We have already glanced at the strong contrast drawn between man's condition in the first three verses, and the mighty intervention of God's grace that follows. We have seen the Gentile brought out in the dark portrait of abject moral corruption and senseless idolatry, the Holy Spirit laying everything bare in a few mighty touches. They were “dead in trespasses and sins,” thoroughly subject to the prince of this world. They were merely pursuing the course of this age, children of disobedience, without reference to God in their ways. There is no thought of bringing out in detail the frightful forms of human impiety, or the depravity and degradation to which man has fallen under Satan's instigation. Nevertheless, we have a far deeper view of the hopelessly evil condition of man here, than even when all the details of impurity, superstition, and rebellion are entered into at full length. In the word of God, how little the energy depends on the seeming strength of language! Still less is it what we find with men when they wish to put a thing forcibly. Of violent, exaggerated expression there is nothing in Scripture.
We have simply (and what a fact it is!) God Himself sounding the condition of man, no longer looking at the heart as if it were a question of restraining its desires, which He did under the law. But now it is the utter death of nature in the presence of God—the power of Satan substituted instead of God's government—man himself evidently and hopelessly ruined. But into this scene of death God enters—God who is rich in mercy. And the great love wherewith He loved us is just alluded to as the spring of all that He has done. “God, who is rich in mercy, for His great love wherewith He loved us, even when we were dead in sins” — “we,” whether Jews or Gentiles, but more particularly referring to the Jew here. At least he had contrasted the two in verses 2-3. In verse 5 he may possibly be bringing them both in; but if any are particularly alluded to, it is the Jew, for he is as dead as the Gentile—there is no difference as to this. “Even when we were dead in sins, [God] hath quickened us together with Christ (by grace are ye saved), and hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” Having already entered into the general subject of regeneration, I would only just add, that although, now that Christianity is divulged, we have regeneration going on at least as much as ever, we have in fact the Holy Spirit stamping upon the regeneration of the present time a deeper character. For it is not only that there is life given, or souls quickened only, but they are quickened together with Christ. I doubt that this could have been said before Christ's death and resurrection. There can be no hesitation that all the life which any saint ever received from the beginning of the world, was of and through Christ. “In Him was life.” He is the eternal life that was with the Father, and other life there is none for a sinner. There was a tree of life before man fell; not only a tree of knowledge of good and evil, but a tree of life. But this was only creature life that might have sustained an innocent creature to the end. But what if the creature fell? What when Adam became a sinful man? Would the tree of life avail for him then? Not for an hour. “So he drove out the man.” God would not permit that man should touch the mere natural tree of life. For supposing he had eaten of it after sin, what would have resulted? Only a perpetuation of evil in a wretched, remediless condition of sin: an eternal existence in a condition alienated from God, from which there was no escape. So that although death came in as the sentence upon a guilty man, there is in a sense mercy in it, now that man is born into a sinful world, and is subject to every kind of misery, which an enemy has brought in, and which, if you look at death as a part of it, may be the just sentence of God upon man's iniquity. But all this is laid hold of by Satan, and turned to his purposes, mingled with a bad conscience, on which Satan works, so that a man is filled with dread and horror of God. From this, God, by presenting Christ, delivers the soul. It is not only that the soul finds a life that is suited to its every need—it is not at all a mere perpetuating one's existence in misery, but a life that ensures deliverance out of evil and all its effects and curse, flowing from God in His grace, founded upon holiness; and a holy blessedness in the presence of God in that same Christ who brings in this life. There is also God recovered by the soul, as surely as He recovers it to Himself. It was not only that man by sin lost natural life, but he lost God; and it is not only that Christ gives me now a new and better life than the tree of life could give, but He gives me God; He brings me to God and puts me in the presence of God. He makes known God to my soul, and gives me to be sure of His love, of His interest in me, of His deep pity and even complacency: for God cannot only love in a natural way, but with a love of complacency and relationship.
