“Heirs of God”

"Heirs of God"

(No. 2961)

A SERMON PUBLISHED ON THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 1905.

DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,

AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON, ON THURSDAY EVENING, JULY
22, 1875.

"And if children, then heirs; heirs of God and joint-heirs with
Christ." Romans 8:17.

THIS chapter–the 8th of Romans–is, like the Garden of Eden, full of
all manner of delights. Here you have all necessary doctrines to feed
upon and luxurious Truths of God with which to satisfy your soul. One
might well have been willing to be shut up as a prisoner in paradise
and one might well be content to be shut up to this one chapter and
never to be allowed to preach from any other part of God's Word. If
this were the case, one might find a sermon in every line– no, more
than that, whole volumes might be found in a single sentence by anyone
who was truly taught of God! I might say of this chapter, "All its
paths drop fatness." It is, among the other chapters of the Bible, like
Benjamin's meal which was five times as much as that of any of his
brothers! We must not exalt one part of God's Word above another, yet,
as "one star differs from another star in glory," this one seems to be
a star of the first magnitude, full of the brightness of the Grace and
Truth of God! It is an altogether inexhaustible mine of spiritual
wealth and I invite the saints of God to dig in it and to dig in it
again and again. They will find not only that it has dust of gold, but
also huge nuggets which they shall not be able to carry away by reason
of the weight of the treasure!

I notice, in this chapter, and also in many other parts of Paul's
writings, that it is his habit to make a kind of ladder–a sort of
Jacob's ladder, let me call it–which he begins to climb. But every
step he takes leads to another, and that one to another, and that again
to yet another. You see it here. "As many as are led by the Spirit of
God"–there is the leading of the Spirit–"they are the sons of God."
And when he gets to sonship, then he says, "And if children, then
heirs." So he gets to heirship and he climbs still higher when he says,
"heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ." I think he means us to
judge, by this mode of writing, that this ought to be the style of our
Christian experience. Every measure of Grace which we receive should
lead us to seek after something still higher! We are never to say,
"This is the pinnacle of Grace–I cannot get beyond this."
Self-satisfaction is the end of progress, so we are constantly to cry,
"Higher, and yet still higher! Onward and upward"–and still to ask to
be filled yet more completely with all the fullness of God!

My text is far too large for me to attempt to preach from it in an
exhaustive style, so I will just make four observations upon it. And
even those observations will only give you a bird's-eye view of the
great Truths revealed here. May God grant that in each of those four
things, there may be food for your souls!

I. These first thing that I see in the text is THE GROUND OF
HEIRSHIP–"If children, then heirs." The children of God are heirs of
God and they come to be heirs through being His children, and in no
other way.

Mark that we are not heirs of God as the result of creation. I cannot
say what we might have been by creation had the Fall not ruined us, but
that fatal disobedience of our first parent robbed us of any
inheritance that might have come to us in that way. And now, by nature,
we are "children of wrath, even as others," but certainly not heirs of
the promise or heirs of the Grace of God. No, beloved Friends, Nature
will never entitle you to be a joint-heir with Christ. Whatever you may
think of your human nature–and you may suppose that it is not so
depraved as the nature of others–you may even get the notion that
yours is a very superior sort of human nature–well, let it be what it
may, it will not entitle you to this inheritance! For as it was not the
children of the flesh who were necessarily the heirs of the Old
Covenant, even as Ishmael, born after the flesh, was not the heir, but
Isaac, born after the spirit–and not Esau, but Jacob–so is it now. It
is not what you are by nature–not that which is born of the flesh, but
what you are by Grace–that which is born of the

Spirit that is the ground upon which heirship may be claimed before
God. So, my dear Hearer, if you are in a state of nature–if you have
never passed out of that state into a state of Grace–this text has
nothing to do with you.

