PUBLIC-DOMAIN CHRISTIAN BOOK
Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V)
Alexander Maclaren, 1826-1910 · 251,651 words · 349 reading sections
The Witness Of The Spirit
And so the _substance_ of the Spirit's evidence is the direct conviction based on the revelation of God's infinite love and fatherhood in Christ the Son, that God is my Father; from which direct conviction I come to the conclusion, the inference, the second thought, Then I may trust that I am His son. But why? Because …
1,029 wordsSECTION 62The Witness Of The Spirit
But, my friends, if this principle be true, it does not apply only to this one single attitude of the believing soul when it cries, Abba, Father; it must be widened out to comprehend the whole of a Christian's life, outward and inward, which is not sinful and darkened with actual transgression. To all the rest of his b…
966 wordsSECTION 63The Witness Of The Spirit
And the practical conclusion that comes from all this, is just the simple advice to you all: Do not wonder, in the first place, if that evidence of which we speak, vary and change in its clearness and force in your own hearts. 'The flesh lusteth against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh.' Do not think that i…
329 wordsSECTION 64Sons And Heirs
'If children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ.'--ROMANS viii. 17. God Himself is His greatest gift. The loftiest blessing which we can receive is that we should be heirs, possessors of God. There is a sublime and wonderful mutual possession of which Scripture speaks much wherein the Lord is the …
833 wordsSECTION 65Sons And Heirs
But the inheritance which my text speaks about is also that which a Christian hopes to receive and enter upon in heaven. The same principle precisely applies there. There is no inheritance of heaven without sonship; because all the blessings of that future life are of a spiritual character. The joy and the rapture and …
683 wordsSECTION 66Sons And Heirs
So much, then, for the first principle: No inheritance without sonship. II. Secondly, the text leads us to the principle that there is no sonship without a spiritual birth. The Apostle John in that most wonderful preface to his Gospel, where all deepest truths concerning the Eternal Being in itself and in the solemn …
683 wordsSECTION 67Sons And Heirs
Fatherhood! what does that word itself teach us? It speaks of the communication of a life, and the reciprocity of love. It rests upon a divine act, and it involves a human emotion. It involves that the father and the child shall have kindred life--the father bestowing and the child possessing a life which is derived; a…
1,088 wordsSECTION 68Sons And Heirs
IV. Last of all, no Christ without faith. It is not enough, brethren, that we should go through all these previous steps, if we then go utterly astray at the end, by forgetting that there is only one way by which we become partakers of any of the benefits and blessings that Christ has wrought out. It is much to say th…
494 wordsSECTION 69Suffering With Christ, A Condition Of Glory With Christ
'...Joint heirs with Christ: if so be that we suffer with Him, that we may be also glorified together.'--ROMANS viii. 17. In the former part of this verse the Apostle tells us that in order to be heirs of God, we must become sons through and joint-heirs with Christ. He seems at first sight to add in these words of ou…
813 wordsSECTION 70Suffering With Christ, A Condition Of Glory With Christ
Now what do the Apostles, and what does Christ Himself, in that passage that I have quoted, mean, by such solemn words as these? Some people shrink from them, and say that it is trenching upon the central doctrine of the Gospel, when we speak about drinking of the cup which Christ drank of. They ask, Can it be? Yes, it…
769 wordsSECTION 71Suffering With Christ, A Condition Of Glory With Christ
But then, let me remind you still further, that not only does the life of Christ, as sinless in the midst of sinful men, and the life of Christ, as sinless whilst yet there was temptation presented to it--assume the aspect of being a life of suffering, and become, in that respect, the model for us; but that also the De…
746 wordsSECTION 72Suffering With Christ, A Condition Of Glory With Christ
Such considerations as these, however, do not necessarily exclude the other one (which we may just mention and dwell on for a moment), namely, that where there is this spiritual participation in the sufferings of Christ, and where His death is reproduced and perpetuated, as it were, in our daily mortifying ourselves in…
652 wordsSECTION 73Suffering With Christ, A Condition Of Glory With Christ
I name this principally for the sake of putting in a caution. The Apostle does not mean to tell us, of course, that if there were such a case as that of a man becoming a son of God, and having no occasion or opportunity afterwards, by brevity of life or other causes, for passing through the discipline of sorrow, his in…
763 wordsSECTION 74Suffering With Christ, A Condition Of Glory With Christ
III. Finally, that inheritance is the necessary result of the suffering that has gone before. The suffering results from our union with Christ. That union must needs culminate in glory. It is not only because the joy hereafter seems required in order to vindicate God's love to His children, who here reap sorrow from t…
468 wordsSECTION 75The Revelation Of Sons
