Death and Life–the Wage and the Gift
(No. 1868)
A SERMON DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, NOVEMBER 1, 1885,
BY C. H. SPURGEON,
AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.
"For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life
through Jesus Christ our Lord." Romans 6:23.
IN the fifth chapter of this Epistle, Paul had shown, at considerable
length, our justification from sin through the righteousness of Jesus
Christ our Savior. Our Apostle goes on to speak of our sanctification
in Christ, that as by the righteousness of Christ we have been
delivered from the guilt and penalty of sin, so by the power and life
of Christ in us we are delivered from the dominion of sin, so as not to
live any longer therein. His objective is to show that true servants of
God cannot live in sin–that by reason of our newness of life in
Christ, it is not possible that we should continue to yield our
members, instruments unto iniquity. We have passed out of the realm of
death. We have come into the domain of life and, therefore, we must act
according to that life and that life–being in its essence, pure, holy
and heavenly–we must proceed from righteousness unto holiness.
While he is driving at this argument, our Apostle incidentally lets
fall the text which may be regarded as a Christian proverb, a golden
sentence, a Divine statement of Truth worthy to be written across the
sky! As Jesus said of the woman who anointed Him to His burial,
"Wherever this Gospel shall be preached, in the whole world, there
shall also, this, what this woman has done, be told for a memorial of
her." And so I may say, "Wherever the Gospel is preached, there shall
this golden sentence which the Apostle has let fall, be repeated as a
proof of his clearness in the faith." Here you have both the essence of
the Gospel and a statement of that misery from which the Gospel
delivers all who believe! "The wages of sin is death; but the gift of
God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord."
First, it will be my painful duty to dwell, for a while, upon death as
the wages of sin. And then, more joyfully, we shall close our morning's
meditation by considering eternal life as the gift of God.
I. First, DEATH IS THE WAGES OF SIN. The Apostle has, in his mind's
eye, the figure of a soldier receiving his pay. Sin, the captain, pays
his hired soldiers a dreadful wage. The original word signifies,
"rations," or some translate it "stipend." It means the payment which
soldiers receive, put in the plural as wages, because pay can be given
in different forms–soldiers might be paid in meat, or in meal, or in
money, or in part by their clothing, or by lands promised when the time
of service came to an end. Now that which sin, the grim captain, pays
to those who are under him, is comprehended in this terrible term,
"death." It is a word as full as it is short. A legion of terrors are
found around this "king of terrors." Death is the rations which sin
pays to those who enlist beneath its banner!
Now "sin is any want of conformity to, or transgression of the Law of
God." Sin is that evil power which is in the world in rebellion against
the good and gracious power of righteousness which sits upon the Throne
of God. This evil power of unholiness, untruth, sin, contrariety to the
mind of God, holds the great mass of our fellow men beneath its sway at
this hour. The rations with which it rewards the most desperate valor
of its champions is death.
To set forth this terrible fact, I shall make a few observations.
First, death is the natural result of all sin. When man acts according
to God's order, he lives, but when he breaks his Maker's laws, he
wrecks himself and does that which causes death. The Lord warned Adam
thus–"In the day that you eat thereof you shall surely die." Dying
does not mean ceasing to exist, for Adam did not cease to exist, nor do
those who die. The term, "death," conveys to me no such idea as that of
ceasing to exist, or how could I understand that word in 1 John
3:14–"He that loves not his brother abides in death"? How could a man
abide in annihilation? A grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies,
but it does not cease to be! No, rather, it brings forth much fruit.
That Adam did die in the day when he ate of that fruit is certain, or
else the Lord spoke not the truth. His nature was wrecked and ruined by
separation from God and by a fall from that condition
which constitutes the true life of man. When any man commits sin, he
dies to holiness and purity. No transgression is venial, but every sin
is mortal and genders death.
The further a man goes in lust and iniquity, the more dead he becomes
to purity and holiness–he loses the power to appreciate the beauties
of virtue, or to be disgusted with the abominations of vice. Our
nature, at the very outset, has lost that delicacy of perception which
comes of healthy life and, as men proceed in unchastity, or injustice,
or unbelief, or sin of any kind, they enter deeper and deeper into that
awful moral death which is the sure wage of sin. You can sin yourself
into an utter deadness of conscience and that is the first wage of your
service of sin.