And, further, as our heirship with God depends upon our being the
children of God, it does not depend upon our natural descent. I have
already shown you that it does not depend upon our nature, but there is
another phase of that Truth which needs to be mentioned. There were
some, of old, who said, "We have Abraham to our father," but being born
as sons of Abraham after the flesh availed not to give them any part in
the inheritance which was according to the Spirit. And, today, there
are some who say, "We are the children of godly parents. We were born
in a Christian land, so, of course, we are Christians." Not so, you are
no more Christians, on that ground, than if you were the children of
the Hottentot in his kraal! You need as much to be born-again as does
"the heathen Chinese." You need to be regenerated by the Holy Spirit as
much as if you had been taught from your childhood to bow your knee to
a block of wood or stone. O you who are the inhabitants of this
so-called Christian country, you stand before the living God in no sort
of preference to the heathen except that you have the privilege of
hearing the Gospel! But if you reject it, it shall be more tolerable
for the people of Sodom and Gomorrah and the inhabitants of heathen
lands, in the Day of Judgment, than for you! Did not our Lord Jesus
Christ say that "many shall come from the east and west, and shall sit
down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the Kingdom of Heaven; but
the children of the Kingdom"–the favored ones of His day, or of our
day– "shall be cast out into outer darkness: there shall be weeping
and gnashing of teeth"?

Further, as the inheritance is not by creation, nor by natural descent,
neither can it come by meritorious service. The Apostle says, "If
children, then heirs"–not, "if servants." You may toil and keep on
toiling all your life, but that will not make you an heir of God! The
servant in your house, however diligent, is not your heir. For a
servant to claim to be the heir would not be tolerated for a moment in
a court of law. The servant may be able to truthfully say, "I have been
in my master's house these many years, neither transgressed I at any
time his commandments; and all that is right for a servant to do, I
have done for him from my youth up." But if he were to go on to ask,
"What do I lack?" the reply would be, "You lack the one thing that is
absolutely essential to heirship, namely, sonship." Oh, how this Truth
of God cuts at the root of all the efforts of those who hope to win
Heaven by merit, or to obtain the favor of God by their own exertions!
To them all God says what Jesus said to Nicodemus, "You must be
born-again." Birth, alone, can make you children and you must be
children if you are to be heirs. O Sirs, if you remain what you are by
nature, you may strive to do what you please, but when you have dressed
out the child of nature in its finest garments, it is still only the
child of nature finely dressed, but not the child of God You must be,
by a supernatural birth, allied to the living God, for, if not, all the
works that you may perform will not entitle you to the possession of
the inheritance of the Most High!

And as good works cannot do this, neither can any ceremonial
observances. You know that there is a ceremony of which children are
taught to say, "In my baptism, wherein I was made a member of Christ, a
child of God and an inheritor of the kingdom of Heaven." It does not
matter what people may say in order to make an excuse for believing
that this statement is true, for it is as gross a lie as was ever put
into human language! We know it is not true. Look where we may, we can
see numbers of persons who were sprinkled in their infancy, or were
even baptized after they had reached years of discretion, but their
conduct shows that they are not members of Christ, children of God, or
inheritors of the Kingdom of Heaven! And as that ceremony cannot make
them Christians, neither can any other, whether it is devised by man,
or ordained by God, Himself, for God never intended that any ceremony
should take the place of the new birth, the regeneration which must be
worked by the Spirit of God Himself–

"Not all the outward forms on earth,

Nor rites that God has given,

Nor will of man, nor blood, nor birth,

Can raise a soul to Heaven!

The Sovereign will of God alone

Creates us heirs of Grace–

Born in the image of His Son,

A new peculiar race."

And, without the Holy Spirit to carry out that Sovereign will of God by
making us to be born into the image of His Son, we are not His heirs,
for thus it stands in our text, "If children, then heirs," which
implies that if we are not children, we are not heirs!

So this is the all-important enquiry for us to make. Do we, beloved
Friends, possess this qualification which is absolutely essential to
our heirship? Have we been born-again? We cannot have been born into
God's family when we were born the first time, for Christ Himself said,
"That which is born of the flesh is flesh," and nothing more–"and that
which is born of the Spirit is spirit," so we must be born of the
Spirit, we must be born-again, born from above if we are to be children
of God. Did you ever undergo that great change? Do you know what
regeneration means? I do not mean have you read of it in the Confession
of Faith, but have you experienced it in your own soul? Are you new
creatures in Christ Jesus? For, as the Lord lives, before whom I stand,
if any of us have not been created anew in Christ Jesus, if we have not
been born-again by the regenerating power of the Holy Spirit, we cannot
possibly be the children of God and heirs according to the promise!

