What, then, is the consequence of this new position? And what does it involve? Nothing less than a parental and filial union. In Christ Jesus you have a Father who loves you, a Father whom you love; a Father who cares for you, and on whose care you may confidently trust; a Father who speaks to your soul by His Spirit, and who admits you into close and confidential intimacy with Himself. Now it is perfectly clear, that as you pass through life, it will be the joy of your heart to please that loving Father. The more you love Him, the more you will rejoice to please Him, and He gives you the assurance that your efforts, defective though they be, do please Him, for we are told not to forget to do good, and to communicate, ‘for with such sacrifices God is well pleased.’ (Heb. xiii. 16.) But, on the other hand, you may grieve Him. I can never forget the tender love of my dearest mother, or how fondly I loved her in return. I have the greatest satisfaction also in the recollection of her pleasure as she witnessed my boyish efforts to carry out her wishes and those of my father. But I can look back to more than fifty years ago and remember one or two sad days in which I pained her. Oh, dear children! never pain your mother, for the thought may remain with you long after she is in the grave, long after the time when you can no more throw your arms round her neck, and ask her forgiveness for what you have said or done to grieve her. Now it is just the same with our Heavenly Father. We may love Him, truly love Him, love Him without a doubt. Moreover, we may please Him, please Him well in all things, and bring to His service that offering of the whole man with which he is well pleased. But we may also grieve Him, and I fear we often do. The free forgiveness through redeeming blood has not removed, eradicated, or laid to rest the old sinful human nature. Thus St. Paul tells us to ‘grieve not the holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption,’ Eph. iv. 30; and he shows us how we may do so, viz., by corrupt communication, bitterness, wrath, anger, clamour, evil speaking and malice. Do you think that a bad temper does not grieve Him, or unkind conversation, or pride of heart, or wandering thoughts in prayer, or any of the thousand things that may rise before the conscience of those who are not satisfied with a superficial Christian life? But if this be the case what do we want,—want day by day as we pass through life? Surely the parental forgiveness, the loving forgiveness of a loving Father, watching in love over His loving child, and with a Father’s love, and a Father’s authority, accepting the acknowledgment of sin, and day by day freely forgiving it. This perfectly explains the use of the Lord’s prayer by the children of God. We come to Him in that prayer as our Father, and because He is our Father we ask Him as a Father to forgive us our sins. This does not supersede the judicial forgiveness, but is the consequence of it. Nor does it set aside redemption, for it is on redemption that the whole sonship depends. There is nothing independent of that most precious blood of Christ. It is through that blood of His that the curse is removed, and the judicial forgiveness granted; through that blood of His that we receive the adoption of sons, and are brought into the sacred relationship of children in a Father’s family. It is through that blood of His that we are preserved in that relationship, and stand before the Father in a covenant union with the Son of God Himself. But resting on this power of the atoning blood, there is a great deal besides judicial forgiveness. If you be asking now the way of life, and anxious that all the sins of all your life may be blotted out, that so you may be saved from the condemnation of the law; then your only hope must be in the plenteous redemption wrought out for you on the cross when the Son of God redeemed you from the curse, being made a curse for you. And, thanks be to God! that is sufficient, for it has broken down every barrier, and set the way of life wide open before the chief of sinners. But if you have been saved from that condemnation, so that now you ‘have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins:’ you have also a great deal more, for you have besides it and resting on it, the unspeakable blessedness of a Father’s love. You may daily fall back on the satisfaction of the law, and in consequence of that satisfaction, like loving children may cry, ‘Abba, Father,’ and claim a Father’s forbearance and a Father’s tenderness, a Father’s provision, and a Father’s forgiveness. It is this parental love that is the joy of our hearts when we kneel together round our Father’s table, this parental forgiveness for which we pray when we say, ‘Our Father which art in heaven, forgive us our trespasses.’
Let us endeavour, then, to realise the legal condemnation gone; the judicial forgiveness granted; the adoption of sons bestowed; the Father’s table spread; the Father’s forgiveness ready; the Father’s love shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given us. And realizing this, shall we not draw near in faith? Shall we not confess to Him that we are heartily sorry for all our misdoings? Shall we not ask Him for His parental forgiveness? Shall we not feed at His table? Shall we not rest on His loving arm? Shall we not regard it as our chief joy to please Him? And shall we not out of the fulness of loving hearts exalt His name for the unspeakable riches of redeeming love; and praise Him from the bottom of our hearts that by His marvellous grace we even now ‘have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins?’ and having it, can appeal to a Father’s love for daily forgiveness as for daily bread?