This, then, is what we find in Christ; and although life could be spoken of in connection with all the Old Testament saints before Christ died and rose, still I doubt much that the Spirit of God could speak of the life which they received, as being life with Christ. Life by and in Christ it could not but be; but quickening with Christ goes a great deal farther. And this is what we have now. For God points us to Christ under the burden of our sins, under the whole consequences of that which my nature deserved because of its distance and enmity to God—its spirit of disobedience and self-will. All the evil was charged upon Him, and He was treated as if He were it all; as if He, in His own person on the cross, had the entire sum and substance of the evil of human nature in His own person. Of course, had there been a single particle of it in Himself, He could not have atoned for others—the judgment of God must have been upon it; but the total absence of it in His own person was what indicated His perfect fitness to be the victim. God was dealing with the whole height and length and depth and breadth of sin in the person of Christ upon the cross. But God raised up that same blessed One who went down under the wrath of God, and who, when He had tasted what it was to be forsaken, and God's face hid from Him, did not and could not depart from this life without saying, “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit,” which showed the perfect confidence of His heart and delight in God. “Our fathers trusted in thee they cried unto thee and were delivered.” But He could not be heard till the full trial was closed. He was only heard from the horns of the unicorn. He must go through it all— unutterable sorrow and anguish, intolerable to all but Him; and yet to Him what was it not—all the wrath of God if the deliverance was to be complete and according to God. But He has done so; and He lets us know, in departing from the scene, that however He might suffer, yet His heart truly rested in God; and He confessed unwaveringly, not only that God continued holy, but that the Father was full of love. “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.”
But now we have another thing altogether—God interposing to deliver to the uttermost. He would not say that He quickened Christ absolutely. It is always qualified somehow, because Christ was life Himself. He was the eternal life with the Father, in due time manifested on the earth; and how say anything that would imply that He owed His life to another? He might say that, as man put to death in the flesh, He was quickened of the Spirit, but His intrinsic personal glory abides, which indeed gave its value to the whole extent of His humiliation and suffering unto death. The Father, too, gave Him as a man to have life in Himself. This was the perfection of Christ here below: He would not take it as His own right. He would not speak a word nor do a work that He had not heard from and in God. He was the perfectly dependent man. The same Gospel that dwells as none other does on His divine glory, shows us also His absolute dependence on God. On the other hand, how sweet to see in Scripture how God the Father watches over the glory of Christ! He would not say one word that could in any way impair the dignity of His Son. Here, therefore, it is said, He hath “quickened us together with Christ.” It was we that needed the life. Christ might have gone down into death, but He has quickened us together with Him. Christ had died in a more solemn manner than any mere man could die. He was emphatically the Holy One of God, the only holy man, and yet even so had He died. Of course no unholy one could die as He died. He knew what it was to taste death in all its bitterness, God's judgment and wrath, as none other could; and yet He was one who felt it so much the more because He was essentially in the bosom of the Father. But this blessed One having gone down thoroughly under death as the judgment of God upon our nature and our sins, thereon ensues the mighty power of God, who has quickened us together with Christ. In a word, the life is in the most intimate association with Christ, and we are in union with Christ Himself, put to death in the flesh, but now quickened by the Spirit. As to the life that He had here below, it was given up and gone; and now He rises in a new life, in resurrection. It is therefore immediately added that God not only has quickened us together with Christ, but has raised us up together; and more than this, has made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. Thus the full value that belongs to life as it is now in Christ is also given to us; so that we can be spoken of even while we are in this world according to the complete blessedness of life as it is now seen in Christ at the right hand of God.