If we have been thus regenerated, we shall certainly know it. There may
be times when we shall doubt it, but we shall know it, partly by the
indwelling of the Spirit, as Paul wrote to the Galatians, "Because you
are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts,
crying, Abba, Father." And in the verse before our text, we read, "The
Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are the children
of God." Do you know anything, dear Friend, about this witness-bearing
by the Holy Spirit? I have often asked myself that question, so I feel
free to ask you the same. This is not a thing that you may know, or may
not know–and yet possibly may be safe–you must have this witness of
the Holy Spirit, or else the witness of your own spirit will be a very
doubtful thing, indeed! The Holy Spirit never confirms a false witness,
but a true witness He will confirm. And if the witness of your spirit
is true, you will have, more or less definitely, the witness of the
Spirit within you, bearing confirmatory testimony that it is even so.

Those who are truly the children of God have yet another mark by which
they can be recognized, namely, that there is a likeness to their
Heavenly Father begotten in them. If a man says to you, "I am the son
of So-and-So"–some old friend of yours–you look into his face to see
whether you can trace any likeness to his father. So, when a man says
to us, "I am a child of God," we have the right to expect that there
shall be at least some trace of the Character of God visible in his
walk and conversation. Come, dear Friend, with all your imperfections,
are you seeking to be an imitator of God as one of His dear children?
Do you try to do that which He wishes you to do? Do you make His Son to
be your Exemplar? Do you strive after holiness? Are you aiming at
obedience to those Divine commands, "Be you holy; for I am holy," "be
you therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in Heaven is
perfect"? Do you feel that because you are a child of God, it becomes
you to walk even as His first-born Son walked while He was here below?
Remember that without holiness no man shall see the Lord, because
without holiness no man has the evidence that he is, indeed, a child of
God!

And once more, the main evidence of our being children of God, by the
new birth, lies in our believing in the Lord Jesus Christ. "As many as
received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to
them that believe on His name; which were born, not of blood, nor of
the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." There are
many evidences of the life of God in the soul, but there is no other
that is so abiding as the possession of faith in Jesus Christ. Perhaps,
dear Friend, you are afraid to say that you have the likeness of God
upon you, although others can see it, but I hope you are not afraid to
say, "I do believe that Jesus is the Christ" and the Apostle John says,
"Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ, is born of God." If you
accept Him as appointed and anointed of God to be your Savior–and
commit your soul into His hands–then you can be sure that you are a
child of God, for true, simple, sincere faith in the Lord Jesus exists
only in the heart of the regenerate! No unregenerate man ever did, or
ever could believe in Jesus Christ–but where the Lord has given the
Divine Life, He gives faith at the same time–faith which is the surest
proof of the existence of that Divine Life in the soul!

God grant to each one of you the Grace to test yourself by these four
questions–"Have I been born-again? Have I the Spirit of adoption? Have
I at least some likeness to my Heavenly Father? Do I believe in Jesus
Christ?" If so, then you are a child of God and that childhood is the
ground of heirship! So we can leave that point and go on to the next.

II. The text teaches, in the second place, THE UNIVERSALITY OF HEIRSHIP
TO ALL THE CHILDREN OF

GOD. "If children, then heirs"–not some of them heirs, but, "if
children, then heirs"–all of them without an exception! Proven that
they are children, it is also proven that they are heirs. It is not so
among men, for, often, it is only the first-born sons who are the
heirs. But with God, the rule is, "If children"–whenever born–"then
heirs."

Why is it that all the children of God are His heirs? First, because
the principle of priority as to time cannot possibly enter into this
question. There is a First-Born who has priority by nature, honor and
right. But He is "the First-Born among many brethren," and in Him all
the rest of the children of God are also first-born, for Paul writes of
"the general assembly and church of the First-Born which are written in
Heaven." The question of the time of birth is, sometimes, a matter of
very great concern on earth. In the ways of twins, a few minutes may
make all the difference between his lordship and his brother who is no
lord at all–between the brothers who shall be heir of many broad acres
and the one who shall go forth upon the broad acres to earn his bread!
But, with God's children, there is no difference in point of time.
Adam, if he was the first man converted, certainly has no priority over
Paul, although Paul says that he was as "one born out of due time."
Noah, an early member of God's great family, has no preference over
Abraham. Indeed, Abraham seems to be mentioned with greater honor than
any of those who had gone before him–they certainly had no priority
over him. Time has to do with time, but time has not to do with
eternity, so, whether you, my Brother, were born to God 50 years ago
and I, 25 years ago–and our young friend over there 25 days ago–it
makes no difference. "If children, then heirs," because the date of
birth cannot come into our reckoning when we have to do with eternal
things.