'For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God.'--ROMANS viii. 19. The Apostle has been describing believers as 'sons' and 'heirs.' He drops from these transcendent heights to contrast their present apparent condition with their true character and their future glory. The…
742 wordsSECTION 76The Revelation Of Sons
From all such thoughts there arises a piece of plain practical wisdom, which warns Christian men not to despond or despair if they do not find themselves living up to their ideal. The sons of God are 'veiled' because the world's estimate of them is untrue. The old commonplace that the world knows nothing of its greates…
725 wordsSECTION 77The Redemption Of The Body
That revelation will be more surprising to no one than to those who are its subjects, when they see themselves mirrored in that glass, and so unlike what they are here. Their first impulse will be to wonder at the form they see, and to ask, almost with incredulity, 'Lord, is it I?' Nor will the wonder be less when they…
694 wordsSECTION 78The Redemption Of The Body
The thought of the future life as a bodily life satisfies the longings of the heart. Much natural shrinking from death comes from unwillingness to part company with an old companion and friend. As Paul puts it in 2nd Corinthians, 'Not for that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon.' All thoughts of the future which d…
714 wordsSECTION 79The Redemption Of The Body
Similarly the redeemed body will be a more perfect instrument for communication with the external universe. We know that the present body conditions our knowledge, and that our senses do not take cognisance of all the qualities of material things. Microscopes and telescopes have enlarged our field of vision, and have b…
754 wordsSECTION 80The Redemption Of The Body
All that Scripture says about 'rising in glory' is said about believers. It is represented as a spiritual process. They who have the Spirit of God in their spirits because they have it receive the glorified body which is like their Saviour's. It is not enough to die in order to 'rise glorious.' 'If the Spirit of Him th…
319 wordsSECTION 81The Interceding Spirit
'The Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.'--ROMANS viii. 26. Pentecost was a transitory sign of a perpetual gift. The tongues of fire and the rushing mighty wind, which were at first the most conspicuous results of the gifts of the Spirit, tongues, and prophecies, and gifts…
695 wordsSECTION 82The Interceding Spirit
III. These divinely-inspired longings are incapable of full expression. They are shallow feelings that can be spoken. Language breaks down in the attempt to express our deepest emotions and our truest love. For all the deepest things in man, inarticulate utterance is the most self-revealing. Grief can say more in a so…
789 wordsSECTION 83The Gift That Brings All Gifts
'He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?'--ROMANS viii. 32. We have here an allusion to, if not a distinct quotation from, the narrative in Genesis, of Abraham's offering up of Isaac. The same word which is employed in the Septuagint …
758 wordsSECTION 84The Gift That Brings All Gifts
And now, notice how this mysterious act is grasped by the Apostle here as what I may call the illuminating fact as to the whole divine nature. From it, and from it alone, there falls a blaze of light on the deepest things in God. We are accustomed to speak of Christ's perfect life of unselfishness, and His death of pur…
660 wordsSECTION 85The Gift That Brings All Gifts
Farther, this one great gift draws all other gifts after it, because the purpose of the greater gift cannot be attained without the bestowment of the lesser. He does not begin to build being unable to finish; He does not miscalculate His resources, nor stultify Himself by commencing upon a large scale, and having to st…
668 wordsSECTION 86The Gift That Brings All Gifts
First, I would say, Let us correct our estimates of the relative importance of the two sets of gifts. On the one side stands the solitary Christ; on the other side are massed all delights of sense, all blessings of time, all the things that the vulgar estimation of men unanimously recognises to be good. These are only …
651 wordsSECTION 87More Than Conquerors
And, last of all, make you quite sure that you have taken _the_ great gift of God. He gives it to all the world, but they only have it who accept it by faith. Have you, my brother? I look out upon the lives of the mass of professing Christians; and this question weighs on my heart, judging by conduct--have they really …
790 wordsSECTION 88More Than Conquerors
There is no need, in order to rise to the full height of the Christian contempt for calamity, to deny any of its terrible power. These things can separate us from much. They can separate us from joy, from hope, from almost all that makes life desirable. They can strip us to the very quick, but the quick they cannot tou…
653 wordsSECTION 89More Than Conquerors
II. So then, note next, the abundant victory of love. Mark how the Apostle, in his lofty and enthusiastic way, is not content here with simply saying that he and his fellows conquer. It would be a poor thing, he seems to think, if the balance barely inclined to our side, if the victory were but just won by a hair's br…
778 wordsSECTION 90More Than Conquerors
