—for all that are joined to Christ in the Divine purpose are not yet made of one spirit with Him, for many of them are still living in their natural ignorance, little aware of the Grace ordained of old for them.