Again, we know that the love of God is the same toward all His
children. They are all His children–all chosen, all redeemed, all
regenerated, all called, all justified and they shall all be glorified.
Where a father loves all his children alike, his disposition leads him
to treat them all alike, both as to what he gives them now, and also as
to what he will leave them as an inheritance. But sometimes
circumstances such as the law of the land and the title-deeds of
estates prevent the father from treating all alike. But in the case of
the children of God, laws cannot hamper or hinder Him. He is the great
Law-Maker and He can control circumstances so as to do everything
according to the dictates of His own heart. And His heart of love says,
"I have loved all My children alike, and they shall all have the
blessing." And so they shall, Beloved. Though you, my dear Friend,
think yourself obscure and one of the least in God's Israel, your name
is just as prominently written upon the heart of Christ as the names of
His Apostles are! And you are as dear to the Lord as the very noblest
among His saints. Indeed, He carries the lambs in His bosom, so the
little ones have the best chariot of all! He may leave the sheep to
walk, but He carries the lambs, and He always takes special care of the
weak and feeble. "If children, then heirs," because all God's children
are equally partakers of their Father's love.

Again, we know, from Scripture, that all the children of God are
favored with the same promise. If you turn to the 6th chapter of the
Epistle to the Hebrews, and the 18th verse, you will find there what
Paul says to all the Lord's children. What a precious passage that is
where he tells us that, "by two immutable things, in which it was
impossible for God to lie, we might have a strong consolation, who have
fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us." In the
previous verse he mentions the heirs of promise and by that expression
he means all the children of God, for they are all heirs according to
the promise–and all heirs of the promise. Well, then, as God has given
them a promise, He will fulfill it! And that promise is that they shall
be heirs of this world and also heirs of the world to come! And He will
fulfill it to them all and keep His oath by which He has confirmed it
to them, so they shall surely be His heirs.

Notice, again, that all God's children are His heirs because they are
all equally related to Him through whom the heirship comes, for every
child of God is neither more nor less than brother to the Lord Jesus
Christ. Yes, a member of His body, of His flesh and of His bones. In
this brotherhood with Christ there can be no degrees–a man is not
partly a brother and partly not a brother. If he is a brother of
Christ, Christ is his brother. A man is not partly in Christ and partly
out of Christ. If one with Christ, he is one with Christ. And all the
members of Christ's mystical body are quickened with the same Divine
Life and shall have the same Heaven to dwell in forever! Seeing, then,
that we are all one in Christ Jesus, the heirship which comes to us by
way of the First-Born must come equally to all the children.

And there is one more very comforting reflection and that is that the
inheritance is large enough for all the children. Rich men sometimes
have to let their estates go to the eldest son, according to the stupid
regulations of this age, "to keep up the family dignity." There are
some great lords who find that they can accumulate wealth enough to set
up two or three sets of families and they do so. But, in other families
there generally are some of the children who must remain lean in order
that the first-born son may grow fat. Now, it is not so with the
inheritance of God because there is enough for all! And there is this
peculiarity about it, that every child of God has all the inheritance,
yet there is not any the less for all the rest of the family! It can
never be said, in relation to human heirs, that each heir has all the
inheritance, yet no one else has any less than all. You, my Brother, if
you are a child of God, are an heir of God, and so am I. And I have not
any the less of God because you have Him and you have not any the less
of God because I have Him. No, if it were possible for it to be so, I
would have more joy in the fact that you, also, have the same blessing,
and you would have more in the joy of

seeing others partaking in the same privilege as you have! The whole of
God belongs to Christ and the whole of God belongs to the least member
of Christ! All are "heirs of God." So you see that there was no reason
for the exclusion of the younger branches of God's family in order to
make up a greater estate for the older ones. All the children of God
are the heirs of God because the inheritance is an infinite one and
there is an infinite inheritance for each one of them.