Let us consider what such a marvelous thought as this involves—what it brings us into association with. We know what our old nature loves, and does, and is; we know too well what the life, or rather the death, of Adam, brought us into. What have we derived from our first father—what have we deserved and brought on ourselves, but sin, sorrow, suffering, sickness, death, a bad conscience, and a fearful looking for of judgment? All these things we have as the workings and effects of that existence which we have inherited, our sad heirloom from the first man. But now comes the new and supernatural source of life in the Second Man; and where shall we best know its character? Let us look up at Christ. How does God the Father look upon Him? Is He delighted in Him? He was always so; and was never more than when He traced Christ's steps as He walked a man among men. But there was the terrible question of sin—our sin. Is it a terrible question now? Or has Christ in very deed answered it forever in the cross? Yes, it is the very thing that has given occasion for God to show His love as nothing else could. How should I have known how much God loves me if I had not had such depth of need as an enemy of God, fathomless save to His saving mercy in Christ? I do not say it to lighten the sin of my enmity to God, nor to allow the notion that there was or could be the smallest title to the favor of God. But my hopeless evil becomes a measure of the depth of His love; and that because this brings Christ into the scene, and Christ as a Redeemer and Saviour on God's part —Christ the infinite gift of God's grace—Christ, who would be turned aside by nothing—Christ, who endured everything from man, Satan, and God's righteous judgment, that we might be saved after a divine sort. And so in truth we are. And what do we not owe the Saviour, and the God who gave Him? But what did not Christ bear? Our frightful ruin and sin has just brought out what God is in His great love to us, and what Christ is in His value and the mighty power of the life in which He is risen and gone up, seated, and ourselves in Him, in heavenly places. Do you still ask what the character of the life is that the Christian has got now? Look at Christ, and see how precious He is to God—how He cannot have the Blessed One, who is the full expression of that life, too near Himself. He has raised Him up, and set Him at His own right hand in the heavenly places. In Ephesians 2 it is simply “made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” It is not added here, as in Ephesians 1, “at His own right hand.” I am not aware that such words are ever said about the children of God, nor do I think they could be. Do they not rather seem to be the personal place of Christ? But it is said, “in the heavenly places,” because it is to them, and not to the earth, that we belong. Israel, as such, in their best days, belonged to the earth; and so did we in our worst; but now it is not only that our names are written in heaven —though that very expression shows the wonderful love of God that destines and enrolls us to be above—that connects us with heaven while we are upon the earth —all that is true; but we have much more in Ephesians. There we find that, in virtue of our union with Christ, we are said to be not only raised with Him, but seated with Him in heavenly places. In a word, what is said of Christ Himself is true by grace of us, only excepting what may be personal in Him as God the Son, or used of the Lord in a necessarily pre-eminent degree. For after all there is a distinction between the Head and the body, even as such; though, on the other hand, the very difference shows the closest possible association: we are His fullness or complement.
We learn, then, from this that we have Christ's own title while we are in this world—nay, more than that, Christ's own life in us, by virtue of which we are said to be quickened with Him, yea, raised and seated in Him in heavenly places. But let us carefully bear in mind that all this is never said of any in purpose or election, but only where faith exists. It is not applicable to us before we believe: it would not be true of any person before there is positive, living association with Christ. What is commonly called Calvinistic theology, much truth as it embodies, is totally false on this head. One of its main features is the endeavor to make out that, the love of God being from everlasting to everlasting, our relationship is always precisely the same—that because God has the purpose of making us His children, He always regards us as His children —that if a man is elect, supposing he is still an infidel or a blasphemer, he is as much a son of God as when he is regenerate of the Holy Spirit and walking in the ways of God. It maintains that God loves him with exactly the same love (while he is, for example, a sot or a swearer), as afterward. What among believers can be conceived more dishonoring to God and destructive to man than this doctrine? Manifestly the apostle is speaking here, not of persons elect merely, though of course they were elect, but quickened—that is, they had actually life. Not only was there a purpose of God about them, but they were then living to God as those who had faith in Christ. You could not say that a man has life before he has faith. It is the reception of Christ by the Holy Spirit which, on the one side, is called faith, and on the other life: You could not rightly put one before the other. If you could not say that faith was before the life, certainly life is not before faith. The first exercise of faith is the first also of life. It is the power of the Spirit of God presenting Christ to the soul. Hence it is said, “The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear shall live.” The living is there, if there be any difference at all, the effect of hearing, rather than the hearing the effect of living. This is very important; because none can say that persons are quickened with Christ until they are here to be called; and it is impossible to say that they have life till they have heard the voice of the Son of God. The first proof that a man is a sheep is that he hears the good Shepherd's voice. He is not thrown on certain, or rather uncertain indications, of life within himself, but on the grand, objective test and evidence which God demands—not merely what I am doing or not doing (the law asked this), but whether I receive and rest on the Son of God. Am I drawn away from all the sounds of this world, and is His voice attracting my soul? As sure as this is so, you have life. “He that believeth hath everlasting life.” “He that hath the Son hath life.” I prove that I have it by the very simple, sure, and blessed fact that I hear the voice of the Son of God. Thus only I have life—then only am I assured of being quickened and raised with Christ. This is an association with Christ after He had gone under death for our sins, which is the Christian character of quickening. We are also said to be seated in heavenly places because we have the life of Christ who is there, and we are spoken of according to the place which He has entered who is our life. So that Scripture does not merely mean that we are so in God's decree or thought when it says that He has raised us up and made us sit together in heavenly places. The reference is not to our future resurrection, but it teaches the present association of the believer by virtue of our union with Christ, who is in the presence of God. And in referring to this first part of it, the apostle says, “By grace ye are saved.” This is the source of all the blessing. And the expression is very strong. For what the form of the word implies is that the salvation was complete, and that they were now enjoying its present result. Salvation in Scripture is not always thus treated: there are whole epistles where it is never so spoken of. Thus, particularly in Philippians, salvation is regarded as a future thing—as not complete till we see Christ in glory. Salvation, there, is a solemn but not precarious process, which is now going on, because it is plain that we are not with Christ in glory, but in our natural bodies. And accordingly Christ is therein seen as a Saviour, not merely because He died and rose, but because He is coming back for my full deliverance and joy. This explains the meaning of the text which has perplexed people so much— “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling;” because, in the sense intended there, we shall only get salvation when we are glorified with Christ. Meanwhile, we are working it out with fear and trembling, remembering that Satan hates us because we are to be in glory with Christ. We are viewed as persons in this world, who know that there is not the slightest doubt that we are to have the prize, but we have to fight and run for it, though we ought to hold fast the assurance that we shall have it when we see Christ coming for us from on high.
