1 Cor. 3:21-2321Therefore let no man glory in men. For all things are yours; 22Whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come; all are yours; 23And ye are Christ's; and Christ is God's. (1 Corinthians 3:21‑23); John 17:9, 109I pray for them: I pray not for the world, but for them which thou hast given me; for they are thine. 10And all mine are thine, and thine are mine; and I am glorified in them. (John 17:9‑10)
"Ye are Christ's." I invite you to dismiss from your minds all popular notions as to what our relations with Christ are, (for the more popular a notion is, the more likely it is to be false), and come back to the clear, unmistakable words of Scripture. They are not, "Christ is yours," but, "Ye are Christ's." I am not aware of any passage in the New Testament that says, "Christ is yours."
We are His possession; His claims are absolute; He is our Lord. This is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Many things are yours. Before we reach this arresting statement, we are told, "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," and popular Christianity would crown this glorious wealth by saying, "And best of all, Christ is yours." But the Scripture does not say that at all. What it says is, "YE ARE CHRIST'S, and Christ is God's." Just as Christ was and is and ever will be altogether at God's disposal, the willing Servant of His good pleasure, so are we to be at Christ's disposal, to be pleasurable to Him both now and forever.
We did not choose Him, but He chose us; we did not buy Him, but He bought us, and great was the price He paid; and since He chose us and bought us, we must belong to Him-spirit, soul and body. Yes, body as well as spirit and soul.
I know that it is preached and taught that Christ is the pearl of great price, and that we as merchantmen seeking goodly pearls must surrender all we have and purchase Him so that we may call Him ours (Matt. 13). But it is a false interpretation of a great passage, and sadly mars its beauty and power. Christ is the merchantman, and His Church is the pearl of great price. For it He sold all and gave Himself, that it might be His by unchallengeable and everlasting right. His Church is His, and you are part of it if you have believed (Eph. 5).
That we are not our own but Christ's is emphasized later in this epistle when the Apostle, full of surprise that his Corinthian converts were forgetting it, and of indignation at the conduct that resulted from their forgetfulness, urges "Do ye not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit which is in you, which ye have of God; and ye are not your own? for ye have been bought with a price; glorify now then God in your body."
When first the apostles proclaimed that God had made this same Jesus both Lord and Christ, so real was it to those who yielded themselves to Him that they put all they possessed at His feet; they kept nothing back. Land, houses, everything belonged to Him for He was Lord, and they were His; and without delay or regret they surrendered all to His disposal. Was that because they were a generous and large-hearted people? It was because they wholly recognized the claims of Christ. Nor was the truth less effectual among the Gentiles who believed, for the churches of Macedonia, though in great poverty, first gave their own selves to the Lord and then placed what else they had at His command. So it is recorded for us in
2 Cor. 8 The Christians at Corinth had not fully owned the sovereign Lordship of their Savior. It is probable that they boasted that Christ was theirs. It seems certain that they did, for they were taking the benefits and gifts that they had received because they were Christ's, and using them for self-exaltation.
They were laying hold of these benefits and saying they are ours; they were puffed up thereby, and this was producing all kinds of strife and envy where peace and love should have held sway. They were reigning as kings, these people who could boast that Christ was theirs, while Paul and his fellow apostles, men who fully owned that they were Christ's, were the offscouring of all things, for so we learn from chapter 4 of this epistle. Paul could not reign where Christ was crucified; he must be as his Lord.
The sort of Christianity that the Corinthians showed is the sort that is popular today, and just as they needed to have the truth pressed upon them that they were Christ's, so do we. There can be no advance in grace and truth, no walking and growth in the Spirit apart from this. "Ye are Christ's" must gain its proper ascendency in our lives if we are to manifest what the Scripture shows us that Christians really are.
Before proceeding to speak of the blessedness of this fact, let me say that it is not my intention to take from anyone any definite blessing or joy that they may have derived from thinking of Jesus as theirs. There is a certain measure of truth in that side of things; the trouble is that it is forced wholly out of its place to the detriment of souls.
It is true that the Lord Jesus has placed Himself at our disposal. He is our Savior, our Advocate, our Priest; all the grace and love that fill His heart flow out without limit for us; in that sense He may be said to be ours. But was there ever a Christian who really got the joy and benefit of these things apart from owning the claims of the Lord over him? It is only as we own that we are Christ's that we can rejoice in what He is to us.
It is good to speak of Him as our Savior. Yes, but what did He save us for? That we might belong to Him. He "gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto Himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works"-that we might be His peculiar treasure. We rejoice to speak of Him as our Lord; but that means not that He belongs to us, but that we belong to Him; it is not our claiming Him, but our owning His claims over us.
We delight in the fact that "The Lord is my shepherd." True, but does the shepherd belong to the sheep, or the sheep to the shepherd? His own account of this blessed relationship is very definite. "I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth His life for the sheep.... I am the good shepherd, and know My sheep, and am known of Mine.... My sheep hear My voice.... neither shall any man pluck them out of My hand.... My Father... gave them Me." There is no part of Scripture that emphasizes the great fact that we are Christ's more than John 10; and oh, the preciousness of it! We are His because of the great love that fills His heart for us, love that has flowed forth and proved itself by His death for us. He gave Himself that He might possess us for Himself forever without a rival. We are His because His Father gave us to Him, and we are more precious to Him because of this than thrones and kingdoms; we are the Father's love gift to His well beloved Son. We are His because He can keep us. He can hold us against the threatenings of every hostile power. In His right hand dwells omnipotence. The sheep belong to the Shepherd. "Ye are Christ's."
We may begin, and often do, like the bride in Song of Solomon who sang in her new-found joy, "My beloved is mine, and I am his "; but if we advance in the knowledge of the Lord we shall speedily change our song as she did, and rejoice with a greater joy to sing, "I am my Beloved's, and His desire is toward me." The first is a sort of half truth in which self has a place of prominence; the last is the whole truth, in which Christ is all. There the heart loses sight of all but the greatness and tenderness of Him who has been spoken of in poetical language as "this tremendous Lover." Then it is realized that the only response to love such as His is to yield ourselves to Him, and it becomes the joy of life to own that we are His.
This means much to Him; if we would know how much, we must measure the travail of His soul when He gave Himself to save us; and as we endeavor to do that which is impossible, we must remember that His joy in possessing us will compensate Him fully forever for all that He has suffered to make us His. He will say in the day of His glory, The prize is worth the price.
But consider the Lord's intercession on behalf of His own in John 17. He is speaking to His Father in that full and blessed communion that ever existed between the Father in heaven and the beloved Son upon earth. He makes requests for His own. Hear Him say, "the men which Thou gavest Me out of the world: Thine they were, and Thou gavest them Me.... I pray for them... which Thou hast given Me; for they are Thine. And all Mine are Thine, and Thine are Mine;... keep through Thine own name those whom Thou hast given Me."
When He spoke to His disciples, He could not tell them all that was in His heart. He was straitened and restricted. But when He spoke to His Father, what was in His heart could flow out without any reserve, and could anything affect us more deeply? Could we possibly listen to that wonderful prayer and not gladly and fully own that we are Christ's indeed? We are His because the Father gave us to Him; His because He bought us with a great price; His because we are possessed on His behalf by the Holy Ghost. Yes, the truth, the whole truth is this, "Ye are Christ's." Let it fix itself in our hearts and minds, and produce in our lives its own true and blessed fruit.