O Beloved, let us dwell for a moment or two on this theme! The text
says, "If children, then heirs." It does not say, "If children, then
Apostles." None of us could attain to that high office. It does not
say, "If children, then preachers." Here and there, one of us could
claim that title. It does not say, "If children, then
deeply-experienced saints." Some of us may neverbe that! It does not
say, "If children, then mighty men of valor." Perhaps some of us are
too timid to ever grow to that. It does not say, "If children, then
rich men," because some of us are poor. It does not say, "If children,
then favored with health," for some of us have little enough of that
gift. It does not say, "If children, then filled with full assurance,"
for some of us are vexed with many doubts and fears. But it does say,
"If children, then heirs." So let us rejoice that we are "heirs; heirs
of God and joint-heirs with Christ." Let us rejoice in that fact, now,
and let us begin to live worthily of our rank as heirs of God! Let us
strive after holiness and seek to live as becomes the heirs of eternal
life considering what manner of persons we ought to be in all holy
conversation and godliness!

Thus I have spoken of the universality of the heirship to all the
children of God.

III. Now, thirdly, I want to speak concerning THE INHERITANCE ITSELF.
"If children, then heirs; heirs of God."

That little phrase which I have just uttered is one which none of us
can fully comprehend and none of us may even attempt to do so. This is
the glory of our inheritance, that we are "heirs of God." Will you give
me your most earnest attention while I remind you of some of the
descriptions of our inheritance which are given in Scripture?

Here is one which you will find in the 21st chapter of the Revelation
and the 7th verse–"He that overcomes shall inherit all things." That
is the extent of your inheritance, "all things." And it is not a
singular expression, for you have it again in 1 Corinthians 3:21,
22–"All things are yours; whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the
world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come; all are
yours." The richest man who ever lived could not say that all things
were his, but the poorest Christian who ever lived can say that! If you
turn to the 1st chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews, the 14th verse,
you will find that we are there called, "heirs of salvation." Looking
on a little further in the same Epistle, in the 6th chapter and the
17th verse, you will find that we are called, "the heirs of promise."
In his Epistle to Titus, the 3rd chapter and the 7th verse, Paul calls
us, "heirs according to the hope of eternal life," while James says, in
the 2nd chapter of his Epistle at the 5th verse, that we are "heirs of
the Kingdom which God has promised to them that love Him." And Peter
says, in his first Epistle, the 3rd chapter and 7th verse, that we are
"heirs together of the Grace of life." If any preacher wants to deliver
a series of sermons upon the heirship of the saints, let him take these
texts and preach upon them. I have not time to do that tonight and even
if I should say all that I could upon all these texts put together, I
should not then have said so much as my text says, for that does not
speak of "the heirs of promise," or the "heirs of salvation," or the
"heirs of the Kingdom," but it says, "heirs of God."

"Heirs of God"–what does that mean? Well, it means, first of all, that
we are heirs to all that God has. Suppose I am my father's heir and
that he has an old thatched cottage worth a shilling a week–well, that
is what I am heir to. But if I happened to be the heir of the Duke of
Westminster, he might take me over a county and say to me, "That is
what you are heir to." Ah, just so! Whatever the father has, thatis
what the child is heir to. Now think what God has! Stretch your wings,
most vivid imagination! Fly abroad, most capacious thought! And when
the remotest bounds of space have been crossed, you have only just
commenced your endless journey! We will not attempt such a flight as
that. We will stay at home and meditate upon the great Truth of God
that all God has is ours because we are His–heirs of God!

Yet even that, great as it is, is only part of the meaning of our text,
for the Apostle next means that God Himself belongs to us. David said,
"The Lord is the portion of my inheritance"–and this is what every
child of God can say! So that the portion of each child of God is not
only what God has, but what God, Himself, is! O child of God, you have
God's power to protect you, God's eyes to guide you, God's Justice to
defend you, God's Immutability to be constant to you, God's Infinity to
enrich you! You have Gods heart of love, God's hands of power, God's
head of glory–time would fail me to tell all that you have, for you
have all that God is–to be yours forever and ever!