All desire after God and all delight in Him die out where sin reigns.
Death is the separation of the soul from God. Alas, this death has
passed upon all men! Can two walk together except they are agreed? Man
may continue to believe in the existence of God, but for all practical
purposes God, to him, is really non-existent. The fool has said in his
heart, "No God"–he does not desire God–indeed, he wishes there were
no God. As for seeking after God and delighting himself in the
Almighty, the sinner knows nothing thereof–his sin has killed him
towards all desire for God, or love to Him, or delight in Him. He is to
God dead while he lives. "To be carnally minded is death."
As there is, through sin, a death to God, so is there a death to all
spiritual things. "The natural man receives not the things of the
Spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto him. Neither can he know
them, because they are spiritually discerned." The man does not
perceive and discern spiritual things, for he is dead to them. Talk to
him of the sorrows of the spiritual life–he has never felt them and he
despises them as mean cant! Speak to him of the joys of the spiritual
life and you will soon discover that you are casting your pearls before
swine–he has never sought such joys–he does not believe in them and
he thinks you a fanatic for talking such nonsense! He is as dead to
spiritual realities as a mole is blind to astronomy, or a stone is dead
to music! To him it is as though there were neither angel, nor spirit,
nor God, nor Mercy Seat, nor Christ, nor holiness, nor Heaven, nor
Hell. Giving himself up to the dominion of sin, the sinner receives,
more and more, the result of his sin, even as the Apostle says, "Sin,
when it is finished, brings forth death." "He that sows to his flesh
shall of the flesh reap corruption."
Inasmuch as in holy and spiritual things dwells the highest happiness
of our manhood, this man becomes an unhappy being. At first by
deprivation of the joy which spiritual life brings with it and,
afterwards, by suffering the inevitable misery of spiritual death. God
has justly appointed that if a man will not be conformed to God, he
shall not taste of happiness. And if a man will follow after that which
is evil, that evil shall, of necessity, bring with it sorrow and
unrest– Romans 2:9. Since sin as naturally brings spiritual death upon
men as fire brings burning, death is spoken of as the wages of sin.
I would observe next, that the killing power of some sins is manifest
to all observers, for it operates upon the body and the mind as well as
upon the spirit. This spiritual death of which I speak may not strike
some of you with fear–you may think it a small matter, though to me, I
confess that Hell, however painted, is never so terrible a thing as the
death which fills it! Some sins are murderous to a degree which is
clear to all. For instance, if a man takes to drunkenness, or if he
indulges in lasciviousness, it is manifest even to the unspiritual that
the wages of sin is death. See how by many diseases and deliriums the
drunk destroys himself–he has only to drink hard enough and his grave
will be dug. The horrors which attend upon the filthy lusts of the
flesh I will not dare to mention, but many a body rotting above ground
shall be my silent witness. All know, or ought to know, the mischief
which is occasioned to men and women by the violation of that Law which
commands us to be pure!
I spoke, the other day, to an aged Brother who feels the result of
natural decay, but is, in all other respects, sound and healthy. I
congratulated him upon retaining so much vigor at such an age. "Yes,"
he replied, "I owe it to the Grace of God that I never abused myself in
my younger days and, therefore, I have a store of strength in my old
age." How many, on the contrary, feel the sins of their youth in their
bones and in their flesh! We have all known that sins of the flesh kill
the flesh and, therefore, we may infer that sins of the mind kill the
mind. Death in any part of our manhood breeds death to the whole. Death
drags man down from the power, beauty and joy of life to the wretched
existence, the feebleness, the abominableness of death! The man is no
more a man, but the wreck of a man–and his body is not the house of
his soul, but a ruin in which his poor spirit seeks in vain for
comfort. A withered heart, a blinded mind, a blasted being–such is the
death which comes of sin. The wage of sin is openly death when it
assumes certain forms and it is always really so, take what form it
may.