But when we take up the language of the Ephesian Epistle, all is different. There salvation is regarded as an absolutely past thing: “By grace ye are saved “not merely that it is going on, and is to be completed by and by; but we are saved, and cannot in Christ be more so than we are. Whereas, according to Philippians, Paul himself had not his salvation yet: “not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect.” The perfection there spoken of entirely and solely refers to the time when we shall be changed into the glorious likeness of Christ: then he says, We shall be saved. If you applied the same sense of salvation to both epistles, you make the doctrine contradictory. Take again the Epistle to the Hebrews. There, too, salvation is always represented as a future thing. “Wherefore,” it is said, “He is able to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by Him.” God's people are meant, not the unconverted, as coming unto God by Christ. For whom is He a priest? For the believer only. Thus it is the saint that requires to be saved in the Epistle to the Hebrews; because salvation there applies to all the difficulties of our wilderness journey. The whole doctrine is founded on the type that we are now, like Israel of old, going through the desert, and have not yet entered into Canaan; whereas, the characteristic teaching of Ephesians is that Christ has gone into Canaan, and that we are in Him there. It is because we are occupied with a part of the Word of God, and not the whole—because we see one truth strongly, and not the truth generally, that we get confused and faulty views, which lead to wrong practice.
The reason of these differences is most interesting. You have exactly in each epistle what is suited to its own character. In Ephesians the revelation is not of Christ as one interceding for us before God: this we have in Hebrews. Why is He a priest? That He may have compassion on the ignorant, and on them which are out of the way. This is exactly, as we journey here below, our danger: we are ignorant, and always exposed to the temptation of slipping aside through an evil heart of unbelief. Therefore we need the Epistle to the Hebrews. The doctrine of Ephesians would not of itself suffice to meet me in my weakness, difficulties, and sorrows. Supposing I had wandered, what is there to recall and comfort my soul in Ephesians? “That we should be holy and without blame before Him in love.” Nay, but I have gone astray, and I cannot get any relief to my anguish from this. I may try to stay my heart on God's election and high counsels, but if I have a tender conscience, these alone will make me more miserable. If God really loved me so much, how comes it (the heart will reason) that I should so dishonor Him? In Hebrews 1 find nothing at all about my sitting in heavenly places, but Christ at the right hand of God, and pleading for me, after He had by Himself purged out my sins. The very first chapter starts with the glorious truth—that Christ took His seat on high only when He could go there on the ground that He had completely blotted out our sins, and this “by Himself,” that is, to the exclusion of all other help. It was His own task, and He has accomplished it, and would not rest even in that, to Him, familiar glory, save on this ground. Therein we have a most sure foundation. But although we have the purging of sins through Christ, we are in a place of temptation where, through ignorance and weakness, and a thousand things that may arise, we are in constant peril of turning aside and slipping. What is to become of us then? What is to sustain and carry us through! God reveals this blessed Priest who cares for the soul—One who has the full confidence of God the Father; who has given the most entire satisfaction to Him—One who is seated at the right hand of God, and who there is unceasingly occupied with our need, on the ground that we belong to God, and are already redeemed, and that we have no more conscience of sin. We can perhaps hardly make out how it is that persons who are so blessed of God should be so weak and wretched; so little like Him who, at His own cost, has brought and secured us our blessing. But faith receives, and asks of God what He intends to be our strength and comfort in the midst of our weakness and dangers? His answer is, that Christ is there to plead our cause, as surely as the spirit is here to render us sensible of it. And it is through Christ's intercession at the right hand of God that we are brought to feel our need and failure. For we never judge it, without getting moral blessing through that judgment. All power of Christ resting on us is in proportion to the depth of the moral estimate produced in our souls by the Spirit of God in answer to the intercession of Christ; and it is part of Christ's intercession for us that we are made to feel when we have in mind and fact gone astray. In Hebrews, salvation could not be spoken of as a past thing. We know that we shall be fully saved, and that Christ is coming