Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1688
Delivered on Lord’s-Day Evening, August 27, 1882
“Be not moved away from the hope of the Gospel.” Colossians 1:23.
I THINK this morning we showed pretty plainly that many a soul has a great struggle to attain to the hope of the Gospel. [See “Despair Denounced and Grace Glorified,” No. 1676.] Not without hand-to-hand fighting do many hearts lay hold on Christ and eternal life. Conscience often sets up a chevaux de frise around the hill of Calvary and thus cuts off the convicted sinner from approaching his Savior. Doubts and fears, the Black Watch of evil, drive back the coming ones and worry those who would gladly hide in the Rock of Ages. Satan summons all his hosts to push men back from the Cross that they may not come to Christ and live.
But, Brothers and Sisters, the battle does not end when, by a desperate rush, a man has come to Christ. In many it assumes a new form—the enemy now attempts to drag the trembler from his refuge and eject him from his stronghold! It is difficult to get at the hope of the Gospel, but quite as difficult to keep it so as not to be moved away from it. If Satan spends great power in keeping us from the hope, he uses equal force in endeavoring to drag us away from it—and equal cunning in endeavoring to allure us from it. Hence the Apostle tells us not to be moved away from the hope of the Gospel. The exhortation is necessary in presence of an imminent danger. Do not think that in the moment when you believe in Christ the conflict is over, or you will be bitterly disappointed! It is then that the battle renews itself and every inch of the road swarms with enemies.
Between here and Heaven you will always have to fight, more or less, and frequently the severest struggle will be at a time when you are least prepared for it. There may be smooth passages in your career and you may, for a while, be like your Savior in the wilderness, of whom it is said, “Then the devil departed from Him, and angels came and ministered unto Him.” But you may not, therefore, cry, “My mountain stands firm, I shall never be moved,” for fair weather may not outlast a single day! Do not grow secure, or carnally presumptuous. There is but a short space between one battle and another in this world. It is a series of skirmishes even when it does not assume the form of a pitched battle. He that would win Heaven must fight for it! He that would take the new Jerusalem must scale it and if he has the wits to take Jacob’s ladder and set it against the wall and climb up that way, he will win the City. “The Kingdom of Heaven suffers violence and the violent take it by force.”
I. First, BE NOT MOVED AWAY FROM THE SUBJECT OF THAT HOPE so as to give up any part of the hope which is revealed to you by the Gospel. What is your hope? First, it is the hope of full salvation—the hope that, inasmuch as you have believed in Jesus Christ, you are free from all condemnation at the present moment and shall be free from all condemnation in the future as to all your sins. And that, in addition to this, He that takes away the condemnation of sin will also destroy the power of it over you. You have this hope—that being made to love righteousness you shall be enabled to walk in obedience and “to perfect holiness in the fear of the Lord.”
Your hope is that one day you shall be presented holy, without blame and unreprovable in the sight of the great Father. You shall, one day, be presented “without spot or wrinkle, or any such thing,” cleansed from all guilt and cleansed from all tendency to sin and to corruption—and made like unto the perfect creature of God when first it comes from His hands. Oh, this is a blessed hope! “He that has this hope in him purifies himself even as Christ is pure.” We hope that we shall be like unto Christ, Himself, and that the Glory of His holiness shall be our glory—and we shall see His face and His name shall be on our foreheads—and we shall be without fault before the Throne of God. Now, never give that up!
Never allow a particle of it to be diminished. God means all that He has said, and more, rather than less. Let no man debase the currency of Heaven or clip the coin of the realm of the Great King.
The first part of it—hold to it, that the Lord Jesus Christ has cleansed you from all the guilt and penalty of sin, so that not a speck remains to accuse or condemn you. Hold to it, moreover, that if He has once washed you, you shall not need to wash, again, in that fountain filled with blood, for, “He that is washed needs not except to wash his feet.” And that washing shall be given to him by the condescending hands of Christ. The water shall be a second cure of that which the blood has already cleansed and removed. The blood-washing has removed all guilt and prevented all possibility that sin shall have dominion over you. Complete forgiveness and full justification are proofs that through your Lord’s endurance of the death penalty, you are no more under the Law, but under Grace.