All the worlds that at present have been created are but as mere
trifles compared with what God could make if He so pleased. A thousand,
thousand, thousand, thousand worlds, when they were all made, would be
but as a handful of dust scattered from His almighty hands and He
could, if He willed, do the same again a thousand, thousand, thousand,
thousand times over! "Behold, the nations are as a drop of a bucket,
and are counted as the small dust of the balance: behold, He takes up
the isles as a very little thing. And Lebanon is not sufficient to
burn, nor the beasts thereof sufficient for a burnt offering." Think of
the whole mountain range as one great altar and all the cedars set
ablaze, and then all the beasts that feed there offered up as a burnt
sacrifice! Yet the Prophet says that is not sufficient for God! Then
how great He must be! Oh, make Him great in your hearts and reverence
and adore Him! But when you do, do not forget to say, "My God! My God!
My God!" How often you have that expression in the Psalms! It never
could have been there, as the utterance of any mere man, if it had not
first been in the eternal purpose ofGodas the utterance which was to be
on the lips of Christ in that dread hour when He cried, "My God, My
God, why have You forsaken Me?" So now each Believer can say, "my God,"
for Jesus Christ, Himself, puts it, "My Father and your Father; My God,
and your God." In some aspects God is as much my God as He is Christ's
God, and as much my Father as He is Christ's Father. O Beloved, I have
got out of my depth now! I wish I were able to go even deeper into this
wondrous Truth of God, but there I must leave off what I have to say
concerning the inheritance itself–"heirs of God."

IV. My last point is, perhaps, as blessed as any in the whole text. It
is, THE PARTNERSHIP OF THE CLAIMANTS TO THE INHERITANCE–"joint-heirs
with Christ."

This is, first of all, the test of our heirship. Listen. You are not an
heir of God alone–you cannot be. You can only be an heir of God
through being "in Co."–in company–joint-heir with Christ. Now, are
you and Christ in company? That is a simple question. Are you and
Christ in company, or do you stand alone? If you stand alone, you are a
poor miserable bankrupt, announced in the court of Heaven–so do not
try to stand alone. You will perish if you do. But are Christ and you
thus joined together? Have you learned to trust in Christ, to live in
Christ, to pray in Christ, to trade with Heaven through Christ and to
have everything in Christ? That is the test of heirship. God's child is
born God's heir, but it is because he is in Christ and is born in union
with Christ that he becomes God's heir. If we are out of Christ we are
out of the family of God and out of the heirship of God. "Without
Christ" you are "without God in the world." But in Christ, joined in
company with Christ, you are an heir of God!

This, Beloved, seems to me to be the sweetest part of all the
inheritance. Once let me know that I am one with Christ and so have
become a fellow-heir with Him and it is like Heaven below to my soul!
Indeed, I shall like Heaven itself all the better and I shall like all
that God is going to give me, by-and-by, all the better because I am
going to share it with Christ! A good deal depends upon the company we
may meet in going to any place to which we may be invited. A person
might ask you to his house and you might not know whether you cared to
go. But suppose the host were to tell you that a very dear friend of
yours was going to be there? You would then say , "Oh, yes, I will go
for the sake of having his company!" Now, wherever Jesus Christ is–I
do not care whether it is in the house of a Pharisee, or on some lonely
hillside–it is good to be where He is and to go shares with Him. It
makes everything more sweet to be able to enjoy it with Him. So,
Beloved, while you are heirs of God, you are not the only heirs, for
you are joint-heirs with Christ and you will share the inheritance with
Him! When the Lord Jesus Christ prayed the best prayer that He could
pray for His people, do you remember what He asked for? It was
this–"Father, I will that they, also, whom You have given Me, be with
Me where I am; that they may behold My Glory, which You have given
Me"–as if He knew that His people would prize something that belonged
to Him better than anything else in all the world, or even in Heaven
itself! If Christ sups with us, it is a blessed supper though it is
only a dish of herbs. But if Christ is absent, it is a poor dinner
though there may be steak enough to make the table groan. To my mind,
then, this is the sweetness of our inheritance–that it is a
joint-heirship with Christ!