III. Lastly, notice the love which makes us conquerors. The Apostle, with a wonderful instinctive sense of fitness, names Christ here by a name congruous to the thoughts which occupy his mind, when he speaks of Him that loved us. His question has been, Can anything separate us from the love of Christ? And his answer i…
560 wordsSECTION 91Love'S Triumph
'Neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God.'--ROMANS viii. 38, 39. These rapturous words are the climax of the Apostle's long demonstration that the Gos…
806 wordsSECTION 92Love'S Triumph
The distance of a star is measured by the apparent change in its position, as seen from different points of the earth's surface or orbit. But this great Light stands steadfast in our heaven, nor moves a hair's-breadth, nor pours a feebler ray on us, whether we look up to it from the midsummer day of busy life, or from …
781 wordsSECTION 93Love'S Triumph
And as for them, so for men around us; the limits of their power to harm us are soon set. They may shut us out from human love by calumnies, and dig deep gulfs of alienation between us and dear ones; they may hurt and annoy us in a thousand ways with slanderous tongues, and arrows dipped in poisonous hatred, but one th…
753 wordsSECTION 94Love'S Triumph
And this eternity of Being is no mere metaphysical abstraction. It is eternity of love, for God is love. That great stream, the pouring out of His own very inmost Being, knows no pause, nor does the deep fountain from which it flows ever sink one hair's-breadth in its pure basin. We know of earthly loves which cannot …
800 wordsSECTION 95Love'S Triumph
In that great ocean of the divine love we live and move and have our being, floating in it like some sea flower which spreads its filmy beauty and waves its long tresses in the depths of mid-ocean. The sound of its waters is ever in our ears, and above, beneath, around us, its mighty currents run evermore. We need not …
723 wordsSECTION 96The Sacrifice Of The Body
'I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.'--ROMANS xii. 1. In the former part of this letter the Apostle has been building up a massive fabric of doctrine, which has stood the waste of cent…
677 wordsSECTION 97The Sacrifice Of The Body
Now, Paul was not such a superficial moralist as to begin at the wrong end, and talk about the surrender of the outward life, unless as the result of the prior surrender of the inward, and that priority of the consecration of the man to his offering of the body is contained in the very metaphor. For a priest needs to b…
858 wordsSECTION 98The Sacrifice Of The Body
It is also, besides being the recipient of impressions, and the possessor of needs and appetites, our instrument for working in the world. And so the exhortation of my text comes to include this, that all our activities done by means of brain and eye and tongue and hand and foot shall be consciously devoted to Him, and…
680 wordsSECTION 99The Sacrifice Of The Body
And there, as I believe, is the one motive to which we can appeal with any prospect of its being powerful enough to give the needful impetus all through a life. The sacrifice of Christ is the ground on which our sacrifices can be offered and accepted, for it was the sacrifice of a death propitiatory and cleansing, and …
551 wordsSECTION 100Transfiguration
'Be not conformed to this world; but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect will of God.'--ROMANS xii. 2. I had occasion to point out, in a sermon on the preceding verse, that the Apostle is, in this context, making the transition from the doc…
702 wordsSECTION 101Transfiguration
Now, I suppose that in my text the word 'mind' is not so much employed in the widest sense, including all the affections and will, and the other faculties of our nature, as in the narrower sense of the perceptive power, or that faculty in our nature by which we recognise, and make our own, certain truths. 'The renewing…
766 wordsSECTION 102Transfiguration
The life is to be transfigured, yet it remains the same, not only in the consciousness of personal identity, but in the main trend and drift of the character. There is nothing in the Gospel of Jesus Christ which is meant to obliterate the lines of the strongly marked individuality which each of us receives by nature. R…
699 wordsSECTION 103Transfiguration
Now, I do not wish to do more than just touch most lightly upon the thoughts that are here, but I dare not pass them by altogether. 'This world' here, in my text, is more properly 'this age,' which means substantially the same thing as John's favourite word 'world,' viz. the sum total of godless men and things conceive…
772 wordsSECTION 104Sober Thinking
And so, brethren, here is the way, the only way, by which we can change ourselves, first let us have our minds renewed by contact with the truth, then we shall be able to transform our lives into the likeness of Jesus Christ, and our faces too will shine, and our lives will be ennobled, by a serene beauty which men can…
729 wordsSECTION 105Sober Thinking
The grace given by faith works in the line of its possessor's natural faculties; but these are supernaturally reinforced and strengthened while, at the same time, they are curbed and controlled, by the divine gift, and the natural gifts thus dealt with become what Paul calls _charisms_. The whole nature of a Christian …
795 wordsSECTION 106Sober Thinking