for it. And although it is appointed unto men to die, it is not necessarily so for the saint. We know that they may never fall asleep, as for certain they will never be judged, though all they have done will be surely manifested before the judgment-seat of Christ. But He has gone through death for them, and therefore there is no necessity that they should die; and He has endured judgment as none other could, and we have His own word for it that into judgment at any rate we shall never come. “He that believeth on the Son of God hath everlasting life, and shall not come into judgment.” The consequence is, that though we look for Him to come, we know that when He does appear the second time, it will be without sin unto salvation. He has so perfectly put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself, that when He is thus seen the second time of them that look for Him, it will be “without sin,” apart from all question of sin, as far as they are concerned— “unto salvation,” and not unto judgment. Salvation and judgment are the two things above all others most in contrast. You cannot have judgment and salvation exercised upon the same individual. In Hebrews you have salvation connected with our Lord's appearing the second time.
In Ephesians, on the contrary, we are saved already, and there Christ's return to receive His people is not throughout referred to. In the epistles where salvation is said to be consummated by and by, there we have Christ coming to finish it. In Philippians he says, “Our conversation is in heaven, from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto His glorious body, according to the working whereby He is able even to subdue all things unto Himself.” There we have our Lord changing this body of humiliation into the likeness of His glorious body, proving Himself to be the Saviour; because it is not a partial salvation, but a complete salvation for the whole man. But in Ephesians, where our Lord's coming is never referred to, this links itself with the fact that salvation is already supposed to be an accomplished fact, which we now enjoy. This is a way of looking at salvation rare in Scripture: it is generally looked at as something we have before us People confound salvation with justification or reconciliation to God; but in Romans the evident distinction is drawn— “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.” Thus, we have the reconciliation, but not the salvation, in the sense spoken of there. “We shall be saved.” He is living for us, and, as a consequence, we are being saved. The salvation is going on; and when Christ comes again in glory, then salvation will be complete. Hence, in Romans 13, we have the doctrine applied again: “Now is our salvation nearer than when we believed.” We have not got it yet; but it is nearer; and we shall have it all perfectly by and by. Before we believed, we were enemies and lost; then believing, we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son. Now He lives for us; and soon He will come again for us, and then all will be complete.
Again, take Corinthians, and you will find the same doctrine there. Salvation is not regarded there as complete. Hence the apostle says that he is keeping under his body and bringing it into subjection. He will not allow any evil lust to get the mastery over him. He might preach to all the world; but if evil got mastery over him, how could he be saved himself? He puts it in the strongest possible way of his own case; and shows that preaching (of which some apparently thought more than of Christ) has nothing to do with a man's being saved, but life in Christ; for the grace of Christ manifests itself in holy subjection to God and self judgment of evil. These are the inseparable consequences of having the life of Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit in the soul. “I keep under my body,” says he, “lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway.” This last word I take in the strongest, and, indeed, the only scriptural, sense—that is, of reprobate. A castaway in the New Testament means not merely that a, man was going to lose something, but to lose his soul, and to lose Christ. There are no instances in the epistles where the word is used in a modified sense: it invariably means lost forever, and it is neither faith nor intelligence to modify its force. It was not that Paul had any fear of being lost; but he transfers the case to himself, to make it more energetic, supposing that he were to renounce Christ and holiness. What is the consequence? He might have been ever such a preacher, and yet be a castaway; but no man that ever was regenerate could be a castaway; and so he does not say, Though I were born of God, I might be a castaway. Such a thing could not and ought not to be supposed. But he does illustrate most seriously, what, alas! has been far too common, that a man might preach to others and be a reprobate. We know that one of the apostles preached and wrought miracles; but the Lord never knew him.