Now this tendency is in every case the same. "The wages of sin is
death" everywhere to everyone! It is so not only where you can see it
operating upon the body, but where you cannot see it. I may, perhaps,
startle you when I say that the wages of sin is death even in the man
who has eternal life. Sin has the same deadly character to one as to
the other, only an antidote is found. You, my Christian Brothers and
Sisters, you cannot fall into sin without its being poison to you, as
well as to anybody else! In fact, to you it is more evidently poison
than to those hardened to it! If you sin, it destroys your joy, your
power in prayer, your confidence towards God. If you have spent
evenings in frivolity with worldlings, you have felt the deadening
influence of their society. What about your prayers at night? You
cannot draw near unto God. The operation of sin upon your spirit is
most injurious to your communion with God. You are like a man who has
taken a noxious drug, whose fumes are stupefying the brain and sending
the heart into slumber! If you, being a child of God, fall into any of
the sins which so easily beset you, I am sure you will never find that
those sins quicken your Grace or increase your faith–on the contrary,
they will work you evil, only evil and that continually.
Sin is deadly to any man and every man, whoever he may be! And were it
not for the mighty curative operation which the indwelling Spirit of
God is always carrying on upon the Believer's nature, not one of us
would survive the deadly effects of even those sins of infirmity and
ignorance into which we fall. I wonder not that Paul cried aloud, "O
wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this
death?" If a man takes poison, if it does not absolutely kill him, it
injures him and thus proves its killing tendency. In certain places the
air is pestilential and though a very healthy man may pass through them
and seem none the worse, yet this does not disprove the general deadly
tendency of the malarious district, nor does it even prove that the
healthy person is not secretly but really injured by having been there.
Evils caused by sin may be too deep to be at once visible, just as the
most serious of diseases have their periods of incubation during which
the person affected has no idea of the ill which is hatching within
him. Sin is, in itself, an unmitigated evil root which bears wormwood.
Sin is death! Wonder not, therefore, that the Apostle says, "the wages
of sin is death." As the sparks fly upward and as the rain fall to the
ground, so sin leads to death. As the river takes its leap in the
thundering cataract, so must the stream of sin create the fall of
death!
Moreover, when we read of anything being a wage, what does it mean? It
means that it is a reward for labor. Death is sin's due reward and it
must be paid. An employer employs a man and it is due to that man that
he should receive his wages. If his employer did not pay him his wages,
it would be an act of gross injustice. Now, if sin did not bring upon
man death and misery, it would be an injustice! It is necessary for the
very standing of the universe that sin should be punished. It must be
so! They that sow, must reap. The sin which hires you must pay you.
Wrong cannot produce right. Iniquity, transgression and sin must, in
the nature of things, become darkness, sorrow, misery, death. Every
transgression and disobedience must receive its just recompense of
reward. There is no use in attempting to alter it so long as God and
justice reign–those who do sin's work must receive sin's wages–and
"the wages of sin is death."
Now, observe, that this death, this wage of sin, is in part received by
men, now, as soldiers receive their rations, day by day. It is a
terrible thing that they so receive it. The Scripture says, "If you
live after the flesh, you shall die"–such a life is a continued dying.
Again, it is written, "She that lives in pleasure is dead while she
lives." The wrath of God abides on him that believes not on the Son of
God–it is there already. I would that men here who are not converted
would remember where they now are–they are "dead in trespasses and
sins!" O Sirs, you are not merely sick, but you are "dead in your
sins!" You are already dead to the highest spiritual enjoyments and can
never know them except by passing from death unto life! You cannot
rejoice in God, you cannot know spiritual Truth, you cannot taste of
spiritual bliss, for your sin deadens you to these things every day
that you live in it. To all that which is worthy of a man, to all that
which is the true life of manhood, you are dead through sin!
But then a Roman soldier did not enlist merely for his rations. His
chief pay often lay in the share of the booty which he received at the
end of a war. He expected to share in his captain's triumph and to be a
partaker in the spoil. Death is the ultimate wage of sin. The death
which is here intended is the eternal loss and wreckage of the soul,
the destruction of all about it that is worth having, the drifting of
the guilty being forever upon the full tide of those evil tendencies
which caused his sin and were further increased by sin. When all comes
to all, this is where sin will drive you–it will perpetuate itself and
so, forever kill the soul to God, goodness, joy and hope. You will
enter upon a world in which the highest enjoyments which even God,
Himself, can provide for men will be revealed, but they will be hidden
from your eyes because you will be utterly incapable of knowing,
appreciating and enjoying them!