The just estimate of our gifts which Paul enjoins is needful in order that we may ascertain what God has meant us to be and do, and may neither waste our strength in trying to be some one else, nor hide our talent in the napkin of ignorance or false humility. There is quite as much harm done to Christian character and …
324 wordsSECTION 107Many And One
'For we have many members in one body, and all members have not the same office: 5. So we, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another.'--ROMANS xii. 4, 5. To Paul there was the closest and most vital connection between the profoundest experiences of the Christian life and its plainest a…
774 wordsSECTION 108Many And One
But, though this unity is mysterious, it is most real. Every Christian soul receives from Christ the life of Christ. There is a real implantation of a higher nature which has nothing to do with sin and is alien from death. There is a true regeneration which is supernatural, and which makes all who possess it one, in th…
672 wordsSECTION 109Many And One
The average Christian life of to-day sorely fails in two things: in being true to itself, and in tolerance of diversities. We are all so afraid of being ticketed as 'eccentric,' 'odd,' that we oftentimes stifle the genuine impulses of the Spirit of Christ leading us to the development of unfamiliar types of goodness, a…
721 wordsSECTION 110Grace And Graces
'Having then gifts, differing according to the grace that is given to us, whether prophecy, let us prophesy according to the proportion of faith; 7. Or ministry, let us wait on our ministering; or he that teacheth, on teaching; 8. Or he that exhorteth, on exhortation; he that giveth, let him do it with simplicity;…
770 wordsSECTION 111Grace And Graces
II. The graces that flow from the grace. The Apostle's catalogue of these is not exhaustive, nor logically arranged; but yet a certain loose order may be noted, which may be profitable for us to trace. They are in number seven--the sacred number; and are capable of being divided, as so many of the series of sevens are…
915 wordsSECTION 112Grace And Graces
III. The exercise of the graces. There are some difficulties in reference to the grammatical construction of the words of our text, into which it is not necessary that we should enter here. We may substantially follow the Authorised and Revised Versions in supplying verbs in the various clauses, so as to make of the t…
668 wordsSECTION 113Grace And Graces
'Diligence' is the characteristic prescribed for the man that rules. We have already pointed out that this exhortation includes a much wider area than that of any ecclesiastical officials. It points to another kind of rule, and the natural gifts needed for any kind of rule are diligence and zeal. Slackly-held reins mak…
286 wordsSECTION 114Love That Can Hate
'Let love be without hypocrisy. Abhor that which is evil; cleave to that which is good. 10. In love of the brethren be tenderly affectioned one to another; in honour preferring one another.'--ROMANS xii. 9-10 (R.V.). Thus far the Apostle has been laying down very general precepts and principles of Christian morals.…
675 wordsSECTION 115Love That Can Hate
II. Let love abhor what is evil, and cleave to what is good. If we carefully consider this apparently irrelevant interruption in the sequence of the apostolic exhortations, we shall, I think, see at once that the irrelevance is only apparent, and that the healthy vehemence against evil and resolute clinging to good is…
660 wordsSECTION 116Love That Can Hate
In the final exhortation of our text 'the love of the brethren' takes the place of the more diffused and general love enjoined in the first clause. The expression 'kindly affectioned' is the rendering of a very eloquent word in the original in which the instinctive love of a mother to her child, or the strange mystical…
577 wordsSECTION 117A Triplet Of Graces
'Not slothful in business; fervent in spirit; serving the Lord.'--ROMANS xii. 11. Paul believed that Christian doctrine was meant to influence Christian practice; and therefore, after the fundamental and profound exhibition of the central truths of Christianity which occupies the earlier portion of this great Epistle…
700 wordsSECTION 118A Triplet Of Graces
Brethren, that is a very homely exhortation. I wonder how many of us can say, 'Lord! I have heard, and I have obeyed Thy precept.' II. Diligence must be fed by a fervent spirit. The word translated 'fervent' is literally boiling. The metaphor is very plain and intelligible. The spirit brought into contact with Christ…
697 wordsSECTION 119A Triplet Of Graces
III. The diligence and the fervency are both to be animated by the thought, 'Serving the Lord!' Some critics, as many of you know, no doubt, would prefer to read this verse in its last clause 'serving the time.' But that seems to me a very lame and incomplete climax for the Apostle's thought, and it breaks entirely th…
513 wordsSECTION 120Another Triplet Of Graces
'Rejoicing in hope; patient in tribulation; continuing instant in prayer.'--ROMANS xii. 12. These three closely connected clauses occur, as you all know, in the midst of that outline of the Christian life with which the Apostle begins the practical part of this Epistle. Now, what he omits in this sketch of Christian …
783 wordsSource & rights
Public domain in the USA; original historical text digitized by Project Gutenberg.
Project Gutenberg source record →
Historical Christian writing; not Scripture.