Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2580
“God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of His Son Jesus Christ our Lord.” 1 Corinthians 1:9.
PAUL is here arguing for the safety, the perseverance and the ultimate perfection of the saints to whom he is writing. He thanks God for what He has done for them and is assured that He will do yet more—that He will certainly confirm them unto the end—that they may be blameless in the day of Jesus Christ. The Apostle bases his argument upon this Truth of God—“God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of His Son Jesus Christ our Lord.” And, Brothers and Sisters, this is good argument—to reason as to the future from the present and the past!
What God has done is a prophecy of what He will do, for God is unchangeable. He never takes up a purpose for a while and then drops it, but He carries it out to the end. He never speaks a word and then reverses it. “Has He said, and shall He not do it?” He never performs an action which is intended to produce a certain result without following it up until the result aimed at is fully accomplished. If you and I were dealing with a changeable God, it would indeed be bad for us, but He has said, “I am the Lord, I change not; therefore you sons of Jacob are not consumed.” Thus, from the Immutability of God, we argue that if He has begun to bless us, He will continue to bless us—and if He has commenced a work of Grace in our souls, He will certainly carry it on till it is absolutely complete!
We argue thus, partly from our own experience, because everything that is gracious within us has been, up to now, God’s work. What have you and I done towards our own salvation? Put together all that we may even think we have done and what does it come to? “Without Me,” said Christ to His disciples, “you can do nothing.” And, truly, without Him we have done nothing. Therefore, all that has been done in us is to be ascribed to His working in us to will and to do of His good pleasure. When the Lord has begun any work of Grace in us, do we not find that He has carried it on? Has He ever forsaken us? Has He, up to now, turned from His purpose? In the day of trouble, has He deserted us? When He has sent us upon a warfare, has He left us to fall through our own weakness? It has not been so, up to now, and we may sing, “His mercy endures forever.” He has been a faithful God until now and it is, therefore, right for us to conclude that He will always be the same—
“Determined to save, He watched over my path When, Satan’s blind slave, I sported with death. And can He have taught me to trust in His name, And thus far have brought me to put me to shame?
If He had meant to put us to shame, He has had ten thousand opportunities of doing so, but, until now, we have found the promise good—“Whoever believes in Him shall not be ashamed.”
And, dear Friends, if you will think this matter over, the argument will seem to be still more clear. The Lord called us when we were quite undeserving of His Grace. I am sure that I can remember nothing, before my conversion, that could be used as a reason why I should have been called by the Grace of God any more than other lads of my own age. True, I did not go into any gross sin, but then I had so much light, and so much tenderness of conscience, and I lived in such a godly atmosphere in my home, that every sin I did commit was worse than the sins of those who never had such advantages. And I have often looked upon myself as having been, under certain aspects, the very chief of sinners. And every child of God, when he is in his right mind, will look upon himself in the same way—
“What was there in you that could merit esteem, Or give the Creator delight? “Twas even so, Father,‘you must always sing, ‘Because it seemed good in Your sight.’”
Let us think of His great love wherewith He loved us even when we were dead in trespasses and sins, and say, ’ ‘If His love freely flowed to us when we were in thatsad state, what is to hinder its continuing to flow to us? If the Lord loved us from no cause within ourselves, why should He not continue to love us?” And if it is said that we are now in an altered condition—and, blessed be God, it is so!—that very alteration is an argument that He will still love us. “For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by His life.” He that brought us out of our horrible state and condemned by nature, without any reason in us for doing it, but simply because of His own sweet love—how could He cast us away? We are, at our worst, but what we were then, even if it were possible for us to be still dead—and should not He that began the work still carry it on, since He began with us on the footing and ground of Grace alone?
And think yet further, dear Friends, at that time we were not simply undeserving, but we were also unwilling! There is, in the natural heart of man, an unwillingness to yield unconditionally to God and Christ. The ways of Free Grace are not palatable to human pride! Even when we were religiously inclined, our religion consisted of our own prayers, our own repentance, or our own faith. You know how long we ran from one way to another, but it was always the same kind of way—we were to do something by which we were to get right with God, or to feel something, or to know something—everything was of self and for self! But the Grace of God, at last, weaned us from this folly and took us off the breasts of self-righteousness, which had always been empty. Then we were prepared to go to God and, as one whom his mother comforts, so did He comfort us. We found, in our Father God and in His well-beloved Son, all that we needed, even wisdom, righteousness, sanctification and redemption! Well, my Brothers and Sisters, if God brought us to Himself when we were stray sheep without any willingness to return, how much more will He continue to keep us, now that, at any rate, the will is present with us, though often how to perform that which is good we find not? He that loved the undeserving, He that loved the unwilling, will not forsake us now. “God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of His Son Jesus Christ our Lord.”