Being under the ever-growing power of sin, it will become more and more
a hopeless thing that you should escape from the death which thus
settles down upon you. All the agencies which could have recovered you
from the clutches of death have failed to bless you in the life which
has come to an end–and now, in eternity, neither the death of Christ,
nor the Holy Spirit, nor the ministry of the Word of God, will ever
again operate upon you. Till your last moments, you chose sin, and
through eternity you will still choose it–for this death is the reward
of your sin! Our Lord Himself said, "These shall go away into
everlasting punishment." Then you shall come to know to the fullest
what that awful word, "death," really means as God intends it.
Meanwhile, if you would escape this dreadful doom, read your Bible and
see how the result of sin is expounded. As our Savior taught, that
future death includes within itself the fire which never shall be
quenched, the worm that never dies, the outer darkness, the weeping and
wailing and gnashing of teeth and the departure into everlasting fire
which begins with a curse from the lips of Love!
Alienation from God is death and can never be otherwise. The Holy
Spirit, speaking of the ungodly, says, "In flaming fire taking
vengeance on them that know not God and that obey not the Gospel of our
Lord Jesus Christ: who shall be punished with everlasting destruction
from the Presence of the Lord and from the Glory of His power." This
will be the ultimatum of sin! As surely as rivers run into the sea, so
surely must sin run into death–there is no help for it! The hard and
impenitent heart heaps up for itself wrath against the day of wrath and
revelation of the righteous judgement of God. Sin inevitably pays to
all who are its servants the death by which bondage to its power is
sealed forever! O my God, grant us Grace to see what a wretched service
this is which pays such terrible rations, now, and gives such a
terrible dividing of the spoil in the end!
I shall not longer dwell upon it, the subject is so distressing to me,
except that I must add a few solemn words. The misery of the misery of
sin is that it is earned. Every pang that shall fall upon the ungodly,
either in this life or in the life to come, will have this for its
sting–that it was duly earned! The sinner may well say, "I worked for
this; I laid myself out to earn this; I now feel the misery of what I
willfully did." Death is the result of being out of gear with God. But
the sinner puts himself into that condition. If men, in the world to
come could say, "this misery of ours has come upon us by an arbitrary
arrangement on the part of God, quite apart from its just results,"
then they would derive from that fact some kind of comfort to their
conscience, some easement of their biting remorse. But when they will
be obliged to acknowledge that all their woe was their own choice in
choosing sin–and is still their own choice in abiding in sin–this
will scourge them, indeed!
Their sin is their Hell! The worm which gnaws at the heart of the lost
soul is its own willful hate of God and love of evil. O lover of sin,
you are under the power of this death–this worse than death! You are
dead to God, dead to holiness, dead to love and dead to true
happiness–and you have brought this death upon yourself, every part
and particle of it! You have chosen that which has made you a wreck and
a ruin–and that in the teeth of many warnings and admonitions! It must
be so that "the wages of sin is death," and the terror of that death is
that it comes as a wage! Why will you die? Why will you earn death? Why
will you choose your own delusions? Have you wickedly determined to
prove what outer darkness means? Have you turned your back on God just
to see how a man must fare who wars with his Maker? Have not enough
dashed themselves to pieces on the rock of sin? Why will you do the
same? If you will do so, this shall be the misery of your misery–that
you brought it on yourselves and that you rejected the one remedy
provided by the Lord in the Person of His Son, Jesus Christ!
Note, next–and I speak with the truest compassion–that it will be the
folly offollies to go on working for such wage. Up to now, they that
have worked for sin have found no profit in it. What fruit have you
had, any of you, in the things in which you have cause to be ashamed?