This will show the importance of leaving room for salvation in every way that Scripture looks at it. In the largest part of Scripture it is not regarded after the Ephesian manner, but in the way I have been describing, in Romans. No question is fairly raised of falling away when the apostle speaks of salvation in this sense; but the fact is that all the result of the blessing—all the fullness of the deliverance, is not yet our portion. And who can say that it is? Here we in suffering still: then we shall be out of the scene of temptation altogether. In Ephesians, when looking at the character of our life, he says, It is entirely outside all danger, all temptation, and everything of the sort. “By grace ye are saved.” By this he means that we have been and are saved; that is, we have the present enjoyment of that which is already past and complete before God. It is a fact accomplished, because it is in Christ, and everything here is regarded as being in Christ, as, for example, our very peace. Hence He is called “our peace” farther on. Hence, too, so truly is the salvation viewed as being in Christ, that, the Saviour being seated on high, we are said to be, not in process of salvation, but completely saved, so as to need nothing more as far as this is concerned. In full accordance with this it was added, that God “hath raised up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus; that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us through Christ Jesus.” What plainer than the completeness of the salvation? How manifestly it has a character of association with Christ, that is entirely beyond all human conception! It is easy to conceive that such blessedness might be by and by; but the wonderful thing is, that this could be predicated of poor, weak Christians in the world now. If we dwell much upon human things, they become cheap and common, and we cease to wonder; but with this glorious work of God in His beloved Son, the more we think of it, the more we stand amazed before it. Observe, too, it is for this very purpose: “that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us through Christ Jesus.” That is, it is not merely God looking at us, and giving us what we need, but God acting for the indulgence of His own affections through His Son. God says, as it were, I want to show what I am, not merely to supply what you want. Thus, it is God rising up to the height of His own goodness, and acting from what He is, entirely irrespective of what we are, save that we become the occasion for God to skew His matchless love; and this, not merely now, but “in the ages to come,” or, I suppose, for unlimited time.
Nor is this all. There is a fresh guard against certain misconceptions by taking up or repeating the expression, “For by grace are ye saved,” with the addition, “through faith,” a strong confirmation of what has been already said. We are not saved by the electing purpose of God, true and blessed as it is, but through faith in our hearts, through that divine persuasion which the Holy Spirit works in the heart of a man once an unbeliever. “By grace are ye saved through faith.” There is no such thing as God introducing one into the relationship of a child without the action of his heart and conscience. The Holy Spirit gives such a man to feel his own condition as seen of God, and yet what God is toward him in Christ. A cold parchment-deed, mechanical salvation there is not, any more than such a change of the old nature as could be a ground of hope toward God. But if human feeling cannot be trusted, neither can ever so orthodox a recognition of God's decrees. When God speaks in and of His Son, it is a real thing, and he who hears must more or less deeply have the consciousness of its solemnity. He is no longer unwilling and indifferent to Christ. He may feel sin, hate himself as he never did, just because he is under the hand of God and under the teaching of God, and the very things that you bring to prove that you are not one of God's own, is rather a proof that you are. If you were dead to God, would you feel what grieves Him? It is when Christ has begun to dawn on the soul that you begin to realize that you have been lying in all that is dark and loathsome, though a glimmer of hope breaks through the clouds. You are seriously conscious of evil things to which you were insensible before. This is an effect of God's mighty and gracious operation; but there is no such thing as life without faith or with unconsciousness. There will always be something that awakens new thoughts and feelings about God, a fear and a desire after God, a horror of sin and a hatred of self. All these things and more will pass through the spirit of him that is born of God, and what produces all these feelings by the Spirit of God is Christ—nothing else will. Otherwise a man might be attending a church or chapel—going to the best or the worst testimony. But he is there on this principle: he thinks it is his duty to attend perhaps every day. It is the notion of a religious service which he thinks he ought to pay to God, and that if he does it diligently, God will remember him on his death-bed and in the day of judgment. Such is one part of the duty man pays in the hope of escaping hell. But all this goes on the ground of man's putting God under a kind of obligation to himself. Man is doing something because of which he thinks God ought to show him mercy. What can more flagrantly deny both sin and God's grace? Now, it is “by grace ye are saved, through faith.” And the meaning of being saved by grace is by what God is toward me in His Son, apart from a single thing deserving it in me. Are you willing to trust your salvation to God only, in His beloved Son? This is faith. “By grace we are saved through faith.” If I mingle a particle of my own, it is properly neither grace nor faith, for faith renounces self for Christ, and grace is God's pure favor to me a sinner on the cross. When I listen to Christ, then the Word of God begins to deal with everything in me that is selfish and contrary to God, and I must not attempt to modify or accommodate the Word of God to my own thoughts, and thus to make provision for a little indulgence of the flesh.