XII. PURITY.
‘Who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works.’—Tit. ii. 14.
If we wish to understand the various passages in the word of God on the subject of redemption, we must never forget the two parts of which redemption consists, so often brought before you in these lectures—the satisfaction of the law by the payment of redemption price, and the actual deliverance of the ransomed people as the result of the finished atonement. It is of especial importance that we bear this well in mind in the study of those texts in which redemption is spoken of as being either now in progress or still in the future, for there is no possibility of any present or future atonement, that having been for ever completed on Calvary, and such passages can only refer to the work of deliverance which will not be complete till the glorious day of our Lord’s appearing. The atonement is complete, but the deliverance is in progress still, and those texts refer to it.
I believe that this remark is of great importance to the right understanding of this text. It occurs in the midst of one of the most practical chapters in the Bible. The words are addressed to the various different classes of society. Aged men are exhorted to be sober and sound in faith; aged women to be in behaviour as becometh godliness; young women to be sober and to love their husbands and their children; servants to be obedient, pleasant, not contradictory, and honest; and all of us to deny ungodliness and worldly lusts, and to live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world.
Now, according to the text, the great motive power to all this is the fact that our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ ‘gave himself for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people zealous of good works.’ Let us study then the redemption work, and the redemption power; and may God the Holy Ghost so bless it to our souls that we may be led in practical life to adorn the doctrine of God our Saviour in all things!
To redeem in these words clearly means to deliver, as the result of the finished atonement. The foundation of the deliverance is the fact that our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ gave Himself for us. The actual deliverance is described in the words, ‘that he might redeem us from all iniquity.’ A question has arisen as to the meaning of this expression. Does it mean that He might redeem us from the curse and judgment of all iniquity and so set us legally free, as when He said, ‘Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us?’ or does it mean that by the power of the Holy Ghost He might deliver us from the bondage of all iniquity, and so make us actually a holy people unto Himself? There is much to be said for both interpretations. ‘Iniquity’ may stand here for the curse, or guilt, of iniquity, as ‘sin’ stands for the guilt of sin in 1 Pet. ii. 24: ‘Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree.’ Or it may stand for sin itself, and its deadly power over the ruined soul. I am inclined on the whole to prefer this latter application, and to believe that the words describe the actual deliverance from the dominion of sin. The context clearly points in that direction, and so, as far as I can judge, do the words. The word here rendered iniquity strictly means ‘lawlessness.’ It is the same word as that in 1 John, iii. 4, where it is translated ‘transgression of the law,’ and appears generally to express the actual disobedience to the law, or will of God. If this be the case the idea evidently is that in our natural condition we are slaves and bondsmen to disobedience, or lawlessness. But that the great God and Saviour made an atonement for us in order that He might set us free from that dreadful yoke, and call us out to be a people set apart for His praise. This is in harmony with what we are taught in Rom. vi. 19, for there we are described as having in former times ‘yielded our members as servants to uncleanness and to iniquity’ (the same word), and as now being set free by the grace of God. But there can be no such freedom without redemption from the curse of sin. You remember that when a man had sold himself to be a slave, the only way in which he could obtain his liberty was by his kinsman legally redeeming him from his master. So it seems to be here. Christ our kinsman has paid the ransom in order that we, being redeemed, may be freemen unto God, and may now as freemen have the joy of serving Him.
But this is not all that is done for us, or nearly so, for the text does not merely refer to the bondage from which He died to deliver us, but leads us also to consider the new life to which He came to raise us. It takes the positive side as well as the negative. It looks forward as well as backward. It describes the new-master to whom being redeemed we belong, as well as the old master from whom by redemption we are delivered. Now you see this transfer very clearly in the text. The old master is lawlessness, the new master is Christ Himself. He came to redeem us from all iniquity, and ‘purify unto himself a peculiar people.’ ‘Peculiar’ does not mean odd, or eccentric; but special, and separated, as you may see by a comparison of Deut. vii. 6, and xiv. 2. In chap. vii. 6, we read, ‘The Lord thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people unto himself,’ and in chap. xiv. 2, ‘The Lord hath chosen thee to be a peculiar people unto himself.’ You see that these words respecting Israel of old exactly correspond to those here spoken of the redeemed Church, and they completely explain what is here meant by the word ‘peculiar.’ As Israel was a peculiar people, delivered from Egypt, and set apart unto God, so those who are in Christ Jesus are redeemed from the old bondage of their past lawlessness, and set apart as a special people unto Him who has redeemed them by His blood.