Has sin ever brought you any real benefit? Come, now, and let us reason
to-gether–up till now has doing wrong ever worked for your health, or
your happiness? Are you the better for hate, or greed, or lust, or
drink? Has sin ever developed your inner self into anything worth
calling life? You know it has not! It has rather destroyed you than
improved you–and you know it. Why, then, will you go further in sin?
Have you not learned enough, already, of the deadly nature of evil? Why
will you press further into this barren region which will become more
and more a howling wilderness to you as you advance into it? Why will
you go where it will be more and more difficult to return? Oh, may
God's infinite mercy prevent our being such madmen as to labor in the
very fire to earn nothing else but death! God forbid that we should
plunge from sin to sin by an inventiveness of rebellion–only to
discover more and more what it is to be dead forever to God, Heaven,
hope and everything that is to be desired!
Let me add, it ought to be the grief of griefs to each of us that we
have sinned. Oh, misery, to have worked so long in a service which
brings such terrible wages! Though I have known the Lord, now, these 36
years, I still regret most deeply every sin that I have ever committed
against the perfect Law of the Lord. I take it that repentance is not
the temporary act of a certain period of time, but it is the spirit of
the whole life after conversion. When we know we are forgiven, we
repent all the more that we ever loved that sin which is so abominable
unto God and so evil in every way. Evil seems most evil when we have
the clearest sense of Divine Goodness. Its constant wage is death and
only death–and our lamentation is that we harbored this assassin, yes,
even became its slave! Let us humble ourselves before God because we
have played the fool exceedingly by sinning against Him. We have
wounded, injured and destroyed ourselves–and all for nothing– our
only wage being a still deeper destruction!
Oh you that have never repented, but are still abiding in this
spiritual death, how I long that the voice of Jesus may echo in that
sepulcher of sin in which you now lie asleep! May it awaken you and
make you dread the death that never dies! Oh that you may turn over, as
it were, in your grave and begin to moan, "O God, deliver me!" If there
is such a thought as that in your soul, I shall hope that the Spirit of
God has begun to bring life into your spirit. But what an awful thing
it is to have spent all these days–and some of you are getting
gray–in only doing that which is your undoing, in giving life to that
which is your death! The sole wage that some of you have yet earned is
death. Is not this a poor reward for all the risk, labor and
perseverance with which you have served sin? God help you to see your
folly and repent of
it!
One thought more before I leave this point, and that is it must
certainly be a miracle of miracles if any sinner here does not remain
forever beneath the power of sin. Sin has this mischief about it, that
it strikes a man with spiritual paralysis– and how can such a palsied
one ward off a further blow? It makes the man dead–and to what purpose
do we appeal to him that is dead? I have tried to describe what a
dreadful thing it is to be dead to God, purity and happiness–but the
dead man does not know or care for these things. Our preaching may well
be called foolishness, since it is addressed to ears that cannot, or,
rather, will not, hear. What a miracle of miracles it is when the
Divine Life comes streaming down into the heart that sin has chilled
into death! What a blessedness it is when God interposes and finds a
way by which the wage most justly due shall not be paid!
It is a necessity that every transgression should have its recompense,
but in the Person of the Lord Jesus, such an expiation is made that sin
pays its wage of death to Him who did not earn it, while those who did
earn it go free! O Sinner, none can save you but the God who made you!
You, as dead in sin, are in such a state that you will rot into
corruption and go on forever rotting into a yet fouler and filthier
corruption throughout the ages–and none can prevent it but Almighty
God, Himself! Only one power is capable of affording you the help you
need! And that power works through the Lord Jesus, who is, at this
moment, mighty to save. Oh, that the miracle of miracles might be
worked upon you! But if not, there it stands, "The wages of sin is
death." Alas, I fear that sin will pervert even the ministry of the
Word of God and make it a savor of death unto death! This is the first
teaching of the text and I pray the Holy Spirit to impress it on every
conscience!
II. And now I am glad to pass into liberty and joy while I speak on the
second subject–ETERNAL LIFE IS THE GIFT OF GOD.
Note well the change–death is a wage, but life is a gift. Sin brings
its natural consequences with it, but eternal life is not the purchase
of human merit, but the free gift of the love of God. The abounding
goodness of the Most High, alone, grants life to those who are dead by
sin. It is with clear intent to teach us the Doctrine of the Grace of
God that the Apostle altered the word here, from wages, to gift.