I maintain, therefore, that the salvation spoken of in Ephesians is already complete for him that believes; so absolute, indeed, that none can add anything to it, because it would be adding something to Christ, and to what Christ has done. And this may not be, cannot be, seeing that it is all the free, unmerited, unmingled mercy of God. And this is the great thing for the soul. Am I able, without question of what I am, or what I hope to be, or what I ought to do for God, to trust Him now? Can I rest all that I have been and am upon Christ, without any promises or pledges of mine—without any hope or thought of what I may do, because God might take me away in a moment? Can I rest entirely and implicitly in Him? Think of the case of the dying thief, which is a living and notable testimony of salvation by grace throughout all ages. Others may have a work to do afterward, but there we have one who was saved by grace in the last hours of his life. And there is no other way. Had he lived for a thousand years afterward, he would not have been a whit more saved by grace than he was then. It is of great moment to bring our souls to the touchstone from time to time—whether we are resting solely upon the grace of God toward us, not upon what people call grace in us, that is, our faithfulness toward Him. For this is a common notion of grace. They mean a great change that has taken place in the heart in respect of God. This, however, is not what God calls grace, but what He has given gratuitously in the work that Christ has done for me. “By grace are ye saved through faith.” The Spirit shuts out all thought of man's contributing the faith or taking any credit because coming to Christ; for He says immediately after, “And that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God.” This probably refers, not only to the salvation, but to the faith; it was all the gift of God, and not man's production: “Not of works, lest any man should boast.” On the contrary, instead of being a question of our works, we are God's handiwork, the new creation for His own praise. “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.” There you have a most plain proof that there could be no carelessness as to the walk of the believer; but the same verse cuts off all thought that man's doing can be the ground or means of salvation.
Here, then, we have the believers the workmanship of God in Christ, and this “unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.” This is a very remarkable expression, and one that we cannot too much weigh. It is not the good works of the law—not those which might seem so in human judgment, but an offering of a new character, heavenly and of grace, which was in God's mind and all determined about us before the scene existed into which we are now brought. The same God that had a purpose of saving us and blessing us with Christ before the world was made, had a certain line of walk, a special course of action, in which He expected the recipients of such favor to walk. It is not the thought of the good that we ought to do as men, as a means of showing that we are willing to obey God under the law. It is not loving God, and one's neighbor as oneself simply, but another type and display of love altogether. It flows from our new relationships, and if it be exercised in loving God and loving those around us, it is according to the rich love which God Himself has shown us in Christ. It is not merely duty, let it be the very highest form of obligation. If a man were to walk merely in this, though ever so well, he would fall short of what a Christian ought to be, and they are not the “good works which God has before ordained that we should walk in them.” The law was brought in by Israel's presumption and self-conceit; it was not something that God had before ordained for His people to walk in. Therefore it is said in Romans, the law came in by the way (παρεισῆλθεν). It was a thing that entered temporarily, as a sort of parenthesis brought in for a special but very momentous purpose. And it has done its work, and the believer, even if he had been under it, was brought clean out of it and made alive to God. He has a new husband, and is dead to the old one. But here it is put in a very beautiful form, in harmony with the character of the whole epistle. As the calling, and the purpose, and all that God thought about us were before the world was, so even the character of the believer's walk was ordained before ever we came into the world, and is in its own nature entirely above it. It is a question of our manifesting God aright, as He is now displaying Himself, “Be ye followers of God as dear children.”
What a wonderful place is this that we are put into! We are created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God has before ordained that we should walk in them. We have a new character of life altogether, that the law never contemplated, and we have a correspondingly new character of good works.