This also shows the greatness of the inheritance because, if we are to
be joint-heirs with Christ, it cannot be a little thing that we are to
share with Him. Can you imagine what the Father would give to His Son
as the reward of the travail of His soul? Give yourself time to think
what the everlasting God would give to His equal Son who took upon
Himself the form of a Servant, was made in the likeness of men, who
humbled Himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the
Cross! Can you think of a reward that would be large enough for Him?
Let the Father's Love and the Father's Justice judge. Oh, it must be a
large inheritance for such a well-beloved Son and such an obedient Son
as He

was! I, a poor worm of the dust, cannot think of anything that I
consider good enough for Him. Lord, I would have Him crowned with many
crowns and set up on a glorious high throne! But what must be the
reward which His Father devises for Him? What must be the greatness of
the infinite recompense which the Infinite God will bestow upon His
Only-Begotten? Follow that line of thought as far as you can and then
recollect that you are to be joint-heir with Christ. What He has, you
are to share! I will read those wonderful words again, "If children,
then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we
suffer with Him, that we may be also glorified together." The same
Glory that is to be His, He will have us to enjoy with Him!

Again, this joint-heirship ensures the inheritance to us. I am quite
sure that I would not like to go into partnership with just anybody
whom I might meet in the street. Indeed, if I had a share in any
limited liability company, I would do with it as the man did with the
bad bank-note–lay it down and run away from it as fast as I could!
What multitudes of people have been ruined by taking shares in
companies which seemed to be the nicest, neatest, most money-getting
schemes under Heaven! But one need not mind going shares if one has
nothing at all and the other partner is the wealthiest person in the
whole world! So what a blessing it is to go shares with Christ because
we know that He cannot fail. I was thinking, just now, that if I ever
should lose Heaven, seeing that I am joint-heir with Christ, it would
be "the firm" that would lose it, because we must stand or fall
together if we are joint-heirs. Somebody once said to a holy man, "Your
soul will be lost." "Then," he said, "Christ will be the loser." He was
like the Negro who was quite unconcerned when the ship was being
wrecked. He said that he would not lose anything, for he belonged to
his Massa, and his Massa would lose it. Well, what the Negro said in
his simplicity, we may say in real earnest. If our souls are lost, it
will be Christ who will be the loser, for He bought us with His blood
and He will lose what He purchased at so great a cost! And His Father
gave us to Him, so He will lose His Father's gift. And He has loved us
and is married to us, so He will lose His spouse, the beloved of His
soul. But He will not l ose us–He cannotlose us–and if Christ cannot
lose His inheritance, then none of His people can lose theirs, for we
are joint-heirs with Him! If two partners go into a court of law and
the case is decided against the one, it is against the other, also, for
the two are one in that matter. So, if the decision could, by any
possibility, be given against anyone who is in Christ Jesus, it would
be given equally against the Lord Jesus Christ, Himself. But that
cannot be. How secure, then, is the inheritance of the saints! We are
joint-heirs with Christ.

And, my Brothers and Sisters, to conclude, how this endears His love to
us–that He should thus put Himself on the same footing with us as to
His heirship, first taking us into union with Himself, making us
joint-heirs with Himself, and then Himself going back to Heaven to
plead for us and to make it part of His glory up there to prepare the
place which we are to share with Him! Does not this bind us fast to
Him? If He lets us be sharers in His inheritance in Glory, will we not
gladly be sharers here in His sufferings and in His shame? Is there
anybody who desires to spit upon Christ as they did of old? Then let
him do me the honor to spit upon me for Christ's sake! Is there anyone
who has an evil word for Christ? Then let that word fall upon my ears.
Do you not feel, Beloved, that it is an honor for you to endure any
reproach for Christ's sake? Surely if we are to be there with Him
forever, it is but right that we should be with Him here! If we are to
share the splendor of His Throne, we may be joyful to share the
dishonor of His Cross so far as we may.

I have thus set before you the heirship of the saints and the way to
attain it. I pray God the Holy Spirit to apply the message to His own
people and to make them feel glad in the Lord. As for the others, I
have shown that they can only be heirs through being children–and if
you are not the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus–I pray the
Lord to reveal to you whose children you must be and what inheritance
you must expect to have at the last. Yet I pray you to remember that
the way of salvation lies in simply looking to Jesus Christ. May you
look to Him tonight–not tomorrow. Before you leave this place, present
this prayer, "O Lord, give me the nature of Your children, and the
spirit of Your children, and faith in Jesus, as all Your children have
it, for His dear name's sake! Amen."