Naturally he would have said, "The wages of sin is death, but the wages
of righteousness is eternal life." But he wished to show us that life
comes upon quite a different principle from that upon which death
comes. In salvation all is of free gift–in damnation everything is of
justice and desert. When a man is lost, he has earned it–when a man is
saved, it is given him!
Let us notice, first, that eternal life is imparted by Grace through
faith. When it first enters the soul, it comes as God's free gift. The
dead cannot earn life–the very supposition is absurd! Eternal life
enjoyed on earth comes to us as a gift. "What!" says one, "do you mean
to say that eternal life comes into the soul here?" I say yes, here, or
else never! Eternal life must be our possession now, for if we die
without it, it will never be our possession in the world to come, which
is not the state of probation, but of fixed and settled reward! When
the flame of eternal life first drops into a man's heart, it is
not as the result of any good works of his which preceded it, for there
were none. Nor was it the result of any feelings of his, for good
feelings were not there till the life came. Both good works and good
feelings are the fruit of the heavenly life which enters the heart and
makes us conscious of its entrance by working in us repentance and
faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. "Eternal life is the gift of God in
Jesus Christ." By faith we come consciously into Christ. We trust Him,
we rest upon Him, we become one with Him and thus eternal life
manifests itself.
Has He not said, "I give unto My sheep eternal life"? And again, "He
that believes in Him has everlasting life"? O Beloved, you that have
been quickened by the Spirit of God, I am sure you trace that first
quickening to the Grace of God! Whatever your doctrinal views may be,
you are all agreed in the experimental acknowledgment that by the Grace
of God you are what you are. How could you, being dead, give yourself
life? How could you, being the slave of sin, set yourself free? But the
Lord, in mercy, visited you as surely as the Lord Jesus Christ visited
the tomb of Lazarus. And He spoke with His almighty voice and bade you
come to life–and you arose and came to life at His bidding! You
remember well the change that came upon you. If any man here could have
been literally dead and then could have been made to live, what a
wonderful experience his would have been! We should go a long way to
hear the story of a man who had been dead and then was made alive
again!
But I tell you, his experience, if he could tell it, would not be any
more wonderful than our experience as quickened from death in sin, for
we have suffered the pains that come through the entrance of life into
the soul and we know the joys which afterwards come of it! We have seen
the light that life brings to the spiritual eyes! We have felt the
emotions that life brings to the quickened heart! We have known the
joys which life and, only life, can bring to the entire man! We can
tell you something about these things, but if you want to know them to
the fullest, you must feel them for yourselves. "You must be born
again." We bear our witness that eternal life within our spirit is not
of our earning, but the gift of
God!
Beloved, since we received eternal life, we have gone on to grow and we
have made great advances in the Divine Life–our little trembling faith
has now grown to be full assurance! That zeal of ours which burned so
low that we hardly dared to attempt anything for Jesus has now flamed
up into full consecration so that we live to His praise! From where has
this growth come? Is it not still a free gift? Have you received an
increase of life by the Law, or has it come to you as the free gift of
God? I know what you will say! And if any of you have so grown in Grace
that you have become ripe Christians. If any of you have been taught of
God so that you can teach others. If any of you have been led by the
Holy Spirit so that your sanctification is known unto all men and you
have become saintly men and women–I am still sure that your holiness
and maturity are gifts received–not wages earned! I will put the
question to you again–Did this abundant life come to you by the works
of the Law, or by Grace through faith which is in Christ Jesus? Your
instantaneous answer is, "It is all of Grace, in the latter as well as
in the earlier stages." Yes, in every degree, the gift of God is
eternal life ill Christ Jesus!
Yes, and when we get to Heaven and the eternal life shall there be
developed as a bud opens into a full-blown rose– when our life shall
embrace God's life and God's life shall encompass ours; when we shall
be abundantly alive to everything that is holy, Divine, heavenly,
blessed and eternally glorious–oh, then we shall confess that our life
was all of the Grace of God, the free gift of God in Jesus Christ our
Lord! I am sure that our heavenly education will only make us know more
and more fully that while death is the well-earned wages of sin,
eternal life is, from beginning to end, the gift of infinite Grace.
