(1) The Word of God
CHANGE and decay are stamped on everything “under the sun”; and “we all do fade as a leaf” is the inspired language of God’s prophet of old. A groaning creation is the continual reminder to all who have eyes to see that, spite of all man’s efforts to improve his condition, and notwithstanding all his fancied wisdom and ambitious schemes, he is absolutely helpless under the cruel mastery of sin and death. Satan, too, as the god of this world, still binds his victims in the iron chains of bondage; surely never more so than in these perilous times, when “the end of all things is at hand.”
Amidst the thickening darkness, and the fast approaching storm of divine judgment, which ere long will burst on a doomed and guilty world, how refreshing it is for the believer to remember that the new nature he possesses as God’s child is one that cannot decay; and the words of Peter sound in his ears with holy joy: “Being born again; not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the living and abiding word of God.”
Yes, the good seed of God’s word is “incorruptible”; and the divine nature implanted in every true believer grows neither old nor corrupt, nor can it decay. The Master’s words can never lose their precious and eternal meaning, and He Himself has declared that “the seed is the word of God.” Often, alas! we know it falls into hearts, whence it is snatched away by the fowls of the air; or, on to the rock, where it cannot take root; or, maybe, it is choked with thorns. But where it enters soil prepared to receive and keep it, then by the power of the Eternal Spirit, it takes root, springs up, and bears precious fruit, thirty, sixty, or a hundredfold.
The apostle John declares that “whosoever is born of God doth not commit [practice] sin; for his seed remaineth in him; and he cannot sin, because he is born of God.” There is nothing corruptible in the word of God. “It liveth and abideth forever,” in contrast to “All flesh,” which is “as grass, and all the glory of man, which is the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away; but the word of the Lord endureth forever. And this is the word which by the gospel is preached unto you.”
Not only does it, by the power of God’s Spirit, convert the soul, but it also gives light and life, peace and joy, food and strength; and, in its formative power, sanctifies the believer to the praise of the glory of God’s grace. Yes, the word of God is “incorruptible.”
(2) the Blood of Christ
Man’s guilt reached its climax when the soldier’s spear pierced the side of the crucified Jesus, although he knew not that, in that very act, he was fulfilling scripture. For, “without shedding of blood is no remission”; and “it is the blood which maketh atonement” for the soul. Not only is it the one and only ground of peace between a guilty sinner and a holy God; but it cleanses, justifies, and sanctifies the believer, and he, in virtue of it, is brought nigh to God, and privileged to worship by the Spirit in the holiest of all. Such is its priceless value in God’s account that even the vilest sinner who trusts it can stand in glory’s unsullied light without a spot or stain.
“Clean every whit;
Thou saidst it, Lord,
Shall one suspicion lurk?
Thine, surely, is a faithful word,
And Thine a finished work!”
Not only so, but the sinner who believes is “redeemed” by it, and the ransom price paid for his redemption is nothing less than the precious blood of God’s Holy One. The same inspired apostle who tells us that the word of God is “incorruptible,” also says, “Ye know that ye were redeemed not with corruptible things, as silver and gold.... but, with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot.” That holy Lamb of God was foreordained before the foundation of the world, and the blood which flowed from that divine Victim stands in everlasting contrast, not only with the blood of bulls and goats (which could never take away sin), but with all earth’s richest mines of gold and silver which only sink into utter insignificance when compared with its priceless, infinite, and eternal value.
The sinner’s redemption (whether of soul or of body) could not be effected by anything that is “corruptible”; and herein all the Old Testament types come short of the divine Anti-type; for “He, whom God raised again, saw no corruption,” and the blood of that slain Lamb, who was without spot or blemish, alone avails as the believer’s title to present peace and future glory.
Let the reader of these lines mark it well, and ponder it in his soul. You must be “born again” (for Jesus says so), by the word of God, which is “incorruptible,” and you must also be redeemed by that which is equally “incorruptible,” even the precious blood of Christ; or else there is nothing before you save death, judgment, and the lake of fire.
(3) the Heavenly Inheritance
All “under the sun” is “vanity and vexation of spirit” says the Preacher, and is fast passing away. The “potsherds” may strive with the potsherds of the earth; but all the fond ambitions and brightest hopes of men’s hearts are obscured and blighted by the overshadowing power of death. But Christ’s death and resurrection bring the believer into new scenes altogether, where sin and death can never come; and therefore all his hopes are living hopes, founded on Christ’s glorious resurrection, where, as a consequence, corruption has no place.
Canaan itself, the hope of Israel, was, after all, but an earthly inheritance and defiled by sin; but the glorious inheritance to which the believer is hastening is “incorruptible, undefiled, and fadeth not away.” It is “reserved in heaven” for all those who are “kept by the power of God, through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.” What an unspeakable comfort, amidst the increasing chaos, ceaseless change, fleshly excitement, and growing corruption of all things here below, to have a glorious and incorruptible inheritance, “where neither moth nor rust can corrupt, nor thieves break through and steal.”
This will be the believer’s happy portion in and with Christ in the bright and coming day, and for this his pilgrim spirit waits and longs. Though the trials of his faith may be many, yet the end is sure and certain, so that even now he can “rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory.” The groaning creation waits “for the manifestation of the sons of God”—but meanwhile we ourselves wait for that triumph shout, “when this corruptible shall put on incorruption, and this mortal shall put on immortality.”
S.T.