Beloved, observe gratefully what a wonderful gift this is–"the gift of
God"–the gift which Jesus bestows upon every Believer, for, "to as
many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God,
even to as many as believed 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." How
express is our Lord's statement–"He that believes on the Son has
everlasting life: and he that believes not the Son shall not see life;
but the wrath of God abides in him"! What a life this is! It most be of
a wonderful sort because it is called, "life," par excellence,
emphatically, "life," true life, real life, essential life! This does
not mean mere existence, as some vainly talk. There never was a greater
blunder than to confuse life with existence, or death with
non-existence! These are two totally different and distinct ideas. The
life of man means the existence of man as he ought to exist–in union
with God and, consequently, in holiness, purity, health and happiness!
Man, as God intended him to be, is man enjoying life–man, as sin makes
men–is man abiding in death. All that man can receive of joy and
honor, the Lord gives to man to constitute eternal life in the world to
come. What a life is this! The life that is imparted to us in
regeneration is God's own life, brought into us by "the living and
incorruptible seed which lives and abides forever." We are akin to God
by the new birth and by loving union with His Son, Jesus Christ. What
must life mean in God's sense of it?
Moreover, we have life eternal, too, never ending. Whatever else may
end, this never can. It can neither be killed by temptation, nor
destroyed by trial, nor quenched by death, nor worn out by the ages.
The gift of the eternal God is eternal life! Those who talk about a man
having everlasting life and losing it, do not know the force of
language. If a man has eternal life, it is eternal and cannot,
therefore, end or be lost! If it is everlasting, it is "everlasting!"
To lose it would prove that it was not everlasting. No, if you have
eternal life, you can never perish! If God has bestowed it upon you, it
will not be recalled, "for the gifts and calling of God are without
repentance." This eternal life is evidently a free gift, for how could
any man obtain it in any other way? It is too precious to be bought,
too Divine to be made by man! If it had to be earned, how could you
have earned it? You, I mean, who have already earned death! The wage
due to you, already, was death–and by that wage you were effectually
shut out all possibility of ever earning life. Indeed, the earning of
life seems to me to be, from the beginning, out of the question. It has
come to us as a free gift–it could not come in any other way.
Furthermore, remember that it is life in Jesus. The, "through," of our
version is, "in," in the original. We are in everlasting union with the
blessed Person of the Son of God and, therefore, we live! To be in
Christ is a mystery of bliss. The Apostle felt, again, that this was an
occasion for rehearsing our blessed Master's names and titles of
honor–"in Jesus Christ our Lord." I noted to you on a former occasion
how, at certain seasons, the various honors and titles of great men are
proclaimed by heralds with becoming state and so here, to the praise of
the Lord Jesus, Paul writes His full degree–"Eternal life in Jesus
Christ our Lord." He writes at large the august name before which every
knee shall bow and he links our life with Him. Here we read the
cheering and precious name of Jesus! By that name He is nearest to
man– when He was born into our nature, He was named Jesus, "for He
shall save His people from their sins." The life which comes in
connection with Him is salvation from sin! In this Savior is life.
The next name is, "Christ," or, Anointed, by which name He is nearest
to God being sent forth and anointed of God to treat with us on God's
behalf. He is the Lord's Christ and our Jesus. Next, He is called, "Our
Lord." Herein lies the Glory of our anointed Savior–we, through Grace,
becoming servants, participate in the life and Glory of our Lord. He
reigns as our Lord and by His reigning power He shows Himself to be the
Lord and Giver of life. "All live unto Him." Our Lord has life in
Himself and breathes it into us! What a life this is–a life saved from
sin, a life anointed of the Holy Spirit, a life in union with Him who
is Lord of All! This is the life which is peculiarly the gift of God.
Thus I have set forth this doctrine and I desire to apply it by adding
a little more of practical importance. First, let us come at this time,
one and all, and receive this Divine Life as a gift in Christ Jesus. If
any of you have been working for it by going about to establish your
own righteousness, I beseech you to end the foolish labor by submitting
yourselves to the righteousness of God! It you have been trying to feel
so much, or to pray so much, or to mourn so much, forbear from thus
offering a price and come and receive life as a free gift from your
God! Pull down the idol of your pride and humbly sue for pardoning
Grace on the plea of mercy! Believe and live! You are not called upon
to earn life, but to receive it– receive it as freely as your lungs
take in the air you breathe! If you are dead in sin at this moment, yet
the Gospel of Life has come near to you. With that Gospel, there comes
the life-giving wind of the Eternal Spirit. He can call you out of your
ruin, wreckage and death–and make you live. This is His word, "Awake,
you that sleep, and rise from the dead, and Christ shall give you
life."
Will you have it as a gift? If there is any true life in you, your
answer will be quick and hearty. You will be lost if you do not receive
this gift! Your earnings will be paid into your bosom and dread will be
the death which will settle down upon you. The acceptance of a free
gift would not be difficult if we were not proud. Accept it–God help
you to accept it at once! Even that acceptance will be God's gift, for
the will to live is life–and all true life, from beginning to end, is
entirely of the Lord!
Beloved, have we accepted that free gift of eternal life? Let us abide
in it. Let us never be tempted to try the Law of Merit. Let us never
attempt to live by our earnings. No doubt eternal life is a reward in
one sense, but it is always a re-
ward of Grace, not a reward of debt. The Lord shall give us a crown of
life at last as a reward, but even then we shall confess that He first
gave us the work by which the crown was won! The Lord first gives us
good works and then rewards us for them (Eph. 2:10)! The labor of love
is, in itself, a gift of love! Grace reigns all along–not only in
removing sin, but in working virtue.
Finally, are we now abiding in eternal life, trusting in the Son of God
and clinging to His garment? Then let us live to His Glory. Do we know
that because He lives, we shall also live? If so, let us show, by our
gratitude, how greatly we prize this gift! We dwell in a world where
death is manifesting itself in various forms of corruption everywhere
— therefore let us remember from what the Lord has delivered us! Let
no man boast in his heart that he is not subject to the vile influences
which hold the world in its corruption. Let no pride, because of our
new life, ever cross our spirit. Chase every such thought as that away
with detestation! If our life is of Grace, there is no room for
boasting, but much space for soul-humbling. When you walk the streets
and hear the groans of the dead in the form of oaths and blasphemies,
thank the Lord that you have been taught a more living language! Think
of drunkenness and lust as the worms that are bred of the putridity of
the death which comes of sin! You are disgusted and horrified, my
Brothers and Sisters, but these things would have been in you, also,
but for the Grace of God! We are like living men shut up in a
morgue–wherever we turn we see the dreary works of death–but all this
should make us grateful to the sacred Power which has brought us out of
death into spiritual life.
As for others, let us anxiously ask the question–"Can these dry bones
live?" Then let us be obedient to the heavenly vision when the Divine
Word says to us, "Son of man, prophesy upon these bones." We must
cherish the faith which will enable us to do this! Moreover, a sight of
the universal death of unrenewed nature should drive us to prayer, so
that we cry, "Come from the four winds, O Breath, and breathe upon
these slain, that they may live." This prayer being offered, we should
live in hopeful expectancy that the Lord will open the graves of His
people and cause them to come forth and live by His Spirit. Oh for
Grace to prophesy believingly upon these bones and say, "O you dry
bones, hear the Word of the Lord! Thus says the Lord God unto these
bones, Behold, I will cause breath to enter into you and you shall
live." Beloved, we shall yet see them stand up an exceedingly great
army, quickened of the Lord our God! He delights to burst the bonds of
death! Resurrection is one of His chief glories. He heralds
resurrection work with trumpets, angels and a glorious high throne
because He delights in it!
The living Jehovah rejoices to give life and especially to give it to
the dead. Corruption flies before Him! Grave clothes are cut and
sepulchers are broken open. "I am the resurrection and the life," says
Jesus, and so He is, even at this hour! O God, save this congregation
to the praise of the Glory of Your Grace, wherein You have made us to
live and to be accepted in Your well-beloved Son! Amen and Amen.
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